Friday, I'm in Love

I seem to make a lot of posts on Friday, usually about that fact that it is Friday. Well, I guess this is another of those. This week has not been terrible, though I was really busy at the beginning of the week. I was running back and forth between engineering and geology trying to get a lot of work done. I've put 12 more samples through the X-Ray Diffractometer. That's a special device that use Bragg's law of refraction to determine the spacing of atoms in the crystal latice of minerals. Because various minerals have distinct crystal spacing, I can determine what minerals are present in a given sample that I use. The 12 samples that I ran this week are whole rock samples, meaning that I crush the entire sample and put it in the machine. Later, I'll be working on clay mounts, where I purposefully try to concentrate and allign the clay minerals in the sample. This is done because many clays have similar signals, and concentrating them makes the signal stronger. It also allows me to do some clever things that manipulate the signature crystal spacing of the clays, like adding ethylene glycol and baking them at 500 °C.

After a long break from the campeign, I am planning to bring my Pirate themed world back to active play with my RPG friends. I'm planning to give the world a significant rewrite though, because there was a lot of stuff that I was never completely happy with. Some parts of the history didn't quite make sense. And I feel that the game plot itself had become rather confused and tangled. I think we'll restart at first level in a small town. I'm going to make a bit of a series out of crafting the starting town for the players. Keep tuned for that.

In other news, I may be moving this blog over to the Gameslave. Chris and I are looking into it now, so it won't happen for at least a week or more.

The Research Continues

Despite a few setbacks, I'm keeping the research going. I had some samples go missing during the time that the lab was moved. I also had to spend way too much time trying to get the lab equipment to work. I was only able to get through two sets of samples during the time I had available. Now, the lab is needed for teaching again, so I won't be able to use the equipment again until the end of the next semester. But, I have plenty of other testing to keep me busy while the weather is cold and rainy.

I took the car in to get a WoF today, and as long as that turns out alright I'll be free to get my registration renewed. All this is good cause it means I'll have a car for another year. There isn't really a whole lot to report other than that. Chris, Crystal and I have begun recording a podcast for our gaming website every other week. You can find it over at www.thegameslave.com. Its not exactly a high quality production. Its basically just three friends talking about games and giving our views on the latest game related news. Still, we've been having fun with it. Mainly, we're just recording conversation that we would have anyways. If you're interested in that sort of thing, have a listen.

Laptop Death

My laptop died this weekend. Another dead hard disk. Somehow, I just seem to have terrible luck with these things. I'm trying to write my article for the Young Geotechnical Professionals Conferance, but the words just don't want to come today. My experiment is going well today though. There has been a definite peak in the strength curve, so that makes things pretty cool. Also, the bank actually found a way to make things more convenient for me, simply by changing what type of account I use for my savings.

Back in New Zealand and into the lab

Hello everyone. This post may be a little obvious to many, but I have returned to New Zealand. The flight back was an adventure of its own when it felt like our plane was going to drop out of the sky shortly after leaving DIA. After a rather long and turbulent flight to California, we arrived in LA, navigated the maze that is LAX and found our international flight. The trip across the Pacific was much less eventful. I watched Juno. I'm not sure how to feel about that movie. I think I enjoyed it, but I may have been too far gone from the Nytol as well. I'll try to catch it again whenever it comes out to video so that I can form a real opinion about it.

Arrival in NZ was standard except that we came from the opposite side of the airport that I am used to. Every time that I have arrived in NZ so far, the plane has parked at a gate on one side of the terminal. This time, they were on the complete opposite side, which meant that going through customs and immigration felt somewhat backwards compared to normal. We purchased some duty free and were picked up by a friend. My birthday ended up with just going to Mexicali for some tasty food. I can't really complain. I got gifts from everyone before I left the US. I do feel like I was missing some cake though.

This week I have been in the lab. If you've been following my Twitter posts, which are conveniently located just to the right of the main blog, you would have an idea of this dilemma. To summarize: I'm trying to calibrate a data logger and everything possible is going wrong. Today (Thursday) things are finally looking up. I have a sample in the triaxial testing apparatus. It's sitting in the water and saturating so that I can have undrained conditions at failure. Especially because I don't want the sample to be unsaturated, cause that makes the geomechanics much more complicated.

I'm pretty sure that Crystal will have a raise. The operations manager, her boss, is going to talk to the owner about giving her a raise. Both of these guys like her, so I think we should see a slightly higher income from now on. This on top of my funding means that we can upgrade our life style slightly. Going out to eat is an option again. Before, we were really splurging if we didn't cook a meal. Now, things are going to be alright.

As I mentioned earlier, I've got Twitter now. The feed updates on this page or you can go direct to my Twitter page and add me or whatever.

Grants and Funding

So, after all the long waiting and hoping I've got some grant money, courtesy EQC. And its being funneled through the IESE, which means that I might be moving office again. In order to provide me with more supervision and some better mentoring, and to help springboard their Engineering Geology/Geotechnics branch, I'll be moving to IESE new offices in mid-late June. I'll take it, if it means getting out of this freezing building before we get to far into winter. It really is a good opportunity for me as well. I'll get to be in close proximity to more people who will care about my research. Ever since the only engineering geologist lecturer here went onto retirement/contract, I've felt pretty lonely (intellectually speaking). Most of the other people in the department are busy researching things related to geochemistry and petrology or paleontology. I just don't share as much in common with that sort.

Anyways, also less than 72 hours from being back home in sunny Colorado. Both Crystal and I are looking forward to our little break. Fortunately, I've gotten my lab work to a good point before I head home. I may have some writting to do while I'm there as well. It'll be good for me to get at least some work done during the three weeks I'm away. I keep thinking about my timeline back home, and the thought that the time will be nice, but not nearly enough keeps coming up. I guess I should enjoy the opportunity while I can.

I have a lot of movies to see while I'm at home and the prices are more reasonible. The much higher cost of living is probably the biggest turn of of NZ for me. The people, environment, and setting are all great. I love the geology here, especially because I feel like people researching here actually have a chance to find something that's really new and could actually impact the country as a whole. I just don't think I could have that feeling working back home. All of the geology in Colorado seems to be so well understood. Maybe its just cause I'm doing my research here that I feel that way.

This post has dragged on a lot longer that I had originally intended, but at least that gives everyone a fair update to what's going on. To those of my family and friends living in Colorado, I look forward to seeing you soon.