Here’s an interesting story that was on 60 minutes last week about the network security of our nation’s infrastructure.  Interesting for two reasons.  First, it’s just scary.  Second, it features Sandia National Labs, my future employer.

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=5578986n&tag=contentMain;contentBody

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I know that it’s been ages since I’ve written a post here, but hey, I’ve been busy!  A lot of things have taken place recently, with even more to come in the next few months.

Right now, the overarching item on my mind is graduating.  For the past month, I’ve been working very hard to start tying up all of my loose ends and finish my last major project.  With that, I’ve been working on my thesis, which is currently at 148 pages and is due one week from today.  I’m finishing a section for my last primary chapter, then all I have remaining is the introduction and a few appendices.  Still a lot of work to go, but I think I can get it done in a week … hopefully.

There is also the 2009 APS DFD meeting in Minneapolis in a week.  This weekend, I have to prepare my talk (only 10 minutes) so I can practice on Monday and give it a week from this Sunday.  Luckily, the conference starts after my thesis is due, so at least I won’t have that to worry about.

And then there’s my thesis defense, which has been confirmed for Friday, December 4 at 10:30 AM.  For those of you who are in Minneapolis and want to kill your late morning, stop by!

Besides work, I’m also preparing for my upcoming move to Albuquerque.  I’ve made some travel arrangements and am meeting with the moving company next week.  Christine is going to drive down with me around the first of the year and help me get set up before I start work on January 11. 

So yeah, things are moving along.  But for now, I’m feeling like I should get back to writing …

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As I stepped out of the apartment this morning, it struck me … it’s finally fall.  Tomorrow is the actual first day of fall, so that works out well for me.  Autumn is one of my favorite seasons, and I hope this is a good one. 

In other news, I’ve finally decided on my job/career move for next year.  If you remember in early August I posted about the opportunities I was facing. Well, a few weeks back, I accepted an offer for a postdoc at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, NM.  It is a one-year appointment, extendable up to six-years, and I’ll be starting work on January 11, 2010.  While it was a hard decision to move away from Christine for the first half of 2010, this is a great career move for me, as I’ll be working with some world-class engineers on some very cool projects.  The downside is that Albuquerque does not have a lot of industry, so we’re not sure if Christine is going to be able to find a job that she really likes in Albuquerque, but we’re hoping for the best. 

One thing that this means is that I actually have to graduate this semester!  Kind of exciting, very scary.  Primarily scary because I have a lot of work to do, and this fall always ends up being a busy time of year.  However, last week, I came up with a schedule how to complete my project, write my thesis, and defend by the end of the semester, and I think if I work really hard, it will be feasible.  My plan has me defending during the first week of December, so wish me luck between then and now.

Besides trying to graduate, I’ve also started my new job as an instructor for Senior Process Design in our department.  I was worried that this would be too much work for me to do this semester, and it is taking a lot of time.  However, since the entire class is working on one project, I’m not responsible for developing my own project, saving a lot of time.  So far, I’m really enjoying the class.  I like preparing for my recitations, and my students seem fairly responsive to me during lectures.  All in all a great experience so far, but of course there’s a lot of work left to do.

On another topic, all of my friends are leaving me!  Masano graduated a few months ago and is now working for Bristol-Myers Squibb in New Jersey, Janice defended a few weeks ago and is about ready to start a postdoc at Navy Reserach Labs, and Chongai just left town last week to begin his postdoc at Brookhaven National Lab.  It’s sad to see all of my friends leaving, knowing that I’ll be here for another 3 1/2 months, but I’m very excited for all of them to move on to new and exciting things.  I’m also looking forward to everybody coming back to Minneapolis for my wedding next summer and getting to see my friends again.

This weekend, Dan wanted to get out of town for a night, so he, Kyle, Christine, and I took a 24-hour trip to Lake Elmo Regional Park to do some “backpacking”.  I say backpacking in quotes because we were originally headed to Afton State Park, where we would have had to hike ~3 miles to our campsite, but the sites were all full.  At Lake Elmo, however, the campsite was only 1/4 mile away from the car; hardly what I would call backpacking.  However, we did get a 4 mile hike in, consumed nearly a box of wine, and played some good games of Five Crowns.  All in all, a very relaxing and enjoyable trip.

That’s probably all for now.  I know it was quite a while ago that I posted, and a lot of things happened between then and now.  I went to Kansas for Labor Day to see the family, etc. etc.  However, I need to go to class now.  Another week of work!!!

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http://digg.com/travel_places/Nessie_spotted_in_Minnesota

Originally published at http://saroberts.com. Please leave any comments there.

Originally published at http://saroberts.com. Please leave any comments there.

OK, so everybody in the news is talking about the health care bill, and SP started this whole “Death Panel” thing to scare people.  So I obviously knew that the notion of a death panel was completely false, and the democrats come on TV also saying it is false.  Correct.

But did you ever wonder what part of the bill actually led to the beginning of this death panel discussion?  I assume this came about because there is some panel being formed, right?  Wrong.

The person who started this was on the Daily Show Thursday.  And you have to watch it to believe it.  The interview will only take 15 minutes of your life, but it’s well worth it.  There are two parts, linked here … watch them both.

Why haven’t I heard this on the news? Or heard this at all? No wonder Jon Stewart was voted the most trusted newsman in America.

By the way, who in the world is she looking at when she’s talking?

{
Links, in case the embed doesn’t work:
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-august-17-2009/exclusive—betsy-mccaughey-extended-interview-pt–1
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-august-17-2009/exclusive—betsy-mccaughey-extended-interview-pt–2
}

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http://abstrusegoose.com/a/177.htm

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As most of you know, I’ve took up the hobby of geocaching last summer, and have really been enjoying it for the past year, with 140 finds to my name. I often TNLNSL, but like trading bugs.  And I am weak and DNF when I’m getting tired.

As of  yesterday, however, I’ve finally become a true cacher.  While I still don’t have a FTF to my name, I am now the proud owner of two caches, GC1XN6Z (DinoCache: Gasosaurus) and GC1XMJ2 (Flying Pandas).  The DinoCache was a free container that I picked up last year and just now placed in honor of the Lake Harriet “Creature”, with a pretty easy 1.5/2 S.  The second is in memory of a fallen friend. flyingpandas.com and is 2/1.5 M.

Christine and I hid both of these caches last night and posted them online around 6:30 PM.  They were reviewed and posted by 7:30 PM and somebody posted FTF just a few hours later.  If any of you reading this are geocachers, go find them!

Originally published at http://saroberts.com. Please leave any comments there.

An interesting article about some issues in the New York educational system:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/08/31/090831fa_fact_brill?currentPage=all

Originally published at http://saroberts.com. Please leave any comments there.

Originally published at http://saroberts.com. Please leave any comments there.

So, Christine was interested in how fast we paddled at our last two BWCA trips. So here’s the data:

2008 BWCA Trip

2009 BWCA Trip

Amazingly, a little faster?

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A few months back, Christine mentioned that she was interested in taking her dad on a canoeing trip up to the boundary waters.  I thought this sounded great, and suggested that I take my father too.  Last weekend, this trip actually materialized, and the four of us spent 4 days / 3 nights on a very sweet BWCA trip.

Christine and I decided that an easy trip would be of order, that way we didn’t break our dads.  We booked an entry permit from Lake One, a very popular lake with very few portages, and the ones that were there were quite short.  This worked out well, as I ended up carrying both canoes for most of the portages.

We adapted our trip plans a little from what we had originally made.  Instead of making long day paddles to get to a campsite, on most days, we paddled until around noon, picked out a campsite and set up, then set back out for a afternoon paddle.  This actually worked out for the best, as I think we were able to paddle much farther into the BWCA and see more things than if we had only paddled until 2-3PM each day.

All in all, it was a very successful trip.  The car rides up and back worked well with all four of us piled in dad’s new truck, and the gear in the trailer.  The mosquitoes were quite terrible, but they did respond pretty well to high levels of DEET.  The food was tasty, and we didn’t have any problems with bears, etc.  Gear worked out well.  And nobody died.

We managed to put in ~ 30 miles of paddling in just 4 days, which was quite impressive.  Saw some pretty sights and wildlife.  I’ve posted the GPS track below, complete with geotagged pictures.  Check them out.  I’ve also placed Christine’s pictures on the map, so you can see them.

Originally published at http://saroberts.com. Please leave any comments there.

I know I have posted anything recently about my career plans, etc., so I figured now is as good of a time as ever.  Right now, I’m writing this on a plane on the way back from an interview.

First off, I have been offered the opportunity to teach a class at the U of M this fall.  I’ll be a recitation instructor for the senior process design class.  This is going to be quite a lot of work, as I will have to lecture twice a week, but also design a unique capstone design project for the students to do. I’m quite excited for the opportunity to teach, but a little nervous about designing the project for them to do.  Pretty soon, I need to start coming up with ideas and working the design out myself.  I haven’t dealt with this kind of thing in 3 years, so I’m sure it will take a while to refresh.  One good thing is that I will have a TA, so I won’t have to spend much time grading.

What this means is that I’m not longer under a major time crunch for job hunting and graduating.   I will be in Minneapolis until the end of December, so all I need to do is graduate sometime before then.  That also allows me to have a firm start date for whatever job I take … the beginning of January.

I currently have three leads on the job front.

First is a postdoc at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.  I just got a phone call from them Monday with the formal offer, which is quite exciting.  The work would be atmospheric and geoscience related.  This is quite the far stretch from my current research, but I’m sure I could catch on.  The bad thing would be the cost … LLNL is about 1 hour east of San Francisco.  Nice area, but very expensive. 

Secondly, I am flying home from a two-day interview for a postdoc at Sandia National Laboratory.  This has always been sort of a dream job for me, as they have a large, awesome computational fluid dynamics group.  While LLNL is very physics-oriented, SNL is a very engineering-oriented lab.  I would have the opportunity to work with many UMN CEMS graduates on a variety of projects ranging from batteries to coatings to weapons systems to satellites.  The work is awesome, the resources are amazing, and the benefits package is great.  And, I even kind of like Albuquerque, NM.  It’s pretty.  I don’t have an offer from them yet or anything, but I’m hoping for the best.

Finally, I have written a proposal for National Research Council postdoctoral fellowship.  I spent the better part of the last two weeks learning about the project and writing the proposal.  If I got this, I could end up working at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Washington, DC.  The project deals with determining the interfacial properties (diffusion, surface tensions, etc.) of a emulsion system with surfactants.  I’d primarily be doing modeling, with a little bit of experience, too.  This is a much more academic-like position, but is very related to my current research.  I won’t know about getting this job, however, until late October.

So that’s it.  I’m not planning on looking for additional opportunities, because all three of these would be exciting and good for my career.  I’m just hoping for the best that in October, I’ll have a few offers to choose from.

Originally published at http://saroberts.com. Please leave any comments there.

Where am I? 

More information later.

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In the post Walter Cronkite era.

http://www.timepolls.com/hppolls/archive/poll_results_417.html

I’m not completely sure what I think of this.  I do love John Stewart.  But isn’t this kinda sad?  At least my man came in second.

Originally published at http://saroberts.com. Please leave any comments there.

I love my new hammock swing.  I’ve been home the better part of this evening working on a fellowship application that is due very soon.  Yeah, boring.  However, I’ve spent the past few hours sitting on the deck in my swing, working on the fellowship on my laptop.  And let me tell you, it’s great.  Got some tunes pumping, the swing swinging, and words flowing out of my fingers.

And I’m crossing my fingers, but the radar looks as if I might get some rain in the next bit.  Wouldn’t that be even better!

Originally published at http://saroberts.com. Please leave any comments there.

Today was my first real bike ride since I hurt my ankle.  Did the Lilydale route with Dan, and it went very well.  My knee started hurting towards the end, due to how I’ve been limping around, but all in all a good ride.

Ride Route

Originally published at http://saroberts.com. Please leave any comments there.

Originally published at http://saroberts.com. Please leave any comments there.

Last weekend was exactly one year before Christine and I are getting married next summer.  In celebration, we planned on going to check out Centennial Lakes to check out the building and check out the mini-golf course across the lake.  We didn’t make it last weekend due to the 4th of July holiday, but this weekend we took a trip out there to play a round of golf.  For some reason, Christine was convinced she was going to beat me.  After the front 9, she decided we should re-start the count.  She still didn’t win.  But I took pictures.

http://picasaweb.google.com/saroberts/20090711CentennialLakesMiniGolf#

It was a glorious day and the park was great.  We’re excited that everybody will join us in 11 months and 22 days to celebrate at Centennial Lakes!

On another note, I just ordered a new daypack.  I’ve been wanting one for a while, but after not having anything good for our trip to Alaska, now was the time.  I decided on the Osprey Kestrel 28 without trying it on.  I tried on the 38L model, but REI didn’t carry the smaller 28L model.  Luckily, I got a great deal on Amazon.  They only had 3 left, and were selling them for $80, rather than the $120 that I could buy it for everywhere else. 

Oh, and have you heard about Google Voice yet?  Well, it’s great.  You probably can’t join quite yet; I had to sign up a while ago and just got an invitation.  What is it?  Well, you sign up for a Google Voice phone number.   This is now your phone number for ever and ever.  You then associate all of your other phone numbers (cell, home, work, etc.) with your new number, and people have just one number that they call and it will ring all of your other numbers.  You can define groups that ring differently (like your boss calling doesn’t ring your cell).  Even better is that your voicemail is online.  It is available in your email inbox as an audio file, but also transcribed into text.  Very cool!  There are a ton of other features, too, so you should check it out!

On that note, if you would like to start using my Google Voice number to call me, feel free! 
(612) 208-7024

Originally published at http://saroberts.com. Please leave any comments there.

A couple of months ago, Chris and I went to the Minneapolis farmer’s market and saw these wonderful hammock swings.  We sat in them and they were wonderfully comfortable.  While enjoying the comfort, we decided that surely they must not be that hard to make.

The next week, a trip to the public library landed us with two books on hammock making.  These books were amazingly awesome.  They were obviously written by hippies in the 70s and were spiral bound.  The books weren’t the most well written, but after reading through them, we got a grasp of how to make our own hammock swing.

Menards and Home Depot had all of the materials that we needed to begin this project, so we bought up all of their cotton rope and I started weaving!  Amazingly, the project went very quickly; I finished weaving the entire bed in only 3 evenings.  It took one additional day to tie the bed onto the rings and another morning to put together the spreader and the hanging hardware, but finally, it’s done!

I tested out the swing for the first time yesterday, and I’d say it was a successful project.  It ended up being fairly cheap (<$50) and fun to make.  Now that I’ve learned a few tips and tricks, I think I’ll try to make one for Christine, too, so we can both relax on my deck.

[Show as slideshow]

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