Scott A. Roberts

As I stepped out of the apartment this morning, it struck me … it’s finally fall.  Tomorrow is the actual first day of fall, so that works out well for me.  Autumn is one of my favorite seasons, and I hope this is a good one. 

In other news, I’ve finally decided on my job/career move for next year.  If you remember in early August I posted about the opportunities I was facing. Well, a few weeks back, I accepted an offer for a postdoc at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, NM.  It is a one-year appointment, extendable up to six-years, and I’ll be starting work on January 11, 2010.  While it was a hard decision to move away from Christine for the first half of 2010, this is a great career move for me, as I’ll be working with some world-class engineers on some very cool projects.  The downside is that Albuquerque does not have a lot of industry, so we’re not sure if Christine is going to be able to find a job that she really likes in Albuquerque, but we’re hoping for the best. 

One thing that this means is that I actually have to graduate this semester!  Kind of exciting, very scary.  Primarily scary because I have a lot of work to do, and this fall always ends up being a busy time of year.  However, last week, I came up with a schedule how to complete my project, write my thesis, and defend by the end of the semester, and I think if I work really hard, it will be feasible.  My plan has me defending during the first week of December, so wish me luck between then and now.

Besides trying to graduate, I’ve also started my new job as an instructor for Senior Process Design in our department.  I was worried that this would be too much work for me to do this semester, and it is taking a lot of time.  However, since the entire class is working on one project, I’m not responsible for developing my own project, saving a lot of time.  So far, I’m really enjoying the class.  I like preparing for my recitations, and my students seem fairly responsive to me during lectures.  All in all a great experience so far, but of course there’s a lot of work left to do.

On another topic, all of my friends are leaving me!  Masano graduated a few months ago and is now working for Bristol-Myers Squibb in New Jersey, Janice defended a few weeks ago and is about ready to start a postdoc at Navy Reserach Labs, and Chongai just left town last week to begin his postdoc at Brookhaven National Lab.  It’s sad to see all of my friends leaving, knowing that I’ll be here for another 3 1/2 months, but I’m very excited for all of them to move on to new and exciting things.  I’m also looking forward to everybody coming back to Minneapolis for my wedding next summer and getting to see my friends again.

This weekend, Dan wanted to get out of town for a night, so he, Kyle, Christine, and I took a 24-hour trip to Lake Elmo Regional Park to do some “backpacking”.  I say backpacking in quotes because we were originally headed to Afton State Park, where we would have had to hike ~3 miles to our campsite, but the sites were all full.  At Lake Elmo, however, the campsite was only 1/4 mile away from the car; hardly what I would call backpacking.  However, we did get a 4 mile hike in, consumed nearly a box of wine, and played some good games of Five Crowns.  All in all, a very relaxing and enjoyable trip.

That’s probably all for now.  I know it was quite a while ago that I posted, and a lot of things happened between then and now.  I went to Kansas for Labor Day to see the family, etc. etc.  However, I need to go to class now.  Another week of work!!!

http://digg.com/travel_places/Nessie_spotted_in_Minnesota

OK, so everybody in the news is talking about the health care bill, and SP started this whole “Death Panel” thing to scare people.  So I obviously knew that the notion of a death panel was completely false, and the democrats come on TV also saying it is false.  Correct.

But did you ever wonder what part of the bill actually led to the beginning of this death panel discussion?  I assume this came about because there is some panel being formed, right?  Wrong.

The person who started this was on the Daily Show Thursday.  And you have to watch it to believe it.  The interview will only take 15 minutes of your life, but it’s well worth it.  There are two parts, linked here … watch them both.

Why haven’t I heard this on the news? Or heard this at all? No wonder Jon Stewart was voted the most trusted newsman in America.

By the way, who in the world is she looking at when she’s talking?

{
Links, in case the embed doesn’t work:

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-august-17-2009/exclusive—betsy-mccaughey-extended-interview-pt–1

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-august-17-2009/exclusive—betsy-mccaughey-extended-interview-pt–2

}

http://abstrusegoose.com/a/177.htm

As most of you know, I’ve took up the hobby of geocaching last summer, and have really been enjoying it for the past year, with 140 finds to my name. I often TNLNSL, but like trading bugs.  And I am weak and DNF when I’m getting tired.

As of  yesterday, however, I’ve finally become a true cacher.  While I still don’t have a FTF to my name, I am now the proud owner of two caches, GC1XN6Z (DinoCache: Gasosaurus) and GC1XMJ2 (Flying Pandas).  The DinoCache was a free container that I picked up last year and just now placed in honor of the Lake Harriet “Creature”, with a pretty easy 1.5/2 S.  The second is in memory of a fallen friend. flyingpandas.com and is 2/1.5 M.

Christine and I hid both of these caches last night and posted them online around 6:30 PM.  They were reviewed and posted by 7:30 PM and somebody posted FTF just a few hours later.  If any of you reading this are geocachers, go find them!

An interesting article about some issues in the New York educational system:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/08/31/090831fa_fact_brill?currentPage=all

So, Christine was interested in how fast we paddled at our last two BWCA trips. So here’s the data:

2008 BWCA Trip

2009 BWCA Trip

Amazingly, a little faster?

A few months back, Christine mentioned that she was interested in taking her dad on a canoeing trip up to the boundary waters.  I thought this sounded great, and suggested that I take my father too.  Last weekend, this trip actually materialized, and the four of us spent 4 days / 3 nights on a very sweet BWCA trip.

Christine and I decided that an easy trip would be of order, that way we didn’t break our dads.  We booked an entry permit from Lake One, a very popular lake with very few portages, and the ones that were there were quite short.  This worked out well, as I ended up carrying both canoes for most of the portages.

We adapted our trip plans a little from what we had originally made.  Instead of making long day paddles to get to a campsite, on most days, we paddled until around noon, picked out a campsite and set up, then set back out for a afternoon paddle.  This actually worked out for the best, as I think we were able to paddle much farther into the BWCA and see more things than if we had only paddled until 2-3PM each day.

All in all, it was a very successful trip.  The car rides up and back worked well with all four of us piled in dad’s new truck, and the gear in the trailer.  The mosquitoes were quite terrible, but they did respond pretty well to high levels of DEET.  The food was tasty, and we didn’t have any problems with bears, etc.  Gear worked out well.  And nobody died.

We managed to put in ~ 30 miles of paddling in just 4 days, which was quite impressive.  Saw some pretty sights and wildlife.  I’ve posted the GPS track below, complete with geotagged pictures.  Check them out.  I’ve also placed Christine’s pictures on the map, so you can see them.

[Show as slideshow]

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