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.