Hot off the Vatican press: you are clear to believe in aliens.
This can only bode well for the relationship of Mulder (a true believer) and Scully (a true Catholic). Try not trip over your own feet while you’re staring at the sky, Padre.
Monthly Archives: May 2008
More This American Life Props
It feels like it was just the other day that I was here talking about a great episode of This American Life. Gotta say that I really enjoyed the show from this past weekend, too. They talked about the roots of the credit crisis, and for a financial novice like myself, I found the show to accessible and informative. I came away with a much more thorough understanding of the events that led us to our current economic state of affairs.
One additional question that I had afterwards was, “What were the comparable specifics that led to the economic downturns of the 1930s and the 1970s?” I’m sure I learned these things in history classes (10-15 years ago) but I don’t really recall. It’s baffling to realize that even though we, as a species, recognize that mistakes in history tends to repeat themselves, mistakes keep happening, and the cycle goes round and round.
Give a listen to episode #355, “The Giant Pool of Money,” if you get a chance.
Commencifying and Biogas
I just read an interesting little article about the use of “biogas” (basically natural gas harvested from rotting manure) in India. Found it via New Scientist.
Also wanted to quickly take this opportunity to mention commencement and open houses for next weekend. I didn’t just start thinking about it, but I’ve been slowly working on a post about this graduation stuff for about a month now, and it’s too late to finish it. So:
- I will be “commencing” in anticipation of a summer 2008 graduation from Oshkosh next Saturday, May 17. All are welcome.
- All are also welcome the following day, Sunday, May 18, at Jen and Joe Mundschau’s house at 6425 W Wisconsin Ave in Wauwatosa for an open house event to recognize Joe and me, both “commencing” this weekend.
I understand that is very short notice. What’re we gonna do?
Quite a Finish
Dave and I were at the baseball game last night. Glad we stayed until the bittersweet end— you may have seen the highlights of Rickie Weeks doubling in a pair of runs to snatch a victory from the division-leading Cardinals. Even though the pitching hung in there and Manny Parra settled in to a decent outing once the dust settled on his first two rocky innings, it was still a struggle to be able to watch these guys methodically eek out hits throughout the game. We watched the same players just light people up last year, so that makes it a little frustrating. I turned to Dave in the top of the 8th and said, “You know it’s gotten bad when we’re down just 1 run and you don’t feel like there’s a chance of pulling it out.”
Well, I spoke too soon. Sheets takes to the hill in about 20 minutes, and we’ve got a chance to get back to .500 (uughh), and within 3 games of first place. Who thought that this division was going to be such a dogfight? Answer: nobody. I forget where I was reading earlier this week that pitchers are approaching our young guns (Fielder, Braun, et al.) a little differently this season, now that they’ve had a whole year to adjust. Once again, for the 3rd year in a row, the Brewers find themselves at a sort of crossroads: in ’06, it was “can we finish with a winning record after a 81-81 ’05?”, then in ’07, it was “now that everyone has ‘arrived,’ will we deliver on all the potential?”, and here in ’08, it’s “can we continue to persevere after our chance of sneaking up on people has ended?”
We’ll find out. Go Crew!
Damn You, iPod. DAMN. YOU.
Michelle is in the air at the moment, probably rapidly descending into New York by now. Last night, one of the things that she asked me to help her out with was getting access to the iTunes Music Store and her iPod itself on her computer at home.
She runs the latest version of Ubuntu, at her own request.* I thought that this should pretty easy anyway, since she has a virtual Windows installation on there for stuff that you, well, y’know, have to have Windows for.** I would just make sure I could get the USB rokkin on the virtual machine, install iTunes, and she’d be done and done.
That turned out to be a lot more complex than I thought it would be. I never did manage to get USB working in VirtualBox OSE, but I’ve got it all set in my VMWare Windows machine on the laptop. I probably spent an hour or more trying to get it fixed on her desktop. The recent upgrade that I did complicated running the virtual machine itself, so there was a good chunk of that hour wasted right there…
Then when I moved this iTunes-installing-and-using operation over to MY laptop, there was a whole different problem of just being able to get the virtual machine to recognize that the iPod was plugged in. It was as if Ubuntu didn’t want to completely give it up. Finally, I managed to get that to happen, too, but I quickly managed to initiate a process of “sync”-ing the iPod, which, apparently, will go ahead and wipe everything off of it. Which is on one hand, total bullshit, and on the other, awfully disheartening when you’ve been working on getting this damn thing to work for 3 hours. This is not to mention to fact that the syncing process took FOREVER, given that the USB support, while present in VMWare, is merely of the version 1.1 variety (versus the standard, commonly recognized, vastly superior, HIGH-SPEED USB 2.0).
I do understand, on a basic level, why these frakkin iPods are so locked down and a pain the ass to try to work with. I dig that you can’t use the Music Store with anything but a Mac or a Windows PC. But that doesn’t mean I can’t bitch about it. I thought it was a profound drag that I spent so much time dicking around with this problem that I’ve never had copying mp3s over to an SD card and plugging it into my PDA, for example.
What this did make me decide I should do, though, is come up with an more effective means of using Windows on the desktop machine. Dual-booting would be one option, but I don’t know if I’m interested in blowing the hard disk space or the partitioning effort on that. How often do I really need to use Windows? I think I can count all the occasions in the year on one hand. I’ve become much more interested in scoping out this Windows-on-a-thumb-drive option. Not only is it more complex than re-partitioning and installing Windows on the side, I’ve never done it before, so it will require quite a bit more effort. Right up my alley, where personal computing is concerned.
I think I’ll get started on it now, since it’s relatively early and the Brewers are getting smoked once again…
* – Granted, her request was not necessarily for Ubuntu, but when I set up this machine that she has right now and offered to install XP, she said, “Well, I don’t really want Windows…” Very sexy.
** – Those would be things Netflix, TurboTax, and goddamned iTunes.
I Assure You They're Open
Jen and Joe are doing something pretty cool at their house later this summer– they’re having Justin Roth over for a house concert. I’ve been thinking that they have a nice venue for such a show pretty much… well, since they moved in there.
In my experience, house concerts are the most fun when you have people who really enjoy the artist there for the show. I went with the Kiefers once to see Chris Cunningham (of Storyhill) all the way over in Lodi. And cool as our friends and family may be, they’re not all necessarily hip to the Roth-jive. I encouraged Jen & Joe to offer to make the show open to the public, just because they would most assuredly draw some extra bodies that way. They agreed.
So despite what Justin’s current schedule might indicate for Friday, June 20, let me be clear on this point– ALL ARE WELCOME, but reservations ARE REQUIRED. You can contact Jen for that– jenjedi at soloshootsfirst dot com. I am going to try to spin some Justin tracks more often on the last.fm stream as we lead up to the show… He’s also got a MySpace page if you’re into that sort of thing. And some video on YouTube:
In a Haze
Had a rough weekend, as I started to get sick late in the afternoon on Friday, and basically didn’t get out of bed on Saturday. By mid-day on Sunday, I was feeling a lot better, but I’m still pretty congested and I’m working through a murky, medicine-induced fog.
The positive thing is that I’m getting all sorts of work done today. I have to think it’s because my brain is more or less zoned out, and just functioning enough to keep my bodily functions up and running. Maybe a frontal lobotomy is the solution to the probs I’ve had with getting motivated around here…
Machines Knows Science
From today’s Tech wire, “Mechanical Squirrels, Robot Lizards Jump Into Research“– here’s my fave excerpt:
Sarah Partan, an assistant professor in animal behavior at Hampshire, hopes that by capturing a close-up view of squirrels in nature, Rocky will help her team decode squirrels’ communication techniques, social cues and survival instincts.
And in related fictional news, it appears that the Cylons have been among us from the beginning, apparently for the exact same reasons.
60 Days
Just dropped off my rent check and put in notice that I would be leaving at the end of my lease term. Time to really start looking for a new place!
Thankfully, the cross-town move is usually not as stressful as the cross-state or the cross-country. But if you feel like lifting some boxes around the end of June…
Some Notes for Thursday
Couple random items from around the web for you this morning:
First, a short Obama ad about a summertime reprieve from the gas tax, with a good point:
Second, I do enjoy lists. New Scientist offers a list of the Top Ten Fictional Scientists in popular culture.
Finally, it’s exciting that Kyle and Robin will be headed to Thailand next month to pick up Thanu, but I’m a little conflicted on their plans for conditioning him to accept the reality of the coming robot menace. I guess it will be up to MY children to lead the resistance.
And a PS, not from the webs, but from the real world– today is Grandma’s birthday. She is 77!