Stupid "Lucky" Ice Bucket

It may seem counter-intuitive, but I am VERY superstitious about my work. You might suppose that the quantitative powers of science would banish any kind of superstitious voodoo aside, but there are too many things to account for most days. Some of this has an explanation- if you always take a coffee break at one point in an experiment and it works, then skip your break and it doesn't- well, you need an "incubation" time. Much more of it does not. But I swear my experiments fail if I don't follow the routine.

This is fairly normal in science, believe it or not. Dr. Boss will always say to "wear your lucky socks" on the day of an important experiment. I have being wearing metaphorical ruts in the carpet of my experiments for long enough now that I have The Way I Do Things that Must be Done in part because I need consistency, and in part because I am totally superstitious. For example, I thaw all my reagents first (like in a very tiny PBS cooking show), and use down time to label my hundreds of tubes. This, I think, is justifiable. That I insist on doing all of this in the ONLY yellow ice bucket in the lab, which has been My Lucky Ice bucket for years, is less so.

Here is a recent example. In a typically catastrophic way, nothing I did for the two weeks before Thanksgiving worked (I know! I was using the Lucky Ice Bucket!), and I came back with every intention of fixing that this morning.... but, my ice bucket was missing. Which is crazy- I use that ice bucket almost everyday, no one else knows it is lucky. Morosely, I resigned to performing an experiment in an inferior ice bucket, since it was all Doomed to Fail anyhow.
. . . and it worked. Somehow, I managed success outside of my "Lucky" ice bucket.

There are two possible hypotheses here, and I've dedicated many years of my life to the study of the scientific method, so I should know.

1) The color of the ice bucket in which the experiment is performed has no impact on the results of the experiment.
Or, more likely
2) All of the good science luck has been drained out of my yellow ice bucket after years of hard service, and it needs a chance to recover by participating in someone else's experiments for a while.

The vast body of evidence suggests #2, so I'll be switching to a standard black bucket until I hear good things coming out of the yellow one again.

Practice Thanksgiving

Last time I wrote, I think I was still in the desert, so lest anyone be using these blog entries in the far flung future as a digital, archeological record of the era before everything was captured and recorded on supercomputers: yes, I did return on time. (I read about that in a short story once and I’ve been mildly obsessed with the idea ever sense.)

We’re slowly constructing a baby room from its component atoms: furniture and baby toys. Ever since the gender got out: (it’s a boy, in case you’ve been under a rock) and the presumptive name (Tyler Rex Preecs, cause then we can call him T-Rex) we’ve been flooded with intriguing gifts from all corners of the...well, if not the world yet, then at least the country. Sandlin sent us a fantastic set of nerdy early-development stuff, like a flash card set for numbers that contains Pi, and an alphabet poster that has “J for Jovian Moons”. Good stuff for a nerdy baby, which ours is likely to be. Mom and dad (we think? We’ve just gone off the return phone number) got us some baby onesies with T-Rexes on the front. Ha-dorable.




As for us, we’ve been in charge of slightly more heavy stuff: primarily furniture. We’ve gotten the crib (thanks, consumer reports!) and a chest of drawers/changing table. We’re hoping to paint before it gets too late for us to do so, (read: we get too busy/tired) and we’re excited because we can finally pick something with *color*. I’m intrigued by the possibilities presented here.

I’m whipping Jessie back into shape, which is to say that we’re jogging again. Jess has slowed down due to the fact that she has to carry about 20 pounds of baby around with her at all times, so that’s okay. I come up with things to slow me down, like running back and forth, dropping and doing push-ups, and the like. Good exercise. Judo is also going well. I’ve told the teacher that I need to practice more Shiai (sparing, like what you see at the Olympics) not because I like it. Because I’m bad at it and I therefore need the practice something fierce. There are tournaments to attend, if I wanted. Once I feel either curious about how I would perform (I can probably guess, now) or want to try doing judo with different people I may go to one. But for now? No rush.

I’ve been using tools. An old branch or two has broken off on one of the trees in the backyard. We yanked it down with our fancy tree-cutting kit. It wasn’t easy, but I figured out how to saw halfway into the branch and then get the teeth stuck in it so I could pull it down. Then we sawsalled it into trash-can-sized pieces. Also it’s a little windy and there’s a branch out there that looks to be hanging a little bit awkwardly. I may investigate after I post this.

And finally, and most interestingly, Fake Thanksgiving!

I hope you have your plane tickets already and don’t mind getting groped by strangers or having naked pictures taken of you and posted on the internet because it’s time for Thanksgiving Vacation. A recent spate of Good Eats watching led me back to the Good Eats Thanksgiving special, where Alton Brown (my hero!) talks about his tips for Turkey success, namely:

1) Brine the Turkey
2) Don’t stuff it (at least not with stuffing)
3) Start at 500 degrees, drop to 350 and finish with a probe thermometer

I’ve never got a chance to do any of this, but the Florida Family is perfectly willing to let me take over some thanksgiving cooking duties, so I thought I’d give it a try. I wouldn’t want to try it without knowing what I was doing, though. Who knows what a brined turkey could taste like. So rather than just trying it all blindly next weekend, Jess and I decided to do a preemptive thanksgiving this weekend.



All came out well, as you can see. The turkey, brined, was great. Not too salty, and CRAZY-moist. Really good. Jess made a green bean casserole (from scratch, people) that came out fantastically. The stuffing was from stove top and the rolls came almost-pre-baked, but there’s only so much from scratch I’m willing to do all at once. Anyway, we just finished it up (thanksgiving is always better for lunch) and Jess is, of course, napping, which means success, in my book.

Oh, and I got to use my electric knife again. Thanks person who got it for me for Christmas several years ago. Probably parents.



-N

I'm looking for a job.

Our very good friend packed the last of her belongings up this weekend and headed to her future new job and exciting life in VA. Yeah for her! I've obviously spent the rest of my weekend in sweats moping about missing such a good friend in my life. Matt's way of cheering me up has been to say, it's ok, you are going to move on soon too. Sigh, lately I'm not sure how soon "soon" might really be (we can all look back at this post in 2014 and laugh...).

In an effort to redirect that energy, I've decided to start the process of my own moving on, by thinking about applying for some of the policy fellowships I've mentioned. The first is due Jan 14, and more info about it is here- I am particularly interested in the Initiative to help scientists understand the public. The application is a cover letter. Let's put aside for a moment that I've never had a "real" job, I've also never written a cover letter, esp not one that seems so important.

Right now I've got a word document open that reads:

Reasons why I am the best candidate for the Hellman fellowship:

Strong background in science (ie, dissertation work), previous exposure to a variety of fields, ie, undergrad research projects

Recognizing the important role of politics in science during CUR- Posters on the Hill, and also that many scientists choose to shy away from this interface.

Interest in the relationship between science and the public, first realized at CSPC and developed while teaching BIOSC 1590

Ambition to serve science by providing the best possible environment for good science and scientists to develop ideas that service the public--

Have any of our dear readers ever written a cover letter of this sort? Is this a good way to go about it? I'm try to specifically address some of the notions in the job description and also the initiative... but, I'm starting to feel really under qualified and quite scared about sending out this letter. Help?

My awesome students

There have been ups and downs to this whole teaching gig. It's a lot of work, but it is a really fun distraction. I feel compelled to provide my students with something valuable, and in return, they spend hours preparing for my class. I'm very self conscious of how I give them grades- but the fact is I have a bunch of awesome students.

A pair mind boggling examples:
-As I was tallying the grades from last week's assignments (3% of the final grade), I realized I didn't have one from one of my students. I figured I lost it, since I couldn't find some other articles I thought were with it, and emailed him to ask for another copy. He declined, saying he hadn't done the assignment. Seriously, I basically gave him a free pass to get those points, and he demurred. Wow.

-Two students led last nights discussion, and they did a fantastic job with the material- they brought in some cases I was unfamiliar with, and the rest of the class got on board. It was a really fun discussion. While I was pondering their grades (Do I want to give them an A++ because I am so interested in this stuff, or because they actually did A++ quality work?) after class, they started talking about Med School Interviews. Turns out, one of my students was just on her first interview THAT DAY. Yeah, at Pitt, a top 10 ranked program. And then she came and rocked in my class like it was no big thing.

We are now just 3 weeks from the end of the semester, and by the looks of it, I'll be giving 9 out of 10 As, which I think absolutely describes the quality of work I am getting out of these students. I supposed I should make more of an effort to tell THEM how thrilled I am with the work they have done, but I didn't want to ruin the magic by letting them all realize their grades are basically secure at this point. Perhaps next week's class will start with some epic gushing.

Life in Walla Walla?

I have to say that we starting to really enjoy life in the slow lane. Our backyard neighbors are really quiet and the neighbors on the rest of the block are not much noiser.

We have a double garage, a large driveway, and could park a motorhome in front of the house (if we needed to) . . . which is a huge contrast to hipster Ballard where, at certain times of the week, required us to park two blocks away.

Our neighbors on the circle here, held an open house to welcome us and two other couples who are relatively new. We now have faces to match with about half the names on our block watch list. Again, very different from our previous urban life where we knew maybe six people on the block.

We still have moments of missing some aspects of former life, but we each new contact, each new outing, I feel greater happiness about the fit of this location and our stage of life. (and who knows, I might even do some pictures at some point??)

Success at the kiln!

We cracked open the kiln last night- the only major casualty was a off center bowl I shattered with a log- a fair sacrifice. A lot of stuff turned out really nice, I tried some new things this time, making "tiles," using plaster molds, hand building with "spring cut slabs" (this requires a picture, but it turned out pretty great) and not glazing everything. Some of the unglazed stuff looks great! Also some of it looks just mediocre. I think I am partial to the glazed look, but it is amazing what plain old ash and reduction can do.

I brought in the first round of very extraneous pieces today to share at work. I had 4 boxes of modest size to bring home, so I brought the smallest box of pieces I could part with in. Actually, we do have plenty of bowls at my hour already. I picked and attractive mug and walked it up to Dr. Rockstar, who I imagined would politely accept my childish looking craft. He was actually really thrilled that I would think of him. Which is weird, considering I think of him in almost everything I do, as in- would this be good enough for Dr. Rockstar?

My in-laws are coming tomorrow for a long weekend. I hope they've enjoyed their train trip and are energetic enough to see a bit of the city while they are here. I'll be photographically in debt to the blog by mid next week, so I'll endeavor to get that under control asap.

Another amazing fire

The forecast for the weekend was cold, snow, possible rain, and more cold. This is why I was committed to doing my part to add to global warming- Matt and I spent the weekend at the Laurelville Mennonite Church Center, firing the wood kiln. But first off- let me show you how awesome all the stuff the THREE of us made for this class. Amazing volumes, right?


All that is hand packed into the kiln- it takes most of a day- more than a normal work day for sure, to carefully balance each piece on 'wadding'- clay mixed with sand and wood chips that becomes unstable after the firing, but keeps all the pieces from melting to the surface of the shelves.



We lit the fire at 7- this is the earliest we've lit it, EVER, and a couple hours really seemed to help. Once the kiln was going, we could focus on the business of making wood fired pizzas. Oh yeah.

We share the load in 8 hour shifts, mine were both midday- my coworker Sarah went from 8pm-4am (I did that before- it is tiring), and Swarna did from 4am-noon. I tried to be helpful and stack wood or gives breaks whenever I was awake, since I had the easiest time. During my shift on Saturday, I moved the temp from 800 F to 1700 F- so I was pretty much feeling awesome. My friend J even came out to see what all the fuss was about! But my camera started acting up- so I don't have any more pictures. Frown.


By 7am Sunday, the kiln was up to the temp (2100 F) it needed to be help at for a couple hours (Thank you, Weather!), so my shift was rather abbreviated. We did actually help seal up the kiln this time. This involves slowing the rate we feed the kiln, then choking out the air intakes and sealing the cracks with more wadding. The bravery and skill required to 'mortar' the kind of crack that has 2150 degree flames shooting out of it we left to our teacher. I just dropped the last piece of wood. We seal it up, and let it happily melt the remaining ash into glass while it cools. We'll unseal it on Thursday, and see what we get. There are other photos posted here, but these are quite similar to similar albums of the past.

Fine, fine, pictures

Fine, you want pictures? You get pictures. Never let it be said I don't listen to my audience. :)

From 2010-11, Desert

Playing lots of scrabble with the Vegas family before I left. This is a game Ray and I did. Thems some big words!

From 2010-11, Desert

I really dislike being hungry while having to do these work-out-in-the-field, things. So I mostly brought my own food with me wherever I went. Probably saved a bundle of money this way, too. The fridge was too cold, though. It kept freezing my milk and cream cheese.

From 2010-11, Desert

This is where I spent most of my time. We set up our sensor in the back of an SUV, powered off an inverter connected to the alternator. Then we just let the car idle all day and used it to power our computers. Neat, huh? Mostly just sitting in a car for 4.5 hours a day, though. Unless something needed to get fixed, then it was exciting. But boring success was the norm for this trip which is good news, I guess.

From 2010-11, Desert

Fake Afghanistan from up on the hill where we were collecting. By the by, all these pictures were from my cell phone. Pretty neat, huh?

From 2010-11, Desert

There were a *lot* of these driving around. Though not nearly as many as the humvees.

From 2010-11, Desert

Painted rock. Everyone who comes here paints their battalion's symbol on this rock or another nearby one. Neat tradition.

From 2010-11, Desert

Who *is* that handsome lad with the dorky hat?

From 2010-11, Desert

Rattlesnake! Glad I saw him. I'd have taken a better pictures, but my camera doesn't have a very good zoom, and I didn't feel like getting any closer. You understand, yes?

From 2010-11, Desert

Welcome to fake Iraq! Would you like some fake concrete barriers that are actually made out of styrofoam and have blown over in the wind?

From 2010-11, Desert

How about this totally cool-looking fake mosque in the morning sunlight?

From 2010-11, Desert

Fake buildings made out of shipping containers with fake crenelations? How about that fake hospital down at the end of the lane there?

From 2010-11, Desert

I doubt any of these fake, yet expertly messy, phone lines is carrying anything. And I doubt they sprung for the full Sports package on that satellite TV.

From 2010-11, Desert

Check out all these props. Mostly old, junked computer cases and rusted-out bicycles. Certainly adds to the ambiance, yes?

From 2010-11, Desert

Would you like some fruit OH I FOOLED YOU it's also fake. Look closely. You can actually see how it's all molded out of foam. Except for the Bananas and Watermelons. They're just wooden.

From 2010-11, Desert

UXO. Do not mess with. These things were *all over*, though this is the biggest one. Again: taken from a significant distance.

From 2010-11, Desert

Fake Afghanistan from up on the hill. You can see our car, too.

From 2010-11, Desert

Down in fake Afghanistan now. Not as cool looking, but much larger, and still under construction. Concrete buildings, too.

From 2010-11, Desert

Fake Afghanistan also has its own mosque.

From 2010-11, Desert

And finally, this is what you can do when you're out in the desert and bored, but don't want to disturb *too* many rocks because they might be on top of critters or UXO.

You can click over to the album to see a few more pictures I didn't include.

-N

Notes from the Field: Part 2

Day 10: “This is our second-to-last collect day and it’s been pretty busy, so far, which is good for making time go by, but not so great for the collect.  Anyway, I got up at my customary 4 AM, made lunch, ate breakfast, and then took apart the computer I was using and got it downstairs for the car.  We drove out, got set up, and then went out to Fake Afghanistan, which is less exciting than fake Iraq.  It’s actually still a little under construction, they’re expanding it out some more, so there’s no activities or crazy training exercises going on here, though I did notice a few of those fruit stand props.  Also we’re up on the hill again, in one of the collectors. 

It was a bit of a trick to get up here.  We had to drive out *really* slow because 1) we were behind someone slow and 2) the roads are just dirt, so anytime anyone drives over them it kicks up dust, and in the early morning there’s no wind to blow it away, so it just builds up and makes visibility a pain.  When you’re dealing with tanks potentially coming down the road, you tend to drive a little extra conservatively.  By the time we got out, the sun was coming up, which was good, because our navigation up the hill was a little ad-hoc last time, and we weren’t sure we’d be able to find our location again, especially in the dark.  With the sun, though, we were able to find our old path and meander up the hill. ”

“They gave us a safety briefing when we first got here about Unexploded Ordinance (UXO).  Basically don’t touch anything that isn’t obviously a rock.  I don’t know about unexploded, but there is non-rock stuff all over the place out here.  Old shells, even .50 caliber ones.  Nothing bomb or missile-looking, or we’d definitely call it in, but you had best believe I’m very cautiously watching my step everywhere I go. 

Oh, and I don’t know if I told you: I saw a rattlesnake.  From a distance, mind.  We were walking around ‘painted rock’ where everyone paints their emblem when they come in for rotation, and I spotted one on the ground.  Good thing I was looking out, lots of places for critters to hide among the rocks.  Anyway, I kept well away: he looked pretty small and didn’t even move, which was fine by me.  I want no part of that accident.  And, of course, ever since I’ve been watching my feet when I get out of the car or when walking around.”

And...that’s pretty much it. The majority of our work consisted of driving a car to some predefined location, setting up an antenna and a sensor, and then sitting there and watching it record data for four hours, switching hard drives once in the middle of the test. If everything went correctly, it was really boring. Lots of time to kill, which I passed either by staring out into the desert or messing around on my computer.

And you did read that correctly, traditional wake-up time was 4:00 AM for about two whole weeks there. Which actually isn’t too bad, considering that I’m two hours behind Texas. If I ‘sleep in’ to 5:00, that’s like my normal wake-up time back home, theoretically. It means I get to Skype with Jessie in the morning sometimes, if I don’t have to rush off to work right away.

Also, in case you can’t tell I wrote a *plethora* of e-mails to Jessie, as well as sending her text and picture messages on our sexy new phones all the time. A pretty nice way to stay in communication, as it turns out. The one downside is that when we were downrange (in ‘the box’) we had really spotty cell-phone coverage. Though the fact that we could make phone calls out there *at all* is kind of a marvel of modern technology, wouldn’t you say?

-N

Notes from the Field: Part 1

Well the desert collect has pretty much wrapped up. All that’s left is for me to pack up my things, hang out with the Vegas family for a few days, and then go home to see my pregnant WIFE who I miss so much.

I’ve been writing to Jessie a lot, so allow me to blog by posting some choice quotes from my correspondence with her:

Day 2: “The training for the downrange stuff was mostly boring.  'Here's what you have to do.  Don't play with animals.  Don't touch anything that could even potentially explode.' But there was one point where they actually showed full on video of graphic explosive damage.  Potentially not from here, but GRUESOME.  Hand blown apart.  Messed up face.  Leg in tatters.  They ended with a 6-second shot of a dude *getting his leg amputated*.  Doctor cutting it and everything.  I couldn't even watch.  Snuff film kinda stuff. ”

Day 4: “I’ve been sitting in the car for two hours and we just got a radio call from Ed to remind us to switch hard drives at 10:00. Most excitement we’ve had all day.”

Day 7: “So we’re hanging out in what I’ve dubbed ‘fake Iraq.’  It’s pretty cool, I can show you pictures when I get back.  (This whole thing is unclassified, except for one little uninteresting bit).  Out in ‘the box’ which is the range where they send people out to train for shooting tanks and mortars and other, less interesting things like troop movements and supply stuff, I’m sure.  It’s a pretty big place out here.  Lots of room for different things to be going on at the same time, it’s miles on a side, at least, I’m sure.  Just a big empty space for army training things. 

We’re currently sitting in an SUV at Mediana Jabal which is, and no kidding, a fake Iraqi city. It’s mostly made out of shipping containers, but they’ve done a really impressive job of dressing the whole thing up.  They’ve got fake walls on all the boxes with fake bricks.  Fake two-story buildings with fake crenelations, and a big, pretty, fake mosque in the middle of the town.  There’s a bunch of fake power/phone lines all over the city, all haphazardly.  They even have fake fruit stands and storefronts, like a fake internet cafe and a fake hospital.  The fake fruit is really weird, because it’s all plaster and paint. 

And even better, and I don’t know if it’s for us, or for something else, (I’m guessing someone else) but there’s fake people out there today!  Bunch of army dudes in their fatigues (not fake, it’s real army guys) and dudes and dudettes in fake (?) garb, walking around and doing role-playing stuff.  I’m not sure if they’re doing specific scenarios or what, but there’s a lot of dudes out there.  Mostly Iraqi-looking.  Probably a really good training scenario.  I even saw, no lying, *goats*.  Real ones, being led down the street by some army dudes. Not even sure where those guys come from. ”

“Ooh.  Fake explosion, I think.  Either that or somebody just dropped something really heavy.  Ooh, now gunfire.  Pretty far away, though.  I feel safe.  There’s a whole bunch of people around here, too.  Either it’s real and far away for a different exercise or, and I suspect this one is correct just due to the radio chatter, it’s a fake-ish explosion for whatever training stuff they’re doing over there.  We have a special range radio they can use to communicate with us and I’m monitoring it closely.  If it was a real problem, we’d hear about it, so no need to worry.  We’re safe.  And I’m not getting out of the car anytime soon.”

Day 8: “...while we were setting up and collecting they were doing some pretty serious training.  I didn’t see most of it (definitely trying to stay out of the way) but I definitely heard the explosions, and I was outside the car walking around when one of them went off.  Loud!  And then they had Ambulances drive up.  That’s all I know, cause that’s all I could hear. 

I overheard some other people talking, though.  Evidently it was some sort of IED training, or at least part of it was, and they had a stunt guy pretend to have his leg blown off.  Sounded pretty dramatic. ”

More in a second,

-N

Oh, I got your 'handy'

I learned to break glass today- you know, the purposeful, score and break way. Got me a diamond tipped pencil, shattered half a box of microscope slides - for practice - worked my way up to glass plates until I scored and cut a sheet that was most of a centimeter thick. Boo yeah! And then I went back and split an entire box of glass plates- FOR SCIENCE! Amazing the things you learn in grad school.

We are all ready for the kiln firing this weekend- let's hope it doesn't snow!

WIP- also how much I rocked that seminar

I'm not sure if I ever mentioned that early in the semester there was some confusion with my boss about some seminars he asked me to give (angsty GSR eye-roll, is this HARD to keep straight?). It turned out for the best, I got to give a pair of seminars to two different Cancer audiences. The first one was a 'Prize,' and the second one was a WIP, or Work In Progress talk. The WIP was this morning, and I was worried about how I would stretch the 15 min Prize talk to a 50 min WIP. For cancer people. Since, I don't actually study cancer....

Turns out I had lots of extra stuff to add in, and it's easier to give the slow explanation. And dammit, my work is interesting. Dr. Boss and I drove to the seminar site together (it's off campus), and he was very supportive. He punted me prompts in response to the barrage of questions so I could come off as really bright. He was very gracious about the whole thing, so I felt good about it. I had loads of questions, which makes me feel like I explained myself way and other people think my work is interesting.

- - -
I've had some stressful interactions with students and my class recently, which have been making me question my motivation for teaching long-term. But really I've just been feeling busy, and not thoughtful or reflective, or in any position to respond well to students concern about their grades, or the overall course structure.

This weekend we are going out to the wood kiln- its expected to be cold. Fortunately, we'll have a raging inferno to keep us company, and distract us from real life.