Things you probably don't care about.
Qualifications
So I had my oral qualifier yesterday. Basically I had to give a presentation about something related to my work, but not a regurgitation of my Master's thesis, and not the work that i was doing on my Ph.D. So I talked about convective fluid flow through nanoporous membranes. This is really the basis for the work that I do, so it was something I knew quite well. The presentation was supposed to be given at the high undergraduate level, and as this was for an electrical engineering audience, that level wasn't as high as it might seem to be. Though I think the presentation that I gave probably would have still been at a high mechanical engineering undergraduate level. Anyway, the only problems that the faculty thought that I had related to delivery, not on the content. Bottom line: I passed, and that is really all that matters. rianwyn , I know that you had volunteered to preview it for me and give constructive criticism(I mentioned this a month or so ago), but I didn't actually finish putting the presentation together until about 2 AM the night before. *slaps wrist* Bad Tower.
Research Articles
So I've essentially got 3 articles in the works. One has been sent of to Applied Physics Letters (endotoxin paper), and has been there for almost 4 weeks. It is currently under review according to their website. One has been sent off to Transducers 2009 (Hindered transport of charged particles) and I won't hear back from them until February. And the last one (instrumentation paper) has been reviewed by my adviser and looks like it might be getting a full rewrite. Interestingly enough, this is the paper that I started on first, and it still hasn't gotten out of our group. Oh well. Zorman said he'd get it to me either yesterday or today, so I'm expecting it sometime next week. >.>
Christmas
daemon82 and I will be heading to her parents house for Christmas this year. This will probably be the last Christmas for a while that we will be going anywhere. I do plan on doing some work over the break though. I have a book that has a section on how to handle some of the more uncommon statistics that occasionally come up on experiments. I also will have the previously mentioned instrumentation paper to work on.
Rearranging
Our roommate for the past year, clara_medea , moved out last Wednesday. While we were sad to see her go, it opened up the room which she had been staying in. That room now is now the guest room and has the Futon as well as the TV (and all of the DVDs an CDs). The door-table from the basement has been moved upstairs and essentially been turned into a double desk. When the baby comes, I'm going to have to be able to work from home in a place that is close enough to the nursery (what was the guest bed room) yet still has enough table space for me to actually work. So now the desktop is setup on one side of it, the printer in the middle, and there is plenty of space for the laptop on the other side of it. Also, the new position of all of the electronics actually reduces the number of cords stretching across expanses that they probably shouldn't be stretching across. We might even get our TV connected to the antenna that is on top of our house instead of the rabbit ears we have been using.
So I had my oral qualifier yesterday. Basically I had to give a presentation about something related to my work, but not a regurgitation of my Master's thesis, and not the work that i was doing on my Ph.D. So I talked about convective fluid flow through nanoporous membranes. This is really the basis for the work that I do, so it was something I knew quite well. The presentation was supposed to be given at the high undergraduate level, and as this was for an electrical engineering audience, that level wasn't as high as it might seem to be. Though I think the presentation that I gave probably would have still been at a high mechanical engineering undergraduate level. Anyway, the only problems that the faculty thought that I had related to delivery, not on the content. Bottom line: I passed, and that is really all that matters. rianwyn , I know that you had volunteered to preview it for me and give constructive criticism(I mentioned this a month or so ago), but I didn't actually finish putting the presentation together until about 2 AM the night before. *slaps wrist* Bad Tower.
Research Articles
So I've essentially got 3 articles in the works. One has been sent of to Applied Physics Letters (endotoxin paper), and has been there for almost 4 weeks. It is currently under review according to their website. One has been sent off to Transducers 2009 (Hindered transport of charged particles) and I won't hear back from them until February. And the last one (instrumentation paper) has been reviewed by my adviser and looks like it might be getting a full rewrite. Interestingly enough, this is the paper that I started on first, and it still hasn't gotten out of our group. Oh well. Zorman said he'd get it to me either yesterday or today, so I'm expecting it sometime next week. >.>
Christmas
daemon82 and I will be heading to her parents house for Christmas this year. This will probably be the last Christmas for a while that we will be going anywhere. I do plan on doing some work over the break though. I have a book that has a section on how to handle some of the more uncommon statistics that occasionally come up on experiments. I also will have the previously mentioned instrumentation paper to work on.
Rearranging
Our roommate for the past year, clara_medea , moved out last Wednesday. While we were sad to see her go, it opened up the room which she had been staying in. That room now is now the guest room and has the Futon as well as the TV (and all of the DVDs an CDs). The door-table from the basement has been moved upstairs and essentially been turned into a double desk. When the baby comes, I'm going to have to be able to work from home in a place that is close enough to the nursery (what was the guest bed room) yet still has enough table space for me to actually work. So now the desktop is setup on one side of it, the printer in the middle, and there is plenty of space for the laptop on the other side of it. Also, the new position of all of the electronics actually reduces the number of cords stretching across expanses that they probably shouldn't be stretching across. We might even get our TV connected to the antenna that is on top of our house instead of the rabbit ears we have been using.