on vacuums, progress, and patterns of work
Have I really not posted a progress report since returning from Ireland? Shame on me. Let's see...
My reading of my 1000 words a day from the geologic literature continues. I'm at 218 days in a row and counting. This is 63% of the days that have happened since I started this job, and 21% of the days since I first decided to try to do this every day. It took 20 different attempts to get going and then forget to read a day and have to start over before I hit this current record-breaking series, but I appear to be on a roll. Here's hoping I can keep it going.
I've made some progress in processing the data from my last microprobe session, but there is more to be done before I can prepare the poster for my next conference, in Budapest. I leave for that one on Sat. the 21st, so I'm running low on time for that. The biggest problem is that there is some confusion as to which of two capsules in a single plug from an experiment run years before I arrived is which. The analyses I've done on them seem to usually, but not always, give opposite patterns from the ones that they did years ago, and I need to work it out, because if we are combining data from two different compositions into one set we will get huge errors as the vastly different mineral compositions are "averaged" together.
This afternoon I *finally* re-opened the draft of a paper in progress from my PhD research, looked over the first part, saw that it was good, filled in some stuff for the discussion section, and then sent if off to my erstwhile advisor for comment, asking which of the many other topics that made it into the thesis discussion section are actually worth including here. I suspect not all of them. The discussion section of the thesis is as long as the entire paper without a discussion section. With much luck my e-mail will reach him on a day he actually has time to look at it, and it won't languish for weeks waiting for him to have time to read the draft.
Wednesday, on the other hand, didn't see much uni work progress. Instead I got up early and walked into the city center to get photos witnessed for my renewal of my Tasmanian driver's licence. They permit Tasmanians living overseas to renew one time only by mail, but we need an embassy person to sign something saying that the photos are a true and correct likeness of the person. My plan had been to loop around from there to my favorite grocery store, which is the only one where one can purchase the various grains I like to put into my muesli. When I arrived at the embassy it was just starting to sprinkle a bit, but in the time it took to do the paperwork any pay for the service it had started pouring down rain in the way Milan does now and again--really fast heavy rain. I walked from there to the closest post office, and while much of my path was under overhangs on buildings, just crossing the street got me rather wet. I don't mind me getting wet so much, but I'd just as soon not get my pack wet--there are things in there (like that paper work!) that are better kept dry.
Therefore after leaving the post office I took the under-shelter path to the nearest metro station, thinking I'd take the train to the store rather than walking. I did look at the umbrellas the guy was selling at the entrance to the Metro, but decided that I didn't really need one. As it turned out, this particular set of stairs, rather than coming out straight in the station, leads through a store carrying things like stoves, refrigerators, etc. I've been coping for a year without a vacuum cleaner. It is possible when one has floors rather than carpet, but I've kind of wanted one. When I first arrived I couldn't afford one, and while I've thought of getting one every now and then since, it never quite worked out. I did look into it at another store, but while they had affordable models on display, they were out of stock in those, and I saw no reason to pay twice the price for something that I may not want to take with me, depending on where I go next--most of the rest of the world has different shaped outlets.
But since I had to walk through the store anyway, I stopped to look at their vacuum display. The fist couple were marked with prices in the €200-400 range, and I thought that I would continue to do without. Then I saw the model at the end of the row. In a pleasant (though not perfect) shade of blue. Bagless. €49.99. I looked at the shelf below the display, and they had one in a box in stock. Perfect. I'll take it. I've got five months left in Italy, even if I part with it when I go, that is only €10/month for the convenience of a vacuum! Normally I wouldn't accept a shopping bag, but given the downpour I let them put the box into a huge plastic bag. Given the bulk of the item, I decided to skip the grocery store (which is fully a 30 minute walk from my home, and no bus routes directly connecting the neghibourhoods), and instead transfered to the other train line, getting out at the station closest to my house. By that time the rain had slowed to a gentle rain, so I put the box on its side onto my head and carried it home that way (so that the rain would fall on the side of the bag, rather than into it). This also kept some of the rain off of me and my pack, which isn't a bad thing. The box wasn't heavy, but carrying something for 10 minutes by holding it over one's head does tend to make one's arms tired by the end of the trip!
By the time I got home with my loot it was already 11am, so I went in to Uni, intending to work, and fell into some fan-fiction by an author that vesta_aurelia recommended . Oops. But it was a pleasant diversion. By the time I reached a break between chapters in which I was actually willing to take a break some of my friends were on line and saying hello, and I wound up puttering around doing semi-useful tasks while visiting with people rather than making real progress on my work.
This morning I celebrated my purchase by vacuuming again (of course I used it yesterday, too). Only this time in addition to emptying the dust out straight away like I did yesterday, I also tapped the dust out of the filter and completely washed the filter and dust-catching chamber. This is the first time in my life that I can recall having access to a completely new, never before used vacuum cleaner, and I'm loving it. Sure, it is a very cheap model (the box advertises a "telescoping hose", which does, in fact, gain about one inch in length if you adjust the telescoping part), but if I keep the filter spotlessly clean then the motor will always be able to do its job.
Tuesday's biggest accomplishment was finishing up my application draft for that museum job. It was fun to work on it, and I wouldn't have been able to have prepared as good of an application packet without the input and comments from bethchm, massaria, sismith42 and clovis_t. The first two gave me some amazingly useful suggestions about what to say and how to approach it, and the latter two spent hours hanging out on line giving me feedback on which version of sentences were better. Now I wait and see. The application packet is as good as I could make it, but it really depends on who else applies, and what their strengths look like on paper. If I were to get this job it would be totally unlike anything I've ever done before. I'm accustomed to being in academia, where I get to set my own hours, and I often work evenings (or even late at night), weekends, or whenever I'm inspired to work. This job would be an 08:30-17:00 Monday-Friday. I have no idea how I would go with that. I would have to not access personal e-mail/LJ/Facebook/etc during business hours if I had *only* business hours in which to accomplish work tasks. But on the other hand, being done at the end of the day, and therefore being able to hang out with friends, work on art projects, or read for fun without any guilt because I'm "not working" sounds rather appealing...
In other news, I've heard from my friend racaire1. She had thought she'd be out of town the week I'm in Vienna for a short course at the end of the month, but it turns out that she will be home after all. I am so looking forward to spending time with her again!
My reading of my 1000 words a day from the geologic literature continues. I'm at 218 days in a row and counting. This is 63% of the days that have happened since I started this job, and 21% of the days since I first decided to try to do this every day. It took 20 different attempts to get going and then forget to read a day and have to start over before I hit this current record-breaking series, but I appear to be on a roll. Here's hoping I can keep it going.
I've made some progress in processing the data from my last microprobe session, but there is more to be done before I can prepare the poster for my next conference, in Budapest. I leave for that one on Sat. the 21st, so I'm running low on time for that. The biggest problem is that there is some confusion as to which of two capsules in a single plug from an experiment run years before I arrived is which. The analyses I've done on them seem to usually, but not always, give opposite patterns from the ones that they did years ago, and I need to work it out, because if we are combining data from two different compositions into one set we will get huge errors as the vastly different mineral compositions are "averaged" together.
This afternoon I *finally* re-opened the draft of a paper in progress from my PhD research, looked over the first part, saw that it was good, filled in some stuff for the discussion section, and then sent if off to my erstwhile advisor for comment, asking which of the many other topics that made it into the thesis discussion section are actually worth including here. I suspect not all of them. The discussion section of the thesis is as long as the entire paper without a discussion section. With much luck my e-mail will reach him on a day he actually has time to look at it, and it won't languish for weeks waiting for him to have time to read the draft.
Wednesday, on the other hand, didn't see much uni work progress. Instead I got up early and walked into the city center to get photos witnessed for my renewal of my Tasmanian driver's licence. They permit Tasmanians living overseas to renew one time only by mail, but we need an embassy person to sign something saying that the photos are a true and correct likeness of the person. My plan had been to loop around from there to my favorite grocery store, which is the only one where one can purchase the various grains I like to put into my muesli. When I arrived at the embassy it was just starting to sprinkle a bit, but in the time it took to do the paperwork any pay for the service it had started pouring down rain in the way Milan does now and again--really fast heavy rain. I walked from there to the closest post office, and while much of my path was under overhangs on buildings, just crossing the street got me rather wet. I don't mind me getting wet so much, but I'd just as soon not get my pack wet--there are things in there (like that paper work!) that are better kept dry.
Therefore after leaving the post office I took the under-shelter path to the nearest metro station, thinking I'd take the train to the store rather than walking. I did look at the umbrellas the guy was selling at the entrance to the Metro, but decided that I didn't really need one. As it turned out, this particular set of stairs, rather than coming out straight in the station, leads through a store carrying things like stoves, refrigerators, etc. I've been coping for a year without a vacuum cleaner. It is possible when one has floors rather than carpet, but I've kind of wanted one. When I first arrived I couldn't afford one, and while I've thought of getting one every now and then since, it never quite worked out. I did look into it at another store, but while they had affordable models on display, they were out of stock in those, and I saw no reason to pay twice the price for something that I may not want to take with me, depending on where I go next--most of the rest of the world has different shaped outlets.
But since I had to walk through the store anyway, I stopped to look at their vacuum display. The fist couple were marked with prices in the €200-400 range, and I thought that I would continue to do without. Then I saw the model at the end of the row. In a pleasant (though not perfect) shade of blue. Bagless. €49.99. I looked at the shelf below the display, and they had one in a box in stock. Perfect. I'll take it. I've got five months left in Italy, even if I part with it when I go, that is only €10/month for the convenience of a vacuum! Normally I wouldn't accept a shopping bag, but given the downpour I let them put the box into a huge plastic bag. Given the bulk of the item, I decided to skip the grocery store (which is fully a 30 minute walk from my home, and no bus routes directly connecting the neghibourhoods), and instead transfered to the other train line, getting out at the station closest to my house. By that time the rain had slowed to a gentle rain, so I put the box on its side onto my head and carried it home that way (so that the rain would fall on the side of the bag, rather than into it). This also kept some of the rain off of me and my pack, which isn't a bad thing. The box wasn't heavy, but carrying something for 10 minutes by holding it over one's head does tend to make one's arms tired by the end of the trip!
By the time I got home with my loot it was already 11am, so I went in to Uni, intending to work, and fell into some fan-fiction by an author that vesta_aurelia recommended . Oops. But it was a pleasant diversion. By the time I reached a break between chapters in which I was actually willing to take a break some of my friends were on line and saying hello, and I wound up puttering around doing semi-useful tasks while visiting with people rather than making real progress on my work.
This morning I celebrated my purchase by vacuuming again (of course I used it yesterday, too). Only this time in addition to emptying the dust out straight away like I did yesterday, I also tapped the dust out of the filter and completely washed the filter and dust-catching chamber. This is the first time in my life that I can recall having access to a completely new, never before used vacuum cleaner, and I'm loving it. Sure, it is a very cheap model (the box advertises a "telescoping hose", which does, in fact, gain about one inch in length if you adjust the telescoping part), but if I keep the filter spotlessly clean then the motor will always be able to do its job.
Tuesday's biggest accomplishment was finishing up my application draft for that museum job. It was fun to work on it, and I wouldn't have been able to have prepared as good of an application packet without the input and comments from bethchm, massaria, sismith42 and clovis_t. The first two gave me some amazingly useful suggestions about what to say and how to approach it, and the latter two spent hours hanging out on line giving me feedback on which version of sentences were better. Now I wait and see. The application packet is as good as I could make it, but it really depends on who else applies, and what their strengths look like on paper. If I were to get this job it would be totally unlike anything I've ever done before. I'm accustomed to being in academia, where I get to set my own hours, and I often work evenings (or even late at night), weekends, or whenever I'm inspired to work. This job would be an 08:30-17:00 Monday-Friday. I have no idea how I would go with that. I would have to not access personal e-mail/LJ/Facebook/etc during business hours if I had *only* business hours in which to accomplish work tasks. But on the other hand, being done at the end of the day, and therefore being able to hang out with friends, work on art projects, or read for fun without any guilt because I'm "not working" sounds rather appealing...
In other news, I've heard from my friend racaire1. She had thought she'd be out of town the week I'm in Vienna for a short course at the end of the month, but it turns out that she will be home after all. I am so looking forward to spending time with her again!