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Tuesday was a very productive work day.
Nov. 17th, 2010 11:10 am(Alas, LJ wasn't working when I typed this, so it is being posted the next morning instead…)
I wound up staying up kind of late on Monday; I went home at a reasonable hour, but then did a nice long yoga session, followed by going out jogging in the rain (only around a largish block, but still, I got out and did something!) followed by some stitching on my underdress in progress, all of which combined meant that I didn't get to bed till after 02:00. Since sleep is one of the things I keep high on my priority list, I, of course, slept in till nearly 11:00 (have I mentioned recently how much I love being able to set my own schedule?)
However, this translated into a late start to the work day as it was necessary to first catch up on reading LJ etc. and then head to the bank. I have been running low on cash in my Alaska bank account, since that is where my student loan payments come from. At my current rate of loan repayment the money there would have run out as of the January payment. Since it can take up to a month for a transfer from my Italian bank to Alaska to actually finish processing I decided that it was time to actually do the transfer. When I arrived at the bank and went to the desks in back where complicated transactions occur the lady who offered to help me said "yes" when I asked "Parla inglese?", but the expression that crossed her face when she said it looked very pained—like she was foreseeing an unpleasant experience trying to actually communicate details on whatever transaction brought me to this part of the building. When I said (slowly and clearly) that I needed to do a transfer to the US, here is the paperwork from last time (and handed her the paperwork) the look of relief that crossed her face was amazing. She happily went and got the correct paperwork (which form, oddly, looks different now than when last I did this months ago), and the transaction was complete in record time. Now I wait for the money to actually show up there, and try not to worry about it going astray in the meanwhile.
Despite the morning distractions, I actually did settle into doing uni work by about 14:40, and was happily entering data from the geologic literature into spread sheets to be compared with my experimental data later, when my boss came in to speak with me. He had a question about one of the phases in one of the experiments, which plotted in an unexpected location on the AFM diagrams (page down) I'd sent him last week.
It turns out that the sample in question had exactly *one* chloritoid analysis that hadn't been rejected due to problems (and 15 which had been)—this sample's chloritoid grains are really small—the microprobe can be focused to a beam size of 1 micron, so any grains that are smaller than that (or thinner than that) the analysis will be partly that grain, and partially whatever is adjacent to it. For this sample the long axis of the grains is normally about 1 micron, and as a result I had problems getting even the one "good" analysis. But was it good?
He suggested plotting all of the bad data for the chloritoid for this sample to see if they fall on a trend line connecting an ideal chloritoid and one of the other mineral phases present. Since my experiments make use of a simplified composition (only the elements Ca-K-Fe-Mg-Al-Si-H2O are present in the starting powder), I was able to get away with only a page worth of diagrams plotting CaO, K2O, FeO, and MgO against SiO2 and Al2O3. As it turns out there are two distinct trends—some of these analyses fall nicely between chloritoid and kyanite, and the rest fall nicely between chloritoid and muscovite. In addition, the one "good" chloritoid plots in the group that is mixed kyanite and chloritoid, and needs to be rejected after all. That nicely solves the problem of it plotting in an odd place on the AFM diagram, but, alas, we now have no data at all for that sample's chloritoid. In the short term I can extrapolate what it might be (same as I did for two other samples which also have chloritoid too small to analyse and use those numbers in the graphs with a huge footnote that they are based on a guess, and why). However, I am now more keen than ever to re-run this particular experiment. He says we can do one more run starting later this week, and I think that this particular P-T conditions get my vote in hopes of getting better results next time (this is one of the experiments I blogged about ages ago that had poor textures due to a failure to seal them properly). I am confident that the capsules waiting to be run are properly sealed, so it is reasonable to hope for a better texture if I run them at the same conditions again.
Much to my surprise, when I had finally finished the last of the graphs and sent the e-mail to my boss about them it was midnight! 9.5 hours work did nice things to my graph of average number of hours worked per week for this month. However, after working there were still things to be accomplished with my night (like telling Quicken about the bank transfer and checking mail), so it will be another late night, given that it is pushing 03:00 and I still need to do my yoga. (Fortunately, my 1000 is done for the day). Time to head home, and hope that I can actually post this tomorrow.
I wound up staying up kind of late on Monday; I went home at a reasonable hour, but then did a nice long yoga session, followed by going out jogging in the rain (only around a largish block, but still, I got out and did something!) followed by some stitching on my underdress in progress, all of which combined meant that I didn't get to bed till after 02:00. Since sleep is one of the things I keep high on my priority list, I, of course, slept in till nearly 11:00 (have I mentioned recently how much I love being able to set my own schedule?)
However, this translated into a late start to the work day as it was necessary to first catch up on reading LJ etc. and then head to the bank. I have been running low on cash in my Alaska bank account, since that is where my student loan payments come from. At my current rate of loan repayment the money there would have run out as of the January payment. Since it can take up to a month for a transfer from my Italian bank to Alaska to actually finish processing I decided that it was time to actually do the transfer. When I arrived at the bank and went to the desks in back where complicated transactions occur the lady who offered to help me said "yes" when I asked "Parla inglese?", but the expression that crossed her face when she said it looked very pained—like she was foreseeing an unpleasant experience trying to actually communicate details on whatever transaction brought me to this part of the building. When I said (slowly and clearly) that I needed to do a transfer to the US, here is the paperwork from last time (and handed her the paperwork) the look of relief that crossed her face was amazing. She happily went and got the correct paperwork (which form, oddly, looks different now than when last I did this months ago), and the transaction was complete in record time. Now I wait for the money to actually show up there, and try not to worry about it going astray in the meanwhile.
Despite the morning distractions, I actually did settle into doing uni work by about 14:40, and was happily entering data from the geologic literature into spread sheets to be compared with my experimental data later, when my boss came in to speak with me. He had a question about one of the phases in one of the experiments, which plotted in an unexpected location on the AFM diagrams (page down) I'd sent him last week.
It turns out that the sample in question had exactly *one* chloritoid analysis that hadn't been rejected due to problems (and 15 which had been)—this sample's chloritoid grains are really small—the microprobe can be focused to a beam size of 1 micron, so any grains that are smaller than that (or thinner than that) the analysis will be partly that grain, and partially whatever is adjacent to it. For this sample the long axis of the grains is normally about 1 micron, and as a result I had problems getting even the one "good" analysis. But was it good?
He suggested plotting all of the bad data for the chloritoid for this sample to see if they fall on a trend line connecting an ideal chloritoid and one of the other mineral phases present. Since my experiments make use of a simplified composition (only the elements Ca-K-Fe-Mg-Al-Si-H2O are present in the starting powder), I was able to get away with only a page worth of diagrams plotting CaO, K2O, FeO, and MgO against SiO2 and Al2O3. As it turns out there are two distinct trends—some of these analyses fall nicely between chloritoid and kyanite, and the rest fall nicely between chloritoid and muscovite. In addition, the one "good" chloritoid plots in the group that is mixed kyanite and chloritoid, and needs to be rejected after all. That nicely solves the problem of it plotting in an odd place on the AFM diagram, but, alas, we now have no data at all for that sample's chloritoid. In the short term I can extrapolate what it might be (same as I did for two other samples which also have chloritoid too small to analyse and use those numbers in the graphs with a huge footnote that they are based on a guess, and why). However, I am now more keen than ever to re-run this particular experiment. He says we can do one more run starting later this week, and I think that this particular P-T conditions get my vote in hopes of getting better results next time (this is one of the experiments I blogged about ages ago that had poor textures due to a failure to seal them properly). I am confident that the capsules waiting to be run are properly sealed, so it is reasonable to hope for a better texture if I run them at the same conditions again.
Much to my surprise, when I had finally finished the last of the graphs and sent the e-mail to my boss about them it was midnight! 9.5 hours work did nice things to my graph of average number of hours worked per week for this month. However, after working there were still things to be accomplished with my night (like telling Quicken about the bank transfer and checking mail), so it will be another late night, given that it is pushing 03:00 and I still need to do my yoga. (Fortunately, my 1000 is done for the day). Time to head home, and hope that I can actually post this tomorrow.
