Friday Picture Blogging

Meet Retardo.



He's saying, 'My God...it's every color in the known universe all at once...and music...and, look, there's Wavy Gravy...'

Statistical Thermo Is FUN!!!

Well, maybe not fun, but it's certainly the class I'm enjoying the most. It very much reminds me of the quantum mechanics course I took during my junior year of school. Then and now, the thing I'm really digging about the material is the level of abstraction and the fact that despite this abstraction, the material actually relates to the real world. I'm not learning how to prove some centuries old theorem using bizarre multi-dimensional mathematics, I'm learning how to calculate fundamental properties of physical systems based on a set of very basic assumptions.

Now granted, it's not like I'm going to have some simple equation that allows me to perform these calculations. My understanding is that the mathematics for handling these types of calculations for real world problems is immensely complex and inevitably requires a lot of computer power if you want to do something useful with the concepts. That's fine. Ultimately, what really turns me on is that I'm getting a better understanding of how the world really works from first principles. Obviously, that window into the "real reality" is still very fuzzy and very small, but it's still a window that allows occasional glimpses of the deeper "truth" that we generally don't perceive as we go about our daily lives.

I also think that Professor Faller's lecturing style jives pretty well with my style of learning. The accent and the bad handwriting were tough the first few days, but adaptation to that has been pretty quick. A big help was learning that characters that look like upside-down v's are actually the number 1. I also like how he's easily able to work interesting anecdotes about material into the lecture, usually in response to questions. For example, today he briefly touched on the concept of what are called "periodic boundary conditions." I'm not going to bore you with a further explanation of what those are, but suffice it to say I had encountered them once before while visiting RPI earlier this year. This created an interesting quandary in my head which I'll explain later. To resolve this quandary I asked Professor Faller how recent of a technique "PBC's" are. Apparently they're fairly recent, in that they were definitely used by Edward Teller to solve some problems in the 50's and were also probably used by a guy named H. Ising in the 20's. So yeah, I like that I can ask the Professor a question like that in class and get an interesting answer that involves Edward Teller or in an earlier case, Laplace's Demon. I'm not really sure how exactly to describe why this is different and cool, but it genuinely is. Even though he tends to focus on computer simulations (which I've never thought of as interesting) I'm probably going to talk to Professor Faller about his research.

Now here's the skinny about the earlier mention of PBC's and RPI. I was talking to Suzanne on the phone last night, and the issue of bullshit came up. My experiences with Neah Power and the WTC have generally made me a more cynical person and drove me to the conclusion that there are a lot of people out there that are "full of shit." So, one interesting question I'm going to be answering while I get my PhD is "are the proportion of people in academia that are full of shit greater, less than or equal to the proportion of people in corporate-world and government-world?" The answer to this question will probably do a lot in determining what type of positions I apply for when I'm almost done with my PhD.


What was interesting about my experience with "PBC's" at RPI was that I had been led to believe that the use of "PBC's" was in some way very new and had in fact been invented by the professor that was using them in one of his molecular simulations. It was never directly stated that the professor "invented" them, but it was strongly implied that using them in a molecular simulation was somehow very novel and non-obvious. In my brain, that means "invented". Too bad it was neither. Apparently, using PBC's is very very common and as Professor Faller stated, nearly 99% of these types of problems assume them. So, I get the impression that the grad student I was talking to was trying to impress me by correctly guessing that I didn't know what PBC's were and then implying that his Research Advisor had invented them. In other words, this guy was probably "full of shit."

So, I guess I need to start keeping a tally of number of graduate students and professors met, and the number that bullshit excessively.

One Other Thing

For those of you who had to register to comment on my Blog, I have fixed that. I had an inappropriate box checked in my settings. That's been fixed. So now, you can comment anonymously.

Oi Vey

Yes, my new life as a graduate student has started in earnest. Six hours of class on Monday. Three hours on Tuesday. Five hours on Wednesday. Two hours on Thursday and a whole HOUR on Friday. Yes, I'm being oppressed by the 17 hour work-week. For those of you who think that's nothing, let me just explain that my brain HURTS at the end of the day on Monday.

But still, life is grand.

I absolutely LOVE the weather in Davis. Last week it was in the high 90's. I mean, the high on Wednesday, September 28th was 97 DEGREES. I walked outside during the part of the day when the temperature is at its maximum and thought, "Hmmm, it's kind of warm today." Biking between classes on campus in the sun is just "the bomb."

I also find myself walking through buildings on campus and thinking, "I wonder if this is where I would be attacked by vampires if this were Sunnydale."

School has definitely been a challenge, but it's a challenge I'm fairly confident I'm up to. The small amount of studying that I did before school started has really paid off. I just need to make sure that I maintain my lead on the material, except in the rare cases where it actually works better to read the text AFTER the class. Statistical Thermodynamics is like that. Professor Faller (the guy teaching it) is personable enough, but his notation sometimes literally looks like a flock of birds and he's not teaching the material in the manner that I would. But then, he's a professor and I'm not, so maybe my notation IS supposed to look like it's going to fly south for the winter.

I'm thinking about starting a play by post D&D game on ENworld.org. Apparently, those types of games take ten hours to resolve a single round of combat and I could see myself having time for that. Those of you who read my blog and are interested should let me know. It'd probably be something simple to start with, to see if it's worth doing.

Friday Dog Blogging

This is Chance. He's one of my roommate Carolyn's three dogs. Here he is playing Dance Dance Revolution. Also, when he pees, he does a "handstand." IE, he lifts both his back legs off the ground and balances on his front legs. Yes, I think it's really weird too. I'll try and get a picture of it. Chance also likes to sit and stare at Stromboli for hours at a time. Carolyn says he's just "herding" my cat, but I wonder.

I am not a number! I am a free man!

I want to send a heartfelt thanks out to one of my six or seven readers, Charles Morley of Port Angeles, Washington. As he realized and pointed out to me, I'm apparently living in The Village. I can't believe that I didn't think of this myself. And to think I consider The Prisoner one of my top ten favorite TV shows. I'm ashamed.

This Post Decorated By The City Of Davis

Now this blog entry looks like the city of Davis. Various versions of this thing are plastered EVERYWHERE. On buildings, as sculptures, on stationary, I think it's even on a water-tower. Personally, I'm surprised that the town is not shaped like the damn thing.

But seriously, that's all irrelevant because I have a fancy modern hybrid bike. I bought it for $60 off of craig's list and it came with two special stickers thrown in for free. One reads, "This Country Needs A Regime Change" and the other reads something along the lines of "Vegetarians of the World Unite." A list of what the bike DID NOT come with is quite extensive. It includes the mandated by city ordinance front light, a bike lock, a comfortable seat, a helmet, fenders for when it gets wet and tires that aren't close to disintegrating into rubbers shavings.

So, today I went to one of Davis' 17 bike shops (yes, a town of 40,000 people needs that many bike shops) and purchased a new "comfy" seat, phancy detachable fenders that I only need to put on when it's the "rainy season" and a snazzy new helmet that's guarenteed to make me look 50% more ridiculous than I look now. Sadly, I was unable to afford a bike seat with what is apparently called the "love groove." Yes, that's a groove in your bike saddle where your nards are supposed to go. I seriously hope I don't get erectile dysfunction because of my cheapness.

Installing the detachable fenders was pretty easy but putting in the new seat was a real pain in the butt. There's basically this clamp that attaches to the post that comes up out of your bike frame. This clamp also has two connectors that fit around these two rails that connect to the bottom of the bike saddle. It took quite a bit of doing getting the clamp and the two connector assembley between those two rails as the whole thing was a teeny bit wider than the space between the rails on my new saddle. And then, once I did have the assembley between the two rails, I discovered that doing that had compressed the clamp to the point where it no longer easily fit onto the central post. To get the stupid thing on, I basically had to flip my bike upside down and pound the post into the clamp.

But, in the end I got it to work. I can't wait until I have to change the tires. The nice lady that helped me at the bike shop said that I shouldn't bother changing them until I get a flat. Of course, she said I'd probably be experiencing a flat pretty soon, consider that we're about to enter Thorn Season. Yes, Davis has a THORN SEASON!! What next, Acne Season? Motion Sickness Season? Mildly Annoying Itch Season?

But anyhow, my bike is all decked out now. All that needs to be done is to remove those fracking stickers. Either that or spell out something snarky by blacking out all but certain choice letters. Perhaps, "OLD TIMEY BIKES SUCK."

Scottland's Visit

He visited me again last weekend.

It was fantastic weekend and also very laid back. We had no specific plans other than to visit some friends on his in Sacramento on Saturday night.

We ate dinner on Friday at Del Taco, which is my favorite new fast food restaurant. There's just something wonderful about a place that serves both burritos and french fries. They serve burgers too, but I haven't had one those yet. After that, we went back to my place and watched the two episodes of BSG between Home, Part Deux and Pegasus. All in all, pretty good episodes. As was the case with Dr. Farley, I enjoyed Flight of the Phoenix a lot more than I was expecting to. Any episode where someone points a gun at Tigh's head is a good episode in my book. I still haven't seen Pegasus, but will probably see it in the near future when Scottland mails me a video tape with the episode on it.

One of the big things that we've needed to figure out w/r/t to the long distance relationship thing is whether or not it's going to work to have weekends where I spend a significant fraction of my time studying while he's reading, writing or out doing something in Sac/Davis. We did that on Saturday afternoon and it worked out just fine. We went to campus, (ostensibily to study at the library but found out it was closed on Sundays until the term starts) sat on the grass and had about two hours of rarely interrupted quiet time. He wrote and I studied. So, it looks like that's one thing I'm not going to have to worry about.

Later that evening, we went to a pretty good mexican place in downtown Sac called "Zocalos." As I said that night, "The food is good, the drinks are good, the way the restaurant looks is great but the music sucks." Basically, after about 8PM, very pretty people started sitting at and standing around the bar. At about the same time, the music got a lot louder and turned all thumpy-bass-techno on us. That made it sort of hard to talk. But, like I said, the food and drinks were really good so I didn't mind too much.

Fred and Tom (Scottland's friends that we met for dinner) showed us the various gay bars after that. There are apparently five of them and the onese we saw all sorta reminded me of changes on 45th. We didn't see the "bear bar" that was located further away, so maybe that one won't be quite so . . . sketchy. But whatever, I hate gay bars anyway. Oddly, we saw one guy at one of the bars that I saw at a coffee shop in Davis. The only reason I really remembered him is becase he has this thing implanted into the side of his head. My suspicion is that the's had brain surgery recently and the "implant" is a way for surgeons to re-enter and tinker with his gray matter without having to complete detach the skull again. But, I don't really know. Scottland and I agreed that, minus the implant, the guy was pretty foxxy.

After we checked out the gay bars, we went back to Tom and Fred's (they've been living together for something like 18 years now and yet are not dating) and watched The Incredibles on their SUPER FANCY HIGH DEFINITION WIDE SCREEN FLAT PLASMA DISPLAY. I kid you not, it was like watching the movie in the theatre in terms of picture clarity. Needless to say, Scottland and I are now both lusting after a consumer electronics item. Personally, I feel kinda dirty about my lustful feelings as I'm generally pretty asexual when it comes to shiny stuff like that.

Sunday, we just slept in and then had breakfast at Cindy's. Scottland was freaked out by his overly orange orange juice that didn't taste like orange juice until I pointed out that it was probably "extra orange" and different tasting because the waitress was squeezing it from REAL oranges at the counter. Then he realized it was orange juice that tasted like actual oranges, which makes me wonder why orange juice from the store apparently neither looks nor tastes like REAL orange juice. Needless to say, far too much thought for a Sunday morning breakfast in Davis. The much vaunted cinnamon rolls were adequate, but I can certainly cook better. Still, I liked it more than Baker's Square, which is the California version of Sharis except with more pies.

So yeah, it was a good weekend. Not super exciting, but good. I'm a simple guy, so I was just pleased to see Scottland . . . and the high definition television.

On a side note, when I got back from campus today (where I was getting my new student ID that looks NOTHING like me thanks to the weird angle my head was at when it was taken) a lady was delivering a dozen red roses to yours truly. Yet again, Scottland ROCKS.

Friday Hurricane Blogging

This is Typhoon Tip . . .

Ranks number 1 as the most intense tropical cyclone on record. Tip was located in the northwest Pacific Ocean, which on October 12, 1979 had winds gusting as high as 190 mph (306 km/h) and a central pressure of 870 mb (25.69"Hg). The size of the circulation around Typhoon Tip was approximately 1350 miles (2174 km) across. If placed over the continental U.S., it would almost cover the western half of the country. -NOAA

Highway Robery At UC Davis

In other words, I purchased my textbooks today. Here's what I bought.

Analysis of Transport Phenomena cost me $84. It's for my mass transport class and maybe my fluids class.


Applied Mathematical Methods for Chemical Engineers cost me $100. It's for my advanced mathematics for engineering class.

Introduction to Modern Statistical Mechanics cost me $31. It's for my statistical thermodynamics class.

I have no idea what textbook my fourth class requires as the professor has not told the bookstore what book he wants.

The First, Second and Third Circles of Hell

Also known as where I'll be attending my classes this term. I don't really think of them as being a form of hell, but I couldn't think of a better title that was incredibly dry. I suppose that by the time I get to my first set of mid-terms, it's possible that I will consider these buildings to truly be layers of hell. Click on the picture to see a larger image with better resolution. By the way, most of the pictures posted to my blog are like that.



In Bainer Hall, I'll be attending Seminar and my Advanced Mass Transfer class. In Wellman Hall I'll be attending my Advanced Fluid Mechanics and Engineering Math classes. In the Physics-Geology building I'll be attending my Statistical Thermodynamics class.

The house I'm living in is located just beyong the northeastern (upper right) corner of the map.

Razorback Kat

I was pleased when Stromboli came off the drugs with no signs of a dependency issue. I was very concerned that I was going to have to find the feline equivalent for the Betty Ford Clinic after the move to Davis was complete. Instead, she was back to normal the day after her last dose of tranquilizers.

By normal, I mean running from one window in my room to the other at until 2:30 in the morning to stare at something outside and occasionally stopping to swat at the houseplant on my night stand. After that, she would go to her normal sleeping place in between my legs, alternating between under the cover and on top of the covers.

She was less afraid of her new surroundings after this move than she was the first time when she went from my old apartment to Suzannes. Within a day or two, she showed extreme interest in the world outside of my room. Basically, this manifested in one of two behaviors. Either should would lay at my door and scratch at it when I was in the room, or she would sit at the door and try to bolt out when I was entering through the room. This continued until Thursday, when I started the introduction to the three resident dogs.

These dogs are Jenna, Chance and Ross. Jenna and Chance are both border collies, like Scottland's dog, only of the short haired variety. Ross is a big, late adult german Sheppard looking thing. He's what we call a "Large Dog." It's clear that Ross has issues that probably stem from mishandling when he was a puppy. Of all the dogs, I was the most worried about the interaction between Ross and Stromboli. So, the reason why she was cloistered in my room for two weeks is because I wanted to get to know the dogs first.

After about two weeks, I had sufficiently convinced myself that while Stromboli may be freaked out by the dogs, she was not likely to be attacked or hurt by them. So, we began the controlled interactions and nighttime visits. For a couple of hours each night, I would allow her to roam the house and explore. Carolyn (the owner of the dogs) sleeps in her room with the dogs and keeps the door to her room shut. She certainly enjoyed being able to do this, but it also seriously increased her desire to leave my room, and the scratching at the door greatly increased. During the controlled interactions, I would hold Stromboli and pet her while sitting in my room while Carolyn sat outside the door of my room with her dogs.

After a couple of these sessions it came time for the first interaction. Essentially, Carolyn and I sat like we did in the controlled interactions but let the animals act as they would. Carolyn has trained her dogs to never go in the rooms of the other roommates and they generally obey. So, everything was pretty much up to Stromboli. Apparently, she is remarkably brave. Either that or she's so curious she's gonna wind up killed one of these days. She went right up to Jenna and started sniffing noses. Then she headed into Carolyn's room to sniff around. That's where she met Chance for the first time. She was pretty apprehensive about the whole thing and moved VERY slowly. Chance just sort of stood there and sniffed her while she looked around.

Stromboli's exposure to Ross was a bit more dicey. It was pretty clear from the controlled interactions that she was far more afraid of Ross because of his size (Ross is a large sized dog) than anything. Anytime she saw Ross, she would puff up to twice her size and become, as I affectionately called her, Razorback the Kat. If Ross came too close, she would hiss at him. If Ross started to come in my room (which he occasionally does when he forgets he's not supposed to be in there) she'll hulk out, hiss and start growling at him. Ross doesn't really react to this, although one time he growled at her when she came into Carolyn's room. Apparently, Ross doesn't like it when cats get near his food bowl.

So, Stromboli is acclimating pretty well to a household that has dogs. All in all, she's far more frightened of the vacuum cleaner than of the canines. That makes me pretty happy. Now if I could just get her to stop running from window to window at 2:30 in the morning.

Friday Picture Blogging

I believe I've just succesfully sneak attacked my cat. What else could explain the look of shock and surprise?

Three Sisters Uplift

As requested by Suzanne (I believe she requested this, anyhow) here's more information on the uplift you may or may not have heard about in the national media recently.

Firstly, I'm not sure why this is such a big deal. I've known about this for several years now and I'm quite confident it's been reported on in the MSM before. Why it's suddenly news worthy of being repeated in multiple major news outlets, I don't know.

So, where is all the excitement located? The Three Sisters are located in central western Oregon and are essentially due west of Eugene. They are part of the Cascade Range. This is the mountain range that Mt. Hood, Mt. St. Helens and Mt. Rainier are all part of. All volcanic activity in this range is a result of the subduction of the Juan De Fuca plate underneath the North American plate.

The area around the Three Sisters is different from the many of the other peaks of the Cascade Range in that there are a large number of distinct volcanic features such as cinder cones, eruptive lava flows and craters, in addition to the three main peaks, in a fairly small area. The three peaks themselves are an anomaly in that they are literally three distinct stratovolcanoes within very close proximity. Normally, hundreds of miles separate the major stratovolcanoes of the Cascades. So, there may be or may have been something different about the magma and crust underneath the Three Sisters, but no one really knows. While the area has been very volcanically active in the past, it's rather quiet now when compared to some of the other Cascade peaks. It's difficult to learn about a volcano when there's nothing really going on.

The uplift that's occurring in the area near the three sisters was only detected recently because of the development of a new technique that allowed them to see very small uplift like this. Uplift is being tracked at other volcanoes around the world such as Mauna Loa, but uplift like that occurring in Hawaii is easier to see by virtue of it occurring in an area where one would expect to see it, and thus is more easily detected using older conventional methods. At least, that's my understanding. This new technique (InSar) essentially uses two separate batches of radar data (in this case one from 1996 and the other from 2000) to create an interference pattern that indicates the height difference between the two time periods. How this technique works, I don't really understand beyond this.

When geologists first discovered that the uplift had happened, they were unclear on whether or not it was a single event or something that continues to occur. Data gathered since 2000 indicates that the uplift has continued and that the total height increase is about 10 inches at this time. Although the news release seen in the MSM said that this uplift could be caused by water or magma, it seems more likely that it's occurring because of the intrusion of a small amount of magma. I say this not because I'm personally an expert on what's going on in the area, but I do know that the gelogists studying the uplift have performed some isotopic analysis of the gasses coming out of the ground in the area, and the isotopes of carbon and helium being encountered are those typically found in conjunction with magma.

By "a small amount of magma" they mean about 40 million cubic meters. That would be a cube approximately 342 meters (1122 ft) on a side. As has been reported, the pool of "fluid" is about a mile across and 65 feet deep or so. Of course, when magma does reach the surface and erupt as lava, the volatiles previously trapped in the fluid by the high pressures encountered underground are free to expand and the volume of material greatly increases. Still, during an eruption, it's rare that a magma chamber or pool is substantially emptied out.

In march of 2004 the area near the uplift (which is normally pretty quiet by Cascade standards) experienced a small swarm of earthquakes. This swarm of earthquakes could have presaged the beginning of a volcanic eruption, but didn't. It's more likely that stress induced in the surround rock from the uplift (try imagining the amount of force necessary to squirt hot toothpaste into basalt) was being relieved by the fracture and shift of rocks around it. This is, of course, how hot rising magma manages to force it's way to the surface. It's interesting though, to compare the increased seismic activity from this uplift in the Three Sisters area with the normal seismic activity occurring at a dormant volcano like Mt. Rainier.

In the end, it's possible that the uplift may result in a volcanic eruption. Or, the intrusion of magma may stop and the hot material will simply sit there four miles underground and slowly cool off. With volcanoes, it's very difficult to predict what will happen over long periods of time, except in the sense of very long term trends. Even if there is an eruption, it's unlikely to be particularly large. After all, 40 million cubic feet is apparently a small amount of magma. Since there are very few people living in that area and the warning signs of an iminent eruption will be obvious for months before hand, it's not likely to be dangerous to anyone.

One Good Thing

I just wanted to say that for all its faults, California has one good thing going for it. You can buy liquor in the grocery store. I'm enjoying a tasty margarita as I type out a bigger post on my blog.

Comment Spam Sucks

FYI . . . I've turned on word verification for comments. The comment spam is relatively annoying and that's a good way to get rid of it short of requiring people to log in to view my blog. So, sorry for the inconvenience.

Moveable Moneypit and A Mountain of Paperwork

Sometimes, moving to California is a real pain in the ass. And I mean that in the negative sense. I had a bunch of work done on my car before I left, which is to be expected considering that it has nearly 200,000 miles on it. One of the things that was replaced was the timing belt. In order to get my car registered, I need to have a "Smog Check" done. This is very similiar to the emissions tests performed in both Oregon and Washington, only much more comprehensive.

My car barely passed the emissions test but failed on another arcane part of the test. Yes, the timing belt synchronization was slightly off. Apparently, California law (or is it regulation) stipulates that the difference between where the belt is and should be can be no more than 5 degrees, and mine was off by 10 degrees. The guys that owned the place I took the car to for the Smog Check said they could adjust the timing belt for an additional $35 dollars (and the Smog Check costs $60) but the adjustment would likely put my cars hydrocarbon output above the maximum allowed. He suggested the problem might be something like bad spark plugs, but since those were replaced recently, that's unlikely. What is more likely is that my catalytic converter needs to be replaced. So, I'm driving my car to a place in Woodland tomorrow to have the converter looked at. I'm not sure how much a new catalytic converter would cost, but I imagine it won't be cheap.

In other exciting car related news, getting my California driver's liscence hit a snag when I found out that the birth certificate that I've used for the last 31 years of my life is not an "official" certificate. So, I had to pay another $32 to have an "official" certificate mailed to me from Oregon. I'll get it in 10 - 14 days.

So yeah, no I remember why I hate dealing with stuff like this. Every time you turn around someone's taking a $20 to $30 dollar bite out of your savings to cover some fee for some piece of paperwork that you need.

Feed Me!!!

I fed my Venus Fly Traps today. I can't believe how quickly those little leaves can close. My babies must be hungry. I'm really curious as to whether or not the sudden infusion of nitrogen containing nutrients (which is why carnivorous plants need to eat) will spur a growth spurt in my plants. That'd be cool, as long as they don't start chasing after Stromboli.

Rice-A-Roni, The San Francisco Treat

Scottland and I found ourselves wondering if Rice-A-Roni really was a San Francisco treat, as we sat in afternoon traffic while trying to cut across the city from Coit Tower to Golden Gate Park. We had arrived in 'Frisco several hour earlier, having driven all the way there from Davis. The drive was much shorter than I realized. Davis is 73.7 miles from downtown San Francisco. It's a pretty short drive, as long as you don't get stuck in traffic. Even if you do get stuck in traffic (like we did while going over the Bay Bridge) the drive isn't bad.

Our first stop in San Francisco was the SOMA/Castro area. We met up with Steve, a friend of Scottland's from Canada. Steve was visiting SF while his partner Andrew was in Monterey giving a talk at a conference on language related topics. Scottland, Steve, Steve's friend Joe and myself got lunch at a place in Castro named Harvey's. I'm guessing it was named after Harvey Milk. The food was all right, but the restaurant (like much of the rest of the Castro) was kind of dirty. We wandered around the area for a bit after that. Like the first time I saw it, I found the Castro kind of disappointing. It's supposed to be the center of the gay universe, and I simply found it dirty, run-down, seedy and thought the people all generally looked a bit on the haggard side. If the Castro is emblematic of what it means to be The Gay, then I think I'm pretty happy to not be tightly dialed into The Lifestyle.

After our sojourn in The Castro, Steve and Joe parted ways and Scottland and I had the exquisite pleasure of attempting to drive through down-town San Francisco. It was INSANE. The streets were completely full of traffic and everyone was honking, weaving and dodging, stopping in intersections and generally being hyper-aggressive. Oddly, it didn't bother me one bit. Although I can appreciate the staid and placid nature of Seattle drivers, sometimes the extreme level of niceness gets on my nerves. I'm generally a lot more willing to be an asshole while driving than other Seattlites. San Francisco, while not pleasant to drive in, felt like it was more up to my speed. Scottland thought I committed myself well, as I was able to weave and dodge in and out of the best spots in traffic with the best of them, once I understood what was expected of me.

I had wanted to visit Coit Tower the first time I visited San Francisco, but couldn't as I was stuck using public transportation and couldn't figure out for the life of me which bus I needed to take to get up there. This time, things went much better and eventually, we managed to meander our way to the 2nd (the 1st being the Golden Gate Bridge) coolest depression era public works project in the city. It's pretty obvious where it's located considering that it sticks straight up into the sky, but the actual path there is much less obvious. All the roads there are steep and narrow, and cars are parked every which way. Scottland was my navigator and he performed admirably. Once we got within a few blocks of the spot, signs led us the rest of the way. We decided to park on a street near the tower, instead of trying to go up to the lot. So, we had a nice little walk along the path the winds up around the hill to the tower.

At the tower, we paid to take an elevator to the observation tower. The tower is 210 feet high, so only around 40% of the height of the Space Needle. However, it's on a steep hill in the middle of the city, so the views from the Tower are nearly as good as the views from the Needle. Scottland was obviously quite disturbed when we first got to the observation deck, but he calmed down after a bit and started taking a bunch of photos with his camera. After we had our fill of panoramic views of San Francisco and the surrounding areas, we took the elevator down and took a look at the really interesting murals in the large room surrounding the tower gift shop. These murals were all done in the early 30's and can be quite socialist in content at time. They're very interesting to look at, as there are a lot of little details that start popping out at you after you look at them for a while. The picture I've included here is an abstract portion of the mural that sits right over the entrance to the central elevator waiting area.

After Coit Tower, Scottland and I again braved city traffic to make our way to Golden Gate Park. The driving this time wasn't as bad, once we got out out of the area immediately surrounding the downtown core of the city. Of course, once we got to the park we discovered that there had been some sort of Reggae festival at the park, and the main boulevard through the park was closed down. So, we parked the car and walked around for a bit. Once we were done parking and after I took a phone call from Ron (who had a great time at Burning Man, apparently) we got back into the car and drove to the west end of the park through one of the non-blocked roads. I wanted to see the beach.

I think it's odd how the west side of San Francisco fronts on the Pacific Ocean, and yet that part of the city is something that's hardly even mentioned. I suppose it has something to do with the beach in these parts resembling the beaches in Oregon, IE not very warm and kind of windy. I still thought it was beautiful. The part that we were on was the location where the main road through the park connects to the Great Highway near the Cliff House and where the Sutro Baths used to be. It was cold and windy, but the sun was going down and the whole scene was quite pretty. We looked into getting dinner at a restaurant that was right next to the beach with a beautiful view of the setting sun. Unfortunately, the wait was 45 minutes and we kind of wanted to get back onto the road.

After that, we wandered through the southwestern parts of the city a bit in order to get back onto I-80. Scottland thought that this part of the city was very nice, and he wouldn't mind living there if he had to. He wouldn't want to live in the other parts of the city, though. I sort of don't blame him. It seemed pretty ran down, considering how astronomically high property values and monthly rents are. I guess that part of the city is also where all the good restaurants are, which is important to know. Eventually, we found ourselves on the Bay Bridge, and made our way home from there.

If you'd like to see all the pics from our trip to San Francisco, look at the following link.

This Weekend

Scottland was here this weekend, and left for the airport about an hour and a half ago. It was a good weekend, all in all. We went to San Francisco on Saturday and I'll put up a post about that trip once he uploads the pictures from his digital camera. In the meantime, here's a couple of interesting tidbits for your enjoyment.

This is the Davis Wiki. It's basically an open source encyclopedia about Davis. It's been a very useful resource for me in the last week, as it's helped me figure out where a lot of stuff in town is. I'll probably highlight interesting portions of it from time to time.

Bob recently posted a link on his BLOG to the following short movie. It's a recruitment video for the Japanese Navy and is 100% hilarious. Don't bother to download the japanese language enhancement unless you care about being able to read japanese characters.

Thirdly, this is a website that is used to archive pictures from the SOHO and other solar observatories. In particular, this is a movie of a rather recent solar x-ray burst that occured on September 1st. It's interesting to watch.

Friday Picture Blogging (Since I won't always be posting pictures of cats)

Unpacking the cat after the move . . .

You Are Not Here

So, looks like I brought Seattle's summer weather with me when I moved here. Davis was a freaking FURNACE in July and most of August, and then I move there, and the daily high has rarely gotten over 85 F. *chuckle* It won't last forever I'm sure, but it's been nice.

In case any of you losers want to come visit me in Davis, here's how you get to my place. It's very easy.


Take I-80 towards San Francisco when you get to Sacramento.
Take the Richards Blvd. /Downtown Davis exit from I-80.
Take a right onto Richards Blvd and go through the tunnel.
Go "forward" onto F street. It's actually not exactly straight ahead, sort of an angled turn.
Turn right onto 5th street.
Turn left on L street.
Turn right on Duke street.
I'm on the right, a couple of houses in.


Also, here's me as per the South Park Character Generator. Striking likeness, no?

Fall Term Class Schedule

This appears to be my class schedule for this term:

Statistical Thermodynamics (ECH 252) MTWR 1:10 PM - 2:00 PM
Advanced Fluid Mechanics (ECH 253A) MW 2:10 PM - 4:00 PM
Advanced Mass Transfer (ECH 253C) MTWF 9:00 AM - 9:50 AM
Advanced Engineering Mathematics (ECH 259) MTWR 11:00 AM - 11:40 AM
Seminar (ECH 290) M 4:10 PM - 5:30 PM

So yeah, this is seventeen credits worth of classes and around 42% of the minimum number of class credits (38) I am required to take in order to get my PhD. So, the good news is that if I flame out, I'll probably do it in the first term and none of you will have to get all that used to me being gone. I'm unclear if the Seminar counts towards the final total of 38, and I suspect that it doesn't since I don't think I really have to do much more for that class other than attend a bunch of presentations and maybe read and dissect some journal articles.

In other news, of the "Davis is Weird" variety, while driving to the grocery store at about 11:00 PM last night I saw a guy driving down the street in what appeared to be a large sized, motorized red wagon. You know, the ones that little kids used to have with the words "Radio Flyer" on the side. Sadly, no pictures.

Do You Wanna Lick The Pop Off My Floormat?

Scottland and I woke up very early on the morning of August 31st so that I could be at the Penske store at the ass crack of dawn. After waiting for about ten minutes, we had my 15' Penske truck and were headed towards Scottland's place. Scottland stopped at the Starbucks near Admiral Junction and got himself a fancy coffee drink and a extra large drip for me. He also got me a cinnamon scone. The cinnamon scone was really critical and thus as I drove past the store in the Penske, I called him to remind him to get it. It's another sign of how wonderful a guy he is that he thought my calling him about the criticality of the scone was funny and not annoying.

By 9:30 we had loaded 90% of the stuff I own into the Penske and went to pick up a few items for the trip. Then we both loaded into the truck and headed over to Suzanne's. As soon as we got there, we cornered Stromboli and stuffed one of the tranquilizers I'd gotten from the vet the week prior down her throat. The we shut Flounder, Squeak and Stromboli into Suzanne's truck and proceeded to load everything I had at Suzanne's place into the Penske. Suzanne came home from work and wished me a safe trip and said goodbye.

After that, it was time to load the cat for transport. I wasn't really sure what to expect when I opened the door to Suzanne's room. Would Stromboli even be tranquilized? Would she be lying in a pool of vomit? Would I find Flounder and Squeak feasting on her paralyzed body in the manner of Carrion Crawlers? Luckily, the cat situation was a lot more ordinary than any of the situations that I could imagine. Flounder and Squeak were simply curled up on Suzanne's bed looking disturbed while Stromboli was on the floor in front of Suzanne's vanity eating one of her shirts.

"Hello Stromboli," said I to the cat. She turned and gave me her very best "you're harshing my mellow, dude" look and a let loose a long drawn out "Mmmeeeooorrrowwwaaaarrrr." Needless to say, Stromboli was in a state that as I've been saying lately, "would make Nancy Reagan cry." She didn't really seem to be able to stand up and she offered no resistance when I picked her up, carried her to the dining room and placed her in her extra large cat carrier. She let out a few plaintive meows like the first, and then got down to kneading and chewing on the towel that I'd placed in the bottom of the carrier. After that, she was loaded into the Penske, followed by myself and Scottland and we were off!!

We stopped at the Penske store one last time. The guys there hooked up the trailer for my car and then Scottland and I loaded it up. Another indication of just how great Scottland is occurred when I got all spazzed out and snappy while driving my car onto the trailer. It was making a lot of weird noises and I was completely paranoid that it was going to pitch off the trailer and crash onto the ground. My fears were totally unfounded, and Scottland handled me very well. Once the car was loaded, we took a few pictures and then we were really off.

We got to Vancouver almost exactly on schedule. We hit very little traffic and it only took us about three hours to get there. We needed to gas up and both of us were pretty hungry. So, we made our first attempt at getting off the freeway in the now gigantic 15' Penske / Car Trailer road hog. Needless to say, this thing made WIDE turns. Getting into a gas station was relatively easy, but getting food was not.

We drove around a big block of strip mall and saw a Wendy's that we sorta thought we'd be able to get into. I guess I underestimated how long this thing was, and thought I'd be able to pull into two parking spots that were empty, in the sort of way that semi's and trucks pull into those longer parking spaces at rest stops. Unfortunately, I had vastly underestimated the length of our "rig" and was now blocking some other cars that wanted to pull into the drive through. Honestly, this whole thing was probably the dumbest move I made during the entire trip. When you're driving a big vehicle like I was, you need to always be thinking about how you're going to get into a place, where you're going to park and how you're going to get out before you even think about turning in.

Anyhow, so once I realized that we weren't going to fit, I looked around and saw where we should have tried to park. The building right next to the Wendy's had a long row of empty stalls with an entrance and exit that were both easy to pass through. To get there, we had to get out of our current predicament. My initial idea was that we would back up the way we came and then go around the block so that we could get into the parking lot I could see. Unfortunately, I had not tried to pilot a trailer in reverse in many years and Scottland never had. I knew that you had to turn the wheels of the truck in the direction opposite to what you wanted the trailer to go, but Scottland didn't. So, with me at the wheel and him directing me, things got really screwed up and we made no progress escaping from the predicament.

As my level of stress was steadily increasing, things proceeded to get even more difficult and weird. It's hard to really do the following scene justice with words. Basically, this really skanky old looking pick-up comes lurching into the parking lot. The guy behind the wheels appears to be gunning for the space immediately next to the one that the Penske is occupying. It looks like maybe his clutch is about dead, because he's having to over-rev the engine to keep it from cutting out. So, the truck literally lurches forward a few feet, starts to stall, the engine revs and the truck lurches forward a few more feet. All this while he's trying to edge into the spot next to where I'm at, no matter that I'm standing in that spot and that the door to the truck is sitting open because I've just gotten out to make alternate plans with Scottland about how to get out of this predicament.

So I'm yelling at the guy to stop as it looks like he's going to (a) smack into the truck and (b) smack into me. He manages to avoid hitting the front of the Penske, but he basically smacks the driver side door of the truck shut with the bumper of his. The idiot finished moving into the parking spot and I let out a big "WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?!?!?" Seriously, I was about an inch away from pulling him out of his car and just beating the shit out of him right then and then. Then I remembered that assault is a felony, and that being arrested and thrown in the clink isn't conducive to getting your PhD. So, I continued to just ask him what the fuck he thought he was doing.

That's when I realized how seriously weird this guy was. He was sort of a middle aged white guy with a gray mullet and a face that looks like it belongs to someone that smokes too much. He starts to "what the fuck" back to me, and I notice that his voice is oddly slurred, like he's on tranquilizers or something. Apparently, he's as upset as I am, only it's because having to avoid hitting my truck made him spill his recently purchased pop. So, maybe the problem of the lurching car was compounded by his dumbassedness trying to drink a soda while attempting to park a manual shift truck with clutch problems. I pointed out that he was a real dumb shit for tapping the door of the Penske, since that was obviously completely voluntary on his part, and I'd have shut the door if he'd given me a chance to. He then says "I suppose you want me to pay for it?" And I reply with a "Hell yes I do." And he replies with a "Well, are you gonna pay for a new pop for me?" Only, he says it in a way that's clearly meant to be some kind of threat. So, I'm starting to think there's something seriously wrong with the guy and I'm getting a little nervous now that I realize he might really be crazy.

So I reply, "Sure, I'll go into the Wendy's and get you a fucking soda pop." While I'm saying this I'm starting to think that we need some sort of de-escalation here because the guy is seriously bent over the loss of his soda pop, and I'm worried that he might pop out and start stabbing me or something. Then he says in a tone of voice that's trying to sound all bad-ass and offensive but really isn't, "Do you wanna lick the pop off my floormat?" At which point, I'm just done with the guy. "Get the fuck out her you freak" I say, pointing towards the exit of the parking lot which he can easily reach. Amazingly, he just starts up his truck and leaves.

I'm all worked up at this point and look around for Scottland. He's right behind me, just out of sight from where the guy was, which is exactly where he needed to be if things started to get physical. There's nothing like an ally stepping out of the shadows to really make an asshole think twice about getting in a physical confrontation. Anyhow, I'm too jittered to think so he comes up with the plan that pretty quickly extricates us from the parking lot of doom. We go around the block as planned and make and easy entrance and stop in the row of empty car stalls. Oddly, crazy dude is back. He's sitting in the spot he had previously occupied and was gobbling down the last of the food he'd bought at the Wendy's. At that point, things sorta finish clicking in my head and I figure that the guy is probably Schizo, OCD and probably on heavy meds. We were in the spot that he HAS to eat his dinner from Wendy's in. Which explains why he was so intent on that particular spot. So I feel kinda bad for him, but am mostly glad that it's over with. I notice another really sketchy looking dude talking to him that then tries to come into the restaurant to use the bathroom but then leaves. So, I suspect maybe there was a halfway house or something in the area.

After that, the rest of the trip was relatively uneventful. We filled up the truck in Grants Pass around 11:30 that night and stopped at a Motel 6 in Medford. Stromboli was totally sober at that point and I let her out of the carrier to eat, excrete (I love saying it like that) and explore. There was nowhere for her to hide, so she ended up under the sheets with Scottland and I. The next morning, we gave her more drugs and loaded her into the carrier after taking showers and getting dressed. We got back on the road and pulled over in Ashland to eat breakfast. That was a bit of an adventure too, as we again had to play the "where are we going to park" game and the roads we were on weren't exactly designed for large vehicles.

After breakfast we got back on the road and subsequently experienced the other fun and exciting part of the journey. Shortly south of Ashland is the beginning of the pass over the Siskiyous. The first ten miles of it is probably the worst part, too. Basically, you go up a 6% grade for about seven miles and then down a 6% grade for five. You do some more ups and downs after that, but none of them are as bad as that one. Going up was relatively uneventful, except that we were only able to go about 45 miles and hour and the truck started to overheat. Luckily, I was able to turn the heat on full blast and bleed enough heat out of the engine to cool it back down. Going down the other side was quite a bit scarier. Scottland started getting a but freaked out because from his side you could see a LONG ways down. I started getting freaked out because I discovered that the Penske/Trailer system started developing a harmonic resonance when braking between the speeds of about 35 and 50 mph. I didn't want to go faster than that because I was freaked out about the brakes failing or something, but I really couldn't go slower than that on account of all the twists and turns in the road and the bad sight lines. So, I pulled over and tried to calm my frazzled nerves. Once I'd calmed down, we got back onto the freeway and I tried to be careful to oscillate the speed between 50 and 55 mph.

We made it through the rest of the pass relatively uneventfully. We stopped at a rest stop about 100 miles north of Redding. I'm amazed at how much nicer the rest stops in California seem to be compared to the ones in Washington and Oregon. It's weird and I don't know what the reason is. Maybe California just takes better care of it's infrastructure or something. Anyhow, we drove through Redding and stopped in Willows for gas. At around 5:30 in the evening on the 1st of September, we rolled into the rental shop in Dixon (which is about 10 miles west of Davis on I-5) and turned in the car trailer. We took the truck to my new home, unloaded it and returned the truck to the rental place. We dined at Chevy's after that and then went back to my new place and went to sleep about 10:00 PM.

And now, I live in Davis.

Scottland . . . Freak Out!!!

So, as I was saying before I got derailed by relating my impression of the train wreck that is "Paul Allen's Science Fiction Hall of Crap I Think Is Cool" I was talking about how I finally "did" the Space Needle.

It was a lot more interesting than I expected, for a couple of reasons. Suzanne had told me that I would find the description of the markers pointing out various buildings a lot more interesting than your average tourist, on account of actually knowing what those buildings are. She was correct about that, though I already knew what most of the buildings were. I finally did learn what that big building on top of Queen Anne Hill used to be. Yes, that used to be Queen Anne High School. I think I might have heard that before, but it never really stuck in my head for some reason.

The ride up the Space Needle in the elevators was exciting, as I haven't been in exterior elevators with glass walls very often before. The observation deck was interesting in that it was completely encased in fence now. There's literally no way to jump off the space needle unless you're a Chihuahua (and if you are please jump) or somehow manage to sneak up bolt cutters and a hack saw. The view was about the same as the view from the 65th floor of the "Columbia Tower" as it used to be called. One major difference though was that the lack of a glass window between you and the rest of the world really brought things into sharper focus. I'd also recently had the lenses on my glasses updated, and I was amazed at how sharp and crisp everything looked.

But really, the most entertaining part of the whole experience was Scottland. Before we'd left his place for the Seattle Center, he'd informed me that he didn't like heights. I think maybe I didn't understand just how serious he was about that. I mean, I get a little uneasy about heights, but usually only in a situation that provides some real amount of danger. His fear borders on an actual phobia.

As we exited the Science Fiction Museum, I noticed that the clouds were looking pretty ugly, so I suggested we skip our plans to eat first and just go straight to the Space Needle. That's when his face turned a little white and he got a lot less relaxed. The whole way from the Science Fiction Museum to the base of the Space Needle I kept giving him the chance to wait for me at the bottom, but he kept refusing. Once we actually bought our tickets I could sense that his dread had bumped up even more. He started telling me that he was going to have to turn towards the inside wall of the elevator once we got into it. At this point, I was taking everything he said literally, so I wasn't surprised when he walked back and stood facing the wall of the elevator while the other passengers and myself piled on. I wish I'd thought to take a picture. It was kind of amusing.

Once we got out of the elevator, things were a lot better for him. He managed to walk around the deck with his eyes open and didn't seem to nervous. He even managed to get near the edge with me for some photos of the two of us and the Seattle sky-line. I was very proud of him. At one point, as we were walking around the outside deck, the wind started blowing very hard. I got a little worried that it was going to whip my glasses off my head and blow them into the abyss below. Scottland had gone completely silent at that point and I turned to see where he was. He was following close behind me, only he was hunched over to about 3/4 of his normal height and was somehow managing to walk forward even though he was turn inwards towards the wall. Once we got out of the windy part, I stopped and he sat down near one of the benches.

We went inside after we had the before mentioned pictures of us taken and stood in line for some hot drinks. While waiting, I made a joke about wondering if I could knock the space needle down if I jumped hard enough. Scottland was relaxed enough at this point to laugh and try to take a picture of me as I bounced up and down while in line for coffee. Isn't it great? It sorta looks like one of those weirdly angled pictures that guys online take to make themselves look different, if they think that a normally angled picture is unattractive. We did one for Scottland too. Doesn't he look fantastic? I love a man with gigantic nostrils.


After we got our hot drinks we took the elevator back down to the gift shop and looked around. Sadly, there were no books on the geology of Washington or Seattle, so I left empty handed. Scottland has subsequently remarked about a thousand times how amazing it was that I was able to get him up to the Space Needle at all, and how relaxed he was about the whole thing.

All in all, the Space Needle was fun, and everyone should do it once. Just don't eat at the restaurant. I hear it's awful.

Giant Space Robots And The Androids That Love Them

As my time in Seattle was quickly approaching the end, I decided to engage in a bit of tourism that I had heretofore assiduously avoided. Yes, I undertook the grueling 520 foot elevator ride that brings one to the top of the Space Needle.

However, before I did that I decided to finally use the ticket to the Science Fiction Museum that my good friend Ron had purchased for me a year earlier on the occasion of my 30th birthday. The rather ironic bit here is that I used the ticket almost exactly a year to the day that it was purchased. The ticket was purchased by Ron on August 28th, 2004 at 6:18 PM. The ticket was used on August 28th, 2005 at 6:05 PM.

The Science Fiction Museum was interesting, although my general impression of it conformed fairly closely to the critical reviews it had recieved in the local papers. The museum appears to essentially be a collection of science fiction memorabilia purchased over the years by Paul Allen. In that sense, it's rather interesting to see props from a wide variety of television shows and movies. My main complaint is that what's inside the northwest corner of the EMP building hardly deserves to be called a museum. There's very little intellectual content, and I suppose I've always believed that a museum is more than a place to see stuff. It's a place where you see stuff that makes you think.

The place has two floors. The top floor has nominally more intellectual content than the bottom floor in that it is devoted almost entirely to science fiction novels and the authors that write them. Unfortunately, for anyone who has read any science fiction, their treatment of the various novels falls woefully short. They break down the genre into subjects, ie "nanotechnology", "robots", "aliens", "androids", "computers" and other categories. They then provide a smattering of books that are "about" the chosen subject. For example, Isaac Asimov's "I, Robot" falls into the "robot" category and David Brin's "Kiln People" falls into the "android" category. Small placards are placed next to each book with a quick description of what the book is about and if you're lucky, when it was written and by whom.

Maybe I was expecting too much, but there was no in depth discussion of any of the authors, the books they had written or whether their visions of the future had proven to be prescient. Also, there were a number of books I thought were oddly missing. The Foundation "Trilogy" was nowhere to be found, nor were any of the Dune books. In fact, there were a lot of books that were present that I'd never heard of. A lot of them looked like the kind of books that I wouldn't read simply because the cover art made them look really cheesey. You know, the ones where some guy that looks vaguely like Han Solo is gripping a laser zapper in one hand and a hot big boobed babe in the other and either running from or to something. I did find out that Kim Stanley Robinson has a few books out that I didn't know about, so some good did come of it.

The lower floor was all memorabilia, and for some reason, a small section about Orson Scott Card and the Ender series. The memorabilia was okay, although after a while it got pretty repetative. I don't care much about TV as it is, so seeing the various costumes people wore and the fake blasters they carried wasn't all that exciting. They had a big section on War of the Worlds, which was full of stuff about the at-the-time upcoming movie. Scottland was pretty disappointed by this section, as there was absolutely nothing about the book or the radio broadcast that freaked out the nation other than a recording of the broadcast that you could listen to if you wanted. Also, there was an LCD display that kept replaying commercials for the upcoming season of shows on the Sci-Fi channel. Only, it was for the first season of Battlestar Galactica and Stargate : Atlantis, so a little out of date considering that we're nearly halfway through season two at this point.

So yeah, the Science Fiction Museum was interesting, but I'm glad I didn't have to pay for my ticket. Still, thanks for the ticket Ron, I'm glad I got to see it. If anything, it gave me a strong sense of what a science fiction museum should look like, and it also made me realize that I need to start doing a lot more reading. There's still a lot of good stuff out there, with new good stuff being written every day. I just need to avoid the dreck. I'll just be sure to not read most of what Paul Allen apparently reads. But then, I don't like big-boobed-space-babes, so that'll probably be pretty easy.

Going Away BBQ

On Saturday, August 27th I organized a BBQ in honor of my imminent departure from the pacific northwest was a modest success. People had a good time and most of the people I was expecting attended. I was a bit disappointed that my parents, my Aunt Stefani and Danielle weren't able to make it, but I'm fairly confident I'll see all those people again.

We had a Lord of the Fries tournament that went fairly well. Robert, Amy's boy-toy, came in first place with a score after three hands in the high 100's. Jason Robertson came in second place with a score in the low 100's. My friend Bruce came in third place with a score in the 80's. I, of course, came in last place with a score of 14. Yes, after three hands of the english menu without the special rule I had a whopping score of 14 points. Apparently I was being punished by the goddess of luck for making sarcastic comments about how much ass I was going to kick.

Here's a link to pictures that Scottland took of the event.

Sex on The Beach

My friend Rod has been bugging me to go to Deception Pass with him for a couple of months now. Since my exit from Seattle is imminent, I figured there was no time like the present. Deception pass is about sixty miles north of Seattle on I-5 and about 18 miles southwest of the intersection between I-5 and highway 20. The drive to Deception Pass is pretty boring for 80% of it. Once you head SW after the refinery at Anacortes, the road quickly becomes very scenic.

Deception pass is the break in the land that makes Whidbey Island into and island. It's a beautiful steep walled cut of rock crossed by a narrow and oddly fragile looking bridge. Because deception pass is at the far northern end of Whidbey island, much of the water to the east of Whidbey island and nearbye Camano island prefers to pass through the Deception Pass channel when the tide changes, rather than heading the long way to the south and then back around to the North. So, when the tide is changing, the surface of the water ripples and roils like water flowing through a shallow river. It's a pretty amazing sight.

Still, my appreciation of the beauty of Deception Pass was eclipsed by something I saw that, while one of the most natural of human experiences, was complete unexpected at the time. The southern side of the channel is lined by very nice beaches made of a mixture of sand and smoothly polished medium sized gravel. Rod and I went for a walk along the beaches heading west. There are a couple of small sized headlands that cut very close to the water, and depending on where the tide is at they may or may not be passable along the lower edge. One of the headlands in question went very nearly to the water's edge, but was passable by a narrow foot wide bit of unsubmerged ground. Rod and I had to get through this part in single file and I went first.

As I came around the headland I took a quick look to my left. She was bent over the large driftwood log wedged in the gravel three quarters of the way up the shore. He was right behind her, his hands on her hips, thrusting madly. Neither were wearing any clothes of any kind. They turn towards me with big shit eating grins on their faces and then quickly disengage. They turn, scoop up their clothes and start heading towards the woods that line the beach. I do an abrupt 180, stopping Rod with a hand to the chest and mumbling "sorry about that" over my shoulder. I think to myself, "Damn, he had a nice ass. I wonder if he plays soccer."

Rod and I go back the way we came and wait for about five minutes before continuing on. When we get around the headland they're no where to be seen. We continue on down the beach. About 100 feet down, we pass a couple heading in the opposite direction. The woman doesn't really make eye contact. The man does. He asks, "How's it going?" I reply, "Pretty good." He gives me another big shit eating grin and a little eye waggle. About ten steps afterwards I stop and turn. Yep, that's him allright.

BSG

I love BSG with all my heart and soul. Some of the stuff in the most recent episode (Season 2 Episode 5) was a bit cheesey. Still, the show is so good it's fairly easy to forgive the minor mis-steps. I'm a bit concerned that the show is going to veer into the realm of "Cylons can't have babies because they don't know love" crazy stupidity. My guess that's just what Sharon-Bot believes because she's obviously the "please kick me because I have so much love to give" model.

Still, I was thinking about the show this afternoon and something "profound" suddenly occured to me.

THE CYLONS ARE THE ZERG.

Sort of. Think about it. They operate as a crude hive mind. They mass produce biologically engineered organisms designed for a single function or set of functions. There is a set of more sentient engineered organisms that do a lot of the thinking for the hive mind that cannot be killed through conventional means as they just grow new bodies into which their minds are transferred.

It all sort of makes sense in my head. And, if that's the case, where is the The Overmind? And more importantly, who is Kerrigan? Baltar?

Stromboli's Blog

I was googling the other day and decided to look up "Stromboli," which is my cat's name. You can imagine my shock and surprise when I found, nestled amongst the typical links to pages about a certain italian volcano, a Blog apparently being maintained in secret by my cat. While I have always known that she was intelligent for a feline, I had no idea that she was THAT smart. Perhaps I'll enroll her in undergraduate studies at UC Davis. It would be fun to be study budies. Here's the first entry in her blog.

This is my blog. I am a beautiful princess. I have two pets, HissGrowl and MeowMeow. I like them both, but MeowMeow is better at serving my needs. I have trained him well. MeowMeow has brought me several other pets as tribute over time. There was Rowwrl, who I remember from my youngest days. For a short time I also had PrrrrGack! and LickSniff. Traitorous attention sluts that they were, they all left. HissGrowl is fairly new and not yet as adept at serving me as I should like. I shall strive to train him to attend my needs as well as MeowMeow does. Perhaps he will not slink away like the others.

I think MeowMeow refers to me, and HissGrowl is my old roommate Bob.