Summer is Wrapping Up

As the title suggests, the end of my summer research experience is drawing near.  I have a week and a half left in the office and then I begin Graduate orientation and training.  I'm getting impatient, but I think it's just because I effing LOVE school, so I'm getting pumped to be in classes again.  I'm fairly confident on what I want to do in grad school, but per everyone's advice, I will shop around just to be sure.

I'm moving twice in the next two weeks, but then I can finally settle in.  I just found out that my room at my apartment has the biggest closet.  It's not like I have a ton of clothes, but I am going to appreciate the storage space.  I think I'm going to get a periodic table shower curtain like this:

Why not?

I have to say that over the last month I've grown fond of Kimmie Jin.  My new English-speaking roommate brought two chihuahuas with her and they are IN LOVE with Kimmie Jin.  Last night he sat in the living room with me, cuddling the smaller dog, and he literally giggled the whole time.  It was adorable.  He even started to talk to me more in mostly understandable English.  I won't really miss that apartment though.  I don't really like living with dogs, no matter how cute they are.  Just because I think this is funny, here's a shot of me and the bigger chihuahua:

From there, I go to live with one of the guys in my group for two weeks.  He's got a nice house and CATS!  He also has the entire Ender Wiggins series by Orson Scott Card, so I'm pretty pumped to have access to those as well.

I actually have been crocheting a lot lately, but only on one project.  I'm bound and determined to use up my yarn and the blanket that I'm almost done with is helping tremendously. Here is a picture I took a few nights ago, just to give you an idea.

I'm imagining that I will be done with it in the next week.  I only have one more stripe to complete, plus a border.  I'm debating on whether I want to keep it for myself or give it to my niece.  I think she would like the colors, but it's big and nice and I like it!

As always, thanks for reading.

Cheers

Granny Square Goodness Preview

Just thought I would drop in and give you a picture of my latest project.  I don't have great light in my room, but here is a preview.

Bunnies! Bunnies It Must Be Bunnies!

...or maybe midgets!  There was my Buffy reference for Megan.  I've never seen so many bunnies in my whole life.  It's ridiculous how many bunnies exist in this city.  I'm not complaining, I love me some bunnies, but seriously.   The sunsets are pretty good, too.  I've made it a ritual to take a drive down this road that's all fields and watch the sunset.  The colors I've witnessed just put a smile on your face, they're that good.

Last week, Megan was here.  There isn't much to do in Ames, so the foodies we are, we checked out a number of popular restaurants.  We weren't disappointed.  It was nice just spending time together.

Work is pretty much the same.  I'm still reading a lot, but I've started working on the computer a little.

As far as my crafts go, I started a new blanket.  I'm hoping the yarn that I have will get me to a reasonably sized blanket, but only time will tell.  It's a multi-size granny square blanket.  I'll post pictures eventually, but I'm only done with about a quarter of my original design.  I've learned that graph paper is great for designing crochet patterns.

As always, thanks for reading.

Scarlet and Grey Granny Square Goodness

So, per Megan's request, I'm finally posting again.  Last time I mentioned another project I was working on.  Due to my diligence (or obsessiveness...whatever you prefer) I've completed my small lap blanket, and now I have pictures for y'all.

Side note before I go any further: I didn't actually mean for this to look like an Ohio State color scheme, but it just kind of worked out that way.  I think it looks badass regardless.

First, here are pictures of what the four different square patterns looked like individually:

At first, I was just going to make the grey and red squares in the middle, but then I realized I wasn't going to have enough yarn, and it might look nicer with the black contrast, so I ended up designing the first and last squares.

The way I joined the squares was a continuous flat braid join.  It was super easy and super quick, and I'm glad I used it.  To finish it off, I added a scalloped border.  If you notice, I arranged the squares in diagonals (I don't do well with randomness). The actual size of the blanket is about 36"x 42".  I wasn't looking to make a giant afghan.  I did this whole thing with only 4.5 skeins of yarn. 

As to my real life, things are going well.  I've made some friends, so I don't have to "hang out" with Kimmie Jin all day/night.  I'm finally starting real projects tomorrow, which is nice, because my motivation to read textbooks is dropping exponentially. I'm teaching myself some computer programming as well, which is slow going, but will be rewarding later on.  

For any chemistry nerds reading this (there have to be a few, otherwise my friends suck), I've picked up a book from my chem department office called the The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean.  It's about the periodic table and has anecdotal short stories about the elements.  It's pretty awesome, so I recommend you check it out. 

As always, thanks for reading. :)

Periodic Table Update

So it's been about a week, but as promised, I finally have an update for you on my periodic table granny square blanket.  Let's get to the picture first...

I've provided labels for those who don't know what they're looking at.  The black squares are just filler. My running total is 118/280 squares completed.  Keep in mind that 130 of the remaining squares are black.  I guess that will help me get through the next three chapters I have to read in my textbook.  

I'm also working on another granny square blanket that's black, red, and heather grey.  That's going to be super duper nice, and I will get pictures of that up soon, too.  

In my chemistry life, I've just been doing a lot of reading.  I have a lot that I need to get a background on before I can just jump into projects.  I'm a terribly slow reader, so it's not going as quickly as I would like it to, but what can I do?  

Kimmie Jin finally moved out of my room, but now that I've been here for two weeks (holy shit, I've been here for two weeks) I don't really want to move into that room.  It's literally half the size of the room that I'm in.  I do want the box spring to go with my mattress though.  I'm guessing that would make my sleep just a touch better.   

That's all for now.  Thanks for reading. :-)

What Is Computational Chemistry?

Over the past month or so, many of my family and friends have asked me about what I will be doing in grad school, and what I can do with it after I'm done.  I've decided to use this post to explain, to the best of my abilities, just what computational chemistry is in layman's terms.

So first, what is computational chemistry?

--Computational chemistry is a branch of chemistry that uses computers to help predict the behavior of chemical systems.  Computational chemists use the principles of math, physics, chemistry, and computing to solve very complex problems.

Most of the time, when doing computational chemistry, we are given a chemical system (see definition below) and we wish to either predict a chemical reaction that will take place or predict the shape, or geometry, the particles in our system will most likely form.  In other words, we are mainly concerned with the interactions that take place between particles.  When I say particles I mean electrons, protons, neutrons, atoms, molecules, and macromolecules.

There are two parts to a chemical system:
1) What is in the system?  I need to tell the computer what type of particles are going to interact.
2) Where are the particles and how are they moving around?  I need to tell the computer how far the particles are from each other, and I also have to provide velocities for each particle.

The goal of my research will be to design and test computer models of chemical systems.  I will be designing models based on initial conditions of a chemical system and will modify the program until my predictions match experimental results within a given range.  Then, once I know a model works for one type of system, I can use the model to predict behavior of systems very similar to the initial one.

If you have any other specific questions, feel free to ask.  I hope this answers at least some of the questions people had.

So now for some chemistry...

Just so you know this hurt my brain, too.  This is the description of what I will be doing in my lab: 

'The purpose of the work will be to develop benchmark test cases and provide profiles for different computational chemistry codes on many platforms.  This data will be used to develop computational models to inform hardware and software development activities.'

Yeah. 

I've spent the last two days learning as much as humanly possible about Unix and vim.  If you don't know what those are, don't feel bad.  I didn't either until yesterday.  

And holy poop...I'm working in a federal lab and even my emails are confidential. I guess that's kind of awesome.