Canto IL

Interesting news from the CDC. Here's the link for the survey, which is fascinating. I love statistics. I think if this whole physics thing doesn't work out, I'll dive into statistics for sports or population surveys and such. It's a lot of fun to see what's really going on in the world. The numbers don't lie.

My first week back, and I'm already behind. I've just been spending the last few days reading and trying to learn some stuff to talk about with The Advisor. I must impress him with all my vast knowledge... I spent the whole day today listening to music (Summer days + Allman Brothers = Awesome) and cleaning the house. Laundry, dishes, vacuuming, bathroom, etc... I think I'll take the rest of the night off and watch The Big Lebowski or something else I can just be lazy with.

I've had an idea that I've been kicking around for a while and I submit it to the masses as to whether or not I should do it. Are you ready?

Blogging The Simpsons.

Basically, I would go back through and watch every episode and deliver some commentary and thoughts after each one. I've got seasons 1-9 so far, and 10 is coming out this August. So it would go at least that far. What do people think? Would that make for an interesting read?

Canto XLVIII

So I'm finally on my way home. I'm currently on the bus from Boulder to the airport, and I'll finish this on the flight home. But it won't get posted until tomorrow. It's like writing a letter to myself in the future! Hmm... What to write about? Not that much news either in my world or the world in general. I'm going out tomorrow to pick up the new White Stripes album (Icky Thump) and will probably listen to it at least twice before the end of the day. Maybe that's something to write about, a review. I'm excited either way, and we're going to see them when they're in town in July. I'm also trying to figure out what other CDs to get. I'm going to limit myself to less than 5. Unless something really good catches my eye. Steph's birthday is coming up this monday. I guess we'll go out for some nice food. She got a raise at work earlier this week, so congratulations to her!

And here's the rest of the story. First, a few things to complain about. Whatever number reason this is to hate the dorms: someone puked in our sink sometime Wednesday night/Thursday morning. I thought we had all grown past this. To the people who thought that a tiny baby would be a good idea to bring on an overnight flight: Go to Hell. You deserve it. I'll have to check my copy of the Inferno, but I'm pretty sure your going straight to Hell. The baby screamed, and I am not exaggerating, the entire flight. At full volume. In the seat directly behind me. By the end of the flight, the baby was coughing and horse after all that screaming. But continued to scream anyway. I don't blame the baby, but the parents who thought that it would shut up for the flight, they can go Hell. Where they will be forever tormented by all screaming unbaptized babies.

But I finally made it home. Lazy weekend followed. Went to the local shopping outlet for some groceries, picked up my CDs (I managed to talk Steph out of getting the Labyrinth soundtrack), and we rented Anchorman, which was pretty funny, Will Ferrell is always good for a laugh. Also, for Steph's birthday dinner we finally went out to this Greek restaurant near our house we've been meaning to try. Delicious and cheap! Next time someone visits, we'll have to go there. Hope you like lamb! (It's delicious!) She also got her birthday present, which is a Nikon D40 DSLR. And has been having fun playing with it since. She also finally submitted her first story for publication last night! She's going to keep working on it, and wants to submit it to 20 places in the next month. She's been working really hard lately and doing a bunch of things at home (like gardening, writing, photography, cleaning up, making dinners...), so I know she's planning on asking some of you to read over her story, so help her out a little bit.

Last night we had to do some BBQ because it was so nice out. The New England evenings in the summer really are quite nice. The days, being 85+ degrees and 70+ humidity, I could do without. But the nights are just great. So if you visit in the summer, we'll have to do BBQ. Also, I've moved into my new office. Steph came by and took some pictures with her new camera, but I think I'll wait a little bit and settle in before posting some pics. It's pretty sweet, though. I just need some bookshelf space for my books. Right now there are 6 stacks of physics & math books, all waist high, next to my desk. We're suppose to get a new bookcase in sometime soon.

Also, I think just about everyone saw this. I'm not saying anything. Just that I was an elder child.

Canto XLVII

So there's really not all that much new going on right now. I'm here at TASI getting my learn on. The lectures seem to be stepping up this week, and I've really been enjoying them. Although by the last afternoon lecture today, I could just feel my brain starting to tap out, I think I was asleep for maybe 10 minutes, and when I woke up, I was totally lost. I'll have to go through the notes tonight. But there was one rather great comment from Nima Arkani-Hamed. Much of his discussion revolves around the anthropic principle, which is basically saying that various constants of nature are "tuned" just right to support life. This has gained a lot of ground in the theoretical physics community (although remains highly controversial) due to two outstanding unsolved problems in physics right now: the Higgs mass (for those who keep up on such things, yes we still expect to find the Higgs at the LHC, this has to do with it's coupling to matter) and the Cosmological Constant/Dark Energy (the recently observed fact that our universe is just beginning to accelerate). Basically, the idea is that there is a huge multi-verse of many different universes with many different values of these various constants of nature, and we just happen to live in one of the universes that can support life. There are certain features and drawbacks to this, but before you dismiss it completely remember that the Earth you are sitting on is an anthropic argument. We didn't just happen to live on a planet that supports life, we could only live on a planet that supports life. Anyway, his lecture included a lot of examples of interesting "accidents" about out universe and situations that may seem to be "tuned". But one was particularly funny. The size of our moon is just such that it can block out our sun. In fact, it works to about one part in 10^3 or 10^4. That's an amazing amount of "tuning", even worse odds than the Blazers winning the Lottery! But he called this a case of mis-anthropic tuning, thinking about all the virgins who were sacrificed to "bring back the sun" or some other such nonsense. It got a good laugh. Well, they say it's not funny if you have to explain the joke, but maybe you learned something along the way.

I'm looking forward to being back in Boston. My parents are heading off across the pond tomorrow to visit my brother in London, and also visit Paris and some other parts of France. Two weeks of European vacation. I'm a little envious, Steph and I tried to see if we could work it in this year, but no luck. We'll make it there sometime. We've both been separately, but not together. Someday.

Canto XLVI

So as you may be able to tell, I've updated my blog! Well, adjusted some of the colo(u)ring (for those of the British persuasion) and updated the links and such. Not too exciting, but it's 90-something degrees out, which makes being lazy very easy. Right now sitting in front of a fan with my laptop in front of me, watching the Sox ticker (Bonds homered, but Sox are still up in the 8th). My web-surfing is slowing down after 2 hours, so I decided to go through the email, then hit up the blog. And since I don't have much to post about, decided to make up my own news. Like fixing up this blog. Oh sure, I could do some research, but the fan keeps blowing the papers around, and if you think I'm moving away from that you're nuts. I saw Pirates III yesterday. Disappointing. If you only saw the first one, stay there. If you saw the second one, like I did, hoping that it would continue the antics of the original, well, you know how that turned out. Basically I was just hoping for some sort of closure for the series since I'd already sunk (if you'll forgive the pun) 5+ hours into the series. So now I'm down almost 8 hours to Jerry Bruckheimer, with very little closure. Lame.

Happy Father's Day everybody!

Canto XLV

Well, I'm not one to usually do this, but this caught my eye while browsing the Oregonian earlier today. "Security setup records teen sexually abusing barn horse" really says it all, but I think the most telling line is "very concise, deliberate, well-thought-out plan." Concise?

Today, after a lovely morning lecture on open string field theory, we went out on a pub crawl in Boulder. Well, more of a Micro-Brewery crawl. We started just after lunch, and by the end were pretty much wasted. But good times all around. Sobering up now that I have a big bottle of water and took a shower. We hit up: Avery Brewing, Redstone Meadery (2nd time for me, if you recall), Boulder Brewing, and Twisted Pine Brewing. I've got to say though that nothing really blew my mind. I think the hoppy-revolution has hit Boulder pretty hard, and that's not really what I'm looking for in a beer. Even the porter at Avery was basically an extra-dark hoppy ale. I really enjoyed the light meads during the hot summer day. We walked about 7 or 8 miles today on sidewalks to get everywhere, and it was hot. The mead was the most refreshing. Weirdest beer of the day was the Chile Beer at Twisted Pine. It really did taste like there were little chiles in the beer. Long story short: if you like the hoppier-style ales, like IPAs and such, then this would have been for you. If you're like me, though, sometimes you just want a good Porter or Stout, and they can be so hard to find.

Anyway, I think tomorrow is going to be my day of rest & maybe get some work done in the afternoon. Right now, it's 10:30 at night, time to brush my teeth and go to bed. I've been posting so much this week because I'm bored without Stephanie. I miss home. And it's not just the nice bed, my own bathroom/shower, meals when I want them, the TV, or the sex. It's all of those things put together. Especially the last one. Maybe I am still drunk... Have a good night everybody!

Canto XLIV

So here's just a quick scattering of stuff while I wait for the cafeteria line to die down a bit so I can get some crappy lunch. I read the Silmarillion. Not a good book. And the worst part was the ending with the Deus-Ex-Machina conclusion. Does anyone ever appreciate this? Roughly the idea of the book is that the good gods beat down the bad god every so often. Yee-freaking-haw. Went for a long hike during the afternoon talk. The speaker was terrible, so I don't really feel bad about missing it. Well, I do feel slightly bad since I was looking forward to the topic he was "discussing", but incoherent mumbling into the blackboard while writing illegibly doesn't really do much for me. He gave some references for what he was going to cover, which is basically an invitation to not take notes. The only other speaker of note so far is basically one of the hugest nerds I have ever seen in a physics setting. And keep in mind this is in a room with 60 theoretical physics graduate students and another half dozen professors. That's how nerdy he was. Normally after a lecture we spend the time talking about whatever interesting points the speaker made, but this time we basically spent it trying to gauge how much lunch money he's lost over the course of his life, how many wedgies and/or swirlies received, etc. 'Now see here gentlemen, I gave you the requisite sum, there's really no need for this...' I don't want to go into further details, for fear of having my young physics career over before it really began, but there were many riffs on this nerd-theme. Feel free to come up with some of your own.

Canto XLIII

Well, school-wise, there's not much to say. Actually, there was one really interesting set of lectures (the ones by David Kutasov) on constructing Supersymmetric Quantum Chromodynamics (SQCD for short - physicists love acronyms) from an intersecting brane scenario in string theory. But I've promised this to be a more personal blog to keep those not so near me up-to-date on the comings and goings of my life and not a geek-driven physics blog. Also I don't think I could keep that up. Anything really cool will probably pop into the New York Times Science section eventually.

For the weekend I met up with Steph again. She had been up visiting her Aunts in Fort Collins, but came down to pick me up. I guess they went to the Celestial Seasonings tea factory and took the tour, and had a great time. The mint room was something else! She picked me up, and we visited a Meadery here in Boulder before heading back up to Fort Collins to stay with her Aunt. (I have discovered that whenever I type Fort Collins, I first type 'Collings' then have to go back and fix it. -ing is just too common of a suffix.) We watched Happy Feet, the animated penguin film, that night. Very cute, but I think I liked March of the Penguins better. Penguins are just sooo cute, animation doesn't really make them much cuter. Almost makes me want to do B-physics... But not really.

The next day we went for a run in the morning and saw a coyote up close and personal. He saw us and ran the other direction, occasionally looking behind him to make sure we weren't following him. But I guarantee that if I had had to fight him off, it would have been a 500-lb Siberian Wolf that escaped from the local talk show. (She gets upset at loud noises. Loud? That's the secret word for the day!) Ahh, season 4, greatest of them all. Anyway, after that adventure, we hit up the local microbrews. Fort Collins is well known for two major breweries, New Belgium and Budweiser. But we took the breweries less traveled and hit up: Fort Collins brewery (damn it! did it again!), Odell Brewery and Coopersmith's Pub & Brewery. All of them were quite good, some of the lagers in particular were nice and tasty. We then had dinner with Steph's Aunts & their dogs. Very cute and funny dogs, but constantly working for something from the table. She flew out this morning and is back in Boston, while I have to ride out the next 2 weeks worth of lectures all by my lonesome. There look to be some good talks, though, so hopefully it goes quickly. Of course, I'll keep everyone apprised of the situation.

I think I would enjoy getting into tennis, if the sport weren't dominated by cyborgs. I was really rooting for Federer today, if only to give him the calendar Grand Slam chance. They always show the career record of Rafa vs. Federer, but it's really skewed since they've met 12 times, 7 of them have been on clay, Nadal's strength. I thought Hard Court was suppose to be the dominant (most common) surface in tennis? They're even (2-2) on hard court, and the only time they've met on Federer's dominant surface (grass) he's 1-0. It's kind of ridiculous how dominant Federer has been, though, and at least it shows that the overall tennis cyborg can be beaten by the clay-court cyborg.

Canto XLII

Well, the week certainly has gone by. First some updates about TASI, the theory summer school I'm now attending. The talks have been a lot of fun, and talking about them afterwards with the other students very rewarding. I'm learning bunches. Of course, the more I learn, the more I find that I don't know much. Frankly, I feel like the only reason to come to these schools is if you already know everything, and just want a place to show that off. Maybe this is just playing into my fears that I'm the dumb one. I'm not sure who said it, but the quote goes something like "If you look around the table and don't see the sucker, then you're it." I don't see any suckers here...

In other news, Steph arrived for the weekend to celebrate our anniversary. She came in Saturday morning, we rented a car, and after a brief stop in Boulder, went straight up to Rocky Mountain National Park (RMNP). The first day, we just drove around the main road up to the pass, and did the basic motor-tourism Americans love so much. Saw a bunch of elk, a coyote, two bighorn sheep (very briefly, they ran across the road and straight up into the hills) and some smaller things as well. The scenery is quite nice. We were staying in a cheap hotel in Estes Park, the local tourism town. The next day (Sunday) we drove to the far side of the park and worked our way back across. We also did some nice hikes, both long and short as we went along. Among the interesting things we saw was a coyote hunting some field mice (not bopping them on the head). It looked exactly like our dog when she would chase down balls and other things. The coyote would jump in with both paws out, and nip at it with his mouth. Of course, he was actually eating them, but you could see where our dog got that from. The other cool thing we saw was a moose. When Steph and I moved cross-country, we visited many parks and did many hikes in supposed moose-country at supposed moose-time, but never managed to find one. But now we finally did. They're very cool, a nice lope to their stride and very casual. Next time we need to find a big bull moose, as this one didn't have the requisite antlers for the full moose experience. Monday morning we also went out for some hikes and finished up sightseeing in the west part of the park that we hadn't got to the day before. Here's a picture of me at the nicest place we hiked to, Calypso Cascades, in the Southeast corner of the park.

And here's part 32 of Stephanie's continuing series of me throwing rocks from places. I don't know what it is about rocks, but I love to throw them. You can also notice the hair growth, two weeks after the shaving.


Monday was, of course, our 2nd anniversary. Like I said, we had gone hiking that morning, and then returned to Boulder to a lovely little B&B we found online. Very granola if you know what I mean. But we enjoyed it immensely. We went out to dinner at Sushi Zanmai, which was also wonderful, then walked around town & campus a little bit and had ice cream at Glacier. I'm only providing these links so that if you find yourself in Boulder, you can retrace our steps. Or enjoy them on your own. Sadly, that was only for one night, and now I'm back in the dorms while Steph visits some of her family that live up in Fort Collins. I already miss the bed. It was a pillow wonderland.

Anyway, that's about all. A whole bunch of us from the dorm went down to the local coffee shop to "get some work done" because they have wireless. And now, everyone is actually getting work done, while I surf the web and blog. It's very depressing. Maybe I just need to get motivated. I wonder if I'll ever feel like I'm not the dumb one...

Canto XLI

Well, how about a quick hair update. It's already reached the comfy fuzz stage. The annoying, itchy & scratchy stubble only lasted a few days, so that was nice. I could really go without all the ZZ Top/Harley jokes. Although I did enjoy Joe's remark about stabbing hippies at Altamont. Damn hippies.

In other, non-hair-related news, I'm now in Colorado. After finishing up the TA junk (grading a final) & packing my office, the last week was pretty slow. By thursday afternoon, all the graduate students were just waiting for the long weekend. Because we're moving offices, there was a long weekend (5 days!), so just killing time until then. Today was the day to go back to work, unpack and settle into the new place. But not for me, and I got my Indian office mate to unpack for me and choose a desk. I'll settle in when I get back. This weekend, for Memorial Day, we had a BBQ with cricket. I've got to admit, cricket is kinda fun. But slow. However batting & bowling are fun. And the BBQ was tasty. Special thanks to Steph for making way too much food. Good times were had by all, and here's a link to some pictures. Please to enjoy!
So why am I so far away from home? There's a theoretical physics summer school (NOT a conference as I was emphatically told when I accidentally called them that in an email) called TASI held in Boulder, CO every year. So far the talks are pretty good. I've only fallen asleep in one of them (out of 8 in the first 2 days). Although I can already tell that 5 hours of lecture every weekday for 4 weeks straight is going to be way too much. Other down sides include that fact that I'm in some UC-Boulder dorm room. I HATE DORMS. I don't know how I lived through them for a whole year. God I hate them so much. The food is on a rigid schedule that would only be appreciated by the 70+ crowd (the dining hall closes at 6:30!), but not by a bunch of graduate students. And we're not allowed to drink beer outside, only inside our rooms with the doors closed. Lame. However, now that I'm further west, the Liquor Store has Black Butte Porter, and it's on sale! Delicious, except for the fact that I can only enjoy inside our smelly dorm room. There was a wine & cheese social the second night we were here. Well, there were some cheese cubes, a cake and other snack food. And 1 (one) box of Franzia Chardonnay. Not even a choice between red & white Franzia was made available. When that box ran out, someone went and got another one. It was quite the event. Anyway, today I got Intrilligated for the first time. A very pleasant experience. But it's going to be a long month of physics. Hopefully I learn a whole bunch and make this worthwhile. I guess it depends on how much I put into it. But with shitty wire spring mattresses and paper thin pillows, I'm not getting much sleep. I'm trying to "run" in the mornings, the altitude is going to make me amazing, but really it's more of a plodding motion. My legs were just two lead weights attached to my torso. But in a few weeks I'm going to be amazing. Amazing.

Okay, that's all for now. I'll try and keep you posted on how the talks go. Steph is going to be in town for our anniversary and we're going to go up to Rocky Mountain National Park. I'm hoping for some elk sightings, followed by a wolf sighting, followed by the wolf taking down a sickly/young/old elk.

Canto XL

I think if this were a real blog, the title would be "In which I shave my head", only now I've ruined the punchline for everyone reading this. Well, you'll just have to scroll down to the bottom and read all about it. First, in other news.

Frisbee playoffs were last week, and we played pretty well. We made our way into the semis where we lost to Mech-E. But overall a very good season, and I had a great time. I already miss frisbee. So in a 16-team tourney in which we were seeded #2, we played 3 games. The first was won by forfeit (apparently, 11 am is too early for undergrads). The second, we won, but it was close. The person running the whole thing came over and basically called the game at the end of the point, when the score was 9-7. We 'won' 9-8. But it turns out Discus, the God of Frisbee, has been seeing both Irony & Justice on the side, and in our next game, the same thing happened to us. We were given 5 minutes to play when we were down 3, and only managed to score 2. Another 9-8 game, this time not in our favor. There's always next year.

And last week, school is finally over. Sure, I handed in the last few assignments late and I just barely scraped through it this term, but it's all over now. I'm calling it senioritis. This was probably my last year taking classes, doing homework and all that garbage. Today I have to help grade the final for the class I'm TAing, and then my school duties are done! It feels great. I've been doing classes and homework and junk for more than 20 years. Wow. And now it's over. I'll be enjoying a cigar this weekend to commemorate it.

Okay, the only other news is the hair. First, a retrospective. I last had my hair cut in October, to my usual short length. Steph and I were going to take pictures once a week and keep track of how the hair and beard grow as a function of time (it's monotonically increasing!), but didn't stick to that too well. And since we didn't label the pictures, I don't know when they were taken; I can only roughly guess their chronological order based on hair size. But here's one I can accurately pin point, and comes roughly 1 week after Thanksgiving. Always gracious in victory.

Well, that's a little more than 1 month after the trim & shave. Here's a current photo to let you know how big it had gotten.

Well, I had just combed it out to make it seem bigger, but still, that's a lot of hair in just 7 months. First up is the bleaching. That's right, I bleached my hair. Actually, I have to admit it was fun, and I might try that again.


I liked the surfer look. But I certainly couldn't just stop there! I wanted to go over the top, and was going to dye it bright purple/pink. This, I must say, was a bit of a failure, and the picture makes it seem much more pronounced than it was. But it still looks kinda cool.

And now for the shaving. Well, this was an event for everyone to enjoy, and everyone got in on the act. On a personal note, let me just say you shouldn't really trust a bunch of theorists with scissors.

Finally, here's the aftermath of the initial shearing. Yes, that's my desk in the background. The umbrella was used to catch all the hair. Also, I'm modeling a new Oregon t-shirt which is kinda weird. It's a Skull-and-Bones, only with a Duck, and says Oregon. It's funny. Man, the alumni association should be paying me for all the advertising I do out here. I love to wear my Oregon shirts out here.

But why stop there? You can see that the hair is slightly mottled from the bleach/dye job and it's very uneven. So sunday morning I shaved it for reals. All gone.

My head feels very cold all of the time now and it just doesn't feel right. I shake my head and my beautiful locks no longer bounce with it. So I've been wearing my old hat.

And that's how it is. What a tale, huh? Hope you enjoyed it!

Ed. Note: I'm going to try and figure out how to get the pictures rotated correctly later. Just tilt your head or screen to the proper angle for now.

Canto XXXIX

And yet another 2 weeks. Well, at least this time I'll have a little something to talk about.

About a month ago my high school class started up a reunion webpage (it's a private site so I'm not excluding you by not including the link, you're already excluded). I'm not sure how I feel about this. There are 3 competing thoughts in my head:
1) I keep track of the people I care about, so who the hell are these other people?
2) The creepy stalker part of me (no small piece as we all know) just looks at all the different people and their bios judging them.
3) The actual point of this whole thing is that I would guess there are about a dozen or more people I am genuinely fascinated by and would like to see again, and this seems like a good venue to get that started.
There were a lot of people in high school I knew and would consider friends, but then we graduated, we to different colleges and work and moved and all that stuff and I never really gave many of them another thought. I feel like Homer when he's looking for his soul-mate. He looks around the bar, and they all tell him exactly what kind of friend they are. Chum, compadre, associate, contemporary, well-wisher (in so much as I don't wish you any specific harm). Who are these people to me now? Now it all comes flooding back. Man, I hated high school.

Anyway, this brings me my friday night. There seem to be at least 3 Lincolnites from the class of '98 in the Boston area, including myself. And so I went out with one of them for some beers (along with Steph and another Lincolnite from '97). It's weird. I knew this guy for 4 years. We would talk occasionally. I guess this would fall under "associate", we interacted enough at school, but not much outside. But it was fun. It's amazing how much has gone on in everyone's lives. We also went to see a movie, "Hot Fuzz". I can highly recommend this movie, if you liked Shaun of the Dead. Basically it was a kinda funny British movie for the first 1:15 minutes. Then for the last half hour to 45 minutes, it got real funny. They just decided to go over the top, and it was awesome. I suppose Steph and I will get around to Spiderman 3 later this week or next.

And then saturday rolled around. Cinco de Mayo. My goal was to get a bunch of grading that I've had stack up the last few weeks finished up. But when I first got in, I got an email with the subject "batting cages?" It was a beautiful day out, and of course it's only saturday, so there's still plenty of time to get it done later... It was a lot of fun, but now I'm in pain. I didn't realize what a total body workout it would be. I think this should be the new hit exercise. Basically, this involved three of us waiting in line with a bunch of kids up to about 12 year olds for the slow and medium pitch cages. Then being taken to school by those very same little kids. There was one kid there who couldn't have been much older than 6 or 7 - the pitches were coming in at the height of his head - and he still hit better than us. Of course afterwards, we had to get some ice cream so we went to the Wendy's down the block and each got a Frostee. Nice. But now I am in pain. I knew my hands and shoulders would be sore, sure. But my abs really hurt! It actually hurts to laugh & cough. What's up with that? Full body workout.

And saturday night we went out to a party in Watertown. Lots of drinks, good food and karaoke. I even tried my hand at it, after 4 beers. These are the things you do when you drink. "I am very sorry for... attempting to sing." But good times all around.

Sunday was mostly spent lying in pain on the couch. We went out for some breakfast at a diner near our place. And frisbee in the evening (who schedules frisbee games for sunday at 6pm?). We won, and are 5-0 heading into the playoffs this weekend. Not bad, except we only had 1 sub, so I basically played the whole game. So that's now compounding the pain from batting practice. I think I need to get younger... High school was 9 years ago!!!

So now I need to get everything done that I didn't do over the weekend, plus the usual work stuff during the week. Sigh. Sounds like somebody has a case of the mondays.

Canto XXXVIII

Emergency blog post! Today, sometime between 8:10am and 6:45pm Kermit was removed from our neighbor's porch. When I was walking home this evening, she was cleaning up the front a little bit and Kermit was no where to be seen. He's really gone. I'll see him next winter.

Canto XXXVII

And another 2 weeks have gone by! Well, not much has been up, unless you want to hear about me struggling with homework. Joseph was in town, so you should ask him how it went. Surely he will tell you what good hosts Steph and I are. We hit some pubs, saw some sights and soaked in some Boston/Cambridge. Nice. And Steph's sister and husband were in town the following weekend for an Anime Con. Sadly, I missed out on this fun. Wait, sarcasm doesn't come through in writing all that well. I don't like anime, so I wasn't not unhappy to miss out on this weekend-consuming event. But again, good food was had by all (they've visited enough that they don't need the city tour). Not much other news. I've got 2 weeks left in my Harvard String Theory class, and after that it should considerably ease up my work schedule, as one of my two TA assignments also ends that week. If I can just make it through the next 2 weeks, I promise some kind of awesome post. Super awesome. Just you wait.

Canto XXXVI

Ugh, it's been more than 2 weeks. Well, some of it was busy, some of it wasn't. And I saw the flurry of activity on other's blogs, which just made me feel the worse for not keeping up with the Jones'. Of course we can't expect to keep up with Syd. Not promising to be a better blogger or anything, but I like to hear what's going on with other people, so I hold on to some delusion that others like to hear about me every once in a while.

My big news is that I was accepted to go to TASI this summer, which is a physics summer school. It should be a lot of fun. The topic is "Sting Universe", and seeing how I want to work on stings in our universe, this should fit in nicely. Also, this is a good opportunity to meet other graduate students and professors in the field. It's for four weeks from May 28th-June 22nd, and it's in Boulder, CO. For those trying to figure it out, yes I'll be out of state for our anniversary. But that's why she's coming out to visit! And I'll be back in time for her birthday, so it should be all good. I'm really looking forward to this.

There's only a few weeks left of my last semester as a real student. After this I'll be happily sliding into the role of surly graduate student alternating between extemes of laziness while mocking those still taking classes/exams and business trying to publish/write thesis. I really don't care about my classes anymore. The only thing pushing me along is that I want to finish on a high note.

Other interesting things. Kermit is still hanging. If you look on YouTube, you can find a video for Kermit covering Hurt by Johnny Cash covering NIN. I think my biggest guilty pleasure song may be "Fooling Yourself (Angry Young Man)" by Styx. I'm re-reading the Harry Potter books right now, getting ready for the movie and final book coming out this July. I want them to be fresh in my mind, but not so fresh that I'm sitting in the movie critisizing every little piece. There's going to a great talk this wednesday on MiniBooNE, which I am going miss due to my stupid string theory class. But I'm very excited for the results, and will hear all about them later today. I ran labs for all my little 8.022 students. Actually wasn't too bad, got in a rythem and soon it was like my mind was somewhere else while my body performed the monotonous tasks around me. And tonight I'm running a review session for these same students for their mid-term tomorrow. It's on Ampere's Law, circuits and some other EM crap. So I'm opening with 100,000 Fireflies by the Magnetic Fields. I feel it's appropriate. Joseph is going to be in town this weekend, looking forward to hearing all the stories from the Left Coast. I miss the Pacific... Our frisbee team won the first game of the year, 12-9 (it ended due to the Gathering Darkness). Huzzah! Hmmm, what else. Nope, that's all!

Canto XXXV

I've just noticed that I've now made it out of Hell and into Purgatory. Only 66 more to go before I can finally start giving clever names to these posts! And my bracket is looking a little healthier. If the favorites continue their run tonight I'll be in great shape.

What a week. Been staying up late to finish up stuff, then sleeping in late and falling asleep in class. It's like I'm an undergrad again. But now Spring break is here! Yes, finally some time to work ahead! Maybe even do some "real" physics. There's plenty of stuff to do around the house, I don't think we've cleaned in 3 or 4 weeks and it's starting to show... Spring literally showed up this week, though. Both the usual Vernal Equinox, and we seem to be in a good thaw after last week's snow and everything just seems sunnier. It's up in the 50's and overcast. Spring is here, might as well get some spring cleaning done before the bugs start crawling in. The first spiders showed up earlier this week.

I plan on taking an easy weekend of cleaning and doing some errands on saturday, saturday night we're going to a concert, then being very lazy on sunday playing some video games and watching basketball. Time to kick back for a couple days. Next week should be fun for a change, just working on some stuff that I actually want to do.

Canto XXXIV

Well my bracket is in shambles. Not that I know much about college baskteball, but I should be doing better than people who pick based on mascots. Not good. My big sleeper bid was Louisville to the Final Four. With them in the second round, I think it's just about over for me. Oregon is getting pretty lucky this year in the tourneys, they seem to constantly be facing upsets and not the higher seeds. Hopefully they make the Elite Eight and shock the world by upsetting Florida. That would be awesome. So long as their 3 pointers keep falling, that's about all they need.

It's been crazy busy this last week and weekend. On friday I watched the Ducks game, but over the weekend I watched a total of 6 minutes of basketball. Saturday night returning late from the Institute, I watched the final 2 minutes of UCLA over Indiana, and Sunday watched the final few minutes of the blowouts of Kansas over Kentucky and USC over Texas. But next week is Spring Break, so I should be able to catch all of the Sweet-16 action. That's when it gets really good, right? No big Cinderellas this year, but the Ducks are still in it to win it.

Last week we had a bunch of prospective graduate students visit to see how cool it is to be at MIT. But we seem to be a pretty cool lot around here. The problem is that they visited as things are starting to get really busy. I've just got to make it through this week and everything will be alright. Spring break here I come!

Canto XXXIII

I just had to write about my movie-watching weekend. On saturday, went out with a bunch of guys to see 300. It was about what I expected. If you want to see a movie with lots of impalings, beheadings and limb-chopping, then this is your film. There was also a crab-man. I'm not sure where he fits in. The element of the fantastical and over-blown in this film I felt detracted from the "story". I love this story, in fact I re-read my Herodotus earlier in the week (no complaints about him being the 'father of lies' - still a valuable source for that era) about the Battle of Thermopylae. I won't go into a blow-by-blow (no matter how appropriate) into the various innacuracies. And the many different movies which were ripped off in different scenes. The weirdest was the E.T. one - if you see the movie, you'll know which scene. My last gripe is that they seriously undercut the Athenian contribution to the Persian Wars. I mean, this was an important battle, as was Plataea, but as far as I know every historian agrees (both ancient and modern) the deciding battle was Salamis. Does this even get a mention? And when the Spartans first show up at the pass, the Persian fleet is wrecked by storm. This is partly true (a significant fraction of the Persian fleet was lost due to a storm), but in actuality the fleet was held up by a much smaller Athenian contingent at the Straits of Artemisium, in a very similar fashion to that seen in Thermopylae only on the sea. We saw it in the new digital projection, and I must say the picture quality was amazing. You could really see every ab and pec in it's full glory, as the Spartans would have wanted.

And on sunday night Steph and I went to see The Good Shepherd. About the only thing everyone can say about this movie is that it was long. Not that bad, but not that good either. I guess I was just expecting more. Next weekend we're seeing The Illusionist, which I heard was quite good.

Last night Steph was talking dirty to me. I'm finishing up my dinner and thinking about doing some work when she says 'You want to watch Babylon 5?'. Very Nice.

Canto XXXII

Another 2 weeks. Well, school has come around but I keep trying to stay on top of things. Sadly no humorous anecdots to relay to everyone. Well, maybe one...

There was a google-stalking which took place recently that I was in the room for. This was not me, mind you, my stalking days are over. They ended up hitting a google-silver mine. Revealing (but not nude) photos and some other stuff. This led me to start thinking about what would be the different levels of victory for google-stalking.
Gold: Nude photos/pornography. Clearly if you find this about some random person you just met, this takes the cake.
Silver: Revealing photos/other (possibly) embarrassing material. Not as good as before, but certainly something that's both interesting and eye-brow-raising.
Bronze: A broad range of biographical stuff, but nothing too embarrassing. Stuff that a stalker might find interesting.
Note that finding a blog or other stuff the person put up him/her self doesn't count towards this prize - they put it out there for everyone else, including the google-stalkers of the world.

Still need to go through some old photos of our and get them up. Remember the bench in The Cube? And the stairs right in the middle of the entry way? And when the sparrows nest was in the dryer's heat exhaust and nothing was drying until they cleaned it out? The college years really are the best.

Kermit update: still hangin'. That's right, 3+ months of a Muppet being strung up next door.

Canto XXXI

Wow, it's been two weeks. Well, as I mentioned in the previous post, school is back in session. And that has certainly put a bit of a crimp on my time. I haven't played FFXII in 2 weeks, and I think it's safe to say that will continue until spring break. But here's a quick recap of what's happening and some other fun bits 'n pieces.

Over the three day weekend Steph & I used our first Zipcar (in Portland they're Flexcars). Not bad. We did a whole bunch of shopping and errands around the town. I miss a car sometimes. It's certainly much easier not having one, but when you really want to bounce around doing a bunch of stuff, one comes in handy. Zipcar will hopefully take care of that need. We also did a lovely dinner at the local Peruvian place and had a good meal. Steph's been missing the South cuisine, and by South I mean South America.

Steph is always worried about how much we'll define the gender roles in front of our future children. She grew up in a more traditional household with Mother cooking & cleaning while Father would dispense wisdom from Mount Olympus. My family not so much, but we also had our traditional settings as well. I dispute the fact that we'll end up like her family (with Steph doing all the house work while I drink beer in my underpants) because I willingly help out with the stuff around the house, and even enjoy it. Then there are times like last weekend where I organized our books, did the dishes and folded laundry while Steph played World Of Warcraft for 4 hours. I think if anything, our kids will just be confused about the traditional gender arrangements.

This came up a little bit ago. It has to do with Alanis Morrisette's You Oughta Know. During the chorus, I heard the line (keep in mind I never look up lyrics until confronted with some situation like this one) "It's not fair to deny me or the cross-eyed bear that you gave to me." Now, this song is about a slightly crazy ex-girlfriend, and that's fine. I just thought that this little bit was highlighting how crazy she was, like she was holding onto some little stuffed animal that her now-ex had won for her at a carnival or something and then promised to love her forever. You know, something stupid and sappy, which she took a little too seriously. Now the real lyrics are "It's not fair to deny me of the cross I bear that you gave to me." First off, this must be a fairly mis-heard quote. Am I the only one who heard this wrong in this particular permutation? Well, Steph thinks now I'm crazy for thinking this. She can't believe I mis-heard it in this way, calling it completely ridiculous. She also thinks the narrator for the song isn't crazy. Just pissed-ff, but not crazy pissed-off. I retorted that if it's not crazy, then will she go down on me in a theater? I think Steph wanted to slap me. Is the singer-woman crazy? Am I crazy for mis-hearing? Maybe in general?

One of our chores from the three day weekend was to do a bunch of spring cleaning and bring old stuff (clothes and some junk) over to Goodwill (using the car!). This naturally led to a treasure trove of old things I haven't seen since we moved out here because they've been buried in various boxes. Pez with a Star Wars Stormtrooper dispenser! Lots of pictures of drunken parties in The Cube! And high school pictures, too! Well, those were all good times, but there was nothing like clearing out my T-shirt drawer. Now, just to make clear right now, I did not give away my old T-shirts. Steph is collecting them and wants to make some kind of quilt out of our used T's in another 10-20 years (roughly the time scale for her projects). Here's a quick list and maybe you can try and picture the shirt and bring back some good memories.
Healy's, Kokopalie, Living Known Animal Species, White Bread 5 for $2.70, Morning Dew, Ireland (black), Celtic Dragons, DeadHead, Carpe Diem, Know Your Insects, Smithsonian (purple), Star Wars TIE Fighter, Jerry Garcia, Athenes 2004, Why I? Why B? Why Me?, Colorado, Guiness, Ireland (off-white), Rabbits, Wassail, Blues Brothers, Lincoln High Seniors, Moon Jerry Garcia (purple long-sleeved)
So many memories...

Back to school, though. I "get" to teach 3 lab sections during the term, 2 nights per lab, roughly 3 hours per night from 6:30-9:30 pm. It really sucks. It's fun to explain how it works the first few times, then you have to do it 50 times to all the different groups and it's really draining. What's so hard about electrostatics? Well, that plus grading and my own homeworks to work on doesn't leave me much time to do anything fun, like research or games. But that little segway gets me to my research point of the day. Starting in January I got a new little thing to work on with the Advisor. It has to do with a conjectured bound on the viscosity of a fluid divided by the entropy density. The conjecture is that this is always greater than or equal to 1 over 4 pi. (Too bad Blogger doesn't support LaTex, I could make this look much nicer.) This was shown to be true for a large class of theories in the AdS/CFT correspondence, and conjectured to be true more generally about 3 years ago. I was reading about how to calculated these things in a general field theory framework (rather than through AdS/CFT) and working out some basic calculations the last few weeks. Then last week someone published a counter-example. So the last week was like the 5 stages of loss. You know, denial, anger, bargaining and so on. At first we didn't believe it, then we were pissed off that such a simple counter-example could be worked out. Now we've grown to accept it and I need to find something else to occupy what little free time I have. So that sucks. Science really blows sometimes. But I learned something that may be useful someday. And now I get to start that all over again.

Well, that's all the news that's fit to print! Peace!

Canto XXX

So now I'm back in school again. Actually, I think my classes will be alright. I've got some other stuff I'm trying to work on, as well. And now I'm even trying to get back into the gym a few times a week. Too much? Maybe. But I'd rather be too busy than sucked into FFXII and not get my PhD. Curse you, Squeenix! Are there anymore Final Fantasies coming out in the next two years? Oh God - what if one comes out Christmas time 2008, just 6 months before I'm suppose to graduate?

Thanks to Tim & Joseph for their music suggestions. I'll have to get around to doing that. Last year I heard the Fiery Furnaces, and they're wierd but kinda fun as well. It sort of depends on the mood I'm in. It always depends on the mood I'm in, actually. But that's just true for music.

Oh, but today is the Pushpinder friday meal! It's going to be a great day! Pushpinder is the Sikh who delivers delicious Indian food to MIT (mainly to other Indian students here, but thanks to my Indian officemate, I'm on the list). His friday meals are the best. If you ever visit, I get Pushp for lunch one of the days. And if you're here for fridays, you get the best lunch of all. I'm already hungry and I just had breakfast.

I'm also TA-ing advanced intro to E&M (8.022 for those familiar with MIT's course numberings). I did this last year and I'm hoping the work I did then will help make sure this year will be less (approaching minimal) work. Today is my first office hours. It's nice, because no one ever comes to these and I can just sit there and listen to music and work on some field theory. I never mind if people come by, though. It gets lonely in that tiny little room.