Some days it’s better just saying in bed.
For me, today was that day.
Ah, the beauty of Avery Point and the Castle blanketed in a layer of calming white snow. Until the klaxon sounds and sirens wail.
Just to hit the high spots:
Very tired this morning after insomniatic night -> Roads not plowed -> three car pile up on the highway -> highway traffic diverted onto my commute route -> 15 minute commute (+15 for unplowed streets) now takes 57 minutes -> miss Chemistry lecture.
Trying to pack for Ft. Lauderdale trip interupted by two 20 minute fire alarms, both false alarms! Finally got the three crates full of the nav and video systems for the cruise, they are on the way. Hopefully they make it to Ft. Lauderdale and don’t end up in Ft. Leavenworth.
One of three hook and ladder trucks which responds to every Marine Science building alarm. I don’t mean that to imply that there are a lot of alarms.
Laptop died at ~8:40am -> three major projects, all due in next 1-3 weeks on dead laptiop, not to mention three almost complete web site redesigns I figured to complete while on the plane. Fortunately it’s only the video board -> after school Tammy and sick Johann accompany (very tired) me to Genius Bar where they verify, yes it’s the NVidea board. They have replacement mainboard in stock, 3-4 days to replace. Whew! Excellent Indian food from the food court(!!) as celebration.
I managed to get the projects off the laptop before we left for Providence by booting it blind as a firewire harddrive to the iMac. Slow process, but at least I’m safe there. 2 hours sleep in the past 48. This day.. you can have it back (though I’ll keep the vindaloo and nan in the food court, thank you!) Now to sleep perchance to dream, or if not just forget this day.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
felt like standing up and belting out your favorite Sea Shanty in a crowded classroom?
My co-blogger from the Other95%, Kevin – who is also a member of the Deep Sea Boys who we hope to see make the circuit of Sea Shanty festivals this summer – essentially did just that as he led a session at Science Online ‘09 on blogging from the field.
The idea, I believe, was to provide some idea of the level of distraction often present on a ship or field location, a lesson I got a bit of a taste for having “live-blogged” a few posts from the NOAA Ship Nancy Foster.
All I know is I would have loved to have been in the room when Kevin started dancing around with a deep sea angler fish puppet and belting out
Haul away you rolling kings
Heave away, haul away
Haul away youll hear me say
Were bound for South Australia
Please tell me someone got video or audio!!
(for those not familiar with Sea Shanties, Roger McGuinn has the lyrics and an MP3 of the Southe Australia available)
As I apply for grad schools the big issue seems to be the money…
This comic strip hits way too close to home!
10% cuts came already and now the painful ones are coming… not that the 10% cuts weren’t already painful. Hopefully I can find my way into grad school despite the cuts…
Applications are in to UConn, Rutgers and URI for masters programs. Feelers went to Duke and WHOI but both of those are very long shots since the deadlines for this year have already past and they are Ph.D. only programs.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
I’m confused….
I had to wonder when Christie at Observations of a Nerd proclaimed that she was actually a man. I mean, I have never met her, but from previous postings etc., I was pretty sure the author of the blog was a female. However it seems her writing is decidedly male, at least according to one analysis.
According to the site GenderAnalyzer.com, which analyzes the gender of the author of a site based on their writings, I also may have an identity issue to deal with on top of GRE’s, Grad school applications, etc…
It seems Eclectic Echoes is decidedly gender neutral. (Technically 53% male).
Larval Images is decidedly male at a ranking of 74% male, and
The Other 95% is comparatively dripping with testosterone at 84% male.
Of course since I blog at TO95% with Kevin, I decided to analyze his other sites as well.
Deep Sea News (with co-bloggers Craig McClain and Peter Etnoyer) scores strongly male, but at 81%
I also tried Kevin’s home page, but according to the analyzer it is not written in English (?!) so it could not complete the analysis.
Unfortunately without a site exclusively authored by Kevin, I don’t think there is a solid way to break out each author’s effects accurately.
Aside from the fact they probably need more training data for increased accuracy, what conclusions can you draw? (While I get back to studying aggregate supply and demand curves and writing a paper on oxygen isotopes and global climate analysis)
Monday, November 10, 2008
Go vote for Brian of Laelaps fame, (but not fortune) and make his college experience a tad less expensive.
He entered a Student Blogger contest that has a $10,000 award and after making the first cut is in a vote-off or the big prize.
(Damn, that would have killed the credit card debt right nicely!)
Seriously, if you all know me and what my family has been doing to make this a reality, you surely know it isn’t easy. Brian is an awesome writer and we need people like him in science and science communications…
Damn, just realized Laelaps isn’t in the science blog links over there —>
must fix.
As for my education… one thing I have learned this week. Bureaucracies are the same wherever you go, and I would still rather be in combat that deal with them – at least in combat you have a fighting chance to survive.
