Grad Life: Christmas Baking

One fun tradition that I started for myself during grad school was to do Christmas baking early in December. Anyone who has been in college will probably recall that early December is generally a particularly busy time. It marks the last two weeks, or so, of regular classes, when the professors realize that they have not nearly covered the amount of material they’d been planning to cover. This means that in addition to the normal end-of-the-semester papers , exams and prep for finals, the amount of material and homework presented during each class increases by 50-100%.

This was the time of the semester that I wanted to do my Christmas baking.

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June is over at long last…

At risk of jinxing July, I’m so glad June is over — it’s been the most stressful month I’ve lived through in a long time. Here’s a list in reverse-time order:

• Formal wear bitch — she was really the last straw to a horrible month. It wouldn’t have seemed so bad without everything else piled on top of it.
• ADP proposal due — this is a proposal to NASA to pay me for the next three years for my half-time thesis work.
• Buying my first new car — while exciting, this is also fairly stressful, and took away an important Saturday from wedding-planning.
• My first ambulance ride, my first time in an emergency room, and my first stay in a hospital as a patient — this turned out to be nothing (probably), but was a horrible, horrible weekend, and took away from our car-hunting and wedding-planning time.
• A tire blow-out on the Beltway — it’s still a toss-up whether this was more stressful or the hospital the following day was more stressful. Frankly, it was quite scary to be trying to change a tire on the Beltway, but then so was the chest pain and news that I might have had a blood clot.
• A week in Denver for the American Astronomical Society Meeting — I hate business travel, plus this took away my Memorial Day holiday, since that was the first day of the conference

Wrestling the Crab Data

The Crab data is winning, too.

A few weeks ago, before the proposal was in our scopes, Kim had suggested that I use the Crab data as a way to check our results with MCG -6-30-15. This sounded like a reasonable idea that shouldn’t take too much work, since I’m familiar with reducing RXTE data (more than familiar, really, at least for extra-galactic sources). However, I had not factored in the complications of dealing with a galactic source. Why is this a problem? Since the source is so much closer, the telescope gets a much larger signal from it, and then complications of instrument dead-time arise^*.

My first results looked weird, and Kim later pointed out that this was likely because of a dead-time correction. So, I looked up how to correct for dead-time on the RXTE data anlaysis pages, and found an article on correcting spectra. However, there was nothing on how to correct light curves. I decided to see how the results would look using count rates derived from integrating under the spectrum, which I finally finished yesterday. Unfortunately it really doesn’t tell me much. My previous plots had data binned to 512 seconds, which produced a few thousand data points. With these spectrum-derived points, there are only about 20 points. Not a good comparison, really.

Now I’m pondering how to correct the lightcurves directly, so I can get my volume of data points back up. In the mean time, I’m going to start writing scripts to produce flux-selected spectra in the data pipeline. I need to consider how best to do this to balance the need for lots of photons per spectrum while trying not to have the spectrum cross into more than one flux state.

^* Detectors take a finite time to recover from detecting an incomming photon. If more photons come in during this recovery period, they are not fully registered, so the count rate measured is actually a bit less than the actual count rate. For extra-galactic X-ray sources this isn’t really a problem because the photons don’t come in fast enough, in general, to arrive during the dead-time from a previous photon. However, this can be a real problem for galactic sources.

Unprecedented

I’ve been working as a support scientist for three and a half years here at Goddard, and in those three years I have assisted with four different proposals, including the one that’s due Friday. In all of the other cases, the proposal has been furiously edited and re-edited until the last possible moment. I’ve found myself making the required 15 or 20 copies at 10 AM on the due date, frantically trying to find a working copier or searching offices for a working stapler. This only works because we are located in Greenbelt Maryland, a mere 15 miles (or so) from NASA Headquarters in DC where the proposals must be delivered before 4:30 PM on the due date. Someone from the lab would take the proposals for several people down to HQ, squeaking in the door at 4:20 PM.

Let me just say that I’m the kind of person who likes to have things done early. This last-minute-scramble drives me crazy. I would rather have the proposal in the bag with a day or two to spare, and send it FedEx overnight so that I don’t have to worry about navigating downtown DC.

This time around, I finally got my way! The only reason this happened is because Kim is out of town (left on Monday, so her contribution had to be finished by then) and Chris is busy working on his own proposals (though he, too, seems to be out of town, so I’m not sure how that’s working). So, I was able to finish the proposal yesterday with a couple careful read-throughs (and proofreading by Andrew), and a half-hour in front of the copier. The proposal is now away! And it’s not due until Friday!

New Car

I’m still not through mourning for Arthur, but I’ve at least recovered enough that I can share a bit more about our experiences on Saturday in pursuit of a new car for me.

We started at Koons Tysons Toyota, because they were the closest dealership with a manual transmission Corolla. I took it out for a test drive, and chatted with the salesman a bit. He layed out the cost of the car, nad I told him that I felt that I needed to test drive at least two different kinds of cars before putting down that kind of money. He was very understanding, and did bring the manager over before we left, but even the manager seemed to understand that buying a car is a big deal.

Our next stop was Rosenthal Honda, just a mile down the street from Koons. Now, we had actually been to a Rosenthal Honda before and not been happy with the experience^*, but this was a different branch and we were looking at new rather than used, so we were hopeful that the experience would be different. We looked up the sales person from the e-mail they had sent, she found the keys for one of the 2004 Civics with manual transmission, and we had a pleasant test drive.

When we got back to the dealership, she brought us up to the office and gave us a price. I responded by saying that it was a big decision and that we would need to go to lunch and talk about it. She went to get the manager, who tried to get us to commit to buying the car right now, to which I responded (possibly more than once) that we would need to go to lunch to discuss the decision. At this point the manager seemed annoyed that we wanted to *gasp* think about the decision. I can’t believe that this attitude can win this manager many sales…maybe I’m just naive.

We did talk over the decision over lunch, but frankly it was a one-sided decision. (Though, Andrew did try to play devil’s advocate.) Did I like the Corolla $1500-worth better than the Civic? Perhaps not. Did I like the Corolla and the dealership that was selling it $1500-worth better than the Civic and the dealership that was selling it? Definately. It seems like a simple rule — treat your customers the way you want yourself to be treated. Or better yet, treat your customers the way you would want your mother or best friend to be treated.

That’s about it — it did take a while to actually drive home with the car, but that’s the way it always is when you buy a car. I did cry on the way out of the parking lot because Arthur was still sitting there, looking at me. And yesterday, while we were out Panda Hunting downtown, I kept seeing Tercels and would feel a twinge of nostalgia and guilt. But I am starting to bond with the new car (which has not revealed it’s name or gender to me yet).

^* We went to the Fairfax Honda used dealership last June when we were looking for cars for Andrew. I told the salesman outright that this was our first day out and that we would not be buying. We just wanted to get a feel for what was out there, and we realized that the exact cars may not be there the next time we came in.

He proceeded to show us cars, questioning why we wanted a certified pre-owned car, and insisting that we would never find a certified Honda or Toyota in our price range. (That last part we knew was a lie, because we had already test-driven a certified Toyota Echo in our price range.)

He ran into the dealership to get something to write some information down about us, so he could call us when something came in that we might be interested in. When he came back, he told us that his manager had said that he must be doing something wrong if we weren’t ready to buy after the cars he’d shown us. Excuse me? That’s right, we are manipulated that easily.

This salesman just kept pushing, and asking what he was doing wrong, and what could he do to get us home in a car today. Finally, I looked him square in the eye, and said, “I’ve already told you that we aren’t buying today. You could offer us a car for a dollar, and we won’t be driving it home today.” I think he finally got the clue.

Needless to say, we did not buy Andrew a Honda.

Odd spam

I felt like I was having a fever dream while skimming this in a spam message today:

airpark frothy bullfinch eleanor consanguine jackpot beck catastrophe vorticity strabismic judge insight cleanse softwood resolution glacial electroencephalograph angola marguerite sapphire skimp adulthood broadcast deepen bump candela aminobenzoic magna martial dreyfuss darius corruption czech

frothy bullfinch? eleanor consanguine jackpot? beck catastrophy? The rest of the message doesn’t get any better. I think, ironically, it’s for a spam-blocking product…

Would you like a pillow under there?

Ever sit at your desk and want to just crawl under it until the day has gone? That’s the kind of week I’m having. There’s nothing specific, just a general feeling of dread and that perhaps I’ve made some serious mistakes in the path of my career. I’m sure it will pass soon. In the meantime, would you mind passing me that can of Diet Vanilla Coke that’s sitting next to my computer before you leave? It’s hard to reach it from under here.

Monster House Girls Rule!

I watched Monster House last night. They had an all female crew doing the Surfer Girl house. It was the first time they had an all female crew. I was worried early on that I was going to hate the “do-it-yourselfer”, because she was shying away from the power tools (uh, hello, this is Monster House…there might just be some need to use power tools), but she came around by the second day. In the end they kicked ass, and pulled it out in the last couple hours.

Things I learned this weekend

• Sleep in a hospital is a myth. It’s like the short line at the DMV; it’s just an illusion. Once I got up to the room from the ER, I thought, great, now I can finally get some rest. Silly, naive me. There was constant dinging outside the door at the nurse’s station, and each time I thought I might just dose off, another person would come into the room to pester me for one thing or another.
• Andrew is the most wonderful man in the world. He not only stayed with me in the ER, but he ran home to get an overnight bag, and called my parents to let them know what was going on. He came in the next moring just to sit with me, and stuck by my side the whole time, despite my descent into utter crankiness.
• It doesn’t matter how you really feel, there is nothing like a thermometer under your tongue to make you feel sick.
• Some of the tests they do are way cool…I’m just glad they all came up negative for me.

My first stay in a hospital

I finally got to the room at about 4:30 AM. Yay, I thought, I’ll finally get some sleep. Foolish mortal.

One of the nurse’s stations was directly outside my door, so whenever someone pushed their button, I could hear the little alarm go off. It seemed ot be going off constantly. Just as I was about to drift off, the charge nurse came back in (at 5:30 AM) to get my history. After she finally left, I tried again to get some sleep, but then at 6:30 AM some guy came in to draw more blood. That is not a pleasant way to come out of a fog. After he left, I tried again, but the alarm was still constantly going off, and there was lots of activity outside my door. I finally gave up at about 8 AM, with maybe a combined total of 20 minutes of sleep (about 2 minutes at a time). Ugh.

I ordered breakfast, and it came just as the nurse came to get me ready to go for my ultrasound scan of my legs. Getting there was an ordeal — I had to hold my IV pole between my legs, and the wheels on the pole were not cooperating (like a grocery cart, there was one wheel not moving with the rest). The scan was kind of cool, though no one mentioned that it would tickle.

When I got back to my room, the nurse took my breakfast and reheated it for me. As I was eating, the phone started ringing — it was my brother, Dave. He just wanted to see what was up. Oddly enough, for the number of times he’s been in the ER, he’s never gotten there by ambulance. Hee hee hee. I’m one up on him there.

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