Resolutions

Most people wait until the new year to make "new years resolutions," but that is why I love my husband. He is constantly making resolutions to be a better man. Some resolutions are much more practical than others. Lately he has resolved to eat 3000 kcals per day to prevent the school year stress induced weight loss that has occurred the last two years. The other interesting resolution is he has decided that he no longer is going to check all the football blogs. Many of you may not know that Hyrum is an avid football fan. He doesn't watch tons of games all of the time for which I am grateful, but he does love the BYU cougars and likes to know what they are doing at all times. Luckily I am also a cougar fan though not quite so hardcore. He needs to check the blogs in the winter because he needs to know about all the new recruits, in the spring because spring ball is happening, in the summer to get the pre-season hype and strategies, etc, and in the fall... well duh. So lately Hyrum has fretted that he is wasting time. He is not a time waster I argue however. Everyone needs a two minute break now and then and what better way to veg out than to check out how some big brawny muscle men are bashing each others brains out. (I am still sore from when the football team would close the weight room for their special practices and I couldn't do my measly cross-country weight lifting routine.) He has been very good all week and has not checked a single blog. I have to say, I am beginning to miss it. How will I know what is happening with Harvey Unga? Or what their strategy for beating the Utes is this year. Hmm... maybe he will change his mind. :)

His no blog-checking luckily doesn't translate to no game watching. Here we are having a great time at the BYU vs. UW game. Hyrum, a current grad student at University of Washington was very happy to see his old cougs sneak a win by his current Husky schoolmates.

Frockly T-Shirt Giveaway

Frockly T-Shirt Giveaway

Change of Scenery

As many of you already know, Mom and Dad Magelsen are going on a mission. They have been called to serve in the Dublin, Ireland Mission as CES missionaries. They will be entering the Missionary Training Center on November 17th. I have informed them that is very good Karma considering that is the day I entered the MTC as well. We are all very excited for them and feel that this call was made for them. The only part that will be a stretch for them is that they will have to work a lot on the computer for reports and such. My mom is a little nervous about that and my dad is hyperventilating (just kidding Dad). They will be awesome and we will miss them like crazy.

That being said, Hyrum and I are now taking over the Magelsen abode in Monroe. I have been living out of the house for the past eleven years, however from the little treasures I am finding around the house, I apparently never truly left. Here are just a fraction of my "treasures."




These pink beauties were my very first pair of glasses. I got them when I was in the fifth grade and boy were they cool. You may think they are large now but imagine them on a fifth graders face. I was a knock-out.








I think Scottie looks handsome in my second pair of glasses. These green tortoise shell print wire-rim numbers are from 6th grade. I stoppend wearing glasses at this point and would squint at the board a lot. This is when my mom decided that I was old enough for contact lenses. So I have been wearing 'em ever since. Thanks mom.







Can you say Valedictorian? Enough said.














Mom, always the thrifty one and ahead of her time in terms of recycling, turned my older brothers metal action figure lunch box into this beautiful masterpiece. I loved it. Maybe I should name a daughter Nicole so I can pass it on.









Here's one from my BYU track days. Third place in the WAC 10K freshman and sophomore years. I think I will hang on to this little treasure so that when my kids are teenagers and stop thinking I am cool, I can remind them.


Maybe in a year and a half when we move out of this house for the second time when Mom and Dad get home from Ireland, I will move out for real.

shout out to nerds

Nicole suggested that I post about the little research project that I'm doing in Boise. First, the non-technical details. My dad started a technology irrigation company about 10 years ago...it has huge upside and over the years has attracted a lot of attention from several prominent irrigation companies and venture capital groups. The heart of the business is a soil moisture sensor that, as you might have guessed, can accurately determine the moisture content in the soil where it's buried. The sensor is used to control when to irrigate and how much water to apply. Because of the drastic water savings this offers, some installations have paid for themselves in a single watering season. My dad's company, Acclima, pride's itself in having, by far, the best soil moisture sensor in the industry. Most other sensors fail when the soil is slightly conductive (salty). For my little research project, I was tasked to stretch the capabilities of the sensor even farther.

The techy stuff for my nerdy friends: the sensor in my right hand (bottom) is a low-cost time-domain reflectometer (TDR), and the sensor in my left hand (top) is a low-cost time-domain transmissometer (TDT). In both cases, a step function propagates down the transmission rods. After it travels through the medium (soil), it can be sampled at a resolution of 5 picoseconds (200 GHz)! Features of the sampled waveform are extracted to deduce bulk permittivity and conductivity. Using a dielectric mixing model, you can back out the volumetric soil moisture content. My six weeks focused on creating experiments and simulations to determine the limits of the sensor (e.g.,. how precise can we expect measurements to be?), and implementing microcontroller code to achieve it. What did I find? If it didn't kill your grass, you could water your lawn from the Great Salt Lake, and our sensor could still track the moisture.