blogwaffe

You have failed me, in-n-out.

Greg and I go to the window and order:

• Double-Double: no sauce, light onion. Fries.
• Cheeseburger. Fries. Chocolate shake.

We obtain:

• Double-Double: light onion. Fries.
• Cheeseburger: no sauce. Fries. Chocolate shake.

Shame on you, in-n-out. Shame.

I went to the Los Angeles County Museum of Arts for the first time Saturday. A five dollar student ticket is a deal that can’t be beat, unless you go after five o’clock. Then it’s free.

But Bonnie and I decided to go at around three, and it was an afternoon very well spent. My time was a little limited (Preskill was hosting a soirée that evening), but we managed our goal of seeing the impressive Tim Hawkinson exhibit though were unable to check out any of the others. Perhaps it was best to only see one exhibit, anyway. Regardless, it was more than worth it.

I won’t bother to describe the artist or his works (I’d have taken pictures, but I got yelled at for attempting to do so). Anything I could say would either be ill-educated, or not nearly as humorous as the statement “Tim Hawkinson, considered by many to be a phenomenon within and beyond the art world” taken from LACMA’s above-linked press release. I’ll just say that the exhibit is well worth checking out, especially if you’re into the ideas surrounding man vs. machine vs. nature discussions. That or latex.

I know you’ve always wanted to post on blogwaffe. Or perhaps you’ve dreamed of publishing content on Apparent Horizons or \_jeff_{krimmel}.

Well you can’t.

Sukah.

But you can hit up the next big thing (next great American novel, big) over at email for pics (dot com).

Making good on her promise to someday visit, Sarah and Anant were in town this weekend. Apparently, Anant was interviewing with some company out here, and Sarah came for the ride. Their home base was Lennon’s (I had completely forgotten he was out here), and, ostensibly because I’m supposed to be studying for quals, I only got Sarah for the day on Friday.

We hit up all the standards: campus, Ernie’s, the Huntington, the OTP, the caltech Canada Day shindig, the houses of the other half. I’d like to think she had fun; I certainly thought it was awesome to see her. And, despite the roaring headache I acquired for no particular reason that evening, it was great to see Anant and Lennon too that evening at dinner with Gina, her sisters and some friends. Five UR folk all in Pasadena for the night. Who’d have thought?

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Any weekend involving Bert driving the wrong way through a drive through (“hello…”) is a good one as far as I’m concerned, but this one had the added bonus of seeing Katie and Ted get hitched. Their wedding afforded me the opportunity to make an ass of myself at the reception, meet the fun group of people that are Ted and Katie’s friends, watch all the bridesmaids giggle and coo over Bert’s “Bye Bye Bye – ‘N Sync” dance routine, and see Jeff get rejected by an eight year old (let’s face it Jeff, she was a much better dancer than you are).

But enough interesting specifics. On to the clichés.

The wedding itself was lovely, and the aforementioned shenanigan inducing reception was a load of fun. And regardless of whether it sounds trite, the Bride looked beautiful, and the Groom… well… I guess he looked a little less bald. The only thing I would have changed about the whole proceedings would be to have ordered better weather (sorry Michelle). It was way too humid.

The event was also a nice venue for self reflection. While weddings have the potential of being depressing for all the single guests, Katie and Ted’s managed to instill in me a small bit of hope. Ted sure as sure married up; perhaps there’s a chance yet. I took notes, and he said he’d be willing to provide some tutelage. I’ll likely take him up on the offer: “Ted’s proven guide on how to trick women”.

Cheers to the happy couple. May your days be forever brightened by the companionship and love you share, but still filled with the sunglasses needed to block the harmful rays reflecting from Ted’s denudate scalp. Many blessings to you both.

I was in az.us this past weekend visiting my grandpa with my dad (and the rest of my family) for father’s day. While we were there, we visited the Titan Missile Museum: the only Titan II missile silo left after the other fifty-three were intentionally destroyed in 1984 as part of the Titan II ICBM’s retirement. (Tidbit: when the silos were demolished, they were left in ruins for six months so the Soviet satellites could confirm their destruction before being relandscaped into reusable property.)

It was pretty freakin’ cool. The tour started with a walkabout on the grounds above the actual installation. From above, you can look down through the silo door and see the vast tower of armament looking back up at you surrounded by its various service platforms, vibrational dampers and supports. (Tidbit: the jets on the Titan II were so powerful that, if ignited in the silo, they’d shake the missile apart. Massive streams of water were injected into the jet’s exhaust flow so that the resulting steam could absorb and dissipate the energy safely.) The thing is just plain big. (Tidbit: really big.)

Once underground we got to see some of the control center and learn about the daily operations of the compound. My mom even got to turn the brass key (Tidbit: Allen and I figured out it wouldn’t really be all that hard for one person to launch the missile instead of the two that the military had carefully designed the system to require). She annihilated “Target 2”; has that woman no compassion?

But what affected me most was the whole (inter)national culture behind the installation: Mutual Assured Destruction. Peace through Deterrence.

I’m no Cold War history buff. I’m no sociologist, no politician, no philosopher. But these seem like horrible guiding principals. What about Peace through Dialogue? I understand that there are big threats in this world and carrying a big stick makes those threats a lot easier to handle. But how much money was spent on this project and those like it? What if that had gone toward education or international (or, hell, domestic) aid? Would people be so enamoured with the idea of blowing up the U.S. if we didn’t have such a gigantic military machine building weapons capable of destroying most of the rest of the world?

People say the best defense is a good offense. I say the best defense is to not have people hate you. (Tidbit: that’s a lot harder to accomplish.)

I just went over to Jeff’s office to drop off the garage door opener. As I jogged down the stairs, I saw an orange ladder and some maintenance people working on some sort of something which needed maintaining in his hallway. Taking no notice of them, I walked over to Jeff’s doorway which was occupied by one of his office mates saying something like “aren’t you supposed to stand in a doorway?”. I looked at him oddly and said “excuse me” and the gentleman said “oh, sorry” and let me by. Everyone else in the office had clearly very recently stood up and were discussing something of some interest.

“Did you feel that?” Jeff asked.
“No.”
“Yes you did.”
*stare*
“We just had an earthquake?” I asked incredulously.

Apparently so. The greater Los Angeles Area was just struck by what has tentatively been labeled a 5.3 earthquake [See also these pretty pictures]. It hit right when I was just taking notice of the maintenance people. The rumbling noise I heard I attributed to the something the mainenance people were poking at, and the shaking I didn’t feel at all as I jogged down the stairs.

Everyone thought this was oh so funny.

I was pissed. I’ve never felt an earthquake before, and here I was, right in thte middle of one, but I couldn’t be bothered to notice.

I swear the big one’s going to hit this weekend when I’m in .az.us, and Jeff will be surveying the rubble that will be Caltech laughing, “Oh, man, Mike is gonna be pissed.”

I’ve been interested in a while in some sort of centralized feed reader. Currently, I use NetNewsWire on my laptop (a fantastic program), and Thunderbird at the office to keep track of all the sites I read. The problem is that the one reader I use doesn’t know anything about the other; I get fed the same articles in both.

Read more…

A couple days ago, NASA reported that Voyager 1 has passed through the solar termination shock (and that their graphics people have made some pretty hot little movies). The termination shock is part of the interface between the solar wind exiting our solar system and the intestellar wind blowing about around us.

Suck on that, Jeff. None of this namby pamby kidney nonsense :)