Journal Entries
Conversations with my Advisor: Dating (rocks)
Posted Dec 14, 2005
I have been having the following conversation with my advisor, spanning the past few weeks:
[Me] You know, I think finding the slip rate on this fault using alluvial fan channels is a fantastic idea! I want to do it for my thesis!
[Advisor] It would be great, but the lab that does cosmogenic dating is backed up a year and a half. You'd have to get the samples now.
[Me] *
, rummage through GeoRef and Google Scholar, come up with successful dating techniques in arid environments.*
[Me] What about electron spin resonance?
[A] Notoriously unreliable.
[Me] Paleomag? I know I could pick up some strong secular variation at least!
[A] Too coarse time resolution.
[Me] Fission track in diagenetic minerals?
[A] No diagenesis.
[Me] Optically stimulate luminescence?
[A] Maybe in the fine stuff... but you'd have to get lucky.
[Me] NOTHING??? Cosmogenics is the only thing I can use?
[A] Unless you get lucky and find some charcoal.
[Me] Can I learn to do cosmogenics? I mean, I can use an ICP-MS.
[A] Good, but it takes an /Accelerator/ Mass- Spec. That's a particle accelerator attached to an MS, and there's only a few of those in the entire world.
[My Inner Child] *
*
[Me] But won't I need dates for all the /other/ stuff I could do?
[A] Yes, but there's some preliminary numbers out there already... what? I didn't tell you that?
[Me] No... ohgeelookatthetime! see you tomorrow!
*Runs upstairs and bangs head on wall.*
Discuss this Journal entry [12]
Latest reply: Dec 14, 2005
I guess it's possible
Posted Dec 13, 2005
I didn't think it was.
I didn't think I could do it.
I didn't think there was enough music in the world.
But somehow, someway, I did it.
I've filled up my iPod.
Discuss this Journal entry [21]
Latest reply: Dec 13, 2005
Geo-mojo
Posted Dec 2, 2005
So, yesterday I had a presentation- it was something I was going to do my proposal on, I think. Maybe. I don't know, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.
I had to rely on my notes, and there was a very important mistake on the slides that made one thing not make a whole lot of sense. I got through it though, and the criticisms I got were very positive!
Then I finished up my homework problems, and I only had to go and ask for two hints on the second part of it. They were both kind of obvious, and I think if I had had more time, I could have done it all on my own.
And then I went drinking- first a beer with my 3 PM lunch, and then out to dinner with my friends from the department.
I've had a bit of an ordeal adjusting to grad school and life at Penn State- you guys have already heard a lot of it. The math, the papers, the five impossible things before breakfast, the TA fiasco... that gets to a person, and I let it get to me.
But after dinner, I was walking home, just sort of noticing how the snow was sticking to the trees. I've always liked it when it snowed. Then I noticed how I was standing a little straighter, how there was a bit more of a spring in my step, kind of like when I was at Akron, before I lost confidence after being unemployed, underemployed, overworked and in over my head.
I think I've got my mojo back! 
Discuss this Journal entry [8]
Latest reply: Dec 2, 2005
Ready for the Ice Age?
Posted Nov 30, 2005
Well, it appears the Day After Tomorrow is going to happen after all:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/30/science/30cnd-climate.html?ex=1291006800&en=f359e635107b8a19&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
All you nice people in the British Isles and points north have space on my couch if your house gets buried under an ice sheet.
*Goes looking for more couches.*
Discuss this Journal entry [25]
Latest reply: Nov 30, 2005
Proof
Posted Nov 28, 2005
I have homework.
Homework is evil.
It involves a lot of complicated math, and basically what I have to do is write an equation relating the channel profile to distance along the stream.
So far, all I have managed to do is prove that when uplift and erosion rates are equal, there is no change in the channel profile.
Discuss this Journal entry [10]
Latest reply: Nov 28, 2005
Scandrea
Researcher U186740
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