Wait...

what was I doing?

Where's my pencil?

What does this cryptic note mean: 'vague recollections of the weird square thingy'?

How do I log in to my computer again?

Password... password... password... I'm sure I had one.

D'oh. Return from very busy time away. Man. I'm sure there was a plan around here someplace.

More antics from Captain...

It's been a week now, and Captain has clearly settled in. He went for big hikes yesterday at the VLA, and had a wonderful time. He was good both on and off the leash, and then came home and snoozed the rest of the evening. He snores. Little whiffly dog snores. It's painfully cute. He also plays with toys, which is new for us.

Today, J joined the lunch group at DJ's. He was oddly nervous, but of course got along fine. Everyone should have a stuffed sopapilla from DJ's at least once in their life. Seriously. It's practically a religious experience. Everyone was very interested in his reaction to Socorro. I know why---people often really, really hate it. But, as J says, green chile sure makes up for a lot of empty space!

What is UP with...

scientists who are also programmers? (apologies to J, who is not this type...)

Here's the gist of a recent conversation:

Me: Does this widget graph the sum or the average?

Him: Average, but it doesn't matter.

Me: Yes it does.

Him: The only difference is that you divide by the number of pixels. It's a constant. It doesn't matter.

Me: But most of my pixels contain only noise. So the average doesn't tell me what I need to know. The average tells me there's nothing there, because on average, there isn't.

Him: You're just off by a constant.

Me: Sort of. But not really. I'm really beating down the signal, by averaging over all the noise. If I sum, I know how much signal I have, but if I average, I know some kind of signal per pixel, which is really, really tiny, because I'm looking at emission in a really tiny area. That's not what I want it to do. I want to see a graph of the signal, and I can't do that if I've just averaged it to zero.

Him: So just multiply by the number of pixels.

Me: But the way the widget works, I get there by drawing a box with the mouse around the object, and the widget doesn't tell me how many pixels it has. And anyway, how am I supposed to do a multiplication in the widget, so I get a graph of what I want?

Him: So just make a one pixel box.

Me: But that's a huge pain. Why should I have to go and make a bunch of one pixel boxes, when if I could just get the sum, it wouldn't be a problem? And how is that going to help anyway, because I don't have a way to add the pixels together again?

Him (condescendingly): You're not making any sense. It's just a constant offset, and it doesn't matter. I mean, come on. It's basic arithmetic. If you divide, and then you multiply, that's the same as not doing anything at all.

Me: (sigh. Rapid silent search for compromise...) Can you humor me, and make it so I can choose if it will sum or average? Some people might want one or the other.

Him: (walking away from me...) That doesn't make any sense. No. It averages. That's what it does.

Me: (grumble, grumble, grumble)

Now I am trying to figure out a way to sum, but not average.

Grumble, grumble...

Some Perspective

It's pretty hard, right at the moment, to keep everything in perspective. Between all of our own personal dramas, the local dramas that come with the tragically bizarre collapse of the economy, and the global dramas that come from not being able to keep our grubby mitts off yesterday's sunshine, a person can get seriously overwhelmed.

But then, you get to see this.


Please allow me to interpret the sci-jarg. The dot in the middle of the left image is an optical image of a galaxy that formed very early in the Universe. How early? About 12.8 billion years ago. You are looking at it as it forms, because the light that left during formation is just now getting to us. Ok. Go away and think about that for a minute, because that should blow your mind right there.

Back? Ok. The image on the right is of the same object, in the radio. Specifically, you are looking at the light emitted from carbon monoxide (CO). Go away again, and ponder the existence of carbon monoxide, only 870 million years after the Big Bang. Need some help with the staggering-ness? C and O form in stars. The existence of CO means there were stars that lived AND died before this big cloud could form. AND the cloud had time to cool enough for the C and the O to get together and share some electrons over coffee and a biscuit. AND the cloud had time for gravity to begin to draw it together to form something new. 870 Myrs is not very long for all of that to happen! The first stars must have been very, very massive, and very, very short-lived in order to get all this done in that short time. So, go. Ponder.

Back? Ok. So now you have to think about this. You are looking at a supermassive black hole (some millions of times the mass of the sun), and a giant elliptical galaxy (trillions of times the mass of the sun, eventually forming trillions of stars) being 'born'---at the same time, in the place, very early in the history of the Universe. Staggeringly, this is exactly how we thought it should happen. Staggeringly, I can explain it to you. Staggeringly, you can understand. Score one for the teeny-tiny, microscopic gray matter connections inside your head.

One of the biggest comforts of being an astronomer is knowing that the vast majority of the Universe doesn't care about me. It just does what it does. It goes on in all its profligate excesses of space and time, and all its random happenstance, whether or not I'm paying any attention at all.

Another comfort is that I am paying attention. And my own little gray matter adds its little pieces to the puzzle, which are written down, and so will be remembered long after we've forgotten all this year's particular drama, and the last of yesterday's sunshine is all used up.

Surprise! A conference...

Well, other people knew about it, I'm sure...

There are ~95 people here for three days for a conference about the EVLA, and galaxy formation and evolution across all redshifts. (While this is not an area of special interest for me, personally, I can still learn a lot!)

I didn't have to plan. I didn't have to travel. I don't even have to present (which is good, because it was a surprise to me, and I'm not an expert in galaxies!!).

This is almost sinfully easy. Just sit there, and let the conferences come to you... Ahhh...

Love comes walkin' in.

It's been a rough couple of weeks, filled with loss and sorrow and grief. The loss of Cassie, the loss of our good friend Chris, the sorrow of our good friend Nereyda. Monumental events and changes and mind-numbing grief. Even the little things seemed to go wrong, and I spent more time these few weeks waiting for the plumber than I usually do all year. Grief brought inattention, and therefore myriad small mistakes, and very little energy in reserve to help deal with them. Sometimes, sorrow comes to visit, and decides to stay a while, leaving his dirty socks all over the floor, soaking the floor of the bathroom when he showers, going through your stuff, and insisting that you accommodate his special diet of candy, cornflakes, beer and some kind of meat.

But even the sorrow that takes up the spare room and messes up your whole house can't keep joy standing on the porch. Because therapy doesn't always come on the psychiatrist's couch. Sometimes it comes on the sofa at home.

This is Captain. A 3-year-old Australian Shepherd---snook-monster extraordinaire. Never has a dog liked so many scratches and belly-rubs. Never has a dog's face gone so fast from tightly wrinkled concern, uncertainty and worry to eyes-wide-open, smiling laughter. Never has a dog made a faster transition from curled-up-flat-eared-defensive to flat-on-his-back, open-to-all-experiences, begging-for-tummy-rubs.

And never have we been so grateful to be the kind of people who sometimes leap even when we can't quite see the bottom.

Goodbye, Cassie...

Last Friday, we lost our best friend to a fierce, but blessedly short, battle with cancer. Today, I've been thinking about why the house feels so completely empty, even though it's only 60 pounds emptier than it was last week.

Cassie made us come home from work. We have the kinds of jobs that never close and are never finished. People like us need someone to make us turn off the computer and come home, and then turn off the computer again. She made us get outside and go for walkies, even in the snow or rain or fierce heat of summer. She made us wait to go in to work until after dawn. She made us laugh with her antics, and kept us from sleeping all day when we were sad. She made us stop and look at the beautiful view while we waited for her to stop chasing moose and come back to us. She made us clean up the kitchen right away, and pack up the leftovers, and put the bread away before we left the house or went to bed. She'd show up at the bedside with the baguette sticking out of both sides of her face, wiggling for all she's worth; 'Papa, can I have this?' She ate the extra rice from the Chinese food place, and cleaned up the crumbs under the table. But she NEVER, EVER licked the dishes in the dishwasher. (That's still a mystery to me...) Anyone saying 'Oops!' in the kitchen suddenly had company, even if she was sound asleep on the sofa.

Cassie tracked mud all over the house, so we had to get the vacuum out and scrub the floors. There was always a muddy towel on the porch near the back door---a badge of the 'feet wipes' after the last muddy hike in Strong's Creek. She was famous in Washington for finding spawned salmon, other dead fish or seals. A flying leap from 6 feet away; a turn in midair; her shoulder landing with a 'splorsh'; an unbearable stench, and happy, smiling dog face. We'd drive home with our heads hanging out the car window, and Cassie just as happy as can be in the backseat. Sometimes she ate god-only-knows-what, and heaved it up in a little pile in the living room at midnight. We'd be out of bed at the first heave, and almost never got her all the way out the door in time. But she was always sorry about it, as only a dog can be sorry---all puppy-dog eyes and feet in the air.

Her hair got in the furnace filter, which reminded us to change it once in a while. It got in the lint trap in the dryer, and in the sheets, and behind the sofa cushions. It got under the bookcases, and behind the refrigerator, and under the bed. We had to buy special cleaning tools to reach those places. We probably never would have cleaned the car if she didn't make it such a mess sometimes.

She took us camping, and crawled into the sleeping bags when it was really, really cold. She watched the chukkar babies, lying in perfect stillness, only rolling her eyes to follow their movement through the campsite, sitting up to smile and dog-laugh only after they'd gone. She let us know where the skunks were. She let us know when someone was on the property. She let us know when friends were at the door, or when it was the ultimately evil UPS man. She made us cut short visits with friends, and trips to just about everywhere. We had to make special plans if we wanted to go out at night, because she'd get spiteful and surgically slice the straps on our work-bags if we left her all day AND all evening. She knew she was too good for that, and was not going to put up with that kind of behavior. We had to look at every package that came into the house, to see if it would be interesting to her. This, after a 50 pound bag of flour wound up spread all over the kitchen carpet, drooled on, and worked into the carpet fibers, dried on like cement. Yummy. She made us finally get rid of the ugly carpet we hated anyway.

A lot of people see these things as a pain. They roll their eyes and say, 'How can you STAND it?!' But these things are a gift. Learning to compromise, to accommodate, to think as a completely different species thinks and see the world as a completely different species sees it, reminds us that there IS another way. Everything she did made sense to her, even if it was a mystery to us. Making room for a creature with such a different way of being, finding a way to communicate and to love and to share beyond the species barrier, sharpened our skills for reading not only dogs, but also each other.

Of course the house feels empty. That's because it is.