Guess and Check

I’ve been volunteering at The River Project for a little over a month now. I work mostly on a seahorse project and help out with updating their website a bit.

This morning they were filming a scene for Law & Order: Criminal Intent in our big shed. Diana, a woman I work with, told me that this is the third time they’ve filmed there in the past year or so. Of course, the coolest thing was that I met Vincent D’Onofrio and Kathryn Erbe. I chatted with D’Onofrio for a bit between scenes and gave him a poster on estuaries that he said his son would like. He seemed like a real nice guy.

Here are some of the better photos I took:

And I’m told the episode they were filming is named “Beast”.

This afternoon, I’m sitting in the lab, working on the computer. Mickey pokes his head in the door and says, “There is chocolate cake in the Idea Exchange Center if you need any.”

I thought it was funny.

So this morning at work we had our monthly safety meeting. I get to the conference room early, and sit down near the back next to the only other person there, a gentleman by the name of Igor Palley. Now, this dude is smart. He was just named “Inventor of the Year” by the New Jersey Research and Development Council for inventing SpectraShield (pdf), a high-strength organic fiber for protective clothing and body armor. He’s got a sheet of paper in front of him and he is just going to town on the thing, filling it will cool looking math.

So anyway, people start to filter in and the group starts talking about Ken Jennings. One person brings up the recent New York Times article on him titled “O.K., Alex, Smart Nerds for $1 Million”. Another talks about the great service he is doing for nerds around the country. A really good conversation.
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As this week winds down, I think back to a few short days ago. Back then, I knew very little concerning certain aspects of analytical chemistry. Now I know much more. Real-world experience makes quite a difference.

Also, three times this week on my way to and from work I’ve had to slow down because on animals on the road. One rooster and three deer. And for those of you who may not have noticed, this was my attempt at posting something more interesting. I’m thinking it didn’t go so well. Yeah.

Work today was good. I did much more work on the SEM. So cool.

I really have to start cleaning stuff up around the house. I’ve been far to lax of late.

I also might want to think up some better stuff to post. Like funny stuff. Stuff someone might want to read. Or I could just talk about what I do at work. Hmm… maybe funny stuff will happen to me at work. I can only hope.

Day two was quite good. I learned how to use the SEM and by the end of the day was even left unsupervised for periods of time. Now I have a bunch of stuff to get done early tomorrow morning.

I’m going to need more sleep though. I’ll get started on that soon…

Well, I managed to get a comment on yesterday’s post. Yay for me. Thank you, Max.

So today I started my summer internship. It was great. So far. We’ll see about tomorrow. I have to be in the lab at 7:30 a.m. to start working. I suppose I might as well get a jump on being a morning person again.

Looks like I’m going to be spending some time tweaking stuff a bit more before I get some real content up. Or maybe I’m just lazy after a day at work. We’ll have to wait and see.