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and a couple of weeks slip by
I keep thinking that I am going to be more consistent about posting here, and I keep getting busy and not posting, so I guess that means it is time to catch up, again.
When last I posted I had made good progress on a nålbinding project, which I finished a few days later, and posted photos to Instagram (and on FB)
On Sunday a week ago my friend J. arrived to stay for the summer. They'd gone back to Åland for school last autumn, but did so by taking a leave of absence from their job here, so agreed to come back and work this summer to keep on the books there. Of course I invited them to stay with me while here, and it has been delightful having them here. We traded massage on Monday--my first since J. moved last autumn, and it was so nice.
Since my job at the archives had ended I have hopped back into my interrupted research for my 2nd PhD project, figuring out where I left off, what I had accomplished, and what still needs doing. Had a video meeting with my supervisors, and we have a plan--I need to get that first paper wrapped up as soon as possible, and promised to send them a draft with at least a well fleshed out outline and some text by the first of July.
Of course, at the same time my job fell into the frantic pace of "it is almost vacation, and there is so much to do". It looked like there were enough days to finish up all of the analyses that needed doing, if all went well. But then my boss reminded me of our annual Division meeting on Tuesday, and, since it was going to be in a pretty setting, I decided to go. I carpooled to the meeting with a colleague who is also in the SCA, and thought I would get a ride back to town with the first car heading in. However, everyone was enjoying the day, so no one left till we'd been there 4.5 hours, and then we all left at once. So I didn't make it to the lab that day.
Then it took longer than I thought it would to set up the experiments (we are trying a new approach), so by the time the first of them would have been ready to run on Wednesday it was already too late in the day, so I went in on Thursday, turned on the plasma, and while it warmed up started work on setting up the next experiment. Then I went to do my performance report, and the Mass Calibration failed. I didn't want to see that error message, since we have to switch to solutions mode to fix Mass Calibration. So I ran the performance reports a few more times, just to be certain, and it still failed. So I switched over to solutions mode, and then I couldn't get the plasma to stay lit. Eventually, knowing it would take a fair bit of time to solve it, I gave up, and went home, where I made progress on my research, instead.
Friday was a holiday (some would say that in Sweden Midsummer is THE holiday), but it was weird not to be performing Swedish folk dance for it. Others may criticise Sweden for not having shut down as much as other countries, but the big, official gatherings didn't happen. However, we had a small gathering here. J had gone north to spend the weekend with her aunt, but D & C invited E & B over for the traditional midsummer lunch of pickled herring, dill potatoes, and strawberries with cream and/or ice cream for desert. It was lovely to see them, and to sit on the deck, in the shade of the umbrella, and enjoy the nice day. I didn't eat the fish (of course, since I have never learned to like fish, or pickled things, so pickled fish is right out), nor the potatoes (I am not fond of dill), but I had a yummy left over home made soup with home made noodles, veg, and beans, and I ate more than my fair share of strawberries and cream.
After B & E left D & C built a fire and grilled something for dinner, but I was already done eating for the day, so I went to the office and fell into my computer doing email and working on the next verse of a song in progress, and then joined the Insuale Draconis Bardic circle on Zoom, which was a lovely evening (if a bit heavier on the story to song ratio than I would have felt ideal, but it was still good sewing time).
Saturday I made almost four hours of progress on my research, and added some more stones to the ramp in progress leading into the shed.
Sunday morning I managed to get up just early enough to catch the final round of the West Kingdom Bardic circle (which started at 04:00 my time, but I just wasn't that motivated), where I got to hear one old friend sing an old favourite song, another old friend sing a filk she'd written that I need to ask for the words for, as I think my fighter friends would love it, and a bard I'd never met before sing a really beautiful period song. I have now befriended said bard on FB, so hopefully I will get to hear more songs from them. That final round of bardic was exactly long enough to mend the splitting seam in my phone baldric and add another insert on the other side, so the pocket is finally big enough for the new phone I got months ago.
The rest of Sunday I took fairly easy, curled up with popcorn and a book for part of it, but I did do some research work, after hitting the "send an email to the author of a paper" jackpot. They replied not only with the answer to my question, and a copy of another paper I didn't know they had written, but also a list of 40 some odd papers that are relevant, only some of which I already had in my list of references. Just going through the list and making cards for some the ones I didn't already have took a couple of hours, and I am only a little more than half way through the list.
This morning I peddled in to work and tried again to solve the problem with the ICP-MS. Managed to get the plasma lit, and it even started draining excess fluid out of the nebulizer waste tube, as it should. However, it must have stopped doing that, because part way through the detector set up, the plasma blew out, again.
At that point I decided that it would probably be worth trying to switch over to Laser mode and see if I can get the detector set up and mass calibration working there. Never mind that the ICP-MS manufacturer says that one needs to be in solutions mode, I did have that one email from the lab in Quebec who said that they hadn't gone into solutions mode for five years now. Since we have the same standard reference material as they use for the calibration, I decided to give it a try--I certainly wasn't going to make it any worse, and it might help. Since Quebec hadn't said what settings they use, but the standard reference material is a basaltic glass, I decided to treat it the same as I treat the NIST glasses. Much to my delight, it worked! I managed to get the detector set up completed, and ran the Mass Balance Calibration successfully. Then I tried doing a performance report, which still didn't pass, but it was a normal "didn't pass", the mass balance test part did pass. I spent another hour or so trying to get the performance report to pass, but autotune just made things worse, and none of the manual adjustments I tried helped enough. Eventually I realized that I had been in the lab five hours, and this is only a half time job, so I came home. Tomorrow I will try again. I have it way better already, so with luck it will just work tomorrow.
When last I posted I had made good progress on a nålbinding project, which I finished a few days later, and posted photos to Instagram (and on FB)
On Sunday a week ago my friend J. arrived to stay for the summer. They'd gone back to Åland for school last autumn, but did so by taking a leave of absence from their job here, so agreed to come back and work this summer to keep on the books there. Of course I invited them to stay with me while here, and it has been delightful having them here. We traded massage on Monday--my first since J. moved last autumn, and it was so nice.
Since my job at the archives had ended I have hopped back into my interrupted research for my 2nd PhD project, figuring out where I left off, what I had accomplished, and what still needs doing. Had a video meeting with my supervisors, and we have a plan--I need to get that first paper wrapped up as soon as possible, and promised to send them a draft with at least a well fleshed out outline and some text by the first of July.
Of course, at the same time my job fell into the frantic pace of "it is almost vacation, and there is so much to do". It looked like there were enough days to finish up all of the analyses that needed doing, if all went well. But then my boss reminded me of our annual Division meeting on Tuesday, and, since it was going to be in a pretty setting, I decided to go. I carpooled to the meeting with a colleague who is also in the SCA, and thought I would get a ride back to town with the first car heading in. However, everyone was enjoying the day, so no one left till we'd been there 4.5 hours, and then we all left at once. So I didn't make it to the lab that day.
Then it took longer than I thought it would to set up the experiments (we are trying a new approach), so by the time the first of them would have been ready to run on Wednesday it was already too late in the day, so I went in on Thursday, turned on the plasma, and while it warmed up started work on setting up the next experiment. Then I went to do my performance report, and the Mass Calibration failed. I didn't want to see that error message, since we have to switch to solutions mode to fix Mass Calibration. So I ran the performance reports a few more times, just to be certain, and it still failed. So I switched over to solutions mode, and then I couldn't get the plasma to stay lit. Eventually, knowing it would take a fair bit of time to solve it, I gave up, and went home, where I made progress on my research, instead.
Friday was a holiday (some would say that in Sweden Midsummer is THE holiday), but it was weird not to be performing Swedish folk dance for it. Others may criticise Sweden for not having shut down as much as other countries, but the big, official gatherings didn't happen. However, we had a small gathering here. J had gone north to spend the weekend with her aunt, but D & C invited E & B over for the traditional midsummer lunch of pickled herring, dill potatoes, and strawberries with cream and/or ice cream for desert. It was lovely to see them, and to sit on the deck, in the shade of the umbrella, and enjoy the nice day. I didn't eat the fish (of course, since I have never learned to like fish, or pickled things, so pickled fish is right out), nor the potatoes (I am not fond of dill), but I had a yummy left over home made soup with home made noodles, veg, and beans, and I ate more than my fair share of strawberries and cream.
After B & E left D & C built a fire and grilled something for dinner, but I was already done eating for the day, so I went to the office and fell into my computer doing email and working on the next verse of a song in progress, and then joined the Insuale Draconis Bardic circle on Zoom, which was a lovely evening (if a bit heavier on the story to song ratio than I would have felt ideal, but it was still good sewing time).
Saturday I made almost four hours of progress on my research, and added some more stones to the ramp in progress leading into the shed.
Sunday morning I managed to get up just early enough to catch the final round of the West Kingdom Bardic circle (which started at 04:00 my time, but I just wasn't that motivated), where I got to hear one old friend sing an old favourite song, another old friend sing a filk she'd written that I need to ask for the words for, as I think my fighter friends would love it, and a bard I'd never met before sing a really beautiful period song. I have now befriended said bard on FB, so hopefully I will get to hear more songs from them. That final round of bardic was exactly long enough to mend the splitting seam in my phone baldric and add another insert on the other side, so the pocket is finally big enough for the new phone I got months ago.
The rest of Sunday I took fairly easy, curled up with popcorn and a book for part of it, but I did do some research work, after hitting the "send an email to the author of a paper" jackpot. They replied not only with the answer to my question, and a copy of another paper I didn't know they had written, but also a list of 40 some odd papers that are relevant, only some of which I already had in my list of references. Just going through the list and making cards for some the ones I didn't already have took a couple of hours, and I am only a little more than half way through the list.
This morning I peddled in to work and tried again to solve the problem with the ICP-MS. Managed to get the plasma lit, and it even started draining excess fluid out of the nebulizer waste tube, as it should. However, it must have stopped doing that, because part way through the detector set up, the plasma blew out, again.
At that point I decided that it would probably be worth trying to switch over to Laser mode and see if I can get the detector set up and mass calibration working there. Never mind that the ICP-MS manufacturer says that one needs to be in solutions mode, I did have that one email from the lab in Quebec who said that they hadn't gone into solutions mode for five years now. Since we have the same standard reference material as they use for the calibration, I decided to give it a try--I certainly wasn't going to make it any worse, and it might help. Since Quebec hadn't said what settings they use, but the standard reference material is a basaltic glass, I decided to treat it the same as I treat the NIST glasses. Much to my delight, it worked! I managed to get the detector set up completed, and ran the Mass Balance Calibration successfully. Then I tried doing a performance report, which still didn't pass, but it was a normal "didn't pass", the mass balance test part did pass. I spent another hour or so trying to get the performance report to pass, but autotune just made things worse, and none of the manual adjustments I tried helped enough. Eventually I realized that I had been in the lab five hours, and this is only a half time job, so I came home. Tomorrow I will try again. I have it way better already, so with luck it will just work tomorrow.
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