More Boringness

Tomorrow morning I get to go sit on a bus and go back to school...Ewwww... I guess I only have two more quarters left until I will be done with UW forever. So probably I shouldn't whine so much. And I guess I am getting kind of bored sitting around here in the Tri-Cities, so maybe it will be nice to get back up there.

Otherwise I haven't been very productive today. I studied a little bit for the GRE, mostly by reviewing all the stuff I did wrong on the practice test I took yesterday. I also drove places for no reason. I'm exciting like that. I finished out my afternoon by eating lots of icecream, and now I'm wasting a little more time by annoying Chris once again at work.

What I'm actually doing...

I read through some of my old entries and I realized that all I ever do is whine about crap that I did a long time ago. So I am going to enlighten you to what I am actually doing at this moment in time. A novel concept, I'm sure.

Currently I am sitting in the back room of the hotel that my friend Chris Carlson works at. He is quasi-working on paperwork while I am entertaining myself by blogging. Right now I am on my spring break, so I am back home in the Tri-Cities (otherwise this wouldn't make a whole lot of sense). I do like being home, I get to drive a car so I can go where I want and do what I want. As I write this Chris is continuously making lewd comments that I decided to censor for you. Anyway, as you can tell I do not really have much of a life.

Today I took a practice physics GRE test and I discovered that I suck at physics and I need to study a lot if I want to get into a good graduate program. I still have a few weeks so I should be able to improve enough between now and then. At least I hope so. Besides that, I went out to lunch with the people I worked with two summers ago and hope to work with again. We went to Jackson's Sports Bar in Richland, which I had never eaten at before. Their hamburgers were far better than I was expecting them to be so that was pretty cool. I also went to the library I used to work at with my mom, and also to a book store. This summer I will be buying myself a car finally, so I am trying to research exactly what I want to buy. Anyway, I guess I am keeping busy with stuff.

Classes and Stuff

Even though I am 100% certain that nobody cares, I have decided to also tell you about what kind of classes I get to take these days. Fall quarter I took Mathematical Physics, Solid State Physics, Modern Physics Lab, Marching Band and Undergraduate Astronomy Research. I would describe to you what those all entailed but I am lazy. My goal here is just to give you a sense of what I am up to. Anyway, last quarter I took Astronomy Outreach, Atomic Physics, German 101, along with band and research again. This next quarter I am still trying to decide exactly what to do, I'm not sure if I want to take German again or not. But I will be taking Nuclear/Particle Physics, Modern European History, Astronomy Writing, band and research for sure. Well mostly for sure, we shall see.

For anyone who might be wondering why I randomly decided to take German (I already tricked them into thinking I know Spanish so I am done with foreign language requirements), I was hoping I could go to Europe next summer for this astronomy program, similar to what I did last summer. But I didn't get accepted so now it doesn't seem terribly beneficial to continue learning German. But I kind of told my roommate that I would be in his German class so I should probably do it.... Or I could just continue my trend of being an awful person and drop it from my schedule. I do enjoy a good battle between what I want to do and what my conscience tells me I should do.

Research and Stuff

For those of you who care at all, I thought I would update my research stuff on here as well since I whine about it so much. Last summer I worked at UCLA, modeling some synchrotron radiation in Mathematica. It was a really neat project but I'm not really sure we're ever going to publish it. I did however get to present my results in a poster session at the big AAS meeting in Seattle back in January, which was really cool. I actually was volunteering at this meeting, which paid my entry fee I guess. There were a lot of astronomers around and I got to attend some neat talks. I also saw a few people I know from other places but hadn't seen in a while. Anyway, it was pretty cool to get to participate in this meeting. Plus I got lots of free stuff out of it which always makes things better.

Right now I'm working on a new project at UW to take simulated galaxies and try to analyze them with tools that an observational astronomer would use. Basically I use a code that makes a simulated CCD image of the galaxy that was in a simulation and then see what I can do with the neat pictures it makes. Hopefully this will keep me busy for at least another quarter, and also will allow me to get some neat results.

This summer it looks like I am probably gonna go back to the Tri-Cities and have the same job I had two summers ago working with some of the Hanford clean-up people to make databases and stuff. I guess from an astronomy standpoint this is a step backwards, since I should theoretically try to work in my field. But this job pays a lot better and I am going to need the extra money here soon. So I guess I might get to see some of you if you are also around this summer. Technically I haven't actually gotten this job yet, but hopefully it will work out.

Life

It's been a really long time since I posted on here, so I decided I would kill some time by posting on here tonight. There's not really a whole lot new going on, I'm still at UW working towards my physics/astronomy degree. I will be graduating next fall, which allows me another year of marching band and whatnot. Hopefully that will be fun. I guess the only other really exciting news is that next summer I will be going to China for the Olympics, I get to play in the band at the opening ceremonies. So that should be pretty awesome.

Otherwise school is going well, I haven't flunked out or anything yet. Last quarter was a bit rough, I was not terribly pleased with how things were going at times. But that was because I am stupid, so hopefully now I know how to recognize stupid when I see it and I will prevent myself from being stupid in the future. I'm reasonably confident that next quarter will be less retarded, even though I will be really busy. Anyway, as always I will try to post more often but I shall fail miserably.