It’s been a pretty big year since my last blog post. Traveled to Santa Barbara (saw Dana and Carolyn) and Tokyo, bought a new house next to Kitty-Kat, decent summer including an injury-free season with the ‘Shrikes, went to Idaho for Grandma’s 90th (plus 1/2) birthday, managed to get to north of the Brooks Range (Barrow) after years of strong resistance, and aquired a beautiful and fantastic live-in dog-sitter for El Toro Guapo. Last week, Rachael and I passed the one-year mark of dating. Lots of good things this last year and a lot of good things to look forward to!

Note: This post is not meant to discourage my friends and family from visiting and seeing what is going on with me. It is just my thoughts on something I find interesting about the blog.

What is happening and what is on my mind?? Plans beyond Germany are beginning to fall into place. I am very excited about what is coming up and that everything seems to be FINALLY working out. Not all the pieces are in place, but they are close. Last night, I went to the crazy fly between trees on ropes and ladders theme park with Konni. It was a lot of fun and a bit scary at times… It made me sweat a lot and I am still a bit sore in my shoulders. After seeing a number of recent political ads run by his campaign, I am beginning to think that the Republican nominee for president is a pretty big dick with nothing to say except…. well, nothing at all – that is the problem. Ted Stevens, long time Senator from Alaska, was the latest in a long line of Republicans (you know, the financially conservative, moral and family values party) to get indicted. I am also getting a bit weary of the dumbing down of the population done by the media. Everyone is telling us how to think these days – TVs, blogs (right and left and mine), radio, etc. I have had a number of discussions about this over the past couple years and I really can not figure out why or how this is happening. Are we really that lazy to think for ourselves? I saw this cartoon on CrooksandLiars this morning and thought it was pretty good. I guess it was done by Steve Greenberg.

Okay, I guess that is enough for now. With a bit of luck, more this weekend.

All my pictures can now be found here.

Each week in Potsdam, our group gets together to read and review a journal paper on a topic that is related to our work. We get 15 minutes to read the paper then we spend about 45 minutes talking about it, deciding if it was good or bad and why. A while ago, we reviewed a paper and decided it was quite bad for a number of reasons. I happened to be in a session where this author basically presented the same paper. The ‘live’ version of the paper is much worse than the paper version. I kept waiting for Sebastian to stand up and say ‘this is complete bullshit.’ He would have said it in the weekly review meeting (and probably did), but not such luck here. I think I would have paid him 5 EUR if he would have said something. That is a lot more than I was going to pay him for proof of sleeping with a reindeer last summer on Svalbard.

I also some some really good talks and sessions. One session opened my eyes to myself. It was a session on the interaction between research and applied engineering (in hydrology context). In the session there was a lot of discussion of what an engineer is and and what a scientist is. I have always considered myself a hydrologist even though my degree says engineering, mostly because I do not like the stereotypes/perceptions of engineers. Here are my notes from the session…. A scientist tries to understand a problem without solving it. An engineer tries to solve problems without complete understanding. Science is about knowledge, doing something interesting, seeking truth, seeing the risk, no deadlines, and waiting for certainty (confidence levels) whereas an engineer is about action, giving good advice, seeing opportunities, having deadlines, and as having to make decisions under uncertainty (fudge factors). I realized that I think so much more like an engineer than a scientist it is not really funny. Maybe it is time to embrace the stereotype. One speaker managed to crack himself up (giggling uncontrolably) when discribing ‘poop freeze’ — his method of discarding different theories/ideas about a problem he was working on. It was pretty funny.

Other highlights.. Sebastian and I spent an afternoon wandering around Vienna city center. It feels so much more like a European city than Berlin to me. We had some really really good pizza for lunch. We were invited (by TU Wein group) to a Heurigen (wine tavern) on Wednesday night for food and drink. We were the last people there but managed to get a great seat next to the food. It was a fun and late night. Too much wine though…. Hard to keep interest (and wake up) on Thursday. I was so tired on Thursday that only managed to watch MacGyver (in German) that evening — sort of, I fell asleep during the not so exciting hour. I also spent a fair amount of time with Ted. It was really good to see and talk to him about many different things. I also ran into David Newman and Skip Walker (both from UAF). I also talked with Jed Brown (from FBKS and friend of Seth Adams) for a while about his research. He thinks on a completely different plane of reality than I do. He is doing some really interesting work. It was nice to see so many familiar faces.

Off to Bucharest tomorrow morning. I am pretty excited about going on holiday.