Two things...

First, I thought it worthy of mention that I was rear-ended on Wednesday afternoon, not 100 yards from where I wrecked my bike a few weeks ago. There's no visible damage - Sherman's a tough Chevy - but I haven't had time to get it looked at yet. I was stopped at the Shepherd red light going east on Rice, as was the car behind me, and the car behind it, as well. The left turn lane gets its arrow before the lane going straight, where I was. For some unknown reason, the woman two cars behind me decides to hit the gas when the turn lane started going. Unfortunately, all the cars in the lane she was in were still completely stationary, at least until she slammed into the car behind me, knocking it into me. What fun! Now I'm just waiting for a third vehicle-related incident before I start to breathe easier on the road. Maybe, though, the blown tire, ruined wheel, and dented quarter-panel from the tow last summer when a friend borrowed Sherman to haul hardwood flooring was the first. (Of course, that could also count as three incidents by itself, and it was a while ago.)

Second, and less immediately pertinent, but interesting none-the-less, is the widening income gap in the country. As explained by the NY Times article about newly released 2005 tax data, the top 300,000 earners in the country had the combined income of nearly 150,000,000 of the bottom earners. The real ratio is closer to 440:1 between the two groups, but it's still almost double what it was in 1980. Another stunning comparison is that the top one percent of incomes in 2005 enjoyed the largest share of the total increase in US earnings since 1928! Egads. For me, the fun part is that I could possibly go from one extreme to the other over the next few years, (hell, I could quadruple my current income and still not make the top ten percent, so it's not likely) but I still think the imbalance is far too large, and even a bit foreboding. But maybe that's a good thing. Maybe it will spur some much-needed change here in way taxes are assessed and maybe even used. A man can dream, can't he?

Net Neutrality

If you're at all interested in the whole net neutrality issue, Engadget has a good article by the Columbia Science and Technology Law Review on the current state of things with the FCC. Give it a look-see.

Vegas, Baby!

Next week, April and I are going to Las Vegas to be with the fam for Easter weekend. Matt and Emily are driving out from LA, Mom's going to be visiting Rod that week before, and we're flying in late Thursday night / Friday morning. We got our flight a little while ago, but just got our hotel yesterday. So now it's official, and I'm allowed to get excited. We're staying in the Excalibur, where I've never been, but it looks promising. I'm not one to gamble, especially since I'm pretty much broke all the time, but there's so much else to do, especially since my family will be there, I'm sure we'll have a great time. What happens in Vegas, will get posted here.

OLPC Thoughts

Going to hear SJ Klien talk was kind of a waste of time today, except that I got to play around with the laptop. I didn't really hear anything you can't find online, including people who seemingly only want to throw thinly veiled insults at the project for no other reason than they don't see the need for it. (Some guy decided to phrase his long-winded "questions" extolling the virtues of Nokia in such a way that it was hard to believe he was listening to the same presentation that I was. People really need to decide if what they're going to say will foster further dialogue or just piss people off before verbally vomiting all over everyone in earshot.)

Such douchebaggery, however, seems to miss what I see to be an important point - Negroponte and those working with him obviously think that the project will do some good in the world. Indeed, facilitating education is rarely a bad thing. Even if it doesn't work, was born of mis-placed motives, or is thriving on media attention a bit more than some people find tasteful, there's still potential for the OLPC project to spur change more positive than negative, no matter the scale. And if someone else can do it better (Nokia, perhaps) then please give it a try.

On a personal end, I'm a little disappointed that due to production constraints, lone consumers won't be able to buy them for a while. It's so completely hackable that it would be really fun to see what you could make of it, especially if all your friends got one for the easy mesh networking. I guess I'll have to wait for a while to see if the project is as successful as people are predicting. They've thought about a lot of angles, as Klein made clear, and I hope it works, but I have a feeling that things won't go exactly as they've planned.

OLPC

SJ Klein, director of content for the One Laptop Per Child project, will be talking and giving a demonstration today at Rice. I'm really interested in the whole OLPC thing, for better or worse, and will update later with my perspective on the talk. I'm hoping to get some hands-on time with the hardware and see how their beta-2 version holds up.

I love Techdirt

... for things like this article about the cover-up of huge problems in e-voting machines used in Florida. Not that anyone will ever be held accountable, of course - that's just passe - but it's nice to see people uncovering the truth about incompetence and corruption. I just like to spread it around.

Quick Lab Update

I'm trying two new experiments this week, both of which will hopefully find their way into my PhD thesis if they're successful. So far, however, my new molecules don't seem to be cooperating. I may need to try a different surface, or it may just be a bad batch. That's the problem at the moment - I can't tell which it is. I suppose it's easier to try a new surface than it is for the synthesis guys to make an entirely new batch of the suckers, but I at least know that there are a bunch of dissociated pieces running around the surface, so some extra filtration to ensure higher purity next time wouldn't hurt.
As it stands now, if both these things work well, I could be writing my thesis in a month. Cross your fingers. I'm trying really hard to be out of here with my defended PhD by August, so the next logical question is - what are you going to do after you graduate? Answer? I have absolutely no idea. I know I don't want to go into academia (at least for now) or government research, and somewhere in industry is where I'm aiming. Can I get a little more broad? Here I feel like I've narrowed it down to a third of my original possibilities, but that still leaves, oh, about a million more to explore.

So if you happen to know of any companies that could benefit from having a nanophysicist around - wait, let me rephrase that. We all know that everyone could benefit from having a nanophysicist around. If you happen to know of any companies that are looking for a nanophysicist, be sure to let me know. Because while my education and experience may be valuable, it's not exactly a plug-and-play situation with potential employers, as it would be for someone in Houston with a masters in geology, or chemical engineering, for example. I'm basically going to have to find a company I want to work for, and then convince them that my strange mix of skills, over-education, and experience is just what they need in some random position - maybe even one that doesn't even exist yet. So that may be a bit challenging. I'm never above accepting a little help in situations like these, so feel free to throw suggestions or ideas my way. I'll ingest and process them as best I can, all the while working frantically to write everything, research everything, and convince everyone I need to graduate.

Happy Birthday April!!!

It's your day, so live it up! Happiest of happy birthday wishes are being continually sent your way, even though you're only a few hundred yards from where I'm writing this. Maybe they'll be even stronger, then - maybe they follow the inverse square rule of intensity and the closer I am to you, the more potent the wishes will be! Awesome.

Happy Birthday, cutie!

No Mama!

Well, damn. Because of the wintry weather in the Philadelphia area today, Mom can't make it to Houston this weekend. Today's flight was canceled, and the Continental reps said that there were no more flights to Houston till Tuesday. Fat lot of good that does, when she has to be at a conference on Tuesday. No worries though, mom. You can come visit any time you like. The door's always open! (well, not really. mostly it's locked. i do live in a big city, you know. that just wouldn't be safe. but you get the idea.)

Weekend Weather

Houston looks like it's going to have a wonderful weekend, weather-wise. Highs in the 70s, low humidity, and cool evenings make it a great time of the year. Great rodeo weather. Philadelphia weather, on the other hand, is about as crappy as it gets. Rain, freezing rain, and snow are currently enveloping the area, with no end till tomorrow morning. Because of that, it looks like my mom's visit that I was so looking forward to is going to be put on hold for a while, or severely shortened, at best. Her flight from Philly to Houston at 5ish has already been canceled, and every line of communication to find out other options is too busy to give any useful response. Yeesh. What are the chances, especially with how often she travels? Hopefully things will work out. I wanna see my mama!

Motorcycle Repairs: Part 1

Yesterday, using the additional daylight that it's "savings time" allows in the pm, I got to work disassembling my thrashed TL. Step one, removing the ruined tail plastic was supposed to be easy - a few screws and some rubber press-fittings - but the bent tail pipe and can quickly changed that line of thought. In fact, just about everything was a lot harder to remove than I originally thought. Not one, but two bolts sheared off in my attempts to get things apart. The worst one, by far, is actually still in the engine casing - one of two bolts a the head of the first cylinder's exhaust. So now I have to figure out how to remove a lodged bolt fragment before I can even attach the new headers, and that's no easy task. Ugh. Anyone have any ideas?

I've removed the entire tail section - subframe, plastics, tail and turn lights, electronics, battery, exhaust headers, cans, rider pegs, and rearsets - as you can see in the picture. The good news is that nothing important seems damages beyond what I originally thought. I still need to get a new front left turn signal (cheap) a few bolts (cheap) and a pair of exhaust cans (very, very expensive) but I'm confident that I can do the work myself. Now, if I can just figure out how to remove a sheared bolt from the front cylinder casing, I'll be set!

Breck Pics

Here are some more pics of my Breckenridge Trip last week. Again, awesome.

Breckenridge, Baby!

Boy, oh boy, was Breckenridge great!!! I'll spare the myriad details I could go into, and post a few pictures here and a link to more for the rest for you to peruse in a little while. The short account follows, believe it or not.

Wednesday around noon, I checked out of the Adams Mark Hotel in Denver, fleeing the scene of APS after only two and a half days to meet April, Vince, Jennifer, David, Nikhil, and Brian at the airport. After a forty-minute production with the guy at Dollar, we got a Chrysler minivan and a Jeep Liberty for about $150 less than we should have paid. Score. The two hour drive across I-70 and down 9 was great, though the cars weren't too happy with the long steep hills and all our gear they had to haul. After finding our great little condo, we picked up our rental gear, did some grocery shopping for the next 4 days, and after dropping it all off ate at the Breckenridge Brewery before calling it a night at about 9:30. The first day at nearly 10,000 feet is exhausting.
Thursday morning showed us the incredibly short walk to the Quicksilver lift, and the beginning of a great day of skiing and snowboarding, with about an inch of fresh powder falling in the afternoon. With aching legs and April's great "Bella Pasta" and a few beers under our belts, we turned in early again.

Friday was a perfect bluebird day. Clear skies, no clouds, highs on mid-mountain hovering just around freezing - perfect for pictures. Those of us not taking lessons, in either a moment of clarity or insanity, decided to take the highest chair lift in North America (12,840 ft) and hike the rest of the way up to the 12,998 ft. summit of peak 9. Though altitude made it much more difficult than I'd imagined, with clear skies for miles, the breathtaking view completely made up for the difficulty of the short climb.

Saturday saw the crowds increasing, and by lunch the lifts I wanted to be on had 10-15 minute waits at the bottom. Luckily, it started snowing that afternoon, dissipating the crowds, cutting visibility to two-chair-lengths at times on the lifts, and laying down the most incredible powder I've ever been lucky enough to carve. Even with exhausted legs, I ran a few short mogul runs down some blue slopes - not something I'd consider easy on a snowboard. The powder just let you float over it, as smooth as you can imagine. It was an absolutely incredible end to three great days of snowboarding. As soon as I can afford it again, I'm definitely going back for more. The people I went with were great, the conditions were amazing, the condo, location, and atmosphere were just about perfect. Best. Vacation. Ever.

Quick Update from APS in Denver

Just a quick update while I escape the commotion of four thousand APS physicists in one crowded (albeit very large) building. I'm back in my hotel room at the moment before meeting some people for dinner. My talk is done (it went very well, btw - I even got a compliment from someone noting that it was not only enlightening, but entertaining, to boot!) and aside from the mild fatigue that the moderate altitude brings on, I'm feeling great - anxious to get to Breckenridge and carve up some powder! It's good seeing people like my former roommate, Aaron, again, among others who've since left Rice for greener pastures. (Heh, like, money. Get it?) If it weren't for all the boring phyics, this would actually be a great time. Honestly, though, while most talks don't interest me in the slightest, there are always at least 40 to choose from at any given time, so there's bound to be something worthwhile to learn about. I'll update w/ more pics as soon as there are any worth posting. Here's one just to emphasize how excited I am about my proximity to the Colorado Rockies, and hence - both temporally and physically - to snowboarding. Woot!(- A view from a nice, quiet, secluded spot on the 2nd floor of the Colorado Convention Center -)