Blog # 8

First off I think that FDR and Barack are very alike in the things they did for the people. For example FDR had a radio show which really made him popular whereas Barack posts videos on his website often kind of like a update of whats going on.

Right now we are looking in the past at what FDR did and comparing it to what Barack is going to do. Now this to me is unfair because Barack has not had a chance to prove himself and FDR has. FDR has done much more than Barack obviously like for example create the Social Security program. Now Barack is trying to fix and mend together programs that have fallen apart.

They were both put in the same exact situation where the economy has crashed and they are in charge of putting it back together. This is good and bad for both of the presidents, good because the Americans look at them as a saivor, bad because if they can't get everything together, Americans will hate them. 

Blog # 7

I think that like today, the smaller businesses would close and the larger ones with remain strong but lose many workers. A small businesses for example a flower store will not do so well during the hard time because the people have a limited spending amount which limits them to buying small "unnecessary" things like flowers. Where as the larger businesses who have established customers like a Costco keep almost all of their customers. I think that my internship would not get shut down but they would lose a large amount of their spending money. This would limit them to smaller projects making every small part that much more valuable.  

Blog #6

"I was a preacher" said Jim Casy

I thought this was a good quote because it says a lot about this person by a first impression. Also it makes you think, why did he stop preaching? so this quote struck me as important to this particular character.

Blog #5

http://ohmyinternship.tumblr.com/post/380372247/mentorinterview

First of all I really like how the interview was layed out. It looks very clean and professional. I also like how the writing is very relaxing ams flows smoothly.

http://stevenblogger-steven14.blogspot.com/

I thought the layout was very neat and professional also on this photo essay. I also think that the pictures look really nice and the captions go with the pictures.

http://danielatoscano.blogspot.com/

Two of dani's peices of writing really caugfht my eye. The first one, the mentor interview was really cool because it almost looks like it coulf be published in a newspaper and I like how she used the writing rules.  I also really likes her photo essay because the pictures were amazing.

Photo Essay

Ignacio Rivera is a very intelligent man who somewhat loves his job. “It’s a job,” answered Ignacio an Environmental Engineer at SpaWar in San Diego California when I asked him how he liked his job. He has been working here at SpaWar for about 15 years now and he says, “I like it at times.” Some projects that he has worked on in the past have been a horrible experience and some are the best experiences he has ever had with a project. “There was this project on developing a model to estimate the water quality criterion for copper in coastal harbors. The project lasted about five years, and included scientists from several different areas of expertise, including, modelers, biologists, chemists, oceanographers, toxicologists, etc. There were several publications out of this project, and the final product is in the process to be approved by EPA for use in coastal environments.” This is Ignacio’s most memorable project of his career. I asked Ignacio why he likes his job and he responded, “Some projects are way off my field of expertise, and require extra effort to deal with. In contrast, those projects that involve my actual expertise seem to be the more interesting ones.” This was interesting to me because some people wonder how someone can work in a job that they don’t like or are not interested in. Here is a man who still tries hard and puts in all of his effort even if he doesn’t like what he is working on at the moment. The benefit of this makes the projects he does like working on that much more interesting and exciting.

Internship was a great experience for me but the 3 weeks was not enough. After the three-week emersion I was invited to go out in the “field” with my mentor and a couple of his coworkers. We traveled to Camp Pendleton located north of Oceanside where we needed to deploy a probe. This probe tests for water temperature, PH and depth. We arrived at about 9 AM and to our arrival the weather was cloudy with a nice ocean breeze. Located under a bridge was where we had to deploy the probe. One huge bridge support made out of solid reinforced concrete in an oval shape was where we some how had to attach this probe. Our day started by putting together all of the parts to make this probe. This included a solar panel, a radio transmitter, the probe it self, a pipe to hold the probe in place and many other components. This probe weighed about 50 pounds so this was extremely hard to get in the water as you can imagine. Seconds turned to minutes and minutes turned to an hour and still no probe deployed. It was my idea to hoist the probe into the air from the rafters of the railroad tracks. It is then when we finally got it to stay.

Inductively coupled plasma mass spectroscopy (ICP-MS). This machine measures very small amounts of the purest elements in water samples in the parts per billion. The plasma part is a heated element almost like an oven but only a little hotter, this plasma reaches a sizzling temperature of 10,000 degrees which is the same as the shell of the sun. The concentration I was testing for was around 8 to 15 parts per billion and the type of element was Copper known as CU. Now to put this in perspective, the water we drink everyday has a little over 300 ppb of CU. Now you might ask how does this machine work? First the water sample comes through a tube and mixes with a gas caller Argon, this then turns the water into an aerosol, which shoots through these cones. Along the way the aerosol breaks down into tiny particles called ions. These ions then hit the MS part of the machine called the Mass Spectroscopy and this measures the ions. Each sample is taken and then plotted in a file on a computer where the user can read the data.

When I hear that someone is working in a lab I think of someone mixing chemicals and explosions. In the lab at SpaWar this was not the case unfortunately. The lab is one large room with a smaller room inside of it called the clean room. This is known as the “particle free room”. The lab has fume hoods, which are mainly where chemicals are to be mixed. The fume hood at SpaWar has many different instruments on it, some of which I have no clue what they do. In the lab I learned many different ways of sampling water and creating chemicals to test the water. I learned that when conducting work in a lab every measurement counts, I think of it like baking, all the measurements have to be precise or else the cake doesn’t rise.

Chemicals are very fun to play with. In second grade we built the volcanoes and but baking powder vinegar and red food coloring in to watch the lava flow out. Well this happens to be a chemical reaction. Chemical reactions can be big and explosive, or they can be cold and icy. Unfortunately I did not experience any of these when I was working with chemicals at SpaWar. Doing work with chemicals here consisted of putting on a white “hazmat” suit and going in a clean room and digging chemicals out of jars with a metal spoon. Now this was not as easy as it sounds. First off it was like trying to dig up cement with a spoon, the chemicals were so hard and compact that it was almost impossible to get them out. After I finally broke everything up there was this white residue that would fall off the spoon onto my gloves. Now before all this started my mentor told me that none of these were harmful and that I didn’t need gloves. I believed him until I got some of this white residue on my hand and it started burning me. Now as you can imagine this would be quite a shock, someone tells you that it is not harmful and you get it on your flesh and it starts burning right away and it feels like some has put a match out on your hand. So from that point on I wore gloves when working with chemicals.

Blog #4

For the book Ampersand, I hope to contribute some of my skills. I want to make a cool cover design or page design for the book. I also want to improve on my writing that I can then put into the book.

Ignacio Rivera

Your job can be good and bad

         Ignacio Rivera is a very intelligent man who somewhat loves his job. “It’s a job,” answered Ignacio an Environmental Engineer at SpaWar in San Diego California when I asked him how he liked his job. He has been working here at SpaWar for about 15 years now and he says, “I like it at times.” Some projects that he has worked on in the past have been a horrible experience and some are the best experiences he has ever had with a project. “There was this project on developing a model to estimate the water quality criterion for copper in coastal harbors.  The project lasted about five years, and included scientists from several different areas of expertise, including, modelers, biologists, chemists, oceanographers, toxicologists, etc. There were several publications out of this project, and the final product is in the process to be approved by EPA for use in coastal environments.” This is Ignacio’s most memorable project of his career. I asked Ignacio why he likes his job and he responded, “Some projects are way off my field of expertise, and require extra effort to deal with.  In contrast, those projects that involve my actual expertise seem to be the more interesting ones.” This was interesting to me because some people wonder how someone can work in a job that they don’t like or are not interested in. Here is a man who still tries hard and puts in all of his effort even if he doesn’t like what he is working on at the moment. The benefit of this makes the projects he does like working on that much more interesting and exciting.

         Going back to Ignacio’s earlier years in life that led him up to being what he is now, I asked him some questions about how he got into this career field. With the first question being, 30 years ago would you see yourself in this position? If no what did you want to be? When Ignacio was a young boy his dad was his role model who was an accountant. So being a role model to him when Ignacio was a boy he wanted to be just like his dad and that was an accountant. When I asked Ignacio what steps he took to get where he is now I was shocked to hear what he had to say. In his younger years he was not to blown away by chemistry and learning it, but when all of his friends loved it and got him “hooked” he could not hold back the pier pressure. It became a study group, where his group of friends got together and helped each other study before tests. In high school and college Chemistry was not hard at all for him because he got into it.  In college he decided to get on the chemical track for Ocean Sciences. “After College I worked as environmental scientist in Mexico, and found out that I needed better knowledge in analytical chemistry.” Says Ignacio. He later came to the United States to get his masters degree in Analytical Chemistry, and later he had the opportunity to get his doctorate degree in Geochemistry where he studied heavy metals in aquatic environments.

         In this economy, if you asked many people how they feel about their job security, some would not be too confident. Now if you work for the government this is another story. Ignacio has been working for at SpaWar for a little over 15 years. Now SpaWar is part of the Department of Defense (part of the government), the government does not want to start firing its employees, this would make the job of rebuilding the economy many times harder. With much experience, Ignacio says he feels “safe” where he is now and has no plans to leave where he is working to find a different job.  

 

Ignacio working in the clean room at SpaWar San Diego preparing samples

Blog #2

When I first met Ignacio I was very impressed to see all the work he has completed over the span of his career, from the tests in Pearl Harbor to the methods he used to conduct tests. At SpaWar Bayside, located in San Diego California, on the outer perimeter of Point Loma Ignacio comes to work every day around 8:30 AM. His day starts off in a small office with a cluttered desk with pictures of his two kids where he checks his email for anything important that is going on that day. His work consists of long hours in a lab or going out in the field and deploying probes or traveling to different places. Labeled as an Environmental Engineer getting a Doctorate degree in Chemistry was not easy at all.

Is there anything else I should add?
How is it so far?
Does the working make sense?
any other questions or comments?

Blog #1

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/5939600/steve_jobs_the_rolling_stone_interview

This interview is very interesting because it brings you to the interview with all the details involved in the introduction. I like how the Interviewee goes into great detail explaining the environment at jobs job and also jobs. This makes you want to read the interview that much more.

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/coverstory/25940442

The Sean Penn interview was the best out of the three because I really like how the beginning was kind of a biography. This really pulls the reader in especially if it is very interesting and well put together.