we've got a wave in the air

I had an interview for an internship/job last Friday and it went pretty well. The company called and wants me back for a second interview, so I have to drive most of the way to Portland again to talk to some other people.

So with the prospect of actually making some money around the corner, I have been daydreaming what I might do with some of it. I am thinking of building a serious new desktop PC, but I am not really in a rush, especially with a whole new batch of components about to come out (like 45 nm CPUs and 1TB hard drives). There also isn't a hell of a lot coming out to force on upgrade on my part. The only think I might actually pick up is a big LCD monitor, which I could use right now with my laptop and then I'd have one for when I eventually build a new machine. A really nice LCD monitor only costs as much now as the first 15" one I bought several years ago.

There's also the matter of next gen consoles. I still think the Xbox is for Halo-playing frat boys, so that is probably out. I gave the Wii a try but I did not like it, and Nintendo is a little childish for me. So that leaves the PS3. Its ungodly price tag is an issue, but one that can be remedied with an actual paycheck and enough time. A bigger problem for me is that no one has actually released anything decent for it yet. For example, the one game that the guys at Penny Arcade like (flOw) is just a next gen version of Snake. Which is stupid.

So what games might make me change my mind? Final Fantasy XIII might, if it looks better than XII. I've heard rumors of a new Ratchet & Clank game, but I am a little wary because the series is already getting a little tired. A new Mercenaries game is in the works, but that is a ways off, as is a new Gran Turismo. A new Kingdom Hearts would also be nice, but I think that's a long ways off, and I haven't heard of any plans to bring Ace Combat to the PS3. All of these games are expected in Q4 2007 at the earliest, so I certainly have plenty of time to think about it.

i'm gonna tell you that i'm innocent

Here is what I have left from my epic battle with a bag of Cheetos.

As you may have inferred, I have a working camera. I broke down and bought another one exactly like mine from Newegg. It was only $99 for an OEM one and I figure I could easily rack up that much having someone look at my broken one. While I was on Newegg I also got a 2GB memory card for my camera, so I can take an obscene number of pictures now.

Unfortunately I have just been working on computational physics all day so I didn't get to try out the camera much. It's been rainy out anyway.

in the name of science

Yesterday was the weekly TA meeting to go over the next week's physics lab. In this case it's the thermodynamics lab, and one of the main attractions is burning a Cheeto to calculate how much energy it contains. One of the other TAs is Ukrainian and so had no idea what a Cheeto was, so I offered to go get some out of a vending machine. I also wanted to burn one to show the others how much the things go up.

So I wandered over to the business building's vending machine. I opened my wallet to find that I had spent my last $1 bills earlier that day (on a used Asimov book), and all I had was a five. I tried giving it to the machine but it wouldn't take it.

This was annoying, but I had a cunning plan. Next to the snack machine was one of Pepsi's slick new vending machines, which does take fives. So I'll use my five to get a Mt. Dew, get change back, and use that to get Cheetos. I put my five in the Pepsi machine, punched Mt. Dew, and waited for the fountain of quarters to spit out.

It gave me three Sacagaweas and a Susan B. Anthony.

I was a little stunned that anything would dispense these useless forms of currency. I tried them on the snack machine anyway, but to no avail.

So now I needed to trade one of these coins in for something more useful. There was a girl working the tech support desk in the computer lab next door so I tried her first. "Excuse me," I said, "I'm trying to get some Cheetos for a physics experiment..." and went on to explain my plight. Unfortunately, when I'd finished, the girl said the smallest thing she had was a five, which would have simply put me back at square one.

I then crashed the study lounge, where I found a guy and a girl working on something together. The girl sounded French and had no idea what currency I was in possession of. The guy was amused though, and bought the Susan B. Anthony off of me.

Now armed with a $1 bill, I returned to ground zero of this farce, the snack machine. I put it in and punched in the code for Cheetos. You should see what's coming next.

The Cheetos got stuck and wouldn't come out.

I began to despair at the prospect of obtaining another $1 bill. I didn't want to go through that again if at all possible, so I rocked the machine a little. The Cheetos did not budge at first, but slowly started to lean more and more. Finally, they yielded to gravity and fell.

Triumphant, I returned to the physics lab and set fire to one of the damned things.

chair affair

My computer chair broke this morning. Oddly enough, the failure mode was not what I have been anticipating for months. I thought the whole seat would crack off at the base since it wobbles from side to side, but as I was getting out of it this morning one of the arms sheared off, compromising the structural integrity. Didn't see that one coming. That chair lasted 14 months, blowing away the previous record of 3.

I got a new chair already, which put me down $130. The new chair seems pretty nice, but as I was putting it together I could only wonder which piece would be the first to betray me. I've already found the microfiber fabric does a good job of building up static electricity.