Lotto and NaBloPoMo

Good evening everyone,

Well, it is time for something called NaBloPoMo. What is that? It’s a phrase meaning ‘National Blog Post Month’. And apparently that phrase is constructed for people who don’t like entire words, or are just too lazy to finish them. The goal of this month is to do a post every day. That might be a challenge for me, but I have been making good so far (2 down, lots to go).

And what am I doing today?

...Working -till’ midnight. And unfortunately, I have to work for a living still, as I did not win the lottery. I had my parents pick me up a lotto ticket on their last trip to Idaho. Being a science minded person (and a sore loser), I thought maybe I will take a look at the last 45 results, sort them, and make a histogram of occurrences for the lottery. I will let you know the results (even though I already know them too: random.. I’m just curious).

I am going to spend the evening mostly waiting for From Russia with Love to return from her trip to Boulder, CO. that she took with some co-workers to party for Halloween, and hear the crazy stories of her travels.

Music today: "N.W.O". by Ministry

That will do it for me tonight folks.

T

A Saturday Night With Mom

The night started out slow. I went to GrayWhale C.D. Exchange and purchased a DVD collection of the three Die Hard movies (I know there are four, but I now own the three good ones). Observe:

Then Mom and I went to my cousin Len's place for a Halloween party. I know, it is technically the day after, but that's just how it worked out. First off, I am going to go over some events that will not be covered in this post:

a) Family controversy about adoption

b) A shouting match over Cheetos

c) The 'prick in the poncho'

First, I had about 20 minutes to come up with a costume (as my cousins party was a costume party), so I quickly went through my closet to find something. I eventually settled on a bad “Che” costume. We arrived at the party and when we realized they had only hard booze and no beer, Mom suggested that we went for a beer run.

After getting past all the odd stares that were noticeably the “Halloween was yesterday” kind, we purchased about $70 worth of beer from Smith's and headed back to the party. By the time we had got back more people had shown up, and all of them were friends of my cousin and not family, so I did not know any of them. So I hung with Mom and my cousin Jer, who dressed as a construction worker, and regretted it due to the frequent requests to sing “YMCA”. Observe:

Yes, Jer- “YMCA” indeed (he was obviously a bit camera shy). And here is Mom with cousin Len, both rather drunk at this point:

Notice cousin Len has a nurse costume. Part of her costume was some test tubes filled with shots (mostly vodka I think). Cousin Jer and another douche at the party had taken a few and said that they were quite good... until anther person arrived at the party and asked if cousin Len had washed tham out before she used them. Of course the answer was no, then the follow up question of why. Apperantly, the type of test tubes she had are factory coated with a chemical to keep them sterile, and that chemical can cause vomiting and diarrhea.

Naturally we started taking bets on how long it would take for those two poor souls to start oozing at both ends. But before we could observe the comical inevitability, my other cousin Chaz called Len and said he had been in a car wreck. Not bad though, in fact he had hit a parked car. Unfortunately, it was a rather nice Mustang. He said that his brakes had problems, he could not see it, it came out of nowhere etc. but really, he was probably playing with his iPod or texting or something. Here is the truck that he was driving (owned by cousin Len):

And here is the poor Mustang:

Sad to see, I know. The funniest part was her trying to be serious talking to the cops in a skimpy black nurses outfit; stethoscope, fishnets and all.

Then Mom wanted to see my recent widower Uncle K. On the way there, Mom wanted to go shake the shipping doors at her place of employment to set off the alarm, and thereby shaking her bosses nerves, because he is apparently quite paranoid of getting robbed. Fortunately, we drove on.

So I drove my intoxicated mother and about $70 worth of beer to uncle K's place. We then arrived at my uncle's place, more beer was consumed and I returned home, to type this post. And the best thing? Spending my entire night dressed like 'Che':

Awesome.

T

On this Eve,

The skies are grey, and the leaves are yellow and brown. There is morbid gore abound; and the celebrated ghouls and eerie undead stalk our imaginations. Yes my friends, this is All Hallows Eve - my favorite time of the year.

Enjoy everyone.

T

In Borders and Shiny Nails

Good evening everyone,

Being that I could not think of anything to post for a while, no witty observations, no 'happy moments' of scientific discovery, and no other real things that would make an interesting post; I thought I would give a rundown of today's events.

After attending the Friends of the Library Book Sale, I am in need of some book-ends. And not just those metal wedges- real big gaudy pretentious things. So, I went to Borders. Of course you would think a bookstore would have such a device, but alas, they did not. In fact, they have become quite a challenge to find. Since they did not have what I was looking for, I decided to wander around a bit. I looked at C++ books, books on electricity and electric circuits, books on math and anything else that caught my nerdy eye. Nothing that is going to assist me with school however, indeed I fear that my browsing those particular types of books was to remove some kind of guilt that I may have had in not doing some amount of homework.

I then made my way down to the fiction section where I overheard this conversation between a mother, daughter and son; all in another isle and invisible to me:

Son:" what was her name mom?"

Mom:" who?"

Son: " his girlfriend.. "

Mom: "you are talking to loud; keep your voice down."

Daughter: "ugghhh…"

Son: "what was her name?"

Mom: "you are talking too loud. You are embarrassing me."

Daughter: "yeah, everyone!"

Mom: "Keep your voices down!"

Son: "but what was her name?"

And it went on in that circular manner until I could handle no more, and left to go to the Mall. I always liked wandering the Mall when I was a kid. I was a bit of a Mall Rat. My friends parents would always ask why we were going there, what point there was in it, and how it was just a waste of our time. I would counter that by saying that it was not a waste of time, but when one wanders the Mall, we are out of the house, we are keeping in touch with culture and current events, expanding our social horizons, and getting some much needed exercise. Especially us heathens there shopping on Sunday- a small sanctuary of superficiality and decadence. Except this time I went with a purpose. Here was my shopping list (and budget):

~Sunglasses: $20

~Boots: $100 (good boots are expensive)

On my way to procure these items, I noticed there has been one thing that has popped up more and more since I used to frequent Malls, and that is the kiosk. Not just a kiosk, bit populated with high pressure sales people. I passed one, and the girl slightly approached me and said:

"excuse me, could I talk to you for a moment?"

To which I replied:

"No."

And went on my merry way. When I looked back at her, I noticed she had a little disappointed sigh, and I felt a little bad. So I decided to myself that I would not be as rude to the next sales associate who approached me… aaaand that was a bad decision.

I was approached by a girl with an accent who looked younger from farther away. She started showing me some fingernail care products that she was selling. She took my hand and began sanding away on my finger while she was talking about how this 'cube' uses silk available from only Israel, and until now we could not use it to unlock the hidden oils in our finger nails, and she went on and on like that for quite some time. then she showed me my finger nail- I looked down with surprise; it was indeed quite shiny!

Then she tried to sell that crap to me, it was about $60, and I was forced to be even ruder than before to get out of there. Nothing eventful happened in getting the items I was originally after. So here is what I ended up with (and what it cost):

~Sunglasses: $10.

~ Boots: $40 (sale… I blame/thank the economy)

~Sad look from sales girl: $A small piece of my soul.

~Shiny finger nail: $A small piece of my self respect.

And there you have it. A long dragging post essentially about nothing, and what I actually spent my time doing: getting an absurdly shiny fingernail.

T

Election Coverage 08’

Good afternoon everyone,

I will not even bother with this crap. I had a witty, cleaver and funny post outlined, specifically regarding alternative party choices. But like I said- now I am not going to even bother. And why is that you might ask?

The election has now centered around a proverbial doofus who can’t keep his ass in his pants.

… well, shit.

Yes, America- that is what they think of you. Also, the fact that they need to put this out into the open to try and relate to us? Insulting if you ask me.

Not to mention that there is a candidate who screws up on an interview so bad, she gave Saturday Night Live enough material to get record ratings (repeatedly)… and thinking that being near Russia gives her foreign policy experience (trust me- I am around a Russian all the time, and I still do not understand her). And abusing her authority to have an ex-brother in law fired (just for being an ‘ex’). And last but not least, there is the candidate who thought she would be a good running mate (thus putting her an ‘old-mans-heartbeat’ away from being president).

I am laughing too hard to actually make my own jokes. To recycle the old saying: “Truth is stranger than fiction”.

To turn this on a serious note, there is a dark and horrible fact that is right in front of everyone’s faces. And that is the fact that this is actually a close race.

Sends chills down my spine… every time.

T

An Accomplishment Electric

Good afternoon everyone,

For those of you who I see on a regular basis, you all know about my irritations with my electronics class, especially the lab section. Here is a glimpse of what I have been doing in there:

This mess took me 2+ hours to wire de-bug. Guess what is does?

Drum-roll please......

Tah-Duh! It counts from 0 to 9! That's right! Not 8, or that whimpy 7- but 9!

Truely a Miracle of Modern Technology (basically, I have built myself an obnoxious 2 year old. But at least I can take it apart without going to jail)... I just fear it will become self aware-

... aaand might end up being something like a mix between this:

and this:

(If you are a fan of ATHF, that was very funny)

Or maybe thinking about this stuff is the only thing that gets me through that time in that miserable hole they call the electronics lab. But so I don't end on a bad note, the view from the physics buildings is quite spectacular:

... Ahhh- Fall Break has begun. Time to relax.

Fair Follies and Fall Break

Good afternoon everyone,

How do you spell relief?- F-A-L-L B-R-E-A-K. That is coming up right after my Electronics Lab and Lecture tonight. I will update the R&D Pages with more of my school work over the break, because I do plan on spending the entire thing studying. I know, for as excited as I seemed in sentences before, it will give me a nice opportunity to do some much needed catching up. Not only that, but I may have time to read other things than text books... finally...

In other news; I went to the campus Science and Technology Career Fair. Being a Physics Major, I thought that would be an excellent place to seek out future employment and opportunities. To my dismay, this was not exactly the case. There were a few places that seemed promising, but I did not appreciate the eye-rolling and laughter because you are looking for a "(insert type here) Engineer", and not anyone who has any type of physics degree... Oh, and get this- I was told by a nuclear power plant company that, and I quote: " we are not really looking for physicists. There might be a job you can do here or there, but we generally don't look for physics majors."- Really? Are you kidding? You dunces deserve all of your hippie protestors.

And the two old biddies who actually laughed at me, and I quote again: "Applied Physics! Ha-ha, oh... what on earth were you thinking you could do with that? Good luck! Hah-ha" Well, hag, here is my answer: a lot more than you, because remember; you are working at a career fair! That is the high point of your professional life!

I would like to thank those who were patient, even though I was not their ideal employee, and a special thanks to everyone who actually helped out with career options (3 total, including the F.B.I., N.S.A., and the nice fellow from Dougway). To everyone else, I am sorry that I could not bring more to your company. If you should change your mind, I have prepared a special Cover Letter and Resume for you:

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Dear Giggling Biddies and Eye-Rolling Recruiters:

Sincerely,
M.S.

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