A complete waste of time

I must have knocked my cup over while taking a break from work. Maybe you can all enjoy destroying your (least) favorite sites as well.

View this article

Real Surrealism

It could have been due to a number of things, but during my run this afternoon (which, by the way, was way harder than it should have been) I had an utterly surreal experience. I had just come from behind the art museum and was crossing in front of it. So here's the backdrop of a cloudy early-evening sky and the museum towering over my left side, the horseback rider statue overlooking the grand basin, water fountains and all, on my right, and some bright colorful kites in the air. I'm sure the kites' owners were lower down Art Hill, but they were standing where I couldn't see them from anywhere along the road. So with the muted grays of the scene during the brisk afternoon, and nobody else around to interfere, these kites are flying like tropical birds overhead. Too cool.

View this article

The sky is crying

Nobody told me, and I didn't bother to check this morning before heading to campus, but there was a 30% chance of rain today. So I bike to campus because the temperature was supposed to be pretty nice. Now I'm home, sitting at my computer with a wet ass and rainspots on my glasses.

In happier news, I think I finished my computer program that models the reaction of various pieces of the halo to given loads. What this means is that I can try different materials, sizes, and configurations of certain components, and 25 seconds later (I didn't bother to clean up and optimize my code) I'll get an idea of whether that particular design meets or beats traditional halo devices. So if all goes well, I'll finish the last chapters of my thesis this weekend.

I could almost cry for joy...

View this article

All in the name of science

I spent the better part of today in the machine shop. It's not every day that I get to make stuff out of titanium!

View this article

A St. Patty's Day thought for my Wheeling friends

Seeing all the people in green today made me remember way back when....

Have any of you seen the Green Guy lately? You know, that man who we used to see riding his green bike 10 months out of the year, wearing big glasses and one of those green ponytail-baseball caps? I wonder if he's still around. I think I may have caught a glimpse of him once or twice two summers ago when I was around...

View this article

It would have been even funnier if it had happened to someone else.

It was a crisp, sunny morning. I grabbed my keys and phone, donned my prescription sunglasses and bike helmet, and headed to campus for a meeting with my thesis advisor. When I arrived at Guy's office, I realized I didn't have my regular glasses with me, and I couldn't recall if I had left them on the table before I departed from my apartment or if they had been in my pocket as I walked out the door. Regardless, we met to discuss and revise some 2-D model calculations we had made this weekend and went to the machine shop to see how progress was coming on our prototype.

After the meeting, I decided to backtrack my route exactly and found that indeed the glasses case had fallen out of my pocket right at the construction bridge at Forest Park Parkway. And, as Murphy's Law would have it, they had been run over by a car and/or a truck.

 
Interestingly, while the frames are completely shot, the lenses are well intact and only mildly scratched. Says a lot for 3M!

View this article

A personal first

I knocked out ten miles today. This marks the first time I've ever run double-digits. And it didn't even seem that tough. The weather cooperated: partly cloudy, 52°F. I'm surprised the park wasn't more crowded than it was, and there wasn't too much traffic-fume-pollution either. On top of everything, I ran at a pretty decent pace, right around 7:10 miles.

In case I haven't yet told everyone, the reason I'm running so much is that I'm training for the Spirit of St. Louis Half Marathon, which is four weeks from tomorrow. During the cold winter months I was concerned about being able to finish 13.1 miles, but after a performance like today, I feel pretty darn good going into it.

View this article

It's official.

I've put the pen to the paper, signed my name and dated it at the bottom. I sent the fax for early confirmation and licked the stamp to send in the hard copy. A big part of my semester woes has been lifted. Pending a background check and drug test, I am an employee of the Cardiac Rhythm Management Division at St. Jude Medical. I begin work on my birthday, May 31, of this year, just days after my graduation. And I'm damn excited.

View this article

Summary of my day

1. Type some thesis text.
2. Go to the kitchen for a drink and/or snack.
3. Look out the window for a FedEx truck that won't arrive.
4. Repeat.

View this article

Can you get emphysema from campfire smoke?

Got back yesterday from backpacking in Bell Mountain Wilderness Area, a part of the Mark Twain National Forest.

My dad had been planning this for some time now, and we couldn't have picked a better weekend to go. Kristin was finishing her spring break, and I was just starting mine. For early March, the weather was wonderful: upper 50's-mid 60's during the day, mid 30's at nite...but no mosquitoes or no-see-ums yet and only a few spiders. None of the trees had leaves, so the woods weren't a pretty as they could have been (save for the sections of evergreen), but since much of our hike was off-trail, the lack of foliage meant we had better visibility and didn't have to fight too much with thorny brambles and thick undergrowth.

We parked on the east side of the wilderness at the end of 5 miles of gravel Forest Service road. The first mile or so of trail was an abandoned Jeep Trail, so it was pretty easy picking...but soon the trail faded and we were left to climb Lindsey Mountain (1662 feet) with no path to follow. We then had the trek down toward Shut-Ins Creek, which was again all bushwhacking without trail. Some of the tributaries had trickles and small flow, a few even with small waterfalls. The terrain was mostly rocky and covered with last season's leaves.

Once we hit the Creek we followed it upstream to an abandoned mine (only about 60 feet or so into the rock face, and filled with 8 inches of water) and pretty falls. We set up camp in that area near a geocache that we found, had dinner and a small-but-warm fire, and fell asleep to the sound of rolling waters.

Day two found us sleeping in late, hitting the trail and promptly crossing a stream (where K fell in...haha), and ascending up a steep wash back to some higher flat ground, where we leisurely set up camp and did the normal evening rituals including another terrific campfire. We finished the short hike back to the car the next morning and headed home to clean up and get my dad to the airport in time.

I put pictures from the trip up on my Yahoo album.

View this article

twentysomething

We can all thank Jamie Cullum for these fine words set to wondersome jazz music.

After years of expensive education,
a car full of books and anticipation,
I’m an expert on Shakespeare and that’s a hell of a lot
but the world don't need scholars as much as I thought.

Maybe I'll go travelling for a year,
finding myself or start a career.
I could work for the poor though I’m hungry for fame
we all seem so different but we're just the same.

Maybe I'll go to the gym, so I don't get fat,
aren't things more easy with a tight six pack?
Who knows the answers? Who do you trust?
I can't even separate love from lust.

Maybe I’ll move back home and pay off my loans,
working nine to five answering phones.
Don't make me live for my friday nights,
drinking eight pints and getting in fights.

I don't want to get up, just let me lie in,
leave me alone, I'm a twenty something.

Maybe I'll just fall in love that could solve it all,
philosophers say that that’s enough,
there surely must be more.

Love ain’t the answer nor is work,
the truth eludes me so much it hurts.
But I’m still having fun and I guess that's the key,
I'm a twenty something and I'll keep being me.

View this article