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October 22, 2008
Pre-Presentation Panic
I've been pretty massively stressed out lately, thanks mostly to my research, which hasn't been going well at all lately. Coming up in mid-November is the Chemical & Biological Defense Physical Science & Technology Conference down in New Orleans, and I have a half-hour slot in which to give a presentation (this is the conference to which I was awarded a scholarship to attend by the people running the conference, my project's sponsors). Yet when are the slides for our presentations due to the CBD folks? This coming Monday. Yep, a full three weeks before the conference. Ridiculous. Now of course we knew about that deadline months ago, so why am I suddenly frantically scrambling to pull something together for my talk? To put it nicely, let's just say that WRF is a particularly difficult model to get to run properly on a new system, especially when you're trying to do it mostly yourself. I've run into roadblock after roadblock after roadblock in my effort to get this thing running the way it should. My latest problem? When I try to run my 4-km high-resolution domain, it keeps crashing the compute nodes on the student cluster at ARL for some unknown reason (we think it's memory-related, but can't figure out how to address it or pinpoint the actual problem). There's something over there that I don't have set up right, but I don't know what, because on the meteo systems WRF generally runs without a problem (now it does, don't know how long it took them to get it to work at first though). Needless to say, I've had an incredibly frustrating last couple of weeks in particular, and especially the first half of this week. After all my troubles yesterday afternoon, I finally decided to give up on getting any of my model runs done in time for this presentation, so instead am now giving mostly a talk on what I plan to do for my thesis research (or at least the first part of it). It's not exactly what I'd hoped to give, or what I'd told the conference organizers in my abstract that I'd give, but it's what they're getting because I don't have anything else. AJ is being really nice and helping me out and giving me some of his model results from his poster though, so that I at least have some "preliminary results" to show during my talk, to go with my methods/plans. It's not quite what I wanted to do for my talk, but hey, it's better than having absolutely no results to show! Anyway, after basically freaking out over everything around midday today, I think I've calmed down a little bit since then. This afternoon I managed to think straight enough to sketch out a rough outline for what I'd now like to do for my presentation, given my current state of affairs. We'll see how that goes. I'll be very glad when Monday qfternoon comes, because either my slides will be in, or they will have extended the deadline a bit. I'm so looking forward to a chance to relax a bit.
So once I'm past that deadline, I'll hopefully blog a bit more, and put up some photos from my brother Nathan & Laura's visit and John & Ruth's wedding a couple weekends ago. I'm still in the process of recovering from my hard drive crash too, and I have yet to send my old hard drive off to the data recovery place even. I've just been too swamped with research, trying to get as much done as possible (yet being stymied every step of the way). Anyway, maybe life will start to get back to normal sometime soon. Normal would be nice. It hasn't been normal for a long time.
Until then, may you, my blog-reading public, enjoy these links:
I've probably told many of you about Denny's Beer Barrel Pub, over in Clearfield, PA, where the small burgers are huge, and the big ones are monstrous. In fact, once I downed a one-pound burger there (I had a pretty solid food coma after that too). Denny's has contests starting with their two-pound burgers, but apparently this guy thought the challenge of even the three- or six-pound burger was beneath him, so he tried the fifteen-pound burger. And ate it. I don't know whether to be impressed or nauseated. Now that's what you call being a bad fatty!
And just when I thought weather-themed movies couldn't get any worse than Category 6: Day of Destruction, Category 7: End of the World or Day After Tomorrow, Lifetime just had to go out and make a movie that's potentially worse than all of them: Storm Cell. (h/t: Jeff [Frame]) Tornado Alley moving north? Somewhat plausible, perhaps. But moving west? To the other side of the Rockies?! To Seattle?!? And the National Weather Service doesn't notice, but this one lady on her laptop is the only one who sees the storm coming? C'mon... No wonder "Family Guy" made fun of Lifetime as "Television for Idiots." Without even having seen it yet, I think it'll definitely crack the pantheon of worst weather-themed movies ever, joining the others I mentioned above. Do any of the rest of you have additions to the list of worst weather-themed or weather-related movies ever made?
Oh, and if any of you would like a good historical primer for this weekend's titanic clash between #3 Penn State and #9 Ohio State, read up on this account of the first-ever meeting between the two teams, way back in 1912. Apparently Ohio State's fanbase was a bunch of hooligans way back then too! Shock!
Posted by Jared at 10:38 PM | Comments (3)
October 17, 2008
Crash Goes the Hard Drive
You know, I had a thought all last week gnawing at me, that it had been quite a long time since I last backed up the files on my hard drive (like maybe a year?), and that I really should take care of that sometime soon. So with everything that was going on last week, I decided that I'd get around to it this week. Little did I know that I wasn't to be allowed to play that waiting game.
On Sunday night, while installing a rather routine Security Update for Mac OS 10.4, my computer got really slow. I mean, R-E-A-L-L-Y S-L-O-W. But I didn't think much of it, because my computer typically got slow when installing big security updates like that. This time it was extra annoying (when I tried to send an IM to Alex, it took over a minute to type and send a little one-line message ... aggravating, to say the least), but I figured it was because I had a bunch of applications open and my normal 5 zillion tabs open in Firefox. So anyway, the update finally finished installing, and it prompted me to restart my computer (again, like normal). Only this time it never made it back to the operating system after the restart. About the third time I heard the start-up chime while I was on the phone with Alex (because IMing was a lost cause while the update was installing), I knew something was wrong.
Here's what was happening: The computer would restart, go to the light gray screen with the dark apple, but sit there. There wouldn't even be the rotating progress bar at the bottom, like there normally would be. After hanging on that screen for 5 mintues, it'd auto-restart. Then it'd hang on that same screen for 5 minutes, and the process would repeat itself ad nauseum. Not good. On Monday morning at Walker I looked up how to boot into safe mode, but that produced no change; it still wouldn't boot at all. I posted to an Apple support forum online and called AppleCare, and tried their suggestion of booting up the OS 10.4 install disc, which I did on Tuesday afternoon (after digging around and finding them at my apartment on Monday night). When I ran Disk Utility like they suggested and tried to "Repair Disk," by the time it was done trying (and failing) even to scan the drive, it could no longer see any information about my hard drive. Uh oh. Then when I tried to do an archive install, the disc couldn't even see a volume to which it could install the OS. Double uh oh.
So when the AppleCare rep told me there was an authorized Apple repair shop in State College (Connecting Point, on Allen St downtown, right next to Chili's), I found out they closed in 20 minutes so I hustled down there right away. They took a look at my old hard drive, tried to access it with their software, and declared it DOA due to mechanical failure. Sigh. At least because I was still covered under AppleCare the new hard drive & installation were completely free. They let me buy back my dead hard drive though, so that I could at least have the option of sending it in to a data recovery service lke Ontrack, which they recommended.
So now I'm considering whether to just sit tight for awhile and move along without my data from the last year, or if I should send it in to Ontrack and pay for a photo-only recovery for $495. For a month's worth of photos, that wouldn't be a good deal at all, but with the amount of photos that I hadn't backed up (again, around a year's worth, which adds up to at least a couple thousand photos, maybe even three thousand or more), that makes the price a bit more potentially "worth it." It's even more worth it when I think of some of the photos that I'd be able to have back, including the last few times I hung out with Aaron, from this summer back to last Christmas break. If I wanted to do a full data recovery, it could be as much as $2500 potentially, but probably more like $1500. I think I can live without my fireworks videos and some other documents in order to save a thousand dollars. My photos are another story though. Those are far more important to me. Important enough for me to put my money toward recovering those, and quite possibly put off the idea of purchasing a new keyboard/electronic piano, or taking a short trip somewhere for spring break or whatnot. Maybe I'll still be able to afford those things too, we'll see.
Whilst pondering my data recovery options, I've been moving ahead trying to get my computer back up and running with the new hard drive. I bought a copy of OS 10.5 and Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac from the Penn State Computer Store and got those installed Wednesday night. I figured there was no time like the present, when I'm basically starting over from scratch, to make an upgrade. And just like on my old hard drive, both Office and my OS are legal! I mean, when the Penn State Computer Store only charges around 50% of retail because of the site license and student license discounts they get, there's really no excuse not to get legit copies. I'm also gonna make sure I keep a cleaner file structure on my new system than I did on my old one, which was gonna be a real bear to try to clean up and organize better. It'll still be awhile before I've got everything more or less back to the way I want it.
I really didn't need all this extra stress this week though, not with how stressed out and worn thin I've been this week with my research and everything else that's been going on. But that's for another post at another time. Right now it's time for bed, so that I don't get worn down even more. I've got another busy weekend ahead of me after all, what with the "Hate Week" (as Moyer calls it) tailgate and game on Saturday (#3 Penn State hosts hapless and hated Michigan ... I hope we hang half a hundred on the Wolverines on Saturday, I really can't stand them, even when they're terrible like they are this year). I gotta make sure I'm all rested up for that!
GO STATE! BEAT MICHIGAN!
Posted by Jared at 01:05 AM | Comments (1)
October 07, 2008
Quarter Century
It's not every day that you get to have wedding cake on your birthday! But that's exactly the situation I found myself in two Saturdays ago, back on the 27th of September, which was my 25th birthday. A few of us Penn Staters made the trek from State College (me, Petters, Walter, Frame, Kerrie), Rochester (Caren, Shannon and her boyfriend Jerry), or northern Minnesota/North Dakota (Lindsay & Vic) over to Toledo, Ohio, on Friday the 26th because our friends Chris & Amber were getting married on the 27th. Penn Staters made up 10% of the wedding guests, as it turned out!
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The wedding was pretty short and simple. Only 15-20 minutes long, actually! But when the pastor's the only one doing the readings (Genesis 2, Matthew 19, 1 Corinthians 13), it's a small wedding party (only a best man, maid of honor, and a junior bridesmaid & groomsman), there are no songs sung and no unity candle to light, it kinda keeps the length of the service down. :-) It was a good service though, and Amber's dress was beautiful as expected (and cream-colored instead of white, which looked really good). The ceremony was at a cute, cozy, little old Presbyterian church in suburban Toledo.
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The reception was at a lodge amongst tall pines in a county park about 20 minutes outside Toledo. A pretty setting, for sure. We Penn Staters all got there pretty early so that we could finish doing all the set-up for the reception (Amber, Kerrie, Caren & Shannon had already done a bunch that morning too). It was a nice, simple reception too, with plenty of crafty autumnal elements and decorations that were very, very Amber (many of which were also made by her, no less). 
Boston Market did the catering (turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, corn, cornbread, and, at Chris's request, macaroni & cheese), and we were all impressed. The reception hall got a bit toasty though, so after dinner a bunch of us went outside for most of the rest of the evening, and it definitely was a gorgeous early autumn evening, very pleasant. As a result, there wasn't as much dancing as some other weddings I've been at (and none by me), but I personally was fine with that. :-)
I did catch Chris's toss of the garter though. A plot was definitely afoot, though, because he made sure to toss it right at me (and everyone else made sure that I was on one end of the line), haha. So while this supposedly means that I'm the next guy there to get married, I somehow doubt that'll be happening anytime soon! ;-)
When the reception was winding down, we all went back to the hotel in Toledo, watched the last part of the second quarter of the Penn State game on TV in our room, and then at halftime we all walked over to Buffalo Wild Wings for the second half of the game. It was a fun end to a fun day, especially since Penn State beat Illinois 38-24. It still would've been fun to experience the White House atmosphere of that game for my birthday (all 109,000+ fans wore white, save the 1-2,000 orange-clad Illini fans), but there never was a question that I'd choose the wedding over the game. It was great to see friends again that had moved away, and to be a part of Chris & Amber's day! It'll definitely be easy for me to remember their anniversary, that's for sure!
There were other birthday shenanigans that went down though. When I got to Walker Building on Friday morning (the day before my birthday), I discovered a giant poster of none other than Algore behind my desk. Lovely. Just who I want to be staring over my shoulder while I work... Walter had (as usual for pranks that get pulled on me) loaned Kerrie his keys to our office, and then she, Tracy & Amanda went to town putting that up. I do plan on taking Algore down, 
lest his hot air or liberal agenda or bad science begin to affect me, but I've so far been too lazy to do it! And then when I got home from Toledo, I discovered that Tracy & Amanda had also been let into my bedroom by Tim, because in the place of one of my Lord of the Rings posters was a ginormous blown-up GOES satellite photo of Hurricane Ivan from 2004, when Ivan was a monster in the Gulf of Mexico. Seriously, it's huge, it takes up most of my wall. Unlike Algore though, Ivan will stay up for awhile. I'm a bit more fond of a blustery storm than a blustery socialist. :-P
Posted by Jared at 11:46 PM | Comments (3)