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The SEM+EDS machine in one of my school’s materials labs ran 98 and there was exactly one thumb drive on campus that was allowed to be used if you wanted to pull data. The lab coordinator had to pull the output file to his computer and email them, but made it sound like the biggest inconvenience in the world if you, ya know, wanted your data.

My school gave up on printing/binding theses, so they also gave up on thesis formatting requirements. As long as your advisor approved the thesis and the title page had all the relevant info, it could be formatted however you wanted.

After finishing my dissertation, I spent maybe 20 minutes emailing the library staff about dissertation edits (date format/placement on title page mainly) and otherwise was told any other requested changes were optional so long as my advisor signed off. I have to get my dissertation printed and bound myself, but that is a small price to pay compared to the nightmare that is univeristy thesis format compliance.

Lol, no, but I’d be damned if I put my actual name out on the internet. Dr. Drail is my profesional anonymous title.

As a newly minted doctor, I prefer Dr. Drail because of the work I put in. I have seen three common name/title presentations though:

Dr. Drail

Dr. Drail, Ph.D.

Mr. Drail, Ph.D.

The last one obviously preserves a gendered title if desired. I tend to include my pronouns where applicable, as it makes clear my gender identity while allowing me to use the least cumbersome combo (Dr. Drail) without confusion. I haven’t ever met someone who double stacks their honorifics (ie Dr. Mr. Drail), but if you want to make clear your gender, there aren’t any rules against it, and it is common in some non-english speaking cultures.

Ultimately, it is your title, your honorific, so you get to decide how to present it. I prefer to just go by my name 90% of the time, but while applying for jobs or introducing myself in a profesional capacity, Dr. Drail (he/him/his) is a really easy way to get all the info across succinctly.

My goal for the summer was to finish my PhD. I defended on Friday and am now Dr. Drail, so I actually accomplished my summer task for once. I sacrificed all my sleep and sanity to do so, as I was told at the 11th hour to redo a major analysis that made up 1/4 of my dissertation, but I fucking got it done.

Everything should just be in eV. Particle physics natural units are the best.

I gave my PhD dissertation defense on Friday, so I am looking forward to not having anything specific to look forward to.

I haven’t played a video game for any length of time since Elden Ring first came out, so I might play Shadow of the Erdtree. Or maybe BG3. Or maybe I will just do some dnd planning. I want to get some home repairs done, so some of that. Maybe just go chill with some friends. All the little things that I haven’t had the time/energy/bandwidth to do for so long.

I want to enjoy not being consantly anxious about my research and not just be distracting myself from said anxiety, but to truly relax, just for a week or two before I move and have to start job hunting.

I have both ADHD and minor hearing loss that started when I was a teenager (wear earplugs if you frequent concerts and play in live bands, turn the music down on your headphones from max volume). It is a rough combo that led to plenty of awkward situations as an awkward teen.

The worst was when I was on a first date at a SixFlags and my date didn’t tell me she was terrified of rollercoasters. I felt bad, but only went on a few rides without her and spent the remaining time trying to win a stuffy at a carnival game for her, trying to have a good time anyway. She was really really quiet and I was having a hard time with all the stimulus and crowd noise understanding her. Eventually, it got to the point where I was asking her to repeat everything more than once, so I started to autopilot. While we were waiting in line for something, she muttered something and I responded, my brain playing fill in the blanks, “Uh-huh.”

Turns out, when I heard her say “Mumble mumble ride mumble bring mumble with you mumble.” she was not saying, “I really wish I could go on a ride, but I am happy you wanted to bring me with you anyway!”

She was, instead, saying something along the lines of, “It must be so annoying that I haven’t gone on a single ride, I bet you regret bringing me here with you at all today.”

Needless to say, there was no 2nd date. She told me later it was shitty of me to respond like that, and I couldn’t convince her that I just misheard her. Since then, if I can’t understand someone after two tries, I just explain that I have bad hearing and need them to speak up. Asking someone to repeat themselves will always be less awkward than driving her home after that.

Cividis. Perceptually uniform gradient colormaps are fun for the whole family

Not to dunk on word, if I need slightly more flexibility than a native .txt reader, it will do in a pinch. That being said:

Word: Oh, you want a table? Good luck getting your excel sheet to cary everything over properly, and god forbid you change a formula. You want to write it natively in word? Lol no.

Latex: tabularx goes brrrr

Word: Equations? Have fun properly tracking equation numbers and manually formatting your text to center justified every time.

Latex: $ $, \( \), and \begin{equation} go brrrr.

Word: Figures? Hope you anchored everything properly, it would be a shame if your entire document layout got shifted…

Latex: What the fuck is an anchor? top, here, bottom, those are your options. Add an exclamation mark if you’re feeling spicy.

My former colleague and I both decided on the same template for our dissertation, but hers looked wonky with the default margins. Sacrificing that lamb to have slightly tighter margins was worth it, even if the eldritch ramblings keep me awake at night.

I did all my Quantum Field Theory homework in Latex, the professor required it. My classmates would write everything out by hand and then transcribe it, meanwhile my officemate and I could think/write/math in Latex, so we only had to write our homework once. The prof lifted the requirement halfway through the semester after everyone else complained, but I never looked back.

The only thing that prevented a 100% Latex-only semester was the goddam section where we had to draw Wick diagrams. There just wasn’t a reliable way to draw them on my computer, as the Feynman diagram tools stuggled with the nuances of Wick diagrams. I still included the hand-drawn versions as figures in Latex, but it felt like cheating.

I did figure out how to write the Wick’s theorem bracket notation in Latex though (not that I’ll ever need to again), so that made up for it a bit. I wager that I spent more time researching obscure Latex packages than actually solving the problems that semester.

I love Latex so much, I even made a template for generating profesional looking DND item cards for my table that I submitted to overleaf: https://www.overleaf.com/latex/templates/d-and-d-item-card-template/ndfdspmmxnrn

When I was a kid, it was playing card rubberbanded to my chainstay so I could pretend I was riding a motorcycle from the noise

Nowadays, I prefer to just let out wolf whistle. Pierces even the best noise cancelling headphones and busiest traffic noise.

There is also a Michael Conklin referenced in the article spiderman pointing meme

I use Tidal for listening to music on my phone most of the time, whether wired or wireless. That, plus USB Audio Player Pro for wired listening, gives a pretty good sound quality over my DAC. At home and in my work office I have dedicated DACs and tube amps for driving my cans (Schitt Modi + Littleblack Mk.2 in my office, Schitt Mobius + Feliks Echo 2 at home).

I use the dedicated DAC on mobile for a few reasons:

1. My phone doesn’t have a headphone jack and I have been dissapointed by most USBC-to-3.5mm dongles’ build quality, so using a higher quality DAC gets around that.

2. I also generally prefer a balanced 4.4mm jack over an unbalanced 3.5mm, both for a more solid physical connection and to reduce crosstalk, and my DAC has both 3.5/4.4mm ports.

3. For wireless. I use IEMs that have a wired connection and the bluetooth adapters/replacement cables are pretty low quality in my experience (low battery capacity, poor sound quality, poor build quality, finnicky connectors, etc.) and a combo bluetooth/wired dac is avoids most of these issues. It also means I can keep the DAC and my phone in different places on my person (great for having my phone on a stand while biking and keeping the DAC in my pocket, or leaving my phone charging while I listen to music in my lab).

No, the Ifi GoBlu. Great sound quality, great aesthetic, convenient size, garbage battery quality. I have had to send it in 3 times for swelling. Each time, I have buckled down more on making sure I was more careful with charging; using a smart charging or low power USBC AC adapter, then using only low voltage adapters, finally demanding they send me an AC adapter designed for it since they didn’t include one.

Such a significant thing to cheap out on with a $200 piece of tech, especially when LiPo batteries are already so cheap. They also refused to send spare batteries as well this last time, which I am more than capable of replacing myself, to save ~3 weeks of time. I have decided that if it happens again, I will just find a comparable size/voltage battery and solder it in myself to spare myself the hassle.

My pocket DAC/Amplifier Combo, works over Bluetooth and wired, built in mic. Allows me to both have great audio quality for music over wired and use my favorite IEMs wirelessly when sound quality isn’t my first concern (biking, working in my lab, chores, etc). I used to just use my wired DAC for listening to my phone, but having the flexibility of choice makes life so nice.

I just wish they had used a better battery, I have had to send it in multiple times for battery swelling.

My mom had an inspirational sign in one of her bathrooms that said, “Embrace this moment, for this moment is your life.” perfectly matched to her decor. She knew exactly what she was doing.

I work on a 0nuBB search doing detector R&D, this is spot on, but has 2 extra components. The three elements needed for explaining the asymmetry are:

1. CP Violation
2. Lepton or Baryon Number violation
3. Interactions out of thermal equilibrium

These are the Sakharov conditions for Baryogenesis/Leptogenesis. #1 has been observed via the weak interaction but not in large enough quantities and is not observed via strong interactions, #2 is what proton decay and 0nuBB searches look for, and #3 can be, at least partially, explained by the expansion of the universe as a non-equilibrium interaction.

To get from leptogenesis to baryogenesis requires theretical physics I only barely understand using particles call sphaelerons that convert leptons to baryons.