tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-45561811756840062602009-11-11T17:17:47.571-05:00I used to wear my heart on my sleeve. Now I wear it on the internet.terriblenewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13223467921290405417noreply@blogger.comBlogger66125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4556181175684006260.post-2721010659525706662009-10-27T09:39:00.003-04:002009-10-27T09:45:15.713-04:00

This made me smile on the way into work this morning. Or school. I'm never sure what to call it. It's both. Anyway, without further ado, here is a van which does not appear to be advertising anything:

terriblenewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13223467921290405417noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4556181175684006260.post-90550327094869526592009-09-16T22:12:00.005-04:002009-09-16T22:46:52.092-04:00

In academia, no matter what your field, there are two things you spend a lot of time doing: reading and writing. I have always read quite a lot and over a wide range, so I had a pretty good feel for what sounded good and what didn't, but not much of a toolbox for identifying why something sounded good or bad or how to deal with my own bad writing. To that end, I took a technical writing class

terriblenewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13223467921290405417noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4556181175684006260.post-71049262649956831242009-06-10T20:29:00.004-04:002009-06-10T20:41:56.423-04:00

There's all sorts of stuff I could write about: I just got back from Halifax; I've been to two scientific conferences in the last 2 weeks; the gardens (there are two this year) are in and growing; there are countless other things in my head right now.But there's something that's been bugging me for a while, and the way the markets are behaving right now has reminded me. It's like, deep down

terriblenewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13223467921290405417noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4556181175684006260.post-11955419257467449282009-05-15T11:23:00.004-04:002009-05-15T11:34:29.814-04:00

Yay! Green things finally come from Ontario again! Not many; just asparagus and baby spinach, really. It's early in the growing season yet. In any case, in our ongoing effort to try to eat more locally, L and I had this for dinner last night. L had hers without the tomatoe sauce. It was de-freakin-licious, I highly recommend it.And since I can't miss an opportunity to get up on my soap box, this

terriblenewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13223467921290405417noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4556181175684006260.post-87528104081208636052009-05-07T22:50:00.005-04:002009-05-07T23:12:52.861-04:00

I haven't been writing here as much as I'd like lately. There are a number of reasons for that. First off, I'm hellabusy being a born-again student; grad school is exactly like I remember my older friends/colleagues describing it. Secondly, a lot of my creative thinking drifts very quickly in the rant category these days and I'd like to spare my readers too much of that. And finally, sometimes I

terriblenewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13223467921290405417noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4556181175684006260.post-80700850354962752852009-05-04T13:00:00.006-04:002009-05-04T13:35:34.308-04:00

In the last few years I have learned a lot about nutrition. My first foray into that controversial cesspool of knowledge was a book called The Longevity Diet. The idea goes something like this:In the 30s, an Italian researcher needed dwarf mice for an experiment. So he starved them and sure enough they were tiny. However, a strange thing happened: they lived 50 to 60% longer than normal lab mice.

terriblenewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13223467921290405417noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4556181175684006260.post-60391776901826899702009-04-22T20:03:00.007-04:002009-04-22T21:50:35.673-04:00

I got a very strange email the other day. The subject line was: [Reminder] 10,000 days alive @ Sat Apr 11, 2009. After racking my brains and asking a few friends if anyone had hacked my google calendar, I eventually concluded that I set this reminder myself. I used to work with a lot of time data and it would have been a trivial task to write a little computer program to tell me the date of my

terriblenewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13223467921290405417noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4556181175684006260.post-29661105000364725672009-04-14T09:32:00.009-04:002009-04-14T10:45:04.264-04:00

I came up with a plan, last week, to solve both the economic crisis and the climate change crisis. Climate change is caused by an imbalance between the energy coming into the earth-atmosphere system and the energy exiting that same system. Almost all of the energy coming into the system is in the form of light from the sun. Almost all of the energy exiting the system is radiation, the amount of

terriblenewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13223467921290405417noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4556181175684006260.post-32969130301766264932009-03-31T20:51:00.003-04:002009-03-31T21:37:17.217-04:00

A lot of my computer gaming came, unfortunately, before there were very many cool computer games and before I could afford the few cool computer games that existed. As a result of this, as a teenager, I played a lot of hearts in Windows 98.Hearts is scored like golf: lower is better. Each heart you hold at the end of a hand is a point against you. The goal of the game is to wind up with as few

terriblenewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13223467921290405417noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4556181175684006260.post-20322159080998860852009-03-26T10:21:00.006-04:002009-03-26T14:47:33.205-04:00

When you get down to a very small level, sometimes refered to as the quantum level, the universe becomes a strange place, at least to our human sized preconcieved notions of How Things Work. Radioactive decay is an example of this sort of weirdness: we can never tell when a particular atom is going to decay, but if we have a big pile of them, we can say how long it will take for half of them to

terriblenewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13223467921290405417noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4556181175684006260.post-13648548915062041372009-03-01T10:10:00.005-05:002009-03-01T11:08:23.425-05:00

When I posted a while ago about our new cat, I was contacted by my friend J, who is studying to be Prosthetic-Orthotic Technician at George Brown College. She knows someone who does prostheses for dogs (and thus might have some insight into working with cats) and thought she might be able to make a project out of it. So yesterday, we crammed Carmen into her cage and hauled her up to PawsAbility,

terriblenewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13223467921290405417noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4556181175684006260.post-12118221674992909562009-02-27T08:50:00.003-05:002009-02-27T08:54:48.797-05:00

I came across a very well written article in the Globe and Mail today. Not only is it enjoyable to read but it espouses some viewpoints very close to my own. I have often said that when I am king, the CRTC people will be the first against the wall.According to their website, the CRTC's job is "regulating and supervising the broadcasting and telecommunications systems in Canada." This means that

terriblenewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13223467921290405417noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4556181175684006260.post-43406264169751909322009-02-08T23:09:00.004-05:002009-02-08T23:28:29.417-05:00

Apparently photos recently surfaced of Olympic hero Michael Phelps smoking pot. In light of this, Kellogg has decided to stop sponsoring him. That's right, Kellogg, the people who make cereal.One article I read called this "poor judgement" on Phelps' part, but I think it was poor judgement on Kellogg's part. I mean, seriously, could you alienate a more lucrative market segment than potheads when

terriblenewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13223467921290405417noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4556181175684006260.post-84790514855198288332009-02-03T10:06:00.004-05:002009-02-03T10:20:01.331-05:00

Can anybody explain to me why we need to create jobs*? It seems to me that there's enough stuff that needs doing to keep everyone busy and that's before you factor in (now fanciful but once standard) things like "everyone gets a new car ever 2 years."The United States has started their protectionist sabre rattling. The US began yesterday debating a nearly $900b "stimulus" package which includes a

terriblenewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13223467921290405417noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4556181175684006260.post-5578921010426747622009-01-29T13:45:00.004-05:002009-01-29T16:50:10.528-05:00

Sometimes, men try to grow facial hair when, really, they just shouldn't. Like when my brother wore mutton chops. No es bueno. I've heard these people told, near the beginning of their ill-advised foray into the world of bearded men, "you've got something on your chin. I have a cat that could lick that off for you.". . .I woke up this morning at 6 AM. This was because my hands were above the

terriblenewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13223467921290405417noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4556181175684006260.post-39545600880268327262009-01-21T23:14:00.005-05:002009-01-21T23:25:54.849-05:00

I'm TAing Nuclear Engineering this semester. I was kind of worried about it because I don't actually know all that much about nuclear physics or engineering. Well, it turns out that the undergrads know basically nothing about it, so I didn't have anything to worry about.Right now we're in the section on dosing. I was reading through a textbook almost as old as me. My supervisor loaned it to me,

terriblenewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13223467921290405417noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4556181175684006260.post-11109135572597167502009-01-20T16:16:00.008-05:002009-01-20T16:48:40.296-05:00

I watched Obama's inauguration speech today. He's a hell of a speaker. I was quite relieved, also, as I had been worried that the speech would go something like this: "Your old government was bad. The new government is good. Now sit back and relax while we fix everything." Y'know, the standard peddling easy answers schtick.Luckily, that was not the case. I hope the speach will motivate everyone,

terriblenewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13223467921290405417noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4556181175684006260.post-37052176433461952482009-01-13T20:45:00.001-05:002009-01-14T08:07:20.518-05:00

Since we moved into the new house in September, L has been saying she wants a cat. I continued to say no on the grounds that if she got a cat, I was pretty sure I'd wind up doing all the feeding and litter cleaning and vet taking and so forth. Well, this Christmas I relented.Meet Carmen!On Christmas morning, L got only one box from me. Which I had smuggled to her parents' house by her father, so

terriblenewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13223467921290405417noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4556181175684006260.post-92751648736711882008-12-15T18:24:00.004-05:002008-12-15T19:02:24.669-05:00

I wrote my first closed-book exam in a very long time today. It was... strange. I'm not sure how I did. L wrote an exam at the same time, although in a very different class. I remember now, though, how exhausting sitting and thinking and remembering and writing for two-and-a-half hours can be.Afterwards, it was decided that we would have boiled celery for with dinner. This probably sounds weird

terriblenewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13223467921290405417noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4556181175684006260.post-60487642942785303942008-12-08T11:47:00.004-05:002008-12-08T12:07:33.125-05:00

I am a determinist. To me, this means that I believe that, given a perfect snapshot of the position and momentum of every particle and subparticle in the entire universe, and also given infinite computing power and infinite time, it would be possible to extrapolate the history of the universe from start to finish. The problem with this, of course, is that you can't ever know the position and

terriblenewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13223467921290405417noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4556181175684006260.post-20203241686309180632008-11-26T22:18:00.007-05:002008-11-26T23:14:32.211-05:00

So I borrowed some glassware.I borrowed some glassware because I am involved in the Human Powered Vehicle†* project. Some people on another HPV team suggested that we use butyl acetate for fusing sheets of styrofoam together. Unfortunately, buying butyl acetate is difficult. So the professor for whom I TAed this semester suggested I synthesize it. For this purpose, he loaned me some

terriblenewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13223467921290405417noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4556181175684006260.post-12605269885780773532008-11-25T18:58:00.007-05:002008-11-26T23:13:52.637-05:00

I have, as my friend ~L* says, the November blahs. ~L is also a grad student. My classes are weighing very heavily right now. For one class I have a final presentation, a final report and a final exam all in the next two weeks. For another class I have a final project due just before Christmas. For the last class, I have a final report and a final exam. Plus, I'm expected to be making progress on

terriblenewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13223467921290405417noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4556181175684006260.post-22668444129964354432008-11-21T00:33:00.005-05:002008-11-21T00:45:22.096-05:00

Today, I had to tell my students that they will be getting a new TA next semester, that I will no longer be assisting them in CHE204. That was kinda sad for me and some of them even seemed genuinely sad to see me go. Even though I probably marked harder than any of the other TAs, I think that, at least for some of them, they will remember me as one of the TAs they actually liked.Later, L and I

terriblenewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13223467921290405417noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4556181175684006260.post-10625235844841580592008-11-11T10:21:00.001-05:002008-11-11T10:21:40.987-05:00

So it turns out I was partly right about going to grad school. I figured I would have a lot more time for things like sleep because, said I, "my thesis won't be calling me at 4 in the morning." Only this last part has turned out to be true — my sleep now comes, typically, in contiguous chunks, however, they are not very long chunks. Turns out I grossly underestimated the workload and took on an

terriblenewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13223467921290405417noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4556181175684006260.post-75087225176355513622008-11-04T21:16:00.006-05:002008-11-04T22:20:06.051-05:00

It is election day in the US. We had ours in Canada a couple of weeks ago. On that day, I was working for Elections Canada as a Registration Officer. It was my job to fill out the forms of people who had not received voter cards in the mail. By hand. For 12 hours.One thing I noticed at the end of the democratic process is that my writing hand really hurt. Now, I am all for the paper voting

terriblenewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13223467921290405417noreply@blogger.com1