Logging as fast as it comes in

Things have been cooking around here. We've had pretty constant core flow at about 15m/day. This is still under our estimated peak flow of 30m/day, but flow should pick up here pretty soon. And when it does, we can build a buffer of core so I'm not constantly working on the next section the sedimentoligists need.

We've been in some pretty monotonous sediments, so the sedimentologists have had a pretty easy time of describing the core. Tonight we're finally into something different to spice up the core presentation tomorrow. But the word is, tomorrow we're back to the monotonous stuff.

As for me, work has been pretty busy with the increased core flow. About every 20 minutes I have to stop what I'm doing and prepare the next core image for the Corelyzer system. There's also been some procedural issues that I've been working through to minimize the amount of manual work. Tonight I worked up a notification script that checks to see if there are any new images waiting so then I can process them. And I've streamlined the processing down to as little as possible--I simply have to crop the images to the right size depending on the core and run a script to make them available to the sedimentologists via the Corelyzer system. So for the most part, I've got things under control. The constant interruption to process images is pretty annoying, because it makes it hard to concentrate on getting any work done. Though when we get a buffer built up, it should go away.

We've also had a lot of DVs (distinguished visitors) coming through recently. It makes for long days when they are here because I usually stick around through the core tour to make sure all of the software is working and give little demos of the software. I haven't been leaving until 1PM or later most days, which gives 6 or 7 hours to do things like laundry, run errands, and sleep. I'm definitely looking forward to just sitting back and relaxing once I get back to the States. :)

I got a good action shot of me squeezing pore water from rocks last night. It's on Thom's camera so I'll get that from him and get it posted hopefully tomorrow. In lieu of that, here's a cool picture of a big rock we drilled through: