Literature Review

Posted Tue Apr 13, 2010 in Engineering

I started out early this morning, working through a project review and figuring out what needs to be done next. I wrote a buttload of emails, then paused for a few minutes to write in my journal.

That journal-writing activity seems to be something key for me. It’s a chance to pause and reflect both on what is coming and what is behind. I think that is something healthy — at least for me.

I also find I’m listening to music a lot more again. I’m not sure exactly why, but I am. I’ve been cleaning up my collection — tossing some things and re-ripping others with the excellent EAC extractor and LAME encoder. I also bought a few new disks and think I’ll order some more as I figure out what sounds good to me.

But, after writing in my journal and my morning ablutions, I hit the literature review really hard. I pulled the boxes from under my work table in the garage, popped them open, and pulled a handful of papers from them. Those are the remains of my earlier climate-change project. I guess the remainder went into the bin somewhere along the way. I wish I’d scanned them, but the aphorism goes “wish in one hand and shit in the other and see which fills first…”

Regardless, I need to see what’s transpired since I last worked on the downscaling problem. It’s been at least ten years and a buttload of money (there’s that word again) was spent on climate-change research since then. So, I’ve been working on Google Scholar all day. I finally quit about 1630 when my poor little pea-brain couldn’t take any more. I’ll hit it again tomorrow, I think. I’d like to get the graduate student who’s helping at Tech a load of work to do while I’m out of town late this week. I can get started reading and writing next week then, before I head for Lubbock the following week for a writing workshop.

Now I think I need a bite of something to eat. I need to finish my presentation in the morning and there are two meetings tomorrow as well. We’re planning on leaving Thursday morning before too late because I need to pick up some materials from California Dam Safety before they shut down Thursday afternoon.

I’m doing a seminar for the Corps of Engineers Friday on the concurrent flooding problem. I’ll present my “toy” and then talk about the bivariate probability distribution approach and then segue into copula technology. I’m not sure about my audience, but I think there will be a few technically-savvy folks there who will want more than lip service to the mathematics.

I’m not a mathematician, but I can do a little mathematics. I’m also damned stubborn. I do not give up easily when confronted with a problem. It’s part of my nature.

Now I want something to eat.