Dave and Pippa's New Year's Punchline of the night...

PIPPA: they are so hard up for talent they have Beyonce's sister performing

DAVE: um..

DAVE: Bedandbathcé ?

and to all a goodnight...

Pretty good Xmas all around, faithful readers. Now the real fun begins. Fourteen hour drive to Chicago for Xmas #2 with the inlaws... back home on New Years for Xmas #3 with my Mom an brother et. al. Let's hope the new DS and games and books do the trick in the van. I'm cautiously optimistic. (Inexplicably so.) I'm very tired from packing and a little sick from eating nothing but cookies, chocolate and mint all fucking day. But I'm still my usual festive self. No... really...

feelin' minnesota ...

As if it's not bad enough that I have to shovel the driveway when it's 7 in the morning and 7 fucking degrees out, but every fucking time, it must be preceded by the HUNT FOR THE SNOW SHOVELS, which have invariably been fucked with by the kids the day before and are either A) invisibly buried somewhere in the middle of the lawn, or 2) have been left over some neighbor's house and swapped with a fucking inferior shovel, often a child's size thing with which I am unable to reach the fucking ground.

It's the most objectionable household chore I have to do, the least I can ask is to have the PROPER FUCKING TOOLS to do it with. This morning I issued a decree that NO ONE IN THIS HOUSE IS TO TOUCH A SNOW SHOVEL EVER AGAIN EXCEPT *ME*. I have no confidence whatsoever that my warnings will be heeded.

Did I mention it was 7º? And windy?

dave will be rooting for the forest-fire next time...

For the second time, I fell victim to the glassy-eyed, herbivorous suicide bombers that line my morning commute. They stand there in the bushes like big, stupid, hoofed time-bombs, staring at the road, ready to spring into action. By the time I saw mine it was too late to brake, or even swerve more than a little bit. It slammed hard against my passenger side door. Thank god for the cheapass all-plastic construction of modern cars, the thing basically *bounced* off and the door flexed back into shape, leaving nothing but a couple of deep black hoof-scuffs near the bottom.

So... mission NOT accomplished you little white-tailed motherfucker. How many of you do I have to fucking maim before natural selection kicks in? And if this is some kind of revenge for the whole "hunting season" thing... jump at a fucking pickup, not a red sportscar. I've got nothing to do with it. But I'm starting to consider taking it up as a hobby.

icy weather, cold fusion, and the laws of thermodynamics...

Kind of a shitty morning... about an inch of snow/ice mix all over everything, but I had to take the early train in b/c I have an exam this morning. And not only have I not really finished writing it (much less printing and copying it) but I need to allow for a couple of emergencies and delays... I can't take the risk of taking the Last Chance Train at 7:30.

So here I am. Me and my laptop and my fucking reading glasses, which I find myself wearing more and more lately. I think after xmas it's time for a trip to Lenscrafters for some fucking bifocals. Fuck. In class yesterday we were using the Pons and Fleishman "cold fusion" debacle as a case study for the reaction of the scientific community to violations of the peer review protocol (fascinating, right?) and I realized that the Pons and Fleishman "cold fusion" debacle happened basically TWENTY YEARS AGO. How is that possible? How can I have been in COLLEGE twenty years ago?? Fuck.

Anyway, I'm giving my first final today, which means I get to sit w/ my feet up on the desk while all the students write furiously (love that!) and write up my personal reflection on course the semester. (Preview: It sucked.)

Meanwhile, in another window, I'm trimming questions out of the final exam. Reason? I'm teaching 3 classes this semester, and I'm trying to cut down on the grading. If a 5-page rather than a 6-page final can contribute to that cause... I'm willing to sacrifice the comprehensive completeness of the final for that. Besides... I think it's still a pretty good exam. Interested?

1) Imagine the following scenario: You make hot cup of tea to help you stay up late and study for your physics final. The phone rings. You set your hot tea down to go answer the phone. You come back a half hour later to find your tea is now lukewarm. Explain what has just happened in terms of the caloric theory of heat.
2) Now take the same scenario above and explain what has just happened in terms of the kinetic theory of heat.
3) What observations and experiments by Count Rumford led him to reject the idea of ”caloric” ?
4) What is the difference between heat and temperature?
5) You can safely reach into a 400ºF oven and touch the top of a cake with your finger to test and see if it is “done”. But if your hand touches the rack, or the cake pan, you will be burned. Why is it safe to touch the 400º cake and the 400º air, but not the 400º metal?
6) State the First Law of Thermodynamics below...
7) State the “Zeroth” Law of Thermodynamics below. Why is this law necessary, and why is it numbered “0” instead of “1”?
8) State the Second Law of Thermodynamics in as many ways as you can. (In terms of entropy, in terms of engines, in terms of heat flow, etc...)
9) State the Third Law of Thermodynamics below…
10) Explain as best you can what physicists mean by the term “entropy”. What is the difference between a low entropy and a high entropy system?
11) Explain the meaning of the statement “Equilibrium = Death”.
12) Briefly describe the “Maxwell’s Demon” thought-experiment?. What point was James Clerk Maxwell trying to make with his scenario?
13) What are some of the practical and theoretical obstacles to achieving a temperature of "absolute zero"?

Now that I look at that, I'll probably re-word a couple of them, but... yeah, that's basically gonna be it. I kinda love writing exams. If only I didn't have to grade them.

How was the birthday party, Dave...?



"AARRRRGHH!!"

Pirate Map..., originally uploaded by doctordavepix.

This is the kind of project I take far too seriously... a 36" x 24" pirate map for a "Pin The X" game at the boy's birthday party. You don't want to know how much of my afternoon was taken up with this.

yawn...

I had hoped that this "cup of tea on the train" would be a life-changing addition to my morning routine, but... turns out it only works at 7:30. No amount of caffeine can make me not feel like shit at 6:30.

I'm going in early today because we're doing a "lab" in physics class. We're measuring the value of absolute zero. That sounds like something exciting and modern that would involve hi-tech cryogenic systems or something, but really it's just sticking a pressure gauge thingy into a bunch of liquids that are different temperatures. I need to get ice.

Speaking of cold, I went out to "warm up" my car this morning, only to discover that it was 52º outside. And drizzly. Yay! Spring is here!!

morning...

First off, I'm sneezy as all hell this morning. I'd like to scratch out the inside of my right nostril with a wire test-tube brush. Are there allergens that can survive when it's 12º out?

Second, it's amazing how susceptible I am to the power of suggestion when it comes to snow. A single flake-thick dusting on the cars and the driveway, and it feels 20º colder than it actually is. It damn sure better get above 40º at some point this week if someone is expecting me to hang Xmas lights.

But the real reason I'm writing is to avoid grading. No. Not true. I'm going to grade. I have to. I've reached the critical point where, if I don't do it NOW, it's never going to get done. So I got an extra hour of sleep, a big cup of Earl Grey tea, and I'm gonna dive into this stack of assignments now.

Oh, wait... maybe I have to write up an answer key first! That's KIND OF like grading!

MEMO: Shortlist anyone with the nickname "Mad Eye"...

Our university is losing yet another Provost... this time, to Obama's transition team at the DoD. I think that may make the 4th person in 6 years. The position of provost at this institution has all the stability of Defense Against the Dark Arts instructor at Hogwarts.

dozen...

Twleve is a perfectly good number for...

* eggs
* donuts
* jurors
* days of Xmas
* disciples

... however it is NOT an acceptable number for the temperature in degrees Fahrenheit.

I'm sorry... I know I bitch about the weather a lot, but the truth is, I can handle the 20s and 30s. I don't LIKE it, but I can deal with it. It's only when the temperature gets below the teens that I start to deeply resent the very molecules of the air for their lack of kinetic energy.

blackout...

Somewhere I got this free pair of sunglasses... a sort of wraparound, Terminator, visor-like pair with mirrored lenses. Now regular sunglasses are basically useless to me, since I wear glasses, but there was something about this pair and how closely they fit against my face that gave me an idea, so I've kept them for around a year. I had a plan.

Last night I grabbed a utility knife and a roll of electrical tape and taped off the lenses on the inside. Since the lenses are mirrored on the outside, you can't tell anything is different. But now instead of a pair of sunglasses I have a commuter sleep-mask that I can wear on the train or an airplane and not look like an idiot wearing some satin number from Bed Bath & Beyond. Just a guy wearing somewhat inexplicably retro sunglasses.

I plan to test-nap them this morning. Any guesses as to how long until these things cause me to sleep past my stop?



[Ed. to add: Verdict? AWESOME!]

pet (sheep) peeve...

Reading a post on Boing Boing that includes the phrase "...photo of decapitated sheep heads..." About once a month it seems like I come across mention of a decapitated head and it makes me crazy. You can't have a decapitated head. "Decapitate" means to cut the head OFF of something. A decapitated head would therefore be a head without a head. You can have a severed head. You can have "the head of a decapitated sheep". But there is no such entity as a decapitated head.

It feels good to get that off my chest. Or out of my head.

december preview...

I feel like I've blogged about the holiday weekend, but I guess I haven't... only Twittered. Not much to say. Thursday we cooked way too much food for just the 4 of us, considering the 2 small people don't eat anything that isn't made primarily of bread + cheese. Friday the wife went shopping and I hung around at home with the kids. Saturday we cleaned the house and found an Outback gift card, so we went out to dinner and I had tilapia that made me sick. Sunday it was grey and snowy so I mostly napped.

Four days off? WASTED!

So here I am on the train with a big bag full of grading that I really do not feel up to. But if I don't get it done this week, it's going to overlap with the end-of-the-term grading that's going to start rolling in soon. Looking at the calendar is a little bit scary. There are really only 3 weeks of classes left, which means... 6 meetings of each of my three courses... the last of which is typically the final exam, so really FIVE more teaching periods for each class. Which I guess feels about right in terms of what there is left to teach in most of them. It's always a strange feeling, though.

There are a bunch of parties on the calendar too. Two for work (an alumni party and the faculty holiday party) and two for home (the Boy's birthday and a possible holiday "open house" for friends and such). I will leave the situation of 4 parties in three weeks to stand on its own without further comment.

Xmas shopping is well under way at our house. The big stuff for the kids is mostly done... karaoke machine, Nintendo DS, a boatload of Wii games. I have a handful of books and small stuff for the wife on the way via the Amazon. I'll probably pick up some nice jewelry from a catalog she was oohing-and-aaahing over the other day. We're trying to cut back a little this year, so that will probably be the end of it.

The Xmas holiday is looking pretty hectic. We're planning to celebrate Christmas morning at home with the kids, then pile into the van the next day and drive to Chicago to the wife's parents. The plan is to make it all in one day, but... we're talking 12-14 hours of driving, so... I dunno. I'm not even sure a pile of brand-new video games can make that drive workable. The plan is to stay the week, then drive home on New Year's day. Then the next day, my Mom will drive up from Baltimore to NY, and we'll have THAT half of Christmas. It looks sort of barely plausible on paper, but... I'm a little worried about how it will play out in reality.

Just for fun, I looked ahead to January to see if anything else is on my calendar. Turns out that January 15th is the deadline for submissions for the National Science Teacher's Association conference in Philadelphia... in 2010!!!. It is totally not cool that the first thing on my calendar in 2009 is something I have to plan for in 2010. I mean shit... isn't the world supposed to end in 2012 ANYWAY? Let's not rush things.

[EDITED TO ADD..]

I should know not to tempt fate. Not ten minutes after sitting down at my desk and posting this, I got an email from my consulting gig asking me to attend a meeting in San Antonio from the 15th thru the 17th of January. Oh well, at least it's free. And warm!

lost focus...

I mean... in the WORST way, and in EVERY sense. Work, house, fitness... it's all fucking falling apart, and my only response is to find more ways to waste time and disconnect. I swear to god, I might as well ask for World of Warcraft for Xmas if I'm going to neglect reality this completely.

a band of daves...

So, since I dropped $250 on a Boss LoopStation, this is essentially what I've been doing with every spare minute of my time.

(new: now embedded)



Exceedingly too much fun.

alpha geeks...

I consider myself somewhat of a geek, but the guy across the aisle on the train has a 17" MacbookPro on which he is simultaneously watching anime and coding a flight-simulator.

Dude... I can't compete with that.

Speaking of geekery, one of our reluctant-favorite shows around the house has become "Big Bang Theory". I didn't really want to like it, but it's pretty damned funny. My wife, being married to a physicist, takes a little too much joy in the show... often in a sort of meta-way, as part of the enjoyment for her comes from ruthlessly mocking me every time I pre-laugh in anticipation of the punch line of a joke about calculus or Star Trek. One memorable occasion involved me muttering the words "Pon Faar" a full second before one of the characters on the show. The dialogue that pleased us the most this week went something like...

GIRL: So, how was YOUR day at work?
LEONARD: Me? Well... I'm a physicist, so... I thought about some stuff...?
GIRL: That's it?
LEONARD: I wrote some of it down.

Meanwhile on the sofa...

DAVE: (stifles a giggle, wipes away tear)
WIFE: Hitting a little close to home over there?
DAVE: I didn't even write any of it down!
WIFE: I'm going to ask you that question every day now, and THAT'S THE ANSWER I EXPECT.

suck it, Bawb...

So, this was to be the final weekend of the bathroom renovation. All the tiling and painting has been done for quite some time. I finally got the molding and chair rail up. Now it's time for the vanity and sink.

First problem, the supply lines come out of the floor, and the vanity has a solid bottom, so the jigsaw is involved. Cutting big holes in brand new pieces of furniture is the kind of thing that usually makes me uncomfortable, but... no problems were encountered.

Slide the vanity over the pipes, drop sink on top, open box with the faucet in it. The drain assembly has a tailpiece that extends below the sink train. Instructions say, simply... "Connect tailpiece to drain." I drop the piece in place and stare at it. The end of the tailpiece is about 5" above the existing drain pipe. WTF? Am I missing a piece? I go online and look up a bunch of sink-installing-tutorials and every fucking one of them says "connect tailpiece to drain" as if by magic everything is supposed to line up. I look at the tailpiece from the old sink and it looks just like this one. IS THIS SINK REALLY 6" TALLER THAN OUR OLD SINK??

Also just for kicks I try to attach the supply lines I bought. My father in law initially bought ones that were WAY too short (12"). I bought some 20" ones, only to now find that they should be 3/8" on the inlet and the ones I bought were 1/2". Seriously... how hard could it be to fucking standardize this shit?

I hop in the car and drive down the local hardware store. Pick up the right supply lines and a 6" extension piece that looks like it will do the trick between the sink drain and the existing plumbing. Feeling pretty good, I take the stuff home and put it in place.

New problem. The existing drain plumbing comes out of the wall about 1/2" FARTHER than the new sink drain. Meaning that now that I have enough bits of plastic pipe to actually REACH one another, they don't actually LINE UP. I yank on the pipe to see if there is enough play to get things to mate, and while I could probably force it, I don't want the sink to be in constant tension AWAY from the wall. And I do NOT want to re-do all the PVC S-trap bullshit myself.

At this point, I'm really, really frustrated and give up for the day.

So, Sunday. While the wife and kids are at riding lessons, I drive to Lowes and find the solution that I hoped existed... a 6" extension with a Silly-Straw section that allows for some bending. Now why can't all those tutorials about how to install a sink have a footnote that says - "Connect tailpiece to drain. Oh, and if it doesn't reach, Lowes sells these bendy Silly Straw extension things that you can use to line shit up."...? So. After a brief detour at B&N for tea/scone (It's still early!) I head home, victorious, with my Silly Straw drain extension doodad.

Sink off, Silly Straw in place, drain extension in, sink back on... it takes some fucking-with but eventually it drops into place. Sigh. Ok.

Mind you, this has all been dry-run... nothing is being REALLY connected. I stand back and look at the vanity. Let me also remind you that this is a tiny "powder-room". I can't remember how wide it is... less than 3' I know, because I couldn't use my 3' level to hang the light fixture... it doesn't fit in the room. Let's say the room is 32" wide and the vanity is 26" wide. That leaves 3" on each side. Of course it's not EXACTLY 3", because the vanity has to be put where the PIPES are, and the pipes aren't centered. Which means that, until I had the sink connected (not REALLY connected, just test-connected) I didn't know how much space would be on either side, so I couldn't install the little 3" (but not EXACTLY 3") pieces of moulding and chair rail on either side. The original plan was to install the vanity, then put the little pieces of trim in AFTERWARDS, but looking at the thing now... there is no WAY I'm gonna squeeze a hand in there to do that. So. Take off the sink, mark the vanity, measure the trim, cut the trim, nail the trim, break one piece of trim trying to hammer it in because it's fucking 2.5" long and made of of weird re-constituted not-quite-wood material... re-cut broken piece of trim...

NOW. I have to wood-putty and touch-up paint these new pieces of trim, since I won't be able to reach back there later, so... there is an hour and a half wait now to wait for the wood putty to dry in the nail-holes and corner-joints. Wait... sand... paint...

Ok. Vanity back in place between moulding. Sink on. Put one of the threaded couplings on the drain extension on upside down. Now I can't get it off, because I've caulked the sink in place and the pipes are all connected. Disconnect S-trap so I can get those pieces apart from underneath and put the coupling on right. Dump water from S-trap into a bowl. (The dog will later drink this water.) Connect drain. Ok. Now it's time to connect the supply lines. This involves lying on my back, wishing I had bought a "basin wrench" to reach up to the faucet. While on back, kick over Starbuck's cup, quite possibly tea-staining the brand new grout. Fuss with complicated drain-plug mechanism. Open supply lines. Cross fingers. Turn on water.

Success. Cold water comes out of the C, hot water out of the H... pull drain plug thing, stopper stops, sink fills, look underneath...

Drip, drip, drip...

Gah! Note: Don't run hot water into a sink when the silicone caulk around the drain hasn't dried. Actually, the nut that tightens the rubber gasket to the bottom side of the drain just needed to be tightened, but in the meantime I got semi-dissolved white silicone caulk all over my hands, some of which is still there this morning.

Tighten gasket. Fill sink. No more leaks. Hang mirror. It is now 7:00 PM, Sunday.

So, that was my weekend folks. If I recall, the Time/Life Bob Vila Home Improvement Book said that installing a sink should take 1-2 hours. If Bob Vila were here right now, I'd kick him right in the fucking nuts.

the stages of life so far...

Age 0-1: Awakened on weekends by child crying
Age 1-3: Awakened on weekends by spouse yelling at child
Age 3-5: Awakened on weekends by children yelling at each other
Age 5-?: Awakened on weekends by children or spouse yelling at DOG

Someday before I die, I would like to be awakened on a Saturday by something other than YELLING.

sometimes the stereotypes are true...

The philosophy class went really well. It's always a treat to get to talk spontaneously on a crazy physics topic (the notion of the "vacuum" in quantum mechanics) completely out-of-context in an environment where you bear no responsibility for what, if anything, the students learn.

Mostly I think the students were thrilled to have a lesson from someone who spoke above a mumble in sentences which seemed vaguely connected to one another into coherent thoughts. I swear, this guy was a disheveled, stuffy, British, and rambly as you could possibly hope a graduate professor of Philosophy to be. I can't IMAGINE having to sit thru a class like that from 6:00 - 8:00 PM every week!!

cutespirational...

Still coming down from the election-driven obsession with fivethirtyeight.com and NPR. And yet I'm still watching a backlog of podcasts and stuff on my computer. Two observations about a "behind the scenes" video from the Democratic convention...

1) Watching a scene of Barack and Michelle scheming to take the girls on "Ellen" and not telling them that the other guests are the Jonas Brothers... these guys are just the most awesomely fucking cute first family EVER.

2) Watching a soundcheck for the convention in Denver - Obama manages to sound inspirational saying "Testing... One... Two... Three...". I'm not even joking.

NoBlogNoMo...

Aaah, the poor neglected blog. 3 days away at a conference, sitting in talks that bored me to tears... lounging in the hotel room at night... and STILL no blogging.

Truth is, I spent most of the conference sessions dealing with an email backlog and various must-be-dealt-with problems of the minor-but-time-sensitive variety. There is an almost limitless supply of those this semester, it seems.

The end is in sight, though. I'm giving a guest lecture in a graduate philosophy class tonight, but after that, there are no more big "engagements". It's just me and my classes. Sure, I have a backlog of grading to catch up on, but... when do I NOT? But no conferences, film festivals, plays, planetarium shows, meetings, posters, flyers...

Of course, there is that whole Thanksgiving-Xmas corridor approaching. Let's just not think about that for a while, shall we?

I CAN DRIVES CUNTRY NOW???

need more hours... need more days...

More hours in the night. Five, then five, then five hours of sleep means that by Wednesday I'm too fucking tired to stand.

Meanwhile I have a pile of documents I should be scraping into a single document for this conference. For a handout. Plus a powerpoint. I wouldn't be stressing over it much except for the fact that I'm co-presenting with 2 other profs from my department, so I fell an obligation to not appear like I'm fucking things up for them.

It all needs to be done by tomorrow afternoon. Tomorrow night I have to drive 3.5 hours to Providence. Given that I'm usually falling asleep on the train at that time, I'm not sure how I'm going to manage that without winding up up dead in a ditch in Connecticut.

late weekend wrapup...

Those of you who keep track of the twitteriffic twitterings know that the weekend was pretty full. The Great Bathroom Renovation Project, which had stalled for a week or so got back under way. The wife finished painting, and I put up the new light fixture, the baseboard molding, and re-installed the toilet. That's right, BITCH... I installed a fucking toilet. How badass and manly is that? Just call me "Dave the Plumber".

That evening I took the dog out for a run. It wasn't a very long run, but it was something, which is more than I've been able to manage for a couple of months. Maybe a little less than a mile, with lots of breaks to stop and sniff things. (The dog stopped a lot too.) It didn't feel GREAT, but it didn't feel awful either... it was better than I expected given how long it's been. Mostly it felt good to get moving again.

Then that night we all piled into the van to go to Barnes and Noble so the kids could spend the couple of bucks they got from Grandma. (How awesome is it that they get so excited about buying BOOKS?) For the 3rd or 4th time, I picked up "The Audacity of Hope" (now available in paperback) and actually held it in my hand before putting it back on the shelf. See, the thing is... I can't have that book sitting around the house on the off chance that Obama, through some sort of freak of statistics, DOESN'T win tomorrow. Every time I looked at it... ugh. The DESPAIR!

"Hope" has it's place, but... you all know me. I'll be keeping DREAD alive over here until Wednesday morning. Wake me when it's over.

Link...

Only two people on the trick-or-treating rounds guessed the costume right . I post it here only to show off my awesome paint-job on the shield and sword. (Note: The Triforce on the hilt of the sword is cut from glow-in-the-dark plastic. No, I will not be YOUR dad next Halloween)




(PS> Credit where credit is due... wife sewed the costume, father-in-law woodworked he shield and sword... Dave just painted and accessorized)

zing...

I intended to get to sleep by 12:00 last night. I did not. I have to grade 35 exams today, and I knew there was NO WAY I was going to be awake enough to get a jump on it on the train, so I did something that I NEVER do. I made myself a cup of tea before I left for work at 6:00... making sure to make it not-too-hot enough that I would be able to drink the whole thing during the drive to the train station. Result...?

I feel fucking AWESOME. I usually don't feel this awake until 9:00 when I make my before-class-cup of precious leafy mild-stimulant. It's weird to feel like you could actually get some fucking work done at 6:37 AM.

I may have just inadvertently increased my daily caffeine consumption by 50% folks. If you need me, I'll be in the bathroom, peeing crystal pure spring water.

exponential decay...

Things are letting up around here, but slowly. The play readings and film festivals are done. Two of the three of the midterms are graded. People are out of my house. Only one graphic design project remains on my plate.

But at the same time, advising and registration is kicking in. I still have a conference to prepare for in Rhode Island that I haven't booked a hotel room for. I have all kinds of paperwork that needs to be dealt with, from receipts and reimbursements to speeding tickets. And I have a stack of problems and papers to grade that was shuffled aside to make room for the midterms. So the date for things settling down to normal has been pushed to probably after November 14th. Just in time to figure out where the hell we're going for Thanksgiving. (Hopefully? Nowhere.)

The thing that has been making it all worse is that I have really not settled on any sort of reasonable sleeping schedule, so I'm ALWAYS tired. Last night I was asleep before midnight or the first time in weeks, and wouldn't you know it... when the alarm went off, I turned it off and GOT OUT OF BED. A big improvement after several days of stumbling out of bed into clothes and into the car after oversleeping 30-90 minutes.

Maybe when things calm down, it will occur to me to write something other than COMPLAINTS when I sit down to blog.

rough start to a long day...

Seriously overslept this morning... threw clothes on and ran to the car and made it JUST in time to the THIRD train on my list... the last one that gets me to class on time. Graded midterms on the train. Combined effect? Massive headache.

At 6:30 PM tonight there is a reading of my play. In the 6 hours between the end of my class and the performance, I should probably...

1) grade 35 exams from my OTHER course
2) make and print out PROGRAMS for the play
3) register for the conference that has rejected my credit card online about a DOZEN times
4) assemble some readings to assign to the religion course tomorrow

I'm sure the list will grow. The one thing I have given NO thought to? What I'm doing in class in an hour.

PS> Make that HALF an hour

clocks...


1) I need to start going to bed earlier. I know there is a problem with my sleep patterns when I wake up and look at my alarm clock to find that it has been snoozed no less than four times, and I have no recollection of hearing it go off even once.

2) I lost my new dress watch, and I broke my cool TokyoFlash nerd watch. This is why I don't own a $350 Movado. Well, this and not having three hundred and fifty dollars.

3) I need to set the clock on my car stereo to more accurately reflect the official MTA time. Twice this week, the train has arrived while I'm still sitting in the car, happily listening to Terri Gross and "Fresh Air". When I say I want to start running again, I am not referring to a 100-yard dash at 6:44 AM.

4) Far too many students in the Einstein class failed to correctly explain the nature of the "Twin Paradox" in the midterm exam. (It has nothing to do with the fact that the twins are different ages - that is NOT a paradox. It's that it seems like each of them will expect to find the OTHER one younger if we naively apply the time dilation equations to both the Earthbound and rocket-borne twins.) I'm not sure who to blame for this. I know I'm not doing AS good a job in the course as I did last year, but I'm also pretty sure there hasn't been a day when all 12 students were present in the class since the first week. Thus, I choose to blame THEM.

5) New train schedules came out this week, so I had to go into the timetable document I keep in my iCal and twiddle a lot of the times by 2-3 minutes in various directions. I always open the new train schedules expecting big news like "We made the insufferable train you get stuck on after faculty meetings an EXPRESS instead of a local that stops every 200 feet in New Jersey" or "We've added a train at 8:45 PM so you can go to an after-work party and not get home at 2:00 in the morning", but... no... it's always just "We've changed the 6:29 AM train to 6:31". Which, when you have no watch and your dashboard clock is 8 minutes slow... really doesn't make a damned bit of difference.

out of control...

I have not exercised in more than a month. I am subsisting largely on candy-bars and cake. I spend most of the time in my office leaning back in my chair strafing the web for something.... ANYTHING more interesting than my actual work.

Something needs to be done.

the McCain voters speak...

So, as I said... I was running a science film festival at the University today. It went pretty well. The main feature was actually very good. The only unexpected occurrence was that during a Q&A session a, 70 year-old lady spoke up and wanted to know why there were no movies about UFO's or extraterrestrials or the cities that NASA discovered on the far side of the Moon. And also a bridge apparently. (She said she was "very up on this sort of thing".)

I deftly dodged this question and foisted it off on the festival organizer, who handily answered it by saying that, after all... these films were all FICTIONAL movies involving scientists... NOT documentaries!

at the movies...

Today I'm running/hosting a science film festival at the University. It's an organization that is sponsoring screenings all over the city, and somehow i got put in charge of our involvement with them.

As is always the case when I am "in charge" of something - my only hope for today is that I don't have to make any decisions or accept any responsibility.

Oh, and I guess I also hope that the films aren't horrible.

one thing that didn't suck...

... yesterday... I was giving my midterm exam in my Einstein class, and when I came up the stairs to class, I saw one of my students (a sorta ADD type kid with a skateboard and "jewfro" who calls me "Doc"...I refer to him as my personal Sweathog) standing at the board, deriving the Lorentz t ime dilation equation for the benefit of the other students who had come early to study.

It was so cute that I took a picture!

on the shoulders of a giant mess...

Welcome, science folks, to my little anonymous corner of the science-blogger community, where the science content takes a distant back seat to my daily bitching and moaning. Today? Speeding tickets, visiting inlaws, students skipping midterm exams, committee meetings, last-minute graphic art projects...

Meanwhile, since my blog is "anonymous" I use an anonymous junky email address for all my correspondence. Including the correspondence where, apparently, who-knows-how-many months ago, I volunteered to host an upcoming Giant's Shoulder's blog carnival of classic science papers. And by upcoming, I mean... I have one hour left to post the thing before I can be accused of totally screwing up and dropping the ball.

Those of you who are regulars here will be less than surprised.

The rest of you... if you are expecting one of those "theme" carnival entries where I wrap all of the posts in some sort of imaginative, high-concept, clever cleverness... well... be prepared to be as disappointed as my 15 regular readers have become accustomed to.

On with it!!

First up, Karin Chenoweth presents There He Goes Again (Charles "Bell Curve" Murray on Education) posted at Britannica Blog.

Alvaro Fernandez presents Santiago Ramon y Cajal: Recollections of My Life posted at Sharp Brains.

Romeo Vitelli presents Dr. Fliess' Patient posted at Providentia.

MBB presents Credit Card Numbers and The Luhn Algorithm posted at Money Blue Book Finance Blog

Yoo presents 137 posted at Stochastic Scribbles.

Greg Laden presents Cultural Evolution from Mosquitos to Worm Grunting posted at Greg Laden's Blog.

John Dennehy presents The Evilutionary Biologist: This Week's Citation Classic: GFP posted at The Evilutionary Biologist.

Scicurious from Neurotopia brings is a post about Aristotle's work on Memory, circa 350 BCE.

Epicanis presents "A Proposed Structure for the Nucleic Acids" posted at The Big Room

That's all I've got for you folks. It looks like a great bunch of posts. Enjoy! And come back again! My pledge to my readers -The curmudgeonliness never ends!

working against the system...

One of the things that bugs me about the MacOS is that they seem to be getting more and more strict about demanding that certain things go in certain system-defined folders like "Documents" "Downloads". (A behavior that strikes me as annoyingly Windowsy.) This is posing a problem for my Hard Drive Reorganization Project, for a couple of reasons. It means, for example, that I can't rename the "Music" folder created by OSX to "Music and Audio" (which more accurately encompasses lectures and stuff I want to store in subfolders) because if I do, the Mac will make a new folder called "Music" with a new empty library every time I start iTunes.

Fuck. You. Steve.

Also, I want my folders to appear in a particular order in popups and list views, with the most-important and most-accessed folders at the top, and I can't get these other stupid folders out of my way. So, my big achievement for the morning was coming up with names for my most important folders that all begin with "A", "B", "C" , or an early "D" so that they appear ABOVE the un-changable "Desktop" and "Downloads" folders. Hence...

* Articles, Books, & Resources
* Consulting & Side Projects
* Coursework & Teaching
* CV & Professional
* Departmental & Committee Docs

The only folder still stubbornly resisting the scheme is the folder full of my writing projects, currently called "Writing and Research". The obvious "Daves Writing and Research" seems like a cheat. Any suggestions for a better name that alphabetically precedes "DESKTOP"?

10.12...

So. This it. The first day of the last year of my "thirties".

It's not starting off so well, honestly.

I'm on the train, heading into the city for a rehearsal of a play that I only barely take credit for having co-written... that I certainly am tired of hearing, much less "performing" in and reading all the way through two more times in the next two weeks. I'll be gone until at least 6:00, because the trains only run once every fucking 2 hours on the weekends. There will be perfunctory cake when I get home I'm sure, to be followed by a return to cleaning the whole fucking house in preparation for a visit from the in-laws that will involve recruiting my father-in-law to help us with what I regard as an utterly pointless (and financially wasteful) remodeling of the first floor washroom. Given the usual dynamic between my wife and her father, I'm willing to bet all of my birthday money that at some point during the week, there will be crying.

Oh, yeah. and if I don't spend this train ride in grading papers, I am utterly fucked for the remainder of the week. My iCal screen looks like a decorative tile mosaic.

commuting woes...

Not only are they checking the boxes now, but as of next month, the parking fuckers are charging $2.25 for parking instead of $2.00. Now I have to keep a fucking pile of quarters in the car.

The 8:30 train is kinda awesome. The 9:50, on the other hand, is full of large groups of children and large groups of old people. Which group will irritate Dave more? STAY TUNED!!

i'm too sexy for this party...

I can't believe I hung around my office all day for THAT. A party with almost nobody to talk to from my division of the school, no booze other than wine... a complete waste of my evening.

I had already decided to bail on the Death Cab gig... I can't stay out that late in the middle of the week... I'll be a wreck for DAYS.

In the meantime, I got almost nothing accomplished today. And I have a headache.

old white bluegrass musicians for Obama...

This radio ad from Virginia is a million kinds of awesome. Even more awesome...? I read today that new polls have Obama with a double digit lead in VA.

I'm starting to move beyond fantasizing about an Obama win and fantasizing about a big blue map electoral landslide. How awesome would that be? Last time I poked at an interactive map, I gave Obama 290, but it looks like I may have been being conservative. (no pun intended.)

Hopes? Up!

Mistake? Usually!

getting things done...

Or, NOT. The weekend was a compete fucking waste. I mowed the lawn, that's about it. We have less than 2 weeks before the in-laws come, and the house is still... oy.

Work is starting to pile up. I have things to grade all of a sudden, and exams start up next week. Then there are all these other projects - the film festivals and the play readings - that require my attention.

Today I have a morning class, then no other "official" commitments until 5:00 PM, when I have a work party. That gives me 4 or 5 hours to sit and catch up on stuff. Then Thursday I have no classes (Yom Kippur) but I do have a 4:00 meeting, so... here is another day when I can just focus on the crap that slips through the cracks of my everyday routine. No plans yet for closing those cracks.

screw the Dow, this is gonna cost me $2 EVERY DAY...

When I first moved here, parking at the train station was free. Then the greedy bastards at the MTA decided that, no... this would not do, and started charging $2/day for parking. And instead of offering a monthly pass, you can only buy passes in 3, 6, or 12 month amounts, which doesn't always work well if you are in academia and have long stretches when you don't have to commute. The alternative is to pay every day, and the high-tech system they have in place is a BOX with numbered slits in it. You note which spot you parked in, fold your two dollar bills 10 times until they are narrow enough to fit into the slit, which if they are the slightest bit wrinkled makes them too THICK to fit into the slit. Luckily they provide a helpful "crammer" tool dangling from the box to aid with this task.

So one morning last November I'm cramming my wrinkly dollar bills into slot 210, and a few minutes later a guy walks up to me and says - "Hey, I see you here a lot... I thought I'd let you know... they don't really check those boxes, they just take the money out. I haven't paid for parking in months."

Now, I'm not one to take legal and or financial advice from random guys on train platforms, but I figured, what the hell... let me try not paying a few times. That was last November. I have not paid for parking since. No tickets.

Until this Monday, that is. The jig is up!

I assume the financial crisis has taken its toll on the MTA and they are cracking down on their lazy parking money collectors. Either that or too many friendly people on the platform let this secret get out and they noticed that the lot was full and the box was empty. Either way, the upshot is... $40/month that I have to spend now that I haven't been, which really fucking sucks. I probably saved something like $300 over the past year (minus this week's $7 ticket) so I probably shouldn't complain. But I will, of course.

are spammers hiring poetry grad students to write for them now...?

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Button Post-office Barbecue Bible Child Robot Leg,

Click here, for your "Rolex Sports Models" Watch

Electricity Mouth Crystal Button Elephant Salt Solid Dung Junk Table Bee Eyes

Festival Solid Sphere Navy Apple Apple Leather jacket

God Junk Compact Disc Leather jacket Drink Ice-cream Leather jacket

Hammer Record Sword Shower Plane Baby Compass

weekend...

So here I am on a late early train. Meaning that, I showed up for my usual train and people were crowding the platform waiting for the EARLIER train, which was late. It showed up just as I was getting out of my car, so I think I'll get to the city earlier than usual.

The weekend was occupied with hardcore cleaning. Friday, the wife and I tackled the upstairs landing, which doesn't seem like it should take a whole day given that it isn't even exactly a ROOM, but it's a large area... more an L shaped hallway than a "landing" really.... that's just what we call it, and it tends to accumulate piles of stuff that are destined to make the trip downstairs or have been tossed up the stairs. Add to that the piles of crap ON the stairs, and you have a good 4 hours of cleaning for two people.

The kids had a half-day of school, so when they got home, we piled into the van and headed to Ikea. (We need a new reclinerish seating piece for the living room.) Didn't like any of their chairs, so we got off easy... just $104, which for us in Ikea is NOTHING. We got some funky panel curtains for the sliding glass doors, nothing else too exciting.

Saturday, we told the kids we would tackle their rooms. Spent the whole day... the wife in the girl's room and me in the boy's, and barely made a dent. Spent the whole day Sunday getting them CLEAN clean. Tossed out two lawn-sized trash bags full of trash and junk-toys, pulled out another full of stuffed animals (68!) to donate, and piled 3 boxes full of stuff in a pile to hand-down, craigslist, or pack away for posterity. The kids are both STUNNED at how BIG their rooms are. Amazing how seeing-the-floor creates that perception, huh?

The wife's parents are coming in a week and a half or so, so we are attempting to get the house visitor-ready by tackling the low-traffic areas first, given that a cleaned living room or kitchen only lasts 24-48 hours. I think the plan is to do our bedroom tonight while watching the mediocre-Monday-comedies, then maybe hit the basement tomorrow, since everyone is off for the Rosh Hashanah.

Other than this sort of activity, there isn't much to blog about. Oh, we did poison the dog... those of you who keep up with the Twittter have heard. (Those of you who don't.... it's really where all the minute-by-minute action takes place anymore.) I mean... the dog poisoned HERSELF, but it was kind of our fault that the boy's Albuterol for his nebulizer was sitting on the stairs, where the dog isn't supposed to go, but she DID, and she seems to have mostly eaten the contents of 2 vials of it. My wife called the vet who was closed and told her to call the emergency vet who told her to call the ASPCA poison hotline who told us to give them $65 before they would even talk to us. So we decided just to keep an eye on her. She seemed fine, although at one point I measured her pulse and it was 188. Not that I knew what her resting pulse rate is, but for a medium breed puppy, I think 120 is normal, MAYBE 150. So I'm reading up on side effects of Albuterol and tachycardia in dogs and whatnot, and decided she would probably be fine. Which she was.

So, one day of work, one day "off", and then October hits the fan. Committee meetings start, then the month of Art & Science events that I am to a large extent responsible for. The calendar is insanely full until the first week of November, when I have to go to a conference in Providence for 3 days. After that, things should let up. Until then, don't expect too much from me.

time i do not have to waste...

My laptop wouldn't wake from sleep on the train (stupid spinning "beachball") so I had to restart, which means I lost whatever blog posts I had pre-loaded into my browser to read on the way to work, plus several Wikipedia pages I had pulled up so I could add some dates and names to a Keynote presentation. Safari's "Reopen all Windows from Last Session" is no fucking help at all, because it just tries to connect to the internet, rather than pull up some saved cache. Is it just me, or were browsers BETTER back in the day of Netscape 2.0? I seem to recall there was a cache folder where your recent websites were saved as ACTUAL HTML files, and that it was easy to go back and open them if you needed to. This no longer seems to be the case.

So, since I can't work, I guess I'll just blog.

Yesterday I (and some students) went to a debate/forum sponsored by the Templeton Foundation called "Does Science Make Belief in God Obsolete?" with Christopher Hitchens and some old Monsignor. The discussion never really went anywhere interesting and was kind of a waste of time, but the lunch was good, and there was free booze. Given the swank hotel and the amount of money that was clearly being thrown around yesterday, I'm thinking I need to finish writing up that Templeton grant and double the amount I was asking for.

Today I'm teaching a sort of "hybrid" guest lecture for one of my colleagues. She teaches a course based on the text of "Mutiny on the Bounty" and ties together a bunch of literary and historical themes in a way that I don't 100% understand, but last year she asked me to come in and talk about navigation and "the longitude problem". Well this year, her class meets at the same time as my Relativity class, so I have tried to assemble a lecture that ranges from naval timekeeping in the 17th century to the global positioning system to the problem of synchronizing clocks in Einstein's conception of spacetime, with the goal of bringing both of our classes together in a single classroom for a discussion that will be valuable for both of them. More likely what will happen is that my class will be bored for the first half and her class will be perplexed by the second half, but... oh well... what good is complete intellectual freedom if you don't take the opportunity to make a complete mess of a lecture every now and then?

Tomorrow I teach yet another guest lecture for a different colleague... this time the topic is energy conservation. I've done this guest lecture many times, and it never seems to go quite right. I always say I'm going to give the students a preparatory reading, and I always remember that I forgot to do that the day before the class. This time is no exception.

Anyway, the point of all this is that I seem to be making extra work for myself this semester. October is going to be a nightmare of film festivals, play readings, committee meetings, conference preparation... I've been keeping my shit together pretty well so far this semester, but... I can see it all falling apart around 10/15. Turning 39 that week is likely not going to help my fucking mood either.

Speaking of which, I'm going blind. My glasses don't work anymore and most of the time when I look at text of any sort, there is a ghosty double-image that only goes away if i squint. My "reading glasses" seem to work quite a bit better, which suggests to me that I really need to go to the optometrist and get a new pair of glasses, most likely motherfucking bifocals. Which really, really pisses me off in what I recognize to be a disproportionate way. But still. Fuck.

On a completely different note, these new PC commercials... what the fuck? Not the Seinfeld ones, which were just unfunny attempts at absurdism, I'm talking about the "I'm a PC" commercial. I read an article that nailed the reason the commercial is so bad. It seems to be misreading the POINT of Apple's "I'm a Mac / I'm a PC" commercials. The Windows commercial has a bunch of people doing great things and saying "I'm a PC". But the Apple commercials are not saying that YOU should identify YOURSELF as "A MAC" or "A PC". The characters in those commercials are not supposed to be Mac and Windows USERS! They are personifications of the (supposed) features of the OPERATING SYSTEMS THEMSELVES. Is it possible that the ad agency that made these new "I'm a PC" commercials actually did not get that point? The more I watch them, the more I worry that they did. We aren't saying that everyone who USES a PC is a pudgy guy with glasses. We are saying that the whole mentality of the OS is that of a pudgy guy with glasses. That doesn't mean you can't make a music video on it... just that you will be doing so DESPITE the OS rather than because of any particular features. A fact borne out by the awesome revelation by some internet meta-data-snooper that the commercial itself (or at least the final cut posted to the Microsoft website) was created on Adobe CS3 on a Mac.

Anyway. Confused satire is one of my pet peeves.

Parting oberservation... The woman sitting across from me looks like a very young Barbara Streisand. Most women probably wouldn't consider that a compliment, huh? Good thing I don't talk to people.

"looming in his headlights..."

you know, i've recently posted about how awesome work is going, and honestly... every day for the past few weeks, I get off the train feeling like i've had a really amazing day. then not 10 minutes from the time i get home i have a splitting fucking headache, because invariably i'm faced with utter HYSTERIA, which is my least favorite thing in the whole fucking world. this child is flipping out because she forgot her workbook from school and that child is flipping out because the other child is screaming and he can't hear the tv and the wife is flipping out at the second child because she's trying to deal with the first child and the dog is running around stealing pizza from the kitchen table...

i really don't want to turn into one of Those Guys... the type who looks for reasons to stay late at work because going home is the thing that ruins his day, but... fuck...

six feet and counting...

Working my way through the pile of bit-torrented cable-TV series that are piling up on the hard drive... I enjoyed the first season or so of Six Feet Under, but now it's turned into one of those shows that seems to take great pleasure in torturing and literally beating the shit out of its protagonists. Give him a brain tumor!! Kill his wife!! Rob him at gunpoint and pistol whip him!! It's a DRAMA! We need more SUFFERING!!

I'm getting a little tired of it.

mile-stone...

Last night I dragged myself out of the house for a run despite being woozy and full of Chinese food. Much to my surprise, I was able to run a mile, then found myself running another half mile... all without a break... and when I got back to my house I felt like I could keep on going. I read somewhere about reaching that point where... instead of your head saying "keep going" while your body says "let's stop", it's the other way around. So, that was a first.

Today was a pretty awesome day of classes, too. Things "flowed"... jokes got laughs...

I'm afraid I have nothing to bitch about.

quick updates from the first week...

Seems I'm not as bloggy with the blogging on the blog this semester... dunno why... general busy-ness plus lots of good TV shows to watch on the laptop, I guess. Things are going well. Not a whole lot to talk about in detail. Perhaps some bullet-points are in order...

* One class is super-full, but my other two are really low enrollment, for me anyway. Especially after I scared away about a third of the students from the Relativity class. (Oops!) Really, though... if they are afraid of the math, I kinda want them out. This is not the place to get over your math-phobia... an upper-level course on Einstein. I have other courses for that.

* My schedule this year is set up in a way such that I feel I have enough time to think. Which feels odd.

* I got a nice new terabyte drive. It's shiny and black and matches the new black MacBook. It also looks not unlike the monolith from 2001. I find myself semi-consciously humming the overture to "Also Spracht Zarathustra" when I look at it sometimes.

* My new office is becoming kind of a perfect "space". Really happy about that.

* Finally met my new office-mate after two weeks. She has a very old-fashioned name, so I had been expecting someone older than me to show up. Turns out she's actually young and gorgeous. Honestly... this is something I do NOT need.

economics...

How the fuck is it that I can buy a METAL LAMP from Ikea that has electrical parts that actually DO SOMETHING for $14.99, but a metal BRACKET for my car that does NOTHING but hold up my tailpipe costs $40??

If Ikea made a car, I'd buy it in a minute. Even if I had to mostly assemble it with an allen wrench.

whoooooooosssshhhh....

The air vent above me on this train is blowing so hard... it's whipping my hair around like I'm riding in a fucking convertible. I'm not even exaggerating.

So, today is the first day of school. When you're 8, the first day of school means a new outfit, a new backpack, and a neat new haircut. When you're 38, it means a new outfit, a new laptop, and a neat first-day-of-school beard trimming. Some things never change.

My morning class is basically under control, I think. My stuff is printed out... I know what I'm going to say for the most part. The afternoon class is another story. Luckily, my co-teacher and I have from noon until 2:00 to get our shit together.

Tomorrow's class is kinda iffy. There are still some decisions I'm waffling over. Require them to read a Galileo/Newton biography? Require them to buy the 200 page course-reader from the copy shop for $20, or give them the option to download? I can't really print the syllabus until I DECIDE on these things.

Anyway, the point of all this is... once again the semester is starting and I'm not *quite* ready for it. Like I said... some things never change.

whooooossshhhhhh....

I noticed all day that the CNN reporters are out in the storm with their mic WITH NO WINDSCREEN ON. I'm sorry, but you use a windscreen on your mic whenever you're outside, even on a relatively nice day. Why would you take it OFF in a hurricane? Unless it's to make the hurricane sound worse than it is? But why would a news organization do that? Unless maybe they had hyped up the storm of the century for 3 days and it had just been downgraded to a Category 2?

Nah.

one funky bridge...

(driving to Kingston, NY)

DAVE: Umm... did that just say the "George Clinton Bridge"?
WIFE: I think so, why?
DAVE: Which George Clinton?
WIFE: I dunno... the British Naval Commander"
DAVE: Oh... ok... not the dude from Parliament Funkadelic, then?
WIFE: I seriously doubt it. I guess I could be wrong, though.
DAVE: Next stop... the Bootsy Collins Rest Area!!

"party"... "recap"...

Small, dark, loud, and full of people I don't know. This may be some peoples' idea of a "party"... but it's my idea of a PANIC ATTACK.

I got the hell out of there as soon as possible.

no tv for me...

I don't have any headphones in my fucking bag. I HATE IT when I do that. Guess I'll blog for a while... It's not like I don't have stuff to write about. It's been a while. It's hard to keep track now that I use Twitter so much. I feel like I've written about stuff, when really I've just twatted about it. Not really the same. So, here is the week in review...

SUNDAY: Hiked up a fucking mountain and back. Why? Because the nature preserve was having a free-pass day, and my wife is insane. It was a nice walk, but I was aching the next day. I'm not joking about the mountain thing, either... I'm talking about walking across ridges and up and down 45º inclines of bare rock. And the poor dog! She was a trooper during the hike, but I've never seen her sleep as hard as she did that evening.

SUNDAY EVENING: Drove wearily to Staples to pick up $525 copy job. Went to Wal-Mart to buy 2" binders. Found ONE. Went to Target... found THREE. Bought four more BLUE ones, which I think looks a little unprofessional, but fuck... don't make faculty dossiers due during back-to-school week. They are lucky mine don't have Hannah fucking Montana on them.

MONDAY MORNING: Went to Sears to get new tires because they were having a "sale" and my inspection is due by the end of the month, and my current set look like fucking DRAGSTER tires and will certainly fail. The nature of the tire "sale" is, of course a mystery, because nothing has a price on it, except for the tires in the Sunday paper ad, which are of course for 12" Geo Metro tires. I told them I didn't need top of the line Goodyear/Michelins and they quoted a price that seemed reasonable until all the fucking add-ons brought it up almost to $400. (WHY the fuck are "valve stems" EXTRA? Are they not part of the tire? Can I buy the tire WITHOUT the valve stems??? THEN STOP FUCKING ME FOR $8/TIRE AND INCLUDE IT IN THE FUCKING PRICE!!) I looked at the tires later in the day and noticed that the brand was KUMHO. Um... Kum? Ho? What the fuck? Were they out of Bukkake All-Season Radials??

MONDAY AFTERNOON: Worked on installing the fence. Why? Because I had to drive my portfolios to the city on Tuesday, and was going to stop at Ikea, and the wife wanted to go to Ikea, and as long as we're all going to the city we should go to a museum, but we can't leave the dog inside for that long, so we have to finish the fence. Result? Did not finish fence. Did finish portfolio, at exactly 11:56 PM.

TUESDAY: Drove portfolios (eight 2" binders of 930 pp each) to the city. Stopped at Ikea along the way. Bought TWO 6' tall unfinished shelf units, a 4'x5' area rug, a floor lamp, a desk lamp, and two decorative accent lights. (I will have the most moodily-lit office on campus!) Total cost? $148. Ikea is so fucking awesome. Also stopped at the Container Store for magnets and Command Adhesive hooks for hanging crap in the new office.

WEDNESDAY: Had court date for the missing front license plate incident. Didn't really have to make much of a case... judge reduced the charge to $75/no points. Whatever.

THURSDAY: Is that today? Taking the train in to finalize and print some syllabi. Also need to assemble the Ikea shelves and help the Chemistry prof install some specialty software on the lab Macs. (Aside: This means I had to bring in the Mac I borrowed today, which means I couldn't bring my power driver to assemble the shelves. Blah. I did manage to stuff my ratchet set into my bag, though) After I finish with all the printing, copying, and whatnot, I have to attend a fundraiser for a science-film organization, because I'm in charge of one of the films they are showing on campus and feel obliged to be social and glad-handy with the organizers. This means I'll be getting home at either 11:30 PM or 2:00 AM. What fun.

TOMORROW: Have an appointment for an inspection/oil-change at 10:00 AM. Have to mow the lawn. Will likely fuck with the fence some more if I'm not completely exhausted.

Needless to say, I've been a bit of a basket case. But for now... I really have work to do. Stay tuned for a "party report" from the train ride home. I hope to god there is booze.

takin' care of bidness...

Heading into the city today to copy, copy, copy! My goal is to have the textual parts of my review portfolio essentially DONE by the end of business today. It should be do-able... it just requires some dedicated time sitting and printing everything I've done for the past 5 years.

Once that is all ready, I need to decide how I'm going to go about making 8 three-hole punched copies of the thing (which I expect to run to 500+ doublesided pages.) I've heard that the Staples in Union Square will do a big job like that and deliver it to campus, but that would probably mean a couple more trips into the city... one to drop it off, and one to pick it up and assemble it into binders with dividers. The alternative is to get it done up here in the suburbs, but then I'd have to get 8 500-page binders into the city, which would probably mean driving. I fucking hate driving into the city, but I could stop at Ikea in NJ and get some stuff for the office!

Speaking of the office, I stuffed my old Netgear router into my bag today. See, my office is in a building with no wireless access, and I can't deal with that. What am I supposed to do, plug a damned ETHERNET CABLE into my laptop every time I sit down at my desk? And then fiddle with the network settings? Is it fucking 1996? Instead, I'll set up my own pirate wireless network. The Netgear has really shitty wireless range, so I'm pretty sure nobody will ever see it outside of my office. Just in case the Universty Geek Squad doesn't like you doing these sorts of things, I'll hide it under the desk. I think I'll set the network name to "underthetable"

I requested some bookshelves for the office, but I'd be kinda stunned to see them there already. I kinda hope they AREN'T actually, because that would make it too easy to fuck around organizing my books instead of doing what I'm supposed to be doing.

exhaustion is better than anger...

Tried to redeem this waste of a day with a run as the sun was going down. It's amazing how cool 70º feels when the humidity is under 60% and there is a breeze. Ran one mile in 9:40, which is a helluva lot better than the 10:30+ last time. Walked for probably longer than I should, then ran for about 7:00 more... probably 3/4 mile back home. Still not back to 2 miles yet... maybe this weekend.

Not sure if I mentioned it here yet, but I have a 5K race penciled in on the calendar on 9/21. Which means I have a month to get from <2 miles to 3+ miles. I assume the first step towards that is making the SECOND mile feel as good as the FIRST mile feels now. This seems highly unlikely. But running a mile comfortably seemed unlikely initially, so... we'll see.

Anyway. I hope to get some work done tonight. Heading into the city tomorrow.

never happens to me...

Where can I meet this girl?

fuck...

i left a dvd burning overnite... the video of my play reading from last october that i have been busting my ass to get the 2 camera shot synced w/ the audio... which i thought i finally had under control, but the fucking dvd looks like a goddamned japanese monster movie. i went back to iMovie, and the audio isn't synced there anymore either. what the fuck? I HAD IT!! WHAT THE FUCK??

the plan today was to get up, run, shower, then head to a cafe to put the final touches on the writing i need to do for my portfolio. i put my running shoes on, stepped out the door and it IMMEDIATELY started raining.

it is turning into one of those days, and i DO NOT HAVE TIME FOR ONE OF THOSE DAYS

run...

Went out for a run this morning (sans dog). My shuffle was dead, so I took my 30Gb iPod instead. (So cumbersome!! How did people ever run with a Sony Walkman?!) Since I didn't have my running podcasts, I figured I'd go for distances rather than times. Listened to "Narrow Stairs" and thanks to Death Cab and some unseasonably cool weather, had a pretty good run. Ran the first mile easily (although at a somewhat plodding 10:40 pace.)... took a short walk break, then ran the rest of the no-quite-mile back home. Legs were good, lungs were good. The problem area today? My ABS. I did SOMETHING in yoga the other day that has had my abs killing me. Who knew you even needed your abs to run?

not quite ready...

The Puppy and I have been running for short stretches during our leash-training outings, so I decided to try to see how far she can run. I put on my running clothes yesterday and took her out. What I hoped would be a 1/2 mile jog turned into a 200 yard DRAG away from the house, followed by a 200 yard ALL OUT SPRINT back to the house.

Someone was NOT in the mood for exercise.

I guess I'll have to wait a few months for my running partner.

small failures...

PORTFOLIO: Didn't get nearly the amount of work done that I needed to today on my review portfolio. Dealing with new computers and new offices is a much more concrete, and hence preferable, task. I did make a few copies, and get some parts of the stack in a "ready" state. (Each finished section is labeled with a large pink post-it marked "READY"!) Still lots more to do, though.

COMPUTER: Got the Macbook from the "Systems Coordinator" guy. Which means that the University Geek Squad already had their paws all over it setting things up. Not cool. OK, it's nice to have a copy of Office 2008 on here, but not if it means I have to uninstall everything else they put on it. Symantec Antivirus? Is it 1992? What the fuck? Macs don't have viruses, you Windows nerds, at least not often enough that it's worth putting up with a "scan" every god-damned time you open a new file or a new drive. And it kept interrupting the fucking Migration Assistant, so none of my apps transfered to the new machine. And on top of it all, there is no way to delete the school-installed administrator user account, or even make it NOT the default. All this means that I'm going to wipe the HD, and reinstall OSX with my own Leopard install disks. (**) But it also means I had to bring BOTH MacBooks home, which I did NOT want to do.

OFFICE: The new office is a HUGE improvement over the old one. Not only is there more space, but there are TWO DESKS. (My old office-mate and I could not be in the office at the same time.) One of the desks was already empty, so I claimed it and rearranged the furniture a little bit. I moved the big horizontal filing cabinet around a corner and slid my desk back, creating a dark, cozy nook from which I can't see the door. This is important, as I find people-traffic distracting, and the new office is right next to the men's room. The only thing that the room is missing are BOOKSHELVES. There are 2 long shelves on the wall, but no freestanding units. I really need more book-starage space, so I'm going to email a request for some wall units. If they don't come through, I guess I can make a trip to the new Brooklyn IKEA! In fact, now that I think about it, there may be room in this office for a tiny sofa! I love offices with tiny sofas! Anyway, right now most of my books are moved into the new room, but stacked in big 5' high piles against the wall, making it look a little like the office I just left.





(**) Notably absent from the laptop box they gave me were all the MacOS install discs. Clearly they don't want you doing a system install yourself. These people have NO IDEA WHO THEY ARE DEALING WITH!!!

i will not blog post in the rain, i will not blog post on the train...

Figures, the first day I've planned to go into the city in since June and the alarm wakes me up at 5:20 to the sound of a Book-of-Genesis DELUGE going on outside. I lay in bed thinking... nope, there is nothing urgent enough for me to do today that requires me to go outside in THAT, so I stayed under the covers until I heard the rain stop. By now it was 6:00, so I still had a chance to make the 6:40. I got dressed, went downstairs and opened the puppy crate, but the dog gave me a look like - dude, it's 6:00 AM, I'm still too sleepy to pee! - so I closed the door and left. Made it to the train just in time... luckily I had few single-ride tickets stashed in my bag, because I wouldn't have had time to buy one.

Three things are pulling me into the office today. First of all, I get to pick up my new Mac. Which means I need to transfer everything off of THIS Mac that I borrowed for the summer, then do a full reformat of this HD in order to make it safe as a student machine again. Second, I need to move closer to finishing my review portfolio, which is due at the end of the month. I want to get ALL of my course materials printed and the writing part finished today, if possible.

Third, I need to get ready for my office move. I requested a new office for 2 reasons. One is that I'm in a different building from the science lab, the science faculty, and all of my science classes. Which is kind of a pain, just in terms of logistics... if I forget something I need to run down 4 flights of stairs, jaywalk across a busy Manhattan street, go into a different building, and then run back. But an equally important reason for the request is that I can't really deal with my pack-rat office mate anymore. The waist-high piles of paper (yes, that's from the FLOOR) are just too much. I can't think in there, and as a result I never go in my office, and I probably don't get as much work done on campus as I should. (I tend to work in the lab, where there is a better computer, but a lot of people-traffic.) Anyway, the rationale I gave to the administration was based on the FIRST complaint, which does not explain at all why, when they moved my office, the just moved me across the hall from my old office! Now my office mate is going to think I asked to be moved just because of him... which is kinda true, of course, but... I don't want to seem like a dick. Oh well.

I should really start writing now, but... oy... I'm kinda sleepy. I forget how much this whole getting-up-and-going-to-work thing can suck.

now tighten your liver...

Went to yoga class today for the first time in ages. There are very few options that are near here with convenient class times, so I tried the one at the Gold's Gym that's about 15 min away. It was ok, but not great. I'm used to a more active style of yoga... this class had way too much hoo-haa about "energy", and bunch of that "breathe in through your pancreas, and out through your spleen" nonsense. Just give me some down dogs and some warriors and a tree, ok? If I want to breathe through one nostril, I can do that at home without paying $12. (Hey, Dharma... nice theory and all, but... I'm pretty sure that breathing through your left nostril alone relaxes you and helps with sleep problems BECAUSE YOU'RE GETTING HALF AS MUCH OXYGEN!!!)

I shouldn't complain, though... because a more active class would have kicked my ass. Maybe I'll try another "Level 1" with a different instructor. Someone without her Kundalini up her Hatha, preferably.

UPDATE: This link showed up on Boing-boing today, just in time for my return to yoga. WANT!

olympic fever...

Spent WAY too much time on the sofa watching the olympics yesterday. Some brief comments...

1) Michael Phelps won! Imagine that! Have the announcers even planned ANYTHING they might say if he loses a race?

2) Beach volleyball chicks are too skinny for my tastes, but have consistently cute butts. Also... it is really odd to see 6'1" Asian women.

3) I'm developing a huge crush on 41 year-old swimmer Dara Torres. I want her body. In both senses.

4) We are going to get our asses kicked so hard in Men's Gymnastics, it isn't even funny.

5) The live internet streaming at nbcolympics.com is just way too much. Yesterday I watched live footage of Women's 10m Air Rifle. First of all, who knew that BB guns were in the fucking Olympics? Second of all... here is a recap of the action, in case you missed it" stand.... squint... stand.... squint... stand.... squint... ... *click* (REPEAT) At least real guns make a loud noise.


To make up for the 8 hours of sofa-sitting, I woke up today and threw on my running clothes. It didn't work right away... I had plenty of excuses. I can't run! I have to watch the dog! I can't run, I can't find my headphones! I can't run! I have poison ivy on my feet!! (**) But I DID run, and it was great. Great weather. And I managed to pick up the program where I left off despite not running for almost 3 weeks. So, yay me. Now I just need to get back on schedule. I'm feeling kind of "blah" lately, so it won't be easy. Now if I can only make myself WORK.



(** Yes, again)

world tour 2008...

My singer/songwriter buddy Annie is coming up to New York to stay with us for 3 or 4 days in October. I plan on dragging her to a different open mic every night she's here. She'll probably insist on having her boyfriend play with us on a few songs, but... that's ok, I guess. As long as *I* get most of the solos.

first blood...

The puppy has gnawed my left ear in half. Don't believe me? Check the Flickr feed in the sidebar for pix!!

I lost about a pint of blood, but i'm sure it was just an accident.

what do Dave's students love about him? his compassion...

IM conversation with student...

STUDENT: hey, since Prof. K. is on sabbatical this semester, will you be my advisor?
DR.DAVE: um. wait, are you one of Prof. K's really demanding advisees?
STUDENT: yep
DR.DAVE: one of the ones who has hour long meetings and CRIES about stuff?
STUDENT: no, I'm not that bad.
DR.DAVE: ok... as long as there is no crying, i'll consider it.

please welcome to the blog...

what will surely soon become yet another thing for Dave to complain about...

the tivo reads my mind...

Made an obscure Monty Python reference in the blog a few days ago... the following day, the TiVo self-selected that very episode of Monty Python to record.

Also.... made fun of TiVO remote today and said remote went missing. I've looked for an hour.... no sign of it.

I think the TiVo may be the next phase of intelligent lifeform on the planet. Its powers are beyond our comprehension.

they told me she went to live on a farm! REALLY!!

We went to the humane society today, and they told us that earlier in the day Jaki was picked up by someone from the New England Border Collie Rescue. :(

I know I was prevented from making a really BAD and impractical decision, but... fuck.

Adopt a Border Collie: Jaki: Petfinder

CUTE!!!

There are no words to describe how much I want this dog!!!.

Not even the fact that she was returned to the pound for peeing all over her last family's house is a deterrent!

"Yes, it's spelled Luxury-Yacht, but it's pronounced 'Throat-Warbler-Mangrove'... "

I swear to god, I need to write an essay about the Day We Ran Out of Words. It started when companies picked names that made no sense and gave no indication of what their company did just because the word was memorable and nobody owned the name yet ("Monster" "FogDog"...). Then we just started randomly chucking vowels out the window, or sticking periods inside things so we could use domains in digitally-empty countries ("flickr", "d.e.li.cio.us"...) and now we are just randomly stringing letters together into unpronouncable sequences. "CUIL"??? Is that fucking WELSH? Was J.R.R Tolkein involved??? WHAT THE FUCK?

Seriously... Which do you prefer? 1) "Hey, maybe I'll Google it" or... 2) "I know! I'll KOO-HOO-WHEEL it!" Umm... no thanks, Sinéad... I'll stick with the search engine that doesn't make me gag on my tongue when I look at the URL.

And the internet-savvy may say - No! It's pronounced "COOL". Well, no... it isn't. You write the word "c-u-i-l" on a piece of paper and show it to 100 non-tech industry, English speaking people and ask them to read it aloud. if ONE OF THEM says "cool", I will personally suck the CEO of cuil.com's dick.

I don't care if this search engine reads your freaking MIND through the monitor... I predict this new venture will fail for no other reason than its STUPID STUPID AWFUL AWFUL NAME!!!


--- -- --- -- ---


UPDATE/POSTSCRIPT: Hey, Google... "KNOL" sucks just as bad. Don't make me come over there next!

last week's gig...

Awesome. I deserve very little credit... Annie is always rock solid... I played my noodly background parts... rocked some solos... worked some harmonies on "Future's So Bright..." by Timbuk 3... but it's always been Annie's show. The most impressive thing about it is that, without practicing, we managed to END all of the songs together. We also did an encore of Spoonman by Soundgarden, which we hadn't even talked about and she didn't even know that I knew.



Anyway. We had fun. And it really makes me want to get something going musically again.

UPDATE: Here is a video on YouTube of us performing part of "Smells LIke Teen Spirit". Crappy audio and video quality, but... oh well.

best laid plans and shit...

i had this idea that during this workshop i could spend my downtime catching up on some writing and, in particular, some blogging.

i'm a fucking idiot.

"i'm goin' to chicago... sorry but i can't take you..."

Off on my bid'ness trip in a couple hours. Any readers in the Chicago area who would like to stalk me? Please contact me for more information.

quick...

back from va... leaving for chicago tomorrow. very tired. stay tuned for trickle of updates over the (still busy!) weekend...

dykerockapalooza, part one...

The Melissa Etheridge concert was good, if not great. She is so rock-solid as a performer... I've never seen her put on a "bad" show. Her voice is still as good as ever. But I payed little attention to her last album, and the one before it only gave a dozen or so listens, so there was a lot of material I didn't know very well. It happens, I guess.

The one problem with the show was... her lead guitarist is a complete fucking TOOL. Never mind the man-cleavage-bearing International Male shirt... his playing was consistently 20% "too much". Which is not to say he was a BAD guitarist... just a TASTELESS guitarist. Two things...

1) When you are backing up a solo artist, you have to have the mindset of a session player - not the lead guitarist of a rock band. Nobody here paid money to see YOUR ass. Take your solo, have your moment, and then disappear.

2) Guitar solos have to go somewhere. In order to make that happen... if you want to wind up at say, 10... you have to start at 5 or 6. This guy always started at 8 or 9 (In terms of volume, number of notes, and height on the fretboard) leaving him no place to go but 11, even in songs that did not justify an 11 solo. I got DAMNED tired of him by the end of the night, when ideally... I should have barely noticed him at all.

So... that was that. Not much else noteworthy happened other than the typical takeover of the men's room. This time the venue eventually made it official... usually it's just a revolt. It never fails to amuse me. I fully expect to see more ladies in the men's room tomorrow at Indigo Girls, where there are usually even FEWER men than at a Melissa Etheridge concert! Stay tuned for a further review.

(Oh, I will add that the attendance was BLEAK. The concert was at a small-town civic center and barely any seats off the floor sold except for right in the center. I guess her "appeal is becoming more...selective")

accidental summer fiction...

I took the kids to swim lessons yesterday because the wife is on a deadline. And because the kids have lessons at different times, and there is a 40 minute break between, it basically amounts to sitting for 2 hours in a classroom at the local high school with nothing to do. I brought my iTouchPod, but I could only get internet access in the hallway. I wanted to try out my new eBook reader app, but since I didn't have reliable access, the only book I had available was the copy of "Tarzan of the Apes" that came installed free with the software.

As a result, I am now about halfway through "Tarzan of the Apes".

It's pretty enjoyable actually... and weirdly Victorian for something written in 1912. The whole "man vs. brute" language is particularly entertaining, not to mention the gender roles...

"What they did may we not do? And even better, for are we not armed with ages of superior knowledge, and have we not the means of protection, defense, and sustenance which science has given us, but of which they were totally ignorant? What they accomplished, Alice, with instruments and weapons of stone and bone, surely that may we accomplish also."

"Ah, John, I wish that I might be a man with a man's philosophy, but I am but a woman, seeing with my heart rather than my head, and all that I can see is too horrible, too unthinkable to put into words.

"I only hope you are right, John. I will do my best to be a brave primeval woman, a fit mate for the primeval man."

How horribly bad and awesome is that, right?

work to do...

Rolling into the city on the 7:30 train. The idea was that I'll be working on paperwork for my Review in August, but that has been somewhat supplanted by a last-minute meeting that will take up a sizable chunk of the afternoon. (Actually, a meeting and a pre-meeting to prepare for the meeting.) Which I suppose is fine, because in the past 3 weeks of dealing with summer camp, I've completely lost focus on what I'm doing... I haven't written anything, I haven't done any work of any sort. So today will basically be devoted to getting my head back into things... just in time to embark on a week-long family vacation next week and forget about it all again.

Meanwhile, I've been roped into organizing a Big Event sponsored by the science department. It's the kind of thing that involves scheduling and coordinating and organizing and phone calls and basically all the things I am WORST at. But I get to put it in the nearly-empty "Service to the University" section of my portfolio, so... that's a bonus.

My syllabi have basically faded into the background, which is particularly bad for the new Science and Religion class. But I left the ball in my co-teacher's court on that one, so I can deny having any responsibility for our current lack of preparation. We also have a half-written grant proposal that needs to go ahead. Oh well.

After the family vacation next week, I get home and the next day I jump on a plane for Chicago. The new consulting gig I lined up last semester is finally starting to bear some fruit. They want me to come to a workshop and help lead physics teachers through some curriculum-development thing... I'm not even completely clear on the task myself... I just know it involves a lot of ed-speak buzzwords like "outcomes" and "rubrics" and "enduring understandings" and that I'm getting paid $800/day to do it. Plus three free nights in a mediocre business hotel adjacent to O'Hare. Paradise!!

Anyway. I should probably get to work.

coming soon...

Spending the day in the city tomorrow... dealing w. some work stuff. Look forward to an actual 200+ word blog entry!

O! How I miss the train!

quick running update...

Yesterday I ran on the treadmill, because it was too fucking humid to even THINK about going outside. I had an ok run, but the treadmill is just not the same. The fact that you are right there in your bedroom and there is a big red STOP button right in front of you makes it hard to stay focused and keep going.

Anyway. Then today I twisted my ankle running for a rocket.

Fuck.

coming soon...

Today is the last day of Camp Asperger, so I PROMISE I will get back to regular blogging soon. In fact, tomorrow, expect a post about all the money I intend to drop at the new iPhone AppStore.

"we're gonna need a bigger field..."

Four rockets went into the sky... two rockets came outta the sky... the trees took the rest... July 8, 2008...

back on the program...

I'm pretty pissed about ruining 3 months of progress with 3 weeks of neglect, but I can't just QUIT running... the $100 shoes would haunt me forever. So, after my last failed attempt at running a mile, I decided I needed to fall back on my podcasts. I cued up week four, which is a program of 3/5/3/5 minute intervals with walking breaks between. So basically I ran one mile with 90 seconds of walking in the middle... had a 2.5 min walk break, then ran another mile with a 90 sec walk break in the middle. At least, that's the way I like to think of it.

I held up pretty well. My legs got tired, but not unreasonably so. I'll try to do the podcast 2 more times this week, and then get back to running the mile w/ no breaks.

It was 67º this morning, so the run felt really nice. It's only going to get harder as we get into July and mild weather becomes more rare. I had been thinking I could run at Nerd Camp between my classes, but given how damp I was when I got done with today's run... probably not a good idea.

long distance collaboration...

One take recorded in VA... my track added in NY... practice for the reunion gig...



... this is why I miss Annie.

new content...

Now that I have a MacBook with the little camera in it, I've decided to try to post a pic a day to Flickr, with the help of FlickrBooth... a plug in that submits stuff to Flickr straight from Apple's Photo Booth. The pictures will live over in my sidebar. Enjoy the silliness!

pathetic aging rocker reunion concert...

So, we are visiting Williamsburg VA this summer, where my wife and I both went to grad school. We'll take the kids to Busch Gardens, do the Colonial history crap, and visit with some old friends while we're there. It should be a nice vacation.

As a bonus, my old acoustic-duo-band-mate Annie is still living down there and playing with a new band. And when I half jokingly suggested we could do an open-mic while I was in town, she actually got really excited about it.

So... now we're stuck with the question... what do two people who haven't played together in almost 10 years PLAY at an open mic night?

It could get ugly.

fuuuuuck...

It's been more than two weeks since I've run (since before the Great Intestinal Emptying) so I figured this weekend would be a good time to get back into it. I also had something that needed to be Priority Mailed at the post office, which is almost exactly a mile from our house, so I figured... two birds/one stone... I'll throw on my running clothes, jog to the post office, walk/jog back.

Two flaws with this plan...

1) After 2.5 weeks off, I can no longer actually run a mile without bursting a lung.

2) You can't actually MAIL anything at the post office unless you bring... you know... "money" or something.

Manage Comments - HaloScan.com

poor planning...

Little League season ended last week. The last day of tennis was today. Also, the last day of school. So now that it is summer, and the kids NEED something to do, there is... NOTHING TO DO!

New School University Libraries - Electronic Reserves

i have read the internet...

... someone please make MORE.

miles to empty...?

My car has a flat (the fun never ends!) so I borrowed the wife's van today. Just ONCE I would like to start up that vehicle and find more than a TABLESPOON OF FUCKING GAS IN IT!!!

moo...

So, we bought one of those pools for the kids that is sort of between a kiddie pool and a regular above-ground pool. Forty bucks with a little filter and all. We set it up in the sideyard at the end of the driveway. We figured it would be temporary enough that we would put it right on the lawn and move it or empty it before it killed all the grass.

Well it sat there for about two weeks and it became clear that the filter isn't worth a damn... it kept getting green and we would shock it and it would get green again. So I decided to dump it, scrub it and start over. I let the water run down the driveway and dragged the pool across the yard to hose it off and... what... is... that... SMELL?

I'll tell you what that smell is, dear readers. You see, when you combine the following special mixture of ingredients... moisture... darkness... GRASS... and the secret hidden ingredient, BACTERIA, you create a fully-functional working model of the INSIDE OF A COW!!

The barnyard smell has only just now started to weaken. I'm sure our neighbors LOVE us!!

rock on...

I mentioned (via Twitter) last night that I had tidied up my iTunes library... tracked down missing song names, deleted unwanted stragglers, eliminated duplicates, labeled all the "unknown artists". Very satisfying.

Today's job was to tackle the problem of GENRE BLOAT. Now that I have a few different iPods of different sizes, it would be nice to be able to sync them with different-sized playlists. And of course, I don't need things like "The Feynman Lectures on Physics" on my iPod. One easy way to have the "smart playlists" function be able to group things would be by genre, only I tend to ignore the genre field because it is so maddening. Every song you get from a different place has its own classification system for this or that band. Indigo Girls - rock or folk? Norah Jones - pop or jazz? Radiohead - alternative or electronica? (Or does it depend on the album?) AC/DC - metal or classic rock?

Today I made a decision. The only acceptable genres in my iTunes library are...

1) Books and Spoken Word
2) Country
3) Classical
4) Soundtracks
5) ROCK

If there is not a cello or a banjo in it, it is ROCK. Norah Jones... you are rock. Bob Dylan? ROCK. Ryan Adams... fuck the "alt country" label you used to get to claim all to yourself. ROCK!!!!!

Some people may have a problem with this system. I don't care. To me, the label means one thing... this is the music I may want to listen to while driving my car or riding the subway or jogging and not... everything else.

So. For those about to rock... Dave salutes you!