Oh geology, why do you torture me?

The past few weeks have been extraordinarily busy. There is probably a lot to write about that I will forget. Regardless, some highlights… or lowlights, of the past few days:

I had midterms last Thursday that I describe as being disasterous. Namely, it was my midterm for mineralogy that caused problems. It was a timed test where we had about 6 rocks in a tray, and we had 13 minutes to identify all the minerals in each rock before passing the trays on. About halfway through the test, I reach over to my folder and knock over a bottle of hydrochloric acid! It spills all over my desk and smites some of my notes (which start to fizz!). I had to take a few minutes to clean that mess up and didn’t end up finishing that tray of minerals. Then when the test was nearly over, I was playing with my knife (which we use to test the hardness of certain minerals) and ended up slipping, slicing my middle finger right open! The thing proceeded to bleed for the next 35 minutes until I finally managed to get home.

Luckily, those days are past. I think it’s a testiment to my klutziness. Anyway, we have a field trip for mineralogy for the next 4 days. The itinerary is to hit up the Sierras and Owens Valley. Among the stops we will be doing are Bridgeport, Yosemite, Bishop, Lone Pine and an area near Death Valley. Most of this area is like my second home, since Dan (sometimes Nic too), go there quite a bit for hiking/camping expeditions. Not to mention the countless other geology field trips I’ve been to in the Owen’s Valley. I’m looking forward to this though, almost completely packed for it. Just need to buy some food for this weekend in a little bit.

I also went to REI and with the intention of picking up a few things… and ended up buying a massive amount of crap. That place is like a drug dealer. So much good stuff! If it wasn’t for that place and Guitar Center, I’d probably be pretty well off!

Speaking of Guitar Center…

I found this interesting device made by Line 6 called the GuitarPort. Basically, it hooks straight into your computer and simulates a large number of different amplifiers and effects pedals. I figured for $99, it wasn’t that bad, and if I didn’t like it I’d just bring it back.

After playing with it for the last week, I have to say that this thing is AWESOME. Since it plugs directly into the computer, it makes it extraordinarily easy to record as well. I put together a small mp3 to show it off. The following example is about 1 minute long (1mb download) and features 4 different guitar tracks mixed together. Enjoy!

Out of the Way Demo Download. (1 minute long. 1 mb download.)

Alright, time to do some final packing and then I’m off for a few days!

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