Picture Overload!

(Click the pics for bigness)

August 29:
This is a solid spherical stone in the city center. It is supported by a jet of water from underneath. The water pressure is strong enough to slightly lift the stone from it's base so you can rotate it. The way you can tell that it is solid stone is by the incredible amount of effort needed to get it to spin. Once it's spinning, it's really hard to change its direction or stop it.



That is not a reflection in the center of the sphere, that's a dry spot. You are looking down the axis of rotation.


September 6:
Here are some berries on a huge bush in the park downtown.


These are pictures from the rose garden in the park downtown. It was even more beautiful earlier in the year.












This is near the rose garden, in the same park downtown. It's in a little area with benches where you can just sit and enjoy the day while looking a pretty flowers.


A bee working hard on the last few warm days.


Same flowers, sans the bee.



Becky waiting patiently while I take a million pictures.




This guy can't get enough.



"Hey round-boy! Give a skinny guy a chance!"




Everyone wants a piece of the action.



I like the bright red berries in the tree.


That's the coffee shop in the park.






I'm not entirely sure why this couple is dancing in the median, but behind them is a performing arts theater.



September 8:
As we were leaving work, we noticed this. I think this was in preparation for a faculty/new student party that night.


September 9:
This is a lake very near our apartment called Kuivasjärvi.



These are pictures taken along the path around the lake.




September 23:
The morning walk to work.

These guys support McCain.

...except G.I. Joe actually was awesome.

Nope, my calendar reads 2008.

Here's a video of some Ohio voters discussing why they won't be voting for Obama. They make some intelligent and well-reasoned arguments.




Did I just bum a ride from a guy in a DeLorean and end up in the 1950's?

The Post Onslaught.

I feel like I haven't posted anything in a long time. I have really great fall pictures on my camera I want to post, but that will have to be later. The sad thing is that fall here is pretty much over now. The deciduous trees are nearly bare, the weather is getting colder, and the days are now 9 hours 36 minutes long. There still hasn't been any snow yet though.

Last Friday or Saturday night, Becky and I saw the aurora for the first time. It wasn't as impressive as pictures make it out to be. It basically looks like a swiftly changing cloud lit up by a full moon. It looked quite pale and didn't have the vibrant green colors you see in pictures like this:


The camera I have won't let me set the exposure time longer than 2 seconds, so I have essentially no chance of photographing the northern lights.

On Sunday night, I went to 45 Special (my favorite bar in Oulu) and saw a popular Finnish band called Viikate. I also saw them the last time I was in Oulu. They are pretty talented.

Lately, I've been kept pretty busy with writing an application for telescope time and a proposal for a Fellowship that sounds really good. I also had to read through the proofs of the last paper of my dissertation, which should be published soon. That can actually be a lot harder than it seems, depending on how good your proofreader is. Unfortunately, the proofreader I had on this last paper wasn't as good as on my previous papers.

Today was the first day in a while where I felt like I could take a breather, so I decided to let my computer do some work for me while I played around with the format of my blog. As you may or may not have noticed, you can now Digg individual posts on my blog if you want. I've also signed up for Twitter and placed a feed in the right column so you can feel like "big brother" and track my every move. I've also started to really use Google Reader and I love it. The cool thing about it is that you can "share" any of the posts you read, so I've also set up a feed that lists some of my most recent shared posts.

Stay tuned for pictures!

Invest in Soup.

Colbert invests in soup. Behold:

Colbert was right.

Last night, we were catching up on The Colbert Report and he brought up an interesting observation. While everyone is losing their shirts in the stock market from investing in Ford, Apple, Exxon, etc., the people who invested in Campbells Soup are making out like bandits! I guess people are opting for the $0.89 meal-in-a-can nowadays.

Take a look at how the stock has done in the past 6 months:



(I was going to add the clip from The Colbert Report, but my browser keeps crashing while trying to load the site. If you go to colbertnation.com, I'm sure you'll find the clip. It's from either Wednesday's or Thursday's show. I'll try to add it later if I can.)

Ask for your own bribes.

Now Accepting Bribes...

Our absentee ballots arrived today! I honestly thought that we would never see them. Tuscaloosa continues to surprise me.



I plan on voting soon and, in the spirit of the U.S. legislative process and the First Amendment, I will be accepting donations. The size of your donation will be directly proportional to the amount of consideration I will give your voting request. I will not place restrictions on the size of donations that I am willing to accept.

Fun and Not-So Fun.

First the fun. Check out this video from San Francisco of the Imperial invasion. It may be time to get your midichlorian count checked:



Now, the not-so fun. I'm guessing that a lot of people don't know where money really comes from (I really didn't either). The common assumption is that for every dollar put in a bank, a dollar can be lent out (for mortgages for example). That is not the case. In fact, for every dollar put in a bank, about $100 can be lent out! The money is created by debt. This video does a really good job of explaining how the financial system works and one can see why the US government wants to give $700 billion to the banks for the bad mortgages rather than the people with the mortgages. If the people get the money, the debt goes away.

The video makes some conspiracy theory accusations toward the end, but the beginning is really informative.

Oh Sh*t!

In case you haven't heard, Travis Barker of Blink 182 fame was critically injured in a plane crash. He was the drummer that took over for Scott Raynor, for what ever reason, and helped create the bands first album that was a mainstream success (Dude Ranch had some success but not as much as Enema of the State).

< aside >
...yes, I love this band as much as your 14 year old sister does, but I also had the Cheshire Cat album when they were still called Blink rather than Blink 182.
< /aside >

Travis is a very talented drummer but he's no Neil Pert. Check out his skillz:

Better Know a District: Florida's 7th

My Mom lives in this district!

Fett's Vette

Fun with hadrons.

Zombie Season.

Here's a great, out of print shirt from shirt.woot.com. I hope they bring it back.



Now that I have your attention...

In her acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, Vice Presidential nominee and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin said, "I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a `community organizer,' except that you have actual responsibilities."

Nominally, her words were an assault on Barack Obama's early career as a community organizer on Chicago's south side. But the impact reaches farther than that and is a direct affront to the thousands who have dedicated their lives to making America great.

I just signed a petition to tell Governor Palin to apologize for her disparaging remarks about community organizers -- I hope you will too.

Please have a look and take action.

http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/community_organizers/?r_by=-1781216-9JNBQvx&rc=paste

Thanks!

September 3, 2008...

...The Daily Show was on FIRE!

Yeah, I know Becky already posted a piece of this, but you need to watch the whole thing.

Drunk History... a la Patrick.

So, I've had about a liter of of Martinique rum and Coke/French Antilles rum and Pommac so far tonight. I've also started reading Whiteout by Greg Rucka, which is an upcoming movie starring Kate Beckinsale. If you have never read anything by Rucka, I highly recommend Gotham Central.

Anyway, the first few pages of Whiteout state that the Nazis laid claim to an area of Antarctica by dropping thousands of metal swastikas from an airplane. I didn't know if this was fact or "artistic license," so Becky did a search for me on the internet. Sure enough, the Encyclopedia Britannica claims that it actually happened in 1939. I am amazed by this, especially in light of Hitler's vision of Berlin as the capital of the world.

Wow, that's ridiculous.

Watch as Megan Callahan tries to keep controversy alive.

Irony Defined.

Here is an interesting non-scientific poll of Fox News' viewers.

Hanging Out Downtown.

It was a really nice day yesterday so we decided to go hang out in downtown Oulu. This wasn't a well planned excursion, so we didn't leave until about 3p. When we got there, we first had a hearty and healthful lunch at Hesburger (the Finnish version of Burger King). We followed that with a stroll through the market square and examined the wares being sold by the local shopkeeps. Unfortunately, a lot of them were already packed up and gone for the day. Here are some pictures of us posing with the statue of the rotund policeman in the market square.







Near the market square is the public library, so we decided to check out their selection of books in english. We were also going to get library cards while we were there, but forgot to bring our passports with us as official identification. We browsed for a little while and I decided that they had a decent collection of novels from both major genres (science fiction and other). We also found the graphic novel section but it was minutes before they were going to close, so we didn't get a good look at what they had.

After the library, we headed for the park and the little cafe located near the center of it. We each had a baked good and a cup of tea while sitting outside and enjoying the weather and scenery.

Here's Becky happily knitting a pastel sock in the sunshine with her cup-o-tea.



Here's the scenery near the terrace of the cafe.





Here are a couple of shots of the fountains in the Oulu River.




Unfortunately, the batteries in my camera died so I didn't get any pictures of the beautiful flowers throughout the park. I also didn't get pictures of the U.F.O. landing, the clown handing out 500 Euro bills, or the cloned velociraptor eating children. We may head back to downtown today since it's supposed to be nice again. If we do, I'll bring some freshly charged batteries and capture all the excitement.

Comedy Extravaganza: Final Day

Lewis Black is going to wrap up the comedy extravaganza. I love this guy. I can't remember if I first saw him on a stand-up special or doing Back In Black on The Daily Show. I did manage to see him live in Birmingham and I got to meet him afterwards. It was a lot of fun.

Here is Lewis Black live on Broadway. It's an oldie but a goodie.

Comedy Extravaganza: Day 3

Today's comedian is The Amazing Jonathan. I remember first seeing this guy on Lounge Lizards at Scott's parents' house years ago. We still bring up this guy's jokes from time to time.

Some of the routine was edited out of the first video, probably because you can't have drug references and Alan Thick in the same show.








Sometimes magic sounds like tape...

Comedy Extravaganza: Day 2

Today's comedian is Demetri Martin. I first saw him on The Daily Show and the graphs he made always cracked me up.



Here's a good one to listen to:

Comedy Extravaganza!

For the rest of this week, I will be giving you a taste of some of the comedians I enjoy. "Why," you ask? "Eh, why not," I reply. It gives me something non-work related to do and everyone likes comedy, right? So stay tuned!

Today's comedian is Daniel Tosh. I saw him once on Comedy Central and he left a big impression on me. Here is his Completely Serious special.

This Looks Sweet.

Here's a new trailer for the upcoming game Spider-man: Web of Shadows.

A Latitude Difference of 32 Degrees.

So, I'm listening to Morning Editon on Alabama Public Radio via the internet and they just said that it will be 97F and feel like 105F in Tuscaloosa today. I sure do miss hanging out at the pool on those super hot days.

The temperature here has maxed out at about 60F today and since summer is winding down, I doubt it'll get into the 70s again this year. Bummer.

Free Comic Books.

If you are interested in reading the latest Batman or Alan Moore's Watchmen but don't feel like paying for them, check out www.freecomicbooks.org. You can download zipped scans of tons of different comics for free! If you are using Firefox, I would recommend installing the Adblock Plus extension before visiting the site because there is a lot of annoying advertising.

Enjoy!

Update-o-rama.

I haven't blogged about what I've been doing in a while so here it is in a nutshell.

Earlier this year, Heikki and Eija (Heikki's wife and one of my collaborators) bought a lot on a small island near Oulu. They plan on building a summer cottage there and recently came across a newspaper ad for a disassembled log cabin. Two Saturdays ago, I went with Heikki, Eija, Heikki's son Ollie, and Ollie's friend to a cottage on a lake south of Oulu to examine, stack, and prepare the logs for shipping to the island. It was a two hour drive with five of us crammed into a small Audi (about the size of a Ford Focus). We got there and proceeded to stack and tie down immensely heavy logs for at least 5 hours while fighting off extremely persistent mosquitoes and biting flies. Ideally these logs would have already been stacked correctly by the owner who was selling them. Instead they were essentially thrown into a pile with some rocks underneath to keep them off the ground. Some of the logs were also missing the all important letter-number identifications needed to be able to put the cabin back together correctly. These things could be overlooked though since the logs we saw were still in fairly good condition (i.e. they weren't wet and rotting) and the price was low (it's my understanding that purchasing logs for a cabin is very expensive).

When we finally finished with the last of the logs, I found out that another set at a different location needed to be stacked and bound as well. Needless to say, I wasn't too thrilled about that. When we arrived at the second location we found that the final logs consisted of the critical, and ridiculously large and heavy, floor beams and attic support beams. These logs were in terrible condition. They were completely wet and rotting from not being elevated off the ground and from a shoddy tarp covering them. After seeing the condition of these logs, the deal was called off and all that labor was for naught. From what Heikki told me, the logs could only be used as firewood now, since the key logs are very expensive to replace.

Overall, it wasn't a bad experience though. I got to see a part of Finland that a lot of people don't get a chance to see. I got to hang out with Heikki, Eija, Ollie, and Ollie's friend, who are all very nice people, while taking in some beautiful scenery. I met and had a good conversation with a really nice German guy who was visiting his friends for the summer. I even learned something about log cabins. Not too bad.

Moving on, last Friday Becky and I went to Q-Stock in Oulu. She beat me to the punch and already wrote something about it on her blog here. It was a lot of fun and there were some good bands that I haven't heard of before. We managed to hear the end of Blue Frequency's set and they sounded pretty good. We also saw Entwine and they were a really rockin' band.

Here I am enjoying the weather and a beer at Never Grow Old in downtown Oulu before heading to the concert.



Today, Becky and I left work early to go see The Dark Knight. I have been waiting on the edge of my seat for this movie to be released since the day I saw Batman Begins in the theater. Thankfully, I wasn't disappointed. It was a great film and Heath Ledger's Joker was outstanding. He was truly frightening and every bit as intelligent and psychotic as in the comic books. For me at least, Heath Ledger's Joker stole the show.

Watchmen.

I read the Watchmen graphic novel because it won some awards and it was considered by many as a great and pioneering piece of work. I wasn't terribly impressed.

The movie, however, looks AWESOME! Maybe I should read it again.

Indeed.

Where do you stand?

Err, it's a little big. Sorry. You can take the quiz here.

Superhero Creations.

Here are a couple of characters I've made.

Daylight (not the Stallone movie).

The amount of daylight in Oulu is steadily decreasing (since we are past the summer solstice) and it's kind of a bummer. We are now down to less than 20 hours of daylight. It looks like we lose about 5 minutes of daylight per day. If you want to track our sunrise and sunset times along with the number of daylight hours we have per day, go to this site. The numbers are directly below the Oulu 5 Day Forecast.

More Super-Nerdy Procrastination.

The best thing about role-playing games was always creating your character (Seraphim can back me up on this). They always had so much potential... until they were immediately killed by dysentery or a squirrel with a +1 Acorn of Bludgeoning. Well Marvel.com now has a similar online experience where you can create your own superhero.

Here's one I created:




Let the time wasting begin...

Drunk History.

Thanks to Brooke for sending me a link to Drunk History. Here's Vol. 2, my favorite.

Colbert.

In case you missed it, Steven Colbert was running for president in the 2008 election, but dropped out in November of 2007.

In the Marvel Universe, however, he is still in the race. Check him out:





Check out the NYC subway advertisement as Frank Castle, a.k.a. The Punisher, battles a doppleganger:



For more Colbert Easter Eggs go here.

I plan on supporting another candidate in 2008 though:

I'm not condoning it...

If you happen to be a fan of music and don't want the RIAA on your case for sharing your favorite tunes with friends using Limewire or another p2p network, check out Mp3gle. I may have posted about G2P, which is a site that uses "crafty googling" to find music on the web. Mp3gle seems to be a similar, but far superior, website. Search for a song or artist on Mp3gle and just click download. The file does not save to your computer with the .mp3 extension, so you have to rename the file with that extension. Easy as π.

This Looks Awesome!

Holy Crap!

Have They Done Anything Good?

Who isn't interested in stories of Nazi war crimes? The brutality and inhumanity just boggles the mind. I mention this because I just read this story on BBC News.

The First Weekend in Oulu.

We made it to Oulu! Our bags arrived the next morning though.

Our first few days here have been great. A friend of Raine's is letting us borrow a bunch of furniture and dishes, so our apartment (which is pretty big, by the way) is much more comfortable now.

On Friday we went to the Rotuaari Piknik, where they block off the walking street downtown and set up a stage to have some bands play. I was an idiot and decided that I would be fine in just jeans and a t-shirt. Well, it got cold pretty quick and I ended up going to the nearby department store and buying a jacket. I actually got a really nice fleece Columbia jacket for 40% off and I'm wearing it all the time now! After that we headed to my favorite bar in Oulu, 45 Special. It's a bar that plays nothing but rock music. The "basement" plays some older music like The Cure, Nirvana, Van Halen, etc. The middle floor, where you enter, is just a sitting area with a bar. The top floor has either a live band or plays more modern rock like Papa Roach, Limp Bizkit, Fall Out Boy, etc.

Last night, we tried out the sauna. It was really nice and relaxing. I'm really glad that we have one in our apartment.

As for work, Heikki doesn't officially return from vacation until next week, but I plan on going in to so some stuff before then. I have to revise my final dissertation paper so that I can resubmit it and I'm hoping I can finish that before I start something new.

Time to go.

The day is here! Today we fly to Oulu, Finland. Our bags are packed and I think we are ready to go. Our flight is scheduled to depart at 10:20pm and we arrive at 7:50pm local time tomorrow.

Stay tuned for blogs from Oulu.

Soon.

Our flight from Detroit leaves at 10:20pm tomorrow and we arrive at about 8pm on July 3 (local Oulu time). I'm both nervous and excited about the trip. I also feel like there just isn't enough time to properly hang out with everyone before I leave.

Good to go.

Our passports arrived today, so we are set to go to Finland!

Permits and The Hulk.

I called the Finnish Consulate this morning and found out that our residence permits are ready to go. The lady just needs to FedEx our passports back to us. I'm anticipating that they will arrive before Monday afternoon.

Last night Becky and I watched The Incredible Hulk and Get Smart in Sterling Heights. I liked the Hulk movie much more than Get Smart. It was even better than the previous Hulk movie. Check out the life-sized 8 foot replica they had in the theater:

Camping in Kentucky.

Here are some pictures of Cumberland Falls, Kentucky.

Quick Update.

Just a quick update. We stopped in Tuscaloosa for the night instead of pushing to make it to Tennessee. This way, we get to see our friends once more too.

On our way?

Today's the day that we are supposed to start our trek to Michigan with a camping layover in Tennessee. I think we will be lucky to leave Covington by 3p today, so I'm doubtful that we will be camping in TN tonight. We still have to do some laundry, clean Becky's parents' house, and try to cram all of our worldly possesions back into my car.

Cross your fingers!

Oh, there has also been no word yet on our Finnish residence permits.

Update.

Here's a brief update on what's going on around here.

Becky and I have been visiting her friends and family and yesterday we were supposed to go on a swamp tour with her sister and nephew. The day before yesterday, I started to get a sore throat and I felt like total crap that night. I started to feel slightly better yesterday morning, but definitely not well enough to go on a boat ride. So we spent yesterday watching tv while I was trying to recouperate. Today we are meeting Becky's mom and step-dad at the Baton Rouge airport and will hang out with them all day tomorrow. On Tuesday we will start our trip to Michigan.

We sent our passports to the Finnish General Consulate last week and are hoping that they will be returned to us before July 2 with the required residence permits. I don't know what's going to happen if we don't get them back before then.

We also saw The Happening on Friday night and I didn't like it. It might be because I was feeling like crap during the entire movie.

Currently, I still have a sore throat and a slight cough, though the sore throat isn't as bad as it was.

Well Rested.

Wow, I slept a lot yesterday. I think I slept for about 10 hours the night before last, then I took a 2 hour nap with the cat during the day, then I slept for 8 hours last night. Geez.

Last night we (Becky, Becky's parents, and I) drove to Baton Rouge to see Becky's brother (Steven) perform his stand-up comedy routine at an open mic night. There were a lot of amateurs giving it a shot that night and it seemed like they all got at least one laugh. I had a good time.

Made it to Covington, LA

After a long day of last minute packing, runs to the storage unit, cleaning, and driving, we finally made it to LA. The cat also made it in one piece and is already making herself at home here.

I don't know how much I'm actually going to miss the town of Tuscaloosa (it does have it's charms), but I am definitely going to miss my friends there.

The end of an era.

Today we have everything officially moved out of our office at school. We just have to come back tomorrow and turn in our keys!

Joss Whedon

I'm starting to become a fan of Joss Whedon. After Becky started watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer, she became a fan. I remember watching a couple of Buffy episodes when it was on tv, I even tried a couple of Angel episodes, but I never got hooked.

Years later I saw the movie Serenity. It was a continuation of the canceled show Firefly, which I hadn't seen at that point. Even without knowing anything about the preceding show, I ended up really liking that movie. Becky and I watched Firefly within the last year, and I ended up really enjoying it. The last episode definitely left me wanting to see what was going to happen next.

Also within the last year, I borrowed Whedon's The Astonishing X-Men (Vol. 1) from the library. It was a good read. I think I liked it because I already knew the characters and their back story so I didn't have to invest so much time into finding out who they were and what they were about. Instead, I was just able to just follow the current story arc. Whedon's writing was definitely good and unique. His campy humor was evident even in the X-men. A couple of weeks ago I read volume 2 and it was incredible. It was one of the best stories I've read in a long time.

Anyway, the point of this blog is that I'm actually excited about how Whedon's next project is going to play out. It's a tv show called Dollhouse. The premise of the show sounds good, but I'm more interested in watching how the show's characters develop. I think Whedon does a good job in making his characters three dimensional and letting them evolve, which is a far cry from the character development I've seen in Smallville for example.

I just hope Dollhouse has the same kind of success as Buffy did and doesn't get cut short like Firefly.

Here's the trailer:

Welcome to my world.

I hope everyone likes my blog's new theme song by Nerf Herder.

Our Cat.

The Home Stretch.

After taking a couple of days off from packing, I finally feel ready to get back to it. Today we are going to bring stuff from our office to the storage unit and continue packing stuff at home. We rented a 10' x 10' unit, but it still seems like it might be a tight squeeze.

Pictures from our week at the beach.

These are from our week in Seagrove, FL (courtesy of Ellen Roberts, Woot!) from May 5-9, 2008.

Free Sidekickers.

"I'm so hungry, I could eat at Arby's."

This coupon expires 6/8/08.

The Plight of the Common Man.

This is why I love W. He really knows how to relate to Joe 6-Pack.

I'm Back.

I returned on Friday from spending a week at the beach with Becky, Ellen (Becky's sister), and Angel. It was a blast.

Busted.

Click the picture for a larger view.

Which Summer Marvel Movie Are You Most Excited About?

100% said Iron Man, rather than The Incredible Hulk or Punisher: War Zone.

Happy Earth Day!

You can get a free reusable tote at Home Depot today!

My other car is a Battlestar.

I found out last night that season 4 (the current season) of Battlestar Galactica is the final one! I'm so depressed. I felt my heart drop when I found out. It is such a great show that I don't want it to end.

Mmmm donuts.

This coupon expires on 5/13/08.

Awesome.

The title of this article says it all: Florida lawmakers pass take-your-guns-to-work law

In a nutshell, the measure "prohibits business owners from banning guns kept locked in motor vehicles on their private property."

The article goes on to say that "the measure exempts a number of workplaces including nuclear power plants, prisons, schools[,] and companies whose business involves homeland security." Why? Is this idea dangerous for some reason? It is because "studies have shown that job sites where guns are permitted are more likely to suffer workplace homicides than those where guns are prohibited?"

I REALLY want to see this.

The Red Bull Air Race will be happening at the Detroit waterfront on May 31 and June 1. I wish I could see it.

Check it out:

What would you rather live without?

33% Dishwasher
66% Washing Machine

33% of you people are crazy. I would rather live without a washing machine and go to a laundromat once a week than have to wash dishes all the time.

F.Y.I.

Per beer, it's cheaper to create your own 4-pack of Guinness at Target than it is to buy a standard 6-pack.

Backwards Progress.

I just read an article about GM's new electric/gasoline hybrid car, the Volt. They are testing batteries for an electric/gasoline hybrid vehicle 10 years after they released an all electric vehicle, the EV1. The funny thing is that the Volt only gets 40 miles per charge with the newer lithium-ion batteries, but the EV1 would go between 55 and 75 miles on a charge with the lead acid batteries. The EV1 would go between 75 and 150 miles on a charge with the nickel-metal hydride batteries. It sounds like GM is making some real progress!

Maybe things would have been different if GM didn't decide to destroy or disable all the EV1's.

Who would you rather fight?

100% said William Shatner
0% said Abraham Lincoln

This is going to be sweet!

Check out the pictures of Ray Park as Snake-eyes from the upcoming G.I. Joe movie!

Good Friday?

Happy Crucifixion-and-Death-of-Jesus-Day everyone.

The End of Excess?

Here's an interesting article I read on Reuters. It's titled Households face the unthinkable: budgeting.

Here's a good quote from the article:

We get home owners coming to us in trouble, but then we look and see they have only make $50,000 a year and yet they own an Escalade," he said, referring to a Cadillac sport utility vehicle that sells for about $55,000. "And you have to ask them 'What on earth were you thinking?'

Here's one of those home owners in a snippit from a WSJ article back when the subprime thing started:



A koi pond, a 12/18 mpg Navigator, and a shrinking income. Oi.

If you could time travel, where would you rather go?

According to my poll...

The past: 0%
The future : 100%

Incredible Hulk Trailer.

This looks like it's going to be waaaaay better than the first one!

Second Life Anyone?

Last night I started checking out Second Life. It's like a MMORPG only without the Orcs. It seems pretty cool. I know that NPR has a space set up there for Science Friday. You can take your avatar over there, hang out, and join in the discussion.

If anyone else joins this, let me know.

Hello New PS.

I got my new power supply today... a day earlier than I expected. I installed it and everything seems to be working fine. I hope it lasts longer than the old one.

Sorry Anthropology Friends.

I just checked rottentomatoes.com and the movie 10,000 B.C. has a rating of 7%!

I think I first saw the trailer for this movie at a showing of Cloverfield and I wasn't impressed. They have been pushing it pretty hard on tv too, which isn't a good sign.

Bye Bye Power Supply.

I think the power supply in my computer finally gave out. About a month ago, my computer would make a really loud noise when it would boot up. I thought that it may be because a fan was failing. About 1 or 2 weeks ago, I turned on my computer one morning and went to the kitchen while it loaded. When I came back, the power was off. "Hmmm. That's odd," I thought. I had to unplug the PS and plug it back in to get it to start up. That has now happened with more frequency. Last night I was going to play F.E.A.R., and the computer shut off after 2 successive tries. I was afraid that something may happen to my hard drive, so I gave up. This morning, I ordered this PS. I hope it works better than my old one. Both are made by Rosewill.

What a Snoozer.

Albert Fert, winner of the 2007 Nobel Prize in Physics, gave a talk today on "The Present and Future of Spintronics." He is the second Nobel Prize winning physicist that has visited the Physics and Astronomy department since I've been in Tuscaloosa. Fert's talk went way beyond anything I understand about magnetic materials research (which is almost nothing) and he ended up losing me at the first slide. I thought that Fert's talk would be more general and that I would be able to follow it better, but that was not the case.

I really gave up on trying to understand anything in magnetic materials talks after my first year in grad. school. I went to a few of them, thinking that I would be able to pick something up, but I just don't have the necessary background to follow it I guess. Also, talk about the benefits of one thin film of material over a different thin film of material just isn't that interesting to me. Sorry Scott Brown. :)

G2P

Looking for a legitimate way to download free music? Try g2p.org.

Maxed Out.

Here you go. You can watch the very interesting documentary titled Maxed Out for free. I rated it 4/5 stars on Netflix.

R.I.P. Gary Gygax

What a bummer. The creator of Dungeons and Dragons died. Read about it here.

Moving On.

Well, we officially have to move out of our Tuscaloosa apartment by May 31. We talked to the apartment manager and she let us out of our lease 1.5 months early without a penalty. That was really nice of her!

Spam can be funny.

I just cleaned out my spam-box and the subject line of one of the messages read, "SIGN THIS CONTRACT."

Duh.... ok, I will. You convinced me.

Who Needs Cable?

Who needs cable when you have broadband? Becky showed me a website called www.sidereel.com where you can watch nearly any tv show online. They even have old episodes of Alf!

Postdocs

I didn't think getting a postdoc would be so hard. I found out today that I was turned down for another position (this one was in Paris). I've been applying for any postdoc that I would be even remotely qualified for and interested in and none have come through so far. I think I have pretty good qualifications, but apparently there are people with a lot more experience and talent out there than I have. I wonder what an astronomy PhD does if he can't get one of the few postdocs offered. Do they just go into teaching and give up on the research? It seems like once you move away from the research, it would be really hard to get back into it. What a bummer.

The First 6 Minutes of The Dark Knight.

Sweeeeet!

Which Republican candidate would you rather have as president?

Here's the tally:

0% said Huckabee
25% said Paul
75% said McCain

Out of all the Republicans that were running, I think McCain is probably the best choice.

Perfect Timing.

Great. While I'm looking for a job, the country is headed into a longer lasting and more severe downturn than has been seen in 20 years. This should be challenging.

Which is your favorite season?

75% voted for Summer
25% (that's me) voted for Winter.

Am I the only one that likes snow?

Unbelievable.

This is probably the most !@#$ed-up thing I've ever read. Not only did the latest al Qaeda bombing in Iraq kill 98 people in two pet markets (also killing an untold number of dogs, cats, monkeys, etc.), but they strapped bombs to and remotely detonated two mentally disabled women who probably didn't know what they were doing. Everything about this story is an outrage.