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March 29, 2006

"We Foresee Future Storms"

As is probably obvious, my bracket is officially busted. The scenario for the PSU Meteorology pool was pretty simple heading into Sunday: "I win 1st place is Villanova makes it to the Championship Game; if Villanova does not make it to the Championship Game, I don't win any money (i.e., I don't finish 1st, 2nd or 3rd). So of course, with a scenario like that 'Nova had to go out and have a horrible shooting day, falling meekly to the Florida Gators with nary a whimper. But at least mighty George Mason knocked off Connecticut to ruin just about everyone else's bracket too. I'm always happy to see the underdog win, and it was great to see that UConn team lose, particularly since they played very uninterestedly all tournament. But hooray for it finally getting to be shorts weather on Sunday, it got up to 45 that day and has been in the 50s since, with 60s due up the next couple of days. Spring has finally sprung!

Monday I spent kinda twiddling my thumbs and looking at some last-minute extra practice problems along with most everyone else in the TA Office, until the Cloud Physics exam started finally at 6pm. I was prepared with my cheat sheet, and it did come in handy a couple times, but more for confirmation that what I was gonna put down on my test was actually kinda right. There was a bit more calculation and a bit less explanation than I was expecting, and while a couple of the questions were a little tricky to think about, I think I did pretty well. But I made sure to wrap it up by 8:40 or so (we only had until 9pm) so that I could make it back to my apartment in time to catch all of "24." I mean, hey, I've got my priorities here. ;-)

Tuesday I started both a bit of grading and some searching for potentially useful journal articles for my three upcoming term papers, but probably wasn't quite as productive as I would've liked. Such is life. The best part of the day, though, as with any Tuesday, was the 25c wings down at Sports Cafe, and this week Vic tagged along with Daniel & I. Although the other plus of the day was not having to teach lab in the afternoon, since Dr Nese cancelled it for this week (hooray!).

Today I did a bit more grading (this lab really sucks to grade, I'm getting really unmotivated to finish them). Then this evening was the Chi Epsilon Pi (national Meteorology honor society) induction ceremony, though I'm not sure how much I actually deserved to be inducted into it. I'll take it though. I know Frame's really wanting me to be an officer next year so that he doesn't have to do it again, so I'll probably end up complying. Anyway after the free pizza and actual inductions (and after an translation of the Greek phrase that's abbreviated XEP, which in English roughly means, "We Foresee Future Storms" -- we all snickered at that after it was read), we played a game of weather- and State College-related pictionary, undergraduates vs grad students vs faculty. Unfortunately the undergrads wound up winning because all the topics they drew were the easiest of the bunch (like "State College, PA," "Dr Nese," "CAPE" and "The Weather Channel"), while we got stuck with having to draw things like "lee-side cyclogenesis," "Accuweather" and "The Day After Tomorrow" (which I picked out of the hat after passing on "mass continuity"). I mean, how are you supposed to draw those things? At least Yvette & Paul had some moderately tough ones for the faculty (such as "mesocyclone," "Doppler on Wheels" and "thermohaline circulation"), though Paul spent much of the game drawing Thomas the Tank Engine on one of the side boards for fun, it was great!

Residents in Oregon should be very concerned about privacy and their pocketbooks, because now the state is going to be taxing drivers per mile, not per gallon of gasoline, because cars are getting too fuel-efficient. In order to accomplish this the state is going to have to have a massive database that details every person's driving habits. Can you say 'Big Brother'?

Watch out for those cats in Connecticut, they can be pretty nasty. So vicious, in fact, that they get a restraining order issued against them.

And Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia set the record straight about a Boston Herald journalist's story on Monday that Scalia made an obscene gesture in a Catholic church, in a blistering reply to the newspaper's account of what happened. Go Scalia! I admire Scalia's incredible intellect and sharp wit more than just about anyone's, he's awesome!

And finally, Hooters Airlines (I bet many of you never knew there was such a thing!) is being "put to bed" and no longer operating as a general commercial airline. I could probably make some sort of tasteless joke but I think I'll refrain. Judging from the photo in the story I've linked to, it doesn't look like too many people flew Hooters, so that's probably why that airline's going down.

Posted by Jared at 11:12 PM | Comments (3)

March 26, 2006

My Bracket's on Life Support

Well, half of the tickets to the Final Four have been punched (LSU and UCLA), and I'm 0-for-2 so far. The LSU win over Texas really hurt me today, as I had the Longhorns in the Championship Game in my money bracket. Oh well. Fortunately I could still wind up with 50% of my Final Four correct, as I still have UConn and Villanova alive, though I'd honestly be perfectly happy if UConn loses to George Mason tomorrow. What I absolutely need for me to have any chance at winning money is for Villanova to make it at least to the Championship Game, but if 'Nova wins it all I'm almost assured of getting 1st place in the PSU Meteorology pool, which would be oh so sweet.

Needless to say, I was very excited last night when Villanova squeaked past Boston College 60-59 in overtime on a goaltending call with just over a second left, especially since most of the people I'm competing against had picked BC to go to the Final Four. Whew, talk about a bracket saver! A bunch of us had gathered at Sports Cafe last night to watch the Sweet 16 games while playing some team trivia (once again, we choked after leading going into the final question and didn't even place, bah). There's something grand about watching excellent, close games in the NCAA Tournament with TV screens every way you look while having a beer with friends and other sports fans. Did I mention that I love March Madness?

Oh, and by the way, I totally called the LSU upset of Duke in the Sweet 16, in all three of my brackets. Down with the Dookies! Though I must say I was crushed by Gonzaga's choke-job loss to UCLA in the final seconds on Thursday night. I was this close to having 3-outta-4 on the night picked correctly into the Elite Eight. That would've been amazing, but it was just not meant to be.

I got back my Dynamics and Mesoscale midterms last week, and while I did alright on the Dynamics test, it still wasn't as good as I'd thought I did coming out of the exam, so I was kinda disappointed. As for Mesoscale, well, let's just say that my grade wasn't too much of a surprise to me. I knew that I hadn't had nearly enough time to study for that test, so I think that that's what that exam showcased more than anything. I know I could've gotten 20-30 points higher easily had I had another day or so to study, which is kind of frustrating. Le sigh... At least I'll get another crack at a good chunk of this stuff on the final, and now we know that Yvette literally tests us on knowing every detail/assumption about everything she's mentioned in class. We didn't know that going into the last test, since we'd never had her for a class before and she's never taught this class before; we really didn't know what to expect, but now we do. That's the problem with classes that have only one midterm and a final. I'd much rather have two midterms and a final, because then we're being tested on a slightly smaller chunk of material, and gets us used to the prof's testing style without it costing us quite so many points. Oh well.

Long story short, my last two exams certainly made me much more motivated to find time more than just one day in advance to study for Monday evening's second Cloud Physics midterm. So that's definitely what I've done a fair bit of today, and I think I'm actually in pretty good shape heading into tomorrow and Monday, at least as far as studying and preparing is concerned, I think I'm more than halfway done making my "cheat sheet" that we're allowed to bring into the exam. The exam on Monday night runs from 6-9pm, but I've gotta make sure I finish enough before 9 to make it home in time to catch all of "24," haha.

For the most recent 2-week forecasting period (Washington, DC) that just ended for the WxChallenge Forecasting Contest, I somehow pulled out the top spot overall in the grad student category. It's too bad it's just the beta competition, and that they won't start awarding prizes until the Fall 2006 contest, but still, maybe I'll be able to get the hang of this forecasting thing after all... We'll just have to see if I can keep the momentum going for the next two weeks for Birmingham, AL, though I expect Daniel's gonna pull out all the stops (such as actually forecasting every day) to make sure he represents his home state well and comes out on top, hehe.

Posted by Jared at 12:23 AM | Comments (0)

March 23, 2006

Sweet 16 Eve

Wow, this week is so much less stressful than last week, the difference is unbelievable. Of course, not having two midterms will tend to relieve a bit of stress. I've naturally had a couple of assignments that I've been working at this week (though admittedly not at peak efficiency).

Did anyone out there who watched 24 this week not have your jaw just about drop to the floor in shock at the ending? Mine sure did. After a so-so episode last week, this one was thrilling. Although Homeland Security is getting a definite thumbs down for taking over CTU, that's just a bad move.

Tonight a few of the guys from the PSCG men's group came over to my place to play some "Apples to Apples," which was a very good time. There were a lot of funny word associations made, but a couple of the funniest included: 1) for the word "shallow," people put down "the far left," "Shania Twain," and "the far right" -- I mean, how can you choose which one is the best out of that! -- and 2) for the word "sensual," the red cards put down were "silk," "The French Riviera," and "Schindler's List," which totally took the cake. In South African Daniel's defense, he accidentally put down the wrong card, but it was absolutely hilarious nonetheless. I'm still mystified as to how Ryan chose "gym teacher" over my "Helen Keller" card for the word "touchy-feely." I absolutely love that game.

A couple bits of older news from earlier this month that I hadn't been aware of... First, scientists at Sandia National Labs down in New Mexico superheated a gas to 3.5 billion Kelvin, a new record temperature achieved here on Planet Earth. The catch? According to the article, "They don't know how they did it." That's comforting. As NRO's Jonah Goldberg so eloquently put it, "I don't like it when we create conditions hotter than the interior of the sun without knowing how we did it. What if I'm in the kitchen and I accidentally put the wrong stuff together and it happens? That'd be so not cool, literally."

Second, I found out that back on March 2nd Dr. Henry Morris died, one of the "fathers" of the modern creation science movement. I was sad to hear of his passing, we owe a lot to him. I have yet to read "The Genesis Flood," the book he authored that really started the whole movement, though it's sitting on my shelf above my computer currently, after having bought it this past summer. Perhaps I'll get around to it this summer. Anyway, a guy from AiG wrote a touching piece in memoriam of Dr Morris that's well worth reading.

And finally, I came across this piece in the American Thinker about the Iraq war, and the strategy (or lack thereof) of the insurgency, that I found absolutely fascinating. It's quite long but worth the read.

I need to try to finish my Cloud Physics homework before tomorrow evening, when the Sweet 16 begins! I especially need LSU to beat Duke and for Gonzaga to top UCLA tomorrow for my bracket to be happy. Texas winning would also be very nice. As for the Bradley-Memphis game, I didn't have either team making it past this round, so I'm pulling for the upset for the ages. Basically, I'm all for the underdog (with the exception of Texas and Villanova in this tourney). I love college basketball!

Posted by Jared at 01:07 AM | Comments (0)

March 20, 2006

Pray for Innisfail

Here's an update on the severe tropical cyclone (hurricane) that struck northern Queensland, Australia yesterday, that I mentioned on my previous blog entry last night. Reports now are saying that the town of Innisfail was practically razed to the ground by the Category 5 Tropical Cyclone Larry, leaving thousands homeless, and that the banana and sugarcane crops have been ruined for at least 18 months. That's especially not good for Australia as a nation, since that region produces 90% of the nation's cane and bananas. This was the strongest cyclone ever to strike Australia, stronger, and now apparently as destructive or more so, than Cyclone Tracy, which devastated the northern city of Darwin on Christmas Eve 1974.

Posted by Jared at 09:26 AM | Comments (0)

March 19, 2006

Long Live the Mid-Majors!

Never before have I seen the Sports Cafe with anywhere near as many people as were there on Friday night for St Patrick's Day. It was absolutely insane. Of course, the number of people was probably boosted a bit by the fact it was Day 2 of the NCAA tourney, though they couldn't find remotes for some of the TV's/projection screens, resulting in a few scattered screens showing silly things like boxing or poker instead of tournament basketball, oh well. But quite a few of us ventured down to Sports Cafe at various stages of the day and for various amounts of time to take in some of the green/tourney atmosphere, it was rather festive. I think, though, that I'll be glad to see the Sports Cafe back to its usual, relatively tranquil self next Friday evening when trivia resumes.

Saturday was a fairly lazy day for me, in that I didn't leave my apartment, and that I watched basketball all day. On the other hand, it was a pretty productive day in that while I was watching all that great college basketball I managed to get ALL my grading done for this week. Any day on which I can get my work done while watching sports like that is a good day in my book. Especially when my new favourite teams, such as Wichita State, advance as I predicted on my brackets. I'm tellin ya, the mid-majors are having a major uprising this year (especially with today's additions to the Sweet 16 of Bradley and George Mason), and that's only a good thing for the NCAA tournament.

Today wasn't quite as productive in a work sense as yesterday, but that's okay. I went to church in the morning with Daniel, it was a good message on the problems we encounter in life discipleship. A lot to think about, especially with the time aspects of everything, namely how we spend our time doing what. I watched a bit more March Madness before heading into Walker for a couple hours to try to get unstuck on the mesoscale homework. Then this evening I went to the Bible study with Penn State Christian Grads for the first time in awhile, I finally felt like I wasn't drowning in work that needed my immediate attention. It wasn't a normal Bible study this week, more just talking about how well we as a group are/aren't meeting the group's stated goals/mission statement. Definitely some interesting discussion.

Tropical North Queensland in Australia was hit by a major tropical cyclone (hurricane) a few hours ago. Severe Tropical Cyclone Larry made landfall near the city of Innisfail, which is about an hour's drive south of Cairns. Larry was a Category 5 at landfall (though various reports also say it was as weak as a Cat 3, so who knows). It's currently weakened to a Category 3 over land, as it's ravaging the Atherton Tablelands area and continuing to race off to the west. Interestingly for me, I've driven around in that whole area that's getting smacked by the super cyclone. Damage and casualty reports are coming in still, but one thing's for sure, it's devastating for the sugarcane and banana farmers in that area. Keep the Aussies in your prayers, especially as there's the threat of another cyclone, Wati, potentially hitting Queensland in a few days.

Posted by Jared at 11:49 PM | Comments (0)

March 17, 2006

St Patrick's Midterm

I can finally breathe a sigh of relief now that this week's two tough midterm exams are over and done with. After spending Monday night finishing up the grading that I didn't get done over break, I spent all day Tuesday and Wednesday studying/freaking out over Wednesday evening's midterm exam in 521 (Atmospheric Dynamics). I really was quite nervous and depressed about the test beforehand, I was pretty sure I'd get something around a 40%. But Sukyoung made a pretty fair test, especially since she let us choose 4 out of 6 problems to do, and since the questions were pretty similar to our homework and past exam problems. So it took me a little over two hours, but I think I pulled out a decent grade on that test. Now it's just time to wait and see how Sukyoung will grade it.

Wednesday morning we were made even more nervous when Yvette asked us if we'd started studying for her Mesoscale midterm. When we told her no, that we all had a 521 midterm that evening, she said, "oh, I really would've been studying by now." Not a good sign. Thursday was pretty well dedicated to studying, but it wasn't nearly enough. We had the test this morning (who schedules an exam on St Patrick's Day anyway?), and I think I'd be lucky to score a 65%. There was just too much material covered to study for adequately in the time we had. Hopefully she's really nice with extra credit, because I'm definitely gonna need it...

At least now that that's over I can relax a bit and start enjoying that it's a) Friday, b) St Patrick's Day, and c) Day 2 of the NCAA Tournament. I sense that the rest of the day is gonna be a really good day. :-) But the weekend can't be all fun and games, because although our Cloud Physics midterm was pushed back from this coming Monday to the following Monday, homeworks were assigned to fill the void. Blah.

The weather's been a bit of a rollercoaster lately. Back on Monday it was 75 degrees here in State College, while back home in Cumberland there was a massive snowstorm that dumped 18 inches. That's really a tough call for which I'd prefer, because that much snow would be really cool. But since then it's been in the 30s and low 40s around here, kinda blah weather.

If ever there were more evidence needed that there are too many frivolous lawsuits in our culture today, look no further than this California man that sued himself for backing into his car with a dump truck. Idiot.

Well, time for me to go passionately cheer on schools I never see play except for this time of year. Some of my gutsy predictions include: Bucknell in the Sweet 16, Wichita State in the Elite 8, LSU over Duke in the Sweet 16, 16-seed Oral Roberts upsetting Memphis, and Villanova winning it all. Keepin my fingers crossed!

Posted by Jared at 01:37 PM | Comments (0)

March 13, 2006

Arizona Adventures

Spring Break has come and gone, and now it's time to get back to the grind, sigh. At least the last week in Arizona was a good time, even if not much of anything went quite like we'd planned it beforehand. But hey, what's a vacation without a little added spice?

The unexpected started way back on last Saturday. After seeing Daniel off at the Pittsburgh airport, I moseyed on over to my gate to do a bit of grading while I waited for my flight to Atlanta. I didn't have to wait very long when, lo and behold, Addison strolled up. Needless to say, we were both surprised to see each other in the airport waiting for the same flight. So that was a fun diversion for awhile, talkin with him and everything; grading was getting boring anyway. ;-)

My flights to Atlanta and then to Phoenix were uneventful, and I got into Phoenix around 8pm, a half hour or so after my parents' flight from Minneapolis landed. Because my Dad's cousin Judy had just had emergency surgery that day to repair complications from her 1964 appendectomy (complications that for whatever reason decided to rear their ugly head this particular week), and was to be in the hospital for several days, we weren't able to stay with Judy & Roger over in Mesa like had been originally planned. So we'd gotten in touch with my cousins Melissa & Marci about staying at their places (their houses are literally next door to each other in Avondale), and they came by the airport to pick us up. After some adventures in trying to find the car rental place near the airport and where we could actually park so we could go rent a car (the third time was the charm), my Dad & I discovered that not having a reservation was gonna cost us at least $100 extra, and that car rental tax at the Phoenix airport is an asinine 47% (compared to a little less than 20% off airport property), we just said 'forget it' and decided to wait till Monday morning, where my Dad had a reso over in Mesa, way on the other side of Phoenix from Melissa & Marci. Meanwhile, during the hour that my Dad & I were checking with various car rental places, Melissa & Marci took my mom to go get something to eat, except they apparently went to some ghetto restaurant that shut off their lights as they drove up, haha. By the time we made it back to their places I think everyone else was wondering what was taking us so long, hehe.

My cousin Jonathan (who had been down there since Wednesday) drove my parents & I to Melissa & Jeremy's church, where the whole clan of us went that week. The unplanned thing there was that I spent most of the church service with my right thumb submerged in a cup of ice water, due to my mom accidentally slamming her car door on it (I have no idea why my hand was there, but during much jumping around in pain outside the church I at least managed not to say a bad word, hehe). But the sermon was fantastic, and both my parents and I are hoping we can get a CD of it or something. After church all of us went out to eat, and then we just went back to the houses for the afternoon to relax and everything. I joined Jonathan, Jeremy & Marc (Marci's husband) in watching the Gonzaga game in the evening, and it was fun hearing about all their connections to people in the game (Jeremy & Marc both graduated from Gonzaga, and Jonathan played high school basketball in Spokane either with or against current Gonzaga players (including Adam Morrison!)). It was just a great time catching up with my cousins, I loved it. After everyone else went to bed, Jonathan, Marci & I stayed up to watch "The Day After Tomorrow." None of us had seen it before, but I definitely loved ridiculing it for its blatant disregard for what might be even potentially physically possible, hehe.

On Monday morning Marci & Jonathan drove my parents & I over to Mesa to pick up our rental car. (Jonathan ended up not coming with my parents & I on our little trip up to the Grand Canyon, so that was another little change in plans.) We ended up spending probably an hour at Enterprise because they were busy, and they were doing everything they could to get my dad the Chrysler 300 he wanted to rent. By that point we'd had enough adventures with rental cars and everything, but more were to come later in the week, more on that in a bit. We took the afternoon lazily making our way up to Flagstaff via the gorgeous road that goes through Sedona and Oak Creek Canyon. We would've probably spent a little more time poking around in those places, except since it was gonna be too cloudy to visit Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff for their night program, we just wanted to make sure we got up to our motel in Flagstaff in time to catch the back-to-back episodes of "24" that were airing that night. Yes, my parents are big fans too. :-)

My parents & I got up early Tuesday morning to make the drive up to the Grand Canyon, about an hour and a half or so north of Flagstaff. It was a nice day, at least to start, mostly sunny and 50 degrees with a stiff 25-30 mph wind when we got there shortly after 9am. My first glimpse of the Grand Canyon was at the Mather Point overlook right near the visitor center, and I must say my breath was literally stolen from me by the immensity of it. I knew it'd be big and a massive hole in the ground and everything, but no matter how many pictures or descriptions you see or hear beforehand, nothing can prepare you for just how awesome a sight the Grand Canyon is. From Grand Canyon Village we took the free shuttle bus westward on a loop to several vistas that are only accessible by the shuttle. Each one offered something new, but towards the end of the loop everything started looking more or less the same, I think I was on a bit of visual overload by then. But that was probably fine anyway, because by the time we got back to the Village it was 1:30 and about to start drizzling. We sure managed to pick the right time to see it! I'd definitely love to go back to the Grand Canyon again, though next time I'd for sure like to go down into the canyon to get a bit of a different perspective and everything. Though I'm not sure that taking a ride down on one of those Grand Canyon burros is a very comforting thought... After we got back to Flagstaff (where it was snowing, sigh), we took a jaunt up to Sunset Crater, a cool area with an extinct volcano and 900-year old lava flows and such. A very surreal landscape, and very worth seeing, I'd say.

Wednesday morning we woke up to two inches of slushy snow on our car, with more coming down. I definitely wasn't coming to Arizona to see the snow, but oh well. Some of the people in the motel lobby were looking at me rather strangely when I walked out in the falling snow in just shorts and a t-shirt, but it actually was quite nice out, I didn't mind it. We had lunch in Phoenix with Jonathan, Marci & Marc, and I was quite glad we got the chance to see them one more time while we were down there. We dropped Jonathan off at the airport on our way to Tucson, as he was headed back to Spokane. Once we got down to Tucson, my parents & I met up with my friend Cory for dinner at a place called Gentle Ben's right next to the University of Arizona campus. After that my parents went back to the motel, and Cory showed me around campus a bit, giving me a tour of the various optics labs he does research in as a grad student, and then showing me a couple of other cool places near campus. While I didn't really get to meet many of his friends, it was still really cool to get to see his new place down there and what all he's up to at Arizona.

Cory had class Thursday morning, so I got up and did some grading down at the student union for a bit. The plan had been for Cory then to take me hiking for a couple hours in the afternoon before he had to drive up to Phoenix to catch a flight for his Spring Break, but at lunch he informed me that one of the lasers was misbehaving, and that he had to get it working before he could leave, meaning that there wasn't time to go hiking with him out amongst the saguaro. Sigh. So I got in touch with my parents, and they came back into Tucson from where they were west of town to pick me up. We spent some time at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, which was quite fascinating. There were over 300 different species of animals there, not to mention a stunning variety of desert plants. It's definitely well worth the price of admission. After that we went back to a scenic overlook on the way to the museum so that we could get a nice shot of whatever sunset there might be. I climbed up the hill a fair bit to try to get a better view of everything, but it was so cloudy the sunset was appearing to be a bit of a dud, so I decided to climb/scramble back down while there was still at least a little light. Well, much to my chagrin, a couple times during my nervous climb back down I took a peek over my shoulder, and wouldn't you know it, the sunset had suddenly set the sky ablaze rather surprisingly. Unfortunately I wasn't in any position to take a decent picture of it until after it'd really faded away quite a bit, bummer. But my parents, who stayed put at the overlook while I climbed, said it was certainly spectacular.

Friday morning we spent entirely in Saguaro National Park, driving around, walking a trail or two and enjoying the sights of the giant cacti that were literally everywhere in that part of the desert, it was quite a sight. It was very different from anything I'd ever seen before, that's for sure. It was quite literally a forest of saguaro, they were that thick in some places. We went back to Tucson for lunch, where we ate at a Waffle House. I thought they were only in the Southeast, so I was surprised to find them in Arizona. I was actually kinda excited to see one, particularly after hearing Daniel rave about it ever since we got to Penn State last fall. I liked it, though I had to text Daniel to find out what would taste good on grits, hehe. I even made sure to get a picture outside the Waffle House with the cacti in front of the restaurant. The people driving by may have thought I was weird, but whatever.

On our drive up to Phoenix we encountered a couple of dust storms and saw a bunch of dust devils, even some pretty big ones. We were almost to Phoenix on Interstate 10, just south of the 202 loop, when traffic suddenly slowed way down, and as I discovered, down to a complete stop. So I slammed on my brakes and was breathing a sigh of relief that I was about to stop in time to avoid hitting the pickup in front of me, when all of a sudden -- SLAM! -- we were rear-ended. That pushed us into the truck in front of us, and then we were rear-ended again. All three collisions happened in about a second, it was bang-bang-bang. Long story short, we were car #3 in a five-car pile-up on a stretch of Interstate 10 that's ranked as the most dangerous part of freeway in the entire United States. Lovely. Thankfully it appeared that everyone was okay, and the first four vehicles were all able to drive away after the police came and talked to everyone. The last truck wasn't so lucky though. He slammed into the back of the fourth vehicle at about 25-30 mph probably, which pushed everyone else into each other ahead of him. His airbags deployed and the front of his truck was smashed in really good -- he had to be towed away. And he only has liability insurance, not collision, so this is gonna definitely hurt him financially. It sure doesn't pay not to have insurance... The damage to the 300 wasn't too too bad, some minor dents on the back bumper, and then the front grill was busted (part of it was actually on the trailer hitch of the pickup in front of us), and one of the headlights was askew.

So all that excitement delayed us about an hour in getting up to Mesa to visit my great aunt Mae (98 years old), Roger & Judy and their daughters Kristin & Linda. We all went to the hospital to visit with Judy for a couple hours, and we were all very glad to see that she's doing well and recovering nicely from the surgery. After that Mae took us all out (plus Roger & Judy's son David and his wife Arlinda) to eat at a buffet called Souper Salad (I bet y'all can guess what sort of food was there). It was good to acquaint/reacquaint myself with all of them, it'd been a dozen years or so since I'd seen most of them. We spent the night at Roger & Judy's house, and after having to wake up after far too few hours of sleep, Linda & Kristin drove me to the Phoenix airport so I could catch my 7am flight to Atlanta. It was even raining in Phoenix that morning before I left, the first measurable rain there since Oct 18 of last year. Talk about an incredible dry spell.

My flights to Atlanta and Pittsburgh were fairly uneventful, except for the cold that I was developing caused my ears to be in a lot of pain during the descents of both flights. Even for the whole 3-hour drive back to State College with Daniel, my right ear felt like there was a giant pillow or earmuff inside, I really couldn't hear all that well. My ears were even popping all day yesterday, it was crazy.

I was too miserable from my cold to go to church yesterday, so instead I went out and bought some meds. I definitely don't need to be feeling crappy this week, I've got too much to do. I managed to finish the Dynamics assignment yesterday afternoon, though it took longer than I was hoping. I still have about 20 labs to grade by Thursday, in addition to Wednesday evening's Dynamics midterm and Friday morning's Mesoscale midterm. Be afraid, very afraid.

Some interesting links I found over the last week... The sun's next solar cycle will likely be significantly stronger than the previous one, which could cause heaps of problems for communications, satellites and astronauts. Stay tuned. And in further "proof" of global warming, Algeria -- Algeria!! -- had over two feet of snow last week. Crazy stuff. Judging from the response to a fan-held sign at a game in the World Baseball Classic last week, Cuba still doesn't understand the concept of free speech. And finally, a Kansas preacher is shamefully protesting at the funerals of Iraqi war veterans, with signs such as "thank God for dead soldiers." Doing that is most definitely very crass, inappropriate, and certainly very un-Christian. Unfortunately it doesn't seem like he or his group will be stopping their outrageous protests anytime soon. Sigh.

And in one final item, I found out over break last week that two of the five photos I submitted to last fall's campus photo contest at Gustavus placed in two different categories -- one ("2005 Physics Seniors," a circle picture at the picnic) won a 1st place, and another ("Ten-Person Toboggan") won 2nd, while my other three were finalists or honorable mention. Since I didn't have the Grand Prize winning photo I didn't win the iPod Nano, but a little cash will still be very nice. :-) If you want to view the winning photos and other finalists, click here.

Well, time for me to hit the books. This is gonna suck...

Posted by Jared at 01:42 PM | Comments (0)

March 04, 2006

Packing for Arizona

Hooray, Spring Break is here! Today was a really busy day, largely because of housing stuff. Jon & I almost got ourselves into quite the situation with the apartment -- we almost signed the lease before asking about the lease dates. Oops. Had we signed on the dotted line for that one we both would've been homeless for at least a week before we could've moved in, given when our leases are up. Fortunately we realized it though, and fortunately there was also another apartment in Mt Nittany (another corner apartment, thank goodness) available, except this one's on first floor instead of third, oh well. But we got the lease signed and the deposit paid and everything, so it is indeed official that we'll be living in Mt Nittany Apartments starting August 1st. The one annoying thing was that when we were filling out the lease agreement stuff, they needed to have us take a form to have our parents cosign on the lease. Talk about ridiculous! I can understand that for an undergrad, but for Pete's sake, we're grad students here, with a steady income! But the rules are the rules, and since we're technically not being paid for 40 hrs/wk of work, they require a cosigner. Jon's even 27, and they still made him have his parents cosign. ARGH. This is definitely a landlord's market, and as Petters put it so eloquently, "they've got us by the balls;" they can do whatever they want and charge whatever they want. But at least that's done and we don't have to worry about it anymore over break or after break. Yay!

The ice hung around on the trees basically all day today, making for a beautiful day around campus and around town, since it was partly sunny all day too. This picture here was from the morning at my apartment complex.

Went to Sports Cafe tonight to do trivia, there were still quite a few of us to participate. We came in second tonight, but that's not too bad I guess. It was definitely a good send-off from State College heading into Spring Break.

I've been trying to get some stuff packed tonight, or at the very least set out so that I can quick throw it all together in the morning. Daniel & I are planning on getting an early start, driving out at 6:30am to head to the Pittsburgh airport (3 hours away), where he'll go down to Mobile to visit Katie for the week, and I'll make the trip to the desert southwest. At least both he and my parents will be able to fly tomorrow to their respective destinations, seeing as how Northwest Airlines reached a tentative deal with the pilots earlier today. That's quite a relief. But now the tentative plans my parents & I had made for our week in Arizona are a bit in limbo, because my Dad's cousin Judy, who we were gonna be staying with much of the time, is in the hospital and might need emergency surgery tomorrow. So who knows how that's all gonna affect our plans throughout the week, but I'm sure we'll still figure somethin out and make it work. If I get a chance I'll try to post somethin while I'm in Arizona. Peace out, time for me to try and get 3-4 hours of sleep.

Posted by Jared at 01:08 AM | Comments (2)

March 03, 2006

Icy Wonderland

Ugh, I'm so tired. And so unmotivated to do more work tonight. I got most of the Dynamics homework done today, though now I'm stuck on the last part right along with everyone else. I hate that class.

The major disappointment of the day actually came when my student who called me "incompetent" on the lab he turned in last week (see my previous post) didn't even show up to lab today. And I was so looking forward to a showdown too... Oh well, I guess that'll just have to wait until after spring break.

We had a nice little ice storm today. I woke up this morning to a nice downpour of freezing rain, always a good way to start the day. It made for some really pretty scenes around the area, everything's coated in a good tenth of an inch of ice. After Daniel & I gave up on Dynamics for the evening, I had to spend about 20 minutes scraping the ice off all my windows before I could give him a ride back up to his place, that was about the thickest, toughest ice I've ever scraped off my car. Hopefully the sun comes out tomorrow morning and is out for a little while before the ice melts and drops off the trees, I'd like to get a few more pictures around here.

Jon & I came to a decision tonight on a place to live. This morning we came to a decision on the maximum price we could pay for the duplex while not busting our budgets, and the landlord, despite his absolute best efforts, just wasn't able to cut the price much more. I think that's actually kind of a good thing, I'd rather have it that way and be able to say no easily (well, as easily as it can be to say no to a place as nice as that...), then have him swing some deals and get down really close to our target price, which would've forced us to think long and hard about it again. Oh well. But at least with that decided, we've elected to go for the place in Mt Nittany Apartments we saw last week and liked. That's a nice place too, I think we'll both like it there quite a bit. Staying within our means and being able to save a little money will be a nice thing, definitely.

I think I'll make tonight an early night and get to bed before 1am. I know I won't be able to get much sleep tomorrow night, I always have a hard time falling asleep the night before a trip, particularly when I have to wake up early like this Saturday morning, when Daniel & I will probably have to try to leave by 6:30 or 7am to head out for the Pittsburgh airport. Hopefully Northwest Airlines doesn't strike, that'd just add too many complications and too much stress over the next week.

Posted by Jared at 12:37 AM | Comments (0)

March 02, 2006

Housing Hunt

Spring break is certainly approaching very quickly. On the one hand I'm a big fan of that because I'm going someplace warm and seeing friends and family, but on the other hand I'm not so big a fan of that because there's so much to do, not just before break but especially after break. Ugh...

I did a bunch of grading on Monday evening, though only after watching the most exciting episode of "24" yet this season (President Logan is a spineless twit, argh!). Okay, and an episode of "Stargate." And some SportsCenter. I'm so bad. But before I went in to uni on Tuesday morning I had it all done at least, so that's a plus.

Though one of the guys in one of my lab sections taught me an important lesson that I can now share with all y'all out there: NEVER insult the grader/TA on a piece of assessment you turn into them to be graded! Okay, so here's what happened. Usually I try to email my students every week with what specific chapters of the book they'll need for lab, purely as a convenience for them so that they don't have to lug the whole book around everywhere. Well, last week I forgot to email my Thursday sections ahead of time, so some of them didn't bring both the needed chapters. And then I didn't have enough copies (which I made for the people who didn't bring their chapter(s))to go around for my second section on Thursday because the copier ran out of toner, so I told them that they could turn in that problem the next day for no late penalty. Some of the kids improvised and free-handed the map/figure on their paper, which was completely fine. One of them then wrote on his lab something to the effect of: "I don't have time to come by tomorrow, so this is what you're going to get. I expect not to be penalized for your incompetence not to send out the email. That's your job as a TA." I was a bit stunned, to be honest, to read something so insolent on the lab. I couldn't just let that go without comment though, so I started writing a reply explaining that the emails are a convenience, not a requirement, for me to send out, and that if I don't send them an email they're supposed to: a) email me and ask what chapters they're supposed to bring, at which point I'd realize I forgot to let the class know; b) be aware of the pattern of doing in lab one week what was covered in lecture the previous week and bringing those chapters; or c) playing it safe and bringing the whole book. I know I also told him to take responsibility for his own education. My response was probably about a half page of red ink, by the time it was all said and done. Yeah, I kinda went off on him, but he really deserved it. And when I showed it all to Dr Nese today, he said he'd back me up on this if the kid came to him to complain. So what if the kid hates me from now on, I really could care less. I still can't figure out what would possess someone to directly insult their grader on something they turn in to that person to be graded. Sigh... I'll find out tomorrow morning how that all goes over with this kid, but I'm expecting either icy stares and scowls, or perhaps even an argument. Bring it on!

I didn't really accomplish a whole lot Tuesday. Other than 25c wings with Daniel, and then in the evening throwing a couple photo albums up on my Facebook profile. My brain was fried from teaching Meteo 003 and working on Cloud Physics.

Today was kind of a busy day. Right after Cloud Physics Jon & I drove over to a duplex on Easterly to take a look at it. It was kinda dumpy, and didn't even have a hookup for a washer/dryer. I'm definitely not a fan of having to drive to a laundromat, so that place is probably out. Then the second duplex we looked at was really nice. I mean, REALLY nice. Seriously, I'm in love with the place, it's amazing. Two bedrooms, one bath, a nice-sized kitchen, dining room, living room (with nice new hardwood floors), and then a whole basement too (it's just one giant room, but that's still cool), along with a w/d and dishwasher. Plus it's in a nice, quiet neighborhood and it's got a good-sized yard, vegetable garden and even a garage out back for extra storage. I mean, the landlord's done a marvelous job with it, it looks absolutely great. Now the downsides: it's about a 30-minute walk from Walker Building (which will be fine on nice days, annoying on crappy days), and it's expensive, particularly with the utilities, none of which are included. The landlord likes Jon & I, and we like the landlord, he's a really nice guy and very willing to try to swing a deal; he really wants to get us to move in there, and we'd love to live there too, but it's just not gonna happen unless he's able to come down a bit in price, because we both need to save a bit of money over what our current places would be next year, that's one of the main reasons for us rooming together. And there's at least one apartment we both like where we'd be able to save a good chunk of change, so we'll see what the landlord's able to negotiate it down to tomorrow... It'd be nice if Petters & I could have something decided on where we're gonna live by Friday, that's what we're aiming for.

For the WxChallenge forecast contest, this week and next should be kinda fun, since we're forecasting for Duluth, MN! Woot woot! I better be able to put my knowledge of the area to good use, though I got off to a poor start the first day. They better record some precipitation there tonight, or I'm gonna be really upset...

Speaking of precip, we're supposed to get a cool tenth to quarter of an inch of sleet/freezing rain over the next 12 hours or so, perhaps even topped by an inch of snow. That'll be super-fun to be going around in... Why can't it just be all snow? That'd be so much cooler, and so much easier to deal with. From a Minnesotan's perspective, this has been a very weak winter out here this year.

Plans are starting to crystallize for my week down in Arizona, which is nice. A little cookout on Sunday after church with a bunch of the relatives, a trip with my parents & cousin Jonathan on Mon & Tue up to the Grand Canyon & Flagstaff, visiting Cory for a night down in Tucson, either on Tue night with Jonathan or Wed night by myself, and then Thu & Fri nights back in Phoenix with all the relatives before flying out early Saturday morning. That sure doesn't leave much time for studying my Dynamics notes to study for that midterm (or studying for either of my other two midterms that follow right on the heels of that one), or reading any "journicles" (the pet name for journal articles that, as far as I know, Kerrie & Amber invented) that I need to peruse so I can write my three term papers in April. I wonder how much of that stuff I should bring along, taking into consideration the fact that how much I bring is inversely proportional to how much I'll actually do. Hmmm, decisions, decisions.

Posted by Jared at 01:50 AM | Comments (0)