| Go Beavers |
[Mar. 31st, 2008|10:18 am] |
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I'm off to Oregon State, OK that's not quite true yet but I'll be there in July. They have a Tsunami tank and a Wave Channel that's big enough to surf in. I'm tentatively assigned to Bill Smyth who is a modeler. I've already started peppering him with questions. Out of impatience I downloaded an oceanography textbook and I was kind of amazed by a phenomena called inertial currents, believe me it's a lot cooler that it sounds. If you want to see some pretty math and graphs take a look here I'd love some input on W.T.F. is going on. |
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| Welcome to Miami, Bienvenido a Miami |
[Mar. 19th, 2008|10:40 am] |
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I'm flying out to visit my last school (Univ. of Miami) tomorrow night. Gotta love the 9pm-5am red eye flight, though on the plus side it's a direct flight. After my visit to OSU I'm not as smitten with UW. UW as an institution seems to better mirror my views but on the research side OSU more closely matches what I think I want. The way things are going there will be a distinct way in which Miami stands out. Darn having multiple good choices! |
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| I quit my job |
[Feb. 27th, 2008|03:12 pm] |
Today I put in notice at Mt. S.A.C. that I will not be teaching there after June 2008. Univ of Washington (Obviously I've changed my mind on the news blackout) promised to pay for people if they want to come early and I'm assuming (make ass jokes here) that the other schools will do the same. No turning back now! On the plus side moving earlier allows Beth to look for a job and both of us to look for a place before the undergrad rush.
( More details... ) |
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| Graduate School Ranking |
[Feb. 14th, 2008|09:09 am] |
I'm starting to get a trickle of news from schools. The details will be withheld until I make a decision to prevent biasing schools that have yet to contact me. The few people I've talked to have made me feel that my shotgun approach will give me an embarrassment of riches. I applied to nine schools because I wasn't sure what my odds of acceptance were. Apparently I am good candidate so I need some ideas to help me thin the choices. I'm using PhDs.org to do comparisons but some of their data is from 1993!
( Schools I've applied to ) |
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| Graduate School News |
[Jan. 25th, 2008|10:27 am] |
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I got my first letter from a grad school last weekend. It was neither an acceptance nor a rejection. I was recommended for acceptance at the University of Maryland, College Park pending my finding an adviser willing to sponsor me. I sent e-mails to seven people at UMD last weekend. Today I called the three people who responded to my request positively. One was out of the office but the other two were expecting me to call and I got a good feel from both of them. The main facility is actually about 2hrs outside of College Park so solving the two body problem with Beth and I might be tough. I got the impression from my conversations that I have a good chance of getting in at the other schools I applied to which was comforting. |
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| I like free... |
[Jan. 18th, 2008|12:02 pm] |
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and hopefully so will my students. I remember the annoyances of plotting and fitting data in Origin and KaleidaGraph for all my lab reports and having to negotiate with the Mudd key server and eventually giving up and going down to the computer lab. The current pedagogy at Mudd favors KaleidaGraph and Excel for fitting and data manipulation respectively. They are willing to allow Open Office Calc as an approved spreadsheet if I'm willing to support it but they are pretty stuck on KaleidaGraph for fitting. I'm not familiar with any good free fitting programs, a little web searching found Fityk which looks OK but I'd love to hear of any good suggestions. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jan. 10th, 2008|08:18 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  ecstatic | ] |
 Hell Yeah! OK it's only to teach labs and it's totally temporary but I'm so excited! |
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| The MTA canceled my class |
[Mar. 29th, 2007|08:36 pm] |
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So for my birthday i bought myself a bus pass and have been taking the bus to my Santa Ana College gig. I get to do grading and well I'm cooler than most everyone else in Southern California. OK I already am since the least efficient vehicle I have ever owned is my 40mpg 1985 Honda civic (previously owned by Chuck and Cari) but now I am looking at the sad prospect of driving to Santa Ana because the MTA and the OCTA cant get me from Cal Poly Pomona to Santa Ana College I wouldn't mind but I depart Cal Poly Pomona at 4pm and don't need to arrive at Santa Ana until 7pm a distance of 23.4 miles (google maps). Problem is that there is only one bus that can get me there on time and it didn't come! I am traveling from a large university to a mid sized community college. This shouldn't be a difficult ! The average speed just needs to be over 10mi/hr, this is not acceptable. I can get from Long Beach to Cal Poly Pomona in 3 hours avg speed 12.5 mi/hr and that route has two transfers! |
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| Could you pick me out of a lineup? |
[Feb. 21st, 2007|02:13 pm] |
The third annual deep fry fest!
Who: If you or anyone you know could pick me out of a line up then you're invited!
When: Saturday March 17th 5pm-later
Where: My house! If you don't know where that is e-mail me and I'll give you directions to the Bishop in Long Beach
Why: St Patrick's day, my birthday, deep fried food, veggie plater, Wii, tamales, Dance Dance Revolution, Rock Paper Scissors, Karaoke Revolution, green food coloring + ______, the letter "y", late is better than never!
What: Bring more people and anything you want to deep fry.
How: 2 DDR pads, 2 Wii-motes, 2 deep fryers, 2 floors |
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| (no subject) |
[Feb. 16th, 2007|12:17 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | meme | ] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | The Bishop | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  happy | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Lily Allen | ] |
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| Dark and pretty |
[Feb. 15th, 2007|10:13 am] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | Mt SAC | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  cheerful | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Lily Allen | ] |
While watching cnet TV on democracy TV I got to watch the video for smile and though at first she sounds like a standard British girl pop band (music nomenclature is a guess) I caught some lyrics and it's like seeing someone wearing a pink fairy dress and then noticing the combat boots. I'm going to have to stop by a music store on my way to work tonight and find her album. Thank goodness her site has a flash player. Here are some choice excerpts from her lyrics which are available on her site along with some streaming audio of her songs.
Song: Smile
At first when I see you cry,
yeah it makes me smile, yeah it makes my smile
At worst I feel bad for a while,
but then I just smile
Song: LDN
There was a little old lady, who was walkin down the road
...
Then a kid came along to offer a hand
But before she had time to accept it
hits her over the head |
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| Grad School Redux |
[Feb. 13th, 2007|09:31 pm] |
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I have decided to go back to grad school. Current thought are in oceanography or atmospheric science given my positive experience doing simulation versus my face-plant in optics with and my dubious track record with materials science. Taking the GRE this spring. If you have any wisdom either general or specific to my new fields of choice this is me asking. |
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| How do you say nanometer? |
[Feb. 12th, 2007|11:27 am] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  annoyed | ] |
I was listening to a podcast from CNET and one of their editors (Tom Merritt) stumbled on the word nanometer he said it with the syllable breakdown nan-om-eter WTF! I emailed him with a correction since he can clearly say ipod nano correctly. Here is his response and my original e-mail. So am I wrong, is he, is the field of medicine trying to obscure the fact that the nanometer is derived from the meter? I know that MDs love their lingo but come on! The whole point of the prefix system is to help communication. I've vented and feel better.
-----------
Tom Merritt
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There is an alternate pronunciation.
http://www.medilexicon.com/medicaldictionary.php?t=58768
Tom
---------------------
Martin Smith-Martinez
Sent: Saturday, February 10, 2007 12:50 PM
To: buzz
Subject: Buzz out loud 2-5-07
-----------------------------
The proper pronunciation of nano in nanometer is the same as in ipod nano and it is 10^(-9) meters or in html 10-9 meter. On billion nanometers fit in one meter or in terms of millimeters a nanometer is one millionths of a millimeter. I love your show, keep up the good work.
Martin Smith-Martinez
http://www.msmithma.name
Long Beach Ca 90804 |
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| No Super Bowl deep fry... |
[Jan. 26th, 2007|03:22 pm] |
Due to conflicts with birthdays there will be no deep fried super bowl this year. Current hopes are that we will fire up the oil for my B-Day in March.
PS
If you know my birthday you will probably be invited! |
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| btw |
[Dec. 30th, 2006|08:05 pm] |
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Beth and I are engaged. |
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| Cal Poly Pomona |
[Dec. 10th, 2006|02:17 pm] |
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I had an interview Friday at Cal Poly Pomona and they offered my a job teaching a Lab class. I'm an adjunct professor at a university. Yay me! While I was there I ran into two people I met at caltech. If this works out I might be able to consolidate all my jobs in east LA county! MtSAC is right next door. |
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| Democracy Internet Video |
[Dec. 7th, 2006|05:08 pm] |
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I have recently taken up watching internet video via the Democracy Player. My favorite show? The Best Week Ever from VH1, other large media companies that deserve kudos include ABC for putting out free media. I gave Democracy Payer's parent The Participatory Culture Foundation some money, they can afford to pay one coder for every 1000 people who give them $5 a month. |
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