• Pages

  • Home
  • About
  • My research
  • What does diktytaxitic mean

• Categories

  • College
  • Geology
  • Grad school
  • Housekeeping
  • Random
  • Research
  • Teaching
  • Uncategorized

• Recently Written

  • Thesising
  • Working, working, working
  • Grad school
  • Awaiting approval
  • Abstract

• Blogroll

  • A Blog Around the Clock
  • Accretionary Wedge
  • Apparent Dip
  • Clasitc Detritus
  • Creek Running North
  • Green Gabbro
  • Growth Faults
  • Highly Allochthonous
  • Living the Scientific Life
  • Lounge of the Lab Lemming
  • Olelog
  • Pharyngula
  • Respectful Insolence
  • Rhosgobel
  • Ripples in sand
  • Ron Schott's Outcrop
  • Southern Exposure
  • Speleonet
  • The Intersection
  • The Loom
  • The Western Geologist

• Archives

  • May 2008
  • March 2008
  • February 2008
  • January 2008
  • August 2007
  • July 2007
  • April 2007

• Admin

  • Login
  • Wordpress
  • 
  • 
  • XHTML

The spring semester is now over (where the hell did it go?) and it’s officially summer now.  So that means finishing up the last round of analytical work and perhaps more importantly starting my thesis.  Eeek!

All I ever seem to do in grad school is work.

At least I had fun with my poster at GSA last week.  That didn’t seem to be work.

Right now, it is spring break time, so that means the semester is
already half way over. I’m sitting at home, casually working on an
assignment (more on that later). Even though being home feels good,
there’s not much here for me to do. When I left Miami, it was 55 and
sunny. Here in Erie it has been below 40 and snowed an inch or two
last night…joy. Here’s an update on this semester so far:

First, my abstract to the GSA North-Central meeting got accepted, just
like my advisor said it would. w00t! The abstract is titled “A Re-Os
investigation of monogenetic volcanism in SE Oregon”. I now have to
make a poster sometime before late April. When I get a second round
of data in the coming weeks, hopefully that will make preliminary
interpretations just a little easier. I also can’t forget the pretty
figures that will get squeezed in there as well. I believe a post on
osmium systematics is warranted, since many people may not be familiar
with the system.

Secondly, before spring break, I was in the lab attempting to acquire
more osmium data. It takes approximately a week’s worth of man power
to get samples ready to load on the mass spectrometer, not counting
the time it takes to get the samples into fine powder. So during the
day last week I was in the lab, getting re-aquainted with the finer
techniques of lab work. It tedious and meticulous work, but when I
get the data, it’s well worth it. Plus, more data gets me closer to
actually starting to write my thesis, which equals me getting closer
to my master’s degree. That’s always a good thing.

As for teaching, I’m teaching an upper level class this semester:
Petrology lab. It’s much better than teaching introductary geology
labs as in those classes you get a bunch of liberal art majors who
really don’t care to be there and are only taking it because they need
a science lab. At least in Petrology lab, i’m teaching geology majors
who actually like geology.

A few weeks ago I started to watch The Office. I can safely say it is
now one of my favorite shows. Michael Scott, you are my hero. New
episodes air starting April 10th–I have that evening circled on my
calendar.

Finally, as part of our research and graduate Petrology work, my
advisor gives an independent assignment based on phase diagrams and
petrographic interpretations gathered from them. It delves into all
different types of phase diagrams that are mostly not normally covered
or briefly mentioned in an undergraduate course. So, in an attempt to
accomplish something meaningful over spring break, I have spent many
hours every day working on it. It’s difficult. I also left all my
reference materials on phase diagrams at Miami, so I only have what I
can gather on the internet and what few notes I had on my laptop.
Even though I haven’t actually completed one problem out of ten, I’ve
made some progress on several of them, enough progress to feel that
I’ve accomplished something.

Now back to watching college basketball games…

I hate playing the waiting game to see if my GSA abstract will be accepted.  My advisor says they’ll accept it, but i’m not getting my hopes up, just in case…

I’m sure it will.

Who would have thought that I could start, edit, and finish an abstract that was due at in 12 hours?  Whew.  I hope it gets accepted.

I’m a little late on hearing about this, but say hi to the Anthropocene.

Retired General Colin Powell spoke at my university this evening.  I did not care.

I finally got to fixing the problems with my blog, along with creating a homepage to go along with this blog. Yay!

I’ll get to reposting some of my previous posts eventually, at least the relevant ones… (Update: I reposted a few of my favorites, but decided the rest weren’t worth it)

What could be more awesome than a geologist in the Star Wars universe?

After crashing his ship, the Alpha Kentrum, on the planet Orellon II, he made first contact with the planet’s indigenous people. He became their spiritual leader, teaching the principles of Sword, Plow, and Spirit.

He even created a series of computer programs which carried on his teachings long after his death. The people of Orellon II were later known as the Kentra, probably in Tandre’s honor. They kept his lightsaber as a holy relic, called the “Sword of Honor”, though its power source was long since drained.

Who needs a rock hammer when a lightsaber could just as easily do the job?

I was always wondering how the two (or three) were linked together.

A Bulgarian professor has promised students A grades if they write about Angelina Jolie’s boobs and buy a copy of his new book.

Professor Stefan Karastoyanov, of the Geology and Geography Department of Sofia University, made the promise as a protest after he was not paid for three months because of cash problems.

He said: “If they write about Angelina Jolie’s boobs and buy my book they’ll get an A.”

So far 80 of the 120 students sitting his classes have ordered his book. - Ananova.com

I haven’t written any books, so I couldn’t give this offer to my students.

— keep looking »