Trackshark front page articles

I'm assuming many of you are familiar with Trackshark. For those who aren't, it's a website that covers collegiate and professional track and field. They did a special two-article interview series with Michelle and the other three Husky runners who competed in the 1500m at Olympic Trials. The articles are on the front page for now, but here's some permanent links: Part 1, Part 2.

Camping

This last weekend we went camping. We had a pretty good time.


I'd forgotten how fun it is to sit around for 2 hours waiting for a tinfoil dinner to cook.

Our car even had fun--it got to pretend it was in a Toyota commercial.


Michelle decided to check how slippery the rocks in the river next to our campsite were.

(Go here if the video isn't working.)

I hugged a tree (but I'm not a treehugger).

The Fair

After the cross country meet we went to The Fair. Although it's technically called the Puyallup Fair, it's usually called and advertised simply as The Fair.

One of the highlights was Mutton Bustin'. It's a rodeo for kids--they put kids 6 years and younger in a helmet and flak jacket, put them on the back of a sheep, and open the gate. The goal is to stay on for 6 seconds.


Although Mutton Bustin' is fun, people at The Fair know what sheep are really for . . .

Sundodger Invitational

This was two Saturdays ago at a park in West Seattle. It's the Huskies opening cross country meet, and basically (at least how it seems to me) a chance for them to show up all the local schools. Michelle placed 12th overall and 6th for the Huskies, with a time of 21:03 for 6k--a 5:39 mile pace. Not bad for her first cross country race in three years.


At the start.


Coming around the first lap.




Michelle was the happiest I've seen her after any race except for Regionals, despite (or because of?) the mud.

Trip Photos

Finally! I'll add more captions sometime. You can click on the pictures to go to an album for easier viewing.


Or go here if you don't have Flash.

Trip to Thailand (Post #1)

Hi family and friends! Here's an update of our trip to Thailand thus far. On Thursday we left on a shuttle bound for Vancouver and got on a Singapore Air flight. (Singapore Air puts U.S. airlines to shame.) The flight took 11 hours and then we stopped in Seoul, South Korea for an hour and a half. From there we took a six and a half hour flight to Singapore. We got in at about 11:30 at night and wandered the airport until about 2 am. Matt and I got a hotel room for 6 hours in the airport so that we could get some decent sleep and a shower. At about 8:30 we boarded an about two and a half hour flight to Bangkok. We took a taxi to the Avana hotel in Bangna, which is near an area Matt served in. We walked around the area and went to the local market and ate nam tog and phad kraphao. We looked for an apartment in the area and found one across the street from the market for about $120 a month.

Trip Reports

Hello readers,
So we've been gone for a week (to Thailand, if you didn't know) and haven't posted anything about out trip yet. That's going to change shortly. Michelle's written up what she can remember each day, with accompanying pictures, and I'll add some posts with other stuff.

Michelle's 1500m yesterday

Let's go fly a kite . . .

There is a hill in the park across the street known as "kite hill" which is presumably supposed to be an ideal spot for kite flying. We decided that it might be a fun activity to go fly a kite. The first time we tried there was not enough wind for Matt's kite, (it is a heavy duty one that requires a large amount of wind). Matt and I decided to make our own kites. Matt had a pattern for a kite that he learned back in elementary school using trash bags and shish kabob sticks, (very high tech). When we went to fly our homemade kites there was even less wind. I was able to get my kite about 20- 30 feet in the air while sprinting up and down the hill trying to keep it from falling. Matt said I wasn't technically flying a kite didn't count because flying a kite shouldn't be an exhausting activity. Our third and final attempt there was a ton of wind. I was able to get my homemade kite out about 200 feet without running around. Unfortunately there was a sudden gust of wind that sent my kite plummeting towards the ground. It landed in a sea of hungry prickly blackberry bushes which quickly ate my kite.





Matt was able to get his "real" kite up in the air for a good amount of time. I could tell he was really having a good time. Matt is always cute but he is extra cute when he gets into an activity that he really enjoys. Like Matt, this picture is a real keeper.

A cleanroom not yet a clean room

I finished my cleanroom last week. Here's a picture from above.

It's hard to see the plastic curtains, but they're there. The rectangular metal things on top are the filter fan units and the white rectangles are the lights. You can see the switches for the fans and lights on the front right post.

Here's a picture of what we call the q-tester and the trolley I made for it.

The q-tester slowly swings the hanging white blocks, actually 80 lb. lead bricks, around our device so we can calibrate against their gravitational force on our setup. The trolley has small wheels so it can roll on the tracks (going left to right in the picture) so we can move it out of the way to open the bell jar.

Zoo trip

Yesterday we went to the zoo.

Michelle really liked the brown bears. We watched one drop its wicker Easter basket into the pool, slowly decide whether to go in after it, then jump in and tear the basket to pieces. After the basket was shredded it then amused itself by putting its face underwater and blowing bubbles.



Here's a monkey (a siamang, actually) that was just chillin'. Like a villain.

My new profession

So our research group decided a while back that we need to put our experiment in a cleanroom. For those who don't know what a cleanroom is, it's a special room that keeps the level of dust or other contaminants inside very low. In most cleanrooms, air is continually circulated through the room, passing through very fine filters on its way in. Different applications require different levels of cleanrooms. Computer chip manufacturing is done in very clean environments, where workers have to wear bunny-suits (these often appear in Intel commercials).
Anyway . . . we needed a cleanroom. We couldn't just buy a stock one either, because of some of our special requirements. I shopped around for some quotes, and we decided that we'd build one ourselves. Since then, I've been a cleanroom contractor. For the past couple of months I've ordered 700 pounds of steel, 2 $600 fans, and various cleanroom parts. I've learned to weld and I, along with my advisor and a post-doc in our group welded together the 12-foot tall frame. After painting it, we maneuvered it into our lab and set it up. It's a good think we have a gantry crane in the lab, because it's a bit difficult to maneuver 300-pound, 12-foot long objects around.
One problem, however, was that we had to set the frame up before it was really ready to be set up. Because the experiments in our lab are so sensitive to vibrations and movement, the owner of one of the experiments wanted us to do the heavy lifting while their apparatus was down for repairs. So after it was set up, I still needed to drill lots of holes in the top of the frame. For those who've never drilled through steel, it's a bit harder than wood or drywall, and balancing on a ladder wouldn't let you get enough leverage to drill a hole in a reasonable amount of time. To be able to get these holes drilled, I've hooked up my climbing gear and either climbed onto the cleanroom or clamped a cross-beam onto it to stand on.
I should finish the cleanroom in the next couple of days. Besides being really fun, I now have a new marketable skill--welding. I'm now safe in the knowledge that if someone comes up with a theory that explains all physics, and thus puts physicists out of their jobs, I can go get a job at the shipyard as a steelworker.
Here's a picture of me working on the cleanroom. The cleanroom frame is light blue, our experiment is in the big shiny bell jar, and the wooden frame is a temporary setup to hold some calibration equipment. I'll post a picture one it's all finished.

Watch Michelle's races live online

I just found out that there is a live internet broadcast of indoor nationals tomorrow and Saturday. The link will be available here once the meet starts. Michelle will be running at 7:05 pm (mile prelims) and 9:35 pm (distance medley relay) Central Time on Friday, and (cross your fingers) at 6:25 pm Saturday (mile final).

A video of Michelle's mile race

http://www.runnerspace.com/eprofile.php?do=videos&pg=1&event_id=43&video_id=1711&folder_id=131#video

Michelle-watch

A picture of Michelle was on the front webpage for the UW newspaper today (not the front page of the print version, but the front webpage).
Here's the article:
http://thedaily.washington.edu/2008/3/10/turner-qualifies-ncaas/
And a news segment:
http://thedaily.washington.edu/video/2008/3/10/last-chance-meet-qualifies-one-more-husky-ncaa-cha/

Michelle's New PR

Michelle ran an amazing race today. She ran in the mile and finished first with a time of 4:40.08--eleven-ish seconds faster than her previous best in the mile. It converts roughly to a 4:19.25 on a 1500m, which would be a PR in the 1500 by . The automatic qualifying time for nationals is a4:40.00, so she just barely missed being guaranteed a spot, but it looks like she'll be about 15th in the country so she's pretty sure to qualify.
I didn't get any pictures, and I really wish I had a movie of her pulling ahead in the last lap. She just poured it on for the last ~200 meters and finished 6.5 seconds ahead of second place.
You can read the news release here.

My second first-author paper

I recently had a paper published in Optics Express. It's an online journal, so authors can include movies and other multimedia (our paper has two movies). It's also open-access, so you don't need a university account to view it.

"Simulated laser-pulse evolution for high-order harmonic generation in a semi-infinite gas cell," Opt. Express 16, 1571-1576 (2008).

Michelle's 800

I still haven't figured out how to take good pictures in this arena. Michelle finished fifth in the 800 with a time of 2:08.97--just enough to provisionally qualify for National's.

Picture from Michelle's Distance Medley Relay

Here's a picture from the DMR tonight--the only one I took in which Michelle is somewhat visible (or twice-visible). Apparently the light is too low in the facility to get good action shots. Sorry.

They came in second with a time of 11:12, which puts them seventh in the country. Michelle's split was about 2:07.