I brought leftover split pea soup to share with two of my grad student cohorts. The three of us went into the lunchroom where four faculty and one of the dept. secretaries was eating. We started scooping up soup and microwaving it in the two microwaves.



Then the lab tech walked in. (FYI, no one can stand this guy because he's always mean to everyone.)



He looked at us and said, "You know, there's a microwave in the hallway."



One of friends looked at me and said, "There is?"



"Yep," I said. "But it'll take you five minutes to boil a cup of water to make tea."



We said nothing more, but took our lukewarm soup out into the hallway. My friend brought cookies, so I made sure those came with us.



No sense in sharing cookies with people who don't want you around.



(You know, maybe it's just me...or perhaps it's because I was in a smaller dept. as an undergrad, but I seem to remember the professors liked to socialize with the students.)

When I was a kid, my mom used to make a lot of split pea soup in the winter. She used four ingredients: peas, water, salt, and milk. If we actually had enough money to buy ham (not often), she would add that, too.



I have never liked anyone else's split pea soup, but I didn't realize until much later that the primary reason is that mom adds milk. I haven't met anyone else who did.



I, however, am also old enough to realize that salt doesn't cut it, so here's MY recipe. It's kid tested...both kids like it, although I think the younger one was having cognitive dissonance at eating something with a green, slimy texture.



16 oz. dried green split peas

4 cups broth (veggie or chicken)

2 small onions, finely diced

1 cup carrots, diced

3 cups ham, you guessed it...diced

1/2 tsp pepper

1 tsp thyme

1/2 tsp liquid smoke

2 bay leaves

3 cups milk



Combine all ingredients except milk in a crock pot. Cook on high for 5-6 hours. About 1/2 hour before serving, mix in milk. Allow to heat in crock pot until ready to serve. Before serving, remove bay leaves (if you can find them).



BTW, it's very filling, so you've probably got a minimum of 8 servings in there. Good sides would be cheese cubes and apples.

I got the simulation to work! Woot!



I made a big conceptual error. I'm much better now.



And I feel better that there is hope I may actually be able to figure this stuff out.

I finally felt like I was making some real progress today. I figured out all the values I needed to run my program. I took a good chunk of the afternoon and got the code written. I ran it a couple times and cleared up some minor bugs.



Then it finally ran.



And I got very upset.



The stupid thing isn't converging (giving me an answer!). It's actually blowing up, instead.



I looked at it, and couldn't see anything wrong with my program, so I started to look at my equation.



It might be unstable...or at least when I tried to find a condition stability, it kept saying I needed to have negative descretization...which isn't physically possible.



I hope I'm just screwing up the proof big time.



*beats head on keyboard*



If I don't get this working, I'm SO screwed. I was hoping to have it finished yesterday...and Mike's out of town, so I can't get anything done tonight.



*whimper*

I started my research LJ yesterday and just put some notes about some software in there.



Today I came in, and spent 20 minutes summarizing where I was at after yesterday. It was nice to be able to write out all the things I found but also talk about the things I didn't understand as well as other things I need to check into. It seemed to get me focused into where I am going today.



So I'm liking this idea so far. I REALLY like the fact that I can put tags to make all my entries searchable (especially if I'm trying to find info on a paper I reviewed). This may save me a lot of hassle down the line.



*keeps fingers crossed*