Reading aloud

For that last few days, I've been reading my thesis aloud to Crystal.  This process has been interesting, and has really led me to find a lot a small errors that need to be addressed before I give my full thesis over to my supervisors to review.  I should be finished with that by the early next week.

I've received editing recommendations for my Summary and Conclusions chapter, and have done most of them at this point.  The big struggle that I have now is to find a few good closing sentances.  I'm not expecting my thesis to close with the same feeling as The Great Gatsby, but I really need some thoughts that push the implications of my research, without repeating things that have already been said too much.  I hope I can find these few words quickly.

I also sent in a resume to a company that I hear might have an engineering job available at about that same time that I'm planning to return to the US.  I feel rather nervous doing this.  The last time I was looking for a job was in 2005, and the economy was still doing pretty well.  The outlook isn't that great right now and even engineering jobs are pretty scarce.  The job is really good and I shouldn't have too much trouble living in an area that I like either.  I put a lot of work into both the resume and the cover letter, so hopefully they leave a good a impression and I get a call for an interview.

Tuesday Meeting: MIA Chapter 8

Meeting with the supervisors today.  I'm still waiting to get chapter 8 (my summary and conclusions) back from them, but I've now received Chapter 7 from everybody.  I'm getting very close to finishing the thesis and have started reviewing the document as a whole myself.  This means I'm getting really close to the end.  Once I have completed my once through, I'll give the thesis as a whole to my supervisors to review.  Following final revision, I'll be ready to get the thesis printed, bound, and submitted.  Getting really excited now.

Where do the weekends go

Unlike everyone in North America, I've already had to deal with Monday.  Nuts to that.  But the weekend was pretty good.  Besides going to Lush and getting some nice smelling things, I spent some time talking to my parents, and playing some games with Crystal, Chris, and Brandon.  I'm really ready to be finished with my thesis so that I have a bit more leisure time.  Things are getting pretty close.  I'm running around trying to secure permission to use some third-party copyright items.  So of it has been easy, but I'm going to end up writing some letters to take care of the rest.  Hopefully, the rights holders are willing to let me use stuff for free since I'm a poor student and not really publishing my thesis.  I spent the rest of the day entering some data into a spreadsheet and drawing a profile for a stratigraphic section that someone else described.  Then I printed out a copy of my thesis so that I can start checking through it to make sure that everything flows together reasonably well and I don't repeat anything.  I have a meeting with my supervisors tomorrow, and will hopefully get some editing suggestions back so that I can wrap up the last few chapters.

Weekend wanderings

Though I suppose it wasn't that much of a wandering.  Crystal and I went to Lush and bought some more nice smelling things.  Mostly we needed some more conditioner and decided to pick up some more henna dye for Crystal's hair.  The clerks gave us a sample of what they called  a "foot mask", as in, something like a facial mask, that you use on your feet.  The funny thing is that I recognized three of the ingredients because they are geological: kaolin, pumice, and smectite.  Kinda funny putting dirt and rocks on your feet to make them smell better.
At this point, I need to make some dinner though, so I think I'll cut this a little short.

What's left to do

I am coming very close to the end of my thesis work.  There are essentially two chapters that are still in the editing process, but both chapters are pretty short.  I'm somewhere between 2 and 4 weeks to finish.  I won't know precisely until I get some more editing recommendations from my supervisors.  I've got suggestions from two of three supervisors on Chapter 7.  Meanwhile, my supervisor had asked me to largely rewrite Chapter 8 from some general comments that they had (it was a bit short, and needed to really be focused on the summary of work and conclusions).  I've got most of the edits recommend for Chapter 7 done and have resubmitted Chapter 8.  I just have a few diagrams to draw for Chapter 7 and I'll be caught up on that until my last supervisor gets back to me on that.

This ending process has been very interesting for me.  I'm finally spending time to reflect on the work that I've done for that last few years.  I find this to be very rewarding.  Understanding what I've found in my research (as well as what I have learned about the process of scientific research) is probably one of the best rewards I could hope from this degree.  Certainly I hope to see some monetary rewards in terms of better wages etc., but I don't feel that is the ultimate goal of the work that I have done for that last four years.

---

In addition to the thesis work, I have spent some of my free time lately reading Alan Wolfe's The Future of Liberalism.  Wolfe explains in a way that I, as a layman, can understand, the evolution of liberal thinking from such people as John Locke and Immanuel Kant to more modern thinkers and writers.  In all the book is a very good read and balances its presentation of liberal and illiberal philosophies, contrasting them, without demonizing either.  In many ways, Wolfe allows the reader to make his own judgment at each step. The book is a bit long, which means I'm taking a bit of time to work through it, but I'm pretty sure that I will continue to the end.

As the completion date approaches

I am fast coming to the end of my time as a PhD candidate.  The thesis is due on February 26, and although I am making good progress in my revisions, I feel that there is more to do that I really have time for.  I have turned a draft version of my entire thesis into my advisers at this point and am primarily working to revise it to their satisfaction.  My conclusions chapter has essentially been returned to me with the rather simple comment "you need to discuss how your research relates to the field as a whole".  This is, in fact, one of the requirements set forth in the PhD statute for the university.  Its not something that I haven't done at all.  I spent a good portion of Chapter 2 setting the scene for where my research will sit in the field.  At this point, I simply need to connect the new discoveries that I have made the work of other people.  I think I can manage to that without further direction, but I'm worried about the time.

I have just begun revising Chapter 5, which is the chapter that primarily presents my work in the Auckland area.  I still have Chapter 6, where I attempt to tie all of my work together.

I'll leave the post here though.  I need to get back to work.

Christmas Holidays

The holidays have turned out to be great fun, even though I'm spending a lot of my time working.  I took half a day off on Christmas eve, and the whole day of Christmas.  Since then I've mostly been working as normal.  I bought myself some awesome new shirts from Nicholas Jermyn, can't wait for an occasion to wear them. I also bought myself a small moleskine planner to use next year.  I really like the look of it.

I'll be moving to Onehunga next weekend.  Can't believe how quickly that is coming up, but I'm also really excited about the move.

Back to work for me though, I need to get all my notes put together so that I can start writing my next chapter.

No internet today

Gah, no internet (besides email) in the office today.  Someone's borked the proxy system or something.  I guess I'll get more work done today.

Year in review

Well, its certainly been a long time since my last post. I'm really not that good at this blogging thing. At least not doing it regularly at all. But I figure I should give a bit of an update on my life. Since my last post in May, I've continued to work on my thesis, cooked lots of tasty food, and traveled to Egypt and the US. I've got some pictures of the Egypt trip available on my photobucket account. I'll try to post here more often, but with my thesis coming down to the wire, I'm going to be a bit pressed for time.

Food Talk

Wow, its certianly been a long time since I've written anything for this. Suffice to say, I've been very busy with my thesis work. I'm going to take just a few minutes here to let everyone who reads this know that I'm doing pretty good. Also, I've been having a lot more fun with cooking lately. My wife and I have put a lot of work into trying some new recipes lately, and in a few cases I have documented these with pictures which I have uploaded to my Photobucket account. Eventually I'll get around to actually posting some of them including Thai Green Curry, Spicy Lentil Soup, and a few others. I'm rather proud of my cooking ability now. I know I'm not a chef by any means, but I can make some good tasting food.

For example, I tried something rather new last night: roasted squash. I've always been a bit shy about trying new vegetables through most of my life. Afterall, veggies are not ussually as tasty as sweets. I cut a butternut squash in half, added some butter and a tiny bit of brown sugar, and roasted it in a pan for about 45 minutes. It was nutty and delicious. I have another squash waiting for me at home, and even though I'm going to have curry with some veggies in it, I'm thinking about roasting the second one to eat with dinner as well.

Also, just checked scores the Basketball scores, and Denver pulled off a win. Woo!

Writing - Day 1

I spent all of today writing the introduction of my thesis. It's taking a long time because I keep having to go back and check my facts, and citations. I'm trying to make sure that everything comes together right the first time through the writing process. This meant that in reality, most of the day was spent looking through all of the papers that I've read previously, and finding the important points in them, and condensing them down into the summary that I need. I think I have all of the papers together again. Tomorrow will hopefully look more productive in terms of things like word count.

Tonight was another taco night. I've got a recipe that I really like down pretty well now. Take about 1 lb of ground beef, brown, and drain grease. Add 1 chopped onion and 1-2 cloves of garlic, diced. Cook for a few minutes until the onion is soft. Add a half can of diced tomatoes, plus enough water to just cover. Season with cumin, chilli powder, and cayenne pepper. Simmer until nearly all the liquid has evaporated. Serve with lettuce, cheese, sour cream, and salsa or hot sauce. Ours tonight was accompanied by sweetcorn and refried beans. Yummy!

Round the world flights

I'm attending a conference this October in Alexandria, Egypt then going home to Colorado to participate in a friends wedding.  This makes booking flights a bit of a weird exercise.  Especially when Expedia.com recommends going from Auckland to Cairo via Los Angeles and New York City.  That was the cheapest flight; somehow cheaper than flying the much shorter distance via Sydney and Dubai.  I guess either way, I'm basically having to fly to the opposite side of the world, but the economics of the whole thing is rather weird.  The good news: I might be able to get the whole trip in at under $2500 per person (that's US dollars).  Still a bit for us on our relatively low income.  May have to beg the parents for a little assistance again.

 

A bit more drawing today.  Revised some drafts according to my supervisors comments yesterday.  I'm pretty much done with that work for now.  Tomorrow I'll start into the writing and get a better idea of what fieldwork that I need to do on Tuesday.  I'm really trying to step up the pace of my work, especially since my supervisors indicated that would be important for me to finish in time.  Time to check the weather and get a feel for whether work next week will be alright.

Committee Meeting

Today was my committee meeting.  Things seem to be going pretty well.  My supervisors think that I'm doing quality work and that my rate of progress is satisfactory.  However, I do think that I will need to ramp things up a bit to get done with the year.  For one thing, I've been told that I should start writing my thesis (or at least the introduction to it) now.  I'll be working on that, as well as a few other things over the next few weeks.  I've got the annual report basicallly done.  I have my application for conferance funding ready to go and will turn it in tomorrow.

 

In my free time, I've been playing through the old Warcraft 3 expansion and having a lot of fun with it.  The bonus level is a bit challenging, and I'll be retrying it tonight.

Fish Feast

I really enjoyed the fish that I prepared last night.  Just got some cod fillets, dusted then in flour, then pan fried them in olive oil.  I do this fairly frequently because its pretty cheap, tasty, and easy.  Served with some fresh green beans and French rolls.  Tonight is going to be a bit of an experiment with pasta, sausage, and ricotta cheese.  The sausage and cheese are leftover from the calzones that we made earlier this week and they need to get used.  I have a meeting with my supervisors this afternoon, so I'm spending most of the morning getting ready for that.

Drawing some more

I'll probably end up filling quite a large number of blog posts with this, but I want to continue with daily updates, so that means discussing my daily work.

I spent two hours today working as a TA. I teach for a civil engineering class, helping them to learn about rocks and minerals. It's a bit of a crash course for them, but I really enjoy it. Today was sedimentary rocks, which is probably the easiest week. The difference between a mudstone and a sandstone is readily apparent, even if you don't have eyes.

When I wasn't involved with that, I continued my work with the drawings, and finished up the sketch that I started to work on Friday. I had to learn a new tool in Illustrator, so I'll use that as the excuse for why my work took so long. I won't be showing a picture today. Out of a sense of (probably) unreasonible paranoia, I don't want to show off any of my finished drawings until I've got them in my thesis. But I think it looks pretty good.

Tomorrow, I have a meeting with my supervisors, which should be interesting. I get to show them these drawing that I've been working on, and discuss what more needs to be done.

Tonight, I'm planning to make some fairly tasty food. Pan-fried fish might be one of my favorite simple meals. It'll be accompanied by some veggies and pasta. Bon appetite.

Drawing and Such

It has certainly been a long time since I have done a blog post here. I'm thinking about trying to do a daily/weekly/something report on my thesis progress. For one thing, it will help me see what I'm really getting done and make sure that I keep up the work.

Most of my time today was spent tracing a photo I took of an outcrop. I'm also writing up a description of each of the soils that I saw at the outcrop in the standardized NZGS format. Here is a sample of what this is looking like so far.

I still have a bit of work to do on it. Things like adding a scale and describing all of the soils in it. Work like this has been one of the major focuses of the past month for me. I have a lot of logs I've done in the field, and nearly all of them need to be digitized for use in my thesis later. It's a lot of work, and I'm trying to get through it quickly, while still producing good quality work.

Me at Starlight Symphony

Young Geotechnical Professionals Conference

Well, I'm back from the conference and have a few minutes now to make a bit of a post about it. I had a good time. I got to see a lot of interesting presentation about geotechnical practice in New Zealand and Australia. I also got received some interesting feed-back on my work. I've got some stuff to work on from those comments, but I think it will make my results more useful.

Anyways, here's a couple of pictures. I'm not that great a photographer, and I certainly don't even try at enough pictures most of the time. Wellington is hugely different from Auckland. The geography defines the shape of the city in a way that many from the Western US would understand. We were treated to 4 beautiful days and I count that as fortunate. I've heard that Wellington can be pretty nasty with wind and rain.

Test

This is a test to make sure that Facebook is properly importing my posts.

Edit: They seem to be getting posted now. Good.

Schaffer vs. Udall

I've been listening to KCFR's series on the Senate candidates, and I just wanted to make a quick note about two things that surprised me. Udall is against gay marriage, on the principle that marriage is a religious institution and people of faith should be the ones to define it. He does support civil unions however. Second, Schaffer is against the "Definition of a person" amendment. Both of these really surprised me when I first heard them. Without being fully immersed in Colorado's senate race, I have to some degree replaced both of them with Strawmen who tow the party line. Listening to this series, not just this little snippet, but the whole thing, has given me a better perspective on the two candidates. To those Coloradans who have not voted yet, I recommend that you listen to them.

kcfr.org