Greg's Blog

Sweat

2009-06-26T09:12:00.003-05:00

It has been stiflingly hot this week in central Illinois. After my noon run on Monday finishing with completely soaked shoes after an easy 7 miles, I decided to try to beat the heat by doing my speed work early Tuesday morning. It turned out to be miserable as well (although I did get to chat briefly with the NCAA 5k Champion, Angela Bizzarri who was also at the track at 7am to do her workout in preparation for her race tonight in the USATF national championships).

Yesterday, I decided to do a sweat test to figure out my sweat rate in these conditions. I lost nearly 5% of my body weight on a 7min/mile paced 10 miler. Here's the "scientific" report that I sent my running group after the run:

Abstract:

I did a sweat test on today's run and thought you all would be interested in the results.

Methodology:

Prior to the run, I weighed myself nude at on the digital scale at the ARC. During the run, I wore a fuel belt and drank measured amounts of water. After the run, I dried off and then weighed myself nude again using the same scale.

Results:

Pre-run weight: 155.9 lbs

Water consumed: 40 ozs (2.5 lbs)

Post-run weight: 151.2 lbs

Run time: 1:10:00

Distance: ~10 mi

Weather: 90 F, 54% humidity, 12.7mph W wind, mostly clear with a few clouds

Total weight lost during run = 155.9 lbs - 151.2 lbs + 2.5 lbs = 7.2 lbs

Discussion:

During the course of the run, I lost 115.2 ozs, which we can attribute mostly to fluid loss and possibly the liquification and sweating out of a significant quantity of brain matter. This is a sweat rate of 98.7 ozs / hour or 1.65 ozs / min. If I were drinking water from a shot glass during the run, I would have to take a shot every 55 seconds to maintain my weight.

Conclusion:

Running is dumb.

Many alternate conclusions were propsed like "running in today's conditions is dumb" or "summer in the midwest is dumb." Regardless, I'm sure I'll keep on doing it.

Illinois Marathon

2009-05-13T12:26:00.000-05:00

It's been quite some time since I've posted anything here, so I'll come back to it with a race report from the first annual Illinois Marathon.

2008 was a disastrous marathon year for me. I felt like I was in really good shape heading into both Boston and Chicago. In both races, I had severe stomach pains starting somewhere past mile 15 and had a miserable experience in finishing both races. I finished 45 and 35 minutes behind my expected finish time in both races and was extremely displeased. After Chicago last year, I was so fed up that I decided I would take at least one marathon cycle off and maybe just quit running them entirely.

Fortunately, the Illinois Marathon came to town. The race was to be a smaller marathon in the town where I live with most of my running group participating. With everyone in the group training for the marathon, I was almost training for it by default, so I went ahead and put in the long runs and signed up for the race. I decided two important things in advance.

1) I would train at lower volume than I have for my previous marathons. I still wanted a bit of a break from the training. I put in a lot of weeks around 50 miles and I peaked at just 60.5, the only week I went over 60 miles.

2) I would run a conservative pace. Despite the fact that I'd finished 4 marathons, my PR was still a 2:58:17 from my first marathon, which I ran in Austin. I'd been looking to run 2:45 in the past few where I'd blown up. I still think I'm capable of running at least that fast (I did a 24 miler at a pace that would have put me at 2:41 training for one of my disasters last year...and felt great after the run), but I couldn't risk blowing up again or the prospects of continuing to marathon would slim considerably. I needed to "get the monkey off of my back" as my training partner liked to say. I decided I'd look to run just under 3 hours and there were a bunch of guys in my running group who I could run with at that pace. The plan was to run a nice, relaxed pace and have fun doing it.

Things went according to plan.

I got out of my own bed on the morning of the marathon, well rested and tapered down from my moderate training mileage. I picked up a few of my running buddies and we convened with the rest of the running group in one of their offices which was right near the start line. The weather was better than we could have asked for. It was around 40 degrees at the start, sunny, and low wind (10 mph, which is low for here in Champaign-Urbana).

We ran nice, even splits right on pace as we opened up the marathon. Pictured here (photo courtesy of Kate Torrey) is a bunch of my running group in the early miles along with my PhD advisor, who was running the half. It was fun seeing lots of people we knew along the course. Before the race, I decided that no matter how good I felt, I wouldn't pick up the pace until at least mile 18. I felt great, but I waited patiently. Still feeling good at mile 18.5, I told the group I was going to pick up the pace and I dropped down from ~6:47/mile to under 6:30's where I stayed through the last 10k to the finish line, coming across in 2:55:30. My splits for the entire race are recorded here (I forgot to hit the button at 15).

I was really pleased with the way the marathon went. I ran it according to plan, I felt great, and I had fun. Normally, I don't look to "have fun" while I'm running a race, although I'm looking to have enjoyed it afterwards. This was a win-win because I got the monkey off my back while also having fun (admittedly, the last couple of miles still hurt and I'm not smiling so much in the picture from the last mile). I also recovered incredibly fast. It was a Saturday race and by Wednesday, my legs already felt really good, although I gave it a full week before I started running again. And I'm re-motivated about the marathon. I'm already planning to run Columbus this fall with a bunch of guys from the running group.

As far as the organization of the marathon goes, I thought it was an incredibly well-done first year event. When the plans were first announced and I heard they wanted 4,000 people, I laughed. Amazingly, there were around 9,000 people across the three events with nearly 2,000 in the marathon. Almost everything along the course was well-done too. My biggest complaint was the places where the marathon and half-marathon courses merged. Around mile 23 in the marathon we merged with mile 11 or 12 of the half-marathon for about half a mile and had to cross paths. This meant that while I was coming through under 6:30 pace, I was moving across a lane of people walk/jogging. I nearly got run into the pillar of the viaduct as somebody slowed to a walk and moved off to her left as I came through. And while it was nice to finish in the stadium, the common start + common finish for the full and the half led to a similar problem. My training partner (who ran ~2:41) nearly got caught in the tunnel entering the stadium amongst a mob of half marathoners jogging their way in. And the winners of the marathon finished amidst a wash of slow half-marathoners. Despite these complaints, I think it was a great marathon. I'll definitely do it again...unless I'm running in Boston.

Surviving the Cold

2009-01-21T16:30:00.000-06:00

Last week, we had some very cold weather come through. The first photo here shows a screenshot (yes, that's a preview of the Windows 7 Beta running on my home computer) from last Friday morning before I headed into the lab. -17 degrees F with a wind chill of -31 F. I ran outside later that afternoon, although it had warmed up considerably. We started our run at 0 degrees and it warmed to 4 degrees by the end of our 7 mile run. The second picture shows the gear I wore for the run. We earned 5 points on this run.

5 points, you ask? How do you earn points on a run? My running group has a system wherein you earn points for runs on extremely hot or cold days. The formulas are as follows:

Winter points = Miles - Average Run Temperature in Fahrenheit
Summer points = Miles + Average Run Temperature in F - 100

Anything left that is positive earns you points. Since the average temperature on our run was 2 degrees F, the points we earned were 7 miles - 2 degrees = 5 points. Everyone diligently logs their points and then at the end of the year, we add them up and trade them in for absolutely nothing. My record for a single run is 12 points (18 miles in 6 degrees), which pales in comparison to some of the guys I run with. I could have racked up some serious points if I'd run when I got up on Friday morning! Some people say the run must be a minimum of 3 consecutive miles to earn points.

The last picture here shows my biking outfit for a cold winter commute in to work. I may complain a lot about how cold it is here, but it sure doesn't keep me inside!

Utah

2009-01-10T18:31:00.000-06:00

My sister didn't have Christmas off this year, so the family headed out to her place in Salt Lake City once the airfare had dropped a week after the new year. We're just now finishing up our five day trip.

Our first full day here, we went skiing at Alta, which is where I have done the majority of my skiing in Utah. 12 inches had fallen in the 24 hours before we hit the slopes, but it was a very warm day (it hit 34 F at the Alta base) and the powder was really heavy. It was not the champagne powder Alta is known for and it made the skiing a lot of work. It was a gorgeous day, though, and still a lot of fun. The first picture here shows my dad trying to get up aided by my sister after taking an awesome face-first plant in the snow. I fell 3 times before lunch myself and the thick powder was lots of fun to tumble in. The second picture shows my brother and at I at the top of the Collins lift and the last picture is the mountains across the street from the Alta base in Little Cottonwood Canyon.
The next day was even warmer, so we skipped the skiing and went to one of the last days of the Body Worlds 3 exhibit in SLC, which was really cool. It was also helpful having Dr. Dad along to explain more than what the exhibits pointed out. I have no pictures to post since they don't allow photos, but it's definitely worth checking out if you get the chance. We spent two hours there and could have easily stayed longer. It was 54 degrees, so I was able to take a rare winter short-sleeve run back home after the museum.

The third day sent us to Solitude for skiing, where I'd never been. It was colder and we had 7 inches of fresh powder and the skiing was awesome. I really liked skiing there a lot and the crowds were very thin. It was a most excellent day of skiing.

Today I abandoned the skiing and went for a long run up City Creek Canyon, a run I discovered using the USATF Routes tool. It was a simply fabulous run. Unfortunately, I started 5 miles from the canyon. I'd only planned to run 12 miles, but once I got into the Canyon, I had to tack on some more because it was so incredible and I ended up doing a bit over 14 miles. It's a gradual climb up the Canyon, reasonable even for this Illinois flat-lander. The road was plowed, but is closed to traffic during the winter (and it's closed to traffic every other day in the warm seasons!). It was low-30's and sunny, which was perfect weather for the run and while the road was clear, there were banks of snow on the sides, with City Creek babbling a few feet away and snow-laden trees forming a canopy overhead. I really must find some mountains to live in when I finish my PhD.

Blizzard

2008-12-30T22:27:00.000-06:00

On Monday, December 22, Claire and I headed out from Chicago toward Detroit. It was below zero as we scraped the car in Chicago, but the roads were fine as we headed out of Illinois. As soon as we hit the Michigan border, we were greeted with gusting winds that made visibility very poor as depicted in the first photo. At first it wasn't evening snowing, but was blowing the champagne poweder from the median onto the road. We planned to pull off for lunch, but just before our exit got stuck in stand-still traffic for close to an hour. Shortly thereafter, everyone was shuttled off the interstate. It turned out it was a nearly 100 car accident that caused the highway to be shut down for several miles. We took side roads for several miles before we were able to get back onto the highway, but the snow blew so badly that we were stuck in total white-outs, with Claire watching the rumble strip out the passenger window to make sure I was creeping along in the lane. We knew it was only going to get worse, and dark was about to set in, so we pulled off at the first exit we could and holed up for the night in a very strange place.

The tiny town of Watervliet (sic) had a new Ramada, which had a waterpark inside. The place was called Safari Joe's and there seemed to be no reason to have a hotel like this in such a small place. We came to realize that the place was basically a trophy room for the owner Joe, who liked to go on safari in Africa and kill exotic animals with a variety of weapons. The most unfortunate part of the event was that the hotel cost more than the room we'd shared with my brother the night before in Chicago on the Magnificent Mile. The place was completely filled, though, because it was nearly impossible to travel. The roads weren't great starting out the next day, as shown in the last photo, but once we made it past Kalamazoo, it was smooth sailing to Detroit.

Oath

2008-12-10T16:38:00.002-06:00

A friend of ours was just elected to the city council of my dear small hometown in Kentucky. It was through this that the amazingness of the oath of office for city councilmen in Kentucky was brought to my attention.

Oath of Office:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm, as the case may be) that I will support the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of this Commonwealth, and be faithful and true to the Commonwealth of Kentucky so long as I continue a citizen thereof, and that I will faithfully execute, to the best of my ability, the office of City Councilman according to law; and I do further solemnly swear (or affirm) that since the adoption of the present Constitution, I, being a citizen of this State, have not fought a duel with deadly weapons within this State nor out of it, nor have I sent or accepted a challenge to fight a duel with deadly weapons, nor have I acted as second in carrying a challenge, nor aided or assisted any person thus offending, so help me God.

Reference: Section 228 of the Constitution of Kentucky, as Ratified & Revised in 1891

Evolution of basketball tickets

2008-12-09T18:14:00.000-06:00

This is my third year buying student tickets for Illinois basketball with some of my friends. Student ticket seats are based on a point system, a big chunk of which comes from years of ticket purchases. Based on that, your seats will improve every year. Assembly Hall has 3 rings. Our first year, we sat in the third row from the top of section C. Last year, we were in the 8th row of section C and now we're in the first two rows of section B. Our seats this year are excellent. The photos here are pictures I took without any zoom each of the 3 years from our seats.

Aside from having good seats this year, the good news is that the Illini appear to be much better than I had expected them to be. Hopefully, that continues to be true as we start to play in the Big 10.

Prelim

2008-11-12T18:19:00.002-06:00

The blog has gotten neglected over the past couple of months because I was preparing for my preliminary exam, which I took on Monday. For those of you unfamiliar with the PhD process, the prelim is the oral exam that qualifies you as a candidate for a PhD. Where this happens in the process varies from discipline to discipline, but in chemistry at Illinois, we generally take the prelim in the first semester of the 3rd year. If you pass, you continue your research for the next 2ish years to complete your PhD and if you fail, you're typically asked to leave with a masters. We submit a preliminary report, then give a presentation to our committee of four who are free to ask us anything they want.

The short story is that I passed my prelim on Monday, which is quite nice to have out of the way. I still have plenty that I want to get done in the lab, but hopefully I'll get back up to speed here as well.

Stop Wining

2008-09-02T11:27:00.002-05:00

My labmate sent me this great article on wines from all 50 states. It's a pretty hilarious read. I was glad to see that the Kentucky wine they tasted ranked as Excellent. I've enjoyed the wines I've had from our friend's vineyard in KY as well, CCC Trail Vineyard.

50 American Wines

Illinois Readers: Alert!

2008-08-28T17:53:00.004-05:00

This is seriously bad news.

I use several of these parks on a fairly regular basis. I plan to call my legislators tomorrow. You should too. Or write a letter. Or both.

If you live in Urbana, here's the contact info.

Senator Michael W. Frerichs
Springfield Office:
Senator 52nd District
118 State House
Springfield, IL 62706
(217) 782-2507

District Office:
45 E. University Ave.
Suite 206
Champaign, IL 61820
(217) 355-5252

Representative Naomi D. Jakobsson
Springfield Office:
257-S Stratton Office Building
Springfield, IL 62706
(217) 558-1009
(217) 557-7680 FAX

District Office:
206 N. Randolph
Suite 120
Champaign, IL 61820
(217) 373-5000
(217) 373-8679 FAX

If you live somewhere else:
http://www.ilga.gov/

EDIT:
Here's the Governor's Office. They suck in comparison. They try to get you off the phone as quickly as possible.

Office of the Governor
207 State House
Springfield, IL 62706
Phone: 217-782-0244 or 312-814-2121

Teaching Award

2008-07-24T09:55:00.004-05:00

I just got contacted yesterday and it turns out that I won a teaching award for the 2006-2007 academic year at the University of Illinois. I was kind of surprised to hear about it so late, but late is definitely better than never!

The award is currently listed here.

I can't help but reflect on how much my Teach For America experience has benefited me. I didn't join TFA because I thought it would help me. In fact, I was worried that taking time off before graduate school would hurt me. I joined TFA because of the injustice that exists in America's public school system. Now--definitely not just because of this award--I'd argue that time spent has helped me immensely in graduate school. The impact on my year as a Teaching Assistant is obvious given my top 10% of instructors on campus rating for both Fall 2006 and Spring 2007 (the two semesters I was a TA) and culminating in this teaching award. I think I have my thorough TFA training as well as two years in the classroom to thank for that.

In addition to equipping me with a skillset for effective instruction--on which I can still improve drastically--TFA helped give me clarity on what I want to do. Long term, I know that I want to teach. I'm not regularly in the classroom right now because I'm currently working on my research, but I love opportunities that I get to spend in the classroom. Also, when I heard about the local school-based mentoring program, CU1to1, it was a no-brainer that I should apply to join the program because I know how valuable this kind of thing can be for students. My mentee is going to be in the 7th grade this coming year and the hour that I spend with him each week during the school year is one of the best hours of my week. Getting other graduate students to even think about taking an hour a week to be involved in our local public schools is like pulling teeth.

So I'm honored to receive this teaching award. The fact that I'm getting it when I'm not actively in the classroom reminds me that I'm not in the classroom and that I'm not doing a lot for education right now. I guess a reminder of why we're doing what we're doing is always in order.

Freedom

2008-07-16T17:36:00.000-05:00

On the 4th of July, my friends Mark and Amber went with me to the small town of Paxton to race the 5k held in conjuction with their Old Fashioned 4th of July Festival. Last year, we all raced in Champaign's Freedom 5k, but it's not actually 5k. The course has been notoriously short for years after someone moved the turnaround cone because the parade had lined up a block early; the problem has apparently never been fixed. I emailed back and forth with the race directors a bit and got no satisfactory information that the race would be a properly measured distance. It turns out it was again short, so I'm glad we bailed on it. Instead, we went to Paxton and had a fabulous time.

It was bound to be a good day when we found out that instead of t-shirts we would get visors, which Mark and I call our Freedom Visors. For some crazy reason, Amber declined this piece of American heritage. Mark and I took a ton of pictures in our Freedom Visors, the whole set of which can be found here.

The race course was an out-and-back with a bit of a rise on the way back. Some high school kids went out with us from the start and I went through the mile at 5:14. The guy next to me looked like he was hurting, so I decided I'd wait until the turn-around and then drop the hammer. I came out of the turn strong (my second mile was still significantly slower) and dropped him off my shoulder, but he never really dropped off hard like I expected him to. I picked the 3rd mile up and still never shook him more than about 20 seconds. I came through in 16:49, a result which I was happy enough with considering I hadn't taken the race too seriously leading up to it and considering that I definitely could have run harder. The kid who'd run stronger than I expected hung second while Mark took 3rd. Amber was the first female finishers.

The race gave $75 gift certificates to our local running store, Body N' Sole, to the top three male and female finishers, so we all finished in the money. The second picture here shows Mark relishing his entry into the ranks of professional runners (as you'll remember, loyal reader, I became a professional last year). We goofed around kissing our wares and the final picture shows the two race champions.

If you're interested in my email exchange with the race directors of the Freedom 5k, it's detailed below; the last email was so unintelligible, that I just gave up trying to understand it and scheduled the trip to Paxton instead. (I think maybe he was trying to say he walked it with a wheel...except everybody who ran it this year said it was short; and nobody likes to admit their time was too fast.)

Hi,

Will the 5K course be accurately measured to five kilometers this year? The course last year was most definitely not 5 kilometers and I have been told that the race distance has not been accurate for many years. Will the course be properly measured this year? I plan to run the 5k, but only if the distance will be accurate.

Thank you,
Greg Scott

---------------

Hi Greg,
The Freedom Celebration Committee is unaware of any error in the distance of the 5K run. The distance was originally measured by a licensed land surveyor and has not changed. What is the source of your information?
[Race Director 1]

---------------

Greg, The Freedom 5 K course is a true 5k, done by a couple of offical surveyor's. One year on course setup, the turnaround was incorrectly
moved 1 block forward, which made the course a little short. I'm not exactly sure which year. or if this happened more than once. Thanks, [Race Director 2]
Second Wind Race Director.

---------------

Hi [Race Director 1 and Race Director 2],

Thanks for your responses. The story that I have heard from lots of local runners is that of the turnaround being moved a block forward, but that it has never been returned to normal, being setup every year as "that's where the cone goes." All of the guys in my running group are in agreement that the race has been short for several years and everyone who magically got a 5k PR during a hot 11am race over the past few years has recorded the race as ~3 miles in their running logs. I would be simply amazed if I ran a 15:57 last year as the results indicate (and Scott Krapf...name mispelled in the results) was quoted in the News Gazette talking about how surprised he was that he ran that fast so early in the training cycle. I went through the mile in 5:06 last year and hit the 2-mile mark at 4:38 after making a conscious decision to let the lead pack go because I realized I wouldn't be able to hold the pace without falling apart. Perhaps the 2 mile marker was just in the wrong place, but it would be consistent with an early turnaround and the miraculously fast times that seasoned, consistent runners post at the race.

When was the last time the course was measured? It sounds like it was when the surveyors did the original measurement (it's interesting to note that the original method used is not acceptable for USATF course certification). I know you make no claim that the course is USATF certifcation, but I think the axiom used in the introduction to that manual still holds true that 'If an entry fee is charged for a road race, runners have a right to a properly measured course." I obviously don't expect you to go out and buy the special bike setup for measuring this course, but considering the inconsistency between "the course has never changed" and "it may have happened more the once," I think it would be nice to know that somebody went out and walked the tangents with a measuring wheel.

Thanks,
Greg

---------------

Greg, That's good because the last couple of weeks I used a wheel (ChampaignCentennial's) to make sure the turnaround as at proper stop. There were pins instreet, but those where covered up when Lincoln Ave. was changed to 3 lanes.I should have remarked at that time. Pins are still at Start and Finish, [Race Director 2]

Flowers!

2008-07-16T16:45:00.000-05:00

These are some pictures that I recently took of flowers in my landscaping. The first and third are daylillies that I planted and the second picture is of Echinacea (Purple Coneflower) that were planted before I bought the house. I love all of these flowers because they're super-cool and require pretty much zero maintenance. I'm hoping to get a few more daylillies this year to add to my collection out front (I still have one more daylilly that hasn't bloomed at all yet, but it has sent up stalks and started to bud).

Ride Across the Country

2008-06-26T10:08:00.000-05:00

No, I didn't ride my bike across the country. But I did tag along with a self-supported ride across the country a few weeks ago. My dad's boss, Phil, contacted me about his brother-in-law, Royce, who was riding across the country and that his route would take him near me through Illinois. Royce, pictured on the left, is riding east to west across the country and Phil, pictured on the right was riding five days with him. I rode part of one day.

The leg I joined was from Danville to Decatur, so I rode down to meet them at the Casey's (ubiqitous gas stations in all the small towns in Illinois) in Sidney and then rode across part way to Monticello with them (basically riding along the same roads I always ride). It was a lot of fun to join them for a short jaunt on a beautiful day. Royce insisted on taking a picture of me for which he had already planned the caption. His ride journal, which he updates every few days whenever he has access, is a lot of fun to read. It's available here.

Some Recent Deliciousness

2008-06-20T15:45:00.001-05:00

Here are some pictures of some food that I've made recently that I felt like photographing and that are delicious.

Spice Rubbed Pork Tenderloin with Mustard BBQ Sauce This one was simply amazing. I got the recipe from Cooking Light and made the suggested tangy mustard coleslaw to go with it. My roommate, who also likes to take pictures of the food he cooks, helped man the grilling operation and we did grilled corn as well. We did it Mexican style with a chile on the grilled corn (no mayo on the corn as you might find it on "elote" in Mexico).

Here's another Cooking Light recipe, Tuna Steaks with Wasabi Ginger Glaze. The glaze was amazing and could be put on just about anything (and was super-simple).

I love to make Chiles Rellenos. I don't have a recipe to point to for these because I just kind of do them. First you have to roast the poblano pepper. Hold it in the flame of a gas burner or just throw it in the toaster oven and repeatedly hit toast rotating the pepper until the whole thing is blistered are the easiest ways that I've found. Then I throw it in a plastic bag and let it sweat before slipping off the skin. Then I cut a seam in the side to de-seed and de-vein the pepper. Stuff with whatever you want (I like to use a white cheese like mozarella and sauteed onions), dredge in egg and flour, then fry in a pan of hot oil.

Black Bean Quesadilla. Here's another one without a recipe for me to point to, but if you don't know how to make a quesadilla, I can't help you. I just thought it was colorful and fun. I sautee the peppers and onions first.

Iris

2008-06-19T15:28:00.000-05:00

The iris that I planted last year bloomed at the beginning of this month and I managed to get a really nice picture of one of the blooms on a sunny morning. I got the iris as well as several daylilies from Newbury Daylilies. If you're in central Illinois, you should definitely check out their property. They have SO many daylilies. One of my daylilies has already sent up lots of stalks with buds on it.

http://www.newburydaylilies.com/

Race Updates

2008-06-16T09:44:00.000-05:00

I've participated in a few races the last couple of months. The first was the Mattoon Beach Multisport sprint triathlon. I had only been in the water once and on my bike once this year after coming off of marathon training, but I went ahead and raced anyway. I finished the race in 9th place overall (results here), and as is fairly common, I had the fastest run split in the race. It was the first time that I had worn my new Fighting Illini Triathlon gear, which you can see in the picture at left with two other FIT members, Kevin and Jimmy. My PhD advisor, Martin Gruebele, beat me in the race after completely destroying me on the race and the swim. Notice his larger trophy in the second picture.

The second race was the Buffalo Trace trail race in Mahomet. I took second overall in a somewhat disappointing 29:12 for the 5-mile race (results here). It was a fun race, though, and it was pretty sloppy on the trails after a decent amount of rain. I wore my cross country spikes and my calves paid the price for the next week.

Recently, I raced the Wolf Creek sprint ~~triathlon~~ dualthon. The weather was really nasty as Martin and I drove down for the race and with the rain storms, the Army Corps of Engineers wouldn't let us swim in the lake. As a consequence, they changed the 400 m swim into a 1-mile run, which played heavily in my favor. Instead of falling way behind on the swim as I usually do since I'm a slow fish, I got to get in the bike with a decent lead. As expected, Martin blew by me on the bike (as did two other guys), but the 10-mile ride wasn't enough for anybody to put me out of striking distance. I was able to ease up after I retook the lead about halfway through the 3-mile run to take my second victory at Wolf Creek (results here).

Jen and Ben's Wedding

2008-06-15T09:55:00.000-05:00

Over Memorial Day weekend, my sister, Jen, got married at Mill Creek Inn in Salt Lake City. It was a beautiful day and the whole affair, wedding and reception, took place on the outdoor pavilion pictured here. I officiated the ceremony, which was a great honor and was a lot of fun. The second picture here shows my brother's girlfriend standing in for my sister during the dry run a couple of hours before the ceremony, since we were unable to rehearse at the site before. The third picture of Jen and Ben with me in the background was taken during the ceremony, which I stole from Darcie's website where there are lots of nice photos. My album, which has lots from the weekend, but little from the actual wedding events, is here. The last photo is of my brother and I with the bride after the ceremony.

There was a ton of family there and everything was so much fun and the reception was a blast as well.

Backpacking in the San Rafael Swell

2008-06-15T09:33:00.000-05:00

When I went out to Utah for my sister's wedding (more on that in another post), I got in a little backpacking trip. My brother, his girlfriend, my cousin, and my aunt went for a two-night expedition in the San Rafael Swell in Central Utah. We had a really great time hiking in the area near Mexican Mountain. It ended up raining on us off and on every day (in the desert!), but the advantage was that the entire desert was in bloom! There are a few pictures of some of the flowers in the post here, and a whole lot more here.

The last picture in this post shows a snake eating a lizard (click on it to see more clearly). Brian saw something fall out of a tree near our campsite and it turned out it was a snake that had just caught a lizard. We got to watch the whole eating process up close, which was incredible. There's a series in the photo album that documents most of the eating and I've got a video of part of it if you really want to see it.

How to Sew Your Own Bowties

2008-06-12T18:34:00.012-05:00

UPDATES (11/19/08): Note that I realized I wrote down the wrong seam allowance (although it doesn't matter much what you use) and it's now corrected in the text. Also, see the comments section for a printable pattern you can download!

I've been wearing bowties for years now and the majority of my collection are homemade ties. I started making my own bowties for multiple reasons:

Bowties are hard to find in stores
Bowties in stores are expensive
I don't have enough hobbies (yeah, right...)

Here is my brief tutorial on how to sew your own.

Pattern Sure, you can probably buy a pattern somewhere probably. But if you've got one bow-tie handy, you can just make a pattern. You'll just have to do this for your first project anyway. Set your presumably adjustable bowtie to the length designed for your neck size and trace one half of the length of the bowtie onto a piece of paper. At the middle of the tie, cut the paper at a 45 degree angle (not perpendicular to the bowtie) since you're going to want to cut your material on the bias. Then add whatever seam allowance you want as a border; I use a ~~1/8"~~ 1/4" seam allowance.

Material Bowties should ideally be made of silk, but you can make them out of whatever material strikes your fancy. I've made some ties that I like quite nicely out of cotton as well. Truly anything works. The key to a tie that will tie up well is good stiff interfacing. The worst bowtie I have is a storebought one that has terribly thin interfacing (or maybe none at all?) and it won't hold a good shape at all. I usually buy half a yard of material, which gives me plenty of room to cut on the bias and I have lots of leftover if I want to make more ties or a pocket square to go along with the tie.

If you have no idea about sewing (like I did when I started this a few years ago), when you cut out the material, the material should be folded in half (so you'll get two things for every one you cut out). When you cut on the bias, that means to lay your pattern on the material at a 45 degree angle from the grain of the material.

Cut out 2 (you get four pieces) of your material from the pattern and 1 (you get two pieces) of your pattern from the interfacing.

Cut your material:
Cut your interfacing:

Ready your sewing machine You'll need a sweet sewing machine like mine. This was my grandmother's machine and it is fabulous. It doesn't really matter what color thread you use because your seams will be hidden if you follow my directions below. I like to be in the ballpark in case some of the thread peaks out.

Connect the Pieces You'll now have 6 pieces, each of which are half of the bowtie. You'll want to sew them into 3 pieces, each of which is the shape of a bowtie. Two will be your material and one will be your interfacing. To do this, pin your pieces together as shown below and sew a seam ~~1/8"~~ 1/4" in.

When you unfold the pieces, they should look like this, with the "right" sides facing the same direction and the seam on the "wrong sides".
Next, flatten out the seam by ironing it down. You can trim off the corners that stick out of the edges at this point as well.

Sew in the Interfacing Pin the "wrong" side of one of your pieces of material together with the interfacing. Sew the material and the interfacing together. I like to stay further to the outside than my seam allowance because it prevents this seam from showing when I do the final seam that will be the actual border when the tie gets inverted.

Sew on the Final Piece of Material Pin the "right sides" of the tie material together and sew the whole thing together. You'll have the "wrong" side out on one side and the interfacing on the other side, with your other piece of material sandwiched in between. Halfway through the neck portion, leave a gap of a few inches because you'll need to invert your tie through that space. Here, you'll want to make sure your entire seam is inside the previous seam that you sewed or you'll end up with that seam showing on your finished tie.

Trim Trim away excess material, particularly around the corners. This will prevent you from having lumps in your tie when you invert it.

Invert Pull your tie inside-out through the gap where you didn't sew on the neck so that the interfacing goes inside and the right sides of your tie are now out. This part can be tediously difficult because you have to pull the "bow" parts out through that narrow little neck opening and it can be hard to do. Have patience, though, because you're almost done! I use a chopstick to help me push the tie through.

Hand-stitch the opening Now you need to sew up the opening that you just pulled everything through. It's okay if you're terrible at this part (I am!) because this is going to hide inside the collar of your shirt anyway. This is the last step. You'll just need to iron it to flatten the whole thing out.

Tie! The last step is to tie your tie. Hopefully if you're up to sewing a bowtie, you already know how to tie one. I'm sure you can find a video tutorial somewhere (perhaps I can make my own?). I found that it's easier to practice on your leg than on your neck while you're first learning. I also like to throw in a pocket square. You don't actually have to sew this; just fold up a scrap of your material!

Finally some updates

2008-06-10T09:37:00.000-05:00

It has been pointed out to me by several people that I haven't posted in a long time. I guess I got into a posting slump since my next post was to be the results of the Boston Marathon. Boston was a huge bust, so I didn't really want to write about it. I finished, but I was really incredibly disappointed. In short, I had a stomach pain that hit me like a ton of bricks at about mile 14. Eek, what a horrible race.I have lots of goodies to post, so I'll try to put a few up here and there and I'll just go through some of the folders of my pictures and put up a few things. I think there's a scientific post or two coming in the future (tons of people use google to hit my blog on my UHV posts looking for information...I guess I should include more technical details--note to the many people who find my blog looking for "UHV bakeout temperature" : read your manuals to find out what temperature each part of your system can be baked!).

On the 3rd of May, we had "Derby de Mayo, a Mustachio Bashio" at my house. Four of us grew two-week mustaches for the ocassion. You can see how pathetic our two week efforts were in the picture here. A much nicer picture is that of a mint julep. I put the nice julep cup that I got as a high school graduation gift years ago (thanks Bob and Judy!) to good use for the Derby.

2008 Boston Marathon

2008-04-20T10:23:00.002-05:00

I've got lots of exciting things to post about at some point including my trip to watch Davidson in the Sweet 16 and the Elite 8, but right now I'm in Boston for tomorrow's marathon! I'll be wearing bib # 2874 tomorrow.

Headed to the Sweet 16!

2008-03-25T11:03:00.002-05:00

Davidson College is in the Sweet 16!

And I'm going to watch!!

Yesterday, my good buddy and former teammate Jonathan, who's working on his masters at Purdue, and I bought tickets for the NCAA Div-1 Men's Basketball Midwest Regional tournament at Ford Field in Detroit. We tried to get tickets through Davidson, but because we both had to talk with our advisors to make sure we were clear to take off early on Friday, we weren't able to call the ticket office first thing when it opened. We found out which section Davidson fans were spilling into and called Ticketmaster to buy tickets in that section.

The excitement around Davidson making it to the Sweet 16 has been awesome. Normally when I tell people that I went to Davidson, I get confused looks and have to explain that it's a small liberal-arts school in North Carolina. Last night, I spoke at a Teach For America matriculation dinner and when I mentioned Davidson, lots of smiles, nods of recognition, and comments about how Davidson screwed up their brackets.

My sister pointed me toward an awesome blog that has a compilation of much of the press that Davidson has been getting recently. It's definitely worth looking at: davidsonbasketball.blogspot.com

It's a great day to be a Wildcat!

It's a great day to be a Wildcat!

2008-03-21T14:28:00.000-05:00

Two nights ago I colored a Davidson Wildcats easter egg in honor of my alma mater's presence in the NCAA basketball tournament. I just took a slightly extended lunch to watch the 'Cats come back from an 11 point deficit to beat Gonzaga in the first round of the tournament 82-76, our first tournament win since 1969. Davidson also just extended its winning streak to 23 consecutive games, the longest active streak in the country. Stephen Curry posted 40 points in the game, 30 of them coming in the second half.

O' Davidson!

Running: Delavan Half Marathon and a fun workout

2008-03-14T18:09:00.002-05:00

Last Sunday I ran the Delavan Frostbite Classic in a time of 1:17:05 to finish 4th overall and 1st in my age group. I went to the race with several guys that I run with and then ran through 10 miles with my training partner Harley. You can see the two of us together in a classic picture here. We ran the first 6 miles right on 6:00 pace and then dropped down into the 5:40's. I stayed there through the end while Harley dropped into the 5:30's for the last few miles. We trained through the race doing a high volume week and warming up 3 and cooling down 5 to get in 21 miles for the day, so I was quite pleased with the run.

On Tuesday this week, we wanted to get in some kind of speed work, but also wanted to recover adequately from the half marathon. So the group of 7 guys went out to the outdoor track (the first Tuesday in 2 months with suitable enough weather to do speedwork outside!) to do 12 quarters with a 200 meter jog in between (Harley and I tacked on an extra four intervals to make it 16). To spice things up, we added the following workout:

Before the interval, you had to call your split (Harley and I called 74 every time). Then you had to run the interval without looking at your watch at all. After you stopped your watch, if you hit your split exactly to the 1/100th of a second (eg 1:14.00), everybody had to buy you a beer (meaning you'd get a 6-pack). Everybody was all over the place on the first couple, but then we settled into the groove and Harley and I were hitting within a tenth almost every time. On one of mine, I ran 1:13.99! It was so funny because the odds are incredibly slim, but you'd get SO close and everybody would freak out. It was really fun. We decided early on that if nobody hit the pot by the 12th one, we'd do sudden death. We had a big gust of wind on the 12th one so it was really hard to judge the pace, so Pat ended up winning a 6-pack by only running within 0.3 of his called split because everybody else had one of their worst efforts.

Indonesian Cultural Night

2008-03-14T17:56:00.003-05:00

The undergraduate who I work with in my lab is the vice president of the Indonesian Students Club and she invited me to attend their Indonesian Cultural Night last Sunday. There was a lot of traditional dance and music and clothing, but my favorite part by far was when the played the Anklung. They played "America the Beautiful" and a more traditional Indonesian song. Each instrument is just one note and they all play together much like a bell choir does. I took a short video of one part of "America the Beautiful" which you can watch here.

Chicago Marathon

2008-02-29T10:39:00.000-06:00

Last night, I registered for the 2008 Chicago Marathon. It will be my 4th marathon following this April's Boston and will be the first time that I've done two marathons in a year. I went ahead and registered since it always fills up early and was already to half capacity, even though the race isn't until October.

On Monday, it will be just 7 weeks until the Boston Marathon. I've done at least 11 consecutive weeks at 50+ miles (okay, technically 48+). Last week was 65 with a 22 mile long run. The long run was a fun one too, because my training partner, Harley, and I ran down to the village of Philo ("The Center of the Universe" according to their water tower) and stopped by the house of a guy from our running group who gave us water and a 2 mile running tour of Philo. We've also been doing some really good quality workouts. One of these days, I'll get around to putting my running log online once I find a suitable venue for it. I already keep it electronically with SportTracks.

I've also been coveting the new Garmin Forerunner 405 ever since it was announced (supposedly, they'll start selling it at the Boston Marathon). I've got the Forerunner 301 and while I love it, I don't like that I have to wait on it to sync up. At home, not a problem because I throw it in the window and it's ready to go by the time I'm dressed and ready to run. But I run most days from work and I work in a laser lab and the watch can't pick up a signal even from inside the doors of my monstrosity of a building. In the really cold Illinois winter, I simply don't wait on it to sync and it won't sync while I'm running or at least a couple of miles in (it's much faster at acquiring satellites when I'm standing still), so I always have to adjust the data that it downloads to my computer.

The primary reason I want a newer one of these things is that they have better accuracy and they acquire satellites faster. Now that they have this new one that's the size of a normal watch and has a week of battery life when the GPS receiver isn't on (and since I broke my regular watch), it's tempting to sell my current one and pick up one of these. Of course, for about $40, I could just buy a new regular watch as well and keep running with my 301.

Valentines

2008-02-13T20:43:00.002-06:00

I stumbled upon these amazing Scientist Valentines the other day.

It's science.

Michael Jordan, the Big10 Network, Bruce's sideline shuffle, and learning to read

2008-02-07T18:19:00.000-06:00

Last week, Michael Jordan came to watch his son, Jeff, play in the game against Purdue. Illinois is terrible at basketball this year, so of course, we lost the game. Jeff actually got a few minutes of playing time, which usually doesn't happen until towards the end of the game. And M. Jordan's presence most certainly did not go unnoticed at the game.

The Big10 Network started this year amidst a wealth of controversy. It's not on the local cable networks and is available only on satellite here. I've only watched it a few times and I've always gotten the impression that it's somewhat unpolished. Now you can see why. The second picture here shows two people trying to hold up the Big10 Network background behind the commentators for the halftime show at the Purdue game. Really professional....

The most entertaining part of the game was when Bruce Weber, the Illinois coach, got a technical foul. Afterwards, his assistants had to hold him back from what looked like a certain brawl with the officials. Then he threw of his jacket onto the bench and stood inches away from the Purdue player who was to inbound the ball next to the IL bench. When the player moved away, Bruce slid up right next to him. The player moved a second time. And Bruce slid up next to him a second time.

This year, the CUMTD added a game-day bus for football and basketball games that starts at my building and runs directly to the game. On the way back, I noticed the GED sign, which reads "Who's Life is it?" at the top.

Cross Country Skiing

2008-02-03T15:28:00.000-06:00

Yesterday I went out to Allerton Park with a few of my running buddies to go cross country skiing for the first time. We got up early and it was a beautiful morning on the deserted trails on the south side of the park. Only one skier had been out before us making tracks and for several miles the only tracks were from animals (we saw a fox twice while skiing).

I rented my skis from the outdoor center on campus and we got in a good ten miles of skiing. It was a really good workout! My hip flexors and my groin are really sore today, but it didn't cause me too much trouble on my 20 mile run (first 20 miler of my Boston training!).

We started at a temperature of about 25 F and it was a beautifully sunny and quiet morning. The last 30 minutes or so were much more difficult, though, because it had warmed up and the snow got really sticky and started clumping to the bottoms of our skis making it really hard to glide and we had to stop to clean them off. Up until that point, though, it was beautiful conditions in 8 inches of fresh snow. Pictured here are Paul about to break fresh tracks, me, and me with Craig, Paul, and Duane.

FAT

2008-01-26T17:56:00.000-06:00

Fully Automatic Timing

Today I learned to operate a FinishLynx system and ran the backup camera for the indoor track meet at the University of Illinois.

The systems are quite impressive and are how I was timed when I ran college track. It was nice to see how incredibly precise the timing is because a time-lapse photo built out of thousands of photos of the finish line every second are pieced together and the timer aligns a bar with the finisher's torso to determine the finishing time. My times were at most 0.02 seconds different from the lead timer's and were usually exactly on or within 0.01 seconds (I didn't check to further precision, but the timing goes down to the 10-thousandth of a second).

Home Theater Stadium Seating Riser

2008-01-25T16:18:00.000-06:00

A couple of weeks ago, I put together stadium seating for my basement theater. It measures roughly 7'2 3/4" x 5' x 9" giving enough lift for two rows of seating. The materials involved were:

2 - 8' - 2x8's, which were cut to make the long ends of the frame
4 - 10' - 2x8's, which were cut to make the 8 cross pieces of the frame
2 - 4x8 - 3/4" OSB board - which were used to make the surface

The lumber cost me about $65, which I picked up at Home Depot with my friend Jeff in his truck. My running buddy Harley let me borrow his circular saw and I first cut all of the boards. Note in the picture the cornhole game my grandfather made me that is set up in the basement for winter play.

Next, I assembled the frame as pictured and held it together with 2 3/4" general construction screws. Then I screwed the plywood on the top and put the seating in place. I'd like to carpet it at some point, but it works well (and is nice and sturdy!) and makes a nice addition to the theater.

Siberian Express Trail Run

2008-01-08T19:04:00.000-06:00

On Saturday, I raced the Siberian Express Trail Run at Kickapoo State Recreation Area, which is put on by the Kennekuk Runners. It was probably the sloppiest race that I've ever competed in and it was a lot of fun. I finished fourth overall in the race with a 46:09.5 for the 7.45 mile course (6:11/mile). I was battling for position through about mile 5 and then ended up in no-man's land all by myself for the last stretch of the race. I had a lot of fun and I still need to clean up my seriously muddy spikes; even 1/4" of metal didn't keep me from sliding all over the place. Considering the difficulty of the course and the slippery conditions, I'm pretty pleased with the way that I ran. The top 5 male and female finishers won race sweatshirts, which Marla and I showed off later that day (Marla was the 3rd female finisher).

(Photos from during the race taken by Dave Ghent)

Marathon Save Lives

2007-12-21T14:14:00.000-06:00

The last couple of months have featured two prominent marathoning deaths. The first happened during the October meltdown at the Chicago Marathon where extreme temperatures led to the race being shut down early and one runner died. The autoposy indicated that it wasn't the race conditions that killed him, though, but rather a pre-existing heart condition. The second was the surprising death of elite runner Ryan Shay around mile 5 of the US Olympic trials. Yet despite the press garnered by these events, running marathons is not only safe, but may actually lower the number of deaths.

There is, of course, overwhelming evidence that running has health benefits. But a new study published in the British Medical Journal indicates that not only is the chance of dying during a marathon slim, but that the number of motor vehicle fatalaties prevented by road closures drastically exceeds the number of people dying during the race.

If you don't feel like reading the journal article itself, the New York Times has a nice summary of the report.

This is good news for people like me who think that it's worth running in at-freezing temperature freezing rain to train for a marathon. Pictured here are my friend Jonathan and I after a recent run from my house. You can see the layer of ice that formed on the bill of my running hat below.

Speaking of which, here's my planned marathon schedule, which constitute the 5 races of the World Marathon Majors:

April 2008, Boston
October 2008, Chicago
April 2009, London
November 2009, New York City
September 2010, Berlin (click on the British flag at the top for English)

Fresh Pasta

2007-12-12T18:19:00.000-06:00

The other night, 19 people ate homemade pasta at my place. I can't take much credit beyond the dough, though, because everybody else brought the rest of the food and I was barely successful at rolling and cutting the dough. I used to roll out the dough with my mom growing up, but the past two years people have had to take over for me to make the magic with the pasta maker that my sister gave me last year for Christmas. This year, Craig and Suvda did the bulk of the pasta and managed to make a huge set of noodles out of an entire recipe of dough (we made five recipes worth). Here's my mom's super-simple recipe for the dough, which makes delicious fresh pasta:

2.5 cups flour
a little salt
~3 eggs

Mix in the food processor and add ~1T of water until the mixture balls up into a ball of dough.

Delectable!

The Wiener Sausage

2007-12-11T22:53:00.000-06:00

I was just introduced by my roommate to the mathematical Wiener sausage. My first introduction came from this abstract:

We consider the Wiener sausage among Poissonian obstacles. The obstacle is called hard if Brownian motion entering the obstacle is immediately killed, and is called soft if it is killed at certain rate. It is known that Brownian motion conditioned to survive among obstacles is confined in a ball near its starting point. We show the weak law of large numbers, large deviation principle in special cases and the moment asymptotics for the volume of the corresponding Wiener sausage. One of the consequence of our results is that the trajectory of Brownian motion almost fills the confinement ball.

I had trouble believing that this could be real, but it's very real indeed. In fact, it turns out that there's a Wiener measure.

Because I have the sense of humor of a 12-year old, I was dying to learn more. A quick search of Google Scholar yielded some great titles (links provided to prove that I'm not making this up):

"Fluctuation Results for the Wiener Sausage" from nothing other than The Annals of Probability
"On the Volume of the Wiener Sausage"
"Asymptotics for the wiener sausage with drift"
"On the volume of the intersection of two Wiener sausages"
and my personal favorite "Long time asymptotics for the shrinking Wiener sausage"

Read any other good scholarly articles on the Wiener sausage lately?

UHV Part 2, the Bake-Out

2007-12-11T18:53:00.000-06:00

Last month, I wrote about how we seal flanges using copper gaskets on our Ultra-High-Vacuum (UHV) system. Just sealing a system up, however, does not get rid of all the air and hooking a standard Hoover up to it won't do the job either. In fact, just hooking up all of our more sophisticated pumps won't do the job either. They work to keep us at UHV once the low pressures are achieved, but they won't do the job just by being turned on at atmosphere. In order to get to UHV pressures after venting the system to atmosphere, we have to do what is called a "bake-out."

The reason that UHV pumps cannot evacuate the chambers to UHV pressures from atmosphere is due to the fact that lots of atmospheric molecules (water is a particularly nasty one) stick to all of the surfaces. While the pumps can evacuate the gas molecules, they will be constantly replenished by molecules desorbing from the walls of the chambers to enter the gas phase. The idea of a bake-out is simple: heat the heck out of the chambers while pumping on them to encourage almost all of the molecules to come off of the walls to get pumped out over the course of a few days.

In practice, the basics of the bake-out are shown in these pictures. Once the system is completely sealed and leak tested, the entire system is wrapped with heating tapes and we place thermocouples everywhere on the system that we want to monitor. These heating tapes are phenomenally expensive and consist of nothing more than a piece of wire in some fiberglass that you plug into the wall; whoever manufactures these things must make a killing, particularly because they burn out all the time. Once the heating tapes are in place, we wrap the entire system in several layers of aluminum foil. This helps distribute the heat from the tapes over the entire chamber since the chambers themselves are made of the very poorly thermally conducting stainless steel. The tapes are then plugged into variacs, which let us apply however much voltage we want to them (to heat whatever parts of the chamber are wrapped in them to the desired temperatures) rather than just the 120 V from the wall.

For a few days, we slowly ramp the temperature up on the system without letting the pressure get too high. The goal is to get each part of the system as hot as we can without damaging any parts of the system (in this case, our microscope, which has a heat tolerance of about 150 C) or any of the seals, which vary from 150 C to 250 C. Once we have the system nice and hot, we say that it is at "full bake." We monitor the temperature at various places in and on the system with the thermocouples that we put on the system before wrapping it, plugging our thermocouple reader into each. We let the system sit at full bake for several days while we monitor the pressure, the presence of various atmospheric gases, and the temperature. Additionally, we do several procedures such as degassing filaments (turning any filaments on in the system to hot to desorb gases from them), regenerating our non-evaporable getters, and "burping" our ion pumps. (These terms are for another future UHV post on the five different types of pumps we use.) Finally, we switch the UHV side of the system over to the ion pumps and cool everything down. When we cool the system down, we cool the core of the system down first and the extremities last because we don't want gas molecules readsorbing at the extremities before the bake-out is complete. If all has gone well, when the system reaches room temperature, the pressures inside will be classified as ultra-high-vacuum!

How To Love The Long Run From Runner's World.com

2007-12-09T22:35:00.000-06:00

I was reading RW tonight and really enjoyed this article. I laughed in the first paragraph because when I'm on vacation with my family, they have to deal with me scheduling my long runs.

How To Love The Long Run From Runner's World.com

Happy Birthday, Jesus!

2007-11-29T20:45:00.000-06:00

When I was home for Thanksgiving, I drove out to CCC Vineyard, run by our friend, with my longtime friends Maura and Sarah. On our way out Hwy 519 near Morehead, we were treated to some lovely Jesus paraphernalia.

Ultra High Vacuum

2007-11-13T19:12:00.000-06:00

I've written very little about what I actually do in the lab, so I'm going to try to put up a few posts that explain some of what I do. This serves 2 purposes:

1) To give some relevant information about some topics that may not have clear explanations easily found elsewhere.

2) (more importantly) So that my father can reference it multiple times when he tries to remember the acronyms related to my work.

Today's acronym: Ultra-high Vacuum (UHV). Since there's a lot that goes into UHV technology, this post will focus specifically on copper gaskets.

While the UHV part of what I do takes up a lot of my time, it's not directly related to my actual research, but we cannot do the research without the vacuum. Ultra-high vacuum is usually defined as pressures that are lower than 10^-10 torr. One atmosphere of pressure is 760 torr and this is anything below 0.0000000001 torr. In simple terms, there is very little air inside the chambers in which we work and even the tiniest leak ruins our ability to be at UHV. So the question arises, how do you seal all of the separate pieces so that there are no leaks? The answer is conflat flanges and copper gaskets. The first picture shows a 2 3/4" conflat flange setup. On the right is the STM (scanning tunneling microscope...the part that is related to our research) chamber and the left is a small window built into a flange. The inner ring of the flange is what is known as a "knife edge." The knife edge is an angled part of the stainless steel with a sharp edge that will cut into the copper gasket.
The second image shows a copper gasket that fits perfectly into the knife edges on both flanges. It's just a flat copper disk that comes clean and sealed inside its own plastic pouch that we open just before we install it between the flanges. Since copper is relatively soft, the steel knife edges will bite into the copper gasket as the flanges are tightened towards each other, leaving an impermeable metal-metal seal, which prevents even single gas molecules from entering the high vacuum side.
This picture shows a larger conflat flange with the copper gasket stuck to the knife edge after being removed from the system. In this picture, you can see the ring where the knife edge on the other side bit into the copper gasket to make the seal. The consequence of this sealing mechanism is that gaskets can only be used once, so everytime a flange is opened (hopefully, you never have to open them, but that's wishful thinking), you have to put in a new copper gasket and discard the old one. This gasket doesn't show it, but often the edge outside the knife edge will be greenish where the copper oxidized on the atmospheric side of the seal, but the inside part of the knife edge will still have a pristine copper shine because it was on the UHV side and was not exposed to oxygen.
The last step is to actually tighten the flanges together, which we do by evenly tightening down a set of bolts to pull the flanges toward each other until the vacuum seal is achieved. It doesn't always work the first time and can fail if there is a tiny scratch in the knife edge or a piece of grit gets in the knife edge, leaving a small passageway for gas molecules to enter. The only way we know that has happened is by leak testing, but that's another post!

Mentoring

2007-11-03T13:57:00.001-05:00

A few weeks ago, I started mentoring through Champaign-Urbana One to One. It's a school-based mentoring program (unlike a community based mentoring program; eg Big Brothers and Sisters), where I spend an hour a week with my student at school. So every Monday morning, I ride my bike to Urbana Middle School and meet with my 6th grade student. I'll stay with the same student year after year as well so that we can develop a long-term relationship.

I've only been to mentor for two weeks now and I absolutely love it and am so excited to go every week. With how much I miss the classroom, I knew that I was going to love it. It's a completely different experience than being a classroom teacher for a lot of reasons, primarily because I have just one student and the focus is not academic. Although we've already started reading together some, the focus is not academic; it's on having a fun, positive relationship, so we spend time outside kicking the soccer ball or playing games like foosball in the "splash room" at the middle school.

If you're in the Champaign-Urbana area, you should definitely look into CU1to1, but no matter where you are, you should consider mentoring. A commitment like an hour a week means nothing to your schedule and can meet a lot to a kid (and to you too!). My experience with Teach For America helped me realize how badly students need advocates and this is one way to play a positive role for students and for society.

Trick or Treaters

2007-11-01T12:21:00.001-05:00

In 2006, I had 159 trick or treaters come to my house. This year, we totally dominated that with 230! My favorite trick or treater was the one who repeatedly said, "My momma said don't give me gum. I can't have gum. Don't give me gum. I'll swallow it. My momma says don't give me gum." I also enjoyed the really little ones who tried to wander into the house and the kid who walked up to the screen door and yelled "Open the door!"

Milk as a chemical reagent

2007-10-30T13:03:00.000-05:00

I was just reading this paper from Nano Letters, and found the following sentence quite entertaining (the bolding is mine):

"Nonspecific binding of rhodamine-labeled anti-Ad 12 Knob protein attached to carbon nanotubes was prevented by blocking this reaction with 4% milk, which contains a number of unrelated, nonspecific proteins in high concentrations."

Allerton Trail Race

2007-10-28T22:40:00.000-05:00

I ran the Allerton Trail Race this morning for the second year in a row and finished in second place overall for the second year in a row. My running buddy Harley Johnson took first place in the race. I finished the 5.5 mile race in 31:20.4 (5:42/mile pace). It was a beautiful morning and a bunch of guys from my lunchtime running group ran really well. The picture here was taken from the album of a member of the Second Wind Running Club, who puts on the race.

I love running the trails at Allerton (and need to make it out there more often), which is a park owned by the University of Illinois about 30 minutes away from campus. The race is a well-run event and has a really nice spread of baked goods after the race provided by members of the club. My one gripe about the race was the couple of places where the course was not marked at all. About 100 meters into the race the guy leading nearly led us astray rather than taking us down into the trails and then when I was leading just past the mile mark and came to an unmarked Y, I had to turn back to the guys behind me and ask if I had taken the right fork. Then as I was coming down the last hill, Harley turned back to me and threw his hands up in the air because there were cones running in two different directions through the field. At the time, I thought he was shrugging at me as if to ask, "why didn't you give me a better race than this," but it turned out he was just confused about the course.

Carbon Based Curiosities

2007-10-26T10:28:00.000-05:00

My friend Aaron who shares a chemistry blog with a Kentuckian (mentioned previously here), have upgraded to a new look. I've updated the link on my sidebar, but you should give the new Carbon Based Curiosities a look.

Bonk Hard Racing :: Castlewood 8-Hour

2007-10-25T20:16:00.000-05:00

I got recruited to fill in for somebody who can't make it to an adventure race that's coming up at the beginning of December in Missouri the other night while I was out. I'm really excited because I've done a couple of adventure races before and love it.

I'll be on a 4-man team and it should take us 5-8 hours to complete the mountain biking, running, canoeing, hiking, orienteering, and mystery events.

Bonk Hard Racing :: Castlewood 8-Hour

Pumpkin Carving

2007-10-25T17:55:00.000-05:00

Several of my friends came over last night and we carved pumpkins. Here are 6 of the 7 pumpkins carved last night on my front porch. We need impartial judges to decide who wins the award of excellence. Leave a comment telling which pumpkin is your favorite.

Fall

2007-10-25T14:14:00.000-05:00

I was on my bike ride home the other day and somebody was taking a picture with a cell phone as I rode toward her. I was trying to figure out why she was taking my picture (aside from me looking really ridiculously good looking in my bike helmet) and then I glanced behind me. I pulled my camera out of my pocket and took some shots over my shoulder.

The first picture here is headed east the direction I was riding and shows the awesome bright red fall trees that I ride past every day on Pennsylvania Ave in Urbana. The second picture is the best of the ones that I took over my shoulder to the west as I was riding. Not bad for a blindly taken shot, eh?

I love fall, except for the fact that it means the ridiculously cold Illinois winter is on the horizon.

Illini Madness

2007-10-24T17:50:00.000-05:00

Speaking of basketball season, we went to Illini madness a few weeks ago. To get in, you had to buy a $7 pink t-shirt, $2 of which went to Coaches vs. Cancer. So, in the spirit of breast cancer awareness month, we painted Assembly Hall pink.

It was kind of fun to go to the event once, but I doubt I'll go again. It's really not that exciting, but it was good to experience. Plus, I now have a sweet pink Illini basketball t-shirt, which I actually wore to the lab today.

Illinois Football

2007-10-24T17:44:00.000-05:00

I have student season tickets to Illinois football and went to the game against Michigan last Saturday. It was a really exciting game, which we unfortunately ended up losing. We made some huge mistakes that cost us the game, what with roughing the kicker on a punt, blatant pass interference, and a dropped fair catch that resulted in a turnover.

It's hard to justify buying single game tickets when they're $24 for students and the season tickets are $60 (6 games). Plus you get extra points towards your seating priority for basketball season (we have much better seats for basketball this year than our 3rd from the top row last year)! The football season tickets come in the form of vouchers which you trade in on game week for seats, so you can sit with whoever you want to that week. I go with a group of chemistry grad students, some of whom are pictured with me here.

The last picture shows "Block I," which is part of the student section that does a halftime show holding up colored cards to make various symbols and write things out. Since our quarterback's name is "Juice Williams" part of the routine always involves a glass filled with juice that then slowly unfills as everyone chants "chug chug chug!"

I'm now a Wikipedia author

2007-10-16T22:40:00.000-05:00

Yesterday evening, I made my first contribution to Wikipedia, a major overhaul to the article on Surface Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy (which was a fairly minimal article before I contributed). We had to write a Wikipedia article on a surface science technique for my Surface Physics course. In December, I'll be posting an article on some topic within surface thermodynamics.

Surface Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Owen's Wedding

2007-10-13T13:30:00.000-05:00

Last weekend, I went to North Carolina for the wedding of my good college friend, Owen. It was one of the most fun weddings I've been do and the food was unbelievable. Here's a link to my pictures.

Greg

Owen's Wedding

Spanish Love Song

2007-10-11T18:24:00.000-05:00

This is so beautiful.

MUSIC - SPANISH LOVE SONG

Cave Run Storytelling Festival

2007-10-02T17:38:00.000-05:00

This past weekend, I made a quick trip back to Morehead for the 9th annual Cave Run Storytelling Festival. It was a beautiful weekend and, as always, the storytelling was amazing. Here's a picture of the venue at the beach area in the Twin Knobs Recreation area at Cave Run Lake. I was the emcee for 4 of the tellers during the Saturday afternoon session. One of my favorite tellers, Donald Davis, was at the festival, but I came away with another new teller to add to the list of the favorites: Kevin Kling.

Mark your calendar for next year's festival; it's always the last weekend in September.

More Fame!

2007-09-01T22:49:00.000-05:00

I don't know how long it will last, but check out ukathletics.com where I'm "featured" watching my brother last year. You can see my dad's hat, me, my brother's girlfriend's forehead, and my mom. Go 'Cats!

My 15 Minutes of Fame

2007-08-31T15:12:00.000-05:00

I was recently featured in the Sep/Oct, 2007 issue of In Chemistry magazine, which is a publication of the American Chemical Society for undergraduates. The article was on taking time off before graduate school and it talks briefly about my experience with Teach For America. I'm on page 15.

On Becoming a Professional Athlete

2007-08-28T18:03:00.000-05:00

On Saturday, I raced the 12th Annual Mahomet 5K. There was $100 of prize money for the winner and the race hadn't been won in under 17 minutes in several years, so I figured that I would try my luck. Of course, every time that I think that I can just show up and win a race, someone else even faster does the same thing, so I couldn't count on it being a sure thing.

I saw lots of fast-looking guys warming up--some of whom I know are fast--but as luck would have it, all the guys that I was worried about entered the half marathon instead of the 5K, which carried a $200 prize. I haven't been doing high enough volume training recently to feel confident racing a half, so I stuck with the shorter race. I didn't recognize anyone on the start line--and in a rare occurence in a 5K, people didn't even crowd the front line--and when the gun went off, nobody even attempted to go with me.

The first mile started downhill and despite the promises to myself that I would start out easy given the chance, I went through the mile in 4:54. Realizing how far ahead of everyone I was, I dropped the pace back to a nice, relaxed 5:50 for the remainder and cruised in to the finish at 17:16 a full minute ahead of the second place runner. Here I am pictured with my $100 check and first place plaque. Now that I've accepted a purse, I believe that makes me a professional athlete (at least in the eyes of the NCAA, for whom I don't have eligibility left anyway).

A gripe about the pace car: Somebody apparently wanted to show off his fancy old car from the 60's and drove it as the pace car for the 5K. The fumes from that thing were nearly unbearable! Just before the 2 mile mark, I caught up with the back of the half marathon pack that had started ten minutes before me and we had to cut across them to stay on the 5K course. The pace car had to wait for a break in the runners to get through and I ran up next to the car and yelled in "Stay behind me; your fumes are killing me!" For the rest of the race, the pace car drove behind me, but it didn't matter because the course was so well marked. Even the guy in second place over a minute back told me that he could smell the fumes. After the race, the driver of the car apologized to me...while sitting on his bike that he could have paced with. I guess the elites in marathons have had to deal with this kind of thing for a long time, but I can't see any reason why pace cars today in major races aren't hybrids, which would run on electric at running speeds.

Road Running - Road Runners Club of America - Programs National Run@Work Day

2007-08-23T21:06:00.000-05:00

Mark your calendars! Sep 21 is the 2nd Annual Run at Work Day!

Road Running - Road Runners Club of America - Programs National Run@Work Day

Blood Donation

2007-08-21T20:01:00.000-05:00

I gave blood for the first time today! I've wanted to give blood for a long time, but never really seeked it out and when the opportunity arose, couldn't for some reason or another (usually that I was in season for track or something). I was ineligible for a year after coming back from China, but I've been back over 12 months now, so my friend Mark and I went and gave blood for the first time at the Illini Union. Note the sweet Illini colored bandage (and the bulging bicep!). I also scored a free Illinois Football shirt out of the deal.

Of other important note in this photograph; the office in my house is no longer purple! Markita and I went to town last week with some Kilz "Poppy Seed" paint and brightened the place right up.

Pictures from Portugal and Spain!

2007-08-13T15:45:00.000-05:00

I trimmed our 564 photos down to 272. Note in the captions that Rossio, Baixa, Alfalma, Graca, and Bairro Alto are all names for parts of Lisbon. Click on the picture below to view the entire album.

Portugal and Spain

2007-08-08T19:24:00.000-05:00

Markita and I made an impromptu trip to Portugal and Spain starting on the 28th of July. We were supposed to come back on the 3rd of August, but since we were flying standby, we ended up getting stranded for 4 days in Lisbon. Our delay caused us to miss an important wedding (I'm so sorry, Ben and Elizabeth!), but the rest of the trip was fabulous. Here's a picture from the Castelo De Sao Jorge at the top of the Alfalma/Gracca area overlooking the Baixa area of Lisbon. I'll post much more and put up lots of pictures when I get the chance.

Illinois Bans Smoking in Public Places - washingtonpost.com

2007-07-24T09:20:00.000-05:00

I learned in the 5th grade that when a bill passes Congress and goes to the President's desk, he has ten days to take action on it or it automatically becomes a law. I began to question my 5th grade (or whatever grade it actually was) civics memory recently because several months ago the Illinois legislature passed a statewide smoking ban, but the newspaper for months referred to it as a piece of legislation that the governor is expected to sign. I did my research, however, and confirmed that 10 days is the case with the US President, but in Illinois, the legislature has 30 days to give the passed bill to the governor after which point he has 60 days to take action on it before it becomes state law.

I was pleased that the statewide smoking ban passed, though, because of the ridiculousness here in Champaign-Urbana. Both cities passed smoking bans that went into effect this January. In May, just days after Illinois passed the statewide ban, the city of Champaign (although not Urbana) repealed their smoking ban despite knowing that they would be trumped by state law in just 7 months. Maybe they thought the governor, who has alienated just about everybody from both parties, wouldn't sign it in the infinite amount of time this state gives him. Yesterday, however, the governor signed the ban into law:

Illinois Bans Smoking in Public Places - washingtonpost.com

USATF Championships and my Broken Camera

2007-07-12T16:50:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago, I went to the USATF Outdoor Track and Field National Championships in Indianapolis with my friend Jake. We sat on the second row and saw some amazing races, some pictures of which can be seen here. Unfortunately, I dropped my Canon Powershot S50 and broke the LCD. Reading around on the Internet, I discovered that it would be much cheaper to try to repair the camera myself, rather than sending it off for repair. I called Canon's New Jersey Parts center and ordered a new LCD for $49 including tax and shipping, which arrived within a couple of days. Then, I used this great website and in under an hour, had a fully-functional camera again.

Trek Bike Helmet

2007-07-12T16:02:00.000-05:00

One of the pieces of the ZipTite (the part that helps hold the helmet snugly to your head) on my Trek Sonic bike helmet recently broke. I emailed Customer Service from Trek's webiste and asked if there was any way that I could find a replacement for the part. Not only did they email me back unbelievably quickly, but once they identified the exact part that they needed from a few emails back and forth, they asked for my address and are sending me the replacement part for free. I've had the helmet for 2.5 years and they are sending me the part no questions asked. I was really impressed.

Pictured here is my beautiful bike helmet on a ride on the Rio Grande in Brownsville (Mexico in the background) taken last spring.

Who doesn't need one of these?

2007-07-11T13:00:00.000-05:00

This product is hilarious. But even funnier is the video.

Unclutterer: Unitasker Wednesday: The Towel-matic paper towel dispenser

Zucchini

2007-07-11T12:19:00.000-05:00

My garden is thriving right now and I picked the first of my zucchini this morning while I was watering. Here's a picture of my monstrous vegetable. Delicious!

My friend featured by Nature

2007-07-03T17:25:00.000-05:00

My friend Aaron Finke, who is an organic chemistry graduate student here at UIUC, has been running a chemistry blog, carbon-based curiosities. The journal Nature has a podcast and in the June edition, you can hear him starting at about 7 minutes in regarding the chemistry blogosphere.
Podcast : chemistry@nature.com

Sophisticated Science with Aluminum Foil

2007-07-02T17:53:00.000-05:00

We finally finished the repairs on our STM and are now doing what is known as a bake out in order to get our system back to ultra-high vacuum (UHV). This involves wrapping heating tapes around the instrument and then wrapping it with multiple layers of aluminum foil to distribute and insulate the heat. The heating causes particles that have been adsorbed to the interior of the chamber walls to come free. These particles are then evacuated from the chamber by a variety of pumps, which allows us to create a pristine, low-pressure system. Pictured here are my lab mate and me along with the great mythical foil beast.

Tin Woodsman

2007-06-28T11:29:00.000-05:00

We have been making repairs to our scanning tunneling microscope (STM) the past few days. Out system is normally kept under ultra high vacuum, so the interior hasn't been exposed to ambient conditions in about three years. We have to keep everything clean that goes inside the chambers, so we clean everything that goes inside in multiple solvents and when we work inside, it's always with gloves on. A small piece that we needed got dropped into the depths of the STM chamber, so I went in to retrieve it with foil wrapped around my arm to avoid contamination. We have since discovered that there are clean sleeves available in the lab for just this purpose, but they're not nearly as fun as wrapping yourself in aluminum foil.

Coming full circle | Philly | 05/29/2007

2007-06-22T15:12:00.000-05:00

I used a ton of Brent Maddin's material's in my high school classroom and observed him teach at the IDEA Academy as well. Here's a great story about him and the impact of TFA.

Coming full circle | Philly | 05/29/2007

George and Becca's Wedding

2007-06-18T16:33:00.000-05:00

My freshman hallmate (and the reason that I survived general chemistry...look at what I owe this guy) and senior year roommate, George got married this weekend in Chapel Hill, NC. I had a fabulous trip with a stop in Atlanta to see some friends before reuniting with a lot of great friends from college at the wedding. Here are the pictures.

My eloquent father

2007-06-11T17:07:00.000-05:00

My parents did a river cleanup on the Licking River this weekend and made the Lexington Herald Leader. My dad says he doesn't remember having said this, but it's pretty hilarious:

Kentucky.com | 06/11/2007 | River rolls along a bit cleaner now: "Ed Scott, a physician, hauled soggy cigarette packs and carpeting out of the river after making his rounds at a Morehead clinic.

'The idea that the people are getting together to make it beautiful, it's really great,' he said."

Triathlon Win

2007-06-10T00:04:00.000-05:00

This morning, I picked up my Ph.D. advisor at 5:10am and we drove south to Lake Shelbyville for the Wolf Creek State Park triathlon, which was a sprint of 0.25 mile swim, 10 mile bike, and 3 mile run. I was the 35th male out of the water, but I managed to win the triathlon. I finally ended my streak of having the fastest run (someone ran 2 seconds faster than me), but I'll happily trade that in for the overall win. I didn't take the lead until the last 600 meters and had to work really hard on the run to do it. I biked almost 2 mph faster than the last triathlon I did since I've spent a fair amount of time on the bike (still not enough, though), but I literally haven't swum a stroke since my last triathlon and think I could take a lot of time off there. My advisor also raced very well; he was in 2nd place coming off the bike (after having averaged 25.1 mph...smoking fast, but he is a competitive cyclist). We'll have to work on his running so that he can hold off a few more people, especially since the 40-45 age group is so competitive.
The complete results can be found here, which includes all splits for the race (note that I'm not yet 26, but for USAT, your age is that at the end of the calendar year).

Land Between the Lakes

2007-05-30T17:31:00.000-05:00

Two weekends ago, my good buddy Lori drove up from Atlanta and I drove down from Urbana and we met at the Land Between the Lakes on the KY and TN border in western Kentucky. We backpacked for two nights at a leisurely pace and did a lot of swimming. The first night, we forded across to a small island to camp the first night. The first picture shows Lori during sunset from our island campsight and the second shows her wading back across in the morning carrying our trekking poles and boots (I was the only one tall enough to carry our packs across and had to make a couple of trips). The water was perfect, though, in the mid-70's and we had a really nice backcountry trip. The last picture shows us with our finger companions, Virginia la Viajera and Teresa the Traveler. Loyal readers of the blog will recognize Teresa from our trip around the country in the summer of 2005. Lori got me Virginia in Mexico with the intention that I would take her to China, but she didn't arrive in the mail early enough, so she's making her travel album debut at LBL.

Memorial Day

2007-05-28T23:10:00.000-05:00

This morning I ran the Memorial Day 5K at the VA Hospital in Danville, IL. I rode over with a couple of guys that I run with sometimes during lunch, which made for a nice little trip (Danville is about 30 minutes east of C-U). Nevermind that I biked about 40 miles last night, I ran the 5K in 16:38 finishing in second place overall, so I was pretty pleased with the performance.

Last year for Memorial Day I helped my buddy Tiny--a purple-heart veteran--put on the Silent March in Brownsville. Since I couldn't be there this year, I wore my shirt and sent Tiny the picture of me wearing the shirt with him last year.

Tonight a few people came over for dessert and I made strawberry shortcake with lemon cream, which I'd been wanting to make since I saw it in Food & Wine Magazine. The recipe is here. I'd never made a lemon curd before so I read a few websites about it before I attempted to do it, which was a good thing because it's about as intense and invigorating an experience as I've had in the kitchen! There's a picture on the recipe website, which I mimicked as shown below. Delicious!

A Bright Idea

2007-05-24T20:47:00.000-05:00

I just replaced 6 of my old tungsten incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescents. The box advertises that I'll save $38 per bulb, which would be a savings of $228 for the six bulbs that I just installed. The box says that's based on 10 cents/kWh, but I just opened up my electric bill and after the Illinois rate increase (we had a 9-year rate freeze in the state), which pumped up bills over 40%, I'm paying over 13 cents/kWh. Still, I probably don't use my light bulbs as much as the average consumer, but even if I only get half the savings, that's quite the adjustment! (Addendum: the Phillips box makes it more clear than the GE box that the savings is over the lifetime of the bulb.) I'm planning to buy some more CFB's soon. I know that the bulbs are supposed to last 10 years, but I'm a little concerned because they do contain mercury and the boxes only have a tiny warning on the back that reads "Manage in Accord with Disposal Laws." I'm hoping that before everybody who's switched to CFB's start burning them out in a decade, there's some awareness about those laws.

I did a little research and it turns out that it's hard as heck to figure out where you can get rid of these things safely. I'll list some websites below, but you'll find that there are not many places right now that will take them off your hands and many are very inconvenient. Here's what the FAQ from GE says:

What do I do with a CFL when it burns out? What is the proper disposal of a CFL bulb?Follow these guidelines to dispose your CFL properly:
Like paint, batteries, thermostats, and other hazardous household items, CFLs should be disposed of properly. Do not throw CFLs away in your household garbage if better disposal options exist. To find out what to do first check www.earth911.org (where you can find disposal options by using your zip code) or call 1-877-EARTH911 for local disposal options. Another option is to check directly with your local waste management agency for recycling options and disposal guidelines in your community. Additional information is available at www.lamprecycle.org. Finally, IKEA stores take back used CFLs, and other retailers are currently exploring take back programs.
If your local waste management agency offers no other disposal options except your household garbage, place the CFL in a plastic bag and seal it before putting it in the trash. If your waste agency incinerates its garbage, you should search a wider geographic area for proper disposal options. Never send a CFL or other mercury containing product to an incinerator.
ENERGY STAR qualified CFLs have a two-year warranty. If the bulb fails within the warranty period, return it to your retailer.

My sister is engaged!

2007-05-21T17:19:00.000-05:00

I got a call from my sister Jen yesterday letting me know that she and her boyfriend (now fiance!), Ben had gotten engaged while in the Canyonlands on a hike. Here's a picture of my future bro'-in-law and my sister that I yanked from their photo album. I was generous and didn't snag the one where Ben's hair looks like it's as windy as it apparently was. Congrats, you two!

My worst nightmare come true

2007-05-21T10:14:00.000-05:00

We had a brood of cicadas emerge when I was in elementary school and I hated it. Looks like I'm in for more fun:

Swarms of cicadas emerging in Midwest | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle

MAYHEM TRIATHLON-DUATHLON 2007

2007-05-12T20:03:00.000-05:00

Last night, Craig Robinson and I drove down to Mattoon Beach to compete in the Multisport Mayhem (results) this morning. We got there in time to go for a quick spin on the bike and a quick dip in the lake before grabbing a bite to eat at Joe's pizza in the cute classic midwestern American town of Effingham. Then we camped along Lake Mattoon just a few hundred feet from the start of this morning's race. Craig won the race, taking a commanding lead on his blazing fast and sexy new tri bike and his fancy new disc wheel. I, having done minimal training on the bike or in the water, however, staggered along until I got to the run where I put down the fastest time in the field, running 16:55 for 3 miles (5:38/mi avg pace) despite the fact that I felt really sluggish going into the run, which earned me 10th overall and 3rd in the 25-29 age group. It was a perfectly beautiful day and we went for a swim in the lake (~75 degrees F) after the race as well and wolfed down the provided post-race pizza.

I was really impressed by how well run the event was and I'll probably head back for several of their other races this year. The course was well laid-out and staffed with support, the corners were swept on the bike route, and everything was fabulously organized complete with chip timing. I'm also incredibly impressed with the fact that the results are already posted online. The race organizer has taken on timing races as a full-time job, though, and it looks like he's doing a great job. I have nothing to complain about, except of course how weak my cycling legs are. It's time to spend some serious time in the saddle.

Triathlon Season Opener

2007-05-10T18:45:00.000-05:00

I've not been swimming or biking much, but I decided to go ahead and do a small sprint triathlon on Saturday, the Mattoon Beach Multisport Mayhem. It's short at 0.25 mile swim, 14.75 mile bike, and 3 mile run, so it's a good place to start. The race is put on by the same people who host the half-iron distance triathlon that I'm planning to do in September, so this will give me an opportunity to see how they run things. I'm going to the race with one or two other guys from the Fighting Illini Triathlon Club, so it should be a good time and a less than subtle reminder that I need to start spending some serious time in my bike saddle.

Brian's Graduation

2007-05-09T17:31:00.000-05:00

My brother graduated from the University of Kentucky with a degree in Geology this past weekend. Some important things to note about the photographs:
1) my grandfather's totally sweet and styling sunglasses
2) the Rupp Arena concession stand was open, complete with hot dogs

Carolina Gold

2007-05-09T17:26:00.000-05:00

My mom came to visit a few weeks ago and we did some yard work, including planting a few new plants that we bought at the Allerton Park plant sale. A few days ago, my Carolina Gold iris (purchased for its sentimental namesake) bloomed.

Wrigley's

2007-05-09T15:05:00.000-05:00

On the last day of classes, Lindsay, Apratim, and I went to the Union in search of a snack before we had to teach. Wrigley's was there giving away gum and other prizes. They kept handing me gum and telling me about its stress-relieving and brain-empowering properties despite my reassurances that I don't like gum. I tried to convince the PR representative to give me 60 packs of gum to give to my students during their final exam. Lindsay, Apratim, and I took advantage of the free photo booth (note that my pathetic attempt to give Apratim bunny ears resulted in giving him a unicorn). Later that afternoon, I got a call telling me that I had won the drawing for the Microsoft Zune. Nevermind that I don't even chew gum, I got lots of free stuff from them, so here's my plug for Wrigley's.

The Marathon

2007-04-17T10:46:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, I ran the 111th Boston Marathon. The Nor'Easter ended up giving way just a little bit for the race, so we didn't end up having to run in pouring rain (although we did run in some rain). We had a 30mph headwind, but most of the race it wasn't too noticeable because of the thick crowds of people along with some trees and houses, although we started to feel the wind pretty heavily once we hit the Newton Hills, so it was a tough time for the wind. I was running with my college teammates Ben and Jonathan and we were running with a few other people that we met up with as well, although we weren't all able to make it to the finish together. It was a lot of fun along the course, although everyone said that the crowds were incredibly thin because of the weather. I'd love to see what it's like when the weather is good! The Wellesley girls lived up to the reputation of being amazing cheerers at the half marathon, though; you could hear them for almost a mile before you could see them.

We were running 5k's just right around 20 minutes the whole way (right where we wanted to be for a 2:50 marathon) until everything fell apart for me at the end. My quads started hurting pretty heavily around mile 12, which made me a bit nervous setting in that early, but I held pretty steady through most the race until the last 10 km. We lost a lot of our crowd in the Newton hills around miles 17 and 18 and I was running with Jonathan (pictured in the second picture at mile 24 of the race). With 0.8 miles left to go, I had already been slowing steadily, but my hamstrings completely locked up and I literally couldn't even walk. I was leaned over to stretch out my hamstrings and couldn't even stand up straight for a good 2-3 minutes (it felt like forever with the crowd yelling wildly and runners zooming past toward the finish). I looked at my watch and said, "Okay, you have 20 minutes to run 0.8 miles in order to qualify for next year's Boston. You could crawl it if you have to. Just relax, take your time, and get moving." I managed to stand up and then start to walk very slowly. I was able to increase it to a shuffle and then finally a very slow jog. I had to stop once more to stretch out a hamstring cramp with less than 0.5 miles to go and one of the spectators was going nuts encouraging me. Once I started walking he was shouting "That's it...you're moving now! You can do it!" and when I just barely started jogging I thought he was going to jump the barrier with excitement yelling "You've got it now!!! Go!!" It was really pretty hillarious and--despite the insane pain--a lot of fun. I finished in 3 hours, 46 seconds. Well off my goal, but meeting my during-unbelievable-muscle-cramping revised goal of qualifying to come back next year. Perhaps I'm insane that I want to do this again already even though I can hardly walk right now.

In Boston

2007-04-15T07:24:00.000-05:00

I flew to Boston yesterday morning from Chicago and met up with my parents who were also fling into Logan. We spent the day checking out Boston and met up with my friend Jonathan. This morning, Ben will meet up with us and the Davidson trio running tomorrow's marathon will be complete. Last night we ate at the Warren Tavern in Charlestown, which was a really neat spot and was apparently Paul Revere's favorite watering hole. Yesterday was a little chilly and breezy and would have been the perfect weather for a marathon. Even still this morning it's really nice out, but it's the calm before the storm. Within the next couple of hours it's supposed to start raining and then get really heavy, putting down 2-4 inches. There are flood watches in effect. Right now, they're calling for the rain to lighten up right as the marathon is starting (although the wind will still be in our faces at 20+ mph). With any luck it will ligthen up before we start running so that we don't get soaked early on and be no better off. No matter what happens, I'm sure it will be an adventure. We're going to take it easy today, go to the expo this afternoon, get dinner, and then try to get to bed fairly early because we're supposed to board buses to head down to Hopkinton between 6:00-6:30am tomorrow morning, although the marathon doesn't start until 10:00.

Boston

2007-04-13T13:36:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow I fly out for Boston for the 11th Boston Marathon. Some forecasters have been calling for a "100-year" storm. There's no doubt that we're going to have lots of rain, a strong headwind, and temperatures in the low-40's. It's definitely going to be an adventure. In the history of the race, they've never delayed or canceled due to weather, so hopefully that's not about to change.

The race starts Monday morning, April 16 at 10:00am Eastern Time. You can keep up in the following ways:

The Marathon Website - You can track me on race day: Bib 2111
Weather
TV Coverage on the Versus Channel

Here goes nothing!

New Bike

2007-03-28T23:01:00.000-05:00

FedEx brought my new bike today and I am thrilled. I haven't yet put on the handlebars or the seatpost. I definitely need a torque wrench before I put on the seatpost since I now have a carbon fiber frame and seatpost and don't want to damage it by over-tightening. It's just as well that it's not yet together, though, because I should try to minimize how much I ride it before the Boston Marathon. Nonetheless, here's a picture of my precious.

Heroes in the Half Shell

2007-03-26T20:18:00.000-05:00

Friday night I went with some friends to the opening night of the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie. We were completely in disguise, so I'll tell you that we're the masked turtles in this picture. There were a few kids at the movie, but most of the people were about our age and there were other people prepared for the show; some had painted faces and one guy even had a TMNT jacket. If you go, be prepared to be disappointed by the fact that they never play the classic theme song (or even any kind of remix of it)!

My trip (not) to Washington DC

2007-03-24T14:02:00.000-05:00

Last weekend, I was supposed to go to the Teach For America Amgen Summit in Washington DC. I flew from Bloomington, IL to Detroit, but then my flight to Reagan was cancelled due to weather as were other flights to Reagan, Baltimore, Philadelphia, etc. I couldn't find a way to get anywhere close to DC (they tried to put about 50 of us standby on the flight to Dulles, which held 46 people and was oversold by 6) and they couldn't get me into DC for at least two days. Since that wasn't going to work for me and I didn't want to get stuck in Detroit, I got them to put me on a flight to Chicago since I could get home from there. I got to see lots of friends and got to do my long run with my Boston Marathon buddies and former Davidson teammates, Ben and Jonathan. I went with Ben's family to the Chicago Botanic Gardens one day, which was really nice. Here's a picture of a flower that I took in one of the greenhouses.

New Tri Bike

2007-03-22T21:10:00.000-05:00

I've been busy and haven't been good about posting to my blog, but today's exciting purchase is definitely worth starting up the blogging over. I just placed an order for a 2006 Quintana Roo Seduza (aka sex on wheels). It's a year-end closeout, so I got a sweet deal on it. The hard part will be disciplining myself not to go ride it a bunch while I'm supposed to be tapering for the Boston Marathon. Speaking of tapering, it finally starts in two days...my legs are SO ready for the break!

Critics denounce Pizza Hut reading program - CNN.com

2007-03-02T22:40:00.000-06:00

Critics denounce Pizza Hut reading program - CNN.com

This is ridiculous. I took part in Book It when I was a kid and amazingly I'm not obese, I haven't been cornered by corporate America (I've eaten at Pizza Hut twice in the past 5 years that I can remember), and I still read books--lots of them!--without extrinsic rewards.

I remember getting certificates and the pins with stickers that we would fill up and the classroom poster with our individual and class goals for reading. Sure, an excess of extrinsic rewards does little to develop intrinsic motivation, but when used judiciously, they can be effective at helping students learn to set and achieve goals.

I'm no fan of loads of junk food in schools; the high school where I taught could have eliminated countless problems by simply unplugging the vending machines during class hours and it made me sick to do lunch duty and see kids eating a bag of Flaming Hot Cheetos with nacho cheese and a Coke for lunch. It's hard to fight that stuff, though, because it's a cash cow. Trying to drive out all corporate influence in schools is a little over the top, especially when the program actually does good for our students. Plus, our country needs people--corporate and otherwise--recognizing the need for investment in education.

I don't even really like Pizza Hut that much, but this article makes me want to go buy some of their pizza. I'm off to read a book in bed....

Blizzard!

2007-02-13T17:46:00.000-06:00

This is what it looks like from my kitchen door right now. I should have gotten more of the garage so that you can see the snow drift up past the edge of the window, although you can see in the center of this picture by the bird feeder that the drift is nearly over the fence.

They cancelled classes at the University of Illinois today for the first time since the 1970's. They failed to notify anybody of this until about 9am when anybody coming from off-campus was already there. Despite the fact that I'll ride my bike to school in just about any weather conditions, even I wasn't dumb enough to get on a bike today with huge amounts of snow and wind gusting at 40 mph, so I took the bus, which amazingly ran down my street this morning.

What happens when it gets "cold" in Brownsville, TX

2007-01-16T20:24:00.000-06:00

Christmas Lights

2006-12-14T15:23:00.000-06:00

Now that I'm a home ownder, I figured it was time I went through the time-honored tradition of being defeated by a strand of lights. Here are the results.

Beckman Institute

2006-12-14T15:21:00.000-06:00

The building that holds my lab is the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, which is a fabulously nice facility. My friend Ian, who works in an organic lab in one of the older chemistry buildings refers to the BI as the Beckman Plaza Hotel. You can kind of see what he's talking about looking at the lobby decorated for the holidays.

Scott Pryor House Concert

2006-12-14T15:17:00.000-06:00

My cousin, Scott Pryor, played a house concert at my place in Urbana at the beginning of this month. If you haven't heard him, you definitely need to check him out (of course, if you're reading my blog, odds are you're familiar with Scott's music).

Quantum Final

2006-12-14T15:14:00.000-06:00

My quantum mechanics final exam was a take-home and I spent all of last weekend working on it (literally...stopping only to sleep, eat, and go for one quick run). Here I am surrounded by my solution set in my living room.

Thanksgiving Hike

2006-12-14T14:52:00.000-06:00

I haven't had a chance to post for a while because I've been busy finishing up the academic part of the semester, so I've got a few updates.

We went on the annual day-after-Thanksgiving hike, this year in Bath County near Cave Run Lake, partly on the Hogpen trail.

UK - TN Football Game

2006-11-26T06:56:00.000-06:00

Yesterday, we drove down to Knoxville to watch the Wildcats - Volunteers football game, the last of the regular season and a long-time rivalary. My brother, #99, got to do the kickoffs for UK and even ended up being the man to knock the returner out of bounds after a missed tackel on one of the kick-offs. The game was a lot of fun, although a disappointing loss for UK (17-12) since they had 3 or 4 opportunities from within the 10 yard line in which no points were scored. The good news is that UK will be going to a bowl game this year, but we still have to wait to hear where that will be. We're probably headed to Shreveport, LA, Nashville, TN, or Memphis, TN, although there's a few other possibilities as well (which would have been more likely with a win yesterday).

Illini Basketball

2006-11-22T19:51:00.000-06:00

Several of my friends and I bought season basketball tickets at the University of Illinois. The games are a lot of fun even though our seats are in the third row from the top of Assembly Hall. The good news is that your seats get better for every season that you buy tickets, so by the time that I have my PhD, I should be sitting on the bench. I have adopted the habit of wearing orange--like the tens of other game attendees--although if U of I were ever to play Kentucky, I don't think I could abondon my True Blue roots.