New Job

Instrument Scientist, Neutron Powder Diffraction (two instruments) at the Bragg Institute at Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO), within the new OPAL facility. The two instruments are called Echidna and Wombat.



I start in December.

Its Global Warming

I'm working quite hard at the moment trying ot get through all my work before I leave. Last weeks work was punctuated by two things - an advanced MicroSoft Excel course I ttok, which went over two days, and a student seminar day that myself and a colleague from ANSTO organised, planned, and ran. I learnt a few things at the Excel course, but mostly that I have almost zero tolerance for stupid people. I don't know when this happened exactly, but I will make an effort in the future. I think it was just because I was locked in the room with them for two days. I think under more normal circumstances I would be able to leave, or do something else for a while and still be nice to them, but more on my terms. The student seminar day went really well i thought. We both got thrown in the deep end and apparently swim quite well, but were left with a few questions as to why we were abandoned in the firsts place.

Saturday I went climbing up the hill - led four long 19-20's (5-10a/b/c) and they were great. Almost finished knitting a sock, but then realised I'd messed up and undid a few thousand rows. This is a pikky of one of the belay ledges there - just a photo I grabbed off the interweb.



In other news Sydney got its first taste of Summer - 35 degrees yesterday and 100km/hr (about 50 mph) hot winds. A few fires broke out, but nothing major. Teh freaky thing here is that its not even October! Wow - I've almost been back for a whole year!

Dirty Rotten Pig

Climbed last Sunday - repeated our 3-pitch route dirt rotten pig (19/19/16). Valuable lesson learned: since retiring from difficult sport climbing do not take new pair of super tiny shoes to the bottom of a multipitch. I ended up cutting through the heels with a sharp rock in order to get them on, and then couldn't stand on my left foot for most of the way. Lucky it was only 19. Awesome route though - so much cleaner than when we first established it!

Here I am!

Guess where I am? Go - on, I'll give you a clue: It's a super sunny blue sky Saturday. I've been here since 4.30am, and went to bed after midnight last night.

Thats right - I'm at WORK!

I'm running an experiment with my colleague Greg sorbing vapours into a crystal. Secretly i thought the crystal wouldn't last as we put these vapours into it, and to get them out we have to heat it to 200 degrees C, and then we cool it and put different vapours into it. Most crystals compain about this type of thing, but not mine! Its such a super trooper - we've done 20 vapours so far, and the damn thing is still alive and kicking, although Greg and I are getting quite sleepy as we have to come in every 3 hours and do 2 hrs work.

WARNING: VERY bad pun (Mikl's fault): With reference to the robust nature of my crystal: "The Neverending Sorby".

Anyhoo - off to change solvents

Update

Hiya! Haven't been posting a whole heap lately - been a busy busy bee, and lets face it - I only post at work and only when I get time, which are mutually exclusive events I'm happy to say. Yes - that's right - I like being busy at work. Keeps me from beating up the students (KIDDING). Actually, the students, well, two of them at least, are struggling with something I'm very good at and its unfortunately not something I can teach them in a few hours, its more of applying accumulated experience to make decesions every few minutes to improve your result, which is hard to teach. I feel for them right now, they both have difficult problems to solve, and I'm trying my best to help them but I can also see their frustration. They are both doing very well, but their problems are just shitty, quite frankly. At least at the end they would have learn't a shitload!

So, since I posted last I've had some great news that I don't wish to share here just yet. But lets say I'm happy as I get to keep my cake and eat it too, so to speak. No actual cake, as yet. BTW - Its not babies - no babies, thats not the thing.

Been watching a shitload of Buffy. I love Buffy, well, the show, Buffy is way to teeny tiny for my tastes, but the show is really cool. I just watched the episode where Buffy's mum dies, and you get to see Willow and Tara kiss. That's the bit I really like, as it was all too "relationship censorship overload" until then. Buffy gets to snog everyone, all the heterosexual people get to snog, but noooo, the gay people have to hide. So I was very happy when they kissed. Then Spike made a fake Buffy and I laughed. Anyhoo - yes, i have an out of control raging Buffy addiction and have started to incorporate syntax from the show into my every day speech. Not particularly useful. No Biggie.

The upside of raging Buffy addiction is the extra knitting I'm getting through. I finished the fingerless gloves for Sal, with pyramids on the back of the hands. You can only tell they are pyramids once someone tells you what they are, otherwise you'll never work it out. But once they tell you, you can really see the pyramids, I promise. The pyramids are in celebration of her ancient history studies, plus she thinks the pyramids are way cool, which they are.

Tomorrow is Friday and then its going to rain for the weekend. Bummerama. Mikl has organized a dinner party for Saturday night, which should keep us entertained, but I really wanted to climb this weekend - it rained last weekend too. I might take some time off during the week next week instead.

Snowboarding Australian Style

Last Friday it dumped snow at the Australian snowfields. We drove like crazycats Friday down to Canberra to stay with our good pal Les, and headed out to the snow for a glorious Saturday of green trees and probably 5 degrees C of sunshine.





Back to Canberra Saturday night, then back again on Sunday where the snow had, alas, turned to slush, but an awesome time was had by all.

In stark contrast I spend this past weekend climbing in 28 degreeC Sydney sunshine, after a 2 hour bushwalk with a new friend, Marty. Michael unfortunately had to work. I can't believe it is 28 and only the second day of Spring. Hmm, could be a taste of the hot summer to come..