I've been quite busy this week. I didn't end up starting my poster, but I have obtained the exact requirements for it and begun brainstorming ideas. I hope to start the poster next week and write an abstract for the program.

I've spend a good bit of time this week planning my dissertation. I went through some short documents that I had previously written to determine which of them I can use to expand into or work into sections of my dissertation. I have starting points for several topics I hope to write this summer. I should be able to easily write about the history of GRBs, Swift and its instruments, the Swift data, and my analysis methodology.

I would also like to learn enough about GLAST, its instruments, and its data to be able to start writing those sections in the next few months. The daily morning meetings are helping me learn quite a bit about things I had never thought of before, such as trigger algorithms, coincidence detections, electron precipitation, the South Atlantic Anomaly, spacecraft movements, and occultations of Scorpius X-1 (a neutron star and brightest source of X-rays in our sky aside from the Sun).

I've also looked at three published GRB dissertations to study both the structure and the content. All three were quite different from each other. One was essentially a collection of published papers with very little relation between them. One was partially a collection of published papers and partially other related work. One contained chapters of closely related work which were not previously published. I was able to measure how much text they used to discuss introductory topics, instrumentation, methodology, models, physics, conclusions, etc. By studying what others have produced, especially those who have graduated from this group, I can better understand what is expected of me.

I made good progress this week continuing my Swift database. I'm pleased with how quickly and efficiently I can work with this familiar data. I hope that, with time, I can learn to work with GBM data just as well.

Of the 160 gigabytes of memory in my 10-month-old computer Stella, 125 gigs is dedicated to my home directory. Earlier this week, I found that I could not continue downloading new data because I had used 120 gigs of that space. I didn't expect to run out of room so quickly! It turned out that the unprocessed data I downloaded from the Swift archive accounted for 65% of that used space. Once I deleted those unnecessary files, I was able to continue working. I'm worried that I'll reach full capacity pretty quickly after I start working with data from two observatories at once. I may eventually have to inquire about purchasing a second hard drive.

I've also started to rewrite my color-color diagram program. My original program is a good foundation to start from. I was getting preliminary data from my original program before work on it ceased. I've written a paper outline of what I need the program to do and some of the code to do it. I haven't yet learned enough about arrays to really program it yet, but I hope by next week I will. My immediate task is to rework the input data files such that I can use an iterative process to read in the data. My biggest challenge is trying to think like a computer, which does not come easily to me.