one month and counting

Tracey and I don't go on many dates. Well, not many real dates. You know: dinner, movie, something private. There's always family around, or some of our friends. Yesterday we managed to go out and see Wedding Crashers: the third time in the past month that we've done something just the two of us. (That sentence sounds right, but I can't figure out linguistically why it works. Any help?) Rather than just repeat Kevins blog, I'll let you read his review. Good movie.

My brother has orientation today and yesterday. He spent Sunday night at my place and I drove him to campus in the morning, which meant I got to work around 7:30. I should really start showing up earlier. I'm much more productive (when I'm not posting to my blog.) He spent the night on campus and I'm taking him home this afternoon. Then I get to try to fix his computer again. We're going to try an IDE hard drive and see if that helps. Even though it works fine with Linux, he's a gamer so he wants Windows.

As for Friday, rather than me keep changing times... Ben, Anna, would you come over if we started earlier? and if so, how early do you think is good? (most people probably won't show up until later, but that'll just mean it will be less noisy and crowded.) Will, I'm assuming you're not going to be in town, even though it usually works out so that you are. Anybody else reading this is welcome too. Everybody but Will.

This doesn't belong here

I should probably post this on codemill, but it barely qualifies so I'll leave it here. My brother got all the parts to his computer and set it up. I think he fiddled too much with it before giving me a chance to look at it, and we're having trouble booting the windows install CD or running the mobo driver's install CD (bootable). The Windows install CD freezes after saying something about checking the system configuration, and the mobo boot CD says the hard drive (SATA) is not HPA compatable, which I believe it is (apparently it's some problem with some BIOSes not reporting HPA compatability for HPA compatable SATA drives.) The funny part is that Linux installs and boots just fine. This is one of those rare occations where Linux is compatable with a setup while Windows is not. Even the hardware drivers don't like the setup, but Linux copes. I'm guessing it's because Linux doesn't use bios any more than it has to, while Windows relies on it. I think we're going to play with some IDE drives to see if that helps. Apparently Kevin ran into a similar problem when he made his computer.

Oh, we're having a party Friday night. We'll probably be playing poker earlier, so if you want to play (or if you don't feel like staying out late... ahem... ben and anna...) show up earlier, around 7ish. That's right... not around 7, or 7ish, but around 7ish. I'm going to be that vague.

Renaissance Man

I'm having more and more trouble making up my mind lately, entering some sort of superposition of grad school decision eigenstates, if you would. This happens to me every now and then; I start getting interested in some new field, and find the resources needed to educate myself. Right now, it's physics and chemistry. I've spent a few days reading about molecular orbitals, and I think I'm starting to grasp the concepts in chemistry that I couldn't, or didn't, get in high school. Either way, having too many interests beats the hell out of having no interests, or no resources, so I'm not complaining. I'm just stating an observation.

I just finished reading Angels and Demons, and it was basically The Da Vinci Code with the details shuffled around a little. Still a good read, but I think I'm done with Dan Brown for a while. I got a copy of The Traveler, by John Twelve Hawks, and read a review comparing it to, and elevating it above, The Da Vinci Code. From what I understand it's written in the same style, and does to a big brother government what The Da Vinci Code did to the Catholic church. I'll probably read this later, since I'm in the mood for non fiction (see 1st paragraph.) I started reading the first volume of the Feynman Lectures On Physics. It's an interesting book, even though it's basically just a collection of his lectures, because it's so old. He was talking about subatomic particles, and his list was missing a lot of new particles (I didn't even see the word quark) and when he spoke about biology, he mentioned DNA and RNA, but said that nobody knew how proteins were made from RNA. Also, he labeled the base pairs A, B, C, and D. On the subject of books, does anybody know a good chemistry book they would recommend?

My brother's an eagle scout now. He outranks me, but I earn more than he does, so it all balances out. This is a short paragraph.

Tracey met my family on Saturday. She and my Mom got along well together, and both said privately afterwards that they thought the other was nice. This can mean only one thing: this relationship has got to end, now. A girlfriend who gets along with your mother is dangerous. They'll talk.

I'm getting addicted to playing Poker. Texas Holdem, international rules. I finally won a game last week, then promptly was the first one out in the next game. You win some, you lose some horribly due to going all in on a straight draw. I'm also getting addicted to Beaver. No, not the animal meat, nor the sexual reference (though both are nice), but the water sport (once again, not the sexual reference.) Some people call it Sharks and Minnows, but Stonegate Pool doesn't do that for some reason. As far as I can tell the rules for the game are the same.

Time for some blatant ego stroking/whoremongering. I've been told this picture is sexy by both Leonard (Tims little brother) and Kayla as well as some girls up in Vermont who go to school with her... If anybody can think of a funny caption, I'll upload it to my friendster account with that caption, attributed to whoever came up with it.

Deep Impact a success

So, the Deep Impact mission was a success last night. It was fairly suspensfull leading up to the impact; for about a minute or so the entire auditorium was silent, the projectors displaying images from the impactor as it approached, and shots of nervous rocket scientists from JPL headquarters. All of a sudden, the teleconference with JPL showed NASA team members jumping up and down, hugging like long-lost family, shaking hands, and so forth. The mood lightened on our end too: mostly laughter at the behavior of the rocket scientists. Now, down to the science. No, I'm not involved in any of the science myself, but I am very close to all the scientists, so I get better access than most. One of my bosses being the principal investigator and the Santa-Clause-looking guy here.

The theories leading up to the impact led us to believe that the ejecta cone would be somewhere from 10 degrees from the normal vector to 45 degrees from the normal. All the images streaming down sofar make the ejecta cone look like it's the full 90 degrees; there's no real cone structure. I haven't seen any data about the crater yet, and it's likely to still be forming as I write this. That comet has some weak gravity, so everything runs in slow motion. Everything has been running smothly on the UMD end; my website (password protected, unfortunately, so I can't show off) has been running smothly, allowing scientists from around the world to upload their findings and search through other peoples findings. All the servers are happy. It seems as though I could have gotten much more sleep this weekend with the end result being the same.

Anyway, I shifted my hours with a coworker so I'm working from 8:00 am to 1:00 pm instead of noon to 5:00 pm, so at least I'll have this afternoon off.

Expect a lot of these

It's 2:42 AM and I'm sitting in my office, waiting for something to happen. If the building burns down or floods, I get to go home and other people have to deal with that mess. Unfortunately, the risks of getting caught and the desire to stay employed are preventing me from taking things into my own hands. So I sit here, while all the servers run smoothly. I am the failsafe, the plan that everybody needs to have, but nobody thinks they'll need, because in all likelihood they won't. I am reminded of a day at my old job, where I showed up to work at 9 and it got started like a regular day. Then, all of a sudden, the company was getting kicked out of a colocation facility because of spam complaints (I'm still not sure if it was legitimate or not, but who cares), and I had to stay until 5:00 in the morning driving servers around the great state of Virginia. Today feels like it's going to be like that day, only more so. I got to work at 8:00 am today, and stayed until noon. I had a whole 12 hours off, and spent most of it with Tracey painting, or stripping wallpaper, and meeting a lot of her family. I got no sleep, but it was my choice so I can't complain too much. Anyway, I'm here until 6:00 in the morning. I expect that by the end of my shift I will be quite delusional, and writing much more fanciful posts.

Women and Ice Cream

Good, glad to see I got your attention. Please, if everyone would be seated we can get started. I've recently come to the conclusion that too many of my posts have been narcissistic, detailing my comings and goings as though I live an interesting life, a life worthy of a best selling autobiography. So I'm going to try, at least in part, to give you something interesting to read.

Those electrons up in the sky have been up to it again. They've gathered forces and in about a day, struck a girl sleeping in bed, a boy through his video game controller, and a worker at the National Weather Service facility. I for one welcome our new electron overlords. Partially because if I try to get rid of them, I'll die. I'm especially fond of the last one, since they were tracking a severe weather system at the time.

Back to the shameless self promoting that we've all grown to expect. I saw The Eels at the 9:30 club on Tuesday. My sister wanted to go, but didn't want to go alone, so she got me to go. She thought they'd be on later, for whatever reason I'll never know, so we didn't get there until 9:15ish. Unfortunately, they started around 8:15, so we missed a good portion of their show. We still got to see a good set, and they did three encores. A couple of which contained multiple songs. They'd disappear, and people would start to leave, or bang their hands together violently, and the band would eventually come back. My sister had some doubts each time that they'd be coming back, but if there's one thing I learned from working stage-crew in high school, it's that that whole fat-lady-singing thing is a myth; it's not over until they bring up the house lights.

I'm working some great hours this weekend. Here's a quick run down:

day	begin	end
Saturday	8:00 am	12:00 noon
Sunday	12:00 midnight	6:00 am
Sunday Night-Monday Morning	10:00 pm	3:00 am
Monday	12:00 noon	5:00 pm
Tuesday	6:00 am	12:00 noon

The actual encounter with Tempel 1 will be at 1:52 am EDT Monday morning. I'll be working at the open house then, but I've been told that I'll be able to see the data as it comes in. If you're bored, here's the UMD website for Deep Impact.