My day so far.
by Mouser

I gave the clerk at Burger King a fifty-cent piece and she stared at it for awhile, I think she wanted to ask me what it was but she had clearly lost her voice recently, so she just guessed its value and gave me chang that would be appropriate if the coin were worth $1.75. Using alternative currency is fun. I think I'll see what I can get for a Sacagawea dollar next time.

Later, I met a man who had broken his neck and back, then passed a woman walking down the street brandishing a long sword. I counted $88.50 in change on my desk.

I'm starting to think about my next computer. The recent demise of my old Pentium Pro 180, wanker (1996-2001), has left my room sadly deficient in the fan noise department.

It's starting to seem likely that I'll be moving somewhere this fall; probably something resembling a warehouse or at least a regular house - certainly somewhere with more space than my current tiny room. This will eventually lead to the construction of the MAME arcade machine I've been designing for the past few months. And that means a dedicated computer. Not really dedicated, but it can't be a desktop and it needs to be Windows (sorry, that's what all the good emulators are written for). But it can certainly be networked and can certainly have loads of harddrive for whatever evil purposes we deem necessary.

So. Sometime in the next 6-8 months, I'm going to build a networked file/mp3/game server. I can't believe how cheap hardware is right now. 1.33GHz Athlon processor & 266 FSB motherboard - $280. 256MB of PC2-100 DRAM - $100. 80GB HDD - $200. That is so cheap. And that's all high-end stuff. For this box I won't even need that level of hardware, and can probably throw together something awesome for under $400. Insane. I guess it helps that I already have a spare case, power supply, monitor, mouse, keyboard, soundcard, video card, and netcard from my old box...

Aaah... gear.

Has anyone else noticed that Dennis Tito looks exactly like Dr. Evil?

Ok Dennis Tito is my personal hero. I hope his trip is worth every one of the 2 billion pennies he paid for it. Fly on, Dennis.

Today was the EMS "club sale" where anyone who belongs to an outdoors club gets 25% off everything in the store. I used this opportunity to get myself a new hiking backpack. The month of backpacking through Europe I did back in 1999 pretty much killed my last pack. And this summer I intend to do a lot more hiking and camping (to make up for the climbing and caving, which I will be doing a lot less of).

My new backpack is great. It's huge, has a hydration bladder, holds the entire contents of my apartment and the local zoo, and feels so comfortable. I just want to wear it around everywhere. Joy to the me, the backpack is green.

Last night I hit the Unlockedgroove party at the VFW which was so-so (it turns out that course 4 and course 11 throw really lame parties; but they hire great DJs!) and then went on to North Annex. Now I've heard of North Annex a lot lately, but I didn't realize that I know everyone who lives there and furthermore that it's about two blocks from my house. How odd. Good party. Ended up watching anime with a woman from Harvard until after the sun was well up. Anime is so bad.

Again, the haircut works its magic:

To: mouser@mouser.org
Subject: jesus fucking christ (cam)

you are hot.. please pose for us.. oh mother of god
you are a piece of ass!

Alex, Jess, and I just went over to Harvard to check out their "protest." Apparently, low-level Harvard employees are underpaid and a bunch of students are protesting this. They took over a building for awhile but have now been forced out onto the yard, sleeping in tents, etc. At 5:00am there was only one person up.

Alex brought his wamp light and beamed a few tents with it while yelling, "wake up!" Not sure why he did that. Anyway, there was a significant amount of hack potential here. They had lots of signs up that were mostly pro-protest, but a few random markings like "Economic theory: they are not needed" [referring to the low-income workers, presumably]. Another sign mentioned how similar employees at MIT got paid more, and used the phrase "the environment at MIT is much better." We found this enormously funny. We're going to come back tomorrow night with markers and some choice signs of our own.

Uncle Dave sent me a big chunk of Flourite crystal in the mail, presumably in return for the halite core sample i sent him from WIPP last summer. I borrowed a blacklight from Alex but it did not make the crystal flouresce, unfortunately. I was going to buy some UV LEDs and make a glowing rock. But looks like that idea's not going to happen.

[ this entry pieced together from jottings in my journal during the course of the NYC trip]

So the security people at the Boston airport were really nervous about me bringing the robot on board. After confusing the woman behind the X-ray conveyor, I got passed up the security chain to some very mean-looking woman who walked me and my box over to the Delta Airlines people and made me show them the contents of my box. Initially they said "no way." The mean woman kept insisting that It had a timer on it (she was referring to the LCD screen on the microcontroller). After some discussion and pleading, I got them to let me demo the robot for them. When I turned it on and the lights lit up and the servos jerked, they jumped back like it was about to blow or something. It was hillarious. I ran the spin-cycle demo for them and they were instantly convinced that it was harmless and let me go on my way. Time wasted: about an hour.

Once I got to New York City and had taken a cab to the Wieden & Kennedy office, I carried my robot up to the 7th floor as instructed by Iain in his email. When the elevator opened, I got my first glimpse of what W&K was like. They owned the entire floor of the building, and it was almost entirely composed of one big room. A very nice space! The receptionist had a casual air about her that relieved my fears that this might be a really stuffy advertising bunch with lots of suits and whatnot. Iain was not immediately available, so I had a few minutes to sit there and look at the office. Most of the employees looked to be in their late twenties and early thirties, everyone looked very "hip." There was this funny trophy case in reception that had a trophy for each of their major clients including Nike, ESPN, Jordan, and some others.

Iain showed up and showed me around. He is an exceptionally interesting person. He gets big points for the Scottish accent too (he's from Glasgow). He set me up in his office while I waited for the 4:30pm presentation. There I saw that he had an extensive collection of techno videos on VHS, some great records and CD's, and basically that he and I shared a lot of common interests. This trip was getting more and more promising every second.

I got introduced to everyone and there seemed to have been some hype about my visit, as everyone said things like, "Oh you're the robot guy!" I was under the impression before I arrived that my presentation would just be for a few of the creative department personell. But it was sounding like the bulk of the office would be there, so I had to do a little last-second preparing for a real presentation. I programmed some more interesting demos into the robot and thought about what I would be saying.

When the presentation rolled around, I was set up in the company kitchen in front of about 25 people. They seemed interested and asked good questions, and I think they enjoyed it. The robot demos worked well, etc. I gave them a 6.270 video and a few shirts.

Afterwards, Iain had some more work to do, leaving me to wander around W&K and chat with people that worked there. I talked to the receptionist for a bit and (aside from being really cute) turned out to be a really interesting person. She had snuck away from the front desk to watch part of the demo and I was telling her about my lack of plans for the remainder of the weekend when she unexpectedly gave me her phone number. I blame this irrational behavior on my new haircut. :)

When Iain was finished, he and I and a few other guys went to some bar near W&K to meet Iain's girlfriend, Julie. This is where Iain informed me that Wieden would be putting all of my meals, drinks, etc. on an expense account. So I figured why not bring on the white russian. But at this point I was really starving and drinking on an empty stomach was probably a bad idea. I got drunk on one drink, and every time I went to the bathroom, a new white russian seemed to have appeared on the table. So now I'm drunk. Julie comes in and is really really cool (and gorgeous, as everyone seems to be here. they're all pretty).

We cab it over to Iain's place in the east village and I drop off my stuff. If I had any doubts that Iain was the coolest person ever before, now it was certain. His modest apartment is filled to the brim with records, CDs, and cool gear. I heart this guy. And he has cool locks on his door (a medeco and some side-pinned thing I was unfamiliar with).

Dinner was amazing; a french reseraunt with gourmet everything. Yum. I had a fillet mingon. I showed Iain the matchbook that Heidi had written her number on and he declared that I must call her tomorrow because she is amazingly cool.

After dinner, of course, we had to go to another bar. Because that's what you do in New York, I guess. This was going to be a weird weekend. Met one of Julie's friends who I wasn't too impressed with, but this was because she was piss drunk and was talking turd about my research. Iain put Kraftwerk on the jukebox and insisted that we wait around for it to come on, which never happened.

I must have left that matchbook on the table at Casimir, though, because when we got home I did not have it. So I am a total rube. I've lost her number. I feel like such an ass. Iain assures me that tomorrow we'll try to figure it out.

I woke up early and went off to the Empire State building. The line was already really long at 10:00am, but it moved quickly. The observation deck is on the 86th floor. The view was tremendous, if a bit hazy. I snuck into a room where I could see down an elevator shaft and snapped a picture that didn't come out. After making my way back down the elevator, I walked down 5th Ave. past the flatiron building and over to the Bowery. Met up with Iain and Julie for "brunch" at 12:30 (isn't brunch supposed to come between breakfast and lunch??) at the Bowery Bar near CBGB. Apparently it was a big Andy Warhol hangout or something.

Went to the Museum of Modern Art uptown a ways. My first subway ride of the trip was uneventful. The NYC subway is way less fun than the Boston one. And more expensive by 50%. But the tokens do have cool pentagonal holes in them... I guess that's what the extra fifty cents is for. Anyway, I didn't know exactly where the MoMA was, so I wandered around for awhile. Poked my head into St. Patrick's cathedral to see some good old-fashioned gothic architecture.

The MoMA exhibits were exquisite. There was one called "Work Spheres" which was all about the future of office design and furniture. I wanted to buy one of everything they had in there. Great desks, lamps, chairs, layouts, etc. And they had some of the Sony robot dogs and various other gear somehow tangentially related to working. This included a giant SUV decked out with all-terrain research gear.

Another exhibit was an Andreas Gursky photo exhibit. His use of repeating patterns and color is amazing. The giant prints were so great to stand right in front of and just get lost in. The only person I know of who can take a closeup of a carpet and make it look really cool.

Finally, there were the paintings. It was like walking through the cliff notes on art. All of the big names were represented, most of the paintings I recognized back from my liberal arts days. Matisse, Van Gogh, Picasso, Pollack, Monet, etc. They were all there. It was so weird to turn a corner and be confronted by the actual "Starry Night." Just... boom, there it is. The painting everyone has seen and read about, there it is right in front of me without fanfare. But what a great painting. I must have stared at it for 20 minutes.

When I got back to Iain's place, he had picked out his music for the party tonight and we set about trying to figure out what Heidi's phone number was. This turned out to be easy as she was listed. We got in touch and I invited her to come to Iain's party with me, but she was feeling tired and we agreed to just go have a drink or something after dinner.

So Iain and I headed out to Hell's Kitchen to bring his turntables and mixer to the bar where the party would be. It was such a dump. Apparently some kind of metal bar, the Bellevue was filled with people that were visibly not my type and the bartender had a leather dominatrix outfit on. Weird. They let us into the back room which was full of garbage, and then down into this weird dungeon basement where we would set up. I was half-expecting to see the gimp in a box down there or something. There was no PA, not table, and the place was a mess. We stood around for awhile tried to get ahold of the party organizers with no luck.

After awhile, I went back to Iain's place to meet Julie and head off to our dinner reservation. Dinner was the most amazing meal. A place on the lower east side called "the kitchen club" which had a lot of japanese influence and served the greatest mushroom dumplings. We ate a lot. Several $40 bottles of wine went by, appetizers were supplied liberally, etc. I got more of an idea of just what a socialite Iain was. The owned knew him and gave us numerous free menu items, came over to talk to us a lot, and basically kissed his ass. Or maybe it was because we rung up a $260 tab. Not sure.

At any rate, it was the best meal I've ever eaten ever. And for me it was free. Oh yes.

So I called Heidi from the resteraunt and she came over just as we were finishing up desert. Iain went back to the club to fix the nightmare that was happening with the party situation. I headed off into downtown NYC with Heidi. We just walked around for a long time and talked. She is a fantastically interesting person to talk to. Of course, as per New York law, we ended up at a bar and I was drinking another white russian. geez. That's #5 on the weekend. I feel like I sort of made an ass of myself talking about my research and everything, but there's only so far you can go talking about nuclear engineering at a bar without looking a complete tool.

I had to be back at Iain's party by 2:00am to help him carry out the gear, and I did actually want to hear him spin some, so at 1:00am I walked Heidi back to her place and we flagged down a cab. I figured that since she had turned down the offer to go to the party that our walking around was just her being nice to me. I had, afterall told her that I didn't know what I would be doing all weekend. So I wasn't assuming this was about physical attraction or anything. As I was getting into the cab, she gave me a quick kiss which pretty much shattered that notion. Wow!

So that was cool. Now I'm not sure what to do. I suck at this sort of thing. But she is really really cool to talk to and, well, gorgeous. Again, it must be my new haircut. :)

I took a cab back up to the Bellevue and met up with Iain, Julie, et al. They had located a shitty PA and made a table out of beer cases. The sound quality was awful and the crowd was lame, but Iain was awesome. He played a Renegade Soundwave remix of a Kraftwerk song that kicked ass. He's hillarious behind the turntables. Dances around all silly and clearly loves doing it, even in such a crappy venue.

After the party, he and Julie wanted to know all the gossip about me and Heidi, apparently they were expecting wild and exciting things to happen. I fear I may have created an inter-office gossip mill. I hope it doesn't piss off Heidi. We retired to Iain's for the night; I'm exhausted.

Slept in some, and went to brunch with Julie and Iain at a Polish diner nearby. Went to a music store called "other music" which came highly recommended by Iain. Bought the new Wagon Christ disc, learned that they just opened a store in Harvard Square. cool. We walked around the lower east side and saw a store called Alife that sold limited edition stuff including weird Air Woven Nikes. Last stop, a store that specialized in grilled-cheese sandwiches. They also sold fruit smoothies, which is what we were after. It was about 90 degrees and very very muggy.

Anyway, we walked back to W&K and grabbed the robot. I said goodbye to Julie and Iain and thanked them for an amazing weekend. They were so generous and great to hang out with. I took the cab back to LaGuardia. In contrast the the Boston security debacle, the New York people didn't even blink at the robot. Didn't want to open the box or anything. Talk about lax security...

What a fun trip. Wow. I enjoyed New York City so much that I'm tempted to try and live there at some point. It was amazing and put Boston to shame. Not sure what to do about Heidi; I'd love to see her again but I still don't really know what the deal is there. She seemed pretty excited that I said I would email her, so I hope we can stay in touch. And if I make it back down there agian, perhaps we can hang out more. I hope so.

My hair is now so short. Shorter than it's been in about seven years. Thanks Helen!

How great is modern technology? I already got my Massachusetts refund check. I only filed two days ago. I heart online filing. Attention government: get off your ass with the online voting.

And speaking of ass, the new TLC robotic "combat" show, Robotica, sucks... ass. It would possibly be more interesting if A) the robots were forced to interact in more than one of the four events and B) the 4WD/6WD wedge robots didn't always win. I swear my 6.270 robot could beat some of these pieces of crapulence. Yawn.

So I got a blinkie* this morning and had it blinking away in my room while I slept. It was cute but mostly useless and for the small amount of agrivation the blinking caused, the total lack of utility was unsatisfactory.

So today I gutted the blinkie, figured out how it worked, and re-wired it to take a TTL input signal from the parallel port of my linux box. This combined with liberal use of the ioctl() function now allows the light to blink when there is network traffic on the apartment net. It's sort of a visual gague of how clogged the network is. And even better - when we're all asleep, the light is mostly off and doesn't bother me!

* Blinkie - A large orange blinking lamp that is often used near road construction to warn motorists of impending danger.

Finally met Andrew, the king of compact macs tonight. Gave him the guts from my macquarium mac. Slept through swapfest this morning. #!&@%

Did my taxes last night. Massachusetts has really great, easy, simple tax filing online. Took me approximately 2 minutes. New Mexico's online system sucks. Took me thirty minutes to figure out that I wasn't elidgeable for their online system, and another thirty to do the written part. Oh and for the first time ever I actually owe taxes. And of course it's from New Mexico. The bastards. A whole hundred bucks. heh

Well IBM technical service was its usual speed self; I got my laptop back in two days, and now everything seems to be working. Let's catch up:

Taxes. I still need to do them. Party last night at Hani's place ("The Arsenal"), mostly 5E people, not really my crowd. Spent most of the time talking to Geo about being on Junk Yard Wars, Blendo, his small hot pipe organ, the railgun, and measuring the resistance of the Federal Reserve downtown (both electrical resistance and armed resistance to people with big spools of wires running around the perimeter of the building).

I've spent a lot of time in the last few days working on designing a PIC circuit with Luka. Ever since Luka sold out and started working in the real world, he has ooodles of mooooolah and can afford to do things like buy 25 PICs at a time to get the bulk discount. $134 for 25 PIC 16F874's, no problem. So I put down for five of them and we're going to build prototyping boards. Then I'm going to build that PEL that Heckler and I have been talking about forever. Finally. Worked out the schematic for it and everything.

Jeff Mission's new mixed CD rocks. Whoops, can't buy it in stores; he's local.

On Monday I woke up laughing. No recollection of the dream, I just woke up with a big smile and a chuckle. And it felt great.

I've never experienced this before, but I must say that it is the best way to start the day. If I could do it again, I'd do it everyday.

Drove down to the White Rock overlook and watched the sunrise, and then took the long scenic route to Albuqerque via highway 4. On the way, I came across a large collection of deer and elk. I'd never seen an elk before.

Let's see. What else. F-16s at Albuquerque airport, taking off four abreast. Found a "speed humps" sign near the airport that I found humorous.

The flight to Cincinnatti was uneventful. They wanted to charge me $5 for headphones to watch some bad Nicholas Cage movie, so I just turned up the volume on my armrest and made a funnel earhorn out of my airplane safety card. It was definitely not worth $5.

In Cincinnatti, they put us on the plane on time, then left us at the gate for 2 hours. There was a storm between there and Boston that was so bad that they couldn't fly through it, so high that they couldn't fly over it, and so large that to fly around would put the plane beyond fuel capacity. So they waited.

Finally, they pulled away and taxied down to some remote part of the runway, where they waited for another two hours.

Then they rolled back to the gate, let us off, and herded everyone onto a bigger plane along with the contents of the next Boston flight which was also very late at this point, and we all flew around the storm in a big 767-300.

Getting home at 2:30am, I realized what three weeks of incapacitation had done to the state of my room. Wow what a pit.

Oh, and to add to the fun, my laptop has now totally stopped recognizing its extra RAM. I'm sending it back in this morning for another repair. @!#*&#%!

And more badness, Professor Parker hasn't graded the midterms from 22.62, and therefore I have no gague for whether or not I should drop the course. Did I mention that taxes are almost due and I haven't started working on that??

Everything was so much more pleasent in New Mexico...

I rented my "car" today to get to the airport tomorrow. They gave me a pickup truck.

There's just something humorous about driving a pickup truck. I don't know what it is, but I feel silly doing it. Anyway, I took my new wheels for a spin up into the Jemez mountains. I drove up the ski hill road to check on a trailhead that I want to hike this summer. The trail runs along the ridge separating the Rio Grande valley from the Valle Caldera, and one end of the trail is at the ski hill parking lot.

The road up the mountain was somewhat sad; it passes right through the most heavily burned portions of the Jemez. In places it looks like a war zone. Everything is char and nothing living can be seen in any direction. But then you'll round a corner and everything is green ponderosa pines again. It's odd how the line between total destruction and undamaged is so fine.

I love driving through the mountains by myself. Aside from being a great drive with beautiful scenery, I just enjoy solitude a whole lot.

The ski hill road didn't satiate me, and the sun was still up for a couple more hours, so I drove off to highway 4, which cuts right through the highest parts of the Jemez. I drove past the caldera, which has now been purchased by the government. In two years, it'll be open to the public! They're going to put some hiking trails and backcountry camping in there. I'm very excited about this. It was such a waste of beautiful land for a cattle ranch.

I got out of the car by the East Fork river and walked along it for awhile. The higher parts of the mountains still had snow in the shadows, and it was melting fast. The river was fat with fresh melt and was well over its banks. I guess it's sorta cliche but there is something invigorating about fresh mountain streams. Walking along through a sparse ponderosa forest with no underbrush, just matted pine needles and that weird smell that the trees give off.

I think tomorrow I'll get up at sunrise and drive to Albuquerque the scenic slow way, down through the Jemez. Down highway 4. I really love New Mexico. It is just one hidden gem after another.

The Trinity site was pretty muh what I expected. There really isn't all that much to look at, but there is some real significance to the location itself and I'm glad I saw it. Neither John nor I had been before. It is difficult to get to the Trinity site because it's only open to the public two days a year. In 15 years of working at LANL, John had never been able to go. It turns out we picked a good day to come. The volunteers there said that usually the April days are cold and/or rainy and the October days are genearlly opressively hot. This was the nicest day for visiting the Trinity site in their memory.

The VLA is still how I remember it. It doesn't really ever change, although the dishes were in a configuration I hadn't seen before (B). John had never been here either, so he probably got more out of it than I did. But it was such a nice day that driving around and taking the self-guided walking tour was very relaxing.

John and Cliff have made it a habit of humiliating me in front of waitresses now. Cliff did it again at the Elk's lodge in Carlsbad Friday night, although not as effective as his first try two weeks ago, and John did it at the Olive Garden last night. Geez.

Way to go JPL! Mars Odyssey launches sucessfully and is on its way to Mars. I hope this mission works. NASA's budget may depend on it. For some reason Mars has been fantastically difficult to get to, and NASA can't afford to screw up again for the third time in a row. Look at the American history of Mars efforts:

1964 - Mariner 3's protective launch sheild fails to jettison, preventing the spacecraft from attaining its Mars trajectory.

1971 - Mariner 8's launch rocket tumbles out of control and falls into the ocean.

1992 - Mars Observer disappears three days before reaching Mars.

1998 - Mars Climate Orbiter burns up in the atmosphere of Mars due to a metric/English conversion error in the guidance plan.

1999 - Mars Polar Lander disappears just before entering the Mars atmosphere.

1999 - Deep Space 2 microprobes returned no telemetry and were presumed lost.

That's six total failures to the eight partial and total successes for the US. The rest of the world has faired even worse with 12 total failures and 7 successes! Why is Mars so hard to get to??

So my time at Los Alamos has come to an end, and I'm back in Carlsbad. John and I drove down last night.

Today's most interesting feature was the freakish wind. Sustained 53mph winds gusting to [hurricane-force] 71mph. It was blowing the wooden planks off of John's boathouse steps and creating whitecapped waves running down the river. I took some photos of it, coming soon.

I spent most of the day working, transcribing Dimitri's notes into the King's English. Fortran is so damn obtuse with its 8-character maximum variable names and implicit typing. Makes me want to pull my hair out. Add to this that I just don't understand some of the algorithms yet and my matrix math is pretty dodgy, and I'm having a hard time.

Anyway, I took the evening off and brought out John's telescope. It's a 6" Newtonian reflector with a somewhat crappy mount. The wind was making it shake a lot but I still got very clear, bright images of the moon and Saturn. I don't think I've ever been able to see Saturn's rings before. It was a moving experience. But there they were. Beautiful.

Tomorrow: Trinity site.

Stuff that has happened in the last couple of days:

Dimitri and I have almost finished reviving his old photohydrodynamics code. John's new code is also progressing in leaps, bounds, and various assorted other synonyms for jumping.

This highschool kid Ben came out of nowhere and emailed me with pictures and a description of his own railgun project, which apparently got a muzzle velocity of 4 km/s with tiny capacitors and 5" rails. I am infinitely impressed. He took the exact opposite approach we did and its clear to me that he did it right. He made small, simple railguns quickly with no attempt at working out the theory and then when they didn't work, he started making new versions with changes to see what parameters had big effects.

Now he has made six different guns and had 20 successful shots in the time it has taken us to almost finish our one gun, which it turns out isn't designed very effectively. Our gun is so big, complex, and expensive that we cannot afford to just scrap it and start on the next one; we're going to finish it and fire it just to see what it can do, but based on what we know now from discussions on railgunners and from literature, we're not expecting much.

We'll probably switch gears after we get this one firing (hopefully this term!) and start with small quick projects like ben's until we can get some of the engineering details worked out.

Today, I talked for an hour with The Legendary Ed Grothus.

Maybe it was the shining halo of white hair, or the purple & white camo pants, or just his overwhelming friendly personality. But for some reason this guy is my hero. Ed just rules. If you're ever in Los Alamos, even if you don't need to buy any lab surplus gear, you must stop by and say hello to Ed. He is legendary.

"You know how they say the one with the most toys wins? Well, I've won."