The perfect day

If I were using matlab to track my productivity Friday would have been 'NA'. I actually had a wonderful day. I didn't do any work and I spent time with Julie, which is always pleasant. I actually didn't even feel guilty for not doing any work, and that is a rare thing these days. Another blessing of taking a real day off, was that I realized how much I like what I do. I have been pretty happy since my thesis has started to come together, and have felt a sense of worth and progress each day. But yesterday I noticed that when my thoughts did move back to my work it was not with a sense of dread but with a smiling excitement to resume my research, with a fresher look at some of the things I have been trying to tackle. I picked up the book 'For love of insects' by Thomas Eisner at Borders and read for a while on our date. I loved how excited he was about his research. I started to find myself thinking jealous thoughts that I wished I liked my work as much as he did. As I reflected on my self negative statement a thought came to me. That statement was simply a relic of an older me. One that I have been trying to remove from my mind for a while. I wasn't unhappy, in fact, my next thought was that I should find a better way to archive everything I am doing so that in 30 years I can write a book about the things I am discovering. I was enthusiastic about my future, for the first time in 4 years! I have a tendency to belittle myself and compare myself to everyone around me. I have been trying to have a more positive outlook about who I am and see myself fitting in with those around me in a more symbiotic way, worrying less about how I compare to others, instead focusing on how I can better fit in and keep the gears moving forward. It seems to be working, and I have noticed that I am feeling more confident.

Today's photo is from the Fells wilderness reservation area near Boston, MA. I thought this circular rock pattern looked nice under the snow matted grass.

Thursday

I read somewhere that Thursdays are the least productive day of the week....Actually, I think it was my boss at the knob factory I worked at as a teenager.

Productivity,
9-9:30 email, read, talk to Jesse
9:30-12:30 Article (last figure)
12:30-2 Talk about forced vortex vibrations with lunch
2-3 Administrative details
3-5:30 Article
Hours 8.5, usefulness 5.5 = 65%.

I guess he was right.

Jour de productivite and basketball

I had a great day today. I was very productive, made a lot of progress on my paper, helped out a friend, and played basketball. Yes I included basketball in my list of things that went well today. Normally I am really crappy at it and lack the necessary skills. Today I felt good made %50 or so of my shots and blocked a few people, I even got a couple of rebounds. I wonder what will happen tomorrow. The weather has been so nice, it just makes me happier to get up in the morning. I wonder how people must feel living in Florida?

Productivity:
9-9:30 email and reading
9:30-9:45 talk w/ Jesse
9:45 - 12 Article (figures)
12-12:15 lunch break
12:15-3 Article (figures)
3-3:25 email walk break
3:30 - 5:00 Article (figures etc.)
At work 8 hours, useful work 6.5 hours = 81% efficiency (a lot more than I can say for my car).

Getting back to work

Today was pretty productive. I didn't really start wasting time until the last half hour of the day. The only bad part was that I would have preferred to work on my paper this afternoon, but opted to work on some homework instead, while I had the chance to work with others. I am going to Thom's again tonight to play mandolin, and I hope tomorrow is also filled with productive time. The paper content is complete in my head, but still needs to be put into the paper. Then I think I will spend some time refining the last section, whatever I have done tomorrow is all I will do for the rest of the week. Then it is on to more experiments and an attempt to assess the reality of the accelerometers.

Productivity:
8:20-9 walk train walk
9-10 Organize and clean-up from friday and file transfers to allow me to use both computers.
10-10:30 got hot chocolate and talked to Jesse and Jordan
10:30 - 12 worked on paper.
12 - 4:00 ate lunch while I worked on the quasi 1-D solution for viscous flow in a diffuser using the interacting boundary layer theory!
4-5 talked and wasted some time.
5-5:30 printed out a schedule for the rest of the week (didn't finish)
5:30-6:20 walk train walk
total hours 10hours away from home, 5.5 hours of useful work!

Messy day

I wasn't very productive about getting work done today, but I did make our home feel a little more cozy. I spent the day at home putting out little fires that started over the weekend, like the fish that was dying, and a room that was out of control cluttered and dirty. I spent most of the day repairing a closet that had fallen apart and was raining plaster because the owner had never thought that it should be painted. I spackled, cleaned, and painted most of the day away. It was actually nice to slow down a little bit and have some long conversations with Julie. It has been a long time since something else was taking both of our attention away from one another. With that out of the way I should be much more productive this week.

Here are the totals.
Late start to the day 8:30 showered and got ready by 9.
90min going to store and buying supplies for fish and printer.
90min sitting down answering email and getting lunch ready for kids.
120min spackling closet and preping for paint.
120min painting closet and cleaning up.
90min barbequeing and making dinner.
90min putting clothes in new closet.

Sweeterade

I don't know exactly why when you put mentos in diet coke carbon dioxide is released so violently, but I sure like to watch it. This weekend we ate a lot of candy, so we found lots of things to do with it when we were bored of eating it. It seems like the reaction is really only sensitive to the outer layer of the mentos, because the reaction only lasts for a few moments and then the mentos continue to dissolve and the coke tastes like there is still a lot of combination left. I will have to do a more conclusive study this summer. We also talked about ninjas. I knew so little about ninjas before. Now I find them very fascinating and I think I am getting pumped up about them. I'll bet that ninjas know a lot about how diet coke reacts with mentos! I haven't laughed so hard in a long time, thanks Jake and Reagan!

Falcon on campus (a while ago)

I have been meaning to put this picture up for a while. A couple of months ago this falcon was in Killian Court at MIT and I took a bunch of pictures of it. Thanks to Jesse for calling me when he saw it. Interestingly, it was trying to eat squirrels!

Productivity report:
45min Walk train walk
10min Get a donut.
210min Article figures
70min Learned about energy methods for determining drag, power, and dissipation in viscous flows
90min Lab meeting (learned all about red algae and correlations for their growth)
60min Error analysis of a flapping foil

in at 9 out at 5:30. More work at home I can feel it! You know those days - sometimes weeks - where you just can't seem to accomplish the thing you set out to do even though you can't stop working on it, it is always on your mind, and you have been banging away at it for 30+hours? Well I had one of those weeks! I am sure next week will be better.

Crayola doesn't make a color for your eyes!

Tonight was a lot of fun. I met with Thom and Judy to play mandolin, guitar, banjo, and ukulele. In the process we spent most of the time listening to music. I really liked the song "Crayola doesn't make a color for your eyes." by Kristin Andreassen. It is a really great song and Thom said that in concert a lot of the percussion is made by hand jiving! Anyway check out the song you can hear it here. If you really like it you can vote for it to win the John Lennon songwriting contest.

Productivity, I ate 1960 calories.
30min - Walk train walk
120min - Journal article and force plots
30min - Discussion with labmates
45min - Listened to a talk on relaxing grid methods and information based modeling.
45min - Discussed weather with friends while eating lemon bars.
225min - Journal article and force plots

In at 9am out at 5:30pm.

Blogging

Ok sometimes I think blogging is really lame. It is difficult to find a subject to write about and when I do it just comes out like a pile of crap. Most of the blogs worth reading have a subject, mine is absolutely random. Most of the blogs worth reading are interesting and thought provoking. I would put more time into one subject, but that would take time away from my work and family, and so now I know why my blog is lame... I have too many excuses. However, I did make a commitment to write here each day this week. So I have a new plan. I am going to use this blog as a way to try and increase my productivity by openly admitting how much time I wasted and how productive I was. So here is my productivity analysis for today. Oh and I am going to keep posting a picture a day because I like to.

I ate 2400 calories today, walked 30 minutes, but I may go for a run this evening.
At work from 9:00 to 5:00pm

45min- Walk train walk
120min- Process PIV results and back-ups
60min- Plan trip to Keypoint Hotel and Plane tickets (Thanks Momi)
30min- Lunch
30min- Journal article figures.
70min- Techniques to solve for the wake of a separated flow using Newton's Method
30min- Tea with friends
90min- Hele-Shaw (sp?) viscous fingering solutions
30min- Walking and Talking with Brenden and Alex
45min- Walk train walk
60min- Work on journal article

There you go, my first day publicly announcing how unproductive I am. Actually, it was a pretty good day. I really think this will keep me motivated. I mean my adviser might actually read this! Yikes, I hope that if she does she will go easy on me.

Balance

How do you balance a career and a family? So far I just plow through and hope they are in balance. I take breaks whenever possible and try to spend time with the family. However, usually by that time I have bills or something else I have left behind piled up on my desk and so the day is gone and I haven't done much with them. I mention it because I wonder if I am becoming the kind of person I want to be. Family. I am home more often than a lot of people. It isn't that I am not around, it is just that perhaps I could be more when I am there. I am going to try to think about ways to become a better family member this week.

Productivity

Being productive isn't always easy. Lately, I feel like I am busier than I have ever been, but I also feel like I have very little to show for it. Perhaps it is because I am always "almost" finished with the paper I am working on. I am actually doing real solid work and slowly adding it to the final product, so I know it will get done eventually, but the process grows tiring.

I love the scent of new ideas. My brother in law wrote a little article on his blog today about how writing each day for strict amount of time at a particular part of the day can make ideas come faster. I want that type of idea flow. He also mentioned that using a paper and pencil or pen for his first and second drafts has really helped him solidify his drafting skills. I would agree. Lately I have been trying to keep a better lab notebook, and it has helped me bring my ideas and thoughts out and into document format a lot more often.

Now if I could just balance everything. Here it is 11pm and I still have four things unfinished I planned on doing today... Perhaps tomorrow.

Another update

The sad part about writing so little not so often is that when I sit down to write an entry I don't like the look of this webpage any more and I want to start over with everything. However, I am going to resist that temptation and stick to making a post here everyday about something interesting that is related to my work, so that my three readers can see a little more about what I do.

Last week I spent most of the week determining the lift and drag coeffecients for my spinning spheres. It sounds easy I know, but in reality it takes 1.2 hours per run to determine this using the computational power of a G4 powerbook. This data is helping to finish polishing the story of my research, which now not only has shape but is starting to be polished. I just hope the shape is similar to a sphere, since that is the topic of my research! You're right my puns are lame, but 30Rock is very funny don't you think?

I thought this guys work was worth looking at. I really like these representations, and it turns out a lot of his other photos are pretty cool too. www.chrisjordan.com I didn't realize that 2.3 million people were incarcerated last year, did you?