Patterns, Purists, and Sinkholes

Before I was a geek, I was a Geologist. A Geophysicist to be precise – but mostly I just tell people I was a Geologist. I worked a lot with environmental cleanup, but I also spent a lot of time doing what’s known as “Geotechnical” work – the stuff that happens before buildings are built and holes are dug. It can be kind of boring, but it’s crucially important. One day I was sitting in our lab with some dark Bay Mud in a crucible, slowly adding water in measured doses and then pouring the mud through a screen and weighing out differences. I won’t bore you with the details – I’ll just tell you that I was 23 and cranky that this is what my career amounted to – a bunch of rigorous nonsense where I got to weigh mud.