I've been dared to explain seven of my interests...

Anachronism

Because, doggoneit, quill pens shouldn't just gather dust in museums! Seriously, though, there are a number of interesting solutions to problems in past times which required a lot of thought. Modern conveniences ("just take the car," "get a portable electric generator," "throw a microprocessor at it") have made us intellectually lazy and wasteful.

Carver Mead

One of my professors at Caltech; I took analog VLSI from him. He invented many of the techniques used to design modern chips. In the 90s, the startups he founded created the touchpad and CMOS digital cameras. More recently, he's been working on something called "collective electrodynamics," which is an attempt to revamp the way we're taught electricity and magnetism (E&M) from a quantum perspective.

Finesse

No, not the shampoo. See my response for anachronism. I love elegant solutions. If a solution is not elegant, then it probably isn't correct.

Jenolan Caves

An absolutely beautiful formation of caves in the Blue Mountains in New South Wales.

Scones

Sweet but not kick-you-in-the-teeth sweet, and they go well with tea. Comfort food. I don't know that I've ever passed one up for breakfast.

Scraphead Challenge

The original title of Junkyard Wars, as set in Britain. Developed by the inimitable Cathy Rogers, contestants had to cobble together working machines or vehicles from items found in an actual scrapyard. The ultimate in finesse.

Throwing Rocks

Because the damn kids won't keep off my lawn.

Swam about a mile yesterday in Dewatto Bay. It was absolutely beautiful.


To put the location into context, it's on the eastern shore of the Hood Canal, on the Kitsap Peninsula. All of this is west of Puget Sound. We live on Bainbridge Island.

I just got ripped off.

I spent the last 90 minutes watching Open Water 2: Adrift. It was a free cable "On Demand" feature. That was about $30 too much. Which, if you're doing the math, means they should have paid me $30 to watch that turd.

I had forgotten this quote. An excerpt from Greenspan's new book, The Age of Turbulence: "I am reminded of Churchill's perception of Americans, who 'can always be counted on to do the right thing -- after they have exhausted all other possibilities.'"

Also, in the excerpt printed in Newsweek, Greenspan lambasts the U.S. educational system, blaming its pitiful state for the growing income disparity. I have to agree; as long as schools are churning out people ill equipped to work in a high tech labor force and we persist in restricting the inflow of skilled immigrants, the wages of the few skilled workers remaining (which includes everyone who reads my journal, at least that I know of) will keep rising out of proportion. Simple supply and demand.

Alas, I'm not going to go out and buy the book just yet. I'm in the middle of Another Day in the Frontal Lobe: A Brain Surgeon Exposes Life on the Inside. Quite a good book so far; both entertaining and informative.

No more "Monopoly Money" jokes...

Start holding on to those Canadian coins. Each is now worth the same as the equivalent US coin. You still can't use them in vending machines, though.

Anyone know if the retailers up north who previously accepted US dollars have stopped doing so? And can I expect to see US retailers in areas like Bellingham to start accepting Canadian money?

Washington State Ferries may want to reconsider their relatively recent refusal to accept the loonie.

Imagining the Tenth Dimension

In case you can't find your usual stash of mind-altering drugs...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qU1fixMAObI

This is how cult religions get started...

Never mind that mentioned multiple times that she would be in Seattle on the 11th. Never mind that I have multiple gadgets telling me that today is the 5th. It's in my Outlook calendar: so it must be true.

This is the reality of my life these days. My schedule is completely interrupt driven. Without Outlook, I wouldn't know when and where to be or, conversely, what I can get away with putting off for now. Flipside: if I enter an appointment incorrectly, forget any possibility of me making it. It might as well not exist.

Ok, so I do know my wife's birthday (April 8th) and our anniversary (October 26th) off the top of my head. And, no, I don't need to look in the address book to remember that her name is Tamara :-P.

Anyway, , this means that I can still make a 11:30/noon lunch next week when is here.

I managed to drive 73 miles yesterday without leaving the island.

How or why? I was one of the ground crew coordinators for the Arms Around Bainbridge swim.

Tiring, but lots of fun. I also took pictures, but I'll spare your friends page from them.

Those who enjoy cooking appreciate a good set of knives.

This guy, however, has taken one-upmanship to a new level; he uses a laser to cut his steak.

Most people's commutes are delayed by mundane things: traffic congestion, accidents, vehicles breaking down, etc.

In my case, I have bomb scares thrown into the mix.

I'm guessing this was intentional; who in their right mind would accidentally leave a bag of sparklers (which will set off the bomb-sniffing dogs they have here) stuffed behind a toilet just a day after the FBI released photos of a couple guys who have been asking for details about ferry operations?

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Of course, this is all trivial stuff. I recently heard from a friend from high school who spent the last year in the hellhole of Darfur. I recommend reading her blog -- it's an eye opener. And nobody else could sum up the Darfur conflict as eloquently and flippantly as she does:

And that’s Darfur in a nutshell. The Red Sox, the Yankees, the Dodgers, the Padres, and the entire rest of the American League all armed and jealous of one another.

Anyway, off to a block of meetings.

Wow. Video footage (from a security camera) of the I-35W bridge collapse.

Harry entered the nearly deserted dining hall. A few other Hogwarts students were in the far corner carrying on a game of Wizard's Chess; one of them -- a Slytherin Harry didn't recognize -- looked up for a moment, but then returned his attention to the game.

Minutes passed. Where were Ron, Hermione, and Ginny? Harry hummed a tune; something catchy he heard played in a muggle shop. He didn't know most of the lyrics; something about a boy in Detroit catching a train at midnight to anywhere. The thought of a train reminded him of King's Cross station and made him chuckle. How constraining it must be -- was, he reminded himself -- to be tied to train and bus schedules, having to fill up automobiles.

Ginny enters and asks him how his meeting with Snape went. "Oh, as you might expect," Harry says. "Draco won't going to testify against his father to the new ministry."

At this news, Ginny sighs. "Well, we can't expect it all to happen at once. Hey! You're sitting on my wand!" she says to Ron as he enters and plops himself down next to her.

"Sorry. I've spent the last five hours tending to Professor Sprout's mandrakes, and I'm wiped. But as dad used to say, 'Try to remember the times that were good.'" A few of the chess players look over in their direction at the break in the silence. Harry feels the gaze of the Slytherin student, putting him on a bit of edge.

Ron shakes some dirt off the sleeve of his robe; something ruffles in his pocket. "Oh, right. Mum sent me a box of Bertie Botts." Ron pulls the box out and starts to open it. "Want some? Hey, where's Hermione anyway?"

A brief interruption in the sunlight streaming in an upper window catches their attention. Another shadow -- this time, they can see it's Hermione flying backwards, attempting to park her broom. "Ah, still trying to park," Ron sighs. The Slytherin student walks slowly towards them, still gazing at Harry. He pulls his wand out, and Harry feels a chill on the back of his neck. Just as Harry moves to pull his wand out, the Slytherin brushes past them to go to the restroom.

Ron finishes opening the box of jelly beans, and they each pop one into their mouths. Hermione, having finally parked her broom, runs up to the dining hall entrance.

[FADE TO BLACK]

For my roadgeek friends...

I used driving directions from Google Maps today which included the following:

• South on US 101 for 3.3 miles.
• West on WA 108, WA 8, and US 12 for 38 miles total.
• South (again!) on US 101 for 0.5 miles.

Yes, the directions are correct.
Yes, US 101 runs reasonably north/south in both locations.
Yes, WA 8/108 and US 12 run reasonably east/west.

The answer lies in the strange routing of US 101 between Astoria, Oregon and Olympia, Washington:

• From Astoria, it runs north to Forks via Aberdeen (directionals read north/south).
• From Forks, it runs east through Port Angeles to Port Townsend (directionals read east/west).
• From Port Townsend, it runs south to Olympia via Shelton (directionals read south/north and the mile markers increase going south).

In case you're curious, we were going here.

Being so far behind in the series, I decided to read the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows plot summary on Wikipedia. The only thing I don't quite understand: Why, exactly, did Harry kill John F. Kennedy?

Let me tell you firsthand: stingray stings are painful. Much more painful than a bee sting.

I was swimming just north of the San Onofre nuclear power plant on the Camp Pendleton side. Reaching the end of the swimming area, I stood up to turn back and promptly felt an intense pain in my right foot. After a sharp yelp followed by a few expletives, I hobbled back to the lifeguard tower where they had me soak my foot in near-scalding water. Trying to burn my foot never felt so good; apparently, the toxin breaks down when exposed to heat.

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I discovered a combination toilet paper dispenser and iPod dock at Fry's yesterday. Seriously, folks -- if you're blowing money on this kind of crap, you have way too much disposable income.

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Here are a couple pictures of the concrete roller coaster they're installing on I-15:

In San Diego briefly; heading up to Mt. Whitney tomorrow with my dad.

First, though: WTF, San Diego? Have you decided that you wanted to pick up the worst features of Los Angeles and pave over the entire place? I swear, it looks like you're building a concrete roller coaster in the middle of I-15. Every town along the corridor looks like a game of Sim City gone horribly, horribly wrong.

Wow... I never thought I'd be glad to leave SoCal. The place is soooo married to the automobile, it's frightening. It's impossible to be a pedestrian here, really -- watching people try to navigate their way across eight-lane surface streets is sad.

I've been remiss in posting these.

Today's workout was a killer -- just myself and the coach, and we had initially planned on a 1:20 workout. Instead, it ended up being 2:15 (!). We were 35 minutes in; she mentioned that I had been swimming with the current so it'll take longer to get back. Ok, "but let's go for five more minutes." Five minutes later: "Oh, hey, look, there's a neat beach neither of us have explored." Ten more minutes, we're at the beach.

Remember how I was going with the current? So, 50 minutes there... 1:15 back. About 3.4 miles total.

My arms were killing me when I got out. And this was all after an on-call shift from hell (35 pages in 48 hours... WTF?).

From today's low tide:


Trying to identify these critters...

Ah, joy. IBM has apparently lost a backup tape containing my name and social security number. And I only worked there for a summer 10 years ago. sigh

My coach is trying to kill us -- either by the 1.8 mile swims or stings by a thousand jellyfish. Yet I pay for the torture and enjoy it. I guess that makes me the freak. :-)


Seeing jellyfish this early in the summer was strange. We haven't seen them anywhere except in Blakely Harbor, though. Fortunately, as with most things in the Pacific Northwest, they aren't the dangerous kind; their barbs are incapable of penetrating the skin, so the worst you'll get is a mild rash.