Microsoft Word, or my Love/Hate Relationship With It

There are several ways a person may choose to type up a document (assuming you are NOT using a typewriter) such as a WYSIWYG editor such as Word or a simple text editor that as far as I'm concerned, only appeals to the nerdy types. So let's assume that Microsoft has taken over the world and everyone used Word. If you use LaTeX and no one else does, good luck collaborating with others. I can see the simplicity of LaTeX where "it is based on the philosophy that authors should be able to focus on the content of what they are writing without being distracted by its visual presentation" but this blog is about Word! 

What's to love? Well, you get what you see and Microsoft Word is really popular. What's not to love? There is an entire host of capabilities available that unless you are specifically schooled in how to use, may not be that simple, such as numbering figures and having them auto update when you change one. Or, dealing with a table of contents or index. And then there are various issues that come up that just befuddle you and you want to smash your computer because you can't figure out why you document isn't doing what it should....

 I think Word is just fine for the vast majority of people composing a simple document, as in under 50 pages.
The more I read about LaTeX, the more interesting it sounds. Oh, I digress! This is about Word. Yes, Word. How easy I forget. 

Use Word! Mr. Gates approves!
Use Word! It's available pretty much everywhere.
Use Word! It's like playing the guitar where anyone can pick it up and learn the basics rather easily
Use Word! Because you are the document designer! Unless you are much cooler than I am and have someone who can do you document design for you, you are on you own.

USU's Environmental Observatory

USU has a really nice weather station.... Well, it's more than a weather station. The title "Environmental Observatory" really does it justice. From the web page www.weather.usu.edu, you can have a look at all sorts of data if you are so inclined. For the average use, the home page shows all the basics but if you're the sort of fellow who likes to look at graphs, that's there also. I really like the CO₂ graph because of the correlation to inversions. Same goes for the visibility graph even though fog also reduces the visibility.

One thing I find potentially useful from the home page is the evapotranspiration (ET) near the bottom that can be used to help determine watering schedules. This would probably be more useful to an average person if there was a link or something explaining how to use ET to figure out how much water to give your lawn. OK, I semi lie, there is a link to information about ET but the information given there isn't exactly explicit in how its to be used.

Now the observatory does NOT predict weather, it just reports it as it is happening. For people like me, that's just fine. If I want to know the weather, I look at the barometer on my wall at home, I look out the window, and nine times out of ten (more like 29 out of 30), I get it right for the day! The observatory is just a better tool than what I have at home, and for the scientific minded, it's a great tool!

Here is the next generation in accurate weather prediction...

Peer Reviews: Pros, Cons, and the Role of Anonymity

It was new to me but I have now learned in academia, papers published in journals are peer reviewed! Makes sense, this is scholarly work and as such should be critically reviewed by others within the same field. I presume this ensures several things:

1. You are legitimate and the work you are publishing in actually research you have done or compiled and not plagiarized.
2. The research is real and not a work of fantastical fiction.
3. The research you have done makes sense and you don't have critical errors within the research.
4. Since you probably don't have an editor and a team of publishers to make sure your writing conforms to the English language, they act as your final check.

The above list if probably a good list of pros for peer reviews but what about the cons? Are there any? Since I've only ever had one paper published and it was intended for a general audience, I've had zero experience with the peer review process but I imagine (that is correct, I have NOT researched this) potential cons of the peer review may include:

1. Your work may be so far ahead that it is not readily accepted. OK, that's probably far fetched....
2. You have been a jerk to others and even though the reviewers are supposed to be anonymous they still know this is your work and they just don't like you. It's probably best to avoid this situation!
3. ...and I'm at a loss for other potential cons....

So what about anonymity? This is probably to keep the honest people honest and to keep the process fair to all. If Dan submits an article and his buddies Janis, Scott and Brent are reviewing it, there may be just a bit of bias towards the paper in their reviews! For a work geared to a general audience, or for something intended for financial gain, anonymous reviews probably become much less important.

Now, who wants to anonymously review the quality of this blog and comment?

On Developing A Résumé

Now I have the wonderful experience of updating my résumé or at least resume the résumé writing process, specifically targeted for a job within my scope of education. 
The main challenge I see with this is getting the correct and relevant information on the paper. Someone outside retail sales, specifically outside of the grocery industry, may not see the value of someone who can run a department on a budget of about $1.2 million in sales per quarter with a margin of 21% while keeping labor below 7%. However, some of my skills at my current job are in fact transferable! Experience in writing budgets, meeting goals and deadlines, managing 16 employees, controlling inventory, working in a team environment. Those skills may have application in something soil science related. 
The main thing for this résumé is what I have done in school, classes I have taken, the paper I got published (check it out), working in Janis Boettinger's soil genesis lab, etc. I think these things may be more relevant to someone looking for a soil scientist. 
Now I just need to get it together on a couple pages!