blogwaffe

.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.

.still no advisor. .being continually frustrated on that front (and with myself), i’ve not been posting much to the site. .i saw west wing last night; abbey’s birthday episode (entitled “dead irish writers”, as i recall, if you really want to look it up). .i like the show a lot, though i never see all the episodes in order, so i’m always a bit behind. .anyway, the point of this story is that due to some international border misplacements, they end up playing the canadian national anthem in the white house ballroom. .for some reason, this has resulted in “america the beautiful” being stuck in my head ever since i woke up.

.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.