Scott A. Roberts

I know I have posted anything recently about my career plans, etc., so I figured now is as good of a time as ever.  Right now, I’m writing this on a plane on the way back from an interview.

First off, I have been offered the opportunity to teach a class at the U of M this fall.  I’ll be a recitation instructor for the senior process design class.  This is going to be quite a lot of work, as I will have to lecture twice a week, but also design a unique capstone design project for the students to do. I’m quite excited for the opportunity to teach, but a little nervous about designing the project for them to do.  Pretty soon, I need to start coming up with ideas and working the design out myself.  I haven’t dealt with this kind of thing in 3 years, so I’m sure it will take a while to refresh.  One good thing is that I will have a TA, so I won’t have to spend much time grading.

What this means is that I’m not longer under a major time crunch for job hunting and graduating.   I will be in Minneapolis until the end of December, so all I need to do is graduate sometime before then.  That also allows me to have a firm start date for whatever job I take … the beginning of January.

I currently have three leads on the job front.

First is a postdoc at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.  I just got a phone call from them Monday with the formal offer, which is quite exciting.  The work would be atmospheric and geoscience related.  This is quite the far stretch from my current research, but I’m sure I could catch on.  The bad thing would be the cost … LLNL is about 1 hour east of San Francisco.  Nice area, but very expensive. 

Secondly, I am flying home from a two-day interview for a postdoc at Sandia National Laboratory.  This has always been sort of a dream job for me, as they have a large, awesome computational fluid dynamics group.  While LLNL is very physics-oriented, SNL is a very engineering-oriented lab.  I would have the opportunity to work with many UMN CEMS graduates on a variety of projects ranging from batteries to coatings to weapons systems to satellites.  The work is awesome, the resources are amazing, and the benefits package is great.  And, I even kind of like Albuquerque, NM.  It’s pretty.  I don’t have an offer from them yet or anything, but I’m hoping for the best.

Finally, I have written a proposal for National Research Council postdoctoral fellowship.  I spent the better part of the last two weeks learning about the project and writing the proposal.  If I got this, I could end up working at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Washington, DC.  The project deals with determining the interfacial properties (diffusion, surface tensions, etc.) of a emulsion system with surfactants.  I’d primarily be doing modeling, with a little bit of experience, too.  This is a much more academic-like position, but is very related to my current research.  I won’t know about getting this job, however, until late October.

So that’s it.  I’m not planning on looking for additional opportunities, because all three of these would be exciting and good for my career.  I’m just hoping for the best that in October, I’ll have a few offers to choose from.

Where am I? 

More information later.

In the post Walter Cronkite era.

http://www.timepolls.com/hppolls/archive/poll_results_417.html

I’m not completely sure what I think of this.  I do love John Stewart.  But isn’t this kinda sad?  At least my man came in second.

I love my new hammock swing.  I’ve been home the better part of this evening working on a fellowship application that is due very soon.  Yeah, boring.  However, I’ve spent the past few hours sitting on the deck in my swing, working on the fellowship on my laptop.  And let me tell you, it’s great.  Got some tunes pumping, the swing swinging, and words flowing out of my fingers.

And I’m crossing my fingers, but the radar looks as if I might get some rain in the next bit.  Wouldn’t that be even better!

Today was my first real bike ride since I hurt my ankle.  Did the Lilydale route with Dan, and it went very well.  My knee started hurting towards the end, due to how I’ve been limping around, but all in all a good ride.

Ride Route

Last weekend was exactly one year before Christine and I are getting married next summer.  In celebration, we planned on going to check out Centennial Lakes to check out the building and check out the mini-golf course across the lake.  We didn’t make it last weekend due to the 4th of July holiday, but this weekend we took a trip out there to play a round of golf.  For some reason, Christine was convinced she was going to beat me.  After the front 9, she decided we should re-start the count.  She still didn’t win.  But I took pictures.

http://picasaweb.google.com/saroberts/20090711CentennialLakesMiniGolf#

It was a glorious day and the park was great.  We’re excited that everybody will join us in 11 months and 22 days to celebrate at Centennial Lakes!

On another note, I just ordered a new daypack.  I’ve been wanting one for a while, but after not having anything good for our trip to Alaska, now was the time.  I decided on the Osprey Kestrel 28 without trying it on.  I tried on the 38L model, but REI didn’t carry the smaller 28L model.  Luckily, I got a great deal on Amazon.  They only had 3 left, and were selling them for $80, rather than the $120 that I could buy it for everywhere else. 

Oh, and have you heard about Google Voice yet?  Well, it’s great.  You probably can’t join quite yet; I had to sign up a while ago and just got an invitation.  What is it?  Well, you sign up for a Google Voice phone number.   This is now your phone number for ever and ever.  You then associate all of your other phone numbers (cell, home, work, etc.) with your new number, and people have just one number that they call and it will ring all of your other numbers.  You can define groups that ring differently (like your boss calling doesn’t ring your cell).  Even better is that your voicemail is online.  It is available in your email inbox as an audio file, but also transcribed into text.  Very cool!  There are a ton of other features, too, so you should check it out!

On that note, if you would like to start using my Google Voice number to call me, feel free! 
(612) 208-7024

A couple of months ago, Chris and I went to the Minneapolis farmer’s market and saw these wonderful hammock swings.  We sat in them and they were wonderfully comfortable.  While enjoying the comfort, we decided that surely they must not be that hard to make.

The next week, a trip to the public library landed us with two books on hammock making.  These books were amazingly awesome.  They were obviously written by hippies in the 70s and were spiral bound.  The books weren’t the most well written, but after reading through them, we got a grasp of how to make our own hammock swing.

Menards and Home Depot had all of the materials that we needed to begin this project, so we bought up all of their cotton rope and I started weaving!  Amazingly, the project went very quickly; I finished weaving the entire bed in only 3 evenings.  It took one additional day to tie the bed onto the rings and another morning to put together the spreader and the hanging hardware, but finally, it’s done!

I tested out the swing for the first time yesterday, and I’d say it was a successful project.  It ended up being fairly cheap (<$50) and fun to make.  Now that I’ve learned a few tips and tricks, I think I’ll try to make one for Christine, too, so we can both relax on my deck.

[Show as slideshow]

Last weekend, Christine and I took a 5-day vacation with my parents to Alaska!  Mom and dad had first gone on a 7-day cruise through Alaska, and we met up with them on a Friday morning in Anchorage.  We explored the Anchorage area Friday and Saturday, then took the Alaska Railroad up to Denali National Park for a few days.  We trained back down to Anchorage Tuesday afternoon, caught the red-eye flight back to Minneapolis that night, and was at work by 9:30 AM on Wednesday.

Of course, I took a lot of pictures.  I’ve posted them on my picasaweb site, and also here below.  Christine will be posting her pictures separately on her picasaweb site.  Also, I had my GPS with me for the entire trip, and have geotagged the pictures and posted the log here.  I personally think it’s cool to see the pictures on a map, so be sure to check that out, too.

Instead of posting a blow-by-blow account of the entire five days, I’ll make a list of my favorite (or least favorite) things about Alaska.  When I get bored, I’ll stop:

• The train.  Trains are cool.  They hall my stuff while I sleep, and they haul me.  And they make cool sounds.  And they are way more comfortable than a plane.  The 8 hour train right each direction to Denali National Park was quick and fun.
• Wildlife.  We saw a ton of it.  Salmon, moose, bears, caribou, sheep, squirrels, tourists.  We saw them all.
• The bus.  The only way you can get into the park is by riding one of their busses; the park road is closed to private vehicles.  We got a pass for the 11-hour round trip ride.  Sounds like a long time to spend in a school bus driving through beauty.  However, I couldn’t have thought of a better way to experience the entire park in only one day.  If I had been there longer and my ankle had been healthier, then hiking would have been more fun, of course.  However, given the circumstances, the bus was great.
• Nancy, our bus driver.  She was awesome.  And patient.  And happy.
• The daylight.  Sucked.  I went 5 days without seeing anything close to what you would call “darkness”.  Sun was up at 4AM and down at midnight.  And and hour before/after that was twilight.
• My ankle.  Damn you softball.  Luckily, I had done a lot of icing and it got better every day.  I was able to do the activities that we choose very easily, but I would have enjoyed more hiking.
• Glaciers.  They’re really awesome.  I want one.

Okay, I think that’s it for now.  Look at the pictures.

[Show as slideshow]

12345►

I’ve been biking back and forth to school the past few weeks, and it’s been great to get back on my bike.  However, I hadn’t yet gone for a real bike ride, until Saturday.  Dan and I chose the hottest day of the year (so far) to put in a 4 hour, 50 mile ride around Lake Minnetonka.  There’s a new regional trail out there, which is much nicer than riding the road the entire way around.  However, it also means that I lost my way just a bit.

I survived, after a few pit stops.  Tired when I got home, and grilled some burgers with the peeps.  Good times.

Ride Route