So my official postdoc offer letter came in today. And they low-balled my salary. Basically offered me the base salary for my employment category when they could go as high as +25%. I called the division leader at N-1 and he was pissed because HR hadn't contacted him before making the offer, so he couldn't get his input in. There will be some renegotiation, so we'll see.

In other news, my advisor is still jerking me around on something pointless in my thesis and, imho, wasting a lot of my very limited time. And my dad is still in the hospital. When is the plague of locusts scheduled to start? Because right now it wouldn't surprise me.

So a little over a week ago I set up this puzzle geocache. This weekend people tried to solve it for the first time. Two teams of two attempted it and both failed. One of them was Bob and Cari, but they were trying to do it in the 6" of fresh snow we got on Saturday night and in the dark... so they didn't have much of a chance. The good news is that I got the math right and Ed's final coordinates were within 6m of mine.

I was going to work on the next cache in the series this weekend but the overabundance of work and snow kept me inside.

In preparation for a puzzle geocache that I've been working on, I was investigating some of the lesser known properties of ellipses and this naturally led me to Eric Weisstein's Mathworld website. I found an error and wrote the Mathworld people about it and I got a personal response from Eric. It felt like a nerd celebrity encounter or something. :)

The issue at hand was the statement that "Four nonconcyclic points uniquely determine an ellipse..." This is clearly not true (consider the verticies of a triangle and any point inside the triangle). The correct statement is either that "Four nonconcyclic points on an ellipse uniquely determine the ellipse," or "Four nonconcyclic points that represent the verticies of a convex polygon uniquely determine an ellipse."

Anyway, my correction is going live with the next update (no idea how often that thing gets rebuilt). So I am now a Mathworld contributor. Cool!

Very very tasty. First time trying to do this all from scratch.

My post titles from here on may be inside-jokes or obscure references. Just a warning.

...too much on plate... ...thesis... ...advisor... ...ugh...

I think I am officially at the point in the thesis process that really really really sucks and will probably go on for some time. So don't be surprised if I ignore you and this journal and the rest of the world for awhile.

OK, let's see. The oscar award nominees have been revealed.

Categories for which I have seen all of the films nominated: 1.
Categories for which I have seen all but one of the films nominated: 4.
Categories for which I have seen all but two of the films nominated: 0.
Categories for which I have seen all but three of the films nominated: 3.
Categories for which I have seen all but four of the films nominated: 6.
Categories for which I have seen none of the films nominated: 10.

The only category for which I have seen all of the nominated films is "Visual Effects," so I consider it to be the only one I am qualified to pass judgement on. In this case, I give the award hands-down to I, Robot. The textures and animation effects in Spiderman 2 were poorly done and I was not impressed. Harry Potter had reasonable effects, but I didn't feel that they pushed any boundaries.

If I had to pick on the categories for which I have seen all but one film, I would choose: The Village for Score, The Incredibles for Animated Feature and Sound Editing, and Lemony Snicket for Makeup.

I would like to see Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and The Incredibles win as many Oscars as they can. Since I haven't seen all of the movies they are up against, I hope that if they get beat it is by the movies I missed.

I attribute much of my not having seen many nominated movies to the fact that the majority of my movie watching is via Netflix and as such I have not seen too many recent movies. If I write out the same category coverage for last year's nominees, it goes something like this:

Categories for which I have seen all of the films nominated: 2.
Categories for which I have seen all but one of the films nominated: 5.
Categories for which I have seen all but two of the films nominated: 7.
Categories for which I have seen all but three of the films nominated: 4.
Categories for which I have seen all but four of the films nominated: 2.
Categories for which I have seen none of the films nominated: 5.

And had I seen SeaBiscuit, these numbers would look considerably better.
The categories from last year that I've seen everything nominated are Visual Effects and Makeup, which just goes to show that I am a big nerd when it comes to the visual spectacle. And in both cases, I would have picked the winner (LotR:RotK).

Today I read this article about a wireless power delivery platform coming to market.

I wrote about this idea last July.

Next thing you know, my idea for moose repellant will show up in the local corner store.

see above.

At the caving meeting last Thursday I finally rid myself of the position of Secretary. There are two positions that it seems no one wants, and these are President and Secretary. I think its because these are the only two positions that involve any real work. At least the president gets to be the contact person for the entire grotto on matters of actual caving. The secretary's job is all more or less bland.

Anyway, I've been the secretary for two years now and this time I respectfully declined my re-nomination. And by "respectfully" I mean that I said, "no way in hell."

My only real job as secretary was to take minutes at the meetings and then get them sent out to the email list before the next meeting. Some how this is really quite dull and the only way I could spice it up was to make the minutes into humor experiments.

Anyway, after annoucing my retirement from the secretary post in the minutes that I sent out on Friday, I got several emails from grotto members telling me they enjoyed my humorous take on the minutes and that they'll miss it. That felt good. :)

Still the class clown.

In an email regarding polyurethane coatings for gloves, jg wrote:

I was asked about the "styling" coating on my gloves. Yes, it is possibly even cooler than Mouser's sunglasses.

My sunglasses require a special OSHA permit just to be seen near. They radiate such amazing coolness that special safety goggles are needed to gaze upon them. To meditate on their apperance will ease the mind and clear the sinuses.

Either that or they were on sale because no one in their right mind would wear lemon-yellow sunglasses, and basically I'm a cheap bastard.

I was going to add to Jason's posting of the Cook Islands Google Portal (google.co.ck) with an unintentionally humorous URL of my own. However, I see now that the US Park Service has renamed the directory for Carlsbad Caverns National Park from the previous and much more silly "http://www.nps.gov/caca/" to just "/cave." Oh well. Think of all the potential jokes lost. :(

But wait, their "U.S. World Heritage Sites" website is still at http://www.cr.nps.gov/worldheritage/caca.htm

So while I was at the caving club meeting last night, renouncing my secretaryship finally after two years, a near-disaster was averted in my apartment. Apparently Mikki had inadvertantly bumped the stove knob slightly and caused it to start letting out gas but not engaging the starter. And this happened on her way out of the house to go shoot baskets. So she comes back and the entire house smells strongly of gas. Being careful not to do anything spark-related, she found the stove leaking and turned the knob off, opened the doors and windows and let the house air out.

Of course, the pilot light on the fake woodstove was still going so had we both been gone for the weekend or something... this could have been exciting.

Anyway, disaster averted, nothing exploded, the pets weren't asphyxiated, etc. But we did have to leave the windows and doors open for awhile to get the smell out and it wasn't too warm in there. So we probably spent a lot of money re-heating the house last night (not to mention the gas that escaped from the stove).

Did I mention I never ever have to take minutes at a caving club meeting again?

A friend from the astronomy club works for IM-1, the web design group here at the lab. She saw some of my astrophotography and asked if they could use some of my images on the lab website. I gave them a handfull of images that I liked, cropped down to the size they asked for. Today they launched one page of the redesign:

http://www.lanl.gov/about.shtml

Reloading this page brings up a random image from a pool of 8 or so. I don't know if my photos will appear anywhere else on the LANL website, but this is cool anyway. :) Please disregard the fact that none of these photos have anything to do with the lab.

Someone who knows this stuff better than I do, please clue me in. Does the water in the human body serve a purpose other than a fluid transport medium for dissolved solids and small colloids?

If not, could you have complex life on a planet like Titan where there is abundant liquid... just not water? What would the consequences of a -180°C temperature be on the properties of various candidate cellular structural materials?

A Titanian analog to a terrestrial cell might have liquid ethane inside for transport and... would probably not be a big fan of free oxygen. Non-oxygen reactions dominate? Who knows. Dad: this is your cue to tell me that my understanding of chemistry and materials science is pathetic.

If you've got M&M's in one hand and advil in the other, keep track of which is which.

I had a headache so I went to Christina's office to get some advil. And she always has candy, so I was eating some M&Ms while she was showing me a recipe she was going to cook for her cooking club. I got distracted by the hideous concept of lemon mint shrimp cheese sauce and just started throwing M&M's into my mouth while discussing the recipe. And eventually the only small round objects in my hands were advil, but I didn't think of that.

Chewing an advil - especially when you're expecting chocolate - is truly a vile experience. It required copius amounts of water and gum to mitigate the damage.

The funny part is that I didn't associate the terrible chalky texture and acrid taste with the advil immediately. In fact, I had totally forgotten that I had advil in my hand. I was just trying to think of how this M&M could taste so wrong. "What am I eating?" I asked with what I'm sure was a rather pathetic look on my face.

I wanted to just take it easy today in preparation for the mad thesis writing extravaganza that is sure to ensue starting tomorrow. But the weather was really nice so I just went on a bunch of little hikes.

After breakfast I did three geocaches near my house. Then Chris came over and we cut some boards using my table saw (for his closet shelves). This was the first time I've actually used the table saw since I bought it from Robin, and it is really a nice tool. I'm excited about having the time (someday) to actually use it and build some cool stuff.

Then Robin came over and we did a couple more geocaches.

Then Bob came over and we went and looked at a LANL benchmark that is embedded in the curb near his old apartment.

And now I'm going to make one metric asston of chili for this coming week's lunches.

Bob, Cari, and I went out to the observatory at El Rito last night for their monthly star party. Despite ominous weather reports of partly cloudiness and a bad-looking radar image, the sky was more or less totally clear. The problem was the wind. Even with the tripod at its minimum height, the optical tube assembley was acting like a big sail and the result was images that danced around by as much as an arc minute. Not condusive to long-exposure photography.

The club still hadn't gotten the alignment pins back from Meade for their 16" SCT in the dome, so it wasn't useful for photography either. The good news on that front was that, apparently, before the scope went in for service, the pier was properly aligned. Because the pier hasn't been disturbed, it shouldn't require adjustment once they get the fork properly mounted to the pier.

We did some visual stuff and tried to work out the kinks on a new polar alignment procedure. Packed up and were home by 11.

So I'm watching NASA TV; the first bits of Huygens' data are scheduled to arrive any second now. So many people are hitting the NASA TV feed here at the lab that labnet's feed for this channel is slowed down to unusable chop. So maybe I'll go watch it in the break room once the data starts arriving.

How amazing is this mission?? Never before have we done something so complicated and with so little knowledge of what we would get in return. The beacon on Huygens transmitted throughout the entry, descent, and landing sequence and continued to broadcast its health throughout the Cassini pass. The batteries lasted longer than predicted and apparently the lander survived landing and was in a "favorable" orientation upon touch[splash?]down. So the hard part is over and apparently went off without a hitch.

The question remaining, which will be answered in moments, is whether we can pull off the "easy" part - receiving the data on Cassini and storing it, then relaying it back to Earth. I am so excited for the outcome of the next few moments.

I went to see The Life Aquatic last night with Nina and Mikki. Great film. Reminded me of Wes Anderson's other work, except that I liked this one. I'm wondering if I should reinvestigate Rushmore and The Royal Tenebaums since it seems like everyone who's opinion I respect likes these films.

Anyway I really liked Mark Mothersbaugh's work on the soundtrack and was dismayed to find that the simple casio-like song piped into the helmets of the divers was not included. Just as with Kill Bill, my favorite song in the movie was not included on the soundtrack and they lost a sale as a result. Luckily, I'm not the only one who enjoyed the song and someone put it on the web.

This link will probably rot quickly. But I have the tune now and that's all that matters.

So a year and a half ago, when I bought my Ranger, I commented that the clutch felt a little soft. In the first year of ownership, I managed to gimp the clutch so badly that it smoked - twice. Then, last month, the clutch throw-out bearing started rattling and needed to be replaced.

But when I brought it in to Metzgers to have them look at it, they said "yes its the clutch bearing, and yes you need to replace it, and you should probably just do the whole clutch while we're in there." To which I agreed, but they couldn't do the repair right then because they needed to order the clutch kit and bearing, so I took the truck home with the intent to bring it back the following week. However, from the moment I left Metzgers with the truck, the auditory symptoms of broken clutch were gone. So I said screw the $800 repair - there's nothing apparently wrong, so I'll just keep driving it.

Well... last week the clutch started going bad in exponentially worse ways. First it got locked out of gear and I had to turn the truck off to get it to go into first. This happened at a stoplight so it was no big deal. A week later, it happened again. The following day, it happened three times. Always when I was stopped and in neutral, so no real hazard, but obviously becoming a problem.

Last Thursday, it started locking me in neutral *while I was driving at speed*. I had to coast to a stop on W. Jemez Rd. to get the damn thing into gear. I nursed the truck home and called Metzgers back to initiate the replacement of the clutch which was clearly now totally befukt.

They said I should bring it in this morning, which I did (without incident). They called this afternoon to tell me they hadn't ordered all the parts they needed yet so they can't do the repair until tomorrow. Eh??

The creators of Spiderman 2 are blissfully unaware that there really isn't any difference between the rapid acceleration caused by sudden impact with a truck and the equally rapid acceleration caused by sudden impact with spiderman. I love it when he comes swooping down out of the sky to brush people out of the way of wayward vehicles.

In slow-mo I calculated that he brought the two kids from a standstill to the side of the road (let's say... ~5 meters) in about 3 frames, or at 24fps, that's 5 meters in 0.125 seconds. Now lets be generous and assume that the acceleration due to Spiderman is constant (this would be the least-damaging scenario to our defenseless children) rather than what it looks like, which is delta-function instantaneous acceleration which would turn them into hamburger. In this case, the acceleration on the children would have to be 2*5/(0.125²) = 640 m/s². This, of course, is roughly 64 times the force of gravity. 64 g's. Spiderman, you lousy rat, you killed the kids. If he would have just stuck to delivering his pizzas, maybe he wouldn't have gotten fired. The kids would have died anyway.

It's 2:00 in the morning and I'm up because of the wind. The wind is so strong right now that it is making an enormous amount of sound and keeping me awake. The NOAA website indicates that the wind speed is 30mph with gusts to 41, but their information for Los Alamos is interpolated and is more-or-less identical to their Santa Fe data point. The LA conditions are often significantly different from SF and right now I'm willing to bet that the sustained winds here are above 30mph.

Of course, the lab has gads of environmental monitoring stations which include local anemometers... but because of the scourge of international terrorism we can no longer access weather.lanl.gov externally without cryptocard authentication. Because if terrorists knew what the wind speed was at the summit of Pajarito Mountain, well, they'd know... more than I do right now.

Personally, I find the fact that I leave my cryptocard locked in my vault at work to be a more sensible security measure than locking weather.lanl.gov.

At any rate, I am reduced to giving you weather measurements with the following units: It's really reallly really windy. And dark. And there's some snow, but not too much...

I must say that I am pretty impressed with the Mac mini. I probably wouldn't have any use for it except as a console emulation station. How perfect would it be for that? 100%. Put bluetooth and 802.11b on there and get a bluetooth keyboard/mouse combo for it, and it's basically a portable emulation station. They even have an S-video dongle for it. Of course, getting these options plus the big hard drive and upgrading to a reasonable 512M of RAM makes the price $900 instead of $500... but still.

One day, when I am loaded, maybe I'll steal Brent's console emulation front end and hook that up.

That is all.

Given that tonight's star party looks very likely to be snowed out, I went to Bob's last night and we took pictures of Comet Machholz next to the Pleiades. They came out OK, but the sky was a little bright forcing me to use ISO 800 and hence the grain and lack of detail in the comet tails.

In unrelated news, I toured a lab at the plasma physics group's facility out at TA-35 and got to wear some generation 3 night vision goggles. Wow do those things kick ass. It's like regular vision only black & white. The resolution is really high and the field of view is quite wide. There was no blooming around "bright" light sources (like an LED on a computer) and I was able to move about and work with my hands without any trouble. Too bad they cost an arm and a leg.

Dentists number your teeth starting at the top right back-most molar and coming around the front to the top left back-most molar, then down onto the lower teeth in the same order. Your front two top teeth are #8 and #9.

It just so happens that there is a huge nerve center right under your nose and just above teeth 8 and 9, and if you need anesthesia on either of those two teeth, they have to stick a needle right into that nerve center. In case you were wondering, that isn't any fun.

Also, for tooth #9, where I had a lingual cavity, instead of the usual anesthesia, they tend to use mercury fulminate. And then they hit you in the nose with a brick and plug your nostrils with napalm.

Anyway, the filling didn't hurt a bit as a result of the very effective anesthesia. However, the shot of novocaine caused me to make an embarrassing sound and then tear the arm off the chair... They took pity on me and didn't charge me for the chair.

In case you're wondering, my dentist is extremely good. There just isn't any way to make a shot for tooth 8 or 9 not hurt like hell. Any other tooth and you're more-or-less safe. I've had a cavity in #7 and it has a separate nerve - the shot doesn't hurt at all.