Nerd Books

I'm a terrible nerd. That fact was really brought to my attention when I looked at the books I got for Christmas. 6 books in all (a rather large haul for me) which I will list below for you.

• Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea
• The Nothing That Is: A Natural History of Zero
• Galileo's Pendulum: From the Rhythm of Time to the Making of Matter
• "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" Adventures of a Curious Character
• The Calculus Wars: Newton, Leibniz, and the Greatest Mathematical Clash of All Time
• e: The Story of a Number

That's about the biggest collection of nerd books possible I think. I've already read the Galileo book. The first 2/3 about the history of time keeping was excellent. The last 1/3 about physics and harmonic oscillators was a bit iffy.

Merry Christmas. But really, the whole point of this post is to alert the world of the utterly unique shower head to be found in the Anderson's basement. It's not terribly new, but it's still news worthy. The shower head, rather than producing any sort of streams of water creates a windy mist of pelting droplets. I guess it's supposed to save water and stuff, perhaps by pelting you hard enough with this crazy mist that you just shower quicker. It's not bad or anything, but it sure is unique in the world of shower heads that I've experienced. If you're ever in the neighborhood, maybe you should stop in and take a look.

First off, I'll be out of town for the Christmas Break, so posting will be a bit more sporadic. But I'll try to keep you abreast of our many adventures. Secondly, I have decided that my blog needs to be a bit more colorful and include more pictures. Any month now I'm going to put up pictures of Bishops Castle, but until then, you'll get a colorful pie chart.

West Texas A&M

Speaking of West Texas A&M, I looked it up to see where it is. (Canyon, TX) Then I looked up Canyon, TX to see where that is. (12 miles south of Amarillo. Luckily I know where that is.) Their website is the best college site I've seen since North Carolina A&T. Their first two points which they make sure to point out when you read about their school are:

1) "[T]he northernmost senior institution of higher learning in Texas." They get this point out in the very first sentence. Good, because I'd hate to go to school and find out that I was only in the second or third northernmost senior institution of higher learning in Texas.

2) "[T]he only bachelor's and master's degree-granting state university within a 100-mile radius." This is their big point of the second sentence. Just to make sure you know that not only are they far north, but they are the only school anywhere near Amarillo. Apparently the further away you are from any other school, the better. I think they're putting in a satellite campus in White Horse, Canada.

(My apologies to White Horse.)

"Rocky II" / Jerry Tarkanian / Washed Up Quarterback / Las Vegas Bowl

Yes, this is a rant. Maybe some of you didn't get to watch the thing that ESPN decided to broadcast during the Las Vegas Bowl between BYU and Oregon. Among topics that were covered:

• Brent Musburger's part in "Rocky II"
• Brent Musburger's "Rocky II" action figure
• Brent Musburger's "Rocky II" action figure's physique and pants.
• Jerry Tarkanian's opinion of Bobby Knight
• Jerry Tarkanian's opinion of Texas A&M (not playing in this game, by the way)
• A former NFL quarterback becoming the golf coach at West Texas A&M because they couldn't even pay him to be their quarterbacks coach.
  

Among topics that were not covered:

• The Las Vegas Bowl
• Plays
• Stats
• Penalties
• Anything having to do with BYU or Oregon

Major gaffe of the game: Brent Musburger confusing Oregon QB Brady Leaf with Notre Lame QB Brady Quinn. Strongly worded emails have already been sent to ESPN, but feel free to add your own. I put up with CSTV and Versus coverage during the season which was bad, but at least it was on topic. At least they tried. Tonight, ESPN didn't even care. They didn't even try to convince me that they took the game seriously at all. But I am glad that they cleared up the confused I had about the golf coach at West Texas A&M

401k'd Up

As of right now, I am offically 401k'd up. It was a fairly easy process. Click here, answer this yes/no question, choose how much money to put in, click 'ok', and then choose what percentage of your money (1%-100%) you want to put in each of these 19 different funds. I suppose I'm supposed to be happy to have all those options, but I mean, come on! Should I pick the Franklin High Yield Growth and Income S, or the SSGa Diversity 17Ga Fund, or the YT Oppenheimer R Investment Fund, or the GTYFFWX Unicorn and Burrito Fund? Lucky for me, each one comes with a prospectus. I sampled one, which was 54 pages long. Needless to say, I didn't read it. But we're signed up now, and hopefully we'll be rolling in the dough soon.

I depend on these people?

Yesterday I was trained in CPR, and the course is taught, in part, by a DVD. It shows all the steps and gives little scenarios and you can practice along with the tape, etc. The video emphasised various important points, such as pushing hard and fast, but my personal favorite is how we were repeatedly told to start CPR "ammediately". I listened carefully, and each time we were told to take "ammediate" action. So when your life is on the line, be glad that your emergency responders are taking action "ammediately" to save your life.

Happy Birthday Tim

Yesterday was my nephew Timothy's birthday. He is now four years old, and apparently spent the whole day telling everyone that it was his birthday. We called him up to say happy birthday, and Melissa put him on the phone. When I asked him what day it was, the answer surprised me. "Tuesday" Even more weird is that when I got his brother Benjamin on the phone (5 years old) and ask him what day it was, he said, "Tuesday". Apparently the kids are real big on the days of the week down there in Texas.

Welcome to .. .. ..

This is just a reminder for anyone who doesn't know or may have forgotten that the prison down here in southern Utah is named Purgatory. Isn't that a perfect name for a prison?

Apple Carts

An image that will forever stick in my mind is that of peasants overturning an apple cart in the narrow streets of Paris during a riot or revolution and blocking the street off entirely. Ms. Brinton made the reference so that students who had grown up in SLC, with its famously wide straight streets could appreciate the narrow roads of Europe. If only we had all been in St. George, we would already have known what she was taking about.

This morning, snow fell in St. George (second time this year) and a small bridge over the Fort Pierce Wash was slick enough that a car slid off into the guard rail or something like that. So we had dozens of flashing lights on the scene and River Road was closed off. I was forced to turn into a neighborhood, about 1 mile short of work. There is no way to get to work when that 100 feet of River Road is closed. No neighborhood to by pass it, no alternate road, no scenic route. The only option I could think of would be to turn around and drive the 3 miles back into St. George, drive all the way across town, get on the freeway, take the next exit and get back to River Road. That's about an 8 mile drive to bypass half a mile of River Road. Stuart has indicated that there are two other routes I could have taken, one by way of a sod farm that isn't really a public road, and another that goes through Arizona.

Next time I have any Parisian pals in town, I think we should turn over an apple cart and barricade off this part of town, then wait to see how long it would take anyone to get to us to shut down our revolution.

Couches: Final Report

I hope that you are all as obsessed with our couches as we are. But it seems to finally be over. The "couch technician" came over on Saturday (I wasn't there, so maybe Shannon will give a more detailed report) and fixed the couch up. I guess he sprayed some stuff on our small little tear and it should be ok, and we're just happy to have couches to sit on and watch TV and read.

A Call for Websites

Ok folks, sometimes we all find ourselves sitting in front of a computer with very little to do. So we surf the internet. But if you're like me, you surf for about 10 minutes, and then, once you've verified about 7 times that no one has commented on your blog, there is no where left to surf to. So what are some of your best websites for providing a good time or a small giggle? If we all share, then we'll all be better off.

Things that keep Clark interested:
These may not be for everyone, but I generally check:
espn.go.com - Self-explanatory
www.ornery.org - Message board of people arguing. Heavy on politics, but not always.
cloark.blogspot.com - Obviously you know where this one is.
any blog linked to my blog
www.hatrack.com - Just to see what weird thing Orson is ranting about this week.
improveverywhere.com - Hilarious, but once you've read them all, you're kinda done.

Ok, Go

We went to Panda Express last night, and it was tasty. My fortune says: "People are waiting for cues from you." So, for all of you out there (and you are plural at least) whatever it is, you can go ahead and do it now. You have my permission. You may proceed.

Profiles

I don't have a profile filled out on this this, and I went through the effort to remove the profile link on the blog that appears by default. No one who reads this thing needs a profile for me anyway. But the other night, Shannon accidentally clicked on her own name in a comment field and it took her to her profile. 50 views! I just checked mine. 5 views! And one of those was me just checking. We don't have anyway of checking traffic, so we don't know how many people are looking at our blogs, but if we assume traffic to be equal, apparently the public is 12 times more interested in knowing about Shannon than they are about me. Or she's getting 4 times the traffic and they're 3 times more interested in knowing more. Or she's getting 12 times the traffic and the populous is equally uninterested in both of us. Or they're 4 times as interested in me, but she gets 50 times the traffic. I just can't find a way where this comes out good for me.

Couch Timeline

The folks down at SofaMart are certainly no Service Champions. Here's a basic rundown of our couching adventures. The dates are a bit sketchy, because when this all started, I never figured I'd be doing this.

Oct 1: Initial shopping
Oct 3: Order couch, love seat, and tables. We are told that it will take about 3 weeks.
Oct 30ish: Shannon calls them, to find out where our couches are. They tell us it will be a few more weeks. Thanks for telling us, guys.
Nov 20ish: More phone calls. Still no couch. They pledge to make things better.
Next Day: We go into the store. They say it will still be a few weeks until our couches come, perhaps into January. We elect to trade up to a different couch at no cost to us. We should have our stuff within a week.
Dec 2: After calling them, and finding out that the love seat has not arrived, we basically tell them that we need somewhere to sit, and they deliver our couch and tables. It's now just shy of 2 months since we bought our couch.
Dec 13: Love seat finally arrives. All is good, until the deliverers find that one of the legs doesn't screw into the couch. It's functional but the leg will fall off if you try to move the couch. They will send couch technician to fix it in a few days. All is ok, until I discover some dirt and a 3/4" tear in the arm of the love seat. Couch technician will also fix that, or they can order us a whole new love seat, but I am loath to think of how long that would take us.

Summary: 2 months, 11 days and we've got a couch, coffee table, 2 end tables and a somewhat damaged love seat. The set is already 60% paid off. I feel that if we order a new love seat, it could be another month before it comes. I regularly think of asking them: What good is 6 months same as cash if it takes you 6 months to give it to me? Isn't that really just a 6 month lay-away program?

Scientific Instruments

At work, I deal with molten metal. It's hot stuff. Incidentally, I'll remind everyone out there that we're all very familiar with water as a solid, liquid and gas. We're all used to terms like, freezing, melting, boiling, etc. It's no different for metal, or liquid nitrogen. All the elements still do the same things, just not at 0° and 100°. (The whole expanding when freezing thing is fairly unique to water though. If you want to know half a dozen more unique things about water, ask Suzanne.)

Anyway, because our molten metal is really hot 1000°C, give or take, we have fancy thermometers to measure the temperature. The only down side is that when you're spending your evening letting the things cool down, the thermometers quit working. They've got some lower limit why the don't work (I'd explain why, but that would require the Stefan-Boltzmann law and you simply don't care) so as they cool, once they're somewhere below 800°C (roughly) the thermometer doesn't say anything more specific than "cold". (Remember, cold is just a relative meaning. "Colder than what?" is the important question.) But that leaves me curious as to what the temperature is like in there. The metal glows red when it's hot, so color and brightness is an indication of temperature (whoops, that's pretty much the Stefan-Boltzmann law, sorry) but that gives out not long after my thermometers. So our official technique: stick your hand in front of it and feel how much heat is coming out the little window. But if you want a more precise measurement? Easy. I use my face. (It's much more sensitive to heat.)

Gabriel Mann

I don't know where he comes from, but our computer came with 3 songs on it from a guy named Gabriel Mann. (I assume that's his name, not a band.) Anyway, I rather like the music. It's catchy. And it's nearly 2 in the morning, I'm in a noisy room with lots of equipment, and I haven't seen another person for 8 hours. So I've got my mp3 player stuck in my ears and I'm singing along to music. I'm sure I sound ridiculous, but provided Jason doesn't show up 3 hours early, no one is going to hear it (including myself) so I'll just go back to enjoying myself.

Something to throw the book at

Shannon and I have know for a little while now about a glaring error in the St. George phone book. It has a vendetta against Home Depot. When we moved here, we thought there wasn't a Home Depot around, because it isn't in the phone book. It turns out that it is. But the other night, we found further phone book anomalies.

We wanted to rent a movie from Blockbuster, so we checked our phone book and found 2 near by. One in St. George, another in Washington. We don't live too far from Washington, so were uncertain as to which is closer. We figured that if it was closer than the DI in Washington, that would be a good bet, so we looked up DI in the phone book. But DI isn't in the phone book. It must have sided with Home Depot in an argument once or something. So we went to the Blockbuster in St. George. But there isn't a Blockbuster in St. G. Only the remains of one. Good job again, mr. phone book. So off we went to Washington, passing the non-existent DI and Home Depot to arrive at Blockbuster. But there isn't a Blockbuster in Washington either! So apparently, here in St. G, if you want to find something, you'd better hope it isn't in the book.

Ge Smuggler

Yesterday I found a new way to smuggle expensive Ge out of the plant: in my thumb. I got a sliver of Ge stuck in my thumb in the morning and didn't manage to get it out until after I got home. It kinda hurt (and still kinda hurts). But, the stuff is valuable! If I keep giving myself slivers every single day, I figure I could get ten or twenty bucks after a year.

Fortune Cookie Wisdom

In the working world, everyone seems to have automatic secrecy warnings put at the end of their emails. They're long, and no one reads them. To prove that no one reads them, I started putting different ones at the ends of all my emails to Jason, and he didn't notice until I pointed them out to him. Some of my favorites are:

**********************************
This message is super secret. Don't
even think about telling anyone about
it. Or I'll break your knees.
**********************************
********************
Tell anyone about this
and you're dead meat.
********************

But now after going out for Chinese today, I found the perfect message that I think I'll be using from now on. From my fortune cookie:

You think that is a secret, but it never has been one.

Continuing Christmas Ranting

The next topic of Christmas tripe is Christmas songs that aren't about Christmas. These fall into two categories:

Wintertime non-Christmas Songs
If you pay close attention, a lot of Christmas songs aren't about Christmas. "Let it Snow" ought to be good anytime it's snowing. The all-time classic "Jingle Bells" is likewise not about Christmas. It's just that Christmas seems to be our all-around wintertime celebration. If you pay close attention, you'll notice that probably 1/3 of "Christmas" songs fit in this category.

Songs that have nothing to do with Christmas or winter
The top winner in this category is easily "My Favorite Things" from the Sound of Music. Really, why is this in my big book of Christmas songs? Why it is on Shannon's Christmas CD? Who thought this one up? Why "My Favorite Things" and not "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing" or "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" if we're just picking random songs to sing for Christmas time. Another one that has confused me for years is "Hymne". It's a fine song, but how exactly can a song with no words be a Christmas song? Does it have a particularly yuletide melody?

Christmas Tripe

This was supposed to be the last post, but apparently my feelings about notepad were just too strong and worked their way to the surface. (That post is doomed to zero instances of lavish praise.) But this one is all about Christmas quality. I've often commented to Shannon the following American culture truth:

People will accept a startling level of crappiness from products and still love them, just because it's Christmas.

Exhibit A: 98% of all Christmas music. Some crummy vocalist can get his family steel drum band together and go record "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" and suddenly you're listening to it on the radio. There's such a demand for this stuff that they start playing Christmas music November 1st. What if crummy-steel-drum-band-man went and recorded his own version of "Video Killed the Radio Star"? Would that get air time? If it did, would you listen to it? Most Christmas music is done by poor to average vocalists with formulaic music. If you really look at it, the tunes and lyrics themselves are usually pretty awful. "Jingle Bell Rock" "Feliz Navidad" "Upon the Housetop"? If these songs were about anything other than Christmas they never even would have been written.

Exhibit B: Christmas Movies and TV shows. The Charlie Brown Christmas is a classic. And that's about it. Many will defend the original Rudolph TV production, but really, if that wasn't somehow entrenched as the greatest Christmas time TV show ever, would anyone still like it? (We all like it and watch it because we've been told that everyone likes it.) Frosty the Snowman isn't bad, but would take a big hit without the "Happy Birthday!" line every time he's brought back to life. The movie "The Christmas Story" is a good flick and then we've just about exhausted Christmas films. Yet every year someone has to star in a terrible Christmas movie where people learn to have the Christmas spirit and old enemies become friends. Any don't try to punch holes in this argument with pseudo-Christmas movies like "Home Alone". It takes place at Christmas time, but really, there's no reason it couldn't have been done over spring break. The scary guy next door would just have to be fertilizing his lawn rather than salting the walks. The heartwarming "we made it back for Christmas" scene would have been weakened a bit, but really, the film is about being home alone, not Christmas.

Exhibit C: Handy-Nerd stocking stuffers. (If you don't know what this is, ask. Maybe it'll have to be it's own post.)

My pledge this Christmas season is not to endure any low quality tripe just because it's Christmas tripe. Enjoy the good quality stuff out there, but don't settle for things you'd never endure the other 11 months of the year.

New Blog Post (3)

Well, Gmail seems to be down today. We seem to be having a few internet issues in general, but gmail is particularly defunct today. And the blog is gmail based. (Because Gmail owns everything.) So I'm writing posts ahead of time in notepad. I think I'm about the only person in the whole world who uses notepad regularly, and does so out of personal preference. I could use Word. I could use Wordpad. But when I just want to make myself little notes, I prefer the stark simplicity of notepad. I just right click on the desktop, create a new text document and start typing away. Back when I made dorky little web pages in high school I was proud that I did them all in Notepad, rather than having some program make them for me. The only downside is I can often end up with 'New Text Document' 'New Text Document (2)' and 'New Text Document (3)' all sitting on my desktop if I don't remember to rename them something more sensible. But generally, the files just live long enough to be copied into the blog or some other place before being destroyed. Such is the short life of a text document.

Double Heel

I know Shannon already thinks I'm a huge weirdo for thinking this way, and now all the rest of you can weigh in on this point also. (I know you all think I'm a huge weirdo in general, but that's not the point. This is a question of this specific weirdo nature of this one item.) I pulled out my sandwich today (which Shannon lovingly made for me) and my first thought was, "Alright! A double heel sandwich!" Shannon despises heels, and I like 'em! Of course, the second heel turned out to be a fraud, because there was actually a very thin, mini-heel stuck to it, so I got a half-heel sandwich and a little heel to snack on. What a day!

Truly a Sight to Behold.

First off, the spellcheck and formatting buttons are back. All is once again right in the world.

My car has a tachometer, which has been mostly broken for years now. Mostly broken, meaning that it works about 5 to 10 percent of the time and there's no telling when it will suddenly come to life or when it will revert back to it's preferred dormant state. It happened to be on the other day, functioning as if nothing were ever wrong, but then, moments later, I noticed that it is now semi-permanently pegged at about 8,500 rpm. I think it red lines at 5,500 and the gauge stops at 7,000, but there is my needle, pointing nearly straight down in the neighborhood of where 8,500 would be. My theory is that as I was getting onto the freeway the other day, I got the engine up to at least 3,500 rpm while the tach was working, and it chose that point to poop out on me. 3,500 is an important number, because that is the vertical point on the gauge, and if the needle was beyond 3,500 and it cut out then the needle falls off the high end of the scale, rather than dropping back to zero. So from here on out, I'm apparently driving a race car, even if I'm in the parking lot.

Sub-ward

Shannon and I belong to a somewhat elderly ward. Welcome to St. George. But yesterday we decided to attend the other gospel doctrine class. We walked in, and suddenly, we were in a married student ward. While the majority of the ward was in the cultural hall attending one class, here we were in the Relief Society room with about 25 other people, non of whom was over the age of 30. I guess we're the only ones in our age group that had been going to that other class.

Of course, it's not like the class was any different. But for some reason, the younger people feel better about being with other younger people, rather than mixing with the bulk of the ward. Of course, in my opinion, this is a Bad Thing. The ward is artificially segregated, and the old folks never will mix with the young bucks. This is particularly bad for the men. They don't mix in Sunday School, they don't mix in Priesthood classes. They won't even home teach each other. What's the point of even being in the same ward? No one will learn others names. All activities will turn into either "old people" activities, or "young people" activities, and the ward will be about half as strong as it ought to be. But maybe that's just my opinion.

In other news, where has my formatting and spellchecking button gone? Now this post is sure to be all fouled up.

Reasons for Existance

Some things out there don't seem to have a broad range of uses. Once your pen runs out of ink, you generally throw it out, because really, what else can you use it for? Shoe laces that fray excessively at one of the ends suddenly have almost zero value. I have a growing collection of useless door handles for a Chevy Prism off of which one small piece has broken.

A few weeks ago, I gave a challenge of diagramming a horrid sentence. Suzanne did it and has declared the $1 prize to be rightfully hers. She even says that her solution was checked by her boss, an English major. In my efforts to be a good judge, I decided to bring in two outside opinions, both English majors whom I trust, to make sure Suzanne isn't trying to pull a fast one for some easy dough. Joy's response: "I'm afraid I'm of no help. . . . I've never diagrammed sentences before." Another day later and we had Chelsea's addition: "there's really no chance on this little green earth that I can fidure [sic] it out. " This has left me wondering what exactly English majors do. If they don't diagram sentences, who does? And if diagramming really isn't part of being an English major, why did I spend years being forced to do it in English class? And how is it that I've diagrammed sentences, but neither of them has? Is this why they chose to be English majors, because they were never caused to despise the subject by diagramming? And lastly, if you get a degree in physics, you're a physicist, biology and you're a biologist, but if you have a degree in English, what are you? An Englishist? Englisher?

You can see how this whole thing has turned my world upside down. I suppose I'm officially acknowledging Suzanne as the winner of the dollar.

Cruising the Town

I guess it's a sure sign that you work in an industrial park when you see forklifts driving down the road, and don't even find it to be an unusual sight.

Redicularity

Nursery rhymes are pretty silly things. But some go above and beyond. Shannon and I have a running debate on whether or not Patty-Cake involves "throwing up high" or not. It seems to me that any throwing up high of cake batter would get messy in a hurry. Then there is a bizarre one involving riding a "cock horse". I just make up words to that one.

But one of the all time weird things hidden in Nursery rhymes has to go to the Little Piggy/toe rhyme. It seems somewhat plausible at first. One goes to market, and the next stays home. Nursery rhymes are thick with people prancing off to the market through the woods to go fetch something or other. But then, out of the blue, here comes "This little piggy had roast beef". Roast Beef?!?! Of all the possible things in the whole wide world, how did roast beef get chosen? What is a pig doing eating roast beef? I just don't get it!

Left in the Dark

Welcome back from a long Thanksgiving break. It was lots of fun. We partied in SLC, had our first Black Friday shopping experience, watched a thrilling football game, and drove like mad people to get back to St. George in time for the Amazing Race. As predicted, internet access was a bit harder to come by, so you missed out on the blogs. But, if you were like me, you were busy enough with other things that you didn't really miss it. But on to today's important topic:

There are no light switches in the clean room. We've got 2 clean rooms here at work, and neither one has a light switch in it. It's actually not a bad idea not to put light switches in the clean room. The switches should be outside the room, so you flip them on before going in and, more importantly, you can still flip them off once you're outside the clean room without dressing back up in your bunny suit. As an aside, bathrooms should have the light switches inside the room, but Shannon's parents house apparently doesn't know that. Anyway, the most peculiar thing about the clean rooms here is that there are no light switches. Period. No where, anywhere, is there a switch on the wall that turns the lights on and off. Millions of dollars we spent on the place and no light switches. We just flip the breakers on and off for the lights. I suppose that in the long run, the clean room is supposed to be running 24/7, so the lights will never need to be off. But still . . . .

Suzanne Sightings!

Despite my sisters constant claims, she is apparently not the youngest Suzanne in the whole world. It turns out that Alex's husband's sister is named Suzanne and comes in at a spry young age of 25.

In other news, Thanksgiving approaches and my internet access will not be quite so ubiquitous, so you could see a decrease in posts while we're all busy stuffing ourselves with turkey. But, since half of my readers will be moving into the old Sandy home, you'll still get your fill of me. Those of you in TX and OK will just have to find something else to keep you entertained.

It's like it's trying to speak to me.

While out driving, Shannon and I saw a license plate:

GRDCNPT

If you have any ideas as to what this could possibly mean, we'd love to hear them.

LEARN ALGEBRA!

About a year ago, someone wrote an article in the NYT (I think) about how Algebra was useless. As you might guess, I disagree. Nay, I strongly disagree. Anyway, along comes Suzanne wondering how a little party trick works, and suddenly, here comes Algebra with the solution! I'll first list the trick:

YOUR AGE BY DINER & RESTAURANT MATH

This is pretty neat. Don't cheat by scrolling down first! It takes less than a minute. Work this out as you read; be sure you don't read the bottom until you've worked it out!

1. First of all, pick the number of times a week that you would like to go out to eat. (more than once but less than 10)
2. Multiply this number by 2 (just to be bold)
3. Add 5
4. Multiply it by 50
5. If you have already had your birthday this year add 1756 . If you haven't, add 1755.
6. Now subtract the four digit year that you were born.You should have a three digit number.

The first digit of this was your original number ( i.e., how many times you want to go out to restaurants in a week.) The next two digits are your age! 2006 is the only year it will ever work!

And now, because this is algebra (which everyone should know) not magic, I will reveal the trick. It's good to do it with a real number so you can see how it works, but because we want to show why it works, we use algebra's favorite number: x.

1. Start with:
x
2. Multiply by 2:
2x
3. Add five:
2x+5
4. Multiply it by 50:
(2x+5)*50
These last two steps are to confuse you so you can't see what's going on. Let's simplify to clear that up:
100x+250
5. Now add either 1756 or 1755. Since we're late in the year, we'll use 1756
100x+250+1756 = 100x + 2006
Hmmm . . . now we can see why this trick will only work this year. This step just makes sure that the number you're adding is the year you had your last birthday in. The trick will work just fine next year, you'll just have to add one more.
6. Subtract the year you were born.
100x + (2006 - 1982) = 100x + 24 = x00 +24 = x24
I put in my year of birth, just for a firm number. Of course, 2006-1982 is my age. The 100x (remember that x is how often you want to eat out) pushes the value x out to the hundreds place where it won't interfere with the calculation of your age. Of course, don't try this trick on anyone 100 years old or older!

Perhaps Suzanne owes me my dollar back?

Hot Zippity!

The next time you are entertaining guests, make them some Hot Zippity Tomato Dill Drink! Here's the recipe (from the Lion House Recipes book).

Ingredients:
1 can (46 ounces) tomato juice
4 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon garlic salt
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
3 dashes Tabasco sauce
1/2 cup dill pickle juice
1/3 cup lemon juice

Combine all ingredients in saucepan. Bring mixture to a boil. Let stand awhile to develop flavors. Taste to correct seasonings. Beverage may be served hot or cold. Garnish with chopped chives or a dollop of sour cream, if desired. Makes 7 cups, about 12 servings.

I can't even think of where to begin, so I'll just let this recipe speak for itself.

You know you've got an interesting job when you're working and suddenly you realize: "hmmm . . . I've only got 2 pairs of gloves on, that's probably not enough." So then you take off the outer pair, and put on two more to bring the total up to three.

Exciting chemical reaction for the day: (Never, never, never try this one at home.) Add 50-100 mL of room temperature HF to a piece of room temperature Ge. Wait 20 seconds. Suddenly, the HF is boiling vigorously and is REALLY HOT!

Again, I can't even begin to emphasize how you shouldn't even think about doing this in real life. (Unless you're a professional, like me.) (But again, I'm not kidding about those warnings.)

Inspired by Suzanne

My competing list. I'd tell you to guess what it's a list of, but the odd of you not having read Suzanne's blog is so minuscule that I won't bother.

• Hard hat
• 5 brown paper bags
• 3 Jolly Ranchers
• Safety Glasses
• 2 apples (shhhh! Don't tell Shanny)
• Styrofoam cup
• "Curious finger" of Germanium
• Spoon

So relaxing . . .

Today I have discovered that work is much more enjoyable when you can relax on the beach and listen to the waves crashing on the rocks down shore.

A few days ago we discovered that our dumpster here at work had been filled with someone's crap. An ironing board, a baby stroller, boxes of crud. I haven't been out to look, but that's what they tell me. Well, I guess Stuart was taking inventory of how much stuff was out there, when he discovered a working soothing noise machine. So now in the office we can listen to ocean, brook, rain, heartbeat and a few other options.

Now I'm looking for a little contraption so I can feel the warm sand between my toes.

Sleeping with the Fishes

Charles "Charlie" Fish Blockburger died last night. This news was first reported in an article on Shanny's Life. Reports indicate that he was found dead when the owners went to feed him Monday evening at about 10pm. Little is known about Charles' life before he was found at Petsmart at a young age on Valentines Day, 2004. Since then he has lived in Provo, Sandy and St. George. He is survived by two owners. Services for Charles were held in the main bathroom of the Blockburger home. In lieu of flowers, please make donations to the Charlie Blockburger memorial fund. For details, leave a message on this blog.

I wish I was making this up

Is the type and extent of control applied to the Supplier and the purchased product dependent upon the effect of the purchased product on subsequent product realization or the final product?

And I thought that if I went into science and not lawyerness that I could avoid terrible things like this. But no, this is what I get to spend half of the week learning the answers to.

Edited to add: I'll give a dollar to anyone who can diagram that question.

Top Gun

Old companies usually have old stuff floating around that has been stuffed into nooks and crannies over the years. As a new company, you'd think we'd have less of that stuff. But no, we've got it all the same, because we've got things that we've bought from old companies who have off loaded their stuff onto us. Today's jems were some hardhats that were delivered to Jason and I. They're probably from the construction process here, but now I've got one sitting on my desk, as does Jason. He decided to put his name on his, or rather, he decided to name himself "Maverick". As his dutiful sidekick, my hard hat is now labeled "Goose". I guess that makes Shannon Meg Ryan.

The Hot Zone

A few years ago when Nate, Brett and I lived together in Provo, we were warm blooded enough that we just never turned on the heat as the temperatures cooled off in the fall. Eventually,l of course, it turned into some sort of macho contest with ourselves as we took pride in being "tough guys" or something of that sort. Shannon and Sabrina would come down to see us and would complain that they were freezing. They'd keep wearing their coats even inside our apartment. Eventually they forced us to turn on the heat somewhere in mid-November.

Fast forward to the present. A few weeks ago (late October) I merely mentioned to Shannon that we'd have to fire up the heat soon. The response? "Why would you want to do a terrible thing like that?"

We still haven't turned on the heat.

Check and Mate

One of the unfortunate parts of moving is that you have to get new checks. I guess maybe you don't, since it's been years since I last heard the formerly ubiquitous question, "Is everything current?", but anyway, it seems that getting new checks is just one of those things that goes along with moving. When we got married, Shannon and I settled upon using her existing accounts with Washington Mutual. My name was added to her checks and we had checks proudly declaring:

Shannon Anderson Blockburger
Clark Blockburger

We needed new checks upon moving to St. George, so Shannon called them up to get our new address on them, and they very promptly (and freely) delivered our checks for:

Shannon Anderson Blockburger

Had I been disowned? Shannon called them up to correct them, and they made it seem like they were doing a great service to give her more checks for free, even though they're always free and they were the ones that decided to delete me from existence. She said, "I want my husbands name on the checks, too." "Charles?" "No, Clark" "Right." We were half expecting checks for Charles Blockburger (incidentally, that's my Grandfather's name) to show up, but instead we got (this is their actual formatting):

Shannon Anderson Blockburger
Clark Blockburger

Never before has my name looked to puny. Evidently they've been forced to admit I exist, but that doesn't mean they'll choose to elevate me above the status of a peasant any time soon.

This is why you get no bloggings

I come up with all sorts of neat things to blog about every single day. And most of them are long forgotten by the time I get to a computer. Especially on the weekends.

However, I am announcing a late night chat/interview opportunity with yours truly for the next two evenings! I'll be pulling the 6pm - 5am shift at work and I'll get pretty lonely (and tired). So if you have insomnia problems, drop me a line!

Fair Weather Friends

A visitor to the plant, and a new friend we made out hiking.

But you can call me . . .

I just got too much of a giggle out of Mark's comment to the last post not to write something about it. Mark's brother's nickname from back in the day was Bun. It makes me laugh just to type it out. (It also kinda reminds me of Mr. Bun, Suzie Derkins stuffed rabbit.) I don't really know how we got away with calling him that for all those years. So here is a further list of nicknames that I find quite ridiculous and which make me giggle. Feel free to add your own, though maybe I'll ask Shannon not to embarrass me too much.

My names: Pants (short for Clarky Pants), Ball, Clarm, Cloark (apparently Alex still uses this one all the time), Eagle Eye, Boy, Flu-Boy-Lump-Head

Shannon: ShannyBoo, Boo, Cave Fish Eye (she came up with that one herself)

Other People: Long Arms Millar (Brett), Disc (Sabrina), _7, (Sabrina), Oaf (Mark), Bun (Eric)

Grand Prize Winners: I almost feel bad to put these ones up here, but when you put it on your blog for the whole world to see, you're just asking for it. The prize goes to Alex and Ben whose names for each other are Booboo and Poopy.

Vegetables are your friends.

Eat your friends.

This week I learned that Alex is not a particularly big fan of vegetables. And it's started me thinking about that. I like most all vegetables. Shannon has a few very stong dislikes and a larger list of things that she's not real wild about. DO NOT try to feed her a pickle, or iceberg lettuce. Bad Things will happen. Then I thought about Sabrina not liking varous veges. And my sister Suzanne. And I've realized, I don't know of any guys that have wide spread vegetable dislikes. Brett doesn't like asparagus, but other than that most guys I know will eat their vegetables. Does this seem suprising to anyone else? I realize that my sample size is pretty small here, so you can help me out with it, but are girls the vegetable haters in the world?

Sinking Feeling

Happy Halloween, first off.

Once upon a time, I was in the basement of the ESC in the evening working on one of the microscopes. One of the million dollar microscopes, mind you. It was late enough that I was the only one there; everything was locked up, and I just had to shut the door behind me. Anyway, in the course of trying to use the microscope (I rarely succeeded in actually using the microscope, but I sure did try) I broke something. I did something wrong, I touched a wrong button, flipped a wrong switch, and I wasn't sure what I had done. The red light was on, things weren't working right and I had no idea what I had done. That leaves an interesting feeling in your stomach, knowing that you've broken something that's probably worth more than your life. I knew that the microscope was under warranty, and while it was worth 2 million bucks the worst case scenario would really be that the microscope was down for a few weeks, but anyway, it's a bad feeling. All I could do is leave an email for Jeff (the guy in charge of the machines) and let him deal with the problem the next morning. I never even got up the courage to ask what I had done, or what had gone wrong. Maybe I should have picked a career where there was less expensive stuff to break!

More Buttons Needed

I can see that every Monday morning it's going to be a race between me and Shannon to blog the funniest things from the weekend. And she gets to work 20 or 30 minutes before me, so that's a loosing battle I'm fighting. Luckily there are some topics that I know she'll leave all for me . . .

Staples has recently invented the Easy Button. You can even buy one for 10 bucks or something. You push it and it says "That was easy". (It's pretty lame in real life, even if the commercials are good.) But I don't mind that somethings in life are difficult. I can accept that life is not a cake walk. What I really want is an "I can do that better than you" Button. It's the button that would allow you to momentarily switch places with people who can't do something no matter how simple the task. Think of all its varied uses:

• That waiter/waitress that just CAN'T seem to refill your drink
• Any employee of Jensen Property Management in St. George
  
• Switching places with me so you can add some appropiate 3rd item to this list, because I just can't seem to think of another one for it.
  

The newest one that I would add to that list is: Second Rate Football Announcers on Versus (formerly OLN). Every game I have watched this year on Versus has been terrible. Their latest gaffe during BYU's game came on an Air Force 2nd and goal from the 1 foot line. Air Force ran straight ahead and there was some doubt of whether or not the RB scored. One official signaled TD, the other did not. The commentators assumed they scored and 6 points were put on the board. (Here comes the great bungle) The commentators failed to notice, however, the the ball was marked at the 6" line, the down was changed to 3rd and the 6 points were taken off the board as the officials ruled that a TD had not been scored. As Air Force was about to run another play they could only comment, "It looks like Air Force is going for a 2 point conversion." WHAT? It would have been the first ever 2 point conversion where the ball was placed on the 1 foot line on the right hash! Unfortunately, this is not an uncharacteristic lapse for them.

• They were unable to decide who had made an interception while I was able to easily read the name "Jensen" on the back of his shirt.
• They were surprised to find an injured Cougar on the field, and then were unable to discern who it could be. Eagle-Eye Blockburger at home had noticed 30 seconds early that the guy who scored the touchdown had never gotten up and indeed way laying right where he had been when he scored. I guess it never occurred to the Verses crew that perhaps the guy who was right where the guy who had scored the touchdown was might indeed be that same guy. But I do give them credit for the possibility that a touchdown had been scored, that player got up and left, another BYU player went to that spot on the field, became injured and hit the turf.

I'd go on, but by now you either get the point or you don't care.

Moon-Dessert

The following is a direct quote from someone who will remain anonymous, because I'd hate to embarass him/her. We were discussing his/her desire for dessert when he/she said:

"It's not like I want to go to the moon and have some moon-dessert."

Experts are still debating what this could possibly mean.

Lord of the Nerds

The sad part isn't that I've done this. The sad part is that I'm proud of it, and I'm posting it.

My dad called this evening with a math problem from Jessica that they couldn't work out. Of course, he didn't have the problem in front of him at the time, so there wasn't much I could do, but they emailed it to me. I promised to give them a solution, along with the amount of time it took to figure it out. The two emails follow:

20)
x+y+z=4
5x+5y+5z=12
x-4y+z=9

My response:

3 seconds.

The problem here is that you have two equations that aren't consistant with each other. Those being the first and second equations. Think of it this way:

take the second equation

5x+5y+5z=12

and factor five out of the right side

5(x+y+z)=12

However, we know that x+y+z=4 from the first equation. Substitute that in and you get:

5(4)=12

Which is clearly not true. This is an inconsistant set of equations that has no solution. If you think about systems of equations visually then two equations with 2 unknowns are like looking for an intersection of 2 lines in the Cartesian plane. Most lines intersect, but it is possible for lines to be parallel. In 3 dimensions it suddenly becomes very easy to imagine 3 lines that do not share a single point. In terms of matricies (which Jessica should be introduced to this year and be tortured into using) the matrix describing this system would be singular, or have a determinant of zero, or be non-invertible, or have a non-zero null space or . . . the list goes on, and we've drifted into the realm of math 343 at BYU, which no one really understands.

So there you have it, in case you didn't already know.

Need to make a quick buck?

Regardless of how far fetched any movie plot is, we all know there at the end of the credits will be that line that reads something like: "This movie is fiction. Any resemblance to your life is purely coincidental." I can't assume that this line exists for any reason other than to avoid lawsuits. (Not that I can see how merely adding this line in the credits would stop a law suit if indeed it was warranted . . .) But as I was watching the end credits of Shrek, it seemed to be missing that famous line. And I was watching the credits pretty close. Beyond my theater-credits compulsion, I like to have fun looking for names worse than Blockburger. Things like Hatzelkrantzen. Or Vaanderwurkshtoffel. That and I know Shrek has an extra little bit at the end. So, I guess the creators weren't ruling out the possibility that maybe some real life person rescued a princess that changed form at night for a diminutive Farquad guy who ends up being eaten by a dragon. If that sounds like something that happened to you, you might be able to pick up a quick buck.

They Came to the Land Down Under

I guess it's been a full week and a half now, but we had some visitors and I'm finally posting some pictures, for your viewing pleasure.

Our very first house guest was this fine fellow. We don't know how he got in or how long he stayed, but he was hiding in our pile of newspapers and turned out to be a bit difficult to catch.




That very same day, we had more visitors, this time, the invited kind. Brett, Sabrina and little Clarketta came to see us and our new digs. We played El Train Mexicano, FanTan, and found some red rocks to hike around on. While up there, we decided to take a picture while standing in the shade in front of a really bright sky. But here is the picture such as it is. Remember folks, if you come visit us, you'll get your picture in the blog!

2.6 Miles

In between my two near-consecutive 8 hour shifts at work today (7:30 - 3:30) and (5:30 - 1:00) I had some time (2 hours, you'll observe) and decided to find out where the road I work on goes. I've worked here for a bit over a month, and every day I drive down River Road 4.4 miles and turn into the parking lot. River Road is a fair sized road, and I've always kinda wondered where it goes. Today was my day to find out.

The industrial park that we're in only goes on for another mile at the most, and then the scenery turns into hills which are riddled with tracks from jeeps or ATVs. The road narrows a bit, and then at the 2.6 mile mark there is a sign:

Arizona State Line
I work 2.6 miles from Arizona. I'm even including a map. The green square is more or less where home is, and the blue square is work. And the big fat blue line across the bottom of the map. Yup, that's Arizona.

Doin' Stuff

For some time now, you've probably been hearing me tell you how I have this job, and we grow crystals of Ge, and blah blah blah. Well, as it turns out, this week we actually are growing crystals. That means 9 hours yesterday standing infront of our two machines. It means Jason got here at 6 this morning to take over for Stuart who was baby sitting the pullers over night and I got here at 7:30 and we'll be here until . . . we're done. So we're looking at an 18 hour day today or something like that. So not much time for blogging, emailing, keeping up on world news (someone from "Father Knows Best" died and I didn't even know about it for a whole day!) or any of that fun stuff. I'll soon post about some adventures in CO, including our many death defying stunts, but you can get a head start on our adventures in Suzanne's Poor Johnny post.

Complimentary Beverage Provided

We made it to Canon City, CO. For a while there, I wasn't sure we ever would. We managed to climb up the snowy, icy 11,000+ ft. pass without too much difficulty. I never would have thought that the biggest obstacle would be descending. We were part of a half mile long train all wishing that there wasn't some big truck going down at 2 miles per hour. We're all taken to exaggeration for comedic value at times. This is not such a time. We spent half an hour or so crawling down the slope. At times my speedometer simply didn't register our movement at all. It was maddening.

But the real high point of the trip thus far is our motel room here in Canon City. Suzanne has a AAA membership, so we're at the Best Western. I hate to imagine what Worst Western or even Mediocre Western would look like. The room is small, but not too incredibly small, and we're not too terribly picky when it comes to lodging. The real treat, however, is that the mini-fridge in our room comes equipped with beer. 2 bottles of Michelob Lite provided free of charge, compliments of the management. No ID required. I wonder what they'd do if I called up the office and complained that they had beer for us in our room, but hadn't remember to leave a bottle opener. This is going to be a long treasured vacation memory. (I'll post a picture just as soon as we can get them off of our camera.)

On the Open Road

For clarification, I am most certainly NOT on the open road. I am, however, reporting from the Best Western Sandman Motel in lovely Grand Junction, CO. We drove 6 hours last night after work, and shortly before my right quad gave out entirely, we made it here.

It's wonderful being on vacation. We might get to see a drapey river (thanks to a guy known simply as "Cristo"), and Shannon can spend the morning watching "Different World". I think she really relates to Whitley. So, over the next few days I'll try to stay connected, but since half my Blogging audience is in the hotel room with me, I'll try to stay motivated somehow.

Scientific Equipment

Our plant has millions of dollars of technology. We have some machines on separate foundations for vibrational isolation. We have 2 clean rooms. But when dealing with the aforementioned wires, we found ourselves without any tweezers. 40,000 square feet, and no tweezers to be found. Grant was nice enough to pick us up some, though. Jason has decided to go with the "compact tweezer" and I am partial to the "expert tweezer". Both of them we made by a respected name in scientific equipment technology: Revlon.

A whole post on Wires

You've looked at wires before, right? Some end of a wire that has come unattached to some electrical equipment or something. If you've looked closely, perhaps you noticed that your little tiny wire is actually made of about a dozen even tinier wires. One of my tasks today is to take some of those tiny little wires and use little gobs of liquid metal to attach them to a little square of germanium. Grant is currently out getting me a pair of tweezers so I can actually hold onto the wires (because of course I'm wearing latex gloves while doing all of this). The wires get hot when I get them into the liquid metal on the end of the burning hot iron, and because they're so small, they get hot quickly! By the end of today I need to get a good electrical connection out of them, and make some decent measurements! So wish me luck in my fight with the hair-thin, burning hot, wire wrangling rodeo!

A TERRIBLE book

6 or 7 years ago I read "Into Thin Air" a book by Jon Krakauer. It's about people climbing Mt. Everest. I enjoyed it, and was thereby fooled into thinking that I would enjoy another book of his, "Under the Banner of Heaven". It is, I suppose, about people who do crazy things, calling it the work of god. Specifically he focuses on polygamist offshoots of the LDS church. I got about 1/3 of the way though and had to quit, because I just couldn't take his version of events.

Obviously, any probe into polygamy in Utah is going to include a study of the LDS church and it's history. Certainly different people feel differently about the church. However, the unforgivable sin perpetrated by Mr. Krakauer in his book is that he ignores any debate is dispute. I don't mind so much that he presents versions of stories that I don't believe. It's that he presents only one version, as if it were the only version there is. His writing is obviously one sided and often biased. I don't mind someone disagreeing with me. I do mind when someone disagrees with me by publishing a book that implies that there isn't even a debate and doesn't bother to cite specific references where his "facts" even came from.

Life is still worth living!

I assume the world is generally cognizant of the fact that you can switch windows in Windows with alt + tab. If you didn't, now you do, and if used properly it ought to revolutionize your word. I would like to thank Brett for alerting me to the fact that in Firefox, you can switch tabs with ctrl + tab. I did it just now. I'm working on perfecting my technique for hitting it quickly. I'm deciding if I should keep my pinky finger straight while going for the ctrl button, or curl it and use the first knuckle of the pinky. Yes, these are things that I consider. Also, ctrl + [#] will give you which ever number tab you hit (i.e. ctrl + 2 give the second tab). Yes, these are the sorts of things that I get excited about.

Where do they come from?

The last two weeks I've had the immeasurable pleasure of going to the laundromat with Shannon. Now that she's been working, we have to go in the evenings after work. We take books and talk and wait for our clothes to get clean amid the very colorful company. Last week it was the infestation of Hispanic children. This week, it was the "more soap" lady (we'll just call her MSL from here on out).

The laundromat has some really big washers. Some that reportedly hold up to 4 loads of clothes all at once. This must be so you can turn every single white thing you own pink in a single load, rather than having to do it over the course of many weeks and months. Then they're all the same shade of pink, too. Anyway, it is natural to assume that more detergent is required. I'd reason about 4 times as much. Our story starts as MSL is asking MSM (more soap man) how many cups of detergent she should put in.
MSM: 4.
MSL: (laughing) Oh, I've put in 5 already. I'd better do one more.
MSM: You only need four.
MSL: I was my clothes clean. They'd better have lots of suds. If I don't see suds I'm going to dump the whole bottle in. (MSL adds a 6th helping of detergent.)

A few minutes later, with the washer running, MSL is not impressed with her level of soapiness.
MSL: Look at that, there are any *%&@ing bubbles! (She adds more detergent.)

I think MSL was wanting to do her laundry in an episode of "I Love Lucy" where you can add extra detergent and turn the whole world into a fluffy, bubble-bath sort of foamy world.

This whole episode made me realize that there has only been on place in the world that rivals the laundromat for it's colorful and creepy people: the public transportation system. My personal knowledge is limited to the UTA buses and trax, and the Brasilian bus system. But both confirm that creepy people love the bus. I think it's what they do to relax and have fun. So I've thought up the ultimate experience for them: buses with laundry facilities! Think of the fun they'll have, and hopefully the fun I'll have staying far, far away.

Physical Things

One of the best things about studying physics in college is that first reaction that you almost always get when people ask what you're majoring in. You say "Physics" and they say "Whoa. You're smart." Yes sir, if you want to immediately raise peoples opinions of you, walk down to the college/department office and change your major to physics. I don't think people realize that being a physics major just means you filled out a piece of paper.

But physics has it's drawbacks, too. For instance: what do you do with a degree in physics? This is, unfortunately, often the next question people ask, particularly in your last year at school. There isn't a whole lot you can do with a degree in physics, atleast not with a BS. With a Ph.D. you will either become a researcher or a professor (which is just a researcher that spends 5 hours a week teaching a class). But people who stop at a BS generally go out to work and spend their lives pretending to be engineers. After all, who pays people to tell them where a ball will land if launched with an initial velocity of 65 m/s at 17.5° above the horizon while on a 40 m cliff with a 6 m/s wind going from left to right? However, with a rare stroke of luck, there is atleast one guy out there who is a physicist. It's perhaps a little vague in meaning, but he's a physicist no less. Here, take a card.

We be the smart ones

I'm sorry to do this to Mark, but he's the reason that this post is being written. I should make it clear that there are few people that I hold in higher intellectual regard than Mark. However, his comment on the last post brings back an old memory.

10 years ago, as a sophmore in high school my sister was going to try out for the Academic Decathlon team. As it sounds, this is a team which competes in 10 academic events. Basically a group of kids study a whole bunch and then try to take multiple choice tests better than their competition. It's a really lame idea, whoever thought of it. Infinitely more lame, however, is how I got involved. I was waiting around for my sister to try out for AD so I could get a ride home. So, rather than sit around and do nothing, I tried out, and lo and behold, I was the youngest person on the team by 2 years. But that is neither here nor there.

One of the very few perks of the whole thing is that the AD team gets a shirt made up, so we can keep track of who we were when we go off to that big scantron extravaganza. My high school colors were green, white and orange, but really, the student body tried it's best to ignore the orange and focus on the green and white. But, for whatever reason, the AD team decided that we would get burnt orange shirts. Apparently they weren't fully done, because when we got them, they were more of a flaming orange. But that isn't the point of this story either.

(As a side note, I'll bet that my sister Suzanne would know where this story is going, and she is probably the only person on Earth who already knows.)

We got our shirts, tried them on, wore them to the competition where, as the brightest collection of 9 students that could be duped into studying and competing we placed 3rd in the district. That was a quite respectible showing. It was only after all of this, however, that any of us first noticed that we had not managed to spell "Academic Decathlon" correctly on our own shirts. We had proudly declared ourselves to be part of the "Academic Decathalon". Yikes. I guess that's why we placed 3rd.

Yukon Ho!

I've felt it necessary for everyone to fully appreciate the history of blogging, its foundations and motivations, before continuing on here. The blog is now officially open. Very soon, in fact, I will even tell someone besides Shannon of it's existence. So sit back, and wait as we journey on a collective experiment, so see what the ensuing days, weeks, months and perhaps even years will bring, and what adventures will be spawned by my boredom. For it was boredom that has lead me to create this blog, and it will surely be boredom that will lead me to keep this blahg, and it will most assuredly be boredom that will bring you hear to read this blahg!

And that, sir, is how we know the earth to be round.

Fast forward to my freshman year in college . . . . AIM is everywhere. I spent hours on end "talking" to people on it, half of whom I could have hit with a rock provided both of our windows were open. I think my one handed typing speed was up about 30 wpm. Fast forward a few years, and where has AIM (or MSN messenger) gone? It seems to have shriveled up and died quicker than a St. George lawn. We all must have decided one day that it was actually worth seeing life beyond your our boxy computer monitor and once we weren't all chained to our computers in our tiny little dorm rooms, there was no going back.

The AIM empire was felled by two new city-states. The need for ever more instantaneous and ubiquitous personal contact (so young people can ask each other "what r u doing?") found a new heroine in texting. I've had little personal contact with the texting phenomenon, but it seems to be intent on taking over the world. But that's ok, because I feel it's important that we have a national system in place so that all 8th graders can get in instant contact with each other. The more substantial information sharing realm that vacated by the withdrawal of dinky personal web pages and AIM was reinvigorated with the advent of the Blog. And so, some talented computer geeks out there have made it possible for each and every one of us to have a place where we need only type, and suddenly, there is our well polished, upstanding looking blog, proclaiming our ever so important personal insights to the world. Unfortunately, it turns out that in the last 10 years (since we were back in "dinky personal web page" phase) individual personal lives haven't improved dramatically. So the only thing that we can offer the world through our blogs is our own rambling commentary on our own boring lives turning the internet into an even bigger, and even boringer place than it was yesterday.

Long live the blahg!

The possibilities are endless.

The internet sure does go through fads and phases, doesn't it? Let's teleport back to high school. Little nerdy kids like myself sat around working on our "web pages". Hour after hour of finding cool backgrounds, and collecting quotes for your cool quotes page. Then you went high tech with midis playing in the background and then you went mad trying to figure out to get HTML tables to work right. Then, suddenly, we all realized that we'd spent hundreds of hours of effort into a web page with a bunch of Star Wars quotes that everybody already knows anyway, a dumb bio of a nerdy high school kid, and a counter that read 462. (Of course everybody knew that at least 50% of the hits on any web page was just the owner checking to make sure things were working right.) I had finally realized that there was nothing I had to offer the world that anyone could possibly care about. And thus the web pages were left abandoned.