post-season

Well, I made it through the Christmas season without hearing the damned hippopotamus song once. Christmas truly is the time of miracles. Visiting with extended family was nice except everyone wants to know what I'm going to be doing and I have no idea.

My big Christmas present was a GPS receiver, which is extremely cool and slightly devious. You see, if you just sit around being a bum all it will do is tell you where you are. However, if you get off your butt and leave the house it will tell you where you're going, track where you've been, and then there's the whole geocaching angle. Mine is even able to automatically generate routes on the fly and act like a satnav. Apparently some software will even let you look up ATMs, gas stations, hotels and restaurants.

They have quite a racket going with these GPS receivers though. The one I got isn't cheap, but you could easily spend twice as much for a unit with one or two more unnecessary bells and whistles. The preloaded maps only have main highways, so if you want to see every street you're going to have to drop $100 or so on software. If you want better reception from the satellites you can buy an external antenna. Then of course you're going to want a case to protect your investment.

The furthest I've been from the house since I got my GPS receiver is the mailbox, so I really haven't tested what it can do yet. I just figured out how to load geocache locations this afternoon (the receiver has a steep learning curve) but as soon as I did that it started getting dark out so I couldn't test it out. There is a geocache about a third of a mile from my house and I want to check it out.

primed, part II

In other news, I coded up an implementation of that Shanks factorization algorithm. So far it can do 19 digits, but I don't know how to get it to stop returning trivial solutions (e.g. factoring 51 as 1 * 51) so it only works most of the time. I was able to factor some phone numbers for people, so that was amusing. I tried to make a copy that used Java's arbitrary precision data types to work on RSA-100, but that wasn't going well. I'm also having problems with Java running out of memory.

beyond jet lag

It is just not my night to sleep. I've been trying to get over the jet lag from coming back to Michigan but tonight has been ridiculous. I went to bed around 11, got up again at 2, tried going back to bed at 3. Then I got fed up with my bed so I fixed it, and when I tried going back to sleep it was too stuffy in my room so I cracked the window open and now the fresh air is too invigorating to sleep. I can't win. So now I am writing some emails until I crash again.

primed

The code in question basically works out an integral by staggering the sum with parallel processing. I am going over it to see if it can be commandeered for other purposes. I was thinking about modular exponentiation but I already cracked that nut, so I'm thinking about factoring. I'm not going after RSA-2048 or anything, but it's an interesting problem.

I am looking up integer factoring algorithms on Wikipedia and I ran across one called "Shanks' Square Forms Factorization." I might have to take a look.

i'd rather be an exposed wire than be a cold machine

It's finals week in Corvallis. Normally I would be bouncing off the walls by now but I am still kind of doing productive work. Office hours were super slow today so I brought some parallel computing code to go over. The computational physics TA just happened to stop by and I talked with him for like an hour and a half about coding and calculating pi. The only final I have left is computational physics tomorrow morning and then I'm done with another term of classes.

I've been assigned to do two labs and a recitation next term, which is new. I'm wondering how many students there will be. When I proctored the final my room was supposed to have 119 students but I only counted 93. That's 26 drops since the beginning of the term in my room alone. And then I had a bunch of students tell me they were switching into 202 next term instead of taking 212. The joke is on them since I heard the non calc sequence is harder than the calc sequence.

dead week

I only have one more class for this term, although I do have to go in and teach a lab at 3. This morning we had crash course in parallel computing and the physics department's Beowulf cluster - apparently this is going to be a major focus of my computational physics class next term, so I'm kind of looking forward to that. The department just got a whole bunch of dual-core computers and now I'm eager to get some money and build a new desktop. When I get a real job I might be able to afford things like $500 dual-core Athlons.

weniger nights

I did some hardcore exam grading last weekend - until 2:30 AM on Friday night and midnight on Saturday. That may have been a mind-numbing waste of time, but the scary bit was that there are other grad students still there at that time of night. Who aren't grading exams. I mean, seriously - how mental do you have to be to stay in the physics building on late late Friday or Satuday night by choice? I don't hate what I do but I get the hell out of there the minute the opportunity presents itself. I guess that's one of the differences between me and the Ph.D students.

monetary policy

I (and all the other TAs) got a $250 in this month's paycheck for no reason. I suspect the grad student union has something to do with it. I don't know what to spend it on. I am so used to being miserly and poor I can't bring myself to buy anything big, or even medium. Part of it is a time issue - I could buy games, but right now I have no time to play them. And then Christmas is starting to get close so I'm not supposed to buy stuff for myself anyway. My trusty TI-30x Solar calculator is dying, so I put in a bid on eBay for three more at $1.99 each. I'm a big spender.

a different kind of sunday morning

I think I may have finally figured out how to disable the bastard auto-update on Google Toolbar. There's no option to make it not replace my nice version with their horrible new one, so I had to get clever. I have been idling in the lair of the beast (toolbar.google.com) and it still hasn't auto-updated, so maybe I am in the clear.

I made an impulse buy today. I was in Staples trying to find new red pens because grading exams used up the last of my good ones, and in the laptop accessories section they had solar chargers. They have a MSRP of $100, Staples originally had them for $80, but they were on clearance for $19.80. Solar power + 75% discount is something I can't pass up. Unfortunately it's night right now so I can't play with it. The website has pictures of people using it in weird places, like "extreme ironing" in the Himalayas. Maybe mine won't be used for that, but hey, if civilization collapses and the power grid goes down I can still listen to my iPod.

I found out last week that the Atlas Shrugged movie(s?) is finally being pulled together. Angelina Jolie has been confimed as Dagny Taggart, I think she'd be perfect. Brad Pitt as John Galt I don't buy as much. I don't know who would be better though. Michael Gambon would make a pretty good Hugh Akston, and Harrison Ford would be a good Hank Rearden if he were younger...Anyway, we'll have to wait until 2008 to see. One of the articles I saw also said a remake of The Fountainhead might also be done. I've seen the original and I've been waiting for it to come out on DVD for years, which is finally about to happen.

The movie news has sparked my interest enough to make me finally get around to my annual reading of Atlas Shrugged. This is the 5th year now. I'm not going for the speed record this time - currently set at 4 days, but I swear it can be done in 3 given nothing to do and the stamina to break through The Speech on Day 3. This time around I'm taking my time and reading a couple chapters a day. That's more than I can afford time-wise anyway.

I've had a cold all week and it's annoying the hell out of me. dHealth/dt > 0 but it's not over yet. Cute Fred Meyer Girl was also sick. We commiserated with each other briefly and she gave me a Halls.

I acquired some mp3s of the new albums by BT and Hybrid. The BT tracks aren't that great, he's gotten a little too artsy. They are spacey and ambient and the shortest one is over eight minutes long (with the longest one topping 14). The Hybrid album doesn't seem to stand out at first, but it got under my skin and I can't stop listening to it. Today's post title is stolen from one of those songs.

court trouble, part III

ACT III
Government: Well we did some checking around and decided to pay you after all, but it won't be until December.
Jon: Christmas bonus!

court trouble, part II

ACT I
Government: You have to give us eight weeks of jury duty. But as compensation we'll give you $25/day.
Jon: Fine, whatever.

ACT II
Jon: You said I was going to get like $300 but you cut me a check for $2.80. What gives?
Government: Oh yeah, we forgot to tell you we have an obscure subsection in this law that says you automatically waived your juror's fee and we just have to reimburse you for mileage. Here's a copy of the law. Share and enjoy!
Jon: What.

court trouble

I got the check for my jury duty today. For a whopping $2.80. (It should be more like $280.) Now I'll have to go harass the courthouse and make them move some decimal points.

title

I'm getting the hang of things, maybe. Electronics is still crawling along, we're still only measuring RC constants in lab. Last week's computational physics problem was about chaotic scattering, which was actually pretty interesting. I was a little stumped by business stuff but once I saw some problems worked out it clicked, to the point where I'm half wondering how my own financial records would look in double-entry accounting. The only class where I'm still really stumbling is semiconductor devices, but I'm hoping to change that this weekend. The prof assigned 6 homework problems but threw 3 of them out because he hadn't gotten very far in lecture, so I might stand a chance this week.

In completely unrelated news, I learned yesterday that Gillette now has a razor with no less than six blades on it, five on the front and one on the back for no good reason. The razor arms race it getting out of hand. I can only imagine that somewhere, men in white lab coats are testing the feasibility of razors with 8, 10, or even more blades. Test subjects require reconstructive surgery after using the prototypes. After all, few men have what it takes to wield the Gillete Baker's Dozen.

Anyway, off to get stuff done, and then maybe reward myself with some more Tropico 2 later. That game is pretty fun but it does take a while to play so I haven't been at it too much. I'll also throw up a new movie review later.

crushed, part IV

I went up to Woodburn on Saturday to get some jeans and while I was up there I hit Fry's and got a lot more Crush, so I'm stocked up for a while. I also picked up Tropico 2, which is taunting me because I can't play it right now, and it seems like a pretty good game.

I was wrong about the 'theme' of this term's classes. It's not-physics. I got stunned by classes last week because I'm not expected to think like a physicist anymore - I'm now supposed to think like a business student, an EE and a computer scientist. The triple culture shock was a little much, I'm probably going to pull an all-nighter here just to tread water. Hopefully things will settle back down.

crushed, part III

I'm down to my last glass bottle of orange Crush. I came up with what I thought was a great idea last night: take a 2-liter bottle of Crush that Fischer brought down from Seattle and put it into some empties. I almost got a six-pack out of it. However, when I drank some it just wasn't the same. I'm not as crazy about Crush as I was a few months ago, but it would still be nice to have some. Oh well.

I like the looks of my business class already. The one I had last term was horrible, it really didn't teach anything and it had the extra horror of making us work with MBA students. There are no business students in this class because they're all taking real courses, not crash courses. (This class is teaching the basics of both accounting and finance.) Most of the students are from science, including a batch of new PSM students who I haven't met yet. In addition, although we've only had one class so far I've already learned something. The prof handed out copies of Harley-Davidson's annual report and we went through it and now I have some idea what those numbers mean.

Today has just been a lazy Sunday. And I do mean properly lazy - I had 11 hours of sleep last night, and I'm sitting around in a comfortable sweatshirt thinking about a nap. I did manage to do some business homework, and I punched out this entry over the course of an afternoon, but really it hasn't been productive today. I guess I'll just have to enjoy it while it lasts - I'm certainly not going to be able to laze about when I'm up to my neck in coursework.

post number 2^8

First day of classes today. Electronics seems alright except a bunch of my ex-students are in it as well, which makes it weird. Double weird since one of the undergrad TA's worked with me as a TA for some classes last year. Some other grads are supposed to be in there but they were taking quals today. I don't have to.

Vincent has a dartboard in his office now, so we played with that for a while. I should have moved into his office when I had the chance, I spend way more time in there than in my own office anyway. My own office also has new accessories, most notably a rocket launcher. It looks like a fake AK-47 made out of PVC and wood but it can apparently fire Estes rocket engines. It was burned inside the barrel so I take their word for it.

Then it was over to the new engineering building for semiconductor devices. This is my first class over there because I had to crash an engineers-only course. My first impression of the classroom was that it was like something the UN would have. Engineering classrooms are nicer than physics ones. The old asshole prof is out and the new prof seems like a good guy, so I'm hoping that will be a good class.

I also had a bunch of TA stuff today, which was more backwards zaniness. Last year I was the most junior person involved and now I've somehow been promoted to the most veteran member of the team - the other two TA's are first years (seem like OK guys) and the prof isn't the same one as last year and hasn't taught this course in 10 years. So they all look to me as if I know how this class should be run. I don't think they liked my ominous warnings about how hard the prelabs will get. The prof also teaches my electronics class, so I'm both his student and TA.

I ended up having to pull lab duty already. There are so many students enrolled in 211 that there's a new Monday 6PM section of lab. Today I had to hand out clicker things used for in-class quizzes. I brought my Pontiac brochure and ogled a G6 GTP sedan in Electric Blue Metallic while waiting for students to turn up.

Also, more of my neighbors are moving out. This time the ones with the god damned Doberman. Good times.

If last term's overall theme was 'bad profs', it's looking like this term's theme is just the weird role reversals and juxtapositions. I'll have to see how the rest of my new classes go though.

1111111

It's Friday night and I am cruising an obscure corner of the internet. I have been searching high and low for the original score to the movie Pi. I have the album, which contains bits of the score and is great in itself, but the score is really very powerful and I'd like to get my hands on it. One problem - it's unreleased. However, in the composer's online forum he posted:

"It's the 10th anniversary of π next year and there have been some rumblings about what to do to mark such an event. Over the next month or so Tezzer and myself will be launching www.clintmansell.com and by that time a few plans should be in place - and the release of the π score is on the 'to do' list."

That would be awesome.

I saw Fearless tonight and I have to say it was stunning. I didn't come out of it feeling slightly let down like I did with Hero. Better than Fist of Legend I don't know, I have to let it sink in. And maybe see it a couple more times. Definitely a good movie for Jet Li to go out on.

your world is different from mine

It rained today. That's as sure a sign as any that fall is here. Only a little over a week until classes start up again. Kind of exciting that this is my last year of school though...and not even a full academic year of classes.

Yesterday was a very car-focused day. I bought the new issues of Top Gear and Motor Trend. MT's cover story is about how GM might import another Holden, this time as the Grand Prix. It looks quite interesting. MT also had the Solstice GXP and the Aura, so I had to check it out.

I also went and test drove a Pontiac G6 GT, and I think I like it more than the Aura. I have been avoiding the G6 because I was annoyed it looked like every other Pontiac, but I found out the 2007 models are going to have GM's new six-speed automatic transmission and I've really pulled a 180. The G6 GTP is the one I really want of course. The dealer didn't have any of those, but he said there are some new ones coming. So in a few weeks it will be more test driving, Aura XR vs. G6 GTP.

I played through Command & Conquer: Red Alert. I may have only beaten the Soviet campaign once before, and I know this is my first time beating the Allied campaign. I've been playing through the whole series and the early ones are definitely harder. I never noticed before how bad the acting in Red Alert is.

Also: The MSU Physics Shirts are coming back for a third run. I know this is the third time I've claimed this, but I swear it's going to happen this time because I'm not the one handling it. My brother is looking at doing a run as part of the new improved SPS that actually does things. So if you're interested, either let Jim or me know. Not taking orders just yet though.

cutting the voltage to your powerlines

I went up to Salem a couple days ago and test drove a Saturn Aura. The dealer only had one, an XE model with no options, so there weren't any toys to play with. It was pretty nice except the steering wheel kind of hit my knees and I couldn't see out of the thing as well as my Malibu, although the stupid sticker on the windshield may have been part of the problem. The salesman said he was getting some XR models (what I'm interested in) in a few weeks. The Aura XR has the same engine as the Cadillac CTS and a six-speed semiautomatic gearbox. (Those are good things.)

In other news life has pretty much been jury duty and screwing around, with a little bit of getting important stuff done. School doesn't start for another three weeks so this is a good time to take care of stuff before I get bogged down with classes. Now that my fall schedule is done, all I have to do is work out a student loan and then I can focus on finding an internship for spring.

Guess what, more jury duty tomorrow.

sunspot cycles

I discovered that deep within the submenus of Photoshop CS is a tool called Photomerge for putting pictures together as a panorama. I put a couple rough panaoramas from my recent Oregon vacation together. The best part is that as long as you have Photoshop open you can smooth over the seams. I tried putting together a 360 degree panorama from La Jolla, and it looked like it was going to blend pretty well, but Photoshop complained about RAM and quit so I will mess with it tomorrow.

I also wrote a Java program that solves Sudoku puzzles. I needed the practice in Java and I wanted to see how hard it would be. The code is hideous but it can solve the last problem in my Sudoku book in 129,000 operations, which is a trifle for the computer. I guess the algorithm I made up isn't that bad after all.

The rest of today was spent playing Ratchet: Deadlocked and We Love Katamari, but I did register for ECE 417 so I can claim a little progress for the day. More jury duty tomorrow.

charged with battery, pt. II

I set aside some of the batteries my camera refused to run on and checked them with a DMM. They still have 1.5 volts on them. If anything this makes my problem more confusing. If I put them back in the camera they will work for a while again, but not if it's right after the camera refuses to take them. Maybe the batteries are heating up and the camera won't work until they're cool again?

charged with battery

My digital camera, while awesome in most respects, has recently developed a malfunction that causes it to use up batteries at an alarming rate. As in, they need replacing several times a day.

Even with this handicap I still managed to take quite a few good pictures in the past few days. My parents came out to visit me and I gave them a crash tour of Oregon as I have so far come to know it. The Columbia River Gorge was great. We were lucky to see Mount Hood because parts of it are on fire and this apparently presents difficulties for tourists. We also checked out the wine country to the north, and Newport to wrap things up. It was pretty cool overall.

gone fission

So today I got to apply an important grad student skill - raiding free stuff. Some prof retired and left a bunch of old books for people to take. This was last week sometime, but apparently not many people have bothered because there's still piles of them. I went through them today and got a bunch of good stuff. I found an instructor's solutions manual for Marion/Thornton and Halliday/Resnick, but they are 2 and 3 editions out of date respectively. I just like acquiring what used to be contraband - they have the answers to every single problem in the texts.

There was a lot of miscellaneous stuff too, like microcomputer manuals from the late 70's and early 80's, and some books on the nuclear arms race. I took a couple books that opposed Reagan's SDI. I also took a book called "The Discovery of Nuclear Fission" which looks very interesting because it has excerpts from the original research papers. That book is from 1971 though, I think it underplays Lise Meitner's role. I'm still looking forward to reading it

In other news, my dumbass neighbor moved out yesterday, so I'm pleased with that. I also went in for jury duty orientation and got assigned to the circuit court's grand jury. I have to go in two days a week for eight weeks and here about all the horrible stuff going on in the county, but at least it's not hard and it fits in my schedule. I even get a little bit of cash out of it, though that probably won't show up until early November.

hundred billion bottles washed up on the shore

Yeah, it's been a while since I posted anything here. That's because I haven't been doing a damn thing. It was nice. I'm back in Oregon now...not that I've suddenly started doing interesting things. I did get a notice that I've been selected for jury duty, we'll see how that goes. I start TAing again next week, or so I've been told. I haven't gotten any updates on that. I did write up a couple more movies I've seen recently. I guess that's about as much of a point this post is going to have.

norton liveupH8, pt. II

So naturally, when I fire up my computer this morning LiveUpdate got the one package that was giving me hell last night with no problem, and now my Norton is up to date. This is why I hate computers. They will break and then fix themselves for mysterious reasons, and no matter how long you've been working with them they will continue to break down in new and exciting ways. It just goes with the job. This is why happy techs scare me - either they have no idea what they're doing, or they've gone completely off the deep end. I'm glad I'm not a tech anymore.

norton liveupH8 (computers suck)

I repartitioned and reformatted my computer, and I spent the day trying to get everything installed again. I hate this part because entering serial numbers and install directories is tedious. And then there are the programs that just never work.

Norton is one of these. After installing, it needs dozens of update files from the internet and every time I have to reinstall it, LiveUpdate seems to say "That update there. You can't have that." and it refuses to install that part no matter how many times I try. Symantec's only advice is to uninstall and reinstall Norton, but I've done that three times now and it don't work. I think it has something to do with installing the WinXP service pack before updating Norton. I hate how everything needs to be installed in a certain order and if you do it differently it will make your life miserable.

Of course, Norton couldn't have the show to itself. My iPod also crashed. Again. I managed to fight with it long enough to get it wiped/restored (thank you Apple for making it so I have to erase the whole thing every time I have to fix it), but the iPod has to be hooked up to the AC power supply to reboot and work again. And of course I left that cable in Oregon, because you can just charge it by USB.

I'd like to point out that to make the iPod get recognized by the computer so I could wipe it, I had to strike it against the desk. Physical violence makes technology work better.

I also forgot to back up the saved passwords for my fingerprint scanner, so now I don't remember how to get into anything. So far I've managed to get back into my online credit card statement and this.

Fortunately, one thing that does work is Generals: Zero Hour, because after fighting with computer crap all day I need to blow a lot of stuff up to chill out. Once this all gets sorted out it will be good. My new drive has over 150GB free and my 120GB drive is still empty (though untested) - I will have no shortage of storage space for a long time.

but i still can't focus on anything

It looks like my new 300GB external drive will show up on Tuesday rather than tomorrow as I'd hoped. I really want to get working on my computer. I had a panic moment this morning when my computer hung while booting, but I found the culprit was my stupid iPod which had locked up (now what are the odds of that?) and was causing my computer to do the same when it turned on the USB ports. I've kept my current external drive off most of the time because I don't want to taunt it.

I finally watched Bullitt tonight. It was ok. The car chase scene was pretty good though. I wrote up some more movie and game reviews and put them on my MSU site.

drives

Computer work is not progressing as planned. As I was backing up data from my internal drive to the external, I found the external drive is kind of on the fritz and is resisting any treatments I have to offer. The only thing I can think of to remedy it is a reformat...which is exactly the sort of thing I don't want to hear, because there's not really anywhere for my data to be now if both of my drives need work.

So I'm looking at getting a new, proper external drive. I can get a 300GB drive for only around $120. Combine that with my current 200GB and I'd have half a terabyte of data storage. I would have way more space than I need...at least for the moment.

Then I might have another 80GB on top of that, from my old desktop. It apparently suffered a power surge that let the motherboard's magic smoke out. I wouldn't really have any use for that drive though. Basically I have to determine if that computer would be worth rebuilding, or if it should just be salvaged for parts.

In other news, it's good to be back in Michigan and my polymorphic head cold is all but over.

contents under pressure

I arrived in Detroit at an ungodly hour this morning in bad shape but still in one piece. Recently I've been suffering a sort of head cold that changes its symptoms every day. Presumably only an illness as polymorphic as this could make it past my robust immune system. On Saturday I had a sore throat, stuffy nose and addled brain, on Sunday this had turned into a runny nose and a lack of energy. And today? Sinus pressure and I lost my voice for a little while. Who knows what tomorrow will bring?

The sinus pressure, combined with some ham-fisted cabin pressure control on the behalf of a Northwest Airlines crew, caused me some grief during the final approach to Detroit. I had horrible earaches for the last 15 minutes before touchdown and even a bit of shooting pain in my forehead. And then my ears didn't pop when I got off the plane. In fact they didn't pop until I got home an hour later, sat in the hot tub and set about purposefully trying to mess with the pressures in my head. I got it mostly right and then gradually equilibrated over the rest of the day. Flying on a plane should not require that you recalibrate your head afterwards.

One of the first orders of business once I regain my health and coherence is to reformat my computer, which has gone over a year on one installation of Windows. I broke some stuff quite a few months ago and it's kind of jury-rigged together at the moment.

So yeah, I'm back in Michigan for a few weeks. So if anyone else is around, drop me a line and I'll see when I can swipe some wheels.

going home

School is FINALLY out for the summer. In about an hour I'm headed up to Portland for a flight to Detroit. I'm spending four weeks in Michigan.

dreiundzwanzig

I'm not 22 anymore.

if it can be lost then it can be won

I had a nice weekend. Mostly because I did no school work. I made peanut butter fudge, went to the department picnic, watched Where Eagles Dare, got on the roof of the physics building (pictures on Facebook), saw Cars, and did no studying for quantum mechanics. I'm flying back to Michigan in a week and I'm looking forward to that.

driving

Recently I've been trying to learn how to Top Gear drive.

Not the exciting stuff like driving around corners too quickly and shouting POWER! though. Mostly watching how they steer. They put their hands on the steering wheel differently (hands at 9:00 and 3:00), and you're not supposed to take your hands off the wheel but you can cross them in a turn. Of course this limits how much you can actually steer, but maybe this works better at 150 MPH. Doing this supposedly gives you a feel for the grip of the car, but I'm not exactly worried my Malibu's tail will slip out. So this is a mostly pointless endeavor.

Top Gear has also made me a carspotting snob. Not that there's much interesting around here, although I did spot a Volkswagen Golf R32 last week, and I think those things are kind of rare. That car might be fun to have, except it costs as much as a damn Evo.

danger! high voltage

There was no physics colloqium this week - again - so I crashed the EECS colloqium. A guy from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory was talking about the power grid. It was kind of cool. He obviously had an EE background, but then he was talking about how a system they'd come up with is similar to thermal physics, and then noted that some market phenomenon they'd observed would be analogous to a theoretical "negative temperature." Not sure what he meant by that last bit. That dude had some mad cross-disciplinary skills going on.

Fun fact - Texas has its own power grid. So does Quebec.

pseudo coup, pt. II

So I think I've caused something of a minor insurrection in my business class. After I did a couple Sudoku puzzles in class, Vincent decided to do them too, and then the rest of my project group, and in the last class I saw some random MBA guy I don't know doing one too so I don't even know how far it's spread. I'm a very good seed of rebellion.

we promised the world we'd tame it

My iPod went completely insane just now, and only my 1337 skills brought it back from the brink. This of course requires another ponderous overnight 18GB data transfer. I'm getting slightly concerned about the long term prospects of this particular piece of hardware.

I got my last tax refund this week so I decided to spend some of it. I've already established that Corvallis, Albany, and Salem have little commercial value, so on Friday I pushed even further north to the outlet stores at Woodburn. This turned out to be a bust. The only store that had anything decent was the Levi's/Dockers store, and they didn't have anything in my size. This outlet store was simply where 40W/30L pants went to die.

Woodburn wasn't the end of my trip though. Another 12 miles further north lies one of the Wonders of the Modern World: a Fry's Electronics.

I'd never been in one of these before. Let me just say that no other store in recent memory has made me go weak in the knees. They have everything from popcorn makers to solar panels - real ones, not just science kits. Fry's has entire aisles of headphones, so I was able to pick up a pair of inexpensive folding headphones with an awesome response range. They even have Crush, so I picked up a couple bottles. Now I'll never be fully satisfied with Best Buy. Unfortunately Fry's is over an hour away and I don't have enough money to warrant frequent trips, but it's still good to know that somewhere in this state is a store that doesn't suck.

Tomorrow I have lots of work to do for business class, but if the weather's nice again I might try and get on the roof of Weniger and take some pictures of campus. It doesn't look too hard.

every morning i walk towards the edge and throw little things off

It has now been one year since I graduated from MSU. I'm not sure how much progress I can say I've made except that I'm about halfway through my Master's degree now. I swear I'll be done with school after this degree. I'm only halfway through this silly term, but it's getting close to the end of the year. Unfortunately I have a damned quantum final on my birthday, but I have plans for that. I'm not one that suffers things like that quietly.

I've had my iPod for over a year now. I've managed to keep it fairly scratch-free, so it looks nice. It's gone a bit mental though. It keeps locking up when I'm skipping through songs rapidly and I have to reboot it repeatedly, and if I leave it hooked up to the computer it will claim to not have any playlists one it until I reboot it again. I also found out that something else I thought was a defect was actually a feature. As if to prove a point, my iPod decided to crash and lose all its songs, requiring a ponderous reloading of 16GB. I bought some new headphones for the iPod, a different brand this time, and it has a wider response range and I'm impressed with the results. Especially for $5.

Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children finally came out on DVD. I have to say...the English dubbing didn't really work as well as I was hoping. Especially when they give Cid a Southern accent, and Cait Sith is Scottish? I think it was almost more confusing in English than it was in Japanese. The movie just doesn't click with me.

Corvallis has once again proved itself to be commercially useless, this time for restaurants. Eugene, which is as far away as Salem, has the nearest Chili's. Both cities have an Olive Garden. We don't even have a Denny's or IHOP (guess what, Salem again). There are no Big Boys in the state, and apparently National Coney Island is a Detroit thing. The nearest Cracker Barrel is in Idaho, 350 miles away, with the closest one after that in Montana. All the restaurants we have are either college food (pizza, Chinese, McDonald's) or uppity fancy places.

The new series of Top Gear started today! I really wish Honda would bring the Civic they have over here because it's a million times cooler than even our new Civics. They're going to review a C6 Corvette Z06 among other things, they don't usually review American cars but this one they can't just ignore. The new series looks awesome.

zero

Apparently I can't use a calendar, because I've been under the impression that Ace Combat Zero came out next month, when in reality it came out earlier this week. So last night as soon as I figured out I was breaking Physics Rule #1 I ran down to the store and bought it. And beat it. It's rather shorter than Ace Combat 5 and doesn't have nearly as good a story, so I think AC5 is my favorite of the series so far. I'm still going to give ACZ a working over though.

Unfortunately it's going to be a busy weekend so I won't have much time to mess around with ACZ any more right now. In particular, I have to double grade exams for 213 this weekend. We're down another 50 students or so from last term though, about 200 now, so at least there aren't as many to grade overall. We've lost so many students compared to first term that we can now fit all the students into one room for exams while before we needed two. The intro physics series here is a rough one.

pseudo coup

Last week I found a great new way of getting through my three hour business class while staying sane. I take all my class notes on gridded paper so I can do graphs easier. I figured out that I can copy Sudoku puzzles into some of the squares in my notebook and do those while looking like I'm taking notes. And the puzzles only take like a third of the page up so I can put real notes alongside if anyone says anything interesting. This way, I don't go mad listening to proposals about air quality-testing lichens and biodiesel byproduct diapers. I'm glad I'm not an MBA.

I'm doing really well so far in my scientific computing class. After my initial troubles with Java I'm getting the hang of things and I'm probably the furthest ahead in the class by a good margin. For example, last week's program was originally due Wednesday but was pushed to Friday. I was putting the finishing touches on my programs on Monday. This week's programs are different so I want to run some stuff by the instructor before I keep pushing. I think that is an interesting class, it's not just about coding but now we're getting into the physics that can be done with it.

I'm only about a quarter of the way through this new term but I'm getting close to being halfway done with my Master's degree. I'm going to have to start thinking about what I'm going to do for an internship next year. I'm almost out of the PSM core and can start getting into my own classes now. Next year should be good with computational physics, electronics labs and solid state physics.

i think i know my geography pretty damn well

I've finally gotten to grading this week's prelabs. My old red pen has just about had it, but they didn't have any more like it at the store so I bought a couple different kinds and I'm trying them out to see which is best. It's important to find out now because the 213 midterm is next week and that means exam grading. An inferior red pen just won't do.

I kind of feel like I didn't get too much accomplished this weekend, but I did finish the coding for this week's scientific computing homework and that's a major part of my workload for the week. I still think Java is insanely uppity but it'll take more than that to stop me. I did have to write in some bizarre stuff to get it to work fully though.

MIA

Just finished the first week of labs I TA. The first section was a little rough but by the third one I started getting back in the groove again. Lots of familiar faces in my sections, which is good. The students all seem to be distressed that one of the instructors from the last two terms (Pat) apparently isn't teaching this term. I knew he hasn't been around, but I thought he was just out for the first week or something. None of the students know where he is, so when somebody brought him up in lab all the rumors started flying. One of the students said they'd seen Pat at Safeway, so I said at least we know he's not dead. I told the students I'd look into it.

culture shock

Spring term has started and I've now had all my various new classes. Comps (quals) ran at the beginning of the week, and Vincent and I just sat on the sidelines and watched as all the other first-years joined in. Vincent and I don't have to take comps because we're PSM. It's just kind of odd because this term I finally start my major deviation from the normal course of physics.

I now have a proper MBA business class, which is composed of about half PSMs and half MBAs. It was kind of funny because there was definitely a bit of culture shock going on there. I thought it was going to be a lecture class, but it's another one of these case study classes which I'm not completely sold on. Still, we're finally getting some business training, which is a good thing.

I'm also in a scientific computing class as a prep for computational physics next year. The odd thing is that my department programs in Java. I don't know why. I don't know Java, but it's loosely related to C++ so I'm getting by pretty well so far. Vincent only knows Fortran so he's having a rougher time. I think I did work with some Java back in my SOAR days, but that wasn't writing code, just kicking it around until it compiled.

In my crash course on Java I'm finding out all these little idiosyncrasies Java has that make me shake my head. It is like C++, but 50 times as uppity. The structure is much more restrictive (like 4x won't be intepreted as 4 * x) and it seems like everything takes twice as many lines as C++ to express (like how declaring an array takes two lines of code instead of one). I tried formatting some numbers, and the process was to use a good sized command to format the number, but it got returned as a string, so it had to be parsed back into a number using another good sized command. It practically took up a full line just to say I wanted less decimal places. And there's some really weird stuff about how it handles objects.

I also discovered one of Java's dirty little secrets - it can't even add properly! For some reason Java can't express the number 0.1 properly. Java's proponents blame it on binary numbers, but C++ certainly didn't seem to have any problems. They claim it doesn't matter unless you're doing taxes or something, but any way you cut it I don't like it when I add 0.2 to 6.0 and get 6.199999999999 back. Not appreciated.

I'm not a big fan of Java.

As for my engineering bug, I made a major find at Borders last weekend. I found the other book by J. E. Gordon, who wrote the slightly eccentric but very interesting book on structures I like. This one (The New Science of Strong Materials, or Why You Don't Fall Through the Floor) is more about material science, but it's still good. I love the way this guy writes, these books are good reads.

2002 Pontiac Solstice Coupe Concept

Llast night I managed to repair my old MP3 player, the one that also acts like a USB drive. So I can hook it up to my PS2 again. Which means I can take pictures of my Gran Turismo 4 cars once again. Of course the first subject is the Pontiac Solstice, which I finally won after I'd broken the USB drive. The only reason I'm not taking pictures of cars all day is that I'm on my way back to Michigan - I'm in Portland's airport right now.

end of winter

Winter term is finally over for me. I've finished my finals, graded my last exam and reported my lab grades, there are no more stupid loose ends keeping this term alive. It seems like by the time I get used to all this I'm going to graduate. I'm already a third done. Certainly better than having to hang around for the better part of a decade though.

I had intended to celebrate by playing PlayStation all night, but I got sidetracked watching Top Gear. That's how much I love the show, although it's also true that I could use some fresh games for the PS2. Quite the lineup of games in the months ahead - Kingdom Hearts II comes out over break, with the Half-Life 2 expansion the month after that (if it's on time - which it won't be), and Ace Combat Zero the month after that. Gobeski says it must be a conspiracy to fail me out of grad school. If there were a new Katamari Damacy or Command & Conquer game as well, I might be inclined to agree. As is, I'm still surviving.

Oh yeah, and Duke lost. Good times.

sore thumbs

My thumbs are sore. I turned in my ethics term paper this morning and I've been playing Gran Turismo 4 since then. It took maybe an hour, but I finally beat Jeremy Clarkson's lap time on Laguna Seca with a stock NSX-R, by nearly a second. I then tried to attempt one of the few races I haven't beaten yet, but I had forgotten how infuriating that game can be. I also don't have much thumb stamina for that game, always having to mash down as hard as possible on the brakes...stupid pressure senstitive buttons. I think I'm going to put that game away for now and look at some quantum.

510 nm

Being the only sober person on St. Patrick's Day, I have some time on my hands. I finally got around to typing up all my quotes from Dr. Stetz. It was no small feat. So go check out my updated quote board.

Today was pretty good with the exception of my being vaguely unsettled all day. It was the last day of classes for the term, so that was good, and spring break is finally just a week away. I still think it is stupidly late. That makes me a hair short of a third of the way through my Master's degree, and 40% done with my classes. So I'm making progress, slowly. But I am starting to wonder what I'll be like on the flip side and if that's really what I should be shooting for. Some in-flight corrections may be in order.

I am also suffering from the engineering bug because I've just been saturated with physics not-practical stuff all term. If I were still at MSU I could just run off and take another civil engineering class to satisfy my need for balance, but finding time for it here would be much more difficult.

Michigan State got beaten in the NCAA tourney in the first round, which is very sad. March Madness is gone already. Now all I can hope for is that Duke and UNC will get beaten. (UNC because they beat us last year and I had to deal with those bastards while working on the SOAR telescope at MSU.)

Tomorrow I should start writing my HEP doomsday term paper for ethics. My presentation earlier this week about my topic went well. So well that it's probably hyped up to a level I can't possibly meet. Ah well.

For some reason I am still not big on video games at the moment. I played a little R&C3 earlier but put it away after quickly tiring of it. I tried to find a new book to read (I tore through Catch-22), but I couldn't find anything in Borders worth getting. I've kind of overdosed on Top Gear at the moment because I've been compiling a personal cheat sheet for the good episodes. And I'm too exhausted today to bother going out. So I have been trying to find things to do today to unwind. Hence the Dr. Stetz quotes. He's a funny guy.

when i close my eyes i am at the center of the sun

Today was the last day of proper E&M lecture, which promptly meandered into the fields of thermodynamics and statistical mechanics. I would have minded except that this particular excursion was a discussion about how lasers work, and it's a scientific fact that lasers are frickin' awesome. I'm a physics major. I know science. So we had a nice talk about population inversion and neon energy levels. And during all this laser talk I remembered that I have a Class 3A laser module sitting in a funky box that I haven't done anything with because both my soldering iron and DMM broke.

I am in a cantankerous mood because everybody else's spring breaks have come and gone and we're still slogging away here with another week to go. It doesn't help that I've been rereading Catch-22. Fortunately, most of my duties for the rest of the term are TA-related, which I enjoy. I only have one more big assignment to take on before finals, my research ethics term paper. I think I'm going to be the only person in the class that isn't taking one of the three suggested topics, even though the prof was hoping everybody would pick something different. Most research ethics stuff is boring, especially in physics, so I'm going to be talking about the possibility of destroying the world with particle accelerators. I haven't decided which side to take yet. I know the chance of catastrophe is incredibly remote, but I also can't resist slamming high energy physics.

perturbed

Two more weeks and I'll be home in MI for spring break. I have a couple big homeworks due Monday and an ethics term paper to write before then, but fortunately no real major projects are left. We changed gears in quantum and we're doing basic perturbation theory now as a prep for what we'll be doing all next term. It's more interesting that what we were doing before. We're apparently almost done with EM waves in E&M, which is odd because we have barely done anything with it. That whole class has been rather silly and pointless.

The prospective grad students finally came through and it was a little weird being in the opposite position of what I went through last year. I went to the dinner (free food) but not the Q&A session or the Newport trip.

I finished reading Fire in the Valley, an epic tome about the history of the personal computer. My favorite chapter was about the start of the PC vs. Mac rivalry, because I like to see Macs get an ass-kicking. Unfortunately, despite the book's size it doesn't seem epic enough. A lot of time was spent talking about the Altair and then the book covers less and less specifics as more and more happens. There was no real connection for me to what I already know about computers. Even at the end of the book it seems like a "computer" is still some sort of newfangled toy. The book is also out of date already - it ends in 1997 when Microsoft just got sued over IE, it didn't even get to Windows 98. The book is also kind of badly organized, with chapters broken into many sub-chapters consisting of only a few pages, even though they mostly talk about the same thing. I can't stand when authors do that.

One of the big things about the early days of computers was the whole magazine scene. A lot of computer stuff was just advertised in the back of the magazines, and the articles talked about exactly what hardware can do and how to program it. I would say that modern magazines are not like this at all, but I recently found an interesting magazine called Make that tells you how to make stuff like windpower towers and a pulsejet-in-a-jar, and there are ads for circuitboards and stuff. One of the neat little things in the magazine was a way to make origami envelopes, which is pretty cool.

I haven't been playing any games since I got fed up with Black & White 2 and uninstalled it, which is just as well because it's been busy recently. Some tempting release dates are coming up though - Kingdom Hearts II, Ace Combat Zero and the Half-Life 2 expansion should all come out later in the spring. It's about time some good games got released.

the ugliest car in the world

Meet the Subaru Tribeca. The picture doesn't do justice to its true hideousness. Those headlights look like they've been ripped off from the Porsche Cayenne, which was already a horrible mockery of the front of a Porsche 911. Then to up the ante, Subaru added its atrocious new snout. The angled bits at the back look like it's trying to parody the fins on old Cadillacs. Perhaps it isn't the ugliest car in the world, but someone drives one of these monstrosities around campus and it makes me cringe every time I see it.

i need space

My computer is finally kind of needing a reformat after nine months (I'm pretty sure that's some kind of personal record), but I'm not sure what to do about that. I could do a normal reformat easy, but I have a couple problems that wouldn't fix. I basically want to repartition, but I don't have anywhere near enough space to move things off the drive first for a clean repartition and repartitioning with data on the drive is a Very Bad Thing (PartitionMagic is the devil). Unfortunately I can't really upgrade my drive, as it seems 90% of notebook HDDs are 40GB whereas mine is already twice that. I saw an article about a 200GB perpendicular-bit notebook HDD that I would absolutely love, but it's not coming out for another year yet and will probably cost a gazillion dollars.

whatever lies beyond this morning is a little later on

The weather right now is fantastic - a little cloudy, breezy, around 60 degrees. I was actually here in Corvallis exactly a year ago for grad school visitation, so this weather is partly what sold me on coming way the hell out here. Exactly a year ago today was the Newport trip. I'd certainly rather be out there than here in the apartment, but I have a bit of work to get done today.

This week is the last full week of labs, the term is finally winding down. I do have a couple major things to finish before the end of the term, but they're at least pretty well spaced out. I'm very much looking forward to coming home for spring break in just a couple weeks and then having a changeup of classes for spring quarter.

seriously uncool

I found something new that is epic about Black & White 2 - the size of the save files. The game used nearly 2GB for autosave crap, thus filling my data drive. I threw it all out and kept my manual saves, but they apparently don't work any more and give me memory read errors. I was just about to beat the game too.

There are other problems I forgot to mention too, like how the patch is 109MB and invalidates previous saved files, or how it is such a resource hog it causes pre-rendered opening videos to lag on my machine, or how it takes like five minutes to quit the game because it's unloading so much garbage. I seriously don't appreciate BW2's lack of respect for machine resources.

So for those of you keeping track, CivIV is bland and unexciting, whereas BW2 is an OK game to play but will utterly kill your computer. Screw this crap, I am going back to Generals: Zero Hour until somebody makes a new game that's actually decent.

take a deep breath and dive right into it

I made it to another weekend somehow. February finally died, thankfully. Only three more weeks left in the term. Apparently the PSM seminar for spring term has been scheduled for one of the worst possible time slots, so there's yet another minor PSM uprising in the works. It also sounded like my 3-credit business class for next term will be scheduled all on one night per week, so that's not entirely cool.

I put up reviews of Civilization IV and Black & White 2. It's very odd - those games seem to be diametric opposites of each other. The one game is exactly what the other is not. CivIV has a lean two CD's, while BW2 has an epic 4. CivIV has a novel for a manual, while BW2 has a pamphlet. CivIV has skirmishes and multiplayer modes but not single player story, while BW2 has - you guessed it - single player story but no skirmish or multiplayer. CivIV has ridiculously simplistic graphics, while BW2 causes biblically slow framerates with its rendered beauty.

Another update I intend to make is to compile all the quotes from my EM class. Dr. Stetz is very amusing. Those quotes are what make that class not a total waste so far, although we are finally getting in EM waves which I have been waiting two whole terms for and is the only thing I want out of EM.

Pandora actually scored a hit for me the other day. It's amazing at how Pandora can pick up on all the 'genes' of a song and yet usually completely misunderstands the feeling of the song. It did give me one new song that I've been listening to endlessly - 68 times so far, according to iTunes.

Speaking of new things, this webcomic is AWESOME.

regardless of warnings the future doesn't scare me at all

I think it's going to be another fairly manageable week, which is good. I had an E&M exam this morning, which could certainly have gone worse. I might have actually done really well if I'd known what the hell I was doing, which would have been a coup almost worthy of PHY410.

It's already the seventh week of the term. I think I'm mostly past the grueling stuff and classes are now just a matter of making up for some rough spots I had earlier. Today's department seminar was actually pretty sweet, a guy from NIST talking about quantum calorimetry to detect hard gamma rays to fingerprint "special nuclear material" for nuclear weapons inspectors. The results he showed were pretty stunning compared to methods in use right now.

I am currently banging around in Dreamweaver in preparation for my PSM seminar tomorrow. I have no intention of using it except that's what the prof has picked for us to use in our website-making module, so if I figure out how it works ahead of time I'll look as smart as I should. This is especially important because Dreamweaver sucks and isn't as good as FrontPage, which I actually use. So some advance prep is required. Street price for Dreamweaver is $400. I don't think I'd pay a nickel for this crap.

I got to thinking about how I made MSU's SOAR website, and realized that I had no idea where I put all the cool pictures of the telescope. I think I wiped them off the drives, but fortunately I back things up to CD - apparently weekly, back then. I did find the enormous original files I was looking for. Some of them are pretty stunning. I should get out and take some pictures somewhere - I've only broken out my camera once so far this year, to document the migration to a proper desk in my apartment.

webcomics

It seems like all my favorite webcomics are dying. PHD is starting to graduate people - first Mike (of all people), and maybe now Cecilia? Real Life is definitely past its prime, as well as Megatokyo. 8-bit Theatre is getting messed up so much if it doesn't die it will hardly be recognizable. Dilbert seems to have jumped the shark. It looks like even Ctrl-Alt-Del is going to start settling down and marrying people off. Perhaps the golden age of webcomics is over.

crushed, pt. II

Oregon's weather right now is fantastic. It feels like a spring day would in Michigan, and it's early February. The sun is out all day, the days are getting longer, and the temperature is high enough I didn't wear my jacket.

Today I harassed several distributor branch offices and eventually Dr Pepper / 7Up itself, and found that what I feared is true - there is no distributor of Crush in Oregon. DPSUHQ told me the nearest distributor was around Seattle. However, L swears she's seen Crush somewhere (not in town though). Incidentally enough, my parents sent me a couple six-packs of Crush that arrived today, so I related my troubles about how impossible it is to get Crush to the other PSMs while drinking Crush. Now they think I run some kind of Crush smuggling ring.

Tomorrow is Friday. I am more than ready for it to be the weekend. However, tomorrow has a greater distinction than that - I will be a quarter of the way through my Master's program. Already! I am probably going to Salem tomorrow to celebrate with things I can't get here in Corvallis - a Best Buy run and a Papiano's pizza. Then there will be much gaming. No exams to grade this weekend.

crushed

I still can't find Crush out here. I do have some that I shipped from Michigan, but it's being strictly rationed and is already about halfway gone. I went through most of the grocers in the Corvallis phone book last week and no one has it. I might start bothering stores to see if someone is willing to get some.

I have also been scouring the internet for Crush. There are a couple of websites you can order pop from but I am kind of iffy on that. It also seems like there might be places in Portland where I can get Crush. I wouldn't go to Portland just for that, but I haven't been to the science museum up there yet and if I can come back with a trunkload of Crush that's even better.

superbowl sunday

So yeah, it's been a long time since I updated. I haven't done anything particularly interesting since last time, just school. Grad school will rough you up. The end of this coming week marks halfway through the term though.

I did end up buying Civ4, but it's less exciting than I'd hoped. In particular the combat stinks, but at least they fixed the screwup from Civ3 where spearmen would beat tanks. I have pretty much thrashed Ace Combat 5 except for a couple of medals left to earn.

I'm grading exams this weekend. Circumstances led to my pulling double duty this time, but that should mean I get a really easy time later in the term when I'll probably need it more. I'm halfway done so far, I need to put another six or seven hours in today.

I'm getting some useful stuff done on the side though. I finally filled out a draft for my program of study, and I graded this week's prelabs which are a big help during the week. I seem to be having a little more trouble putting names to faces in my labs, and I forgot a couple of people that I had last term but aren't in my current labs. And then there was the dude who shaved his heavy beard, thus rendering himself completely unrecognizable to me, to his great amusement.

IE7 Beta is out, but I haven't used it yet. Not for lack of trying - it won't install because of something I did to Windows a couple months ago to free up drive space. I wish laptop hard drives were bigger. I hear IE7 is a good step up though.

insert coin

So I'm starting to want a new game to play. I went to Gamespot and looked up the review of Generals: Zero Hour, and clicked on "Similar Games". You want to know what it told me? First, it suggested Generals and the Generals + Zero Hour Deluxe Edition. You know, Generals + Zero Hour is pretty similar to Generals and Zero Hour. Idiots. Gamespot also suggested SimGolf - because building a golf course is so much like fighting international terrorism - and an obscure imported 2002 RTS called Hooligans, which is all about being soccer hooligans. The tagline of that game is apparently "The only thing to fear, is running out of beer." And if you think the box speaks for itself, try the scoreboard. Wow. I feel dumber just for knowing about this game.

Such h8.

Anyway, on to games I might actually play. I read Gamespot's 2005 awards and Psychonauts won like half of them. Then again, Gamespot tried to make me play Hooligans. I do remember Gobeski going on about Psychonauts though, so I might check it out. Empire Earth II might be interesting, but there is apparently an expansion pack coming out in about a month and damned if I'm going to buy that game now. There's also Civilization IV, but I'm not really into turn-based games.

I'll probably end up playing a game I brought back from home though - Sub Command. I never really got a chance to play it when we got it, but I did get a fair way through its predecessor 688(I) and I liked that, I even did some of my own TMA.

Of course, this is all assuming I'll have time to play games, which I don't. I manage to squeak in a round of video games here and there though just to stay sane.

no war no wrapped in plastic

I stopped trying to make up titles to posts that actually make sense. Now I'm just pulling random lines from songs I'm listening to. It seemed like the hip thing to do. Or maybe I'm just lazy and like confusing people.

Idiot Neighbor Boy was at it earlier today with his incessant pounding bass, so I went over and yelled at him. This time I didn't ask him to turn it down, I ordered him. It's much quieter now. Hopefully it sticks in his damned head this time.

So far my schedule is not too hectic, but the labs I TA haven't started up yet. I was assigned to a section that conflicted with my schedule and it took me two days to get it sorted out. I have to move my office hours though, which means I'll probably get stuck with some awful time slot. I wish this crap had been taken care of ahead of time instead of waiting until classes have started.

My classes. Quantum and E&M are off and running again like we didn't have a break. They're both pounding away at Lagrangian stuff I should have learned somewhere but didn't. It doesn't seem too bad to pick up though. It always amazes me when several independent classes get hooked on the same topic at the same time. At least I only have to learn one thing instead of two.

My philosophy class looks kind of interesting, although I want to go back and read up on Objectivist moral theory. I believe most of it, but I can't debate because I never remember the specifics. Also, I don't really care what other people believe anyway so there's no point in debate. I also do that Roark thing where I don't pay attention to people in the street. I'm always worried philosophy classes will turn all socialist. They were already throwing the word 'selfish' around in the first class today. I'm not looking for trouble, but I won't go quietly.

PSM seminar is going to make a pain of itself to start with, but then the whole second half of the term is making web pages. Hell, I could sleep through that. Just knowing how to get into my OSU FTP is like a million bonus points.

Speaking of websites, I added a couple game reviews to my much neglected MSU site.

The Nice Device released a song that's going to be on their new album. I can't wait until I can get my hands on that. They apparently have the final mixes in hand. I'll probably have to go to a show to buy it though. I really liked them the first time I saw them, but the second show wasn't quite as good. Part of it was just the sound. "Girls and tuning don't mix." -- Alicia Gbur, retuning after a couple songs.

I saw the Miami Vice trailer online. I thought it looked pretty good, until I stripped out the Linkin Park song they used, the fact that I played Vice City and the Ferrari 360. Then it looked awful. I have never actually seen Miami Vice, so I have no idea what the show was supposed to be like. Remember, 'Miami' spelled backwards is ' I Maim'.

My wireless keyboard shipped and should be here Thursday. Should be cool.

I'm a good chunk of the way into my latest book, Germany's Last Mission To Japan: The Failed Voyage of U-234. It's an interesting piece of history, but sadly you might not realize that from the book. It is kind of tepid when talking directly about U-234, and it also has a tendency to go off and talk about the war as a whole and make some sweeping claims in passing when it should be talking about rogue Nazi submarines. The book's organization is a little odd too. My tome on cryptology that I am excited to read arrived yesterday from UPS with the rest of my stuff from home, so I might start chipping away at that after I finish the U-234 book.

a hybrid of hundreds of troubles

Here we go again. Tomorrow I start my second term at Oregon State. I've been getting stuff organized - as you can see below, I got a new desk (or rather, an actual desk). I'm still getting used to the new setup. I ordered a wireless keyboard, which should be nice. I also like the monitor riser I put Freeman on, it gives me a little extra space and I think it helps with cooling too. My class load should be lighter this term, and I don't have my stupid comm class anymore, but I do have to figure out what's going on with the biodiesel stuff.

I've also been playing some games since I got back. I did my first run through Ace Combat 5, and I've been progressing in Need For Speed: Most Wanted as well. I am very good at getting pink slips in that game, I won both my Lamborghini Gallardo and C6 Corvette instead of having to buy them. I also unlocked one of the ultimate planes in AC5 - it even has a laser - but I have nowhere enough money to buy it.

There was an article in the latest Car and Driver about hybrids vs. regular cars. I was thinking about getting a Prius when I finally get a real job, but then the new Civic hybrid caught my eye. But apparently the regular Civic is almost as good, so now I'm just looking at that kind of car, but I don't really want to get rid of the Malibu to get the same kind of car so I'll probably just wait until the Malibu is about to die. I did see that Chevrolet is finally doing a Malibu SS for 2006, it's about time.

new desk

Before.

After.

it's the last major festival dance-wise of 1999

Spaghettios have never tasted as good to me as they do now. I have been subsisting on token airplane foods all day. I think my proper lunchtime occured when I was in the air. I fully intended to get a good meal for lunch/dinner in Las Vegas, but their food court was closed! Then I was going to get a good meal in Portland waiting for the shuttle bus, but the plane out of Vegas was over an hour late, so I barely caught the shuttle. Which takes another two hours to get to Corvallis. So now I am eating whatever is left in my cupboards, which is all my canned foods.

I killed time on the planes today by rereading The Cardinal of the Kremlin. It's not Tom Clancy's finest, but it passed the time. Several parts of the book just seem like The Hunt for Red October Part II instead of a new book. I finished the book just as I got on the shuttle, but I had a loaded iPod in reserve.

I went to Fischer's New Year LAN earlier this week. It's been a while since I've been to one of those. I did good in fy_iceworld, my specialty, but not much of that was played. I did like the new mod SourceForts, but it isn't quite polished enough yet. We also played some of Fischer's "Red" mod, which I was awful at because I'd never played it before.

I've also been working my way through Need for Speed: Most Wanted. I have a Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution, so I'm a happy guy. If I could get a Lamborghini Gallardo I would be set. Freeman doesn't run that game nearly as well as Jim's computer does, which is sad. However my biggest problem was Freeman's keyboard, which has been taking a beating from computer games. So I went out and bought a $10 USB keyboard, and it's definitely much better for gaming. I also have a new USB hub that is much better than the one I had before. I think a wireless keyboard would be even nicer, but I haven't seen any I like yet.

Anyway, travelling sucks, I'm back in Oregon, and I'm going to get some rest.

new year

2006 is here. To me it is just the year I have to get through to get to 2007, when I graduate. Again. Sooner or later, one of these graduations is going to take.

I am not a big holiday person, I just chilled for New Year's Eve. Christmas was good, but I like being able to settle back into the normal routine again. Among other things I got a new cell phone (same phone number though, don't worry), the Band of Brothers DVD set, a carrying case for poker stuff, David Kahn's The Codebreakers, and Ace Combat 05.

I fly back to Oregon on Wednesday so I am scrambling around trying to get everything in Michigan done. I have a lot of stuff to take care of in Oregon too. I haven't gotten anything done that I should have.

Anyway, I'm going to celebrate the new year by sitting in the hot tub.