2008

2008 has not been kind so far. My computer got bogged down with some nasty malware, my diploma still hasn't come in the mail.

The worst offender by far though is Southwest Airlines, notably their Chicago branch. They caused my flight to be late out of Detroit, then they told me I only had 10 minutes to catch my connection, then the connection sat on the ground for an hour waiting for luggage to be loaded, the plane ended up having some loser with a peanut allergy on board so nobody was allowed to eat anything, and then when I finally got to Portland my luggage was still in Chicago.

The luggage office told me my stuff would be on the first flight to Portland the next morning, but as it turns out they can't find their asses with both hands so my bags were still MIA last night until 11PM when they tried calling me to say they turned up, even though I had gone to bed at 9 because I am still jet lagged. Southwest then tried putting my luggage on a midnight delivery truck so I have a voicemail from some Russian truck driver at 2AM wondering where I was. I appreciate their urgency but that was a little silly.

merriment

Christmas today. Among other things I got the entire set of Northern Exposure, a TV show I've vaguely heard good things about but I've been oblivious of it until now. Checking that out should be neat, especially with normal TV running completely on empty now - no Heroes, no Top Gear, no QI, nothing. Tomorrow will be Lansing for Christmas with grandparents. I haven't been up there in a long time, and I've not really been out and about since I got back except for a pizza run.

With Christmas festivities almost over I can try and concentrate on making the most out of being in Michigan. Unfortunately I caught a minor cold en route, so I have been a little out of it since I got back.

where will you be when this is through

Much quieter today with no family xmas events. I even managed to divert the CTS for the purpose of going to Gregg's for lunch. I am trying to pull down the last Top Gear of the series but the time zone difference is not as favorable here. I dug around my local book collection and found Player Piano by Vonnegut, but it's not great. My family has finished wrapping presents but we still have to wait another stinking day until we can unwrap them.

I'm sad I'm going to be missing the Detroit auto show because they will have both a Corvette ZR1 and an R8 convertible. Audi might also bring a V10 R8 if they can figure out how to make one that doesn't burst into flames. My extended family is praising the virtues of upcoming 'clean diesels' but I still have my heart set on the last bastions of petrol, before the new MPG laws ruin anything interesting.

I am continuing to apply labels to the archives as I see fit. It's somewhat bizarre because for the most part I am going backwards, so a post about 'went to see the Hard Lessons' is followed by 'Hard Lessons in one week!'. A minor disclaimer is that I am also engaging in some limited revisionist history, mostly tweaking hindsightedly stupid lines and removing italics applied for similarity to Tycho's writing style.

I also ran this URL through a blog readability tester and I've apparently been upgraded from high school to genius, despite my continuing to rant about cars and technology as usual.

holiday season

Finally getting near the holidays. So far the only decorations I have is Christmas lights on the floor. It did actually snow yesterday - just barely, but still. I did find the two radio stations playing Christmas music, but shortly after I did one of them started playing Kenny G and the other went to a bunch of annoying ads so I had to turn it off.

happy new yar

2006 was really just a year I needed to pass through to get from 2005 to 2007. This year should be big for me though.

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.

dreiundzwanzig

I'm not 22 anymore.

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.

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.

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.

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.

double deuce

It's my birthday! I'm 22.