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Published On: Aug 05, 2007 08:38 AM
Total entries in this category:
Published On: Aug 05, 2007 08:38 AM
Duty
Jury Duty, that is.
It's been a week since my last entry. Why? Jury
Duty. I spent half of the work week at jury duty -- all day Wednesday, half of
Thursday, and all of Friday. Despite not really wanting to be on jury duty, my
scrupulous honesty and sense of duty and fairness kept me from coming up with
reasons why I might be biased for or against one side of the case. It didn't
help that Friday was Good Friday, the day when a man was executed after failing
to receive a fair
trial.
-----
Norman, my colleague at work who takes care of maintaining our computer hardware, is running out of space to store old equipment. He spent some time on the 3rd looking around for 19" monitors to swap for >21" monitors, because the 19" monitors take up less storage space. So, I got one of the big monitors in exchange for the old 19" Viewsonic on my desk. It's kind of hard to tell how much bigger the new monitor is in the picture. It takes up noticeably more (physical) desk space, and the screen real estate is large enough that it's taking time for me to get used to it.
-----
The day before I reported for jury duty, I received a phone call from an 8th grader at that school whose science department chairman I visited. The 8th grader is the one who was given a Geiger counter and some ideas for a science project. I spoke to her briefly on the phone. It turns out that, as I was going on jury duty, she was going on spring break. I ended up typing up a six or eight page memo, with diagrams, with ideas on experiments she can do with her Geiger counter, which I e-mailed to her the night before she left for her vacation.
An 8th grader. I have no idea how to talk to one, much less a girl, even a very articulate girl. When I was at U. Chicago, I got a handful of very smart freshman physics majors to work with, and I set them a boundary conditions problem as the first step in a summer research project. After maybe three weeks of zero progress, I eventually figured out that the problem I had given them was too hard for freshman, who were likely to try (and fail) to brute-force their way to a solution. There's a mathematical "trick" that makes the problem very easy, but it's the kind of trick that you don't usually get with a freshman level of experience. I didn't realize this fact, which is why they ended up going nowhere and probably being discouraged along the way. Luckily, I gave them the solution before they decided to quit.
I tried to make my Geiger counter memo approachable, but I don't know if I succeeded.
-----
Happy Easter, 2007.
Today was cool, wet, and dreary outdoors. The Easter Bunny (aka yours truly) didn't set out the candy-filled eggs on the front yard this morning before Mass, as originally planned, because the ground was soaking. In previous years, the eggs went out after Mass, but it was still drizzly after Mass today. While the boys took their naps, we considered having the Easter Bunny leave eggs around the family room indoors, but eventually, the eggs were placed outdoors immediately after the boys' nap, followed immediately by the hunt, so the eggs didn't get soaked.
That's a Spiderman egg in William's right hand.
I'm not sure James enjoyed it quite as much as William enjoyed his first Easter Egg hunt, though William certainly had nicer weather and may have been a bit older. Still, James definitely likes his chocolate -- he'll happily pop a piece of chocolate into his mouth, complete with foil wrapper. There's a foil-wrapped piece of chocolate in his mouth in the photo above. Unless we take the thing out of his mouth, he'll happily suck the melting chocolate from the messy wrapper. We've always managed to get the stuff out of his mouth, so I'm not sure if he'll ever go as far as swallowing the wrapper.
-----
Norman, my colleague at work who takes care of maintaining our computer hardware, is running out of space to store old equipment. He spent some time on the 3rd looking around for 19" monitors to swap for >21" monitors, because the 19" monitors take up less storage space. So, I got one of the big monitors in exchange for the old 19" Viewsonic on my desk. It's kind of hard to tell how much bigger the new monitor is in the picture. It takes up noticeably more (physical) desk space, and the screen real estate is large enough that it's taking time for me to get used to it.
-----
The day before I reported for jury duty, I received a phone call from an 8th grader at that school whose science department chairman I visited. The 8th grader is the one who was given a Geiger counter and some ideas for a science project. I spoke to her briefly on the phone. It turns out that, as I was going on jury duty, she was going on spring break. I ended up typing up a six or eight page memo, with diagrams, with ideas on experiments she can do with her Geiger counter, which I e-mailed to her the night before she left for her vacation.
An 8th grader. I have no idea how to talk to one, much less a girl, even a very articulate girl. When I was at U. Chicago, I got a handful of very smart freshman physics majors to work with, and I set them a boundary conditions problem as the first step in a summer research project. After maybe three weeks of zero progress, I eventually figured out that the problem I had given them was too hard for freshman, who were likely to try (and fail) to brute-force their way to a solution. There's a mathematical "trick" that makes the problem very easy, but it's the kind of trick that you don't usually get with a freshman level of experience. I didn't realize this fact, which is why they ended up going nowhere and probably being discouraged along the way. Luckily, I gave them the solution before they decided to quit.
I tried to make my Geiger counter memo approachable, but I don't know if I succeeded.
-----
Happy Easter, 2007.
Today was cool, wet, and dreary outdoors. The Easter Bunny (aka yours truly) didn't set out the candy-filled eggs on the front yard this morning before Mass, as originally planned, because the ground was soaking. In previous years, the eggs went out after Mass, but it was still drizzly after Mass today. While the boys took their naps, we considered having the Easter Bunny leave eggs around the family room indoors, but eventually, the eggs were placed outdoors immediately after the boys' nap, followed immediately by the hunt, so the eggs didn't get soaked.
That's a Spiderman egg in William's right hand.
I'm not sure James enjoyed it quite as much as William enjoyed his first Easter Egg hunt, though William certainly had nicer weather and may have been a bit older. Still, James definitely likes his chocolate -- he'll happily pop a piece of chocolate into his mouth, complete with foil wrapper. There's a foil-wrapped piece of chocolate in his mouth in the photo above. Unless we take the thing out of his mouth, he'll happily suck the melting chocolate from the messy wrapper. We've always managed to get the stuff out of his mouth, so I'm not sure if he'll ever go as far as swallowing the wrapper.
Posted: Sun - April 8, 2007 at 11:40 PM