blogwaffe

.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.

Pictures of my office(s) and apartment(s)

.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.

.every big company should have a mathematician on staff. .in fact, i dare you to think of any type of national company that doesn’t need a few mathematicians. .just keep ’em in a box with some paper and pencils and haul ’em out every once in a while when you’ve got a tough problem. .sort of “bring out the gimp”-esque. .on a related note, i’ve always wanted to develop a crush on a barista. .something nice and cliché. .we’d have a drink instead of a song: a good darjeeling or earl grey or or even hot apple cider when it was in season. .the relationship would develop slowly but pleasantly, and we’d grow genuinely fond of each other. .we’d see and critique movies and evaluate other people’s senses of fashion with no care in the world for our own. .it’d last for about a year and a half until she broke up with me for some artistically minded person who actually drank coffee and knew the difference between emo and crap. .i’d be heart broken and desolute [sic] for months until i realized she’d stolen my green lantern shirt. .then i’d be pissed. .yeah. .that’s the life.

.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.