Greetings from Durham, NH

Last Post on Blogger!

2008-01-03T18:37:00.000-05:00

Hey everyone, just so you know - I am moving to a new blog. I'm sorry if this is upsetting and understand if you never want to read my new blog. But please do! It can be found at:

http://michellejw.wordpress.com/

I've moved all of my previous blogger posts over to there too, so you can see it all from one place. You'll see that I've already got a few posts up there, and the welcome post is about the fourth down from the top. That's because it took me a long time to decide whether I really wanted to make the move.

** A special sorry to my two known RSS subscribers - you'll have to re-subscribe at the new site.

See you there!

Snow Day tomorrow?

2007-12-19T17:52:00.000-05:00

It looks like the 5th storm of the season is going to hit us tomorrow - what is going on?? Last year the snow didn't even stick until January! What is Fredericton going to be like?!? I have an exam tomorrow morning too - seamanship. It will be fun getting into school tomorrow! woo hoo! Poor Trooper has become a bit less fond of the snow, it seems, now that every step he takes off a beaten path involves punching through a layer of frozen crust and sinking in up to his armpits. (legpits?)

Some kind of woodland creature...

2007-12-18T16:38:00.000-05:00

We always suspected, but now we know the truth: Trooper is not a dog - he is a rabbit. Trooper-rabbit.

Latke-tastic!

2007-12-12T20:43:00.000-05:00

I guess this is a bit of a delayed message, but last Sunday Janice and Yifty hosted a Chanukkah party and invited a bunch of their friends, including several of us CCOMers. It was super-fun, we learned how to play dreidel, and had lots of delicious fried food, yum... They made homemade latkes (potato pancakes) and sufganyot (jelly/chocolate/vanilla filled doughnuts - I probably spelled it wrong...) Even Gracie came - but she didn't eat any of the fried foods. The picture shows some cookies (with sprinkles on top) and also the doughnuts before they were cooked. That's Janice standing behind the table overseeing the food preparation. It was delicious and lots of fun!!

Early morning walk

2007-12-07T08:26:00.000-05:00

While Trooper's paw was healing from his injury, John and I felt so bad for him that we let him do whatever he wanted, including sleeping on the bed, getting up on the couch, giving him lots of treats. This has, of course, backfired. Trooper is feeling better already, only two days later, and he now thinks that he is entitled to all of those things, all the time. He jumps on the bed, pulls on the leash, whines endlessly when he can't get what he wants - we've created a monster!

This photo is from our walk this morning in College Woods. It looks so different in there when there's snow on the ground. There were tracks from cross-country skiers - we need to get some skis! But we missed the ski-swap this year AGAIN :( I've been told it took place way back in October.

Operation

2007-12-05T12:46:00.000-05:00

Two days ago Trooper broke a toenail on his right front paw. He ended up having to go into doggie surgery yesterday morning. They sedated him and amputated the whole nail - it seems harsh, but they had to do it because it was split all the way up to the base. We don't really know how he did it, but he was running around like a maniac in the snow, and it could have caught on something like the icy crust or a branch that was buried. Well, he's back to his old self again, except that he's extra hyper because we can't let him go outside much to burn off his energy, in case he irritates his paw. I'll try to post a picture of him with his cast on - it was hilarious - a little blue cast.

I'm tired

2007-11-27T18:49:00.000-05:00

I think that grad school is slowly killing me. I need to get out! I need to know what it's like to be outside in the daytime, to sleep in past 7am, to stare at a computer screen for less than 14 hours every day. What is that life like? I don't even remember... That's why I need to get graduated and move on out of here.

Right, sorry for all the complaining. But I am sick of trying to wade through 27 gigabytes of acoustic data, only to realise that I didn't calibrate the sound levels for changes in the pre-amp gain settings. Now I have to go back and write it all down by hand, and apply it to the data after the fact... Oh well. Such is life, eh?

Well, I think I'll try posting a video. This on cheers me up, it's starring Trooper, mainly. It was after we'd just played scrabble, and I lost (235 - 240). I have a bad habit of gambling on words that I have never heard of but suspected they might make their way into the scrabble dictionary.

Christmas Plans

2007-11-21T11:27:00.000-05:00

Our plans are set, the flights are booked, we've told our families when we're arriving - we're going to both Fredericton, New Brunswick and Durham, North Carolina. I am beyond excited - I cannot wait! Two weeks of family time for the holidays. Trooper dog is coming to Fredericton with us, but we're putting him in boarding while we are in North Carolina - maybe next time we'll attempt to get him on a plane, but for now he'll have to make do at the Barking Dog. It's a very nice place with heated floors and fancy food and daily playtimes with the staff and baths and daycare where they play with other dogs. I doubt he's going to cry himself to sleep at night missing us... The Barking Dog is also where we take him for his obedience classes.

I have planned our vacation so that we are in Fredericton on a Saturday for the Farmer's Market - a crucial requirement for me. I need those veggie samosas and german sausages and breads and the delicious almond chocolate triangles...If you don't know what I'm talking about you can check out this link: Boyce Farmer's Market

Trooper

2007-11-19T08:35:00.000-05:00

This is our puppy, the day I brought him out to Fort Foster to help with fieldwork. We spent the day out on the end of the pier with periodic breaks to go for walks on the beach or in the park or trails. When he wasn't sniffing at the people wandering out onto the pier, he spent the afternoon lying out in the warm october sun on a blanket that I'd brought along for him.

Finally, a new blog post...

2007-11-19T08:18:00.000-05:00

It's been so long since I've posted anything. I'm pretty sure that no one even checks anymore, assuming of course that people checked it out before. John has been reminding me for weeks to put up a post. So here it is, finally. A lot has happened since my last post (which was on September 3rd by the way) - John returned from Africa mid September, I went to a conference in Vancouver at the end of September, we collected data for my thesis for two weeks in October, and then we got married on November 9th. :)

Durham Landing

2007-09-03T09:48:00.001-05:00

Another photo from a morning walk with Trooper. This is overlooking Durham landing from the walking bridge.

Buoy-tastic

2007-09-03T09:36:00.001-05:00

Here it is - attempt # 2 to make a weight that is hand-deployable, yet heavy enough to stay in one spot on the bottom. tricky, very tricky. Good thing it doesn't have to be hand-deployable by me. I can hardly lift the frame of this thing, let alone half of 150 pounds. Those gigantor chain links are HEAVY! Luckily, Tom and Ben C. could get it into the water with the help of the pulley on the A-frame - and it seemed to stay in place! Excellent. That was at Adam's Point though, several kilometres upriver from our actual research area. We'll find out soon if it'll hold out in Portsmouth Harbour...And yes, this is about as exciting as it gets for me. In fact, I think that the last post about a bag-o-milk was more interesting.

Bag o' milk

2007-08-31T21:14:00.000-05:00

I found this picture online on the first page of a google image search for milk bags (hence the mystery child in the background). This looks like the same kind of milk bag container that we always had at our house, except maybe in a different color. I've posted this basically so that my American friends know what a 'milk bag' is - and because I miss being able to buy milk in a bag.

Doe Farm, by the Lamprey River

2007-08-27T14:07:00.000-05:00

I worry too much about this dog - does he look sick to you? Me neither. He looks a little bit crazy actually. He doesn't usually do this, but he had a little spaz attack for no apparent reason.

Lighthouse work

2007-08-26T14:29:00.001-05:00

Val and I found ourselves back at the lighthouse again last Thursday and Friday. We complained about being in that dark lighthouse, soldering and splicing, while we could hear people having fun at the beach just a few hundred metres away. But then we figured that if you have to be soldering and splicing, it's better to be doing it with the sea breeze outside the door and waves washing up onto the rocks 10 feet away, rather than in the freezing cold electronics lab at CCOM (and I do mean freezing).

You may notice that there is a GPS (Global Positioning System) antenna mounted under a deck. And we're OK with it! Sure, the positioning will probably be pretty crappy, but we're not using it to find position - an additional signal that comes out of a GPS receiver is a very accurate pulse every second. For GPS to work, very precise timing is required to synchronize the satellite signals and the receivers. This works out for us because we're going to use the clever GPS timing scheme to synchronize the acoustic signals we're sending into the harbour.

Val made me take this picture of a splice we did between the GPS cable and ethernet cable. It's more impressive than it looks. Well, on second thought, it probably isn't.

John in Mozambique

2007-08-21T17:10:00.001-05:00

Here's a shot of John sitting with the sonar that they've been working with. They are currently in Maputo, Mozambique. They're doing the survey work for a fiber-optic communications cable. Which, in my opinion, is desperately needed - the internet connection there is terrible. Our Skype calls keep getting cut off! Well, by the time the lightning-fast internet connection arrives, John and the rest of GRS will be long gone... to Tanzania, anyway. He should be back in Durham by early September. This six week trip has transformed into more than 7, and is expected to go on for at least another 2!

Morning walk

2007-08-16T07:19:00.000-05:00

Trooper likes to wake me up SUPER early in the morning by chewing a chew toy really close to my head. This is loud and impossible to sleep through. If I open my eyes, or otherwise appear to respond, he licks my face. If I take the toy away, he starts to chew on the comforter or the edge of a pillow. But once I'm up, it's definitely worth it to see the sun coming up over Oyster River.

Congratulations, Luis!!

2007-08-15T15:14:00.001-05:00

Luis defended his Master's thesis yesterday morning, and did a great job. He's now just finishing up with the formatting so that he can submit it to the graduate school for binding. His half hour lecture generated some interesting discussion afterwards, including how box cores and different acoustic frequencies might be combined in the future to come up with better estimates of the bottom type for classification. I think everyone hopes that they can deliver their thesis topics so clearly and calmly. Congratulations!

Fieldwork and Trooper

2007-08-15T07:30:00.000-05:00

The past week and a half have been pretty crazy. We started testing the pinger positioning last week at Fox Point in Newington. It's a gorgeous spot, and it was nice to work there. On Saturday, Trooper came over to CCOM to help me test the RTK GPS. His job was supervisor, but he spent most of the time chewing on his kong toy.

We finally got the RTK working, it took quite a lot of running around, downloading drivers, picking up forgotten tribrachs and trying to get the laptop to stay alive long enough to set up the receiver. ( we ended up having to use a car battery and an inverter - it worked very well)

The actual survey at Fox Point was very hectic, with the R/V Coastal Surveyor driving back and forth in front of the pier, and Tom measuring sound speed profiles continuously over nearly two hours. Below is a photo of the GPS antenna with the Coastal Surveyor in the background. It was a beautiful day and it only rained a little bit.

Trooper

2007-08-06T07:58:00.000-05:00

We were so sad to give up Cayo, but now we've finally found the perfect pup for us. Elisa told us that we should check out labs4rescue.com. She used to foster dogs from there, and said they were a great organization. They are rescue group that takes labs from high-kill shelters in the south and finds good homes for them. We found one called Leo the Lover on their website. His description said that he was friendly to everyone and just loved people, other dogs, and children. We got them to cat-test him - he'd never seen a cat before. He was scared of them!

We ended up changing his name to Trooper - this was a name that Jakob came up with. It's actually Storm Trooper. If you want to see more pictures of Trooper, he's up on my picasa site, the link is at the left side of this page.

Back to blogging...

2007-07-24T21:56:00.000-05:00

Well, it's been ages since I've updated the ol' blog. (and by ages I mean 21 days). So here's the latest update: We had to give Cayo back to the SPCA. She was very aggressive to other dogs, and then we discovered she was also scary aggressive to little kids. So that wasn't cool. I was so upset when I went to take her back. She was only with me for 3.5 weeks, but I was pretty attached. She was so sweet when it was just the two of us, but she definitely had issues. We're still going to look for another dog, we just need to take our time and find the right one for us.

John is in Africa now, they're somewhere near Richard's Bay, South Africa. They should be leaving for Mozambique any day now. The place where they're staying now has fairly reliable internet access, so we can talk on Skype every day. It works out pretty well for the most part, except that because of the time difference, I'm usually at CCOM when he calls so I have to lug my laptop and some headphones somewhere out of cubeland. So I go to the lunchroom, and sit on the blue 'comfy' chairs. (I put quotation marks around comfy because they are not actually comfy, but they have blue cushions on them so you think they're going to be comfy, but then you sit down and they're hard as a rock. so they're faux comfy)

I've had one email from my little sister, Andrea, who's allegedly in Ecuador, bestowing the healing powers of a first year med school student on the innocent injured in Quito. I am sure she's doing great. Dad says that she has been putting stitches in people and everything. Yikes!

Crazy Two Weeks!

2007-07-03T09:53:00.000-05:00

Wow, it's been a while since I updated the blog. A lot has happened in the last two weeks. Dad came to visit a couple of weeks ago. He arrived the day after Father's Day. It was super fun, we went to Strawberry Bank in Portsmouth, which is the historic part of the town, something like King's Landing. Or Colonial Williamsburg. We also went to the Flume near Franconia in the White Mountains.

We drove up to Fredericton and I was there for a couple of days. Then I drove back with Stephanie. She stayed with us for 3 days. She painted and hung out and saw a bit of Durham, and then she took the bus back home.

On Sunday we started moving our stuff downstairs to Mike and Kim's old apartment in the basement. We cleaned it all up and started decorating, and I must say, it looks really spiffy now. It's a quirky little apartment and it's definitely the basement (no forgetting that) but it's looking really nice and homey. The kitchen is currently my favorite room, I'll put a picture up soon. But the living room and bedroom are well on their way to being very nice and cozy rooms too.

And somewhere in all of the craziness, we adopted a dog. Cayo is the newest member of our little family. She's definitely a handful, and has a lot of energy. She's a two year old shar-pei mix. Whatever the mix is, it's something smaller than her, because she's full grown, and smaller than a full grown shar-pei.

Val is a PhD candidate!

2007-06-15T12:49:00.001-05:00

Val had his qualifying exam this morning. He sat in the conference room with his entire committee (except for Jamie who got stuck in Cincinnati) and they asked him tough questions for 2 hours. He passed, as we knew he would. And then he got to eat cupcakes and cheese.

CONGRATULATIONS VAL!

Croquet game with Sydney

2007-06-15T12:36:00.000-05:00

Last night John and I babysat Sydney and we played indoor croquet - according to Sydney's rules. She won. Here's a picture of us after the game.
We watched the Grinch, and we watched the first few minutes of The Little Mermaid, and we watched some of Monsters Inc. We ate popsicles, and Kraft Dinner, and orange peppers. We went outside and looked for squirrels and for the groundhog that lives under the deck by Mike and Kim's place. We played instruments including guitar, tambourine, triangle, and morrocas. It was fun!

Sunday BBQ

2007-06-11T07:44:00.000-05:00

We had a barbeque/lawn games party at our house yesterday. It was a lot of fun. Here's a picture of Kurt catching a frisbee. It was one of my favorite shots of the day. Action shot! I took a lot of bad, blurry pictures, which is a shame because I was trying to be good about capturing the day in photos.

We ate lots of delicious pulled pork barbeque and chips and pies between games of bocce, volleyball, badminton and croquet. Although John actually planned the whole barbeque because of a hankering for a croquet game, he didn't even play. Well I suppose he was probably worn out from playing Bocce.

Val took the time to explain to me the difference between the types of barbeque sauces. I hadn't realised there were different kinds, but apparently he wasn't kidding when he asked whether it was going to be Carolina, Texas, Tennesee or Fredericton, NB barbeque sauce. I guess that John's recipe (which is from his mom, Carol) is a vinegar-based Carolina type sauce. Which makes sense, because Carol lives in Durham, North Carolina.

To check out the other pictures, just click on either of the pictures above and it will link you to my picasa site. I didn't put all of the photos up because (a) there were 95 or so and (b) there were a lot of blurry ones that didn't turn out.

Dad's coming to Durham!

2007-06-06T10:00:00.000-05:00

Dad is flying in to Boston on Monday, June 18th, the day after Father's Day. It'll be fun to take him around and show him CCOM, and go to Portsmouth, and maybe go up to the mountains. And then we're going to drive up to Fredericton, and I'll stay there and visit for a few days. I can't wait! Home sweet home...Freddy Beach here I come!

Tornado watch in NH!!

2007-06-05T15:14:00.000-05:00

The weather here is wild today. We saw the craziest clouds outside of CCOM this afternoon, there was rain, hail, thunder and lightning, and even a tornado watch. In case you're wondering - the above image is not a picture of today's weather in Durham. There was definitely a lot of green sky going on before and during the storm. For some reason I always thought that green sky meant there was going to be a tornado. I think I saw it on tornado documentary a long time ago. I just googled it again and I guess that there's no specific rule - sometimes green sky happens with no tornoado, and sometimes tornados happen with no green sky warning. In any case, it's fun to watch - until there's a brownout and your computer loses power and turns off. And then ten minutes later after the power comes back on, and the computer is restarted, we lose power again.

Saturday in Boston

2007-06-03T08:57:00.000-05:00

John and I went to Boston yesterday and saw the Blue Man group. It's a show that has a lot of audience participation. Before we went John was expressing concern about getting singled out (he tends to get singled out for thigns like this, I don't know why) - and sure enough, he got picked. He had to throw pieces of chocolate at one of the Blue Man guys who was standing about 10 feet away and catching the chocolate in his mouth. And it was all broadcast onto a big screen at the front. I think they're just really good at picking people who really don't want to be picked.

The weather was okay in Boston, a bit muggy but not too bad. But once we got on the highway, and were just past Newburyport, the sky turned that scary greenish colour and got really dark and ominous. And before we really realised what happened, it starting raining and hailing. It turned into a complete white-out and all the cars were pulled over to the side of the road. It brought traffic on the I-95 to a complete standstill - well except for a few crazy people that kept driving anyway. There were bits of debris and leaves flying everywhere, it was very strange and unexpected.

Memorial Day Weekend

2007-05-30T07:22:00.001-05:00

Here's a picture of John at Kennebunk beach in Maine. We decided to drive up on Saturday and see what all the fuss was about. It was cloudy at first, but by the time we finished our lunch it was sunny and hot. On Sunday morning we went into Portsmouth and had breakfast at the Friendly Toast. On Monday we drove into Portsmouth again and had lunch at the Icehouse. The Icehouse is a restaurant/ice cream place on Newcastle island on the way to the Coast Guard station. Gretchen and Gretchen's mom both recommended it a number of times, it was definitely worth it. Their seafood chowder is delicious.

John's coming home tonight!!

2007-05-25T08:42:00.000-05:00

Correction: John's flight's been changed and he's coming home tonight at 5!

John's coming home - 50th blog post!

2007-05-25T07:22:00.000-05:00

Okay, it's for real this time. He's got a plane ticket and everything. I don't believe him anymore when he says he's coming home unless he has flights booked. This two week job has turned out to be nearly a month and a half! Although I really can't complain because he did fly me out to California for a week. But I think that my formula has worked once again: take whatever time estimate he gives me at the start of the trip, multiply by two, and add two weeks.

Anyhow, his flight arrives at 8am in Boston tomorrow morning. I'm seriously considering bringing a giant cup of coffee and trying to convince him that despite taking the red-eye flight from Seattle, he still has enough energy to go hang out in Boston. Surely there will be lots of fun stuff going on, what with it being memorial day weekend and all. Of course maybe the city will be totally empty, since people will all be heading up north to hang out in new hampster and maine. We'll see...

Professor Schwehr

2007-05-23T14:09:00.000-05:00

Our good friend Kurt is officially a professor at UNH! Congratulations Kurt. Kurt is going to be a fantastic prof, so I recommend everyone to take his computer visualization class next year (he's co-teaching it with Colin Ware). He says that he does not wish to be called Professor Schwehr because it would be 'weird'.

In related news: Kurt just got back from a very successful hydro conference in Norfolk Virginia where he managed to get his proposed xml chart standards to be adopted by an international standards committee. You might say that last week was a lot more productive and successful for Kurt than it was for me (creating an international standard vs. lazing about in California).

Congratulations Gretchen, Bec, and Kim!

2007-05-20T16:10:00.000-05:00

This is what you do when you graduate. You eat a great big chocolate cake with strawberries and little chocolate and vanilla sticks and chocolate icing and chocolate sprinkles - I can't wait!

Three of my good girlfriends graduated this year: Gretchen Imahori, Bec Conrad, and Kim Leung. Congratulations ladies - I can't wait to follow in your footsteps and eat lots of chocolate cake - I mean get a masters degree...

Back to rainy NH

2007-05-20T15:59:00.001-05:00

I'm back in New Hampster, and it's pretty rainy and cold. Oh well, it is supposed to be sunny this week. Here's one of my pictures from last week. Just click on it to see more on my Picasa page. It was a great trip. Thanks John!!

**note to John: these pictures are for you! I know you're the one who put a comment up about the lack of photos recently - you can't fool me by calling yourself anonymous! ;)

Goodbye, California

2007-05-17T23:24:00.000-05:00

This week went by incredibly fast, as you might imagine. I spent every single day doing basically nothing. I brought along a few 'academic papers' and some half constructed matlab code with high hopes of accomplishing something (anything) while on my quasi-vacation, but alas it was not meant to be. 'Reading academic papers' turned into 'taking pictures of myself beside california-looking things', and 'writing code' turned into 'trying to get a tan so people believe I actually went to California'. So the week was spent mainly relaxing and watching other people (John and Chris) do work like lugging car batteries and GPS equipment around.

Well, my slacking days are over (for the time being). I'm in a hotel in Sacramento and am being picked up by the Super Shuttle at 3:45am. My flight leaves at 6am, I'll fly to Denver, then to Laguardia, then arriving in Boston at 10pm. The C&J trailways bus will take me to Portsmouth, and I'll take a taxi from the station to home sweet home. I should arrive sometime near 1am. The next day I will meet Gretchen and her family at 7:00am in preparation for the graduation day ceremony. After the ceremony we're going for lunch and celebratory drinks at Kennebunk with Gretchen's family and friends. Much coffee will be consumed between now and Saturday night.

PS: for anyone who is not sure, this is not my graduation. It is Gretchen's. And many others. And believe it or not, Bill Clinton and George Bush Sr. are speaking at the graduation ceremony. I'm not joking

No single-beaming yet

2007-05-16T13:09:00.000-05:00

I'm still at Lake Berryessa, enjoying the sun and the views. Unfortunately, I forgot to bring my download cable, so I can't share the photos yet. I thought I'd be spending my days here on the little ski boat helping John do a little single beam survey on the east side of the lake. But the boat has been out of commission since I arrived. They thought it was the starter, then thought it was the solenoid, then the mechanic decided it was something more serious and needed to take it out of the water and have a look at it at his shop. So I'm just hanging out and following John and Chris around (to Napa, to the other side of the lake, to the marina office, etc.). It's nice to be on a job, but not actually have to do anything. I got John to take a picture of me by the RTK base station. It kind of looks like I'm working.

Sunny California

2007-05-14T10:00:00.000-05:00

I said a while back that I was going to try to get myself out to California. I didn't think it was really going to happen, but here I am. We're waiting on the shore of Lake Berryessa for a starter for the boat. John and I tried to get it started earlier, but no luck. So while the mechanic is locating the part, John has moved on to another task - fixing the broken pinball machine.

Down with vegetables

2007-05-11T07:19:00.000-05:00

(note to jakob: that title is just to get your attention, but vegetables are actually very good and important in a healthy diet)

It's official, Andrea is no longer a vegetarian. And the first thing that she ate when she crossed over to the meat-eating side was a caribou burger. Nice one, Andrea! It would have been completely lame if she had started off with lunch meats or spam or something like that. I must say, as happy as I am about this news, I'm also a little disappointed. But not too disappointed, next time I see Andrea we're going to go out for a burger. Maybe we can even go to the Fredericton Farmers Market and have an oktoberfest sausage with saurkraut from Kurt's. Mmmm, Fredericton Farmer's Market...

Thanks, Earth Sciences!

2007-05-07T19:50:00.000-05:00

Val and I crashed the Earth Sciences BBQ! We disguised ourselves as marine geologists and stealthily made our way over the James Hall so we could get some burgers and dogs. Can't beat a free meal (well unless someone pays you to eat something. but that's sort of sketchy, really). I wonder if anyone realised there were *gasp* ocean engineering students in their midst. You know, it was almost like being a spy or something. Speaking of which, you should check out this CNN article ( Canada's poppy spy coin ) in which some U.S. Army contractors, in their infinite wisdom, mistakenly launched a counter-spy investigation into a suspicious Canadian coin. That's right, they even believed that we (as a nation, naturally) planted super secret spy coins in their pockets while they weren't looking. Little do they realise that it was only a cover up, only meant to throw them off the scent. The real spy coins have Queen Elizabeth on them. You can tell if yours is a spy coin by checking if the Queen's eyes follow you as you move around.

Painting

2007-05-04T09:07:00.000-05:00

I spent a couple of hours last night at Alice and Val's place, helping to paint their new shelves. The paint smell is not good for Alice and the baby, so it had to be done while she was out of town. I only spilled a drop or two on the floor, and luckily Val caught it and cleaned it up. Val was pretty happy to have some help, but really I only did it for the free food - he fed me some rice and veggies, which is a whole lot better than what I would have made for myself at home. This is basically what happens when John isn't here - and when it's the last 2 weeks of class - I forget to think about getting groceries and cooking good meals, and my diet ends up being sort of bad. For example, I boiled some eggs that were in the fridge the other day, and it was the most cooking I'd done since I thawed out some split-pea/lentil soup two days before. It's a bit embarrassing.

We love ice cream

2007-05-03T16:01:00.000-05:00

Val, Alice, and I ate almost enough ice cream to make us sick last night. But we just can't turn down a trip to the Dairy Bar. Janice needed to celebrate because she just presented her proposal to the Earth Sciences department. I heard through the grapevine that Janice and Nathan both did a great job. Janice is studying coarse-grained sediment transport in the lower Piscataqua River, and Nathan is looking at using GPS data to find the separation between the WGS84 ellipsoid and the tidal datum in a specific area (Bay of Fundy!).

In this photo: Val, Nick, Lynn, and Janice

Sofia - enjoying Belgium

2007-05-03T14:31:00.000-05:00

Luis sent me some adorable pictures of Sofia, they're living in Brussels now, and are experiencing a rare stretch of sunshine. Here she is, smiling for the camera, chillin in some cool shades. She likes getting her picture taken almost as much as she likes playing with your camera - especially if it's a digital camera. Sofia is learning some words in French now, Luis says she knows how to say 'encore'. Hopefully she'll come back to visit sometime - or maybe we'll be passing through Brussels one of these days (after grad school...)

Late afternoon on Colovos Road

2007-05-03T10:27:00.000-05:00

I don't have much to say about this, other than we were on our way to get ice cream. I wanted to practice my skills as a photographer. If you click on the picture you'll be able to see more that I took at that same spot, trying to a all artsy. But more imortantly, I think, was the fact that we picked up Alice and went to get ice cream soon after that. Mmmm, ice cream... we were too late for the dairy bar though, so we had to go to a place in Dover, which was pretty good too.

Steph's paintings at the Beaverbrook

2007-05-02T08:40:00.000-05:00

Here are a couple of Steph's paintings that are at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in Fredericton. The top one is called 'The Biker' and the bottom one is a self portrait called 'Hands in Hair'. She is so talented! Nice work Steph.

Les fleurs

2007-05-01T07:10:00.000-05:00

There are daffodils on the hill by CCOM, how did they get there?? And why hasn't the hungry groundhog mowed them down to the ground? There are outcroppings of flowers all around the building. It's almost as if some people went around secretly planting bulbs last fall so that they'd come up in surprising and unexpected locations once springtime came. It must have been the flower ninjas on a secret mission to brighten up an otherwise dreary lawn.

Steph's painting

2007-04-28T11:09:00.000-05:00

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

2007-04-24T07:44:00.000-05:00

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

2007-04-21T10:51:00.000-05:00

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

2007-04-18T15:42:00.000-05:00

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

2007-04-18T15:01:00.000-05:00

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

2007-04-18T14:52:00.000-05:00

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!!!

2007-04-11T08:41:00.000-05:00

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

2007-04-11T08:27:00.000-05:00

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

2007-04-09T09:38:00.000-05:00

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

2007-04-05T07:58:00.000-05:00

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

2007-04-03T16:29:00.001-05:00

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

2007-04-02T11:04:00.000-05:00

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!!

Durham has events

2007-03-30T15:47:00.000-05:00

Wow, there are actually three cool-sounding events happening right here on the UNH campus this weekend: a Home and garden show at the Whittemore centre, a greenhouse show at the Thompson school, and a paddle sports show at the Field House. Why are they all converging on this one weekend? I'm not sure.

New easel!

2007-03-29T07:06:00.000-05:00

John got me an easel yesterday without telling me. We went out for pizza with Val and Kurt, and when we got home, I found it in the upstairs living room. It's so cool, it folds up into a little suitcase, so if I wanted I could take it out somewhere to paint. He also got two new rugs and re-arranged the living room. Thanks John! It was pretty hard to say no to painting last night, but I had math homework :( My painting skillz are pretty much non-existent, but it's nice to have someone who's encouraging me anyway. Pretty soon our entire apartment will be wallpapered with mediochre artwork by me. I'm not good, but I can paint fast!

Scrabble and ice cream

2007-03-26T17:04:00.000-05:00

Janice had a great dessert potluck/scrabble party on Saturday night. It's wonderful to eat tons of sugar and listen to music and think of obscure scrabble words. This time we decided not to keep score since it became far too competitive last time. Not only that, but we decided that interesting words that had 'cred' were allowed to be used. Hence UNIX. and novae. and jedi.

Subversionland

2007-03-24T16:53:00.000-05:00

It is kind of lame and more than a little bit dorky to write about this in my blog, but it's so exciting I just can't help it. I have finally got a Subversion folder of my very own set up on the CCOM server - woo hoo! It's better than a backup system (hold on to your hats folks) - it will save every single revision that I ever do on my thesis, even if I make 700 revisions! Holy moley.

I haven't quite got the commands or structure sorted out in my head though, so I'm a little bit dangerous to myself right now. I need to make sure I don't inadvertantly overwrite something that's on my computer, yikes. Okay, if any of my CCOM friends are interested in learning how, I will show you whatever I know (which is not much right now, I'll admit). You should definitely get Nathan to set up a subversion account for you, you won't regret it.

Here's the book, it's online and it's totally free, and in a variety of formats (namely pdf and html): Subversion book .

And yes, I said holy moley. There's just no better way to describe it.

Thesis defense

2007-03-23T11:16:00.000-05:00

Kim's thesis defense is today, it's on estuary current modelling - cool. I bet she's going to feel pretty good after about 5 o'clock. I'll find out what it's like a short year and a half from now. I got a sneak preview of her presentation and it's very neat. She kept the scary equations down to a minimum and she explained things well. I hope that I can manage to do that when my turn comes. Good luck, Kim!

Snow and sun and trees

2007-03-21T07:14:00.000-05:00

UNH campus can be so nice. This was taken last night as I was walking home. It's facing DeMerritt which I think is the physics building, but I'm not sure.

Crock pot cooking adventures

2007-03-21T07:01:00.000-05:00

I was inspired to make soup last night for some reason - I don't know, I might have been just avoiding math homework, but I guess that's okay for one night. The giant slow cooker was excavated from its hiding place and put to use once again. It's definitely one of my favorite kitchen appliances - that and the foodsaver. Anyhow, here's a picture of the chopped veg right before it got tossed into the pot. I was inspired by Val and Alice's split pea and lentil soup, and thought I'd try it myself. Except I added bacon, so it's not vegetarian friendly.
John was bugging me about having no pictures of myself on my blog. So here I am - look at me I'm cooking!

Sofia - International traveller

2007-03-17T08:22:00.000-05:00

Here's Sofia, all bundled up and ready to get on a plane. John and I drove Sofia and Luis to the airport yesterday. Sofia didn't know what was going on. Luis said she might be worried because last time she was at the airport, her mom left. Now she was at the airport again and probably thought her dad was leaving too - poor kid! She'll be happy when she finds out they're going to meet her mom in Brussels.

Snowy Night

2007-03-17T08:08:00.000-05:00

Last night we had a pretty big snowstorm. It started snowing a bit around 2 o'clock or so and it just kept on going through most of the night. John was quick to point out that the snow is, in fact, up to the bottoms of the cars. That has been our landmark for a decent snowstorm. And I think it's the first time it's happened all year. This picture is sort of bad, dark and tilted a bit. But I still like it for some reason. Actually, most of the pictures from the storm are dark because I started taking them later in the evening.
Last night John and I watched Flushed Away - Jakob, I think you'd really like it, if you haven't seen it already. The singing slugs are hilarious!

Surveying the Surveyor

2007-03-14T08:08:00.000-05:00

Val and Lynn and I are going to help Ben do the offset survey of the Coastal Surveyor in early April. Yesterday we went out to try and figure out how we are going to do it.

The Coffee Cart

2007-03-12T10:55:00.000-05:00

Here is a picture of our favorite coffee cart. Janice and Lynn and I used to go three times a week, before our physical oceanography class. Mom, Dad, and Jakob: if you guys come down here for a visit, I'll make sure to take you to Vinny's for some chowder or chili or lattes, Yum...

Did you know it's Spring Break here at UNH? Why am I not in some tropical paradise this week? I must really love Durham. Maybe I'll make some Pina Coladas later, I wonder if they sell those little drink umbrellas around here?

Sunny Sunday

2007-03-11T13:13:00.000-05:00

Finally the temperature has started to rise - it's about 10 degrees (Celsius of course) today. John and I took a walk around the block, and down to the Oyster River. You can see our house on the map, it's 'E' on the picture above.

I started a Picasa site, so if you click on the photos above, it will link you to the whole album. And a couple of other albums. You can also find it at: Michelle's Picasa photos

The year of the papercuts - ouch!

2007-03-08T09:51:00.000-05:00

What's going on? I've had at least 6 papercuts since the start of the semester! What have I done to deserve this? Maybe it's because I didn't recycle enough last year and all the paper around me is getting revenge the only way they know how. Do you think this might have something to do with it?!? Shocking, I know. Not only am I using an upside down recycling bin for an unnecessary table, but I'm using TWO upside down recycling bins for an unnecessary table. Well, it's not that I throw all this paper in the garbage. I keep it right there on my desk. You know, in case I need it again.

The High Bay

2007-03-06T08:56:00.000-05:00

I sometimes forget that not everyone knows all about CCOM, especially those who do not work or go to school there. A couple of posts ago I said that there was an alpaca in the High Bay. Well, the High Bay is a mystical and magical place where humans and alpacas live in peace and harmony, and underwater acoustic systems are calibrated. At night, when all the people and alpacas go back to their homes, the UNH wildcat comes in and does laps in the pools for excercise. That's why cat hair gets stuck to the transducers so they give funny results.

If you want to know the truth, I don't even really know why it's called the High Bay, it just is. So that's not very helpful. But I can tell you what it is: it's a big room with a High ceiling (maybe that's where the 'High' part comes in), and it's got two pools in it. One pool is big and deep and the other one is long and narrow. And kind of deep. Anyone who is interested the High Bay can come on down to Durham, New Hampshire, and I will give you a tour.

Bottles

2007-03-05T17:39:00.000-05:00

I couldn't figure out why John was keeping all of these glass jars on our counter. He kept saying he had a plan but he wouldn't tell me what it was. This afternoon he built this shelf with jars attached to the bottom. Cool! He even filled the jars up for me. What a guy! Thanks John!

Boston trip

2007-03-04T10:32:00.000-05:00

John and I went down to Boston yesterday. It's the first day in a really really long time that I did no schoolwork at all. It felt so good. We were planning on seeing whole bunch of things like the Museum of Fine Arts, the Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Science Museum. But we only went to the MFA and spent the rest of the time wandering around. Here's what it looked like when we left:

In Boston it was more like this one:

This photo was taken outside the Museum of Fine Arts. We spent more than 3 hours in there, and we didn't even see everything.

No Snow Day

2007-03-02T11:00:00.000-05:00

:( The weather conditions do not seem to be any better than they were on the last snow day, so I'm not sure what prompted the decision to keep the school open today. Whoever decides on the snow days around here certainly seems to be a bit inconsistent. I mean, UNB never had any snow days, but at least they were consistent.

Maybe I'll put on my snowpants and build a snow man later. I will take pictures with my phone again so you can all see how pretty a NH winter is.

Alpaca-Rama 2

2007-03-01T18:54:00.000-05:00

I finally got to see a real live Alpaca - and here's the photo! Believe it or not, this little fella (Fabio) was in the CCOM High Bay this afternoon. He was temporarily hanging out because Andy McLeod had to bring him in to see the vet. Fabio was living with one other Alpaca and two Llamas. It seems that the two Llamas were bullying him, and not letting him eat, so he was losing a lot of weight. Don't worry though, they figured out what was going on, and separated the llamas and alpacas. Fabio has since gained 18 pounds.

You never know what you'll find in the High Bay.

Quote of the Day

2007-03-01T12:55:00.000-05:00

"I got more work done on that snow day than I did all summer!" - Lynn Morgan (from Alaska)

We were talking about the possibility of getting a snow day tomorrow. There's a NOAA research scientist here at CCOM - John Kelley - who always lets us know when the storms are coming. He sent out an email this morning and it looks like we're in for a big one, starting later tonight. Keep those fingers crossed! I don't think it'll be anything like the snow day that Andrea got at MUN. But it would still be cool.

We have a winner!

2007-02-28T22:16:00.000-05:00

Okay folks (all two of you who read this), Nick Forfinski has correctly answered the mystery question of the significance of the number 206265 (I personally like 206264.8, i think the extra sig dig makes it look better). So the rest of you can put down your slide rules and flux capacitors, Nick beat you to it.

The distance from the earth to the sun is often called an 'astronomical unit' or AU by astronomers. The distance to the closest star is called a parsec and is roughly 3.26 light years away. One parsec is, by definition, 206265 AU's. Astronomers have all sorts of ingenious calculations they do to figure out things like the angle subtended by two stars, or the distance to a star, or between two stars. And this number helps them do it. I'm sure they all know it by heart. (I bet Yoshi knows it) If you're still burning with curiousity after this introduction, just go onto google and type in astronomical unit, or parsec. (I'm talking to you Jakob!)

So there you have it. Oh yes, it's also quite effective at converting arcseconds to radians.

And, as Nick pointed out, one parsec is equal to 30,8000,000,000,000 km. I think.

I miss Key West - Updated picture

2007-02-28T16:01:00.000-05:00

John finished his latest painting yesterday, it's a scene from Key West. I'm in the picture, can you spot me? It makes me want to go skateboard around Key West at sunset. Or learn to paint - actually I'll just leave the painting to John :)

*Note: this photo was taken with a real camera this time, not the phone.

R/V Gulf Challenger, yeah!

2007-02-27T17:38:00.000-05:00

Another fun day on the Gulf Challenger. It was actually very nice today, it was warm and the seas were very calm - (I suppose it's easier to have calm seas when you're on a river). I took a picture of a little sign hung up 'downstairs' in the cabin area. I thought it was funny.

I'm going to be doing my thesis project on acoustic positioning, specifically on a harbour tracking system in the Portsmouth harbour. And the Americans all want me to spell harbour wrong (harbor!!) Can you believe it? The very cover on my thesis is going to have a word spelled wrong. How can I go back to Canada? They'll never ever take me seriously! (if they ever did)

The new blog...

2007-02-26T08:58:00.000-05:00

You may be wondering why I started a new blog. The main reason is because my mother put in a request to be able to comment on my entries. Well, here it is mom - for better or for worse :) you can now make all the comments you like. And so can anyone else for that matter. Val and John think it's great that my mom can send out her messages for all to read - I'm not so sure...

Okay, now for those of you who didn't know about my last attempt at a website/blog, you can check out what I had at this address:

The old site

But from now on I will be updating this blog. happy reading - hope I don't bore you to death!

PS: sorry to all y'all who had to witness the transitional blog stage. so soory! I just couldn't stand the name schoolhouse-yarn. this url works better for me, it's a special number. first person who can guess what that number is wins a dollar. Love you guys! btw, i just put that picture of muffins in because my camera is misbehaving and i don't have anything better right now.