Something to Talk About

Here are some tidbits from conversations I have participated in this week:

While at dinner:
Friend: I am the Korihor of dating!
Friend 2: You are trying to win people over on to your side.
Friend 3: "And when they were married, that was the end thereof."

About a friend's impeccable sense of style.
Friend: DG, you either dress like a prep or a thug.  Why is that?
DG: Like a thug?
Me: You wore a knit cap the other day.
DG: It was cold outside!
Me: We were inside.  And it was perfectly situated on your head.  I am never sure if you know how perfectly you dress or not.  Is it planned or...?
DG: Me trying too hard?
Me: Well, I wasn't going to say it but...
DG: Yep, I'm definitely trying too hard.

At work:
Me: So, there's gas leaking right outside our window.
Colleague: Is this a problem?
Me: I was just wanting to let you guys know in case you didn't know about it already.  I wondered if it was related to the leak you had earlier this week.
Lab Manager: No, that was coolant leaking.  You say, this is gas leaking?
Me: Yep.  I noticed it on Monday but we just opened our windows and I realized that it's still going so I thought I should let you know.
Lab Manager: The compressor room exhausts gas into the atmosphere after an experiment.  It is probably just the noise of that echoing off the building.
Me:  Hmm...except that this week is the first time I've heard it and you've run the experiment many times before.
Lab Manager: I was hoping you wouldn't notice that flawed logic.  I'll go check it out.

At home:
Linds: You have a big box outside your door.
Me: Yep, I ordered something.  It's probably just that.
<I lug it inside>
Me: It's paper.  Wait, this is all paper?
Linds: Looks like it.
Me: I didn't realize I ordered so much. 5000 sheets?
Linds: Didn't you notice it when you bought it?
Me: Well, no, I assumed it was just a ream.
Linds: Isn't there a significant price difference between one ream and all of that?
Me: Isn't paper expensive?
Linds: How expensive are you talking?
<we look up my order>
Me: Oops. I really did just order an order of magnitude more paper than I wanted.  Oh no!  My poor mailman!  He lugged this thing all the way down here just for me to return it!
[We returned the paper in-store and Linds told the manager the whole story so that he could laugh at my blunder too.  It made his night.]

Here's something awesome: Gershwin playing Gershwin.  It's a different version than how he recorded it later but it's really jazzy and downright inspiring. (nod to Austin for sharing it with me)

Relating

Have you ever read House of Mirth?

I'm only a third of the way through the book so there will be no spoilers, I promise.  

Anyway, from page one of this book, my heart has been bleeding for the main character, Lily Bart.  She's "twenty nine and unmarried in a society and connection where those who have failed to get married are simply those who have failed to get a man."  Wait, wrong book but similar idea.

She's been out (in the nineteenth century sense) for 11 seasons and has yet to land herself a rich husband.  At this point, I haven't heard too much about her previous 11 years of conquests (except that she was in love only once).  However, we are immediately thrown into her current state and dilemmas accompanying them.

While reading this book, I often think, "Lily and I are the same person!"

Reading it last night, though, I stopped myself.  "The same person how?!"

Lily is a poor girl, yes, but she was raised as a rich debutante in fashionable and extravagant New York Society in the early 1900's.

Sure, she's around 30 and unmarried, but she is more concerned about her future husband having a fat bank book rather than any other important qualities.

And then, the husband of her friend handed over a check for five hundred dollars and suddenly wanted to be all chummy with her.  I'm being generous in my description of chummy.  I really mean, he would have had no qualms about breaking any of his marital vows if Lily even so much as encouraged him a little.

All of that gave me the biggest pause.  Five hundred dollars in 1905?  Having an affair with a married man?  I gasp in shock at how different our situations are.

And yet, the underlying issues are still there, those issues that have me feeling a bond to this character: She's torn between obligations and expectations of the society she lives in with her own desires and impulses for happiness and freedom.  But do you reconcile the two when you don't have the means, when you're living from day-to-day and struggling to keep your head above water?  

I felt her desperation from the very first page.  She's a person who is inwardly anxious and terrified but outwardly, confident and calculating.  Except she keeps making these mistakes that end her in the above blunder .  Instead, I can only hope that she won't give up and will do her very best to rise above her current situation.  

"Don't give up, Er...erm...Lily!  Don't give up...ever!"

Don't Quit Your Day Job

When I was in Japan, I fell in love with the Pilot FriXion pen.  It's a great pen, with a nice ink that writes easily and clearly and is even erasable.

I loved this pen so much that...
(1) I bought several packs of them before I left Japan.
(2) I gave them as a gift for my labmate as his souvenir
(3) When I attended a Tech fair and could choose between a number of cheap gifts, I chose this pen over the free computer keyboard they were handing out.  Ponta was shocked, "You want that pen when you could have a free keyboard?"  I smiled back.  "Yes!  Besides, what would I do with a Japanese keyboard?  I don't need any more luggage to haul back to the US."

I had no idea if they sold them in the US but I wasn't taking any chances.

Turns out they do sell them here but the Japanese design is better (of course it is).  However, I also found out from my internet searching that the pen uses a new type of ink technology that fades with friction. 

The moment I gave one of the US versions of the pens to my labmate and told him about the ink technology, he started laughing, "Oh man, now I just want to see what will happen if we put a heat gun to this."

We work in a lab that happen to have heat guns so we sprinted downstairs to try it out.  It's true!  Disappearing ink!

It's like an awesome spy gadget.  

Except, you can still see what you wrote, even after it's disappeared.

    And what spy carries a heat gun around them to destroy the evidence?

           Wouldn't burning the evidence be just as effective?


Yeah, so no worries about spies trying to buy out all my pens.

Now, I just have to remember not to leave anything I've written out in the summer heat...ever.

Now you see it.  

Now you don't. 

 Except, you can still kind of see it.  (It's much more clear in person)

Tomorrow

After days of learning a lot about wiring and breakers, I found the problem behind our other broken pump.  I had flipped a switch in another lab. 

Days of climbing up and down ladders, opening up hatches and breakers, and following every bit of wiring to find that I had simply left a switch on. 

Such is life.

Pretending

Last week, my pump broke.  As you know.  But as it turned out, two pumps broke that day.

Since the pump was broken, as our lab tech and I were pulling out the broken laser-cooling pump to prepare it to be shipped back, we asked a colleague to turn off pit pump for us.

"Sure,"  He went over and flipped the switch.

"Uh... That didn't work."  I called up to him.  "The pump is still running!"

He called back down, "I've switched it 'on' and 'off' several times now.  Nothing's working?"
"Nope."

Hmm, the switch must have failed.  We went off in search of the pump's breaker.

My colleague found it and flipped the breaker open.  The pump stopped.

And then the alarm went off.
"What?!  We have an alarm on this pump?"  My colleague and I scratched our heads for a second, but then, the noise annoyed us so much that we went and flipped the breaker open.

We continued to take the broken pump out and shipped it off.

The next day, someone came looking for me.  "The pit pump is still running.  Is there a reason for that?"
"Yeah, we can't turn it off."

This week, my task has been to figure out how to turn off the pit pump.  And it's turned into a bigger headache than expected.  For one, the switch isn't broken.  We tested it, several times.  Secondly, the wires go down into this very long complicated series of conduits and boxes and other breakers.  Of course, none of this is labeled.  Third, I generally have no idea what I'm doing.

Today, I walked into the lab tech's office to give a report, "So, I went and pulled the fuses from the wires we were looking at.  I then tested the two wires up above and the circuit was open.  I flipped the breakers closed and nothing turned on.  So the short is happening on the switch end side of the circuit."

The lab tech nodded and another colleague stared at me in amazement.  "Wow, you sound like you know what you're talking about."

Seventh year of my PhD and what am I doing?

Learning the hard way about what it's like to be an electrician.  Alternate career path?

Maybe so.

The Days We Never Saw the Sun

Last night, I had the weirdest dream.  Everyone I knew was living on a series of rocks - let's call them planets.  There we were, speeding through the universe in a fleet of tiny floating islands.

It looked kind of like this: 

 Image from nasa.gov

Sounds adventurous, right?  I spent most of my time in my bathrobe and pajamas eating food in some cafeteria while people came to visit me and tell me how fabulous their lives were and what new islands they had discovered.

 Finally, someone told me I needed to get myself off the big rock.  I looked out at the fleet of still unexplored islands and said, "I miss the sun."

It seems that we were floating in some big orbit but we were behind some really big rock that blocked us from the sun permanently.

Everyone laughed at me.  "Erin, what a silly thing to say!  Our new lives are so exciting.  Why would you miss something as silly as that?"

But I looked out at the dark, gray, rocks without any kind of growth on them and my heart hurt.  So, I continued to sit in my bathrobe, eating bowls of rice while people came and told me of their adventures.  The people who traveled the furthest out before returning to tell me of their tales got more of my attention.

"Is there an island that I can see earthrise?"  I asked, somewhat hopefully.  They all shrugged.

 Image taken by Apollo 8 Crew, 1968.  Image from nasa.gov

Somehow the hope of seeing earthrise at least was enough for me to venture back into normal life.  I got ready to go and packed my bags and asked how I could get to the farthest island.  My friends were excited to see me taking some steps for myself but when I told them I was going out there to see if I could see the sun or the earth, they stuck me on a tour bus/spacecraft instead.  The tour gave you a fun view of all the islands and stopped several times to laugh at the absurdity of a place with trees and grass.

Their laughs just hurt me more though.  I was homesick and I just wanted to go back.

But for some reason, we couldn't go back and so my friends kept trying to convince me it was for the best.

It was a very sad dream.

I woke up, grateful for the sun and the earth in ways I never thought about before.  Funny, huh?

Survey Says

Today, in English class, we discussed how teachers in schools think that students' ability to significantly changing due to our daily use of technology.

It was inspired by this article from the New York Times. Essentially, the article said this: a survey that went to schools around the country, teachers everywhere regardless of teaching experience and age felt that students were requiring more and more entertaining to stay engaged in the classroom.  The teachers all felt that this was due to digital technology. 

From the article:

"The surveys also found that many teachers said technology could be a useful educational tool. In the Pew survey, which was done in conjunction with the College Board and the National Writing Project, roughly 75 percent of 2,462 teachers surveyed said that the Internet and search engines had a “mostly positive” impact on student research skills. And they said such tools had made students more self-sufficient researchers.

But nearly 90 percent said that digital technologies were creating “an easily distracted generation with short attention spans.”

Similarly, of the 685 teachers surveyed in the Common Sense project, 71 percent said they thought technology was hurting attention span “somewhat” or “a lot.” About 60 percent said it hindered students’ ability to write and communicate face to face, and almost half said it hurt critical thinking and their ability to do homework."

Surveys are kind of fascinating things for me.  When I'm asked to evaluate a product, I usually get the following options: extremely dissatisfied, very dissatisfied, somewhat dissatisfied, neutral, somewhat satisfied, very satisfied, extremely satisfied.

When I read the internet has a "mostly positive" effect, I instantly see a lot of teachers marking the "somewhat satisfied" box.  It's not a good thing.  It's just better than a neutral thing.  That's not saying much.

Likewise, the difference between "somewhat" and "a lot" are pretty different as well.  It's the difference between a happy customer and an "eh" customer.

Then again, I'll just trust that the people who did the survey ran through all the statistical information to make sure it's significant.  We know stats aren't my forte.

On another slightly related note, one of my English students told me she liked me hair but told me that statistically women cut their hair when they go through a break up.  And also that statistically older women like their hair short.