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that's better
Dec. 16th, 2010 12:53 amThis week I am starting to get my average hours of work for the month back up to a reasonable number. Starting the month with four days off of work when I went to the UK for the SCA dance event made for a *very* low total average number of hours worked per day. However, I have managed to pull the average up to about 27 hours/week so far this month, which isn't bad given how low it started. And the month is only half over, so it might be possible to bring it up within target range, too.
Now that I've got that spreadsheet to track my vocabulary I'm learning, one song at a time, it is taking me about an hour each day to put a new song into the spreadsheet and look up all of the new words, during which time I listen to all of the songs on a loop before I then switch to playing only the new one I'm trying to learn today. Doing the one verse of a song a day technique has brought me to 111 words learned already! Can I use any in a conversation? No, not really at this point, but I suspect that by learning to sing my lessons I will have better long term retention of the words. ( today's song )
Progress report: I have *finally* managed to go through all of the geologic literature I can find which mentions rocks containing talc or anthophyllite and extract the data (if any) on the compositions of those two minerals and of the bulk rock composition (if listed) and get it into the correct format for using mathmatica to plot that data on graphs side by side with my data. Both my talc and my anthophyllite in my experiments contains a fair bit more iron than the natural samples do, but plotting *all* of the data I could find gives a nice diagonal band on the Mg-Fe graph, with my data on the end of the range higher in Fe, and the natural rocks on the end higher in Mg. I've e-mailed my boss with all of the resultant graphs, but he's at a conference in California this week (same one I went to last winter), so no idea when he will see it.
Yesterday I did the preliminary polish my latest experiment and got the second coat of epoxy added (we polish only deep enough to remove a tiny portion of the gold capsule, then add more epoxy to hold the contents together before doing the final polish). I really need to do that final polish tomorrow and get it turned into the microprobe lab for a carbon coating (because otherwise the microprobe won't be able to properly "see" the sample) because I am scheduled for another microprobe session on Monday and/or Tuesday (when he booked the time my boss wasn't certain if he'd need to use some of it, too).
I haven't made any progress on actually writing up my results, but I am getting much closer to having results ready to write up. I have also applied for a bunch more jobs, and even heard back from one which had indicated some time back that I was on the short list--they want to do skype interviews in January.
Today I started some real packing of household goods--I took my armour out of the nice decorated wooden box in which it normally lives and put it back into the old cloth armour bag, and then put my favourite breakable kitchen toys into the box wrapped in clothing I don't need to take with me while travelling, and cushioned with some of my stuffed animals. I have no idea where on earth this box will be shipped, but the contents should arrive safely.
In 16 days and a bit I fly to Sweden, with luck (and some major effort on my part) I should be able to accomplish everything that needs to be done before I go.
Now that I've got that spreadsheet to track my vocabulary I'm learning, one song at a time, it is taking me about an hour each day to put a new song into the spreadsheet and look up all of the new words, during which time I listen to all of the songs on a loop before I then switch to playing only the new one I'm trying to learn today. Doing the one verse of a song a day technique has brought me to 111 words learned already! Can I use any in a conversation? No, not really at this point, but I suspect that by learning to sing my lessons I will have better long term retention of the words. ( today's song )
Progress report: I have *finally* managed to go through all of the geologic literature I can find which mentions rocks containing talc or anthophyllite and extract the data (if any) on the compositions of those two minerals and of the bulk rock composition (if listed) and get it into the correct format for using mathmatica to plot that data on graphs side by side with my data. Both my talc and my anthophyllite in my experiments contains a fair bit more iron than the natural samples do, but plotting *all* of the data I could find gives a nice diagonal band on the Mg-Fe graph, with my data on the end of the range higher in Fe, and the natural rocks on the end higher in Mg. I've e-mailed my boss with all of the resultant graphs, but he's at a conference in California this week (same one I went to last winter), so no idea when he will see it.
Yesterday I did the preliminary polish my latest experiment and got the second coat of epoxy added (we polish only deep enough to remove a tiny portion of the gold capsule, then add more epoxy to hold the contents together before doing the final polish). I really need to do that final polish tomorrow and get it turned into the microprobe lab for a carbon coating (because otherwise the microprobe won't be able to properly "see" the sample) because I am scheduled for another microprobe session on Monday and/or Tuesday (when he booked the time my boss wasn't certain if he'd need to use some of it, too).
I haven't made any progress on actually writing up my results, but I am getting much closer to having results ready to write up. I have also applied for a bunch more jobs, and even heard back from one which had indicated some time back that I was on the short list--they want to do skype interviews in January.
Today I started some real packing of household goods--I took my armour out of the nice decorated wooden box in which it normally lives and put it back into the old cloth armour bag, and then put my favourite breakable kitchen toys into the box wrapped in clothing I don't need to take with me while travelling, and cushioned with some of my stuffed animals. I have no idea where on earth this box will be shipped, but the contents should arrive safely.
In 16 days and a bit I fly to Sweden, with luck (and some major effort on my part) I should be able to accomplish everything that needs to be done before I go.
