FYI

Warning. This sign is a tripping hazard.

W00T!

It has been a rather good week! My paper was accepted to Review of Scientific Instruments and the grant proposal that I wrote with my advisor was funded through the National Science Foundation.

In other news: I will be taking my qualifying exam near the end of May. This is progress! Boink.

Dateline: Pittsburgh, PA

I have spent the week in Pittsburgh, PA at the annual March Meeting of the American Physical Society. The view from downtown Pittsburgh is decent but the surrounding areas look a little run down. I know what an under-developed area looks like in California but it is hard for me to tell here on the east coast. It might be that everything is more weathered and that makes the area seem run down.

We were discussing whether the local community could tell that a bunch of physicists had suddenly appeared. I happen to think that we are a weird group. The only other convention that would be geekier would be something like Comicon or a Star Wars convention. However, it appears that Pittsburgh annually hosts the Fuzzies. Who knew?

BTW - they have free internet in the airport! Time to catch my flight.

Merry Christmas!

I have been busy lately but that is a good thing. (See my first post.) I am stopping by today to spread some holiday cheer. Here is a little christmas music that you can put on softly in the background at your gatherings this holiday season. I will leave you with a new holiday classic. Move over Charlie Brown.

Merry Christmas!

LaTex my @ss

I cannot even begin to tell you how much I loathe LaTex. I don't buy the arguement the author can "ignore the details of typsetting and focus on the content." I have wasted more time trying to figure out simple things that can be done by clicking a button in a word processor. Don't get me wrong, MS Word has its own problems. Don't even get me started on endnotes in Word. Perhaps I should try communicating my data through interpretive dance rather than journal articles?

BTW - Winedt you can eat it.

Greenhouse

Here are some pictures of my greenhouse in various stages of construction. I laid out the design in Google SketchUp before starting. SketchUp is not as full featured as AutoCAD or SolidWorks but it was sufficient for this project. I will post the file after I fix up a few details. It is raining today so construction is on hold. :(

Man tools

I have started building my new greenhouse! My intention was to use the tools that I had available at the time: a cordless drill, miter box, and hammer. Unfortunately, the second battery for my 15 year old Craftsman drill finally died and it was not obvious were I could find a replacement. The two web sites that I found selling replacements looked sketchy to say the least. So, I bit the bullet and bought some new tools.

Of course, when I brought my new purchase into the apartment I received the prerequisite  harassing. Many jokes ensued about "man tools" but I had to laugh when I opened the box and the teenager stopped in mid-jibe and said. "Oo, shiny!" Everybody likes new stuff and black and yellow is a pretty cool color scheme.

I planned to only buy a new drill but for some extra cash I picked up a cordless circular saw and reciprocating saw as well. (The light that came with the set seems lame but I will go with it for now.) Having the circular saw has been nice as I started with only a hand saw and that was a bit of a pain. I can tell that the reciprocating saw has a taste for blood (and bone) and I am very careful when I use it. I am a big fan of engineered safety barriers and the reciprocating saw leaves me a little uneasy. The 18V tools seem to have plenty of power. Neither of the saws has felt underpowered and the drill arguably has too much torque.

Safety First! Go Bears!