Shoshe - On another world

Today's to-do list:

Get stat info for Tetl
Check MIPL pairs
Measure Peace, etc.

(Tetl and Peace are rocks on Mars. MIPL is the Multimission Image Processing Lab, and is pronounced "mipple".)

YL - job application period closed!

The NSW state wide online job application period for jobs starting Jan 2011 has closed. Thank goodness! Each job application has a online set of questions to answer with 1000 character word limit. No two are the same!! =( Argh. I'm glad that pain is over.

Now to wait for the interviews you might might get and then find out which jobs you might might get offered.

(This all assuming the people haven't preselected who they want and are interviewing you for numbers sake.)

Epic Kit!

I had arranged to go mountain biking in the afternoon with a friend from out of town. 30 mins before I was supposed to leave (late), the General Manager turns up, then I make my escape (normal knock-off time), then I get a text from a colleague saying: He wants to talk to you, urgent!. Me: Can it be done by phone? Him: He will call you. Then I have this “meeting” whilst driving (I don’t remember anything about the drive – I can see why it is so dangerous), arguing with the GM about why I need to delay a big piece of equipment by year, but how it won’t affect the project at all.

And then did I mention the bike dramas? The night before, I go to check on the bike, tyres are a bit down, so I try and pump up the rear one, end up fully deflating it, then snap the valve off the tube (means it won’t ever pump up), so I go to change the tube, find that the rubber of the tyre has glued itself to the rim of the wheel so I can’t take it off. Then after I left work, I went past a shop to see if they could replace it, and *he* couldn’t – he was asking if I had used a special glue or compound to fill the tyre, left the wheel with him to try and fix. And that’s when I got the text about the GM wanting to talk to me. Then I race home, pick up my spare wheel with the city slick tyre (mostly flat), and drive out to meet the friend. I'm only one hour later than we had originally planned. Mountain biking on a city slick tyre? It can be done, but looks really silly!

Shoshe - lost

For the past few weeks, I've been looking at tons of images of one of my field sites, Cumberland Ridge, which encompasses three neighboring outcrops in the Columbia Hills (in Gusev Crater on Mars). I'm trying to correlate the locations of the outcrops by identifying the same rocks from several viewpoints. I know these outcrops and the small rocks around them REALLY well*. Now I'm looking at some images from a nearby site, and I don't know any of the rocks. It feels like I'm lost -- Tennessee Valley is just to the side like it should be, but I'm in this sea of rocks and I don't recognize any of them. It's really weird. Kind of...alien.


*By name, actually. Cadge is my favorite, but Buoy has really grown on me. It's easy to identify from just about any angle.

YL - gargh

Feeling overwhelmed here over work/career choices.

Friday afternoon special kit

I find out today that the paper I'm going to give at an Industry conference isn't in May, it's on next week. oops!

Kit Boo Web

Big brother is monitoring my net access, so no more onesentencehive @ work for me. Boo. 

YL - Merry Christmas & political pawnage

It was so good to see everyone. It is true, I still exist. Although even Dante said "I'm sure you were just a figment of my imagination!" And Atticus was sure I was "Cushion". At least that's a solid object right? Merry Christmas all!

However, work is not so pleasant. After weeks, people's true colours are showing up and it's not enjoyable to be used as a political pawn in someone else's inter-departmental games or to be used as a scapegoat/buffer to cover up your fallibilities or take the blame.

Oh and for the record, I don't always have to agree with you just because you're senior in age/years of medical training.

Kit - new is much the same as the old

Holidays are over, and like yenli, it's back to the grindstone. Budgets, forecasts, programs.
To the Federal Liberals (and the NSW Labor party): stop stuffing around and let your appointed leader lead, instead of stabbing them in the back.

Kit is Quality-Bee

Under Quality System Certification ISO9001 (I think), you are supposed to keep your records for seven years after. I just got a phone call about a project I was involved in 6 years ago, because the people who had actually done the work after me hadn't.

Kit - life, work update

1. Slight moment of panic this morning, as I thought I had locked myself in the secure garage, without house keys or car keys to get out. Just as I was thinking of breaking the car window to get to the roller door controller ... I found my keys. Phew!

2. In my absence from work last week (acting Dr Frankenstein), coffee truck 1 has stopped coming, and coffee truck 2 (who had given up the battle of wooing us in the month before), was less than interested in shafting his regulars for a quick profit with us less than loyal coffee drinkers.

3. Blooming Greystanes library must be the *only* library without an after-hours returns chute.

Kit's Frankenstein moment is delayed.

What was supposed to start at lunchtime yesterday started at lunchtime today. Kids! Make sure your red is connected to red, blue to blue, and white to white, otherwise you have to run around in the dark looking for phasing errors.

Shoshe - Long bugger of a day

It started out the night before, when we had no hot water.

We still had no hot water in the morning. Talked to the rental office; 3 buildings were affected. I knew I was going to miss my normal once-an-hour bus, so I walked the 10 minutes to the every-15-minutes bus.

Apparently my annual buspass had expired, even though I swear I'd renewed it months ago. The busdriver was a bitch, and I didn't have $1.50 in change, so I got off the bus and went to the bank across the road where a very nice teller gave me change for a dollar.

Ended up catching the next once-an-hour bus. Got to campus 45min later than I'd wanted to and went to the new bubble tea place that's right by my office. Put the bubble tea in the office fridge because my day was full of classes and I wouldn't have time to slurp tapioca until 4:30pm.

Rushed to class 1; had a short break; was late to class 2 because it turns out it wasn't in the room that I thought it was in, and I had to wait for the elevator because it had the nearest course poster saying where my class meets. Left class early to TA.

TAing was okay. There was a fair bit of banter between the prof and me in the "space news" section -- we kept forgetting about one after another of the several spacecraft that have had problems over the past few days. We currently have no decent weather forecasting on Mars, for the first time in a few years. And it's dangerous duststorm season.

Some of my students from last year came to visit me just after class, which rocked :)

Went back to the office with about 1/2 hr before the postgrad soc meeting. Needed to talk to my advisor, who was trying to meet with many people before they left for the day. Got my bubble tea out of the fridge. The tapioca pearls had somewhat congealed, so I shook the sealed cup a bit. Failed holding-onto-cup-while-shaking-it and dropped sugary bubble tea all over the corridor and my advisor's carpet.

I was really looking forward to that tea.

Kit has reached a milestone

End of a project ... time for a new haircut.
FRINGE!!!

YL - hot, cold, warm?

I had a hot summer surfing USA among other things. I put a pause on the grind of work, worrying about careers & just feeling the road running under the car while the possibility of "who knows what" approaches over the horizon. 3 packed weeks full of people, hearts and life experiences. Amazing. There is so much more to do. Not enough time!

Philosophically, where do I go next?

Job applications are now closed for next year's jobs. Who knows which direction I'm really heading in. Or am I just afraid to say it out loud? =)

Kit will have Holidays!

Going on a summer holiday. Already in holiday mode. 1.5 days of work to go.

Ben - Internship

Just finished my first week of internship. Nice little school, unusually well behaved kids, and only a 20 minute bike ride from home. Not a bad little set up, all in all.

Ben - Well that's done

Just finished my DET interview. Think it went well.

YL - contemplations

On a day off where I don't have to be anywhere at any one time, I relish the simple pleasure of a full day of sunlight to myself. Granted, I'm going to go to a bookshop (sans sunlight) but then I'll have the pleasure of books!

Also, getting compliments at work from patients/their family is nice. Never been much good at processing compliments .... just a nod, smile and thank you seems to be a sufficient response. Apparently I'm kind. Who woulda thunk? Me? Pfft!

Shoshe - Amateur Robot Astronomy

Spirit has more power than she's had in about 2 Mars years, so the engineers have requested that we do more nighttime observations to use up power (when we don't use up enough power, we shunt it by waking up in the middle of the night and turning on our heaters for an hour or two). I thought it would be nifty to take a picture of Earth, and it turns out that Earth and Venus are in conjunction in the martian sky! They're about 1.5 degrees apart tonight, and will be close to each other a bit after sunset for the next several nights. I've spent the past few days working closely with the Pancam operators and an awesome researcher who's been studying twilight at Gusev. On 21 June at 19:07:28 UTC (19:40:05 local time), Spirit will start taking some pictures for me! If these go well, we might take images every day or two for several days and make a little movie.