BBKristopher.com

The website, especially the blog, hasn't been getting much love lately. A lot of that has to do with what I've been doing the last few months. Between learning more than I really want to know about Quantum Mechanics, Solid State Physics, Leech Brain Cells, and Electricity and Magnetism; Doing an extensive rewrite on Meredith MacKenzie and the Uruk Empire, and my new time sucking addiction to World of Warcraft, I haven't had a lot of free time. I still don't, really, but I'm going to try to make more of an effect to keep up with this blog.

So, on to stuff that's actually interesting.

I amuse myself, anyway

"Do you think they have to worry about resonance when they design windshield wipers? I mean, if they get the timing just right, well, wrong I guess, could the windshield wipers flip the car?"

"No, the shock absorbers have a dampening coefficient."

"See, you learn something new every day. They put shock absorbers on cars to keep the windshield wipers from flipping them over."

***

(In regards to a teaching award the students give to their favorite teacher)

"I think we should give it to Dr. X."

"I don't want to give it to someone in astronomy."

"He'll get it eventually. Dr. Y will get it eventually."

"No he won't. I'll throw him off the room first."

"---"

"Actually, can I throw him off the roof on general principal?"

***

Me: "God, how do you keep track of this notation crap. A-star, A-hat, A-sub-this, A-sub-that, A-dagger."

J: "I'll bet there's an A-unicorn."

Me: "That's graduate level stuff."

J: "You know what, if I ever invent an equation, I'm going to have a variable called A-unicorn."

Me: "As long as I don't have to take the derivative of it."

J: "What would the derivative of a unicorn be?"

Me: *thinks* "A horse."

J: "What about the double derivative be?"

Me: "Donkey, and the triple derivative is a mule."

J: "What about the fourth derivative?"

Me: "It's not differentiable beyond the third derivative."

J: "If the derivative is a horse, what would the integral be?"

Me: "A bicorn."

J: "Would that make the double integral a triceratops?"

Me: "Yeah. And the nth integral is Godzilla."

J: "Godzilla."

Me: "Yes, where n is the number of spines on Godzilla's back, minus one."

J: "If we right this up, you think we could publish?"

Me: "The proof that Godzilla is the nth integral of a unicorn? That's a Nobel prize, easy."

I was down in the physics lab at school last night and had just finished using the Neon Laser to align the Fabry-Perot interferometer when the fire alarm sounded.

Well, fire alarms go off all the time on Campus. It's one of those things. One went off on Monday during my Calculus test. As a rule, evacuations are slow, and there's a lot of 'is this real, or is this just a malfunction, or some ass trying to get out of a test.'

Not so this time. The alarm went off, and the door to the room were we were working jerked open. My professor said "Everybody out," and inside of five minutes, the whole building was emptied.

This is what happens when you spend your time in a building with several high level biolabs, physics labs, and chemistry labs.

We'd been outside maybe three minutes before the first fire trucks arrived. There were five in the first batch, and they just kept coming. Fire engines, paramedics, a hazmat team. In the end, there were about two dozen cops, twenty fire trucks, four cop cars, and about half of plant, and there was just no dicking around at all.

We were outside for about 45 minutes, and I never found out for sure what happened, but whatever it was, it must have been fairly minor, because the hazmat teams never went in, and they let us back in to finish up our work. Still, lots of excitement.

Below is a little bit of what happened (click on the thumbnail for the full size image:

Apparently, I can use the new MacBook's built in webcam and the handy-dandy iMovie to record videos.

This is a really neat function.

Now, let us never speak of it again.

1). Apple Pages files and Subversion do not mix. Ever.
2). Figure out how to change default text editor from VI to ANYTHING ELSE. I'm thinking Pico, I like Pico.
3). Subversion is your friend. Except when you try to use it with a Pages file. Then it becomes your enemy, and you must drive a wooden stake through the heart of the Pages file in order to get it to love you again.

I ordered a new MacBook a few days ago. Along with it, I ordered a new iPod, a copy of VMWare Fusion, and an iPod extended warranty. I get home today, and what do I find on my porch?

If you guessed the iPod and the copy of VMWare, you win a virtual teddy bear. So, the iPod and the software aren't valuable enough to require a signature, but the extended warranty package, which is a box with a post card in it, I have to go pick up at the FedEx depot, because that can't be left without a signature.

I've been toying around with a couple of Urban Fantasy ideas for a while. One of them has a character who's a marine who received a medical discharge after he died in the line of duty and was resuscitated. These days, he makes his living writing a series of fantasy romance novels called the Unicorn Riders of (Some exaggerated cliché of a fantasy world name). The books are about female paladins who are bonded to men who can transform into unicorns (or unicorns who can transform into men, I'm not real clear on that point).

Waking up with a runny nose, going to the bathroom, and finding that it is, in fact, a bloody nose.

Ugh. Some days being me sucks. Yet another reason to hate con crud, like I needed it.

But the best part is, I stopped by the campus health center to see a doctor yesterday, and the place was closed. They're moving the bloody thing, so everything in the clinic is packed up in boxes.

Bleh.

Okay, I've got about an hour and a half before I have to be awake. I'm going back to bed.