Geri's Livejournal Revival, Entry 1

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 05:29:36 GMT

*Years ago, I used to maintain an older livejournal under the account name sanji53, which ran from Fall 2003 to roughly...maybe late 2006 or early 2007? I stopped updating that journal probably early senior year of high school or somewhere around there, and I later deleted the journal for lack of updating after months and months. Here is the first entry of a new livejournal account opened up by Gerasimos A. Michalitsianos, June 21, 2009. I have done this realizing I want a place to be able to record my thoughts. I am currently 20 years old, an undergraduate geology major (rising junior) at University of Maryland, College Park, weigh 178 pounds, height is 6 foot even...umm...whatever. My favorite music includes Led Zeppelin, Billy Joel, Sting and the Police, classical (The Planets, Beethoven), Ozzy, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Styx, Eric Clapton, Bruce Springsteen, Phil Collins, Beatles (duh...), Metallica, Bon Jovi, Van Halen, Boston, Nirvana, Pink Floyd, national anthems, musicals, random movie themes and scores (John Williams and others). I am currently considering a minor in physics.

So I am currently taking MATH241, Calculus III this summer (Summer I term) here at UMCP. I should have taken this course long, long ago, but there were a couple semesters that I did not take any math at all. Took Calculus I Fall 2007, took Calculus II fall 2008, and took no math Spring 2009 nor Spring 2008. My professor for MATH241 is Greek, Manoussos Grillakis. He is pretty tough; I took a test on Friday. It was 5 questions of which 4 I answered. So that is already a -20 (out of 100) right there. I probably got around a 60 overall on the exam, which sucks. It was on 2 chapters. The material was generally easy, but the algebra and trying to expand and then condense/simplify huge expressions in the given time limit was simply insane. It just exploded out of control, especially when computing cross products and norms of vectors resulting from multiple derivations of difficult vector-valued functions in attempting to compute the "curviture" and "length" of curves in space. I just hope I did better than the average on it. It seemed alot of others in the class felt that exam was a bitch too. Grillakis said he would choose functions with derivative computations that were much more simple, so the algebra wouldnt get rediculous. I guess he did not stick to his word. I have a MATLAB assignment for this class due July 1. That should be easy, on account I have been doing nothing BUT MATLAB programming as a research assistant for the past month with UMD French Geophysicist, professor Dr. G.J. Montesi. He earned his doctorate in Geophysics from MIT, which is really hardcore. I am sort of intimidated by his extreme intelligence.

Yes, I work in the Computer and Space Sciences Building this summer. Basically, there is a whole load of GPS horizontal postseismic displacement data (we're talking ~1-10mm). This data I download represents postseismic displacements and gradual relaxation of the 28 September 2004 Parkfield Earthquake, Parkfield California. I download this data (data from several dozen GPS ground-based sensors with east/north displacement vectors with respect to time), and attempt to fit curves through the data using MATLAB. Then I attempt to reduce "Chi^2" to try to get the best fit through the noise by adjusting various seismic parameters. It is alot of error analysis. Because of postseismic relaxation, theoretically the earthquake GPS displacements should have their derivatives approach zero as t >0 post seismic event. Such curves are parametrized by 1/n. From Dr. Montesi's papers and presentations, there exists 14 mathematical functions (laws) with varying numbers of parameters, in which each law is fit to the data. One function for example, is simply a linear function D = Displacement = a + bt, where t is time and a and b and constants. Then another law might be D = a + b*log(alpha*t+beta). Some functions fit the GPS displacements more accurately than others. The two laws just given have few parameters, and hence return large values of Chi^2, and hence fit the GPS data poorly compared to more complex laws with more parameters. I took to investigate these, and strive to see which mathematical derived laws fits the 2004 Parkfield Earthquake post-seismic relaxation the best. I will eventually perform this same method of inversion for the May 2008 Sichuan Earthquake for my Senior Thesis project (as such is required for all GEOLOGY majors), indeed a thrust fault whose geometry might be able to be inferred from continuous time-series GPS data. Right now is a good learning experience.

Yes, I currently reside in College Park at Leonardtown community. I have a Chinese roommate. He is an Aerospace Engineering major, and he is real chill. He is taking a Aerodynamics class of some sort this summer. It looks like fun. We go to the gym as workout buddies at Eppley Recreation center. Yes I have started working out lately. I can now run 1.5 miles without stopping, which for me, is pretty damn good. So each workout I run the indoor track and then lift weights. I do this 2-4 times a week. Its free for UMD enrolled students which is cool. I want to try the swimming pool soon.

Sorry people this entry was really boring. I know. I have many turburlent thoughts in head right now. Some are angry, some are confused, some are anxious. Most of these thoughts stem from...I guess I am scared I might bomb my math class this summer...I'm doing shitty in it I feel and am scared I might fail. I look to my next entry however, to maybe talk about my thoughts and reflections of the 2009 spring semester, which was certainly a very unusual semester for me.

Chao,
Geri

sanji56

Geri's Livejournal Revival, Entry 1