I'm slowly making headway in the battle to finish on time.
Slowly but surely.
I expect many things to fall into place tomorrow.
Oh how I am going to miss this city and the wonderful pizzerias on every corner.
Where else can you find so many things on one island?
I've really enjoyed my time here. The people. The sites. The sounds. The food. The fun.
This city is amazing.
e enjte, 26 korrik 2007
e diel, 22 korrik 2007
Coney Island
Yesterday a few of my friends and I trucked on over to Coney Island for the siren music festival. It was so much fun! I saw loads of great bands, the most note worthy of which being White Rabbits and Elvis Perkins. It was a great time to be around all of the old fashioned amusement park rides. We mozied on down the boardwalk as well and spent the better part of sunset on the beach making sand sculptures. Although I have to admit I was disappointed with the hotdogs! As you may or may not know I don't eat meat (ok, I eat fish) and have not eaten meat in quite some time. I was so excited to have a real Coney that I broke my vegetarianism for a day and had one from Nathan's which is where they hold the hot dog eating contest every year. And it wasn't very good! Ah well. It was a beautiful day full of beautiful music and no writing of paper.
It was a good break from last week.
Until next time....
Chelsea
It was a good break from last week.
Until next time....
Chelsea
e premte, 20 korrik 2007
Moon.
I was curious whether or not our moon had some sort of technical name aside from "the moon," as other planet's moons bear this distinction and ours does not seem to. The answer to this question is plainly stated as yes, the moon has a name. It is Moon with a capital M.
lame.
I think we should name the moon. Or at the very least give it some sort of prefix.
"Mr. Moon".
And my paper is well underway. I was surprised that once I started it I had an easy time keeping the juices flowing. I've got a few pages now and they are constantly growing. Woohoo!
lame.
I think we should name the moon. Or at the very least give it some sort of prefix.
"Mr. Moon".
And my paper is well underway. I was surprised that once I started it I had an easy time keeping the juices flowing. I've got a few pages now and they are constantly growing. Woohoo!
e enjte, 19 korrik 2007
tortuous \TOR-choo-us\, adjective: marked by repeated turns and bends
I seem to have lost quite a bit of gusto since the last time I updated this page.
Today was rather awful as my list of items lost to the city is steadily growing larger (and more expensive).
This is quite out of character. I am generally an organized person and I hardly ever lose anything..
To recap, the city has consumed the following possessions as of 7/19/07:
*new camera ~$400
*2gb flash drive ~$30
*unlimited 30 day Metrocard ~$76
The most recent of which being the metrocard, which is pretty unfortunate. The museum pays me back for transportation costs, but not for card falling out of pocket costs. There is a balance protection service offered by MTA but it is equal to $2.53/day for the rest of the time the 30 day card was to be active. So I'm out for at least half of my subway rides, if not more, because rides are 2 bucks a pop and I tend to ride the subway 2-4 times a day. I've written a letter begging for sympathy in purchasing a new unlimited pass, but somehow I doubt it will be given the time of day.
The end of my time here is looming in the not so distant future (T minus two weeks) and I'm starting to get pretty nervous. I don't have any results per se... Just a lot of unanalyzed data. Today I acquired two high school students to help me with the really tedious parts of my research which is amazing. I was looking some very sleepless nights in the face until that happened. It was a really fun experience to sit there and teach them what I know about meteorites because I didn't think it was much until that happened. It made me feel smart. Denton turned down another request to examine somebody's "meteorwrong" (some sort of strange rock someone picked up and thinks is a meteorite but never is). He looked at me and said "Well I should have just sent you down there to examine it!" and he wasn't joking. Hah.
I've got to churn out a draft of my paper by tomorrow but I just can't get myself started. I have never really written a paper like this before and I'm pretty intimidated. I shouldn't be, but I can't help it. We're planning to submit it to the journal Meteoritics and maybe one other journal, not sure yet. I'm going to be the author on the paper which is pretty scary as my job in this project is to refute Hap McSween's 1977 paper. He did pretty much the same thing I am doing now and it has not been touched since even though technology has progressed leaps and bounds since then. He is pretty much one of the big dogs in meteoritics land.
Needless to say it is going to be a long night.
Good night,
Chelsea
Today was rather awful as my list of items lost to the city is steadily growing larger (and more expensive).
This is quite out of character. I am generally an organized person and I hardly ever lose anything..
To recap, the city has consumed the following possessions as of 7/19/07:
*new camera ~$400
*2gb flash drive ~$30
*unlimited 30 day Metrocard ~$76
The most recent of which being the metrocard, which is pretty unfortunate. The museum pays me back for transportation costs, but not for card falling out of pocket costs. There is a balance protection service offered by MTA but it is equal to $2.53/day for the rest of the time the 30 day card was to be active. So I'm out for at least half of my subway rides, if not more, because rides are 2 bucks a pop and I tend to ride the subway 2-4 times a day. I've written a letter begging for sympathy in purchasing a new unlimited pass, but somehow I doubt it will be given the time of day.
The end of my time here is looming in the not so distant future (T minus two weeks) and I'm starting to get pretty nervous. I don't have any results per se... Just a lot of unanalyzed data. Today I acquired two high school students to help me with the really tedious parts of my research which is amazing. I was looking some very sleepless nights in the face until that happened. It was a really fun experience to sit there and teach them what I know about meteorites because I didn't think it was much until that happened. It made me feel smart. Denton turned down another request to examine somebody's "meteorwrong" (some sort of strange rock someone picked up and thinks is a meteorite but never is). He looked at me and said "Well I should have just sent you down there to examine it!" and he wasn't joking. Hah.
I've got to churn out a draft of my paper by tomorrow but I just can't get myself started. I have never really written a paper like this before and I'm pretty intimidated. I shouldn't be, but I can't help it. We're planning to submit it to the journal Meteoritics and maybe one other journal, not sure yet. I'm going to be the author on the paper which is pretty scary as my job in this project is to refute Hap McSween's 1977 paper. He did pretty much the same thing I am doing now and it has not been touched since even though technology has progressed leaps and bounds since then. He is pretty much one of the big dogs in meteoritics land.
Needless to say it is going to be a long night.
Good night,
Chelsea
e hënë, 16 korrik 2007
No survivors
I would like to take a minute to congratulate myself for staying at work past 6 o' clock this evening. Today I kicked butt and took names in my research. Take that, Adobe Illustrator. No prisoners! I will finish this initial paper draft. Huzzah.
e diel, 15 korrik 2007
Chelsea = Cameraless
So I lost my brand new digital camera last night on Columbia campus. I've spent lots of today sluething around the local lost and founds to no avail. Goodbye, sweet camera, I loved you so. It was a short time we knew each other, but you served me well. I'd like to think I'll see you again someday...
e shtunë, 7 korrik 2007
update with lots of pictures
Wow. It's been such a fun week. I've just got several random stories, so bear with me. I was very glad yesterday when my adviser came up to me at wine and cheese and told me how proud he is of my progress in my research! Yesterday I broke a piece of the meteorite! It was awful. I had a thin section (a very very tiny sliver of the meteorite adhered to a glass slide) and I was mounting it on a metal stub so I could load it into the EVO. I started scanning it and I couldn't figure out what was wrong... well I had glued the stub onto the rock rather than onto the glass (upside down) and it pulled out a large chunk of the sample when I pulled the stub away. I showed the ruined section to Denton and he just kept saying "Shit. Shit. Shit. Don't worry, it's an easy mistake to make. Shit. Shit. Shit." And needless to say, that didn't help me feel much better about it.
I've been slowly but surely tinkering away on this EVO program and I've pretty much got it down now, German and all. It's funny because yesterday the tech came in to install a new part for the EVO and I was giving him pointers about the program that I have deciphered because I knew more about it than he did. It was a nice feeling.
I was rushing through the fifth floor hall of the museum trying to make it to the microscopy lab for my 9am appointment when I almost barreled over a triceratops skull! It was scary. I was coming around the corner just as the caravan of wagons and people pushing them very slowing began to emerge in front of me and I skidded to a halt. I narrowly escaped. Everyone just stared at me like I had just given them all individual heart attacks. There was a triceratops skull on a pedestal in the middle of a very large white wagon like cart followed closely but another cart carrying a cast of this skull. It was a really cool thing to behold... I'm pretty sure most the bones on display are casts, at least for the most part. But this was definitely a real skull. Sorry, no pictures, it was far too awkward to ask them to stop so I could take a snap shot. Just take my word for how strange of an incident it is to almost knock over something like that.
The fourth of July was spent in Brooklyn on the promenade watching the Macy's fireworks over the river. It was a good show, but it don't got nothin' on Thunder over Louisville. We walked across the Brooklyn bridge and it was tons of fun. The following pictures are from the Fourth and walking over the bridge as well as some various views of Brooklyn. It's a very nice place and I really like it.
Plus a meteorite picture and one of the thin sections (that I did not mame).
I've been slowly but surely tinkering away on this EVO program and I've pretty much got it down now, German and all. It's funny because yesterday the tech came in to install a new part for the EVO and I was giving him pointers about the program that I have deciphered because I knew more about it than he did. It was a nice feeling.
I was rushing through the fifth floor hall of the museum trying to make it to the microscopy lab for my 9am appointment when I almost barreled over a triceratops skull! It was scary. I was coming around the corner just as the caravan of wagons and people pushing them very slowing began to emerge in front of me and I skidded to a halt. I narrowly escaped. Everyone just stared at me like I had just given them all individual heart attacks. There was a triceratops skull on a pedestal in the middle of a very large white wagon like cart followed closely but another cart carrying a cast of this skull. It was a really cool thing to behold... I'm pretty sure most the bones on display are casts, at least for the most part. But this was definitely a real skull. Sorry, no pictures, it was far too awkward to ask them to stop so I could take a snap shot. Just take my word for how strange of an incident it is to almost knock over something like that.
The fourth of July was spent in Brooklyn on the promenade watching the Macy's fireworks over the river. It was a good show, but it don't got nothin' on Thunder over Louisville. We walked across the Brooklyn bridge and it was tons of fun. The following pictures are from the Fourth and walking over the bridge as well as some various views of Brooklyn. It's a very nice place and I really like it.
Plus a meteorite picture and one of the thin sections (that I did not mame).
e hënë, 2 korrik 2007
Ready to rumble
I have recently become entangled in an epoch battle to the death. It's the EVO SEM versus me. I seem to have forgotten this is one of the world's classic blunders. Only slightly less well known than "Never start a land war in Asia." I tell EVO to do something and it yells at me in German. Literally. It pops up dialog boxes in German with exclamation points. I only recognize the words "uber" and "nicht". Basically we are both set on the other's demise... only me slightly less so, as EVO costs 400k.
The stage automation function finally exists, but nobody in the museum knows how to work it. Except me. And it's my job to figure out the most poorly designed piece of software (p.o.s., hah) that I've ever encountered. And then I've got to teach everyone else. I've made lots of headway in the past few days, much to EVO's dismay, but I still can't quite get a standard procedure down aside from "Enter numbers in such a way that the machine will not yell at you in German. Push start. Stop if it gets finicky."
EVO woes aside I have lots of fun pictures from this weekend, but they'll have to wait. Jaime flies in tomorrow evening! I'm so excited. But now I'm about to go for a run and then it's off to China Town for a fellow intern's 21st birthday!
Cheers,
Chelsea
PS
For the love of God listen to Rodrigo y Gabriella. It is such beautiful music by two very talented guitarists.
The stage automation function finally exists, but nobody in the museum knows how to work it. Except me. And it's my job to figure out the most poorly designed piece of software (p.o.s., hah) that I've ever encountered. And then I've got to teach everyone else. I've made lots of headway in the past few days, much to EVO's dismay, but I still can't quite get a standard procedure down aside from "Enter numbers in such a way that the machine will not yell at you in German. Push start. Stop if it gets finicky."
EVO woes aside I have lots of fun pictures from this weekend, but they'll have to wait. Jaime flies in tomorrow evening! I'm so excited. But now I'm about to go for a run and then it's off to China Town for a fellow intern's 21st birthday!
Cheers,
Chelsea
PS
For the love of God listen to Rodrigo y Gabriella. It is such beautiful music by two very talented guitarists.
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