Blues Appreciation

My friend Kaci sent this to me quite awhile ago, but I recently rediscovered it in one of my many email folders. I know that not everyone (or maybe anyone) will appreciate it, but it makes me laugh.

March Madness 2008 Eve

Oh yes, this year it creeped up on me but I was still able to get my picks ready at the last minute. Plus at least Friday I should be able to work from home, which will allow me to enjoy a full day of first round play. That day is so great since every couple hours there will be four consecutive finishes in a row. You can almost guarantee a last minute win by a team ever set of games. This is definitely the best tournament in all of sports and if it wasn't for this I probably won't watch hardly any college basketball.

My 2008 March Madness Picks. I was probably too safe with my picks but we'll see...you never know. (click on image to get a better view if interested)

Another Experiment Completed

In the middle of January I wrote a post stating that I was back in the lab doing a "small" experiment to investigate diffusion in a boundary layer. Well it turned out to be much longer and challenging experiment then originally thought, but today I'm glad to say I have finally completed it. The bonus is that I believe there is some pretty interesting stuff in this data set. Obviously I now need to do the full data processing (I did some crude processing to make sure my data wasn't garbage but will be redone) and data analysis, but at least I'm out of the lab (my legs are very happy about that since the number of cuts should significantly decrease for them).

My model with some rhodamine dye being injected into the boundary layer.

The tunnel I used for my experiment (the lab doesn't really look this clean, its an old picture).

Visiting Stanford

Last week I visited Stanford University to meet with some VIPs of the fluid mechanics community. This was my first real visit to California. Previously my only time in California consisted of Kristie and I running from one side of LAX airport to the other lasting a grand total of approximately 15 minutes. Most people have told me that that doesn't count as visiting California. So my stay this time was significantly increased because I was in California for 25 hours (arrived 12:30 am Wednesday and left ~1:30 am Thursday). The flights were horrible since I first sat on the plane in Detroit for 2 hours, deplaned for about 45 minutes, got back on the plane, spent about a half hour deicing the plane, and then we finally started the 4.5 hour flight. The return flight was better since it was less than an hour late and by sprinting through Minneapolis we were able to catch our flight to Detroit as they were closing the doors.

In spite of the miserable travel schedule/delays the trip was useful and pretty enjoyable. I was able to visit the fluid mechanics labs, meet with a few very knowledgeable professors, present some of my work, and have lunch at the faculty club (the bathroom had cloth towels in it). Plus I was able to walk around Stanford's campus a bit and in the evening my advisor and I went into San Francisco for dinner. Since this was my first visit to the area my advisor figured I couldn't go to San Fransisco and not see the Golden Gate Bridge so we went down to Fisherman's Wharf and was able to get a nice view of the bridge at night as well as Alcatraz. The only unfortunate thing about the trip was that I was within a few miles of two close friends of mine and wasn't able to visit them because the trip was so short, but with any luck I'll be making more visits out there.

Stanford Campus - Old Union Area

Key spots from my visit to Stanford.

Sleeping Bear Dunes Puzzle

Demoree and I recently (well actually a couple weeks ago) started and finished a sweet puzzle that we got from her parents over Christmas. We took pictures periodically to capture the fun of doing a puzzle so that we could share it with everyone.

When we first poured out the pieces we were a little intimidated and thought this might take awhile.

With me not knowing what to do, Demoree suggested we sort out the pieces and start with the edge.

By the end of the first day (which was only about an hour) we had a few sections put together…this had us feeling more confident.

I had made a promise not to work on it when she wasn’t there. Well it was late one night and I just happened to see two pieces that went together and before I knew it I had put together a decent amount…opps, but Dem said it was alright.

The next time we got to work on it we made a lot of progress really fast…it was about 11pm when we took this picture. Since I knew I won’t have the will power not to put pieces together until the next time she came over I pushed for us to finish it that night. Though she was pretty tired by the end she stuck it out all the way until we finished that night.

Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore Puzzle

Unbelievable

I really can't believe that I'm going to give an update on this. So I now truly hate an inanimate object...hate it. I hate the corner shown below because it is slowly but surely removing chunks of my legs. This afternoon it took another bite out of my right leg.

My Arch Enemy...The Stupid Corner.

The more recent cut that the stupid corner has made on my leg (the lower one is the cut shown in the center image of my last update).