My dream

I haven't really thought about retirement until recently. Sarah and I occasionally talk about what we would do if we suddenly made $500,000. 

If I ever make a lot of money. I would like to own a dude ranch for myself. It wouldn't be for making money; more like a cabin thing. I wouldn't try to make it a business, but it could be a place for family reunions and stuff. 

I really like riding horses, dogs, BBQ, wide open spaces, shooting guns, and working on man projects. 

It could be a vacation spot or home if I can convince Sarah, most likely a vacation spot.  So I guess I would like to be a cowboy after I am done being a physicist.

Work 2Fly

I work at jetBlue in the Interline and Distribution Support Team. We are open 24/7. Its a fairly new group at jetBlue. We are expanding our services and working with more travel agencies and getting new partner airlines all the time.

Basically what we do in our small team at jetBlue airlines is work with other partner airlines (usually international) fixing problems that people have becasue of their own error - like wrong name, date, spelling errors in a name... or because of an airline or system error - like a misconnect, cancellation, or computer error.

Our team also assists in GDS or travel agent bookings, government fares and corporate accounts. Occasionally we talk to irate customers experiencing air travel difficulty thru their own error, system errors or travel agent errors or any other number of problems they are having. We generally work on any problem that most of the other teams are unfamiliar with or are not allowed to work on because of the complexity of the issues. It is a lot to learn and a great challenge. I really like it.

I have been with jetBlue since fall of 2007 and have worked in reservations, Crew Support and now this department.

I really like it as I can work from home and its kind of a fun challenge to solve the problems we are presented although occasionally stressful as people's travel is often in jeoprady as they encounter problems at the airport.

I also work at home cleaning, cooking, organizing, projects, gardening, coordinating other jobs and and any other house related work. I like this job to.. and I singed up for it a long time ago.

Occasionally I get to plan special events with delicious food and playing of games.

Worki'n and Worki'n

Work right now for me is on two fronts. My 'real' job is working at Exelis, which is two exits after the airport, and, for the most part, makes aerospace composite stuff: like the outer covering of airplane wings, vacuum pressure poop-tanks (not their official name...), helicopter tail blades, etc. Anything lightweight and strong. My department is called Bearclaw, and we make plugs for geological oil fracturing.

This is an older model, so it's not exactly what we're building anymore, but it's close enough:

I just got promoted to Lead a few weeks ago, which is nice. I haven't noticed much of a change in duties though, which, is also nice? I guess? I was expecting more responsibility or something, but no complaints here for a raise with no extra work so far.

Second front is doing freelance art. Last year was a bit busier for me on the freelance field, with a bunch of educational images and super-tight-deadline-kids-books that were fun but not really what I wanted to be doing forever. That's cooled down a bit, so I've been tackling a large personal project in the form of a graphic novel. (A graphic novel is basically a comic that has a beginning and an end in one volume, not 'to be continued.') That project entails a heinous amout of work, but it's my own storyline, so I enjoy it more, and any proceeds from it are all mine, so I'm hoping it does all right. I update my regular erikastudio blog with that occasionally, but, for the most part, I'm saving it until it's done to release periodically next year with the whole book on sale on the side. I've also had some interest from Wizards of the Coast, which is a card game that buys a lot of fantasy art, so I'm hoping to get a chance to work with them--as that's more the type of art I want to be doing in the long run.

I almost made this our blog picture

Science rules!

For those of us who grew up in the 90's.

So, I have landed in the research group I am going to be in for the next 4ish years. I just got a desk in the office of the research team. They even gave me my own computer!

The physics I do is atom cooling with lasers. Here is the basic concept: 

Using the Doppler effect, we can shoot atoms with laser light that will only hit the atoms that are moving in the direction opposite the photons. 

It's like you are running around and you keep getting hit in the chest with pillows. Eventually you will start to slow down. 

This cools the atoms down so much that they almost stop moving. Once this happens, we can see some pretty interesting quantum effects. One of them is scale invariance. This means that our little cloud of atoms in the lab will behave the same way as a black hole or a neutron star, the size doesn't matter. 

If you click on the link, you can see some pictures of the lab.

Lab website. (My picture is under the people tab.)

My job in the lab right now is basically to lock the laser to different frequencies and then pipe it into the vacuum chamber with fiber optics. 

What Miranda Thinks I Do While She is Sleeping

What Miranda thinks I do while she is sleeping:

1. Throwing parties.
2. Eating delicious foods that she is missing out on.
3. Playing with all of her toys.
4. Watching all of her favorite shows.

What I actually do while Miranda is sleeping:

1. Write grant proposals for East Wake Academy charter school in Zebulon, North Carolina (about 30 minutes away from where we live). I work with the headmasters (Yes, the school calls them “headmasters” just like Hogwarts!) and teachers on getting the things they need at their school. I've written two grants for them so far. One was for getting supplementary materials for a reading program they have at the school. The other I just finished was a grant for chemistry lab equipment. 
2. Write grants for L.I.O.N.S. for Christ Youth Ministries, a nonprofit organization in Bakersfield, California. I just finished writing a letter of inquiry (which is like a mini grant proposal) for a grant to help their organization purchase a larger facility. 
3. Work as an Internet Assessor (yes, I assess the internet) for a company called Lionbridge. Basically, I help improve the quality of search engine results. I just barely got hired on, so I am going through lots of training right now. 

I feel really blessed to have the opportunity to work and stay at home with Miranda. I couldn't have asked for a better setup!

Zoie pointed this out.

Look at the picture on top of the blog. Notice anything?

I'll have to fix that, and Photoshop Miranda in there too.