Plagiarism, she lives

You would not believe how many hits this blog has gotten this week from people using the search criteria "how I spent my holiday," which leads to this post.

Write your own school essays, kids. Writing is a good and useful skill to have and practice. Besides, I think your teacher wants to know how you spent your holiday, not how internet writers spend theirs.

In other news, engineering classes are enjoyable thus far. I find that I can grasp even theoretical engineering better than I can wrap my mind around even applied physics. Of course, my motivation level is higher in engineering than in physics, so that helps. Applications of engineering can make immediate contributions to human welfare, however small. Applications of physics, on the other hand, tend to be grander, loftier, and may move the entire human race forward in the quest for Understanding the Universe. That sounds romantic enough, but such goals have always seemed just a bit too quixotic for me.

Fall Falls Along the Chena

With their papa on a different day:


Here are the bunnies looking cute. Even Mr. Grumphus Bumfus Bunn B. Doofus is looking uncharacteristically cute.

So the Fall Semester Begins...

It started last Thursday, actually, but since my classes only meet Monday through Wednesday, I start tomorrow. I will be taking Arctic Engineering, Elastic Stability Theory, and three thesis credits, in addition to my research assistanceship. Both of my scheduled classes are in the evenings, so I am free to schedule my daytime hours however I find convenient (within the constraints of the other people I work with, of course).

When you are a grad student doing research, your time is tight, but fluid. I am thankful for this and find that it suits both my personality and what I am used to. In the Silicon Valley, salaried engineers almost always work over 40 hours a week, but we are not paid overtime. However, on the flip side, the time that I took off was equally loosely managed. No-one even recorded the time I took off for personal business. It was just sort of understood that since I worked 45-70 hours per week with no overtime pay, it was perfectly fair of me to take off the time I needed without getting all nitty-gritty about reporting my vacation or sick leave.

When I was growing up, my mother worked for the federal government. She worked 9 hours a day, four days a week. On the fifth day, she alternately had the day off, and worked an 8-hour day. This summed to 80 hours every two weeks. Later, after having been working in industry for several years, I recalled this with a sort of awe. No-one had ever managed my time that carefully, and no-one ever would. I'm not sure what part of my personality gives me this, but I would be very resentful if anyone tried to schedule my hours exactly, even if the sum total of hours is less than what I would have planned for myself. I have worked in such jobs before, and it didn't bother me then. And obviously, taking classes imposes such restrictions, and I'm not so resentful about those. *shrug*

Fall Photos

Fall brings the best food (the Alaskan King Crab was frozen from Winter)::




Hangin' with my buds:


Red fox on campus:

Pistachio Scans

Here is the entire nut, in profile:


Here is a slice taken along the z-axis of the view above:


And here is a screenshot of the rendered 3D model of the above slice:


Cool, huh? You can see the nut, the shell, and the skin of the nut that is peeling off inside the shell!

Fall Reportage

We are losing seven minutes of daylight a day now. We saw the stars come out for the first time since Summer, a few weeks ago. After months of missing them, I actually found them anti-climactic. I guess they are, after all, just little twinkly things in the sky. :)

All of the birds (geese, swans, cranes) are gathering together and staging their migrations. It's very dramatic to see them swooping around against the bright blue sky.

The weather has been beautiful, and the temperature changes from day to night have been dramatic! Highs are around 70F/21C, lows around 40F/4C. I leave home in a wool sweater and return at the end of the day in a T-shirt!

Last night I baked and mashed the pumpkins, made two loaves of pumpkin bread, and froze the rest. When I first cut open the pumpkins, I was disappointed. They had pale, yellow flesh and looked watery. However, they baked up rich and sweet. The bread, it will not surprise you to hear, is delicious!

Fall Falls on Ester Dome

Here is Ann's giant pumpkin:


And here are the girls at their second favorite hobby::