Back...at least for the moment...

Another long break in the blogging. I'm going to blame school. Just because.

The big thing on my mind:
I'm a little surprised (and saddened) at the stories about the hardships that people will have to go through to keep their televisions working after the conversion today. When did television become a necessity rather than a luxury?

An NPR story this evening spoke to a stay at home mom with 6 kids that, due to the recession, was going to have to drop cable and buy a converter box. I'm going to make the assumption that the family has a DVD player or *gasp* a VCR. I'm also going to make the assumption that the community has a library. Go borrow movies...or...wait for it....books!

Off Rant.

Dreams DO come true

I love to go in the temperature/humidity controlled rooms at the wine store and drool (figuratively) over all the expensive and lovely wine. I can spend a remarkable amount of time just looking at wines and I've always joked that being trapped in one of those rooms wouldn't be so bad.


Well, last night was the night. While at dinner with colleagues in Tucson at 58 Degrees and Holding, a couple of us took a quick tour of the storage room which has an attached private dining room. When we were done looking around, we discovered that the door had locked behind us. Every sitcom ever made has an episode where people get trapped--I had flashbacks to the Family Ties where Mallory and Skippy get stuck in the basement and end up wearing chipmunk suits. We didn't do the banging on the door thing. We didn't do the group bonding thing. We shrugged and went back to look more at the wine.


There are three reasons that I was happy that someone opened the door in a short time:

1. It was difficult to see what was stored in the cabinets--window shopping becomes less fun when you have to make an effort to see what's hiding in the window. I want to say something about the experience becoming a peep show, but I can't figure out how to do that gracefully.


2. All the cabinets were securely locked (see picture from the website below)


3. No corkscrew.

The evening's dinner was wonderful and the wine list offered a lot of variety and was very approachable. I learned that living a dream isn't always what it was cracked up to be and that I should always carry a corkscrew.

Shortage

Friday morning, before I left for Indiana this weekend, I heard there was a gas shortage in Middle Tennessee. I didn't think much about it because I had just under a half-tank of gas. However, I went for a run and started looking for an open station, I started to get worried. I passed 6 gas stations around my apartment and none had gas.

Jeremy did some searching and found that it was a Middle Tennessee problem and told me that if I could make it to Kentucky, I could find gas. I had just over a quarter tank which I conservatively estimated to give me a range of 60 miles. I kept an eye on the gauge and started taking every exit once I got out of Nashville. I didn't use air conditioning and I drove slow and got further than I expected before I decided that I needed to make a decision to keep going or go back to Nashville. Fortunately, a guy was filling his tank with a portable container and I was able to ask him how far away he went to find his prize. It was just 5 miles up the road in Kentucky.

So after waiting in line for about a half hour, I made it to Indiana safely with plenty of gas to spare. People waiting in line were generally very polite and patient--unusual for such circumstances. Also unusual is that the gas price wasn't gouged. I paid less than what was being charged in Indiana.

I don't know what the current gas situation in Nashville is. Rumors say that deliveries are on the way and that they aren't. I don't know if it's a coincidence or not, but the grocery stocks were low this evening when I went.

Needless to say, I'll be walking and biking when and where I can.

Signs from the Locker Room

No shaving in the sauna or steam rooms

Attention Span

I played a lot of some Mario-based racing game when I was at Purdue over the summer of '97. I can't remember what version of what system or what whatever things were, but there was a level that was described as "difficult", not because of the high technical level, or the irritating cheat-for-computer mode, but because the track was long and people (especially children, evidently) would have a hard time keeping their concentration for the entire race. I thought the concept was really funny.

Now, the Iphone has a "productivity application" that is meant to improve your concentration. The concept? Hold down the button as long as you can. Lifehacker posted about it. Click on the screenshot link....if you can remember to do so when you get there.

Speaking of...

Speaking of food, you know those claw games you see in grocery and discount stores where you use a mechanical claw to try to nab a stuffed animal? They have them for lobsters now. The lobster claw game may be coming to a store near you.

Pet store? Bait shop? Grocery store?
You pick.



The video was actually posted a year ago, so it may be old news to some of y'all.

Cute Sells. Sometimes.

Prelims are in 10 days. I should be up to my elbows in technical papers, but since Jeremy took off this afternoon, I've taken it upon myself to make sure I make the most of my Netflix streaming time, fix the front derailleur on my bike, drink some wine, eat some leftovers, and most importantly NOT read technical papers.

While similarly procrastinating earlier this week, I came upon this ad (linked from Jezebel) for ummm....feminine hygiene products. I'm not sure it makes me want to buy anything, but it's certainly...something...yeah.

J'adore...

...en ewww!
C'est un poisson de gâteau!
Bon appétite!

So. Very. Sleepy.

I discovered that I was very tired this afternoon. Perhaps it was the smallish salad (with orzo and crab) that I had for lunch that didn't quite sustain me. Perhaps it was the papers I was reading. Perhaps it was the M&M's that should have perked me up, but put me in a sugar coma. Perhaps it was the class that covered in painstaking detail stuff that I've seen before for an hour and a half. I don't think my chin ever actually touched the desk, but only because of the strange sitting configuration of the desks.

I took a brisk walk home after class and tried to work for a while and decided that a nap was the best thing for me. I woke up an hour and a half later. Ugh.

There's how much sugar in that?

Tastespotting linked to Foodsel today, reminding me of the short discussion of Smarties on Daily Pie after last Halloween.

You can pick the food and it shows you the equivelant number of sugar cubes, sticks of butter, and batteries (calories?). It will also tell you how long you would need to work out for different activities to burn the calories you took in. Kinda interesting but kinda sad. Enjoy!!

Before you freak out with the numbers, the default serving (for M&M's, at least), seems quite large. I think it defaults to 1 cup of the food. I have eaten more than a cup of M&M's in a sitting, but it's not the norm.

WFA WTF?

All the news today seemed to be centered around the congressional baseball/steroid hearings and I got really frustrated at the fact that our lawmakers are spending time investigating something that really doesn't affect the general public and that there was so much media coverage of said hearings. I kept getting a mental image of the big, bad committee asking hard questions during the session, then scurrying around for autographs during breaks.

So, I decided to find out a little about the committee that's running the hearings, the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, to see how baseball fits with the plan. The charter, from the webpage:

The Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is the main
investigative committee in the U.S. House of Representatives. It has
jurisdiction to investigate any federal program and any matter with federal
policy implications.

Okay. This does not help with how baseball fits with the committee, unless baseball is suddenly a federal program. We'll move on to jurisdiction (again FTFW):

The legislative jurisdiction of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform includes the following areas, as set forth in House Rule X, clause 1:
• Federal civil service, including intergovernmental personnel; and the
status of officers and employees of the United States, including their
compensation, classification, and retirement;
• Municipal affairs of the District of Columbia in general (other than
appropriations);
• Federal paperwork reduction;
• Government management and accounting measures generally;
• Holidays and celebrations;
• Overall economy, efficiency, and management of government operations and
activities, including federal procurement;
• National archives;
• Population and demography generally, including the Census;
• Postal service generally, including transportation of the mails;
• Public information and records;
• Relationship of the federal government to the states and municipalities
generally; and
• Reorganizations in the executive branch of the government.

Okay, so I'll stretch things a bit and go with public information and records. It's a stretch, but I'm going to assume that's where they're coming from. However, if we're going to make this argument, I'll say that they need to be talking to individuals from all arenas wherein steroid abuse is an issue. These are probably primarily sports, but definitely not limited to baseball. The talks should be talking about the effects of steroids on the human body (for the use of public information) not the future hall-of-fame eligibility of the individual in question. Let that question go to the MLB governing body.

In the meantime, the 41 members of the committee have (so far) spent two sessions (this go-'round) in this investigation. Even conservative calculations would show astronomical billable hours. From there, we'll go back to the committee's homepage, on the right, under "Key Issues", and point out the "Waste, Fraud, and Abuse" (WFA) link. Yes, friends, this is the group that investigates WFA issues.

It's the very definition of irony.

Not quite a flying car, but close enough to impress me:

It took me a few minutes to figure out what they meant by "disappearing car door", but once I watched the video and had it spelled out for me, I drooled. Watch the whole video, enjoy the narrator's accent, struggle to imagine mainstream car companies adopting this.

The company is located in So. Cal. and the website seems a little slap-dash, but it seems like a viable idea.

Union Rules?

Resurrection

My views of how to fix electronics has changed. I noted a few posts ago that my microwave died. I was going to do something about it, but more than two weeks later, it is still sitting on my kitchen cabinet, plugged in. This may not be a completely bad thing. When I got back from my trip this week, I discovered that the clock and lights were working again. Magic? I dunno. It seems to be working just fine now. I have no earthly idea what happened.

It was definitely not working and now it does. Odd.

The microwave was picked because it was pretty and all microwaves are the same. After the untimely death, I went and read some reviews of this particular model and found that lots of people were having them die young, but conveniently out of warranty. My research also showed that it's often some capacitor that goes bad. Did the cap have a chance to cycle and refresh itself when I left it sitting? Dunno.

What I have learned: If something's broken, leave it there. It may fix itself. This replaces my old practice of dropping the broken device from an unspecified height. If it works after, great, if not, it definitely won't later.

I wonder how long this resurrection will last.

Wounded-Bird-Truck

I may have previously posted about the Vanderbilt policy (mandate?) that they not physically harm the critters that run or fly around campus. This has lead to stories about squirrels being shipped off by the hundred to lands where students don't hand-feed them on the lawn to flourish or die (we can guess the outcome) or birds of prey being brought on to campus to keep the squirrel population down. The addition of birds of prey doesn't directly kill the squirrels, right?

Anyway, there's a bird problem. Not a bird-of-prey problem, but a bird problem. I documented, but never posted about this late last semester when I was a little more than crazy and posting about multitudes of birds would have just fanned the fire, if you will. So, I feel that, after the events of today, I can safely post the picture I took in the Nov./Dec. time frame. The dots, yeah, they're birds. A whole lot of birds.

From what I learned today, the birds in question are known for spreading all sorts of nasty diseases. The campus beautification team spends a significant amount of time keeping the little buggers a safe distance from the Vandy bubble. Unfortunately for those of us that have hearing left, that means that they blast the sounds of a wounded bird from a truck that drives around campus and setting off fireworks near the trees in which the birds light.

While I was walking to and from the gym, I could alternately hear the wounded-bird-truck(s?) driving about and the firecrackers going off. If I paid close attention, I could see on the horizon, the location of the firecrackers by the puff of birds making their narrow escape from the trees.

It was really absurd.

Chocolate is Seasonal???

Jeremy went to pick up dinner tonight while I worked on the thesis. I had requested a chocolate shake from Arby's. He came back with tea and explained that, according to Arby's, chocolate is a "seasonal" flavor and this is not chocolate season. Jamocha, on the other hand, is not seasonal. This, evidently, is eggnog and orange cream season.

FOUL!!!

Colossus

While listening to NPR this morning as I was heading to work, I heard in the hourly news summary that a British group has rebuilt Colossus, the computer designed to decipher German codes during WWII.

That's great! It'll be the size of a pocket watch!

No, no. Evidently, a computer museum (in the original location of an original Colossus machine) rebuilt the original design as accurately as possible (starting from a picture).

A computer museum--it's like seeing your childhood lunchbox in an antiques store!

The project took 14 years.

Huh? How long did it take to build the first one?

I dunno. Not 14 years. The difficulty is that all 10 original machines and their plans/specs were disassembled and/or destroyed for security reasons. The rebuilt computer will be pitted against a virtual Colossus running to demonstrate its blinding speed. Codes will be generated and transmitted via radio for this exciting head-to-head competition.

From Germany?

Yes.

Appropriate. Authentic.

Yes. Absolutely. The testing should be underway shortly. There are delays due to that fact that "we are at a bad point in the sunspot cycle."

Interesting article. Worth a read.

Names

I saw this article today and couldn't help but think that there may be some validity to this.

I remember drawing water associated with my lower-case script initials (SEA). Coincidence?

The sign of a long week ahead:

Walking to class this afternoon, I sighed and thought to myself, “At least it’s Friday.”
I then realized that it wasn’t.

It’s going to be a long week.

Additional Proof of the Downfall of Society

Hi, my name is Sarah, I think it would be great fun for everyone if you would let me come into your office when you're not around and do something funny. I could (a.) rearrange your furniture (b.) cover everything with aluminum foil or (c.) fill your desk drawers with Styrofoam peanuts. Would that be okay? Great.

Oh, hey, would you mind chipping in for supplies, everyone's giving $3. It would be great if you would too. Thanks.