Week(s) in advance: 21 December-3 Janurary

With school closed and the holidays among us, it's time to take a break.  While I hope to work on some small projects over the next couple weeks, my focus will be on having some time away from the lab.  Instead of giving constant updates that I am not working, I've decided to suspend regular posts on the blog for the next two weeks.  If matters arise I'll pass the comments along otherwise, see you in new year!

Week in review: 14-20 December

On Saturday night our lab group got together from a Christmas BBQ.  It was a nice way to wind down the week, month and year. After such an intense week a social gathering with my colleagues and friends was appropriate.

Yesterday I gave an early review of the week's activities and I don't really have too much to add.  I had a list of work I wanted to finish and I focused on these tasks.  I didn't allow myself to get distracted to sidetracked and by the end of the week I was able to attend to all my scheduled jobs.

Finish Line

A bit after my post last night I went home for a couple hour break and then headed back to school.  There's been a flurry of work and excitement in the lab the last couple of days as months of effort and planning have started to come together.  I've mentioned numerous times that I've been developing new hardware and software for soft matter experiments.  Things have been progressing nicely, but it was only this week that I started to use these tools for actual physics investigations.  And even with the best plans and preparation, there's still so much to learn from "doing".

This week I was determined to complete the experiments (or at least the first round of samples) for a journal article.  I am pleased to say I got to everything on my list.  Of course there's great potential I'll run follow-up tests next year, but I have data to look at and start slotting into a draft.  Additionally, these measurements are the first significant pieces of my thesis, which I will also start writing in the next month.

The end of today signals the start of a two week holiday period in which our university is closed.  I look forward to taking some time off, but I also hope to work from home.  In addition to the writing I mentioned above, I have data to analyse, plenty of code to fix up and I even brought a tray of electronics pieces home to keep me company at my satellite desk.  In the immediate future, it's time to rest, recover and plan out my next moves.

Late night

Today's late night post comes from my desk at school.  With less than 24 hours until the holiday break, I am trying to complete my work for the week.  Despite the hour, notice I've still rated the day a "3".  I am not upset I am still at work and in reality it's a choice to be here.  I could easy run these experiments after the break (and I might need to), but right now I have the advantage of momentum. For now I plan to take a few hour break and come back early in the morning.

Momentum

Today was full of energy.  I bounced around throughout the day as I ran samples in the lab and with an instrument on another floor in our building.  So far things are still moving forward, and I haven't fit any major bumps in the road this week.  Things don't always run this smoothly, especially with a looming deadline (such as the upcoming campus shut down).

I have a clear idea of what experiments to run tomorrow and there's a chance I might finish up my list of jobs I hoped to complete this week.  Even if I don't I still have Friday as a back up.

Moving right along

Today I loaded and ran experiments on one of the samples I prepared last week.  So far the data looks good, but I'll need to keep diving in tomorrow.  Additionally, I'll check the readings from my device with a commercial instrument tomorrow.  At the same time I'll start to look at the second sample I prepared and this is where I start to get nervous... not only should the measurements on my instrument match with the "gold standard" purchased machine, but both samples I prepared so also give the same results.  I am already prepared to remake one or both of these samples in the new year, but for now this is a great opportunity to shake out major bugs from my system.

Blur

Things moved fast today.  I spent a couple hours in the lab before heading off to volunteer.  I worked on a number of small tasks in the lab, mostly around preparing to load and test a sample tomorrow.  It was a pretty busy day and I didn't feel like I really took hold of a job before having to move on to the next one.