Trish Frazeur's blog

This week everything started to come together. At the beginning of the week Grant and I realized that the program I had been modifying for the last week and a half would not work even without my modifications. It was a bit frustrating to essentially throw out something you had spent a bunch of time troubleshooting. Oh well such as life I guess. At least I would no longer have to figure out why it wasn't working quite right.

This week I was finally able to compile the SELFE program and then get it to run. It was very exciting because it meant that I could finally start getting my data for the ETM.

This week I feel like I have made some progress toward my final project. Things are starting to piece together which is great since we are at the half way point already! I can't believe how quick those 5 weeks have gone by.

I spent a lot of time working with Sergey's Matlab code. When I first saw it, I must admit it looked a bit foreign. I took an introductory course on Matlab winter term, but this was a bit beyond that class. Grant helped explain some of the stuff but I mostly manipulated it so I could use it for my own data.

This week was rather frustrating. I believe computers are really great as long as they work. Unfortunately, this week it was not working as I had wanted. Grant and I couldn't get the Selfe program to compile. We made some progress but it didn't get the thing working.

But on a positive note, I enjoyed the graph presentations. I thought it was a great way to learn a bit more about other people's projects. It was also beneficial to get some input about our slides. It made me think of a few things I should have added to my slide just by looking at other people's.

This week I felt like I was finally starting to get a grasp on my project. I had read through all of the material that I was given and feel that I have a great conceptual idea of about the ETM.

Later on in the week I started working on the computer. Grant, my fabulous mentor, helped me load various computer programs to get started on modeling the ETM. I discovered that computers are really great when you get them to work correctly but definitely a pain to troubleshoot. Google has become my new best friend in that regard.

Time flies when you're having fun right? This week seemed to fly right on by. I have spent most of my time reading some papers on modeling the ETM and learning Fortran code. This will hopefully help me be able to start doing some modeling of my own. I also must say I enjoyed our tour of OHSU. I am jealous of the views some lucky grad students get to enjoy every day.

I have had a great first week here at CMOP. It has been fun meeting fellow interns and hearing about where they go to school and what they study. I feel a little behind because I had to go back to school to take a couple of finals, but now I am ready to dive right in.