alan.lamielle.net

I’m finally back from my ~2.5 week vacation following the conclusion of my internship in Boulder at NCAR. I drove from Fort Collins back to Michigan and flew out to California with Rachael after returning from my Michigan trip. We got back in town Sunday afternoon.  I’m finally back and on a regular schedule at school/work after reading through 300+ emails and getting caught up with people/events.  I’ll get pictures of the trips up as soon as I can.  I’m pretty busy right now though.  Partly because of school and partly because while we were in California I proposed to Rachael!  More details on this soon as well.  This post will have to suffice for now.

Update (2009-8-25 13:45): Pictures from our trip to California are up in the gallery in the vacation category.  There are six sections of pictures (all starting with ‘California Trip’), including a set of pictures from when I proposed!  Enjoy!

Kate and I ran into a fox on our way to the car today.  He looks a bit thin and was out before dark.  Aren’t foxes normally an evening animal?  He may be very hungry and desperate for food.  We watched him for a bit.  He would slowly stalk some unseen animal and nimbly pounce into the tall grass where he disappeared only to be seen pouncing again above the grass and back down.

Today was the start of my internship in Boulder, CO at NCAR (The National Center for Atmospheric Research) in the SiParCS 2009 summer internship program.  It was mostly filled with administrative and logistical stuff, but I did get a few hours of working on my project in.

Read more…

SiParCS 2009 starts Monday June 1, 2009.  That’s two days away.  Over the past week or so I’ve been getting emails concerning logistical issues and I’ve been taking care of these things.  Two weeks ago Kate and I dropped off a form that was needed and we met with John and had lunch.  A while before that Kate and I took care of apartment details and got things squared away in this area.

As I won’t be in town and working in the CS department every day, I’ve been trying to get a few last minute things squared away with IEGen and ready for Michelle.  We’re trying to get a journal paper finished and submitted (as we have been for ~6 months now…).  As I won’t be working for her directly anymore (thought I will be working on IEGen in the evenings) I’m trying to get certain things finished up so she doesn’t have to do as much learning of various pieces of my code.  I’m almost where I want to be, but I still need to get a few things finished up and ready before Monday.

Things are falling into place to get started working Monday at NCAR.  I’m really excited!  This should be a fun 10 weeks.

Kate and I took a second trip down to Boulder today to finish up the temporary apartment logistics and turn in some paperwork at NCAR.  We timed the trip again, this time with some decent traffic, and it looks like it is safe to say it takes very close to an hour from Kate’s apartment to the NCAR lab at the top of the mesa.  This is definitely longer than I want to drive twice a day, so I’m glad we decided to take the temporary apartment route.  I think 10 hours a week is more than I’m willing to put into commuting…

After we finished up signing all of the apartment paperwork we had about 30 mins to kill.  We stopped by Caffe Sole for a coffee and snack.  This may be the place I hang out if/when I’m not at the lab working.

We met with John around 11.  We chatted for a bit, got a brief tour of the building, found our future (though hopefully too needed) cubes, saw some big (though in the grand scheme of things not that big) machines that they use to run some simulations on, and had a (free!) lunch.  I really like the atmosphere (no pun intended!) there, it is very open, everyone is friendly and seems very approachable, and I immediately felt included and a part of the lab.  After lunch we chatted with most of the CS researchers there.  Every time I meet a new person or group of people that work in my field (or something close) I always seem to get along instantly with them.  I suppose it is the thinking alike thing that causes this…  Regardless, everyone seemed really nice, smart, and will be great to work with.

After another hour drive back, I met briefly with Michelle about the status of IEGen and her progress with the related full space tiling work.  Things are going well and I may actually be able to run some experiments soon!

Finally, we ended the day at Jim’s Wings on Elizabeth St, very close to Adam’s (soon to be) old apartment.  Hot wings go great with a few pints of beer.  We also discovered a small local ice cream shop where we enjoyed some tasty treats before I headed home on my bike.

I’m tired, it’s time for bed.

Quick update concerning SiParCS: At the FRACTAL Spring 2009 conference I ran into two engineers/scientists who work at NCAR: Ben Mayer and Nathan Hearn. It turns out that they are two members of the group Kate Ericson and I will be working with (under John Dennis) for the SiParCS 2009 internship this summer. We chatted at lunch for about 30 minutes about some interesting topics. It was nice to meet a few of the people I will probably be interacting with for at least two months this summer. It was also interesting that I ran into them at the conference: small world!