blogwaffe

About the time I was finally able to get to sleep last night, a certain member of the Caltech faculty was abruptly awakened by the ringing of his telephone. Professor of Theoretical Physics David Politzer must have first awakened in annoyance when he heard the phone, then fear as he subconciously prepared himself for some sort of emergency, and finally elation when he realized what day it was. 10.05.2004: the day the Nobel Prize in Physics is announced.

He lifted the receiver and was connected with Stockholm.

I like to think the King himself was on the phone, but, as far as I know, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, though founded by the Crown, is entirely independent; I do not believe the current King is a member.

Dr. Politzer was awarded the prize for his earlier work in on the concept of asymptotic freedom. The strong nuclear force is responsible for holding together such “everyday” particles as the proton and the neutron (together known as nucleons). These nucleons are in turn comprised of other, more fundamental particles called quarks and gluons. The odd thing (at least in the early 1970’s) is that particle collision experiments suggest that quarks are held together only very weakly inside a nucleon, however they have never been observed on their own outside of a nucleon. How can particles held together so very weakly not be pulled apart and examined individually?

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So after a few days of compiling, my latop (~Dell Inspiron 7000) is up and running with Gentoo. Perhaps the biggest hurdle to usability was the button on the case that the lid presses when closed. This button suspends the computer. Since I wanted the laptop for a server, and since servers serve fairly poorly when suspended, this was unacceptable. I tried to install ACPI, but the daemon consistently refused to load no matter what kernel I used and no matter how completely I saw ACPI support compiled into those kernels. I finally decided my laptop was not compatible.

So I tried APM. The only useful feature that APM allowed was turning off the screen’s backlight. It had no control over the lid-close-button event. So, hell, I don’t need the button there, anyway, I thought. I’ll just take it out. I disassembled my entire laptop, removing drives, keyboard, screen, various bits of thermal shielding, etc. As it turns out, the button is not easily removed. This is an understatement. Not wanting to break out the soldering iron, I, after hours of attempting software control, and an hour or so of taking apart (and putting back together) the laptop, decided to cut off the button.

So I cut off the button. It works great now; I can close the lid, have the screen turn off and let the thing run as long as I want on less juice than a typical light bulb.

Paul.za is already missing, presumed confused. He left for Ikea approximately twenty-two hours ago and has not be seen or heard from since.

UPDATE.11.40pm: Paul.za broke Greg’s car and got stranded in the Ikea parking lot. Greg and Laurel rescued him in my car and had Greg’s towed to some sort of automobile rehabilitation center. Meanwhile, I was eating dinner expertly prepared by Jeff and Ariele and the girls’ and replacing dixie’s brain at Evil Ltd. After coming back from Ikea (with only half of his purchases), Paul.za, Greg and Laurel joined us at the girls’. Simply to complicate, I had Paul.za drive my car back to our place, and Greg drove Heidi’s car.

Now Greg’s measuring his penis online.

I have recently been introduced to a moste excellente beverage. Yerba Mate. My fellow greg has learned of it and it’s properties through his colleague and friend in the Adami group: Alan, a native af Argentina.

This South American drink has a pleasantly bitter taste and leaves the drinker with not only a caffeine like buzz, but a deep yen to explore the villas y calles of our sister continent.

Apenas nunca pida el azúcar.

Back in Moscizzle

Not that you’ll be able to figure out what’s what, but you can see the High School, the 1912 building, East City Park, The Courthouse, and what I think of as the GTE building. More importanly, you can see my parent’s house and garage.

I’ve looked up CalTech (the latest they have is 1994 – pre Broad days). You can see the Angle at which the shot is taken by looking at Millikan. Go USGS.

<function key>Da-nuh, Da-nu-nuh, Daaaaaaah nu-nu-nu-nu-nu-nu-nu-nu-nuh.</function key>

A lady, likely from montana, whom I can only assume is both beautiful and intelligent has invited me into what I will henceforth refer to as “The Gmail Glitterati”. I can’t imagine there is a single person reading this who is jealous (as, to the best of my knowledge, I’m the only person reading this), but, thankfully, my happiness is not contingent on the envy of others.

It is, however, contingent on me gloating, regardless of whether or not anyone notices (or cares). So: ha! Sukah.