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December 30, 2006
People Sightings
[On location in Cumberland, Wisconsin]
Now that Christmas is past, the time has come to start hanging out with friends for most of the rest of break. On Wednesday I went out to lunch at Sammy's Pizza here in Cumberland with Mike, his mom, and Amy T. After lunch Mike & I had to swing up to Leitheiser's place to pick something up, so I got a chance to see Greg for half an hour or so, he was up visiting from Dallas for the holidays. When we stopped by the radio station we saw Ivan Dixon there, and he updated us on his proposal he's putting before the Minnesota State Legislature again this year (for the sixth time). His plan calls for a huge state-run casino/110-acre indoor theme park/eight hotel/Vikings stadium complex down in Eagan, which would also help fund the Twins stadium (removing the Hennepin County sales tax that was enacted last summer), part of the Gophers football stadium (removing the recent increase in student fees at the University of Minnesota), three billion dollars for light rail in the Twin Cities (contingent on federal dollar-for-dollar matching funds), as well as donating 80% of the theme park's profits to charities. He has celebrity connections and backing too from his days in the movie business (he was a co-producer on "Close Encounters (he said he flew out to NYC last weekend to talk to Paul Newman and Michael J Fox about all this). The bill has a very good chance of passing, and will likely be introduced to the legislature in three weeks or so, so it'll be exciting and interesting to be reading about its progress.
While Mike had to work at the radio station then I went down to Taylors Falls with my parents to the midweek Bible study at Searching Together, it was really good to see all of them again. I know I won't be able to go to church there either this Sunday or next, and who knows about next Wednesday night, so I figured I should take advantage of the opportunity and just go.
After we got back from Bible study, I went over to Mike's house in Rice Lake for the night with Shaun. Kevin was supposed to come too, but he's lame and doesn't comprehend why people make plans, and just does goes off and his own thing without checking with any of us beforehand. Sigh. We still had lots of fun without him. 
Earlier in the afternoon I picked up some La Crosse Lager for the 3rd edition of the BASF (Bad American Swill Festival, a bad beer smell/taste test), which we'll be having probably around Memorial Day back at Penn State. I won't be home between now and then, and since La Crosse Lager was the runaway "winner" of being the worst beer at the 2nd BASF back on Labor Day weekend, I'm obligated to re-enter it. Since I picked up a 15-pack for just $7, there were a couple extra, so Shaun, Mike & I each "enjoyed" one for some reason. I don't know why. :-)
When we were at lunch the next day at Mandarin, we saw Profe there. I was just gettin to see all sorts of people! In the afternoon Scott W. and his wife Katie stopped by for a bit. I hadn't seen Scott in probably three years, and I hadn't ever met Katie before (they just got married a month ago). It was so good to see both of them! Then Jim F. came over for a bit too before we all went out to dinner at Bona Casa and met up with Martín. Oddly enough, even though Bona, right here in Cumberland, is one of the more popular restaurants in the area, I hadn't been there since my family first moved up to Cumberland way back in 1990. I would've taken a picture of all of us, but my camera was misbehaving, or, more accurately, my batteries were. Argh. :-( After dinner Scott & Katie went back home to the Cities, but Jim & Martín came back over to my place to chat for a bit. It was a really fun afternoon and evening!
And then last night I went over to Nathan & Laura's to play a game of "Power Grid" with them and Mark. Since I was the only one to have ever played it before (and I hadn't played it much), it took us awhile to get familiar with the rules and everything, but we had a really good, close game. I was behind pretty much the entire game, but on the last turn came back with some creative shenanigans to deny Mark & Laura the win and put myself ahead of them. Unfortunately, however, it was not quite enough to beat Nathan, who squeaked out the victory at the end. It's a fun game, maybe I should buy it for my collection out in State College...
Well, I'm about to head down to Minneapolis for "The Nerds Are Back In Town" party with a bunch of my physics classmates from Gustavus. I'll be down there at least tonight and possibly tomorrow night too, we'll see. It should be a fun time on the old town tonight! :-)
Posted by Jared at 01:17 PM | Comments (0)
December 26, 2006
Christmas '06
[On location in Cumberland, Wisconsin]
I know Christmas seems to be starting earlier and earlier every year, with retailers starting to put up Christmas products way back in October and everything, but I think Christmas seems to be getting shorter and shorter every year. I know the calendar says December and everything, but with final exams and no snow it's usually kinda hard to get in the Christmas spirit and feel like it's coming up soon. Well, it was kinda the same thing this year, and all of a sudden Christmas is over and done with. 
It was a good Christmas though, with good family, good food, good presents, and a couple of entertaining dogs. Brody (Nathan & Laura's dog) and Greta (Aaron & Eve's energetic and very large puppy) were going at it several times, mostly with Greta wanting to play and Brody playing along for a little while until getting tired of it. Greta wouldn't take a hint though, and continued to pester him even after Brody had her pinned, it was pretty funny. Even with all the bared teeth they were definitely still playing. :-) Aaron also taught me how to play golf on the pool table, it's a pretty fun new game I hadn't ever heard of before.
But after all the activity of yesterday and this morning, the house was once again quiet today, so I spent most of the afternoon reading a book I recently purchased, "Unwrapping the Pharaohs." It's a really interesting book, it talks quite a bit about how the traditional ancient Egyptian chronologies are almost certainly in error, due to some dynasties being simultaneous and not sequential as originally thought. Revising the Egyptian chronologies also brings it into line with evidence from other literary and archaeological sources (Old Testament, Hittite, Assyrian and Persian records, Josephus, etc), and just makes everything harmonize and fit so much better, whereas previously everything else in the region was forced to conform to the Sothic Cycle theory of Egyptian history, no matter how well it did or didn't fit. There were a couple of bonehead typos I've found along the way and the organization is at times a little disjointed, but the information it presents is quite eye-opening and very interesting.
A couple of the interesting things the authors concluded was that the Queen of Sheba who visited King Solomon was in fact Hatshepsut, the only female Pharaoh in Egyptian history (unless Nefertiti ever rose to power, which is under debate). Also, there's much mystery surrounding the Hyksos, who suddenly appeared on the scene and occupied Egypt for a few hundred years, without opposition from the Egyptian army. Now why wouldn't the Egyptian army put up a fight against an invading force? If they were at the bottom of the Red Sea after chasing the just-departed Israelite slaves, that'd be a pretty good reason. The authors also name the Hyksos as the Amalekites, who attacked Israel shortly after they crossed the Red Sea (and thus presumably discovered that Egypt was basically defenseless), and whom King Saul hundreds of years later completely and utterly obliterated (the Bible says Saul and his men killed every last Amalekite man, woman and child), which would explain why the Hyksos/Amalekites absolutely vanished from history. History has always interested me as a subject, particularly Egyptian and Biblical history, so this book definitely caught my eye and kept me turning the pages. :-)
Oh, and I've also gotten a few photo albums from January and February uploaded to my Penn State photo page. Who knows how much more I'll get through though over break, since I have quite a few friends to hang out with the rest of break, but at least I've made a decent dent in things.
Posted by Jared at 11:42 PM | Comments (0)
December 24, 2006
Looks a Little Like Christmas
[On location in Cumberland, Wisconsin]
Hooray for snow! Okay, even if it's only an inch of it and even if it's accompanied by freezing rain, it finally looks at least a little bit like Christmas. I'm even fine with the snow causing a few delays with my flight. It seems that airlines really don't plan on bad weather happening. I say that because our plane had to get some extra fuel before taking off from Pittsburgh due to the inclement weather around the Twin Cities, which apparently made the plane too heavy to fly safely. The flight attendants had to ask three people to volunteer to get off and take a later flight, and while two did volunteer almost right away, we were waiting around for another 15-20 minutes for a third to volunteer. When nobody did though, they just picked someone to get off -- fortunately it wasn't either me or Jacob! So that took half an hour, and then we spent another 10-15 minutes circling in a holding pattern over western Wisconsin (when I took this cool picture of the snowstorm, looking west), because the runways were needing to be plowed, meaning we landed about 45 minutes late. Oh well, at least we landed. And at least our flight home wasn't delayed five hours like Andrew's was to Chicago...
Friday afternoon Dad wanted me to put the lights on one of our Christmas trees, even though he can be somewhat finnicky about how exactly they get put on and how they look. At least this year he didn't totally redo my efforts. :-) But we got it all decorated and lifted back up on the ledge where it belongs. My parents dialed it back a bit this year, we only have three Christmas trees up around the house, unless you count one or two mini-trees, and then the mini-forest out on the sun porch. :-) I remember the days when we'd have at least five or six trees up around he house!
On Friday night Jake & I went out (huh?) to Club Cumberland for a bit, as quite a few people from high school were back in town for a "Home for the Holidays Bash." It was fun to catch up with quite a few people and find out what they're up to these days.
Yesterday, just in time for the end of 2006, I finished up the photo albums from Christmas break last year. They're on the Cumberland and Gustavus pages. I'll almost certainly get some more albums up from the first part of the Spring 2006 semester at Penn State over the next few days.
In the past couple weeks my parents have gotten a brand new widescreen HDTV and a satellite dish, so I've had a blast checking out all that stuff. Ever since we moved to Wisconsin way back in 1990 my family has never had cable or satellite or anything, so it's pretty cool to be able to spend a day being lazy watching movies like "Return of the King," "Tora! Tora! Tora!,""Ocean's Eleven" and of course "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation." I'm also really happy they got satellite, because now I'll be able to watch the Penn State-Tennessee bowl game on New Year's Day morning (assuming I'm home then...).
Neither church that my parents are a part of are meeting today because so many people are travelling, so we're just having a quiet Christmas Eve morning here, finishing some decorating and wrapping presents and whatnot. My brothers and their families will be getting here tomorrow morning sometime. Hopefully what little snow we have will stick around. A brown Christmas is depressing enough, but especially in northern Wisconsin. Maybe I should move back to Australia, they're having a white Christmas Down Under in the summer!
Happy Holidays Merry Christmas everyone!
Posted by Jared at 11:30 AM | Comments (2)
December 20, 2006
Another Semester in the Books
Holy cow these have been a stressful last couple of weeks, but I seem to have survived. Whether I've survived with my wits fully intact remains to be seen. The last couple weeks in particular have seen many late nights in Walker (often past midnight) trying to get research done so I could show it in 580 and for the IPR. I was coerced to go have some fun on Friday night for the wine & cheese party upstairs at Shannon & Steph's place, but then Saturday I spent all day in Walker, not leaving until my Meteo 580 paper and slides were all finished at 1:30am. Sunday I reserved for studying for my final in Grad Synoptic (512), which was Monday at 8am. I couldn't focus at all Sunday, and I had pretty much a hopeless feeling all day about the impending doom of the final.
However, both the 512 final and my 580 presentation went reasonably well, leaving me in a position to make a mad dash to get even more research stuff done so I could make my slides for the IPR. I spent most of yesterday listening to the other IPRs instead of working on my slides, and then I went to Dave Stauffer's big Christmas party for all the IPR folks (everyone from PSU, NCEP or other places that met up here to have projects reviewed by DTRA) instead of doing my slides, which I managed to finish at 2am (I only got three hours of sleep last night, ugh). But the party was cool, and Dave has an AWESOME model train collection, certainly rivalling (and probably surpassing) Dr Henry's collection back at Gustavus. Dave even has model trains from 1917 in mint condition with their original boxes...
Anyway, the project I'm on had its review this morning, and my 15-minute talk went quite well, much to the pleasure of Joel & Sue in particular, because neither of them had seen or heard even a hint of a draft of my talk for the IPR because of how busy we all were and because I didn't have time to craft the presentation until the night before. And Joel said it a few times verbally during his talks and put it in writing on his power point slides: apparently it's a done deal, I've officially decided to stay for my PhD. That's news to me, last I knew I was definitely leaning that way but hadn't come to a final decision. :-) And Joel also informed me that DTRA practically tried to offer me a job on the spot, before he pointed out that I wouldn't be finishing my Ph.D. for another 3-4 years. Heck, I don't even have my M.S. yet, but it's nice to know that there'll be at least one job offer waiting for me.
But I am SOOOOOO glad that all is done with. The huge research push, coupled with the 512 final and 580 presentation (though that was also about my research), has really exhausted me. I've printed out quite a few journal articles that I can pretend to get to while I'm home, I'll pack up in the morning and then I'll be heading to the airport in Pittsburgh with Jacob, Andrew & Marcus at 9am.
But first, there's the matter of an end-of-semester party upstairs at Shannon & Stephanie's place. Better get to it!
Posted by Jared at 08:16 PM | Comments (0)
December 12, 2006
1 Nation - 11 Regions
Quite a few of us grad students here in the meteorology department have had arguments and debates over the last few months over what states are in what regions. For instance, states like Pennsylvania (Mid-Atlantic? Northeast? Appalachia?), Missouri (Midwest? Ozarks?), Virginia (Mid-Atlantic? Appalachia? Southeast?) and Kentucky (Southeast? Appalachia? Ohio Valley?) have been problematic for several of us.
Regional biases can creep in to this argument, based on where one grew up. I'm extremely hesitant to classify Ohio as being in the Midwest (having grown up in MN/WI, I think it's too far east, but I guess I don't know what other region you'd put it in, while native Ohioans like Amber bristle at the notion that Ohio could ever not be considered Midwestern). Similarly, Katie (from Alabama) doesn't consider anything apart from Mississippi, Alabama & Georgia to be in the South (Daniel has a slightly wider definition of the South, haha), and Kerrie (from near Boston), who wouldn't even consider New York to be part of the Northeast, much less Pennsylvania. And then there's Jeff (from Michigan), who tries to tell Jim that he's from the South even though he's from northern Virginia, which is very much not Southern, in my opinion.
So, in an attempt to settle this argument, we decided that it'd be good to let everyone color in their own map of the lower 48 states, to display visually and at a glance what they consider the regions of the country to be. The ground rules were the following:
1. The lower 48 must be divided into exactly 11 regions. Why 11? No good reason really, other than that it's prime and Jacob gravitates toward primes. That, and when Jacob & I arbitrarily tried to do this with exactly 7 regions (since 7 is prime, God's number, and because this is God's country), that turned out to be quite obnoxious. Seven might actually potentially be the worst possible number of regions into which to divide the country.
2. Each state must belong to one region and only to one region. This forces people to make the tough decisions, such as what in the world to do with Kentucky or Pennsylvania. Moyer apparently decided to be a bit cavalier with this rule, splitting California and Florida in two (the southern half of both states he called the "Vapid Whores" region, haha). If people don't like the whole-state rule, then they're invited to create an additional map of regions that ignores all state boundaries.
3. Single-state regions are allowed. Multi-state regions must be contiguous. This ideally would've prevented Moyer from making southern Cali & Florida into the same region, but whatever.
My whole-state map is displayed above. The regions I've included are the Northeast (dark blue), Appalachia/Pennsyltucky (orange), Mid-Atlantic (pink), Southeast (light green), Southern Plains (dark red), Ozarks (cyan), Desert Southwest (yellow), Californian Socialist Republic (magenta), Pacific Northwest (blue), Rocky Mountains (purple), and last but certainly not least, the Midwest (teal).
Above is a regional map of the US, where I didn't restrict myself with state boundaries.
This is yet another regional map I did where I divvied the country up into 15 regions, where I added the Ohio Valley (lighter red), Southern Florida (grayish green), the Central Plains (bright orange) and the Northern Plains (bright yellow).
I'll be adding links to other people's maps here as I'm made aware of them and given links to them, so check back at this space to see how other people defined the regions!
Adam Moyer: Whole State regional map. Partial State regional map.
Chris Allen: Blog post.
Jacob Haqq-Misra: Blog post.
Jeff Frame: Whole State regional map.
Others: Coming soon?
If any of the rest of you would like to join in on this adventure, you can download a blank .jpg map of the US here. Then once you fill it out and stick it somewhere that's accessible from the internet, let me know and I'll add your name to the list above! Aren't arguments about geography fun? :-)
And in case you were wondering, I was really only doing this stuff while waiting for codes to finish running, or for TecPlot to open various 2.5GB files. So I wasn't being a total slacker. :-P
Posted by Jared at 10:35 PM | Comments (5)
December 10, 2006
Terabyteosaurus
I know I haven't blogged in awhile, but I'm still alive. I was ambushed by the terabyteosaurus (hat tip to my brother Nathan for coining the term, I like it), but I've managed to escape for the time being. Joel's/my codes have been happily chugging away (finally) both on the CAPTEX (Cross-Appalachian Tracer Experiment) and IHOP (International H2O Project) data I'll be using for my thesis. That's a very good thing since I'd really love to have some mid-stage CAPTEX results to show in my Meteo 580 paper/presentation, and I really need to get the IHOP stuff done for Joel & Sue before DTRA (Defense Threat Reduction Agency) comes up for the IPR (interim project review) on 19-20 December. (I also will probably end up having to give a modified, more technical version of my 580 presentation to DTRA.)
So anyway, back to the terabyteosaurus. Running all these codes has been generating a tremendous amount of data, so when I tried to set up another code run on Friday night after getting back from trivia at the G-Man, it failed right away, with a message telling me the disk was full. Gulp. So yeah, I'd generated nearly a terabyte of data, which had sucked up 100% of the available space on that partition of the zeus raid (literally, not a single byte of free space was left). And that's really not good, since the operational version of MM5 runs on zeus... So I sent a somewhat-panicked email after midnight on Friday night to Joel, Sue & Chuck to inform them of the situation and that I was dead in the water until and unless they could find me more disk space somewhere. Fortunately Chuck was able to give me access to jupiter (another raid in the meteo dept) in short order, complete with nearly 3 terabytes to play with, so yesterday I spent awhile getting all my stuff transferred to there. Now I just need to try to figure out if 3 TB is gonna be enough space for everything I'll eventually need. For my immediate needs though, I should be all set. Hopefully I can get everything finished so that I can have some pretty graphics and results to show in a week.
I went to see "Borat" with a few of the other meteo grads this past Thursday. I was really looking forward to it because I'd heard some good reviews, and I was also curious just because of all the cultural hype and whatnot. I must say I came away from it fairly lukewarm though. Parts of it were extremely funny (even if they were racist/offensive/explicit), and I really liked the first half of the film. But the second half really started to drag and get old. That and the whole hotel wrestling scene lasted way too long, and really wasn't necessary at all... All in all I'm glad I saw the movie, but it's one of those movies where seeing it once is definitely enough, I think.
Senator Inhofe from Oklahoma and the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works have come out with a document, "A Skeptic’s Guide to Debunking Global Warming Alarmism. Hot & Cold Media Spin Cycle: A Challenge To Journalists who Cover Global Warming." (Click here to download the pdf.) I'd encourage y'all to check it out.
It's hard to believe that Christmas is only two weeks away, particularly when we're having temps in the 40s and low 50s. I'd better get a move-on in the Christmas shopping department, if I wanna make sure stuff all arrives on time.
Back to doing something productive. Like going to sleep so I can wake up relatively early and get work done. I'm also doing the forecast on air on CNET tomorrow afternoon (for the last time?), so I'll be on Channel 7 here in State College at 5:55pm, in case you feel like taking a look.
Posted by Jared at 11:42 PM | Comments (2)
December 04, 2006
Looming Decisions
Hooray for surviving the busiest week of the semester to date just fine. I managed to get all my stuff done on time (or early) without a tremendous amount of stress. The extra stress actually came in when I was feeling the pressure to register for classes for next semester. The reason that was stressful is that I didn't know what I wanted to take, and what class(es) I signed up for was (and is) partly dependent on what I end up deciding for staying vs leaving Penn State after next semester, and when Joel & Sue are wanting me to be done with my M.S. thesis (spring's late February deadline vs summer's mid-June deadline). I'm really hoping they say summer's okay, because otherwise I might not sleep for the next few months. Oh yeah, and then our landlord called and let Jon & I know that they were showing the apartment on Friday, so we had to make a decision on renewing our lease for next year so that it wouldn't get rented out from under us. Jon wants to stay, so he signed for the whole apartment, and I signed as a "departing resident" since I'm not completely sure just yet what I want to do; I can sign a renewal at any time if I so choose. So yeah, it can get kind of stressful when you're trying to make a few (relatively) snap decisions simultaneously about the course of probably the next 3-4 years of your life...
As it stands right now, I'm at least tentatively signed up for "Numerical Solutions to Differential Equations" (MATH 552/CSE 552). Why would I do something so awful to myself? you might ask. Well, a) Andrew's already taking it and managed to convince me to sign up for it too, b) it'd help me learn more programming, which I'm currently not very good at (same reason he's taking it), and c) it'd help me become more comfortable with diff eqs, which I pretty much despise but would almost certainly encounter more of if I stay for a Ph.D. It is a grad-level math/comp sci course though, and since neither of us have much comp sci under our belts at all, maybe it's not the best fit. It'd certainly be challenging at any rate, and I'd probably learn a lot. I'm also tempted to take a second class, the undergrad forecasting practicum. I was thinking about the mesoscale forecasting class Daniel's taking, but I really need to get a more basic understanding of that under my belt before I do something more challenging like mesoscale. That and I really do want to learn more about weather-related stuff while I'm here in "weather school." If I do take two classes though, I definitely will be postponing taking the Ph.D. candidacy exams from May 2007 until next winter (if I elect to stay and take them at all), and had better not be trying to finish my thesis in the spring.
Trivia's back! After a long, Sep-Oct-Nov hiatus from the G-Man, team trivia is back on Friday nights. We'd all been rather lost with what to do on Friday evenings, that's how ingrained trivia had become as a tradition for us. :-) Our team name was "TGIT - Thank God It's Trivia," and we managed to come from behind in the final question to win 1st place, so it was a great start. The final question was a good one too: "Which of these founding fathers were not present at the 1787 Constitutional Convention? a) Thomas Jefferson, b) Benjamin Franklin, c) George Washington, or d) James Madison." Do you know the answer? Perhaps our favorite question of the night, though, was this one (category, 'Landmarks'): "Hunting enthusiasts can visit the Key Underwood Coon Dog Memorial Graveyard in which state: a) Georgia, b) Alabama, or c) Mississippi." Don't click on the link unless you want the answer.
Jacob's birthday was last Thursday, so in addition to lunch at Jamaica Junction followed by birthday cake made by Steph back in Walker on Thursday, then on Saturday night a bunch of us went out to Bar Bleu to hear some jazz by Andrew Jackson, which was fun. I didn't stay out too late though, since I had to be at church at 8:15 the next morning.
Speaking of which, my playing piano with the worship band went really well this week! I didn't actually get the music or start practicing until Thursday night, but it all came together relatively quickly. Or at least that's what practicing for 3 hours in one evening can do. :-) Several meteo grads came along to the 10:30 service, Shannon, Steph, Jacob, Andrew, Kerrie, Daniel & Katie! I was really excited that they would all come visit my church to hear me play. Thanks for coming, guys! I really do appreciate it. I expect I'll be playing a bit more frequently (maybe every 3 weeks or so) next semester.
Friday was a really interesting day weather-wise here in Pennsylvania. The day started out really warm, in the mid-upper 60s here in State College. A squall line developed to our west (associated with the same storm system that plunged the whole country into a cold snap and dumped a half a foot to a foot of snow from Oklahoma City to Chicago), getting Dr Markowski really excited (we spent the whole class period in Grad Synoptic just studying the situation, because there was a high potential for severe weather). Unfortunately the "State College Effect" reared its ugly head again, because the storms died as they approached us, but then reformed into an even stronger squall line off to our east (note the paucity of damage reports in central PA in the earlier link to see what I mean). About the time that that squall line was in full gear to our east and southeast (which was setting off another flurry of excited schoolkid-type emails from Marko, hehe), it dropped a tornado down a bit NE of Harrisburg, causing one fatality. I managed to borrow a key from Eugene for the second time in the day to get up on the roof of Walker to take pictures of the squall line, and this panoramic actually turned out quite well.
That's about as good a severe weather event that we could ever expect to see in central PA in December. Or just about any time of year, for that matter. This place really sucks if you love severe weather... At any rate, since the front passed we've had occasional flurries and we're headed for a low in the teens tonight. What a difference a couple of days makes.
Well, maybe I should try to get some reading done before heading out to Zeno's for a bit to listen to Cootie Brown. And it'll be jazz two nights in a row (and 3 out of 4, counting Andrew Jackson on Saturday) if I make it to Starbucks tomorrow evening from 6-8pm to catch Ed's band Mobius Trip. Ahhh, a string of good music on the State College scene!
Posted by Jared at 09:09 PM | Comments (1)