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June 23, 2005
i need my love / cuz what is life but promise and despair
Well, life continues even if I don’t have time to blog.
Over the past two weeks I’ve either been extremely stressed out about work or this whole bus thing. Murphy’s law that two sucky things happened to tangled up in the same time frame. It reminds me how I wish I was “a guy” and didn’t get so personally wrapped up in things. I also wish I didn’t believe that the worst case scenario was bound to happen. What happened to my optimistic side?
A good adviser is many things, and my adviser is great. I’m come to question a set of data that has been the bedrock of one of our projects. I do wish my adviser had been in town (he was in Hong Kong) so I could discuss my concerns with him sooner. He made me feel a lot better with the attitude of if the data is wrong, it is wrong. It is better we find out now than publish it and someone else figure it out.
I am just too personally wrapped up in my data. Of course, this is the number one reason that I shy away from going into research as a career choice. Of course, going into research is not why I can to grad school, but I still have got to learn to stop taking everything so personally.
I was thinking the other day that I have everything I ever wanted – and none of that includes work/school. I have hunk o’ man. I have great friends. I, you know, can walk. The rest is just how I pass the time in between.
I’ve started “job hunting” in response to several people’s assertions that it is never too early (I’m looking at another 1.5-2 yrs here). I’m doing it more to get a feel for what I want to do for a year or so after graduation. It makes this some how better. Though you can’t beat the flexibility of grad school.
Dude. According to this website, I’m going to live to be 90.4.
It has been a day of 2 unexpected, yet spirit lifting e-mails. They remind me that to love and be loved is the most important thing, not mistakes and work and buses.
I’ve got to take something quite complicated apart this afternoon. I’ve been avoiding by trying to work around the problem, but have not been successful. I must now bite the bullet.
ps - the lyrics in the title (they are always lyrics) are from hunk o' mans brother. Pete and J gave us a demo cd a couple weeks ago. It is quite cool. You can check out their website and hear some of their stuff on their MySpace page, linked from their website.
Posted by christina at 12:07 PM | Comments (0)
June 18, 2005
did you ever live to linger? / to twril time around your finger?
I walked Cosmo around the block at lunch today becuase the yard is messy becuase the Harpers are reroofing thier house. This would be fine to most risk adverse animals, they would pee around the stuff (or on). Cosmo eats everything, therefore i just put him on the leash and walked him. It is a beautiful day, and it was a beautiful walk even though Cosmo pooped in someone's yard. I have no idea why i was so surprised (and unprepared), as that was the goal of the walk. We walked back to the house and got a bag and than returned to pick it up. I'm not sure what the rules are in Willmette, but it is just considerate to pick up about your dog, and so I did. It was good practice for my future dog, though i hope it poops smaller poops.
Tom and I saw the HUGE dog (really, a bear) outside of the restaurant last night. "Can you imagine how much that dog poops?" i asked Tom. Seriously. I can't imagine. That is a big plus for a small dog, small poops.
The trip up to walk the puppy was good motivation to get some work done at school this afternoon. I am currently taking these type pictures on the SEM.
It took me along time to be able to hop in here and get these kinda of nonconducting small things. Tricks of the trade enable me to find them. People not messing up the SEM before me also helps.
Not such a bad gig. I brought my ipod. Quite nice.
My ipod + pedometer have been some of the best two christmas presents ever. My parents rock. The combination, I believe, are what have motivation my 5 mile morning runs. Those morning runs have played more into my sanity these past two weeks than I think I realized until today. I didn't run this morning becuase my body was complaining that it would be 5 in a row, which it doesn't like. When a part (or two) of my life feels out of my control, I have a tendency to try to ubercontrol parts to make up for it. Usually it is my running. I push myself. I look forward to getting up in the morning and running. I totally stress about whatever is stressing me running my run, so it isn't like an escape. Some how, though, it makes me feel better.
Tom and I saw Howl's Moving Castle. It was excellent. I'm not sure Tom was a huge fan, but I really enjoyed it.
Posted by christina at 6:04 PM | Comments (0)
June 17, 2005
i believe
a good picture of what i believe
Posted by christina at 4:42 PM | Comments (0)
everything will be alright
You know, when things suck, they can really suck. I'm an big optimist, but have a bit of paranoia mixed in. I always imagine the worst case scenario and then work from there. I think, at least yesterday more for sure, that it would be nice not to the that person. Of course, that person makes sure I don't miss flights and that I don't break lots of stuff in the lab.
A city bus side swiped me on the way to work yesterday. It was a tight intersection. I was watching the guy to my right as he was swinging my way to make a hard turn and all the sudden my side mirror casing shatters on the left side and i look to see a bus driving past me making the turn in the left lane. The bus made the left and was gone.
I was in shock. I had to be at school to start the second day of the fore mention conference. I was the only one who knew anything that was going to be there and so had to be there. That was all I could consider in my shocked state and so went on to school. Once I got everyone settled in, I went and filed the police report at the station nearest to the accident (and my house actually). The cop spent 20 minutes trying to convince me not to file and basically made me feel like an idiot for insisting on following the law and filing a report. As I expected, since I did not get a bus number, they could not do anything. The cop upset me more about the situation as he acted like I was just a stupid women.
Seriously, he is the thing I am most pissed about. A run in with a bus was bound to happen considering how often in the past they have come really close to hitting me. I didn't need this cop lecturing me about how insurance companies are just out to make money out of you and me and how if i report this my premiums are going to go up. And how if next time i put people in the hospital that they are really going to go up if i report this. Considering the fact that I have never hit anything or gotten a ticket since my one speeding ticket in high school, this was a total ludicrous idea. But he really had NO PLACE telling me any of this or trying to convince me not to follow the law. He also asked me who pays my premiums, insinuating that I should talk to that person before I file a report. Once he finally let me file, he tried to give me a hard time about not having an Illinois drivers license and so had to show him my student id.
My insurance company (usaa) was amazing. Well, they might still yell at me for not getting the bus number. (Had it been any other morning and had i not been in complete shock than i totally would have. This is the first time i've ever been involved in anything like this, and so I had no idea what to do and turned stupid. Live and learn.) The insurance lady was so nice and helpful and set up a repair shop just down the street and a rental car just down another street.
Though all of the ups and down of this past week and a half, the nicest thing has been knowing that there is always someone on your side. Someone you can call even though you know he is trying to get ready and you are totally going to make him late to tell him a bus took off your mirror. Someone to rub your back when you can't shut off the voices in your head reliving what you should have done. That's been the best.
and this spell check on the new google toolbar totally rocks my world
Posted by christina at 10:30 AM | Comments (2)
June 16, 2005
i go walking
Currently, I want to become a dog walker.
It just has been one of those weeks.
Posted by christina at 4:25 PM | Comments (0)
June 13, 2005
crazy little thing called love
Organize regional conference complete with invited speakers from around the world. Check.
Well. The meeting has come, is almost gone, and can be said went well. It is always interesting to hear about people’s research. The highlight is that one of my invited speakers turned out to do a lot in tribiology of mems, a field that my low friction films apply well. I alternately love exposing my research to people in my field and alternately am afraid of some question I can’t answer. It never has really happened, as I’m not afraid to say I don’t know.
I got here at 6:30 am this morning, and won’t leave until close to my usual 6:30 time. Gotta love those 12 hour days. I am debating a run as I did not get to yesterday or this morning, but the humidity might just make me wait until tomorrow morning. I have to be here early tomorrow, but not until 8:30, which makes it hard to fit in a run, but I think I’ll just get up early when it is nice and cool.
Go to crazy Cubs-Red Soxs game, the first one since the 1918 word series. Check.
Yep, to the envy of random people, I got to go to Saturday’s Cubs-Red Sox game.
We’ll call Friday and Saturday the days of pretending I lived in the south again. It has been so hot and humid up here and we spent a good chunk of our time out in it, as air conditioners are everywhere here like they are in the south.
Friday evening was hunk o’ man’s little sister’s graduation. She graduated from a tiny school – her class had 38 people. The speaker was very amusing and not what you would expect. They didn’t wear caps and gowns, which perplexed me. I found out that hunk o’ man didn’t either. He went to the local public school, so it must just be a north shore thing. Random
After the ceremony there was a reception complete with miniature pastries. I’ve decided that my heaven will contain miniature pastries.
A thunderstorm blew in just as we arrived at the local country club for the dinner/dance. A lot of the tables were under this large tent. There was some mighty strong wind and I really thought the tent was going to blow down. The staff did too as they ushered us all inside. The wind soon calmed down and we had a delightful dinner with the sound of rain on the tent. The sound of rain is one of my favorites. If/when I get married, I would love to order rain and listen to it on a tent.
And there was dancing. The thunderstorm did nothing for the humidity, but that did not stop the dancing. There was this great cover band with a stupid name. And there was lots of dancing. Everyone in the family danced. There was a conga line. There was some swing dancing, where I discovered ben’s version of swing to be quite different from mine. We had a great time dancing the night somewhat away as 11 was our limit and we left all the high school grads dressed in white dresses and suits to their celebrating.
Saturday was the game. It was crazy. I never see opposing team fans at Wrigley. Saturday there were Red Sox fans everywhere. They were crazy and obnoxious. It was a great game – close and warm and winning. In the evening we joined all the Harpers for dinner in honor of Emma’s graduation. It was this great wine bar that had “wine flights”. It was three “half” glasses of wine on a theme. Ben and both his parents got the wines from the south of France theme. I got a merlot, shiraz, and pinot noir theme, whatever that theme might be. I got it, mainly, for the pinot noir as like most people who’ve seen sideways are intrigued by the pinot noir. It was really good. The food was quite great. And I had a great time. I got to spend lots of time with Ben’s young brother, which I really haven’t had the opportunity to do. So that was a great perk to the weekend.
The cat is TOO CUTE. She is laying in front of the open door sleeping in the evening breeze.
Posted by christina at 8:02 PM | Comments (0)
June 12, 2005
will you hold me sacred / will you hold me tight?
dude. i am so sick. it sucks. though i feel a heck of a lot better now than I did a couple hours ago when i was so nauseous I couldn't stand up. Oh me and the trusting that my stomach is made of steel and taking a pill on an empty stomach. I didn't remember the warnings on the bottle about taking it with food. I've taken this medicine many times and never had this problem. Though, now that i think about it, i have had the nausea problem, but always attributed it to the antibiotics that accompany this pill. Moral of the story - always read the the pill container and take with food if it says take with food.
The northwestern health center is my favorite thing today. After some 5 am research about urgent care center and my insurance, it dawns on me, the second time I wake up today, that I should call the on call doc for the health center and see what their advice is. The doc on call is one i've seen before (i've seen most of them). I doubt he remembered me, but was quite nice and understanding. This illness is easily diagnosed over the phone if you are prone to them and so after a couple of questions, he phoned in a script. If the symptoms don't get better in a couple of days, of course, i should come in.
The great thing about this situation is that I have been super stressed since the symptoms started about not having time on monday or tuesday to go to the health center because of the conference i was putting on Monday and Tuesday. Now I'm not. Though I am going to make an appointment to discuss the recurrence problem that seems to be having. Though, I see more of a connection to stress than anything else. I was super super stressed this week - about this conference, about some testing issues. Last time I got sick, but body was already wore down from another illness. Sigh.
So here we all sit. I'm trying hard not to move very much, trying to drink a lot now as I've basically drank nothing today. I'm enjoying hunk o' man's tinny laptop. I love it - a small sliver dell. I love the wireless internet. It is perfect, especially if you have more than one computer you want to get on it (like our three)(yes the cat has her own computer)(ha ha not really, the printer has its own computer). Izzy's taking a nap and sleep running. It is awesome. Ben's playing his baseball playstation game. The only bad thing about that is that he has to sit close to the tv to be able to see and therefore he's too far to rub my back. ha ha, he's getting old and blind.
Besides the unpleasantness of today, this weekend has been fabulous. More later. Just want to vent as this is the place to do it.
Posted by christina at 5:13 PM | Comments (1)
June 8, 2005
is this real
Today is one of those days. One of my instruments' maker sent their application person to campus today for a presentation. I met with him this morning and he just further my opinion that the company is not one its toes. He tried to convince me that static friction is measured with no motion. I tried to tell him otherwise and finally I stopped with, well, that is not my understand of static friction. And he just looked at me like I was stupid. This exchange pretty much sums up everyone this morning.
And this is only one thing. He contradicted advice I've gotten from people are their company (and made work) left and right. I could not wait for lunch to come and i could return to productive research instead of wasting my morning with him, which is what happened. Of course, he had planned on spending tomorrow morning also, so i had to tell my advisor and other advisor who was hosting him what the story was. I hate doing that. I would rather brush it off. But i absolutely don't have the time nor the patience to sit with him tomorrow nor do i want him messing with the machine as i have it working, at least when it feels like it. currently i suspect that it needs new foils and that is why i've had a bad week with it. But i had to tell the advisors to explain why i was brushing the dude off if it got back to them. My advisor, beside asking what he was suppose to do about it in his true fashion, said that i should ignore the idea that dude might think I'm stupid. It was a cool and funny thing to say because do not care one but what this guy thinks of me. I only care what my advisors think of me, which is why i said something.
You know, i'm not that surprised. I've had nothing but trouble with this company. We just did an upgrade on the machine a month or so ago. When i brought the computer online, they'd upgraded, I got a crazy, fatal error. It took them two weeks to reproduce it and found a setting deep in some software I don't even run wrong. They also had no label on the cable, causing lots of plug-in problems (i didn't figure out that the cable was plugged in backward until they gave me the pin number connections and I took an ohm meter to the cable). In addition, they miswired the cooling fan. I needed to take the soder iron down there and soder the ground to the chassie, but who the junk has time? I just set up another fan in the mean time.
This is grad school. Currently. i am not a fan.
Posted by christina at 5:11 PM | Comments (1)
June 7, 2005
sunshine and chocolates
It was a two pug, one schnauzer run this morning. I’ve been missing Boris, the bulldog puppy lately. I’m quite sad at this.
When I stepped out this morning, the sky was filled with helicopters. There was five of them, all fixated on a place a tad west and south of my apartment. I didn’t, of course, know what was going on, but quickly figured that, though I was about to run toward them (on my normal running route), that I didn’t think I would run into whatever they were watching. Truthfully, I figured it was a bad traffic accident on the highway.
By the time I was running back toward home, the ‘copters were gone. I heard on NPR during my shower that there was a serious fire at this intersection a block from the edge of my route (about half a mile from home).
Here is what they were taking pictures of. It is very sad. 3 guys died in this apartment fire. I just realized that this is exactly where our friend Chipper the med student lives. Dude. I hope he’s okay…..just talked to hunk o’ man. We determined that he lives a little east of there. Whew.
No word on what happened.
I’ve been planning this conference for a while now. It is Monday. It is sucking up a lot of my time. But that is okay. It is going to be swell. And I am going to so glad when it is done.
What is wet? Steve defines wetness as the interface between water and something else. Therefore water itself can’t be wet. Ben defines wetness as the feeling of water evaporation off his finger. Therefore water can’t be wet. Actually, scientifically, the definition of wetness is the ability of a molecule (or set of) to wet a surface, which has to do with the difference in surface energy of the two surfaces. The smaller the difference in surface energy, the more one set of molecules will wet the other. See so asking if water is wet is an incorrect question. Steve is correct, wetness can only be defined by interfaces. Therefore water can’t be wet. But if you decided to define both of your molecules as water, than both the surface energies will be the same, causing complete wetting. So water can be wet. The question is unanswerable.
Posted by christina at 3:45 PM | Comments (0)
June 5, 2005
do you know the muffin man?
So, as I've mentioned several times here, I'm a cooker. I love to cook and bake. I get good reviews. For me, it is just following good recipes, and knowing when things are done. So I've decided to post my favorite recipes to a recipe page for your enjoyment.
Posted by christina at 5:17 PM | Comments (0)
June 3, 2005
movin’ to the country gonna eat a lot of peaches
thomas louise passed this link along to me, asking me why why why. (okay, maybe not so melodramatically.)
It is a perfect example of what happens when school teach abstinence only instead of abstinence and protected sex. I just don't understand. And the same people are (usually) anti-abortion. I don't understand how the Bush administration (and their supporters) fail to grasp the logic that if fewer people have unwanted pregnancies, then there will be fewer abortions. There will be fewer unwanted pregnancies if we teach people about safe sex and make condoms readily available. I would like to see condom machines in every bathroom of every school so kids can get condoms easily and without having to go to the store. I remember how embarrassed I was to buy my first box of feminine products (which hunk o' man still has problems being in the same aisle as in the store). It would have been out of the question for me to purchase condoms had i needed them.
It is failed logic. Teach abstinence, that is fine. There are a certain percentage of kids that will follow this advice and choose to wait even if condoms are available. They aren't going to get a condom and say, oooooo, let's have sex now. A good portion of kids won't be swayed by abstinence, and these are the ones that need need need to have access to condoms. They will have sex, wether they have a condom or not. I want to make sure they have taught that to and have access to them.
On the subject of 12 years old having sex, it reminds me of my fears of raising children in today's society. My world was so different than what i see around today. I was insulated from drugs, alcohol, and sex. None of these were an option for me or my friends until we left for college. It was how we were. I would like this to be the world my children are raised in, but I know that I was just super lucky and that some of my peers were tempted by those. I guess I just have to teach them to make the right choices. But i worry about it now, and i don't even have kids (i hope) (ha ha ha) (NOT serious, hunk o' man).
Posted by christina at 1:17 PM | Comments (3)
June 2, 2005
i don't know nothing except change will come
Congratulations to Leta for defending (and passing) today!
She is my first close friend here to graduate. Though she is two years ahead of me, her graduating makes me realize that i'm not too far away. Okay, that is a lie but it make me think more about it than usual. Grad school is a bunch of small deadlines (qualifier, conferences, etc.) racing you to the big one, which is less of a deadline and more of a goal. She took almost 5 years, which is pretty normal. I hope to finish on the shorter side, just because I think I can. But as I've mentioned before, graduation brings up its own set of decisions, so I'm pretty happy to keep plugging along.
Today's topic: Statistics and Design of Experiments.
ha ha. not really for you, but for me. I need to learn all about the statistical analysis, I've decided, for my corrosion project (ooo, yes, something I didn't mention in my last post because it has nothing to do with my thesis and everything to do with you do random work for your advisor cuz, you know, he is paying you, and you can publish it. You also become Christina of all trades.)
Anyways, I was thinking about how differently I think about finding information than previous people. When i want to know about something, even how to spell something, I immediately google it like the internet is the bible or something. The assumption that any thing on the internet in accurate is a stupid one. (I also have a grain of salt attitude toward things published in any form, including scientific journals.) It dawned on me, after i had spent some time looking for information on fractal distribution, that i should just go to the science and engineering library, located 100 yards from my office. Okay, actually i went to their website and looked up the call numbers to the books that sounded yummy and then walked over there and got them. I would also like to take a moment to mention that the self-check out station at the libraries here rock my face off (in the immoral words of honea).
Oh the library, filled with yummy books and things....and moveable shelves in the basement for all the bound journals.
oh, did i mention that thomas lousie and I saw Layercake this past friday at the movies? It was quite good. I recommend it. It isn't as brutal violence filled as they claim. It is definitely no worse than some of the Saparnos I've seen.
Posted by christina at 1:37 PM | Comments (3)
June 1, 2005
i've made charts and graphs that should finally make it clear
I’m forever trying to explain to people what I do. So I will today, if only to be able to put a link on the side to this post. I wish I could just say carbon nanotubes or fuelcells. (Okay, not really for many many reasons.) The project that I have spent most of my time here on is a carbon based low friction coating. The interesting thing about that is that you (more than likely) use a carbon based coating every week. Most razor blades are coated with this carbon based compound (carbon and a very small amount of (if any) hydogen specifically in this case). It is just more for corrosion protection – as most coatings/thin films are. The thin film on the razor blade prevents the steel from oxidizing, forming iron oxide (rust), which dulls the blade. A sharp blade reduces the contact area between it in your skin, reducing the friction that causes “razor burn”.
Everything, just about, has a coating on it for some purpose – to protect, to make more appealing, etc. One of the films I make is to reduce the friction between two surfaces, i.e. to reduce the energy required to move one surface over the other. A wheel of a train on a track is a good example, the pistons in your car, another. MEMs devices have lot of trouble friction (stiction to be exact). This energy to over come friction is wasted energy. Your car wastes 62% of its energy overcoming friction. [This site is has an excellent explaination.] Interesting quote - "Only about 15% of the energy in the fuel you put in your gas tank gets used to move your car down the road or run useful accessories like air conditioning or power steering." To be able to reduce the friction between parts, and therefore the energy waste associated with that, would have a huge effect on the economy, and in this day, global politics. We’ve (ok, I’ve, base on my advisor idea) synthesized a film that has ultra-low friction properties in ambient air, something that has never been done before. Carbon + hydrogen films alone have shown ulta-low friction in dry nitrogen, but humidity was always a problem. We’ve synthesized a doped version that has no humidity problems, and therefore can be used in every day life. It’s pretty exciting. Many days I have doubted our results, but more than a year later and many reproducible friction test, I am starting to trust my data. I’m looking forward to following this project further.
The other thing I do is wear resistant coatings. Oxide based instead of carbon based. This is more in the scientific stage – can we synthesize an oxide multilayer, which displays an interesting hardness enhancement phenomena that has been observed in nitrides m.l.? It’s going to be tough, but I have some good preliminary results. Thank goodness my advisor is a great advisor and had some money for upgrading my system, or I would never have a chance. These films would be used as protective coating for use at high temperature where current coating fail. They would replace cutting fluids that are harmful to the environment and humans.
Posted by christina at 2:33 PM | Comments (0)