blogwaffe

I pick myself off the floor of the living room deciding to try and do the last problem from the set I’m working on in the morning before class. I hadn’t eaten any sweets in O(weeks), and the one milkshake I drank really destroyed my ability to concentrate (note to self: maintain daily sugar intake at the one dozen Krispy Kreme equivalent level from now on). I poke around on the internet a bit and fastidiously avoid updating the ‘waffe. Calling it an early night (1am), I go to my bedroom, shut the door, undress and get in bed next to the pile of clothes I still haven’t put away after doing laundry a few days ago. I bless my Queen Size bed.

The window by my ear is open, and I hear the rain lashing the pane and sounding off the roofs, the wall of the next door parking garage, the balconies, the trees. I think of forests, of parks, mud puddles, and grey skies. Of wet days on wet beaches, tin roofs and wrinkled papers. Flower petals in a stream. Overwrought descriptions.

I close the window but for a crack and dream the rain.

I deal with people Everyday. Multiple times a day, really. And, as a consequence of this people dealing, I have found there are several people in this world whom I find terribly annoying. That set of people happens to overlap (albeit lightly) with the set of people with whom I deal regularly.

I suppose that since that intersection of sets is non-null, you might as well be an element therein.

But, not necessarily a believer in fate, but rather a believer that something can be learned from every situation into which one gets tossed, I’d like to take this (contrived) opportunity to thank you for being so completely antiposed (to conflate a few apropos words) to my idea of a one hundred percent not-at-all annoying individual. You see, in reflecting upon just why I find every action of yours to grate so on the very sinews of my body and to jar so truly the synapses of my nervous system, I have discovered that I’m really being very bigoted.

Read more…

Brought to my attention by uber.

A comic.

And a big nuts-to-you-and-your-empire, George Lucas.

A few weeks ago, Marc Broussard’s “Come Around” was featured as iTunes’ free download of the week. It’s pretty kickin’. A good back-beat funk sound to it. I’ve listened to it a bit these past few days, so I decided it was finally time to check out some of his other stuff.

Crap.

I don’t know what he’s trying to pull with these smooth R&B/Southern/White Boy College Rock tracks. His single is some pappy crap in the vein of John Mayer, and the rest of his songs are even worse. Worse except for “Home”: a decent Blues Rythm piece with a hint of anger-release-Rock (no – I did not say fusion – get that fleeting thought out of your head right now).

Now, iTunes did not have his debut album (Momentary Setback), which was apparently good enough to tour with some pretty big names (DMB, Willie Nelson, Tori Amos, Robert Randolph, O.A.R., Martin Sexton, moe., Bob Schneider, Maroon5, to name a few referenced by his website). Perhaps it’s better than his follow-up album. But going on what I’ve heard, it’s hard to understand. The style that seems to be more or less his bread and butter is pulled off with such… is there a better word than “blah” for the boredom and distain I feel when listening to his songs?… that it’s sort of shocking these couple of other songs are as good as they are.

And man, does he ever look like douche-bag.

My laptop is really heating up now, and I think its fans have gone into second gear trying to calculate a very nice looking integral. I’m sure if I were clever, it’d be fairly easy to do by hand. But I’m not, so it isn’t.

In ~Mathematica Lingo:
Integral[Exp[[ImaginaryI] k.u] Exp[-m Abs[u]]/Abs[u], {u, all space}] (u, k 3-vectors)

(a 3D Fourier transform of Exp[-m Abs[u]]/Abs[u])

It’s for my Relativistic Quantum problem set. The problem set is late. Late because I’ve been spending all my time TAing Ph3.

I hate Ph3. It’s a huge pain in my ass; it eats away all my time and most of my will to live. I have to meet at least six times a week for this class. Six. And it’s a mechanics/circuits lab; I don’t even have access to any liquid nitrogen to cool down my currently-in-the-blackbody-domain laptop.

I wonder, is stress induced brain hemorrhaging grounds for collecting worker’s comp?

So it seems the pizza fest was a success. At the very least, no one complained or openly admitted to having a bad time. Maybe if grad school doesn’t work out I can open up a little pizza place. I’d call it “Fratello’s” after the pizza dough’s provenance. The only disappointment on my part was Dixie having to leave early before I was even able to get out of the kitchen and socialize. Oh well. Cheers, Dixie. At least I got some material goods to make up for it: (one third of) a wine rack from Jeff and Ariele, and an official burninating uniform from Heidi and Greg – both highly appreciated.

In other SLR news, I met a couple of our new downstairs neighbors today. Seem quite nice. All of them downstairs are +/- my age and working at various jobs in Pasadena. Hopefully I’ll see more of them.

“The truth of that matter is, if you listen carefully, Saddam would still be in power if he were the president of the United States, And the world would be a lot better off.”

–George W. Bush [Second Presidential Debate]

–Dick Cheney

In fairness the time period during which he did not make such a suggestion was not explicitly specifed. He could have meant “I have not suggested [within this debate] …”. But let’s be honest, Cheney’s full of crap. Well… I take that back. He’s not full of crap. Cheney’s very intelligent, actually. He’s just evil and manipulative.

He’s also very consistent on his inconsistency in labelling Senator John Kerry’s consistency.

Ah well – Hopefully I won’t have to see Cheney ever again for an extended period of time.

It’s decided; the best idea for a blog ever goes to one \_jeff_{krimmel} for his coverage of his Madden 2004 football double elimination tournament. Others may have had similar ideas in the past, but Jeff’s is the first I’ve seen, so he get’s it: the honour of an oh-oh-ficial blogwaffe shoutout.

He starts off with a good description of the situation and continues with an in depth commentary on each of the games he’s played. Humble enough to admit and explain his limitations, but still very concerned about the outcomes of the games. And who wouldn’t be? He’s got a lot riding on this. Like getting Ariele pissed off that he’s spending too much time with Madden.