Not so monsoonal...

I'm Moving to France!...and Cleveland?

I found a new advisor, new project, new goals. I no longer am the Quantum Dots guy, I am now Mr. Solid Oxide Fuel Cells, that name hasn't stuck yet but I am working on it. The project is to design hierarchical porous microstructures for solid oxide fuel cells. In this way they can become more efficient,durable, reliable, and economical, at least that's what is being said in the Grant proposal. The project is a joint effort with SIMAP labs in Grenoble, France. This means that over the next four years I will be living in the French alps for approximately 9 months.

The project is currently being funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) since this is a governmental entity I'm supposedly not at liberty to discuss any further details of the project. My advisor (Dr. Bordia) is having me solicit for funding from other sources however. I am in the process of sending in my proposal to NASA for further funding. If the proposal succeeds I will be an official employee of NASA meaning I will have to do research for them as well. Unfortunately this means that on top of France I'll be living in Cleveland for about two summers. It seems that I won't have any time in Seattle!

Beautiful, clear, cold weather today. This is the view from West Seattle where Eli and I explored today. The tallest building is the Columbia tower. In case you were wondering, the Space needle is on the left-hand side. :)

Teaching has been going very well for the most part. Lot's of grading and dealing with whining. I had a girl get cut, a guy got burned, but it could have been a lot worse. My students think that I grade too hard, I have a few that want to meet with me and complain. They are kinda spoiled in my opinion. I'm trying to break them down :) Feel the pain that I felt in Undergrad. This is a picture I took of them putting a ceramic crucible full of aluminum into a furnace.

This coming week is New Grad Student visit day (my cousin Jason was admitted to UW) so I have to play gracious host to all the incoming grad students because I'm the junior member of my research group. On top of visit day this weekend I am in charge of Olympus week next week because my boss will be out of town and she said I'd be best for the job. Essentially Olympus week is a four day event where Olympus brings in about four top of the line microscopes (optical, laser, confocal, stereo and video) and teaches our juniors how to use them during the day and then makes sales pitches to local companies in the evenings. There will be speakers, workshops, and meetings, and I have to deal with everything, including the obnoxious Olympus rep. He's looks and acts like this guy.

Rachel visited: We took Seattle by storm (no pun intended). We were given free pitchers of beer and pizza for both being so attractive. Rachel it transpires fits PERFECTLY on my tiny couch. She is the largest person that could possibly live full time in my apartment. So if you are below 4'11" and about 100 pounds then you are in luck.

p90x:
I completed day 30 and decided it was going to kill me. I can now do a lot of pullups which is cool, but I'd rather get exercise outside or play raquetball or something. Speaking of which, I took my bike out yesterday and mid bike ride my back axle decided to shear away from the wheel. In a completely ironic and serendipidous way this happened RIGHT outside of a bike repair shop.

Archie! That is all.

2011: A New Year

Haven't written for a while, this definitely isn't for lack of life events.

I'm watching Little Shop of Horrors right now, I forgot how good the music is.

Teaching:

This quarter I'm teaching a lab on metallurgical techniques. This is the most fun lab of the series because the students get to sand cast something of their own design. Then they get to do different metal treatments like Jominy and carburization. The problem is that the administration in their infinite wisdom has shortened my lab section from four sessions to three. This means that I am very short on time and it's difficult to teach everything that needs to be taught in that amount of time. The students are really enjoying it though and I like teaching a lot.

Advisors:
I'm still looking for an advisor who has projects that I like and a group that I can get along with. I have meetings tomorrow with two different people, we'll see how they go.

Hillel Things:
The president of Hillel took me out for coffee, I guess they like to meet all of the new members of the Jewish community. I went to the Young Jewish Professionals Happy Hour which was in downtown Capitol Hill. They rented out a winery downtown and had free wine tastings and really good nosh. The wine was meh though.

Today I went to a L'Dor V'Dor (generation to generation) Bagel Brunch. Apparently the senior jewish community in seattle is really active, they take trips to hawaii, and alaska, and meet all the time. They wanted to meet with the younger generation here. So there was a free brunch at the hillel. Some very interesting people. Mom, what does Schmata mean? They all kept saying that and laughing. These were some pretty sassy old people. It was a very nice meeting.

SLO:
Inness and I took a surprise trip to SLO to see my friend Lisa's senior vocal recital. It was a lot of fun and reminded me how much I miss living in San Luis Obispo. I got to see a bunch of old friends, eat at all my favorite places, hear some beautiful music and talk nerdy with a bunch of engineers. I was introduced to "The Big Bang Theory" which is a TV show about a bunch of nerds. "A whirling vortex of entropy..." is my new favorite quote.



Other:
ARCHIE GOT HIS DIPLOMA! So proud.

Rachel is coming this weekend for a visit. I'm not sure what we'll do yet, but it should be fun.

I'm halfway through the 3rd week of p90x. It's hard but very good for me. I can't wait for summer up here, Seattle is supposed to have amazing summers. That's when people should come visit, hint hint, wink wink.

Coming home soon.

First of all I'm in a cafe that actually charges for internet so I shall not be staying long. The result of this being a disjointed sounding entry.

Well it did snow...a lot. It was really really cold but very pretty everywhere.

Finals have been most stressful mostly from non-finals related things, such as family and my students who seem to be able to find me at all hours of the day no matter where I hide. I am weeks behind with my grading so I'll be doing a lot of that when I get home for winter break. I did find out that I passed my grad class. Surprising considering the events of the final. I was the second person to finish the test, I went up to hand it in and in front of the class in a whisper that nevertheless carried to the whole room he started orally grading my paper. Flipping through and going "No no, that's not right." Then he started discussing with me why things were wrong which was mortifying because the entire class was listening in trying to get hints for their own tests. I ended up getting a D on the final, but in a grad engineering class that curves to a 3.4/4.0. I needed a 3.2 to pass so I was happy with that. The thing that helped me pass was my paper probably. It took me weeks to write and was entitled "Structure-Property Characteristics of Iron Disulfide and their Relations to Bonding and Symmetry."

I did attend a Hannukah party with Eli's neighbors, the Gettlemans. Latkas were wonderful but there was a horrible woman there who said that Archie was the ugliest thing she had ever seen. I gave her such a death glare. Then we discussed the fact that she had been laid off work and I was a full-time TA at the University of Washington pursueing my PhD at the ripe old age of 23 with a full scholarship and fellowship. Horrible woman.

I got my Hanukkah presents to myself too. A beautiful new watch (rose gold), a new rainproof backpack that will let me take my laptop to school, and my new snow boots (Thanks mom and dad).

My last junior lab of the quarter starts in 20 minutes, it'll be nice to finally be done teaching optical and X-ray diffraction. Although I must say I really like teaching, but I think I am too accomodating to my students, I need to be a little meaner so they don't ask me questions at all hours of the day. I also heard through the grapevine that there was a facebook discussion about me at 3am the night before my lab was due.

I am in the process of checking out new advisors in case it turns out that I want to leave the Ginger group indefinitely. I have talked to a variety of people in the department from biologists to chemists to physicists to materials scientists. I'm not sure what I will be pursueing exactly.

Last night Eli and I went to the Botanical gardens where I guess each christmas they decorate it with thousands of lights. Dad would have liked it, it was way over the top but still very pretty. Luckily it hasn't been too cold recently, not even that wet to tell you the truth.

Oh and I got an awesome hat!

No one insults Archie, no one.

Supposed to Snow this Weekend!

It's now well into November and it is getting cold. It's been raining for nearly a week now. It's about 38 degrees outside and they say that there is about a 30% chance of snow for where I live. I need gloves.

Seattle in Fall

The leaves all changed color, it was very beautiful. I have now explored some new neighborhoods Ravenna, Greenlake, Wallingford, and Ballard which are all right around adjacent neighborhoods to the U District. These are places where I might live in the future. They were all very nice, and a lot less expensive than where I live now.

I've only included pictures I took of trees though because I like them better.

Inness and her Functions

Inness and I attended many different functions this month. Here are some of the highlights. We joined a casual Jazz singers group. Where we, along with some very accomplished jazz vocalists, all got together on a Saturday afternoon and sight read some tight-harmony jazz. For just sight-reading it sounded really good and it was nice to get some singing in. We definitely were the youngest people there.

Seattle hosts something called couchfest every year. It is an independent film festival that has it's viewing parties in normal people's houses. Inness and I went to the "Comedy and Awkward Awesomeness" showing. It was literally in someone's apartment that we had never met. They had set up a projector and 20 strangers showed up to view about 15 short films. Some good, some not so good. Afterwards however we stumbled upon an Ethiopian (I think Ethiopian) diner where they had the best chai tea.

One of my personal favorites of the night. Grandma don't watch...http://vimeo.com/11649385

We also attended a free vegetarian cooking class where they taught some things about being vegetarian as well as how to cook some tasty dishes. A lot of it made sense and it seemed good in health/environmental/ethical ways. I don't think I'm going to become full vegetarian, but I am going to try to phase out meat at least a few days a week.

Jewish Things:

I only managed to do two Jewish/Israeli things this so far. I went to a Hebrew discussion group which just ended up being me and one other guy trying to speak in hebrew at a local bar. He was a native speaker and very excited about everything so I just tried so make him slow down. It was nice though, and he's going to be having these discussion groups about once a month.

Megan, Inness, and I went to Hillel where they were putting on an Israeli dinner in conjunction with an Israeli organization that teaches natives how to cook professionally. Nine Jewish woman from all over the world (Yemem, Tunisia, Ethiopia, Turkey, India, Israel) all came and cooked us dinner, told us their stories and then as any good Jewish mother would, thrust food at us and complained we didn't eat enough. I took home four pita breads in my pockets that night because they wouldn't take "no" as an answer.

Schoolish Things

Lots of midterms in quantum mechanics this month. That was pretty exhausting. I ended up doing fine on all of them, not that great, but ok. We are learning the derivations of EVERY crystallographic system known to man. I'm also supposed to be writing a term paper on the crystallography and properties of Iron Sulfide (FeS2) also known as pyrite or "fool's gold". Needless to say I am extremely far behind on that.

This is a picture that my friend Eli took of me while we were exploring downtown Seattle on Veteran's Day. I finally went back to Pike Place Market and saw some fish being thrown.

Research

I am currently getting trained to use a Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM). It is a very powerful microscope capable of seeing down to atomic resolution. It takes quite a long time to get good at it. So far I have spent over four hours, and over $500 of my advisors money, sitting in front of this thing trying to get pictures. It's really fun to use since it actually works more like a projector than a typical microscope.

The dots that make up the big blobs in the picture above are actually individual atoms. The things that make up EVERYTHING. To use the proper vernacular I was "geeking" out when I saw this on the microscope. This picture is from a sample that the trainer prepared, they are Gold (Au) nanoparticles. My sample that I did today was not nearly as good as hers was. I made Copper Sulfide (Cu2S) quantum dots in lab on Monday. I must not have prepared my sample too well because it ended up looking like this:

Each of the little dark circles is a nanoparticle approximately 2-3 nm in diameter. Not the best image, but those are in fact nanocrystals that I made and imaged.

TAing

As part of my fellowship I got to attend a luncheon the other day where I got to meet my benefactor. His name was Tom Delimitros. He introduced himself like this:

"Hi I'm Tom, I have a boat..."

He was a very rich guy, very smart, with a big yacht that he lives on in Seattle when he isn't at his mansion in Texas. He also ended up being the keynote speaker for the event which took place in the skybox of Husky Stadium.

My normal TA duties certainly aren't as entertaining usually. Things have been going well enough. I have a large pile of reports sitting on my desk that I need to start reading. I like the students, and it hasn't gotten too boring yet.

I'm not so sure about coffee, but Seattle has the BEST hot chocolate you could ever ask for. There are all these artesian chocolate cafes (Chocolati, Chocolate Bar...) where they serve European drinking chocolate. I...have...no...words.

This is Bailey, my officemate. What do you think is Archie cuter?

Oh and I forgot to mention just how much I HATE my radiator. Absolutely hate it. Without fail at 5am it'll start banging so loudly it sounds like Archie got inside it with a monkey wrench. Building maintenance can't do a thing about it. I HATE my radiator.

Wow I spent a lot of money this month!

Looks like I haven't written in a very long time. So I will try to recap the highlights and skate over the dull/unpleasant portions.

New York

I went to New York to see the Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers in concert. It was worth every penny. The weather in New York was absolutely perfect, the company was great, concert incredible and everything went off pretty much without a hitch.

We spent most of our time in New York getting incredibly lost in Central Park. I had no idea how large that park was. Last year when I went I didn't get nearly as lost as I did this time, and this time I had another navigator and my new phone which has Google maps.

The actual concert was really beyond words. Just imagine being in Radio City Music Hall with a full house that loves Lord of the Rings as much if not more than you. They laugh and cry at all the right parts. The orchestra and singers were so so good. The scene in the end where Gandalf and Eomer appear to save the day where the orchestra is playing full out and the boy-soprano sings was -- transcendent, only way to put it.

We ate very well while we were in the city, here are all the types of food that we had.

Food list: Korean, Irish Pub with Indian fare, French Bistro (the best food was here), Hot Dogs, Tapas Bar, Cinnabon!, Italian

On the last day there Christine and I went to see Ground Zero, it was a very strange experience, but I'm glad that I did it. The memorial is going to be very beautiful.

It was a very quick trip. I can't wait to go back and see the "Return of the King."

Teaching

I starting my teaching duties, in fact I have already gone through one rotation and am halfway through my second group of students. The first rotation was really good, there weren't any big snags along the way. The students aren't as prepared as I would have expected them to be, but I suppose that is why I am there. The students are fun to work with (except my current afternoon session where it is like pulling teeth to get anyone to answer questions). Most of them are over 21 or over so it is a little weird to be teaching and controlling their grades but I'm getting the hang of it. My afternoon session has this one guy who's probably 45 or so. He is so overbearing that none of the other students answer anything. I find him obnoxious. I will be getting my first set of reports back in a week then I'm going to have a lot of grading to do, until then I don't have too much to do outside of labtime. The lab professor told me in confidence that he heard from my first rotation of students that I did a good job, so that was kinda a confidence booster. But then he added more work into the lab because he said I could handle it. "sigh"

Research

So I started my research in earnest. Last week I spent pretty much all of Monday, Wednesday, and Friday in my new chem lab learning their process for making lead sulfide (PbS) quantum dots. They have a much more advanced set up than I did in my lab at Cal Poly so the procedure takes a lot longer, but the end result is much better. I think that I did a pretty good job overall. They gave me a desk of my own, and if I ask really nicely they may buy me a computer.

Since the lab contains a lot of light-sensitive devices they have blocked out all the windows so it makes the environment a little depressing. I went in at 9am and got out at 5:30pm and I only saw the sun during my lunch break. The work was fun though and I think it'll fit me really well in the future.

Weather

I must say Seattle hasn't been as rainy as it has been made out to be (apparently we are having a freak October though) it has been raining down south in LA while up here it has been clear and sunny almost everyday. That trend is coming to an end this weekend though. They are forecasting cloudy skies from now till March!

ARCHIE!!!! What happened!? I think you need to stop feeding him so much.

September 26th - And so it begins

This week things actually started to come together schoolwise. Technically classes do not start until next Wednesday but I was really busy nonetheless. On Monday I attended a TEDx Change talk. If you are unfamiliar with TED talks then I will catch you up to speed. TEDx Change is a really amazing seminar series that takes place around the world. They get the best and the brightest to give free speeches that are broadcast across the world live. This was the first talk that I've ever attended in person, usually I just watch them on youtube. The talk on Monday was about "Millenium Development Goals" for developing nations. It was really very good. Bill Gates Sr. and Bill Gates wife both spoke and were really excellent.

One thing in particular that I found interesting, and obviously so did the speakers since they brought it up, was that Coke is a ubiquitous brand around the world and you can find it and get it literally anywhere. NGOs are now talking and working with Coke to better develop a marketing plan so that they can get medicine and knowledge spread in the same way. They went really far into detail but I won't bother putting it down.

On Tuesday my Teaching Assistant (TA) orientation began. Many long talks about what to expect, how to conduct yourself, and what to do in certain situations. The TA union came and talked to us. Disability services talked to us and so on. I met some of my "cohorts" they call them here, but I would just call them classmates. There are only 12 of us cohorts in Materials this year. I guess that is actually not too far off from average, it's a small department. My classmates seem nice enough. They are from all walks of life. Most of them weren't Materials in undergrad, they were physics or chemistry. Some of them are working part time and some have been out of college for quite a while. We were given a lab tour where I saw some pretty fancy stuff. They have a great machine shop here that I can get access to. I saw my XRD that I will be teaching with in a week, it's a nice one.

Met with two other professors as potential advisors. One was chemical engineering and the other was just straight chemistry. I think I will end up working with the chemistry guy just for his projects, but I won't say too much further now. I'm going to sit in on his lab group meeting tomorrow just to get a feel for the group dynamic.

Computer Science Building and Drumheller Fountain, see the rainbow?

The weather has been really nice almost the whole time this week. A bit drizzly for a while but it cleared up. Yesterday my friend Donnie from Cal Poly visited for dinner. He was in the area moving his brother in. OOOOOOOOOO I forgot, and yesterday I went to the Fremont Oktoberfest which was AMAZING! About five miles from here. They had tons of extremely delicious beers, they had biergartens, lounges, bratwurst, curly fries. Oh it was really good. Blue Moon debuted a beer that won't be available for a long time. It was called Abbey Orange and it was incredible.

I finally downloaded some of my pictures onto my hard drive because I got my fellowship today. In celebration I bought Adobe CS5. I got photoshop. illustrator, indesign and acrobat for $200 because I'm a grad student. Considering that if I paid retail it would be over $1000 I was really happy. So I have been spending today cleaning up my hard drive to make it run really well. Here are some pictures that I recently took.

Suzzallo Library Reading Room - often referred to as the "Harry Potter Room"

Leaf :)

Wetlands Surrounding campus

Sylvan (Greek) Theatre - my building is right behind those pillars. I have an office on the top floor. Well I desk in a closet with three other people is more like it.

Husky Stadium - Filled for our game against the Nebraska Huskers. We lost spectacularly, very sad.

September 18th - Settling In

Well I probably shouldn't be writing this right now seeing as I'm all liquored up on Sangria but I'll give it a shot ( I will explain shortly). Many things happened this week. I met with three potential professors, got a coat, a new phone, explored downtown Seattle and after tonight I saw Newcastle/Espana.

Coat:

So I'd been looking for a coat for a long time Goodwill, Ross, thrift stores, Nordstroms rack. Nothing was quite right. The closest thing was a coat at Nordstroms rack that was $1,195 marked down from $3,395. I ended up getting a wool peacoat at a used clothing store for $45. It was originally a $500 coat so not too bad. Well it needed a bit of TLC. There were stains, missing buttons, the sleeves were a bit too short and it was a bit too large in the waist, but that is all being taken care of as we speak and on Tuesday I should have myself a brand new tailored peacoat.

From the coat, there is a direct segway into my NEW phone! As I was walking home from the alteration place I passed by Verizon and went inside. I ended up getting the new Blackberry Bold which is a very nice professional smart phone, excellent for text, email, and internet. But it took so long that by the time I left the shop, the blue skies had given way to rain. And since I was now coatless I had to walk/jog home which was not that close. The phone is really nice, I like it a lot, although I still don't really know how to use most of the features. There is an application on there to find local happy hours, it even will pinpoint your location, because it has an internal GPS, and give you step-by-step directions on how to get where you want. This took Megan and myself to Palomino, a rather swanky establishment at the top floor of the city centre (Don't get excited, it's only 3 floors up) but it is in the middle of beautiful downtown Seattle.

Here I had two amazing pomegranate mojitos, Megan had two incredible Pear-Ginger Martinis, and we split a wild mushroom flatbread, Dungeness Crab dip, and a huge bowl of puget sound clams for about $40. Then we got to walk the streets in the rain and get on a bus back to the U district. All care of my new phones directions. Oh and Mom thanks for mailing the UPASS. The busses here are about $2 each way. With the UPASS they are all free.

Professorial Meetings:

These were very interesting, I had three of them back to back. First I met Professor Pauzauskie. A recent Berkeley graduate, he was extremely nice, and he listened intensely to what I had to say, his gaze was almost Dumbledore like. He is doing work with optomechanics meaning moving objects using only light. Its really cool and he is trying to employ these techniques as well as some others to work in the field of nanomedicine. For example, with his "laser tweezers" (thats really what they are called) he can grab a single virus, or bacteria and move it any way he wants and actually video record it. In this way you can physically see how a virus infects a cell by literally poking them at each other.

The second professor I met was Dr. Christine Luscombe, she had a very interesting accent, almost British but not quite. The thing that I didn't like about her was her timidness. She didn't meet my eye when I asked any questions, she seemed quite busy with other things to tell the truth. Her projects were really cool though. She recently got a large grant to work on electrochromic windows which act like transition lenses but they also work like solar panels. In this way buildings could be their own power plants.

Third professor was the department chair and he didn't listen to anything I said, he just talked about what he did.

So basically at this point I'm going with Pauzauskie even though his projects don't interest me quite as much at this point. I do have two other professors to interview next week, and I'm gonna try to talk to some grad students before I make such a big decision.

After talking with the professors I had a moment of zen where I sat in Red Square and sketched Suzallo library while listening to music on my ipod and sipping my latte. Life is good.

The sketch came out kinda crooked because I was sketching at an angle. It was a very clear day and on such days you can see Mt. Rainier through the main plaza of campus. It's one of the those mountains that actually makes you gasp. Usually it isn't visible because of clouds, but when it's out you know it. Over 14,000 feet it looks huge even from how far away it is. I couldn't take a good picture so I've included one from google.

Actually the meeting with Dr. Pauzauskie went so well that we ran out of time. We scheduled to meet up again the next day. This has been the only time so far that I was caught in a torrential downpour. The sky was blue in the morning, grayed over slightly and then it was like the entire heavens were falling onto my hoodless jacket. My question then became "Who's brilliant idea was it to pave almost the entire campus of a place where it rained 3/4 of the year in slippery brick?!?" But I made it to the meeting.

Our 30 min meeting turned into almost 2 hours of talking about grad school and life. It was really good. The above picture is Dr. Peter Pauzauskie.

Random:

I made an appointment with a dentist, turns out the most highly recommended one in the area is about 6 doors down from me, in the same building. Highly convenient. I also got a prescription for massage so that I can get them covered by insurance. Turns out the deal isn't quite as good as I thought. The University will only cover 50% of the cost up to $250 and it seems like massages here are more expensive than they were down in LA. I found the best chai latte that I ever had over at Trabant Chai and Cafe, it was actually meteoric. I finally got my wireless internet so my apartment looks good. I don't have pics though sorry.

Today: Disclaimer - I am aware that it is Yom Kippur, I actually did a lot of reflection last night and this morning. I forgot to fast and ate breakfast and then I figured well I already broke it so...

What an exciting day today was. It started off with farmers where I bought far too much, but I received assurance from Student Fiscal Services that my $10,000 will be available Monday. I know that about $3000 of that immediately goes to Mom. I bought a pound of fresh chanterelles for $8, yes eight dollars. I bought heirloom tomatoes, nectartines and pluots, squash, spinach, basil, river cheddar cheese, and Inness bought me maple candies from Quebec and Honeycrisp apples, a very popular, HUGE apple that is really good. Its all quite delectable and shall be a fun week of cooking. I'm gonna make soup I think and other tasty things that will start to last me when I don't have time to cook. After Farmers Inness and I went to Capitol Hill where we had excellent New York style pizza and we watched the Huskies lose to Nebraska (boo!). Then against my better judgment I had some really good artisan vanilla ice cream and then went back to apartment completely miserable full.

Later that night we were invited to a Paella and Flamenco party by a coworker of Inness' mom. So I thought I would have time to rest up go to the gym and then leave in the evening, I was wrong. I had barely started digesting when Inness' mom came and picked us up. She was already in the area and with football traffic it would have been terrible to come back so I had to change into "spanish" clothes and then rush out the door. I accompanied Inness, her mom and her mom's boyfriend on errands then we went to the Paella party which was amazing. These were some very rich people. It was up in Newcastle in the mountains. Their backyard had it's own protected wetland. We were greeted at the door by a guy serving Spanish almonds and sherry. Then we had our choice of fine spanish wine. There were empanadas, shrimp, all sorts of things and then really excellent paella. There was a professional flamenco guitarist, a singer, and two really good dancers. It was quite the party, sorta surreal.

Now I am home, it is raining lightly outside. Tomorrow I shall digest the repasts from this week. Go to the gym and finish cleaning the apartment. I have some laundry to do as well.

These are the pictures that Inness and I took at the ACLU thing last week.

Hope you enjoyed all the writing. Be sure to post comments if you want me to continue.