Over the last few week, I have been spending most of my time coding in an attempt to improve and add new features to our groups’ codes.  I had almost forgotten how fun and satisfying coding can be, even if it is in Fortran.  We recently moved to an SVN programming environment, which has drastically improved our code organization.  Additionally, it turns out the courses I was required to take as part of the CSGF actually are directly relevant to my research.  I solved a nasty hidden bug in our MPI implementation the other day, that I’d have never have figured out without my CS courses.  Doesn’t it always feel more satisfying when you solve a problem with some complicated obscure knowledge that you struggled to gain?  Usually, the next day, you find out that you could have solved  the problem using a fifth graders’ knowledge anyway; which is why you should never think about a problem again after solving it   Anyway, hopefully all this will also lead to some new papers sometime relatively soon…

I was just watching the Colbert Report shows from last week and was quite surprised to find that the (now former) Berkeley Physics graduate student, Jeff Gore, was the featured guest on wednesday’s show!