I was up in Sacramento this past weekend for the California State University’s Student Research Competition as a finalist in the Physical and Mathematical Sciences category. 190 students representing 23 different schools were participating! Pretty awesome event overall.

Anyway, we each had 10 minutes to present a Powerpoint Presentation and talk about our research topics. My presentation, entitled “Mapping the existence and extent of mid-crustal reflectors in the San Gabriel Mountains of Southern California” (It’s an unwritten rule in science to have the longest possible title in the world. Longer titles evidentially means you are cooler), was completely rock solid.

It was very well put together, designed great and flowed well too. I even had humor interjected in parts and the judges on my panel were laughing! Plus, it was actually fairly interesting (it has to do with earthquakes). I completed the presentation in EXACTLY 10 minutes, right as the moderator held up the sign for me to stop speaking. The judges then proceeded to ask me some questions and I had no problems answering them. In short, I knew my stuff!

After checking out the competition in my category (2 physics majors and 3 mathematicians, plus myself… a dirty geologist), I figured I had the competition in the bag. People were also telling me afterwards how much they liked my presentation too.

Anyway, Lockheed Martin sponsored a few of the science and engineering categories (and put up prize money for the winners), including mine. Both judges on my panel were theoretical physicists, one of whom works for Lockheed Martin.

So fast forward to the awards ceremony the next day. Second place went to one of the physics students, whose research delt with modeling various lasers. Awesome I thought. I knew for a fact that I did way better than he did! Then they call the name for first place. “Funny,” I thought to myself, “that name they just called didn’t sound like ‘Dave.'”

Nope, it was the other physics major! Gah! I guess that’s what I get for being so cocky, but in all honesty I don’t understand what went wrong, or what their selection criteria was. I was quite surprised, as were a number of other people. It was absolutely ridiculous.

Then again, I guess it would make sense that Lockheed Martin, the biggest military weapons manufacturer in the world (and as a result, the biggest exporter of death and destruction), is going to like someone’s research that could potentially have military applications (lasers!) over my research that has practical applications in using earthquakes to map/locate FUTURE earthquake hazards.

So yeah, I’m somewhat sour. Then again though, I did make it all the way to the finals and got to represent my school in my category. So at the very least, that is still quite an accomplishment.

This just means I should start new research this summer, and be ready to take the competition next year.

Yay for universal internet access! I’m currently at a hotel in Sacramento and running my old laptop.

The CSU Student Research Competition is tomorrow and it looks like it’s going to be pretty big. A few people from SF State, including the Dean of Graduate Studies were here tonight. We all had dinner together and then practiced our presentations in front of each other.

We received quite a bit of valuable feedback and some suggestions. So now I’m cleaning up a few things in my presentation and running through it a few times before tomorrow.

I initially ran through my presentation last night with Meghan. It was 13 minutes in length. Cutting the explanation of certain things today, I got it down to 10 minutes exactly (which is the requirement).

Now to commit the rest of it to memory!

We’ll see how it goes! Stay tuned. 🙂

Bear with me as my website undergoes schizophrenia while I try to design a new look for it in my spare time. In the meantime, enjoy this amazingly boring… blue.

Before I begin, I checked out this webpage using Safari (Apple program) and it basically looked like poo. Trying to code for all sorts of different browsers that don’t support standards gets quite frustrating. Of course my webpage doesn’t even pass a basic HTML validator test by W3C.org. I’ll have to get this in order soon.

Anyway, onto more interesting things!

On Friday night, Meghan took Michelle, David and I rock climbing. That was a blast as always. Michelle and David had a lot of fun and want to go back sometime. Michelle and David did better than I did the last time I went out. Definitely impressive! It made me pretty happy to see them do so well and like it a lot too. Watching Meghan was just awesome too. She knows how to tear up those walls. She’s a regular spider, or maybe a mountain goat? Maybe something more flattering, such as a… cliff-hopping penguin? Right…. Anyway, we brought the digital camera along also and documented the event. Check out the pics!

I helped David conduct a number of surveys for his senior thesis on Friday and Saturday. This involved sitting outside of a grocery store and asking people if they’d like to take a survey on recycling. A lot of interesting people and we seemed to average about 1 survey every 5 minutes or so, which isn’t bad at all.

Of course there were a few naturally angry people who automatically thought we were soliciting donations for money. One guy stormed off saying “Recycling? Bah! One day it’s save the trees, another it’s for the whales. Now it’s about recycling!” I noticed he was wearing a San Francisco Giants hat and briefly thought of telling him how much his baseball team sucks.

Other news:

• Student Research Competition in Sacramento on Friday – I think I have my presentation completely done. However it’s about 20 slides that have to be explained in 10 minutes. I might have to cut some things out, but I’m not sure what just yet. However, I feel very confident about what I have to say and think I can win my section.
• Paper due in Quaternary Geology on Wednesday. This paper was based on a weekend field trip we did at the beginning of April. As luck would have it, I’ve misplaced my field notebook that contains all the information I wrote down while we were on the trip. Gah!
• The College of Science and Engineering at SFSU is having a Student Research Showcase on Friday, May 6. I’m entering my project I did for the Southern California Earthquake Center into it (which is the same project I’m presenting in Sacramento). $500 for first place! We’ll see if I can pull that off. That’d be some excellent funds for New Zealand.

Anyway, the time is nigh to go to bed. Until next time!

I’m not sure what’s gotten into me lately or where I’m finding mass quantities of energy (it must be all those carbohydrates from the tons of pasta I eat), but I walked to school today. All the way from my house!

It’s just about 3 miles exactly. Then, I decided to walk home from school tonight. That is 6 miles of walking I’ve done today! It only takes about 45 minutes to walk that distance though, which the bus sometimes takes that long anyway, once you factor in time waiting at the bus stop.

Anyway, since Monday (when I first walked home from school, plus my late night adventure), I’ve walked or ran a total of 20 miles!

I even have ambitions to walk to (and from) school tomorrow as well. Another 6 miles! Perhaps even a run in the afternoon and then Michelle, David, Meghan and I are going rock climbing at the gym. This has definitely been an atheletic sort of week for me.

Perhaps I’m feeling guilty for all the junk food that I’ve been eating. Or perhaps I have some subconcious desire to get into shape for later this summer, when I may climb Mount Shasta with Meghan and her dad. Either way, it’s definitely been perfect weather to take advantage of this. I’m thrilled!

Anyway, I have a quiz to study for in the morning. Hopefully tomorrow, I’ll get around to writing about Dan’s visit this weekend and posting some pictures.

Alright, I downloaded a theme from another website and heavily modified it to get the interesting look you see now. I suppose it is still somewhat bland, but at least this time our whole page doesn’t look like it is in constant mourning for someone/something.

After I get the theme for the blog working properly, I will most likely move on to re-theming the whole site in this fashion.

However, my sister still says this looks rather boring and bland. I’m not sure how I can spruce it up… (figure out a way to add more graphics I guess)

A lot happened this weekend… but before I get to that, I guess I should start off by saying (especially according to other people), that I’m “pretty damn lucky to be alive or uninjured.” And I definitely owe David and Michelle A LOT. This all happened last night (and caused me to miss my Tuesday petrology class for the FOURTH WEEK IN A ROW!).

Anyway, my roommates decided to go to a bar in the Mission. I haven’t spent much time in the Mission district, but regardless, I thought it’d be fun. After a few drinks, I wasn’t feeling that social or wanting to spend much more money, so I decided to leave at 12AM. I told everyone goodbye and walked up the street to take the BART subway home. (more…)

Update: And yet here are some more cases! Perhaps I’ll just make this a running list. Anyway, in the latest news: 180,000 people had their personal data stolen from Polo Ralph Lauren and GM Mastercards.

Also added info on data theft from DSW Shoe Warehouse in March that I didn’t originally notice. 100,000 people affected in that incident.

People Affected So Far In 2005: 1,297,000 (more…)

I really should update the design of my website to less dreary colors. It’s kind of depressing… almost as if this page is in constant mourning or something. I’ll file that plan away when I have some more free time.

Anyway, as is becoming a Tuesday tradition, I missed my Petrology class again! Oh yes. What was the excuse this time? More faulty alarm clocks? Earthquakes? Fires? Famine? Power outages or a herd of angry buffalo? Nope. I woke up at 7 AM, thought to myself, “Hmm, I think I’m going to take the day off!” Yawned and went back to sleep. Wonderful! Probably not the smartest idea in the world however. Ugh. (more…)

Well my “academic weather forecast” for the next week or so calls for calm weather. All my pertinent assignments are turned in, presentations given and field trips carried out. I have a small quiz tomorrow evening in volcanology, but I’m not too worried about that (though I should be, the last test was a bear! Still managed to pull off a “B” though).

So to celebrate, I missed my petrology class today. Oh yes! What actually happened is that my alarm clock is a rancid piece of trash. For some odd reason, the snooze button doesn’t work anymore. However, I’m not going to let a wimpy little thing like the snooze button stop me from snoozing for another 15 minutes! So I’ve taken to just manually resetting the alarm clock forward 15 minutes and going back to sleep. That is dedication for you.

However, today I evidentially set my CLOCK forward 15 minutes and not my alarm clock. Unaware I did that, I went back to sleep (where I had some horrible dream about my teeth falling out). When I finally woke up, I thought “that was a REFRESHING 15 minutes of sleep! Wait… something must be wrong.” I look at the clock to see that it is now 10:05! (In actuality, it’s 9:50). Regardless, my class started at 8AM. So much for going to that.

Field Trip
This past weekend, our Quaternary Geology class had a field trip to Pyramid Lake, located in western Nevada. It probably ranks as one of the best geology trips that I have ever been on. A large class (especially for an upper division class in our program: 21 people), but everyone was just completely awesome.

In terms of stuff to see and work to do, it wasn’t bad at all. And all of it was definitely interesting, as we looked at deposits relating to an ancient lake called Lake Lahontan. Check out the photo gallery from the trip.

Also, I filmed an interesting video of us throwing a lighter into the fire. Oh yes. Probably not the smartest thing to do at 1 in the morning. Regardless, check out some looney college students. The video is a 7mb AVI file. Blowing Up Lighters

Until next time.