Deeply moved
Moved to the new apartment this weekend. It’s as much fun as always – slightly better than slogging through hip-deep boiling molasses, but not quite as nice as being massaged by porcupines. (Their paws are surprisingly soft.) Thankfully, I had some truly excellent help (second year in a row), so it was a lot shorter and more pleasant than it might’ve been.
The new place is quieter. Much quieter. I never got at all used to the noise of US-23 right outside my bedroom window, and I guesstimate it cost me at least half an hour of sleep every night for the past year. I wonder if there’s a way to claim reimbursement for that? and would they (whoever They might be) deliver it in one lump payment or could it sort of trickle out over the next year or so?
It’s bigger, slightly. Except my bedroom (the second/guest room – I lost the coin toss), which is quite a bit smaller, and also I can’t spread out into the living room as much. But I really have all the space I need, and the room’s a nice layout. Kind of shy on electrical outlets, and the only one near my desk is on the wall switch… might have to rearrange at some point.
And it’s closer… instead of a 7 minute walk followed by a 26-32 minute bus ride (or a 15 minute walk with a 20 minute ride), it’s a ~5 minute walk with a 10 minute ride and a 10 minute walk. I can even walk all the way, when the weather’s as nice as it’s been. Only down side is that pretty much spoils the nice long read I used to have twice a day, but I’ll cope somehow.
Roommate, yes. I have one again. More news of him later, perhaps. I’ll keep it nice, he might discover this some day 
In other happy news, yesterday’s experiment went quite well. So well, in fact, that the individual spectra might actually be usable (instead of binning each row of the chip, trading spatial resolution for spectral quality). And that opens up a whole new set of data handling techniques… principal components, here I come. It seems vaguely odd — and yet unsurprising — that it becomes easier to process 900+ spectra than to process 50.
Now, if only the hurricane backs away from hitting my family’s house, it’ll be a good week indeed!
