Job Opportunity

My ex-coworker is interviewing people for a process engineering job at a company in VA. Anybody interested? Let me know!

=) Hope you all are doing well!

How did it get there?

So it has been a really long time since anyone posted, and I was faced with a very interesting puzzle today so I figured I would share and see if any of you can figure it out...

Last night it snowed here in Bellingham, probably around 3 inches, lucky for me I get to park in the garage at my house, so I was not forced to brush off my car at 6 this morning. I drove to my carpool lot as usual, parked my car, and got a ride with a coworker. Today was a bit warmer, so a lot of the snow melted, and on the drive home there was basically none left on the roads.

When we got back to the carpool lot I was surprised to see the roof of my car completely covered in 2 FEET of snow. It was basically like a large cake of snow on the top of my car. The hood was completely bare, as were all of the other cars in the lot.

How did it get there?

we are not alone

Kept forgetting to post this. Ariel and I saw this in SF a few weeks ago.

It's not SWOT...

Last week, the police, accompanied by a SWAT team, showed up at the refinery to take into custody a contract employee. There was a warrant out for his arrest. Yes, a SWAT team. My (working) life is awesome.

Move aside, Twitter

It's time for a new internet phenomenon, and we're going to start it. You're all invited and encouraged to contribute to: Did you even check this?!

Admin Alison says: "No contributor mistakes allowed."

A quantitative study of two options for the commute to work

Greetings all! While I know that this post will not break the trend of west-coast heavy postings, I felt the information was interesting enough to share.

Introduction: I have two commuting options to work (not counting driving), the Glen Park BART Genenbus, and the Marina/Pac. Heights Genenbus.

Glen Park BART Genenbus Pros:

• Picks up every 10 minutes
• Short ride on the Genenbus (relative to Pac. Heights Genenbus)
• I get to ride the cable car to work (aka, awesome)
  

Glen Park BART Genenbus Cons:

• Requires three modes of transportation (cable car, BART, Genenbus), compared to 2 for the Pac. Heights bus
• Seems to take slightly longer than the Pac. Heights bus based on previous experience
  

Marina/Pac. Heights Genenbus Pros:

• The pickup is a short walk/Muni ride from the apartment
• Previously observed relative consistency in arrival time at work
  

Marina/Pac. Heights Genenbus Cons:

• Only picks up every half hour or so
• Greater distance to travel on the freeway (greater opportunity for being caught in traffic)

I decided to track my commute, to determine which option was most favorable.

Methods and Materials: Time was tracked with minute precision based on AT&T Wireless time. Thirty commutes were monitored on the Glen Park Genenbus route. Said route entailed: wait for the cable car, ride the cable car, walk to/wait for BART, ride BART, walk to/wait for Genenbus, ride Genenbus. Sixteen commutes were monitored on the Marina/Pac. Heights Genenbus route. Said route entailed: walk to the Genenbus stop (OR, wait for Muni, ride Muni to Genenbus stop), wait for Genenbus, ride Genenbus.

Every effort was made to cover a reasonable range of arrival times on the Glen Park BART Genenbus route. All Marina/Pac. Heights Genenbus data is based on the 8:30AM-arrival bus (note: the 8:00AM and 9:00AM-arrival busses are only used on the rarest of occasions).

Results and Discussion: The mean commute time on the Glen Park BART Genenbus was 56min:20sec, with a standard deviation of 6min:20sec. The minimum and maximum commute times were 46min and 1hr:09min, respectively. There was essentially no dependence of the trip length on the departure time (as seen in Figure 1).

Figure 1.

The majority of the variation in total trip time was caused by the wait for the cable car (up to 14min!!!) and the Genenbus ride (data not shown). Both the wait for BART and the BART ride had extremely low variability (as would be expected).

The mean commute time on the Marina/Pac. Heights Genenbus was 53min:41sec, with a standard deviation of 2min:06sec. Total trip times ranged from 50min to 57min. It was found that walking was consistently faster than taking the Muni (mean of 17min versus 20min from apartment departure until boarding Genenbus, respectively).

Conclusions: The ideal arrival time at work would be 8:30AM. Based on that, cumulative probabilities of arrival are shown in Figure 2, for both the Glen Park BART and the Marina/Pac. Heights Genbuses. By even 8:25AM, there is a greater than 90% probability of arrival on either the Marina/Pac. Heights bus or the 7:20AM Glen Park BART bus.

Figure 2.

This data supports the Marina/Pac. Heights Genenbus as the most reliable and time-efficient option for on-time arrival at work. Future work will explore the benefits and costs of driving.

African American Quantum Singularity

I am pretty sure no one checks this anymore, but just in case, see if you can figure that one out...

I just wanted to post that reunion 1.5...or 1.0?  im not really sure, will be at the Jersey Shore on the weekend of Sept 11th, not sure which days or where we are staying.  Post back if you wanna come and haven't said so already, hope all is well in the world of awesome chemes!!

Also, here are some pics from me and alisons trip! the actual pretty ones will go on fbook...

   after climbing mt rainier
    your guess is as good as ours
     we peed here...imagine if they knew where we worked!

 

Top of the Mourning

I received sad news today. jdm has accepted Cornell's offer of retirement and will leave on the tentative date of June 30. A moment of blog silence in remembrance:

Thank you.

Olin Engineering Lives!

We had to do a presentation (in groups of two) for our spectroscopy class a while ago.  Naturally, Sean and I had to work together, and I think you all might appreciate the slide theme we used:

Speaking of Powerpoint, I'm surprised that after presenting weekly for an entire semester, no one (that I know of) mentioned the use of presenter tools.  It lets you see the current slide, next slide/animation, notes, clock/timer while the audience sees just the slide on the projector (the Keynote version is even better).  It's definitely useful and helped me get through pre-quals on Monday.  They decided to keep me around (ha! fooled them).

hellooooo?

Is anybody out there?  Whered the cheme love go?  I just wanted to remind people to update the reunion 1.5 availability spreadsheet and ask again if people have suggestions/votes about locations.  lets start getting this thing planned!  miss you all!