There's a cute little neighbor kid that lives in my unit that always comes running up to talk to me and pet Roland. He's of a certain ethnicity, and his parents don't speak English as a first language, with all the difficulties for all parties involved. There's a couple of families of the same ethnic group that sort of hang out together, and sometimes I think he comes to talk to me for a change of pace because I'm different from his family, I have a dog, I always answer questions, and maybe because... well, I know how mean kids can be because you're different.

Today he must have really needed a chat, because he was waiting for me when I got out of my car. After we talked about Speed Racer for a minute, and I explained about the security badge I have to wear to work, I tried to excuse myself.

"Why?" he asked in that innocent way of kids.

"I have to get Roland and take him for a walk before it rains."

"Why?"

"So he doesn't get wet!"

"Why?"

"Because wet dog smells really bad!" I was officially Home Late at this point, and I didn't want to delay Roland's walk any longer so I waved and started walking home.

"Can I come to your home?"

...aaaand I stopped. Dead in my tracks. "Uh... well... where's your Mom and Dad?"

"My Dad works in Philadelphia. He takes the train to work. He's supposed to be home sometime this afternoon- what's afternoon?"

Damnit. "And your Mom?" I was really hoping someone was around to take care of The Kid...

"She's at my friend's home. Can I come to your home?"

"Well... uh... not now, but I'll tell you what, I'll bring Roland out to visit you, okay?"

"Okay!"

So I went inside and let Roland out of his crate. At that point I was going to change, but then I saw a little head at about the right height bobbing outside my big window. The Kid was waiting at my door. I promised myself that I would try hard not to get too dirty at the dog park tonight, grabbed Roland's leash and my keys, and walked out the door.

We walked along a little way, and he asked me what Roland was looking around for, and I tried to explain that he was a hunting dog, but he couldn't really hunt. Then he tried to get him to hunt one of the robins that was hopping around. Kid logic. There's more of it on the way. We reached the point where we can either turn around and walk around the complex or go to the dog park, and Roland made it very clear that dog park == WANT. And I told The Kid this.

"Why?"

"So he can go and play with the other dogs."

"Why?"

"Because it's fun!" In retrospect, this was probably not the right thing to say. I bet you can guess what the next words out of his mouth were.

"Can I come too?!?"

"Uh... you had better let your mom know where you're going!"

"Okay!" The Kid said as he ran back.

"I'll come with you!" I figured his mom wouldn't let him go running off with any strange lady, but if she did, then I'd at least know where to deposit him later. "Oh, tell her it's The Angry Geologist in Apartment Plural Zed 5!"

"I live in Thorn-92," The Kid said. "You can come and visit me, but if you come visit more than seven times, my mom will get mad!" Kid logic. Was I this cute when I was his age?

So I met Kid's mom. As I figured, English is definitely not her first language, and The Kid indeed does speak another language at home. At The Kid's insistence, she gave Roland a treat, which he took a little less than gently, because she was holding it so high above his nose. She scolded him a moment in the other language, and waved goodbye to me as she brought him in.

I tried to do the right thing here. I really hope she doesn't think I'm a bad person or going to do anything to her son. I'm wondering if I should try to catch her and explain myself, or maybe write a letter- or do you think she gets it already? I don't know- I've never had a kid follow me home before.

Dogs, cats, fish... add kids to one more thing I can't turn away from my door.

In case you haven't figured it out yet, I'm a pet person. I am always more "myself" when I own and care for some sort of animal. That's the way I am, I've accepted that, and so have my friends.

My parents, on the other hand... well, there's a reason why I put off telling them about Roland.

Case in point: yesterday, I was walking by a yard sale, and I found a 30 gallon fish tank and stand with all the accoutrement for $10. Yes- ten dollars. The stand needed a fresh coat of paint, but I mean... that's giving the damn thing away! It's all glass, very sturdy, the filter even has a built in foamer chamber! Of course, after I got a verbal assurance from my neighbor that everything worked, I paid her the ten dollars and picked up the thing right away.

The stand is mostly repainted. There's a few little things I would like to add, but those can be done later- besides, I need some balsa wood for that (and there will be pictures, so keep your pants on). Today, I added the gravel, the water, the Java Ferns from my old betta bowl (RIP Levi- sorry I didn't catch your swimbladder problem in time), doused it with stress-zyme, and started up the filter. I'm going to let it stabilize for a few days, and maybe start adding fish on Tuesday or Wednesday.

While I'm not an advanced fishkeeper yet, I am not a novice aquarist. To some extent, I know what I'm doing, and if I ever think I'm getting myself into trouble, you can bet I will spam the fora with my issues.

And, like most things in my adult life, my parents seem to think I'm going to be incompetent at this. My bettas have lived at least three years per fish, including the ones that were sick when I got them, and I was working under adverse conditions (very limited space). I didn't tell them about the saltwater tank I had in grad school, because I knew they'd run with this again, though when they saw it, they didn't seem to knock my roommate for taking poor care of "his" fish. The last time that they know that I had a fish tank was when I was a kid- there were two goldfish in a 10 gallon tank- okay, okay, I was a stupid pet owner, but in my defense I WAS EIGHT and I think that at a quarter century I can do a LITTLE FRACKING BETTER THIS TIME.

*huff*

It's okay, though. They've always been way too overprotective of me. I just have to wait them out, and prove to them and myself that I am a responsible adult. They'll come around. Eventually. I can be patient.

Besides, a school of neon tetras are going to look great under that blue light.

Last night I dreamed a bit about Iron Man, and when I woke up this morning, I was thinking about how well it would fit into a steampunk world...

And this idea isn't going to let me go, is it?

As it turns out, I am not the last person on earth to see this movie. My brother is.

I just got done shouting at him on the phone to rectify this.

I also think I have a problem- I believe that I have been to some of the places where they shot the opening scene based on the basalt flows. No, I don't think. I know.

I may post more after I get done fangirling. As it is now, I don't think that I could give a coherent review without descending into teh capslocks of awesome. I should be done by the time the next one comes out.

I also have plans for May 22. :)

Well, I'm back from Indiana! It was kind of a whirlwind trip- I left Monday, worked my not inconsiderable ass off Tuesday and Wednesday, and flew back Wednesday night. We've got about a year left on the project if nothing goes wrong, so I'll probably be going back out there again. Not the least because of the waders.

To make a long and convoluted story short, we had to do stream gauging out there, and they didn't have a pair of waders that would fit me. Therefore, I had to run out and buy a pair before I left, something I never, ever saw myself doing in my entire life, kind of right up there with inventing my own language. Since I cost them $119.45 on top of everything else, I will probably be heading out there to do the gauging for the duration- not a bad thing.

The site is part of the former Jefferson Proving Ground, a giant swath of land in Southern Indiana that the military bought or eminent-domained, and bombed the shit out of from 1940 to 1995. This is a lot of firepower, and not everything went boom the first time. It's rumored to contain the greatest concentration of unexploded ordinance in the Northern 48 States. We're looking at ways that certain elements from certain weapons could migrate off site (I won't say too much here, but if you go to the JPG website, you could probably figure it out).

Now, the good news is that they couldn't have picked a much better spot in terms of groundwater protection- the limestone contains dissolution fractures to a certain depth, then becomes as crystalline as it gets. The upshot of this is that we don't have to worry about contaminants getting into the deep groundwater system and heading off to Parts Unknown. Pretty much the only way it can get offsite is through the surface water, and that's what we're working on now.

The Army gave/sold the land to the Fish and Wildlife Service, and all but a little bit up North that's still in use by the Indiana National Guard and the bit South of the firing line that's a park, housing, and industrial complex, is now the Big Oaks National Wildlife Refuge. BONWR is about 50,000 acres, so this is nothing to sneeze at. And it is absolutely gorgeous. They do controlled burns to keep the grasslands open, so when I was there the wildflowers were just (ha) exploding. The deer, racoons, and turkeys are isolated enough that they don't yet think that humans= guns or food. They'll run, but not without staring at you for quite a bit wondering what the heck you are. Box turtles, salamanders, snakes and toads run the gravel roads without any fear. The bugs are just as unbelievable*, and I've never seen so many Things in streams, running from freshwater molluscs the size of quahogs, to flatworms, to things with entirely too many legs.

It's pretty much as close to heaven as I can imagine... and then you see the bombs. In the area we were in, which wasn't cleared for public use, they were everywhere. They ranged in size from small ones that would fit in a pint glass to giants longer than your arm and thicker than your leg. That's why they made it a refuge- it would cost billions upon billions of dollars to dispose of the UXO on site, so they just leave it go. There's something to be said about how quickly nature heals itself, but I think the more depressing thought is more true: the only way we can let something be like this, without plastic bottles in the streams, without garbage bags in the trees, without McMansions or McDonalds, is to bomb the shit out of it so that no one can use it for anything else. Perhaps we can look forward to some new Middle East wildlife refuges in the future.

Still, if you're ever stuck in Southern Indiana, this place is worth a trip. Stop in at the Fish and Wildlife office, and go birding, hunting, fishing, amateur archeology-ing, take lots of pictures, and be safe. If I get the chance to revisit, you know I'm going to.

*If you go hiking there, I recommend having a trusted partner check you for ticks afterward. I pulled two lone star ticks off of my person after I got home, and at least one was embedded. Incidentally, I have memorized the symptoms of Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever.

You will need:

One bottle of Bombay Sapphire Gin
One bottle of random store brand tonic
One lime

1.) Buy the gin at the liquor store. Get into a conversation about prospecting with the cashier about gold prospecting in Pennsylvania (?) after you tell her you're a geologist.

2) Buy the lime and the tonic at the grocery store.

3) Get home and start drinking immediately after you try to brush your dog's teeth.

4) Realize you have no tumblers, so mix it in a pint glass that you stole from your ex-roommate instead.

5) Pour in two fingers of gin. Cut an eighth of the lime and squeeze the juice in the glass. Pour enough tonic to fill it three quarters of the way.

6) Taste. Realize there is not enough gin. Pour more in.

7) Drink. Drink again. Drain the glass to all but about a finger left.

8) Wonder how this would taste with cranberries. Add one dried cranberry to the glass. Drink the remainder. Eat gin-soaked cranberry.

9) Wheeeeeeeee!

Just a quick update from the field:

I was down at the motorcycle plant today driving the giant diesel truck with the poly tank on a trailer. We're doing our very first sitewide groundwater sampling, and the boss needed me to fill in for a few days while the rest of the field personnel got back from wherever. I had just finished my last well for the day, and I was headed to the contractor lot. Now, the army reserve barracks is right across from it, and one of the soldiers was sitting on the stoop out front smoking.

He watched me pull that giant trailer into the contractor lot, whip right into a parking space, and kick open the door in my flannel shirt and well-weathered steel toed boots. Then he watched me climb down, look in the side mirror to apply lip gloss, fix my hair, and sit down with my new copy of Country Home.

I don't think I could have caused more chaos in that poor guy's brain unless I had slipped off my boots and pulled on a pair of high heels.

I'm a pretty honked off dog owner right now.

A few weeks ago, I switched Roland to Nutro beef and rice, and just watched his energy level plummet. He really wasn't the same dog- wouldn't run at the dog park, slept all day, and just acted like a cranky old man. I was going to make him a vet appointment, and then a friend of mine told me about this.

Yup- that's right. Nutro is having problems. Frak- I trusted this brand! This one was supposed to be good!

I went to the Feed Store- the one that I blogged about earlier with the turkeys- and told the resident dog food expert about the problems I was having, and he directed me to Innova's Evo line. It's used a lot to build dogs up, whether for competition or showing, or rehab- he spoke from experience, saying that he'd given it to abused and neglected dogs to help them bounce back. I took a look at the ingredients- no corn or wheat or grains of any kind. Turkey, chicken, turkey meal, chicken meal, potato, cottage cheese, garlic, carrots... this damn dog is going to eat better than I do! God help me if he ever gets into the bag! I started the switch immediately when I got home. I don't know what I'm going to do with the rest of the Nutro bag- it wouldn't be right to take it to a shelter, I suppose, but I don't want to see it in a landfill. I'm saving a baggie of it for testing, and also the lot number.

The guy at the Feed Store mentioned that he had had a few other complaints about Nutro from other dog owners, so myself and the other folks mentioned in the above article apparently have company. He said the sales rep kind of beat around the bush when he asked about it- the ingredients are getting harder to find, so as of right now, the owner has no clue where the stuff is coming from. He only carries one type of Nutro food for dogs, and he might get rid of that in light of this.

Of course, after I spent almost twenty dollars on a shockingly small bag of dog food (though it will go a long way because he should only get a cup a day), he turns around and eats his own poo. The Irony Fairy must love me.

I was on my way home from work today, driving the same way I always do. It was a bit later in the evening, thanks to some last-minute changes on a project, so traffic was a bit heavier and the volume of kids in the playground en route was lighter. I admit that I was on autopilot, staring out the passenger side of the windshield at the soccer field on the hill and thinking about impermeable clay, when something caught my attention and made me turn my eyes front. At the same instant, my right foot moved of its own volition onto the brake pedal. A second later, the car in front of me hit its brakes and signaled a turn.

Oh, cool, I thought, and kept on going.

I anticipated the action without realizing it. Am I psychic? You can bet if I was, I'd be a lot richer by now. No magic here, either, I'm afraid- it was all me. I saw something that told me that car was going to turn before it did- maybe it dropped speed slightly as the driver moved his foot from the brake to the gas, maybe I'd seen it turn there before, maybe he pulled to the right side of the road so he'd be able to make a tighter turn. But I saw something, processed it, and reacted before my conscious mind had a chance to catch up.

This is a normal, documented phenomenon. People of all sorts make decisions without their conscious mind. Might explain why Bush got two terms, but politics aside...

Which brings me to my main point.

There is no magic in dowsing. There are no subtle electrical or gravitational fields affecting the metal rods or wooden stick. And you would have to do some pretty rigorous experiments under controlled conditions to convince me that some people have greater sensitivity to either in the degree necessary to detect flowing water or buried foundations or what have you. And there doesn't need to be, because people are smarter about the physical world than they think they are.

Because experiment after experiment has disproved that dowsers can do any better than an untrained person in finding water or an object, that then begs the question, how good are ordinary people? Let's say you were dropped out in the middle of a field and asked where you think some buried foundations of an old barn were. Your conscious mind might say, "Go pound sand, Angry Geologist! There's no way I can do this without help!" But your eyes are looking around at the rolling swales and the vegetation; your feet are picking up vibrations as you walk around the grounds. Eventually, you'll come to a spot that seems to have a different tenor when your feet strike it, a little higher or lower than the surrounding landscape, where the grass is just a little bit greener or a bit marshier in the center. And you'll look down, and see an old block, and say, "Damn, how did that happen?"

You won't have any idea how you did it, just like I didn't have any idea why I hit the brakes before the car ahead of me hit his tonight. But you did it- not the sticks- you. You put together the facts and came to a conclusion, even if you didn't quite realize it- and I really believe that this is what dowsers do, only they try to dress it up in woo to explain things to themselves and try to convince people to hire them again, instead of going with the cheaper option- their own hunch. And I'm sure it feels good for both people- the water seeker is going to be happy he's got his water, and the dowser will get paid and feel good about his abilities. There isn't any malice- just gullibility on both parts.

In fact, the only difference between a geologist and a normal person is that we consciously know what we're looking for. We look for swales and stream valleys because they form along weak parts in the rock, which is where water can flow most easily. We look for green spots in the middle of a drought or wetlands vegetation because we know that's where water is getting to the surface. We look for disturbances in the soil where something might have been dug up, buried and had the earth settle around it, and bring in the magnetometer to check our work. I can tell you what's going on, but you don't need me to put together the pieces- you are smarter about this than you think you are.

Here...ville

This is one of the neater concepts for a webcomic I've seen in a while. It follows the adventures of a headstrong girl Mirka, who wants to grow up to be a dragonslayer, and her family. It's pretty standard fantasy, with a couple of twists that make you unable to put it down.

First, I've been unable to nail down the time period and place this is supposed to be set in. We could be talking about an insular community in post-war Europe, or a 1950's Levitton, or ten years from now. I mean I can nail it down a little bit- they didn't have electric stoves or lightswitches in the 1400's. Stuff like that absolutely fascinates me. And as far as we can tell from the kids' point of view, magic more than exists in the world.

Second, the cast is entirely Orthodox Jewish (with the exception of the possible witch that Mirka and her brother meet, but you'll have to read it to find out what's up with that), and the creator Barry Deutsch really brings their family traditions to life. You don't see too many of that particular faith in comics, and it's a refreshing change of pace.

Mirka's relationship with her shrewd stepmother is also something to hold dear in this comic. Mirka will, as most kids do, start arguments to get out of doing chores- but Mirka and Fruma don't have normal mother-daughter fights. They argue about free will, or good and evil, or the ecology of dragons. And yet, throughout each exchange, you never get the feeling that either one doesn't genuinely care about the other. I'm really looking forward to seeing this develop.

The magic is real. The art is sepia-toned. And the challah smells delicious, I imagine. I've found a new reason to look forward to Wednesdays!

I finished two reports today. I should be able to send one out tomorrow, and get the other one into typing. It's really kind of cool. One of the sites is in Baltimore, and I think you can see the effect of sea level rise on the groundwater levels in the wells.

***

Dad had his knee replaced on Friday- he ended up only getting a partial instead of a full (which is kind of like saying you "only" had to have bypass surgery and not triple bypass). But he came home today, so I'm going to call them later and see how its going.

***

The check engine light in my car has come on. D: Probably nothing, but I'm getting it checked anyway. I need to meet one of the managers at the mechanic's- not only was he nice enough to tell me where he gets work done on his car, but he offered to give me a ride. Of course, if my car is really going to explode and it will take a few days to fix, I'm calling Enterprise. Not going to take advantage of someone's goodwill like that.

***

Remember the 1400 foot dry hole, and how the property owner called in a dowser to find another spot? Guess what he found? A 700 foot dry hole! Score one for real science! Of course, that means the last site we're trying is do-or-die. And they're drilling tomorrow. Freakin yay.

I'm slowly trying to wean myself off the filing system developed by the eminent Dr. Aegus Tossit Ennywhere.

I am now trying to put things in piles. I have succeeded in clearing a very large wad of papers off my desk, recycling about half a ream of stuff that I won't need anymore, and exposing a three foot square section right next to my computer.

Clearly, this is not enough. But steps must be taken somewhere before I lose something important.

I tried an experiment today to see if Roland's separation anxiety is caused by the crate, or if it's just me leaving home (it's me). Unfortunately, Roland took advantage of my absence to go counter surfing, and inhaled a six-pack of whole wheat english muffins, with 6 g of fiber each.

Is this going to cause a problem before it comes out the other end?

He seems fine- hasn't been behaving sluggishly, heart rate and reaction is normal, and the only sign that he hasn't been good today has been a slightly pudgier belly than normal, but it gives to the touch and is similar to when he got into the dog food bin at the rescue. Still, if I need to call an emergency vet, I'd really like to know now.

I just got off the phone with my parents, and somehow we got into a conversation about how other people's houses were decorated. I mentioned that I had seen one apartment where they had turned the dining area into a sort of library and breakfast nook, and I was debating getting some bookshelves. I need more book storage space, the little Ikea bookshelf isn't cutting it anymore.

"Don't go out and buy the most expensive thing," Mom said, always frugal. It's how she grew up. It's still really hard to convince her to do stuff for herself, and she feels guilty everytime she does. When she brought home her new sewing machine, she had this expression on her face like she had hit a homeless guy on the way home and had stuffed his body in the trunk.

"I was planning on buying secondhand, anyway. There's some nice antique stores around here, and I was looking for an excuse to go."

"Good- and don't pay too much, no matter what they tell you its made out of."

I laughed and reassured her that I wouldn't. "Hey, I won't even have to have it delivered- I can just wait until I'm out in the field, and I can use a company truck. Just zip over, load it up, drop it off, and have everything back to equipment and supply before you can say 'P-52's broke down again!'"

Dad said, "So you're driving the truck now, huh?"

I kind of puzzled over this; I'm the oldest child and the only girl, so there's two reasons for my parents to worry sick about me. I was their first try- my brother owes me big time for breaking them in. "Er- yeah. It's no big deal. It's just a pickup truck."

Dad laughed. "Sweetie, don't take this the wrong way, but you've really grown up! I can remember when you wouldn't drive the tractor, and you were scared of my pickup!" In my defense, my dad was usually unhappy when I mowed the lawn (none of the oak saplings in the eastern part survived that year), and he was usually growling at me when I was driving the truck (learner's permit, ahoy!), so I was kind of turned off by that. But yeah. I had gotten over it.

I laughed too. "Yeah, Dad, I guess I have."

Heh. I want a cookie and a star sticker.

My brain missed a step in its boot sequence this morning. I am not sure if that had anything to do with the beers that I had last night, but I had better start drinking again and building up a tolerance if that's true.

Usually, I wake up rather quickly and efficiently. I don't get things like sleep paralysis or waking dreams, unless someone is in the room making noise and then I will talk to them. I'm not really asleep either because I can remember everything I say later.

This morning was a little bit different. Somehow, I woke up before the part of my brain that processes memories did, which meant that for about two minutes, I had no idea who I was. I also managed to wake up before the part of my brain that accounts for passage of time did, so it felt like an hour.

I can't remember (ha) all that much of it, but I remember trying to piece together information from my surroundings. Only problem was that I was still slightly dreaming, so my perception was a little wonky. For a moment I thought I was a carpenter, maybe a dog breeder because Roland was curled up at the foot of my bed.

I opened my eyes again; this time, everything had turned on in the right order, and I was waking up correctly. But I could remember what that felt like; my entire life up to this point was inaccessible, and while I didn't know what I had lost, I knew what I had lost. Is that what it's like to suffer a TBI? Did my grandmother feel this way after her stroke? Is this what Alzheimers patients feel like all the time?

I was in the craft store today after a lamp, and they had a display of lilac sprigs. I stared at that display for a very long time before I could move on.

Ambiguity is the language of charlatans.

Discuss.

So, I finalized most of the figures for the report today- and they all worked, except one: the cross section.

I based my cross section on a variety of sources- the existing geologic maps, some structural measurements and rock descriptions that my boss did, and the drilling logs for the big well. It mostly worked- it shows that one of the wells that we drew down shares a water bearing bedding plane with our well, and better yet, if we just drill him a new one a maximum of a hundred feet deeper down, he won't have any more problems when the production well goes online. However, the other well that we drew down? Not even close.

We have leakage between bedding planes.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing- if we can quantitatively estimate how much water is leaking through, we can get a clearer picture of the recharge area for this well, and possibly get more water out of it. The problem is convincing the regulatory agency that this is indeed what is happening.

Fortunately, there's a neat little mathematical trick that we can use to estimate this. Transmissivity is basically the ease with which water flows through the aquifer to the pumping well, and there are several ways to estimate this. The first two rely on pumping test data from both the pumping and recovery phase, and are estimates of the average transmisivity (these don't always match, so there's a whole new level of agony trying to figure out which number you should use, but fortunately that didn't happen here). The second one you can do if you've drawn down a monitoring well during the test, and that will give you transmissivity in that direction.

We already know that the aquifer is strongly anisotropic- that means that the speed at which water flows through the rock varies greatly depending on which direction it's going. And we have an average value, and two directional values in this case. So, what we can do is construct an ellipse with the transmissivity values and their directions from the well, and that'll give us an estimate of transmissivity in all directions, not just in the directions of wells we know about. From that, we can figure out how long it will take for the water to get to our well, and more importantly, where it's coming from.

Disclaimer: Apparently, this isn't a very common phenomenon- or it is, it's just that the signal from other processes overwhelm it most of the time. But in this formation, it's business as usual- the last time the senior hydrologist had to pull this little trick, it was in the same rock. Go figure.

Read em if you got em.

To be honest with you, I'm not really sure what to make of this one. I like the premise- brilliant female scientist and single mom with two brilliant little girls. It's got potential to be a good story- but that's about where it stops.

I can identify with the kids- one is crazy and causes trouble, the other is cynical and was probably born thirty. They're the kind of answers to Calvin and Hobbes that I'd like to see in the papers. Sometimes, the strip gets a bit preachy and political, but that's forgivable.

But the adult protagonist I'm having trouble with- name one female scientist that treats her kids as a science experiment (even more unbelievable that they're OK with this). She's totally unbelievable in other ways, too, like the fact that she got a sperm donor and a surrogate mom to both carry them and take care of them for the first year of life, rather than... you know. In fact, the author of the comic leads the reader to believe that she's never even begun... you know... the normal way. Can you identify with that? I can't- and I haven't even done "the normal way" yet.

And yet for as tough and no-nonsense as she seems to be, she breaks down in front of her kids' dad's wife because she's worried she's not doing right by them (if you feel that way, you're probably not and you should probably change something, then!) But it all magically ends up to be OK, and nothing changes. I understand that comics are the realm of the absurd and impossible, but you've at least got to make your characters have some kind of depth- right?

There's quite a bit about this comic to like- the art has improved since the inception, largely due to the author hiring a cartoonist (*shrug*). It's got a couple of good one-liners, and the running gag about squid ink is worth showing up for. But as far as a review, I'm going to go with, "Doesn't live up to its full potential." And that's really kind of sad.

[Farnsworth] Good news, everybody! [/Farnsworth]

After sitting down with the staff hydrogeologist, we have figured out why the method I used to determine well efficiency didn't work, and found a method that did!

The method I tried first involved using data from the step test- that's pretty much exactly what it sounds like. You pump at a given rate for an hour, then step up your discharge to find out how the aquifer behaves. There's a mathematical relationship between discharge, drawdown, and the resistance to flow within the aquifer that can be deduced from step test data. I don't understand the physical basis behind this well enough yet to explain it, but under normal circumstances, you can use figure out the percentage of resistance to flow from the aquifer into the well, and get your well efficiency.

There's a number of reasons why it might not have worked in this case. Our initial step might have been too high, and the relationship that should have been linear turned exponential- but we would have only seen the linear part of the curve. Another possibility may be that the well was actually developing itself- clearing debris from the fractures- during the pump test. It probably was the character of the rock more than anything. After doing a little bit of research, we found that the specific capacity (Discharge divided by drawdown) of wells drilled into this formation tended to be remarkably low.

In any case, the hydrogeologist clued me into a second method, one that I can see the physical basis for much more easily, and therefore one that I like. This one uses the recovery period after the constant rate test ends, and as I understand, it goes something like this:

You have a well that you've pumped to approximately steady state, and you have a nice cone of depression going. If you take a cross section of it, you'll find that the water level in the aquifer just outside the well is not the same as the water level inside the casing. This well loss is because water experiences more friction when entering the well. I am not certain why, but I am sure it has something to do with pirates and the Flying Spaghetti Monster. In any case, an efficient well minimizes the difference between the water level outside and the water level inside.

But I'm getting a little ahead of myself. Now, let's shut the pump off. Water that's entering the well will continue to flow at the same rate until it's at the level of the water in the aquifer. That all has to do with gravity- groundwater, like surface water, flows fastest down steeper gradients, so if you have a rolling shallow cone of depression followed by a sharp cliff into the well, guess which one will get filled up faster? This period is fairly quick- a matter of minutes for our well- and after that, recovery is mostly due to water trickling back down the cone of depression until the aquifer recharges completely.

Plotting up a graph of drawdown against T/T' (T- time since test ended, T'- time since test began) yields a curve that looks like an old chair's armrest with a beveled edge. The steep end of the curve toward the end represents the recovery from well loss. The flatter, more linear part of the curve extending to zero drawdown is all due to water trickling back through the formation. After you figure this out, you can divide drawdown due to formation loss at the end of the test by total drawdown, and you'll get your well efficiency.

The verdict? The well is 80-85% efficient. And the better news is now I know where the water is coming from.

And there was much rejoicing!