official

It's official folks: I'm a grad student! I registered for classes today, got my keys and found my office. It's on the second floor of the physics building. There is a really nice map of the campus here. Tomorrow I'll fill you in on some statistics of my trip across the country.

See if you can find my picture on the grad student web page!

oh noes! The Starbucks is closing!

The Starbucks I frequented during my April trip to Syracuse is closing!  It's a good thing I won't be staying at that hotel nearby when I move out there in a month.

Syracuse, Day 4

Most of today was spent looking at a couple of apartments. See the map. We did manage to get a little lost this time. We missed the turn to the airport off I-90. We were trying to check in for our flight, but you can only do the 24-hours-a-head-of-time-thing on line.

The three apartments we saw:

1. labeled B, Grant Village Apartments. It's in a run down neighborhood. Heat is included though.
2. labeled D, Covered Bridge Apartments, because it has a covered bridge. The 1 room apartments are down stairs with the windows buried under snow in winter. Also, it has a sliding door in the shower.
3. labeled E, Grenadier Village, located on the Seneca River. Very nice and also the most expensive of the three we saw.
   

We ate at The Retreat in Liverpool, labeled C. It was nice, and we beat the rush, just barely! The food was good, and the service pretty prompt.

Syracuse, Day 3

I'll try to keep it a little shorter than yesterday's summary. A few bullets:

• attended the Syracuse GWG meeting this morning, which lasted about 2 1/2 hours.
  a couple of things I found out aboout:
  - the Einstein@Home home team, SUGWG has moved up 2,000 spots in the rankings since adding the SUGAR cluster.
  - how to estimate the coincident rate for glitches from a couple of channels (bad sentence summary).
  - global warming is going to be very bad, a summary statement from the APS meeting this week in St. Louis.
  - of course, more stuff.
• had lunch with that group. Stephanie really got along well with Peter! That made me happpy.
• A road tour around Onandoga Lake to see what the neighborhoods were like (thanks Josh!).
  - I found out what New Yorks obsession is with the word "Empire": when people first moved here, they stated that the area that would become the state of New York had everything necessary for an empire.

After that, Stephanie and I headed off to find some quiet time at the hotel.

Also, I determined that the right bank is probably HSBC, it has branches both here and in back home. If anyone knows anything about this bank, please let me know!

two photos

The first picture is of the Quad. As you can see, they have rolled in the special weather for visiting students. The sky is blue, there is no snow, and there are a lot of people on the grass. Aparently we are 20 degrees F above average today.

The second pictures is inside the geology building (I know, random) which has an interesting piece of art on the wall, and several casts of fossils along the right. It also has some very large windows, which the physics building does not have.

Syracuse, Day 2

This was the first full day. It started off quite early by pacific time standards but didn't feel that way. I dropped Steph off at the Carousel Center, a giant mall. They happen to be working on it right now so there was a lot of construction going on.

I found my way to campus by feel, after reading how to get to my final destination, the Quad 4 VIP parking. Getting to the lot went pretty smoothly. I walked passed the Quad (which was filling up with people) and headed for the Physics building. Inside I didn't immediately find the people I was looking for because the floor plan was a little odd. On the first floor there is a lecture hall, but on the second floor there is another hall way and more offices- it is hidden behind the free standing wall with the stairs and the elevator.

Once in there I chatted with the people I knew, and was introduced to a few new faces. Then I got a piece of good news. I've been upgraded from a TA to a RA! I'm pretty excited about this because it means I'll be able to keep working on LIGO from the start. I'm not sure how hard exactly, because I need to get the classes taken care of too.

After this I had a 'grad student's lunch'. Six of us, grad students only, went to King David's restaurant. It was an okay place, I think you just have to know what to order.

Next up was a little bit of work- the post-doc and I took the eLIGO telecon. Then it was back to the Carousel Center to pick up Steph and head back to the hotel for some down time.

Dinner is at 6:45 with two professors, the post-doc, and a friend of mine, one of the senior grad students.

getting "lost" in NY

We tried our hardest, but didn't actually get lost. Navigating by intuition, we did this:

View Larger Map

We'll try harder tomorrow, adding destinations, splitting up, etc.

writing from Syracuse

We made it!  The trip was mostly uneventful.  Some high lights:

1. landing at Atlanta was the "droppy-est" that either of us had ever experienced.
2. barely had time to get any food after landing and before boarding the hopper to SYR.
3. Although the Syracuse airport is much larger than our native Pasco, about 4 times, I would say, it is just a sleepy.
4. The necessary toll to get from the airport to the hotel was 20¢!
5. This place is very flat.

There are a couple other things, but I'll save them for later.  Gotta make sure I have something write about!

the latest

On Tuesday we drive to Portland to catch a plane to Syracuse, NY. We'll be there for about 3 1/2 days, which isn't much time. I hoping to see a couple of apartments, see the campus, get a road tour of the area, meet my new colleagues, and find out where good coffee and food is. We'll see how it goes.