Whoa, Deep Thoughts, Man

I was reading Nature in the department lounge today while I was waiting for my coffee to brew so I wouldn't fall asleep in my tropical meteorology class and ran across an article that I really needed to see:

The Path Less Travelled in the NatureJobs column.

It starts out: "Most people make sacrifices to complete a PhD because they want a lifetime connected to scientific pursuits. However, only one in three new PhD scientists is likely to get a tenured academic position."

The author goes on to talk about why getting out of academia is becoming a reality to more recent grads and why it might be preferable these days. I was really happy to read this, not because I plan to own my own business or be self-employed some day (I guess anything is possible... ) but because I know I'm going to be one of those two out of three that don't end up in on the tenure track. Not because I don't think I'm smart enough, but because I don't want to and have never envisioned myself becoming a professor. This week, I've been preparing, and unnecessarily stressing out, for a conference and reading a ton of papers written by people smarter than me. It's been easy to lose sight of the fact that I won't be doing this forever, so I'm glad I picked up Nature and got a reminder.

Today's Watches and Warnings

It's a pretty patchwork.

n00b frustration

I just got a new laptop! Yay! It is small and shiny and cute, and I can't wait to bust it out while I'm traveling instead of my heavy, clunky, slow old laptop that ran hot enough to cook food on the keyboard (OK, that's an exaggeration). But I have to say, that old clunky laptop was a faithful computer - never got a virus, never crashed or lost data, ran MATLAB surprisingly well. It hasn't reached the end of its useful life, so I am passing it on to someone who will love and care for it as I have over the past four years. But before I do, I'm wiping the hard drive because nothing puts a cramp in my style like identity theft.

This is where I ran into a little problem today. It's a pet peeve and has more to do with me not being a computer expert, but I have a request to all you tech guys, hackers and whoever else works with computers, software and the like: Please learn how to use plain english. Please meditate on the meaning of "user friendly". You should do this because you are not the only ones who own computers that might resell and thus wipe the hard drive of one day. Being borderline computer illiterate doesn't seem to be an impediment to owning a laptop anymore. Does it annoy you when these people pester you to fix their computer because they used IE instead of firefox and got a virus? Do you grind your teeth reflexively when they ask you tech questions that have simple answers? You can help yourself. You can make this happen less.

Let me explain: My significant other is one of your folk. I asked him today if he could recommend some software that would completely wipe my hard drive. He provided a link. The concept was simple enough. This thing goes on a usb stick somehow. You boot the computer in question from the usb drive and poof! squeaky clean hard drive. OK, but how do you boot your computer from a usb drive? I'm sure this seems like a simple question to you, but would you believe I've never done that before? It's true, the last computer I got rid of, I smashed the hard drive with a hammer (it was scavenged from my high school and worthless anyway) and the next computer I got was the one I am now trying to wipe. So my man says, just look at the directions. Ah, directions. Instructions. Those would be nice, wouldn't they? Except there aren't any. There is a FAQ on the website. I found my answer there, but let me tell you something: Someone who doesn't know much about computers isn't going to know what question to ask, much less what vaguely-named category of question to look in. There is also a readme, in which each actual, simple step is followed, surrounded by or hidden in by two paragraphs of troubleshooting instructions.

Lesson: Steps, instructions, directions should be separate. Troubleshooting is for FAQs. Us simpletons don't know what question to ask before something has even gone wrong. We have to go through the normal steps first.

Is this just toooo muuuuuch wooork for you tech people? In this case, it would have taken just a few lines of plain english. As my man said:
"Click to download the zip file.
Double click to unzip.
Double click on the iso file to burn to a CD"
Which would then be followed by:
"Hit esc-del-F1 when turning on computer to be wiped.
Choose to boot from cd or usb.
Proceed to boot"

That's all. It's very simple. Is that little chunk of instructions anywhere on the website or the readme? No.

This seems like a very small issue to get worked up about, I know. But it says something about the tech industry: you are frustrating everyone around you and they are going to annoy you right back until you make the smallest effort to simplify things that didn't need to be that complicated in the first place.

Nerdy Stuff

My department started off the school year yesterday with a great seminar given jointly with the Earth and Space Science (ESS) department. The speaker was Susan Solomon, a leader in our industry who was heavily involved in ozone hole work and is now on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Her list of honors took our chair five minutes to read and include a National Medal of Science and the Carl Gustav Rossby Award, and the Nobel Peace Prize that the IPCC shared with Al Gore. She spoke on climate change and issue of irreversibilty - can we really prevent global warming? How long will it take to get back to "normal", if that's even possible? The talk was very approachable and I wish she could do a public lecture on the same topic here because I know so many people not in my department, or not in school, who find the subject compelling. In the meantime, I always suggest that anyone wondering what's up with climate change read the IPCC fourth assesment report: Summary for Policymakers. It's written for senators, representatives, etc. so it's short and understandable for the non-scientific folk, and written by a group of some of the most respected researchers in the field.

Also: cloudy with a chance of rocks.

New Seasonal Weather Outlook

The change in the weather this weekend inspired me to take a peek at the Nat'l Weather Service's seasonal weather outlook for the upcoming Autumn. Guess what? They're actually predicting a warmer, drier fall and winter than normal. The warmer part isn't so surprising - the current El Nino is strengthening so that makes sense. Usually, though, El Nino also means a wetter, stormier winter for us. Perhaps there is something else at work - large scale climate dynamics isn't really my specialty. But at least you don't have to completely despair that we're descending into interminable winter a few months early!

Breath Easy...

Seattle is getting back to normal - weather-wise, anyway. For anyone that's been living under rock, we broke a lot of records last week. Most people know that we had the highest daily high temperature ever recorded in Seattle (that would include back in the day when weather readings were taken at the downtown federal building instead of Seatac), a blistering 103 degrees F. But that's not really what made last week so unbearable - I think the misery was more related to another record that we broke. We had the highest low temperature ever recorded in Seattle, too. That is to say, the night of the record breaking heat, it never got below 70 degrees. Seattle wasn't able to cool down... probably for several reasons. We had a lot of air stagnation so the region got very little ventilation. Also, it was fairly humid - not by East coast standards, but there was enough moisture in the air to hold on to a lot of the heat of the day. And of course, we are having our long, intense summer days that don't allow a lot of nighttime cooling (the sunlight is more intense at higher latitudes in the summer - you'll get a sunburn quicker in Seattle than you will in Houston at the Summer Solstice). So we really had the perfect heat wave storm... something that only a meteorologist could get excited about :)

Luckily, the persistent pattern that brought the heat is breaking down and we'll be back to normal (mid 70's) soon... how long that will last is anyone's guess, though.

It's Baaaaaack...

Yes, Folks, it's official - El Nino is back. It doesn't matter a whole lot right now, but come winter we'll see the effects. Sorry, Washington skiers and snowboarders: El Nino means warmer winter temperatures and less snow in the Pacific Northwest. Also, El Nino usually means bad news for California, with increased storminess, but this year I think that might be a good thing since they REALLY need the rain. One immediate consequence that we will see will be the next hurricane outlook that comes out from the Nat'l Hurricane Center in August - El Nino often means a suppression of Atlantic hurricanes. However, they already knew this was coming and this looks to be only a weak to moderate El Nino, so the outlook probably won't change too much.