This is my life

In anticipation of May Day (May 1st), which is a holiday in Barbados, let me give a few more updates on life. (And, YES, this is in list format. Lists rock.)

1- Like my friend Francine (Coram Deo), I have realized that in the tropics, the sun is intense. And I agree with her that really only 2 hours of daylight exist where continual sweat does not: 5 a.m. to 6 a.m., and 5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. (This does not imply that fast walking at other hours does not lead to a good covering of sweat.) Thus, again like Francine, this week I've woken daily at 5:15 a.m. for a jog or walk, depending on the day (jog MWTh, walk TuF). This little island secret was obviously unknown only to me... for at 5:15 a.m., I pass quite literally several dozen other walkers, joggers, and - towards 6 a.m. - business men/women heading to work. Despite being crazy tired at 8 p.m., the benefits of waking are real.

2- My computer headset arrived today :) I'm going to test it out a little later with a refreshing chat with a friend. We always talk about weighty matters (bed sheets, shampoo, rabies, China, roommates, soup, etc.), so please do not interrupt!

3- I figured out how to plot a high-resolution map on MM5 output using RIP4. Hurray! Now if I could only figure out how to *run* MM5 on more than one processor.

4- Speaking of, do you know that I routinely login to a supercomputer? The thought dawned on me the other day-- 'how crazy is this life? I am a supercomputer user!' Funny story there: yesterday, I got an email from the system administrator warning me that my account was using too much space. He said if I didnt delete, or compress, some files, I could cause the supercomputer to crash! Wouldn't that be a funny story to tell the grandkids: 'yea, buckaroo, back at the turn of the millenium, any old grad student could crash the supercomputer. And I managed to do just that.' (I must admit, it is tempting to go download a 6GB file to overload the partition & make that sentence come true! haha)

5- Less than five weeks before I return to the US. Still no word on Austria or confirmation which class I will teach in the summer. I'll let you know when I know.

(see, aren't lists great? you dont even have to really end the post. but, for closure's sake, this is the end of this post.)