(-_- ). ). ). ) ). ). ).

The Watermelon Sun

2010-01-24T17:45:00.001-08:00

I've been sitting on the couch all day with the dog studying very inefficiently for some exams I have this week. It's been raining all day, which is fine. About an hour ago, as the sun was going down, everything outside turned this amazing warm gray color. I tried to get some pictures to show you what it looked like, and I think this is it:

I didn't alter these photos much, just lightened them a little to get the color more accurate and stitched them together. Everything was really that color. I feel like I finally understand this chapter of one of my favorite books, In Watermelon Sugar, by Richard Brautigan. Here's the chapter. You can listen to Richard Brautigan read it there, it with that player, or just read it, or follow along as he reads it.

Music Playlist at MixPod.com

-------------------

The Watermelon Sun

I woke up before Pauline and put on my overalls. A crack of gray
sun shone through the window and lay quietly on the floor. I
went over and put my foot in it, and then my foot was gray.
I looked out the window and across the fields and piney woods
and the town to the Forgotten Works. Everything was touched
with gray: Cattle grazing in the fields and the roofs of the shacks
and the big Piles in the Forgotten Works all looked like dust.
The very air itself was gray.
We have an interesting thing with the sun here. It shines a
different color every day. No one knows why this is, not even
Charley. We grow the watermelons in different colors the best
we can.
This is how we do it: Seeds gathered from a gray watermelon
picked on a gray day and then planted on a gray day will make
more gray watermelons.
It is really very simple. The colors of the days and the watermelons
go like this--
Monday: red watermelons.
Tuesday: golden watermelons.
Wednesday: gray watermelons.
Thursday: black, soundless watermelons.
Friday: white watermelons.
Saturday: blue watermelons.
Sunday: brown watermelons.
Today would be a day of gray watermelons. I like best tomorrow:
the black, soundless watermelon days. When you cut them
they make no noise, and taste very sweet.
They are very good for making things that have no sound.
I remember there was a man who used to make clocks from the
black, soundless watermelons and his clocks were silent.
The man made six or seven of these clocks and then he died.
There is one of the clocks hanging over his grave. It is hanging
from the branches of an apple tree and sways in the winds
that go up and down the river. It of course does not keep time
any more.
Pauline woke up while I was putting my shoes on.
"Hello," she said, rubbing her eyes. "You're up. I wonder
what time it is."
"It's about six."
"I have to cook breakfast this morning at ideath," she said.
"Come over here and give me a kiss and then tell me what you
would like for breakfast."

--------------------------

last dog post for a long time I promise

2009-09-05T08:47:00.000-07:00

I just walked back into my bedroom and this was waiting! I squealed!

Here's a little further back to show you what's going on. She moved a little.

She's so lazy, she doesn't usually start moving around until 9 or 10.

Sticky Card Big Top

2009-09-03T20:28:00.001-07:00

While looking at sticky cards yesterday for the presence of natural enemies, I caught this performance by some kind of hopper. Look at that leg kick! A little cane and hat too. His act was a little rough around the edges, but I think that he could go far.

Happy Birthday Beatrice, I guess.

2009-09-03T19:38:00.000-07:00

I got a card from Banfield Pet Hospital in the mail this afternoon that said "Look who's turning 3!" Insides it said "Happy Birthday to you, Beatrice!". I was embarrassed because I didn't realize that her birthday was in September. I showed her the card and since its her birthday, I let her tear it up into bits, which she seemed to get some birthday glee out of, before demanding more peanut butter.

What is a little strange about the card is that it was addressed to my Corvallis address, but I have never updated the address with them. How did they know? How far reaching is that change of address form that you fill out with the USPS? The last time that I used it, between LA and Portland, it didn't actually work. I can't complain though because a nice woman at the post office near my residence in LA personally went to my old apartment to get a package that had been sent there mistakenly, and sent it to me express mail. Yes, that was the U.S. post office. Yes, in Los Angeles, CA.

Anyway, the dog is three years old.

Krokodil

2009-08-29T20:55:00.000-07:00

I think that my dog may have the strongest jaws of any dog, when she wants to use them. I wanted to read tonight and she was whining because I wasn't looking at her, so I went to petco to get her an updated name tag and some pig's ears to distract her. She ate one of the pig's ears like it was a potato chip. I read about 3 pages before it was gone, but I was reading slowly because I was watching her crunch through dried skin. I wish she didn't get sick from rawhide, that would last a couple of hours.

Here's some recent pictures of the dog for those who may want to look at them.

She got some treats in the mail that are supposed to calm her down. I got a puzzle with beetles on it and this!!!!!!:

I had heard that this existed within the walls of the house I grew up in but my Mother said that it was long gone. My sister found it and now I possess it and it will be unfurled and flown upon the proposed camping trip at the end of september. If you don't know what it is, it's related to my halloween costume from 2008:

Harmless but Uncomfortable

2009-08-25T21:35:00.000-07:00

So i've got nothing against breastfeeding, but I find this picture that was on SFGate.com a little odd. The baby's making eye-contact with the camera/viewer, like we have an understanding, kind of like he's bragging. "Eh? hmmm?" I don't like it. I don't like what it suggests. I don't like the baby looking at me while he's doing that, it's weird. He might as well be tipping his shades:

Notice it also suggests "everything tastes better at grandma's". The whole thing is really weird.

2009-07-28T18:24:00.000-07:00

Some days I wonder if I am a sad man, that if people looked in on my life, if they would say "What a sad man, talking to his dog, standing there in his boxers, and putting golf balls at an electric dust pan." No, dude, look at the pictures of trees I have framed on my wall and the shelves I put up yesterday to hold my cameras! You are so stupid, get away from my window, you are making the dog bark! Today is very hot. It's over 100 degrees out. It's still over a hundred degrees out and it's 5:30 pm. I woke up at 5:45 am to leave for the Filbert orchards and get work done before it got too hot out. We were kidding ourselves, since it was hot at 7 am when we arrived at the first orchard. I have never had sweat literally pour off of me in a steady stream. At one point I was drawing Drew a map and when I tilted my head forward, sweat trickled off my head like a water in a faucet left on for a cat, all over the map that I was drawing for him. We both laughed, but I knew that we both understood this was disgusting. I thought about how I read in a book that circus people rub peanut oil on elephants' heads to keep their brains from drying out when they are stressed, and how that's got to be complete bullshit, because peanut oil is not a good brain moisturizer. Maybe it's true, I don't know, but I have some doubts, seeing as water is essential to life and oil is sort of the opposite of water.

I received a phone call from my boss that said that I no longer have to come in at nights for a couple of hours to check on the life table experiments that we are running. I was happy to hear this, since I don't like having to be anywhere at anytime, really, even if I have no place better to be, and the place that I am supposed to be is neither inconvenient nor disagreeable. The basement of the Agriculture and Life Sciences building is disagreeable in that it's hot, but it's cooler than it is outside. The work is tedious but not hard, a lot of microscope work, looking for the shed exoskeletons of mites to see whether or not they have molted to a new development stage (sometimes I forget this is my job). This is useful information to farmers, sort of. That's not why were doing it. It has to do with effectiveness of control as a natural predator during certain seasons... I am happy to not have to look for insect skins anymore, at least in the evening. I've been there every night for about two weeks, which means I haven't had a day off in over two weeks. I think sunday is my next day off. Hasn't really mattered all that much.

The point is, it's really hot outside, so I can't take the dog for a walk or we'll desiccate into little dusty piles of skin and clothes, so we are sitting around bored in the apartment, where it is warm (about 80) but not unbearable. I dragged out the putter, golf balls, and auto-ball returner (it resembles a dust pan and plugs into the wall) that I got from goodwill when I had no TV or internet to keep me entertained. I have six golf balls, that I line up about 15 feet from the target. The first one I know I will miss, because the dog is ready to leap at it as soon as I tap it, so I just hit it without aiming. She leaps at it and can't quite get it and it goes shooting into the bedroom. After she gets her mouth around it, she puts it onto the bed. I'm able to get about two putts in before she gets back, usually. I mean that I have the time to hit two of the balls towards the hole, not into the hole, as most of them go past. The dog grabs those and puts them on the bed. When I am out of balls I go into the bedroom and collect the eggs from the nest that she has made of the balls. I think that if they hatch into dogs I might be on the news, but I will be embarrassed when they ask about the last time I washed my sheets.

After a few sessions of putting/collecting eggs, I decided that it was time to get serious, to stop dicking around and make some real putts. I went into the bedroom and put on a pair of athletic shorts (I have one pair of athletic shorts) and then returned to the living room. I give the dog the first putt and then I look at the dust pan, and imagine a straight line from the pan to the putter. I look at the ball and I swing and I putt through the ball, I don't even look at the hole and I know it's gone in. I can't describe it, I just know I have sank this putt. The ball returner sends it back THOK. I decide that I am going to sink 100 putts in a row. I think that I am very good at this and should make this a career, but a lot of people already do this, much much better than me, and they are called professional golfers. I think that I need a nickname, but all I can think is "Jonny Greenwood." I make the next putt, but I miss the third. I decide again that I am going to sink 100 putts in a row, but before I do, I check to see if the dog is choking on a golf ball. She wasn't, but I thought that it would be a good idea to google "dog heimlich" and it turns out there is such a thing. I also remember that I wanted to learn morse code and how to identify trees. What for, I dunno. Then I started typing all this out, because I thought that the bit about putting on athletic shorts and the dog heimlich is funny. I look forward to later making coffee and an omelet out of the vegetables that my boss brought me yesterday, but it's still too early, because if I make it now, I will be hungry before bed, and if I eat before bed, I wake up feeling sick. I look behind me because I can hear the dog whining and she is sitting on the side table, and I wonder if perhaps I really did suffer heat stroke this afternoon. Then my phone rang which was just as surprising.

My former just landlord called and asked if I knew that I was aware that my lease ends on Friday. I said "Oh my god, what!?" but I was lying. She didn't think it was funny and least she didn't laugh. She asked if I wanted to do a walk-through when I turn in the keys, and I asked that if the lease ends on friday, and that I have to be out on friday, and you want to do the walkthough friday, when was I going to be able to fix the things that she thought were not clean enough? Should I bring cleaning stuff to the walk through? Is that normal? She said no. I told her that I did a walk-through with another girl, (which she said she remembers), which was sort of useful except that she asked us to clean the patio which was not listed on the list that you gave us of things to clean, and that I decided that the place was a clean as I could get it, and I was told that you don't make a final decision till after we turn in our keys, at which point I can't make changes. So if I can skip a walk-through to avoid being depressed about things that I should have done and will now regret, I would like to just skip it. She said that's fine, she understands. Thanks for understanding your complete power over me in regards to the situation. I should have said that I'd like to learn to walk through walls, you GHOST! What do you say to that? But really I want to be a ghost, so that is not an insult. She then told me a device, that she had previously told me to to take the office, needs to be returned to Comcast. I told her that we only got it because we were told that we needed to get it, and that, in fact, we never opened the box, and our cable TV never changed at all (I was suggesting that she was swindled.) She said she didn't remember that. I reminded her about the Comcast foodcart thing that was parked in front of the office for three days. She said to write my apartment number on it. I checked to see if I had peanut oil because I think my brain is drying out from the stress of the phone call that she clearly thought was going to be about a minute and I dragged into about eight.

It's too hot today, and I live too far away from my friends, and this may be the worst summer of my life, to be perfectly dramatic. Now it's 6:30 and probably time for an omelet.

new lampshade

2009-07-26T17:58:00.000-07:00

I was bored, and thought that this lampshade was pretty boring too, so I drew some old cameras on it. I have each of the cameras in real life, except for the "Start 66" which noel has and provided the picture of.

Now i'm bored again. I already cleaned the rest of my apartment and made cookies and took the dog for a walk. I have to go to work in about an hour. It's really hot out. I'll be happy when I get my weekends back and don't have to work nights.

Crab Spider versus B. melanopygus

2009-05-18T22:40:00.000-07:00

Daniel spotted this dramatic scene (but I took the picture) of predation and mimicry during a field trip two weeks ago to Gathering Together Farms, an organic farm in Philomath. The man who owns the farm looked and sounded exactly like George Bluth, Sr. from Arrested Development.

International Shortwave Celebrity!

2009-05-05T23:50:00.000-07:00

Skip to the 10 minute mark:

they emailed me this QSL card, so I knew to listen. Sadly I missed the broadcast last night. I was able to hear it on the internet, confirming that there's really no reason for anyone to listen to shortwave radio, unless the power's out.

Martin Sheen shoots a football

2009-05-05T21:42:00.000-07:00

I am a fan of Terrence Malick's films. Maybe he's my favorite director. It doesn't matter. I was excited to read this excerpt this evening while taking a break from scientific writing (which I have had to do a lot of this week, is very boring and is hard to do for a project that you haven't yet started):

"We're just starting work on a project for Terrence Malick, animating dinosaurs, the film is The Tree of Life, starring Brad Pitt and Sean Penn. It'll be showing in IMAX -- so the dinosaurs will actually be life size -- and the shots of the creatures will be long and lingering." -- this comes from an Empire magazine interview with VFX artist Mike Fink.

Synopsis of the film have been all over the place. I had read previously that it was about a child growing up and realizing that life's hard, which sounded sort of lame, but I was willing to give it a shot since I've liked all of his films that I've seen very much (even The New World, if mostly for the look of it). But now it apparently has dinosaurs. Maybe it's a documentary on the big tree at disney's animal kingdom.

I was reminded to look up the status of his new film when I downloaded this mix from this guy who I really don't know anything about, but I generally like the mixes he uploads. His band, deerhunter, is popular I think. The first track in the mix is the from the final scene in "badlands".

2009-04-07T00:24:00.000-07:00

part of the film roll's packaging got into my camera when I was shooting at the cemetary two weeks ago. I think that it came out pretty neat for a couple of shots:

Also, here's a couple of shots I liked when I put 35mm film into the camera sans adapter:

This shirt is stupid

2009-04-02T20:52:00.001-07:00

I thought i'd use my blog to complain for a minute. I saw this shirt for sale at dirtcheapshirt.com (not a site I frequent, but it comes up at dodtracker.com, a site I check daily for rare goodies). The shirt makes no sense. Ideally, you shouldn't "spend" 1-ups at all. You don't get anything in return for using them, so you aren't really spending them, but using them up. You can't sacrifice them for anything, since you start at the beginning of an area or a marker point if you die in just about every Mario game. What are they getting at? There is no way to wisely die in the game. This shirt is totally stupid, like the rest of nintendo's latest ventures, such as fixing the DSi so it doesn't work with cool rom flash cards.

Medium Format Pictures

2009-03-29T23:40:00.000-07:00

I purchased a Lubitel 166B a couple of weeks ago. Yolanda had sent me a link to the one that Lomo makes these days and sells on their website, but that one is very, very expensive. This one was not nearly as much as that, and it is 25 years old, and functions well (You can also load 35mm film into without an adapter, and it seems to work fine, actually fits very snugly). I've also been developing my own negatives, both B&W and color, though the color is not so good. It's been fun. Here's some pictures that I've taken over the last two weeks. I'm not going to post opinions of digital vs. film, as I just like taking pictures. I also like the smell of fixer and feeling around for scissors in the darkened bathroom. I don't have an enlarger, so I put the negatives on the light-table and then photographed them and edited them on the computer, which seems silly. Works pretty well though. I did make some contact prints which turned out ok, but they are 4x4 cm. Little wallet-sizes to carry around or trade, I guess.

Medium Format

I like the pictures of the tombstones, though I understand that the subject matter is a little loaded. Still, I thought they made nice images, and I was happy to take pictures away from my house or school.

also, here's some 3D pictures that you can view with the red/blue glasses. I took them with the camera I made a couple of weeks ago. It's hard to get the exposure right, and the pinholes are slightly different so one comes out darker than the other.

I built a camera

2009-03-24T10:27:00.000-07:00

This weekend I was without the dog so I decided to take advantage of the time and finish a project that I had been wanting to work on for a long time: Building a pinhole camera that would take 3D pictures. The reason that I waited until I didn't have the dog is because she gets upset when I am not looking at her directly, and there are a lot of small pieces for her to eat.

I designed it myself, though its based very much on the Dirkon design. It's made of basswood (which is like tougher balsa wood, so it's very light) and accepts 35mm film. The pinholes are made in aluminum from a soda can, so the pictures were far sharper than my dirkon, which had the hole in paper. The image is exposed over the entire film, sprocket holes and all, which i felt would look cool, and i also though that more image would be better. It works by sliding the shutter right to expose the film, and left to close the shutter. There is a bubble level on the back to make sure the shots are the same height. The film is wound into an empty canister but it still has to be unloaded in complete darkness. The back and compartment separators are lined in black velvet to reduce risk of scratching the film and to help block any light leaks. It has a tripod nut on the bottom that is flush so it can rest flat on a surface as well. It took three days to complete. The only snag I ran into was the film winder mechanism was really difficult to wind at first for some reason. It was fixed but i'm not sure how. The dot on top lets me know how many turns i've done: 2.5 turns moves the film enough for a new shot. The back is held on with tiny rubber bands, which was a feature I took from another designer's camera.

Here are the results from the first roll that I shot and developed yesterday. The exposures were from 2-4 seconds.

You can view these in 3D using the crosseye method: cross your eyes until the two images overlap perfectly in the middle and let your eyes focus on it. this is easier if you stand back from your monitor a little, so you don't have to cross them so much. I will have regular red/cyan ones up once I get some glasses to test them with: a good excuse to go back to the 3D museum downtown. The daffodils and parking lot ones work better than the sidewalk, since they have foreground.

I apologize for the low contrast images, but yesterday was very grey and rainy, and I underdeveloped the film in my haste to see the results. I also didn't know the exposure times yet, so three images came out. The woody bits on the edges are from the edges of the shutter, so I need to widen those holes a bit. But it works! which is very exciting. I wish that I had made the holes slightly wider than my pupillary distance, because I believe that enhances the depth effect. Something for the next one, I guess.

2009-03-14T17:02:00.000-07:00

from Saigon Market

News

2009-03-13T13:25:00.001-07:00

News Items!

1)Somebody stole the thermometer transmitter from the front of my apartment. It was in a plastic ziplock bag to protect it from the rain. I suppose i should have expected it, but I figured as soon as somebody picked it up, they would have realized that it was pretty worthless without the rest of it. I checked at the office, they haven't seen it.

2)My USB greenhouse is sprouting a lot now that the LEDS are always on.

3)I have heard that dogs have no concept of time, but my dog Beatrice here just climbed into her kennel at 1:20 pm, which is generally about the time I head back to school on MWF, without me telling her to. She has picked up on a lot of visual or audio cues, such as the squeak of my commuter mug lid, or when I put my backpack near the door, or when I put my shoes on.

4) Here's some fun weekend projects for you, I might give it a go soon, after I am done with finals.

Pinhole Cameras

Matchbox Pinhole Camera

Or if you have more time and don't want to dissasemble the thing everytime, you could make one of these

If you've got an SLR or DSLR this also is fun, but I didn't think it was quite as fun. Though it's cheap and easy.

2009-03-12T00:39:00.000-07:00

I tried putting my cellphone's camera up to the microscope's eyepiece today, on the microscope that I use everyday, and was surprised to see that it actually worked, and I could get a fairly good image. Nothing professional, but still interesting.

Here's a video of what I look at everyday: mites. In the video, a mature female eats a spider mite egg, while a pair of juveniles hang around, and a bunch of spider mites walk in and out of the frame. It's a pretty good representation of what I look at most of the day, for whatever reason:

I apologize for the light moving around strangely. I can't rest the lens on the eyepiece, I have to hold it about a cm away from it, and keep it parallel. It's really tiring. Here's a TINY snail that fell out of some moss while I was looking for springtails. At the end, you can see the scope and the setup:

Lastly here's a springtail. It's hard to see but I like the old film look that it has. I just zoomed with the digital zoom on the camera. I wish that I was easier to see but I suppose I could do it again. You can hear me sigh a lot because my arms are very tired at this point:

iWeb

2009-03-11T00:49:00.001-07:00

I've been trying out the new iweb program. I feel that after taking flash and dreamweaver classes, and being familiar with HTML that I should be putting together my own site and not using some templates from apple. But you know what? I hate putting together websites. This, combined with Adobe Lightroom do a pretty good job in my opinion. However, what I learned from my first website is that no one will ever look at a homepage. In conclusion, I am not sure why I went to the trouble, except that I wanted a place to put some pictures that I took and I liked that wasn't google or flickr.

website

Predatory Mites and Spider Mites

2009-03-08T23:21:00.001-07:00

I took some pictures of the mites that I work with last wednesday, here's the album:

Mites, March 2009

The big orange teardroppy ones are the predatory mites, T. pyri, the hairier, yellower ones with black spots are the spider mites that they eat, I don't know the name of the species. They are very small. For a comparison, look at the period on the period key on your keyboard. They are about 1/4 the size of that or less. They still hunt and eat and have reproductive behaviors and all that though. Pretty neat, I think. They also know how to flee a paintbrush tip right after they hatch out of the egg.

2009-03-08T22:48:00.000-07:00

A note on the invoice reads:

"Hiya :) Thank you so much for your patience!
Here you go ;) you finally got what you had waited for!
Please love the stuff and let us know if you need a help.
By the way, we really wish this new year, 2009, will be fruitful, hopefule, and fruitful for you. Many layoffs, salary cut and chilly winds and snow, tough time's still been over here and it's so sluggish X(
Oh, but look! here you go! bright happiness with this tiny gifts. Bless You!"

My recent impulse purchase arrived from Japan today, an 8x telephoto lens for my phone's camera, plus tripod :

(the glowing egg in the background is the USB greenhouse I received for my birthday. It has a single sprout so far, but the light was off all last week since I left my laptop charger in Portland. I added more seeds today because I think I planted the other ones too deep)

It fits very discreetly on my phone:

It feature a focus ring on the front. The tripod mount is standard. The mini-tripod that it came with is better than the ones that I got for free from one of those deal-of-the-day sites a couple of weeks ago.

Here's some sample pics from this afternoon with a normal shot from the phone for comparison!

Normal:

With Lens:

Normal:

With lens:

Its too bad about the dark area around the pics, but I don't really mind that much. I think it's pretty fun. Even came with a tiny lens cap and cloth to clean it. It can be adjusted to fit any phone. I look forward to trying it out at school tomorrow.

daylight "shavings"

2009-03-08T22:38:00.000-07:00

Today a funny thing happened: my hair clippers stopped working in the middle of cutting my hair, which left me with a choppy hair cut and a need to go out into the world and find another set of clippers. Luckily I own a lot of toques, and I found a pretty good deal at rite-aid on a cordless clippers. It also came with a barber's cape, which was a garbage bag with a hole. I also found the taco bell in town.

2009-02-26T14:55:00.001-08:00

2009-02-24T20:28:00.000-08:00

Whenever I have a lot of homework to do, I usually start changing the icons around on my computer. Tonight I made some new ones. I had mentioned in the controversial "25 Things" Facebook meme that I enjoyed many hot beverages a day, so I made some icons of the tools that I use to make those beverages. If you'd like them for your very own, you can download them here.

ive heard 3 sub-prime mortgage

2009-02-13T13:45:00.001-08:00

ive heard 3 sub-prime mortgage jokes in 2 days from the npr movie critic who is complaining about cliches and remakes.

Krazy Klock!

2009-02-11T18:57:00.000-08:00

Tim got this clock from a guy who kicked him out of his office. He put in a battery and we thought that they gave him a broken clock, which seemed really mean. We timed it and it's pretty accurate. After an hour it's keeping good time. Here's a video with which to waste a minute of your life. We wasted about 5 making it and blogging about it.

25 random things

2009-02-09T23:32:00.000-08:00

This is a post of the 25 random things that's making the rounds on facebook. These responses I have put are not random at all. It also totals 27 but a couple don't count.

1)I really dislike the word "random" because I am pretty sure it's mostly calculated. Many people have told me that my humor is "random" and I find that to be a little insulting, because I usually think that im pretty clever and if it was random it would be really easy.

2) I am a terrible procrastinator, but I am really self-deceptive about it. I do things like look for programs that will help me be more productive, reward myself, take breaks, "relax for a change", all while never ever finishing anything I start.

3)I still don't really consider myself an adult, even though I turn 28 this weekend, have a retirement account and am well into balding.

3.5)I'm not concerned about going bald, in fact it's one less thing to worry about.

4)I am terrible at keeping track of money.

5)When I drive or go for long walks by myself, I will get a lot of ideas for stories, pictures and books that seem really great, but when I get home, instead of working on them, I make excuses why they are bad or can't do them right now, or the feeling goes away. This is why I won't succeed in the art world. No drive.

6)I worry constantly about whether or not I am making the most of my life, and wonder why I am not out walking around the woods. I feel that staring at a computer, watching TV or anything like that is the worst waste of time and totally unnatural, but I do it A LOT.

7)Very often I am on the brink of tears, I'm not sure why.

8)My dog's armpits taste sweeter than the rest of her, and if you kiss them she'll go limp. Anywhere else she tries to put her teeth on you. Thats not about me, but I did discover it.

9) I really enjoy listening to the radio, but not for music. I enjoy weather and traffic reports a lot. I listened to british streaming radio for a while to hear what their commutes were like. I also feel that traffic reports are more of a tradition, rather than something that's useful. I've also gotten into shortwave radio recently. I like the idea that somewhere in the world, someone is broadcasting the signal and I am receiving it a few seconds later, and in the case of shortwave it might only be a couple of us that hear it. I LOVE listening to the NOAA weather station. Here's the link for portland: http://audioplayer.wunderground.com/wh6ko/StHelens.mp3.m3u . I wish that there was better local programming anywhere. I don't know what I want though, really. What would be better?

10) I have no idea how to dress myself. Thank god for Yolanda buying all of my clothes. She's actually made clothes shopping somewhat of an enjoyable experience for me.

11)I like dipping foods into other foods, or foods that involve dipping.

12)I have toes that overlap in a grotesque way. My fourth toes have "sectioned" toenails due to this where there's a seam in the middle and two different textures.

13)Lately I have been misspelling words when writing them by mixing up the order of the letters. That's never really happened before.

14)I worry about not being a very good friend to my friends because I don't call anyone or contact anybody, even though I think about my friends a lot and care about them very much.

15)Sometimes I'll click "home" in my web browser to go to my iGoogle home page. When that's not satisfying in terms of entertainment or information, I'll click "home" again, expecting a different result, I guess. The same page will load, and I'll click "home" again, thinking i just need to refresh it, and something good will come up. I do this until I realize that it's not going to change. This happens at least once a day, and it's probably a sign of internet addiction.

16)I like the idea of being a survivalist, and sometimes hope for some kind of apocalyptic event so I don't have to have a job. I think that I'd be better at running around and hiding than whatever it is I end up doing if I ever graduate college.

17)I drink at least 3 hot beverages a day, generally twice as many as that, even in summer, and I still make terrible coffee.

18)I love text messaging, sending and receiving. Words, pictures, videos. I set up my email to forward to my text messages so I would get more. Text me at five oh three eight four one 7350 why doncha? a joke or something. You can email me a text message.

19)I HATE bumper stickers, each and every one of them.

20)I don't remember how to do any physics, calculus, japanese, or probably general chemistry and I just spent the last 2 years sweating over all of that shit. I hope I really don't need it.

21)I don't like discussing music or movies with most people, because I don't think I am a movie snob, I am just hard to please. People think that I am knowledgable on these subjects - I don't know shit about either. I have seen some films I like and heard some albums I enjoyed, but there's a lot that I didn't and I hate having to defend my opinion in endless and useless discussions/arguments. That said, when it was pointed out to me that I was a grump and more recently that I can ruin things people like by pointing out nitpicky details (sorry yolanda), I resolved to keep my opinion to myself unless asked, and be more careful of my words and comments.

22)There's been a couple of occasions where i have forgotten that my dad died. Where i thought, oh I should call dad I should ask him about that. Oh yeah, I can't do that.

23) I don't floss enough, even though I know the risks and don't have dental insurance anymore.

24)I don't think I read enough books even though I there are many books that I fee have influenced me greatly. For some reason I have this sense that if I don't discover a book on my own or it was written in the last couple decades than it has no merit. Again, I am talking out of my ass and know just about nothing on the subject of literature.

25)I love winding my watch and wished that I had a hundred watches. I really like clocks and watches, but at the same time wish that things were much simpler and that we didn't depend on watches and schedules and that things moved at a much slower pace. From my bed I have the time on 6 devices, and the temperature on 4. Three of them show the temp in my room, they all disagree by about a half degree. It's about 63. (62, 63.1, 63.5). The barometric pressure is 30.5 inches. Humidity in my bedroom is just under 50%. There is a winter snow warning for the valley floor for tuesday morning.

26) These weren't random. This took me about 2 hours to type out, which means I thought about it a lot and edited it and it was greatly biased. I tried to do it randomly with a random number generator and searching my computer with the numbers but I got things like "My dad has a friend named Dave Parker".

2009-02-09T19:06:00.000-08:00

I was finally able to get a picture of this window at school. This is on the window of a basement level classroom in Milam Hall. I like to imagine the scenario that sparked enough anger to write this on the window in dry erase marker. Today the light was right and there was noone in the classroom.

Don't Do It!

2009-02-04T23:32:00.000-08:00

Don't let this recipe fool you, unless you like molten chewy bits that get crispy and sharp almost immediately. Not even a heaping lump of frosting helped. Now the house smells weird.

Also, while your at it, avoid the DS game Personal Trainer: Cooking unless you like white wine vinegar a lot. I've made two salad recipes (foolproof, right?) from it and both have been so vinegary that they been inedible, or felt like I was eating vomit. I am not trying to be dramatic, it was really that acidic. The potato salad was more onions that potato.

That's all.

im wearing a lab coat

2009-01-29T14:40:00.001-08:00

im wearing a lab coat and doing tasks that require i wear it, while being paid money for it! professional scientist!

New Time Lapse

2009-01-27T18:11:00.001-08:00

It was very clear last night, so I tried time lapsing the night sky. That picture is a link to the movie. The top of the tree looks fake but it's not. I used iStopmotion 2 and my Nikon D50, taking a 15 second exposure every 30 seconds, out my bedroom window. Does the beauty of the cosmos make you feel insignificant ? There's a lot of light pollution from the 1,000,000 lights and porch lights in my apartment complex.

The Snuggie Works

2009-01-26T18:50:00.001-08:00

I'm able to stay pretty warm and do my stupid homework!

Picasa for mac

2009-01-24T22:30:00.000-08:00

I'm trying out the "blog this!" feature of Picasa for mac, which seems like a pretty solid program so far.

A Few Things

2009-01-16T22:45:00.000-08:00

1) Today in my organic chemistry class it was getting towards the end of the lecture, and I was dozing off and half paying attention, when my teacher begain talking about the origin of some substance. He said it showed up about 65 years ago, during WWII, as a biproduct of the Manhattan Project. I perked up immediately and was glued to his every word, because you see I always get the Manhattan Project, which is the development of the atomic bomb, mixed up with The Philidelphia Experiment, a conspiracy theory about a top secret Naval invisibility project that involves teleportation and brainwashing. I thought either "Wow, it's real!" or "Wow, he's totally screwing with us!". This euphoria lasted about a minute until he said the words "atomic bomb" and I realized my mistake, and why every one else wasn't jumping out of their seats. I literally looked around after he said it to gauge the class's response, like "Are you hearing this?!"

2)I put together this ipod dock from an old metal box I had saved and the black foam that was inside of it. I like clocks a lot (in fact, from my bed this second, I can see 5 different clocks in my room, not including my cell phone) and there's a bunch of clock apps for the ipod/iphone, but how to display them without running down the battery? The answer is "a dock". Docks are expensive though. I had this idea to use the tin, and I looked up to see if any one had used an altoid box, which one guy had. He reminded me that the ipods come with dock adapters now, (that white thing on the bottom) which made the project easy and I think nicer looking. And it was no extra money. It'll be even better when its all glued into place. I am pleased as punch.

3) My waders came in the mail, and I get to try them out tomorrow for the first time at Alsea Falls and some other place, for my aquatic entomology class. Last week was a lot of fun. Should be cold. If they look too big, it's because they are. Waders are sized very strangely: as the foot size increases, so does height and waist size, as if you're feet get longer the fatter you get. So while I have big feet, I am not hyper obese. I have no choice though, and the ones I wore last week worked just fine. I guess I wont' be wearing them just around town like I had planned, though, as pants.

4) I put together this Obama desktop wallpaper today after I clicked on the link for the first official presidential portrait taken with a digital camera, and saw that the image was fairly high resolution. If you have a Mac and a dock on the bottom, his eyes are blocked. I made another one, but really, who cares? I made it while putting off doing homework.

What's New?

2009-01-12T21:48:00.001-08:00

Here's some things that are new with me:

-New Job: I now assist Ms. Angela Gardino with some predatory mite research. My duties include: collecting spider mites from lima bean plants to feed to our predatory mite colonies, transferring adult females onto new colony trays, planting new plants to infest with spider mites, and lots of other things. I get to use a microscope a lot, which is fun. I also get more hours and am paid 9% more.

-New Classes: I am taking an aquatic entomology class this term, which is totally fun so far. We had a field trip on saturday to a couple of wet spots on OSU experimental forest land, and got a bunch of critters from ponds and rivers, including dragonfly, mayfly and stonefly larvae, as well as some diving water beetles and giant water bugs. One guy got a water scorpion, which we thought was a stick. This all involved wearing waders and sloshing about in the creek with nets and forceps. It was pretty cold out still, but I wore 2 layers of thermal underwear and was fine. I ordered my own set of waders that evening. They should be here thursday. My other two classes, Stats and Organic Chemistry, are totally boring and I have a very hard time paying attention in them. My stats class requires this ridiculous remote to answer questions live during the lecture. It costs $53 and I have no idea why we're using it, other than to keep us watching the lecture, since the questions are worth points.

-New Socks: Yolanda got me a lot of thick warm socks for xmas and they've been great.

-New Worries:I feel like I am becoming increasingly forgetful and worrysome. I have left stoves burning on a few occasions over the last couple of months. And while I've been out, if i can't remember turning off the burners, all I can think of is the house burning down. I think that my diet has actually improved over the last couple of months, since I am eating a lot more at home (mostly curry and things that I can make at the beginning of the week and eat over the month, so its not that. Its not that I am forgetful, I just don't remember details about things I did. Did I lock the door? Did I put the dog away? Did I cover the microscopes? Did I lock the lab? It's a little troubling. I haven't really looked into it yet. I also seem to be really distracted while driving, and much wimpier at it.

-New Love for Tea: I've never really enjoyed tea all that much, but recently I decided I needed to cut back on coffee because I was going to class and feeling very, very anxious after I had a cup in the morning. Also, the coffee maker in the apartment here burns the coffee really quickly if you make a small amount, and I can't drink a pot so I was just wasting it. I got a bunch of tea from safeway and grocery outlet and its been very nice to have some variety in my hot beverages. I also found a Bodum Tea Press at goodwill for 2.99 (retail 24.99) that makes a 4 mugs worth from 2 teabags, and fits perfectly onto my electric mugwarmer, and stops steeping with a plunger, so I can make tea just how I like it, plunge it to stop steeping, and keep it hot for a while.

Some new reading: here's some new blogs that I've been reading and enjoying lately, some of them are probably well known already, I make no claims to being on the cutting edge of anything anymore as it takes too much effort and it's just not that important to me:

ikeahacker

BibliOddysey

Thinking For a Living

ColourLovers: Palletes

I hope you're well. It's been a long time since I've talked to a lot of my friends and family, but you are all still near and dear to my heart.

We've had some snow

2008-12-26T17:29:00.000-08:00

Portland's had record snowfall this december. It seemed like it was going to be awesome at first and then it got pretty obnoxious for a dozen reasons:
-flights were delayed and cancelled, X-mas plans were cancelled
-GREs got cancelled and delayed
-cars got snowed into driveways
-cars getting stuck in the snow on my street every hour or so, including us last night on the way back from christmas (grabbed the shovel and dig dig dig dig)(someone just slid out just now, I heard it).
-getting cabin fever
-the dog getting cabin fever
-I didn't bring much clothes with me from Corvallis, especially shoes other than converse, which means soggy walks in the snow.
-missed work, missed paychecks
-not missed work means slogging to work in the slush and ice, on unpredictable bus routes.
-leaky shoes
-all anyone is talking about is the snow and how much we're all sick of it.
-all anyone is talking about is how the Portland area sure is ill prepared for snow.

The Good things have been:
-its been pretty (now its gross dirty slush
-it hasn't felt as cold as it does when its raining all the time
-hung out more with roomates who are sick of looking at the internet
-stomping the ice layer to bits
-adventurous hikes to Safeway, pretending that we're in a post apocalyptic snow world, and we're out of ammo, and the few drivers we see are dead and are just rolling down inclines.
-fires in the fireplace
-eating a lot at home (mostly puff pastries)
-learning to put on snow chains and getting some experience driving in the snow
-

Still, we had a little fun. Here's some pictures of all that snow. If you live in an area that gets snow regularly, then you might think "that's not much snow". It may be true, but I don't care. It's more than Portland gets, which is next to none.

From Snow Day 2008

These next two I took today with the new lens, a Lensbaby Muse, that Yolanda got me for Xmas. I look forward to using it more when there is more to look at then snow and the things in my house.

And many more:

Snow Day 2008

So what seemed great a couple of weeks ago turned into a slushy mess. All this snow makes me glad that I didn't apply for a student research position in Antarctica that I saw posted.

2008-12-08T22:25:00.000-08:00

Here's over 350 very high resolution pictures of the surface of mars in 3D for you to ogle.

here's the pictures that I forgot to link to!

Alan Abel

2008-12-04T00:49:00.000-08:00

I guess this guy is fairly well known, but not well enough or he wouldn't have been able to pull all of these off. I first heard about him in March after an interview with him on the radio, that talked about his "Anti-Breastfeeding" hoaxes. Tonight I found a note I had written to remind myself to look him up. All of his hoaxes that were successful are pretty funny. I'd like to know what he tried and didn't work. I am glad to see that there's a documentary about him too.

Here's a timeline of Alan Abel's media hoaxes

and some examples:

Look!

2008-12-02T20:12:00.001-08:00

The guy in the pie grew a full beard in just over a week! As manly as apple pie.

impossible...lie...filling...She is....

2008-11-29T14:30:00.000-08:00

I came across this site today after googling for a character that Yolanda discovered called "Peanut Cereb", that's a lot like Banao. This site has high res scans of a lot of Japanese stationary, stickers and envelopes. I've been clicking through for over ten minutes and haven't seen half of them. Now instead of paying the high prices of Kinokuniya and Mitsuwa, you can print them out at your leisure. Enjoy!

thanksgiving 2008

2008-11-28T17:21:00.000-08:00

Our thanksgiving party was a lot of fun. I think we had about 20 people which is way more than I thought we'd have. There was a LOT of food and after we ate, most people just stared at the thanksgiving-themed iPhoto slideshow I was running on the television (which you can order as a DVD from me for $1.99 if you'd like, just drop me an email). Almost everybody made a hand-turkey which I thought was great, because I thought most people were going to make fun of them. Here's a picture of the wall of them:

From turkey 2008

Also, we have leftovers! even after a lot of people took food with them. Here's a picture of a very small portion of them, which was breakfast this morning:

From turkey 2008

we have a about a turkey and a half left, a whole pumpkin pies, cookies, a whole thing of stuffing, potatoes, two things of gravy, an entire tofurkey, a dozen rolls, and that's all I can think of. 2 yorkshire puddings too. Thanks everybody who came for all the delicious food and delicious company! I was very glad to see all of you. Thanks also to everybody who somehow made the plates and cups disappear. When I went around with a bag to get loos garbage, there was nearly none to be found. A second thanksgiving miracle, after the Diane Keaton miracle.

Greenhouse Pictures

2008-11-28T16:42:00.000-08:00

Here's some photos of the greehouse that I took a few weekends ago while I was weekend watering, and a picture I snapped of myself while washing pots. I washed 1164 and 50 flats in 4.5 hours, which is by far my personal record. That works out to about 4 pots a minutes, which includes scrubbing, washing transport to and from the pot washing room and stackking in pyramids of 36 to dry. If you're wondering what our lab does, I really couldn't tell you. Something about genetics and all that, small RNAs and viral replication. I honestly don't really know.Here's the website if you'd like to read all about it. My job is pretty good, and since minimun wage is increasing in Oregon in 2009, I'll get a raise. I can listen to my iPod a lot of the time and its warm.

From Blogger Pictures

do yourself a favor and

2008-11-21T13:36:00.001-08:00

do yourself a favor and listen to today's writer's almanac by garrison keeler, at npr's website for the poem at the end.

2008-11-19T11:28:00.001-08:00

Cha Cha actually paid me! it only took 5 months and 4 emails to get their attention. After that it was easy.

2008-11-15T17:41:00.000-08:00

link

a dozen spiders just ballooned

2008-11-15T11:21:00.001-08:00

a dozen spiders just ballooned into my face. this is what mobile blogging is about.

MRE

2008-11-12T21:58:00.001-08:00

For my food science and technology in western culture class, my group is doing a presentation on the development of the MRE or Meal Ready to Eat. If you don't know, it's what troops are given when they are away from any kind of kitchen or cafeteria. One of my group members purchased one tonight, and I though that the instructions on the heating unit were pretty funny.

Cyclops Copepod

2008-11-11T22:05:00.000-08:00

I picked up a couple of these ladies by accident the other day while trying to capture some diving beetles in the park (i caught 2 of those). It's been so rainy that a couple of gigantic puddles have appeared in tanbarky and leafy areas. Even after only a day, they were ripe with invertebrate life.

This gal is a Copepod, from the genus Cyclops, because of that red eye spot. The water droplet is about 4 mm across. She's also got a couple of egg sacs. They are crustaceans, and things like diving beetles and fish will eat them. I saw one paper when doing some quick research for this blog entry that suggests that they filtered diseases that might harm fish. The paper said that the cyclops would eat the actinospores, and the fish that consumed the copepods wouldn't contract the disease that they would from the lone actinospores. Pretty neat. When the camera is still, you can see the hundreds of even smaller organisms floating about in the droplet around the copepod. If anyone would like to buy me a light microscope so I can see what they are, please feel free. Xmas is right around the corner. Also, let that be a lesson to not drink out of puddles that might look clean. You might drink a trillion water fleas. I also managed to grab a lot of some kind of worm, but they didn't photograph well. Too shiny.

An aquatic entomology class was added for the winter term and I am very excited. However, if I take it, I probably won't have time to take botany as well. I have to take botany for some other classes. If I kept them both, I would have a 16 credit load of Botany, Aquatic Ent, 2nd term Organic Chemisty, and statistics. I don't think I should try it but I really really really want to take it and its not always offered. My advisor said that I could probably move botany to next winter, but it looks to me like botany is a pre-req for some other classes that I need to take.

He'll be in stitches

2008-11-10T19:33:00.001-08:00

My funny joke will most likely result in my roomate Tim's finger being busted. It's not even a real peanut butter cup. I ate the candy and filled the foil with tissue, because it was too heavy to put on the platform.

Another note about the traps: the package says "No bait required". I assume they mean because they've put the fake cheese there. I think that that is funny.

3-Deatrice and other things

2008-11-08T20:45:00.000-08:00

From 3d

cross your eyes until the 2 pictures overlap. if you are having trouble, use your thumb to cover the picture, so that you can see the left picture with your left eye and right picture with your right eye. Then focus on your thumb. Slowly, lower your thumb and the 3-D picture will be behind it.

I've been working on this instead of homework.

We've had mice in our apartment the last two days. You think we live in squalor now but we really don't, it's very tidy. Tim saw the first one yesterday afternoon run through the dining room. He yelled "there's a mouse in the house!" and I locked Beatrice in my bedroom before she could get mouse-disease. We had it cornered under the oven with bowls ready but it somehow vanished. We pulled the oven out and it was nowhere, and we DID see it under the oven, so who knows. We talked to maintenence but they said it'd be Monday before they came over. We bought some classic mousetraps from safeway, and i'd just listened to the Radiolab podcast about "Building a Better Mousetrap" and they said the classic ones work. They do! We've killed two in two days. Tim heard the first one die. Somehow they are getting in under the sink, probably through the dishwasher. I also spotted a hole in the back of the cabinet where we keep the potatoes. The potatoes weren't bad but I threw them out, because they likely had plague.

I had brunch with my brother and his friends this morning for his 30th birthday. It was delicious and fun. I also had a lovely drive back to corvallis. I snapped many pictures with my phone but they mostly turned out lame.

Tea

2008-11-05T19:30:00.000-08:00

I got some tea from the Dollar Store, 100 bags for a dollar. It's not bad, but what I really like about it is that it's so weak that I can put a bag in my thermal mug and leave it there for hours and it doesn't get all over steeped and bitter.

i just found a geocaching

2008-10-29T11:57:00.001-07:00

i just found a geocaching prize by accident. all that was inside was an explanation. i thought it was drugs.

Mantises

2008-10-29T11:15:00.000-07:00

This has been a good month for mantises in my neighborhood. I came across five of them in total on my walks with Beatrice without even really looking. Most of them were hanging out on the path, and one landed right on my hand while i was bagging up another one.
All of them are the European Mantis, or Mantis religiosa, which is pretty common across the united states.

"From "National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Insects & Spiders" (1), p. 397:

This mantid was accidentally introduced in 1899 on nursery stock from southern Europe. At a time when Gypsy Moth Caterpillars were burgeoning in the eastern states, it was recognized almost immediately as a beneficial predator. However, mantids are so cannibalistic that they are rarely numerous enough to have much effect in depleting caterpillar populations."

I caught four and kept them alive for awhile, hoping that they'd laid ootheca, or egg sacs. In the meantime, i brought them to the Bug Zoo so some of the students could take them to outreaches. They went to two. They were a hit at the garden themed night, but at the one I went to, the kinds were unimpressed since most of them live in the country and see them a lot. Ooo la la!

From creepy crawlies

This girl above (all four were girls, says Mike from the bugzoo) laid an ooth. Another one died, possibly of an injury, possibly of dehydration, possibly of starvation. One died while trying to lay an ooth. The ooth comes out as foam and then hardens, exactly like that polyurethane sealer foam you can buy in a can. It's also sticky, and mike found her stuck to the side of the container, with a failed ooth binding her feet and wings. I gassed her and the one that laid the ooth and pinned them up. The remaining one is still alive but she's not nearly as fat as the other ones, so I don't think that she'll lay any eggs.

Two days ago I found a wooly bear caterpillar from the species Pyrrharctia isabella. There's an old wives' tale, according to Peter Haggard who wrote Insects of the Pacific Northwest that says "The wider the band (of orange), the colder the winter." By the looks of the this one, it will be a moderate to very cold winter. This one's dead though because the remaining mantis has been snacking on it.

From creepy crawlies

I didn't expect her to eat it but I threw it in to see what would happen. I also didn't expect it to live very long because it kept flipping itself upside down. You can see in the picture that the mantis has her modified arms, which are big hooks, dug right into the side of the caterpillar, and her forelegs folded back. She's also eating it upside down which is pretty neat. Whenever the wooly bear would stir. She'd dig in again. I'm glad to see that she's eating.

In other insect news, Beatrice found some kind of what I think is a spider's sac in the grass, and we took it home and put it into a plastic bag to see what comes out. I'll let you know.

gross

2008-10-27T22:50:00.000-07:00

I just saw an article on the ny times about little kids getting kidney stones and they showed that picture. I had no idea they looked like that. I immediately chugged a liter of water.
Also, the dog threw up a bunch of cheese all over my shoulder this evening, and then in the carpet. It smelled terrible. After I cleaned it up, she peed on the spot. It was a nice deposit before it was a fee. Thanks, puppy.

Happy Scare Day

2008-10-26T00:04:00.000-07:00

this thing autoplayed so I got rid of it.

2008-10-24T21:32:00.001-07:00

My neighbor Gil passed away yesterday. It's pretty sudden, though he'd recently been diagnosed with cancer and he was doing his best to fight it. I talked to his wife Maggie for a little while tonight, and while she was sad, she is happy that he has some relief.

Although I complained at length about how annoying it was that he'd tell me to mow my lawn, he was a genuinely nice man who would do anything for anybody, and I did appreciate his help although I often accepted it begrudgingly. He was the first new friend I made in Portland, as I met him the second day I was in town. When he wasn't telling me how to fix the yard or how to deal with other neighbors, he was telling me great stories about his past, gossiping about the neighborhood, or getting the dog riled up. He will be missed.

OSU and Google Earth

2008-10-11T23:04:00.000-07:00

I've been putting off homework all afternoon. Instead of doing homework, I put together this little tour of my daily life at school. You'll need Google Earth to see it. You can click on the locations in the left hand menu to read descriptions of the places. Double Click em to get customize zooms and angles picked by me! Enjoy!

Get Google Earth

Download the Tour

Bug Zoo

2008-10-01T22:48:00.000-07:00

Tonight was the first meeting of the Oregon State Bug Zoo, which is a club on campus that raises some live insects as well as keeps a collection of preserved insects, and goes to schools in the area to educate people about insects and other arthropods.

Currently there are about 12 members. I volunteered to be Secretary this evening, which means that I take notes at the meeting. Another job was Minister of Propaganda, but I figured that I would just help with that rather than being official, because I felt like it would ultimately turn into more work than I wanted to do. I am also in charge of feeding the darkling beetles (which are adult mealworms) and the thorny sticks. The collection of live insects is particularly impressive. They have a whole lot of stick insects, mostly spiny and thorny, the kinds that look like big leaves. One of them crawled all over my face. It's a good club. The members are all very friendly once you get them talking. They're also very proud of the club. I am happy to be a member.

It's started raining here which is welcome. I am tired of these 80 degree days. I am anxious to get my bike this weekend, although the tips that tim gave me for parking worked out well this morning. I was able to find parking in the dirt lot two times.

Day 2 of OSU

2008-09-30T18:20:00.000-07:00

I received some training for my new job this morning. I work in the West Greenhouses, in the Botany and Plant Pathology dept. My duties include cleaning pots and trays, filling them with soil (i did that today), planting seeds, thinning plants, watering plants, and keeping the greenhouse clean. It seems pretty straightforward. There are things to worry about like which seeds to plant where and how many but there are explicit directions regarding those things and for the most part things are well labeled. I have to watch some training videos next tuesday, and then I work every tuesday and thursday, from 10-4, before I have Food Science in Western Culture, which is going to be an interesting class. It's in a room near the agriculture area of the school, which means it smells like a giant barnyard. Here's the greenhouses from the top:

View Larger Map

I have been to all of my classes now, and none of them seem particulary daunting. Organic Chemistry seems to be the hardest, but I have heard now from a number of people that the teacher that I have is awesome, so I am excited about that. My anthropology class is entirely on videos, so I can just watch them all online. I only have to show up once a week.

The dog is slowly calming down and getting used to apartment living. She whines a lot when I leave, which she may have done in PDX, but I wasn't worried about it because I didn't have neighbors sharing a wall. I haven't had any complaints yet. There are many pets in the complex.

The bus system here sort of sucks. It's free for students, but it's a one way loop. It's only scheduled every hour, and is late generally, and usually empty also. I've only used it for two days and probably saw waiting for the bus a total of 2 hours, which is crazy. That doesn't include the time I took waiting for my classes. I have to catch a bus at 7:55am for a 9am class, because the 8:55 one would get me there at 9:10am. My assigned seat in Ecology (the 9am class) is right in the front row of a 200 seat auditorium that's full, so being late would be very awkward. Tim gave me some tips on free parking today which work out well because all of the places he pointed out are very close to all of my classes and work. This all won't be a problem after I get my bike this weekend, which may be its own problem when it starts raining. Who knows.

The dog is now walking around my desk. She hopped up on my lap and then on the desk. What a pest.

From beatrice

Moved In

2008-09-27T14:24:00.000-07:00

So far so good. Moved into my apartment in Corvallis, got some food, found a bed this morning in the shopping center right across the street for $109. The only drawback is that I miss Yolanda and Portland terribly. It's been less than 24 hours. I don't know anybody here and don't know my way around. I know where the Safeway is, because it's across the street. Also, I drove to WinCo this morning, so I know where that is.

Tim, my new roomate, is incredibly friendly and has made the move very easy. He told me about the mattress store across the street and saved me a ton of time and money. He also showed me where I can get a large bucket of fried rice for 1.50. Tonight his mother and some other people are coming over and we are having steak and potatoes for dinner, which I am looking forward to.

I am very anxious about starting school. I start on monday at 9 am. I also have my new job training on Tuesday. I was hired to work in the greenhouse which I think means watering plants, but I guess we'll see. I am happy to have a job that is remotely related to science. I am also very nervous about screwing something up.

I am picking up the dog tomorrow and bringing her to Corvallis for awhile. I am afraid that she'll bark when she hears closing doors and things like that but it's actually very quiet, so I think that she'll do ok. There are a lot of other dogs around so perhaps I can set up play dates.

I feel anxious but it may be because I drank a half a pot of coffee. I am also sore because I slept on my floor last night and I forgot to bring pillows. I bought a couple of pillows at the BiMart earlier today. I feel like I want school to start so I have something to do, but I also don't want school to start because I'm nervous. Blech. I still have to figure out the bus system. Walking to school apparently takes about a half an hour to 45 minutes. I plan on testing that out this evening and finding my classrooms, because the campus is gigantic and everything looks pretty much the same.

From PCWorld:

2008-09-26T00:47:00.000-07:00

Xinhua Runs Spacewalk Story Before Astronauts Leave Earth

Bill Nye spotted on BART

2008-09-13T17:20:00.001-07:00

Bill Nye spotted on BART leaving SFO! Yolanda and i were too starstruck to talk to him but he winked at me when I smiled.

Ha Ha

2008-09-11T23:28:00.000-07:00

You have to have the password written on your hand to get here

Go Water Bears!

2008-09-08T23:07:00.000-07:00

They're my favorite team!

"MASTER of survival. Can withstand pressures six times greater than those at the bottom of the ocean and endure temperatures ranging from more than 100 °C down to absolute zero. Can shrug off lethal radiation, survive in a vacuum and go without water for more than a century."

'Water bears' are first animal to survive vacuum of space

LHC on September 10

2008-09-08T22:45:00.001-07:00

you can watch a live webcast of the Large Hadron Collider being turned on at around 3:30 am eastern time.

From the NY Times:

At stake is a suite of theories called the Standard Model, which explains all of particle physics to date, but which breaks down at the conditions that existed in the earliest moments of the universe. The new collider will eventually reach temperatures and energies equivalent to those at a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. There are many theories about what will happen, including the emergence of a particle known as the Higgs boson, which is hypothesized to endow other particles with mass, or the identity of the mysterious dark matter that provides the invisible scaffolding of galaxies and the cosmos.

But nobody really knows for sure, which is part of the fun, but which has led to a few alarming claims that the collider could spit out a black hole or some other accidental phenomenon that could end the Earth or the universe. Those claims have been vigorously rebutted by a series of safety reports and studies, the most recent of which was published last week in The Journal of Physics G: Nuclear and Particle Physics, a peer-reviewed journal.

The director general of CERN, Robert Aymar, said in a news release, “The LHC is safe, and any suggestion that it might present a risk is pure fiction.”

Pretty exciting. It's the biggest, most expensive science experiment to date. Some of the doomsayers have been sending scientists involved death threats. See you on the 11th? Maybe?

he just came back and

2008-09-04T16:54:00.001-07:00

he just came back and took the wrapper!

a man just gave me

2008-09-04T16:52:00.001-07:00

a man just gave me a free ice cream bar!

Crazy Day

2008-09-03T21:24:00.000-07:00

Had a pretty interesting day.

It started off early with taking Bea to the vet for a couple of red patches on her skin. She's got a skin infection so she has to get some topical spray as well as take antibiotics AND benadryl for like two weeks. It knocked her out cold, so the next two weeks should be pretty quiet. It's already starting to clear up.

I also got an email from a job I applied to at a lab at OSU about 4 months ago, doing things like cleaning lab equipment and assisiting a little on some research for a botany professor. They want to interview me next week.

In the same instant that I was reading the email text I got on my phone, I got rear ended, in Yolanda's car. The bumpers were perfectly aligned so there was no damage at all that I could tell, and she just barely bumped me so I can't imagine that I have whiplash. It was as good as a rear ending could go. The woman, mimi, said that she was passing by a place that a friend of her's used to work, before she died about a month ago. She was very embarrassed and apologetic and didn't have proof of insurance.

At work I was able to very easily switch a shift to get time off for the interview. Thanks Gabby.

The Apple store also called and said that my computer had arrived and I could pick it up whenever I pleased. I did that tonight. It's as they said a brand new macbook, in a retail box. However, this one is a 2.4 core 2 duo, with 2 gigs of ram, a 160 gig hard drive, a superdrive that burns dual layer dvds. It's a huge upgrade for no charge. I bought my old MacBook in May of 2007. In August of 2008 they completely replaced it. Let this be a lesson to naysayers: PURCHASE APPLECARE!

This screen is not flickery at all! Hooray! What a day!

apple comes through

2008-08-27T17:19:00.000-07:00

so i took my computer to the apple store today to see if they could finally fix my flickering screen problem. I showed up for my appointment and one of the techs said that he'd take it in the back and check it out, which worried me because I often have trouble replicating the problems for them, since the flickering is unpredictable. I also took it in for a chunkt and clicky trackpad button, but that had also been quiet all day.

After about a minute he came back and said "how would you like a new computer?" and i said "I'd love one". so he gave me the chance to backup my computer and bring it back in a couple of days, after they get the clearance and tags to send it back, at which point I will receive a new laptop from them. Since the one they sell now is better than mine, i get an upgrade to a core 2 duo 2.0 ghz macbook (currently I have the core duo). I imagine it will also have a superdrive, which mine has, which I believe means I will gain dual-layer burning as well. I will just keep my ram upgrade since it will work in the new one and they'd like the old ram back if I have it. The only thing that I am disappointed about is that I like the keyboard layout on my current computer more than the layout on Yolanda's newer Macbook. Also, this doesn't mean it's free of defects - Yolanda's had her computer since December, and one of the USB ports stopped working, and the entire thing periodically shuts down without warning. We are taking it in so it's fixed while we are in SF.

He said he is also putting apple care on it, but I don't know if that means extending my coverage or just porting over what I have.
It occurred to me that if I hold out a few more weeks then potentially I could get one of the new macbooks that are supposedly coming out in september, but honestly, I don't want to push my luck. It took 5 trips to the apple store to get this far and I feel like if I cancel this work order, the next guy may not want to do this. I asked about replacement computers once before, since they only thing I have left on this one that was what I initially purchased is the screen, and they said that it was very rare. The guy today said they can replace it because it's a refurbished model. Also, given the quality of apple's latest hardware, the iphone 3gs, i don't think I want the first generation new macbook.

The new computer's not in my hands yet, so I am still wary, but things look good. I got a work order number from him today. Now I am just waiting for a phone call from them to tell me that I can bring it in.

Tonight we are going to see Richard Swift, and tomorrow Sondre Lerche. The last time we saw them at the doug fir they both played amazing shows. Tomorrow is also Yolanda's and my four year anniversary.

I was offered the job today at the OSU/ONID computer help desk, and I am still deciding whether or not to take it. When I considered trying to help people over the phone with a system that I myself will have only the day before been introduced to, while moving to a new town and starting four classes at a new school, I thought that I was setting myself up for exhaustion. Plus the job sounds shitty now that I know they are really busy.

KOFY

2008-08-26T14:43:00.001-07:00

This jingle goes through my head at least once a day:

i understand that the dogs are back after a long absence.

These were my favorite cookies when I was six. I'll say that they still are.

Shanghai Bummer

2008-08-20T22:46:00.000-07:00

Tonight we had an outing with our coworkers where Trader Joe's bought us pizza and beer at Old Town Pizza and then we took a tour of the Portland Underground, also known as the Shanghai Tunnels, a system of underground passageways where Portlanders in the 1850s were kidnapped and sold into slavery on ships.

Tonight was a perfect example of why I don't like to hang out with most of my coworkers. A good amount of them got drunk and acted like obnoxious 12 year olds while the tour was going on, trying to out-do each other for attention or make out with each other. I would have loved to hear what the very nice guide, who was passionate about what he was telling us, was saying but i couldn't over a group of drunk, disugusting idiots making catcall noises, wandering away, talking about how they had to pee, and making terrible jokes. Would have been a lot of fun, thanks for ruining it by making everyone there really uncomfortable and embarrassed for the group. Yolanda pointed out a couch that one of the girls was laid out on was from one of the first whorehouses in Portland and people probably exchanged all sorts of diseases on it and/or died on it, which was comforting but annoying that she was laying down on it.

If anyone would like to try to go on the tour again, i'd really like to go check it out again. I also plan on volunteering with them so I can spot this ghost that's supposed to be down there.

Also, now the clicker bar on my macbook is loose and chunky. Holy shit, man.

A collection of found notes

2008-08-18T11:44:00.000-07:00

After reading Found magazine, one usually gets into the habit of scanning the ground for notes and debris that might be funny or interesting. I found a pretty good gem by the registers at work this week. Here's the front of it:

I was reading this side to Yolanda, and she was laughing like crazy, which I thought was weird because it's not that funny. It's even sort of sweet. Finally she yelled "Turn it around!!"

I looked around for the people depicted in the drawing, but nobody matched. Nobody that I work with is named anything close to "Heime".

Yolanda found this one at Goodwill a few days ago. It's a pretty major mistake, and a good lesson learned.

Here's one that Yolanda had found when she worked as a buyer at Buffalo Exchange. She said that she found it in the pocket of a pair of jeans a guy was trying to sell. She found it an kept it and had to hold back her laughter until he was out of the store:

In case you can't read it, it says "These jeans aren't mine. They probably belonged to some other girl you were fucking - perhaps someone you met through the personal ad you posted while you were still living with/ sponging off me."

This is one that Jimmy found somewhere.

"45 - 65 - 60; Wife complaining in Morning. Did not feel like much got done during day + distracted in the evening; 55 Tired"

This last one is one that jimmy and I found while attending De Anza College, in Cupertino. It was probably around 2002. It was taped to a table warning about the carpet, but we took it anyway:

I think that the handwriting is pretty neat.

I've found some others in the past, such as a grocery list where the item "gas pills" was underlined 3 times, and another one warning that if someone ever saw dog poo on the sidewalk again, the owner would get their face pushed in it, but I don't have scans of those.

hot time, summer in the city

2008-08-17T00:12:00.000-07:00

Friday:

Saturday:

Hooray!

2008-08-15T16:17:00.000-07:00

I just confirmed our reservation for the Preview Days for the members at the Cal. Academy of Sciences. Yolanda and I are in the first available slot, Sunday Sept 14 at 9am. We are not required to leave the academy at anytime, the slots are for crowd control, so we can spend the max amount of time there all day.

Email to Phone: Fixed!

2008-08-15T12:27:00.000-07:00

I fixed the problem. I noticed that when I emailed myself a reminder to download "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid" on Noel's suggestion, i saw that the email was from my number @vtext.com, since it was a text message, not @vzwpix.com, like the picture messages. So i tried that and it works like a dream. The only drawback is that it's the size of a text message instead (160 chars). I can look at gmail through my phone via the browser, but now I can screen them before I check it.

We went dancing at Soul Night last night a Rotture, it was a lot of fun but very hot. Today's supposed to be hotter, like 105. Yolanda and I cleaned the pool this morning and now we are filling it up. It's looking like it's more lever and less wrinkly. Also, not slimy!

Recents events and things of notes in my life:

2008-08-12T21:50:00.000-07:00

1)This summer's season of "The Mole" wrapped up last night and I found it to be very satisfying in terms of who won and who the mole was (that link's a spoiler, if you care), but even more satisfying in terms of who didn't win. It was a good season overall. I didn't think it was as gripping as the Australian seasons, but I enjoyed putting the time aside each monday to watch it. Since i download most shows now, and think even more shows are just plain garbage, it's nice to have something regular to look forward to each week. Pushing Daisies is starting again in October, and Yolanda and I like that show too.

2)Tangre moved in yesterday seemingly seemlessly. We found a mattress for her today in Aloha and got it home thanks to my brother's/dad's bronco. That car is great fun and terrifying to drive. The steering is nearly 45 degrees off of true, it's very wide, and the only gauge (<-- hard word to spell) that works is the speedometer. It's got a battery voltage and another gauge that I'm not sure of, so they may have worked but probably not. It still contains a picture of mt dad, his sunglasses, his hat and many other articles that were in the car, as well as smells the same as always, so it's sort of like a mobile Sam Hedstrom museum. My brother got the license for Oregon that reads "8EIGHT", which is like the ones he had in CA and NV that read "8EIGHTS".

3)I booked Yolanda's and my trip to California for the Grand Opening of the California Academy of Sciences this afternoon. I had seen a very good offer to stay at the Nikko Hotel in SF (the hotel behind the forementioned "8 Eights") but when I went to book the rooms today, they were priced at almost twice as much, so instead of paying all that, I booked us an extra day at the Kabuki Hotel in Japan Center. We'll be there from the 13th to the 18th, and from what I understand, can visit the Academy on the 14th, 15th and 17th, which is TEN DAYS before the rest of the people!

4) I have an interview soon with the Computer tech department at OSU to be a telephone helper to students for their computers. Apparently it's very easy, says my new roomate Timothy. I was honest in the application that said I had a very basic knowledge of fixing things and had mostly just done troubleshooting my friends and families computers, but was familiar with a lot of software, and had no experience with Vista or Linux. We'll see how it goes. It pays minimum wage. I'd like some kind of income while at school, however small.

That's all I can think of right now.

God Speed, Tortoise.

2008-08-11T12:59:00.000-07:00

I put Bernard on craigslist this morning at about 3 am and by 9:30 I had ten responses. This afternoon a very nice gentleman named Alan came and picked him up. Alan does reptile rescue and care for a few pet stores, but he said that he is going to keep Bernard with his 2 red footed tortoises, in an outdoor enclosure for the rest of the summer. He also has three red-eared sliders (which are apparently illegal in Oregon, because they are taking over ponds are are considered invasive.) He says that Bernard will be good for his daughter, and he will keep the name Bernard so not to confuse him.

Bernard lived in Danville, San Jose, Portland, and now Vancouver. He was a celebrity in my fifth grade classroom, and a quiet but smelly floormate to Liam.

Alan said that I can come see him in Washington whenever I want, or when I am done with school, I could have him back. Many of the responses I got were impressed that I had him for nearly two decades. I am as surprised as they are. It's been a hell of a ride, Bernard.

Free Work-arounds

2008-08-10T13:48:00.001-07:00

I thought I had found a way to get my email forwarded to my phone for free, since verizon wants to charge $9.99-$19.99 a month for that service, as well as the data charges you'd accrue while accessing it. I noticed that when I sent my brother an email from my phone, he'd replied at 5038417350@vzwpix.com, and I got the message. This is the same address that I use to send myself ringtones. So I tried sending myself an email there and I received it fine, even past 160 characters!

So i tried having my gmail account forward any email to that address and then leave it on the server. What happens though is very odd. Any message sent directly to my phone is just fine, but when something is forwarded to it, my phone reboots! My phone will shut down and start back up on it's own, and never receive a message, and google sends me a message that says that the delivery failed permanently. I think that's very odd. This is a similar problem that occurred when I first got the phone and wanted to be able to upload pictures directly to my blog. When google would send back a confirmation message, the phone would restart. Blogger fixed this problem by having an option to turn off the confirmation message, and that seemed to fix it. But now verizon added back in thier add for vzwpix.com which is generally longer than the blog posts!

So I tried it again with my hotmail account, thinking that maybe verizon just had a problem with google, and that worked! So i set up a dummy hotmail account that my gmail forwards to that forwards to my phone, and set up filters in my gmail account so i don't get the things like my OPB newsletter and the like. It took about a half hour to get this all working, but now i get emails on my phone that can include attachments like pictures for no extra charge (i called verizon to verify this) for free!

UPDATE! Oh I was wrong! new hotmail accounts only let you forward to other microsoft accounts! So i tried it with my OSU account and I get the same rebooting! This is just fine since I am not that busy that I need to answer email right away anyway. Blech.

Stinkbug Defense: It works

2008-08-06T13:58:00.000-07:00

Members of the insect order Hemiptera, family Pentatomidae, also known as Stinkbugs, will, in defense, squirt out a liquid if disturbed. For some species, this liquid is foul smelling. For others it is foul tasting.
Today I took Beatrice for a walk to Sacajawea Park at the end of our street to take a look at the wild blackberries that are growing there. They've been very green for awhile, but the ones in our backyard turned dark, so I thought that maybe the ones down the street would be dark as well. They are all still green, but there was one that was dark, so I plucked it off and threw it in my mouth. I immediately sensed that something was bitter, then hot, then wrong. I also sensed there was something extra in my mouth, so I spit it out and saw a small green brown pentatomid wriggling upside down in the dirt by my feet. I also spit out the blackberry. This wasn't surprising so much because I had found one a few days earlier on the same plant, on another ripe blackberry. I looked at some of the other blackberries and sure enough, there were two pairs mating and one watching them, perhaps waiting his turn. Apparently they love blackberries.

Another Laffs-o-Liam Klassic

2008-08-05T20:44:00.000-07:00

From April 25, 2007:

Macbook Screen Flickering

2008-08-02T23:31:00.000-07:00

I can't believe that my laptop screen is flickering again. I can't even defend their software anymore because the 2.0 firmware for ipod/iphone is slower and buggier than the hacked 1.1.4 firmware, and the apps crash 100% more than the homemade ones on Installer, which was < never. Fucking apple. My conclusion is: there are no computers that work well. When my laptop works, it works great, but this screen flicker is driving me bonkers. This will be the 4th time it's sent out to be fixed. I can't wait to sit in the apple store to try to reproduce it again for the guy in the utilikilt.

Yolanda's macbook, which is around nine months newer than mine, shuts itself off all the time as well as has some other problems. I can take mine in, but she has online homework daily, so she just has to deal with it until school's done.

Anybody looking to buy a Wii? My last hope was some kind of announcement at E3 about interesting games for it, but instead they announced another Wii Sports, Animal Crossing and Wii Music, which is like guitar hero or rock band, minus a score or any kind of challenge. I'll bet there's a peripheral to buy for it too (such as the $90 wii fit board, or the $25 zapper, $159 rock band, or $100 guitar hero, or the NEW add on that makes the controller better, probably $30) And animals crossing? I've played it twice already. I'm tired of nintendo's bullshit. Mario Kart Wii is just awful. Oh well. I think with all the games I have for it and on virtual console, and since nintendo is still purposefully trickling them out to store and keeping them in high demand, I can get about $500 for it on the ebay or craigslist. Thank god for that at least. I think I am over video games which makes me a little sad. I'm pretty happy with my old xbox and my DS, since i have every nes and snes game on the xbox (literally, all of them) and i can play the DS on the toilet. New video games make me bored and sad. What's strange is, I think to myself that I am happy playing the games of my youth over and over again, but that's the problem with newer games is that they are the same thing over and over again. I guess i'd just rather play the first ones in 2D, or that I don't need to learn a game again. At least the newest zeldas (minus twilight princess) have been good. I guess what I don't want to do is pay for video games.

Bah! Technology!

smells so hard

2008-07-29T11:54:00.001-07:00

It rained this morning after 25 days without rain, which is a pretty good stretch for here. It smells great outside! Inside it smells great because yolanda brought home a great big bag of rosemary (an entire Trader Joe's paper bag full, compliments of Lindsey's garden). Good smells all around. Kitchen smells good because I made waffles. I should have made rosemary waffles.

Plans for today:
1)get the dog's nails trimmed (1 pm)
2)wash the sheets
3)watch "Papillon"

Giving up on trying to give up coffee is much easier than giving up coffee. I tried to stop drinking coffee for a week because I as getting really anxious when I drank any at all, but that only lasted a day. I think while I am out today I will buy some decaffeinated and try that. Also, I can't find the bike pump.

I got some hiking done in the gorge yesterday. Kira and I did a 2.15 mile loop around Latourelle falls. Highlights included going off the trail to get a better look at the top of the falls and finding a demolished house covered in plants.

I am getting better at making thai salad rolls. The rice papers aren't as sticky as the wheat flour ones.

worked a little

2008-07-28T11:27:00.001-07:00

MyHeritage: Family trees - Genealogy - Celebs - Collage - Morph

I found this thing while i was trying out the new search engine cuil.com which is getting a lot of press. I didn't find this on cuil, i didn't find anything on cuil. When i google image search "chris hedstrom" you get a picture of mike barron as the number one result, and when you image search "mike barron" you get a couple of pictures of naked guys. Also, a link to a thing such as above.

Phone Macro

2008-07-22T12:52:00.000-07:00

I really like my phone's camera. I think it takes decent photos for what it is, and it does a very good autofocus, actually changing the distance from the lens to the sensor, which i think is pretty sophisticated for phone cameras. What it doesn't do, however, is take very good close ups of small objects.
I had an old fujifilm digital camera that stopped working about two years ago. That camera had served me well, but it became unreliable and wouldn't save the photos it was snapping. It had a switch on the side to enable it to take close up images of small objects. I imaged that the switch slid a tiny magnifying glass in front of the lens. My plan was to take that tiny piece and put it in place of the small swivel dustcover on phone's camera.

After I took the camera apart, i found it was simpler than that. The switched just slid the lens further from the sensor. This was disappointing because it made my project much more difficult, since the actual lens is about a centimeter in length, one solid piece of glass. After trying to hold it up to my phones lens and take pictures, i decided that punching a hold in some tape and adhering it to the phone would work better, and it did. Observe:

Here's some of the pictures, and a movie that I did.

The last thing is smaller than the size of a pinhead. There are hundreds of the all over the side of my house. I am going to keep my eye on them.

This is inside of a dandelion on my walkway. The longish looking thing looks like a Dermaptera (earwig) or perhaps a Staphylinid (rove beetle). The beetle sits still at the end because the lens is actually resting on him. The focus on anything, it has to be sitting right on the end of the lens, which makes it no good for stalking teeny-tinies.

I'm happy with the lens but i wish I had a way to attach it other than with tape, and that it didn't stick out so much. Oh well.

Dumb Dog Faces

2008-07-22T09:56:00.000-07:00

Took some pictures of the dog yesterday, and got some gems.

Here's More:

beatrice

2008-07-21T13:14:00.001-07:00

Anonymous Philanthropist Donates 200 Human Kidneys To Hospital

WASP knife

2008-07-19T18:50:00.000-07:00

This knife has a CO2 cartridge in the handle, and blasts whatever you stab it into with carbon dioxide. The idea is that if you are attacked by a bear or shark, you can stab it and it will inflate and explode their organs. I posted this professional video because
1)the guy's wearing a scuba outfit in his backyard
2)the picked the worst angle to show off this feature
3)the table is made of stumps
4)they spent all that time on stenciling WaSP onto the back of the table, and the rest of the table is made of stumps.

The knife is $400. Apparently the british police are convinced would be knife killers are going to use it on their victims. All they have to do is look for the scuba diver covered in spattered blood and watermelon with a pocket full of empty CO2 cartridges.

Got it!

2008-07-14T02:20:00.000-07:00

We finally had a night clear enough to see the international space station, and yolanda and I just saw it pass over, right through the big dipper and to the NE. Neat! The next pass is in an hour and a half, at 3:50 am. I think i'll skip it though.

Noel and Colby and I took the dog to Forest Park this evening, on a 2-3 mile walk through the woods. I got a couple of new beetles too. It was very cool in the park, which was good since it was about 90 in the sun, and beatrice would have boiled to death. Lots of people said she was cute. I don't know how to react to compliments to our dog. Usually I am not acknowledged, which is fair because I didn't really do anything but bring her to the spot where the other person happened to be. I think that its funny that when dog owners meet, we are expected to be friendly and talkative - about the dogs. I have never asked anyone's names or been asked my own name, just the dogs' names. Topics are usually dog related. Dog owners think other dog owners are very shallow and that the center of their life is the dog. I am going to try to stray into other topics next time. "What'd you spend your stimulus check on? Not enough, eh brother? Didn't catch your name..." I'll let you know how it goes.

Also, earlier today, I was sure that I was seeing a volcano erupting. I looked at google news and saw that there was a very big eruption in Alaska and was blown away that I could see it. Then i realized it was the wrong direction and wrong time of day. Eventually I saw that it was a wildfire in Washington. I was not the only one who made this mistake, according to one article.

When I saw it at about 1 pm, it was more vertical. It's not very dark smoke, so I thought it was steam. Doesn't matter.

Check out episodes of "Nevermind the Buzzcocks" on youtube. Very funny show that Yolanda just showed me. Look for the ones with Noel Fielding, and Amy Winehouse. Also, the party seemed to go well, though yolanda and I fell asleep at midnight, which is a little embarrassing. Apparently people stuck around til about 3, which is funny.

New

2008-07-10T22:55:00.000-07:00

I went to a orientation/registration at OSU on wedsnesday and that went well. This term I am taking organic chemistry, ecology, and some other classes. Right now I am registered for some sociology class, as well as a class about food preservation and how its affected history. The second two are some of the required core classes. I also found out a get a gig of free webspace, which I am pleased about, not because I plan on making a website but because I can use it to store things. The following is a test to see if i can use it to host things like images. More likely I would use it to host things like flash (as if I make a lot of flash cartoons):

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Thumbs up means success.

Also, I bought a car on tuesday, a black 2008 Honda Fit. So far, so good. I drove it to Corvallis and back and enjoyed it, except for the FM transmitter we had didn't work so well. The actual purchasing was terrible and took 5 hours total. Then it wasn't ready to go, then it was, then they forgot my registration, now they've forgotten my lifetime oil changes. My favorite thing about it is the "magic seats" which are the fold every which way back seats. My least favorite thing about it is no middle arm rest and that I had to go to the dealership at all. Those people are just terrible.

I'll probably seldom use "refresh" mode, but it's nice to know that I'll have someplace comfortable to sleep of for some reason I become a homeless man.

Don't Forget if you're in town. Party tomorrow. 7ish. Bring stuff to grill and drink. Goes to ??? obviously. We have a kiddy pool, but by 7 it'll be too cold to "swim" probably. Most likely going to be great. Bring Whomever.

Hivey Dog

2008-06-30T21:13:00.000-07:00

It's been hot here this weekend, hot enough that when the dog goes outside she gets hives. Danced like crazy on friday with yolanda, liam, kira, megan, and damon. it was a good time, though incredibly smelly on the dance floor. We also tried to play mini uno at the Bye and Bye but it was really difficult in the low light.

After this last quarter of chemistry, and the miserable failure of the ping pong table, I had to do some things to remind myself that I am good at something. So i worked on some other projects that I had been meaning to do.

First, I finished needle felting this goomba. There are a couple of NES characters that I wanted to do, specifically the Ice Climbers, and Goomba in a Kuribo shoe. The human characters like link and mario will probably look like shit needle felted, so I most likely won't do them. I did a Link, but he turned out weird. My Octorok is pretty good but not my favorite.

i also finally got around to trying out my Gocco printer. My first print was no good because the bulbs were bad and the copy was too moist (its a long explanation) but this one turned out pretty well. You can do two colors in one pass easily if they are far enough away. Supposedly you can reuse the screen but good luck washing oil based paint off of something made of cardboard. Overall though, far far easier than silkscreen, but you are limited to images that are 4x6. That's OK with me. Also the supplies are more scarce everyday as they don't make them anymore.

Also, it's strawberry season which means another batch of jam. This batch is Oregon Hood Strawberries, like last year. I am happy with this year's batch. It seems a little thinner than last year. I also don't think the berries were as good as last year. It's still tasty enough in my opinion that I ate about a half jar's worth with a spoon. This is the second year that I have made jam. I feel fortunate that I have never had any problems with the jars sealing, even though I don't have a canning pot and rack and all that expensive stuff that everybody says you need. I just invert the jars and they seal up fine (i didn't make up that technique). This year I am also going to make blackberry jam as soon as they are ready. The flowers are blossoming. Now they just need to be fruit. Liam and I found a cherry tree over on some school grounds about 3 blocks from our house and at a lot of them before I stepped in dog poo.

The Mole is on tonight. I am enjoying this season though everybody's pretty annoying so I don't really care who wins. I'm not reading the mole's blog on the website. I've managed to forget the clue that my sister posted without warning, except that it seemed to narrow it down to three people.

Google Reader

2008-06-26T17:59:00.001-07:00

Ben added me on goole reader, so now i can see his shared items. does anybody else use google reader? If not, why not?

PingPong is a bust

2008-06-26T00:29:00.000-07:00

Noel, Colby and I tried to build the ping pong table I designed. Long story short it's not going to happen. Although we built it very close to my original design, my design was terrible and overlooked major flaws that I don't care to outline here. It's also INCREDIBLY heavy, so much so that Noel's arm twisted clean off like twirled clay when we tried to lift it and turn it over. Colby got sunburned. I did have a good time hanging out with the two of them and trying to get this thing done, but overall it was one sad defeat after another as more complications arose. Whatever, we tried. Sorry everybody. I am rich in 2x4's if anybody needs one. Stinking rich. Craiglist has a number of free or cheap tables available, I just thought it'd be fun to build one. I was totally wrong. I returned the paddles and net to Sports Authority by lying to them and saying that the paddles were peeling after an hour. In reality i just peeled them a bit in the car before I walked in.

Today I received in the mail the last widely published Brautigan book that I needed to have them all, June 30th, June 30th. It's short, and poetry, so it was a very quick read that I enjoyed in the backyard this evening. There are some real gems. I also went on a mini pizza tour with Kira, Alyssa (i think is her name) and Parker. We went to Bella Faccia first, but it was not nearly as good as I remembered, so we drove across town to another pizza place that had much better pizza. I also had pizza with noel last night. My last four meals have been pizza and beer, except for the leftover pizza this morning for breakfast, no beer there. I also at a banana and a plum at one point. My stomach is currently making funny noises.

sinclair's peeing the bushes. its

2008-06-18T20:30:00.001-07:00

sinclair's peeing the bushes. its still light out.

Summertime

2008-06-15T10:46:00.002-07:00

I finished my last final on thursday, and I am not taking any classes over the summer. Suddenly I find myself with a lot of time monday thru thursday to do some things that I have been waiting to do. Time to ride around the back of a flatbed truck with refreshments:

to do (so far):
1)ping pong table
2)buy car
3)gocco prints
4)zines
5)beat zeldas
6)quit job
7)go to california academy reopening

First on the agenda: Build a ping pong table. The one at Zack's Shack, a weiner/beer place on Hawthorne, has one built of plywood that works very well. I don't know why we didn't think of this before. We've talked about investing in ping pong tables, it didn't occur to us how easy building one will be. All it has to do is be flat. I plan on getting that done this week. We have a ton of outdoor enamel paint in our garage, so the table will most likely be robin's egg blue with dark brown lines. I wanted royal blue with yellow lines, but we don't have those colors. Get ready for fun-in-the-sun.

or

or

or

Also, I plan on playing oracle of ages, oracle of seasons, and majora's mask to completion. those are the three zelda games I haven't finished, except for twilight princess, but I won't beat that one because it's boring.

I'd also like to get some use out of my gocco printer and whip up some small prints. Yolanda and I also have two new 'zines in the works. I have to review my general biology textbook because i feel like I have forgotten most of it. Our trip to the opening of the california academy of sciences is in september. School starts september 29th.

2008-06-15T10:46:00.001-07:00

Friends turn mental mountains into molehills

* 15 June 2008

Having a friend at your side can turn a mountain into a molehill.

Simone Schnall at the University of Plymouth, UK, and her colleagues asked students to estimate the steepness of a hill by tilting a board to match its slope.

Students with a friend nearby assessed the hill at 10 to 15 per cent less steep compared with those who were alone during the test. The longer the friends had known each other and the warmer their relationship, the less steep the hill appeared.

Schnall's team also found that just thinking about a close friend or family member - as opposed to a neutral person, or someone you dislike - made the hill appear up to 20 per cent gentler (Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, DOI: 10.1016/j.jesp.2008.04.011).

I'll eat all the popcorn

2008-05-29T16:15:00.000-07:00

I feel like I don't draw enough anymore, so i am trying to do that more, though i was sick of having lotso f drawings in piles all over the office and in notebooks that i was afraid to get rid of, so i dragged out the old digital drawing tablet. At the same time, i came across a program called Sketchbook pro that I like a lot more for drawing digitally then photoshop. Above is the drawing I did this afternoon when my drawing of the yeti lobster starting going sour. For things like directional hair, regular old pencil and paper is still good for me. I am very happy with the colored pencil in this new program, something i hate in real life.

Hooray!

2008-05-28T02:05:00.001-07:00

The greatest GBA game that there was, Rhythm Tengoku (rhythm heaven) is getting a sequel on the DS, very soon, too. July 31! This is right after i saw the news that there is supposedly a sequel to Daigasso Band Brothers coming out in June.

Some kind of link to news about it: TOPIC 4

here's a summary of the one for GBA:

in other news, there is no other news. I had memorial day dinner at my friend cory's, and it was fun. I saw Indiana Jones today, and I enjoyed it. I think the key to enjoying movies these days is going in with low, low, low expectations. It's worked for me for Indiana Jones, Speed Racer and in the past it worked for Life Aquatic. I clipped my hair, i have itchy bumps on my hands and fingers which is some kind of eczema manifestation.

Go Look at the ISS

2008-05-20T22:40:00.000-07:00

Here's a link to NASA's Java Applet to show you when it will pass over you and where to look. I missed the last viewing by ten minutes, but it's all cloudy right now, so i couldn't see it anyway. They seem to happen every three hours or so.

Sunlit space station to put on marathon sky show

The next few days will be prime viewing opportunities for anyone interested in catching a glimpse of the International Space Station (ISS) passing overhead.

The space station is normally visible once or twice a day, but from Wednesday to Friday, it can be seen making as many as four daily passes over North America and Europe.

Satellites like the ISS are only visible on Earth when they are in sunlight and the viewer is in deep twilight or darkness.

Such a scenario can occur more often at certain times of the year, when the Earth's orientation relative to the Sun allows the ISS to move out of Earth's shadow.

That will occur over the next three days, when the station will be bathed in sunlight almost constantly. Since it takes just 90 minutes or so to orbit the Earth, it will be visible multiple times around dawn and dusk.

The space station, which orbits at an altitude of 386 kilometres, is by far the biggest and brightest manmade satellite circling the planet. It looks as bright as Venus or Jupiter and can be seen even in well-lit cities.

"You don't need anything [to see it], although I would recommend if you have binoculars to try them because then you see a much more detailed view," says Nicole Cloutier, a spokesperson at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.

The ISS will appear to sweep quickly across the sky, remaining visible for about 4 to 5 minutes during each pass. Find out when to look for the ISS here.

Construction of the orbital outpost, which is about as tall as a nine-story building, started in 1998 and will be completed in 2010.

NASA’s space shuttle Endeavor is scheduled to launch on 31 May. Another unique viewing opportunity for sky watchers will occur two days later, when the shuttle docks with the ISS, making the station appear even brighter than usual.

Harry the Horse

2008-05-17T12:13:00.001-07:00

This is one of my favorite sesame street segments. Jimmy sent one out in email, and remembered to look for this one. I feel like I have searched for it before and been unable to find it, but this says it was uploaded over a year ago.

Speed Racer

2008-05-14T00:48:00.000-07:00

I watched Speed Racer this morning while I did some physics homework, and I actually enjoyed it a lot. If you aren't a big fan of the cartoon, then you probably won't like it, but if you do like the cartoon, it's pretty good. I won't go into a long review, except to say that it's perfectly cast (except for spritle and MAYBE sparky, but the fact sparky is in it is great), the Warchowski brothers chose exactly the right elements to keep, including the way Pops Racer clunks heads together during fights, and to keep Snake Oiler as Speed's rival during races (though he's sort of different, and there's no mention of "the car acrobatic team", and the original music throughout. The only thing that it was missing was constant reminders from the narrator about who Racer X is, and Speed's erotic groaning, and the fast, erratic, dialogue resulting from trying to match mouth movements when translated to english. Also, Speed has next to no internal dialogue. The cartoon is saturated with it. Some parts are embarrassingly stupid, but whatever. It's a Speed Racer live-action movie, and I think it's meant for nine-year-olds. Feel free to make fun of me if you want.

The movies exciting with cars flipping all over the fucking place and exploding and if you can see it for free, I'd say do it. There's not an ounce of realism in it and its totally predictable. I was very, very surprised that I liked it as much as I did, but then again, I am always surprised that I like the cartoon as much as do.

I'm up to 50 bucks now as a chacha guide. I answered 10 bucks worth tonight while working on this insect pamphlet. Most of the questions people ask are about rabbis in brooklyn, and about people in SLC, Utah. So many questions from brooklyn! They must be advertising there a lot.