back from fieldschool

A while since I've done funny news stories. Thus the next couple of posts may or may not be unbelievably funny."Here is how to safely shoot a fellow officer in the head."

I wonder why...


Microphones in the eyes... that's an understandable photographic error, but how is that photo then selected for use?!

Yeah I had something like that; an 18-wheeler crushed my feet and my right earlobe fell off.

Fieldschool was a good time, with some neat rocks and beautiful scenery. I surprised myself by not being totally inept at teaching students field techniques and concepts, despite than most of them were older than me and many had more field experience, albeit in the oil/gas industry, not hardrock (why are the undergrads at this university so old??).

Today they're working on their reports and good maps, and I'm around to help out. On Saturday I'm going home to surprise my sister for her birthday (I'm fairly certain she doesn't read this because she doesn't remember I even maintain a blog, let alone where it is). Also I'll be home for Mother's Day, which I'm sure Mum appreciates.

Remember a few months ago when some US defence contractors up here in Canada reported being spied on by Canadian coins that commemorate our war dead with the red poppy quarter? Well they thought the red poppy in the centre was some sort of nanotechnology espionage device, and that these quarters were being 'planted' on them by spies (eg in the cupholder of a rental car, or, as I prefer to think they believed, by the evil cold-hearted commie scum working at Timmy's). Anyway they've admitted it was all an incredibly silly mistake, and just reading the cbc article was enough to make me laugh.

Come on, America! Why would we want to spy on you guys? We're pretty much the best of friends, compared to most neighbouring countries, and we share much of our technology and military systems anyway. If for some reason we did want to spy on US military contractors, we would not use something so stupid as coins, since coins flow in and out of peoples' hands all the time. No we'd just head on down over the border and take a look around, because we look and (if we remember to say 'huh' instead of 'eh') sound just like Americans. And if our accents are a bit more than they're used to, we say we're from Maine. Or possibly Alaska.

I finally capitulated to the nagging alert window and updated my version of itunes, and for the hell of it, skimmed through the EULA. Look at section 15. How could itunes possibly be used for such things? Does it count if you have it playing in the background as you're working on such a project? Are Lockheed-Martin workiers exempt? I understand it's just a general-issue apple product EULA, but still, I think it's amusing.

A new contest, to be properly propounded next time: Come up with a word for the opposite of "dense", including opposites for "density" and "denser" etc. It bothers me that such a word doesn't exist. Maybe I'll come up with some more things that I think need words for next time.

Cheers.

life update

"Day's touchdown victory dance led him to runway 36L, where he was finally taken out by flight 354 from Edmonton."

Been a while since I just said what's going on in my life, and after all, that's what this blog thing originally was; a way of friends from back home keeping up to date with me, since we're all scattered across the country.

The last post with any sort of me-update was back in March. Since then I've gone skiing a lot, zapped a lot of rock samples with electrons, marked a lot of exams, helped people move apartments, done taxes, and (excitingly) worked out that I can afford that Mazda that I so desperately crave in December, all being well. I'm not sure if I'll actually get it at that point. It really depends on the likeliness that on any given weekend someone with a car will be going skiing, and may be willing to take me.

I was very very stupid with my skiing this year, going out 17 times total (for 19 days of skiing), mostly at Sunshine, with a couple of trips to Louise, one to Kicking Horse, and two to Fernie. I would have easily paid off a Sunshine pass, and I paid way more in rentals than I would have had I just bought some decent skis at the beginning of the season. I plan to avoid the same mistake next season.

I'm also (90% sure) moving into a new apartment with a couple of friends who play musical instruments, sometime in June. This necessitates acquiring some decent keyboard equipment so we can jam. Not only that, but the place (which I haven't seen yet) is apparently amazing. It will be nice to have a place I could actually have some people over, rather than just a place with not even a table, which has never felt like anything more than a temporary residence. In fairness, though, the location of my current place is nigh unbeatable.

Right now I'm in Trail, BC, TAing a fourth-year field school in igneous and metamorphic geology. I've never been to southern BC before, and this area in particular is quite beautiful. The weather isn't cooperating, unfortunately, with rain every day since we arrived in town. We're mapping what essentially amounts to three plutons (intrusions of magma which cooled deep underground, now exposed at the surface thanks to erosion), over hills with excellent exposure (i.e. a high percentage of the ground surface is bedrock, rather than vegetation or loose rocks). Unfortunately the rain makes the hills a bit dangerous in places, but once it really starts coming down we call it a day anyway. If it were my own camp/research, we'd still work, just avoid the very steepest stuff.

That's another thing I've been planning for: the upcoming field season. I'm really looking forward to this summer, and I know what I want to pin down, tie up, and leave out. My supervisor is coming into the field with me for at least a week, which is nice as I only got one day last year! My main objective is to learn as much as I can about transposition (extreme shearing, in simple terms), and how to identify it, so I can decide whether this effect is widespread or localised in my field area. Previous literature suggests that primary sedimentary structures (layering, grading, etc) can be identified, but frankly, last summer, I found none that were unequivocal. I was, of course, drawing on my experience from the heavily transposed Monashee Complex rocks I worked on before, which are directly south of me about 70 km. Therefore, I've been inadvertently trained to look for (and see) structures associated with strong shearing, rather than sedimentary structures in well cooked-up rocks, which may not have been sheared so much (although I certainly still think they've been exceedingly buggered up). A problem is that the geology between my area and the Monashee Complex is not strongly nailed down. There may be no real stratigraphic discontinuity between the regions, meaning my rocks are a part of the Complex. I need to order some PhD theses from this 70 km stretch to see what may be going on.

Sorry for the geo-ranting. It's just my nature.

Someday, when I'm feeling brave, I'll put up some more funny pictures. I haven't done that in ages.

Cheers all.