electrical devices that transfer energy from one circuit to another by magnetic coupling

TRANSFORMERS.

Because the only thing cooler than a Veyron...

...is a Veyron with rocket launchers.

you've no idea what you're like

I was at the Pontiac website today and they had a feature on countering excuses to not get a convertible. Their defense basically boiled down to "man up." They didn't actually address the concerns I have actually heard about convertibles - they have no space and when you take the roof off of a car, you lose torsional stiffness unless you put huge steel beams in the sides that add weight and spoil the performance.

Whatever. I wasn't at the Pontiac website to look at convertibles. I was there for this, which is now my new car to dream about buying. It's the Grand Prix replacement, the G8. Top Gear had the Vauxhall VXR8 on display in a recent episode, and I remembered hearing rumors that Pontiac might import and rebadge its own version of the Australian car it's based on, and apparently it shall come to pass. The G8 GT is supposed to have 362 HP, and I'm guessing the GTP model would be around the Vauxhall's 420 HP (before the supercharger kit.)

For those of you playing along at home, the G8 is actually a step back from the brink of total irresponsibility. Once upon a time I wanted a Prius above all else. Then the new Civic got Car of the Year from Motor Trend, and I thought about the hybrid a little bit. But then it turns out the normal one is almost as eco-friendly and actually moves. Then once you think about the Civic, there's a thought about the Si model, the hot one. But once you get that far there start to be similar GM products, and the GM equivalent would roughly be a Cobalt SS. I respect the Cobalt, but I'm used to the Malibu which is the next step up. There is a Malibu SS, but it didn't really catch my fancy.

Around this time its cousin the Saturn Aura was coming out, and I actually test drove a base model, but a little while after this the Aura's UK origin, the Vauxhall Vectra, was on Top Gear, and the Vectra is far from JC's favorite car. So I started looking at other cars in this class. Fischer had been down in Corvallis around then, and his G6 didn't seem too bad. So since then I have been lusting after the G6, particularly the top-end GTP model because it's got some options you can't get in the other ones, and also a good sized V6 with a little more power than the Malibu's got. I also test drove a G6 and thought it was OK, although a bit tight for a big guy like me. This has pretty much where I've been for the past few months, until PJ got a real job, got internet again and implanted an evil idea in my head because it's been rattling around in his. It can almost be rationalized. And so I've gone from wanting a Prius to wanting a muscle car.

The G8 is therefore a slightly more rational choice. It's a sedan and not a coupe. Maybe it has better trunk space or something too. That's about all I can think of. Perhaps only 97% as irresponsible as the alternative. It would certainly be more interesting than a G6 though, especially with RWD and a V8 with a hundred and ten more horsepower, and possibly more on the way. That's quite a bit. It almost makes me stop and wonder how much is enough. 362 HP is probably twice as much as my Malibu, and that 420 HP in the Vauxhall is comparable to something like an Audi RS4 or a BMW M3. Power is good, but I don't want a car that is so twitchy if I barely touch the gas pedal it tears off at 100 MPH and torque steers into a tree. I think I would be plenty happy with having the GT instead of a GTP.

she said the satellite is coming

Today was the last day of classes for the term, so I don't have to take classes anymore. Ever. The prospective grads came through today but I only came onto campus late in the day for my one class. There was an informal poster session after that to show the prospectives what the other grads are working on. I didn't have to do anything because I don't do research. This was the first time I'd seen some of the older grads in a while and it was good interacting with them again. Them talking about their research emphasized how much more knowledge they've absorbed as fifth-years, but on the flip side I'm going to have a real paycheck in the near future. All I have to do now before moving is clear out the last of the assignments that have piled up and do finals, but tomorrow I am going out to the coast with the prospective grads and that will be a nice break.

moldy

I have been kicking ass and taking names in my computational physics class, so it's annoying when a project finally gets the best of me. It's mostly the prof's fault. Up until that assignment we had been doing Metropolis Monte Carlo stuff, and we had started with something simple and built on that over several weeks. Even in the end we were still only simulated a 2D square lattice with nearest neighbors only. Then the prof turns around and tells us we had one week to make a molecular dynamics program (which is completely different), with a 3D FCC lattice, and make measurements of temperature and pressure. I wasn't even able to work on it the over the weekend because I had to grade the stupid PH212 midterms. The prof eventually realized the folly of his ways and gave us an extra week, but that second week he was at APS so nobody could ask questions. In the end I probably got further than anyone else - I initialized positions and velocities properly, got the forces working, and even had energy conserved. But when I tried to measure the temperature I got something like 10^20, so I decided that was a good place to stop. My friend asked for and got another week's extension, but I have wasted enough time on that timesink. The rest of my schoolwork has been piling up.

you'll begin to wonder why you came

Big news. I had a second interview and got an internship, and they seem pretty insistant that I stay on afterward too. The company makes things like pacemakers and implantable defibrillators, and they are hiring me on as a component quality engineer. So at the end of the month I have to pack everything up, move up near Portland, and start my three month internship. It looks like I will end up doing my defense/oral exam sometime in mid-July, and then I'll have my Master's degree.

So in celebration of getting an internship, I bought a 19" LCD monitor. It looked normal in the store but once you put something like that on your desk, you realize it's big. I switched away from widescreen so I am enjoying having extra vertical room again.

scrubbed

Scrubs has jumped the shark. That may be obvious to you, or more likely you don't care, but it annoys me and when I get annoyed I rant. It was bad enough when they decided to make everyone have a baby at once. Then they start giving all the characters diseases - Turk having diabetes is OK, but now JD has something or other so he "passes out when he poos." Poop jokes - always a sign of high level writing. Last week they decided to run a clip show which was awful, as soon as I figured that out I deleted it. I even went to the site jumptheshark.com and Scrubs satisfies quite a few of their criteria. (Apparently there are such criteria, and people with nothing better to do than apply them.)