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January 31, 2008
Punxsy Phil at Penn State
We in the Department of Meteorology here at Penn State were honored with a celebrity appearance on Wednesday over the lunch hour -- Punxsutawney Phil (and a couple of his handlers)! There was advertising for it all over Walker Building -- even big huge banners *inside* the elevators, it was kinda crazy. 
They had a big reception for Phil up in the 6th floor Weather Station, complete with free chili, chips/dip, cake and whatnot, and it sure seemed like all of Walker Building had emptied and gone up there. I'd say there had to have been probably 150 people up there at the peak. 
And the handlers were giving away free plastic top hats to everyone, as well as groundhog beanie babies and official Punxsutawney Groundhog Club large coins (I made sure to get one of each -- gotta stock up for Saturday, you know!). 
I was hoping to get a picture next to Phil, but there was a $2 raffle for a chance at that, so I had to settle for a picture next to Phil in his plastic cage. That's probably closer than I'll ever be to Phil again. There's no way we'll be able to get quite that close to the stage at Gobblers Knob this Saturday morning, that's for sure!
Speaking of which, we've got a good-sized group of people heading over to Punxsutawney *early* on Saturday morning for Groundhog Day. And I do mean early. As in we're planning to leave State College at midnight. All to stand outside in the cold for hours in the middle of the night, just to see an oversized rodent get pulled out of his hole for a few minutes. You've gotta love America!
We had our second game of the year for Wyld Stallyn IM basketball tonight, and I really thought before the game that we were gonna snap our long losing streak. We played very well in the first half, particularly on defense with our 1-3-1 zone, taking a 17-17 tie into the break. And then in the second half we jumped out to something like a 28-21 lead, but then the wheels pretty much fell off. The other team started draining threes because our defenders left them open a couple times, which seemed to make us stop believing in the 1-3-1 and executing it, which in turn led to even more easy looks for the other team, both from outside and inside. Needless to say, it was frustrating to watch the game slip away and see us lose 45-37 in a game we should've won. For what it's worth, here's my line from tonight:
16 Min, 1-3 FG, 2 Pts, 1 Reb, 2 Ast, 0 TO, 0 PF
And most of my minutes came in the first half, as it turned out. At least I wasn't a negative to the team tonight again, and this time I even scored a basket, woohoo! Baby steps, baby steps... Anyway, we've got three more chances this year to win our first IM basketball game since 2005 (and to be fair, we didn't field a team in 2006). It'd be nice to get off the schnide, finally.
Posted by Jared at 11:42 PM | Comments (2)
January 28, 2008
Return of the Wyld Stallyns
Wyld Stallyn basketball is back! Yes, it's intramural basketball season again at Penn State, and the meteo grad crew is back for more -- though hopefully this season we'll actually win a game, especially since this year we've gone to the trouble of having a couple of pre-season practices. ;-) Our first game of the season was Thursday, and the first half did not go so well. A streak of six or seven consecutive possessions on which we turned the ball over without getting off a shot did us in, and the other team shot some insane lights-out percentage, en route to a 31-12 halftime lead. We settled down in the second half, took better care of the ball and played better perimeter defense, and actually outscored them (slightly) in the second half, making the final tally 48-31, being led in scoring by Ethan and Dr Markowski. So we were fairly pleased and encouraged overall, since we eventually showed that we could play with what was a pretty talented team. As for my line?
8 minutes, 0-2 field goals, 0 points, 2 rebounds, 2 assists, 0 turnovers, 0 fouls
Meh. Those stats are unofficial of course, and only to the best of my recollection. At least I wasn't a net detriment to the team! With my skills, that's about all I can ask for. :-) Game 2 is coming up this Thursday.
The worship team at church just got a lot more high tech. Out with the old monitor system, in with the new. The old setup involved monitor speakers by each of the musicians on stage, so that we could hear the other instruments and vocalists better from where we were sitting. These were often turned way up, and added a lot of extra noise, some blasting straight out into the sanctuary, but most of it being blasted at the wall at the back of the stage and then bouncing back into the sanctuary. So on Saturday the old system was removed and the new system (which was graciously donated by somebody, I don't know who) was installed and wired up, just in time for worship (band) rehearsal (which took 3 hours, largely trying to get used to the new monitors!).
So how does the new monitor system work? Well, now each musician has their own personal mixer, into which we can plug in headphones. Yes, now we're all wearing headphones while we're playing music on stage at church. :-) Ashley & Emily thought it looked like we all had iPods on, hehe. Anyway, each mixer/monitor has 16 channels (6 vocal, 2 auxilliary, piano, guitar, bass, 2 drums (right/left), 2 mix and pastor/CD/DVD), and we can change the volume on each channel, and also the left/right balance in our headphones for each channel. And then you can group channels together (say, all the vocal channels, so they can all be turned up or down collectively rather than one by one), as well as save up to 16 groups of settings on each personal mixer. It's pretty slick! It took a bit last night to figure out how I wanted to have the mixer channels set, but once I did it was great! I could hear everyone else quite a bit better, and I think it helped us all play better with each other. And another unforeseen benefit: improved acoustics in the sanctuary. As Pastor Tober was listening to us rehearse last night, he noticed that we sounded noticeably better, and we figure that it must be that we don't have all the old monitor speakers blasting sound as well anymore. I'm really excited to use it more in the future, including this coming week again.
For Bible study with PSCG in the first part of this semester, we're listening to and discussing a 6-part sermon series by Phillip Jensen (of Saint Matthias Anglican Church in Sydney, Australia) on the Sermon on the Mount. I studied this same sermon series back in 2004 at the Sunday evening Bible studies with Monash Christian Union when I was studying abroad in Melbourne, so it's really cool for me to get to hear it again and introduce everyone else in PSCG to Phillip Jensen's wonderfully entertaining and incisive Gospel preaching. Of all the pastors/preachers I've ever heard, Jensen's my favourite. But anyway, we had 17 people at Bible study tonight at my place, which was really exciting! We haven't had that many people in awhile, so it was really great to see, and is giving me great optimism for this semester.
Oh, and if any of your property is destroyed in a month or two by a falling satellite, don't say I didn't warn you!
Posted by Jared at 12:38 AM | Comments (2)
January 23, 2008
Math - Just Say No
It's good to be back in State College, even though we dragged the cold air with us. It was definitely a bit of a whirlwind weekend, from having to get up mega-early Saturday morning in Boulder to go to the Denver airport to finally getting back to State College in late afternoon. Shortly after I got back, it was time to head right back into campus for the PSCG Spring Semester Kickoff party, which had plenty of free pizza and games. Tim taught me how to play some Chinese variant of chess which was pretty cool, and then the rest of the time, while everyone else played other games, he & I played Megachess (my three-person chess game), rotating the board and taking a turn making the best move possible for the color in front of us. It was definitely an interesting and different way to play, not being able to come up with or execute any sort of coherent strategy (not to mention Megachess having completely different strategies from regular chess). I still prefer playing Megachess with three instead of two people though. :-)
I spent parts of Monday and much of Tuesday copying Kerrie's notes from the Linear Algebra class (Math 436) that we'd signed up for. After copying those, reading through chapter 1 of the book carefully, and starting to work on the assignment, I really got to thinking that the class wasn't gonna be all that useful to me, while also being a lot of work (you know, trying to translate math language and think like a mathematician instead of a "normal" person). So with today already being the drop/add deadline here at PSU (they always have it so ridiculously early in the semester, especially compared to GAC), I had to put in some hard thinking of whether to stay in a class that I hadn't even attended yet. And to be honest, I was dreading it (especially after Kerrie decided to drop the class, because then I didn't know anyone), and didn't really want to go through an entire semester like that. It would've been a different thing entirely if this were a linear algebra class from an applied math perspective, but instead it was clear after getting this far into it that it was gonna be from a pure math perspective. And that's a world of difference. You see, I like applied math and physics-type stuff. But pure math? I despise it. It's just too abstract for me, and my brain really doesn't think that way. The way I see it, math is a tool that should be used to solve real-world problems; math (in my view) is somewhat pointless when it's treated as an end in and of itself, and isn't used to do anything practical. So I decided to drop it, and register instead for Remote Sensing of the Earth System (i.e., a class about satellites!). I was trying to decide between Radar Meteorology (which would've also been interesting) and Remote Sensing, neither of which is really remotely relevant to my research, but I think the latter will be potentially more interesting, spanning a wide range of topics (ozone/atmospheric composition, ice/snow cover, cloud properties, oceanography, etc., basically any field that uses satellite measurements). It should also be a bit less work that Linear Algebra, which would be a huge plus and would allow me more time to do research. And another plus is that Caren, Anke, Luna & Isaac are all taking it too, meaning I'll have some company during that once-a-week 2.5-hr class.
While I was in Boulder I finally got around to reading a novel (gasp! reading something for fun while in grad school? perish the thought!), "Hood" by Stephen Lawhead (my favourite author!), book 1 of the King Raven trilogy. It's a pretty cool book, basically setting Robin Hood in Wales in AD 1073, complete with Welsh place/proper names, giving it an authentic feel (Lawhead always does that in his books, which are typically Irish, Celtic or Welsh in flavor). I had originally started reading it last spring on my way down to New Orleans for Katrina clean-up, but didn't get very far before thesising took over my life once I got back to PSU, so I just started over. I didn't wanna put it down, and I was tempted all along last week just to keep reading, but realized that sitting through a bunch of presentations on little to no sleep wouldn't be a wise plan. So I just waited until Sunday night to stay up late finishing it all! It's definitely been awhile since I've done something like that. I wish I had more time to do reading for fun. But now that I'm hooked, I've gotta get book 2 in the trilogy, "Scarlet"!
So now that Fred Thompson has dropped out of the GOP presidential race, who am I supporting? That's a really good question, and I wish I knew. All I know is that it's certainly not Mike Huckabee or John McCain! Both of them are running pretty dishonest campaigns, in my opinion. I guess my top three right now would be Romney, Paul & Giuliani, though I'd have to hold my nose to vote for any of those three. Is it too cynical to say that I'm quite disillusioned with our current slate of candidates? A third party might look very attractive to me this year!
Posted by Jared at 11:36 PM | Comments (2)
January 17, 2008
Dining at Dushanbe
[On location in Boulder, Colorado]
Only one more day of the WRF Tutorial to go. It's been a pretty valuable week for the most part, I think. I actually feel like I learned something even! Walter & I had our third and final practice session using WRF this afternoon, and we think we're getting a decent feel for how it's all put together, from setting up the domains (including some nested domains) to running WRF itself to visualizing/plotting some of the output. I'm kinda eager to see if I can get it running on our cluster over at ARL when I get back, though I fear that it'll be a major pain trying to get it to compile. I think I'm confident enough that I could at least give it a shot myself, before crying uncle and handing it off to the sys admins when I ultimately run into problems with missing libraries or compiler issues. That's something I definitely would've been too timid to try before this week, so that's progress.
At life group last week back in State College when I mentioned I was gonna be spending a week out here, Ryan strongly recommended that I check out the Dushanbe Tea House here in Boulder for dinner sometime. So yesterday when our bus got back to our hotel (the Golden Buff Lodge, where most of the tutorial attendees are staying) I threw out the suggestion to my fellow weather nerds, 
and eight of them were intrigued enough to brave the mile-plus walk in the single digits down to the restaurant (Claus from UW-Madison, Lukas from UC-Berkeley, Xiaoli and Claire from Denmark, and Dave, Thomas, Muhammad and Kathrin from Australia). It was definitely worth the walk! The Dushanbe Tea House is really a unique building, crafted entirely by artisans in Tajikistan before assembling all the pieces here in Boulder. 
The building itself really is a work of art, with awesome carvings, frescoes and paintings covering the whole interior and exterior, even the ceiling. And then the food was awesome too, with quite an eclectic ethnic selection, including Tajik (of course), Indian, Moroccan, Brazilian, Argentine, Spanish, Creole, Greek and other cuisine. I went for the North African Bere-Bere Chicken Kebabs with dried fruit cous-cous, and split it with Muhammad, who got some Tajik lamb kebabs. Mmmmm, soooo good... 
And it was fun to get to know everyone a bit better too, to hear about their research and where they're from too. And after talkin to the Aussies, I'll have to add the University of Melbourne to my list of places (Monash, CSIRO, BoM down in Aus, plus NCAR and NOAA stateside) where I'll go investigating for some sort of a position after I graduate from Penn State. And I'll maybe have a couple more people to try to visit when I go down to Australia in a year and a half now too. My connexions to Australia just keep growing! :-)
This morning Walter & I went up to the NCAR Mesa Lab along with Xiaoli, Claire and Kathrin, to take a few pictures and look around a bit at all their exhibits and demos, which is always fun for a weather nerd. ;-) It was still pretty chilly out, but while it was virtually calm down in Boulder, it was very windy (almost 35mph sustained, with gusts above 40mph!) up on Table Mesa, 600 ft above the city. I don't think I'd ever get tired of looking at the Flatirons if I ever worked/lived here in Boulder!
I'm not looking forward to tomorrow night so much. Well, early Saturday morning to be more precise. In order to make it to DIA (Denver) in time for our 7am flight, we have to catch the Super Shuttle at our motel sometime between 3:30 and 3:50am. Yuck. I hope I can sleep on the 3+ hour flight to Philadelphia! And then our layover in Philly's dump of an airport is long enough that we could drive back to State College from there in less time, argh. Hopefully I'll have enough energy to make it through the PSCG Spring Kickoff that evening, which starts about an hour after I our flight lands in State College. It'll be a long day for sure.
Posted by Jared at 11:13 PM | Comments (0)
January 14, 2008
Greetings WRFlings
[On location in Boulder, Colorado]
Yes, the title of this post is from a note posted on the side of the cardboard cutout that's on stage in the lecture room (more on that later). I can't take credit for it, unfortunately, haha. Anyway, The first day of the WRF Tutorial out here at NCAR (Foothills Lab, not the mega-cool Mesa Lab, unfortunately) was pretty good, even though we did have to wake up ridiculously early this morning. We didn't get any hands-on work in today (our first actual practice session is tomorrow afternoon), as the whole day was basically lectures on basics of the structure of the model suite and the dynamical guts of the model itself. 
This all is made a bit more complicated by the fact that, even though back in the day WRF was originally planned to be a one-size-fits-all model, there are now two almost completely separate versions that use different dynamical cores (among other things): WRF-NMM (Nonhydrostatic Mesoscale Model, favored by NCEP) and WRF-ARW (Advanced Research WRF, favored by NCAR). A couple of the talks were even interesting, too. ;-) And then one of the speakers in the morning started out his presentation on guitar, singing a song he "wrote" called, "Give WRF a Chance." The lyrics were sooooo nerdy. :-) But the highlight of the workshop/tutorial today was definitely coming into the lecture room and seeing a big cardboard cutout of Worf from "Star Trek" on stage next to the lectern. I guess he's their mascot, haha. Who said atmospheric scientists didn't have a sense of humor? :-)
There are about 60 people form around the world at this tutorial though, it's pretty cool. And a good number of them are grad students, which is really cool. There are even a few from Australia (including from Monash University and the University of Melbourne!), I've gotta make sure to talk to them at some point. Tonight Walter & I hung out for awhile and went to dinner on Pearl Street with a grad student from UW-Madison named Claus, he's a pretty cool guy. And there was at least one other person besides him that I talked to today who was familiar with Gustavus and where Cumberland was, which is definitely not a common occurrence outside the Midwest. ;-)
The weather's been pretty nice out here so far, and tomorrow's gonna be fantastic, with a high up near 60. But then tomorrow night we're gonna get some snow and one heck of a cold front, which'll drop the temps down to 11 overnight Tuesday, and they won't even get to 20 on Wednesday. Welcome to the Front Ranges, I guess. I'm suddenly regretting not bringing something warmer than what I did, but it's not like it'll be pleasant to spend much time outside anyway with a bitter windchill, so I should be able to get by okay. Some morning this week I'll have to find a decent sightline to take some pictures of the Flatirons, though, even if I have to brave some cold!
Posted by Jared at 10:21 PM | Comments (2)
January 13, 2008
Bye Bye Candidacies, and Hello CO, Too!
[On location in Boulder, Colorado]
I'm DONE with the PhD candidacy exams!! Wahoo!! As I mentioned last week, I think the first part (dynamics) went reasonably well. The second part of the candidacy exam (physics) was on Wednesday, and that was a tough one too, but I also think it went reasonably well (was the rainbow on the way into Walker a good omen?). There was some mad studying going on during the day off in between exams, as I'd previously put off studying physics since I got back so that I could focus on dynamics. But of course, very little that I studied on Tuesday actually specifically helped me on the exam (in fact, only one thing helped me out, if I recall - the rest was basically just physical intuition or remembering a couple general concepts from classes a couple years ago). And just like on the dynamics exam, I took the full six grueling hours. I was completely exhausted by the end, but very glad to be all done with it. I was too tired even to go out and celebrate with anyone that evening, so after my worship committee meeting at church that evening, I just sat at home, relaxed a bit and then went to bed! I'll be glad not to think overly much about the candidacy exams until we get the results back in a few weeks.
On Thursday when I woke up after my ten-hour sleep I felt like a whole new person! I also didn't bother going into Walker at all -- I deserved a break. Again I basically just relaxed and did some "fun" work, like tweaking the design of the Penn State Christian Grads website and designing a couple simple logos for PSCG. It was something I've been meaning to do for awhile, and it definitely took my mind off of all things meteo effectively. :-) On Thursday evening I finally felt up to celebrating, so a few of us went out to the Rathskeller for team trivia (we didn't do well, though), and then to Pickles for a little bit after that.
The Penn State men's basketball team, after a rough start to their non-conference season, really seemed to have turned things around, going on an 8-game winning streak coming into Saturday's game vs Minnesota, including winning their first two Big Ten games -- on the road, no less, which snapped their 15-game road losing streak dating back to two seasons ago. So yesterday I went to the game with Jeff [Frame], Jeff [Grabon], Kerrie and Kent, and it was a pretty entertaining game, with a good crowd. 
The home crowd was roaring (something which doesn't happen for basketball games all that often!) as the Nittany Lions ballooned their 3-point halftime lead to a 16-point advantage with 12 minutes left. Then the wheels started to fall off, slowly but surely. Penn State couldn't solve Minnesota's full court press, and they also suddenly went ice cold from the free throw line, including missing their last 8 attempts. It was pathetic. 
PSU had numerous chances to seal the victory (including having the ball with under 10 seconds left and a tie game!), but the Golden Gophers escaped Happy Valley with a 76-73 win. So frustrating. Total choke job at the charity stripe. On the plus side, if Penn State was gonna lose to somebody, at least they were nice enough to lose to Minnesota, my second-favorite team. It was still a really disappointing loss, though.
Walter & I flew out to Denver today, and it was a reasonably uneventful trip, if a bit long. We're out here in Boulder for the whole week for the WRF (Weather Research & Forecasting model) Tutorial at NCAR (National Center for Atmospheric Research). It's good to be back in Boulder again, it's a nice town to visit, nestled up against the Flatirons (I was here 3 years ago on a grad school visit to the University of Colorado). I really have no idea what to expect from the tutorial or how intense it's gonna be. Hopefully we'll have a bit of free time to get out a bit and either hike a little bit, and one of these evenings we'll definitely check out Pearl Street, just a few blocks from our motel. It should be an interesting week though!
Posted by Jared at 09:31 PM | Comments (0)
January 07, 2008
The Eye of the Storm
Warning: This post/analogy is going to be nerdy. Very nerdy. But then again I'm pretty nerdy. I'm a grad student in a science field, after all, so I think that pretty much defines me as a nerd on at least some level(s).
But anyway, if the PhD candidacy exam were like a hurricane, then right now I'm in the eye, where it's deceptively calm and clear, almost making you think the storm is over. Not quite. I already suffered through the first part of the storm, barely missing the worst part, the right-front quadrant. When I first got the exam and read over the questions, I thought I was sunk. Seriously, they were pretty tough questions, and none of them seemed immediately obvious at first glance. But then I dug in and just started plugging away on a couple problems, and 6 hours later I'd finished my 3 out of 5 problems. The two I skipped were both about waves, which kinda forced my hand to the other three. (Here's a fun question from the test for y'all to ponder: What would the atmospheric general circulation look like if the Earth were cylindrical instead of spherical?) At any rate, while I didn't ace any of the questions, I think I may well have done enough to pass, so I'm feeling reasonably good about how it went (I'm maybe 60 or 70% optimistic that I passed, so I'll be really disappointed if I don't). I guess I'll find out in 4-6 weeks though. At the very least I'm not feeling demoralized after the test today, so that's a plus! After studying dynamics ever since I got back to State College a week ago, it's now time to switch gears quickly and review cloud physics, radiative transfer and turbulence. The other side of the eyewall is coming in on Wednesday morning with part 2 of the candidacy exam (physical meteorology), but by Wednesday evening the storm will be long gone! I'll be able to relax at long last!! It'll sure be nice to have a life again. Studying like this has really gotten old. Well, I should either get back to it or get to bed before too much longer so that I can really hit the books tomorrow. It's almost over...
Posted by Jared at 10:33 PM | Comments (1)