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November 30, 2005

Happy No-More-GFD-Day!

Woohoo! At long last, GFD (Geophysical Fluid Dynamics) is OVER!! The final exam was this morning, and while that wasn't exactly bundles of fun, we're all ecstatic that we're done with GFD! We were all of course majorly stressing out about it beforehand, so this morning when we all showed up to Rad Tran, Dr Clothiaux was nice enough to postpone today's class and make it up sometime next week when he realized that nobody was gonna be paying any attention whatsoever to anything he would talk about. That, and he's just a cool prof (except when he assigns ugly, difficult homework, hehe). But anyway, the test was actually pretty fair (at least it was after Moyer told Dr Evans to axe a couple of the problems when she gave it to him to look over a couple days ago), even though it took everyone at least an hour and a half to complete when it was intended to be only an hour-long test (Dr Evans apparently thought her original, 33%-longer version of the test was still eminently doable in an hour too...). Anyway, I know I didn't get everything right, but I think I might've done enough to get a B, which I guess I'd be satisfied with, especially in this class. All in all it wasn't too too too bad, the carnage could've been worse. Far worse. But on the plus side, I don't really have to think about GFD anymore, unless I decide to take the Ph.D. candidacy exam in a year or two.

Tonight a bunch of us went out for a dual celebration -- Jacob's birthday (it was also Levenia's, though she elected to work on Rad Tran tonight, which is probably what the rest of us should've been doing instead) and the end of GFD. We decided to go for Japanese food, and went down to the Fuji Garden restaurant, where we were treated to habachi prepared right in front of us by a really cool chef. He was whipping the knives all over the place, setting all sorts of stuff on fire, cooking incredibly tasty food amazingly quickly, and just doing everything with flair and panache, it was awesome. He even was launching shrimp into all our mouths with his spatula from several feet away, that was pretty cool. It was the first time I'd ever had habachi as well, so I thought the whole experience was pretty cool, and the meal delectable. It's always fun discovering new restaurants and eateries, and I think I'll definitely be going back to Fuji Garden at some point.

And speaking of newly-discovered eateries, next time I'm desperately in need of a break while studying for a final exam (which'll be in just over a week for sure), I think I'll go get a tasty smoothie down at Smoothie King. Daniel introduced me to the place yesterday evening, and while it's not exactly cheap, the smoothies are awesome. Definitely a good break from studying for what you know is gonna be a crappy test.

Well, I think I just needed an evening of not really doing much of anything, particularly with how busy the next two weeks are gonna be. It's not gonna be fun at all, but we'll all survive, and then it'll be time for a break for a good 3-4 weeks! We're just all ready for the semester to be over already at this point, can you tell?

Posted by Jared at 11:59 PM | Comments (1)

November 27, 2005

Break's Over

Well, that's that. Thanksgiving break is over, and now it's time to get back to work, as classes start up again tomorrow morning. The last few days I've spent largely relaxing, interspersed with a bit of homework and studying. I'm gonna miss these care-free days during the next couple weeks, what with the final exam in Fluid Dynamics coming up on Wednesday morning, hard Rad Tran assignments due the next two Fridays (along with other exam and assignment corrections to do during then), and at least one 501 assignment (though that one's mostly on a skew T-log P diagram, so it shouldn't be hard, just tedious) thrown in for good measure. But at least there won't be any more GFD after the final on Wednesday, it'll be nice to have that out of the way, so that we can concentrate on the other two classes at the end. Now I just need to work up some motivation to study for GFD...

Last night I got around to creating and uploading a few more photo albums to my Photos page. The ones I just uploaded are in the Gustavus section, and from January 2005. I'm gonna get caught up, slowly but surely, and probably making huge strides over Christmas break, but I may end up getting a few more up there before break, we'll see. Earlier in the month I also finished uploading the last half of my New Zealand photo albums, so those are all online now too, including the ones from my visits to "Lord of the Rings" film sites like Edoras, Rivendell & Hobbiton. Check 'em out!

This morning Daniel joined me at church again, for this the first Sunday in Advent. With it still being the holiday weekend, attendance was a bit more sparse than usual, but it was still a good service and sermon as usual. After church we finally decided that it was time to buy our plane tickets home for Christmas break, since they seem to be going up in price every couple days or so. Since it's significantly cheaper for both of us to fly out of Pittsburgh than State College, we decided to leave and come back on the same day, that way we can split the cost of both gas from driving to/from Pitt, and long-term parking at the Pitt airport for a couple weeks. So I'll be flying into Minneapolis early afternoon on Sunday, December 18th, and then flying back to Pittsburgh early in the morning on Thursday, January 5th, leaving me a good two and a half weeks of being in the midwest to see family and friends. Hopefully I'll be busy doing a bunch of that, though not having my car during that stretch might be a bit trying. Somehow I'll survive without the "green school bus," as a couple of my friends call it.

I've run across some more interesting news stories in the last week that many of you might find amusing. Who knew that being a pastor was such a dangerous job? I'm pretty sure my dad never got slugged while giving a sermon like this pastor from Tulsa did. I guess that was a message with an impact! Then there are some Canadians who clearly don't have enough to do. Either that or they've gone bonkers in the long, dark winter nights up there, because a former Defence Minister is asking Canadian Parliament to hold hearings on "Exopolitics" -- political relations with extra-terrestrials -- because he's convinced the USA and the Bush Administration is about to start an intergalactic war. Ummm, yeah... And watch out Carl, thieves in Baltimore are stealing lamp posts. That's right, they're sawing down 30-foot street lamp posts and selling them for scrap metal, likely to feed their drug habits. And there have been at least 130 of these conspicuous lamp posts stolen in the last few weeks. Some even in broad daylight on busy streets. No wonder Baltimore's such a crime-ridden city, the police can't even figure out who's stealing these lamp posts right under their noses!

Well, that's all for me today. Time for bed. Why can't break be longer?

Posted by Jared at 11:43 PM | Comments (0)

November 24, 2005

Happy Thanksgiving!

One thing I can give thanks for was that this was a short week of classes, we've all definitely been needing the break. We haven't gotten a break from work though, as Dr Clothiaux on Monday assigned us two HARD homework assignments to get done in the last two weeks of classes, sigh. At least he basically apologized for the exam he gave us last Friday and all but admitted to messing up in writing it, but we're still gonna have to make all the corrections to it next week, on top of everything else that's going on. Like Wednesday's GFD final exam. Yup, it's crunch time.

My 501 test went pretty well on Monday evening, I think. It took me 2 hrs, 45 min though, but that was okay since it was untimed, meaning we could relax, take it easy and take however much time we wanted to in order to do the problems as well as we knew how. I think that's really the best way to give an exam, leastaways for a class in which I actually kinda know what's going on, and where the problems aren't impossible. In a class like that, I'd much prefer having just an hour exam, because then the pain is limited to 60 minutes, and then it's over.

But anyway, I made sure I got done with the 501 test in time to head home and catch the entirety of the Vikings-Packers game on Monday Night Football, which was actually a pretty good game, or at least as entertaining a game as two bad teams can have. It was fun chatting online with Mike during the first half, trading barbs and jokes back and forth about what was happening during the game, especially since there was plenty for us both to be frustrated (and happy) about. Like Brett Favre throwing 3 TD's in the first half -- two to the Packers and one to the Vikings, hehe. Even if the Vikings suck the rest of the year like they did to start off the season, at least they've beaten the Packers twice. So sweet.

After I got done with classes on Tuesday I decided finally to head up to see a doctor at University Health Services, to see if they could diagnose my illness and possibly prescribe me anything to help make it better. The long and short of it is that apparently I have bronchitis. Again. At least it's not as bad as when I had it for three weeks down in Australia a year ago when it hurt to breathe, move or do anything. But anyway, the doctor prescribed me some zithromax, an albuterol inhaler, and some nice bedtime cough syrup that has some codeine in it. And since I started taking the meds I actually have been feeling better. Being able to sleep for a full night without having a coughing fit is a big part of that though, credit the codeine. :-)

Yesterday after going to get some groceries I spent a few hours in the afternoon and evening grading some labs, I figure I may as well polish off something I can actually do before banging my head against a wall over something I can't (the Rad Tran assignment), and that I may as well do it while being in a good mood, so I watched the first two Lord of the Rings DVD's while grading. Good times, and memories of freshman year at GAC when I'd do physics homework almost weekly while watching LOTR. :-)

It snowed an inch overnight last night, which made for a pleasant scene out my window upon waking up. A white Thanksgiving definitely adds a nice touch. So I made some fruit compote (sweet potatoes, cranberries, pineapple, apple, blueberries) this morning to bring to Brian & Kerrie's for Thanksgiving dinner, and it actually turned out pretty good! There was so much good food that everyone brought this afternoon, it was awesome. I stuffed myself so much that I didn't even eat supper this evening, hehe. I did take a fair bit of leftovers home with me though, they'll be my next couple meals, woohoo! But I was glad that there were at least a couple other meteo grad students that had also decided to stay here in State College for Thanksgiving, it definitely made it quite a bit nicer. So our group today included me, Kerrie, Brian, Daniel, his fiancee Katie, and Muge. It was the first time we'd all gotten a chance to meet Katie too, she flew up here from Alabama for the weekend, so that was fun to meet her finally. I'd say a bulk of the afternoon's entertainment was had by everyone playing with Rolo, Amber's kitten that Kerrie & Brian are taking care of for the holiday weekend while Amber's home in Ohio. What a crazy, energetic little kitten.

Well, I guess I should get to bed. Don't wanna let the triptophane in my system go all for naught. And in the football games coming tomorrow, I'm definitely gonna be cheering for the major underdogs, Arkansas (vs LSU) and Texas A&M (vs Texas), which'd put Auburn in the SEC title game (and likely the BCS) and Penn State in the Rose Bowl vs USC. Hey a guy can dream, can't he?

Posted by Jared at 11:54 PM | Comments (2)

November 20, 2005

Back from Baltimore

Wow, life really does exist outside of State College. Considering this was the first time since the very beginning of September that I'd been more than 15 miles from State College, I'd almost been beginning to wonder. I got down to Carl's apartment in inner-city Baltimore (Charles Village) just as he and Betsy were walking out the door to go pick up some Chinese food, so that was good timing. After a little while we drove up to Towson to Jess's apartment, to pick up her, Seth and Jess's roommate Erin (all Gusties), but along the way Carl & Betsy gave me a brief synopsis of what happened in the first three books/movies of the Harry Potter series, so that I wouldn't be totally clueless during the fourth movie, which we all went to Friday night. I'd say I liked the movie, though doubtless I would've appreciated "The Goblet of Fire" more had I been more familiar with the series, because even with the quick rundown of what had gone on prior to this film, there were a couple places where I was a little confused, but it was alright. The film's definitely not for young children though, and from what I gather, neither is the rest of the series really, even though it sure seems like it's being heavily marketed to some pretty young "skulls full of mush." It's not like I went straight to a book/movie store right afterwards, but I'll probably end up eventually seeing the rest of the films at some point, and possibly even reading the books, something I hadn't originally planned on doing. Like I don't have enough to read already...

Saturday morning we all (except for Erin, who had other stuff going on) got up and headed down to DC for the day. It was a gorgeous day, with only a few cirrus clouds here and there streaked across the bright blue sky, and cool (but not chilly) temps. First we went to the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian and poked around there for most of an hour, then we checked out the National Gallery of Art for an hour or so. We then grabbed a late lunch at the Old Post Office before wandering back over to The Mall, walking past (and taking many photos of) the Washington Monument, through the World War II Memorial and eventually on to the Lincoln Memorial. Unfortunately there was scaffolding all over inside the Lincoln Memorial, much preservation work was in progress. But at least this time there was actually water in the Reflecting Pool, as opposed to the only other time I'd been to DC, this past Easter weekend, when it was totally drained. Water makes everything look better. By the time we left the Lincoln Memorial it was getting to be dusk already, and before heading back to the Metro station we walked around the Tidal Pool to pay a visit to the Jefferson Memorial, since Seth had never been there before. Interestingly, the Jefferson Memorial was also under a good deal of preservation work. But I'd say the memorials and monuments and everything look cooler at night when they're all lit up, so it was fun to get the chance to see some of them not during daylight hours. When we made it back to Baltimore we stopped for an hour at The Lodge in downtown, but left because there wasn't live music like had been advertised, there was nowhere to sit, and we were all pretty tired from walking around DC all day. So we all went back to Carl's apartment and just ordered pizza, which was fine. We popped in "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," since Carl & I were the only ones to have seen it, but halfway through we were all asleep, that's how tired we were! HGG's an awesome movie, but exhaustion and fatigue can be very assertive.

This morning I left Baltimore around 10:30 or so, and got back to State College around 2. I studied for a bit this afternoon for tomorrow evening's 501 exam, and then went to the Bible study at Anna's tonight for Penn State Christian Grads, the first one in a month or more that I've been able to make. I've been wanting to go to more of those, but my schedule's kinda gotten in the way.

I still have the cold and cough, ugh. But Friday night I broke down and actually got some cough syrup and cough drops, mostly to help me sleep through the night better. So I guess I should take care of myself and make tonight an early night, especially since I haven't slept terribly well the last four nights. Sigh. Hopefully I can get over this crap by Thanksgiving, I'm sick of being sick and hacking up a lung all the time.

And I know it's a day late, but Happy Birthday Mom! Hopefully the card got there before now. And I'd also like to wish Kerrie in the meteo dept a happy birthday, hers was also yesterday.

If any of you have travel plans to, from or in the Northeast either Tuesday or Wednesday, do take care to monitor the weather reports for the next few days. Looks like that storm that's been predicted for a week is coming to fruition, though it's still kinda hard to say how much snow's gonna fall where, or which areas are gonna see mostly rain. Could be an interesting couple of days for travel, to say the least.

And how ironic is it that after watching "Hitchhiker's Guide" last night, I forgot my towel at Carl's place this morning?

Posted by Jared at 11:33 PM | Comments (0)

November 18, 2005

Baltimore-bound!

Just a quick little post here. All of yesterday's studying for Rad Tran turned out to be all but fruitless, as this morning's exam savaged each and every one of us. It was just way too long, again. What is it with profs writing impossibly long exams that they intend to be finished in a mere 55 minutes? Sigh. Just like for the last GFD test, everyone can take at least 10-20 points straight off the top from questions they didn't get to. I only left a 10-pointer blank, but towards the end I was just putting stuff down on a couple parts so that I'd at least have an answer, even though I knew it was almost certainly wrong. Call it making an offering to the god of partial credit. We'll see if Dr Clothiaux looks with favor on my jottings... And then immediately following failing the Rad Tran test (okay, so perhaps I won't have failed, but I still did poorly regardless), we got our GFD tests back. At least that was a little ray of sunshine in my morning, with a 70, which is a bit better than I'd been anticipating (and slightly above the class mean).

Once I was done with those two classes I didn't really feel like doing any work, so I just made multiple trips over to the main meteo office, where the secretaries were throwing a tailgate party to cheer on Penn State in their final regular game of the year tomorrow at Michigan State. If the Nittany Lions win, they clinch the Big Ten title and a berth in one of the BCS bowls, most likely either the Orange or Fiesta Bowl! Let's Go State! Tomorrow's gonna be a great day of college football, with Minnesota-Iowa (with "Floyd of Rosedale" on the line), Michigan-Ohio State and Auburn-Alabama (the Iron Bowl) also on the docket. I just hope I get to catch a little bit of it tomorrow.

So why might I not get to watch much college football tomorrow, you ask? Well, I'm actually about to head out the door to Baltimore, to Carl's apartment down there, to hang out with him and a few other Gusties, namely Seth, Jess & Betsy. Should be a good time, regardless of what we do! Tonight we're going to the new "Harry Potter" movie, so I need to get to Baltimore early enough so that I can have the plots from the first three books/movies explained to me, since I haven't read or seen anything Harry Potter yet. I'll be gettin back to State College early Sunday afternoon probably, since I need to study study study for Monday evening's exam in 501. I'm just glad my cough/cold that I've had this week didn't get any worse, otherwise I probably wouldn't be going to B-more this weekend. Well, I'm off!

Posted by Jared at 04:22 PM | Comments (0)

November 17, 2005

Irradiance on the Mind

Wow, I need to take a break from studying for Rad Tran. Nevermind the fact that I really only started studying this evening, but you can only spend so long reading a textbook before your mind starts to melt. Especially when that textbook is about radiation, radiance, irradiance, scattering, absorption, transmissivity and solid angles. Definitely not looking forward to that test on Friday morning.

Daniel & I went to the early (9am) service at my church on Sunday. It was the first time he'd come along to SCEFC, so he got to meet a bunch of the other grad students I've gotten to know some this fall, so that was cool. I think he even kinda liked it too, bonus. Going to the early service enabled both of us to start tackling our respective hefty workloads a bit earlier. I hadn't been planning on it, but I decided to stick around in my room for the first quarter (and then first half) of the Vikings-Giants game (which the Vikings amazingly won with an interception, kickoff and punt return for touchdowns!), but by halftime I had to go up to Walker to continue my homrwork, it was too excruciatingly painful to watch the Vikings offense amass a whole 6 yards in the first half. But hey, a win's a win. After spending a few tough hours on the 501 homework (with stunningly little, but hard-earned progress to show for it), a bunch of us (Daniel, Mario, Amber, Caren, Levenia and I) went over to Kerrie & Brian's apartment for the conclusion of "Category 7." Unfortunately, the second half was not nearly as entertaining as the first, it was just plain-old bad. There was hardly any storm even, or talk of what was causing it. The computer animations of the multiple tornadoes/falling chunks of mesosphere were ridiculously poor, and so was what happened when they got the temperature in the clouds above DC to drop to the supposedly magic level of 79.2 degrees (the clouds instantly evaporated, ha!). But even though the movie was a disappointment, it was still a nice study break, and any chance to hang out outside the confines of Walker Building is a joy. :-)

Monday was a bit stressful, with having to spend virtually all day (until after 10pm) working on finishing the 501 homework. In the past 501 has been long and tedious, but we've known what we were doing, or what the end goal was, but this assignment was long, tedious, hard, and not obvious or intuitive at all, which is a frustrating combination, especially when you're on deadline. And when you have grading that needs to get done that night too. And when you need to sleep at some point eventually.

Tuesday I finished grading and everything, and then I didn't know what to do with myself in the evening, without an assignment due in the immediate future (though I have tests coming up on Friday and Monday). So I did my best to find ways to procrastinate, including watching a pretty cool PBS "Nova" special called "Newton's Dark Secrets" (apparently he was an alchemist and a pretty major heretic, though he hid those views pretty well; he even predicted the Apocalypse would happen in 2060...), calling my parents for a bit, and then catching up on my finances from the past month. All that equalled not touching my backpack, much less my books. Success.

Today when it came time to go to lunch, both Daniel & I were pretty well tired of the usual Subway, Wendy's, Arby's or Taco Bell, the fast food places that are the closest to Walker on College Ave. So we decided to be adventurous today, and in the course of wending our way through downtown we happened onto a place we never knew existed, Bell's Greek Pizza, tucked away in a niche on Calder Way. The food was amazingly good (and lots of it too!), we both got spaghetti dishes, and it was well worth the wait, I highly recommend it. The pizza there looked really good too, I'm assuming we'll be heading back there on a semi-regular basis. Though next time I might have to make sure I don't eat breakfast beforehand. :-) It sure beat the heck out of fast food! And then I've spent (or at least tried to spend) much of the afternoon and evening studying for Rad Tran. At 3:30 I was starting to get so engrossed in it up in the TA office that Kerrie asked me, "Don't you have to teach now?" Okay, so I almost forgot to go teach my lab today. So sue me. I got there right before it was supposed to start, so it was all good. :-)

Following the weather has been interesting the past few days with the big storm that moved through the midwest, and the associated extremely powerful cold front that's now sweeping through the Northeast. While Minneapolis was waking up to windchills down around zero this morning, it was a balmy 65 here in State College. Of course, the temp dropped almost instantly by 10 degrees when the front passed this morning, and now it's down to 35 and still falling, with highs the next two days slated to be in the low-mid 30s. Our first significant taste of a cold spell, I love it! Unfortunately we don't have much in the way of snow or flurries to go along with the cold yet, though it's kinda lookin like there might be a big snowstorm setting up somewhere in the Northeast in the middle of next week, just in time for Thanksgiving. At the very least it's looking like it'll be rather chilly here mid-late next week, with highs probably in the 20s. Looks like winter might finally be coming after all! It might be time to start dusting off that winter coat. :-)

Well, tomorrow's gonna be hardcore studying, Friday will be the Rad Tran test, and then Friday evening I'll be driving down to Baltimore to hang out with Carl & Jess, along with Seth (who's flying down from Michigan Tech) and Betsy (who's comin up from Chapel Hill). Should be a fun pre-Thanksgiving Gustie reunion weekend! The only downside is that I'll have to be studying some this weekend for Monday's 501 test... Sigh, it never ends.

Posted by Jared at 12:40 AM | Comments (0)

November 13, 2005

The Weather Man

And just like that, another busy, busy week goes in the books. Large chunks of Wednesday and Thursday were spent working on the Rad Tran assignment. Who knew solid angles could be so aggravating and tedious? But we were all helping each other out so that we wouldn't have to be in Walker working on it all night, because we all know that wouldn't be any fun. Complicating matters, we also had class Thursday night for GFD, which will hopefully be the last of the extra sessions we need to make up for Dr Evans being gone all of December. Flow structures. Eww.

A couple hours after GFD finished up, a few of us (Daniel, Amber, Caren, Walter & I) went up to the theater to go see "The Weather Man," as a nice break for our minds, which have been getting overworked here in weather school lately. I'd read a lot of reviews of the film, and they'd been mixed -- people either liked it quite a bit or not at all. "The Weather Man" certainly isn't a feel-good comedy, nothing of the sort. There are some funny parts (like when Nicholas Cage's character recounts all the different food items that have been thrown at him by angry viewers in Chicago), but all in all it's rather serious and depressing actually. That doesn't prevent it from being a good film though, which I thought it was. I wouldn't say it's one of the top 5 films of the year or anything (although there haven't really been many good films this year, so you never know...), but I'd still give it somewhere between two and a half to three stars out of four. The only meteorological blunder in the film was a reference to the "Canadian trade winds," which gave us all a good laugh at a part that wasn't intended to be that funny. :-) One caveat is that the film had quite a bit of profanity (I thought it was a bit excessive). I just hope that if I ever become a TV weather man that I don't get Frosties, soft tacos, falafel or other food/drink items thrown at me. Although maybe that'd be a sign that I was well-known, which could be good. :-) Interestingly enough, I think this was the first film (cinema, DVD, video, TV, anything) I'd seen since I saw "War of the Worlds" in the theater in the Mall of America back in August. Busy schedules kinda suck.

Yesterday was good, being a Friday and all. And since it was Friday evening, that meant another session of team trivia, with our team name this time being "Third Place Every Week." Oddly enough, we didn't continue our multi-week trend of finishing in 3rd, as we pulled into 2nd this time around. We're movin' up in the world! But I couldn't just take the rest of the evening off unfortunately, I have too much that I need to accomplish by Tuesday morning, so I did a bit of grading for Rad Tran, correcting people's corrections from the assignment I'd originally graded back over a month ago. I think there's probably been only one Friday night in the last six or seven weeks at least that I haven't been sitting in my apartment doing grading or homework. Sigh. Only another month left of that this semester (!), maybe next semester will be slightly more humane.

This morning I woke up reasonably early and polished off the rest of the Rad Tran grading over in Walker, so that I wouldn't be distracted by the usual Saturday morning stuff (ESPN College GameDay), and then this afternoon I've been grading some Meteo 3 labs while watching some football. A relaxing day overall. Tonight I went over to Rob & Vic's place in Houserville along with Daniel to watch the Auburn-Georgia game. It was a very entertaining game, with Auburn getting the game-winning field goal with 6 seconds left, stunning the Bulldogs 31-30 in Athens. I was starting to get worried I was a bad-luck charm when I watched Auburn games with Daniel, since the last one I watched with him, Auburn lost to LSU in OT 20-17 on a botched field goal. Before Auburn got the winning field goal tonight Daniel said that he probably shouldn't watch any more games with me, as those games were bad for his heart, hehe. War eagle!

Oh oh oh, and then tomorrow night a bunch of us are going over to Kerrie's place to catch the second half of "Category 7" on CBS. It'll be so bad you won't wanna miss it! Seriously, I doubt that you need any meteorological training to spot the glaring and ridiculous scientific errors that will certainly be present, hehe.

I should probably get to bed, I'm going to the 9am church service tomorrow with Daniel, and then I can look forward to a full day of work on 501 ahead of me before taking a break for "Category 7." Somehow I think I'll pass on watching the Vikings-Giants game tomorrow, even though it'll be the first Vikings game on TV here in Pennsylvania this season. I fear another game similar to the 41-0 blowout in the 2000 NFC Championship Game.

I'll leave you all with a rather humorous (to start out with) and insightful article by Jonah Goldberg about the recent and ongoing riots in France entitled "Trouble in Gaulistan." Jonah Goldberg rocks.

Posted by Jared at 12:31 AM | Comments (0)

November 08, 2005

Wisconsin Whited Out

I'm so glad the past few days are over and done with. Too busy and too stressful, if you ask me. Just "toooooooooo much." But I did manage to have at least a little fun along the way.

After Thursday & Friday basically being hw time (apart from another 3rd place finish in team trivia at the Sports Cafe Friday night, our team name this week is gonna be "3rd place every week" or something, since every single week we're leading going into the final question and then choke), Saturday morning was good. Daniel, Kerrie, Brian, Amber & Caren all came over here to meet and then walk up to the meteo grads tailgate at the other end of campus, up near the stadium. It was a grand ol' time for everyone involved, and the first Penn State tailgate for Kerrie, Brian, Amber & Caren. Since this was the last tailgate of the year, that kinda motivated people to come out a bit more, hehe. I'm gonna miss tailgating though, I can't believe it's gonna be next August or September before there's another one...

Anyway, I went to the Penn State-Wisconsin game with Robert, Lindsey & Maggie. It was a fun game to be at, what with it being Senior Day, and with a white-out of Wisconsin being declared, meaning everyone in the student section was wearing white, just like for the Ohio State game a month ago. There was also a lot riding (or as Josh would say, "ridding") on the game too, as both teams were 8-1 coming into the game. Well, the Nittany Lions absolutely dominated the Badgers, winning 35-14, much to the chagrin of Mike & Kevin, two of my Badger-fan friends back in Wisconsin that I was calling periodically during the game, hehe. So now Penn State is 9-1 and ranked #5 or #6 in the country, depending on which poll you look at, heading into their bye week. Another interesting thing to note is that the attendance for the PSU-Wisconsin game was the 2nd highest in Beaver Stadium history, up around 109,900, passing the previously 2nd and 3rd-highest-attendance marks in Penn State history, set earlier this year for the Ohio State and Purdue games, respectively, each with an attendance over 109,000. And I was there for all of em, so in a very real sense I was part of history. :-) I'd say 109-110,000 isn't too shabby, especially for a stadium with a stated capacity of "only" 107,000, hehe.

After church Sunday morning I spent all afternoon doing homework for 501, which was rather demoralizing. Partly because it was unbearably warm and stuffy in the TA office (like it's been in there for a week or two now, at least), and partly because there was so much more I had to do than ultra-tedious busywork. But in the evening we all took a break, and Mario, Daniel, Levenia, Kerrie & I headed over to Amber's apartment to catch the "movie event of the year" on CBS, "Category 7: The End of the World." It was both hilarious and ridiculous, especially when it tried to explain in meteorological terms what was going on, because they'd just string a few random terms together and hope they impressed the non-scientists who don't know what's going on. Statements such as "falling chunks of mesosphere" generally don't gain you many points in the scientific world, unless it's intended to be a comedy. :-) The best part is that it's a continuation of last year's CBS movie "Category 6" (which Frame bought on DVD), and part 2 of "Category 7" is on this coming Sunday night. Don't miss it! :-)

Yesterday I was starting to feel a bit stressed out, since I only had page 1 done out of all 50 Meteo 3 exams that I had to grade, and Bill wanted them yesterday or today. So I buckled down and managed to grade the remaining four pages of all of them by the end of last night, I was rather proud of myself. And there were a few gems along the way, such as "metal is a convector of lightning," or that "nocturnal conditions" are a factor in causing flash flooding, which gave me the inspiration to keep going through the rest of the exams. :-) Some other favourites included several failed attempts at spelling "Connecticut" (with all of them crossed out vehemently, except for their final answer of "Connectit") -- it's just too bad the question was asking for a large city in Rhode Island, or the one that Amber graded, with the question asking what the name of the process was (evaporation) when liquid turned into a gas, and the student answered "defecation." Now, I'm sure they were probably thinking of dessication and just got confused, but still, that has to be one of the most hilarious answers to a test question any of us has ever seen.

Today I worked a bit on the Rad Tran hw that's due this Friday, but only half-heartedly since my brain is fried from the last few days. Hence why I'm blogging. :-)

There's sure a lot going on in the world right now, what with the UN and EU (at the behest of repressive regimes like Iran, North Korea, Cuba & China) trying to do a power-grab of the internet, the Aussies foiling a terror plot down under, Wal-Mart keeping down inflation, France burning (they'll probably surrender like the French usually do, and turn into a caliphate within two months...), new PHASR guns being developed by the US military, and the Kansas school board legitimately calling for debate about evolution in the public school classroom. At least that's a snippet of what I found interesting in the last day or two. Until next time, sayonara.

Posted by Jared at 11:56 PM | Comments (2)

November 03, 2005

Indian Summer

So for Halloween a few people actually did wear costumes to class, and we did do the Pac-Man thing right after class started. We waited for Dr Clothiaux to start writing stuff on the board, then we all came in the door at the front of the class, with Walter leading the way in his Pac-Man costume and his "wacca wacca" sound effects, followed by the four ghosts, including myself. We just kinda went every which way around the desks, meandering until we reached our seats. Everyone was having a pretty good laugh, including Dr Clothiaux, who then asked, "so what are you guys supposed to be?" We told him Pac-Man, and then he exclaimed, "Oh! That's funny!!" and laughed some more. So apparently he thought at first that we were just being strange or something, haha. Dr Clothiaux also wanted to take a picture of our Rad Tran class with several of us in costumes, "to show people what he has to put up with," hehe.

Monday night was our final intramural flag football game of the season, except our opponent didn't show up. So we won our second game of the year via forfeit, pushing our overall record to 3-2. But instead of just scrimmaging against ourselves or whatever, like we did during the first game of the season when the other team didn't show up, we decided to play against an undefeated team from the major division (we were in the minor division), whose opponent also hadn't shown up. Well, let's just say that that team was really good. Before kickoff we thought the line (if there was one) would probably favor them by 30 points, and then we didn't even cover the spread, losing 40-8. Everyone on their team was not only fast, but also a very good athlete; we never stood a chance, really. It was still fun though, even if it knocked us down a peg by reminding us that we really aren't very good athletes. :-) But the best part is, we were both winners (literally, since we both won on forfeits)! Usually I don't go for that self-esteem gobbledegook psychobabble, but it fit in this case. Anyway, after the game we all went out for a meal and a drink at the Gingerbread Man, before resuming homework.

On Tuesday I gave my students in Meteo 003 a quiz. A really easy quiz. With questions such as: "Hailstones are falling chunks of what? a) dynamite, b) ice, c) rocks, d) comets" and "What line of latitude separates the northern and southern hemispheres? a) Tropic of Cancer, b) Equator, c) Tropic of Capricorn, d) US-Canadian border." I haven't graded them yet, but I did spy a couple of wrong answers here and there (I haven't seen any on either of those questions above yet though, fortunately). Since they had an exam this week, lab this week was supposed to be a "freebie" type lab where we could do whatever we wanted, instead of assigning the usual problem set out of the book. And if we chose to make a quiz, Bill said it had to be "EASY." If only lab could be this short and pleasant every week. But I won't get a respite from grading, as I'm about to be dumped on with 55 Meteo 3 exams to grade (this time the whole thing, not just the first page, because Bill said he'd go insane if he had to grade all 250-300 of them again) as soon as I get to Walker Building this morning. ~whimper~

Yesterday I got a start on the fluid dynamics assignment that's due Monday, and I'm hoping to finish that ASAP so I can begin on the 501 assignment that's also due Monday. At least the GFD homework is a bit easier than I'd been fearing, that's a plus. This week has been unofficially dubbed "dynamics week" as well, because we're having an extra GFD class this evening from 6-7:30, and then tomorrow morning a double session, from 9-11am, since Dr Clothiaux's gone and Rad Tran won't be happening at 9. Yay! We get to fall even further behind!

This afternoon I'm also going to be donating blood at the EMS (College of Earth & Mineral Sciences) blood drive, which is part of the larger annual Penn State-Michigan State Blood Donor Challenge. Last year I guess PSU lost by a mere 35 units of blood, 1785-1750, so they're trying to make sure there isn't a repeat of that. I wonder if they'll give me an "A+" sticker for my efforts. ;-)

Back on Sunday or Monday morning there was a coating of frost on the ground here at White Course (that's right, we had our first accumulating snowfall before our first frost), so the unseasonably warm weather (60s!) that we've been having since Tuesday can officially be dubbed as "Indian summer." Unfortunately it won't last, a cold front is scheduled to barrel through here on Sunday or Monday, dropping temps into the 40s. Blah.

In a bit of interesting news, computer giant IBM is claiming to have slowed down light to 1/300th is usual speed, which could lead to another revolution in computing technology. It'll be interesting to see if that technology becomes mainstream.

And probably not too many of you care about this, but the Melbourne Cup was held on Tuesday, "the horse race that stops a nation." Last year when I attended it, it was the first horse race I'd ever been to, and it still remains the only one. Last year I also bet $10 on Vinnie Roe over defending Cup champ Makybe Diva, who wound up pulling away for the win. Well, this year Makybe Diva was back for another fun at Flemington, and wound up winning her THIRD consecutive Melbourne Cup (the first horse ever to accomplish that feat), putting Makybe Diva right up there with Phar Lap as the most legendary racehorses in Australian history.

Posted by Jared at 10:23 AM | Comments (2)