Amer. Geophys. U.
Dec. 18th, 2006 11:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
notmattI'd best post my summary of the AGU (American Geophyscial Union) meeting before I forget too much.
It was a good meeting, but ill-timed. I'd just come there direct from a three-day workshop on Early Planetary Differentiation, so by the time the meeting started my brain was already full.
Francis (that's my boss) had driven us up to Sonoma County for the Differentiation workshop. I was not feeling well on Sunday (the 10th, the last day of the workshop), but I dealt with it. Francis had to go to Palo Alto that evening to meet his wife Emily and their friends from Google. So the plan was for him to swing by my hotel (the Westin on Union Square), slow down to about 30 mph and for me to jump out. Well, that would have worked if we knew how to *get* to Union Square. You can't turn left onto Market from Van Ness, and once you do get onto Market, you can't turn left off of it. Anyway, we finally managed it. I checked in, then met Colin and Zoltan and we headed off to Chinatown to eat at some hole-in-the-wall place that I couldn't properly appreciate because I was feeling poorly.
Then to the Moscone West conference center to check in. The line to register filled the entire lobby area, spiraling and winding around. Fortunately, Colin and I had pre-registered. There was exactly one person in front of me, and it turned out he was in the wrong line. This is a big meeting. The program was three volumes. I was told that there were 14,000 attendees expected. The main problem AGU has though, is that the meeting is too *small*. That's right, Moscone easily holds 50,000 and as a result, a "small" conference such as ours has trouble getting the dates we want.
After registering. we headed back to the hotel. That night I awoke, went into the bathroom and, in ways that conserved momentum, eliminated everything I'd consumed that day. I'll skip the medical TMI, but during the course of my . . . dehydration, I felt my hands and feet tingling. I suppose it must have been food poisoning, since I immediately felt better. Nothing I'd eaten seemed remotely undercooked, so I'm not sure what went happened. Nevertheless, I fully recovered by the next morning.
Monday came as quite a relief for nonmedical reasons as well. I abstained from caffiene, hydrated, and went to the conference center, a good 10-15 minute walk from the hotel. It was a bit of a surreal experience. This, oddly, was my first AGU meeting. The conference center was three floors, with the poster sessions on the first two, and the talks on the third. I spent the morning in the Titan session. One of the talks was given by an Italian gentleman whose accent was so thick and stereotypical, you'd think he was faking it. Much like I believe Paula Deen is faking the accent, since she can't possibly be that southern. Anyway, Saturn's moon Enceladus is named for a giant that sleeps beneath Mt. Etna. In Italian, this is pronounced "En-che-la'-dus", with the accent on the "la". Enchiladas. After my experience the night before, I was in no mood for Mexican for lunch. The afternoon I spent at the Enceladus posters, fearing to learn that I'd got scooped. The abstract by Tobie et al. seemed to indicate they'd essentially done the research I was trying to do. After seeing their poster and talked to Christophe Sotin, I learned that they're no farther along than I am. Their "3D" convection calculations appeared unconvincing. As in, I was not convinced they were really 3D. And they had managed to generate their one-plume mantle structure by assuming it was there to begin with. Bill Moore had an interesting idea how you might get a single thermal anomaly by asymmetric differentiation. I'll have to look into adding that in, but I'm getting the feeling that convection may not be the right thing to be looking at. I hope to know for sure by the end of the week. Anyway, I'm not scooped yet, but I need to move on this.
What happned Tuesday? Can't really remember. More Titan stuff maybe? Rings? Lunched at "King of Thai Noodle", which was not bad and quite inexpensive. Duck-noodle soup for $6.50.
In the evening, I went to the Planetary section reception at the California Academy of Sciences. I thought it was farther west than it actually was, so I ended up walking down 6th street in the Tenderloin. Not a great neighborhood. Quite a difference one block east or west can make. I was never approached; evidently I didn't look like I was worth bothering, and made it to the Academy without incident. They had a museum in there (part of it was temporary housing from another museum). There was a bar in the front, but to get to the food you had to navigate through the displays, and being scientists, got distracted. Then to get another drink, you had to amble back to the front, making sure you saw everything you missed before. Clever idea. There were a lot of aquarium displays including the Chinese Giant Salamander, and dinosaur exhibits, and upstairs were the bugs (identify an ant!) and space science. Apparently they know for certain that there was an early ocean on Mars. That was informative, because not one scientist at AGU was able to say that for sure. All we had to do was go to the museum. Talked to a few people, and actually got to know one of the grad students, Lissa, from UCSC. I'm closeted in my office here, so I've hardly got to know anyone here except Francis. We then met some of the other grad students who skipped the reception for booze at the Grand Cafe.
Wednesday morning was pure beat down. I had two concurrent oral sessions in different buildings I needed to attend, while simultaneously being at my poster. I crammed a bagel down my throat and ran around the talks for a bit and spent the rest of the morning at my poster getting mobbed. At least that meant people found it interesting. Lon Hood had some good suggestions, but the paper's been accepted (pending revisons), and I don't know if it's feasible or even wise to add more to it at this point. I nearly panicked when Norm Sleep (brilliant, but insane. Yes, I really mean that. The guy's brighter and nutter than Isaac Newton) came over, but he just looked at it for a second and walked off. My idea was generally well-received, and if anyone didn't like it, they didn't bother to tell me. Which is at odds with the reviews the paper was getting.
Can't remember what I did in the afternoon. I know I got a beer. I looked at the posters I didn't see in the morning since I couldn't move from my poster.
One of the grad students here, Charlie, lives in San Francisco, so the UCSC grad students (plus a couple SO's and I) took the MUNI all the way west to go to a sushi restaurant near his house. I'm still close enough to being a grad student (only 6 months out of the chrysalis) that I fit in. The place was called Goemon which is amusing if you've seen any Lupin. Apparently if you order the chirashi-zushi, you get free beers for the table. It was far more than I could eat, but Reid is apparently the human vacuum cleaner and did not mind helping.
Getting back was a trick. The subway closes at 9 o'clock, so the train only went halfway back. We had to switch to the bus, but we got on going the wrong way and didn't realize our mistake for a bit. Eventually we got it right. We'd had beer and sake. I have the bladder of a man thrice my age. I was quite relieved when I got back to the hotel.
Thusday I went to the Ice rheology talks. I saw Francis leave right after the second on and thought "what the hell?" Then I found out why. Next up was a bloody awful speaker. I left then, and saw Francis outside who asked "You stayed for Kargel's talk?!" Thanks. You might have warned me. I ditched the rest in order to go hear "The Honorable" Al Gore (inventor of the Internet, and first emperor of the Moon) speak on Climate Change. I was there 45 minutes ahead of time and just barely managed to get a seat. Actually a funny guy. Even did a Bill Clinton impression. Then I returned to my hotel and collapsed for about three hours. This was conference day 7 for me.
I returned later to go to the Sagan lecture on astrobiology, which was so bad I left halfway through. Note that it's just called the Sagan lecture. Sagan's ghost wasn't speaking or anything. I went to the Va. Tech. geoscience reunion for a bit, but they were few people I knew, it was a cash bar and they weren't really feeding us, so I left to find dinner. Found a sushi place where the plates are on boats that ride around on a stream and you take what you want. They charge you by the designs on the plates you accumulate. Then I went a block north of the hotel to the four-story Borders bookstore.
I don't think I got anything out of Friday. Not a good day. I should have left early. Francis even called me up and told me he found someone who was leaving at noon that could give me a ride, but I'd already made plans to go into Japantown. I went to a few talks and then Colin and I checked out of the hotel. He needed to extend the reservation because he wasn't flying out until Saturday, but the hotel was full. They'd told him he could extend it, but apparently they lied. I took my bags to the concierge to hold until I was ready to leave. They guy I thought was the bell took my stuff and walked out the door. The frak? I ran out after him and he was gone. I shouted some choice words, and I believed someone had just stolen my stuff. Including my computer. A few minutes later, he came back with the tags. Apparently he'd taken them to another storage area, but hadn't told me what was going on first.
Colin got a room at the hotel across the street and we hopped the bus to Japantown. We ate at a noodle shop and putzed around the gigantic Japanese bookstore. Then I returned to the hotel and got my stuff.
I had to stay until the bitter end, since Emily was giving the penultimate talk in the seismology section. Francis had told me to bring my stuff to the conference center. So I lugged my bag and backpack and poster to Moscone West, bought some items from the vendors, and then lugged everything to Moscone South where Em's talk was. Then after her talk I was dismayed to see she returned to her seat to watch the last talk. I couldn't take any more seismology, so I stepped out. Then they had a post-talk discussion since they wrapped up early. Emily did not emerge until 6 pm. Then, we apparently had to go back to Francis and Emily's hotel to get their stuff, which is halfway back to my hotel. I got Francis to carry the poster tube this time. I didn't care about the poster, but I wanted the tube back. Then I found out that we were also taking one of Emily's colleagues with us and had to wait for him to go to his hotel and get his stuff. About twenty minutes later, he arrives, only there is another one of Emily's colleagues. So there are to be five of us. We lug our stuff to the garage (fortunately it's not far) and spend fifteen minutes playing tetris with bags and people while some a$$hole is holding up traffic waiting for our spot. We leave, and then can't figure out how to get on the freeway, so we end up driving all the way down Valencia. We do end up finding the freeway there since Francis and Emily used to live there and know that area better. We have to stop in Palo Alto to pick up Francis's car, but that's not out of the way and it gives us all some more room. We finallyend up back at his place around 9:00. I get my car and meet Kate at Zomblebee's since I'm about to gnaw my arm off at that point.
So the meetings were good, but too long. I had 8 straight days of conferences and was essentially working for 12 days straight. And LPSC abstracts are due in three weeks. I have a little work left to do before that's ready and I'll be gone all next week. I can do some work remotely, but not very productively. I took the weekend off because I needed to, whether or not it was a good idea. I needed a break. I played Twilight Princess, got my hair cut, finished X-mas shopping, macerated dried fruit for cake and made latkes matzo-ball soup with never-ending leftover Turkey. This is the last of the thigh meat.
The fruitcakes may not work. I use AB's recipe, but I add extra rum for the maceration, then add extra cider when I cook the fruit, and strain some of the liquid out to make a sauce before adding in the dry goods. I did not however, write this step down anywhere.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kathleenroberts is home sick today (I think the latkes provided more grease than she's accustomed to eating lately). She went to bake the cakes for me, but of course never knew about my modification. As a result, the batter's too thin. There's an extra pint of rum in there. We're going to bake them anyway to see what happens. The batter's in the pans already. Can't hurt to try. If it doesn't work, there's still plenty of rum left. We'll just have to get some more fruit.
Most of the work that needs to be done is for the CPU, not for me. I basically wrote this huge entry in spurts over the course of four hours at work while the shorter calcs were running. The rest will be longer (half a day each), and I'll be revising the Icarus paper while that's happening.
It was a good meeting, but ill-timed. I'd just come there direct from a three-day workshop on Early Planetary Differentiation, so by the time the meeting started my brain was already full.
Francis (that's my boss) had driven us up to Sonoma County for the Differentiation workshop. I was not feeling well on Sunday (the 10th, the last day of the workshop), but I dealt with it. Francis had to go to Palo Alto that evening to meet his wife Emily and their friends from Google. So the plan was for him to swing by my hotel (the Westin on Union Square), slow down to about 30 mph and for me to jump out. Well, that would have worked if we knew how to *get* to Union Square. You can't turn left onto Market from Van Ness, and once you do get onto Market, you can't turn left off of it. Anyway, we finally managed it. I checked in, then met Colin and Zoltan and we headed off to Chinatown to eat at some hole-in-the-wall place that I couldn't properly appreciate because I was feeling poorly.
Then to the Moscone West conference center to check in. The line to register filled the entire lobby area, spiraling and winding around. Fortunately, Colin and I had pre-registered. There was exactly one person in front of me, and it turned out he was in the wrong line. This is a big meeting. The program was three volumes. I was told that there were 14,000 attendees expected. The main problem AGU has though, is that the meeting is too *small*. That's right, Moscone easily holds 50,000 and as a result, a "small" conference such as ours has trouble getting the dates we want.
After registering. we headed back to the hotel. That night I awoke, went into the bathroom and, in ways that conserved momentum, eliminated everything I'd consumed that day. I'll skip the medical TMI, but during the course of my . . . dehydration, I felt my hands and feet tingling. I suppose it must have been food poisoning, since I immediately felt better. Nothing I'd eaten seemed remotely undercooked, so I'm not sure what went happened. Nevertheless, I fully recovered by the next morning.
Monday came as quite a relief for nonmedical reasons as well. I abstained from caffiene, hydrated, and went to the conference center, a good 10-15 minute walk from the hotel. It was a bit of a surreal experience. This, oddly, was my first AGU meeting. The conference center was three floors, with the poster sessions on the first two, and the talks on the third. I spent the morning in the Titan session. One of the talks was given by an Italian gentleman whose accent was so thick and stereotypical, you'd think he was faking it. Much like I believe Paula Deen is faking the accent, since she can't possibly be that southern. Anyway, Saturn's moon Enceladus is named for a giant that sleeps beneath Mt. Etna. In Italian, this is pronounced "En-che-la'-dus", with the accent on the "la". Enchiladas. After my experience the night before, I was in no mood for Mexican for lunch. The afternoon I spent at the Enceladus posters, fearing to learn that I'd got scooped. The abstract by Tobie et al. seemed to indicate they'd essentially done the research I was trying to do. After seeing their poster and talked to Christophe Sotin, I learned that they're no farther along than I am. Their "3D" convection calculations appeared unconvincing. As in, I was not convinced they were really 3D. And they had managed to generate their one-plume mantle structure by assuming it was there to begin with. Bill Moore had an interesting idea how you might get a single thermal anomaly by asymmetric differentiation. I'll have to look into adding that in, but I'm getting the feeling that convection may not be the right thing to be looking at. I hope to know for sure by the end of the week. Anyway, I'm not scooped yet, but I need to move on this.
What happned Tuesday? Can't really remember. More Titan stuff maybe? Rings? Lunched at "King of Thai Noodle", which was not bad and quite inexpensive. Duck-noodle soup for $6.50.
In the evening, I went to the Planetary section reception at the California Academy of Sciences. I thought it was farther west than it actually was, so I ended up walking down 6th street in the Tenderloin. Not a great neighborhood. Quite a difference one block east or west can make. I was never approached; evidently I didn't look like I was worth bothering, and made it to the Academy without incident. They had a museum in there (part of it was temporary housing from another museum). There was a bar in the front, but to get to the food you had to navigate through the displays, and being scientists, got distracted. Then to get another drink, you had to amble back to the front, making sure you saw everything you missed before. Clever idea. There were a lot of aquarium displays including the Chinese Giant Salamander, and dinosaur exhibits, and upstairs were the bugs (identify an ant!) and space science. Apparently they know for certain that there was an early ocean on Mars. That was informative, because not one scientist at AGU was able to say that for sure. All we had to do was go to the museum. Talked to a few people, and actually got to know one of the grad students, Lissa, from UCSC. I'm closeted in my office here, so I've hardly got to know anyone here except Francis. We then met some of the other grad students who skipped the reception for booze at the Grand Cafe.
Wednesday morning was pure beat down. I had two concurrent oral sessions in different buildings I needed to attend, while simultaneously being at my poster. I crammed a bagel down my throat and ran around the talks for a bit and spent the rest of the morning at my poster getting mobbed. At least that meant people found it interesting. Lon Hood had some good suggestions, but the paper's been accepted (pending revisons), and I don't know if it's feasible or even wise to add more to it at this point. I nearly panicked when Norm Sleep (brilliant, but insane. Yes, I really mean that. The guy's brighter and nutter than Isaac Newton) came over, but he just looked at it for a second and walked off. My idea was generally well-received, and if anyone didn't like it, they didn't bother to tell me. Which is at odds with the reviews the paper was getting.
Can't remember what I did in the afternoon. I know I got a beer. I looked at the posters I didn't see in the morning since I couldn't move from my poster.
One of the grad students here, Charlie, lives in San Francisco, so the UCSC grad students (plus a couple SO's and I) took the MUNI all the way west to go to a sushi restaurant near his house. I'm still close enough to being a grad student (only 6 months out of the chrysalis) that I fit in. The place was called Goemon which is amusing if you've seen any Lupin. Apparently if you order the chirashi-zushi, you get free beers for the table. It was far more than I could eat, but Reid is apparently the human vacuum cleaner and did not mind helping.
Getting back was a trick. The subway closes at 9 o'clock, so the train only went halfway back. We had to switch to the bus, but we got on going the wrong way and didn't realize our mistake for a bit. Eventually we got it right. We'd had beer and sake. I have the bladder of a man thrice my age. I was quite relieved when I got back to the hotel.
Thusday I went to the Ice rheology talks. I saw Francis leave right after the second on and thought "what the hell?" Then I found out why. Next up was a bloody awful speaker. I left then, and saw Francis outside who asked "You stayed for Kargel's talk?!" Thanks. You might have warned me. I ditched the rest in order to go hear "The Honorable" Al Gore (inventor of the Internet, and first emperor of the Moon) speak on Climate Change. I was there 45 minutes ahead of time and just barely managed to get a seat. Actually a funny guy. Even did a Bill Clinton impression. Then I returned to my hotel and collapsed for about three hours. This was conference day 7 for me.
I returned later to go to the Sagan lecture on astrobiology, which was so bad I left halfway through. Note that it's just called the Sagan lecture. Sagan's ghost wasn't speaking or anything. I went to the Va. Tech. geoscience reunion for a bit, but they were few people I knew, it was a cash bar and they weren't really feeding us, so I left to find dinner. Found a sushi place where the plates are on boats that ride around on a stream and you take what you want. They charge you by the designs on the plates you accumulate. Then I went a block north of the hotel to the four-story Borders bookstore.
I don't think I got anything out of Friday. Not a good day. I should have left early. Francis even called me up and told me he found someone who was leaving at noon that could give me a ride, but I'd already made plans to go into Japantown. I went to a few talks and then Colin and I checked out of the hotel. He needed to extend the reservation because he wasn't flying out until Saturday, but the hotel was full. They'd told him he could extend it, but apparently they lied. I took my bags to the concierge to hold until I was ready to leave. They guy I thought was the bell took my stuff and walked out the door. The frak? I ran out after him and he was gone. I shouted some choice words, and I believed someone had just stolen my stuff. Including my computer. A few minutes later, he came back with the tags. Apparently he'd taken them to another storage area, but hadn't told me what was going on first.
Colin got a room at the hotel across the street and we hopped the bus to Japantown. We ate at a noodle shop and putzed around the gigantic Japanese bookstore. Then I returned to the hotel and got my stuff.
I had to stay until the bitter end, since Emily was giving the penultimate talk in the seismology section. Francis had told me to bring my stuff to the conference center. So I lugged my bag and backpack and poster to Moscone West, bought some items from the vendors, and then lugged everything to Moscone South where Em's talk was. Then after her talk I was dismayed to see she returned to her seat to watch the last talk. I couldn't take any more seismology, so I stepped out. Then they had a post-talk discussion since they wrapped up early. Emily did not emerge until 6 pm. Then, we apparently had to go back to Francis and Emily's hotel to get their stuff, which is halfway back to my hotel. I got Francis to carry the poster tube this time. I didn't care about the poster, but I wanted the tube back. Then I found out that we were also taking one of Emily's colleagues with us and had to wait for him to go to his hotel and get his stuff. About twenty minutes later, he arrives, only there is another one of Emily's colleagues. So there are to be five of us. We lug our stuff to the garage (fortunately it's not far) and spend fifteen minutes playing tetris with bags and people while some a$$hole is holding up traffic waiting for our spot. We leave, and then can't figure out how to get on the freeway, so we end up driving all the way down Valencia. We do end up finding the freeway there since Francis and Emily used to live there and know that area better. We have to stop in Palo Alto to pick up Francis's car, but that's not out of the way and it gives us all some more room. We finallyend up back at his place around 9:00. I get my car and meet Kate at Zomblebee's since I'm about to gnaw my arm off at that point.
So the meetings were good, but too long. I had 8 straight days of conferences and was essentially working for 12 days straight. And LPSC abstracts are due in three weeks. I have a little work left to do before that's ready and I'll be gone all next week. I can do some work remotely, but not very productively. I took the weekend off because I needed to, whether or not it was a good idea. I needed a break. I played Twilight Princess, got my hair cut, finished X-mas shopping, macerated dried fruit for cake and made latkes matzo-ball soup with never-ending leftover Turkey. This is the last of the thigh meat.
The fruitcakes may not work. I use AB's recipe, but I add extra rum for the maceration, then add extra cider when I cook the fruit, and strain some of the liquid out to make a sauce before adding in the dry goods. I did not however, write this step down anywhere.
kathleenroberts is home sick today (I think the latkes provided more grease than she's accustomed to eating lately). She went to bake the cakes for me, but of course never knew about my modification. As a result, the batter's too thin. There's an extra pint of rum in there. We're going to bake them anyway to see what happens. The batter's in the pans already. Can't hurt to try. If it doesn't work, there's still plenty of rum left. We'll just have to get some more fruit.Most of the work that needs to be done is for the CPU, not for me. I basically wrote this huge entry in spurts over the course of four hours at work while the shorter calcs were running. The rest will be longer (half a day each), and I'll be revising the Icarus paper while that's happening.
