i fail at sleeping

So it's like quarter to 4 AM and I'm still up. I had a plan to go to bed an hour earlier each night until I got rid of my jet lag, but it's not working. I keep getting distracted when I should go to bed. I've been reading a bunch of books lately like Slaughterhouse-Five, Flatland, Sphereland, lots of interesting stuff. Tonight I was watching a clip of Top Gear and got sucked in by one of the songs, so I hunted it down, found the entire album it came off of, and found some other albums while I was at it, and now it's 4 AM. Damn. The one song in particular I found is classical / electronica from a movie that is supposedly set in the 1800's or something, so it kind of has a steampunk edge to it as well which I like. I do have to say that Top Gear is a very good source of new music for me, my old sources have been dried up for a while and I was sad. Also, I found that a good way to find mp3's online is to do a Google search for "Index of /mp3", it pulls up a lot of random stuff.

I've also been playing Generals again. I beat all 36 missions from Generals and Zero Hour, which is intense when you do it all at once. I've gotten pretty good, even the really hard missions didn't go too badly. I still have every intention of playing FFVIII, except I don't have a memory card here and Final Fantasy with no mem card is asking for trouble.

Tomorrow I should work on finishing Christmas shopping. I have half of it done. Thursday night is the Hard Lessons / Nice Device concert, but I haven't gotten around to making those plans yet. But it's happening. Two weeks from today (technically) I go back to Oregon. Bleh.

There were a couple other things I wanted to note, but coherency is not my strong point at 4 AM.

Yeah, I think I should sleep now.

the seasoned traveller

Yeah, I'm home. Travelling home wasn't too bad, except I finished Snow Crash early in the long and boring flight from Phoenix to Detroit. I did figure out how to get wireless internet in the airports at Portland and Phoenix, and I found out I actually know my way around those airports from previous trips. My flight back in three weeks has a stop in Las Vegas, which I haven't been to yet.

So far haven't had much time to sit and relax since I've been home. I'm still adjusted to West Coast time, so I'm not getting enough sleep. Tomorrow is a family Christmas with my mom's side of the family. I am looking forward to seeing family again, though not the inevitable explanations of what the hell I've been up to in the past few months. I can't quite account for it all myself. Between sleep and being in shock from last term I'm kind of wandering around in a stupor, disconnected from reality. But hey, that's what break is for. Hopefully normal operations will resume next week.

Grad school is just a blur. Being at home is definitely better than being out there. I just want to get my damned degree and come back for good. I am still reading my radar book, and it is in the post-WWII part where basic research resumes and all these graduate students do spectacular things for their theses. Yeah, that's not me. Basically I have to survive the rest of this year, and then next year I start getting classes that actually relate to what I want to do, and then I'm off and running.

Went out shopping a bit today. I'm getting a new cell phone for Christmas because the one I have sucks, but it'll all be worked out so I'll have the same number and whatnot.

top five

None of you care, but it's getting posted anyway.

Top 5 most influential songs to me:

- Children by Robert Miles, first song I heard on the radio and went mad hunting down, leading to the first CD I ever bought.

- Enervate on Paul Oakenfold's Tranceport, first Oakenfold song I heard and not the last.

- Piledriver by Amoebaassassin

- Offshore by Chicane

- In The End by Linkin Park

preflight

So yeah. I'm flying back to Michigan tomorrow. I am packing now because I put it off until the last minute. I was going to be finished, except by packing my small suitcase inside my larger one (because I don't have a lot to take home) it was more than 50 lb. per bag, which is over their arbitrary limit. Now I have to treat them separately, and I don't have anything to put in the big one. I should fill it with weights. How do you like that, Southwest Airlines? Because of your nonsense limit, you have to do twice as much work.

I am looking forward to being home for the holidays, but not to the travel it requires. Seriously, I have to get up at 5:30 AM tomorrow - a killer for a semi-nocturnal person like me - and I won't get home until midnight. A whole day gone! At least I bought a new book that will keep me distracted - Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, a major cyberpunk novel that I haven't gotten around to reading until now.

I think I forgot and slept through a biodiesel meeting this morning. Oops. I know I still have to do some website work for them, but it'll be easy when I get the time to sit down and do it. I am thinking about moving some of my volunteer time over to Solar Creek though, it's more in line with what I want to be doing.

Concert update: the planets have aligned or something, for The Hard Lessons and The Nice Device will be playing together on Dec. 22 in Ann Arbor. Expect me to be there.

forged

I love Sound Forge. I've been using it more to tear out bits of songs that I don't like, because I like listening to the good stuff looped twenty times in a row. I hate it when a song has a pointless intro or an awful bridge. The song 'In My Head' from the Matrix Revolutions soundtrack got a particularly brutal treatment the other day. Currently I am working on The Hard Lessons. I stripped the audio out of a video I took from their concert in Portland, and I'm adjusting levels with an equalizer so it sounds somewhat decent. The song is a version of "Milk and Sugar" with some interesting new stuff in the bridge. And now it's on my iPod.

The Hard Lessons are doing a New Year's Eve show in Detroit, by the way.

end of fall term

Well, that's that. I finished my first term of grad school, so I'm 1/5 done with all of my grad school classes. As expected, I have no life and I'm broke. Big surprise. My existence has much less variety than undergrad - it basically consists of schoolwork, food, sleep, and some video games to keep me sane.

The work wasn't really as I expected though, I was hoping to have only a few hard things to focus work on but I'm being pulled in more directions than in undergrad. I thought I would just have to put in hard work and I could get everything done, but instead I am overwhelmed, I literally do not have enough time to finish everything and have to pick and choose what to complete. Maybe that's how the real world is, but it's still BS.

I got a B+ in quantum. I was really hoping for an A. I think I'm going to vow to get an A in Quantum Mechanics II. Next term should not be nearly as bad now that I am familiar with how grad school works. I didn't think the QM final was too bad, but I got 78/100 on it. Oksana graded hard. Oh well. Grad school is binary.

The most amusing part of the QM final was that someone wrote on the board 'Find Bound States and Energy Spectrum' and drew something that started out as a normal QM potential and turned into Super Mario Bros, with pipes and a castle and everything. Obviously the underground pipes represent solutions for E <>

I finished grading exams. My iPod played the perfect song when I finished - "Who Will Grade Your Work?" by Piled Higher and Deeper (yes the webcomic), a song about being a TA.

Now I am screwing around in iTunes before going back to FFX. I've set myself some iTunes challenges. Right now I'm trying to make a list of the top five most personally influential songs. Not my current favorite songs, but the songs that changed everything when I first heard them. I know about three or four without question, but #5 is a tricky one to decide. Try it yourself. iTunes makes this sort of endeavor much easier because I can sift through every song I own quickly and efficiently.

I'm also thinking about top five songs from soundtracks. I set a bunch aside, but when you come across one that is absolutely on the list the others just don't compare. The Indiana Jones theme without a question is in the top five, and probably Back to the Future as well. And as for top five video game songs, well there's a lot to thing about there too. I'd say FF7 is going to have a song in there , and the Katamari Damacy theme definitely.

I have been wearing my Black Mesa hoodie nearly continuously since I made it. I had to dress up nice for my comm speech because I needed every edge to pass it, but pretty much all the time other than that. I like my Black Mesa hoodie.

the battle of comm

The Battle of Comm will be won or lost on Monday. At 6PM I have to turn in a term paper and give a big presentation. Term paper: 4.5 pages so far, I made pretty good progress on Sunday. Presentation: nonexistent. I have to come up with it tomorrow, probably by mashing together the paper and the PSM presentation. My grade in there may or may not be precarious, I can't afford to lose the 30% this final project is worth. I don't care what I get in that stupid class as long as I pass and don't have to take it again. Grad school is binary. You pass or you don't, no one cares what you get.

Although I should have been working on comm stuff all day, I did find the time to add the Black Mesa logo to the spiffy thermal hoodie I bought yesterday (via iron-on transfer paper, thanks for the iron mom & dad), thus making it approximately a million times cooler and sealing its fate as my lazing about hoodie. So I'll be wearing it all winter break. Which can't come soon enough. I just want time to work on my own silly projects like ironing weird stuff onto shirts.

ambience

Classes are over. Monday I have to turn in a major paper and give a big presentation, neither of which I have started yet. I also have to work on biodiesel website stuff in order to write the paper.

I did buy a new thermos today though. (I broke the old one on Thursday.)

I have been playing a little bit of FFX. I am still astonished by the number of cutscenes. The game would be like a quarter as long if they dropped them. I have m4d Blitzball skillz from summer 2004, so I actually beat the Luca tournament. However, the game I really want to replay right now is FFVIII.

I updated my ancient versions of ACID and Sound Forge (2.0 -> 5.0 and 4.5 -> 8.0b, respectively) and I'm playing around a bit with music making again. I haven't done this since the Great Hard Drive Partition Failure of 2002 (caused by the unfathomable evil that is PartitionMagic) in which I lost, among other things, all of my ACID project files and loops.

So far I am only collecting samples I find randomly (like the first couple bars of the Baywatch theme). The first new track is apparently going to be ambient techno based on what I've thrown in so far. This project is more for Xmas break though. I might even try to learn some FruityLoops, but that's definitely for some other time.

Anyway, it's 2AM so I should go to bed. I am not productive when I am being nocturnal.

Edit: Hey, post #200.

random notes

I had to go to Student Network Services today to work out some insurance stuff, because they threatened to put a hold on my account. While I was there I saw a magazine with BT on the cover, so I swiped it. I like BT. Apparently he has 8TB of data storage in his home studio. That's way more than even what I put in for that astro prof last year for all his astronomical (literally and figuratively) images. It is an issue of 'Keyboard' magazine, so they talked about all of his hardware and I have no idea what they are saying.

I did make-up labs today for people that didn't finish certain labs, so I had people working on several of eight different setups at once. Fortunately everything worked. One of my students left their calculator behind though, and the TA that came after me was an ass and wouldn't take responsibility for it in case the student came back, so I had to take it with me and email the student. I have to drop it off in the physics office tomorrow morning. It's a TI-89 Titanium, and I have no damn clue how it works. An 83 just isn't good enough for people anymore? For me, it's TI-30X Solar for life! My trusty physics sidearm.

This morning I found a link to massive (like 500GB) hard drives that were like giant Lego blocks. I was amused. I don't remember at all where I found that though. Jim and I think it would be even cooler if you had hundreds of little brick flash drives you could piece together to act like one big hard drive, and you could make Lego sculptures out of them.

I have also been cruising ytmnd.com, I am amused at its randomness. My favorites:

http://katametroiddamaci.ytmnd.com/
http://joneskatamari.ytmnd.com/

Man, now I want to play some KD/WLK. Which reminds me, Vincent still has my copy of KD...

I joined a forum for identifying songs from Top Gear episodes (they don't publish a playlist). It's an interesting source of new music, and trying to remember obscure songs I have heard before can be fun. iTunes is great for that kind of surfing through my entire music collection. When it's working. iTunes + iPod have been acting up a bit and it's been getting on my nerves.

I made some good headway on tomorrow's quantum HW, but I'm just going to finish it tomorrow morning. as usual. read some more of my new book and go to bed. I am reading The Mind and the Market: Capitalism in Modern European Thought. It is worded a little fancifully, they use the word 'modern' pretty loosely, and has lots of those little historical details I don't particularly care about (like Voltaire's stock exchange transactions), but I think it still brings up some interesting points. The next chapter is Adam Smith so I am looking forward to that.

turkey break

Somehow I made it to Thanksgiving break. Unfortunately, my brain seems to have mistaken it for winter break and has wandered off somewhere. I know there are things I should probably be working on, but I have spent the past few days playing The Sims 2, watching entire series of Top Gear and generally spacing out. I've also been reading a book about Alfred Loomis, but the middle section reads entirely too much like my very good book on radar.

I didn't go anywhere for Thanksgiving. At least it has been quiet around here. There's only one other car in my parking lot, and I haven't heard my idiot neighbor in a few days.

I gave my biodiesel presentation for my PSM seminar on Wednesday. It was marred by the fact that I was only borderline coherent and I was the third of three presentations on very similar material. On the feedback forms someone said if I had such similar material I should have gone first. Brilliant. You don't have do be a physics major to know we can't all go first.

I tried signing up for winter term classes today, but fully half of them I could not get into for various reasons. Outstanding.

A day or two ago I finally got a packet from the American Solar Energy Society. I've been so busy running around doing other crap I'd almost forgotten that I want to go into solar power. I wish something I did in school would relate to that. I'm going to have to put together my program of study this week so Dr. Warren can check it out. I have to put together what the PSM people want me to do, what the physics department wants me to do, and what I want to do.

an evident lack of light tonight

Last week I had a craving for a Papiano's pizza, and found that it was closed. It turns out they might have just moved, or so Vincent says. I don't see anything wrong with their previous location, and I don't actually know where they new place is yet. It doesn't show up on the Papa John's locator. You don't do too much business if no one knows where you are.

It's finally the weekend. I am so wiped that I don't really have the energy to waste my Friday night gaming. Instead, I have been watching episodes of Top Gear, a car show on BBC. They are greatly amusing, have awesome cars, and their cinematography and music can be stunning. Watching those shows just make me want a Mitsubishi Lancer EVO more and more. I actually recognize a lot of the songs they use, which shows how well I've picked my electronica collection. The latest shows have been drawing a great deal from Hybrid's latest album, which I hadn't really delved into. I am now listening to "Blackout" on loop, though I did cut something like 70 seconds from that song. I hate it when it takes nearly a minute to get to the good part of the song, and it had a really annoying ending. I love Sound Forge - it's like audio Photoshop.

I have been getting some odd "delayed write" errors on my external hardrive. If it dies I am going to be very sad. My iPod also has been giving some minor but weird errors when synching.

I talked with my major professor today, and felt a little better about my program but not terribly much so. The things that have been causing gripes in the PSM program aren't under his control at all, so bitching about that doesn't do much good. There is supposed to be some kind of major PSM meeting on Tuesday anyway. I have the feeling that if I didn't have a designated goal for my program it would just kind of wander aimlessly. I am chucking classical mechanics and probably statmech so I can work in solid state and optics. I would also like to squeeze some EE in if I can. And I would love to take that cryptography class, if they would ever offer it...

So yeah, I am still geeked on solar power. I joined the American Solar Energy Society, to no noticeable effect except to my credit card bill. I am pretty skeptical about battery technology though. I can never keep the damned things charged, and they die over time, and I want something that will last forever. Just in case of the end of civilization as we know it or something. So I figure, how about a flywheel? It sounds pretty good for a system that isn't going anywhere, like powering houses. I guess I'm not the first person to think of this though.

I finished reading Body of Secrets. That last few chapters seemed more like a collection of trivia than a proper book, but it was a good read overall. Quite a long book. I don't know what I'm going to read next.

This weekend I have to prep my PSM seminar presentation and get ready for an EM exam I really need to pass. I have been doing ok, but I haven't really had my edge in classes so far. (Except for destroying the quantum exam I suppose. I'm an exam-taking machine.) And I don't know how to get my edge back.

I also need to get out and run errands tomorrow, so I don't think I'll be able to participate in tomorrow's revelry. Tomorrow is the Oregon-Oregon State game. I'm definitely going to sleep in all morning. I'm also getting sick of PB&J every day for lunch, so I'm going to have to figure something out at the grocery store.

high class

freeman goes to campus

Major coups in our favor at the Biodiesel Initiative meeting tonight. Lisa, Vincent and I presented the content for the pamphlets we're making for when the Governor's aides tour next week, everybody was impressed. Then I got to bust out my secret weapon, the website I've been working on for the biodiesel project. The others were all stunned, they loved it. Definitely paid off to have a laptop today. Found out that I get wireless network on campus, which makes my life easier. Lisa and Vincent liked my desktop wallpaper, a La Jolla Cove pic I took when I was in San Diego. Probably the best picture I've taken with this camera.

We finally got new partners in badminton today. Suddenly I enjoy that class again. My ass of a partner is dragging someone else down now. My new partner and I got to 14-14 (coming back from a 0-9 deficit) on our first game and won our second game. I didn't win a single game with that other guy. We started to play a third team, but ran out of time. They were being real sneaky about net drops, but I think we can just outright overpower them. I was really on my game with smashes and blocks.

Labs tomorrow, and lots of work. Have to write another stupid comm paper, do some quantum, write a cover letter for my resume, lots to do.

to do

Only three more weeks left of class in the term. My Thursday section of lab will be doing the last experiment in the series, so after that I will just be doing make-up labs.

I do not have anything specifically due tomorrow, so I am getting a leg up on the week. I got my prelabs for Tuesday graded, something I usually do Monday night (at the earliest) so my brain is confused and thinks it is Monday or something. And with that out of the way I can use tomorrow night to take a crack at the quantum homework...after the Biodiesel Initiative meeting, of course. Vincent, Lisa and I are presenting something at the BDI meeting tomorrow night, I am not quite sure what role I am playing in that though. I am going to try to work on some BD project stuff before then.

This week is going to be busy, but I think I'll at least be able to get everything done. Unlike last week, which was ridiculous.

I got up at 1 PM today because I broke my internal clock. I graded exams until 2:40 two nights ago, and last night I played The Sims 2 until almost 5 AM. It is an entertaining little game. Hopefully I can get readjusted quickly.

week in review

I went on campus last night to grade at 6:00 PM. I left at 2:40 AM. I was really starting to lose coherency around then. Good news about exam grading: I was about 40% faster in grading than last exam. Bad news about exam grading: I'm pulling double duty this time. I did the longer problem first though, so I am probably about 60% done altogether and hopefully I have no more than 6 hours of grading ahead of me. I probably won't do it until tonight though so I can enjoy this beautiful Saturday afternoon.

It has been an utterly crazy week, all the days blurred together. I didn't do any quantum homework this week, I just didn't have time to even attempt it. I should have gone to the grocery store last weekend, but I didn't have time to hit it until Thursday so trying to find something to eat was getting interesting. Fun fact: you can't make Mac & Cheese without milk. I tried ordering pizza on Thursday, but it turns out nobody is open for pickup after 9:30 PM. What the hell? Then I tried ordering a Papiano's pizza yesterday...but they didn't pick up their phone. Guess what? They closed that store. Unless they're preparing to open a new store, the nearest Papiano's is in Salem. With the nearest Best Buy. So that was week 7 out of 10, I've got three more weeks of class in the term.

I did go see The Hard Lessons on Tuesday night. Portland is not the seat of their power, but it was still really great to see the band. I even managed to get back at a semi-reasonable hour that night, but I didn't have anything done for the next day and I just crashed.

I have a ton to do this weekend, including finishing grading exams, but with no classes or meetings to worry about I at least have the illusion of free time. I discovered that there is in fact a video game store within the city limits, so you had damn well better believe I'm going to patronize them later today. Even though I don't really have time for a new game. Maybe pick up a used copy of Kingdom Hearts or something. The Sims 2 is still calling my name as well. I tried playing some Gran Turismo 4 yesterday, but my Pontiac Solstice has really given me closure on that game.

broken

I finally broke down and bought a new computer chair. While it is not spectacular, it it nicer than my last chair and seems to be much sturdier. However, I noted that the warranty covers use up to users some 30lb. lighter than I am. Big guys like me just can't get a break. Or rather, get them too often. The chair needs to be broken in yet, but I thouroughly enjoy my reclaimed ability to recline.

On Friday I took a tour of OSU's new engineering building, specifically pointing out 'green' features. For example, the building collects rainwater to flush the toilets. I also got to go on the roof to see the small solar water heater and PV array they have up there. That was pretty cool, except it was pouring and cold outside, so needless to say our little rooftop excursion was brief. The tour was cool not only because it showed this stuff off, but also because the project manager told us about things that weren't going as well as planned, a reminder that things in real life never work perfectly the first time.

Lisa had a belated Halloween party last night. Not being one to celebrate most holidays, I had to scrounge up a costume at the last minute, failing miserably - especially since Vincent had an awesome pirate costume. However, I did bring my secret weapon (peanut butter fudge) which I managed to get right on the first try, and that went over well at the party. Perhaps next year I will actually make a proper costume.

I also played through Half-Life: Opposing Force over the weekend. It's pretty short so I managed to be the whole thing. The game is an interesting second look at HL1, and it's pretty odd playing it after being adapted to HL2.

Another hectic week ahead. When I plan stuff out the days are practically blurring together. It's week 7 of 10 for the term though, so I'm getting there. Another PH 211 midterm this week, so my weekend is shot again. Definitely packing my iPod for that.

The Hard Lessons play on Tuesday! That's going to be a long night, but worth it.

I'm currently reading Body of Secrets, a book about the NSA. I am up to the end of Vietnam. The book is pretty fascinating, but also makes me a little sick. The Bush administration may be very good at reckless and stupid things, but by no means are they the first to do them. Stuff like a proposal to cause terrorist attacks in the U.S. to incite a war with Cuba, almost starting WWIII by poking the USSR, and the complete lack of communication security in Vietnam causing many deaths. It just makes me want to stay away from government even more. Lisa wants to be a senator, but I'll settle for being left alone.

bond...james bond

You scored as James Bond, Agent 007. James Bond is MI6's best agent, a suave, sophisticated super spy with charm, cunning, and a license to kill. He doesn't care about rules or regulations and is somewhat amoral. He does care about saving humanity though, as well as the beautiful women who fill his world. Bond has expensive tastes, a wide knowledge of many subjects, and his usually armed with a clever gadget and an appropriate one-liner. James Bond, Agent 007 58% Lara Croft 50% Batman, the Dark Knight 50% Neo, the "One" 50% Maximus 46% Captain Jack Sparrow 46% Indiana Jones 42% The Amazing Spider-Man 33% The Terminator 29% El Zorro 17% William Wallace 17% Which Action Hero Would You Be? v. 2.0 created with QuizFarm.com

busywork

So yeah, it's already November. Things are about as slow as they get around here - which means it's busy but manageable - but it's about to kick into high gear again in the near future. Stupid PSM classes are starting to make a lot of noise about papers and presentations and whatnot, and there's another PH 211 midterm next week (with a good possibility I will be grading two problems this time instead of one). Biodiesel project stuff needs to get worked on, because it hasn't really been started yet. And my badminton skills test is next week, so I need to get to the rec center over the weekend to practice.

I got tomorrow's prelabs graded already, so I am looking at E&M homework now. E&M has kind of been sidelined in favor of quantum for a couple weeks now, so I am going to try to give E&M a push now. Pollack & Stump is actually proving to be a good reference even now, although my help comes from the very last chapters of the book. I could go for some hot chocolate about now, but I have found that it makes me sleepy and I just end up going to bed.

november

i have been waiting to post this comic for weeks.

doomed

I saw the DOOM movie with Vincent and Lisa. Vincent really wanted to see it. I decided to go with him because he convinced Lisa to see it, and the opposite is probably true too. I'd say the movie wasn't really bad as much as it was stupid. For further details, check out my movie reviews. Which I updated. Holy crap.

All I have to do this weekend is study quantum, so I will have time to do other things that got neglected last weekend with all the exam grading. Like cleaning up my apartment, it's a dump. I can also do some longer range planning like research possible internships.

I'm not particularly worried about the quantum midterm but I know there is a lot of stuff (the not Linear Algebra stuff) that I need to brush up on for me to do well. I am a little worried about E&M though. I don't think I need to worry about getting the boot - at least just yet - but I'm going to start making a contingency plan for transferring to a lower level E&M next term in case things start going badly.

I was tempted to grab the little that's left in my bank account and run to Best Buy this weekend (I get paid on Monday anyway), but this week wasn't as rough as last week so I'm behaving myself.

grad school is a state of mind

making the grade

I did not have to do the exam problem regrade after all. One of the teachers took care of it. The students learned their scores today, but I have not heard anything about that. Apparently the average on the exam was something like 40% despite it being very similar to an exam from last year. Some of the students asked me about the exam in yesterday's lab. I couldn't help but mess with them. They asked if the average was below 60% and I laughed.

Today quantum went back to making me look stupid. (It was not about Linear Algebra, which I seem to have a black belt in.) Nobody understands what is going on in E&M. I have to do E&M homework tomorrow so we'll see how that goes. I can probably get an A in quantum, but I'm hoping just to pass E&M. Maybe I will drop it next term - I already know I'm not taking third term E&M.

PSM seminar was harping on internship stuff again, Lisa needs to worry about this stuff now but I have another year yet! Badminton went badly. I was not on my game today. We started playing doubles on Monday, and my partner and I have not beaten anyone yet. In Comm we had to do impromptu speechs about our comm projects. My project has not really been started, at all, so I started strong but then rambled for a while. I don't have stage fright though.

I have been grading prelabs. Tomorrow's lab is about beam theory. (Structural beams.) So I got to look all smart at the TA meeting today because I've had ME 222. The prelabs are insanely long and hard compared to the actual lab, if we could put half the prelab material in the lab we would be fine. At least my week eases up after Wednesday, I planned it out well. and no running around like crazy like I was last week.

quantum mechanic

Today was another long and painful day. It ended with my irritating communications class. I seriously considered jumping out the window and running away. I was late to all my afternoon classes because Oregon State only allows ten minutes between classes, and profs here love to run over as much as anywhere else.

I did manage to pull off one major coup though. There was an extra quantum class today because quantum didn't meet last week. So the prof hands out homework in the morning session, and Vincent jokingly asked if it's due at the afternoon session, to which the prof responds "if you want it to be." I took a look at it and did 3/4 of it in E&M instead of listening. I seem to have a very good grasp on linear algebra and that's what this homework was. I made it my goal to finish the homework and turn it in before the afternoon session.

My only free time was around lunch though, so I sat down and started cranking through it. I was doing well, until some of the students in my lab found me in my office. Disaster! However, I was able to kick them out after answering a couple questions. I finished the last part of the last question in my TA seminar, and I turned in the homework in the afternoon session. So now everybody thinks I am crazy good at quantum mechanics.

I don't know what's going to happen with the damn midterm. I am not going to be a happy camper if I have to regrade.

I actually had some free time tonight, so I played We Love Katamari and unlocked the secret and super secret levels, as well as beating the end credits. I have to grade prelabs yet, but I seem to recall they grade really fast this week.

we have uh-oh

So I guess the problem I thought was wrong on the midterm wasn't actually wrong, only unclear to everybody outside of a certain loop. The problem could be interpreted two ways, but you wouldn't think of the second way unless you had this exact problem hit over your head several times in class already. I did everything I was supposed to do and it's not really anyone's fault, but that problem will need regrading. Which is probably a 2-3 hour ordeal, especially since I seem to be twice as slow as the other TAs. I already spent over 15 hours grading the midterm over the weekend and the thought of more grading is the sort of proposition that is liable to make me scream and defenestrate something.

This morning was very backwards. Quantum made me feel smart and E&M made me feel bad. We will see how the rest of the day goes but right now I just want to be left alone to sulk about E&M and the midterm.

college nonlife

I really want to play The Sims 2 right now. There is a University expansion pack about college life, and a Nightlife expansion pack where you can drive cars and your Sim can be a DJ. Plus, I always love building Sim houses - it's the architect in me. It looks like so many different ways to entertain me. Unfortunately, the game and its expansions account for a good chunk of cash, which I don't have. I also have no time to play the game right now. I guess I'll have to wait for Christmas or something.

I could also go for some noise-canceling headphones. My idiot neighbor is at it again, and it's just generally noisy in my part of town. Another item for the Christmas list I guess.

So yeah, I'm supposed to be writing a paper right now. It's coming along...slowly. I'll get it done, but I'm becoming a nocturnal creature and Monday morning quantum is going to hurt. Tomorrow is a double dose of quantum, too.

The Hard Lessons concert is a little over two weeks away. I was getting concerned about my ability to pull it off, but now that my cold is cleared up I have a lot more energy, and I found out the Hard Lessons are playing early so I can bail afterward and get home before 4 AM. In any case, all three Hard Lessons concerts I was not sure about going to, and all three turned out to be incredibly awesome. The Hard Lessons helped me get through grading exams on Saturday - "Gasoline" is on my iPod.

My last LiveStrong band broke. I have a whole new box coming though. It should be here tomorrow, but it might take a couple days to catch the UPS man like it did for Jim's Top Gear DVDs.

graded

Exam grading is the kind of thing that could annihilate your soul. Fortunately, my iPod kept me sane. I am done now, which means I have to move on to writing papers and all kinds of other things before tomorrow. I spent a couple hours screwing around on Facebook though, and it was worth it. There will be AOE2 later tonight as well.

My $634 OSU bill finally went through, so now I have a grand total of something like $300 on hand, which will be mostly gone by the end of the month. My metamorphosis into a full fledged grad student is nearly complete. But seriously, being a grad student is nothing like undergrad. I was hoping grad school would make me learn how to focus my efforts and be a hardcore physics student. And I think it's working.

Apparently nobody in the department passed quals this term. Just as well I am staying the hell away from a Ph.D.

ph34r t3h r3d p3n

I just got back from exam grading. I'm about 85% done now, which means I'll have to go in again tomorrow. I think I spent maybe 7 hours grading today, so that's a total of 13 hours so far. The last 15% will take another couple of hours. Part of the problem was that the teacher did a problem wrong, showed the whole class how to do it wrong, who turned around and did it on the exam wrong, and the teacher skipped town before I found out and tried to clarify. I check with the other TAs and they agree with me, so I am grading it my way. I have not seen even one student do that part right yet, but I am giving points to students who broke their programming and took some steps in the right direction.

I have many other things I am supposed to do this weekend, like write papers, but I haven't been able to get to them yet. I stopped grading for about two hours in the afternoon...to work on something else. Speeches related to the biodiesel (biofuel?) project. We are taking steps that seperate us from the biodiesel club and I am very happy with that. Our work on the biodiesel stuff over the last couple days has actually gone very well and I am excited about it.

I also took a break from grading to play badminton because I am supposed to write about an out of class badminton experience. I missed my shot at open gym on Monday so I made Lisa come play with me. I also made the equipment desk people pull out a wallyball so I could prove to Lisa that they exist. (The desk person had no idea what a wallyball is, but I know where they keep it now.) I don't think Wallyball can be played until next week though.

Campus is very peaceful at night on the weekends. Mostly because only sucker TAs are there, grading. In contrast there is some kind of huge party near my apartment and some idiot managed to trigger a fire alarm over there earlier.

time issues

Undergrad midterm was this week. I spent almost six hours grading exams tonight...and it may take up to nine more hours.

I would say that I've been very busy but that is rather an understatement. I'm reaching the point where my productive output is not based on how hard I work, but on the number of hours in a day. I am worried that in the near future I will literally not have enough time to complete all the tasks before me. Today I went in really early and barely scraped out my E&M homework minutes before it was due. And I can't just cop out and dump one or two tasks - everything is important.

I am finally getting over my cold. I think it was prolonged because of all the stuff to do and my not being able to just sleep in. My weekend is completely blown already - perhaps even overbooked - but I'm sleeping in tomorrow, damn it. I've earned it.

The biodiesel stuff is a go - perhaps too much of a go. Basically any spare moment I have will belong to some form of biodiesel project task. Quantum makes me feel really smart on the homework and really dumb in class - I've been doing well on homeworks, and then I come to class and utterly bomb in-class worksheets. The midterm sounds like it will be on stuff I can handle though.

I could elaborate on some of the other stuff I've been up to this week but it's already quarter to 2 and I need sleep.

it's a grad, grad, grad, grad world

So it's been a few days...they are keeping me busy here. I have been running around this weekend trying to get stuff done while I have the chance, so I'm a little stressed. But really, the only thing that truly upsets me is noise. Birds with annoying calls waking me up, idiot neighbor playing music all day with his subwoofer against my wall, some other idiot neighbor whose car makes really irritating noises, somebody using a leafblower at 10:30 PM...all I want is some damn peace and quiet. I'm a grad student now, I guess it goes with the territory.

Other than some AOE2, I have been fairly productive this weekend, but I still have a ton of stuff to do. I'm going to have to be pretty productive all day every day just to keep up. I can see how grad students have no life.

Oh, and I got my first bill from Oregon State. I can also see how grad students are broke.

I am grading prelabs to get them out of the way. I am too tired to actually assign pass/fail right now though. I did not fail anyone in my first section, but some of the people in my other labs are tempting me. Sometimes it makes me very sad to see what they write.

I'm pretty exhausted. I don't know how I'm going to pull the all-nighter to see The Hard Lessons. With my luck there will be a quantum exam the next day.

I just realized quantum isn't meeting this week! An extra hour to sleep in! And I was getting up an hour even earlier than usual at the end of last week anyway, that was rough. I still have QM homework due Friday though.

Tomorrow I'm going to visit the motor pool, and there's also a meeting about this biodiesel project we physics PSMs are trying to get in on. I also want to hit open gym for badminton because I'm supposed to at some point. Tomorrow is going to be a long day.

math sucks

My third week of classes has started and we still aren't doing physics, just math. The math was starting to get to me today but hopefully I can get it sorted out.

I have two sections of lab tomorrow so I am finishing their prelabs from last week. I also ran up to Albany to get a shirt & tie for a PSM deal on Thursday, but I couldn't find anything in my size so I have to go shirt hunting again. If I can't find anything tomorrow I'll have to skip comm on Wednesday or something.

I found out that the local rec center does have Wallyball, but I don't know if I can fit it into my schedule this week. I'm not looking forward to when classes start assigning real homework.

music

I went to a concert on the quad last night that featured some of the big local bands. I wasn't too impressed though.

The Hard Lessons confirmed where they're coming in Portland. One month from today, actually. So I am super excited about that. Unfortunately, The Nice Device is still only touring in the Midwest. On October 21 both bands are playing at the Temple Club - dammit, I wish I could be there for that. Being thousands of miles away has its disadvantages.

unquote

I went to go read my quote board and found that MSU has stolen my web space, so I will put up a mirror on my OSU web space when I get the chance.

I had a bizarre dream last night about having a food fight with Cerberus. I think that threw me off for the rest of the day. I have a lot of TA stuff to do tomorrow, hopefully it will go smoothly.

I have to do a stupid service project for my PSM seminar, but there is a chance that the other physics PSMs and I can use this to get hooked up with the motor pool's project to deploy biodiesel vehicles in the campus fleet. Apparently they want to get the biodiesel from on-campus sources...and they want to make the biodiesel facility solar-powered. That is really freaking cool. Lisa has to go talk with her motor pool contact about it though.

idiot neighbor

My neighbor is some kind of idiot gamer. He has been playing some game literally all day. He was playing at lunch, he was playing when I got home, he was playing at dinner. While his stamina is impressive, I got sick of hearing thumping through the wall and told him to knock it off about two hours ago. He's still playing (though at a greatly reduced volume). Seriously man, get a life. I just feel like I'm surrounded by idiots.

hard lesson

I was cruising The Hard Lessons' website and saw that they are coming out here, in November! I asked Augie to come to Portland, and Portland they are indeed doing. No specifics yet. It looks like they are coming on a Tuesday though, which means it's going to be really hard to pull off. It's going to happen though.

zero tolerance katamari

officially a grad student

Well, I survived my first week of grad school. I think I can handle the conceptual stuff in quantum mechanics, but the math is going to kick my ass. The heavy math stuff won't start until next week though. I'm probably going to be more comfortable with E&M. My seminars and communcations class seem ok, and badminton is a fun class but I have to get used to these so-called 'rules'. I'd like to play some Wallyball but I don't know if Corvallis has the facilities.

Last night a bunch of the PSM majors got together at a local pizza place. It was good times. The other two Applied Physics students and I get along really well, and the people from the other tracks seem like good people too. I think there will be more PSM get-togethers in the future because everyone was mad that people in their own department never go out and do things.

It started raining yesterday. More rain today. And for the rest of the 10-day forecast. I suspect Oregon's rainy season has begun.

day one

Today was my first day as a graduate student. The math diagnostic test this morning was not so hot. Then again, some of it was there just to see if people knew what to do with it. I wasn't about to solve a PDE or a Fourier transform. I knew Vincent had to leave early, so I waited for him and left at the same time. I told him later it's like how herds form so predators can't pick weak individuals off.

Quote from lunchtime:
KC: "I wish I had a $65M yacht like [celebrity]. It has 12 bedrooms, a helicopter, a 24' fishing boat attached to the back and it can go 32,000 miles on a tank of gas."
Lisa: "You're in the wrong business then. Try being a porn star."
KC: "Porn stars probably don't make as much as you'd think."
Me: "Somewhere, there's a porn star saying, 'If you want that yacht, you're in the wrong business. You should be a physicist.' You know, someone in...porn grad school."

No quantum or E&M today. My TA seminar looks iffy. I don't want to get into touchy-feely teaching philosophy stuff, I just want to teach. My badminton class is pretty hardcore. The teacher was talking about how she had some badminton scholarship to Oregon State once, and she brought the captain of the badminton club, and went on and on very seriously about badminton. I'm like, it's badminton. We did get to practice a bit today, it was fun, everybody worked up quite a sweat.

My communication class looked like it was going to be painful. We had to arrange our desks in a circle, and they want lots of participation. However the class seems like it will be fun. Everyone in that class is a PSM - the first time I'd seen that many in one place. As such, the class is going to deal with things we actually care about. I don't remember off the top of my head but it sounded worthwhile. The teacher knows this class is required, but doesn't want it to be a waste of time. It was pretty easy to jump in and join the discussion. Some of the activities look like they are going to be a pain in the ass, but I will probably do them happily (or at least without complaint). The teacher ended class by showing a clip from Raiders of the Lost Ark. That's like a million bonus points right there.

Tomorrow I have...nothing. Next week I have two labs on Tuesday, but they haven't started yet. I have a bad headache and I'm tired so I'm calling it a night.

back to school

I turned in my PHY 492 term paper on April 27th. That was the last thing I had to do to graduate MSU. Tomorrow is September 26th, and after five months off school is starting back up for me. My physics classes don't start until Wednesday, but I have to go in tomorrow morning to sign up for office hours and take a math diagnostic test. My business cohort meets tomorrow so I should meet the PSMs from the other tracks.

Fall 2005 schedule:
PH 651 - Quantum Mechanics
PH 631 - Electromagnetic Theory
PH 607 - TA Seminar
PH 507 - PSM Seminar
COMM 512 - Communication and the Practice of Science
PAC 113 - Badminton I

I am also going to be TAing three sections of calc-based physics lab. I am working for the department chair and a guy who used to teach high school physics that our department picked up, and the other TAs are grizzled veterans. I was lucky to snag this spot instead of getting non-calc physics lab like most of the rest of the new grads. I think I got picked because I have experience from MSU and I worked over the summer. It should be interesting.

It took seven attempts to make PB fudge for the department picnic. Even after seven tries it looked funny, but it tasted OK and it held together so I went with it. The picnic was alright, pretty informal and lots of food.

Last week was very long so I spent Friday night eating pizza and playing Final Fantasy VII, and Saturday I bought We Love Katamari and played that all day. Today I have been getting things in order - I cleaned up the mess in the kitchen left after the fudge disaster, did laundry, got groceries, and figured out where my books and other supplies are.

Edit: After looking over the list of covered topics, I believe I am going to completely bomb tomorrow's math diagnostic exam.

Edit 2: Math oddity I ran across while making sure my TI-83's batteries work: 10! = the number of seconds in a day * The Ultimate Answer.

miscalibrated

I am not in a good mood. Today I had to sit through 2 1/2 hours of TA training stuff with the crazy prof I can't stand. It wasn't a total loss though. During one of the touchy-feely group learning sessions I said "My name is Jon, and I drew a pirate." That's what they get for giving me markers.

When I got back to the apartment I became suspicious of my new cooking thermometer. I went out and bought a better one and was suspicious of this one too. Indeed it was off as I incinerated an experimental half-batch of peanut butter fudge, turning it into some sort of powder. So I have to figure out how to compensate for retarded equipment before I make fudge for the department picnic. Fortunately I have lots of supplies.

Yesterday was OK. The other grads seem alright. We have a lot of TA training stuff to do, it is kind of a pain. Happy birthday Erin.

laissez-faire, bitch

You are a Social Liberal (63% permissive) and an... Economic Conservative (90% permissive) You are best described as a: Capitalist Link: The Politics Test on OkCupid Free Online Dating

life signs

Move-in week for Oregon State started today. Corvallis is a busy place now. All the frats in my area have suddenly come to life.

Tomorrow I start my grad student orientation. I have already signed up for most of my classes. I need 1 more credit though, and the seminars I was recommended conflict with classes I need. I wanted to take EE's cryptography class, but it seems to have been cancelled.

The department picnic is Friday. That should be fun. I told the other grads at lunch I make a mean pan of peanut butter fudge, so I signed up to bring that. I need to get the supplies from the store though - I don't exactly have superfine cane sugar in the kitchen.

payback

I replaced all the lightbulbs in my apartment today with CFL bulbs. The store had them for a buck each and they are compact enough to actually fit in the socket, so I went all out. I'm keeping the old bulbs in a bag to swap back when I move out, because the CFL bulbs are supposed to last for years and they're too neat to leave behind.

I got the latest issue of Car and Driver. They had some cool stuff about the new Corvette Z06 and the Pontiac Solstice. However, there was an article I took offense to. The guy was talking about how hydrogen isn't a primary energy source, which is right. But then he said that solar cells don't make back the energy it requires to make them, and ripped on wind power too. I'm still very new to the renewable energy scene, but I've heard this energy payback rumor several times now. It's FALSE.

Even if it were true, do these people think it would stay that way? All you have to do is increase lifespan, increase efficiency, or decrease input cost, or some combination of the above. It's called technological progress, morons.

I'm probably going to finish rereading The Idea Factory tonight. Parts of the book hit a little close to home. The most depressing part is still ahead, so I'll be bummed out later. After this book I think I'm going to reread William Gibson's Sprawl trilogy - after Ghost in the Shell I'm hungry for more cyberpunk.

I'm recuperated from all my travelling and now I have too much energy. I wish I had a bike to burn it off. I should look into that before classes start.

summer's end

refit and resupply

I slept for 11 hours. It was called for.

My apartment is a dump and there's nothing in the fridge. Today will be spent correcting these issues.

I read half of The Idea Factory last night. It is good, but depressing. My undergrad view of grad school basically came from that book and Piled Higher and Deeper.

Fortunately, grad orientation starts on Tuesday so I have one more day left to myself. One week left until my classes start.

the seasoned traveler

I've had more than enough traveling for a while. I got up at 4:15 AM today. 1 hour drive to the airport. 4 hour flight. 2 hour layover. 3 hour flight. 2 hour drive. And when I pull into my apartment complex, I find that some dumbass has sprawled his huge Ford pickup across my parking space. After all that travel made me cranky, he's lucky I didn't slash his tires or something. Fortunately the owner drove off and I took my rightful place in parking space #5.

So, I'm back in Oregon. I certainly brought a lot of books with me. I think I am going to bed now because I was on something between Eastern time and Pacific time and today's travels have further confused things.

re-strung

I went to the print shop today to talk physics shirts. They told me they'd send details in a day or so. I started looking at colors as well - there won't be blue shirts in this run, but all the other popular colors are making a return. I have been convinced that red shirts would be a good idea (all you, Mikey) and of course green and orange are back. I liked the looks of the yellow and grey shirts last time as well. All of the shirts will be 100% cotton this time - I wasn't happy that last time some of the shirts were 50/50 polyester. This time I'm probably going to replace my 50/50's with full cotton shirts because I like the feel of the cotton shirts better.

I suppose that on today's news I can confirm a third run of Michigan State Physics T-shirts will be made, I don't have specific details yet though. I have to work out a timeline and get the production end running, and Jim has to start working some marketing magic. I'll throw up a website or something when I'm back in Oregon and have details. We're not taking orders just yet, but definitely drop me a line if you're interested.

Tomorrow I'm going over to Ann Arbor to hang out with some friends. I'm going to wear a Michigan State Physics shirt, of course. Tomorrow is also my last full day in Michigan before I fly home. It's very fortunate that I flew Southwest Airlines this time, because Northwest and Delta both went bankrupt this week.

After I return from Ann Arbor I have to pack everything up and get ready for another day on airplanes. I certainly did a good job of raiding my bookshelves - I won't have a shortage of things to read for a while. I'm wondering if I took full advantage of my week back in Michigan, but I think I did all I could for only having one week (especially for only having a car a couple of those days). I kind of want to hang around in Michigan some more, but my five month long summer is over. It was good to hang out with friends at MSU again, but it also felt clear that it's not for me anymore. Time to move on.

I finished watching Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. I thought the series started off good, then got a little slow in the middle. Then the run up to the climax was pretty awesome, but the final episode was confusing and not quite satisfactory. I enjoyed the series overall though. Now I am trying to find Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children. I found out the English version won't be out until November, but I can probably find a Japanese version (subtitled in English) to watch. Penny Arcade claims Advent Children is pure condensed awesomeness. I am inclined to believe it.

I am flying back to Oregon on Saturday morning. Next week is orientation week at Oregon State, and then my classes finally start. It's been a whole five months since I had classes - I am not sure if I am ready, but it's coming anyway. The next time I'll be in Michigan will be December.

major

i want a tachikoma

My MSU email is acting up at the moment, so I've pretty much switched over to Gmail wholesale. I can still read MSU email but it won't let me send email for some reason, so I'm just responding to all my emails with Gmail. On a side note, I have only been using Gmail for a couple of days and I've aleady accumulated 19 invites.

I got some weird email today. One of the PSM people I talked to thought I was in applied biotechnology, and emailed me demanding to know why I wasn't signed up for some molecular bio class. I replied that on top of my being an Applied Physics student, I haven't signed up for any class yet, because they haven't yet told me all the classes I need to take. However, my remarks were to be sent by MSU email and thus got held up. The PSM person figured out I was in Applied Physics and correct themself, so I just deleted my outgoing email.

I also got bored and Googled myself. I found that Oregon State now has a list of PSM students, including profiles. Unfortunately, they completely made the profiles up - I am quoted as saying that I want to be a 'technical advisor in the aerospace industry.' Right. They also spelled my name wrong. Excellent work all around. I told the PSM people that I would be happy to write a short blurb about PSM if it meant getting rid of the crap they made up.

Since I'm home for the week I can catch The Daily Show. (No cable TV in the apartment.) It seems that their popularity has made them bolder - the joke seem a little punchier, and they dropped quite a few F-bombs in the shows I watched. I still love my Daily Show though. Kurt Vonnegut was on tonight, but it wasn't really a great interview. I like a couple of Vonnegut's books, but many of the others are just him being a dirty old man and getting away with it.

SPS is starting back up at MSU. And what's this - it's not sucking? The change in leadership (read: Sarah left) seems to have done a great deal of good. My brother is apparently even standing in as temporary VP (until they hold proper elections). SPS even ordered good pizza for their first meeting. This is a huge deal in the context of SPS. In the past, SPS has been governed by apathetic inertia so great that they couldn't even order anything other than Bell's pizza. (It is the cheapest...and also sucks. To quote Timmy, you can taste the savings.) SPS usually ordered 8 pizzas for 7 attendees. SPS was once criticized for 'not spending enough money' by the department (because they do nothing), so at the next meeting they ordered 8 horrible pizzas and a 6' sub.

At the new meeting, they ordered Papiano's. And they had enough attendees to justify 8 pizzas.

This is a very positive step for SPS. In fact, with Jim as acting VP and Josh as acting president, they may even be interested in a run of physics shirts! I emailed the print shop quite a while ago about a new run, but they haven't responded. I clearly need to go out to the shop and get the facts in person. The physics shirts are far from dead, they're just...hibernating? Waiting for a triumphant return, perhaps with the rebirth of SPS from the ashes. SPS and the physics shirts, working together - who would have thought?

Jim came home today for our mom's birthday. He brought several full episodes of Top Gear, a car show on BBC. The show is fairly amusing and I like their picks in music. For example, playing Orbital's "P.E.T.R.O.L." for a race between the gasoline and diesel versions of the BMW M5. Or playing music from Master and Commander and Batman Begins while racing a van on the Nurburgring.

In return, I made Jim watch an episode of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. Ghost in the Shell is a cyberpunk classic and I have been enjoying Stand Alone Complex.

Tomorrow I am going to be in East Lansing. Good times.

the mental projection of your digital self

I currently have six email addresses, two webspaces and this weblog. I think some purging is in order. Maybe I can set up some email forwards to cut down.

home

Well, I'm back in Michigan. My flight from Portland to Chicago was boring (4 hours), and my flight from Chicago to Detroit was stupid. The second flight was tp depart at 2:15 PM local time. They started boarding at 2:00 PM. Surprise surprise, we didn't finish boarding by 2:15, so the flight attendent started getting pushy and telling people to hurry up. (At one point: "We were supposed to pull out of here 23 seconds ago!") So everybody finally gets boarded, when I look out the window and see...the luggage guys pulling up. Yes, they did not get around to loading luggage until after the scheduled departure time.

And yet, we still got into Detroit ahead of schedule. Padding time is fun and easy!

So, for the next week I am bumming around in Michigan. I am going to start by going out to the hot tub.

I got sick of MSU's email crashing so I had Fischer hook me up with some Gmail invites. My new email is shanks.jon@gmail.com. I may or may not start using that as my default account, we'll see how it works.

Edit: I messed up my internal clock so I may well be on Eastern time this week. However, it's hard to remember that everybody is on the same time as I am now, and not three hours ahead.

i am a katamari god

My big accomplishment today was getting the last of the 1438 items in 'Katamari Damacy' for 100% completion. Now I'm ready for the sequel.

I had a meeting with the PSM head this morning, where I confirmed I don't have to take the comps. We also talked about internship stuff a little. I saw the PSM roster and found that there really are only three Applied Physics PSM students (not counting the dude in Iraq).

I went over to the student bookstore this afternoon. They have a better selection of science and engineering books there. I found no less than three cryptography books. They weren't just simple substitution cipher books, they were actual hardcore textbooks (even had RSA attack strategies in them). They cost around $75 though, so I didn't get them.

The bookstore also had some interesting books on renewable energy, but they cost more than I had on me. This month's National Geographic also wrote about renewable energy - I read part of the story, but didn't finish it. Fortunately, we get National Geographic at home.

Tomorrow I'm going up to Portland to visit with some family, who are being kind enough to get me over to the airport Saturday morning so I can fly home.

non-comp

I emailed a PSM person last night and got some very good news this morning. I don't have to take the comps - the comprehensive exams. No oral exam either. That stuff is just for Ph.D students to have nightmares about. The biggest thing I have to worry about - besides surviving grad school in general - is my internship and future employment. I have done a little bit of basic research into renewable energy companies. I pulled up a list of exhibitors in the 2005 World Solar Congress and I recognized a couple companies just at a glance. The 2006 conference is a must if I decide to keep pursuing solar power.

U-M started up today, so I am pretty much the only person still on summer break. Kind of a bummer. The different time zone throws things off too. In a couple of days I'm coming home for a whole week though.

I think my Go playing is getting better. I can beat the stupid computer on a 19x19 board now. I went back to the 9x9 board and found that there wasn't nearly enough room. I guess I've been literally growing as a Go player.

superpower

incorporated

I watched The Corporation. I thought it was fairly well done. As for the actual content, I agree with some of their ideas but not all of them.

I tinkered with my RSA demo program a little bit, but the stuff I would like to add involve stuff I've forgotten how to do and would generally be a pain.

Overall I had a slow weekend. I am very excited to go home next weekend, but I still have things to do here before I leave. I wanted to take care of some stuff today, but I forgot it was Labor Day so nothing productive could get done. I did get a small fire safe today though, which makes me feel a lot better about keeping important documents out here. Fortunately, banks and stuff are open again tomorrow so I can start attacking my list of things to do again. My virtual Post-It notes are slowly obstructing more and more of my desktop.

I have usually kept Freeman docked at the desk over the past few weeks, but I have recently been taking advantage of the fact that it's a laptop to do computer stuff on the futon. I like my futon.

I haven't gotten out and about too much recently. It would be nice to go out to the coast again, but I am trying to put off filling up the car if at all possible. I am going up to Portland in a few days anyway (though my exact plans are not yet determined - another important thing to take care of). I will be home in Michigan all next week, but again my plans are not yet determined. I do know that I want to get up to MSU and over to U-M at some point.

I played a bit of Counter-Strike: Source over the past couple of days, and I regained some skill, but frankly I am tired of video games right now. I am more interested in becoming a better Go player than in becoming a better CS:S player.

I want to get a bike so I can explore Corvallis without wasting gasoline, but I don't know where to find a decent bike (for a sane price). One more item on my list of things I haven't gotten around to getting yet.

audigized

My Audigy came today. It's an impressive little piece of technology. Freeman finally has high quality audio - one more deficiency taken care of. The Audigy's delivery was the one event that prompted me to get out of bed. This was at 11:30 AM.

Now that my summer job is finished, I'm not sure what to do with my week before I come home. I'll probably pull up some side projects like RSA again.

I proctored the PH 203 final on Thursday with the other TA. It was not too eventful, but I did get asked a question so stupid I could offer no response. One of the student flagged me down and pointed to the last question. It expresses the power of a lens in diopters, which is the reciprocal of the focal length. Diopters are not used often though, so it generates a great deal of confusion when it appears. So the student points to the diopters value and says:

"Am I supposed to convert this to Watts?"
"Excuse me?"
"It says this is the power of the lens. Do I need to convert it to Watts?"

Moment of stunned silence.

I told the student that the equation they needed to use was on their formula sheet and went back to my post.

end of summer session

Today was my last recitation for the summer. As usual it was undermined by what was going on in the class. Because the class is so time-compressed, some material just gets left out. This time it was ray tracing. I'm not entirely sure how you do an optics lecture without ray tracing, but whatever. I taught the basics of it.

I was supposed to get paid today, but I didn't see a pay stub or the money. I really hope I don't have to chase down every damn paycheck.

Tomorrow I have to wake up early and go proctor the PH 203 final. There is another PSM defense tomorrow, this time in Applied Biotechnology, so I am going to go check that out as well.

I started going through my Go books again. I have a Go computer program, but it is not much fun to play against. Some of its moves are almost demeaning, it thinks I am an idiot. I also can wall off one of its groups without enough space to make two eyes and it keeps putting more stones there. The computer is a absolute bastard about invading though, so I guess I can learn a little from it.

I've been reading my Steven Ambrose book about the Transcontinental Railroad. It's interesting to see how closely tied the Transcontinental Railroad was to the Civil War. I have to say it definitely provided inspiration for Atlas Shrugged. There are people who are Prime Movers doing the pioneering surveys, designing the bridges and figuring out how to forge the path. That's pretty exciting to read about. Then there is the fuckery of the second-handers. I don't know how the damn thing ever got built.

Although the book is interesting, it is definitely not as polished as the author's other books. At one point I got to a paragraph that looked extremely familiar. I thought the wind had blown the pages back when I wasn't looking, but it turns out that the author used almost the exact same paragraph eight pages ago. The first time it was a quotation, and the second time was the author's description (which was almost identical to the quote). It just seems like the author wrote his book in the same style the railroad was built - build it fast, worry about fixing it up later.

one string to rule them all

MSU's classes started today. Jim said he wore a physics shirt, and it seems that there is interest in another run of physics shirts. I thought I'd saturated the market at MSU, but apparently not. I'm talking to my people and gauging how much interest there is, so if you would be interested in an MSU Physics Shirt drop me a line. I'm not saying that MSU Physics Shirts III is definitely underway, but I'm starting the mechanism up and it's looking favorable. Perhaps the time has come. I told Jim to stir up interest for the shirts at MSU. I also told him to poke at the wreckage of SPS. Now that most of the old officer corps is gone (and by that I mean Sarah and her lackies), there may be hope for SPS yet.

I ordered an Audigy 2 ZS Notebook. The deal was just too good to pass up. It's coming extra slow shipping though. I should get it a couple days before I fly home.

It's raining today. It hasn't rained since I moved out here. That's a big sign that we're moving out of summer. The temperature also dropped quite a bit, it's in the mid 60's right now. I don't have recitation today so I am listening to Linkin Park and generally chilling.

n00b

I tried playing a bit of Counter-Strike: Source for old times sake. Yesterday I went about 1:2, which isn't too bad for being rusty. Today I completely sucked it up. I don't know why. I would get lost, wander around and end up being shot instantly in my one brief encounter with the enemy. I am just not in a gaming mood right now. I'm a little edgy, partly because I'm used to classes starting right about now and I still have four weeks or so left. This week is the end of my summer work though.

It cooled down quite a bit outside, I think it is starting to feel like fall. I might go for a walk on campus. I have to grade some homeworks sometime tonight, but I might be able to sit down and start reading my new Steven Ambrose book too.

return of the EVO

As you can see, the Lancer Evolution was back. I have no idea why there were no cars there last weekend, but the dealership is back in action. It seems they only have the one Lancer EVO now, but at least it was the red one. I only managed to take a couple pictures before they sent a salesman after me. He was pretty nice - he offered to pull the car out so I could take better pictures, but I was only swinging through while running errands. He asked me if there was a Lancer EVO in my future and I laughed at him. I told him I'm just laying the foundation for my midlife crisis, he was amused.

I watched Master and Commander - The Far Side of the World tonight. Between my pirate game, my pirate book and the Far Side of the World book, it was inevitable. Although I felt let down overall by the original book, I found that the book had a lot of small details that helped me understand the little things in the movie better.

I sorted through a great deal of paperwork today. My table is actually cleared off now. I got an email or two out but I have more to write tomorrow. I also might give some family a call to let them know how I'm doing (guess I'd better start charging my cell then).

I looked around for a good computer chair today but I didn't see any in my price range. Staples had a good one that I enjoyed sitting in for a few minutes, but it was $109 which is over twice what I'm aiming to spend.

Staples also had the notebook Audigy 2 ZS for $80, when last I checked it was $100. I only resisted because if it is $80 at Staples it must be even cheaper online. Sure enough, a quick check reveals a going price of $65 at Buy.com...after a $20 rebate that ends Monday...hmm.