Judy's Pics

On Tuesday, with Judy and mom in tow, we took a drive up the windward coast to see Kualoa, Sunset, the Waimea heiau and have dinner in Haleiwa. Good times. Then Wed, Judy and I hiked Mariners ridge. I learned a helluva lot about the ecologic development that would occur on a rock if somehow one could float said rock out in the middle of the pacific. I didn't know that there's all kinds of spiders, seeds, and other things just floating in the air. Said rock would have certain plants and perhaps scavengers nearly overnight. To turn said rock from a rock to a plant and bird covered rock, like Hawai'i was before the polynesians (and certainly after the haole's) it would take a while. And then let evolution run it's course....

Visitors!

No sooner than 24 hours after I returned, the swarm of visitors began.... And the weather's been freaky. Cool and grey. Weird.

Mom at the heiau up near Waimea.
Choppers overflying Three Tables.
Birds harassing us at Three Tables.

A Rough Morning....

6am was tough.... With much help from Coffee, I made a whole bunch of plots in the airport on the flight home. Killed all 4 batteries too. I've spent the rest of the day finishing plots and cleaning. The visitor mayhem begins in 15 hours.

Flying To San Jose

It was a great day for flying. I got to work on a whole bunch of plots and a draft of my next paper. I'm trying to hack out the "survey" work from my thesis. I've got it down to 58 pages, journal style. It's one big mo-fo. At least the pictures were good. I got in and got a car to drive to Santa Cruz. I managed to miss the Mohito night, but Jesse's whole house was pretty ripped and I killed off the whiskey/amaretto combo with Katie and her friend. Then, we biked up to a house to go to a party. I got to catch up with Sora briefly. What a crazy world - I feel like I know Santa Cruz really well.... I do know it well.

Tech As I Remember It

I finally saw the Tech I remember from my three years there (thank jeebus for that year in Oz). The fog rolled in and cancelled all flights fro 24 hours. Since it's such a small town, the hotel people knew all about it. I woke up at 5am to check in and when I called the front desk they said "oh, this is Dave right? Your flight got canceled and they put you on the 2pm flight. Your shuttle will be ready at 12:30." Anyways, it was "senior walk" where all the graduating seniors walk across town (~2mi) and stop at every major bar. I believe it's a 15-beer day or so. They all have shirts that they write on as they "check off" the bars. I was at the new one - Keewenaw Brewing Co - and got to see a number of physics people stumble through, on beer 10 or so. Good fun.... Just like the Tech I remember.


Can you tell which one was taken with the NIR camera?

Tech Tales

What an awesome visit it's been... I had no idea that there'd be so much to do with the department. Basically, I've been talking non stop since I got here. My talk went really well. The style is very different in the physics department. It's more like the Socratic dialogues - discussion and question as they come up. I've spent a bunch of time one-on-one with old profs talking about my research and what the education at tech did and how it could improve (and how it's changed). I also set up one grad student with a month-long "internship" on Maui. Neat that I was able to make that connection. And I had two days of sun, one day of thunderstorm and one day of grey-but-ok. Way better than statistics would suggest!!! I fly to Cali tomorrow....

To Michigan Tech

I'm at Michigan Tech this week. What a strange feeling. This all came about because my old advisor, Will, is now the director of the Remote Sensing Institute here. He invited me to give the last seminar of the class and to stay till Thursday to present an award to the top physics graduate after their senior research presentations. I'll be meeting a whole bunch of people and trying to get caught up with the faculty and students here. I think I'm useful to them in that I'm an example of what happens after undergrad. It's been really strange knowing that I haven't been around for 5 years now....

Me on the physics dept website.


The RSI

Flying from San Jose over to MSP. Near-IR shots are freaky....





And a young Dave... The 2003 MTU physics class.

Looking at flowers...

After the hike, we spent the day taking pictures of flowers.... And I spent two hours practicing my talk with Patrik and Brian. Jesse fell asleep in his chair... I don't really know what that means, but it can't be too good....

Brian doing his thing.
Bee!

Frolic!!

Falls Creek

Brian came down from the city Friday night... We were supposed to go diving in Monteray but the visibility was 5ft. Junk, really. We canceled that plan and went on a hike up near Felton - Falls Creek, near Henry Cowell Redwoods. It was really fun. A great, cruisy hike..

"Don't build shit next to a creek!!!"

A creek.
Infra-red Redwoods.
An infra-red creek.

A CfAO Day

So... I feel somewhat strangely at home on the UCSC campus. I went in today and caught up with a whole bunch of Santa Cruz people. Ryan, Jess, Scott, Lynne and Mark mostly but there were others as well. I'm starting to know my way around this place freakishly well for somebody who doesn't live here... It was a good work day despite only having a few hours of sleep.

A Mt. Hamilton Evening.

Inge and I got fed up with the conference around mid-afternoon. I was standing outside on the balcony, musing on the effectiveness of conferences like these when she came out and said "Wanna leave?" Perfect timing. We drove up to Mt. Hamilton where U. California has their smaller observatories. It was an awesome drive... On the way back we stopped off at this little county park at a lake/pond. It was a great place to catch a sunset.