Finally, some new posts...

I'm back (more or less) from meetings, holiday breaks, injury (a badly sprained ankle) and sickness. At the moment I'm just sitting in my office and procrastinating while I should be working on some loose ends from last semester, but I decided to finally put some new material up here and let people who check this blog know that I'm still alive.

After the harrowing suck-fest that was the fall semester I'm eager to start the next few months of work. I'm finally done with the banal classwork that has been the bane of my graduate career to date. I will be working more closely with my advisor on my research and attending lectures on active tectonics and structural kinematics for the first time since coming back to school... it only took three years!

Anyway... I'm back, hopefully this finds all of you well and healthy at the start of this new year.

~T

eastern forests

The following was written while flying from VA to CO about a week ago...
___________________________________________________


wow... it's really been a while. as I recall, my last public post of anything related to my life was something about having passed my comprehensive exam. I think that happened about two months ago, but I suppose in reality it was really about 4 weeks ago. plenty has happened since that time, and I'm not referring to political elections in the united states and political demonstrations in Africa, united nations peacekeepers involvement in Darfur, political assassinations in Pakistan and also in Africa, and the opening of bidding for oil rights in Alaska's wilderness...

yes there have been many interesting and mostly disturbing developments in world politics and policy over the last few weeks, but I'll talk about things on a more personal level. I think I mentioned during my last post that I was in the midst of a most-hellish semester, which saw me approach historical levels of stress bordering on mental breakdown. luckily for me, that semester is over. I'm flying home now, leaving the south-eastern united states ( a region of the country which I have never enjoyed, but now holds a new and worthy reason for my renewed attention) and headed back to Colorado. as much as I enjoyed myself over this holiday break, I find myself breathing a sigh of relief as I return home. I'm grew up in the east, albeit the northeast and newengland, and many things about returning to the countryside and forests of the eastern seaboard were wonderful. I immersed myself in the smells and sights of oak and laurel forests... the aroma of wet soil and fallen leaves heightened by the cold rain overcoming my senses and reminding me so vividly of fond memories from my childhood. ...also, but to a much lesser degree of some memories from my childhood which were decidedly bittersweet, or in some cases just bitter.
___

I recently attended the annual American Geophysical Union's meeting in SF, along with some 15000 other geoscientists, in early December. AGU is always an amazing and overwhelming collection of talks, posters and many of the most influential minds in our field of science. The climate change researchers were out in force, and were a major contributing factor to the increase in general attendance this year... up a few thousand from last year alone. I myself gave a talk to room of close to 100, thanks in large part to going immediately after one of the most influential structural geologists of the last two decades, John Suppe. My interpretations and field models actually clashed somewhat with his, but I only received two questions which were very benign during the Q&A portion of the talk. The more time I spend at these conferences the more I realize that these researchers and scientists, who are held in such high regard, are really my colleagues; people who I will be working and arguing with for the rest of my career... assuming I end up in an academic position and continue along the path that I have begun to follow.

Growing up in the hills of maple and gorges of slate in central new york, I was surrounded by academics for as long as I can remember. Cornell University was always a fixture in my life, in some way or another. I was friends with children of professors, my parents were students there, my dad taught there for a short while, and many of their friends were on staff there. I rode my bike through the campus, often at irresponsible speeds down crowded staircases and through the plazas, to eventually attend, teach and work there myself.

The soils in Ithaca are of higher organic content that the red clays of the southeast; clays which when wet can wreak havoc on a sprained ankle during an easy walk in the rain if one is not careful. the overall feel of the forests is similar though, and so different from the open grasslands and evergreen forests of Lodge-Pole and Ponderosa in Colorado. Revisiting those eastern forests brought to light just how much I have accepted the western mountains as my new home and how free I feel here... but also reminded me quite vividly of my Yankee roots.

~t

Tarka Wilcox, PhD (Candidate)

Hah! I endured the 3 hours of oral interrogation by my committee members and emerged victorious. ..or, at least alive.

In doing so, I've cleared the first significant (and according to many, the largest) hurdle I will be faced with during my graduate education. Now, after some paperwork and red-tape, I will be advanced to the status of "candidate", and return to the normal grind of research and classes... except that I'm pretty much done with classes now, so I've actually cleared two hurdles. I look forward to another year and a half of being mired by wishy-washy research directives before finally reaching the ultimate stage of the doctoral program which entails productive work and dissertation.

..anyway, it feels good to be through it, and I've been able to breath a small sigh of relief over the weekend. Now I just have to get back to grading students work (which, after tonight, I should be done with also)... I can't wait for winter break.

~t

Pedantic ?

yup, I'm still writing, rewriting, thinking and re-thinking. I hate this stage of work; you realize that you're wasting time being critical of yourself but you still can't be satisfied with what little has (or how much has not) apparently been accomplished. Anyway, I'm just going back through my introduction (again) and seeing some interesting things. Like the fact that when I sum up what it is I study, the following chain of uber-dry terms appears: "...spatial and temporal scales of steady-state critical-taper orogenic evolution". My undergraduates would experience the instantaneous onset of unconsciousness if I ever said that phrase to them (either by fear or boredom, I'm not sure which). But yeah, I guess, that's more or less what I study in a nutshell.

~t

pictures and words

this post is going to be mostly pictures, I think, but first some words. I've been holed-up in my house for the last couple of days, not really venturing out for reasons other than getting food or getting something from my office. I'm in the throes of writing my comprehensive exam research proposal, which means I'm being forced to look back at what I've done over the last two and a half years, and make some kind of statement about what I plan to do for the next two and a half. I suppose maybe I've done a fair amount, but it doesn't feel like it. Anyway, I recently developed a few roles of film that had been sitting around my house for a while, here are a few results. one is from a day of climbing last summer, where I was apparently unaware of the f-stop setting on the camera, so only a very shallow focal length appears clearly defined but I still like the pic. The others are from the last winter, after an evening of powdery snowfall. The tree also shows a ghost of the film border in the sky... apparently a reflection from inside the housing of my pentax.. I kept it in though, rather than remove it with photoshop. I think this is all on Fuji Reala 100 stock...





~t

a pic of sunset in death valley, CA... taken about a year ago.

~t

up and coming

Hey all,

The last several months have seen me turning away from blogs and more towards the things on my desk. Work, teaching and preparing for candidacy have more or less ruled my life recently, with the occasional escape for an hour or two to ride my bike. It seems like the semester is winding down, which of course means that everything is actually winding up, towards a culmination of a couple major events, namely my comps exam and a presentation at AGU on my recent(-ish) findings in Taiwan. As always during November, I've been feeling my internal stress-meter climbing steadily for the last couple of weeks... but I seem to have temporarily plateaued for the last couple of days. I've been thinking less and doing more, and trying to come to some quieting realization that even though I'll be busting ass for about the next month straight I'll come out the other end just fine and ready for a break.

~t

mathematicians

they might as well be called mathemagicians. I spent my morning rolling my eyes at the lecturer (a well known, highly respected professor and researcher) this morning, as he recited (practically verbatum) the same lecture he gives in another class (which I've already taken, and also struggled with). ...which is all fine and good, except for the fact that he spent a large amount of time making mistakes, stalling the class and generally confusing everyone who hadn't already mastered fluid dynamics (grad students were correcting him throughout). I never should have taken this class.

~T

backup

jeez...

Between my roommate's computer dying this week and the structure lab computer data drive eating it this afternoon, I'm backing up my entire hard-drive to my extra external drive right now. the gremlins are running wild here...

then again... both of the computers in question are PC's running Windows XP... thank god I use a Mac.

~t

utah

Fall Breeze

Fall is here, no doubt about it. Yesterday morning I went up to NCAR, with my coffee and bagel, to sit at the edge of the mesa and take in the view. When I got there, several model glider enthusiasts were perched at the edge of the mesa, guiding their planes through the steady updrafts blowing along the edge. These were no balsa wood gliders... the models were fully radio controlled, and large. Several were in the 4-5 foot wingspan range, but one in particular had a wingspan approaching 8 feet. As that glider sliced through the air, the wings arced upwards and whistling, the pitch changed from a low hum at level flight to a high 'Wfhuee!' during the pilots swooping dives. The air was chilly but the sun still provided enough warmth to sit comfortably and its light dappled the front range through the breaks in the clouds...

More 'purple prose', I know but recently that's about all I've had time for with respect to these blogs. hopefully I'll be able to put some more interesting narrative down before too long..


Notice the pilots off to the right for scale...



~t

An open letter.....

...to my (a$hole) ex-landlords:

dear a$&holes,

thank you for taking over two-thirds of our security deposit. I hope your new tenants enjoy the upgrades you financed with our money. I hope your children enjoy the thirty-dollar-an-hour rate you paid them (skilled laborers) to paint one wall in the house. I also hope that the two-hundred something dollars you charged us for a carpet cleaning lined your pockets well after you rented the same steam cleaning vacuum we used. your combined efforts as property managers have to be of the lowest caliber I have ever had the displeasure of experiencing. your efforts to weasel money out of us were evident long before you sent us the return, on the last possible day of the 60 day grace period you gave yourselves in the lease. the fact that the majority of the things you charged us for actually go against legal precedents is obviously of no concern to you, since you are both most likely aware of the fact that renters have almost no legal recourse against landlords of your breed and creed. honestly, my best option for requital is to educate your current tenants as to the similar misfortune they will most likely face when they leave your property. I hope this karma comes back to you someday, as it should.

cheers, and don't come around my door if your car radiator starts smelling like limburger ;)

~t

lucky

yesterday evening found me pedaling a bike along an old jeep road, wending my way through meadows and stands of aspen up meyer's gulch to the outlook between boulder and eldorado canyons. the climb is steep and long, a little less than 3 miles, and pedaling close to fifty pounds of metal and rubber up this trail seems like the pursuit of a crazy person. the views behind me are worth every bead of sweat every heavy breath. the great expanses of the central plains stretch out beyond the abrupt edge of the foothills... the continental divide looms in front of me, backlit by the setting sun. hues of heather and gold, set against shades of green from sage to pine, pick up the last light of the day. it takes less than ten minutes to descend from the bench at the ridge back to the trailhead... the feeling of leaning through sweeping turns at ground blurring speed pulls me towards home, back through the meadows and past the old abandoned homestead, or barn, or whatever it used to be that sits off to the side of the trail. things i complain about during the day, or whichever particular bit of red tape i got stuck with earlier, are all just minor annoyances when considered against the privilege of experiences like this.

back at last

hey all,

i realize that it's been quite a while since my last post... at least a month. i have been in taiwan most of that time, and L.A. for a part of it too. i've been bouncing around boulder for the past few days just trying to regain my footing here and get things in order before the semester starts. i'll be teaching the two lab sections of structural geology this fall, to 42 kids. i still need to complete a draft of my paper in the next week or so. i have to finalize my thesis committee and schedule my comprehensive exam for the end of the semester. i'll be taking advanced geomorphology and participating in a reading seminar on the same subject... since neither my own advisor nor any other professors who specialize in structure or tectonics (any of about 6 people now) are offering any courses or seminars on those topics, at least none that I haven't already taken. i'm off to run home and grab reciepts and a brunton compass from my trip, then back to the desk. more (and more upbeat) posting to follow....

~t

pre-visualization

visualization is important for all athletes; it allows you to see where you're going before you get there... to see yourself completing a task and thereby enabling you to complete that task. two pics follow, one is pre-vis... the other is completion.




that's me at keystone, sending a small drop (~6 feet?)...

~t

melting

hey all,

sitting in my office on this sunday afternoon, because it's the only air-conditioned place i can be and pretend to be productive at this time. wunderground.com was reporting the temperature for boulder as 102.8 degrees farenheit until five minutes ago, when the temp dropped to 99. it's $#@!ing hot here. my house is a relative inferno, and there's not much i can do about it until the outside temp goes down, aside from doing something silly like buying an air conditioner (which i refuse to do, at least at the moment). ... i can say they cost 139 bucks at the home depot though... not like i was looking or anything.

~t

wow, simply wow...

for your daily dose of tasteless humor in the global political arena, check out this cover of wprost magazine (polish), as reported by the bbc.

bbc story here

new place

some quick pics of the new place... note the hardwood and gas range... sweet! no art on the walls yet, still trying to figure out where to put things.. two kurodas, a kuniyoshi and two other contemporary japanese prints (i can't remember the artist at the moment), as well as a bunch of my own photographs. still need to stop by the boulder restaurant supply store for a few things and the lumber store for some raw materials... need to build a table (rectangular, long and thin, to go under the chandelier in the living room) and a futon frame (the metal one i have is crap). that chair design in a previous post is still on my mind, but i probably won't get a chance to really get to that for another couple of months... thought about modeling the legs of the table after those of the chair though... maybe?

~t