blogwaffe

.so i was noticing the other day that a person walking around on campus would be extremely hard pressed to overhear anyone talking about notscience. .people here at caltech converse almost exclusively about science. .it’s truly bizarre. .even when it seems as though people are talking about notscience, they’re still really talking about science. .for example, i was walking toward lauritsen yesterday and passed a guy talking on his cell phone. .i heard him say, “… yeah, i know you wanted to go look at shoes”. ?perfectly normal, right? .wrong. .he next said, “ok, im almost done writing the script i need to run overnight…”. .he could have said, “ok, i’m almost done here” but no, notscience is a foreign language to this person and most other caltexen. .now i’m on a mission to overhear even a bit of conversation about notscience.

.a diction question for those interested. .i was trying to think of a good word for “to pass” in the sense of “those two people whose velocity vectors were (for the moment) approximately antiparallel passed eachother” as opposed to “to overtake (parallel velocity vectors)”. .i was trying to be more descriptive (read “less ambiguous”), but i couldn’t without using more words: …passed a guy going in the opposite direction…. ?is there a good one word for this?

.well, i have officially admitted failure; i have submitted a petition to the cce division requesting summer funding because i couldn’t find a research group that could pay me. .i can’t imagine they’ll approve the petition, but it’s worth a shot. .in other news, ace has made me want to start keeping log of the restraunts i’ve patronized and the movies i’ve seen. .look to the future.

.point of the day goes to dixie for making a remarkable …point (too many… points) about hax0rificus 31337alious. .btw, thank you for using (s)he and not s/he. .i was just thinking last night about how much the later annoys.

.talked to dougherty. .we discussed various options: taking the summer off, being a “volunteer” either in physics or chemistry, petitioning cce for funding. .naturally, the last is to be tried first. .also spent many hours doing the ph125 hw. .those sets are really geared toward experiment (read “application”). .not sure how i feel about that. !ah! .speaking of hw, i’ve found i don’t have to write the problem sets for ch2 for the next two weeks.

.el cholo for dinner. .sad to say i liked el torrito better. .sad because el cholo is an la orginal and not (really) a chain. .ace and i had a fine time despite. .i’ve decided a good bit for a cartoon would be to have all the black characters talk like white people and all the white characters talk like black people. .by that i mean get black voices to do the whites and white actors to do the blacks. .obviously, you’d need more of a foundation than that for a cartoon, but i think it’d be a funny bit. .to describe the situation to the inevitable frenzy of media attention the show would attract, we came up with the word “ethnigma” (cf. “gender-bender”). ?how do you describe something to a frenzy, anyway? .seems like it be hard to get one’s attention.

.went to the dodgers game with jeff ariele and shay-la. ?what is a dodger, anyway? .the question came up, and no one had an acceptable answer. .by acceptable, i do not mean “dodgers are like badgers with a do instead of a ba”. .we lost. .i feel i can say “we” since i’ve been to a game and have been officially indoctrinated into fandom. .but my were there some hunnies out. .baseball and swimming pools: gold mines each.

.jeff and i fired up the grills again in honor of ariele’s friend shay-la’s visit. .i meant to take pictures of the cooking process during which paul.za was kind enough to supply me with a beer, but forgot. .but you can see the (hopefully) happy eaters (soon) {!now!}. .speaking of ariele, i know her mom reads the site on occasion, so i should mention that during one of the many times i faithlessly strayed from maintaining the site her dad (ariele’s), bob, came into town. .he and ariele cooked us one of the best meals i’ve had in a while. .and nobody got salmonella. .but back to the present – or closer to it, anyway. .after dinner roger, shay-la, ariele jeff, slizzy, bert and i went to lucky‘s. .they had a barleywine fest going on that night. .a lot of it was quite good, but believe you me, i had some wierd tasting stuff.

.found dian (two thirty). .she was very sympathetic and refused to take my gra from me, as i suggested. .as always, she was very supportive. .talking to dian left me feeling a bit better, but leaving her office made me feel far worse due to a simply unfair juxtaposition: i found myself face to face with three nobel laureates. .one of them dead. .next up on my list of people to talk to is professor dougherty, but he’s not here until monday. .so i’m giving up on the rest of the day. .in other news, i saw claire in the hall and said “hey”. .she was shocked that one grad student would greet another. .so i continued the conversation and asked her how she was, etc. .she said she was stressed about candidacy. .i wished her well and didn’t know whether to think her position enviable. .also in other news, i continue to be remiss and jackassly in not mentioning dixie. .so, “dixie“.

.i must have given porter a horribly piteous look of mixed confusion, disappointment and rage on wednesday, since i got an email from him yesterday. .he told me the physics option couldn’t fund me over the summer (though they could offer me a ta during the school year). .so now i don’t know what to do. .swung by dian’s office around two, and she wasn’t there; i’ll try back later. .i never really had a plan b, so i guess i’ve got to skip now to plan c. ?anyone have any idea what plan c is? .also, my great uncle died last week, and i still haven’t written my mom’s cousin yet. .april is the cruelest month.

.i talked, briefly, to professor porter again about switching to physics. .i say “briefly” because he admitted to having not looked into it yet (two and a half weeks after initial (and persistent) contact). .so i left.