Obviously not. Here’s recent proof that she hasn’t changed too much in the last month.

What’s that over there?

So, as I mentioned, there are a few reasons it’s been so long since the last update. Here they are.

1) Time. Since many of our family members have computers in such a pathetic state of being that the full-sized pictures would likely send their browsers into a comatose state that their hard drives would never recover from, I have to resize all of the pictures on here before uploading so as not to bring about the Compupocalypse for anyone. Since I know how to use a computer, I don’t have any of those easy 1-click programs to deal with my pictures that create a mess for file storage and memory issues on the PC, so I have to sort through the pics, manually choose each one to upload, and then resize each one individually. All of these processes take a significant amount of time, and it was wearing me down and I was slipping in other areas.

2) The video card in my office computer up and died the day after my last post, which started me down a nearly three-week process of rebuilding one PC, and building two new ones to get myself re-situated. It’s still not perfect, but at least I am up and running again. I’ve got a Windows 7 machine networked with a Linux machine, with both operating off of the same mouse and keyboard. I’m sure I’ll discuss more about this later because it’s just so cool, but I’ll move on for now. I’ll simply say that because of problems I have with my laptop, whenever I sign into WordPress for this blog, my internet connection dies, so that leaves my office computer as the only option. This, of course, left me unable to do anything for a couple of weeks anyway.

3) One of my best friends in the history of the ever, Ben Johnson, went down swinging in his battle against leukemia about three weeks back. I’ve known Ben for more than half his life, and damn near half of mine. He was one of the best people I’ve ever known, and I still don’t have the words. It’s probably the first time in my life I’ve been struck speechless by something. To be honest, I haven’t felt much like doing anything lately because of that. I miss him more than I can say.

4) I’ve been actually spending more time with Emi and interacting with her more in a lame attempt to take some of the stress off of Sara. Also, I just plain like spending time with her. I vastly prefer it to, say, writing about how someone else has been spending time with her. So, I apologize if this upsets anyone, but if I have a choice between spending time with Emi, or signing in to do all sort of things for an update, chances are I am going to choose her. Them’s the breaks, eh?

So, to satiate you, at least for the moment, here are a couple more pictures.

Broadway Emi skips down the Yellow Brick Road!

Metal face. METAL FACE!

I truly enjoyed doing the updates so frequently on here, but it was getting to be too much. Too much time, and I was stressing out over getting them done, and losing time to do other things. You know, like my job. Or spending time with my little girl. Chalk it up to burnout, but these Emi Updates won’t be coming as frequently, because I simply can’t keep up that pace. I trust you will all understand, and Emi has a message for all you haters that want to complain.

Emi prefers the single deuce.

Definitely my little girl. I didn’t even have to teach her that. DNA is a powerful thing, my friends.

Until next time.

-Matt

It’s the little things that keep me going. I came home tonight and Sara made Philly Cheesesteaks for dinner. Brutally awesome. Then, I went in to check on my little girl, and while she was sleeping, she kept opening her eyes to look up at me, and she would smile before closing them and heading back to Dreamland.

Consider me defused. For now.

-Matt

“Okay so just to prove your experimentation truly works, you should show Em-Dot in the midst of a babypocolypse moment and then you singing and then her not being in babypocolypse mode any more :P”

Be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it.

Irrefutable proof of the power of Metal. My daughter is pretty much the best thing ever.

-Matt

Now the song I am singing in that video may not seem very Metal, but I assure you it is. It’s a song called “I Died For You” by Iced Earth, and is from the album The Dark Saga which is about Spawn, which just happens to be one of the best comic characters in history. For those who haven’t ever heard the actual song, check it out below.

This was the first song I had ever heard by Iced Earth, and I fell in love with it immediately. Now, they are one of my favorite bands. Apparently one of Emi’s favorites as well.

So, you may be thinking it is coincidence that she should calm down, because even though it is a Metal song, it doesn’t sound it when I sing it. Well, turns out Emi also likes some Doom and Death Metal vocals as well.

That’s a song called “Swallowed By The Moon” by November’s Doom. It’s a really good song written from the perspective of a father to his child. It’s probably not up everyone’s alley, particularly because of the Doom-style vocals, but Emi seems to dig it nonetheless.

I love the fact that Emi is exhibiting Metal tendencies, but I am starting to fear that she may someday become more Metal than even I am.

Just kidding! Like that could ever happen.

-Matt

Metal Is Forever!!!

You may not think she looks very Metal in this picture, but don’t let her looks deceive you; in her chest beats a heart that was born to rock. Some of you may be dubious, or may not believe some of the things I have posted here. However, I have come to you today with solid, irrefutable evidence that liquid Metal flows in my baby’s veins. If you will, kindly view Daddy’s Exhibit A:

Not enough proof for you yet? Well, when the Iced Earth song ended, Emi jumped and started to stir at the sudden radio silence. Sara tried to fill the void using something very un-Metal in Colbie Caillat, which is apparently pronounced Colby Kayak. Emiko’s reaction is quite clear, as seen in Daddy’s Exhibit B:

This is me e-thumbing my nose at all of you naysayers out there who didn’t believe it could be true. Sure, I like to make jokes and play around, but when it comes to Metal, I am serious as they come.

Let the truth be known: Emiko. Is. Metal.

End transmission.

-Matt

The sweater is done in Kwanzaa colors.

Happy Kwanzaa, Internet!

I absolutely love this sweater, and think it looks great on her, but you have to admit that it is absolutely Kwanzaalicious. I think it’s awesome, and Sara just shakes her head and rolls her eyes when I say it. Hopefully the physical violence will be kept to a minimum, because I just couldn’t help sharing pictures like these.

The Revolution Will Not Be Pacified.

Emi reaches for a pound. Don’t leave her hanging.

Kwanzaa has always been one of my favorite holidays, and this just makes it that much better for me. Unfortunately, Emi found out the hard way that fighting the power can be exhausting work.

Emi has a dream…

Emiko > Everything. That is all.

-Matt

So I spent the first couple of hours at work on Monday preparing for the talk I was to give in the afternoon. Luckily, since I had just given the lecture to the 3rd year undergrads this past Thursday, I was able to recycle a lot of the basic information and just add in some more specific details.

Let’s hear it for Copy/Paste!

I spent most of Monday afternoon before the meeting preparing for the experiment that I am running today (actually as I write this) in the 3000-ton press on the first floor. For synthesis experiments like this, I most commonly use the 2000-ton and 3000-ton presses here in the GRC. For those of you who have never seen such equipment before, here are some pictures.

Haruka with ORANGE-2000.

Me with ORANGE-3000.

To put two things to rest right away… First, yes, these pictures are a few months old, from back before I started shaving my head. Second, although it may not seem it from these photos, the 3000-ton press is actually significantly larger than the 2000-ton press. As proof, here is a picture for scale:

Me with Haruka.

As you can see, I am significantly larger than Yano-san. Significantly. Like, a factor of 2-point-something.

Anyhow, I had originally intended to do this experiment last Friday, but the last experiment I did ended up rupturing several anvils, and the new batch had not arrived yet. I had to postpone the experiment to the next available day on the schedule, which was today. Thankfully, the anvils arrived late Friday afternoon (just barely too late to do the experiment; grrr…) and I was able to run today.

After the group meeting got out, just before 6 pm on Monday, I was asked whether or not I had submitted my research grant proposal. I said that I hadn’t, as the deadline is this coming Friday. I was then informed that the deadline for non-Japanese proposals that are to be submitted in English was last Friday. Needless to say, I was taken aback by this, as I had no idea. I was told that this information had been emailed to me, and I went to check, and sure enough it had.

In Japanese.

I will repeat that. The administrative office sent an email saying that non-Japanese speakers who were submitting English proposals had an earlier deadline, and they sent this email to the non-Japanese-speaking GRC folk in Japanese.

Hence my confusion.

Anyway, it turns out it is not a big deal, as it is only a soft internal deadline, which is a week before the hard internal deadline, which is three weeks before the actual JSPS deadline. (JSPS is the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, and acts kind of like the National Science Foundation in the U.S.) Another excellent example of the multi-layered bureaucratic structure here.

I finished preparing the proposal about 2am Tuesday morning, and finished revising and polishing it on Tuesday. In addition to working on the proposal, I also finished preparing for today’s experiment, which was another few hours of lab work.

I also had my first Daddy/Husband panic attack on Tuesday afternoon. Sara was supposed to go to City Hall to pick up some paperwork so she could finish filing the last of the necessary forms for her and Emi’s Visas at the immigration office that afternoon. What should have been a 1 hour excursion turned into four hours without any sign of her. Several phone calls went unanswered, and I began trying to figure out how the hell to report two missing people to the local police in a language I can’t speak.

Luckily, she finally arrived here about 5 minutes before the aneurysm actually burst, and my mind was put at ease. I finished the lab work at about 7 pm, and Sara stuck around here so we could walk home together. We stopped at the grocery store on the way home to pick up some snacky foods and ketchup, the latter of which I had ruthlessly devoured the last of that morning.

Emi was really good the whole time, and it was time to eat when we got home. She got a tad fussy for a while, and now you know the reason for the Stewie Griffin video I posted.

So, today I got a bit of a later start than I had intended, and came in here to start the experiment. It was a bit different than usual because the computer that monitors the pressure and controls the heating in the press died yesterday. It was replaced, but the programs and such work a bit differently than what I am used to. Haruka helped me get the press cleaned and ready, and after a brief explanation about the new computer from Shinmei-san, it was time to begin compressing.

Which is a five hour process, by the way.

So, during this five hours, I worked with the Research Administrator for the GRC, Yamada-san, on translating the title of my research proposal and submitting the preliminary proposal to the JSPS website. We ended up taking care of a lot of things today; see if you can follow this trail with me.

1) I write the proposal in English. No problem.
2) The descriptive title must be translated into Japanese for the submission process, and can be no more than 40 characters. Yamada-san took care of this. I don’t know what I would do without him.
3) Submit the proposal to the JSPS web system. Which is written entirely in Japanese. Again, thanks go to Yamada-san.
4) Receive PDF file of proposal with new cover sheet.
5) Print this PDF file.
6) Take hard copy of PDF file across campus to the research office at the University for them to look over and check for formatting errors or other logistical problems.
7) Receive either corrections or the green light from the research office. (Rinse and repeat Steps 6-7 as needed.)
8) Submit final version of grant proposal to JSPS web system.
9) Wait 5 months to find out whether or not the proposal is funded.

Today, we got through steps 1-6. Hopefully things will be in order and I can finalize all of this tomorrow.

The huge amount of bureaucratic machinations aren’t the most difficult part of the proposal process, however. We are not given a character limit or anything, but we ARE given a very limited amount of space and a minimum font size. This is universal, whether written in Japanese or English. Since I am writing in English, I don’t have the luxury of using Kanji characters, which significantly reduce the amount of space taken up by Japanese writing. This means I am limited to saying about half of what the typical Japanese proposal has room to say, which makes it harder to fully develop and give enough details, and that can be frustrating.

On a good note, though, I received the final electronic version of my latest paper, which has just gone live in the Journal of Earth Science. For those of you who are interested, it can be found by CLICKING HERE. Good times.

And that leads us to now, where I am about 3 hours into the 4 hour heating cycle. Unfortunately, the thermocouple broke during compression, and I can’t seem to find the reason why. I hesitate to call shenanigans, but I will keep an eye out for signs when I take it out tomorrow. So, one more hour until I can quench the sample and set it to decompress overnight. The press is booked by a student tomorrow, so I need to make sure to vacate the space for her as early as possible.

Now that I’ve bored pretty much all of you to tears, I suppose I’ll call it a day in Blogsville and head back downstairs to check on my little alchemical concoction. Thanks for stopping by, people, and until next time, I bid you all a Metal farewell.

-Matt

Emi’s already starting to show signs of this. It’s going to be one hell of a ride!

-Matt

She’s becoming quite the strong little girl as well, and enjoys nothing so much as ninja-kicking me in the face or nether regions when she gets fussy. Sara and I speculate she may be trying to prevent future siblings from hogging her limelight. She is definitely a Diva-in-training with her temper and demands.

Daddy, as the lone male, is now on borrowed time…

In addition to her physical growth, it has been interesting to watch the evolution of her personality as well. She has been getting fussy a lot lately, but she’s also starting to show signs of curiosity as well.

“How do we resolve possible velocity attenuation as a function of frequency domain?”

She has also begun letting us know what her preferences are as far as certain things are concerned. She likes to be warm and really doesn’t like the cold. Her Daddy, on the other hand, loves the cold, while her Mommy likes to be bundled up in the cold to feel warm. Not Emi. She prefers to be ridiculously warm, to the point where she starts to sweat. Sometimes when she sleeps on my chest, I have difficulty telling if she threw up on me, of if she is just sweating on me.

On average, it’s a 50/50 chance for either.

She has also started to show some very strong preferences in music. Preferences that make me very proud. I played a metal song for her recently, and she was very content. I played an acoustic version of the same song, and she started to cry. I put the original heavy metal version back on, and she stopped crying.

In addition to that, she has continued to show preferences in the songs I sing for her. When she gets fussy, I’ll walk around with her and bounce her around to calm her, but usually it takes me singing to really calm her. I try some nice mellow songs, and still she fusses. I started singing Guns N’ Roses “Don’t Cry” and she calmed right down. I followed that up with “I Walk Alone” by Iced Earth, and she fell right asleep in my arms. For those of you not familiar with the song, here it is.

I couldn’t be prouder of my little girl. Raise the fist of the Metal child!

-Matt