blogwaffe

.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“.

.before i do anything else, haskell has a new site. .check it out if you want a look at a small slice of life at fairchild430.ur.

.seems to go in cycles, this website. .i’m damn sure you could model my postings according to a few coupled differential equations. .the problem is, the longer i leave it alone, the more effort it is to change it, the less i want to do anything about it, etc. .i talked to professor preskill a week ago today about his group and the possibility of me joining it. .he was informative and encouraging but told me he could not fund a gra. .so i talked to the oracle (dian), and she told me it was not too big of a deal that i hadn’t yet turned in my advisor selection form. .but if i don’t get it in in the next week or so, i’m in trouble. .we talked about the possibility of switching to the physics option, and it turns out its a fairly easy process. .so i talked to another oracle (donna), and she agreed. .the only issue (as always) is of funding. .so now i’m trying to talk to professor porter, the graduate rep. in physics, about what my options are. .but he hasn’t responded yet. .ugh.

.true to form, i forgot dad’s birthday this year in spite of the friendly reminder mom gave me a few days ago. !happy (one day late) birthday, dad! .i started reading a really interesting paper by r raussendorf (now here at the iqi). .it’s about one-way quantum computation via single quibit measurement only. .pretty slick stuff. .this evening, in celebration of greg and heidi leaving town for the weekend, paul.za, louise.za, greg and i went to amigo’s for some margaritas. .there i killed a cockroach as large as my fist. .it was crawling around on my (flipflopped) foot; it deserved punishment. .also found out via louise.za that currency.za rocks: much more interesting than its american counterpart.

.got up at the ridiculous hour of 9am this morning to meet with professor giapis (ace’s ‘fearless leader’) at 10. .the meeting went fairly well and was fairly interesting. .as an added bonus, he had parked in timed spot that morning for some reason and so had to cut the talk off at about an hour to go move it. .following, i went down and chatted with ace a bit about his ginormous plasma gun and the various bits needed for its operation. .i’d really like to see some numbers on how much juice that thing draws from the grid. .in the afternoon, i had a very nice chat with ben toner from iqi. .very informative about the research going on and, even better, very encouraging about working in the group. .he also told an amusing story about going to a shooting range and firing all sorts of guns dirt cheap while talking to the guy in the next lane about “those damn treehuggin’ earthfirstin’ sissies”. .the story was particularly funny as ben is from .au, and this was a sort of “find out what it’s like to be an american” adventure.

.there is a stairway outside behind my office. .it leads down a flight or two to the back exits of the lecture halls in noyes. .i’ve been in this office for six months or so and had no idea it was there. .seems an interesting place. .might do some late night reading there in the summer. .greg, who is a baby and won’t write his own website but will hopefully guest lecture here, and i went to burger continental for the special. .over a pitcher of guinness, we decided that we were going to hang out with charlie kaufman sometime. .maybe invite him to amigo’s. .hang out at his place. ?who knows? .we figure he’s a pretty coolguy and can probably appreciate the various wierdnesses of caltech students. .we’re gonna write him a letter.

.updated the site, a few new pics. .got online and talked to bengis, neeks and haskell. …hm… .need more text to get the formatting right. .let’s see. .sompaa v. fumpaa update: still in preplanning. .i’ve never played whack-a-mole. .i’m sure of had more musings, but i never remember them, so the list never changes. .i wonder if i inspireed kate’s rant on capitalization. .everyone should check out the nascient offyellowpaper. .i need a domain name. .ah yes, i forgot to tell everyone that i’m trying out a web stats service. .you might be getting a cookie or two, let me know if this is heinous.

.greg has a new baby (a shiny new powerbook). .paul.za told me he generally uses the mouse left-handed (though he is arighty). .so i’m trying it out now.

.i did absolutely nothing yesterday, in stark constrast with the previous few days. .played an ass-load of milles bornes with ariele and michelle. .ended up drinking very tasty mojitos that greg made. .today… i don’t remember. .i’ll get back to you on that one.

.i don’t think i did much of anything besides see eternal sunshine of the spotless mind. .a very good movie with only one quibble [spoiler]. .met heather’s sister robin who is in town for the weekend. .got a call from my parent’s saying, among other things, that my aunt did not get her kidney transplant as scheduled yesterday because of heart complications. .what’s worse, is that she’s temporarily off the list. .hope everything works out soon. .more amigo’s, first with greg and heidi, then with bonnie, (her) brian, and teresa.