We don't need no education

Dear Diary,

 It's the fall-time right of passage.  Each Burke student must teach the ABCs at some point before they leave the program, just as they must take the program for credit before they leave.  The only question is always:  Who has to teach?  And I'm sure for the incoming students, they ask: What do you think the teacher's gonna look like this year?

Well, diary, I will be teaching at least some of the course this year.  Fun, fun.   Yep, it finally comes to me:  preparing, teaching, grading, answering questions without messing up, reading the text for the first time, being just another brick in the wall, etc.

[Editor's note: Hey, teacher, leave them kids alone]

Wasn't me

Dear Diary,

For once, it wasn't me.  I did not crash the cluster's head nodes.  For once.

Picture this:  I've been submitting a ton jobs recently, getting a lot of work done.  Steve and Kieron seemed to be real pleased that I'm getting all this done.  How could I remember not to crash any computers?  How about running less jobs so I make it wasn't me.

Ok, but there was some trouble around lunch.  I figured it has to me.  It's been me so many times that I'm now the guy  who is known as the guy who crashes the cluster.  To be a true player, you got to learn how to play.  But it wasn't me!

Nate was really nice to me this time and everything seems to be going my way.  Further, Miles and I are honing on the exact LDA that we've been trying to get for a long time now.  I mean, I have two numbers instead of zero now.

And with the whole cluster at my command, nothing can stop us!  (Unless I submit too many jobs and crash it.)  I was extremely nervous before I found out it wasn't me; now I need to go tell everyone and celebrate at the pub!

I will remember you

Dear Diary,

My roommate has moved out today.  I'm distraught.  Corey was one of the best roommates I've ever had.  Up there with the three guys I roomed with my first year at Long Beach before the landlord showed up unannounced and used a leaf blower to blow dust off the outside of the house.  Funny what having kids can do to some people.  Angry, formal letters by yours truly were sent to make sure we got our full security deposits (we did), and we all went our separate ways.  Happy times.

But Corey!  Now who will I come home to?  I can't keep doing this.  Going through roommates is tough.  You did your dishes!* That's like roommate gold! Two roommates in a row who did their dishes?  There must some regression back to the mean at some point.  And you always bought the toilet paper.  Remember the time we left the compost inside too long and got flies? 

My guess is that they won't fill the room for about a year.  It was awkward timing to do a fish project in Vietnam for housing contracts.  But seize the opportunity, Corey!

Who will I awkwardly negotiate bathroom time with?  Now it's just me and the bathroom.  I suppose my last, also very great roommate Ben moved out under similar circumstances.  He did get married, but maybe it was me.  Sometimes you have to look in the mirror and realize that you've got the whole place here to yourself and that's super awesome.  No, Corey and our third roommate (his significant other) loved spending time here because they basically had full control over the apartment.  With no furniture and a full work schedule, I'm a veritable non-factor!

He did leave a table.  Maybe I should have a party where I invite everyone and sit in my one chair.  That's enough, right?  I am slowly collecting furniture discarded from former roommates.  The first year I was here, I slept on the floor.  Not after Ben moved out.  Thank you!  A few more roommates and I could get to enjoying time at home!

*-The next one better too! 

Riding along to a colloquium talk

Dear Diary,

Today I went back to my alma mater:  CSU Long Beach so that I could see Kieron give the weekly colloquium.  Kieron did a really good job!  I really am learning from an excellent speaker and master physicist!  Not only was I impressed, but so were the current students (none of whom I currently know).

I did get a chance to reconnect with my old advisor, Andreas, and sort through some things while Kieron visited others.  That's somehow still going on but winding down.

Kieron even mentioned me and my work (he needs more Dr. Who's!--Who doesn't?*).  But I wonder how much crowd pleasing that could have been.  Would we have been run out of town with pitchforks and knives if we hadn't glorified the Long Beach name?  Well, maybe not so violently, but Kieron did make fast friends with one Zoltan who was my favorite professor during my time there.  Ok, well, Zoltan prepared me for more than just physics.  He also taught me lessons about life (so it was literally the School of Hard Knocks!).

I'm glad they got along!

*-Joke.  Pun.  Haha.

The Advancement Came to Me

Dear Diary,

I have been selected for an interview for that Fellowship I applied to!  Wowie!  I'm super pumped for the opportunity to talk about my research and career goals in front of a panel of real physicists!

...Hmm, that sounds a lot like the advancement to candidacy.  Why have I been putting it off, you ask?  Well, I wanted to get the initial project I was given  out of the way.  I am was so optimistic!

But now the advancement has come to me!  If I had played my cards right, I could maybe just do both at the same time!  Over the weekend, I'll have to prepare a presentation on things I've done, places I've been to, and interview questions both technical and simple!

But the sartorial choices are key!  I'll need to find some proper dress shoes and choose whether I wear the blue or the red dress shirt.  I just got new ties for both, so this is an excellent time to ponder endlessly about which one will be cooler to wear (it's supposed to be over 100 the next few days!).  Hmm...maybe the purple shirt...with the skinny black tie!  Eh...or the blue...or red...or plain white...

Oh, and I'll get a haircut!

So much physics

Dear Diary,

Looking back over the past few weeks of posts, I've been accidentally ending everything with some sort of statement that I'm going to get to work or being productive.  And that is only half as useful as you'd think because I do get to work, but nothing seems to get done!  I'm going to give up declarations like that for the next few posts and see how bad the withdrawal symptoms are.

Yesterday, the project I've been working on for quite a while came to a head.  It was both Steve and Kieron in the same room getting on the same page.  When two professors talk physics, it's the students who are in the middle!  I decided to type as fast as my little fingers could go so I could reread their comments for later.  The script read something like:

Steve:  How are you?
Kieron:  Not too bad. You?
S: Fantastic.  I'm headed out of town.
K:  So am I.
Dr Who:  I haven't done anything.
K:  Have something for us when we get back.
S:  [Complicated physics that was above my head]
K:  [A brilliant response]
S:  [Another brilliant response]
Dr Who:  [I say something]
K:  Uh....so like I was saying...[more brilliance!]

I pasted that verbatim from my notes!*  But we finally figured out what's been plaguing everything and some possibilities to fix it.  I swear I had the final suggestion running around in my head, but I hadn't gotten an opportunity to say it.  It seems like it's important to be on the same page as your bosses so you A)  don't get off track and B) keep them in the loop.  Kieron really liked the figures I showed him; I'll do more of that.  Steve had some great test calculations for me to run that illuminated everything.  I will admit that I brought this whole thing up a bit ago and it took even me to realize the full implication and fix of what was going on over the last week and a half since I first mentioned it.  Now that Steve and Kieron have set me straight...err...hmm, I'll back away from that one.  Close call.

On to progra-...!  No!  Whew, that was close.

But all that's past us now.  I can---er...yikes.  It has been a long time since working on this project, but I honestly feel like I'm accomplishing my goals as far as learning the material;  I guess I can learn!  But I have little to show for it as far as papers.  So....uh....nevermind.

Ok, it's ti-....No, I won't do it!  I won't make a declaration about heading back to work or progressing!  Oh, shoot, there it was...

[*Editor's note:  That is not actually what was said at the meeting.]

UCLAke

Dear Diary,

Greetings from UCLAke. We're under a lot of pressure these last few days. The main thing is not to break down. But I'm afraid we'll get hosed if we're not careful. Luckily, a lot of the material is watered down if vast. Still, we get water breaks. Good thing, I'm thirsty.

Now, not to flood you with news, but someone at the conference actually (no joke) had a baby today (congratulations!) after their water broke! Yay! Rejoice!

Ok, I'm running dry on material. I'll keep you up on all the topics here as quickly as they come out. Things are going swimmingly.

Lifetimes

Dear Diary,


You see, Diary, we work in one dimension where some normal descriptions of matter break down.  We like one dimension because things are often easier to solve, but we need to be careful to avoid nasty physics (or hard math) that differs from problems we might want to solve in two or three dimensions.

One such instance is the description, known as a Fermi-liquid, that describes excitations that are close to the Fermi-surface very well in three dimensions (and two).  But if you try to calculate the quantum field properties in one dimension, you get a bad answer.  Specifically, the self-energy has a big imaginary part to it.  That's bad because it means the quasi-particles (or hypothetical weakly or non-interacting particles that would act like the many interacting particles) in our system have a short lifetime.  That means it's a bad description!  Ideally, we'd like the true quasi-particle that only weakly interacts in our system.  This means the math we wrote down to describe the system can be solved (perhaps more simply than the original problem if we find the right quasi-particle!).

For a real world example, let's describe how SCARY would tell the story of the camping trip last week.  A lot of that story would contain an untruthful description of the real events of that system that have a large imaginary part, but that means a made up story wouldn't have a very long lie-fetime!  One would say the made up quasi-particles in that system are a bad description of the actual events that happened.

You see, physics is useful for describing things.

The radius of convergence is zero

Dear Diary,

Let's talk about a Taylor series' radius of convergence for a minute.  When you're writing down a mathematical structure for a particular object, sometimes the best you can do is generate the Taylor series in a small area of the problem.

I'll liken this to a color gradient.  If you have a panel that slowly varies from red to white like this:

If you start on the white side of the figure and move towards the red, you need to slowly add red to the spot you're standing on.  This is what a Taylor series is doing.  As you move around on the color gradient from right to left, you need to add more color...but in the physics or math problem, you add more mathematical terms to the Taylor series!

You can also a define a radius of convergence of the Taylor series.  This would mean, how far can you want with your Taylor series.  Say our gradient abruptly turned blue to the left of the above gradient.  You can't add more red to get to blue, primarily.  So, the radius of convergence of that color set up would be the width of the rectangle.

There are some things in physics that have a radius of convergence of zero.  As soon as you take one step away from where you started, the Taylor series is already bad!  Most famously, this happens in quantum field theory when you try to see how far away the electron's mass is from the bare mass in the Lagrangian.  You get an infinite distance; in other words, your Taylor series is a miserable description everywhere!  Instead, you can only use the experimental mass in your computation and then everything works!

But there are also real life examples.  For starters, consider the distribution of camping trips I've been on in my entire life.  The one I went on last week had a radius of convergence of zero about it.  You can't Taylor expand to compare it to any other camping trip!  It was that bad!  I have a bunch of trips that were good, bad, and otherwise interesting, but this one was SCARY!  I find it hard to compare to any other experience.  A description from any other experience would not be adequate.  Just like a Taylor series with a radius of convergence of zero.

The Gettysburg Address

Dear Diary,

This is the year of 2014 which is exactly 88 years after Schrodinger published his famous equation for quantum mechanics.  Kieron approached me and Lucas last year about commemorating the event by sneaking in some snippets from Abraham Lincoln's infamous Four Score and Severn (87) years ago speech.

But we didn't publish last year.

Luckily, Thomas-Fermi theory, a commonly used approximation for the kinetic energy that matches up with a uniform gas was published in 1927.  That's exactly 87 years ago from this year!  So, we thought, why not just honor this other paper?

We did!  But the editor's caught us.  Kieron was a little disappointed that the reviewers didn't mention it in their reviews, but during the proofing stage, a savvy literature guru at Physical Review noticed it and the Dante's inferno reference placed there by Lucas.  So, they would change the wording.

But the joke was still on!  They didn't remove enough from the paper to take out the intention!  It's still there!  Kieron did fess up to the editor's, but one should note that the Physical Review Letter from last year referenced a Tale of Two Cities in the first line.

While the original wording was changed, the world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.

Not your American Summer Camp

Dear Diary,

Here at Jouvence, the main inhabitants during the week are young tween-ish or younger kids led around by their eclectic band of adult leaders.

Why just today I saw one holding a kid's hand in one hand and playing an accordion with the other while singing in French.  Some kids in front of him were sort of skip-jumping wildly, enthusiastically and singing along.  The leader was just missing a beret and a cigarette to keep it from being too French!

Another time, me  and some others were playing volleyball when a bunch of kids showed up with adults in fluffy, enormous hats and various brightly colored clothes.  They rolled in, started a fire, and sang songs.  It was all disorganized and frolicky; like they just let the kids play. Lorenzo whistled "If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands" and all the kids clapped and started singing, giggling.  So fun! It looked a lot more fun than the American camps I've been to.

Ok, back inside to listen to some more physics.

What goes bump in the night

Dear Diary,

Other campuses that I've attended had their own special brand of vermin that invaded the streets at night time:  Brazilian cockroaches that a biologist accidentally let loose, ferral cats, coyotes, me, etc.

But Irvine's animal control is absolute.  Nothing has a chance of lasting very long.  And the biologists work with fish that won't last in this weather!  Yet, there's one animal the beast can not control:  bands of wild high school students!

Recently, I sat down in one of their more exotic gathering places: chipotle, and saw them communicate in their native Snapchat.    It really is amazing how much of their social energy is spent with cellphones.  They could be programming!  Or blogging!  Or looking at each other!

Don't be fooled, though, the wild teenager is crafty like a fox.  Irvine boasts one of the top schools in the country.  A high school student I once spoke with saw college as synonymous with the University of California or the Ivy League. Anything less, like where I went to, is a mistake!

But perhaps that's apples and oranges.  The high schools around here occasionally send me pamphlets about how their students are in the upper whatever percentage of test scores in the nation.  I imagine if one of those high schoolers catches me looking up some physics knowledge while observing them, they'd interrupt me like this:

"What are you working on?" they pry.
"Oh, this is just some multi-dimensional physics [jargon] blah, blah, blah." I respond trying not to blow their minds.
"Oh, we just did that Tuesday in our string theory class," they ask and grab my phone briefly scanning through the document like Data from Star Trek.
"Well, why don't you just..." [the student trails off and solves it by writing the answer in salsa on the wall of the restaurant]
"Go do literally anything else!" and I quit since Mind=blown is the only equation that comes to my mind.

PS  Apparently there's an enormous hullabaloo about a new high school in the area being built on a toxic waste dump.  I don't know, sounds smart to me to enfuse these impressionable super-geniuses with super powers imbued by the ooze!

Let them eat cake

Dear Diary,

Here's a bit of retro-posting for you.  I'm going to tell you about one of the all-time legendary computers games that probably influenced me to become a physicist.

I'm talking about the original Half-life.

The game opens on a scientist going to work in a secret, private corporation's complex by tram past, among other things, a radioactive pit.  The subtitles inform you that you are Gordon Freeman, a theoretical physicist from MIT.  Now, as a nine year old, that theoretical physics thing sounds super dope because no one who is nine years old knows what physics is, so it must be something completely wicked.

That first subtitle holds up well and good until you start thinking about what kind of work Dr. Freeman actually has considering his background in theory.  His job is to be blithely ignorant to all things going on in the facility and push samples into laser beams.  He does this excellently.  But, why did they hire a theoretical physicist to do this?  Is it that an experimental physicist would know too much about pushing samples into laser beams and the work is hyper-classified?  If their goal was to find someone who would definitely never figure out why their experimental appartus was a bad idea, they picked the right guy.  Rather, the game should be focused around you sitting at a desk and pushing math around on a piece of paper.

When Dr. Freeman activates a resonance cascade opening a trans-dimensional portal to allow aliens into our world (almost the first thing you do), he immediately becomes the "hunky, studly" sort of life saving scientist (a la Tony Stark/Ironman, but without any dialog or attitude) and you start to wonder how he knows how to deal with headcrabs (class at MIT? PHYS 301: Monster Management? PHYS 302: How to Save the World from your Research?).

What are the teaching people at MIT, anyway?  How did he get through MIT if he doesn't know what a resonance cascade is?  Does the physics department there also include courses on how to use weapons in case your physics research opens trans-dimensional portals...or is that something he learned at his first postdoc?  Maybe it's a product of the Manhattan project?  Could Dr. Freeman not get a regular postdoc and so had to settle for causing an alien invasion?  I know the job market is bad, but whoa...

Let this be a lesson to all of us:  theorists cause the alien apocalypse working in a theoretical job.  This game is really a lesson in hiring people with the proper job training...and not getting too over-invested so you get impatient waiting for Half-Life 3 to come out.

They say it's your birthday-it's my birthday too, yeah!

Dear Diary,

It's my birthday today, and I wanted to reflect with you about this 27th year.  You know, the title line of this post is from The Beatles' song Birthday and is the ultimate "someone hits on someone else, finds out it's their birthday, and claims they have the same birthday ever so slyly"-line.  It apparently worked for The Beatles, but for the rest of us it probably only works one day a year.  Now to find someone else who is also having their birthday...

My sources say that the 27th birthday is a unique time in one's life because Saturn has just revolved around the sun once*.  Because of this, it is a time of great reflection in one's life where you can finalize the lessons from your relatively chaotic youth and figure out how you want to wield those experiences.  Lots of famous people have had to tackle this milestone including Jim Morrison, Amy Winehouse, Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, and Kurt Cobain.  It looks like I'm in talented company!

Here's to one more year!

[Editor's note: *-technically, Saturn goes around the sun every 29 years...but the wisdom and life lessons still apply.]

It's my time to shine!

Dear Diary,

Kieron has deputized me in the quest to put out a paper by the end of the month.  It is to be my top priority.  But, as they say, first is the worst--second is the best--and third (in my priority list this would be working on a separate paper) is the one in a polka dot dress.

My first task was to set up the appropriate folders for the draft.  This involved finding all the references Lucas had put into the paper...all 86 of them!  So, I went through each of the references, found their pdfs and then renamed them all to the classic Burke short-hand.

The last letters of each author (up to four) appear in capital letters followed by the year.  If two such papers are named identically, the second earns a "b" at the end of it (and so on through the alphabet if there are more).

As an example, if Drs. Who and Hyde appear on a paper from 1901, then the shorthand would be WH01.  As a further example, for hyphenated names where you could have two possible choices, you only retain one of the letters.  So, for Gori-Giorgi, you obviously take the "G".

Mucho Macho Pruebas!

Dear Diary,

The cluster has been humming with my calculations recently.  I'm preparing lots of data for Li.    I've spent a lot of time debugging how I was making all 2000 points for him and found one key error:  the number of spaces between four fingers is three (not four).  Basically, I set up my code to automatically generate the program files somewhat strangely.

Anyway, now I'm pumping out the correct data and will send it to Li as it comes out.  The cluster really makes it slick to calculate large data like this and I can't even imagine doing it on my personal machine.  I can basically run things overnight!

I have noticed that copying the scripts to set up all of the programs is really quick with Unix to boot. So, giving them more data shouldn't be a problem if it comes to that.

Now, Kieron asked us to run a "macho test" and I haven't quite looked into that yet.  Hopefully, I can see if something is located in previous papers, so I'll go take a peak now.

The Fellowship of the Grant

Dear Diary,

Whew.  I'm exhausted.  I just toted a tiny grant proposal all the way across middle winter.  I wasn't really equipped at first to handle this task and take the precious to the end, but I had a great band of comrades who helped me out.  The ability to fund oneself is important as one grant can rule them all and, in the physics, support it.


Sure, we bickered about how the essays should be written, what they should be written about, who to send reference letter requests to, and ultimately who gets the money if we win, but the real adventure is between friends.  At first, the essays seemed to dig too deep and too greedily.  Strangely enough, the more I attacked the essays in a short amount of time, the less effective I was.  So, it was important to space things out.*

I had enormous writer's block and had to rewrite everything approximately infinitely many times, but it led to a good place.  I am worried that if we wind up some of the essays any tighter, then they'll snap in half while the reviewers are reading them!

And if I win, the precious will be mine!  I'll be invisible to all external granting woes!  It can even go on my CV!

...oh, and there's the sweet physics I'll get to do too...

*-But maybe not three movies worth...

Old Computer, New Computer, Red Computer, Blue Computer

Deary Diary,

Kieron wants me to upgrade my circa 2005 laptop.  I'm reluctant.  I've been able to keep this thing together through blue screens, lost work, and hours of inane debugging with Arch Linux.

...hmm...

The joke is, my current computer is almost as good as all the new ones if it just had double the hard disk space and twice the processing speed.*  Processor speeds have sort of maxed out because their cooling abilities can't handle the extra heat generated by a faster processor.  That's where spintronic/quantum computing applications might one day help.  Oh, and my current laptop weighs 12 pounds.

So, you have me on the heaviness thing.

Unfortunately, I'm not an undergraduate, so I might not be able to deduct this off my taxes, but I'm ready to go from Eric Clapton to Eddie van Halen and accept that the computing world got itself into a big hurry.  While I might someday regret choosing the fast computing life and leaving the safety and comfort of yesterday's small town computing palace, Kieron is adamant and I have no leverage.

After an exhausting search, I've decided to get another laptop.  Getting a desktop would be like playing the cello in a marching band for what I need it for: conferences and the weekly group meetings. My strategy is to go small and go light.  The lightest options as of writing this blog** are the Macbook Air and the Ultrabook series.

I originally was going to get some stupid cheap, old laptop and install Linux on it (which you can do really easily on either class of laptops, apparently).  But it seems like it's not cheap enough to justify the headache--and I need it to work without spending all my time on it.  Further, I get a university education discount with Apple at least because I work for one.  Another reason is that the first*** year graduate students keep egging me to (Kieron, skip to the next paragraph!) play online video games with them.  Haha!  Jokes on them, I just wind up getting my spawn points camped and feeding the other team, n00bs/lol/lmao/l337!

Now, I've seen Windows 8.  I've watched commercials for Windows 8 (which, let's face it aren't particularly good), and reviews for Windows 8.  I'm not saying Windows 8 is bad (even though everyone else seems to)...I'm just saying that Windows 8 isn't Unix based and since I'm using more open source software and Unix type things, it makes more sense to not get Windows 8 right now.  Further, there's this Open Office thingy that has a Word equivalent...and the buttons are all like it's 1999 instead of whatever they are nowadays!  Yay!  I'm using LaTeX now exclusively, though, so...

In short, I wound up ruling out the ultrabook because they're more expensive than the Macbook air in general and have hardware issues that seem petrifying if I'm going to keep this thing for another 8 years.  Lots of Youtube videos helped guide that decision.

You see, Youtube isn't just a huge waste of time!

So, take a bite out of the Apple.  Why buy a Windows machine to just overwrite it with Linux?  Why not instead get an Apple operating system, not play any games, and eventually need to upgrade after 2 years because the next generation of software updates will (uncannily) slow your system down to something unusable until you finally A) buy a new Apple computer (Apple hopes) or B) give yourself a headache installing Linux.****

Pick your poison.

And the poison I pick is the Apple because at least you (incoherent Snow White pun:) get the seven dwarves. I'll upgrade to Linux as soon as Kieron starts bugging me about the age of my computer again to steal a few more years of usable life out of it. The price...well, it's worth the lost weight when I carry this around (~2.5 pounds, a 480% improvement).

But which monopolistic-ally priced Apple device should I purchase?  I see with a cheapish external hard drive, the 128 Gb device should suit my needs--and look!  I already got a 1TB external drive because I was convinced my current laptop would crash by now and needed backups!  And for the guys and gals who play video games, it appears it will handle those too.  I could even get a monitor and see things comfortably instead of on the 11 inch screen I picked.

I made sure to look at it in the store before buying and had it shipped to the campus store to get it quicker.  I can't wait to see Kieron's reaction when I roll up to group meeting with it!  Well...maybe the biggest reaction will be the lack of sighs and grunts from the whole group when the computer works.

Now what to do with this old computer...and we'll figure that out in another post.

*-and a better graphics card, resolution, faster USB/HDMI ports, battery life, internet speed, the ability for a USB clicker for a presentation to be plugged in and not have the laser pointer button make the screen toggle between full size and otherwise, and a working F11 key.  You know, the trivial stuff.

**-[Editor's note: This information is already out of date]

***-Now second years!

****-Oh, and upgrading Linux versions generally makes the whole thing crash, so I heard. Therefore, the Linux fix might not be so fixy!

E tu, Macro?

Dear Diary,

Oh, Lucas!  You left me with an unfinished paper (thank you, sort of).   Normally, I would be thrilled to help you get another publication, but you have so many macros in your Latex documents to make things so much simpler to type up.  I'm from the school of type everything out long hand!

So, I made a new figure and then tried to implement it into the tex file.  You know

\begin{figure}
\includegraphics[width=\columnwidth]{newpic.pdf}
\caption{Figures.  It's a figure. \label{fig:itsa}}
\end{figure}

but then it didn't compile!  I tried and tried (I even removed the above to see if it worked and it did!) until I removed a different figure and somehow it compiled!  It turns out that one of the macros later on was busted and this mysteriously revealed itself when I added a new figure.

So, there!  Don't use macros!  They only make your life easier!  I should go tell Justin to stop using macros to make changing symbols easier if he wants a switch and just go do everything by hand every time he makes a switch!

Don't pull the eject button!

Dear Diary,

I had to run my first meeting in place of Kieron.  Really, I found it was easy.  I let everyone else do most of the talking.  The group wisdom is usually best here and kept the pressure off me.

We were going over abstracts for the American Physical Society meeting in March.  I put up mine first because I'm the newest, and it went over well!  It only took 45 minutes to iron out the kinks and make sure we broke everything down didactically!  I think everyone else's benefitted from it because it didn't take as long!  I actually think we're going to have a golden set of abstracts for the APS.

Guo is sitting in with us for a few weeks since he's new to the program and pointed out that I didn't add any firm conclusions. I could add a few points to the content; however, I don't have any yet...I'll have to work hard so I'll have something to say in Colorado!  I showed it to Kieron beforehand, and he could only say good things about how broad the abstract is.  Huzzah!

When I finally submitted, I had to cut it even further because the new affiliations for Miles and Lucas (especially Lucas') put me over the limit.  APS gives you a little line that you can't go under, so beware.  I can write as much as I want with you, though, diary!

Oh, Lucas!  I finally fit your dervatives!  Yay!  I'll add them to the paper in an appropriate place.  Don't pull the eject button too soon and submit, Lucas!