Happy end of 2011.
Since graduation, my life has taken some unexpected turns; as I somewhat expected it would. At graduation, I lost that which occupied the majority of my waking life since I was 5. The day after graduation, I lost the most important person in my life. In November, I lost my career, apartment, and purpose.
If nothing else, I guess I learned another lesson in attachment. I've got more to complain about, but we've all faced difficulties.
Anywhom, here are some books I've read since graduation (in decreasing recommendation):
The Good Book - Grayling
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Pirsig
Skinny Legs and All - Robbins
The Spirit Molecule - Strassman
Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming - LeBerge
Blink - Gladwell
Naked Pictures of Famous People - Stewart
Machine Design - Norton
Physics of the Future - Kaku
The Fractional Calculus - Oldham
The Divine Proportion - Huntley
The Alchemist - Coelho
Project Icarus (1979) - MIT
Handbook to Higher Consciousness - Keyes
Meditation : The Complete Guide - Monaghan
That's Not What I Meant - Tannen
The Prophet - Gibran
The Art of Imperfection - Vienne
-- Haven't Finished --
Evolve Your Brain - Dispenza
Masterpieces of World Philosophy - Magill
Confidence Men - Suskind
Synergetics - Fuller
... bet you didn't see that coming. And while we're off topic, here are some concerts I've attended since graduation: A Perfect Circle, Primus, Bassnectar, Deadmau5, Amber Vexation, Skream, Pretty Lights, STS9, Umphrey's McGee.
Saturday, December 31, 2011
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Facing Fears Dream
I’m in the pool room at mom’s watching some cop drama on TV. I ask what happened to the pool table. The other guy says it is over there and points around the room. I see it in three pieces that don’t make sense. He says we took it apart. I couldn’t remember doing that. (At the time I could remember earlier in the dream)
I wake up in a courtroom. There are lots of people, as if court was about to begin. I was at the prosecutor’s desk so I grabbed a pile of my shirts and walked out. The lobby was also full of people. I went out to the parking lot and tried to find the mini. I gave up quickly and I decided to walk. There was a big white tent attached to the side of the courthouse with chairs. A big tractor drove into the tent pulling a super long seating trailer. ~8 seats per row and ~25 rows, it had to be 150ft long. The back axel had ~12 wheels and stuck out on both sides. As the trailer was turning into the tent the back axel got caught on a large support of the tent, the trailer stopped.
I walk around taking pictures as more people show up. Barriers begin appearing around scene to keep people away. I continue walking around looking for a good shot; others are also taking pictures. I find two guys I seem to know and tell them about my plan to climb above a door to get a good view. The whole scene is now indoors similar to the big gym at Silver Creek. They don’t want to try the plan for fear of getting caught. I show them the people that would catch us and say they’re not looking. They’re still not interested. I show them that if we do get caught above the doorway then we can take a path along the side of the wall to get to the secret elevator.
They didn’t know about the secret elevator so I lead them to the back of the gym and show them the main and secret elevators. This secret room behind the gym is a reoccurring area for me, so I became lucid and jet-packed around. However, the secret area was pretty interesting so I stuck with them to look around. We looked at all the school’s secret rooms. The room that I thought had teleporters in it ended up having cryogenic machines. One of the guys hooked in and set it for ~17sec. While he was drifting off the other guy said he was no longer focusing his eyes. I felt the two metal spikes going into his thumb as if it were my thumb. He fell asleep.
I turned to the other guy and said this was all a dream and that’s why the pool table didn’t make sense (same guy). The dream starts to fade; I focus on talking, making eye contact, and squeezing my fists. Guards come to the cryogenic room and I throw my gloves at them with telekinesis; then stole one of their hats and telekinetically throw them out of the room. The awake guy turns to attack me; I run and throw things at him. He repeatedly shoots me with ball-bearings from a blowgun. I get hit a few times, it quite unpleasant.
I run downstairs and find myself trapped. When he comes near, I grab his neck and try to pull his spine out. I start running back upstairs and see that it didn’t work and that he’s after me again. Then I remember the chapter about nightmares from the lucid dreaming book.
He’s about a foot from me on the stairs and I accept that whatever will happen, will happen. I don’t try to stop his attack. He waits there, staring me down. Nothing happens. We are then walking together in a warehouse, I tell him that I’m dreaming (in case he forgot) and that we’re both creations of my mind. I say, “Somewhere there is someone dreaming that looks like me” and I point to my face. He seems confused by this. I was wondering what he saw of my face. I thought about becoming him so I could see my face but woke up.
Unrelated, I had a lucid dream ~3 nights ago. Once lucid I tried to jump through a wall and failed. But I did make it out the window and then flew.
I wake up in a courtroom. There are lots of people, as if court was about to begin. I was at the prosecutor’s desk so I grabbed a pile of my shirts and walked out. The lobby was also full of people. I went out to the parking lot and tried to find the mini. I gave up quickly and I decided to walk. There was a big white tent attached to the side of the courthouse with chairs. A big tractor drove into the tent pulling a super long seating trailer. ~8 seats per row and ~25 rows, it had to be 150ft long. The back axel had ~12 wheels and stuck out on both sides. As the trailer was turning into the tent the back axel got caught on a large support of the tent, the trailer stopped.
I walk around taking pictures as more people show up. Barriers begin appearing around scene to keep people away. I continue walking around looking for a good shot; others are also taking pictures. I find two guys I seem to know and tell them about my plan to climb above a door to get a good view. The whole scene is now indoors similar to the big gym at Silver Creek. They don’t want to try the plan for fear of getting caught. I show them the people that would catch us and say they’re not looking. They’re still not interested. I show them that if we do get caught above the doorway then we can take a path along the side of the wall to get to the secret elevator.
They didn’t know about the secret elevator so I lead them to the back of the gym and show them the main and secret elevators. This secret room behind the gym is a reoccurring area for me, so I became lucid and jet-packed around. However, the secret area was pretty interesting so I stuck with them to look around. We looked at all the school’s secret rooms. The room that I thought had teleporters in it ended up having cryogenic machines. One of the guys hooked in and set it for ~17sec. While he was drifting off the other guy said he was no longer focusing his eyes. I felt the two metal spikes going into his thumb as if it were my thumb. He fell asleep.
I turned to the other guy and said this was all a dream and that’s why the pool table didn’t make sense (same guy). The dream starts to fade; I focus on talking, making eye contact, and squeezing my fists. Guards come to the cryogenic room and I throw my gloves at them with telekinesis; then stole one of their hats and telekinetically throw them out of the room. The awake guy turns to attack me; I run and throw things at him. He repeatedly shoots me with ball-bearings from a blowgun. I get hit a few times, it quite unpleasant.
I run downstairs and find myself trapped. When he comes near, I grab his neck and try to pull his spine out. I start running back upstairs and see that it didn’t work and that he’s after me again. Then I remember the chapter about nightmares from the lucid dreaming book.
He’s about a foot from me on the stairs and I accept that whatever will happen, will happen. I don’t try to stop his attack. He waits there, staring me down. Nothing happens. We are then walking together in a warehouse, I tell him that I’m dreaming (in case he forgot) and that we’re both creations of my mind. I say, “Somewhere there is someone dreaming that looks like me” and I point to my face. He seems confused by this. I was wondering what he saw of my face. I thought about becoming him so I could see my face but woke up.
Unrelated, I had a lucid dream ~3 nights ago. Once lucid I tried to jump through a wall and failed. But I did make it out the window and then flew.
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Luge Dream
I was walking around in a house with few furnishings; outside of one room was a small river with a bridge to another part of the one-story house. I was wondering what day it was and whether I had overslept because I knew I had some obligation Monday at 11a. I concluded it was the weekend simply because I wound have otherwise known what day it was. Then I realized that yesterday was Wednesday the 12th so today must be Thursday the 13th (happy birthday Phill). After looking at the water, I came back inside but my eyes did not adjust to the relatively brighter room, everything went black and I awoke.
I lay very still in bed and in roughly two minutes, I was dreaming again.
It was night and I was walking down a small road. I began gaining speed and leaned back. I glided until I ran out of momentum and landed in a streetluge position. I continued speeding up and then lifting off, gliding for a few feet and landing, once I did so to dodge a car.
It is daylight now and a bike attached to another bike by a large cube around them passes me with one rider. I continue occasionally gliding down a hill. I pass the rider on the silly cube double-bike. I stop at the bottom of the hill to look at the surrounding mountains; I take pictures. The biker, no longer with an attached double bike cube, rides past me. The mountain closest to me reminds me of South Table and behind it, I see jagged snow-covered peaks; it was a quality view. The viewfinder of my camera was remarkably sensitive; a small movement caused the shot to change far more than it should have. So I decide to dream-check. I look at the picture number, 214, look at the mountains, then back at the picture number. My camera starts freaking out, as if I were mashing buttons; so I decide to try hovering, it works, and I conclude I am dreaming. I realize I will never see those pictures that I just took, too bad.
I think about my dream goals and decide that I want to talk to a dream character. I walk over to a nearby trail and tell the person there my name, location, that I’m dreaming, and if she wants water. She drinks some water but doesn’t say much. I start to lose vision and try spinning to remain in the dream, unsuccessful, I tell her that the dream will likely end in 3-4 seconds. I pour the water on my hand and regain vision to see it fall into the small river at the house and feel a dog sneeze on my arm. I remain lucid and start walking around again. Again, my eyes adjust to the outside and when I walk inside things go dark, so I try spinning in the doorway only to wake up. I didn’t open my eyes for a few minutes and focused on recalling the dream; wondering if I should record it.
I think the moral to the story is that dream spinning is not very effective for me. I’ve had recent success prolonging lucid dreams by rubbing my fingers together and pouring water on my hand. So physical touch seems to work, I need to experiment with auditory focus.
I lay very still in bed and in roughly two minutes, I was dreaming again.
It was night and I was walking down a small road. I began gaining speed and leaned back. I glided until I ran out of momentum and landed in a streetluge position. I continued speeding up and then lifting off, gliding for a few feet and landing, once I did so to dodge a car.
It is daylight now and a bike attached to another bike by a large cube around them passes me with one rider. I continue occasionally gliding down a hill. I pass the rider on the silly cube double-bike. I stop at the bottom of the hill to look at the surrounding mountains; I take pictures. The biker, no longer with an attached double bike cube, rides past me. The mountain closest to me reminds me of South Table and behind it, I see jagged snow-covered peaks; it was a quality view. The viewfinder of my camera was remarkably sensitive; a small movement caused the shot to change far more than it should have. So I decide to dream-check. I look at the picture number, 214, look at the mountains, then back at the picture number. My camera starts freaking out, as if I were mashing buttons; so I decide to try hovering, it works, and I conclude I am dreaming. I realize I will never see those pictures that I just took, too bad.
I think about my dream goals and decide that I want to talk to a dream character. I walk over to a nearby trail and tell the person there my name, location, that I’m dreaming, and if she wants water. She drinks some water but doesn’t say much. I start to lose vision and try spinning to remain in the dream, unsuccessful, I tell her that the dream will likely end in 3-4 seconds. I pour the water on my hand and regain vision to see it fall into the small river at the house and feel a dog sneeze on my arm. I remain lucid and start walking around again. Again, my eyes adjust to the outside and when I walk inside things go dark, so I try spinning in the doorway only to wake up. I didn’t open my eyes for a few minutes and focused on recalling the dream; wondering if I should record it.
I think the moral to the story is that dream spinning is not very effective for me. I’ve had recent success prolonging lucid dreams by rubbing my fingers together and pouring water on my hand. So physical touch seems to work, I need to experiment with auditory focus.
Monday, October 03, 2011
Lucid Superpowers
I'm currently reading 'Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming', among other things. I hope to improve my ability to have lucid dreams. They are pretty cool.
Here's a half remembered list of supernatural things I've done in previous lucid dreams:
Flying / Hovering: I've flown many times and can usually achieve flight pretty easily if that's what I want to do. Hovering is much easier than walking. I've hovered many times a few feet above ground. I once hovered up stairs.
Telekinesis: In one dream I was throwing juggling balls away from myself and pulling them back to my hand. In a later dream, I juggled without using my hands.
Teleportation: I tried to walk through a wall and failed so I closed my eyes and imagined myself underwater. I began swimming upward through the ceiling of the room I was in. Before I opened my eyes, I imagined an office setting, and opened my eyes to find myself there.
Modification: I was swimming in a pool and stopped to see someone sitting on the side. I didn't know the person, so I changed who they were into someone I wanted to see. Unfortunately, their face didn't come out right. There were two large holes in their skin.
Creation: I wanted to try eating in a lucid dream, so I created two pieces of bread in front of me and began dispensing jelly from my finger. After the jelly, I had my finger write in peanut butter on the other piece, then put it together and ate my Pb+J.
I was recently successful viewing my reflection, but there's nothing supernatural about that. I had just wanted to see it in a dream.
The book has some ideas for things to do while lucid dreaming, but I haven't read that far yet. Here are some things I'd still like to do:
Talk to dream characters: My lucid dream conversations are usually short because I am excited to exercise a supernatural power. I would like to have a long conversation.
Consciously change into a giant or pea-sized person.
Write something legibly: My dream handwriting is really bad.
Now that I'm writing this, I think it would be cool to have 360 vision (idea from Waking Life) or to have my consciousness in two different bodies (this sounds quite difficult).
Here's a half remembered list of supernatural things I've done in previous lucid dreams:
Flying / Hovering: I've flown many times and can usually achieve flight pretty easily if that's what I want to do. Hovering is much easier than walking. I've hovered many times a few feet above ground. I once hovered up stairs.
Telekinesis: In one dream I was throwing juggling balls away from myself and pulling them back to my hand. In a later dream, I juggled without using my hands.
Teleportation: I tried to walk through a wall and failed so I closed my eyes and imagined myself underwater. I began swimming upward through the ceiling of the room I was in. Before I opened my eyes, I imagined an office setting, and opened my eyes to find myself there.
Modification: I was swimming in a pool and stopped to see someone sitting on the side. I didn't know the person, so I changed who they were into someone I wanted to see. Unfortunately, their face didn't come out right. There were two large holes in their skin.
Creation: I wanted to try eating in a lucid dream, so I created two pieces of bread in front of me and began dispensing jelly from my finger. After the jelly, I had my finger write in peanut butter on the other piece, then put it together and ate my Pb+J.
I was recently successful viewing my reflection, but there's nothing supernatural about that. I had just wanted to see it in a dream.
The book has some ideas for things to do while lucid dreaming, but I haven't read that far yet. Here are some things I'd still like to do:
Talk to dream characters: My lucid dream conversations are usually short because I am excited to exercise a supernatural power. I would like to have a long conversation.
Consciously change into a giant or pea-sized person.
Write something legibly: My dream handwriting is really bad.
Now that I'm writing this, I think it would be cool to have 360 vision (idea from Waking Life) or to have my consciousness in two different bodies (this sounds quite difficult).
Thursday, September 08, 2011
Grad School
Well, I've been done with school for quite some time now but seem to have forgotten to record anything here for over a year. It was quite an interesting year.
In the Fall of 2010, I took:
Nuclear Material Science and Engineering, Olson, A: As the name might suggest, this class was a materials class. Most of the students in the class were from the materials department and the Nuclear Engineers had to play catch up learning their silly diagrams and grain images. Among other things, we looked the physical properties of Pu and U, along with techniques used to work with these very hard to work with metals. Grading consisted mostly of tests, which I found difficult due to the material science sections.
Nuclear Power and Public Policy, Schneider, A-: Oh this class... Lots of reading, writing, and in class discussion. Which I kinda some coming from an English class. Given that it was an English class, it was ok overall. I felt the reading was worthwhile and the assignments based on the reading were difficult, but reasonable for this level. We read a anti-nuclear book, a pro-nuclear book, and a book about giving unbiased opinions. Like most of the documents I produced my graduate year, I feel I did a good job on these assignments. People that know me are welcome to contact me for a copy of papers written in this class or in the others.
Nuclear Reactor Design, King, B+: This class had a slow start, a slow middle, and a frantic rush at the end. There were seven in the class, split into two teams. On each team students learned a unique transport code (SCALE, Serpent, MCNP, or Attila). I was the only one to choose Attila. This decision brought about some difficulty, as I was the only person on campus that had used the program, I was on my own. Over the semester we all tried to learn our codes as best we could then design, from scratch, a nuclear reactor. Our group designed a molten salt fast reactor aimed at high burnup, ~600MWe. We really only got our act together to start actually designing with a month left in the semester, so I don't have a lot of faith in our final design.
Nuclear Reactor Lab, Debey, A: This was a great class. There were about 10 students. We drove to the USGS Triga Reactor at the Denver Federal Center early in the morning for a short meeting describing the day's activities, a short quiz about covered material, then a hands-on experiment using the reactor. Lab reports of the experiment were due the following week. I am quite happy with the reports I wrote for this class along with the experience I gained operating the reactor.
Nuclear Science and Engineering Seminar, King, A: Seminar was good. Show up to 12 talks throughout the year, get an A. There weren't 12 given specifically for the nuclear department, so I had to attend relevant talks in other departments and write a summary.
In the Spring of 2011, I took:
Environmental Stewardship of Nuclear Resources, Kozak, A-: This class was pretty easy. Most of the students were from environmental programs, there were roughly 6 nuclear students. We looked at radiological releases into the environment and methods of cleaning them. We also visited Rocky Flats, which was remarkably un-rocky and remarkably flat. Towards the end of the semester, we were broken into groups for a mock set of meetings relating to the cleanup of nearby contamination. I was in the group responsible for the contamination. Our lengthy final report detailed pathways the contamination could affect citizens and what the consequences of that interaction may be.
Nuclear and Isotopic Geochemistry, Simmons/Humphrey, B+: We looked at various radiological dating techniques. Based on isotopic differences in surprisingly many things, we are able to estimate when that system underwent a certain change. i.e. An animal dies and no longer intakes Carbon-14, over time this radioactive carbon decays, based on the difference between the isotopic carbon composition of the corpse and that of its environment we are able to estimate when it died. The systems we spent most of our time studying were more relevant to Geochemistry, dating rocks and the like. I was the only nuclear student among roughly 7 geochem students.
Design and Simulation of Thermal Systems, Braun, A-: After the first class period I regretted signing up. The homework load was quite high and I really could have used the time for other classes. That being said, I learned a lot. It was a good review of Thermodynamics, Heat Transfer, and System Analysis. Most of the work was done in EES, a simultaneous equation solver with thermodynamic properties built in. I was the only nuclear student in a room of mechanical Master's students. I put a lot of work into the final project and am happy with the result.
Introduction to Monte Carlo Practical Applications, Shayer, A-: This class was pretty awkward most of the time. There were two students in the class and one person auditing. The professor phrased everything as a question, which he expected you to agree with. So, once a week, I got to nod my head for three hours. I liked the assignments in the course. Half of the homework revolved around developing our own Monte Carlo code to simulate radiation transfer, while the other half taught us to use the most common of such codes. There was remarkably little direction in the class, we never got a syllabus, handouts describing homework assignments, or (for that matter) anything on paper. He described the homework assignments and projects to use in two or three sentences, which took us 10+ hours to complete.
Nuclear Science and Engineering Seminar, King, A: Horray seminar!
Benchmarking the Attila Radiation Transport code, King/Self, B+: I built models in the deterministic radiation transport code Attila based on four different experiments I selected from the SINBAD database, attempting to reproduce the experimental results in order to verify that Attila produced accurate answers. I reported on my progress at weekly meetings of the students in the nuclear department who were conducting primarily computational research. Early in the semester, I thought I had finished simulating one of the experiments, so I scheduled my time based on this early success. As the semester progressed and I learned more about Attila, I realized this project was far larger and would take far longer to complete than my early optimistic expectation. Towards the end of the semester, I was spending the majority of my free time simultaneously on two or three of the really nice computers in the nuclear lab. Long rambling short, it all came together and I wrote a paper and made a poster, which I presented at the:
ANS Student Conference in Atlanta: Dr. King, a fellow nuclear student, and I flew out to Atlanta for three nights of conference fun. I consider this weekend as an integral part of my education. There were many people there from all aspects of the nuclear field and I enjoyed learning what all there was. The food, presentations, venues, and sights were all pretty awesome. I shared a room with Brendan from Iowa State. I went to as many of the events as I could, although I would not have missed it if I didn't go to the monologue-play about Madam Currie.
Welp, that's that. In May of 2011, I graduated with a Master's of Science in Nuclear Engineering.
Summer has been quite relaxing, but it is about time I got a job.
-- Michael
In the Fall of 2010, I took:
Nuclear Material Science and Engineering, Olson, A: As the name might suggest, this class was a materials class. Most of the students in the class were from the materials department and the Nuclear Engineers had to play catch up learning their silly diagrams and grain images. Among other things, we looked the physical properties of Pu and U, along with techniques used to work with these very hard to work with metals. Grading consisted mostly of tests, which I found difficult due to the material science sections.
Nuclear Power and Public Policy, Schneider, A-: Oh this class... Lots of reading, writing, and in class discussion. Which I kinda some coming from an English class. Given that it was an English class, it was ok overall. I felt the reading was worthwhile and the assignments based on the reading were difficult, but reasonable for this level. We read a anti-nuclear book, a pro-nuclear book, and a book about giving unbiased opinions. Like most of the documents I produced my graduate year, I feel I did a good job on these assignments. People that know me are welcome to contact me for a copy of papers written in this class or in the others.
Nuclear Reactor Design, King, B+: This class had a slow start, a slow middle, and a frantic rush at the end. There were seven in the class, split into two teams. On each team students learned a unique transport code (SCALE, Serpent, MCNP, or Attila). I was the only one to choose Attila. This decision brought about some difficulty, as I was the only person on campus that had used the program, I was on my own. Over the semester we all tried to learn our codes as best we could then design, from scratch, a nuclear reactor. Our group designed a molten salt fast reactor aimed at high burnup, ~600MWe. We really only got our act together to start actually designing with a month left in the semester, so I don't have a lot of faith in our final design.
Nuclear Reactor Lab, Debey, A: This was a great class. There were about 10 students. We drove to the USGS Triga Reactor at the Denver Federal Center early in the morning for a short meeting describing the day's activities, a short quiz about covered material, then a hands-on experiment using the reactor. Lab reports of the experiment were due the following week. I am quite happy with the reports I wrote for this class along with the experience I gained operating the reactor.
Nuclear Science and Engineering Seminar, King, A: Seminar was good. Show up to 12 talks throughout the year, get an A. There weren't 12 given specifically for the nuclear department, so I had to attend relevant talks in other departments and write a summary.
In the Spring of 2011, I took:
Environmental Stewardship of Nuclear Resources, Kozak, A-: This class was pretty easy. Most of the students were from environmental programs, there were roughly 6 nuclear students. We looked at radiological releases into the environment and methods of cleaning them. We also visited Rocky Flats, which was remarkably un-rocky and remarkably flat. Towards the end of the semester, we were broken into groups for a mock set of meetings relating to the cleanup of nearby contamination. I was in the group responsible for the contamination. Our lengthy final report detailed pathways the contamination could affect citizens and what the consequences of that interaction may be.
Nuclear and Isotopic Geochemistry, Simmons/Humphrey, B+: We looked at various radiological dating techniques. Based on isotopic differences in surprisingly many things, we are able to estimate when that system underwent a certain change. i.e. An animal dies and no longer intakes Carbon-14, over time this radioactive carbon decays, based on the difference between the isotopic carbon composition of the corpse and that of its environment we are able to estimate when it died. The systems we spent most of our time studying were more relevant to Geochemistry, dating rocks and the like. I was the only nuclear student among roughly 7 geochem students.
Design and Simulation of Thermal Systems, Braun, A-: After the first class period I regretted signing up. The homework load was quite high and I really could have used the time for other classes. That being said, I learned a lot. It was a good review of Thermodynamics, Heat Transfer, and System Analysis. Most of the work was done in EES, a simultaneous equation solver with thermodynamic properties built in. I was the only nuclear student in a room of mechanical Master's students. I put a lot of work into the final project and am happy with the result.
Introduction to Monte Carlo Practical Applications, Shayer, A-: This class was pretty awkward most of the time. There were two students in the class and one person auditing. The professor phrased everything as a question, which he expected you to agree with. So, once a week, I got to nod my head for three hours. I liked the assignments in the course. Half of the homework revolved around developing our own Monte Carlo code to simulate radiation transfer, while the other half taught us to use the most common of such codes. There was remarkably little direction in the class, we never got a syllabus, handouts describing homework assignments, or (for that matter) anything on paper. He described the homework assignments and projects to use in two or three sentences, which took us 10+ hours to complete.
Nuclear Science and Engineering Seminar, King, A: Horray seminar!
Benchmarking the Attila Radiation Transport code, King/Self, B+: I built models in the deterministic radiation transport code Attila based on four different experiments I selected from the SINBAD database, attempting to reproduce the experimental results in order to verify that Attila produced accurate answers. I reported on my progress at weekly meetings of the students in the nuclear department who were conducting primarily computational research. Early in the semester, I thought I had finished simulating one of the experiments, so I scheduled my time based on this early success. As the semester progressed and I learned more about Attila, I realized this project was far larger and would take far longer to complete than my early optimistic expectation. Towards the end of the semester, I was spending the majority of my free time simultaneously on two or three of the really nice computers in the nuclear lab. Long rambling short, it all came together and I wrote a paper and made a poster, which I presented at the:
ANS Student Conference in Atlanta: Dr. King, a fellow nuclear student, and I flew out to Atlanta for three nights of conference fun. I consider this weekend as an integral part of my education. There were many people there from all aspects of the nuclear field and I enjoyed learning what all there was. The food, presentations, venues, and sights were all pretty awesome. I shared a room with Brendan from Iowa State. I went to as many of the events as I could, although I would not have missed it if I didn't go to the monologue-play about Madam Currie.
Welp, that's that. In May of 2011, I graduated with a Master's of Science in Nuclear Engineering.
Summer has been quite relaxing, but it is about time I got a job.
-- Michael
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