blogwaffe

That’s a composition of two photos. One of which my dad took himself. Without a timer.

Plus it’s a good photo of the fam. Rawk on, Dad.

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.)

UPDATE: The documentation for this plugin is now on my AJAX Comment Preview page. All the talk below of the installation being hard is out of date. Things are much easier now.

I’ve looked around occasionally for a good comment preview plugin for the site. There’s a few “Live” preview plugins around, but I find an as-you-type update of your comment really annoying. Plus, those plugins are entirely javascript based; they can’t know what the server will do to a comment after it gets sent off, so it’s not robustly WYSIWIG.

There seemed to be no good pre-fab solution fitting all my criteria:

1. Not live updating (who’d have thought you’d need to specify the negative)
2. All content filtered through WordPress ensuring solid WYSIWIGnitude
3. Delicious AJAX goodness to avoid hard refreshes

So I made my own.

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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.

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My Quantum Field Theory professor, Professor Wise (check out the hot website), gives out change for correctly answered questions in order to encourage class participation. Previous to last week, I’d earned something less than a dollar for my efforts. There’s a couple people in the class who consistently make about ten or fifteen cents a lecture and there’s one person in particular who answers “zero” to every question for which that answer could be appropriate. Professor Wise has lauded (and suggested) this strategy, claiming that nearly all of the questions he asks can be answered correctly with that response.

In Tuesday’s lecture, we were discussing grand unified theories, and he posed the (implied) question, “Guess how many grand unified theories I understand.” I responded quickly and authoritatively, “Zero.” The professor immediately burst out laughing and headed for his wallet. Fishing around for a quarter he said, “No, no, no. That deserves something more”. He pulled out a single, but said, “No, no”, and pulled out a five spot. Coming over to my seat he proclaimed to the class, “This is the most money I have ever given out in all my days as a lecturer. No one has ever had the chutzpah to say something like that. Congratulations.” I expressed my deepest honor and gratitude and stuck it in my pocket.

The rest of the class responded with a mixture of laughter, shock, and (I’d like to think) admiration (for the both of us).

To make the deal even sweeter, Professor Wise also finalized his plans to take the class out to dinner the following evening.

Five bucks and a free meal for going to class and being a smart ass. Awesome.

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 :)

I like Vroman’s. They’re not quite as massively chain like as Barnes and Noble or Borders, they make me feel like I’m shopping a bit more locally, and they put on pretty good events.

But this time they lost me.

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Ever had a picnic in a parking garage? Didn’t think so. Neither had I until today when, after much delay, Caltech’s new underground parking structure was officially opened. To celebrate, the president, a trustee or two, and staff person who was actually involved in the construction project cut the ribbon and led all three hundred plus of us down in to the depths to eat free hot dogs and hamburgers (vegetarian options available).

It was really kind of neat. All the food was cooked just ouside the garage and served just inside. There were picnic tables set up deeper in, and people were happily chatting and eating where tomorrow there will be seven hundred cars parked. The folks in charge encouraged people to look around and scope out the scene; many people did.

The food was good (as in free as in beer) and the structure looked pretty cool (as far as parking garages go). I imagine the only people sorry to see it open are those like Dixie. Tough luck, girl. No more free cash for you.

A bit silly to keep writing about sandwiches, but I’ve just eaten a most delicious concoction and felt I should share it with the world: An Egg and Herbs on Grilled Cheese Sandwich and Grilled Ham and Cheese Sandwich Sandwich.

Parse that!

That’s right: a sandwich of sandwiches.

• Layer 1: Grilled Cheese Sandwich (Bread, Cheese, Bread)
• Layer 2: Eggs (cooked omelette style with mixed Herbs)
• Layer 3: Grilled Ham and Cheese Sandwich (Bread, Cheese, Ham, Bread)

I’ve done this before but put the ham (or bacon) inside the folded in half omelette. That way even the interior layer could (by some) be called a sandwich.

Delicious. I encourage you all to try it and/or to construct other novel sandwiched sandwhiches.