it's easier to be broken

I had a bit of a surprise at work today when I check my calendar and found I'd been signed up for a reliability statistics class. This was set up weeks ago but I will forget anything set up more than a week in advance. The instructor is a physics Ph.D. who retired and teaches physics, with this on the side.

He gave us homework.

I was amused and procrastinated so I could finish the last main objectives in Spore and do my laundry. So I waited to the last minute as usual. I finally got it done but it was a pain. This is why I LEFT school.

At least I have Monday off as a personal day. And the only person who knows (my boss) probably forgot.

drive until you lose the road

I signed up for an advanced driver's ed class at PIR. I was not able to swing it so I could take a day off and do that instead of work, but it should still be good. We'll see if they kick me out.

Since I finished that Brian Greene book I went back to my limited book collection and dug out an Asimov, one of my favorite authors.

LHC is finally being ramped to full power on Wednesday, although that is only for one beam - collisions won't take place for another two months, and then it will take six months just for them to figure out the first data. I have mixed feelings about HEP but I'm interested to see what they can find.

the weight of storm on memories

I finally finished reading The Fabric of the Cosmos. I got the book when it came out several years ago, but it came at as bad time as I was working out how to exit physics at that point. The first time I didn't even make it through the first chapter before I got fed up with the theories Greene brought up; fortunately after forcing myself through they turned out to be crap in the end. The book is OK - the first section is kind of annoying because Greene has to build up the current picture through history. The middle section is pretty good and has some interesting ideas. The last section of the book is pretty much just a rehashing of The Elegant Universe. The book is now four years old but I don't know how much further the new theories have gotten since they've just been finishing LHC in that time.

It's the time of year when a bunch of new games come out and I have been occupied with Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09 and Mercenaries 2. Which are pretty much exact opposites. My 360 was in a bad way the day I got Tiger Woods, but it somehow got over it and hasn't had any troubles since.

As for the games themselves, they are both sequels and don't seem quite as good as the previous incarnations. Tiger Woods 09 is just an evolution of last year's game. It does feature a new dynamic attribute system, but since I don't play like a normal person at least one of my attributes will take a whack after each round. Mercenaries 2 is more of a letdown - the original game was more organized and focused with the 'deck of cards' and the story was deeper. Mercs 2 also seems easier and shorter than the original. It's still pretty fun but won't be something I play over and over.

don't know how to play my part

Tried to go check out a Firebird today, but the guy flaked out and I wasn't able to meet up with him. Along the way I got cut off big time by a guy in a big stupid truck, but I was able to cut back in front of him without further escalation. There was also a guy in a Jeep driving along wearing two hats at the same time. Which means he thought to himself, No. One hat is insufficient for this situation.

rss

It looks like Craigslist changed something about how they organize cars and it screwed up my RSS feeds, so now I have to go update all 9 of them.

On Friday I decided to clean up the Wikipedia entry for the Genesis Coupe. I didn't think it was that bad but I edited every section, then reorganized the whole thing, and the more I look the more there is to edit. It was just kind of thrown together.

synergy or two

I decided to break out my geek skills on the Genesis Coupe website music. Using a Shockwave decompiler I was able to isolate the tracks, and I reintegrated them with ACID 5.0. Now I don't have to worry about what they are or losing them when the website gets updated. Still no news on when the car goes into production.

Continuing with the geek theme, I worked out that my policy of leaving fans on 24/7 means they represent about a quarter of all the power I use. I picked up some digital timers and now they will shut off while I'm at work and snap back on an hour before I get off work. Assuming people don't pull any more surprise 5:00 meetings. Like today.

is it better to be safe than sorry

The Malibu just had its first fill-up since getting the spark plugs changed, and it looks like that may have done a bit of good. It certainly wasn't any conscious effort to be more economical, because I got pulled over yesterday for speeding after I finally got off work - hosed again, the other quality person bailed around 4:30 without even asking if I could be the one who had to stay late.

style to spare

I just figured out what that song stuck in my head was! And no wonder it couldn't be found in my iTunes collection - it's from the website for the Genesis Coupe.

new grille

nothing to do but believe

I have a song stuck in my head. Just five notes of it, but it's driving me crazy. It seems like it's from a soundtrack. I thought it was Auto Rock by Mogwai but it isn't.

I'm taking a pass again on the '86 Firebird due to the dodgy brakes - me having to deal with it is one thing, but I don't want to put my friend (who will have to drive it first) in a bad position. Also that one is red. I don't want red. I found an '83 Camaro Z/28 but it doesn't have t-tops.

Of the two trainings I was scheduled for this morning, I opted for the one offsite, which apparently caused a great deal of trouble at work as everyone had forgotten about the other training. Process guy postulated that I may have crashed my car and then helpfully pitched in by eating my lunch for me. I had no opportunity for that though - traffic was slow and spread out enough to prevent any exuberance.