Jared's One Blog

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October 31, 2005

Halloween Weekend

Wow, what a weekend. I must say this one was pretty fun, though also balanced with getting a fair bit done, so I'm pretty happy about it too.

Back on Thursday we were all working hard on getting our corrections done for our Rad Tran exams, which were due on Friday morning, so about the only pleasant thing about that day was actually when we had Rad Tran class that night at 8pm, and Dr Clothiaux was in rare form, with some of his best quotes of the semester, he was hilarious! I'm gonna have to parcel these out for awhile, and there's already a queue of great Clothiaux quotes in line ahead of these just waiting to be listed as "quotes of the week," so I shouldn't be running out of material anytime soon!

On Friday in between (and during) classes a bunch of us were still pondering what in the world we could get or make for costumes for Saturday night's halloween party. At last Amber & Walter came up with a stroke of genius -- Pac-Man and assorted ghosts from the Pac-Man game! We decided that Walter would be Pac-Man, and then I'd be the red ghost, Daniel the light blue ghost, Amber the pink ghost and Caren the orange ghost. We all went down to Wal-Mart in the afternoon to look at buying some sheets to make the costumes out of, but that was proving too expensive and too complicated (sewing would've been a necessity), so we just decided to get inexpensive plain coloured t-shirts, while Walter picked up a cheap $5 yellow sweatshirt. We ghosts just drew on the eyes and jagged bottom edges with black marker on the shirts, and Walter cut out a big section of the sweatshirt in the shape of Pac-Man's mouth, to let his black undershirt show through, it was awesome. Daniel & I joined Frame, Victor, Bob, P. Allen, Walter & Jacob down at the Sports Cafe for another weekly game of team trivia (this week's team name: "Pur-Don't," since it was homecoming weekend vs Purdue), and another 3rd place finish (stupid final question about "The English Patient," grr). Following that Daniel & I made a trip down to Dick's Sporting Goods to pick up our t-shirts for our costumes, then it was off to do a bit of homework the rest of the evening.

Saturday afternoon I hit the last half hour or so of the tailgate with the meteo people before it was time to head up to the stadium for the homecoming game vs lowly Purdue. It was amusing to see all the different costumes being worn by people around the stands, such as an all-out penguin suit (animal, not the Batman character), ketchup & mustard bottles, a white crayola crayon, the obligatory random Santa suits, plus a few others. The game wasn't the most exciting game I've ever seen, particularly in the middle, but Penn State did manage to pull away in the end for the 33-15 victory, to push their record up to 8-1 overall, tied with Wisconsin (next week's opponent here in Happy Valley) for the Big Ten lead. Perhaps one of the most amusing happenings during the game was during a timeout, when the Lion mascot and two members from the Blue Band were down in the end zone doing the entire dance to "Thriller" by Michael Jackson, it was a riot, and got probably the loudest cheers of the game out of the student section!!

After I made it back to White Course Daniel drove over here, and then we walked over to Shannon & Stephanie's apartment (which wound up being significantly farther than we thought it'd be, at least a 30-40 minute walk) for the halloween party. A condition of being let in was that you were in costume, and there were some good ones. (Pictured at left are most of the first-year grad students that showed up.) The Pac-Man costumes were a hit (even if they were a bit cheesy, hehe), P. Allen dressed up as "not himself" (which was actually a good costume, he shaved his goatee, didn't wear a baseball cap, and had on something other than a t-shirt and shorts -- I seriously didn't recognize him at first!), Vic was an extremely redneck hunter, and the best costume of the night went hands-down to David, who did amazing job making himself look almost exactly like Dr Shirer (complete with the suspenders and light sweater-jacket), it was hilarious! It was a fun party for everyone, definitely. Daniel, P. Allen & I finally left around 2am or so (standard time, thank goodness for the switch this weekend), and when we got back to White Course at almost 3 we decided to drive over to Eat 'n Park (much like a Denny's) for a little middle-of-the-night meal, hehe. So when it was all said and done it got to be 4am before I got back to my apartment. Unfortunately it was awhile before I could fall asleep, I was still on a bit of a sugar high from the brownies and other goodies from the party, oh well.

Despite the lack of sleep I managed to wake up in time for church, and then I had the fortune to have to miss an absolutely gorgeous day outside today in order to spend 5 hours doing one measly homework problem for 501, grr. And then this evening I graded the labs from one of my sections, so yeah, I've been working pretty much solid today. Apart from writing this, but hey, I've got a responsibility to my readers to keep the updates flowing. :-)

Since tomorrow's Halloween, look for a re-appearance of the Pac-Man gang at the beginning of Rad Tran, to act out a game of Pac-Man, as we slowly chase Walter around the room, going around all the rows of desks and whatnot, hehe. Hopefully Dr Clothiaux will appreciate it. I'll let ya'll know how it went. And hopefully David dresses up as Dr Shirer again, I think he'd get a kick out of it too.

But hey, at least the Halloween celebrations here in State College don't get as out-of-control as they do over in Madison at the University of Wisconsin. UW-Madison's famed nationwide for their State Street Halloween Party, and as usual, this year a whole bunch of revelers got themselves arrested. Who knows, maybe by now those people are sober enough to realize the legal/financial trouble they're in...

Posted by Jared at 12:57 AM | Comments (0)

October 26, 2005

Tropical Snow

Boy am I glad today's over. This morning we had our second exam of the semester in Geophysical Fluid Dynamics (GFD), and it wasn't pretty. I mean, it's not like we had our hopes set on anything higher than maybe doing well enough to eke out a passing grade, but it's still no fun when those expectations come true. The test questions were fair for the most part (although on one of the questions worth 15% I was absolutely clueless, in addition to another one worth 5% - both were basically left blank), but it was far too long for a 60-minute exam, that was intended to be only 50 minutes. Time constraints prevented me from figuring out how to do another problem worth 10%, and from finding my errors in another 10-pointer that I knew I biffed. Basically, my maximum possible score is somewhere in the 65-70% range, and that's only if I didn't have any other errors in the stuff I was able to complete. I was pretty upset during and after the test, partly because yesterday she had said she was worried that the test was "too easy." We're wondering if she re-wrote it... Anyway, most of us have created a pool to guess what the class mean (average) score for this test will be. I'm guessing a 55, and the guesses are ranging from 44-61, with the overall average of the guesses being around a 57 or so. Interestingly, I think everyone so far is placing their guess for their own score below their guess for the class average. Thank goodness there's only one more test in that class (Nov 30th), and that after that we won't have the class at all because Dr Evans will be going back to Australia for a conference or something.

Yesterday, despite studying for the GFD test all day, was actually kinda fun. Why? Because it snowed for the first time this season! Right before I left my apartment for class in the morning the rain started switching over to snow, so that I got absolutely soaked with a frigid wintry mix on my way to Walker. (Note to self: a rain jacket that's actually waterproof like advertised will cause all the water to run down onto your jeans and shoes, making you very cold and miserable when the temperature's near freezing.) Anyway, after some initial indecision on the part of the weather, it decided to snow the rest of the daytime, which was awesome. All told we got about an inch or an inch and a half of wet, slushy snow. I called it tropical snow because the low pressure system that had moved in from the Great Lakes to give us some precipitation was being infused with heaps of tropical moisture from the remnants of Hurricane Wilma. This was an unusually early snowfall for State College, missing the record for earliest accumulating snowfall by just one day. And even though I wish it would've been at least a couple of degrees colder so that it would've been more snow and less slush, it was still beautiful to see all the heavy wet snow sticking to the trees that still had their fall foliage out. On my way back to Walker from teaching my lab in the morning, I was so excited I just had to go out and take some pictures.

A few of us hearty northeners were really pumped up to see snow again, so Kerrie, Amber & I decided to drag Daniel outside around lunchtime to go play in the snow (Amber & Kerrie wanted a snowball fight and I wanted to take a bunch of pictures), since he's from way down in the Deep South. He said that in Huntsville, his hometown, they'd get a little slushy snow like this once a year, but never down in Mobile where he went to undergrad, so this was the first time he'd seen snow in about five years. Kerrie (who's from Boston) was even teasing Daniel by referring to central PA as being "the south," hehe. In Rad Tran this morning Dr Clothiaux (who's also from Alabama originally, an Auburn alum) asked the class who liked and who hated yesterday's weather, and when Daniel didn't raise his hand for either, Eugene was shocked (because he still hates it, even though he's been here for years) and asked why. Daniel said he didn't hate it "yet" because it was still a novelty to him. But that's progress from initially yesterday morning when he said the weather was "appalling." I think we're gonna turn him into a snow-lovin' yankee yet. :-)

Side note: I've discovered the best place to grab lunch in State College, on Tuesdays at any rate. The Sports Cafe has wings for 25c each, and they're muy delicioso! And the Hot BBQ sauce is the absolute perfect balance of taste and spice. I know the majority of you who are reading this won't ever be in State College, but if you find yourself here in Happy Valley some Tuesday in the misty distant future, the Sports Cafe is the place to be.

And there's been plenty of strange and odd news in the last couple days, a virtual plethora. First, USA Today doctored a photo of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice so that she would look like she was possessed. In Dallas a cab driver was arrested for spreading fecal matter on pastries in a grocery store. I guess next time you buy a pastry with sprinkles on it, make sure it was intended to have sprinkles... Along those same lines, a teenager in Michigan has been arrested and faces potentially 10 years for putting a loogie in a state trooper's turkey wrap at an Arby's drive-thru late one night. And the Guinness Book of World Records has confirmed that a California woman owns the world's tallest dog, a seven-foot tall Great Dane! Now that's a big dog! The sight of a dog that huge still probably wouldn't be quite as much of a shock as discovering an 11-foot long python curled up in an Iowa cornfield. I think that makes me officially eliminate Iowa as a potential place where I might live someday, hehe. Now for world news. In London a Japanese artist was paid about $9,000 to drink beer and fall off a plank. Those crazy Brits... In India an astrologer survived predicting his own death. Not a smooth move if you want people to believe your predictions down the road. And finally, I guess I was fortunate while I was driving around in Australia not to get struck by a bullet that was intended for a cow. I'm sorry, but if you can't hit a cow, which isn't exactly the swiftest of animals, you probably shouldn't be shooting a gun.

Well, I'm gonna go drown my sorrows about the GFD test in Cherry Coke. That or doing corrections to my Rad Tran exam. Sigh.

Posted by Jared at 09:15 PM | Comments (0)

October 23, 2005

Rothrock in October

Overall this has been a pretty decent weekend I'd say. I didn't get as much done as I was hoping to, but that's not unusual or unexpected. Friday afternoon was reasonably productive, so in the evening Daniel & I headed down to the Sports Cafe to join Frame, Jacob, Stephanie & Victor for some team trivia. Our team, this week named "Daunte Culpepper's Fantastic Voyage," managed to finish in 3rd, meaning we got $10, woot. A bit after that a few of us (myself, Daniel, Jacob, Stephanie, Shannon, Petters & P. Allen) went out to Bar Bleu for a Friday night drink. It was a good time, even though the band that was playing pretty much sucked.

On Saturday afternoon a group of us got together up at Walker to work on some Rad Tran homework. Kerrie even brought in some chili in a crock pot, and Caren brought some mini-cupcakes. Ya never know, one of these days we might end up having a potluck supper up there in the TA office, hehe. In the evening I went over to Daniel's place over in Toftrees to watch the Auburn-LSU football game and cheer on Auburn with him, since he's a huge Auburn fan (being from Alabama and all). Auburn ended up losing a heartbreaker in OT 20-17, but it was still a more interesting game than Penn State-Illinois, which was on TV at the same time, with the Nittany Lions blasting the Illini 63-10, in a game that wasn't even as close as the scoreboard might indicate, hehe (PSU led 56-3 at halftime, and didn't throw a single pass in the 2nd half).

I went to church this morning, and then this afternoon I took a hike up in Rothrock State Forest with some people from Penn State Christian Grads. I wasn't even sure if I'd go, because I knew that I only had time for potentially either the hike or the Bible study in the evening (or neither), but certainly not both. But I'm really glad I went on the hike, because it was beautiful up there on Tussey Ridge, especially with as beautiful a day as we had today. We hiked parts of the Mid-State Trail as part of a two and a half hour loop a bit outside of nearby Boalsburg. I'd say the fall colours are just about at peak right now, or as close as they're gonna be anyway. Normally peak would've been about a week ago, but the colours are later, duller, and more sporadic than usual because it was rather dry in central Pennsylvania this summer. Then tonight I got a little bit of grading done while staying home from the Bible study, though again probably not quite as much as I was hoping for. But every little bit helps. I need to make sure I'm done with it all by tomorrow night so that I can start studying hard-core for Wednesday's GFD test. ~whimper~ Wish me luck studying and on the test, I'm gonna need it, along with the rest of us. This test is gonna suck.

And as I watch the Weather Channel right now, I see that Hurricane Wilma's back up to a Category 3 storm, and about to make landfall in southern Florida in about 6 hours or so, after having ravaged Cozumel, Playa del Carmen & Cancun on Friday & Saturday. Hopefully Wilma will drag Tropical Storm Alpha with it out to the Atlantic, otherwise Florida might get hit again. Will we see a Hurricane Beta or Gamma? With how this year's going, most likely. All these hurricanes are making it a very interesting time to be spending heaps of time immersed in meteorology and surrounded by other weather weenies. :-)

Posted by Jared at 11:54 PM | Comments (1)

October 21, 2005

Two Birthdays

I'd like to give a shout-out to my buddies Mike and Josh, who both have their birthdays today! I hope you both have a great day! Well, in Josh's case, I hope he had a great day, since his birthday's well over half done now over in Japan. But it's only just startin' here! And I made sure I was the first to wish Mike a happy birthday actually on his birthday, by giving him a call at midnight eastern, even though it was still only 11pm central, hehe. At any rate, it sure makes it easier to remember when two friends have the same birthday. :-)

My camera came in the mail today! Canon fixed everything that was wrong with it, because I'm not getting all black pictures anymore, it's not looking like I'm taking pictures of the inside of a lens cap. It's so nice to have a working camera again, after not having had one for six weeks!

I spent most of the evening once again up in Walker Building. Daniel showed up after awhile too, and we actually got a decent amount done on the Rad Tran homework. If only we could say the same thing about the ridiculous GFD optional assignment (which isn't so optional, considering they're the only problems that we've been given since the last test, and the next test is this coming Wednesday, gulp). I guess we're not in an uproar over the assignment itself so much as the solutions she gave us for them are either wrong, incomplete or just plain weird. I mean, seriously, who would think of setting up a left-handed coordinate system to solve a problem?

Wilma update: It's slowed down, and it's gonna cream the Yucatan tomorrow (Friday) and Saturday. It's still projected to make the hook turn towards Florida, weakening along the way, though it won't get there till Monday afternoon at least. The GFDL model (the same one that yesterday was predicting Wilma would be near Maine in five days, and then six hours later changed its mind and said it'd be near Cuba) today again did another John Kerry, it flip-flopped its five-day forecast track back to eastern Canada this morning, and at midday it was back to predicting it'd loiter around Castro's "island paradise" for a few days. So basically, who knows what Wilma's gonna do. The confidence in the forecasts are rather slim at this point. What we do know is that it went through an eyewall replacement cycle in the last 24 hours, and now has a pretty large eye, around 20-30 miles across, and its central pressure's up to 923 mb. It'll still likely regain Cat 5 status before it hits the Yucatan though (it's a Cat 4 currently).

Posted by Jared at 01:27 AM | Comments (1)

October 20, 2005

Wrath of Wilma

Wow. That's all I can say about Hurricane Wilma. Last night when Daniel & I last checked before we left Walker Building, Wilma was a weak Category 1 hurricane. So when I got to Walker this morning, Mario told me that it was a Cat 5, and that its central pressure was a stunning 882 mb, I thought he was joking, especially since none of the models had Wilma ever intensifying to something bigger than a Cat 3. I was incredulous that such an amazingly rapid intensification was even possible. So when Dr Nese walked by, Mario asked him to convince me that it was true, that Wilma had blown up to a Category 5 overnight (and a wicked Cat 5 at that). Wilma's peak intensity this morning of 882 mb blew away the record for all-time lowest pressure ever recorded in the Atlantic basin (the old record was 888 mb, set by Hurricane Gilbert back in 1988 I believe). By comparison, Katrina's lowest pressure was an intensely low 902 mb, and Rita hit 897 mb (mean sea-level pressure is around 1000 mb). In essence, the lower the pressure, the stronger the hurricane. Also, it's eye was a miniscule 2 miles across for much of the day. Normally, a hurricane's eye would be about 10-15 miles across.

So as you might expect from a bunch of weather weenies in meteorology grad school, we've all been following Wilma's progress closely today. And that includes checking for updated reports being issued by the National Hurricane Center. The 5pm discussion today was actually pretty hilarious, I thought. Here is the relevant part from it (emphasis mine):

AGREEMENT AMONG THE TRACK GUIDANCE MODELS...WHICH HAD BEEN VERY GOOD
OVER THE PAST COUPLE OF DAYS...HAS COMPLETELY COLLAPSED TODAY. THE
06Z RUNS OF THE GFS...GFDL...AND NOGAPS MODELS ACCELERATED WILMA
RAPIDLY TOWARD NEW ENGLAND UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF A LARGE LOW
PRESSURE SYSTEM IN THE GREAT LAKES REGION. ALL THREE OF THESE
MODELS HAVE BACKED OFF OF THIS SOLUTION...WITH THE GFDL SHOWING AN
EXTREME CHANGE...WITH ITS 5-DAY POSITION SHIFTING A MERE 1650 NMI [nautical miles]
FROM ITS PREVIOUS POSITION IN MAINE TO THE WESTERN TIP OF CUBA.
THERE IS ALMOST AS MUCH SPREAD IN THE 5-DAY POSITIONS OF THE 12Z
GFS ENSEMBLE MEMBERS...WHICH RANGE FROM THE YUCATAN TO WELL EAST OF
THE DELMARVA PENINSULA. WHAT THIS ILLUSTRATES IS THE EXTREME
SENSITIVITY OF WILMA'S FUTURE TRACK TO ITS INTERACTION WITH THE
GREAT LAKES LOW. OVER THE PAST COUPLE OF DAYS...WILMA HAS BEEN
MOVING SLIGHTLY TO THE LEFT OR SOUTH OF THE MODEL GUIDANCE...AND
THE LEFT-MOST OF THE GUIDANCE SOLUTIONS ARE NOW SHOWING WILMA
DELAYING OR MISSING THE CONNECTION WITH THE LOW. I HAVE SLOWED THE
OFFICIAL FORECAST JUST A LITTLE BIT AT THIS TIME...BUT IF WILMA
CONTINUES TO MOVE MORE TO THE LEFT THAN EXPECTED...SUBSTANTIAL
CHANGES TO THE OFFICIAL FORECAST MAY HAVE TO BE MADE DOWN THE LINE.
NEEDLESS TO SAY...CONFIDENCE IN THE FORECAST TRACK...ESPECIALLY THE
TIMING...HAS DECREASED CONSIDERABLY.

What should all of you take away from this? Weather forecasting is still a very inexact science, and there is still much that we have yet to learn. We'll all be keeping our eyes peeled on Wilma though. At this moment, it looks like it'll whack Cozumel and Cancun pretty hard (even if the eye doesn't make landfall), and then she'll make a right turn and make a bee-line for southern Florida (with the eye probably aiming for around Fort Myers on Saturday evening). It'll pass over Florida, then turn northward, posing great problems for water-logged New England early-mid next week as a powerful extra-tropical cyclone (it won't be a tropical system anymore, but it'll still be a very strong low pressure center (storm)). But then again, that could all change, especially considering how all the models' forecast tracks are in total disarray and not agreeing with each other at all.

As for what's going on with me, one bright spot amidst an entire day of grading labs yesterday was a phone call from the camera repair place. My digital camera's all fixed and got shipped out yesterday! Woohoo! Hopefully this means that I'll have a working camera this weekend, I can't wait! I know that as recently as Friday I'd been told it'd be another 4-6 weeks, but hey, I'll take it being fixed earlier than that. :-)

Posted by Jared at 01:33 AM | Comments (0)

October 17, 2005

Parents in Pennsylvania

I'd say this was a pretty enjoyable weekend overall. Even if it started out by actually having to study on "Study Day" on Friday when we had no classes... On Friday night after doing as much Fluid Dynamics as my mind could take for one day, I went over to Daniel's place along with Chris ("P. Allen") to watch the Penn State-Ohio State game that Daniel had taped last weekend. It was fun to see the game again from another perspective, especially since it was such a memorable and good game.

Well, my parents have now been to Pennsylvania for the first time ever. They arrived here in State College early Saturday afternoon, and brought good weather with them straight from Wisconsin. As I mentioned in my last post, prior to Saturday we hadn't seen even a glimpse of sun or clear skies in nine days or so, so it was wonderful to have a mostly sunny (if a bit breezy) day at long last. Anyway, after grabbing some lunch and dropping off my bookcase, winter coat/gear and a couple other things in my room, we decided to take a drive out south and east of town a bit, in the Tussey Ridge area of Rothrock State Forest. The fall colours really aren't all that special here in State College currently, but once you get out of Happy Valley they're really quite a bit better. That was certainly evidenced as we were driving around on the lonely, unmarked gravel roads meandering through the woods along the ridge tops. There weren't so many oranges and reds, but primarily yellow-leaved trees of various sorts, making the air rather golden in colour. They also brought Nathan's digital camera along for the trip, so I was finally able to snap a few photos of the area around here. I'm feeling sad without my camera, which I've been told may be "another 4-6 weeks" to be repaired by Canon. Sigh. I just want my camera back!

We managed to find our way out of the woods before darkness fell, and got some supper at Cafe 210 during the last few minutes of the exciting but heartbreaking football game between Penn State and Michigan, in which the Wolverines knocked us from the ranks of the unbeaten on a touchdown pass as time expired (curse them!). (Though that had nothing on the classic choke job the Gophers had against the Badgers in the final two minutes, ARGH!) At least my parents got to experience a bit of a true college town atmosphere, as everyone in the restaurant was cheering or booing with every play being shown on the TV's. After they went back to the hotel for the night I took some time to rearrange my room slightly so that I could fit in my bookcase, and then fill it with all the books I'd been storing with boxes sitting out on my floor (and then deftly sticking the empties back under my bed, hehe). I'm just glad to have a bookcase again, someplace to store all my stuff. Now my room feels whole for the first time this semester. :-)

On Sunday morning I brought Mom & Dad by the church I've started attending out here, State College Evangelical Free Church, so that they could see where I'm going and meet some of my new friends. Then after a quick swing by the Lion Shrine for a few pictures and lunch at The Deli, we went over to the Penn State Downtown Theatre for a Research Unplugged seminar put on my a couple of Meteorology profs here at Penn State, entitled "Spin Cycle: How the Media Portrays Climate Change." Let's just say they weren't exactly kind to the media and their breathless assertions about impending doom and global warming. It was so refreshing to hear a couple more people with graduate degrees in Meteorology repudiating a lot of the nonsense that the media feeds the public on this topic. Basically, they emphasized how a lot of the data being reported is taken out of context or the larger picture is being ignored. For instance, they showed how different facets of the climate, such as temperature, precipitation and tropical storm/hurricane data over the last century seems to be following multi-decadal (on the order of 30 years or so) cycles or oscillations more than anything else. In short, saying that climate changes is like saying that a circle is round -- climate is changing literally all the time; it always has and always will. They also addressed the silly notion that we're the dominant force affecting climate -- they called that "ME"-teorology. They said that while we're almost certainly affecting climate a little bit, any effects we might be causing are absolutely dwarfed in magnitude by even small variations in the sun's output of radiation. My parents and I just really enjoyed it, it was a nice way to spend a couple hours, even if the chairs were uncomfortable. NOVA was filming it, so footage from "Spin Cycle" may be making it to a PBS show near you at some point.

Following that I showed them around Walker Building, so they could see the TA office where I (along with quite a few of my meteo friends) spend what sometimes seems like endless hours doing homework and grading, along with the Weather Lab and everything else. I kinda half expected Dr Clothiaux to be there, even on a Sunday at 5pm, but alas, he wasn't around for us to drop by and visit him, hehe. So after swinging by my room for a couple final things, we went out for some pizza, before they went back to their hotel for the evening so that I could start getting a little caught up on my homework. I think their plans for today were to get up really early and swing by the still-under-construction Creation museum in Cincinnati, on their way to Indianapolis for the night to stay with some friends. They'll be getting back to Cumberland on Tuesday evening. It was good to see them again, and to get a chance to show them around where my new digs are.

Today was a bit back to reality though, with classes, grading and such. For a little bit of fun I played some intramural flag football tonight. Our team (the meteo grad students, our team's called "The Weather Underground," which has more than one meaning) lost 28-26, which kinda sucked. I mostly played cornerback, and while I successfully broke up one pass I also got burned on another for a TD, when I bit on the quarterback's fake, when he rolled out and charged toward the line as if he was gonna run it (like he'd done multiple times already that game). So I left the receiver to cover the QB, at which point he just lobbed it over my head for a score. Gah! But I was between a rock and a hard place, because if I had stayed with the receiver, the QB could've just waltzed into the end zone untouched. Oh well. Other than that I think I played at least decently well. And I would've had a chance to catch a two-point conversion pass at one point too, except when I made my cut (and was about to be WIDE open), I slipped and fell on a slick patch of ground, injuring my thumb a little in the process when I tried to break my fall. Sigh. Our team's record is now 2-1 on the season.

And in a bit of sad news, a bus carrying the high school marching band from Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, (a little less than an hour from Cumberland, where I grew up) from the Wisconsin State Marching Band Championships this weekend in Whitewater, crashed into a jack-knifed semi on Interstate 94 near Osseo, only about half an hour from Chippewa Falls. Three students, an assistant teacher, and the Chi Hi band director were killed, along with many others being seriously injured. It looks like the semi jack-knifed right in front of the bus, leaving the bus driver next to no chance to avoid the tragic accident. When I saw the headline on Google News earlier today about a fatal marching band bus accident on I-94 near Osseo, my heart skipped a beat, because I was worried that it was involving Cumberland's bus on their way back from Whitewater, since they'd take the same route.

Posted by Jared at 11:57 PM | Comments (4)

October 14, 2005

Triple Century

As per Josh's request I'm gonna be trying to blog a little more frequently. He says he needs his Jared fix while he's teaching English over in Japan, so I'm gonna give it to him. Call it my birthday present to him, hehe. And to anyone else out there in cyberspace who's reading this, I guess I'm also giving you your Jared fix whether you care or not. ;-)

I went bowling tonight with Daniel, David, Amber, Levenia, Kerrie, Brian, Walter & Caren, at the lone bowling alley here in State College. That's right, a city with a 40,000-student university has only one bowling alley. That's an indication of how much of a small-town feel State College has. But anyway, it was just fun to break the routine of our first couple months here, which was go to Walker for classes, do homework, go home to sleep, get up, go to Walker, do homework, go home to sleep, and over and over again endlessly. It was also a fun night of hanging out with everyone outside of Walker for a change, too. And I even bowled three pretty good games in a row, with a 128, 119 and 112. Bowling over a hundred is a good game for me, and over 120 is a really good game. I can't even remember the last time I strung together three centuries in one evening, or if that's ever happened, so I was fairly pleased. And in the last game Kerrie came out of nowhere with a turkey, on her way to a 156, which even beat Walter. Way to go Kerrie!

Tomorrow's "Study Day" here at Penn State, meaning there are no classes, hooray! Unfortunately, I think I'm gonna be spending most of the day actually studying and doing homework, instead of doing something fun. Oh well. With my parents coming this weekend, I'm just figuring that I can't afford to take three days off this weekend, I have way too much to do, with crappy homework for Fluid Dynamics that none of us can figure out, and grading.

At any rate, my parents left Cumberland this morning, with aims of making it to Battle Creek, Michigan tonight to stay with my mom's great aunt Lydia. Tomorrow night they'll be staying with friends in suburban Pittsburgh (Zelienople, one of the cooler names for a town I've ever heard of), and then making it here to State College late Saturday morning. I'm thinking of trying to go on a drive down to Gettysburg or somethin on Saturday, that'd be cool to see. And hopefully the weather will cooperate a bit for scenery watching on the pretty drive down there, but it's looking kinda iffy at this point. I don't know what we'll do yet on Sunday, but at some point I'm probably gonna have to break away and get a little homework or grading done, sigh. But it'll be cool to see them again, and it'll be the first time they've ever been to Pennsylvania, so hopefully they'll enjoy it. They're also bringing out some stuff for me that I couldn't fit in my car when I moved out here two months ago, like my bookcase, a wastebasket, plus my winter coat and boots. We'll see if the winter's harsh enough here for me even to need those. ;-)

It's a little-known fact that State College is actually cloudier than Seattle, which is apparently ideal if you're either John P. or Kate J., but kinda depressing for most everyone else who's used to the idea of a little sunshine now and then. Take for instance our current stretch of weather... it's been cloudy since last Thursday, without a peek of sunshine or blue skies anywhere in that time, and with none forecast until at least Saturday. It's also been drizzling/misting a lot, but I guess that's better than the flooding rains that people have been getting east of here, over in NJ/NY and New Hampshire. I just saw a graphic on the Weather Channel tonight that Central Park in NYC has already received nearly 11 inches of rain this month alone, with the all-time single-month record rainfall of 13 inches set back in 1903 or somethin. Needless to say, it's quite wet just a little to our east.

I wonder how the repairs on my digital camera are coming along. I should call the repair place tomorrow for an update...

And have any of you heard about the Arkansas woman who just gave birth to her 16th child? Sixteen!! And she's wanting more! If that's not enough, she and her husband have named all their kids starting with the letter J. How many times do they have to cycle through all the names when yelling at a particular kid for something before they finally get around to the right one?

Posted by Jared at 12:44 AM | Comments (1)

October 12, 2005

Beaver Stadium Madness

We're baaaaack! That's right, Penn State showed on Saturday that they are truly back, by beating Ohio State in a 17-10 instant classic on a drizzly night here in State College in front of a national television audience. The atmosphere lived up to its billing, with electricity "literally seeping through the television screen," as I saw it put in one article online. The unbelievably rowdy and white-clad student section easily topped 110 dB repeatedly throughout the entire game, leading to several mistakes by the Buckeye offense, and on several occasions the entire stadium was literally shaking from the entire crowd of over 111,000 bouncing up and down to "Zombie Nation" being blared over the loud-speakers. Daniel taped the game and Frame TiVo'd it, so I'm gonna make sure to watch it at some point, to get a feel for how it was on TV.

But not all was right on Saturday night, at least not early on. Frame, Monahan, Bob and I all left the tailgate about 45 minutes before kickoff (I was TRYING to get them to leave much earlier, sigh), and we got in line at Gate A (the student section gate). When we were really close to the front of the line, the stadium staff shut the gates for the senior line, leaving all of us rather shocked and annoyed, since this has never happened before. So we move over to the next line, and after a minute or two, they shut that gate too. Now people are really starting to get upset, and a riot is only a spark away from happening. So now the many, many hundreds of students that are still in line suddenly start pushing and shoving trying to get in through the sophomore gate, which is still open at this point. The ticket agents, instead of handing out tickets to people like all of us that have student season ticket vouchers, are just waving people through and telling them to go up the ramp to the upper deck. So we go up there, and try to walk up the stairs in the senior section, except we're not allowed to because we don't have actual tickets. The agent there was asking us how we even got into the stadium, so, exasperated and frustrated, we try to explain to him what had happened so far, that there were hundreds of us that weren't given tickets and were just told to go up there and find a seat. Well, even if the section weren't already full we weren't gonna be allowed to go up there. So we try to watch a little bit of the game from the walkway between the upper and lower decks, but that quickly becomes a very uncomfortable situation, with it now being so crowded with angry ticket-holders who, like us, were being denied seats that we paid for, that we could hardly move at all. We decide to try to gradually work our way out to the concourse, but that takes a good 10-15 minutes to make it the 50 feet or so. Some people were even needing medical attention from being crushed, it was so bad. Then we walk back downstairs to the gate and, frustrated and bordering on irate at this point, ask the ticket agents, "What are we supposed to do?!? You didn't give us tickets, so we're not being allowed to sit in the section where we have season tickets." Then the guy tells us that because our season tickets are in reality only "vouchers" and not actual tickets, that if we get to the stadium too late and they've run out of tickets (like they apparently did Saturday night), that we're simply supposed to "turn around and go home." What a load of bull! We paid good money for these "vouchers" so that we could have supposedly guaranteed seats somewhere in the student section. So at long last someone tells us about a place where we can go where we won't die and won't be kicked out, in the student section, in the corner of the end zone at the top of the first deck in a patio/picnic area. That actually wasn't a bad place to watch the game from, and it only got better as the game progressed, as people gradually left to go elsewhere, so that by late in the 4th quarter, we were at the railing with nobody in front of us and a fantastic view of the action. But it was the start of the 2nd quarter before we got there, so we missed the entire 1st quarter because of the ticket fiasco. At that point we were all sure that there would be a riot following the game regardless of who won. Still, none of us can believe the utter incompetence on the part of the stadium ticket staff (or more likely somewhere in the stadium administration, no individual ticket agent was to blame really), the whole thing was an embarrassment. How or why do you run out of tickets? By overselling the stadium, the student section in particular! Apparently our "tickets" are next to worthless, our seats might be sold right out from under us. I'm gonna be writing a good long email to the stadium people about this sometime this week. I didn't do it right away on Sunday because I wanted to wait until I cooled down about it a bit.

But despite all that, it was still worth it to be a part of that atmosphere and that game. If we had been blown out we certainly would've asked for our money back, but instead we were treated to one of the very best football games of the entire year. Winning has a way of making everything better. :-)

When the final horn sounded, students mobbed the field, and nobody in the stands left for a good 20 minutes, which is very unusual, but everyone just wanted to savor the moment and celebrate. There had been talk of tearing down the goalposts and carrying them down College Avenue if we won, and to prevent that there were armed police officers standing guard shoulder-to-shoulder around both goalposts. After a time the PA announcer asked the students to leave the field, at which point the police started using pepper spray, tear gas and mace to disperse the crowd and get them off the field. On my long walk back to White Course I noticed a helicopter doing circles around downtown, no doubt on the lookout for any potential riots. There were also hundreds of police in full riot gear, prepared to take action should a riot break out, all along Curtin Rd near the stadium, and downtown along College Ave and Beaver Ave, but fortunately nothing of the sort happened; the PSU fans managed to celebrate in a relatively responsible and non-destructive manner. :-)

Oh, and ESPN College GameDay on Saturday morning was a cool experience. The crowd was huge, and there were so many signs around that really no individual person could really be seen on camera. Frame had a sign that read "The Buck$ Stop Here," which got on camera several times, so if you saw that, I was right next to there. I was also right near a piece of a mannequin that was floating around behind Lee Corso's head, if you noticed that. :-) While I don't think my face ever got on camera, I think I saw my shoulder on the big screen once, hehe.

All day Sunday I was still exhausted, and my voice was still recovering from being shouted hoarse by the end of the game, so about the only thing I accomplished apart from going to church (and being hardly able to sing) and the evening Bible study, was taking a good mid-afternoon nap. I can't even remember the last time I took a nap!

My test in Meteo 501 on Monday evening went relatively well I think. I mean, I got answers that seemed to make sense on all the problems, though I'm not totally sure I used the right methods. Oh well. That concluded my crazy stretch of exams and grading, so now it seems like my brain is on holiday or something, I've barely been able to focus on anything for more than about 2 seconds all day, it seems like.

As I've mentioned to some of you, I've started feeling like I need to broaden my culinary horizons, when it comes to making food for myself. For most of my time here so far my self-prep diet has consisted of sandwiches (deli, tuna, etc), frozen burritos, easy mac, ramen and cheese crisps (which are kinda like quesadillas). Last week I tried to make a hamburger for myself on the stove (and wasn't too successful), so tonight I decided to be adventurous and try to make some Hamburger Helper, which went surprisingly well. I know a monkey can probably make hamburger helper, but I've gotta start somewhere. Baby steps. :-)

I also took advantage of my respite in immediate homework tonight by cleaning my room. It was really starting to get on my nerves how messy everything was, and how I couldn't find any of the important things I needed to find. Also, it hadn't been cleaned since I moved in, so it was about time. There's no truth to the rumor that the timing of my room-cleaning had anything to do with my parents' upcoming visit this weekend to State College. ;-)

Posted by Jared at 12:34 AM | Comments (0)

October 08, 2005

BEAT OHIO STATE!!

Holy cow, the atmosphere in State College is absolutely electric. Ever since I finished my Rad Tran test yesterday morning (which went pretty well actually), I've just been so pumped for the game. I took a walk in the pouring, steady rain down to the HUB and then to the bookstore downtown, and it's just an amazing atmosphere out here.

At any rate, I'm about to head up to Beaver Stadium to get behind the set of ESPN College GameDay. It'll be on this morning at 10:30am EDT (9:30am CDT) on ESPN, watch for me! Once GameDay's done, then it's time for a good, long tailgate, rain or shine! And I can't give an estimate for roughly where I'll wind up sitting tonight, but it'll probably be way up in the upper deck in the student section. Oh well, but at least I'll get to personally experience the electric atmosphere of Beaver Stadium at night in the biggest game to come to Happy Valley in years! Don't forget, the game is at 7:30pm EDT (6:30pm CDT), nationally televised on ESPN!

WE ARE... PENN STATE!!!

LET'S GO STATE!! BEAT OHIO STATE!!

LET'S! GO! P.S.U.!!

Posted by Jared at 08:44 AM | Comments (0)

October 06, 2005

There Went Three Days of My Life...

FINALLY, I can take a sigh of relief at having finished my monster stretch of grading that I had to do this week. In addition to the weekly 55 Meteo 003 labs from my two sections, there were 55 Meteo 003 quizzes, 25 Rad Tran problems, and last night and this morning was spent grading the first page of 55 Meteo 003 exams from a test I had to help proctor last night. The mighty red pen has practically become a fixture in my hand, I'm starting to feel strange without it, even for a few moments to type this. But literally, grading is ALL that I did from Monday morning until a half hour ago or so, apart from attending classes or sleeping for a few hours at night.

But at least I've gotten some entertaining answers along the way, like one girl spelling UV radiation as "ultra violate" (for a second I thought I was grading Josh's paper... j/k!), a comment that "...the last time I checked, most of the U.S. is above sea level" (I managed to resist the extremely strong temptation to write something very sarcastic on that), and that pressure is defined as "when air and wind combine." At the end of the test the students had the opportunity to rate the difficulty of the exam (easy but fair, too difficult, etc), and I was surprised that surprisingly few students had the guts to check the box, "[Prof.] Syrett is the Spawn of Satan (unfair test)," hehe. Too bad it won't save most of them from getting really low grades on what was in all fairness an easy test.

So now that I'm done grading (for a couple days), what's next on the docket, you ask? Well, nothing other than a Rad Tran exam tomorrow morning! And an exam Monday evening in Meteo 501 too. I told Dr Clothiaux that the only way I'm making it through this crazy stretch is just focusing on one task at a time, in the order that they're due. I'm not lookin forward to the Rad Tran test in particular, most everyone is pretty sure we're all gonna do quite poorly on it, just because of the amount and nature of the material being covered. We'll see, whatever happens, happens.

I was excited to find out that the lower 48's first winter storm warning of the season was issued yesterday! Eastern Montana, most of North Dakota, and the northwestern corner of Minnesota got hit by quite a bit of snow, more than a foot (and almost two feet) in some places. It was kinda making me a bit jealous, what with it being in the mid-70s here this week, unseasonably warm for October in State College. But I guess I can wait for snow until at least the leaves have fallen; they're only just starting to turn colours now, I'd rate the leaves as about one-third changed so far. At any rate, the front will hit us tonight or tomorrow, bringing highs in the low 50s over the weekend, the coolest air so far this season here.

But what's all the buzz about this week at Penn State? Well, if you follow college football at all you'd know it was the fact that #6 Ohio State is paying a visit to Happy Valley this Saturday night to play undefeated and #16 Penn State. It's the most-anticipated and most-hyped game at Penn State in years (if not ever). Beaver Stadium's attendance record is something over 110,700 (the stadium's official capacity is 107,000), set back in 2002 when heavily-favoured and then-#1 Nebraska came to town for a night game and was demolished by the Nittany Lions 40-7, and most people are predicting that this game will break that attendance record. Seriously, students -- a LOT of them -- have been camping out outside Beaver Stadium and the Bryce Jordan Center since Monday so that they can get the best seats when the gates open up on Saturday afternoon. A "White-Out" has also been declared for Saturday night, meaning the entire student section of 20,000 will be clad in white, if not the whole rest of the stadium. The game is so big that ESPN College GameDay is gonna be here on campus on Saturday morning, and I'm planning on trying to get in the background of it on Saturday, along with a couple of other meteo grad students, including Frame and Victor, before starting the awesomest of tailgates (by the way, Penn State has been voted the #1 best college for tailgating in the entire country by an amazing landslide (something like 80%-20%) over LSU, the #2 school, according to a fan poll on Sports Illustrated's website). :-) The game will be nationally televised on ESPN on Saturday evening, with kickoff at 7.45pm Eastern (6.45pm Central). If you have cable, I recommend that you tune in for at least a portion of it (especially early game), so you can get a flavor of the amazing atmosphere here at Penn State, and just how LOUD it's gonna be!! The place is gonna be rockin'! I definitely am anticipating not having a voice on Sunday morning. :-)

Maybe our government should take a cue from Japan, where their government is cutting 10% of jobs. Go privatization! In addition to coming out for renewed oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is coming up with other solutions for our nation's energy crunch, including (finally!) a new nuclear plant down there. Hopefully more nuclear plants will start going up in the coming years too, because we could sure use its clean, safe, efficient, cheap power. Despite people's best efforts, man cannot control the weather! I don't know what's so hard to understand about that... And new data suggests that Hurricane Katrina was only a Category 3 (possibly as weak as a Category 1) hurricane when it made landfall in Louisiana. Gulf Coast residents won't like hearing that news, but it doesn't matter a whole lot, considering that whatever the wind speed was, it still had a Category 4-5 storm surge in tow. And Peter Jackson isn't stopping with 'Lord of the Rings' or 'King Kong.' His next project: 'Halo: The Movie.' Could be interesting, we'll see.

And finally, this headline says it all: "Python Explodes After Eating Alligator." Enough said. I'd say that's a candidate for one of the funniest headlines of the year. :-)

Well, time to get studying!

Posted by Jared at 12:14 PM | Comments (0)

October 01, 2005

Busy, Busy, Busy

First of all I'd like to thank all of you out there who wished me a happy birthday back on Tuesday. It really did make my day a bit better, particularly since I didn't get a chance to do anything fun that day, apart from a little flag football practice. Yup, the meteo grad students have formed an IM flag football team, and we managed to fit in a couple practices this week in preparation for our first game this Monday evening. Apparently I'm the 1st string cornerback and one of the 2nd string receivers. We'll see how that goes, especially since these practices were the first real forms of physical activity that I've had since arriving in State College.

I'm really feeling the heat right about now, with how much I have to do. I have assignments for Rad Tran (almost all done, though it took forever and frustrated us all) and 501 (very tedious) due Monday, plus grading for Rad Tran (yeah, Dr Clothiaux has us take turns grading our classmates' homework, instead of him grading it ... we'll see how this works), plus grading the 55 labs for the two Meteo 3 labs I teach. I'll eventually get it all done. I just won't watch any football tomorrow. Seriously, I'm even foregoing the chance to see the Vikings on TV out here in the Keystone State so that I can have a prayer of getting some of this crap done. I'd say that these few days have me busier than I ever have been, even during fall of junior year, when I had both Mechanics and Advanced Modern Physics Lab. Now that's busy!

Despite having a lot to do, I basically took today off (hey, everyone needs a few hours as a break every week, these were mine), going to the Penn State-Minnesota football game. Both teams were undefeated coming into the game, and the Gophers were sporting a #18 national ranking coming into their visit to Happy Valley, so there was a bit of buzz in the air before the game started. It was a totally different atmosphere from the first three non-conference games this season, with this being a Big Ten opponent, and a real team. The Nittany Lions totally and completely dominated the game, blowing out Minnesota 44-14. Many people have asked, and yes I was going for Penn State this game, almost losing my voice in the first half from cheering so loud, but I wouldn't have been sad had the Gophers pulled it off. That said, with PSU being 5-0 now, the showdown with #8 Ohio State next Saturday night is gonna be HUGE, especially with the game being nationally televised on ESPN, and ESPN College Gameday being here all day long. I'm gonna have to make sure to get as much work as possible done before next weekend!

After reading about this guy, I'm thinking that maybe I should think twice before shocking someone with a touch of static electricity!

Posted by Jared at 09:58 PM | Comments (0)