E3 - Week Three, Thursday

Week Three. Thursday

Today we met Giovanni at 10 and then went to the OTRC (Offshore Technology Research Center). It was really cool and interesting. We saw a little presentation and watched a video and then got a small tour of the facility. This is a place that makes models and stuff for deeper offshore drilling; deep enough to where the rigs can’t touch the ground. The next tour we went on was the Coastal Laboratory and it wasn’t as excited as the OTRC. It was about offshore drilling in more shallow water. They didn’t even have their wave machine installed like the OTRC did.

After that we ate at Pie R Square and then went to the computer lab. There we worked on our power points for a long time. I don’t feel like we got much done though. Oh well, there’s much more time left. I really hope we can get it all done and working well. We’ll just see I guess.

PDL 3

Day 3 – What drives your life?

This is a good question. Matt 6:24 is great saying that no one can serve two masters. This is so true. I feel that sometimes I make me trying to please Lisa drive my life. I know this is bad because I should never put her over God. I hope I can make God be the “drive” of my life.

Prayer request: I pray that Lisa and I grow more strongly together in Christ and that we can get along better than we do.

E3 - Week Three, Wednesday

Week Three. Wednesday

Earlier today I went to the Association and to the Ring Office and there is an earlier post that describes that. Today we had our “fun” discussion on culture and diversity. Today’s topic was on stats of minorities and women and that sort of thing. So again, being the white middle class heterosexual male, I’m always wrong. We didn’t have time to get into groups again, of course. But it was just horrible. I hate it when people hate on the aggie code of honor just because they don’t understand it or they here one bad thing and assume everything is bad. It’s so much worse when people who go to school here say that sort of stuff. ESPECIALLY grad students (a.k.a. Leslie), they’re the absolute worst. Kim brought donuts so that made of for some of the A&M bashing.

Then Lynn and I went to the CE building and saw Xiong (who I thought was Sean) do his talk on expansive soils. It was tough to understand but interesting for the most part. It is still way over our heads. Lynn then went and met with her daughter and I did work in the computer lab. Not much else happened. I need to get a lot more stuff done though. Hopefully I can soon.

PARKING is still a massive disaster. I don't understand how it can be this complicated and to have something different happen to me everyday in that darn garage. I can't wait for what tomorrow holds. Today the arm came down on my car and whacked the roof and the trunk. I hope they're both ok, but who knows.

PDL 2

Day 2 – You are not an accident

This to me is kind of an extension of day one about how we need to live for God and not for ourselves. It’s cool that nothing is an accident; everything is going according to God’s plan. He has a purpose for us all.

Prayer request: I want to pray for Gary that he can stay out of trouble and just turn to God for everything. I really don’t know what to do but God does.

FTAR

Fightin' Texas Aggie Ring...

Well, it's gone. I won't have it for 4 to 6 weeks. It's in the shop for "repairs". I have too many dings and nicks on it that I want to get buffed out before I start teaching school so I sent it into Balfour to get fixed. My hand feels so naked. Everything is weird now.

Instant Message with Mark on the Microprobe

This blog is only for understanding more about the Microprobe and stuff...

MidnightYell2003: howdy

MidnightYell2003: does carly work at the
microprobe thing?

IrNobleMetal: yeah

IrNobleMetal: why?

MidnightYell2003: ok maybe you can tell me,
what exactly is the microprobe?

IrNobleMetal: A microprobe is sort of a souped up
electron microscope....

IrNobleMetal: do you know what an electron
microscope is?

IrNobleMetal: and how it works

MidnightYell2003: is it like an SEM or scanning
electron microscope?

IrNobleMetal: yeah

MidnightYell2003: ok then no

MidnightYell2003: i just heard of it

IrNobleMetal: exactly, do you know how they work?
(cause I gotta give you some background first)

MidnightYell2003: not exactly

MidnightYell2003: maybe you can explain it
better

IrNobleMetal: ok, for these types of instruments you
basically generate a beam of electrons that you spray
across the surface of a sample...

MidnightYell2003: ok

IrNobleMetal: you spray the electron beam in a rhastor
pattern--just like a TV screen, you know how that
works?

IrNobleMetal: start at the top, scan across, go down
one line, scan across, and repeat til you get to the
bottom of the screen

IrNobleMetal: you dig?

MidnightYell2003: for the most part...

MidnightYell2003: and stuff

IrNobleMetal: ok, well you scan across the surface of
the sample but you do this over a VERY small area...

IrNobleMetal: this is roughly a square pattern and it
could be a millimeter square or it could be less than a
micrometer square

MidnightYell2003: like how small?

MidnightYell2003: ok

IrNobleMetal: as you scan this electron beam across
the surface, electrons are reflected in SEVERAL
different and distinct ways. You pick up these reflected
electrons through different types of detectors....

IrNobleMetal: at the same time that this is going on, the
signal from one of these detectors is being displayed on a
TV monitor....

MidnightYell2003: i see...

IrNobleMetal: as the beam sweeps across the sample,
the beam in the CRT (the TV monitor) is also sweeping
across the screen, creating an image

IrNobleMetal: ....

IrNobleMetal: electrons are reflected in different ways
by different materials....

IrNobleMetal: heavy elements (gold, lead, uranium)
reflect electrons strongly....

MidnightYell2003: yeah...

IrNobleMetal: light elements (oxygen, carbon, lithium)
don't reflect much

MidnightYell2003: ok

IrNobleMetal: so if you have a detector detecting the
quantity of electrons reflected gold would appear really
bright, lithium would appear really dark....

IrNobleMetal: this is an oversimplification, in reality it's
the average weight of a compound (eg: SiO2 or PbPO4)

IrNobleMetal: the compound with lead has a much
higher average weight (z-value) so it would show up
brighter

IrNobleMetal: for a SEM (non-microprobe) you often
have samples with raised features and you're often
looking at shapes like those great black and white
pictures of ants magnified nine zillion times etc....

IrNobleMetal: this is possible because the surface of an
ant isn't flat and so the electrons reflect differently from
the different angles of incidence.....

IrNobleMetal: you gettin' this?

MidnightYell2003: yeah, hang on, phone...

IrNobleMetal: ahh

MidnightYell2003: ok sorry, reading...

IrNobleMetal: that makin' sense to you?

MidnightYell2003: kinda, so what exactly is
different between microprobe and SEM?

IrNobleMetal: well, all those electrons bouncing
around that I was telling you about??

MidnightYell2003: yeah..

IrNobleMetal: the microprobe has a lot more
capabilities as far as detecting the different types of
reflection/flouresence etc..

IrNobleMetal: SEMs are MUCH better at very very
VERY high resolution, high magnification of shapes

IrNobleMetal: microprobes are much much better at
determining the exact chemistry of a vanishingly small
quantity of material

IrNobleMetal: that's the short answer

MidnightYell2003: wow cool

IrNobleMetal: you want chemistry, get a microprobe



you want high resolution images get an SEM

MidnightYell2003: how many microprobes are
there in the world or whatever?

IrNobleMetal: no idea, but not too many I'll bet less
than a thousand. really only two companies that make
them: Cameca (made TX A&M's) and PGT (Precission
Gamma Tech)

MidnightYell2003: is there anymore in Texas?
like does t.u. have one?

IrNobleMetal: Probably, I'll bet the t-sips, and rice
both have them, maybe a few others

MidnightYell2003: interesting

MidnightYell2003: how many different
departments use it?

IrNobleMetal: the one that we have set the department
back about 750 GRAND

MidnightYell2003: wow nice

IrNobleMetal: a typical SEM doesn't run more than a
quarter mil

IrNobleMetal: a LOT of departments use it

IrNobleMetal: especially engineering

MidnightYell2003: which engineering? civil?

IrNobleMetal: nuclear engineering, some civil too

MidnightYell2003: oh i see

IrNobleMetal: lots of materials science....

MidnightYell2003: those people...

IrNobleMetal: they use it to see how metals form and
things of that nature

MidnightYell2003: because it seems to me that
not a lot of people even know it exists

IrNobleMetal: that's probably true, not well publicized

IrNobleMetal: I have helped a lot of grad students
from the chemistry department prepare samples for it
though

IrNobleMetal: oh, and archeology uses it a lot

MidnightYell2003: but it's like some people who i
think should know about it, dont... like a lot of
people in the chem department and even in the
civil department, its weird

IrNobleMetal: yeah, well, all the cool people know
about it: Me, DrGuillemette...

MidnightYell2003: hehe yeah

MidnightYell2003: so what does carly do?

IrNobleMetal: she prepares samples by mounting them
(either in epoxy or on SEM stubs) then she polishes the
ones she mounts in epoxy and carbon coats them all

IrNobleMetal: remember all those electrons?

MidnightYell2003: uh huh

IrNobleMetal: well, you have to conduct them away
(typically with gold or carbon) otherwise the sample will
build up a static charge and deflect the beam (no good)

IrNobleMetal: dude, sorry but it's late and I gotta get
up early tomorrow

IrNobleMetal: if I don't hit the sack I'll turn into a
pumpkin

MidnightYell2003: hehe yikes

MidnightYell2003: well cool, thanks for the info
and what not

IrNobleMetal: no prob, there's LOTS more to know

IrNobleMetal: sorry it would take me a week to type it
all

MidnightYell2003: hehe, well get started...

IrNobleMetal: LOL

IrNobleMetal: I'll get started sleeping, how bout that

IrNobleMetal: good night dude

MidnightYell2003: done and done

MidnightYell2003: 'night

IrNobleMetal: bye

IrNobleMetal signed off at 12:26:01 AM.

E3 - Week Three, Tuesday

Week Three. Tuesday

Parking has been a pain from the beginning and today was the worst. I’m sick on dealing with the PTTS (or TS) people. They can’t make anything easy for anyone. So therefore I was late again (just by about 10 minutes) and so was Bret (because I took him to school today). We had a meeting today at noon with Giovanna and all of her grad students and stuff. One of them, Debora, presented her Masters Thesis presentation on soils and stuff off of the Gulf Coast. It was really interesting and still kind of over my head. She’s the one who uses VRML which I guess I’m surprised that I haven’t heard of much until now. Bret tells me that it was developed around 1997 and hasn’t really been used since.

We then went and observed the soils lab at 2. Lorrie wasn’t teaching this time, it was Sean. I hope that’s how you spell their names… We saw Lorrie teach last Tuesday on Atterberg Limits. Today Sean taught on Hydraulic Conductivity. Since he’s Asian (I think Chinese) it was really hard to understand his talking. But what was funny was that it brought back memories of GEOL 410 Hydrogeology with Dr. Zhan (who is also Chinese and hard to understand at times), especially with Darcy’s Law. He talked for a long time and then finally got to the lab part when we had to go upstairs to the computer lab.

Our “educational discussion” was rather pointless as usual so I don’t really know what got done (pretty much nothing). We had an interesting talk on Food Safety for our Tuesday talk. The lady was the lady who is Marlo and Veronica’s professor. All food is irradiated apparently. But it won’t kill you. Flying in an airplane is much worse for you (for irradiation purposes).

PDL 1

Purpose Driven Life…

Day 1 – It all starts with God

This is about making sure you’re living for God and not for yourself. This is a huge struggle of mine and I hope that I can direct my life to live for God and not for myself. This journal that Lisa got me is really great. I know it will help my spiritual life out a lot and help Lisa and I be a more Godly couple.

Prayer request: I pray for the KSBJ Share-a-thon that's going on today that it can get the funding that it needs and just that God will provide for them as needed.

E3 - Week Three, Monday

Week Three. Monday

Now I can get to the point where I can write these blogs everyday instead of playing catch up from two weeks. Although this program is almost over, I will try to keep up with my postings here. We had our usual meeting time of 8:30 and I think we’re heading more into a direction as opposed to having no idea what was going on. This is a good feeling so we get more and more stuff done every day. But it sucks when you can’t use the computer lab because a class is in there because the computers at the library are awful. I took my computer to school today but I’m not a student anymore so I couldn’t log onto the wireless network, which really put a damper on what I was trying to do. I learned of a lot more resourced today and we have a lot more direction now.

I got a lot more work done at home today, like installing a lot of the programs from Giovanna’s cd and just getting more resources together like VRML on my computer and Molecular Origami (this program is really weird to me right now, but hopefully I can use it more efficiently later).

E3 - Week Two

Week Two.

It was hard to wake up for Monday. I guess last Monday I was rather excited and stuff so I woke up easily. Well, here’s the thing. Lisa and I went to Baton Rouge, LA after the first week of work. We went to go see Texas A&M play LSU in baseball for the NCAA Super Regional Tournament. Well, needless to say, we lost but it was a lot of fun and I got home real late and had to stay in Houston for the night because of how tired I was. So I was a little late to work on Monday and Lynn got a whole tour of the Civil Engineering labs and everything and she liked it a lot.

On Tuesday, we got to sit in on one of the civil engineering soils labs and it was kind of interesting. Since it was like class to me I sort of fell asleep. But we got to see kids play with soil. Our Tuesday talk wasn’t cancelled so we got an interesting talk on Genetics and stuff. Wednesday was our culture/learning discussion again and this time we distracted Leslie (the lady who is in charge, I guess) enough to where we didn’t get to the class discussion part. Well that’s a plus because our discussion this week was over facts/generalizations/concepts/theories and that sort of mess – not a fun topic at all. Again our talk on Wednesday afternoon was cancelled (we were supposed to go see a talk on TI and stuff, it seemed interesting and cool, oh well).

Thursday: first field trip out of town. We went to Atofina chemical company and it was really neat and interesting. They are the world’s largest producer of polypropylene – plastic. We got to go on an elite tour of their facilities (which is hardly open to anyone) and learn a lot about what they do and how high school kids could get a job there. I think this tour really helped me to learn a lot more about those chemical plants that I see everywhere and have a greater understanding of them. We got home a little later than expected but it was still a good day. Friday was just more “educational discovery” so it was a pretty laid back day.

E3 - Week One

Week One.

I’m still really confused about this job thing. The first day we all kind of met each other and of course no one really remembers anyone’s name. I do know the 3 other pre-service teachers in my group (Kim, Jamie, and Roxanna). All in all there are 16 people for the E3 program and 4 are pre-service, which means haven’t taught yet (me included). The people in this group are from a lot of different places but mostly from Houston and Corpus Christi areas and the Valley (south Texas).

We got awesome food on the first day for lunch and breakfast by Jason’s Deli; it was wonderful (I like to eat). The first day was like mostly an introduction day; just like if we were in class. I met my partner (Lynn) and we got to meet our faculty advisor (Dr. Giovanna Biscontin). She’s from Italy and is studying seismic properties of soils in earthquakes and underwater (marine) landslides. We had our first meeting with her and her research sounds interesting and really complex. We then got our computer accounts set up in the CVLB building. We then had a library tour that us pre-service people skipped out on because we already know the library and have computer accounts over there already.

The first day was really long and so was the second day. Our Tuesday talk got cancelled (we don’t know why and this will become the norm – for things to get cancelled). On the third day (Wednesday) we had our first culture and learning discussion where we had to read this horrendous packet about diversity and what not. It was really boring and the discussion got a little out of hand but it was over soon. We had a real interesting presentation on Nano Kids and nanotechnology. I liked it and thought it was really fun. I hope I can use it for my class next year.

On Thursday we kind of had a tour at TTI (Texas Transportation Institute) but it was really short and we didn’t get to see much but we got to go home early and I got a pretty good nap; I was happy about that. Friday was declared as a federal holiday for President Reagan’s death and funeral so therefore we didn’t work since the school wasn’t even open.

Week one was really long, but not too bad. Still kind of confused on what exactly we’re supposed to be doing, but shortly we should figure it out.

CWS con't

So it sucks knowing that Arkansas is out of the CWS. It's nice to know that a team that we beat at least made it that far. (we beat t.u. as well). LSU also lost so now I don't know who to go for. I think that the Fullerton/Miami game will be a good game. I hate to say it but I think that t.u. has a good chance to win it all (ssssssss...)

Craig Stinson of our team is going to try out for the US National Team.

CWS

Lisa thinks it'll be t.u. and Fullerton in the final game.

I don't know who won the LSU/Miami game.

Next weekend...

Warped Tour 2004!! Yay
Gotta go to Dallas though...

This weekend..

Going to Corpus with the girlfriend to her parents' house...

juh

I don't know what I'm doing...

must return later...