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August 31, 2006
Stupid Power Outage...
Power outages really suck. Mind you, this wasn't even a power out during which I was anywhere that was suddenly lacking electricity. It was a long power out across the West Campus area (probably another squirrel, thank goodness I don't live at White Course anymore) that afflicted Walker right at 5pm yesterday. I thought the only thing that would directly affect me was the fact that my work computer was shut down and I had to turn it back on this morning. But no, after I go through all the effort of spending extra time making my forecast and the graphics for CNET and get my shirt and tie with the shorts and sandals on, I find out that none of the Campus Weather Service graphics are updating; they were either blank or showing what they'd updated with prior to yesterday's power outage. It turns out there's some computer somewhere in the server farm somewhere in Walker that hadn't been rebooted, but we didn't know which one it was because all the meteo computer staff were gone for the day already. So, long story longer, I couldn't tape my gussied-up CNET forecast today.
I'd even spent extra time looking at models and everything to make my forecast, so that I could have time to make some slick animations (my attempt at making them failed), and hopefully pinpoint the start of the rain from the remnants of Ernesto here in State College. So my prediction as of 3pm this afternoon for the onset of rain? About 6pm. We shall see tomorrow how well my forecast verifies. But all indications are for 2 to 4 inches of rain overall through Saturday, possibly more. 'Twill be a tad wet.
Tonight was still dry though, which was a good thing since it was the date of the final week of Wingfest. That meant all the winners from the previous six weeks were there (except Racers {hey buddy}, which was a no-show, oddly), and all the wings were good. My favourite? The mountain jerk wings from, well, I forget the name of the place, but it wasn't Damon's, Quaker Steak, CPI or Down Under Steakhouse. It was the other one, whatever it was named. Yeah, it was really memorable. ;-)
In the event that anyone comes across any scalped tickets for cricket matches for "The Ashes" matchup between England and Australia in the land down under, buyer beware. You know, I just didn't want any of the rabid cricket fans in these parts to be disappointed when they buy a ticket off eBay only to be rejected at the gate in Melbourne.
And speaking of Australia, Prime Minister John Howard said something very politically incorrect recently: he told Muslim immigrants to Australia (particularly the extremists) that they need to learn English and become integrated into Australian society, which would include treating women equally. How dare he advocate equality.
Less than 40 hours until the kickoff of Penn State vs Akron!! Oh yeah, and the new grad student welcome picnic and party are tomorrow evening. And then tailgating starts Saturday morning, Ernesto or shine. Should be a fantastic weekend!!
Posted by Jared at 11:56 PM | Comments (3)
August 30, 2006
Weekend With Ernesto
We weather weenies in Walker Building have been paying a fair bit of attention the last few days to Tropical Storm Ernesto (though as of this moment it's a Tropical Depression after crossing the Florida Peninsula, but will likely be back to T.S. status by morning). Ever since yesterday morning at least (because that's when I started paying any real attention) the remnants of Ernesto have been forecast to pass right through western and central Pennsylvania on Saturday, which would make the tailgate and football game very, very wet. But hey, I'll be fine, I just bought a cheap poncho tonight from Wal-Mart, so I'm all set! A few raindrops (or even the steady downpours that Ernesto will bring) aren't gonna keep me away from the first tailgate of the season!
Two more days until the Penn State football season opener!!! WE ARE... PENN STATE!!
Posted by Jared at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
August 29, 2006
First Visit to Camden Yards
Hmm, it'd appear that once again I've slacked a bit the past few days and haven't put up a blog entry in nearly a week. I guess life just got in the way. I'm sure you've all been able to survive without the latest updates from the Life O' Jared anyway. :-P
Yet again outdoor baseball has shown its superiority to the sterile Metrodome. On Tuesday last week I drove down to Baltimore with Jacob, where we met up with Carl to head to the Twins-Orioles game at Camden Yards, my first-ever visit to that stadium. So that we wouldn't have to mess with ballpark/downtown traffic we just took the light rail to the stadium from Carl's neighborhood. (Tangent: In my experiences visiting various cities, I've become a huge proponent of public transportation, particularly trains. 
I really hope that Minneapolis/St Paul will develop a top-notch network of rail lines a la Melbourne, Australia (beyond the Hiawatha Line, the only one currently in operation in MSP), and it'd be nice if CATA (the bus company) here in State College wasn't completely mismanaged. You know, like allow people to purchase day passes, provide monthly passes at something at least resembling a discount, and provide more routes at more times, all of which would increase ridership and make it less necessary to own a car in this town. /Tangent) It was a gorgeous evenings for a ballgame, though we did have a tad bit of an adventure with our tickets. We showed up early to get our tickets, then went across the street to a popular local watering hole on gamedays briefly. 
Then when we were about to head into the stadium, we noticed our tickets were for Friday's game vs the Devil Rays. Hmmm. So we went back to the ticket lady, and as soon as she saw us she immediately knew what the problem was and fixed it for us; she realized her mistake a minute or two after we left initially, and she was just hoping we'd come back so she could rectify the situation. Overall I'd give the Orioles ticket staff a big thumbs up for politeness, and the three of us all thought we were back in the Midwest for a few minutes there! :-) 
Anyway, we got in the stadium in time to see the first pitch, and we enjoyed some delicious Boog's BBQ (though I perhaps put on a tad too much horseradish in a couple places, gobs of it can get really spicy!) before heading up to our seats in the upper deck. It was an absolutely gorgeous view of downtown Baltimore from our seats, and it's just too bad the Twins bats were silenced by the Orioles rookie pitcher, who at one point retired 21 Twins batters in a row. Combine that with Carlos Silva giving up FIVE solo home runs to Baltimore, and three to a single batter (a light-hitting rookie, no less), and you had a recipe for a 6-3 Twins loss. Despite the loss it was still a very enjoyable evening, and afterward the three of us went out to a place in Carl's neighborhood to grab some wings with Old Bay seasoning on them -- those were some of the best wings I've ever had.
Shortly after Carl left for work in the morning Jacob & I left for State College. Hooray work. Though in actuality since "work" that day consisted of forecasting and recording a CNET weather segment, I really have nothing to complain about. :-)
Wingfest last week was, in my opinion, the best week so far in terms of quality. Just about every flavor of wings I had was delicious (particularly the Carribean Jerk and Honey Bourbon BBQ from Wegmans). I brought Tim and Ben from PSCG along for the experience, as they'd never been to Wingfest before. This coming week is the final, so all the winning vendors from the past few weeks are gonna be there. You won't wanna miss it!
Attendance at trivia was a bit sparse on Friday evening (just Victor, Daniel, Katie and me) due to a whole bunch of people going whitewater rafting down at Ohiopyle, but we managed to hold down the fort and get 3rd place in surprising fashion, by getting the final question wrong with an all-in wager. Our team name was "The Ozzie Guillen School of Anger Management," which got a few laughs from the baseball fans in attendance.
A bunch of us went out to the Phyrst on Saturday night (woo!), which was fun. Graham Spanier, the President of Penn State University, even showed up to play with the Phyrst Phamly band with a very unique contraption of an instrument -- I'm not quite sure what it was, but it looked cool. Somewhere during the course of the evening, amidst the fun bluegrass and folk music, I lost the battle with Jacob about who knew more completely and totally obscure Bible trivia. And yes, at one point we were both going through the order of the books of the Old Testament out loud. At the Phyrst. On a Saturday night. For those of you that weren't there, you really missed out. ;-)
Due to Sunday's two inches of rain, the softball field was unplayable, so the end-of-the-season celebration for church softball was relegated just to a party at Pizza Hut. Adam and Leslie made baseball cards for everyone on the team though, to show their appreciation for everyone showing up and playing. I think that's a really cool idea, and here's an image of my baseball card. They labeled my position as utility because I played three positions in one game and I think six or seven positions overall during the course of the season. To see the entire album of cards and photos, click here.
And we might be taking intramural flag football a bit too seriously this fall, but hey, I like it. We've installed a version of the Cover 2 defense, and we've had a couple practices already to start getting down the QB-WR timing on passes and routes and whatnot, yet the first game isn't until late September. I think we all just have football fever, it's gripped this town. Only four more days to go until Penn State has their season opener vs Akron!!!!
Posted by Jared at 01:04 AM | Comments (1)
August 22, 2006
Denny's Pounder
Saturday was a pretty lazy day, I can't even really remember what I did until evening came and I made dinner (the main dish, at least) for Jon, Steph, Shannon and her friend Colby who was visiting for the weekend, returning the favor from Wednesday when Jon & Steph cooked dinner. I made one of the few dishes I know how to make, 
my chicken/mushrooms/broccoli dish on rice, this time with General Tso's sauce instead of spicy orange sauce. The others got some corn on the cob and some wine, and it was delicious! A bit after dinner we all went downtown to Bar Bleu where we joined up with several of the other meteo grads that weren't out of town for a few hours of fun while listening to some nice jazz by the Andrew Jackson Band. And I have no idea what Steph is doing in this picture on the left, but I just had to post it!
After church on Sunday, Jeff, Vic, Daniel, Katie & I all piled into a car and took a road trip over to Clearfield for a (really) late lunch at Denny's Beer Barrel Pub in Clearfield, almost an hour northwest of State College. Jeff & Vic had been talking up this place for quite awhile, building it up to legendary status just about, so we just had to go make the pilgrimage when the opportunity arose. 
You see, Denny's is famous for having Pennsylvania's, and possibly the world's, largest hamburgers, including 2, 3, 6, 15 and 50-lb burgers. (!!) As a mini-test to see how things would go if we got one of those bigger burgers, we all got 1-lb burgers, except for Katie, who got "only" a 1/3-pounder. Jeff only finished about half of his, Daniel got over 3/4 done, while Vic & I both polished off the pounder. Vic must've been absolutely ravenous though, as he finished his burger and fries in about 8 minutes. 8 minutes for a pound of beef and an order of fries!! Vic's definitely game to try the 2-lb challenge next time we go, but I don't think I'd be able to do it, I was really running out of steam toward the end of the 1-pounder. We were all pretty much in a food coma on the way back to State College though, and I don't think any of us ate really anything for supper!
Sunday evening I hosted the PSCG Bible study at my place. We had been thinking of canceling it this week because we didn't think very many people were gonna be in town, but it's a good thing we had it because ten people showed up!
Yesterday evening was the final regular season game of the year for church softball, as we hosted Berean Bible Fellowship from Unionville. Their pitcher was pretty good, and we lost by a score of 16-4. But hey, at least that's better than last week when we lost to First Baptist of Bellefonte 36-7. There's still kind of a game next week, an end-of-the-season party and intrasquad game.
Then last night around 9:30 I went down to the church and let myself in (since I now have a loaner key) to practice piano for a couple hours. It'd been a year since I'd played any piano at all, and I was a bit rusty for sure. I split time between playing a few hymns just to warm up a bit, trying to start to work through Julian & Suzanne's wedding music (which I just got on Sunday), and messing around a little bit with some pieces I used to be able to play, like "Raindrop" Prelude by Chopin, one of my favourite (but pretty technically-difficult) pieces I've ever learned. Even though I was stumbling on a lot of notes, I was honestly rather surprised at how well I could still play some of this stuff, especially after not having practiced or played them at all in at least a year. It sure gives me a little more hope and confidence that I can learn the wedding music over the next four and a half weeks. In any case, it sure felt good to play piano again, I've missed it.
It's only been two months since I last got the oil changed on my car, but I did kinda have that little 3200-mile road trip to Alabama and Minnesota/Wisconsin earlier this summer, so it's high time I get that done. So that's where I'm headed now, and once I'm done with that I'm gonna be picking up Jacob and we'll be heading down to Baltimore to watch the Twins-Orioles game at Camden Yards! We'll be meeting up with Carl and staying at his place tonight, it should be a blast! We'll be coming back tomorrow morning, and I definitely need to be back since I'm going on-air for CNET again tomorrow afternoon (and Thursday). Watch for me on TV, I'm gonna have my "PSU Meteorology...Twins Win!" sign with me! Go Twins!!
Posted by Jared at 01:40 PM | Comments (1)
August 18, 2006
As Luck Would Have It
I finally broke down on Wednesday evening and went to the Hiway Pizza poker tournament. Jeff, Vic, Jacob and others have been trying to get me to go to that for several months, and I decided to give in and just give it a shot for once. It's a completely free tourney, and that definitely played a role in my decision to show up and give it a whirl. So there were only six people there total, including myself, and two-thirds of us were Meteo grads, the aforementioned Jeff, Vic & Jacob. I slowly and steadily increased my chip total while the three of them were the first ones eliminated, giving me enough of a stack to use my apparently unorthodox playing style to pull off the victory. Woooo. So what did I get for my win? Not a $25 Hiway gift certificate like they'd give away if there were more people playing, but a free t-shirt which admittedly is kinda cool. So all in all it wasn't too shabby. I don't know how many more times I'll be back to Hiway for poker, especially since Men's Group for PSCG is gonna be starting up pretty soon here, and I place a much higher priority on that than poker.
Last night was Week 5 of Wing Challenge, and this week's big draw was Quaker Steak & Lube "Best Wings USA" (which did have very good wings, as advertised, especially their Asian Sesame flavor), though the American Eatinghouse (or whatever it was called, I can't remember) had some amazing Italian wings. The biggest disappointment of the night was Kelly's, the really nice and expensive steak & seafood restaurant in Boalsburg. I was expecting big things from their Jamaican Jerk flavor, but it had absolutely zero spice, and very little actual flavor. They were less than ordinary, actually. At least the weather cooperated again, for a beautiful evening for the second week in a row at Wingfest.
After a few weeks of not living up to our potential, we finally returned to 1st place in Friday night team trivia at G-Man, coming back from 3rd place entering the final question to win by a point. Our team name this week? "Maurice Clarett's Prison Boyfriend." I had no input on that, I thought Jeff was gonna go with "The Maurice Clarett Gun Show" or somethin, but whatever. I'm just happy we won.
I gotta get me some of these t-shirts!
Posted by Jared at 11:47 PM | Comments (1)
August 15, 2006
Softball Smashing
I'm pretty sure I haven't ever been in, or even heard of, a softball game quite like the one I was in last night with the E Free church team. It was a road game at First Baptist in Bellefonte, and first of all their field is somewhat unique, in that it's on a plateau carved out of Bald Eagle Ridge, so there's a huge dropoff just beyond the first base line (when playing left field it's gorgeous to see the valley and the next ridge as a backdrop to the field of play), and then a steep hillside in deep left and left-center field. Any ball that hits the hill on the fly is a homerun, or a double if it bounces or rolls up onto it, so First Baptist is of course well-practiced in "swinging for the fences." But anyway, onto the score. We were missing quite a few players, and they had a lineup full of power hitters, so it's perhaps understandable that they beat us 36-7 after six and a half innings of play. But if we would've decided to stop after four and a half innings, when the mercy rule would've taken effect, the score would've been just 23-2. In either case we lost pretty badly, but we still had a good time. We made a few errors here and there, but they were crushing the ball to the outfield so well that even with a perfect game fielding, we still would've lost by 20, especially with us being virtually unable to hit a ball out of the infield off their crafty starting pitcher and his nasty spin. Allowing 12-run innings just doesn't do a whole lot toward helping you win the game. :-) The only comparable slow-pitch softball game to this was with "Team Weather" when we mercied some team 19-1 after 5 innings back in July.
Oh, and I also found out at the softball game yesterday that I'll probably be playing piano at a wedding here in State College in late September. Word got around to Suzanne that I have played piano in the past, and she and Julian (they're both from the E Free church) have been desperately looking for a pianist who's available that date. I told her that I'd even though I'm really rusty from not having played at all in a year, I'd try to shake it off and at least take a look at the music, but that I couldn't promise that I could do it for sure. Well, there goes a fair bit of my free time for the next five or six weeks, but it'll be good to get some of my piano skills back. I'll have to look into getting a key to the church, since that's the only place I know of where I could practice...
Ahh, football is back. Even though it was a preseason game I did watch pretty much the whole Vikings game (and thank goodness Vikings coach Brad Childress opted not to go for a last-second field goal that would've sent it to overtime!), partly to see rookie QB Tarvaris Jackson out of Alabama State, who's priming himself to swipe the backup QB job, and to hear how Tony Kornheiser would do in the Monday Night Football booth. Overall I'd have to say I like him in the booth for his wit, and for how he makes fun of Joe Theismann, who I think is a terrible announcer. As for the new Vikings uniforms, however... Well, I don't think they're quite as bad as Uni Watch says they are, but I still think they're pretty bad. Their old uniforms (home, at least) were one of the best in the NFL, and now they have to go add that awful side stripe and piping on the jersey and the pants. Yuck. I'll wait for a full evaluation of their road unis until I see them play at Pittsburgh this Saturday for their 2nd preseason game. I wasn't really a fan of their old road unis, but judging from the new home uniforms, the new away unis will likely be a major downgrade. Oh well.
Posted by Jared at 11:58 PM | Comments (2)
August 13, 2006
So Out of Shape
If there's one thing I like less than being out of shape, it's the process you need to go through in order to get yourself back into shape. After having taken a cool two months off from my intended summer jogging program (I knew it wouldn't last the whole summer), I decided to start it up again. At least a little bit. Part of my motivation is wanting to be in shape for intramural flag football this fall, another part is seeing my roommate Petters going out for 11-mile runs (granted, he's training for a marathon, something I'll never do), and the rest is just a general want to be in some semblance of shape. But even though it's been two months since I've run, it's still depressing when I can't even jog for 12 minutes without taking a little break in the middle to walk. Le sigh. I guess it'll come back eventually. But at least the weather's been and will be fantastic for the foreseeable future for jogging. The motivation forecast is a little murkier, however.
Jon & I got a lot closer to getting everything finished for the whole setting up the apartment bit, as we've gotten most of the posters and other stuff hung up on the wall. Now we're just waiting for the glue on his dart board (adhering it to a thin piece of plywood or somethin) to dry so we can get that hung up in the living room, and then I think we'll be pretty much all set. And then all I still need is a frame for my bed that's high enough to allow me to slide some boxes and other stuff underneath it, and free up a little closet space. But the apartment's lookin pretty good, I'd say.
We lost a tiebreaker on Friday night in trivia and wound up finishing third. Jeff wasn't there, so we made our team name "Smoke Free and Lovin It," haha. (Sorry Jeff, we just couldn't resist!) Nobody else at G-Man got the joke, but we all thought it was funny.
I got two more Penn State photo albums uploaded today. Before you know it I'll be all caught up with last fall's pics!
And there's a tree from San Antonio that seems to have sprung a leak. Maybe it just needs to be told, "Don't cry for me arboretum." Okay, that was a stretch. And horrendous. I'll stop now.
Posted by Jared at 11:57 PM | Comments (2)
August 10, 2006
On-Air TV Weather Debut
I guess Matt M. thought I was ready enough to go on the air that he put me on the schedule for today. That was totally fine by me, I've been fairly eager to get a chance to do this stuff for real, even though it means I have to wear a shirt, tie and sportcoat. Fortunately, through the magic of TV, I'm still able to get away wearing shorts and sandals with all that! Seeing people wearing shorts with a suitcoat, shirt and tie isn't that uncommon an occurrence in Walker Building actually, but I'm almost tempted to wear that combo out and about once or twice, just to see the reaction I'd get out of people, hehe. But anyway, I think my first time doing this whole TV weather thing "for real" (even though CNET Weather is taped, not live) went pretty well. I know I messed up in a couple places, and there definitely some things I can improve upon (such as not spending a really long stretch looking and talking straight at the camera), but overall I was pleased. I must say I was somewhat disappointed with the physical quality of the tape when it was aired on CNET though, either they have a really crappy VCR/AV system or we need to buy some new VHS tapes. There's no CNET next week, so it'll be almost two weeks before I go on the air again. I'd gotten used to the sound of my voice from doing radio, so that doesn't seem quite so odd to me anymore (though it always will sound a little odd listening to a recording of myself), but tape-delay or not it's still a very weird experience for me to watch myself on TV... But this is fun, I really enjoy making my own forecast, making the graphics and then presenting it all on camera.
This evening I went up to Tussey Mountain with Jon, Vic, Jacob, Arden, Daniel & Katie to the 4th week of Wingfest. It was quite the gorgeous evening, particularly when compared with the night I went two weeks ago, when it started pouring an hour and a half after we got there. There were some really good wings there this week, particularly from the Osceola House, including their delicious Hot Butter Garlic flavor. I could definitely see myself eating a full order of those.
A very interesting article appeared in yesterday's USA Today about global warming. Much of it was a very frank and intellectually and scientifically honest discussion about global warming by Dr Craig Bohren, Professor Emeritus of Meteorology here at Penn State. I haven't ever read or heard anything in this whole debate before that's anywhere near as open and straightforward as Bohren's discussion, especially listing his biases, and the shortcomings of both sides of the argument. I would very highly recommend this article to anyone who's at all curious about getting a very fair picture of the whole global warming issue as it currently stands.
And thank goodness I don't have any plans to be flying on a plane anytime soon. At least we can count this as a major victory in the War on Terror, with the British police foiling the plot to bring down 6-10 trans-Atlantic passenger flights with liquid explosives. Maybe this will serve to remind people of the fact that we are in a war with people whose goal is to kill and terrorize civilians (us), instead of sticking to military targets like would happen in a conventional war. And maybe people will wake up to the fact that we are most likely in World War III already, a war against radical Islamofascism, and that it's a many-pronged war that will take a good deal of time and determination in order to come out victorious.
As for other current happenings about potential terrorism going on in our own backyard, two college students from Michigan were recently arrested with thousands of dollars of cash, a bunch of trackphones, info on various flights, and a map of all the Wal-Mart stores in a multi-state area. There's no good reason you need to be buying 600 trackphones and selling them to one person...
And is Iran planning an August 22nd surprise? I wouldn't put anything past that nut-job Ahmadinejad. He's itching for a large-scale war, and the prospect of mutually assured destruction isn't a deterrent to him, which is rather scary.
Posted by Jared at 11:47 PM | Comments (1)
August 09, 2006
Moving to Mt Nittany
I haven't posted for a few days because I've been busy moving and unpacking. I got the majority of my relatively small amount of stuff moved over on Saturday, though it took 45 minutes and six of us to figure out how best to arrange the furniture in my room, and it took several iterations of moving everything back and forth all over the room just to see how it'd look. But I finally settled on a configuration that I liked, I think it works pretty well. I decided to have CREM take away the bed that they'd supplied, since it was totally crappy, a fair bit worse than a normal dorm bed. Instead I was able to get the box spring and mattress that Robert had left behind, that's working out heaps better. I finished getting the remainder of my stuff out of White Course on Sunday, and for the last few evenings I've been working hard to get everything of mine unpacked and put away -- I'm finally almost done. Jon & I got all our non-living room stuff finally cleared out of there today, so all we really have left to do is put up some posters and we'll pretty much be set (I may post a couple pictures of the place once we get that done). The apartment's really taking shape, and I'm already liking this place way more than White Course. Even the 20-25 minute walk to Walker Building (three times longer than my walk to Walker from White Course) isn't too bad. I hate the whole process of moving, particularly packing (especially how long it takes to pack and unpack the odds and ends at the end), but it was worth the hassle. I'm just looking forward to being completely done with all the unpacking and setting-up, so that I can have time to do other things.
I have taken a few breaks from the whole unpacking business the past few evenings though, namely to go see "Talladega Nights" (thumbs up, it was pretty funny) on Saturday, a little Bible study action on Sunday, a church softball game last night (we won 12-6, and I was only 1-for-2 thanks to a stellar defensive play by Faith Baptist's shortstop), and then tonight it was time to draft my Big Ten Fantasy Football team down at Sports Cafe. I'm in a league with eight other people (my team is named "Gopher Broke"), and not that many of you care at all, but here's how my draft shaped up:
1st round (07): Anthony Morelli, QB, Penn State
2nd round (12): Ohio State Defense/Special Teams
3rd round (25): Steve Breaston, WR, Michigan
4th round (30): Pierre Thomas, RB, Illinois
5th round (43): Tyler Melhaff, K, Wisconsin
6th round (48): Jerramy Scott, WR, Michigan State
7th round (61): Dustin Keller, TE, Purdue
8th round (66): Kevin Grady, RB, Michigan
9th round (79): Paul Hubbard, WR, Wisconsin
The last two picks were to fill out my two bench players. It absolutely pained me to pick Ohio $tate's defense and Breaston from Michigan, since I absolutely despise both the Buckeyes and Wolverines, but I figure this puts me in a win-win situation; if they do well, my fantasy team gets points, but if they stink up the joint, OSU and the Maize & Blue likely won't be winning the Big Ten.
A TV station in Houston is dumbing down their weathercasts even more, eliminating all mention of dewpoints from the current conditions or forecasts, and instead using only a "feels like" temp and relative humidity. Give me a break! Relative humidity is probably the most useless piece of info in the weather business, whereas the dewpoint is incredibly useful, if the TV weathermen would just invest a few seconds now and then to explain briefly what it means. Argh!
Posted by Jared at 12:00 AM | Comments (4)
August 04, 2006
Memorials at Night
As bad as the talks on the first day of the GMU AT&D Modeling conference were overall, the talks on the second day were surprisingly good for the most part. The subject matter still wasn't the most interesting necessarily (though the talk by Steve Hanna on trains derailing and tanker cars flashing many thousands of tons of chlorine (or other toxic chemicals) into the air in a matter of seconds was incredibly interesting), a much higher percentage of the presenters had a clue how to communicate and make an effective presentation.
On Wednesday evening after the talks wrapped up Walter & I took the Metro into Clarendon to meet up with Mark, a friend of Walter's from way back in middle school who now lives and works in Washington, DC. After dinner Mark took the two of us on a driving tour of DC, mostly since Walter had never visited DC before. It was after dark, so all the museums were closed of course, but it was still fun to go around to a bunch of the different monuments and memorials. 
I already have a bunch of pictures of them during the day anyway, from the previous two times I'd visited Washington, but I didn't really have many from at night. We managed to find a parking spot, and so got out and walked through the Vietnam Memorial and Lincoln Memorial before we endured a legendary cloud of gnats all along the Reflecting Pool on our way to the World War II Memorial. Mark also took us by a few other places like the White House, Capitol and Supreme Court before we made a stop at the FDR Memorial, one that I'd never been to before. 
That short visit was more than enough to put it in my top three favorite memorials/monuments in Washington, the others being Lincoln and WWII. I think it was all the waterfalls that did it. It was a humid, sultry night out, so they only made me more thirsty, but it was all good. I was really glad we got the chance to go into DC while we were at George Mason, it was a lot of fun, even with the heat and humidity. By the time we made it back to the hotel though, I was totally worn out. Good thing we had to wake up a tad earlier in order to check out and everything before the last day of the conference...
Day 2 of the conference spoiled me in terms of quality of the presentations, so I was a bit disappointed that Day 3 seemed to be more like Day 1, though the presentations were still a little better overall than the first day, to be sure. You really can only listen to so many 12-minute talks over a few days before your brain gets full, so I was ready for the conference to be done. We made the drive back to State College yesterday evening, and it's good to be back.
So now today I have the privilege of starting to pack up all of my stuff from my current apartment here in White Course so that I can move to my new place in Mt Nittany Apartments. Jon already moved in there on Tuesday, so I'm definitely the late-comer. I'm not sure yet where I'll be laying my head tonight, it kinda depends how much I get done this afternoon. But all that will have to wait until after lunch at the India Pavillion. Mmmm, nuclear chicken... :-)
Posted by Jared at 11:43 AM | Comments (1)
August 01, 2006
How Not To Give A Talk
AT&D (Atmospheric Transport & Dispersion) is often a pretty dry subject. If I needed any extra confirmation of that, this conference is giving it to me in ample supply. Though to be fair, dry subject matter is only part of why there were only about 5 or 6 interesting talks today (out of 28 total). Usually the reason that most of the talks were bad was just because the presenters didn't know how to speak publicly in an even marginally engaging manner. And then there were some presenters who really couldn't speak English very well at all, which is always a challenge. It's hard to follow what people are saying in a technical talk when you're having to put all your concentration simply into attempting to translate what they're speaking into comprehendible English. Sorry if that's mean, but it's the truth. There was one guy from Korea who took the cake for probably the worst presentation I've ever seen in my life though. He was: a) reading from a script, b) getting lost repeatedly while reading his script, c) speaking quite soft and oft-unintelligible English, d) more than 30 slides (it seemed like it at least), e) some slides with 30-40 tiny, tiny graphs/figures (making them all unreadable from any distance at all), f) speaking for roughly 20 minutes (your talk and question time is only supposed to be 15 minutes total, maximum), all while g) standing with his back to the audience the entire time (!!). He had set his script on the table and stood on the front side of it so that he was able to look up at the big projection screen (and hence his back was to us), instead of standing on the other side of the table, so that he could look at the computer monitor with the same stuff on it while occasionally perhaps glancing at the audience. Might've been a nice touch.
But on the plus side, Walter's talk went well this morning. He may very well have been the only presenter to finish their talk in the allotted 12 minutes too, though he was talking incredibly fast to make it. (I'd count Walter's as one of the few good talks today, though I'll admit I'm slightly biased on that point.) 
And then it'd appear that the conference organizers really gave quite little thought to the poster session. After the first session of talks had already started, I tracked down one of the two primary organizers and asked him where we were supposed to hang our 5 posters from Penn State. He was like, "Oh, umm, I don't know... how about over there maybe?" 
Clearly he hadn't given it much thought. Anyway, after having some initial trouble getting the posters to stay pinned up (the surface we were pinning them into wasn't the greatest), people started meandering to the back of the room to check out the posters. I got asked questions by I think three people, though one of the person's questions went totally zinging over my head and way beyond the issues of my poster, I just had to say "I don't know." I guess that'll happen though. But all the posters look great, especially now that they're staying up!
It was 95 over 75 this evening when we came out of the conference here in Fairfax. Ick. Tomorrow's supposed to get to 100...
So how did Walter & I pass the time this evening in the hotel? That's right, looking at radar data and listening to severe weather reports coming in on KTOE AM 1420 from Mankato, MN. Yep, the big red button was being pushed repeatedly in south-central Minnesota tonight, especially in Watonwan and Blue Earth Counties. A couple people called in saying that there were farmsteads completely destroyed south of Butterfield and south of Saint James somewhere. Oddly enough, the NWS didn't issue the tornado watch until after the first tornadoes were already on the ground south of Butterfield. Nice one guys, way to be on the ball. What are they, the State College NWS office?
Posted by Jared at 11:29 PM | Comments (2)