So I finally met up with some people here last night. I can now say that I drove to a different state to acquire some beer.

Oh and hey, you’d never guess it, but I actually found some sort of culture here in Gaithersburg. Where I am staying is a bit more diverse and real-to-life than the other hotel that I stayed at a month ago. Here is a picture from a Thai food restaurant that I ended up in yesterday afternoon:

It’s really cool being here, it’s much like a little community that I’ve always thought up in my head. Having a slew of like minded people is already having a good effect on my mind, goals, and growth, while allowing for a fantastically fun time as it happens.

It’s nice to be able to talk to anyone about quantum physics, computational fluid dynamics, parallel processing and the like as everyone browses the researchers’ forum using Firefox on their Apple laptops or Ubuntu PCs looking for a place to meet up and hang out and share their freshly made hummus and so on. And this is not just limited a few people, pretty much everyone I have met the entire time – who are very approachable and open for some mental digging.

And further than that, you find really striking similarities between the lifestyles of engineers, scientists, and students that are interesting in nearly the same thing in life that you are. Anytime you bring this many good minds together, good things will happen.

Oh, and one of my roommates moved in. He is an older guy with whom I was talking about the aforementioned math and parallel processing topics with.

Haha! Finally I leave you with nerds talking about quantum physics and drinking beer. Am I in heaven?

Good to be here:

Here I am, in Gaithersburg, MD. I made it! I’m on the HIGH SPEED internet here at the hotel place.

My mailing address for the next three months will be:

[My Name Here]
Summerfield Suites Room #1233
200 Skidmore Blvd.
Gaithersburg, MD. 20877

The plane trip wasn’t bad, but the Metro ride over took all of the remaining energy out of me. You can see my developing photo album by clicking the picture:

From NIST Surf 2007

I still don’t quite feel like I’ve left anywhere, just sort of been in a tired daze on a really long hobo ride with three heavy bags. But I have the trees and the Natural Gas city buses to help me breathe clearly:

Finally, here is a very short video of me arriving and my hotel room. I am dead tired and am just playing with my digital camera to get into the habit of upping videos.

I just spent my last weekend here in Houston – it flew by nicely. And now apparently a week of rain is on its way to see me off.

I’ve been working and studying for the past couple of weeks since school has been out (very peaceful), trying to immerse my mind in Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS), differential equations, Fortran, LaTeX, NIST, and the like. I’ve actually been pretty involved with FDS since I got back from the Annual Fire Conference last month, which was amazing and amazingly cold at the same time. It averages 45-50 degrees there right now in Maryland, in MAY. I know. Awesome

In fact, now I will share with you some cool pictures of 3D fire models that I have been working with. Most of them are an attempt to model fire phenomena that I come across in a fire dynamics book that I picked up and recommended for use in the fall Fire Dynamics course here at school.

The first picture shows fire experiments detailing the influence of walls and corners on fire plume height.

This picture shows a water mist sprinkler head and the effects of the smaller droplets on the fire sheet from the burning box below. Tracers are shown for 0.25 seconds and colored based on temperature.

And finally, a picture of when I was checking the air velocity of a ceiling jet, which is the smoke and heat moving to the right along the ceiling.

I am quite excited as there is much work for me to do in the summer.

On another note, I have been reading the NIST undergraduate researchers forum and it seems like many people on there are not too familiar with NIST or even their summer project. For me, Fire Dynamics Simulator is definitely my forté. Fire science, mathematics, technology, etc. I love it. And I like the fact that the people at NIST also really love their work. This is why I will be totally geeked out for this summer deal here: I mean, breakfast is taken care of each morning by the apartment, the place is cleaned twice a week, the wireless internet will beam into my room, and half of my luggage will be my favorite fire science reference books. Sounds fantastic!

Oh, one more thing, I will be purchasing a cheap digital camera and taking along my DV camera to document all kinds of things for you, my readers, and my own historical media library. See you later.

Yes, twelve more days until I depart for Maryland for the summer.

I’m really glad that I got a chance to attend the Fire Conference about a month ago and meet the people that I’ll be working with. I got a prety good glance at what exactly I’ll be doing there in the summer:

• Assisting with writing/rewriting the user manuals for NIST Fire Dynamics Simulator
• Assisting with writing a new guide to fire modeling in FDS which will help more with the “process of modeling” than the underworkings
• Performing verification and validation tests with the fire dynamics models
• Assisting with the final version release and community development of FDS code and support issues
• Assisting with the development of a material properties database for input into FDS

I know it sounds vague, but there is so much going on at NIST that this really helps me make sense of things.

I also have assigned roommates now, three people total in the apt./hotel who are not online geeks like me who have read every thread in the online researchers forum; so I have not met them informally or formally.

I am actually way too excited about the next three months to turn back and think about missing home – in my world, this is easily one of the top experiences that will happen in my life.