The light colors on the reindeer are the only places it is losing heat – around its legs and eyes.  Not anything like the top of my balding noggin.  That reminds me… it is about time to break out my winter hat !!!  Fall has arrived in Potsdam (I have been wearing shoes to work now — too cold for sandals)).

Following are a sequence of pictures taken from the Ny-A webcam taken on Thursday afternoon as a little squal blew through town.

I arrived to this at work yesterday. Thanks Julia!

Actually, I love Kenji’s outreach program. A very good thing he is doing. Here is Episode 1 of Tunnel Man.

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.

I came away with 3 messages from the talks and discussions yesterday — 1) ‘Modeling is easy, but it is worthless.’ (an actual conclusion in one of the talks yesterday morning); 2) Remote sensing products are so good that field based measurements/studies are no longer necessary; and 3) Field based studies are critical (more than ever) for remote sensing community/products. Now I don’t know what to think. Maybe it is time for me to start a new career path applying my until-now-useless psychology minor. I am not sure what I can do with it, but at least I won’t be running in (until now unrealized) circles (based upon my day one take home messages) any more. Now that is a horribly constructed last sentence.

Yesterday was also good as I ran into Ted and Martin – two friends from Fairbanks. Ted is now a big-wig at BAS spreading propaganda on BBC about how Santa Claus’ home will never exist again after next summer. Martin is the same Martin I met up with in Zürich a few weeks ago. Ted and I had a nice lunch sitting outside at an Italian cafe. We are staying in a nice apartment near the convention center. I slept very well (a welcome change since I have not slept well recently). We started the day in a cafe. Today is a slower EGU day – a day of just sitting in on different talks in different topics areas that I am curious about. I may venture into the city center this afternoon (the weather is not as good today, so maybe Thursday). Tomorrow will be a busy day with lots of talks and my poster presentation.

UPDATE: The comments about running in circles and making a career change were all made very much in jest. I very much believe that science (or anything else really) must be holistically approached. Systems are just too complex to use only one approach. I just found these messages from the speakers amusing.