Hail to the Term Papers

Many of you have certainly noticed a lack of “bloggish activity” on this site during the last couple of weeks. I’ve just been swamped with end-of-the-semester stuff, particularly a big term paper.
The first part of last week was absolutely gorgeous, we had a few days in a row even with highs in the 70s and not a cloud in the sky. I really can’t remember a stretch of weather quite that nice, it really was amazing. Perfect weather for sitting outside at Sports Cafe during the day for some wings, if you ask me. But that’s about all that I really got to enjoy it, the rest of my time was spent inside working on the last couple of homework assignments for Dynamics and Cloud Physics. Springtime is definitely in full swing around here though, pretty much all the trees have leaves out, and after last weekend’s rains everything’s really green. At least we’re not being tortured by having to miss too much nice spring weather with school, since finals are over this week.
Perhaps the most momentous event of last week was late afternoon last Friday when Physical Plant FINALLY turned on the air conditioning in Walker Building. It’d been absolutely unbearable in the building for 2-3 weeks, with temps in the 80s everywhere in the building (Physical Plant still had the HEAT turned on full blast, aaarrgghhh…), and it was especially stuffy and stifling in the TA office since we have no windows and no fan. I hate old buildings with crappy ventilation systems, especially when the heat/air conditioning can only be switched on/off once a season. So lame. In terms of excitement I’d say A/C in Walker even tops when my microwave randomly arced for no apparent reason one night last week. Does anyone know if the papery/plastic wrapping that sticks of butter come in contain any metal? Because that’s the only potential cause I can think of, especially since it’s been working just fine ever since.
I finally got around to reading through a bunch of journal articles for my Mesoscale paper late last week and on Saturday especially. I was really starting to freak out by Saturday morning when I finished the first stack of articles I’d printed out, and realized that a) not enough of those sources were even potentially useful to me for my paper, and b) of the ones that were useful, I had no idea yet how to tie them in to anything. So after dropping Daniel & Aviva off at the airport Saturday afternoon (they were going to the hurricane conference in Monterrey, California for the week, along with Moyer, Dr Evans & Dr Frank), I printed off a bunch more articles, most of which actually were quite helpful. I spent the rest of Saturday and pretty much all day Sunday locked in my room, reading articles, and then struggling to start thinking of ways to put it all together into a cohesive whole (hence why they were strewn all across my bed, which was basically serving as my table for laying everything out). All in all it was quite frustrating.
Apart from Monday night, when I stayed in my apartment to watch “Stargate SG-1” and “24” while grading labs, every night this week I migrated to Walker with my laptop to work on my Mesoscale paper (and my 8-minute in-class presentation on my paper on Wednesday, that I had to do despite not being close to done with the paper…). If I recall correctly, Tuesday I was there till after 1am, Wednesday till 2am, and Thursday until 3:30am. That’s a long time to be spending in Walker, especially the TA office where there are no windows, but I find I’m far more productive in Walker than I am in my apartment, in general, especially when there’s nobody else (or maybe a couple people) in the office. Anyway, by Wednesday night I started really getting comfortable with the paper and what I was writing, and my plan for the rest of it really started to gel, which put me a bit at ease. By the time it was all said and done, the text of my paper was 13.5 pages long at 1.5 spacing, with 16 references (15 being “journicles”), with a good deal of my 7-pg Cloud Physics paper appearing in some form or another in the Mesoscale paper, since they were both about hail formation and growth (which was good, because I caught several mistakes in my Cloud Physics paper that way, and also really got a chance to truly integrate and mesh all that I’d learned about the topic). Plagiarizing is okay, as long as you’re plagiarizing yourself. 🙂 I still need to spar with Microsoft Word and add figures to the paper, that’ll probably come tomorrow. Hopefully I don’t have to get too violent with it when it is inevitably irksome and either ignores or intentionally refuses to comply with my formatting wishes. It’ll feel so good when it’s completely and totally DONE, but it’s very relieving to have all the text written. I was getting so tired of having that hang over my head that I just wanted to get it over with.
Apart from realizing that this week was my very last week of classes for my first year of grad school (!!), this week was also my final week of TA’ing Meteo 003 labs, woohoo! I still have a batch of labs to grade though, which kinda sucks, since I kinda have three tough finals to be studying for. Maybe I’ll just give them all A’s on this assignment. I probably won’t ever have to TA again since now I have research funding.
I really should’ve done some work last night, but I was rather tired and unmotivated after my marathon Thursday night paper-writing session. I was hoping to relax with some of the usual Friday night trivia at the Sports Cafe, but unfortunately that didn’t happen because it was packed out by hockey fans watching the Philadelphia Flyers-Buffalo Sabres playoff game. Stupid Flyers, taking away my trivia night.
Today I’ve gotten a little bit done at least, though not as much as I’d been hoping. For lunch and into the afternoon I met with Anna, Steve, Kristin & Brendaly, the other officers for next year for Penn State Christian Grads (a couple weeks ago I was elected the new Communications Officer, meaning that maintaining the listserv and website and all that is my primary responsibility). Then I procrastinated further by going to Wal-Mart to find a replacement bulb for my headlight that burned out. I did manage to get in probably 4-5 hours of studying Cloud Physics (i.e., making my cheat sheet, I’m three-quarters done or so), mostly before a really interesting History Channel special about dragons came on. It really is interesting that cultures throughout every non-Antarctic continent have dragon legends, and how similar most of the descriptions are to dinosaurs; it kinda makes it seem reasonable to surmise that perhaps there really was such an animal that all these peoples actually saw… And then a bit after 11 I went to the airport to pick up Aviva & Daniel and bring them back to their respective places. The TA office will at last feel whole again. 🙂
As for the WxChallenge forecasting contest that I’m in, the “regular season” came to a close last week, and I finished 1st in the grad student category and 23rd overall or so, not too shabby. As a result of my being in the top 64 overall forecasters in the contest, I was entered into the WxChallenge tournament, which for three weeks has us forecasting for Hastings, Nebraska. It’s set up kinda like the NCAA tournament, and I was put as a 6-seed in Region 2. For each round everyone forecasts for two days, and then for each matchup the person with the lower two-day score (i.e., best forecasts) wins and moves on to the next round. I edged out my first-round opponent from the University of Oklahoma, and despite totally blowing my precip forecasts the last two days (I predicted .35″ and .41″ of rain for yesterday and today, respectively, while there were 1.02″ and 0.00″ in reality), everyone else blew theirs too, so I’m now into the Sweet 16, having beaten a fellow grad student at the University of Hawaii. Sweet! My next round matchup will be really tough though, another Oklahoma grad student who’s been doing really well of late. Check out the WxChallenge bracket and follow the tournament!
While the Vikings are my favourite NFL team, I do love that the Saint Paul Saints are openly mocking them. If I were in Minnesota in late May I’d totally go to the game to get one of those, even though I don’t own a bathtub. 🙂 And I guess the Vikings are getting new uniforms for next year. I’m not sure what to think of them, but I think some aspects of them are definitely borderline hideous. I suppose they’ll grow on me with time though.
Tired of waiting at red lights? You could be like this guy who made a “remote” of sorts to change the lights to green as he approached the intersection.
In Pennsylvania apparently the Easter bunny likes to brandish a firearm. I knew there was a reason I never liked the Easter bunny… I bet Jack Bauer could take care of the Easter bunny once and for all, though.
Drugs, nudity and chimneys don’t mix. They just don’t.
And while tax day has already come and gone, here are party-specific tax forms, both of which are pretty funny.
Well, I suppose I should consider hitting the sack, so I can be awake and alert tomorrow while studying for my finals. I’ve got Cloud Physics on Monday afternoon at 4:40, Dynamics on Tuesday at 5:30, and Mesoscale on Thursday morning at 10am. Dynamics and Mesoscale are looking very frightening at this point, but Cloud Physics shouldn’t be too bad, at least not in comparison. Busy week ahead. I also have to help Dr Nese proctor the Meteo 003 final exam Tuesday morning at 8am, eww. And I’m seriously considering auditioning for “Weather World” on Thursday after my Mesoscale final, as if I need another thing on my plate this week.