PSICAT News

Last week I was in Potsdam, Germany for a meeting with folks from ICDP, ESO, and CoreWall. We were discussing integrating our various tools (PSICAT, Corelyzer, and the Drilling Information System) to create a turnkey technology platform for future ICDP and ESO drilling expeditions. Each of the tools have been used successfully on multiple expeditions, but until now haven't interoperated with each other. The meeting went well and we adjourned with an integration plan.

So what does this mean for PSICAT? First off, if you're an existing user, you won't have to do anything different; PSICAT will continue to work exactly as it does today. It will just have some new, optional features for integrating with the DIS and Corelyzer. One positive side effect of this is that I will have some "official" time devoted to working on PSICAT. Things have been so busy in the last couple of months that PSICAT development has been on the back burner. PSICAT won't be my only project but it should get more attention than it is getting now. It also means that PSICAT will be getting used all over the world on new drilling projects, which (I hope) leads to a larger user community and a better overall product.

Exciting times! Keep an eye on the PSICAT site for more updates.

Lincoln and Potsdam

Sorry for the lack of updates. I'm in Lincoln this week and then Potsdam, Germany next week for work. If anyone happens to be reading from either of those places and wants to grab a beer, shoot me an email. I'm hoping to get some work done on the flights, so hopefully I'll have stuff to blog about.

On a personal note, Elizabeth and I are in the process of buying a house. We found one we liked and offered on it last week. The offer was accepted and now we're just waiting for the sellers to do a few things and for our mortgage loan to come through. The plan is to close on the 20th or sooner, so when I get back from Potsdam, it looks like I'll be getting my stuff packed up to move.

The house is in Golden Valley (about 2 miles north of where we currently live). It's about 2000 sq. ft, with 4 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. It's a one story, with a finished walkout basement. The lot is nice and large (for the city) and it's in what appears to be a nice, established neighborhood. I'm super pumped about the move as it means I can start doing things around the house (when I'm home, that is). I'll get some photos up when we start moving.

Busy Last Couple of Weeks

In the last 2.5 weeks, I was in the Bahamas for my wedding, Tallahassee for work, and in Iowa for a friend's wedding. I've spent a total of maybe 36 hours at home during that time. And to top it all off, my laptop went kaput while I was in the Bahamas and I'm waiting for a replacement. The blogging should pick back up now that I'm home for a bit.

Antarctica Service Medal

Not too much technical content tonight. I spent most of the afternoon trying to get OSGi working from a Java Webstart application without much luck. It may be something that I revisit down the road, but for the time being distributing a zip with a set of shell scripts should work. As part of the process, I also learned how to sign a Jar file, which will be useful in an upcoming project.

This morning I pushed out the first update to the Grails app I have in production. Just before performing the actual update, I remembered to double check that my production DataSource was set to 'update' instead of 'create' or 'create-drop' the database. It was lucky I checked because it was set to 'create' from when I was wrangling with MySQL. I had already made a dump of the database, so I wouldn't have lost any data, but I was glad that I checked.

On the non-technical front, I received an Antarctica Service Medal in the mail for the time I spent in Antarctica:


I probably won't have too many occasions to actually wear it, but the medal is a nice memento of my time down there.

And the countdown has begun: 9 days until I'm in the Bahamas for my wedding and honeymoon. Pretty crazy!

Back from Boston

I made it back from Boston. The trip was fun but I did not get as much done as I would have at home. Things are looking to be pretty busy this week as I scramble to get caught up. The wedding is in a few weeks. 10 days on the beach in the Bahamas. That thought is what's getting me through the work and stress.

In other news, I'm starting a new project in my spare time. I'm going to keep things under wraps for a bit as I don't have a solid time frame. However, one thing I will mention is that it's going to be a webapp and it's going to contain a social component. I'm hoping the development will yield a series of useful Groovy/Grails blog posts.

I'd also really like to pull together a generic "web 2.0 template" project in Grails. Something that would pull together plugins for security and contain User, Profile, Role-type domain classes, controllers, and views. Ideally you should be able to use it to bootstrap a generic Web 2.0 site with all of the user registration and profile management taken care of. Then you can start adding your specific domain classes to make the site useful.

Let's Get Crackin'

We had dinner at the Barking Crab last night:


Definitely a highlight. It was a really good dinner and I think we looked exceptionally good in our bibs.

And the match is...

Minneapolis. We were pretty sure Elizabeth would match here since it is a big program and she had strong recommendations from a lot of the doctors in the program but it was still a little stressful. With that hurdle out of the way, I'm off to Boston next week for the NSTA national meeting. I'm just there helping out with the ANDRILL booth, so hopefully I can find plenty of time to work as things are shaping up to be a death march until I leave for the wedding on the 17th. We're rolling out a new sample request management system on April 1, revamping the whole ANDRILL website right around then, and preparing for the SMS post-drilling workshop at the end of April. I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to spending a week on the beach in the Bahamas.

Anxious Anticipation

This is a pretty important week for Elizabeth and I. On Thursday we find out where she "matched" for her residency, which will dictate where we end up living for the next four or so years. Her top choice was to stay here in Minneapolis. The University of Minnesota has a really good program in what she is going into (MedPeds--a combination of Internal Medicine and Pediatrics). Her second choice is Milwaukee, WI. After that, the list includes Indianapolis, IN; Chicago, IL; Peoria, IL; and Rochester, NY.

Obviously Minneapolis would be the simplest all around option. We're already situated here, so we wouldn't have to worry about moving. Oddly enough, Milwaukee is also intriguing to me. Maybe it's the beer and brats. It's also still close enough that we could get back to see friends and family for the holidays and long weekends. The big downside to Milwaukee, or any place other than Minneapolis, is that we'd have to move on relatively short notice. We find out on March 20th and have to be moved by June 15th or so. Factor a wedding and a reception into that timeframe and we've only got about a month to find a place and get moved in.

We're both waiting for Thursday with bated breath.

Bacheloring it up

Elizabeth went to Rochester today through Sunday. She's having her final wedding dress fitting and a bridal shower. That leaves me and the cat to fend for ourselves. Tonight I had the boys over to watch some college basketball and to try out the cream stout Will and I just kegged. Everyone agreed that it turned out well.

Tomorrow I really need to finish up some Grails work I've been doing and to get a few screencasts shot. Since Elizabeth is gone, I'll probably end up working Saturday to catch up on some PSICAT work that I've fallen behind on. Apologies to anyone who's waiting on me. ANDRILL is keeping me busy.

Tomorrow I'll have a technical post. I haven't decide what yet, but I'll figure something out.

Wedding Update

Our wedding plans are progressing nicely. The actual wedding is on April 19th in the Bahamas (Euleuthera Island). It's going to be small; only a few family and friends. We're all flying down there on Thursday, the 17th. We'll have Thursday afternoon, all day Friday, and most of the day Saturday to relax and hang out. The actual wedding ceremony is going to be pretty low key. We're going to be married on the beach in late afternoon on Saturday. For the honeymoon, Elizabeth and I have rented a little house on a private beach for the following week. We return to the real world on the 27th, and a couple weeks after that, on May 16th, we're going to have a reception in St. Paul.