A lot has happened since the last post! To start with, I'd like to announce the arrival of the newest member in our family, Bentley Helaman Stephens. Take a look at him over at troywilkins.com. He sure is a cool little guy.

In other news, I defended my thesis back in November and I am finishing up all the last little revisions now. I'll post a link to the thesis as soon as it's done. I know everyone is real excited to read it. I wish Micro$oft Word wasn't such a pain in the neck to use, it tries to fix everything automatically and it is usually wrong when it tries. If I were to do it again, I'd try AbiWord. I like that little program.

It's a BOY!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So I've been asked by a few people to show them what I've been working on while at school. Here is a photo of Erik and myself taking radiometric data of a field in Minidoka Idaho. I think I'll also put a link to the lab/office homepage with some links to the files and projects I've been involved with.

http://ags116mac.agsci.usu.edu/

My thesis is going to be on quantifying carbon using incident spectral reflectance within the SWIR bands. I'm not sure when it will be finished, but I'm working on it. In fact, I should probably stop typing and work on it right now.

I'm still working on my thesis. I can't believe how long it is taking to write. I'd probably be done by now if it wasn't for slashdot!!! I'm still reading journal articles trying to get as much background covered as I can. In the process of looking up every article ever written about soil carbon and reflectance, I've found several articles from the Soviet Soil Science journal. They were studying carbon and reflectance clear back in the 60's. I can't believe how much research has been repeated because governments dislike studies that aren't 'home-grown'.

In other news, we (Nikkala and I) are expecting our first baby in January. I'm really excited. Of course I think it will be a boy, but we don't know for sure yet. I guess I have a 50-50 chance of being right. I need to hurry and finish this thesis and get a real job before then. We need to move into a larger house as well. The second bedroom is filled with all of my books, computers, and other stuff. Nikkala doesn't think I need my G4 cube, Silicon Graphics Indigo, and Dual G5 desktop all running together and wants to convert the room into a baby room. So I think a new place will save a lot of arguing.

Yeah, it's official. I'm getting married on July 1st. It is a pretty big step. How do you decide that you can spend your whole life with just one person. Well, I did.. and I'm glad that it is to Nikkala. She is the coolest girl...


I'm still working on the soil carbon remote sensing project and I'm also starting some work using a Veris soil EC mapping rig. It's pretty cool... have a look at:


http://www.veristech.com/


Well, I've got wedding plans to plan. Peace Out.

Finals are over... no grades posted yet... they are-a-coming soon...

The recent bout with finals brings me to a question.. why do professors feel like their finals all have to be 3-4 hours worth of questions crammed into 2 hours. Does it make them feel good when only one or two people actually turn in the final before the time is expired? That doesn't tell the teacher what the student knows, it just tells them that no one was fast enough to finish it.

email me at _chod@yahoo.com_ -erase the _ :)

Hello,
Welcome to my BLOG. I hope to find time to fill it with things worthy of reading. Currently I'm in graduate school studying soil science, and finals are here... so I will fill it another time.