Canto LXXI

So there's a few things that I want to post about, but the first thing is going to be about my wedding ring. I love my wedding ring. Of course, I love the person that I'm married to, so that helps. But it's a beautiful ring. It's a tungsten ring inlaid with a band of gold. It's suppose to be nigh-invulnerable. It's made of freaking tungsten carbide! They make drills that go through steel out of this stuff. And mine broke. Seriously. Here's the photo.



I don't know how it happened. I was watching How I Met Your Mother last night and playing with it on my hand. Then it felt a little funny so I looked down, and there was this crack! And notice that the gold part is OK, it's just the tungsten. I really don't get it. I'm not a superstitious person, but this is a little weird.

I'm watching the Red Sox play the Angels right now, and Youk just hit a 2-run home run over the Monster to tie the game. That's not the interesting part, though. The man who caught the ball was balding, but still had a mitt. And not just any mitt. A pink mitt. Seriously. And I don't care if his wife had breast cancer and he bought this to support research. You're a grown man at the ball park. Already you shouldn't be bringing your mitt, and to top it off a pink one? I thought Boston was a tough town. Of course, the people who can afford Monster seats aren't exactly the most blue-collar. And Jacoby Ellsbury of Madras, OR hit his second home run of the night. Not bad. Did you know Madras is south of Portland?

So this weekend was a little crazy. Just lots of stuff to do. But it was all fun. Plenty of free food, played some Rock Band, went to my first Seder, frisbee. Just a fun time. And there was also the Smoking Club. This is a group of a half-dozen of us enjoying the finer things in life. Like a fine smoke and some Bocce Ball. It was a great afternoon on Marathon Monday.

And to end this post, something funny from last friday. My rather italian officemate came in friday morning and said 'You're a fan of The Who?' It just so happened that I was wearing my Who t-shirt that very day, and he noticed. This was followed up with him saying how much he enjoyed listening to them. He's a huge classical music fan, so this was a bit of a surprise, but The Who are awesome, and had now won a new fan. I felt compelled to find out more. So it turns out he discovered them the previous weekend. But what was the song or album that made him such a fan? Quadrophenia. No joke. I immediately asked if he had heard, you know, My Generation, Tommy, Who's Next. Nope, nope, nope. I gave him all the above, and let him know if he liked those to come back for some more.

UPDATE: So I went to the store where we bought our wedding rings. It turns out the company that made our indestructible rings, and thus guaranteed them, went under. Bankrupt. They no longer exist. Therefore we won't be getting a new ring from them any time soon. What the hell. The guy was kind of funny about it, and they said they can give me a good deal on a new ring (Hah!), but I was SOL about the ring. Shit.

Canto LXX

I knew there was going to be at least one day that I missed. But seriously, at least I'm trying. I miss everyone!

Anyway, today I have a quick-hits thing in mind. A few paragraphs on several topics about things that have been going on lately.

First up, I got a hair cut. And trimmed the beard. You may have noticed that in the Lebowski pictures the beard was not it's full, disheveled self. But rather than just cutting it all at once (like last year), I decided to phase it out over the course of a week. Here's the link, I recommend the slideshow. Let me know which you like best. I think I preferred the Fu Manchu.

Part of the reason I missed posting yesterday has been how busy work has been these last few weeks. It's actually really exciting! I understand what I'm working on, can talk somewhat coherently about it, and I'm doing useful calculations that are advancing a possible new result in my field! I think this is really the first time I can say that. Also, meetings with my adviser and the post-doc I'm working with have been a lot of fun and very fruitful. I must say that this is the most excited about work I've been in a long time. But that excitement has led to long hours of late. Not necessarily a bad thing if it leads to a nice result and publication, but I do miss seeing Steph for dinner. Anyway, I'll let everyone know how it goes!

[For those interested, my research is on constructing an AdS background solution in Heterotic string theory. There is a "No-Go" theorem in this subject, but as physicists like to say, a no-go theorem really tells you exactly where to go. They usually say something like "If you do X, Y and Z, then you can't get a xylophone." But then you should just say to your self, 'If I don't use X (or Y or Z), then can I still get a marimba?' Just slightly tweaking the no-go result often causes it to give you something very similar to what you're looking for.]

I've also been watching less TV lately. The best sporting season (football) is over, I really only watch March Madness and some NBA playoffs in basketball, and I'll watch the Sox if a game's on and I'm not doing something else, but I don't obsess over it. But I have been watching 'The Big Bang Theory'. I feel really dirty doing it. Like, really dirty. It's a terrible 3-camera sitcom. Sadly placed next to one of the greatest 3-camera sitcoms of all time, How I Met Your Mother (which I recommend for everyone). I'm only watching it because there may never be another time where a television show is about theoretical physicists. But the various stereotypes are ridiculously bad. First, it should be pointed out that more than 1/3 of the graduate students in the CTP are married, and another 1/3 or so have significant others. [Small, but somewhat representative sampling: my office. 1 married, 1 engaged, 1 steady girlfriend (going out 1+ years), 1 single - with the singleton as a first year grad student.] So 4 single, can't-get-a-date grad students/post-docs is pretty rare. Maybe they congregate, but that's not really my experience. They also have 3 Americans and 1 Indian. While the 1 Indian is correct, 3 Americans not so much. More Europeans, more Chinese. They also assume that everyone is some kind of uber-nerd. Trust me when I say this is not the case. I don't know anyone here who role-plays, has an encyclopedic knowledge of comics, or knows any more about Star Wars than I do (that may not be saying that much). We're total geeks - as in we know way too much math & physics. We talk in physics, relating various things that have nothing to do with physics in terms of physics or math and then laugh about it. But the geekiness ends there. They do capture (somewhat) that aspect of our lives, but even then it's only half-assed. Anyway, hopefully the show will be canceled soon and I can be free from this misery. I'm sure I have more on this, but now I'm all worked up. I have to get back to my real physics work. To The Action, Jackson!

Canto LXIX

And we're back for another round! Today I want to talk a little about my favorite game in the whole world, Diplomacy. Next year is the 50th anniversary of the game, and a new board is suppose to be released, which is good since it's out-of-print right now. But the other news in the Diplomatic world is that there's now a Facebook application that lets you play games. This was really cool and exciting at first, but I must say that it's not as great as it sounds. I'll go over what I don't like first:

1) There are several key rules that are screwed up. First and foremost is that you can't support a convoy, i.e. you can't support a naval invasion a la D-Day. This is really crippling for England, since they're are going to have an impossible time getting past the stalemate lines fast enough. The program also doesn't recognize the difference between friend and foe units when adjudicating, so you can self-dislodge. There was a painful moment in my game where I was using that fact to defend a space only to be forced to retreat from my own units! Also, disbands are handled at the same time as builds, which really messes things up. I need to know what's on my borders before I know what I should build. Anyway, there are probably more issues as well that I just haven't run into yet. Very frustrating.

2) The game I'm playing in right now, I'm not close to any of the other players (either proximity or on a personal level except for one), so it's hard to conduct, you know, diplomacy. There's a forum for sending messages and stuff, but it's woefully underused. This game is ultimately about negotiating and finding ways to interact with your friends and enemies to advance your own interests.

Those are my two big points. But I'm glad that there's a new forum for people to get introduced to this game. It's a lot of fun, and the more the merrier. But hopefully someone can work on this and make a better application.

With that said, I want to set up a play-by-e-mail (PBEM) game, that is run on one of the automated judge servers. The downside is that you need someone to be the Game Master who can't actually play. I've enlisted Stephanie for this, and she's (somewhat reluctantly) agreed to do this and promises not to divulge any secrets to me. So I'm looking for 6 other people who aren't in much physical contact with each other (i.e. in different cities so you can't conspire over a board together whenever you want) to start up a game. I think it will be moves every 3 days, adjustments over 1 day. Also, I would like to see high-volume emailing and negotiating. So don't say yes if you're going to check your email once a day and maybe get back to someone. 3 days is enough time to send out 1 or 2 emails a day for negotiating. I'm sure we're all good enough typists. Anyway, if you're interested you can post a comment telling me so, or just email me. Once I get 6 more, I'll email out and set this thing up.

Canto LXVIII

And we're back for day two of my week of blog posts. Today's post will be about my trip to Chicago a few weeks ago to visit a friend and go to Lebowski Fest. Well, I'm actually not sure how much there is to tell. They treated me real good, ate some great food, and had some good times bowling. Maybe I'll let a couple pictures do the talking.
Arg, it's really bothering me that I can't get these damn images to rotate correctly. I'll have to figure this out somehow. Anyway, here's me and a buddy out on the lanes.
And me relaxing with a beverage. You know, just enjoying my beverage.

Seriously, it was a great time. This is now the second time I've been to Chicago, and each time my hosts have been superb so they keep making me want to go back. It looks like they'll be visiting New England sometime this summer, so we'll have the chance to finally repay them in kind. What else did we do there? Well besides the food (which was excellent, if somewhat meat-filled), we went to the dollar theater for a viewing of I Am Legend, whilst the school teacher graded her tests. I don't know about that movie, a dollar seemed about right. I guess the DVD has some alternate ending and such. But I doubt I'll ever find out what really happened.

Monday morning, before flying back home, I went downtown to the Art Institute. There's something so pleasing about putting on some nice classical music (Beethoven) and wandering around the Medieval European through to Impressionism section. It just felt right. And I put on some Beck (Odelay) when I got to the Modern Art section. Which also felt appropriate. Again, as I said yesterday, I've been listening to a lot of music lately. But the American Art wing was closed for renovations, so no American Gothic, and Hopper's Nighthawks was in with the special exhibit on Edward Hopper which is touring the country right now. But I'd seen them before, so it was OK, if only a little disappointing. I remember being so impressed with Nighthawks when we saw it for the first time two years ago. It's an amazing painting.

Anyway, good times were had by all. I may have to do another Lebowski Fest. Maybe one will come to Boston. I can only hope.

Canto LXVII

So it's been a little while. Okay, more than a little while. But like the little fighter that could in Punch-Out, I have tapped "A" a bunch and I'm back! I've got a list of topics I want to hit up this week, and some pictures to share. So my plan is a new post every day this week. We'll see if I can hold myself to it.

Today I'm going to talk about music. Mostly because I've been listening to a lot of music lately, but I'm not sure if it's any more than normal. But I feel I must spread the word about a new band I found out about. They're called the 1900's, from Chicago. Here's their MySpace site, and you can give them a listen. A friend of mine from Chicago whose a grad student here gave me their album and now I'm completely in love with them. Sadly, they don't have their title track from the album Cold & Kind. But Bring the Good Boys Home is quite excellent. Just imagine two beautiful women singing in harmony the following lyrics:

"I don't believe I've ever told you
Something about my murderous mind,
That it's cold & kind and filled with hate,
Like strange attractors that keep their shape over time."

They're totally awesome. A nice hippie band, remind me a lot of Buffalo Springfield, only with the harmonies of the Mamas and the Papas. The only downside to finding a new band to love is that they have a limited selection available, and I just have to wait for the next album. Sigh.

Next up in my music scene is Guitar Hero/Rock Band. For those who have not played it yet, I just feel sorry for you. It really is a thrill, and I love playing the Bass/Rhythm Guitar. I can't help myself. It's even inspired me to pull my bass off the shelf and make some noise. Man do I suck, but who knows. In the same way I can bench my own weight now (unlike when I started as a slightly paunchy weakling 6 months ago), in a few months maybe I can actually lay down some fat notes. The nice thing about Rock Band, besides the collaborative effort, is that they're putting out new songs every week, so you can keep enjoying new material. They even put out a few Dead songs! Really, the only hole in the repertoire is no Zeppelin. But we all know that they're insanely protective of their music, which is fine, but it would be fun to play drums to "When the Levee Breaks"...