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.

"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:

I just wish I would.

This isn't the worst con crud I've ever had, but it sucks. A lot. Still, life does go on.

I'm not doing so hot with that "Post every day" thing. I figure I'll cut myself some slack because it's the first week of school, and therefore everything is INSANE.

Next week isn't likely to be much better, because it's the run up to DragonCon.

Still, I got two chapters done this week on the Third Draft of Meredith MacKenzie and the Uruk Empire. I think this draft is better than the previous two. It's certainly more action oriented.

We'll see what the nice agent thinks when I send it back to her in a few weeks.

I'll try to post something less blathering tomorrow.

Yesterday was kind of a bust. I went down to school to get my books for the new semester. Introduction to Electrodynamics and Modern Physics. Exciting titles. Really.

Well, after I shelled out $400 bucks on two books, a new bag, and some notebooks, I tried to get a transit card. Of course, they stopped selling transit cards for August on Monday, because it makes so much sense to quit selling cards the same day financial aid is posted. Sometimes, I really hate my school with a passion.

Bleh...

Okay, it's just not my week.

'Dana Scully With Fricken Laser Beams' got rejected in about three hours. That was a little sobering.

Also, Eric Flint emailed me yesterday to ask for major rewrites on the Terraforming article.

Boy, I'm not doing well on the humor front. Really just not. Ouch.

Normally, I'd just dive right into the rewrites. The problem is, when I get home tonight, I've got a paper to write for my Chem Lab and a test to study for.

Ugh.

My American Government professor has a weird grading system. The class consists of 3 tests worth 100 points each, a presentation worth 50 points, and a final worth 150 points. That's a total scale of 500 points. Anything between 450 and 500 points is an A. But each test has more than 130 points availible on each test (oddly enough, more than half the class dropped because they were failing).

I arrived for the final with 413 points. In order to get an A in the class, I need to get 27 points on the final. That's less than 16%

So, it's been almost two months since I last updated this. I think I'm overdue, so here goes.

In the last two months, I've:

Started my second year of college. I'm taking Stellar Astronomy, Stellar Astronomy Lab, Survey of World Religions, Survey of American History - Civil War to Present and American Government. The Religion class is disappointing, but the other classes are a lot of fun. I suppose you can't win them all.

I'm sitting here and just being way to excited about the fact that I got to use the word "gigaton" in a sentence that didn't have anything to do with weapons yields.

Astronomy is fun.