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So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.


The Profile


Zanzibar
Age. 39
Gender. Female
Ethnicity. that of my father and his father before him
Location Altadena, CA
School. Other
» More info.
The World









The Link To Zanzibar's Past
This is my page in the beloved art community that my sister got me into:

Samarinda

Extra points for people who know what Samarinda is.
The Phases of the Moon Module
CURRENT MOON
Croc Hunter/Combat Wombat
My hero(s)
Only My Favorite Baseball Player EVER


Aw, Larry Walker, how I loved thee.
The Schedule
M: Science and Exploration
T: Cook a nice dinner
W: PARKOUR!
Th: Parties, movies, dinners
F: Picnics, the Louvre
S: Read books, go for walks, PARKOUR
Su: Philosophy, Religion
The Reading List
This list starts Summer 2006
A Crocodile on the Sandbank
Looking Backwards
Wild Swans
Exodus
1984
Tales of the Alhambra (in progress)
Dark Lord of Derkholm
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
The Lost Years of Merlin
Harry Potter a l'ecole des sorciers (in progress)
Atlas Shrugged (in progress)
Uglies
Pretties
Specials
A Long Way Gone (story of a boy soldier in Sierra Leone- met the author! w00t!)
The Eye of the World: Book One of the Wheel of Time
From Magma to Tephra (in progress)
Lady Chatterley's Lover
Harry Potter 7
The No. 1 Lady's Detective Agency
Introduction to Planetary Volcanism
A Child Called "It"
Pompeii
Is Multi-Culturalism Bad for Women?
Americans in Southeast Asia: Roots of Commitment (in progress)
What's So Great About Christianity?
Aeolian Geomorphology
Aeolian Dust and Dust Deposits
The City of Ember
The People of Sparks
Cube Route
When I was in Cuba, I was a German Shepard
Bound
The Golden Compass
Clan of the Cave Bear
The 9/11 Commission Report (2nd time through, graphic novel format this time, ip)
The Incredible Shrinking Man
Twilight
Eclipse
New Moon
Breaking Dawn
Armageddon's Children
The Elves of Cintra
The Gypsy Morph
Animorphs #23: The Pretender
Animorphs #25: The Extreme
Animorphs #26: The Attack
Crucial Conversations
A Journey to the Center of the Earth
A Great and Terrible Beauty
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
Dandelion Wine
To Sir, With Love
London Calling
Watership Down
The Invisible
Alice in Wonderland
Through the Looking Glass
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
The Host
The Hunger Games
Catching Fire
Shadows and Strongholds
The Jungle Book
Beatrice and Virgil
Infidel
Neuromancer
The Help
Flip
Zion Andrews
The Unit
Princess
Quantum Brain
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
No One Ever Told Us We Were Defeated
Delirium
Memento Nora
Robopocalypse
The Name of the Wind
The Terror
Sister
Tao Te Ching
What Paul Meant
Lao Tzu and Taoism
Libyan Sands
Sand and Sandstones
Lost Christianites: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew
The Science of God
Calculating God
Great Contemporaries, by Winston Churchill
City of Bones
Around the World in 80 Days, by Jules Verne
Divergent
Stranger in a Strange Land
The Old Man and the Sea
Flowers for Algernon
Au Bonheur des Ogres
The Martian
The Road to Serfdom
De La Terre � la Lune (ip)
In the Light of What We Know
Devil in the White City
2312
The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August
Red Mars
How to Be a Good Wife
A Mote in God's Eye
A Gentleman in Russia
The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism
Seneca: Letters from a Stoic
The Juanes Module


Juanes just needed his own mod. Who can disagree.
Make Sure Your Lab Comes Standard with a Caleb
Friday. 1.12.07 9:43 pm
Well it's quarter to ten, I guess it's time for dinner.

Sometimes surfing nutang and deviantart and facebook are more important than eating.

I had a minor crisis of purpose yesterday, coupled with a complete lack of motivation. The crisis of purpose was averted by an email from ranor, thank goodness, but the complete lack of motivation lived on. It leaked into this morning, but luckily it waned with the passing of the day. Mostly it waned because of Caleb. Let me tell you about Caleb. Caleb turned 27 today. He's a computer nerd. He can program in many tongues. I want to be Caleb when I grow up. When I am 27, and the only impetus that remains propelling towards my thesis defense is the overpowering desire to "get the hell out of this place" like all the old grad students here... I hope I am just like Caleb.

He knows everything you could want to know about computer programming, ArcMap, Unix, geology, astronomy, geophysics, integrals, everything. Or at least, he says a bunch of related things until one of you remembers what the answer is. One time I asked him what he thought that the depth that heat from the surface penetrated into the Martian crust, and he calculated all of the parts of the equation aloud, including remembering formulae, various physical constants, and doing both number manipulation and integrals in his head. He ended the whole thing, "To an order of magnitude, anyway." I really can't tell you how overwhelmingly attractive I found him just then. That is when I resolved to be him some day.
And he seems to have endless patience for people bothering him! "Caleb...?? Why did all of my data points just disappear?" "Caleb, does the fact that it says thmvisget.ERR now mean that it didn't work?" "Caleb, when did the magnetic field of Mars disappear?" He manages to be both one of the nicest people I've ever met and incredibly sarcastic at the same time. This is because he is sarcastic about everything in science and nothing in life, or relating to talking to you. He's my ideal nerd.

When I took Observational Astronomy I almost died of frustration because I didn't know anything about Linux or programming in idl and there was never, EVER anyone there to help me with it. I thought maybe that I just hated Linux and idl and anything that wasn't Windows, because it was SO FRUSTRATING!! But now I know it's because I didn't have a Caleb back then.

I think every lab should come standard with one.

He's always there, always willing to help, and all knowing. Jim tells you what to do, but there's no way he could tell you how to do it. Caleb is the one that gets it done. (and Jay, when he's not in Antarctica).

Someday there will be a young, impressionable grad student like me, and he or she will venture into the Seafloor Lab, and I will be there, as much a fixture of the place as a floor lamp, or Tracing Table Covered With Maps. Nobody will want me to graduate, because I'll Know Everything.

Sigh... maybe I'll be engaged like Caleb, too. But you can't have everything.
7 Comments.


Perhaps you should become his apprentice to pass the knowledge on to future generations. :P
» randomjunk on 2007-01-12 10:07:03

My name is Caleb.
Or it was for seven weeks during the summer.

I miss being Mr. Go-To. When I start all over again in some different lab, I'm just going to be a lowly bacterium. If even that.

But the nice thing about bacteria is that after hundreds of millions of years of evolution, they eventually gave way to complex, multicellular organisms. So we do have things to look forward to. Eventually. After what I'm sure will seem to be hundreds of millions of years. But when we get there...
» ranor on 2007-01-12 10:12:38

ah, caleb - I know him well
well, no I don't. But my friend Lauren (who just got married) graduated last year from Texas A&M for Biomedical science. She was the go-to person in her lab and for me whenever I had 'pet/animal issues'. She came in terribly helpful when we had a pair of sparrows build a nest in our backyard and one of the babies fell out of the nest. We took care of him as long as we could (with her help via phone) but in the end he just didn't make it. We had named him 'bob'.

And no joke - your cool points have just SKYROCKTED! lol, you playing Helena is beyond cool - and the visual I had in my head of your story made me actually 'laugh out loud'. Not to mention that first soliloquy is my favorite by far and away. Far and away.
:)
» Helena on 2007-01-12 10:52:03

Caleb
You ought to tell him.
» Dad (71.196.196.125) on 2007-01-12 11:08:23

You know...
...I actually began collecting state quarters when they first came out, but I haven't done it recently. What I want to do, if I ever have enough money, is buy uncirculated proofs of the quarters. I think they are beautiful, and I love how shiny and mirror-y proofs are. I actually am a bit of a numismatist. It all started when I was in 3rd grade and I reached into a purse at the back of my grandmother's closet and found an 1843 half dollar in decent condition. I asked her if I could have it. How could she refuse?
» ranor on 2007-01-13 12:24:48

im not sure what to say about your post
except that i find it weird that you want to be a guy when you grow up.

Password: LMFAO
» middaymoon on 2007-01-15 11:05:55

yeah, that's the idea
my friend sarah (bilingual) had a problem at school where people read her entries and twisted what she said. (she mentioned her school and it's suckiness) not only are all entries now password protected, but she embedded a re-direct code in each one. can you say "school computers crashing"?
» middaymoon on 2007-01-15 03:44:54

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