Marking the 7th year on the job here go started off with an early bonus. This week I got to transfer to the much coveted E lot parkade across the street after 7 years on the waiting list. Woo hoo!
Year 7 was a pretty good year marked with lots of new equipment and a few accomplishments. It was also another year where I added more things to my to-do list than I managed to tick off. Between keeping up with the latest technology and taking on more research, things are getting busier than ever at work which is starting to make getting all the equipment surveyed on time a little more difficult. Hopefully one of the things that happens in year 8 will be hiring of another physicist to share the load.
In the meantime, this 8th year coming up I have lots to look forward to. I’ll be wrapping up a couple more research projects and trying to get them published or presented somewhere, starting up a few new projects, new digital x-ray equipment being installed and getting more involved with the PET/CT scanner. Should be another good and very busy year.
2006 Hurricane forecast
The official NHC hurricane forecast won’t be out for a couple of months yet, but Dr. Bill Gray’s updated April forecast is calling for another active season with 17 named storms, 9 hurricanes (5 of them intense) along with a 64% probability of a major hurricane making landfall along the eastern coast of the US. Hopefully we won’t see a repeat of last year’s storm season.
The report makes for an interesting read and offers a look at some of the things looked at to come up with a hurricane forecast.
Fun dates in history
Rick tells me that:
On Wednesday, at two minutes and three seconds after 1:00 in the morning, the time and date will be 01:02:03 04/05/06.
That won’t ever happen again.
Campus in the spring
Spring time is always nice around here, because the groundskeepers present you with scenes like this to enjoy on the walk in to work.
Dust bunnies beware!
After Roomba died, we were stuck with using the old vacuum again (over there on the left). Does a reasonably decent job for being a 10 year old vacuum. We were going to get another Roomba, but then the wife decided she wanted a Dyson. And not just any Dyson either. We were going to get a Dyson Ball.
After some reading and research, we decided to get the Animal variant, partly because of the extra attachments it comes with, and partly because of the cool purple colour.
The wife got to use it first, and after seeing the pictures of what came out of the carpet, I’m sold. Now admitedly, it had been a while since our last vacuuming so that was probably a few weeks worth of dust build up. Still, I don’t think it’s anywhere near what our old vacuum would have sucked up.
The Dyson is a bit on the heavy side, but actually surprisingly easy to move around. It’s also a lot quieter than I expected. I used it a little bit last night to vacuum along the baseboards with the mini-turbine head. The hose is nice and long, although it becomes a little bit cumbersome moving around with the rest of the vacuum dragging behind. The telescoping wand is reasonably thin, and the crevice tool allows me to get into places that our old vacuum wouldn’t (it had a larger diameter hose). I was finally able to get to those clumps of dog hair towards the back of the fridge!
I imagine the house will be pretty clean with the new Dyson (at least for the next few weeks until the novelty factor wears off).