Silliness and Introspection
Sunday, July 02, 2006
Finally making the switch to LiveJournal. I just hope it's not too late!
Of course, everything here will still be archived and fondly remembered. However, in my desire for all the shiny novelties and features of LiveJournal (and the fact that just about everyone else I know uses it), I decided to turn myself in to the Dark Side. Or, more accurately, the warm deep blue side with a hint of violet, accentuated with a picture of a scintillating blue mage and festooned with much better commenting, LJ-cutting, and appearance-related features. Farewell forever, blogger! May you still prosper, or at least survive, in my absence.
http://maidenofmystery.livejournal.com
Monday, June 26, 2006
First, a little comment-harvesting novelty, courtesy of Laura and Skippy...
A. Recommend to me: 1) a movie, 2) a book, and 3) a musical artist, song, or album.
B. I want everyone who reads this to ask me three questions, no more, no less. Ask me anything you want. No kidding, ANYTHING. I'll give you the absolute honest truth, to the best of my ability.
C. Then I want you to go to your journal, and copy and paste this there, allowing your friends to ask you anything.
And now, the life update, courtesy of Life, Death, Time, Fate, kittens (what, you didn't know that kittens are the ultimate rulers of the universe?), and me...
Well, to start off, I've now been at my job--if you wish to call it that; I think it's technically a research fellowship or something like that--for two weeks and only in the last two days did I actually feel like I accomplished something both useful and meaningful there. Don't get me wrong; if there's anyone who would enjoy a job in which one sat around, did nothing, and earned money, it'd be me. In no way was I objecting to the first week or so, when I had mostly devoted myself to learning what I could about photovoltaics, solid-state physics, and the mysterious workings of the lab equipment, including the sputtering chamber for making solar cells, the solar simulator, and the demonic spectrometer, whose accuracy and range is such that, had it been reincarnated and put into a William Tell-like situation, it would definitely have missed the apple and shot the poor boy. Sad, isn't it? However, in the second week, I was finally assigned a project, namely that of using said spectrometer to analyze the wavelengths of the various elements within the plasma used to create the solar cells, in search of contaminants or disparities. Basically, I point the spectrometer at the window of the sputtering chamber, take readings, put them in a graph in Excel, and analyze the peaks to match them up with excitation wavelengths of copper, magnesium, chromium, or iron. It's really very simple work. At present, though, I've yet to take actual readings of the plasma, because the spectrometer must of course first be calibrated, a process that would aggravate even the most patient physicist. (I tell you, if Penelope had been forced to calibrate a spectrometer for twelve years until Odysseus came back, she would've run off and married one of her suitors long ago. Thank goodness this thought never occurred to Homer, because now we can read about his horrifically graphic bloodbath of a homecoming in the Odyssey when he comes to reclaim his home in Ithaca. Yay!...?)
Ahem. Spectral matters aside, I'm still very, very grateful that I found this job and send my thanks out to Regina for suggesting that I look for work at the University of Toledo this summer, rather than trusting to the ever-shaky job market. Honestly, my only real objection to the work is that the professor who was supposed to be my advisor, Dr. Compaan, was only in town for a week to provide guidance, directions, and advice for my project, before he left to present a major proposal at a conference somewhere. I've mostly been trusting to the expertise of the various wandering grad students around the university, especially the one poor, beleagured grad student who actually has worked with the spectrometer in the past. He's from Russia, and whenever he talks, he sounds so much like Greg that it's almost eerie. Let's see... The other research students like me also seem to be very nice, although I haven't been able to get to know them well, because nearly all of them are living in the UT dorms while I'm quite naturally staying at home. The only one that I talk to on a regular basis is Jason, the blond Rastafarian-looking EE/CS major, whom I always want to call James for some reason, and who reminds me of a strange mixture of Kevin, William, Laura's dreadlocked little brother, and one of the guys from my Shakespearean Tragedies discussion section, Chris, who was always huggy and gregarious and loud in a funny way. Still, it's a good collection of fun, smart, hardworking, and interesting people, and I do almost wish I were living in the dorms, so that I could get to know them better. But just working with them is good, too.
And by the way, yay for the World Cup! I didn't think I'd really get into it that much this time around, but between my dad and some of the guys at UT, I've really been paying just as much attention to it as I did four years ago. Personally, I'm cheering for Germany and Italy, just because they both have such cool players and I rooted for them both last time, too. With the home-team advantage and a brilliant striker like Miroslav Klose, I think Germany actually has a good chance...again. Poor United States, though; they really did think they had a chance this time. Maybe next time, neh?
Alas, because I am posting this at work, I think I really should get back to actual productiveness. Laziness is such a hard habit to break, though.
Oooh, and please admire: http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/35378449/. Once more, it's another portrait of my character Valeria, from that annoying game that I mention all the time and have failed utterly to convert anyone to, Achaea. I get all the cool artists to do her pictures. Feel free to oooh and aaah over it.
Monday, June 12, 2006
Well, now I'm back home, and the only word to describe it isn't really a word at all but a sound: Sigh. After the last few weeks, which have alternately chaotic and stagnant, delightful and depressing, exhaustingly difficult and langorously relaxing, lively and lonely, inspiring and discouraging, sunny and rainy, and what have you... well, such a hurried, matter-of-fact end to the quarter seemed somewhat anticlimactic. It's been a strange, wonderful, poignant, rather unusual school year in general, not at all what I would have expected and yet I wouldn't have changed a minute of it. Well, maybe I would have studied more in some classes and procrastinated a little less, and it probably wouldn't have hurt to have been more involved in activities and such. Perhaps I could also have been nicer to my roommate, Dorian. Ah well.
Still, as my goodbye to Northwestern this year, I watched "Anger Management"---hey, it was actually surprisingly good, if only because of the inimitable eyebrows of Jack Nicholson---and had Chinese food. So I suppose it could have been worse. In a way, it seemed rather fitting for the experience that was sophomore year. And I think I figured out a way that moving-day might not be a complete and total catastrophe for next year, when I move into my lovely air-conditioning-equipped-if-slightly-smallish new single at Plex. Well, I have three more months to ponder it, so ponder I shall.
You might wonder why I happen to be posting a blog entry on a Monday morning, on the first day that I should be starting at my new workplace and learning about all the intricacies of my new job. For those of you who don't yet know---and apparently, that's quite a lot of people, which up until this weekend included my very own parents, whom I had mostly left out of the loop about my admittedly sketchy summer plans---this summer I will be working at the Physics and Astronomy Department at the University of Toledo, as part of the undergraduate research program. For the next few months, until about mid-August, I will be experimenting and working with solar cells and learning as much as I can about the field of photovoltaics and thin-film coatings. It feels like I never left school at all! Well, except that this time, I get paid for whatever it is that I'm going to study, research, and eventually organize into a paper or presentation. Today was my first day there, even though the program itself started two weeks ago, as UT works on the semesters system while Northwestern's calendar is divided into quarters. As a result, I've missed the first two weeks of the program. According to the nice ladies in the Physics department, though, this apparently isn't that major a loss, as the program supposedly always gets off to a fairly slow start at the beginning. I've met with my advisor, Dr. Compaan, who seemed every inch the physics professor as he lectured about the different types of solar cells and the materials, backings, and semiconductors used in them. The hours seem to be extremely relaxed, even more so than the work-study schedule back in Northwestern; the other REU students apparently are allowed to wander in and out of the university as they please or even work at home, so long as they complete the research project they've been assigned to. Because Dr. Compaan is apparently extremely busy this morning with completing a research proposal of his own, however, I have yet to find out what it is that I'm supposed to be doing. Granted, I've only been here an hour, and it's expected that a university doesn't usually conduct business in the same way that an office or a company would. Still, I hope that I will be receiving some more guidance soon. While I definitely appreciate getting paid---and it was quite the experience this morning, when I introduced myself and was presented with a paycheck---I also enjoy earning what I get, and I hope I'll get an opportunity to do that soon.
So, it looks like between leaving school on Friday and beginning work today, last weekend was about as much of a summer as I'll have until August. As I said, though, my job seems to be extremely relaxed when it comes to hours that I'm sure it wouldn't even qualify as a normal job by most people's standards. It'll be quite disorienting, though, because I'm already off-schedule from coming in a week late and am planning to take a week off to visit Craig in late July, so I may end up turning in my paper/project/presentation almost two weeks after everyone else does. C'est la vie. It'll take much more than a professor's frown to keep me from stepping foot into the hot, dusty desert wastes of New Mexico, also known as the other land down under (or "that one big square state down there with all the other big square states where no one lives except some aliens and a few scorpions")---but probably less than wild horses, attached to all four of my limbs. We'll see.
Otherwise, it's mostly been just dealing with parents, dreading my final grades, and getting reacclimated to the vagaries of Toledo. Now that I completed and turned in everything I needed for school, I'm full of second doubts about how well I did, especially with the group projects I worked on, the paper I wrote about Frost, and...well, I'd really rather not think about the exam for Stat Mech until I really have to. I usually associated the idea of coming home with a general surcease in stress and anxiety, but with all the familial fussing and bickering, the association doesn't come so easily and aptly anymore. I suppose it can't be helped, though; peace and quiet can be difficult to come by, as I discovered this last year at college. Still, the weather has been unexpectedly cool and nice for Toledo in June, and there's a lot of relaxing to do, catching up with friends, and keeping a eye on all sorts of random happenings, from the World Cup, to new events in Achaea (*murmur Dan*), to not playing Starcraft, to enjoying the new DSL that's apparently been installed and is making the Internet ever so much more accessible and enjoyable that dial-up could ever have done. Pages actually take less than five minutes to finish loading now! Yay!
I just noticed. Aside from Shari, I think everyone else I know---which I admit isn't very many people at all, especially with how I cloistered myself so much this last year (voluntarily, I'll have you know)---has turned twenty or older already. What must it feel like, to have passed two decades upon this earth? A whole fifth of a century has occurred since your birth! To be realistic, I'm sure it doesn't feel any more or less momentous than any other birthday, but at the same time, I always feel a little unsettled at the prospect of beginning a new decade of existence. At ten, I suppose it's not so bad, but being twenty years old does carry quite a bit of cultural and societal baggage with it, doesn't it? Whole mantles of responsibility and maturity are supposed to descend upon your shoulders at that life-altering moment. Well, I guess I'll find out on August 1 if I'm able to actually carry them on my rather small shoulders. But until then, I can carry on teasing those who've already reached the ripe old age of twenty for being elderly and grey and ancient...at least until the time they can justifiably repay me, with interest. I do so love saying, "Wow, you're so OLD!" to people a few months older than me. *g*
Hmmmm. I wonder if those mantles are made of velvet, or silk, or just plain cloth? Pity we can't all have a hand in designing our own mantles, as they are supposed to be weighing us down into our graves, after all. Ah well. Moving on.
It'll probably be a good, but very long summer. Oh well, I suppose I'm used to that by now.
Saturday, May 13, 2006
I copied this from Regina's LJ and am feeling very amused and vindicated at the results. Unfortunately, they don't list future job opportunities for English majors...
You scored as English. You should be an English major! Your passion lies in writing and expressing yourself creatively, and you hate it when you are inhibited from doing so. Pursue that interest of yours!
What is your Perfect Major? (PLEASE RATE ME!!) created with QuizFarm.com |
Wednesday, May 03, 2006
current mood: gratuitous
current music: "The Lonely Shepherd" from Kill Bill One
current source of bemusement: the lack of people in general on AIM
current heart's desire: a small silver-grey Skyfox that says "Suu!"
~Observations~
Life is like a bundle of fleeting impressions and feelings, seemingly without meaning or significance, flitting across the surface of one's consciousness like the delicate flight of a waterbug, skimming weightlessly across a pond with neither direction nor knowledge to guide it.
There are a lot of Asians at this school. Some of them are quite militant about it too.
When it comes to tennis, serving is the devil. I can almost occasionally maybe hit an overhead, about 1 out 10 times, but serving is the bane of my existence. Damn you, double faults!
Oh! They have new Prince of Tennis episodes now! They don't seem to be coming very regularly, but nevertheless, they are there.
The other day, I discovered that I really like my professor for English Lit and Shakespearean Tragedies. While I perfectly agree--in deference to my class-conscious roommate Dorian--that the ability to quote Latin, Greek, French, and German doesn't necessarily mean that someone is highly intelligent or even particularly well-educated, it certainly helps that impression a good deal. It also doesn't hurt that he, an English professor, can just casually say, "I remember I was talking with Professor Carr from the Electrical Engineering department about materials science, and he told me that it's not the purity of the metal that determines its strength, but rather its impurities." (Already a pretty interesting insight, no?) "This was particularly fascinating to me, because it reminded me of the idea that a successful government always has a certain amount of corruption in it. A perfect government is one that never gets anything done." How many English professors even know about materials science, let alone carry on what seemed to be a cerebral conversation about it? And how many people in general would be able to connect it back to an English discussion? Then, there's the fact that he always makes fun of Bush in class, which is always a plus. As I already mentioned, he is quite data-oriented and has mastered several computer languages. Of course, I must admit that I don't really like his arrangement of students taking minutes and then reciting them for the following class; it just seems like a waste of time, because the students who have taken notes already know what's important in the minutes and the students who don't take notes probably couldn't care less. However, even this is source for merriment and mirth on my part, because he uses it mostly as a platform to help our public speaking, and oh! it's so funny when he stops a Theatre major (who take Shakespeare as a department requirement) to correct them on their delivery, their diction, the pitch of their voices. Watching them squirm and make faces when he corrects their oh-so-well-schooled and booming, confident speech is just amusing, even though at the same time I sympathize with them because of how long they've trained their voices and performance styles. Still. I like this professor. He's cool. And German. And smart.
At the ripe old age of ninteen, I feel like a has-been. Sometimes I feel so old and worn-out. Perhaps the old never really feel old at all, and only the young do, because they have no real idea of what it's like to have truly felt the passage and the ending of years.
Joshua Bell is, as to be expected of a soloist (not even necessarily a world-famous one; I already find my strings TA pretty bloody impressive), a supremely gifted violin virtuoso, but, in my humble opinion, not much of a musical stylist. And this, I think, makes him rather forgettable as a musician. But ah! His way with the cadenzas in the first movement of the Tchaikovsky violin concerto was sublime in its subtlety, lovely in its lightness and simplicity and ease. His way with the second movement was significantly less impressive, though. Alas, for a David Oistrakh to bring out the balletic luminosity of the concerto!
V for Vendetta was a wonderful movie. I meant to write a fuller review of it in a post soon after I saw it, but for some reason I lacked both motivation and opportunity. I'd definitely recommend it though; it was quite the viewing experience. It was like a combination of Phantom of the Opera, 1984, and Ayn Rand all rolled into one film, at once full of grimness and grandeur, machine guns, roses, totalitarianism, theatrics and masks and pretending, leather gloves and torment, dominos, sheer brilliance, and vivid, voluptous, vivacious, even vertiginous verbiage. V was splendid. I think we're very lucky that more terrorists aren't anything like him, because then I would truly fear for the future of not merely America but the world itself. Sadly, I don't think the movie will stay relevant for very long, because of how much it dated itself with its mentions of America's war on the Middle East. Still, I too see no reason why the gunpowder treason should ever be forgot.
I truly hope my mouse never breaks, because I think I'd be in a spot of trouble if I lacked one.
Lately I've been thinking of perhaps dropping physics, even though I like the subject and the professors. It's not even that I have trouble with the material but that I had trouble with the tests and midterms. I can never seem to think correctly when I'm taking one, and I know I should probably seek help from the professor or TA decently soon. But of course, I'm an English major who's currently surrounded by theatre and drama majors in her Shakespeare class; of course, I'm going to think about taking the extreme route first.
Starburst jelly beans are good to eat. So are strawberries and raspberries.
We bid goodbye to a friend last week, who had to drop out of this quarter because of many, many issues that probably could easily have been prevented had they happened to anyone else but him. It was very sad. Of course, this means that he'll be around next quarter in the fall, but that just seems more like a shame than ever. He's really very smart too, but terrible at managing his own time. Oh well.
I never knew the habit of IM was so easy to break. Now it seems that almost no one is ever on--quite the contrast from last year, when it seemed like everyone I knew was constantly online. I think we all have better places to be now, most of the time.
Oh, did I mention that I really liked the way the Chicago Symphony performed Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition? They took pictures of Chicago life and people and projected them onto screens, while the orchestra members were playing the music, so that the piece illustrated not only the paintings that Mussorgsky saw but also related to life here in the city. It was a clever way to making the music, which is really quite incidental after all, more accessible and interesting to the audience. They had quite a few very good pictures, too.
I wish my fan worked better than it does.
[geekiness] This cracked me up so much --- Lady Maya's ideal partner: "Enjoys long walks on the beach and creating and destroying universes with a blink of one eye. Must love owls." She's so awesome it makes my head hurt.[/geekiness]
I hereby vow that someday, I'll finish all those creative projects that I have in mind or stored on various computers or have left half-begun and then abandoned. I really will, I promise. They don't matter at all to anyone but me, but I would like to have written something complete and coherent for once in my life.
Oh, well.
