Week 79 - Lovebirds

This week ends with my first meeting on the graduate student council but since it is pretty frustrating and raises my blood pressure just to think about the incompetence and pettiness, it will go first. This story begins over a year ago when I was a grad representative on the graduate studies committee. In close quarters with our department chair, he "asked" that I take up the role of departmental representative to the council of graduate students. Unfortunately, this was easier said than done as the elections process was riddled with errors and it took five months and several signatures to finally get onto the council. Of course, these kids are career undergraduate school government politicians, and they think nothing of planning meetings for hours during the work day. It was four meetings before I was even able to attend one, and weeks of drama about graduate leadership and faked feelings of oppression (damn MA in theater studies...) by the time I got to a meeting. I got there just to find out that my committee role had been cut because the chair wasn't able to read emails correctly. And I sat there for two hours as graduate students argued about why they should give money - that wasn't theirs and had been sitting in a bank account blocking future influx to same-said bank account from Coca-Cola student funds - to students trying to perform research abroad. What a waste of my time! I plan to resign from this ASAP, there is no progress to be make with these stone-hearted, numb-witted cousins of Moses' Pharaoh. To top it all off, I had to bike back in a freak snowstorm because I was stuck in the meeting for so long. At least I had my anger to keep me warm.

Cyclocross! Nothing like a bit of snow biking on road tires.

My proposal is in! After a weekend to relax and refocus, the last of the proposal was finished this week and submitted four hours ahead of the deadline. I have to give a lot of credit to our grant development specialist for all of her help in navigating the websites and proofreading some of the sections. My advisor says I stand a decent chance of funding based on the quality of the proposal, but I know there were 500-odd submissions and only 50 will be funded. Rough odds still look just that - rough.

Right after finishing up the grant and while I was waiting for the final recommendation letters from the other side of the water, I went to attend a seminar by a visiting professor from Nigeria who did his graduate work here in 1987. Just a few years ago... I have only a few notes from this seminar, that was attended by about 20 people, five of them fellow Nigerians. We delved into a discussion late about the deficit of funding and the struggle for educational quality in Nigeria. I guess I didn't realize the seminar was to be a pitch for funding, and based on our chair's reaction I'm not sure he was ready for it either. But there were three big takeaways from this professor that I want to share with you all.

1) He said he had a bit of life-coaching for the young ones in the room. "If you want to be successful in life, don't die." Yes, that was his simple advice and it's certainly a fair way to start. Even deeper though, if you think about failure, the only way to achieve success amidst failure is to keep on going. Keep trying, don't give up, don't die.
2) The speaker had done some great outreach work in his home region with the simplest of resources. Too often my peers seem to think they must have the newest technology in order to complete their research. Sure, the new gadgets or programming are nice but it is the mind that must be freshest and sharpest if you want to have an impact on science and your community.
3) A funny story goes something like this... When said professor was just a a student and was getting ready to head off to America to begin his graduate program, the village leaders wanted to bestow on him magical powers to protect him in the big world. So they used magic to make him bulletproof with this vest that would protect him in his adventures. But he said that night he couldn't sleep; he wanted to know if it worked. So he went back to the guy and said he wanted to know if it works. "Well," says the magician, "Put it on." "No! Is there another way we can test it?" "Do you have a goat?" And off they went, tying a village goat to a tree with this bulletproof vest wrapped around its unsuspecting body. They sight up the goat and pull the trigger. Something in the vest bursts into flames and the goat dies and is incinerated immediately. In a flash of fire, the goat is dead and gone. I guess years later he was still pretty glad he didn't test the vest out himself...

Jasmine and Daisy outside at last.

So late in this week was snowy and cold, but early during the work week it was actually pretty nice. The sun came out, the snow melted a bit and we finally let Jasmine and her mother out to run around. They were so happy to be out of the barn, and Phil was glad for the company. There's not really any grass for them to eat but they are happy to run around and rummage through the leaf pile. Jasmine is eating a little bit and so the next step is to get her trained to eat inside an area with specialized panes that are only big enough to let her through. There, she can eat her special lamb starter with greater protein concentration to support her growth and we don't waste that good feed on her mother who doesn't need it. We also have to settle on a name soon. Part of the law with raising sheep is that they get tagged with a state ID tag. This makes it easier to track animals back to their birthplace in case of a disease outbreak just by using their eartags. So my wife and I need to come up with a farm name to register and get this special tags from our state DOA.

I suppose it's been a while since I graced all of you with alcohol conversation, so for you scotch fans out there, this one's for you. Back at the beginning of February, my best man and long-time best friend proposed to his wonderful girlfriend. They surprised my wife and I with a visit the next week and honored us with the request to be the best man and matron of honor! I'm the matron, of course. We are very excited for this and it really reflects how much we value their friendship, too. They have been great friends, awesome support and gobs of fun. Many a game of euchre has gone late into the night. And somewhere along the way last year a bucket list item came up that my best man would really like to drink some Glenlivet 18. "Every man should have it on their list." Well, that was all we needed. That, and the permission to spend $100 on a bottle of liquor from our significant others. That permission came during a rare euchre skunking by the guys over the girls, breaking a long-time streak of female dominance in the games. No matter where I've lived, house rules have always been that a skunking either sends the losers running 1 lap around the house naked (in current -10F that wouldn't have been advisable) or the winners get free booze. It wasn't free, but it might has well have been. Now we only needed an occasion to celebrate with such a fantastic prize. Enter his engagement and my candidacy exams. Check.

So we broke out the Glenlivet this week and it was worth every penny. There was a time that I couldn't have appreciated it, but that time expired with my liver's ability to save me from vodka-induced poisoning sessions. This scotch was smokey, but sweet, with fragrance of fruit/honey. I savored every sip. "There's a special place in hell reserved for men who waste fine scotch...", and I was not one of them.

So much grease with fried jowl.

One thing that I was not afraid to waste was some of the smoked pork jowl that I fried up this week. My wife said it was disgusting, and she wasn't too far off. In truth, there were salvageable pieces that required a lot of precision trimming, but almost all of it was fat so that it even discouraged Betsy after a while. Yes, to calm the rumors, I did put the trimmed part on my macaroni and cheese. I have a soft spot for mac and cheese with pork, bbq sauce and parmesan cheese. I don't know, don't ask. This was just a bit too greasy and I ended up picking it off before I ate the rest of the mix because it just wasn't quite the same as pulled pork or bacon on top. Trust me, pulled pork with mac/cheese is definitely good. Jowl, not so much.

Hannah has discovered the toy bin. Now we just have to teach her to clean it up.

At the end of last weekend, we also got to celebrate Valentine's Day in a non-conventional way that demonstrates the uniqueness of both of us in this crazy marriage. It was my plan just to make dinner reservations and go out for a nice break after all the craziness with candidacy and proposals. But my wife had other ideas and wanted to find something out of the ordinary. That chance came just a few days before the holiday with an email from our zoo about a chance to do dinner under the frozen Christmas lights, eat hors d'ouevres (<-- freaking French spelling) and visit with the zookeepers and the koalas, polar bears, elephants and fishies. It was a cold night out, but above freezing so we walked around for a few hours, listened to zookeepers talk about animal mating and courtship, and drank champagne with the manatees. A historical carousel was also open and we rode it around until I was starting to get dizzy. We watched the baby elephant play with a plastic barrel and enthrall dozens of people for more than 20 minutes. All in all, we had a great, cold time. The best of it was being able to see the polar bears down by the chilly water in the moonlight. A great way to cap off a relaxing night together.

Pronghorn don't seem too bothered by the snow.

Reindeer also want to know what the fuss is about the weather.

A "dory" fish!

Another happy-looking fish.

Rae, the manatee. It's nice not having 200 people in your view.

This woman is the love of my life and I'm so blessed to have her in my life.

Week 78 - Passed!

That's right, folks. At 5.30 pm, a committee member emerged from the room and shook my hand - beating my advisor who is the traditional bearer of news. A minute later, it was his smiling face that I had been awaiting. He told me I had done a nice job. A short time later, I was truly humbled by the joy of my committee at how my examination went. My committee was happy with my work, some even impressed. And just like that, I was passed. I have a few notes from my exam but it was mostly based on questions I didn't quite get right. In the end, what I didn't get right doesn't really matter to you all but suffice it to say that I have been examined on nearly everything, including: termite guts, astronomy, experimental power, amino acid absorption, milk protein synthesis, adipose tissue, rumen thermodynamics, the Wolfe Cycle, hydrogenases, open-circuit chambers, Type I vs. II error, experimental design, and modeling theory. Passing is a great feeling, but I hope that someday people will read this who are approaching their own exams as a necessary stage towards a doctorate. And so I want to give the best advice that can be given about exams; it was given to me about a year ago and I will add in a few sidethoughts as well.

Hannah and mommy are so happy to have their dad back. :)

1) You are picking mentors, not examiners. First, your exam is not about your committee proving they are smarter than you. Instead, my advisor said that by the end, you should be more knowledgeable on the specific research you are doing than any one person on your committee. Your committee is responsible for making sure that you know the foundational information in the areas they are experts so that they can support you through your research to become a unique expert yourself. If a committee member does not contribute expertise to your doctoral research, you have wasted a spot. Be judicious in your selection and make sure each person fills a role that is neither duplicated nor unnecessary. By doing so, your exam will be more meaningful and less like a necessary evil.

2) You can pass your exam if you challenge yourself. Your advisor should never let you pass the writtens or even take them if he/she does not feel comfortable that you are ready to prove yourself in front of your committee. However, it is the sole responsibility of the student to be prepared. Only you know yourself, your weaknesses and your strengths. If you do not take the time to determine your weak points and ask the necessary questions to bolster your knowledge, you fail yourself. Even if you pass you will not have maximized this learning opportunity and challenged yourself to reach a new level of competence.

3) You will get questions wrong. Any committee would be concerned if you did not answer questions wrong. This is due to the nature of science and your prematurity in the field. Foremost, you are a novice in a room full of tenure-track professors. You should not be expected to get everything perfect, just as they would not expect themselves to recite everything. Also, as science is always changing, the "right" answer is not a constant. Rote memorization develops poor scientists who are unwilling to think the box. This doesn't mean that you should challenge fact, but you should also not subscribe to the most recent theory just because it was published in "Science" or "Nature". Be critical. And be willing to admit when you do not know or when you are wrong.

4) Think critically. In the end, your exam is not about your ability to recite correct answers but about your ability to think critically. You must be able to look at a research paper and determine what was done wrong. And you must be able to say how it would have been better. You should be able to think of a creative way to test a hypothesis using known methodologies in your field. And you must be able to identify possible causal sources for an unusual experimental observation. These are not right vs. wrong answers, they test the bounds of your analytical and critical thinking. To be a PhD you must be able to do this above and beyond anything else. Science will change over your life, but the process will remain the same and it must be followed for the sake of future research.

5) Know your proposal. Your proposal is the first step towards you becoming an expert. There will be things in that proposal that should not be known by all the members of your committee. And so you should be expected to know your proposal and the literature that led you to that proposal. Your committee should never ask you a question about the research you proposed to do (hypothesis, methods, theory, previous similar efforts, expected value range for data) that you cannot answer. You must be the end-all on your proposal. My advisor asked if I printed mine to take into my exam and I told him that if I couldn't remember what was on my own proposal and why I wrote it, I didn't deserve to pass. If you get uncomfortable easily, you might want a copy of it to help you feel more confident, but you shouldn't need to read it to answer their questions.

7) Don't study. I saved the most controversial for last, and my wife would tell you that I studied all the time. But I called it studying because that was easier to explain. Don't study - learn. There is a distinct difference that relates back to thinking critically. Sure, there are some facts to memorize and maybe some industry benchmarks to know so that you don't look like an idiot about the real world. But studying leads to memorization in most peoples' books. What you need is to learn. Learn processes and how they can change. Learn the history of research in your field and how ideas have changed. Know the literature and how it guided you to your proposal.

So there, that's all the help I got, except one final comment about being a good graduate student in general. The previous PhD candidate in our lab told me that I should always read 1 manuscript a day. This keeps you up to date on research and allows you to look back into past work. I keep a running list of potential reads on my desktop and work through them daily, adding to the list when I find something new. If you read an article every day through graduate school you can't help but know the literature well.

Now that I am done I get to spend more time with this pretty baby.

Now that I passed, I got to sleep in. And so did Betsy.

A graduate student asked me if I felt better after the exam, as if a monkey got lifted off my back. I laughed and said that I was certainly relieved but never uncomfortable in the exam room. But the hour or two before the exam I ran out of things to do in the lab and started to get very anxious, even calling my wife just to talk and calm down. I said that then it felt like the monkey on my back had been given Xanax (a little poke at recent history) but after my exam the monkey was thrown in front of a bus. No, the monkey wasn't lifted off my back - it was thrown. The level of relief at passing will be rivaled only by the joy of my dissertation defense. If only that wasn't so far away...

Speaking of passage, this week also marks the approval of a new farm bill (about time!) that is encouraging if not positive. The good news, the SNAP program (food stamps for you old-timers) received a cut in millions of dollars. The bad news is that this was preached as a sacrifice woeful to the poor, but in reality it only cut down on abuses of the system and amounted to something like 1% of the total expenditure. Meanwhile, agricultural subsidies continue to come under fire and people neglect the cold hard fact that we must subsidize our agriculture. If we don't, it will move to China like everything else. No matter how you feel about jobs moving to other countries and capitalism, you have to see that when you food is produced outside your country, it is a security threat. People are blind because of the rhetoric surrounding agriculture but they need to open their eyes. Either you start paying more for food so that subsidies aren't necessary to protect the industry, or you will pay more in taxes (or imaginary government money) to secure that food at low cost and prevent outside competition. That is the way of it. Besides, with our ability to produce food in this country being more efficient than anywhere else on the planet, it is a service to the world to protect that food production (in case you were looking for moral hills). I wasn't as negative or positive about the farm bill as some, but if you want to read more, you should. Try clicking here or here.

The farm bill is a lot like mom's birthday cake. The biggest three pieces are the SNAP program.

Beautiful ice this week as we approach Valentine's Day weekend. Since my wife and I didn't celebrate until Sunday, I saved our little romantic story for the next post. But keep reading, we're only 4 weeks away from being caught up again. A few pictures to close out the week.

The sunrise through Jack Frost's best work on our barn windows.

A cold sunrise lights up the few walking paths to the gate and barn. Record snowfall in decades this year.

This crossed my Facebook page this week and I couldn't agree more.

Week 77 - Jasmine

Another round of snow this week and wouldn't you know that's exactly when our ewe decided to lamb. It seems like every time that the weather changes drastically for the worse, the sheep decide to give birth. Of course, it's not that simple but there is definitely a weather component to the process. My folks' lambs started coming last week with the brutally cold shift in weather and ours came this week. This lamb is special because she is the first lamb born on our new place. Yes, we had sheep here the last year but these sheep were born at my parents' place, even if they were ours. This little lamb is an exciting new start for my wife and I who have our roots in sheep. One of my favorite memories I have of her in high school and into college is our interactions at the state fair and within the sheep barn.

Our lamb is also special because she captures two very different gene pools in a 1/2 Shropshire ewe "Daisy" - daughter of Peach, who I bought when we went to an auction together when we first started dating - and "Phil", a Polypay ram from my wife's home. This combination gives our little lamb princess, "Jasmine", a brockle face. Basically, a brockle face is spotted both dark and light and has a bit of a gray mixture. She is very cute but I failed to get a decent picture of her yet. I will share one as soon as the weather perks up with some daylight.

Down on campus, we have our own animal addition to the decor. Really, the horse isn't new, but it is new to the outdoors. A few years ago, a local ironworks meshed together all kinds of scrap metal and fashioned an iron horse. The thing is insanely heavy and came with a base and two hooks just to lift it around and balance it, but the parts chosen by the sculpters really captures the physiology of the horse. I think it is really cool, but it has been a topic of mixed emotion in our department. A long time resident of the garage due to debate on a permanent location, it spent last year puzzling students and parents alike in our department lobby. Now it has been moved outside and the size is much less overwhelming. The trick will be just to see how long it stays before some fraternity drives in at night and steals it away. I know at my undergraduate school that horse wouldn't have lasted 2 days alone outside without being cemented to the ground.

I am now complete with my final three written exams and can breathe a slight sigh of relief. Of course, the oral exam still looms over me, scheduled for Feb. 12th at 3.00 pm. Because one of my committee members is in New Zealand, we had to do the exam in the afternoon. And because one of my committee members teaches a class until 2.45 pm, we couldn't do it until 3.00 pm. Luckily, the exam will last about 2 hours and so we can still be done at a reasonable hour. I have to commend my committee for being so easy to work with and great about communication and scheduling for this exam. When I talked with a previous mentee with similar committee members and advisor, he noted great struggle in settling on a date, to the extent that he said trying to get it all scheduled and completed in 2 months was insane. He expected it to take me over 6 months to get everything done. But in just 2 short weeks after 6 weeks of scheduling, it will all be over. I can't wait, and now that the exams are done I'm starting to get just a little bit nervous. The exams this week stretched my understanding more than last week's questions, particularly exam #3. I am fairly certain that I didn't answer them all correctly and that makes me more uncomfortable than anything. But at least I have a week to look for the correct answers and make sure I am better prepared for next week.

In my absence over the weekend, my wife took our daughter out to have her pictures taken. I wasn't super crazy about more pictures, but my wife was very excited and with all she's had to deal with as I prepare for candidacy and write this grant proposal she deserved to have something to look forward to and enjoy. The pictures were totally worth it, too. Hannah was absolutely adorable - the photographer did a great job and is always so good at getting kids to smile and look natural.

The other big news is that Hannah stood up on her own this week! I just barely missed it the first time because I was a bit late getting back from work, but she was fortunately willing to show off for me again. And then once she got up she didn't want to stop. She just kept trying to climb higher and higher up her little walker play thing (<-- I obviously have no idea what it's really called, but she loves the darn thing). Such a great big moment in her life, and I am so proud of how much of a champion she is. When she falls, she barely whimpers and she goes right back at it again. When she really wants something and gets a taste of victory, she doesn't let off. Here's to hoping she can keep that self-motivation throughout life - it will serve her well.

Week 76 - Calzones

I'm pretty sure that this is how our interns think of me. One of our interns who works very closely with me on some of the hydrogen research asked me a few questions about where we would take our research from where we are. Well, I mentioned a few things about variation of our measurements and got some confused looks. So we tore right into the dry erase board, outlining daily variation in our measurement and discussing how would would test the accuracy of our protocol over real life samples. One thing led to another and next thing I know, we're talking about designing a new sampling apparatus for rumen fluid that will more efficiently filter protozoa without leaking dissolved gases. At the end, I took a picture of the board mostly because I don't know if I could replicate everything I wrote out, and I wanted to be able to revisit the exact conversation again if needed. Since then, we've started down the path of proving the hydrogen sampling method and haven't had a lot of progress because the calibration of the gas system has been pretty difficult.

The infamous board.

Calibration of our gas analyzer is always more difficult than it should be and this started as soon as we bought the equipment. It would seem that most people just don't calibrate their systems because when I went to do it the instructions weren't even detailed! I believe the exact quote was, "Calibration should be done as often as necessary." What does that even mean? I didn't know, and so I contacted the company for more explicit directions for the calibration. They had to write them first. And so since then the calibration has always been a fight, as I edit the calibration instructions to mesh them with the programming.

Good news, the freeze dryer is up and running. Check out this frozen reverse icicle!

My first two exams are out of the way without too much pain and suffering. To be honest, I really enjoyed the first day and felt pretty good about the second one. The questions are strictly confidential until after the oral examination, and I think I will probably never talk about them. To take the mystery out of the candidacy exams would weaken the rite of passage of taking the exams. Suffice it to say that the exams were challenging, but I felt like I could answer them well and didn't struggle to beat the time limit. The most crushing part was getting finished just to hear from my advisor that the bureaucracy that is my great university rejected my committee. They require four members from my home institution and so there will now be five members on my committee. We have added a bioenergy and fermentation expert, and I now have a fifth exam next week. What was so crushing was that I intentionally scheduled my exams around my wife's birthday so that I would be done with the writtens and celebrate a night with her and Hannah. I can only hope that I finish the fifth exam early so that we can still celebrate. That was my motivation all through the last two exam days.

This weekend I got to watch Hannah a bit, and captured this video to show how quickly she moves.

I also needed a bit of a break this weekend and let the redneck out. The wasps have been a problem for a while and I used the paintball gun to soften up the nest a bit. My wife thought I was nuts, of course, and more so when I started throwing logs at it to break off the top part of the nest. No luck, so the rest of the next will remain. And a lot of people are probably still scratching theirs heads about the crazy neighbor.

They called them "Ohio tumbleweeds". I've never seen them before but this year they are everywhere.

The wind rolled the snow like a sleeping bag. This one is over a foot in diameter.

Never know what you'll see at work. Pigs walking in the snow?

So, one of the Christmas gifts that I gave to Amanda this year was a calzone maker courtesy of Williams Sonoma. As a guy, I have to say that this is the coolest cooking and baking goods store. So many fun gadgets! The rest of the pictures in this post will demonstrate this fun little piece. As we try to eat more home-cooked food, this was just one fun addition to our repertoire. It may sound corny, but it is fun to make food with my wife.

Behold the mold. Be sure to dust with flour - or you'll be peeling dough.

Fill with dough and pizza sauce. I like more, she likes less.

Cheese, pepperoni and such. Duh.

Close the mold and have the dough hanging out.

Cut off the extra dough on the outside.

VERY carefully, remove from the mold. This doesn't go well.

And bake. All the cheese in the middle is from one that broke loose. Hence the careful.

Week 75 - Cold

It was officially bitter cold out last week. There is snow on the ground, the winds have ripped the loose branches and resistant leaves from the trees and there is no cloud cover. Clear nights, ripping wind and bitter, bitter cold. With windchills reaching below -35F, I can only remember one other week in my history that was so cold. Spring semester of 2007, early February.

View from my dorm in 2007 with the sun trying to cut through the snow.

My walk to class in 2007. -45F but classes weren't cancelled, just the bus routes.

Well, this time around we were blessed with class cancellings and delays for work, but that was really last week. I still went to work to finish my proposal and get it turned in. What matters this week is that the cold hasn't really broken and the wind certainly has not. With temperatures in the single digits and windchills fluctuating from nothing to -30F, we have seen a few 60+ degree shifts in the past week or two. So when the sun broke out when my wife and I were headed home from a birthday party, we drove home as fast as possible to get the camera. It felt so warm with the sunlight streaming and the wind lightening - or at least it felt warm for a few minutes. My wife has the better pictures but when she got cold I ran out on the edge of the lake and tried to catch the snow that was floating across the ice. It looked like the fog from dry ice as it swept towards me, and with the sun dropping fast with its diverse color palate, the scene was an eerie reminder that this break in the weather is only a break. The winter storms will return.

Silhouette of my wife walking to another spot for pictures on the lake.

The color paling as the sun disappeared.

Hannah is finally up to her knees and working on her ability to stand up! It's so funny to see her sitting back on her knees. She looks so comfortable, as if she has always just been sitting back on her heels waiting for people to play with her. Sitting up from laying on the floor is still a challenge, but she has found the work-around by rolling and grabbing things around her. This also means she has become a bit more interesting to Betsy. Now that the baby in her life seems to be more like a human, Betsy seems to think that she is just a human puppy here to play with her. We have to be careful to make sure that Betsy doesn't paw at Hannah, because she doesn't mean to hurt her but those claws can scratch her if we aren't careful. Of course, Hannah doesn't care. She just loves Betsy sitting so close to her and sharing her toys and food with Betsy. The two of them will be an inseparable pair in just a couple short years.

My Spartans may have had a great year in football, but it seems to have come at the cost of offending the basketball gods. Just when I thought we had suffered enough injuries for one year, Dawson is sidelined with a broken hand. And get this, his hand was broken because he punched a table!! Now, for most of you Dawson doesn't mean a thing. Even some commentators said it wasn't as big a deal as some of the injuries. But Dawson is the catalyst. In my field, we talk about catalysts as the thing that speeds up the reactions, maybe making them viable in otherwise limiting conditions. But in this case, Dawson is the spark (maybe activation energy would be a more appropriate term). He lights up the team and puts the fight in their eyes. He knows what it means to win and he knows what it means to have the game taken away from you. Lately his fire has been lacking, so I can only hope that at least with this energy he will return with renewed zeal for the game. Like Boeheim said about the 'Cuse/Duke game, "It's all about the game," - love of the game.

My proposal was completed and mailed out to the committee at the end of last week, giving enough time for people to send in comments or corrections before the candidacy exams. I know that many people struggle with the amount of corrections, but I received none. Granted, I had already worked extensively with a grant writing specialist in our department, and passed the concepts by my advisor. But out of the other three committee members, I received only one person's written comments and they were minimal. That leaves me just a bit uncomfortable as we approach the written exams. So I am just reading up on the previous work done by my committee members and trying to keep my head in other work so that I can remain calm. Writtens are scheduled for Jan. 30th (my advisor), Jan. 31st (microbiology), Feb. 3rd (modeling and nutrition) and Feb. 4th (statistics and science). It's hard to believe that in only a few days it will be over. I am either going to be acceptable or not. I guess in the end I am not worried about passing. My advisor had me over to his house on Monday and took the time to ask me a lot of questions over a couple beers. He helped me pinpoint things I was weaker on and gave me a bit of coaching on how to answer questions more efficiently. He said not to worry, but then asked me to impress him. So I'm not worried about passing, but I am worried about being a disappointment. Throughout my academic career I have found myself raised on a pedestal and in my undergraduate I am confident that I did not impress my advisors at all. In my masters, I always felt as if my work didn't excite my committee or impress them like I had hoped. So this is my last chance to leave a lasting mark. And the bar has been set high. I just want to make my advisor proud to have me as a student.

Week 74 - Postage

I registered for the Pelotonia this week. This will be my fifth year riding in the cancer research fundraiser and the ride has become more meaningful every year that I participate. Last year, we were connected with cancer patients at the OSU James Cancer Research Hospital and the stories that I learned from current and former patients at the hospital were very moving. This disease debilitates and causes agony in families, and our ride helps find treatments and preventative measures to improve the prognoses of the future. My bike ride may be short and my suffering on those hill climbs is brief; it is a small bit that I can do for those people in my local and global communities. If you read this blog post I don't ask for much, but please go to my profile (click here!)and donate $1. Every dollar makes a difference for the families and patients that are praying for hope and a cure.

I ride so that this little girl can grow up without fear of cancer.

This week we started the final experimental period of trial C035. Our visiting researcher is not coming until next week, and I regretfully started up the trial even though I need to be preparing my proposal and gathering materials for my candidacy exams. We are currently in the process of getting my committee approved by the graduate school which requires a petition to have a committee member not from here, a petition to have the committee member video conference rather than fly across the international date line for the exam, and a standard form to have the committee approved. I like all the resources at this huge institution but the bureaucracy that comes with it is a royal pain in the - well, you get the idea. And my proposal also needs to be completed this week and sent out to my committee so that they can approve it and start preparing my written exams. So yes, I was a little hesitant to start this other trial up but I really need it to be done and a few people in our lab said that they could help out as needed. My advisor says that I'm good at juggling. What he doesn't know is that I'm just good at making things work under pressure.

Part of the trial we are running right now involves the use of IV pumps to infuse isotope-labeled VFAs in a saline solution. As such, I've become a recent pro at hooking up IV pumps and fixing flow issues (when in doubt hit the power button and force it to start over). But I want no part in loading up the isotopes so they had to be mailed to us from Virginia. Well, early this week we received a box with a record number of forever stamps I have ever seen on one package. Fedex would probably have been cheaper. You can count for yourself but I think it was something like $18 in mother Mary stamps. Our lab manager said it best, "He must've really wanted it to get here because that's a hell of a lot of 'Hail Mary's'".

The only good news at work this week was that I got my desk cleaned last week. So as I get knee deep in this proposal I at least have some space to toss stuff around and organize my train of thought. That, and I have been making good on the coffee mug from Starbucks that my wife gave to me. The deal that came with the "January" mug is that I get a free cup of coffee from Starbucks every day in the month of January. And I haven't missed a day. I may not be able to sleep much but the coffee is fueling the madness and at least getting me through the work day. I received a lot of great gifts for Christmas, but this mug was very thoughtful and I think of her every day when I get my coffee before work. Just wishing to be done with this proposal and candidacy so I can be back at home with my family.

Week 73 - Class

No pictures this week as we enter into my posts from January (I'm getting closer to being caught up, and as promised the ship will be righted by the the end of spring break).

Well, this week was pretty brief. I basically show up at work, dive into reading a ton of PDFs, cuss out my Adobe Reader because it always crashes when I load more than 10 files, and then forget to eat lunch. Sometime in the afternoon, I get hungry, eat my lunch by 3 or 4 pm, and then continue reading and try to get to a stopping point. My wife is a saint for taking care of Hannah and supporting my studies. With this funding application I am turning in, one of the requirements is that I have my candidacy exams completed by February 20th. This date is sneaking up on me quicker than I'd like to admit and so my time is divvied into reading manuscripts to prepare my proposal, reviewing pathways for main nutrition, growth and health signaling in livestock, and recruiting members of my doctoral committee. I think in many fields of study, this last-minute recruiting would be more difficult but my faculty members already know me pretty well and are quite willing to be a part of the committee. So far, I have three members for sure because they will be submitted on the grant and agreed back in December and I need to secure one more.

A lot of people have asked me if I'm studying for my candidacies. I've never been known for studying and I'm not about to start now. I call it studying, but what I really do is try to look at the big picture. What systems influence others? What are the bigger concepts of dairy nutrition related to my work? If my committee asks me to defend my ideas, where did I get them from? How can I use my knowledge of statistics to solve problems? But in the traditional impression of studying as a memorization of notes over years of classwork, hell no I'm not going to do that. If I don't know that stuff now, there's no way I will memorize it by next month anyhow. It's more important for me to be able to relate my work to the real world and to cite relevant literature. So I'm basically turning myself into an encyclopedia of manuscripts in nutrition and methane research.

One thing that came up when we had conversation about me taking my candidacy exams was the need to take one more class, another microbiology class taught within our department by a professor on my committee. I was hoping to take it last year but it was cancelled for lack of enrollment. So I'm enrolled in one, yep count 'em, class for this spring semester. And it's been about a year since I took any classes. It feels so weird to have a schedule and I had to set an alarm reminder on my calendar just to remember to go to my class upstairs.

I think our professor was a bit worried that some students were hazy on the old details from microbiology classes so our first week has been a review of basic microbiology. One of those things was gram staining. For those of you who don't know, gram staining basically entails staining bacteria with one stain, then washing it off and adding a different one. Gram positive bacteria have a thick cell wall that will retain the first stain whereas gram negative bacteria have a double structure that is thinner with less peptidoglycan and more attachments on the outside instead. Gram staining is a quick identifier for different groups of bacteria and typically these groups of bacteria have different susceptibilities and other characteristics. For example, many gram positive bacteria are involved in cellulose degradation in the rumen and many starch digesters are gram negative. Pathogens such as Escherichia coli O157:H7 and Salmonella are also gram negative. So gram staining is a tool, and our professor wanted to show students how it was done to refresh their memory.

So we used this video?

Awkward moment in class and I'm not sure how that was a good use of our time. This professor is really good at using powerpoint as a tool instead of a crutch. Great images and limited text, but sometimes his cartoons and video choices just make me scratch my head... I think that back when I was in undergrad I didn't value my time as much as I do now, but all I could think when we were in class that day was "Why can't we just get out early instead of watching this so I can get back to my proposal?"

Week 72 - Bearded

Twas the week after Christmas (Dec. 29 - Jan. 4) and all through the house

Were gifts still wrapped and a very happy mouse

The cold weather had driven the rodents all in

And daddy had to remove them again.

Hannah was opening yet more gift

The box full of blocks and the paper was ripped

But one rip or two, she still couldn't quite see

So Dad and Mom helped to expose what's beneath

Blocks are so fun, can't you see?

Towers and tunnels and houses for me

And when it's all built, I swipe right on through

With my hand or my foot, to start building anew.

"Who me? I couldn't have knocked down the tower. It must've been Mommy."

I'm not much of a poet, but since we got that book for Hannah this year, it seemed fun to parody it for just a minute. Hannah's Christmas continued and this week she moved on to a new solid food - celery. Celery seems to be a great thing for her as she has two teeth to catch the fiber a bit and the body of the celery give her something to bite down on with her gums. Our daughter is such a healthy little girl.

One of the little blessings this Christmas has been how much some of our family has bought into Hannah's education fund. Yes, education is really important to us both and we indicated early on that more practical use of money gifts towards her education fund would be something she would appreciate down the road when she was older. I know in our family that she will learn the value of education and be very thankful for this support. And I am grateful to our family for being practical and loving -giving a gift like that isn't always exciting, but it's not gifts that are exciting that always matter. We aren't saving a lot, but it will add up over time and this is a gift that means a difference for Hannah's future.


This week is nearly all relaxing or visiting with family. I've been messing with gadgets, cleaning up spots in the basement and just trying to get some extra reading done in my spare time. Not much going on at work. In fact, the only other big news is that I am settling into my winter beard quite comfortably. I finally had to trim it up a bit and tame down the wild man, but my wife doesn't hate it entirely. In fact, I shaved it all off once back at Thanksgiving and she told me didn't care. So the new plan is to let it grow up a bit. Hannah seems to like grabbing at it and my face keeps a bit warmer in this cold. It has been so blasted cold lately. We already cancelled the beginning of classes and closed the university due to the cold and it doesn't look to let up soon. The only warmth this week came from the Spartans at the Rose Bowl. Finally, finally, finally! What a great triumph for a team that knows the meaning of struggles and failure. Victory tastes so much sweeter when you can still remember the feeling of defeat.

Week 71 - Autofocus

This week is Christmas, and as such, about time for me to admit I'm fighting some bugs. Having Hannah in daycare brings home just about everything and when she isn't sniffling, my wife is running a fever, and when they both feel fine it's my turn. So we've all passed bugs around and with any luck that's the end of it. Someone heard I was feeling a bit down this week and shared a photo with me. I may not be a doctor yet, but I'm pretty sure this would be the perfect prescription for most any ailment. After all, when has more whiskey been a bad thing? Well... there was that one time... let's just say I've learned a few lessons along the way.

Figure out if the girl you just met has a boyfriend, or two.

Note, don't mix with heavy doses of NSAIDs...

Don't leave anyone behind when you bike home...

Get a better picture of the concert of a lifetime with Eric Church...

Never karaoke. Never.

Seemed like a good idea at the time... doesn't mean it was.

Not as cool as you thought you were...

Pay for a hotel room. Your neck will hurt in the morning.

Watch out for curbs.

Don't forget the girl passed out in the bathroom.

Things might be louder than you expected.

Let your friends cut you off if you forget to do it yourself.

Biking with 60 beers is hard enough, do it sober.

No 2 people should ever be served this much at once. Not even if they are champions.

Anyhow, so it's Christmas this week and we are very excited to celebrate it as a family. With the LOI out of the way and a break between period 3 and period 4 of CO35 (our advisors both banned fermenter work over Christmas break), we have a bit of time to sit and relax as a family. It's cold here now, thought not too cold, and fires in our fireplace are much nicer this year with dry wood. Last year's green/wet stuff was not really that fun but now we have some real fires. Christmas day, that's where I sat the entire morning and afternoon. I love to feel the warmth on my back.

The in-laws came over to visit and we all crowded back into the fireplace room, pretty much a miracle. Hannah didn't really figure out the whole gift opening thing, so there are still a few gifts down there that will probably be waiting for a few weeks. She would much rather just chew on the bows, so helping wrap gifts the week leading up to Christmas was just as exciting for her as the gift-opening festivities afterwards. We have also made it one year into the Santa Claus gig, and I am actually in full support of it. My wife talked me into it and I have to admit that my take on it has changed a bit. I suppose it is good for a child to have something to believe in that's exciting, to perceive the world as magical and happy. We all know that once they grow up and realize what a twisted piece of crap we've turned it in to, they'll wish they could just go back to believing in Santa again. 

Who needs gifts when you can soothe your gums on a bottle?

I would be remiss if I didn't say thank you to everyone for the thoughtful gifts this year. I feel very special and loved, and I would even if I didn't receive anything. But the thought that went into the gifts means a lot to me.

The holidays are also airsofting season around our house, so I thought I would share a couple pictures of the top tacticians in the game, still living high after the night ops ambush back in October. Don't ask me why but we always seem to airsoft when it is literally freezing cold outside. I think it has something to do with better turnout when people have more layers to stop the pellets. Whatever it is, tactics go out the window for my sister once she has to sit in one spot where her hands on a cold, metal trigger. So let's just say she didn't fare as well this time as we did on our last trip out. Guns also seem to jam a lot and while some people have an intuition for a bad gun or jammed magazine, she doesn't. I caught up to her once only to find out she had been firing blank for over 30 minutes. I want to help so badly but I just don't know where to start...

Sis in her show-off pose before she realized she didn't know how to use the gun.

With all of the Christmas gifts and time spent at the parentals', I went in search of my old camera case so that we might be able to use it for our new camera and the extra lens that we bought with it. In the process, I dug out my old point and shoot by Olympus. Twenty years ago, this was as good as it got in the automatic camera world, complete with a digital display on top that told you how many pictures were left on the roll of film! We sure have come a long way since then, but sometimes I think the technology now supersedes the ability of the people who possess it. Back then, we had to struggle to get autofocus to pick up on the right things; it was touchy and unpredictable. But with practice, we figured out how to train the focus on different parts of the frame to change the light reading and exposure even though the camera didn't come with any settings to choose from. People marvel now at the pictures I can take with a digital point and shoot, but you have to realize where I came from to understand why I can get such great performance out of simple cameras. With all of the settings that are available now on the cameras, how could you go wrong? There is truly a setting for anyone's preferences. But people just plan on the camera to correct everything for them and can't figure out why their pictures might not be as good as they hoped.

The things is, we have so much technology now that we take for granted it will make our lives easy, and it does. But in the process of making our ability to take pictures easier, we have dumbed down the art in the process. And that is just like statistics in my everyday work. Graduate students and even professors have this mindset of autofocus - we will run stats the same way everyone else did before us and report the data just like that. But without knowing experimental design and the correct way to analyze data based on the specific experiment in question, scientists are not using the full scope of new stats programming to their benefit. They lose accuracy, power and ultimately impact from their data either by analyzing incorrectly and counting on the program to make corrections or by under-analyzing and not using their brain to determine what should be modeled and examined. It is a challenge even for me up on my soapbox to remember not to just "plug and chug" with statistics but to be thoughtful about what I look at and why I do it. We need to look past the autofocus and remember how it works and what it can do for us.