Saturday, October 27, 2007
Thesis defense
So, I came across this site in a round about sort of way. One of our work colleagues, in response to a question about helping out in a booth wrote:
I alreadny replaied my join at AGU meeting.
So, not that funny but there were some other emails in the thread and I followed one to somebody's website where they have their resume, journal article etc. Well, it's not hosted on the UAF webservers but on another one so they signed up for the google ads. I thought it would be funny to click on the add since the website probably gets visitors pretty infrequently. So the ad was for one of those paper mill aggregators to help you pump out the pretend thesis or whatever. Anyway, clicked through a few of the links and was amused by the writing quality of these companies. Here's a typical example:
007 term papers dot com (tricksy name and everything). Anyway, would you trust someone to write you a good paper.. for 'reference material' that writes like this:
We Guarantee that your term paper or research paper begins with you, the customer! We use college professors and college instructors whose areas of expertise matches the field in which you require assistance with. Thus, your satisfaction is 100% guaranteed. We want you to be pleased with our work so that you will become a long term, repeat customer and recommend us to all of your friends. We are in this business for the long haul and we want you to be part of it.
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Most Frightening Contest
Seems like they roll Halloween out even earlier than Christmas these days. I don't know what's more frightening, this pet photo album:
Dressed up pets
Or the portrait of a German business dude working to get an international airlines off the ground which will bring inflight smoking back to the skies.
Dressed up pets
Or the portrait of a German business dude working to get an international airlines off the ground which will bring inflight smoking back to the skies.
Monday, October 01, 2007
Time for a summer recap
Well, it's been a while hasn't it.... Yeah. To busy soaking up the sun and hanging out outside. Well, big news....
... I held a baby and it didn't scream. That doesn't happen every day. That's Morgan, Jeff and Loda's fresh new baby. Who has the best diaper covers you've ever seen!
So, summer's finally over. We're totally ready for it. I've been all over this summer. Nome was the usual highlight (working on my deviled ham and celery sandwich here from back in July):
But we saw some cool stuff out camping around the interior. Check out this monster mushroom:
Yeah, so, a pretty fun summer, plenty of posts to follow down below. I think I'll start things off with a typical scene, the TSA doing a crossword and chatting up the alaska airlines clerks. Ah, makes me feel nostalgic already:
... I held a baby and it didn't scream. That doesn't happen every day. That's Morgan, Jeff and Loda's fresh new baby. Who has the best diaper covers you've ever seen!
So, summer's finally over. We're totally ready for it. I've been all over this summer. Nome was the usual highlight (working on my deviled ham and celery sandwich here from back in July):
But we saw some cool stuff out camping around the interior. Check out this monster mushroom:
Yeah, so, a pretty fun summer, plenty of posts to follow down below. I think I'll start things off with a typical scene, the TSA doing a crossword and chatting up the alaska airlines clerks. Ah, makes me feel nostalgic already:
Barrow!
Or something. I really wasn't feeling the exclamation point up there. Two days after the Nome trip I left for Barrow. Anna was already up there and I helped to put in two big new stations for her where she's looking at ground temperatures and near surface soil moisture. Condtions were pretty miserable. blowing 10-15 the first day eventually getting up to 20-30 once I was wiring. Neat to make it that far north though. It was my first trip and hopefully not the last.
That's a pretty typical fall scene from up there. Pretty much nearly flat with lots of patterned ground. One highlight was soldering in the wind. It just takes a little longer for the iron to heat up but if you do it right you can still make a bit of headway:
So, this cracked me up. I don't know who thought it up but check out this 10 meter weather tower which is busy jacking out of the ground. I bet this site has only seen a couple winters but that's enough to raise the wind sensor elevation a decent chunk:
So, food up there is a mixed bag. Check out the menu from a place we'll probably pass on the next time but nice to go once for the experience I suppose. Pretty sweet deal, they throw in the lettuce and tomato free if you upgrade to the Hamburger deluxe!
So, that's Barrow in 30 seconds. As luck would have it Jessie was up there, too. We overlapped by a day up there although she was on another project. So, if you want to see picture of the new football stadium and everything (and it looks pretty cool from the pictures) head on over there!
That's a pretty typical fall scene from up there. Pretty much nearly flat with lots of patterned ground. One highlight was soldering in the wind. It just takes a little longer for the iron to heat up but if you do it right you can still make a bit of headway:
So, this cracked me up. I don't know who thought it up but check out this 10 meter weather tower which is busy jacking out of the ground. I bet this site has only seen a couple winters but that's enough to raise the wind sensor elevation a decent chunk:
So, food up there is a mixed bag. Check out the menu from a place we'll probably pass on the next time but nice to go once for the experience I suppose. Pretty sweet deal, they throw in the lettuce and tomato free if you upgrade to the Hamburger deluxe!
So, that's Barrow in 30 seconds. As luck would have it Jessie was up there, too. We overlapped by a day up there although she was on another project. So, if you want to see picture of the new football stadium and everything (and it looks pretty cool from the pictures) head on over there!
Fall Trip to Nome
So, a couple weeks ago Jessie and I went back to Nome for the last time on the year. I've got jury duty in October and Anna had a bunch of Barrow stuff going on so we went earlier than usual to Nome. It was pretty much one of the hardest trips of all time. Certainly of recent vintage. You may remember the four wheeler catching on fire back in July.... so, we got it fixed in Nome between trips. Jessie and I picked it up on our way out to Kougarok but we drove it like two miles and it was overheating like before (pre-fire) and so it got ditched. That was the bad news. The good news was we came between storms/ weather systems so the weather was terrific. Plus the fall colors were out:
So, instead of spending a couple days fourwheeling around Kougarok and then wrapping things up and preparing for winter in Council we slogged 25 miles across the tussocks (seriously, no exaggeration there) over four days. So, a couple years ago I timed myself over tussocks and at top speed I can go about one mile an hour. Total top speed though. Can easily drop to a half-mile per hour in the right conditions. So, a long of walking. The scenery was great though. Here's a scene from our 1km by 1km thaw grid out in Kougarok. We measure how deep the ground thawed out during the summer time on this 11 x 11 grid.
So, the walking was a downer but the company was fun. Here's Jessie at the K1 site out in Kougarok after a few hours of hiking. This site has been pretty fertile bear mauling (of the site) grounds in past years but this summer we got off scot free.
So, we survived and came back later than scheduled but in time for me to blurrily get to class Tuesday morning. One final highlight was prices out there. Check out gas station bottled water. A steal at $10 a gallon!
Water
Mega Rad
For the first time in my life saw Megadeth, Live!
How funny is that. Yeah, you thought perhaps they might be old and washed up but no way, still bringing the heat! ... all the way to cold, cold Fairbanks, Alaska. Johnny, Jessie, and I went and it's tough to say which was the best, the show or the people watching. All world class though. We started the evening parking the car near some swordfighting duct-tape sword kids and it just got better. Here's the man himself, Dave Mustaine in total action. He can really ham it up with the best.
Party on everyone!
How funny is that. Yeah, you thought perhaps they might be old and washed up but no way, still bringing the heat! ... all the way to cold, cold Fairbanks, Alaska. Johnny, Jessie, and I went and it's tough to say which was the best, the show or the people watching. All world class though. We started the evening parking the car near some swordfighting duct-tape sword kids and it just got better. Here's the man himself, Dave Mustaine in total action. He can really ham it up with the best.
Party on everyone!
Chena Dome
We didn't go super far (far enough) over labor day weekend but it was plenty good for wearing the dogs out.
To celebrate labor day, and the first one I haven't worked in a few years, Jessie and I took the dogs up Chena Dome out near Chena Hot Springs. It's a pretty tough 30 miles loop. Water turned out to be one of our weaknesses. The dirty dogs were pretty thirsty most of the trip:
And although there was supposed to be some water up there we couldn't find any this late in the year. So, we hung out on top till we ran out and then came back. In the mean time though the dogs had a blast running around, Matilda bit the two men on the trail we came across (that was um, interesting). But most of the time it was pretty fun.
We didn't make it that far up the trail, three and a half miles maybe but the view was still nice!
And it was still a good enough trip to wear the dogs out. Yay for that! Plus we thought the last big hike of the summer.
To celebrate labor day, and the first one I haven't worked in a few years, Jessie and I took the dogs up Chena Dome out near Chena Hot Springs. It's a pretty tough 30 miles loop. Water turned out to be one of our weaknesses. The dirty dogs were pretty thirsty most of the trip:
And although there was supposed to be some water up there we couldn't find any this late in the year. So, we hung out on top till we ran out and then came back. In the mean time though the dogs had a blast running around, Matilda bit the two men on the trail we came across (that was um, interesting). But most of the time it was pretty fun.
We didn't make it that far up the trail, three and a half miles maybe but the view was still nice!
And it was still a good enough trip to wear the dogs out. Yay for that! Plus we thought the last big hike of the summer.
