Loca the Pug

Here is a video that one of my friend  shared on facebook.  I very much like it so I decided to share it here.

Snow Shoing Stevens Pass, WA

Life of This Blog

I've spent the majority of Christmas day organizing this blog. Don't feel sorry for me. I was invited to family Christmas activities. They sounded fun. I was planning to go, but I'm all tired out and I want to do quiet things at home that make me feel like I got something done.
 Anyway, as you can see, the blog has a new format. The list on the left makes it so one can read only my writing about cats or hiking if one wants to. If you want to look things up by date, you can still do that. The date list is just down a little further.
Andrew is rearranging the house around me. When I sat down, the table was in the middle of the room pretty much by itself. Now I have to climb over stuff to get out. It's in transition.

Wisdom

"If you want to win anything-a race, your self, your life-you have to go a little berserk."
-A Fortune Cookie

New Word

con·com·i·tant/kənˈkämitənt/

 

Adjective:	Naturally accompanying or associated.
Noun:	A phenomenon that naturally accompanies or follows something.
Synonyms:	adjective.  attendant - accompanying noun.  concurrent

More info »Dictionary.com - Answers.com - Merriam-Webster - The Free Dictionary

The definition above is provided by google.
Click on one of the links to hear it pronounced. I just discovered the pronunciation audio files. That's very exciting to me. 

More Metal Complexation Poetry

Do you remember the poem that I wrote about ligands and brigands. Well here's some more about ligands.
Ligands are like people they like to be complex. 
They are like goth kids. They like metal. They have negative or neutral attitudes.

Coordination Numbers
When a person coordinates they bond around a central goal or if you are ligand, you bond to a central molecule because your attitudes are negative or neutral and you're too cool for goals. Your coordination number is the number of bonds you've formed to your metal.

Free metal ions
It's a ruse. Nothing is really free. Cations in water naturally exist as complexes with water molecules. They're just called free metal ions as a sales pitch.

Inner-Sphere Complexes: (coordinate complexes)
The bonding is covalent. (I can't really think of any puns or analogies for covalent bonding.) Nothing is free. the ligand must replace water. Poor water.
Stability of a complex increases with charge and or radius. That makes sense. Just think about religion. Neutral religions don't last very long. The bigger they are the harder it is to change anything-stable.

Outer-Sphere Complexes
No water is replaced. You, the ligand, are just hanging out like a groupy hoping for an autograph. The forces that hold you to the metal are electrostactic. You know like crazy fans with their hair standing on end. No wait that's static electricity. That's totally different, but they sound the same so I'm going to use the idea anyway. So not surprisingly. These bonds are weaker. "Man you are totally not covalent. That metal is totally hydrated. " Poor ligand.

Formation Constants
10^4  increase with increaseing change.

Chelation
a ligand that coordinates at several positions with the "donor" atom, the metal. Sounds kinky. That's all I have to say.

Polydentate
That's right ligand. You a tooth. Polydentate means a complex with multiple teeth.

Polynuclear
A complex with more than one central metal ion. Now that is complex.

Why do we care?
We probably don't. We're to cool for that. We're complex. Complexation only effect solubility, chemical behavior, bioavailability and toxicity.

Oh look we can do some math. Complexation solubility constants work like any other solubility constant. The solid goes on the bottom. the activity of the disolved components go on top

Metal + Ligand = Metal_Ligand complex  K1 (that's your stability or formation constant that how you find out where you reach equilibrium and become a stoner)

Metal_Ligand complex + Ligand = Metal _Ligand_Ligand complex K2 (that's right you not the only ligand. Deal with it)

If you want to write thing thing all in one step:
Metal +Ligand+ Ligand = Metal _Ligand_Ligand complex     B2 (it's actually beta in my book but I don't want to try to find the symbol for that.)
B2=K1*K2

If you want to use math language to generalize it you say:
M+iL=MLi
Bi = (funny symbol)Ki means multiply all the k's together. It's like the summation symbol very intimidating thing that looks like greek cuz it is. The i is math language for put what ever number you want here. Well any positive whole number. Fractions of ligands are like fractions of people. It doesn't work out well.

Alright listen up you ligands! Which one of you is a hydroxide. Ah yes there you are. Yes I see you are negative because you are a ligand.
OH-
Well you're special.
Side story: Even though he is negative, the hydroxide always knew that he was special. Nobody understood his pain. He was an unappreciated poet and infinitly complex.
end side story

Well sometimes we don't want to deal with the hydroxide because he will start reading his poetry.
instead of writing
M+OH =MOH  K1
we combine this reaction with the reation for water and use a *K1 to keep from getting confused, but we really want you to be confused because it makes us feel smart so we don't explicitly tell you why we are using K*. It's cuz we don't like poetry ok. Well also it's useful to write things in terms of released H's instead of added OH's.
H2O = OH-  +  H +   Kw (formation constant for water)
If you are reading this, Dad, you may be interested to recall that you can add chemical equations together just like algebraic ones. The OH's cancel and you get.

M + H2O = MOH + H+   You've added equations so you multiply the formation constants and call them something new for the sake of lazy writing.


What you need to solve a problem involving a metal and some ligands.
1. you need equilibrium constants. Think of these as an (I don't care attitude. You can't touch me. I got equilibrium constants. You know where everything lines up.)
2. Mass balance on your metal. Everybody is obsessed with mass. Just look at the weight loss commercials. The nice the about mass is the whole really is the sum of it's parts (unless you're doing nuclear chemistry.)

Now it's just algebra. Alphabet soup. Put the equilibrium constants into the mass balance.

Comments

I have edited the comment settings, so it should now be easier to post comments.

Web Browser History

Note to self:

Remember, ctrl-h gets your web browser history.

Ember Watching TV

Here's video that we took of Ember watching home videos of herself. The video was taken this spring so if she looks a bit younger to you that's because she is a bit younger.

Fear

Fear.
It's the worst. It's like nothing else I know... the cold sweet... that chocking sensation that you can't pry away because it comes from within... makes you want to tear off your skin. It motivates insanity; makes a trapped animal gnaw of his own foot.I'm ready to gnaw my own foot off. I am not a logical beast.
Chewing my foot will not set me free. Succeeding will set me free or accepting failure or some perfect recipe where one leads to the other or dynamic waltz where the success and failure spin round the floor like lovers.
Conclusion: do not gnaw off foot. Do something else.

HD Taylor Treatment Plant Maps and Pump Performance Analysis

HD Taylor Water Treatment Plant

Settling lagoon

You can see the settling lagoons from the bike path. This water has puzzled me. It often looks dirtier than the river. I thought maybe they were using some sort of biologically treatment. They are not. 

This is water that has been used to clean the filters. They can't immediately return it to the river because it now contains Alum and Chlorine. The alum settles out into these ponds and the Chlorine evaporates. Then the water is returned to the Willamette.

We were not allowed to take pictures of the great big intake screens in the river or the pumps that bring the water up about 27ft to the level of the treatment plant. I'm sure one would see them if one happened to be rafting on the Willamette. I suspect that this level of "secrecy" simply makes the tours more exciting.

After the water is pumped up out of the Willamette, the giant pipe carrying the water meets with smaller pipe that pumps in Chlorine and Alum against the flow of the water. The two streams hitting each other causes a lot of turbulence, which results in nice thuroughly mixed chemicals. This is the first of two time Chlorine is added to the water.

After the chemicals are added the water goes through sensor which measure the quality of the incoming water including chlorine concentrations, turbidity. 

This station monitors the quality of the incoming water after the chemicals are added.

A closer view of the sensors

The plant was off for maintenance during the first half of the tour. So these values are not characteristic of the plan when it's up and running.

Settling basins.

 The water flows through these basins starting where I was standing when I took this pictures and moving away from me. Each basing does progressively slower mixing. The idea is to create phloc. That is particles that are big enough to settle out. The first basin is like speed dating. The idea is to get the chemicals in contact with as many other chemicals a possible. After the initial mixing, the subsequent basics do succesively slower mixing in order to continue to build the phloc without breaking until it finally settles out. 

Vertical Paddle Wheel in the Basin.

After the water has been through the basins, it's forced up though these screens.

The screens provide surface area that the phloc sticks to and then sloughs off. These screens are self cleaning.

A different kind of paddle wheel

Water leaves the basins though this big red pipe

After the settling basins the water goes through porous media consisting of activated carbon silica and sand. Next, it travels into the chlorine contact basin, which i covered to keep debris from falling in the clean water. The Chlorine contact basin is serpentine to allow the water to have the necessary contact time with this final dose of chlorine. After the Chlorine contact basin the water goes into an undergound storage known as the clear well.

This is one of the pumps that move water from the clearwell to the reservoir

Here's a little perspective on that pump

The pressure gauge on the pump. The pump isn't running so the pressure is neutral.

This measures the turbidity of the treated water.  

Turbidity is a measure of amount of light that is blocked by the particulate in the water. For example muddy water in a muddle has a high turbidity. Your tap water should have a low turbidity (at least if your pipes are in good shape.)

A view down into the clearwell.This looks like a big black hole because the limitations of the camera. However if you look closely, you can see that it's tube going down into a pool of very clear water. There is a lighted up logo for the city of Corvallis at the bottom to show you how clear this water is.

This drinking fountain pulls water directly out of the clearwell below us.

Uh Oh!

Matt died, but don't worry. We revived him for the presentation.

If I Could - A Poem of Sorts

If I could tonight, I would become water
I would pound on the roof and beet my fists on the window
I would make puddles in the street that stop traffic
I would apologize for nothing 
I would flow down, down, into the ground with the splashing rain
I would caress rotting leaves and kiss the memory of summer goodbye
I would laugh at all of you and your dreams and your tears
Everything dies in the end

Kearney Hall, OSU

How old is this building?

Here is a photo I found of what it used to look like

I have walked past these pillars a hundred times. I don't know if I've ever taken the time to look at them. The building is newly remodeled, but parts of it are old. How old? I don't know. Well I didn't know.
Apparently Kearney Hall was Apperson Hall from 1906 to 2005. It was built in 1900. I assume that means they started construction in 1900. A third story was added in 1920. Then in 2005 they remodeled it and made is "seismically safe." I think that being the home of the civil and construction engineering department it might have reflected badly on the school if their buidling had fallen down in an earthquake. Anyway, during the remodel they very carefully preserved the beautiful old stone work.

Here's the link where I found a bunch of this information:

http://www.pmapdx.com/projects/oregon_state_university_apperson_hall/

Less Ouch Breathing

My ribs are 90% better. Dr. Young at  Body of Health Chiropractic is one of the best possibly the best chiropractor I know. He's a bit of a genius and kind of my hero for the week. It's pretty awesome to breath again without so much pain. I may have to go in for another visit in a week or so because my whole body was so messed up. I have something going on with my left leg where it doesn't want to hold me up when I first stand on it. That's a common symptom of an upset sciatic nerve. It kind of amusing. 

Ouch Breathing

Category: Personal Blablah
My recent activities have offended a rib on the left side of my body. Upset ribs hurt like a mother... What did I do to mess it up? I have no idea. Sadly, I most likely just hunched over a book or a computer for too long without stretching. Now I hurt. I visited my chiropractor. That helped a lot but I still hurt. If the angry muscles don't settle down with heat. I think I will be visiting again.
Breathing hurts, which gives one the dim impression that one is being chocked.
I took a tour of one of the two drinking water treatment plants for the city of  Corvallis. It was pretty neat. I am thinking to myself that it would be a good, productive, learning experience thing for me to share in detail. I should write about it, but I probably won't. 

Bread-the rising

The second run of the bread experiment was a greater success. The same experimental standards were applied as in trial one. However, the unintentional omission of half the desired quantity of water was avoided. The bread rose. The bread was tasty. The bread was eaten.
The chickens ate bread experiment one... better described as "the brick". They found it somewhat difficult but they were up to the challenge.

Metal Complex Poetry

Words to The Wise
When it comes to metals ligand are like brigands.
They reduce the activity of the metal is solution (which makes it more soluble.)

Chemicals are lazy. They like to have lower activity.
If their activity is high. Their reactivity is high and they tend to precipitate out of solution...
like students failing out of college.

Ligands also (in general) make metals less toxic.
So ligands are like robin hood. They are good brigands.

Bread Experiment Results

It would appear that I added about 1/2 the water that was called for. This unintentional recipe alteration did not render favorable results. In defense of experimenter, she was very tired.
I will try again once the pan is cooled.

Bread Experiments

I decided today that I would make use the bread maker again. I don't think we've used it since our wedding so it's been a couple of months. Today, I followed a basic recipe for white bread but i added more sugar and less yeast. The sugar was also brown sugar instead of white. In addition I added some cinnamon. We shall see how it goes.
My next bread experiment involves adding strong cup of tea instead of water; Earl Gray bread. Worst case, the chickens will eat it.

A Team

It is nearly two in the morning. I am listening to the rain and Andrew's breathing. I think he might want me to wake him if he knew that I was still up but i am not going to. We are a team. That's what he said earlier when he was hugging me and I was apologizing for my irrational sadness. I agree with him. We are a team so I'd rather not sink both of us. I'm going to have a shit time getting stuff done tomorrow. I know his stuff isn't easy either.
By sadness, I mean depression. I would  say that it's passed now but I think that depression is why I'm still awake. Did you know that depression is a symptom of mercury poisoning? (no I haven't been exposed to high levels of mercury in case you were worried.)
Anyway, the strange, terrifying, sadness has passed. I'm just awake... and blogging... Andrew is talking in his sleep. He just twitched and said "I don't know." I wonder what he is dreaming about.

My sciatic nerve was freaking out am making my leg hurt like a mother. I stole that phrase from my friend Tera in high school. She would say "hurts like a mother" and leave it at that. I found it very apt phrasing. As far as I know I've never met any Edipis types but I have met lots of mothers and let me tell you... Don't piss off a mother.
Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah sciatic nerve was making my whole leg ache and go numb, so Andrew gave me a back/leg message which helped a lot. He also helped me get nice and by piling the heater blanket and a bunch of normal blanket on me. My leg still hurts but at least no yammering in pain. Sciatica is weird. According to wikipedia, it's not a condition. It's a set of symptoms. That makes sense to me. As far as I know most people get sciatica at some point. It's a compressed or irritated nerve. The rain is nice to listen to.

Andrew covered the top of the chickens coup with plastic when it started raining in earnest a month ago.  The chickens were walking around looking soggy and myserable. They could of course have gone in their house to get out of the rain, but they didn't. I guess they didn't want to. The plastic keeps them nice and dry. It also makes nice sounds when the rain hits it. It magnifies the rain sound the same way that the gutters do.

I think I could sleep now but I feel at peace with the world. I don't want to lose that feeling. It's funny. Two in the morning is usually the time when mind demons are the strongest.

I just had a very long text chat with a friend/ acquaintance from middle school named Holly. It was a lovely chat and gave me something new to think about. I think I owe at least some of this peaceful feeling to her.  I should thank her. She seems to have troubles and uncertainties of her own. I bet she doesn't know what a difference she made to me.

learning about mercury

Toxnet and the EPA may have more reliable and accurate information, but when researching, it's best to start with Wikipedia. Get a general idea of what's going on then double check it with peer reviewed literature. It just took me two hours fishing through overly specific peer reviewed literature to rember this. Maybe this time the lesson will stick.
START with Wikipedia

Cats At A Tea Party

A tea party for one

An uninvited guest.

Ember- "am I not invited?"

Ember- "I like having tea with you."

The guests have fallen asleep.

Alex sees a bug on the ceiling

Alex looking regal.

I don't think he knows how dorky he looks when he smells the air.

Leaves

Pain for Beauty

School is really hard for me this year. It's not so bad as last year, but last year was like rush hour traffic in Seattle. Don't even bother you're just wasting gas. I'm being reclusive and hiding in books. I've started writing as story, which gives me somewhere else to hide even when I don't have a book.
It explains why so many writers and artists are depressed people. They were compelled to write or paint because it gave them an escape from being themselves. It's not the talent that made them sad. It's the sadness that gave them talent.
All of what I've just said is only partially true of course. There are other drives to creativity. There is, after all, more that one way to start a fire and carbon isn't the only thing that burns. 

Alex- fluid mechanics are so easy I read about them upside down.

Rerynold's Numbers

. Did you know that the behavior of a tiny particle of sediment in water can be modeled by a marble in glycerin? (Glycerin is very sticky stuff. It's like syrup.) The marble falls pretty slowly. The way we can decide if totally different systems will behave similarly is this concept called the Reynold's Number. Some guy named Reynold is credited with figuring it out. You can calculate the Reynold's Number like this:

Reynold's Number= (fluid density)*(fluid velocity)*(characteristic length)/(viscosity)

The fluid velocity might actually be the velocity of the fluid say going through a pipe. However, it could also be the velocity of the marble that you just dropped in the cylinder full of glycerin. Whether it's the fluid moves of the thing in the fluid doesn't really matter. You're just interested in how they move relative to each other. The characteristic length is basiclly the length along which the two things are touching. So it's the diameter of the marble of the diameter of the pipe...
 What if the pipe was square? How would you deal with that? I have no idea. I'll have to ask the professor. What about a river bed? hmm.... I don't know there either.

The last term is the viscosity of the liquid. That you can get out of a book or the internet. People have figure them out and put them in text books and references and written papers and blah blah...
But how did they figure that out?
I don't know. Good question. Maybe I will learn that soon. Maybe I already learned it and forgot.

Dreaming Awake

I have this feeling like I'm dreaming all the time. I can't remember what I've been doing or learning. I looked at a lab report last night and it took me a minute to figure out that it was one that I'd already completed and submitted. I withdrew from one of my classes. It was a ridiculous amount of work for a 3 credit course. Sigh. Maybe now some of what I am learning will stick.
 I want to say something interesting now. I want to tell you a story, but the inside of my head is a big fuzzy cloud filled with chemistry and physics and differential equations. Oh well maybe I will tell you about some of that.

'Just do it' worked well enough today. I dragged myself out and went to class where I understood nothing for about a half hour. Then we stopped talking about flux and did some derivations. That interested me...
It was a really beautiful day. Fall can be so perfect. 

It's been a really hard week for me. Today, I didn't go to class. I got in bed and went to sleep. Sleep helps, but missing class is bad. I've been lonely a lot. Carla died this time last year. I think that's a big part of the ache in my chest, but not all of it. Some of it is anxiety about school. Busy work and due dates. I think I constantly battle fear. "What if this lab report is really hard? What if I get stuck and don't know what to do?" The answers to these question are obvious of course. If I get stuck, I go to office hours and ask questions or ask a classmate, but the questions remain... nagging at me. They are my little demon friends. They get stronger and louder as I get tired or sad. Today, they were deafening. I kept running into pockets of sorrow like pockets of fog on an early fall evening. They are surprising, mesmorizing and cold. Like for they transform the familiar into the unknown. But I like fog. It's beautiful. This feeling is to big for me to see beauty in it, and it's too blinding for me to see.
Clearing the cobwebs out of my head is a MUST DO. I have a few ideas.
I've been alone a lot. Even when Andrew is here, we work in separate rooms because Andrew likes to watch TV in the background while he works. It helps him focus. I cannot be near a TV if I am to get anything done. If there is a TV in the room that I can hear, I am mesmerized by it.
As a means of spending less time alone, I think I'm going to try to do some of my work in the computer lab at Merryfield. Then I will be around other grad students in my program. This should have the additional advantage of getting to know them better.
The University offers group counseling/support groups.I might see if I can be a part of the anxiety management group or the depression managment. I think it's kind of like alcoholics anonymous, but for other issues.
My third idea costs money and I'm not sure if its worth it. I love martial arts. Doing BJJ tend to make me happier. Maybe it's the social. Maybe it's the exercise. I think it's both. There's a school in town that I think is very good.
Well that's some things for me to try. There's also the old "just do it."

Unlikely Expectations

I am yet again faced with a feeling of disappointment upon reaching Sunday night. Since school started I have been making it through the week by telling myself how wonderful the weekend will be. At least so far, the weekend hasn't really lived up to my expectations. None of them have. I've been doing homework and doing it slowly... not because I'm doing an unusually good job or because it is unusually hard but because I am being inefficient. I always start the weekend hoping that I will get a lot of homework done or go on a really exciting adventure or both. I believe it's possible too.
It is, of course, theoretically possible, but statistically speaking very unlikely. Be that as it may I will believe in the weekend the same way that I used to believe I would fly when I jumped off the swing...after all, I did fly for half a second.

Ninja

Ninja that I drew out of my "Manga for the Beginner book"

The boy that I babysat this summer wanted me to draw something. I told him he could pick something out of my book and I would try to draw it if he did his homework. Not, surprisingly, he chose a ninja. Here is the result.