Blog of Berg (Neil): October 2004

Mo's costume was amusing once again. He was "a punk with no future."

Also, we went to the new Striggow apartment in Perrysburg. It was a really nice place and a good get together. I hope we all do more stuff over there. Their apartment makes me think that Perrysburg may be a neat place to live, but we would HAVE to be close to downtown.

In other non-news, my foot is all the way healed. It was amazing that it hurt so acutely that I thought it was broken and was walk-on-able the next day.

Big day today: church, then church, then some more church. It will be fun. It is "Lutherfest," which means that we hang out with youth while listening to some neat bands.

This is a quick picture I took of the lunar eclipse last night. The picture is nothing special (especially with the blur), but it was a neat night.

I went to the FarenHYPE 9/11 movie. It was not very good. About a third of the movie dealt with rebutting Farenheit 9/11. It actually made a few good points. The scary thing is that it did not make enough of them. Instead of systematically using the runtime to go through...oh, let's say, ALL of the money that the Sauds have given the Bush family, it only justified ONE bit of it. They were FINE with the rest. It was scary that they didn't refute some REALLY REALLY bad stuff that Moore had said! It was like admitting defeat. Only they simply didn't mention the stuff that was true. Unfortunately, the "experts" were few and not very authoritative--instead of being experts, they were right-wing wackos who were not afraid of sounding like it.
The thing that bugged me the most was that instead of touching on Moore's film, it used an obscene amount of time spreading: fear propaganda (terrorists could be in YOUR backyard), 9/11 propaganda (firefighters are good, love America), a rosy vision of US troops in Iraq (they LOVE being there and to say otherwise makes you unAmerican), and criticizing Moore's filmmaking style (instead of his content). Some people ate it up. It made me sick.

To help me wind down, Anne and I went for a walk--this also allowed us to see the lunar eclipse. At one point, I was giving Anne a piggy-back ride and I tripped on the curb and nearly broke my foot. The big toe long metatarsal was hit hard. We walked home--I thought it was no worse than a slapshot to a hockey skate boot. Then I woke up at 5am and it hurt so much that I could not sleep. I got up to get ibuprofen, but I couldn't put any pressure at all on it. Long story short, we discovered a lot about our new insurance and went to Urgent Care in Maumee. I had a sprain. It still hurts, but not anywhere near as much. As of tonight, it is almost walk-on-able.

Anne and I went to the mall tonight so she could see the animals. They have a mini-zoo there. It is really odd. Tigers, lemurs, barn animals, ponies and GALLOWAY CALVES! The Casey "my ancestors bred that line of cattle" Galloway calves are the cutest fuzzballs on the earth.

I sent my application in to Maritz Research in Maumee. I really hope they take me. It seems like a fantastic fit for me (automotive market research). I cannot believe it is as close as Maumee. Now to get to those other job applications...

This is what it looks like out of our front window now.

I found a BB-sized hole in our window this morning. I can only imagine that someone was trying to shoot the small Kerry/Edwards bumpersticker that we have in the window. Way to go, Brownshirt revival!
You guys just cost my Republican landlord a new storm window! I hope you are happy.

One protester picture, from outside of the Moore rally. The GOP-hat guy on the right was proud to have me take his picture.

Also, the BG Student Union theater has Farenhype 9/11 showing tomorrow at 7. I think I will go. Perhaps I had better rewatch Farenheit 9/11 first. I kind of wonder if I will have to sign a loyalty oath before the screening. By the way, Moore let ANYONE in. No oaths! Of course, when most of Moore's avid fans were even more rumpled and scruffy than Moore himself, how could he reject anyone? :^)

Moore rally, right-to-life, dissertation proposal

Michael Moore rally at Toledo's Seagate Center (yes, I need to get a new camera eventually).

It was an interesting night. I went with some Psychology department people. When we arrived, there were people outside who were protesting Moore's appearance...they were positive for Bush or anti-Kerry or anti-Moore. There were probably only 20 people or so. The most idiotic was a sign that said that Moore stated "'Of course [Kerry's] a lousy candidate, he's a Democrat'- Michael Moore" I found this funny because it is an extension of the Bush campaign "consistency is all we have going for us" campaign. I am sure that none of the zealots who were attending last night (ok, there were a few normal people and a FEW republicans, even) (oops, did I just call republicans not normal?) would be persuaded to vote for anyone other than the most-likely-to-win non-Bush. The other signs were even less spectacular. They were just name-calling.
Except for the anti-abortion people. They are at every political event. And I feel for them (I think I have my thinking about the matter cleared up a little--stick with me here).
Right-to-life thought experiment starting here. To the disappointment of all who oppose abortion, I cannot see any political candidate or party making any moves that will substantially change the abortion climate. So we might as well support those who believe in the importance of life in other venues. Many more people die from starvation, preventable disease, and war than from abortion in the US. This is the essence of my new thought. I looked up some quick (likely to be somewhat inaccurate) numbers: 35,000 people die each day from starvation. Add 15,000 for water-borne diseases and AIDS. 4,000 abortions are performed each day in the US. Yes, I am calculating worldwide rates for starvation/water-borne disease/AIDS vs just the US abortion rate. The reason for this is that US citizens cannot legislate abortion law for other countries, and never will be able to. However, US citizens CAN fund research and aid programs that influence the other causes of death. I believe that this is the only responsible way to look at the numbers (but so it is known, there are 120,000 abortions worldwide per day, and I don't understand this number--it is disgustingly high). As far as the US should care: 50,000 deaths vs 4,000 deaths, PER DAY. Yes, the abortion number is disgusting and horribly high, but the other number is, well, 20 times worse. So I prefer a politician who prioritizes alleviating starvation and preventable diseases over one who prioritizes appearing to be anti-abortion, because there is car more room for starvation/preventable diseases alleviation to save life. Too bad we cannot have both viewpoints in the same person. Then people who want to vote under the pretense of "sanctity of life above all else" will have a real choice. Until then, they SHOULD vote for the person who appears to put the biggest dent in the largest causes of death, whether it be abortion, starvation, disease, or war. At least logically. At least according to me.
I hope that rant made it clear that one can believe that perserving life is important and still not have a clear decision in the voting booth. I also hope it puts some perspective on how insignificant the 4,000 deaths from the WTC bombing and the 1,200 deaths of US troops are...at least at a global scale. Man, this is depressing. End of right-to-life rant.

So, a Michael Moore "rally" is essentially a person going up to a microphone and creatively reading a list of the democratic position on various social and political issues. People give cheers of affirmation after each line. It was ok for a while, but by the end even the community democratic leaders were looking sleepy (it ran from 9-11 pm, approximately) Ok, that affirmative time-wasting was MOST of it.
The night went as follows (as I remember it):
Gloria Steinem (activist, who is a East Toledo native),
Dale Kapszukiewicz (candidate for Lucas County Treasurer),
Michael Moore,
Roseanne Arnold/Barr (yes, really--and although she was interesting, she was not very funny),
Mike again,
The guitarist from Rage Against the Machine (who played 3 miserable folk songs--he played/sang well, but they were musically and poetically uninteresting),
Mike again,
A Marine Corporal who was in Farenheit 9/11 (who was not a great speaker, but was sounded like a nice guy--unfortunately the night was feeling REALLY long by the time he came up),
Mike again to end.

The good stuff was that Michael Moore is a funny speaker, and a good one at that. He upstaged Roseanne, which is saying a lot, seeing as she was a major comedian for so long. His next movie is against HMOs and drug companies. Knowing this Pfizer issued a "Moore alert," which he read. It was hilarious--and he gave us the number that Pfizer employees are supposed to call if the see a "bearded, heavyset man comeing at them with a microphone." He had us all call the number (212.573.1226) on our mobile phones. He also showed us some of the Bush commericials that his group made. I assume they will be on michaelmoore.com soon. They were pretty darn funny--and rather scathing. He also talked about some good social issues, like our lazy and over-complicated voting process, why politicians underestimate young people, injustices that occur in the political arena, and a few other things. I learned a bit. He threw Ramen noodles and underwear at the new voters, as a symbol of his gratitude for them voting.
I am glad I went to the rally, but it was not as funny as I had hoped. It was a really predictable affirmation session. To be fair, it also did a bit of fear-mongering, some of which may be unfair (such as spreading rumors about Bush reinstating a draft). Nevertheless, the rally worked overall--it was inspiring.

In other (i.e. important to Neil) news...I had my dissertation proposal defense yesterday. I had 3 of the 4 members in attendance and 1 made comments. I passed the important parts (the completed and proposed experiments were passed) but I have to redo my presentation. So I officially did not pass. I think it came down to the fact that I misinterpreted several questions and answered them with the wrong information or did not answer them at all. I have the self-serving alibi that if things were asked differently, I could have done much better. I can also blame the misinterpretations on myself. This is because I was too nervous to interpret the abstract portions of the questions sufficently. I can accept the verdict. It really isn't that bad. So what? I get to work on my presentation skills. That is wonderful. I thought I was getting better already, but I guess I get to continue getting better. [On a cynical note, I wish the department would not have rejected me for a teaching assignment when I wanted one last year--they denied me public presentation experience then, but require that I have that skill now.]
Not to end on a negative note, I should be able to get the presentation project going today, and get a good presentation ready in a short time.

And we are celebrating my (experiment) proposal pass today at BG Frickers at 6pm. Be there. Yeah, everyone. Not just department people.

Now to square away some BG city tax stuff--then go to school.

The Indian Student Association of BGSU had a Mela party. This is a blurry picturephone picture. I went with Saranga. I learned a lot about India from him there. It was cool. Then we went to the Wood County Historical Museum (where Randy works) for a fall openhouse. It was really neat. I have to go there again soon. Then Saranga and I went back to the "Mela afterparty." That was a quite interesting experience.

The main cool stuff was that the ISA culture was way different from that of the modern US. It is partly Indian, partly UK, and partly US. The music was also a mix of these. For example, there was a Eurobeat Eminem song in Hindi. People seemed to like everything. The dances were partly disco, partly unique (to me, at least)...but very fun and very interesting.

The Indian food was decent...from Awa's kitchen in Toledo, I think. Too hot for Sal, though (and too hot for general consumption, in my opinion). Before the Mela food, I had already had a grillout with Gerry, Mo, and Lynn--but the ol' stomach needs a stretch every once in a while, I guess.

Finally changed Anne's oil and rotated her tires. Synthetic oil really does last a long time. It looked pretty darn good, even at 6k miles.

I have been rereading some dissertation-related articles. I am starting to freak out a little about my Monday dissertation proposal, but I think it should be ok. I really do think that I have the materials pretty well down (gee, I have only been staring at them for 4 years now...). I have no idea if there will be a get-together after it.

Time for CRHP and Zoar youth stuff now.

The technology of future housing

Sorry, no picture on this post.
Microsoft's vision of the future home (stupid registration required (I put in user & pw as: qwerqwerqwerqwe)):

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/21/garden/21SOFT.html

Interesting, but it sure sounds complicated. My grandma would never use it. My parents wouldn't either. I however, would LOVE it. But I am wacky in geeky ways like that.

It is, ummm, "optimistic" that MSFTers assume that people will soon invest in the expensive level of hardware needed to perform these tasks (e.g. electronically-controlled blinds), but these may come along to some small extent WAY in the future. At the same time, some of the predictions are rather silly. I doubt the local deli will ever (well, in my lifetime) start RFIDing my 2 lbs of locally-raised and slaughtered ground beef. I could be wrong. I kind of hope I will be.

Contrast this to a mobile phone--that is my vision of the ubiquitous home tech future (and close to Pohl's too). Integrate a fancified future version of a mobile device with a "future home" and MSFT will be going somewhere realistic with the project. I picture a combination remote/phone that responds to voice and touch commands as being more feasible than microphoning my living room. Both would be able to operate local devices equally well (the phone would have screen interface, so maybe it even has more potential than home microphones).

Man, what a fun job they must have. That is what would LOVE to do.

This is the really awful cover (with really awful title) of a neato book that I recently read. I really like this author.
The book is set in the future where cryogenics and extremely good medicine allow people to more or less live forever. The neatest Sci-Fi stuff is never the cornball short version of the plot, but rather the world that the author paints. I will mention only one neat aspect of the "pussyfoot" world.
This world has a particular device (the horribly-named "joymaker") that operates in a neat way. It is a rod-like device that has accesses a central server and can do anything informational that the user desires. It also administers drugs, controls the local environment (which is also hooked to a central network and is accessible via a positioning system) and monitors the environment for contextual cues. The neat thing is that when this was written (1965), the author had only the earliest idea of a VERY early modem. From that he envisioned the cell-phone that dialed into an intelligent agent-controlled Google/PDA/life manager on a central computer. Google, because it was able to access Pohl's idea of a semantic internet to answer virtually any question. PDA because it managed contacts, messages, and such. Life manager because it integrated other life applications, such as financial planner, headhunter, and logistical coordinator.
The only thing that Pohl had wrong was that the interface would be entirely verbal. It is obvious now that the verbal stream would be far too inefficient for some of the tasks that Pohl says it may do. However, verbalization does lend itself to being written in a novel well, so I will give him credit for creating a really good literary device with the interface.

A neat thing he proposed was that the joymaker would have emotions. A child explaining why the joymaker interrupted the protagonist so much with urgent messages stated that "it is like it has to go to the bathroom, and the more you make it wait, the more it will bother you." That is a pretty good analogy to machine emotion! The modern-day joymaker is (in my mind, at least) the mobile phone. They have a GPS, some have context sensitivity, networking capabilities, etc. All they need is to be able to dial into a verbal Google as well as a verbal PDA. Picture the gamut of services that Yahoo offers (jobs, weather, maps, news, mail, contacts, shopping, etc), only delivered on demand by and through voice. That, plus the informational capacity to deliver an intelligent response to most questions--like a real person would. I have a feeling that I will see this as an average joe reality in my lifetime. It is getting there, bit by bit. I remember a conference I went to in which IBM had done the PDA over voice--and it worked pretty darn well. Nevertheless, it was a far shot from being the ideal verbal interface--like the conversational agent that was present in the book.

Anyway, the book got me excited and thinking about what the future may have in store for us in terms of always-with-you gadgets. I have a strong feeling now (and have for a while) like I really want to be a part of that vision, but I am not sure where to go with it. Microsoft? Google? Nokia? Shall I start with automobiles? That is the plan as of now, at least. It makes sense, too. Vehicles are a neat place to do apply human factors.

Envisioning and building to the entire human world of the future may be a lot harder. Hard, but I would like that job.

This is my computer desk..but it is also our TV, stereo, digital recording studio, photoshop, copier, and everything else too. The amount of use we get out of this area is astounding. We have the stereo hooked up to the computer, and the stereo is run into the kitchen and bathroom--so I can listen to streaming cartalk anywhere in the house. This is nothing new, but I was astounded enough by the M drive to actually want to write about it. Yes, I am now up to an M drive. Yes, every spot is filled from C through M. I just got a DVD burner and it actually works. I am pretty happy to finally be able to free up space.

In other worldly possession news, I got the new yokohama avid touring tires on my civic. Man, are they smooth. It is like driving on a sea of silk that is on top of jello that is on top of more silk. What a difference! My tires are supposed to be 3.5% too large for the car, but instead the speedometer is actually CORRECT for first time ever. That makes me happy that it is right, though I kept trying to compensate (even though I didn't need to).

Best of all, I have a committee time. Next monday. Wooo. It is soon, but soon is good. I felt bad for dropping a committee member because of scheduling, but now that I know she can just do comments and not actually show up, I can have her back. This is good, because I liked her on the project and also because she has spent the time to understand it, and I don't have to have a brand new person learn the genre of study. I hope she will join back.

I just got back from church and then my parents. I got to play my guitar through my amp while I was alone in the sanctuary. What a great sound. I really dig the tone. And the parent stuff is good. It was one of those moods where I realize that my parents are really cool people and are responsible for a healthy portion of the good things that I enjoy--sure, physical things, but more the attitudes and happiness that are a part of who I am.

Now that the anxiety of getting the committee is over, I can sleep...and work on actually preparing for the meeting. Yay.

I think I will go dance a happy dance now. Or play some more guitar. Or sleep. Or Anne will get home too soon to do these and I can be happy with her. Yeah, here she is. Double yay.

This is a still from my camcorder--from this Sunday's SCCA fostoria race.

Yeah, Casey beat me. A lot. Actually, I felt like I had never even gone out. It HAS been a while. I guess that is why good racers race often and I race whenever it is most convenient. That red truck you see was the weirdest thing. It did pretty well. It actually beat me. It was a 1949 ford truck body that was REALLY souped up and really confusing...No body roll at all.

At school, I am getting really frustrated at the committee for not being more available. It is stupid to be frustrated at it, but I am having really big issues. At this rate, the proposal will never happen. Or we will have to meet on a Saturday. That is fine with me, though it may not be fine with others.

Argh. All of the subjects are showing up at this time of year. It gives me no breaks. It also makes me sad to not be doing my proposal experiments now.Just got tickets for the BGSU Ben Folds concert. That is on the 6th. It should be a good time. No one wanted to get chicken wings with me today. I got my new winter tires mounted. Now I have to pick them up. I got more hydraulic jack fluid to get my jack back into shape. It was very low. Argh, I need to change the oil in the Corolla. I just got a DVD burner. Now I can clean off my hard drives. But it gave me the first blue screen in I have seen in ages on its first burn.

Life is stupid today. I think I will give up and go to bed. Or get frustrated at the computer. One of those two things.

Sure was fun playing with Casey's car today. Man, I am tired. We cleaned up from the ATF cylinder trick (it smokes a lot). We also did a valve adjustment, valve cover gasket, removed the A/C, put in a short-shifter, put in a racing harness, and changed the oil, plugs, and wires. Yeah, I think his civic will do much better now. We race tomorrow, so we shall see.

Casey had Scott down this weekend--he is an elantra owner (like Casey) who bought Casey's exhaust. We put the exhaust on and it only took 30 minutes or so. New cars are really easy to work on. :) Also, my old neighbor Tim stopped by. I miss him. He's a good guy to talk with.

Now to bed...man, I am beat. It was a hard, cold, icky-weathered day. That and the toxic chemical exposure is probably making me feel weak.

Karate. Taken quickly from my camera phone at their Hamtramck, MI show.
They are my favorite rockish band, I think. The show was okay, but not great. They were kind of slow to get on stage and fast to get off. I talked to Geoff Farina for a while and got some tone/music hints and let him know that I like their music.

Unfortunately, he uses some pretty expensive stuff--like a ghia Dr Z. amp hooked into a celestion speaker (I actually have this speaker, so that is cool). He uses a G&L legacy strat that goes through a centaur overdrive and then a blackstone tone pedal. I think it was really cool that he was so open with sharing his setup with a complete stranger.

Our group (Nate, Casey, Nick (who works at sufficient grounds and is pretty darn cool) and I) got home at around 3. I could do without the smokey bar thing, but it was pretty fun to get out of town and do something different.

I just ran more subjects today. Woo. Tomorrow is a car day with Casey. I sure hope it works for the race the following day.

Sitting in the lab has given me time to do some boring ordering of stuff. I ordered a DVD-R drive, discs and another IDE controller. I also ordered some DECENT tires for the civic. I hate to throw more money into the car, but the present all-seasons that came with it were mediocre to begin with and are outright lousy now. I got the same tires that we have on the Corolla--same size exactly. We could swap tires between them if we ever needed to.

Now it is time for a fun night with Annie (including curry chicken!)!

Here is a postcard that I got for NO GOOD REASON AT ALL. I am not Armenian, I don't know any Armenians. I know people (mainly BGSU students) from all over the world but not a single Armenian. Oh well. This included, we have gotten 4 Kerry mailings and no Bush mailings. NPR (national, not local) had a story about Toledo, Ohio being one of the hardest hit advertising locales in the entire nation. I am glad we don't have a TV.

Tired today...I should be getting on a better schedule of sleep. Of course, this is before we go to a Karate concert in Detroit (Hamtramck, actually) tomorrow...And before debates tonight.

I got a bunch of Musician's Friend stuff today. I have good straps, a super instrument cable, strings for a year, a tuner that fully works, a travel music stand, a guitar stand for church, and an envelope filter (which would have come in handy on many occasions, though it certainly sounds like an unnecessary item). I cannot wait until the microphone gets here. My current one is very dead sounding. Or I sound dead.
I recorded a lot loast night, and I think I have one good song. I hope the few close friends I dare to have listen to it like it. Nate was not terribly repelled by it. It can only get better from here. I like the Audition recording program a lot.
Now to the Brown/Galloway residence.

Neat day. It is BGSU fall break. Actually it WAS. It is now over. This is from when Anne and I went walking around BG on Monday. We saw my neighbor Gerry at Panera--his natural habitat.

Gerry and I went out and got chicken wings today. I went back and got more with Randy and Ruth for dinner. Man, I like those wings. I think 30 is my limit for the day. Anything past that is hard to think about. Gerry and I got him new shoes at the mall. His last ones were at least 10 years old...really. I hadn't been to the BG mall lately, but it is downright tolerable for being a mall. I also went to the local BG family-run orchard and got 3 kinds of apples...mmmm.

I have been going crazy with this music writing stuff. I have 3 fairly decent sounding songs now--fully recorded. I could do the parts better (playing on the recording and making up better bridges), but they are fairly good, I think. Anne is at a David Crowder concert with some of her bible study girls. They sounded elated over the phone. Apparently, it was a really good time.
Nighty night for me now. Back to real life tomorrow.

Here is the same poster of GWB and the bomb-baby theme, but on a busy pedestrian throughway in downtown (middle left wall) We walked all around town today, but besides standard political signs and a few window decorations, this is all we saw. It may be fun to see what else is around, especially when we go to Toledo. What an odd, interesting time of year.

Travelling down the road a bit, we saw a GW poster in front of the courthouse. Something about bombs and babies--it really didn't make much sense, but it looked nice. Someone tried to tear it down, but it stayed up.

I have been carrying my camera around everywhere lately. It is a lousy 1.3 megapixel that takes 4 stinking AA batteries (i.e. it is large)--it is also slow to take and slow to write from buffer to flash card. But it is an Olympus and it takes decent pictures. And I have it. I would like to get a smaller, higher resolution fast camera, so maybe I am carrying it around to justify that purchase to myself. Anyway, Anne and I walked around BG this morning. We had not noticed that many political posters before, but today was an exception. College towns are neat. We get odd stuff around here. Here is a picture of a ONC bus that had an "Over 1000 U.S. troops killed, and we're not lovin' it" poster affixed to it--with GW Bush as Ronald McDonald (see front of bus).

Good weekend.

Brady threatening Saranga with the wedding gift he got from Bob the groom. It was a catapult pistol that he loaded with plastic pigs. Brady shot some plastic pork onto Saranga's pizza. (And it only took him 10 shots. But what was Brady doing with 10 plastic pigs in his pocket?)

What a great weekend. Fun was had all around. It is wonderful to have Brady in town. We do some interesting stuff. Some of was even extra-boardgame-related!

I went to Bob's reception--it was amazing how many friends he and Johari have who "our group" does not know exist. They seem pretty cool--so that may have to change.

Brady and Casey, looking at Brady's two-player circular chess game. Fun, fun fun. We watched the debate. I cannot believe how people tried SOOOO hard to ask very clear, precise questions that would (supposedly) HAVE to be answered but NEVERTHELESS the questions did not get answered. They really had me going a few times there.

Johari and JohnaBob don't get married until today. I was misinformed.

At Casey/Randy's, we discgolfed (I was not all that good, but I am getting better--it was nice playing with Colin Mac, though), then DDR (again, I have to put in a lot of time before being "good" at this at all), then Pres debates, then Brady came over!!! Brady is always a big treat. He made some pretty spiffy chess-based games (2-player circular chess, 3-player chess that some french company already makes, and 4 player chess that appears to be novel and REALLY cool). The 4-player chess is a good Brady game. It makes you think about how to slyly pseudo-cheat the person next to you in novel ways. I really enjoyed it. Circular chess was super-neat too, but it probably has more problems than it is worth (mainly that rooks get too powerful), but Brady will find a new way to fix/break it. Cannot wait to hang around with him and the group again tonight.

Now, I get to paint a basement!!!! WOOOOO!!!!

Johari. She gets married today. I wish I had a better picture of her. Brady should be in town for the wedding stuff. I hope to see some of the festivities and congratulate the couple.
I really like their wedding style. Personally-made invites. Stuff at home--not throwing thousands into a single night. It is personal feeling. Not that there is anything wrong with big weddings, but I find it refreshing to see that it is not happening with them. It is going to be a super-small, personal wedding with a reception 2 days later. Even the reception is small, but general friends are invited. I hope I can go. Sunday is a really silly day with playing at a church service, then a special youth group (orchard day), then a men's (CRHP) church group.
Well, even if I am not present...congrats Bob and Johari. I hope we all see more and more of you two.

In other news, I have been hanging out at the Brown/Galloway residence a lot lately. I like it. I stink at DDR, but that is to be expected for how little I get to play it. Casey and Sal are getting ridiculously good. Randy is not bad, but not ridiculous either.

Unrelatedly, I bought a really expensive ($50) toothbrush yesterday. It had better be really freaking reliable and make my teeth dance with happiness.

I need to buy tires (Kumho HP4s, I think). I also need a GOOD guitar tuner. Mine sort of works. I hope to get something that can do pianos. That way, I will KNOW that it is good. If it can do a piano, then it can do anything. That, and I anticipate having a piano in my life at some point, and learning to ear tune will be way too much work for what it is worth to me. So I will learn to tune it with a tuner...it sure beats paying the big $$ for Gerry (the friendly neighbor piano tech) to service it or having a piano that is out of tune.

I used adobe audition to do some music recording yesterday. It is the best that I have used in terms of understandability AND capability. Of course, this is coming from a person who has only used it once.

Running more people today...no news on the committee member. Need to get that resolved NOW. BGSU spring break is this upcoming mon and tues!

Sushi, hipness, animals, school, music.

This sushi was from when Anne and I were in Seattle on our honeymoon. Every hip blog has to have a picture of sushi, right? Aren't I hip and multicultural? Have I mentioned that I have a Gmail account?...And I am a coffee snob? What? An Ipod? Uhh...no, I don't have one...I don't even want one. I'm hipper than that. I use oggplay on my Nokia 3650.

I have found blogs of two friends (Daryl, Lauren (no link yet)) from fishing around through Casey's internet bookmarks. [Unfortunately, they don't have sushi on their blogs yet.]

On a bummer of a note, one committee member is out on maternity leave (yikes!). Not sure what will happen with me in terms of getting a new member or waiting a long time or her coming back for one meeting. In other news, I am starting to do grant-related experiments today. Should be a blast. At least I will get other work done while they tap away at the keyboard.

Cute, cuddly, and really disturbing. This is one of the funniest things I have seen in a while. (Link ripped from memepool, which is a neat site.)

Oh yeah, the Karate album is definitely good. It is going to inspire me to get some music of my own recorded soon. Speaking of music, Ben Folds is coming to BGSU in November! This will rock. Or at least it had better rock because I plan to get a ticket today.

Winter , Karate, and Cheney

Here is what we have to look forward to in the upcoming month (pic from last year out of the front window of our apartment). I was always a person to like winter more than summer, but that may be changing. I really like being able to be outside and to work on the car and grill and stuff.

I am listening to the newest Karate album "Pockets" now. Their music keeps getting better. This album is really good. I hope that Nate from the dept (and maybe Casey) can go up to their show near Detroit with me. As much as I distrust Detroit for breaking my car window and stealing my stuff last time I parked up there (even after parking it in a lot that a Detroit policeman said was safe!) I really want to see Karate again.

The VP debates were okay. As much as I hate thinking of myself as a person who discusses politics "seriously" (at least away from Randy, who seems to talk about them alot) I really want to note the HUGE stand-out thing from the debate. It happened after Edwards made positive comments about how Cheney supports his gay daughter and then made many points about how the gay marriage amendment was inappropriate and being used as a absolutely unnecessary, divisive political tool. Cheney simply responded "thanks for the nice words--I have no other comments" (or something to that effect). WHOA! Cheney did not deny the charges that his party is doing some nasty political tooling with nothing less than the Constitution! Wow. Talk about a tacit comment. Now we can guess what Cheney thinks of the fact that his party doesn't discourage people who want to vote against gay rights as a primary issue and that the party makes this idea prominent in their propaganda (1, 2).

Still listening, and this Karate album is good!

I got my proposal out the the committee. Now to find a time that will work for everyone. This may be difficult.

Masters of Lebowski

My idea for this blog was to amost always include a picture, even if it is irrelevant to everyone reading this.
This movie of The Big Lebowski + He-Man is better than a picture. So live with it. I got the link from Sean, an old BGSU grad student.

Anne and I had a neat discussion last night. Is it worth getting all emotional about the election? Does our emotion change anything? I got to thinking that tying emotion to an outside (of ourselves) entity is important in two cases: when we have control over the object and when we recieve feedback from the object. So for sports, tying an emotion to a team makes no sense. We do not influence the field. Yes, there is an aggregate cheering section "home field advantage" argument that can be made, but consider the people who cheer at home, in front of their TV sets. And besides, do people say "I am in the fields to cheer so that I can see if my cheering changes the action on the field"? Most people have no real-life feedback reward or punishment if the team wins or loses, except those weak social ones that they put onto themselves. Of course, owners, coaches, and players darn well better tie their emotions to their performance.

What about political stuff? Many "average joes" go nutzo about a presidential candidate, but they have limited to NO control and their enthusiasm makes little to no difference to anyone (i.e. there is no feedback). So is the choice of being a staunch political supporter as trite and arbitrary as the choice of a sports team?
I don't think so, but only because the politicians make choices that DO have some effect on the average joe. As far as control goes, the team and the politician are both equally uncontrollable by you.

Of course, this analogy is much more complicated than I am making it...you can only control if you have feedback (otherwise how do you know you have control?). But it made me think twice before increasing my political fervor from mild to medium. I think I will stay mild.
I will, however, eat some hot 25c Frickers' chicken wings (last week I ate 26 of them!). Assuming Randy wants to go. Then we can watch the VP debates on their big TV.

Now for work.

Here is a picture of Anne and me, just taken this weekend. This was taken prior to my cousin Wendy's wedding. The wedding was nice. It was big too--maybe 250 people. I bought a real suit for the occasion. Not just the sportsjacket and pants, either--a real suit. Why are they called "sportsjackets" anyway? I can barely drive in one due to the way they restrict my arm movements, let alone play a sport in them. Heck, chess would even be difficult without being able to move my arms well. The casual attire of gradschool has me spoiled.

Casey found the blog and yes, I just figured it out too: "The other song was named Jump, and was by the Pointer Sisters." Man, to think that Mrs. Sweeney's overexposure to those jump songs was x5 classes a day x5 days a week x MANY years for her..maybe she was deaf. Maybe she just wished she was.

The proposal draft is almost there. I hope to get it to committee members soon. All I have to do is write up a good explanation of a proposed third experiment.

Ok, I guess it is a blog now. Here is an unneeded note about my life.

"Jump" by Van Halen woke us up this morning (radio alarm). It made me think about Mrs. Sweeney, elementary gym teacher--she made us jump rope to that song for HOURS. Argh. I think there was one other "jumping-themed" 80's song as well, but I cannot remember it.

Off to church. We are doing neat liturgy music stuff this morning (Not Van Halen).

This is a box of Michael Faraday's gold-related slides. We have slide images that we are cataloging into a digital form of his diary. We have hundreds of slide images.

That is all for now. I will put more on when I get around to it.

Ok, you got me. I updated it. I had no idea that Google owned blogger/blogspot as well as picasa and hello. Man, these are great products and they all work well together. I put up a bunch of pictures. The order is not optimal, but hey, it was fast and free and NOW I understand it.