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May 13, 2006
Grey Skies Ahead
Who would've thought that the most interesting thing I did for work this past week would have been going through the first 2-3 chapters of an online FORTRAN 90 tutorial? I haven't yet coded anything in FORTRAN, but I think I'm picking up quite a bit from reading through the tutorial, so at least I feel like I learned something this past week to prepare me for research. So the first couple days of next week I'll probably continue with that, and then Wednesday there'll likely be a SCIPUFF training session for a bunch of us students (grad & undergrad) who are relatively new to the projects that Joel, Sue Ellen and others are heading up. I expect once that's done that my summer research will be starting in earnest.
I've found another tasty place for lunch, Viet Thai, which is actually right across Atherton from Walker. The last time I'd been there was for dinner way back early in fall semester before one of our evening Rad Tran classes with a bunch of other people, and it was kinda expensive then. But Daniel & I went there for lunch on Thursday, and it's not too expensive for lunch. The chicken pad thai and pork green curry were both quite good. There are so many good places to eat here in State College, about the only thing that's lacking is a good Mexican restaurant. Apparently the only good Mexican place in the area is way down in Altoona, about 45 minutes away.
Wednesday evening Daniel & I just hung out at his place, relaxing and watching some stuff on the tele. There were just too many good shows on to watch a movie instead, like the South Park rerun of the episode with the killer whale and MASA, the Mexican version of NASA. :-) Then on Thursday evening we met up with Kerrie & Aviva at Champs to watch the Red Sox-Yankees game, as Kerrie & Aviva are both huge Red Sox fans. 
We got a table in the room with the huge screen, but each table also had a little TV screen, so when it came to be 9:30 Daniel & I flipped it to "The Office" season finale, and tried to crowd up close to it so that we could try to hear the show over the background din of the restaurant and the game, to the great amusement of Kerrie & Aviva, who were just paying attention to the game on the big screen. I'm happy the Yankees lost that one, but that game was sooooooo long, it was ridiculous, about four hours. For a regular season game in May. Unless the game's 12-10 or something high-scoring, there's no reason for it to take that long.
Last night at Sports Cafe we didn't have a few of the trivia regulars, but we still managed to win first place again, this time with the team name "Hideki Matsui's Wrist." The Sports Cafe was a little sparse though, since last night and today are graduation ceremonies for all the various colleges and departments here at Penn State. We grad students will rule this town soon! After trivia we went down to Zeno's for a little while too, though it would've been better had there been places to sit, oh well. All in all it was a fun night (made even better when Zach texted me that the Twins had beaten the White Sox 10-1, woohoo!!), though accidentally dropping my camera on the floor wasn't my smoothest move ever. Fortunately it still works, though not all the panels and joints quite line up and lock quite as nicely as they used to. And I don't know how this happened, but Caren was actually caught on camera with a smile. That almost never happens, haha.
Animals have been in the news a bit lately, with a hybrid polar-grizzly bear found in Nunavut (a northern Canadian province, formerly part of the Northwest Territories), and an alligator attacking and killing a jogger in Florida. Freaky. And in another interesting article I read, apparently one lone juror prevented Zacarias Moussaoui from receiving the death penalty in his recent trial. Apparently that juror never spoke up during deliberations either, to the great frustration of the other jurors, because then they were unable to address and discuss that person's objections. It's always interesting to hear what goes on in the jury deliberations in high-profile cases like this. And finally, a little while ago Josh sent me a link to a very cool picture of one of the Blue Angels planes flying at Mach 1 a mere 30 feet above the ocean. It's always so cool when you can actually see a sonic boom. :-)
I really haven't accomplished a whole lot so far today. I'm contemplating possibly going out for a run this afternoon, especially since I haven't since Tuesday, or perhaps working on some more of my photo albums or even starting to redesign/update the PSCG webpage.
The next week or so is gonna be pretty rainy and cool around here, thanks to a powerful cut-off low (which after looking at it on visible satellite imagery on Thursday we all started calling the "Michigan Hurricane") that's going to continue SLOWLY drifting our way. That same storm's been hammering the Great Lakes and Upper Midwest for several days now with cold, wind and rain. Areas in northern Wisconsin even got 6-8 inches of snow overnight on Thursday night! Talk about crazy May weather. I hate cut-off lows... We've been rather spoiled by gorgeous weather around here the past month or so, so I guess it's time we have some rain. The rain will help ease the drought warnings and watches that are in force around the area though, so that'll be good.
Posted by Jared at May 13, 2006 03:58 PM
Comments
I won't believe Caren actually smiled on camera until I see it.
Posted by: Walter at May 14, 2006 02:57 AM
Umm, the photographic evidence is right there, didn't you see it? Or are you saying that you need to be physically present when the photo is taken before you'll believe it?
Posted by: Jared at May 14, 2006 09:09 AM
Apparently, I am blind. I remember seeing the first two pictures, but not the third. You'd think I would check that before complaining.
Posted by: Walter at May 15, 2006 01:03 AM
Jared, learn and use python instead of FORTRAN. Python has all the advantages of FORTRAN plus a lot more like it can be object oriented, doesn't need crappy compilers, is easier to implement, and has a large support community. Oh yeah, and people still use it. Besides, I'm pretty sure the first language platform for the new quantum computers cory and I are going to make is going to be python, unless ofcourse we have to totally design some new way of programming. But even then, it will be as close to python as possible. Also the majority of the JaredSIM sub projects have been implemented in python.
Posted by: dave at May 17, 2006 01:39 AM
Dave, believe me when I say I'd much rather learn Python than FORTRAN, because FORTRAN seems kinda crappy and Python from my experience in Olin was relatively intuitive, but my advisor codes all his stuff in FORTRAN 90, so I've gotta learn it. That and one of my co-advisors codes everything in Matlab, so I have to learn that too. Apparently FORTRAN (all versions, even 77) is still all too alive and well in the Meteorology/Atmospheric Science "community," it's what a lot of the primary forecasting models are coded in, sigh...
Posted by: Jared at May 17, 2006 02:23 AM