It’s the final day of 2006, which means it’s time for me to engage in a bit of reflection. I must admit that I haven’t really prepared for this, and it’s tempting to paste a meme, even though I try to avoid doing that here. But here goes my year in review:
Continue reading ‘The Year in Review’
Archive for December, 2006
Merry Christmas, everyone! May you enjoy a wonderful holiday with your loved ones. (And for those who don’t celebrate Christmas, may you have a great day.) Also, (ho ho ho) Happy Amymas!
Today I drove the whole distance between Ithaca and my parents’ place in NC by myself and made it in one piece. This essentially means that I left Ithaca before the sun was completely up and it was well dark by the time I got to my parents’. There was a bit of car trouble–flashing lights, buzzers, and a loss of throttle control–but restarting the car seems to have fixed that, at least enough that I was able to make it the last fifty miles or so without incident. But I will definitely be taking the car in to a dealer before I drive the 630 miles back.
I think a large factor in my ability to have driven so far and so long in one go was listening to Neil Gaiman reading Fragile Things the whole way. The audiobook claims to be 10.5 hours, and, though I’m near the end, I’m not quite finished, which seems to indicate that I did actually drive less than 10.5 hours, which surprises me because I’d been pegging the drive between here and there as 11 hours or so. Not that I’m complaining, mind you. The audiobook definitely helped, though, because I didn’t find myself growing sleepy and easily distracted like I normally do after, say, six straight hours behind the wheel. And, being Neil Gaiman, it was all brilliant and I thoroughly enjoyed listening to him do all the different accents and voices–so much so that I think I may listen to the whole thing again on the way back instead of listening to music like I typically do. If that’s not a shining recommendation, I don’t know what is.
Haven’t had a chance to see my parents really because they were on the way out the door to a Christmas party when I arrived. I did see enough of them to be extremely disturbed by the sight of my father with a full beard. (With few exceptions, my father has had either a mustache or a goatee my entire life.) I think the only thing more distressing than my father with the full beard is him with no facial hair. Ah well. I suppose if he doesn’t get the right to complain when I cut my hair, I don’t get the right to complain about his facial hair. Which, mind you, does not mean that I won’t give him a hard time about it. 
Plans to drive to Arkansas for Christmas have been scrapped, and, I must admit a certain relief. After today, I really don’t need another 14 hours of driving. I’ll be sorry to miss seeing my extended family–I so wanted to hear my uncles’ remarks on my Cornell “Actually, I am a rocket scientist” t-shirt–but life goes on. And on. And on.
I think I’m ready for a nice, relaxing holiday now. I doubt I’ll get it, but it’s nice to delude oneself every once in awhile.
Since turning in my last final, life has gotten so much better that it’s almost unreal. Yesterday Stephanie and I started work in the lab. Things have been a bit haphazard in terms of what order we should do things in, but, for the most part, it’s a lot of fun. Our advisor sticks his head in the lab every couple hours or so between meetings, but we are primarily working under Sathya, who is the only other grad student in the lab. He’s finishing up his thesis at the moment and is essentially sticking around long enough to train us.
Yesterday, we started out by getting an overview of how to take data in the big Upson tunnel, which is about a meter squared in cross-section. It’s the first tunnel I’ve seen with wooden walls. The sides have portholes along them for data collection, and every surface is covered in thick foam and aluminum foil from the days when a great deal of temperature work was done in the tunnel.
Yesterday began with an attempt to construct a hotwire anemometer probe. The important thing to know about a hotwire is that it involves a wire that’s about 3 microns in diameter. This means that, in order to clean and solder and etch a new wire onto a probe, one has to use a microscope. So we were busy using sandpaper under a microscope yesterday, which, let me tell you, is a truly bizarre feeling. Unfortunately, one of the cleaning chemicals that we needed was missing, so we couldn’t finish building our own probe. Instead we calibrated a ready-made one.
After work last night, Joe and I had a “double-date” with Stephanie and Eric for Mexican and margaritas. It was lovely, and, boy, was I ready for some relaxing fun like that. Also, margaritas = yummy.
Having done the calibration yesterday, however, we could spend today actually taking measurements in the wind tunnel’s boundary layer. It’s a pretty repetitive process, of course, but the fact that we get to crawl inside the wind tunnel to change the probe position qualifies as pretty awesome. I always said that I was going to grad school so that I could play in wind tunnels. Guess I just didn’t realize how literally I would take that.
Today’s good vibes have also included lunch with our advisor and buy one, get one free on fresh baked goods at the Duffield Cafe. Since today is the last day of finals, they’re running specials to get rid of food without having to throw it away once all the undergrads are gone. This means that Sathya and I came back to the lab with a stack of goodies, most of which were desserts. Oh, yes, I love my lab already.
There are some painters that have been in and out of here a few times today, and I had to ask them not to leave the door to the lab open while we have the wind tunnel on because it disrupts our experiment. At which point the painters asked, “Yeah, uh, are we going to get sucked into there if we walk past?” as they stood next to the exhaust. No, guys. Feel that breeze coming out of the wind tunnel? You’re definitely not going to get sucked in. I assured them that it was perfectly safe to walk past, we just didn’t want the air flow in the room to be disrupted. But then they wanted to know if they would get sucked out the window by passing the exhaust. Oh. Dear. Lord. p.s. My lab partner is the prettiest most awesome wonderful and modest person evar! (says me, Nicole, yep, no one else writing in here but me. nicole. you know the one.)
I’M IN UR BLOG! EDITING UR ENTRIES!
(All italics are courtesy of Stephanie. Who is crazy. In a good way.)
Well, folks, that’s it. The Fall 2006 semester is over and done with. I turned in my last report, came home, and took a shower to wash it all away. Tomorrow the fun stuff (i.e. research) starts. But, first, some amusement courtesy of my CFD professor. This is essentially the conversation we had as I turned my report in. I apologize for the technical terms, but you don’t have to be a fluid mechanicist to appreciate it–actually, it’s more helpful to know some programming
Prof: What method did you use?
Me: I did a FTCS method for the first half and used a conserving upwind approach for the convection terms in the second half.
Prof: Did you use the upwind method I presented in the notes? The one with the absolute values?
Me: Definitely. I didn’t want to evaluate all the conditionals. I’d much rather have a slightly messier looking equation.
Prof: I’m glad that you were listening in class. I’ve spoken to three people now who used if statements.
Me: There’s a little note to myself in the class notes pointing to that equation that says, “Avoids if statements”
Prof: Good. And how did you handle the velocities? Did you store them separately?
Me: Yep. I calculated them ahead of time and kept them in their own array so I could just pull appropriate values when needed.
Prof: Clearly, you are a logical person.
Me: I’ve got one in-class final, one final project, and a take-home final exam that I’m working on right now.
Professor: I’ve always wondered how you know to stop on a take-home exam.
Me: Usually, you quit when you feel confident in the answer you have for every problem. Or when you feel like you’ll throw up if you look at the problem one more time.
Thankfully, the professor I was talking to cracked up at this point in the conversation.
I have answers for every part of the take-home final. Not necessarily confident in all of them, but it’s time to let that be for a few days.
I fear that I’m falling into one of those traps where my blog posts turn into massive bullet pointed lists (or maybe that’s his influence), but I figure that lists of random bits and pieces are better than dead silence, right?
Since I’ve been feeling down more than I’d like to the past few days, it’s time for a list of the good things going on right now:
- My NSF letters of recommendation have been turned in, leaving me free from contemplating my fellowship application until the results come back. This is a serious load off my mind.
- Classes are over. I still have finals hanging over my head, but the part of my life where I have to waste time listening to lectures is over… until January.
- In the finals category, I got my fluids take-home final this morning. It is due December 11th, and I have already finished one-third of it. This is happiness which cannot be counted on one’s fingers.
- Who got a bunch of Christmas shopping done at the big Cornell store sale today? Yes, that was definitely me.
- The rent has been paid for the month, and, because I picked up my paycheck, I’m still coming out ahead.
- My research group meeting today has convinced me that I am very lucky. Not only am I going to get to start playing in wind tunnels in two weeks, but my advisor actually seems to care about his students having lives outside of doing research. Win!
- Current plans are to go to the theater to see Casino Royale this evening. I’m not much of a Bond fan, but the last day of classes is a good time for some mindlessness.
Neil Gaiman has a really sweet post involving his daughter Maddy that made me smile. In particular, he writes:
“You forget the things you were certain you would always remember, especially the tiny things, and all too often they’re the things that matter.”
I think that’s what I’m always upset with myself for failing to do when it comes to keeping a journal or a blog. In the end, it’s usually the tiny things that really bring back a memory for me, and those are usually the things that don’t get recorded. I wish I could tell my thirteen-year-old self that.
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