The Osmotic Governor

I'm thinking a list is in order

• Idaho's Butch Otter: legislative, executive, and military experience, a Catholic.
• North Dakota's John Hoeven: very popular, nation's longest serving gov, former CEO, a conservative Catholic.
• Minnesota's Tim Pawlenty: legislative and executive experience, a former executive of a company, Evangelical. Interacted with officials from India, China, Mexico, Canada on matters of trade.
• Vermont's Jim Douglas: political wunderkind with legislative and executive experience. Established a sister city in Russia, fluent in Russian. No doubt deals with Canadian syrup poachers. A Freemason!
• Florida's Charlie Crist: right there in the name. Methodist swing-state gov.
• From the former Republic of Texas, Rick Perry: long-serving gov, former Air Force officer, legislative experience, social conservative. On the other hand, Endorsed Giuliani.
• Hawaii's Linda Lingle: long-serving Jewish gov. Mayor, council-member, high approval rating. Hawaii is very close to a number of other countries... compared to a lot of states.

So, I'm not sure... but do you think one of these border-state governors might have more experience than the one up for VP? Maybe even useful experience? No? Seriously? Alaska?

Soren Stats - 4 Months

Length


Weight

Ruud the Day

Shoulda read my blog, Ruud.

Read This One Rich

The book I couldn't recall was The Calculus of Consent:Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy, by Gordon Tullock and James Buchanan. It enumerates the cases pretty convincingly, and points out that in determining the optimal decision-making procedure one has to consider the increase in coordination costs vs the imposition of external costs.

Ultimately, I was not happy with their assumptions, though--I can't recall which, exactly, though, unsettled me.

Another book I couldn't recall was by Michael Pollan, and called The Botany of Desire:A Plant's-Eye View of the World. It talked about the coevolution of humans and plants.

Little Flyer

Soren came through the flights with ease and as much aplomb as a baby can muster, much as he seems to come through everything.

In order to facilitate logistics, we asked Susan's folks to front us a car seat that we'd buy from them as we left. We came away with a very nice Britax Marathon carseat. It should be good for Soren up to 49 inches standing height and 65 pounds. Hopefully that won't be, per our friend A.M., at 17 months old, or whatever her extrapolation was. The very nice thing about this seat is that the straps are padded a little, and don't come as close to the rapidly growing neck of the little 'un. Also, we have a "blowout protection" pad, to catch any runaway poos.

It was really only a matter of time, wasn't it?

Wookieepedia

Carrot Salad

We had a salad-themed dinner last evening. Potato, fruit, pasta, carrot, and cucumber salads were on parade. M and D made the potato and fruit salads, Susan made the pasta salad, and I made carrot and cucumber salads. I made a pretty normal cucumber salad that we all know and love, though I made it undersweet, much to my chagrin. The carrot salad I got from Mark Bittman, and it was delicious.
More or less, it goes like this:

• peel and grate 1 1/2 lbs carrots
• combine juice 2 oranges, 1 lemon and 2 tbsp olive oil
• add 1 tsp cumin to liquid
• toss the carrots in the liquid, salt and pepper to taste

It was delicious.

My Ties Are Cooler Than Me

I don't know how that happened. Well, I do know how I got them and I'm painfully aware of my level of coolness, but it still seems somewhat of a mystery how these cool ties got into my closet.

Shaky

That was exciting.

Magnitude 5.4 - GREATER LOS ANGELES AREA, CALIFORNIA

World War Z

So, on my way to work at night, I've been listening to the audiobook version of World War Z, which Tom got and read a while back. It took a little while to get into it - the format is just a series of interviews - but by the end of the first disc I was pretty engaged. In addition to the author, Max Brooks, a whole cast of actors is involved in reading the book (Alan Alda, Mark Hamill, Carl & Rob Reiner, and John Turturro, to name a few). I was frustrated at first by the guy who read the part of the Chinese doctor; his accent was distracting and really poorly done. But once I got past the first few segments, the actors did a better job, and it's pretty interesting how much detail Brooks put into his work. His interviewees are quite varied in their backgrounds - military, civillian, government officials, medical personnel - so you get a sense of how the Zombie War played out from many different perspectives, and each one moves forward chronologically just a bit from the last.

Anyway, I'm not quite done with the book (almost 4/5 of the way through), but I think I've heard enough to say that it's worth a read/listen. It's a little creepy, a little slow in the beginning, but entertaining overall.

Intolerable Cuteness

Soren is wearing his little University of Oregon one-piece and hat. I cannot stand it. It is cuter than anything I've ever seen in my entire life.



See?

Got It!

Soren Weight at Three Months

Pictures

We picked up some pictures from my parents when we stopped on our way back to LA. I scanned them in and Susan's been fixing them up during the wee hours. Check them out at my flickr page.

Watching a Bit of Soccer

Message to Ruud Gullit: What are you doing with those bums in your defense? I would be willing to play for a reduced salary. Call me.

God Bless America

Channel surfing, just now, we stumbled upon Alien Nation, en Español. Who among us didn't love the kidney-bean-head aliens and their daring salt-water Russian roulette?

More about "The Economy of Cities"

Okay, in comments there was a question:

So is this book written from the perspective of "I know how to best plan cities"? Without any data, how can the author make a claim that mixed zoning is physically inefficient?

To the first part: no. The author basically claims in this book that the "city planning" we mostly know and loathe is worse than useless, and development should mostly be allowed to occur spontaneously.

To the second: there isn't any data presented, so she can't, if you ask me.

Grand Parents

My dad, much on his dignity, on the floor with my son:

My mom, soothing a weary, tiny, traveler (>700 miles in the car today):

.

Cute Overload!

Hilarity

I haven't laughed this hard at something in a while.

Check it out.

Oh, NPR.

I was listening to a local show which does film reviews on Friday. As they were discussing the movie Mongol, one of the film critics complained that the movie had too many battle scenes. In a movie about Ghengis Khan? Too many battle scenes?

Inefficient Cities as Sources of New Work

As I continue with "The Economy of Cities" there have been a number of assertions that seemed relatively uncontroversial (what with my vast knowledge of development economics). However, there's no data in this book, that I've yet seen.

I've gotten to the point in the book where the author is contending that inefficient cities--those that are somewhat "organic" in their physical and economic layouts--are engines of innovation. The idea seems pretty reasonable: a number of small firms duplicating work (economically inefficient) and/or being lumped hurly-burly next-door to different pursuits, whether business, residential, or commercial (physically inefficient) may lead to new ways of doing work, new firms making new things, what have you.

Never Thought I'd See That in Print

I jussst started reading The Economy of Cities, by Jane Jacobs. Not fifteen pages in, this gem:

...factories in rural West Virginia employed local people who already knew how to sew and possibly even made their own underwear but this should not persuade us that therefore brassiere making developed from subsistence underwear making in West Virginia.

"Subsistence underwear making" is just hilarious. Like, there they are, barely scratching out their chemises and boxer-briefs.

Height

Here you go.

Eating Enough?

Report

Well, that went okay. I fear that my talk was pitched to the wrong
level, but a few people seemed to follow it and even enjoy it a bit.

I had something like fourteen one-half-hour interviews, as well as
lunching and dining with some of the people. Those all went very smoothly.

For someone with actual knowledge of that industry, it seems like it
would be a truly wonderful place.

San Jose

Going up tomorrow afternoon. I have a day of interviews there and will be giving a seminar on my research at a research unit of a well-known tech company. Somewhat nervous, but also not too bad, as I don't think a) there's a single chance in hell I'll get it, b) don't even really want it.

Still... advice?

Soren's Growth

Continuing apace

Oh, Patton. Another Jest!

"Casserole of evil."

That's some good coinage.

Air Talk

Sometimes, I'm terribly surprised at the things I hear on the radio. With the Pope's visit coming up, it seems as though NPR is all Christianity, all the time.

Yesterday, while interviewing a couple of men in seminary, a hostess made the point that the general public don't really know much about what the lives of seminarians and priests are like. She actually said something to the effect that "the perception is that priests live very cloistered lives."

This morning, I got off the phone and turned the radio on and heard a
host talking to a priest--I think it was a priest--about coitus interruptus.

Dawn of the Dead

Hilarious if you leave the captions on. E.g. "Undead gnashing of teeth" and "cadaverous moaning."

Hello, World

Where is my mind?

I like this song by the Pixies. It came on my internet radio station at work. I said to myself, "Tom"--'cause that's what I go by, back home, is 'Tom'--where is your mind?"

Oh - stop

With your feet in the air and your head on the ground Try this trick and spin it, yeah Your head will collapse But there's nothing in it And you'll ask yourself

Where is my mind?

Way out in the water See it swimmin'

I was swimmin' in the Caribbean Animals were hiding behind the rocks Except the little fish But they told me, he swears Tryin' to talk to me, coy koi.

The What Wing?

In the sixth season, there's an episode where the President hosts peace talks between Israel and some Palestinian authority. In comments on the progress of talks, C.J. mentions the great success of the lunch buffet. The menu included Maryland crab cakes.

A big hit with those Israelis and Palestinians? Really?

I'm thinking not.

Sooo, About That Job Interview

I just found out they want to make me an offer.

I Chose A

I'll tell you about it later.

Tie Vote (har har)

As our hero prepares for his big job interview in DC next week, he seeks the wisdom of the people in an important aesthetic decision.

Option A:

Option B:

Commence voting!

I is...

Too tard to moddle.

No, Not Them!

Since Susan and I are planning on a natural childbirth for our soon-to-arrive progeny, I've procured and started to read Husband-Coached Childbirth. An interesting passage:

My personal experience covering forty-six years and over twenty-three thousand babies is a zero maternal mortality rate. This is in spite of the fact that we have a high concentration of high-risk patients--kyphotic dwarfs, pneumonectomy patients, cardiac surgery patients, diabetic patients, and the most frightening of all, the Jehovah's Witnesses who came to us in droves.

Oh no! Not the Jehovah's Witnesses!

Weird Meme

Okay, here it is: find the book closest to you. Turn to page 123. Locate the fifth sentence. Post the sixth, seventh, and eighth sentences.

The book closest to me was The Physics of Information Technology, by Neil Gershenfeld. The selection is below.

To find the field distribution everywhere, it's necessary t o solve Maxwell's equations in cylindrical coordinates for a diverging wave. This is a surprisingly non-trivial calculation [Yariv, 1991], but the result drawn in Figure 8.4 for the fundamental radial and azimuthal mode TEM₀₀ is close to what we just found. At the focus, the phase fronts are parallel and the transverse amplitude has a Gaussian dependence with a standard deviation of w, the beam waist.

So, that was fun! Do it, people of the world!

Very Tired

Between work and moving, there is little rest for the weary, let alone the wicked.

Tourist Tips for D.C.?

Anybody have any? The people at Pentagon directorate did decide to bring me out for an interview.

Fondue or die!

Okay, the organization of the fondue dinner has passed email capability. I'm making a post here to get it all out there. Discuss in comments.

What
Fondue dinner and dessert. Currently we don't have fixed recipe, but the requirements are minimal: gruyere, emmenthaler, dry white wine, garlic, kirsch, and cornstarch for the dip. Suggested victims are: cubes of a nice, slightly stale, bread, lightly seared strips of lamb, pork, and various vegetables (carrots, broccoli, asparagus).

We have access to Demetri's fondue pot. We will need at least one, probably two more (one for a meat-free version, and one for dessert). Mostly, any heavy-walled sauce pan ought to do. We'll need several tea-lights or votive candles and something with which to raise the pots over them (here we could use the grates from Max's stove and some trivets).

If anyone (besides us) has a Lazy Susan, it would be great if we could borrow it, to grant easy access to the dipping-foods.

Dessert seems likely to be chocolate fondue. I don't know a recipe for this, but I'll bet it will involve a bunch of dark chocolate, some small amount of toasted nuts (filberts, maybe?), a bit of milk or cream and a bit of red wine. For dipping we have suggestions: strawberries, tiny oranges.

Where
Max's apartment.

Why
Duh. Cheese.

When
Saturday night, current proposals are 6:30pm, and 7:00pm.

Who
Currently we have Max, Demetri, John, Susan, Tom, Alice, ML, Dan, and Auna M.

Supplies
We can get the "fondue" ingredients. Others want to sign up for the dipping-foods, tea-lights, and anything else we've neglected?

I Can Haz Cheezburger?

Can I?

Even Steven Gets a Pony

Well, career week has come to a close. I had a couple of on-campus screening interviews. One went very well. Unless I completely misjudged the second one, it did not go so very well. That's okay, though: I got a USB key and a golf-towel out of it. No, I didn't mug the interviewer.

The upshot is that a directorate within the Office of the Secretary of Defense is very likely to bring me to D.C. to interview for a position as a staff analyst. Very interesting work, seems pretty important.

David Brooks

The lesson of the Ecology Narrative is that, in most cases, the market corrects itself. Maybe this year banks will change their pay structure so there’s not so much emphasis on short-term results. Maybe companies will change their boards to improve scrutiny over complex new instruments.

Pfffffff. Sure, you bet! Path dependence is a myth, and the principal-agent problem doesn't exist!

The Perfect Reality Show

Wow. Oh. My. Jeez. They're showing new episodes of Chuck, again. As a special treat, they decided to show two episodes tonight. Between, they sandwiched an episode of The Celebrity Apprentice. But this post is not about that! Susan changed the channel so we wouldn't have to see that, and stumbled upon... Celebrity Rehab With Dr. Drew! Interestingly, it is set at his clinic in Pasadena, and (occasionally) at Huntington Memorial Hospital, also in Pasadena. Such luminaries as Daniel Baldwin, Mary Carey, Brigitte Nielsen grace the halls, messy and bizarre.

Man, you really like Tide

At lunch today the topic somehow got turned to historical mathematicians. I think we were talking about Cantor, and how he went crazy. That was a shame. Euler, interestingly, continued to do stuff after he went blind. And he had, like, twelve kids.

We also talked about how several scientists (like artists) had patrons who supported them. We imagined what it would be like if scientists, mathematicians, and philosophers, were sponsored in the modern sense: Isaac Newton's universal gravitation, brought to you by Fidelity! Occam's Razor, brought to you by Gillette!

Better Lucky than Good

Last Friday an old classmate of my advisor came calling at Caltech to do some recruiting. I (all unawares because I thought he'd be around this week for the career fair) met with him and talked for an hour or so about what I've worked on, and what he works on. In the end, he said he'd filled the position in his group but that he was recruiting for several groups at his company and that I ought to send him my curriculum vitae.

After a couple of hours polishing it up a bit (with the help of Susan and Max), I sent it along.

Apparently I made a good impression, because they'll be inviting me for an interview. It may be too soon, as a practical matter, but it is exciting.

Accidents

Ever been rear-ended at the grocery store?

What about by a crazy lady with a cart?

When you were standing in the checkout line?

Gentlemen and ladies, I implore you! Do not run into people's butts with your fully-loaded grocery cart. Those things sting.

What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up?

I often get the question: What do you want to do with your degree?

The honest answer is that I don't much care. I can get interested in just about anything.

One possible response I've come up with is that I'd like to find a wealthy benefactor and then just relay interesting information to them. Any wealthy readers in need of a bard, minus the singing?

Thanks

To everyone- going to the gym will be nicer thanks to the tiny little radio Mom and Dad got me, and Barnes & Noble will be a fun excursion thanks to Yaya and the Parents-in-law.

My feet are already enjoying these awesome SmartWool socks Susan got me! Though they got quite wet on the ride in today, my toes are still warm. The magic of wool.

Many thanks...

To Ma & Pa Johnson, for bringing an extremely excellent fellow into the world 28 years ago today.

Just a minute

So I've transitioned from swimming to running for the duration of the Harsh Southern California Winter™. I ended up toting around a lot of water in my ear, which started to get unpleasant, what with the gentle breeze and low daytime temperatures in the high 60s. For a couple of weeks, then, I've been running on the treadmill a bit more every day or two, and swimming less every day or two, in an effort not to foul up my knee again.

On Sunday, after doing a "normal" workout, I did a self-test: I decided to see if I could run a mile at a fair clip. In the end, I ran a mile in 6:39--just one minute slower than I did it ten years ago, when I was a bona fide athlete. Sweet!

I really enjoy the treadmill. A wealth of data.

Grandfathers and Uncles

The lot of you.

Have Boo Boo. Not Yogi.

Last night I went to a Yoga class for the first time ever. I've long been familiar with Yoga, to the point of having people show me some postures so I could stretch more effectively, or whatever, but had until then never even sat on a Yoga mat.

My verdict: okay, perhaps more work than I was hoping for. Knowing and KNOWING that it is a difficult practice are, as ever, two different things.

This is all by way of saying that I've got some soreness today.

What What What?

Listening to NPR the other day, they're concluding a series on "consumption." No, not TB, the wallet-related kind. A few seconds long teaser for the final piece included the following gem: "Hoover dam is the drug dealer, and Las Vegas is the crack whore."

So... Las Vegas has sex with the Hoover dam in return for electricity?

Huh?

Guitar Hero

Is so much fun. Seriously. It's ridiculous.

Good Lyric

Some had crawled their way into your heart
to rend your ventricles apart

Balloon Animal Anatomy

Spied at Boing Boing, Balloon Animal Anatomy.

Home, Sweet Home

Pictured above? Grants Pass. If I am not much mistaken, this picture was taken by one Brett Hopper, with whom I was a cub- (and briefly boy-) scout. I say it is him because I recall Brett had a great desire to become a pilot, and this one works near GP as a pilot, etc. Also because I heard long ago that he'd attended LCC for a time, as has this Brett Hopper. Anyhow, there you go. A chunk of GP for your viewing pleasure. The original is here.

Book Recommendation

In the sidebar you'll see that I've (we've) been reading The Time Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger. I'm about 75% of the way through it, and it is amazing. Read it.

My newest endeavor

So in my short time at Lane Community I have been mostly busy working on the student newspaper, The Torch. I am particularly proud of it, too. We finally got it online, although we are still working out the kinks, but now everyone can read the things I write and such! Anyway, we still have a lot of room for improvement, but check it out. www.lcctorch.com

Name That Gourmand

Question: Who would you expect to be the preparer and consumer of a hummus, catsup (ketchup?) and cheese sandwich?

Is it


• a) Susan, the pregnant wife with the high potential for weird pregnancy-related food cravings

or is it


• b) Tom, the very un-pregnant husband

?

Let Us Give Thanks

Monks have given us so much... they copied ancient texts during the Dark Ages... they bred and trained giant rescue dogs... they possibly invented champagne... one invented double entry bookkeeping... we owe them for kung fu... Truly, monks are awesome.

Random Detritus: TNG

Coming: April, 2008

Blood Type

Think Geek has these cool, pretty cheap, DIY Blood Typing Kits. Mine arrived in the mail last Friday, so I had a fun time that night, poking my figers and hand a bunch of times to get enough blood for the test. It really didn't require much blood, but my fingers sure didn't want to yield it, and nor did the meaty part of my palm.

In any event, I'm O+. What're you?

Possibly a Dumb Question...

Why don't they show every (televised) play of NFL football from the Sky-cam? The sideline angle they use is almost completely useless.

This is Just Wrong

Check out this list of great books. The bolded titles are also on the most challenged and/or banned books list. See an excerpt below:

1. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
2. Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
3. The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
4. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
5. The Color Purple, Alice Walker
6. Ulysses, James Joyce
7. Beloved, Toni Morrison
8. The Lord of the Flies, William Golding
9. 1984, George Orwell
10. The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner
11. Lolita, Vladmir Nabokov
12. Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck
13. Charlotte's Web, EB White
14. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce
15. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
16. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
17. Animal Farm, George Orwell
18. The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
19. As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner
20. A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway

Much too much

107 degrees was the high today. Down to 104 right now. I hate low-pressure systems.

Take that, Mother Earth! *kick*

This ad showed up at the top of my Gmail window this morning. These people should be shot. Or strangled with their own product. Something.

Firsts

So I am moving out. My first house, with Thea. It's in Eugene. I will be going to Lane and working at Blockbuster, still, but that's good news for me. I am really excited. I also bought a pretty nifty set of knives. Most things we have so far have been really cheap or free. For example, we got a free couch from the side of the road. It was in a good neighborhood so I think its probably free of bugs and such. Who knows. It WAS free, after all. Wish me many good lucks, por favor.

M

We have now achieved 1kPost.

List

• Most of the flood damage has been repaired. A few things remain, but man, we really lucked out.
• Moving office. Again.
• We went to Oil Rig Eureka and dove under it. It was very interesting. Sea lions are funny. There were so very many tiny fish that sometimes you couldn't see!
• We also saw a taping of Last Comic Standing, in North Hollywood. It was a long wait for two ten-minute sets. The comedians were both funny, but the taping portion made me feel vaguely dirty. Not in any kind of good way, either, Woody Allen.
• Falafel fried chicken. 'Nuff said.
• Some good friends of ours are expecting a baby. The expecting father says, "people don't make babies: babies make babies."

A whole passel of lolz

For your amusements -

• I Can Has Cheezburger?
• LOLPresidents
• LOLBeatles

Brain Scan

I participated in another fMRI experiment the other day. This one attempted to study latent memory.

The experiment comprised three parts. The first was a guided learning session, I believe, lasting 24 minutes. I held a two-button controller and a series of instructions was flashed on the screen of the goggles I wore into the MRI machine, taking me through a decision tree with images of fractals indicating the "state," and the dynamics being controlled by the left and right buttons of the controller.

In the second session, also 24 minutes long, I had to try to reach end states for a given reward ($0.25 for one, $0.10 for another, and $0.00 for another).

Lastly, some anatomical scans were taken to ensure, I guess, that I had a normal brain. This process took about 10 minutes, though it seemed to take too long.

The first stage had a single possible value, and you could make two decisions- left and right. With a certain probability, depending on which button you pushed, one of four images would come up. Then, there was a second step where the process repeated, only the tree collapsed down to three different states there, again with differing probabilities.

The second 24 minute session was the moneymaking phase. The prompt would come up and I was supposed to navigate to the final state, attempting to maximize my earnings. It was fairly simple to do so, as I had figured this was the goal coming in and paid attention mostly to the consequences of the first choice in the learning session. I noticed that one choice led overwhelmingly to outcomes one and three ($0.25 and $0.00 payouts, respectively), and the other overwhelmingly to two and three ($0.10 and $0.00, respectively). I took the first few trials on the payout round to further prune the decision tree.

In the end, I won more money than the experimenter had ever seen. Plenty of money for lunch this week!

After the experiment, I asked if I could get a picture of my brain. Well, he wouldn't give me one, but he showed me some of the anatomical scans with the 3D rendering. The cerebellum looks delightfully leafy. The major blood vessels are huge--and one of my eyes is noticeably lower than the other. My corpus callosum seemed huge, and the lobes were generally quite fluffy in appearance.

SNAFU Resolution Training

After our exciting evening Saturday before last, we had several solid days of cleanup left to do...

Industrial fans were set up and directed to dry out our most important equipment. Gallons and gallons of isopropanol were used for scrubbing, wiping, and mopping the floors, walls, and crevices. Toothbrushes and canned air were used to clean off circuit boards.

Many things were voltmetered and examined with dental mirrors and bright lights.

I even went and examined the insides some of our passive air ducts. That was fun.

Current status: it appears that our SEM will work, though the computer that controls it has passed into the realm of shadows; two-thirds of our ICP-RIE/PECVD cluster tool (see below) is okay; we've got to replace a bunch of cleanroom ceiling tiles before we can 'seal' the room again, probably we'll have to change our HEPA filters out.

We took advantage of the disaster to correct a few problems we've had for a while. We put our vacuum pumps on elevated, wheeled, frames with drip pans below. We're getting some safety equipment we needed to install years ago...

All told, things are still broken, but progress is being made.

Woo-hoo

Sunday was my birthday!! Yay!

Après le Déluge

Last night Max, Demetri, Susan and I attempted to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I say "attempted," because just before we arrived at the theater, I received a distressing call for help.

You see, very early Saturday morning, some construction at school required the shutoff of our building's chilled water. As a result, the temperature in our cleanroom climbed up to about 120F. This necessitated a shutdown of basically all our equipment. We thought we were safe.

We were decidedly not.

Sometime from 7-8pm, one of the fire sprinklers in our cleanroom, weakened by a day at fairly warm temp, went off. The amount of water it put out was epic. It flooded our cleanroom to a couple of inches, spraying a couple of million dollars worth of (thankfully powered down) equipment with nasty sprinkler water. Water flowed down the hall, getting into two of our other labs, though not as bad.

I arrived on the scene at about 8:30pm, and we worked until about 1am vacuuming and mopping and scrubbing up what must have been a few hundred gallons of water, and then setting up fans to dry our precious equipment.

The consequences of this flooding will be difficult to assess. Not least because it may be days before we can even begin to try to turn on our equipment and see what is broken, and what is not. It was a great Saturday night.

Nightmares in Customer Service

Apparently, Sony doesn't take their Sony VAIO customer service very seriously. Read on to enjoy a lengthy tale of woe:

My new Sony's hard drive died last month. This is not Sony's fault; components fail, especially (weirdly) when they're new.

The service, on the other hand, is agonizing. After repeatedly explaining that there was an I/O error on the drive preventing me from booting, I was told to try reinstalling the operating system. This, of course, did not work, because . . . there was an I/O error on the disk, which did not magically disappear when I inserted the recovery CD.

Eventually, I persuaded them that the disk had indeed failed. Fine, they said; we will send you in which you can ship it back to us. The box will get there within 48 hours; it will be expressed back to us, and we'll turn it around in 7-10 business days.

Two weeks without a computer isn't insurmountable.

That was two weeks ago. Unfortunately, it took a while for the box to arrive, because they'd gotten my address wrong. For some inexplicable reason, they'd entered "Clarendon, Virginia" after the correct street address.

Now, this is not a conceivable error on my part. I have never lived in, or near, Clarendon, Virginia. I'm not even sure I knew it existed until the rep told me that that was where my box had gone.

Unfortunately, by the time the box had arrived, I was out of town, being unable to plan my travel schedule around Sony's ineffable errors. When I returned, I boxed it up per the instructions and took it to Fedex.

You can imagine my surprise when, two days later, Fedex delivered my computer to me. At least the address was right in one place: on the "To" section of the label, which was erroneously addressed to me, instead of Sony's repair centre.

That was the end of last week. So today I called to arrange for service. Sony, out of the kindness of their heart, offered to . . . send me another box.

Suffice it to say, I'm glad that I haven't landed there, yet. It is only a matter of time, though.

Ninja Driving School

At the Ninja Driving School, you'll learn:

• To disappear into the blind spots of other drivers, and reappear when least expected!
• To strike with the deadly Toyota, Honda, and Nissan techniques!
• To utilize darkness, light, and the Element to confuse your target!
• To jump dozens of places in a line of autos!
• And much more

Docters That Have Mortars

Apparently, the immigrant medical community in the UK has a bit of a problem keeping to the tradition of the Hippocratic oath.

My husband is a superstar

Seriously. Go here. I dare you to disagree.

Happy Gilmore come to life

"Give me my ball, come on, pop it up, you dirty bastard. I swear I'm gonna... give the ball, alligator. Hey, you've got one eye...Chubbs! You took his hand!"

(Full article here)

Remembering

I have fond memories of my dad picking me up from soccer practice. Junior high, maybe? Sometimes we'd stop at a little market just before the freeway and each get one of those 16oz glass bottles of Mountain Dew.

Similarly, I remember getting 2 Big Macs for $2, after basketball games, and riding a while with my window down to cool off after playing hard in the too-hot gym.

My Temporary Office View

As "senior" student in my office, I get the window.

Not bad...

Intriguing

Now, that's an interesting (partial) menu of services...

Run Silent, Run Deep

So... what's new?

We've been on the busy side, the last couple of weeks.

Susan is trying to get her master's thesis done. Therefore, she's been spending afternoons and evenings at work, where furry little beasts don't distract her by napping in her lap (I sure hope not, at least). There was some tricky X-acto knifery, yesterday, which, fortunately, did not result in (m)any band-aid related activities. Now she almost has a swell set of stackable cups for use in dividing her samples into different particle-sizes.

I've been trying to get an experimental setup completed at work. That took more time than I'd hoped, but it is done now. Possibly, I overdid it, aligning the optics to the extent that a whole passel of tiny reflections is being imaged. It got a little confusing. I'll see about getting a picture of that thing.

Also, I'm doing a re-write of a paper we're trying to get submitted to Applied Physics Letters. It is pretty neat. A small result that we came up with on the way to a better one, it still merits publication, I think, because it is of fairly general (as true as that ever is in academic work (meaning: in the subfield of our subfield)) use. We'd hoped to submit it at the end of May, but I dropped the ball on that.

I've got another paper that I'm supposed to go and write, too. That one is kind of a sequel to one that my colleague wrote. Should also be useful, if I can get the simulations I need to run with my limited computer-access. The problem, there, is that I need to have two objects in the simulation domain with fairly widely varying sizes, which is a pain in the rear. Also, the software I need to use runs on Linux. Ew.

Anyhow, we'll be going up to Oregon (the upper parts) at the very end of this month. That'll be nice, since I bet it'll be ridiculously hot here by then. As it is, the June gloom is not seriously living up to its potential. I'm bitterly disappointed.

Move over, Disney World

Dude. If they put in a quidditch ride, I am so there.

Fun with Replacement

Imagine a word or phrase which contains the word "habit." Now, replace it with the word "hobo."

• Mickey loves it when we put used paper-towel tubes in the hobotrail with him.
• Sorry about that; it was force of hobo.
• The Mother Superior placed the hobo over Frances' shoulders.

&Etc. Buckets of fun!

Baby Oil

In the convenience store on campus I was waiting in line next to the health-care products and noticed that there was a bunch of Johnson's baby oil. I had the unoriginal thought,

"How many babies do you have to press for a bottle?"

After that, I wondered what those Johnsons had to say for themselves, so I read the back label. You'd never know it, but apparently, using it is like searing your food: it seals the moisture in.

When you pry it from my chubby, sticky hands...

Ladies and gentlemen, may I present to you the great state of Illinois.

Mother's Day--Belated

My Mom is awesome.
She's been many things: EMT, day-care provider, student, teacher, sales-whiz, jewelry-maker, and more. She's got versatility.
A high-school dropout, she went to college and got a degree, and then went to grad school and got another! She's got gumption.
About thirty years now, she and her husband have taken care of each other, and grown four (quite) odd children to adulthood. She's got a family, and they love her.
Happy Mother's Day, Mom.
And to all you other Moms: I don't know how you do it--but I'm glad you do.

By Way of Explanation

More work-related posts for you guys.

Oh-by the way, when I give "left/right" directions, I'm assuming your right. As you may recall from the bathrooms of your youths (or Enter the Dragon), when you put mirrors up to each other, you see some very strange things. If you tilt a few mirrors and form a little triangle, you see copies of things receding off into infinity (and MADNESS!!). That is an optical "resonator."

So, an optical resonator is a place where light bounces back and forth. It turns out that when you start to make these things small (like the size of light waves), only the light that fits into the resonator can rattle around in there.

Here's a picture to illustrate.



On the top left, we have a three-sided resonator, like you might form with your vantiy mirrors. We can imagine light following along the red path, coming back onto itself again and again. If we were to add more sides, and follow the arrow down, we'd see that each time the light turns, it makes a smaller turn in the seven-sided resonator than in the three-sided one. If we go farther, up the diagonal arrow, we find a twenty-sided resonator, and the light's turns are smaller still... taking the limit of that process to infinity and imagining a hollow cylinder with a mirrored inside surface, we form what's called a "Whispering Gallery Mode Resonator," (or WGM),so named for the Whispering Gallery at St. Paul's cathedral in London.

We see that the arrow from the twenty-sided resonator to the WGM resonator is wiggly, and that the WGM is full of "lobes." That sort of represents for you that we're making certain that the light has the right wavelength to "fit" inside!

Those are the kind of resonators I deal with at work. Here's a few Scanning Electron Microscope micrographs I took of one such resonator:



Along the bottom is an overview, looking down on a Silicon microdisk WGM resonator. That one is 100 micrometers in diameter-about the diameter of a human hair. Above that, you see a couple of detail pictures. The left one shows a bit closer, and the right, closer still. As you see, these disks are very thin. Around 200 nanometers.

Dealing with these is a bit of a pain. In order to get light into them, we bring a fiber optical cable quite close... so close, that the photons jump from the cable to the resonator. Here's a schematic that emphasizes a that.



In the top panel, we have a fiber optic cable running from left to right, carrying a rainbow of light. The circular thing in the middle is a top-view of a WGM resonator. As you can see, some colors of light jump off the fiber optic cable and swirl around in the WGM. I've exaggerated the degree to which the different colors are displaced, just for clarity. As you see, each of the colors is a wave, and each wave closes on itself. That's called the resonant condition-and is what I mean when I say that the light has to "fit:" at any given point, after a round trip, the electromagnetic wave has to look identical to how it looked beforehand!

Another thing we see is that after the WGM resonator, the fiber optic cable doesn't have any more "red," "green," or "blue" light. It's all stuck in the resonator. We can see that in the bottom panel, where the curve shows the transmission past the resonator as a function of wavelength. Right at "red," "green," and "blue," all of the light gets stuck in the resonator. The shapes there are called "Lorentzian curves." You see that each dip has a little width- well, that has to do with how much light gets absorbed in the resonator, or radiated out into the world, etc. The less that happens, the narrower each dip will be.

So, what does all that have to do with the crazy picture below?

Well, the shapes of the Whispering Gallery Modes are a little more complicated. It turns out that each of those is an electromagnetic wave. And there are a couple of different ways that the electric field part can be oriented. Each of those orientations gives rise to different specific properties. Moreover, a given orientation can also form more complicated mode patterns- each of which also gives rise to different properties. The picture below was made by recording the transmission versus wavelength (around 1500nm-invisible light) and then moving the fiber optic cable farther from the resonator an then recording the transmission versus wavelength and then movi.... Sorry. Pointing up is one electric field orientation, and pointing down is another.

I'm still not sure WTF was going on.

WTF is Going on Here?

Generated this figure today, trying to figure out-well-what was going on.

Never Heard That Before

• Ira Flatow basically tried to browbeat a caller into bombing a fertility clinic. The subject of the evening's show was stem cell research. When a caller spoke of his strong belief that all life begins at conception, Ira asked what the fellow was doing about it... Eventually, he posed the question, "If these were your children, what would you do? Would prayer be enough? Would writing letters to your congressmen suffice? Shouldn't you be doing something?"
  It wasn't explicit, but-hoo boy-subtext.
• Dr. Ruth was an Israeli sniper before she was-well-Dr. Ruth. Talk about a career change.
• We went shooting for the first time in a little over a month. Susan, as usual, was amazing. I did pretty well, too. We did have one problem: on several clips, the shell casings weren't clearing for Susan. She tried firming up her grip, but it didn't help. Any idears? (This did not happen to me at all)

Previously Promised Post

In this post, you'll see some of my work... don't laugh. Here is an ICP/RIE.

We use it a lot. In order to make it work, we need all of this:

You can see small shiny tubes running everywhere. The tubes carry various gases: Argon, Helium, Nitrogen, Oxygen, Octofluorocyclobutane, Sulfur Hexafluoride, Chlorine, Silane, and a couple of others. I did that. It took a while to measure and bend it all.

Occasionally, the ICP/RIE breaks. When that happens, I usually have to fix it. Recently, the part pictured below broke. (It turns out, more than one thing was probably broken, with one leading to the other) Incidentally, that thing is a RF (radio-frequency) AMU (auto-matching-unit). Basically, it connects an RF power supply to our system. In order to make sure the power goes efficiently from the generator into the system, it has to automatically adjust some doohickeys to match the impedances. Impedance is just a fancy kind of resistance, but it is fairly important. In order to replace it, I had to take it apart.

This is the RF AMU:

Here's a better look:

And now with that part on the ground, ready to really work on...

You can see some cylindrical bodies there in the box. Those are tunable vacuum capacitors. The top one seemed to be stuck in one position, so I replaced it. No dice. I could tell that the capacitor could move, now, but looking closely, I found that the machine didn't know it was moving. Eventually, I traced the problem to one of the bits hanging off the side (there are two motors and gearboxes and whatnot)-one of the gearboxes was bad. When I replaced that, everything was peachy.

First Second Baseman

Here is an actual screenshot of my junkmail folder. I noticed that the purported sender had the good sense to phish with the name "Fifth Third Bank." It reminds me of the "38th Church of Christ, Scientist," I saw in Simi Valley some time ago.

Minor Update

What's going on these days?

• Running 2 1/2 to 3 miles, every other day. No recurrence of knee problem, as yet.
• Playing The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind quite a bit. Getting near to completing it.
• Looking forward to reading the new Harry Potter book, which we've got pre-ordered.
• Not going shooting. What with a variety of things, it has been weeks. I need to lay off the diet coke before we go, though: it makes me kinda jittery.
• Enjoying the Pasadena weather. Not quite a proper spring, but it'll do in a pinch
• Listening to a bunch of music I haven't heard in a goodly while (my iPod has been largely battery-less for a long time, now, and I just reloaded onto computer several gigs of old tunes)
• Hungry (lunch in about an hour).
• Had to fix the ICP/RIE, which was a pain in the ass. I'll dig up some pictures of the things I had to deal with.
• Finally, after months, getting a working fiber aligner from New Focus (they sent a bad one, then returned it unfixed, the first time I sent it to be serviced).