Steph's painting

Wow, I just found out (by reading my mom's blog!) that my sister, Steph, has a painting that's going to a gallery in Winnipeg! Very cool. I guess she's also sold a couple more and has been commissioned to do another painting for someone. She's moving out of her place in Freddy Beach, and is headed for Sackville for the summer (that's where she went to school, at Mount Allison). The above painting is of Dad, and it's not the one that is going to Winnipeg, but it's the only one that I could get to load properly. It is probably my favorite though, I really like what she did with the reflections in the glass cabinet in the background.

John's Lake Berryessa photos

Mike just got back from Lake Berryessa a couple of days ago, and brought with him some photos that John had taken on his camera. Here's one of my favorites, but if you click on the image you can see more on my Picasa site. Now that I've seen pictures, I definitely want to go out there and visit. Maybe after the job is done he can stay for a couple of extra days so I can fly out and meet him for some sightseeing in Napa...he doesn't have internet access so he doesn't know that I'm plotting and scheming to get myself out there. I've got my fingers crossed, now all I have to do is get through my crazy math final, and I'll be all set.

It's sunny again

Ah, the sun is out, it's 20 degrees outside, I didn't have to wear a scarf or a jacket or gloves - and I wore sandals *without* socks. I am the biggest wimp about the cold, so for me to be saying this means it must really be nice out. In true graduate student style, I'm celebrating the fine weather by coming into CCOM and working on my math homework. Not to worry though, there is some meaning behind the madness - I'm trying to finish my math take-home exam before the end of the semester so that I can take a couple of days off to visit John in California. It would be my very first trip out west. And it all depends on me sacrificing a beatiful sunny day in New Hampshire in favour of solving Green's functions by the method of variation of parameters. Which, incidentally, is even LESS fun than it sounds.

Gretchen's visit

Gretchen came up to sunny New Hampshire for a couple of days to hang out and to pick up her graduation gown (how exciting!). It's great to have the G-force back in town, even if it's super brief. but she'll be back in a few weeks for the graduation - and she's going to bring the infamous Maxwell (James Clerk Maxwell the dog). Oh yes, and she'll bring Ryan too. Gretchen convinced Barbara to pick up some doughnuts at the bakery in Somersworth (or Rochester, or wherever it is) - because they are the best doughnuts ever. ever. so Barb brought them in and put them in the lunchroom. They were gone so fast. Good thing I grabbed one as soon as they were put out. I can smell free doughnuts from a mile away.

Spring rains, 2007 - catching up on my blogging

I tried to walk to school on Monday morning after dropping John off at the bus station, and was greeted with this scene as soon as I passed through the tunnel - luckily Shachak was driving in at the same time, so he drove me back to the house. The water receded quickly though, and I was able to drive in later in the day. Classes were cancelled at 10.

Brunch on Sunday

I apologize, this post is quite late. I've been pretty busy for the last week or so. But now that my presentation is done, I can update the blog again.
We had a brunch/lunch at our place on Sunday, the day before John left for California. It was also a birthday celebration, although John made three quiches himself. And they were so good! We also had cheese, bread, fruit salad, pancakes, bacon, cheesecake, and carrot cake. Thats a lot of food. And Kim brought up her super duper instant coffee machine which was very impressive (very similar to the one at Carol and Loren's house, but a different brand).

Happy Birthday John!!!

Have a great day, John, and thanks for helping me pick up equipment at the Thompson School!

This is a picture of John, first thing in the morning on his birthday. He got up early to help me pick up survey equipment and even carried the super heavy box of GPS equipment for me. What a guy!

Stephan's Thesis

Stephan is finishing up his thesis really soon and has been getting people to try out his software. It's very cool, you put on some special glasses and you can see an ocean current visualization in 3-D on the screen. There's a 3-D mouse/pen for moving around on the screen. The software includes 5 different types of virtual sensors (such as dye pots and streamers) to choose from to help you see and understand the flow speed and volume at different depths. And as a bonus, the glasses are very flattering, as you can see from the photo.

Easter Potluck

Val and Alice hosted an Easter potluck at their house last night. It was a blast, we got to eat lots o' food, and then we dyed eggs! Here's a picture of everyone before the meal, doesn't it look yummy? Val and Alice made paella, John and I brought John's special black bean/cilantro salad, Lynn brought delicious devilled (sp?) eggs, kurt brought 2 pies, and Nathan and Alyssa brought blueberry/apple crisp. We all had a good time, and Kokua supervised the entire operation. Because she loves us.

Another snow day

It snowed a lot last night. I think classes are all cancelled. There were hardly any people around campus, and there are only a couple of people here at CCOM. Although I have to admit, now that I'm only taking 2 classes, having a snow day doesn't really affect me so much. But for some reason, I still get really excited when I hear that school is cancelled. Then it's sort of fun to walk in to CCOM through the terrible blizzard conditions, and pretend like I'm some kind of brave and adventurous soul. And of course since it's a snow day, I feel completely justified in leaving as early as I like to go do fun stuff like jumping in snowbanks. And by jumping in snowbanks I definitely mean pushing John into snowbanks. hahaha! (yeah, it's funny now, until John reads this and pushes me into a snowbank later)

Beam patterns

Last week Tom tried to get Val and I to come up with the beam pattern for a curved hydrophone array. Val did his on Friday afternoon and it worked great. It gave results that led to conclusions and further recommendations, and an overall benefit to the harbour tracking project as a whole. I did mine in Matlab using the BFI method (brute force and ignorance - plenty of both) and came up with the above plot - the colors represent decibel levels. I have no idea what happened. And since I have no idea what happened, what better to do than to randomly change parameters in the code in hopes of coming up with a nice desktop background. So I changed the radius of curvature, took the absolute value, and came up with this one:

Mystery Tree

John, Kurt, Val, and I went to check out the greenhouse at the Thompson school on Saturday morning. It was really fun, and while I was there I picked up what I thought was a cool looking plant/tree. A guy that worked there said it was a coffee tree, but I can't find any info on it on google, and an image search doesn't really bring up anything that looks like what I have. If anyone can identify this plant, please let me know. If you're curious, click on the image above to link to my greenhouse album on picasa where you'll find more photos of the mystery tree. If you can tell me what it is, I'll buy you an ice cream!! Note to Andrea: the picasa album has a picture of Trogdor!!