1984 in 2002-5?

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A Look into the Mind of a Parking Cop

I'm not sure whether this is just a Midwest thing, but my local newspaper has provided a quick little insight into the daily life of a Madison parking meter reader.

It goes to show that it takes special people to become what most of us despise. :)

A Landmark, Steps Forward and Back

Today the nurses at the Red Cross told me that I had passed the two gallon mark! Those sixteen pints of blood have gone to help forty-eight people, which is in itself its own reward.

Of course, the spiffy two-gallon gold pin doesn't hurt.

Seriously though, if you can, consider giving blood. I saw the difference that it made in my mom's life when she was fighting leukemia -- like night and day. I suppose it's harder to see in those who recover from surgery. The fact that the nation's supply of blood can run low in the holiday season makes it that much more important to give if you can! (And to all those savvy world-travelers and others otherwise on deferral lists, I can end my preaching now. No offense intended. :) )

In other events, it's been interesting to be a resident of Wisconsin these past few weeks. The Democratic attorney general has recently asked, and today received, permission of the Democratic governor to sue the federal government regarding the FDA's refusal to certify Plan B emergency contraception for sale over-the-counter, despite independent scientific analysis proving it safe and effective, as well as internal review boards approving the move. The lawsuit purportedly will claim that political pressure is the reason behind the foot-dragging. (I am one among many who have also talked about that angle.) It will be a landmark suit that will, with luck, enable much greater access to a medication whose effectiveness critically depends on the time with which it is taken following unprotected sex.

At the same time, the Republican controlled Legislature have been busy pushing their agenda, including an attempt to place a ban on gay marriage into the state constitution (which recently passed the Senate the second year in a row) and dramatically expanding conceal-and-carry laws for handguns.

Sometimes it's just hard to know how to feel about the state government. I had almost forgotten how it felt good to know that people in power were not only looking out for the average American, but were doing the right things because they were the right things to be done. At the same time, seeing people deliberately writing discrimination into other state constitutions (and even trying to write it into the US Constitution!) seems to fundamentally against what the US has traditionally stood for that it's scary to see their success.

The Components, they are Gathered...

It's been a while, mainly because things have been going crazy at school and work. Despite working long hours (I am a grad student, after all) I have been able to devote some more time to my pet project at Pegasus -- the Plasma Control System.

Essentially, what we would like to do is to enable real-time detection and correction of plasma physics parameters such as plasma current, plasma position, shape, etc. By real-time, I mean "fast on a timescale relative to the discharge length." In Pegasus, for instance, we can only keep plasmas around for a few thousandths of a second; my first ballpark correction rate will be on the order of tens of millionths of a second. I'll be doing this with a state-of-the-art acquisition and control unit coupled with software based on that used on DIII-D, one of the major research facilities in fusion research.

My job has been to assemble the hardware, get the software components up and running, and then somehow turn this PCS into a working tool for Pegasus!

This summer, I was able to get the hardware up and running, which in and of itself involves a bit of geek factor -- an embedded Linux system (the digitizer), linked as a virtual PCI card in another Linux system, itself controlled by -- wait for it -- another Linux system! The software is written in bits and pieces of four programming languages I've found so far (C, IDL, stitched together with serious bash and csh scripting). On top of that, it interfaces with an independent data acquisition, storage, and retrieval solution, MDSplus, the de facto standard of the fusion community. (It works well, but is very poorly documented.) After I get that working, I just need to patch it into our existing bunch of independent LabView codes! (A programmers nightmare/delight, depending on your point of view.)

Recently I was able to get an MDSplus system up and running, so all the pieces are now on the proverbial table. Now I "only" need to get them to all talk to each other correctly, when not doing real plasma physics or finding vacuum leaks. :)

Thanksgiving was good -- lots of food, friends, and family. I'm looking forward to Christmas, however, since by then I'll be done with this semester! Since I've passed my qualifying exam, I only need to wrap up my courses before I start serious, in-depth research on my thesis, which will likely be coming from using the completed PCS system to study physics issues on Pegasus. The upside: only a year to go, entailing much lighter semesters than I've been pulling in the past while at UW-Madison.

Yes, it's a meme. It's still fun.

You scored as James Bond, Agent 007. James Bond is MI6's best agent, a suave, sophisticated super spy with charm, cunning, and a license's to kill. He doesn't care about rules or regulations and somewhat amoral. He does care about saving humanity though, as well as the beautiful women who fill his world. Bond has expensive tastes, a wide knowledge of many subjects, and his usually armed with a clever gadget and an appropriate one-liner. James Bond, Agent 007 67% William Wallace 67% El Zorro 67% Neo, the "One" 67% Maximus 63% Indiana Jones 63% Captain Jack Sparrow 54% The Terminator 50% Batman, the Dark Knight 50% The Amazing Spider-Man 50% Lara Croft 42% Which Action Hero Would You Be? v. 2.0 created with QuizFarm.com

First Snow!

The title says it all. I live too far south for this -- my Minnesota bones have been aching for lots and lots of snow since before Halloween! At least we'll hopefully have a white Thanksgiving! :P

Some Technical Musings (with Job Offer Potential!)

I took a break from my regular busy grad-student life to attend a seminar today hosted by National Instruments regarding their new LabView software revisions. As Pegasus uses LabView for nearly every aspect of data acquisition and control (at one level or another), it seems well worth my while to learn about the subject from the people who make it!

While the experience was what I expected -- marketing hype mixed with real engineering tidbits thrown in -- a conversation with the presenter at the end was not. I had asked a question regarding some of the finer points of his talk, when he abruptly changed topic, asking me about my background and job prospects! He seemed disappointed when I told him I was in for the long haul with the Ph.D, but wanted to emphasize how my "significant" (I would have chosen "meager") understanding of LabView makes me much more marketable in today's job market.

I suppose that makes sense, given that lots of Big Companies are now using LabView to automate very large production systems, etc. Still, it's fun to know that I have a fall-back skill to sell to industry -- even to the point where I get an easy crack at a job just by attending their seminar!

On another note, I've been reading with disgust about the new Sony Rootkit technology that has been secretly corrupting the Windows OS for the express purpose of enforcing its DRM -- to the point where one is prevented from ripping the tracks from the raw audio data for use on an iPod! (Before I go off the deep end in techno-babble, you can find out more about rootkits and how to find them, as well as more on the Sony rootkit here.) On top of the flagrant breaches in computer security and trampling of consumer fair use rights, the uninstall program that was initially published by Sony after an uproar of public anger -- which requires use of an ActiveX controller using Internet Explorer -- turns out to allow arbitrary code to be run by any subsequent website that a victim of this rootkit may visit!

Let's hope that Sony gets slapped with some huge civil and criminal suits as a result of this massive attack on computers worldwide. (It is a Federal crime, after all, to knowingly and maliciously alter computer systems without owner consent!) Heck, there's even been reports that it may contain LGPL software components without redistribution of source and object code modules -- meaning we may see yet another trial of the GPL in court!

Putting Money Alongside the Mouth

The few frequent readers of this blog know by now that I have a rather strong affliction for the civil liberties that I enjoy as a US citizen. I've even joined the EFF, an ACLU-like group for Internet and digital freedoms.

This past weekend I had a chance to clear off my desk and take care of other miscellaneous stuff. When I was done, I sat down and immediately realized that I wasn't done. There was something that had been quietly nagging me in the back of my mind for some time that was suddenly becoming louder. Whether it was from reading another article about incompetence in Washington (both sides of the aisle!), corruption, or blatant misinformation campaigns regarding AIDS and sexuality by Bush cronies, I decided to start contributing to organizations that I have favored for some time now.

You can now count me among the card-carrying members of the ACLU, and an official Planned Parenthood supporter. In that vein, the ACLU is coming out with a new TV show, The ACLU Freedom Files. It should be on Court TV, as of November 10^th. With luck, it will be interesting!

Doublespeak in the Media

Since the American public instated and re-affirmed the current Republican leadership in Congress and the Presidency, I am not surprised at all about the recent passage of measures to allow for oil drilling in the ANWR national wildlife reserve. (Facts have yet to phase these politicians; rather, lucrative oil contract profit-sharing (kickback?) contracts seem to have been driving some senators.)

That topic aside -- we were asking for it -- I am appalled at the poor reporting that Congress is getting from CNN today. Note their article on a recent budget bill that would "slash spending" through $35 billion in discrestionary funding. Some of the cuts seem quite reasonable, such as subsidies to insurance companies. However, one quote made me really wonder whether he's in touch with reality:

"Bush didn't make too much of the veto threat issued in his name, instead thanking the Senate for the cuts to health care programs for the elderly, poor and disabled while leaving food stamps untouched." (emphasis added)

By the end of the article about Republican fiscal irresponsibility, the bombshell: countering the $35 billion in cuts is an additional $35 billion in new spending.

So, we see that this is not a deficit reduction bill at all! Why then is this bill being lauded by Congressional Republicans and being described by the media as a deficit-fighting measure?

Hopefully they'll be able to start cutting out most of the fluff with their improved Newspeak.

MythTV, the PVR-150, and DISH Control via IR Blaster!

I have recently returned from the 2005 APS-DPP conference on plasma physics. While not my first scientific conference, it was the first of my graduate career! I presented a poster on the adaptation of the DIII-D plasma control system (PCS) to the Pegasus Toroidal Experiment. (Pictures Here)

With APS over with, I can get back to regular life, like schoolwork (ack), dating, and Linux hacking! Yes, I am a nerd. :) As such, I've put together a MythTV Guide, as I alluded to earlier, which will be evolving along with my Myth expertise. So far, I've been able to get a Hauppauge PVR-150 unit working with Myth on my Fedora Core 3 box, in the sense that I can watch television, record it and use the built-in IR blaster to control my DISH network satellite receiver! (Truly a dangerous development.)

And, since it's Halloween, have a look at the jack-o-lanterns we made this year -- Tux and The Cheat included!

Behold the Power of Linux -- and my Dorkiness

Yesterday after working for more than twelve hours on plasma theory (still not done today!) I took a break to tinker with my MythTV box. I had gotten to the point where I could record a program via my hardware TV tuner card, but couldn't change channels, etc. due to the fact that I use a satellite box.

Well it turns out there's been a devoted bunch of hackers that have written experimental drivers for my card's infrared remote. Moreover, it's kind of two remotes in one -- one for receiving commands, another to send commands to an external box. Yesterday, I got the IR sending (aka channel changing) to work. (Yes, I had to write a shell script to do this -- but hey, it's experimental for a reason!)

When that power button first flashed on and off by hitting the Enter key at 1:47 AM, I'll admit it: I giggled like a schoolgirl. There's nothing better than controlling blinking lights with a keyboard. :P

I'll write up a MythTV guide when I get things settled down and I get some free time. I earnestly recommend building one of these things!

Middleton School Referendum

One of the most important things I remember about growing up was when my local school district failed to pass a referendum which would have helped to maintain the elementary and middle schools I had attended. As a result, my parents had been so angry at the local population that they had to leave. A little over a year later, our family moved outside Mahtomedi, MN which had a more progressive (read: well-maintained) district.

The difference in quality of education was simply amazing. I had gone from class sizes approaching fifty to twenty-five. Teachers were less stressed-out. There were extra-curricular activities through which I could get involved both in my school and my community. (The academic coursework was more challenging, to boot -- we were expected to learn, not just pass State proficiency tests.)

Fast forward to now. I'm living in Middleton, WI, a town that was recently rated as one of the most livable cities in the US. (Hooray!) The entire Madison area has been exploding, and as a result, the school system is getting population pressure. At issue: a new K-8 school and funds to renovate heating and air conditioning systems in elementary schools from the fifties. If all of the four measures were to pass, property taxes would increase on the order of low hundreds of dollars per year depending on property value.

The situation is eerily similar to that which faced my parents when I was growing up. And just this morning I was interrupted in my plasma theory work by a pre-recorded phone message from a bigoted anti-school Republican backed PAC that asserted that my property taxes would go up $500/year for no good reason. Of course, this same group has been shown to intentionally air false ads before.

The venom in the lady's voice was difficult to hear. Why should we be arguing about building a school or maintaining existing properties?

I know the school has my vote. Hopefully this kind of nonsense will be ignored by the city. After all, investing in the education of children (and adults!) is a very good thing for the children -- and our future.

Politics Trounces Science at the FDA -- And Needs to Stop

Now that I'm done with Ph.D qualifying exams, I can get back to politically-loaded issues and commentary on techie stuff! In the works: a MythTV box, the alluded-to Nintendo modification, and maybe some more handy Windows tricks that I've been using recently.

But tech takes time, which is in short supply for now. So, it's back to the usual. This particular topic resonates with me both as a concerned American and as a scientist. Specifically, the FDA is caving to what can only be conceived as political pressure to keep a medication known as 'Plan B' from becoming an over-the-counter drug, despite overwhelming scientific evidence of both the safety and efficacy of the medicine, which is very effective at preventing pregnancy within 72 hours of sex. (Of course, earlier is better.) It works like regular oral contraceptives, but with a higher dosage; if a woman takes it too late (after implantation of a fertilized egg) it will not prevent the pregnancy or harm the embryo.

After an advisory panel voted 23-4 in favor of making Plan B over-the-counter, internal FDA scientists reviewed the recommendation and also independently agreed.

In response, FDA leadership delayed a decision for more than a year. After political pressure from Congressional Democrats, the FDA promised a decision -- but ended up deciding 'not to decide' and instead opening a public comment period of 60 days. As a result, multiple internal staff scientists have resigned in protest. (And recently the embattled FDA Commissioner resigned -- coincidence?)

After listening to a podcast from NPR's Science Friday on the subject, I was so angry that politics is trumping both science and women's health that I have written my Congressional representatives. I urge you to do the same.

Dear Senator Feingold, Senator Kohl, and Representative Baldwin,

I am writing to you to express my concern about the Food and Drug Administration's handling of a request to make a brand of emergency oral contraceptive, commonly known as 'Plan B,' available over-the-counter. This single pill, if taken within 72 hours of unprotected intercourse, can effectively and safely prevent pregnancy. However, the sooner the medication is taken the more effective it is -- and if a fertilized egg has implanted itself in the uterus before the medication is taken, it will not work.

The FDA has evaluated the scientific evidence for the safety and efficacy of this medicine and overwhelmingly supported the decision (in a 23-4 vote of advisory panel experts) to make it available over-the-counter. This recommendation was based on an exemplary safety record and to make accessibility to the medication dramatically greater due to the narrow window of time that the medication is effective at preventing pregnancy. Following the recommendation, the FDA's internal scientists reviewed the application and agreed with the findings of the advisory panel.

However, the FDA has chosen to defer making a definitive decision on the subject repeatedly. Prominent scientists in the FDA have resigned in protest. As a scientist myself, I am deeply dismayed by what appears to be a politically motivated decision on behalf of the FDA leadership to keep this medication from women that can already be in a terrible situation.

There are some positions in the government that should be immune from partisan politics -- and the FDA should certainly be one of them. When politics trumps sound science, all Americans lose.

Please take whatever steps are necessary to bring this problem to the attention of the {Senate | House} and to swiftly address the issue.

Very Truly Yours,
Michael Bongard

The Verdict: Part Two

Late last week I was able to obtain graded copies of my qualifying exam. (I swear, this will be the last post about the Quals ever.) It turned out that one of the problems on the Modern Physics exam, which I had failed, was very harshly graded -- despite a perfect solution!

It turns out that a vague question wording had me plug in an incorrect number in the beginning. Aside from that, my physics was correct. I was able to contest the grading of that particular problem successfully -- meaning that I eked through the exam!

Yes, that's right -- I passed all the qualifying exams! That means that the largest academic hurdle to getting the degree is now behind me -- and as long as I can pass my classes and be willing to slave away in the lab, I can confidently say that I will graduate with a Ph.D from UW-Madison.

It also means that I can actually be a real scientist for a living! Hooray!

The Verdict

Mathematics: PASS
Classical Physics: PASS
Modern Physics: FAIL
Oral: PASS

Well, three out of four isn't too bad. Most of the people I was studying with this time around only got 2/4 last time. I'll be able to see my graded test results later this week, which should be interesting -- I considered Modern to be my greatest strength, physics-wise, so we'll just have to see where I went wrong!

It's good to know the results, even if they aren't entirely what I wanted. I'll have to repeat the Ordeal of the Qualifiers once more, albeit only with a single exam. The stakes will just be a little higher -- if I fail again, I need to consider alternative career paths.

So, that chapter detailing the last few months of my life is now (almost) closed. Now I can focus on my research, which has been on the back burner while I crammed so much physics into my head!

Qual Update

No, I don't quite know how I did at this point, but suffice to say, the Fall 2005 Qualifying Exams are behind me.

Of the three written exams I took, I feel best about math, less good (but still OK) on modern physics, and it's questionable whether I passed classical physics. After working through one of those exams, you can almost hear your brain popping and sizzling!

For my oral examination, I was grilled on radiation interactions with matter; dependence of atomic number Z and number density on gamma-matter interaction cross-sections; central-field orbital potentials; quantum mechanical tunneling; wave scattering at potential barriers; resonance and absorptive effects; complex contour integration; solving ODE's via variation of parameters, Fourier analysis, and Laplace transformations; the theory of inverting Laplace transforms via use of the residue theorem; and driven harmonic oscillators.

The faculty panel sure kept me on my toes for the whole experience, and except for some glaring algebra mistakes, I thought I knew what I was doing. It was almost fun -- except for the long periods of silence from them when I was trying to find where I missed a minus sign! (And for those of us like myself who can't do messy algebra correctly on the first try on the fly, doing it in front of your adviser and a former math instructor can only be worse!) Hopefully the remaining two oral exams I'll take (for proposing and defending my thesis research) will go as well.

So, at this point I'm in the weird limbo between finishing the exam and waiting to hear how I did. Nominally I'll know on the 16^th. In the meantime, I'll get back to working on my research, which is much, much better than doing Qual problems!

Madison's Smoking Ban

Madison recently enacted a mandatory smoking ban in all public places, such as bars and restaurants. Naturally, the bar owners are screaming bloody murder about the whole proposition. Some have even gone to such lengths as to lay off bartenders and blame it solely on depressed attendance. (Of course, the month of July is typically some 'dead time' for Madison, with ~40,000 party- and bar-prone students absent over the summer.) Recent polls have had conflicting results about public support for the initiative. City leaders' resolve is waffling and they are proposing that the public decide the issue on a referendum in a few months.

Now, I'm all for admitting that there very well may be depressed attendance from chain smokers. But you know what? I think that it's a better deal for everyone else in that bar, especially employees that secondhand-smoke a few packs a day. It seems that doctors at the UW agree. Also, from driving through town on Friday and Saturday nights, I'm still seeing popular bars get flooded with people; so much so that lines spill out for more than half a block.

All I have to say is that it's well worth revisiting a great Bloom County strip on the issue. And maybe in a month, after the buildings have had three months to let their air clear out, I'll be able to go bowling again without having a terrible allergic reactions.

Today's Job: Mind Blanks!

There's nothing like putting your whole future into (several) two-hour exams. Today, I suffered a defeat that every physicist dreads.

I was unable to figure out a problem with a bowling ball rotating down a bowling alley.

The best is still to come -- I knew the problem, because I read it a month ago during my preparation for the exam. Verbatim. I even had the picture of the problem printed in the book in my head while I was sweating in that room. I was able to turn to the page it was printed on immediately when I got home. And, of course, after I got home today and out of the test situation, I was able to solve it in about ten minutes.

Ack! With luck, the grading gods and the Patron Saint of Partial Credit be merciful, eking me through the Classical Physics portion of the Qualifier. Otherwise, I get to do all of this preparation again -- with the added bonus of getting kicked out of school if I fail.

But, on an upward note, the math portion left me with a good feeling. It's a rare occasion that I leave a math exam feeling good, but thinking that you won't have to ever do that again leaves me with a warm, fuzzy feeling.

Also interesting is that I now fully and completely understand my fellow coworkers' desire to get very, very drunk after completion of the full set of exams. I will not have that opportunity until Friday night. Until then, back to the books!

Katrina

Most of us know by now how absolutely devastating the effects of hurricane Katrina have been. My heart goes out to all of the victims of the disaster. It's times like this that make you glad of the existence of our National Guard.

If you haven't already, please strongly consider donating to the Red Cross. Money does help.

On another note, tomorrow I endure Round I of my Ph.D Qualifying Examinations. Here's hoping that the last 1.5 months of pure studying pay off. Round II on Friday, with results coming in mid-September.

Robertson: Yet Another Example of Hypocrisy

I thought that I was used to radical right-wing Christian conservatives going way off the deep end. Well, today I was unfortunately proved wrong again.

Pat Robertson, creator of the nationally televised "The 700 Club," has now publicly advocated that the United States assassinate Venezeulan President Hugo Chavez. The purported justification of the deliberate murder? He's "a dangerous enemy to our south, controlling a huge pool of oil, that could hurt us badly." The fact that he's chummy with our good friends the Cubans irks him too, I'm sure.

If Robertson was just another right-wing extremist, that'd be fine; I could just ignore his rants as hateful rage against one of the many groups of people he thinks will be going to Hell. The difference here is that we have a Christian minister advocating murder -- and then for the reason that he has *gasp* OIL!

Perhaps Robertson needs to be reminded of the Second Commandment: "Thou shalt not kill." Or perhaps the single most important Commandment imparted by Jesus: "Love your neighbor as you love yourself."

Hopefully remarks like these will cause Robertson's viewers who actually care about their faith and its implications to turn away from him. This type of behavior only serves to further drag the name of Christianity -- and all that it stands for -- through the mud.

A Fitting Quote

"Do not worry about your difficulties in mathematics. I can assure you that mine are still greater."
-- Albert Einstein

Funny that I should run into that one while preparing for my mathematics qualifier! Now, back to work...

New Dive Ratings

It's been a long weekend. -- not because I've been studying for my quals like I should have been, but rather because I spent it at a private quarry outside Watertown, WI obtaining my PADI Advanced Open Water SCUBA dive certification! The lake-like structure on the satellite map is where we were diving, near an abandoned cement factory.

It's been something that I wanted to do for a couple years now, having gotten my original Open Water certification in the spring of 2001. We did courses on underwater naturalism, navigation, a typical night dive, a deep dive, and a dive geared towards underwater search and recovery techniques.

Still, it was pretty intense. We were on the move from 8 AM to midnight on Saturday, and from 8 AM until 6:30 today. After your second dive of a day, hauling on that cold, sloppy wetsuit one more time becomes a mental as well as a physical challenge!

Ah, Wisconsin...

Yesterday afternoon a slew of tornadoes tore through Stoughton, just a few miles southeast of Madison. One touched down in a golf course; another levelled homes. Only one person was killed despite the severity of damage in the area.

The great thing is listening to people's eyewitness accounts. While Kristen and I were in her basement listening to the radio, we played 'tornado bingo.' I called for a reference to a 'freight train,' while she was going for 'roar.' I ended up winning that round -- but the best one I heard is from a group of people taking shelter in the golf course:

"We were ... hiding behind the bar. We had beer, anyway."

And that is why I love this town!

More Evidence Trickles Out

As if the Downing Street Memo wasn't enough of an indication about the Administration's poor war planning practices (according to Britain's MI-6), it looks like officials at the State Department thought that post-war planning was also lacking.

Interestingly enough, State Department officials were not just pointing fingers at the military planners; rather, they offered their expert assistance in crafting a post-war strategy that could have helped address what turned out to be a US-created hotbed of terrorism. They were ignored -- and we all know what happened.

How many more documents like this will it take for the general public to actually look at the evidence and ask the Administration why such a poor job was allowed to take place?

Arrogance? No -- Hypocrisy

A rally of conservative Christians, including House Majority Leader Tom DeLay as an honored speaker, blasted judges for being arrogant and activists. One idea lofted at the convention: a Constitutional amendment that would prevent the judiciary from overturning laws created by Congress without a unanimous vote.

There are some great quotes, too:

• "The [Supreme] court [sic] is trying to 'take the hearts and souls of our culture.'"


• "The framers of our great nation did not intend for the courts to have absolute and final power over us."


• "Activist justices -- we're trying to find out what we can do to stop that activity. Our laws are based on the Ten Commandments."

A rudimentary knowledge of civics reassures us that, in fact, the framers of our nation provided for a wonderful system of checks and balances, including the power for the judiciary to strike down laws that are unconstitutional. So, in that sense, they certainly do have absolute power -- when it comes to striking down illegal laws.

It's rallies like that -- along with the hate that is common with many of these radical right-wingers -- that besmirch the name of Christians everywhere, myself included. I think that the counter-demonstrations that were set up to coincide with the rally have a legitimate point: these people (and their organizations) want a theocracy, not a democracy.

The scary thing, of course, is that we can elect leaders who can write ourselves into one (Constitutional amendments, etc.) if we so choose. I certainly enjoy the current separation of Church and State, and sincerely hope that it remains so indefinitely here in the US.

Tinkering and NES Repair

My girlfriend's next-door neighbor was preparing to move out of his apartment and kindly offered Kristen a chance to scavenge stuff he was going to throw away before the rest of Madison did. I indirectly benefitted from this, as the fool was throwing away a NES!

Fortunately, Kristen just took the thing, along with games like Contra, and gave them to me!

Despite having the words "STILL WORKS!!" scrawled on it with a Sharpie, it does not in fact work -- the dreaded grey screen of death, or the blinking grey screens abound. I've experienced this phenomenon with my older NES system, and was able to have it corrected by some guys in the local used game store. This time, I'll do the repair myself, with help from The Nintendo Repair Shop. A $3.95 part, and I'm set to hack away! (Although still not as much as this guy did.)

Kansas: No Evolution Here!

Some people may remember the scientific uprorar caused in 2001 after the Kansas state board of education cut teaching of evolutionary theory in the classroom. As a result, several conservative school board members were displaced by more science-literate individuals in the subsequent election and evolution was placed back on the curriculum.

Well, come 2004 conservatives were put back on the board -- and history is repeating itself. This time, the twist is to de-emphasize evolution, and allow for teaching of alternative propositions -- albeit non-scientific propositions -- such as Intelligent Design. The board ended up staging debates reminiscent of the Scopes monkey trial, so much so that there was debate amongst the scientific community as whether to even show up and lend credence to the opposition! Simply put, there is no debate about evolution's validity in the scientific community; it's a good model of the available data that has been fueling many of our biological advances (and even advances in computer algorithms) this century.

A common theme that I pick out from these types of debacles is the fear amongst the anti-evolutionists (who tend to be very religious) that children will be somehow corrupted and turn away from their faith as a result of study of biology -- that it is impossible to be scientifically literate and a religious person simultaneously. In a poignant address (PDF) delivered to the St. Olaf Honor's Day members by my undergraduate research adviser Jim Cederberg presents a different perspective -- namely, that scientists can be, and are, faithful and capable of the persuit of scientific knowledge.

It seems fitting, especially since he grew up in Kansas facing the concerns and stigma of evolutionary theory that are still being espoused by those in power today.

Republicans Feeling the Heat?

It seems that a smattering of Republican US Senators don't want legislation authorizing oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge sneaked through early next session via a budget authorization bill.

Why, you ask, would something like drilling oil be in the budget authorization bill? Because under Senate rules, such legislation is immune to a filibuster and thus would be capable of passage with a 51-member vote instead of the requisite 60 needed to invoke cloture (i.e. end a filibuster). With a 55-member Republican base, ANWR oil drilling could make it to the President's desk via this technique. (The House has passed authorization provisions for several years at this point, but the measure has died in the Senate under filibusters.)

Personally, I think that kind of parlimentary maneuver is underhanded and sneaky. I wouldn't be surprised if the Dems have pulled stuff like that in the past as well. Still, it's good to read about some forms of dissent in the Republican ranks; perhaps they will start getting out of the massive group-think that they've been in for the past several years!

With luck, we'll be seeing some turnover in 2006 -- especially if the public keeps hearing about stuff like this.

Hacked!

I hate to say this since I'm a rather security conscious guy -- but the old incarnation of Kravlor.com was exploited via an insecurity in the Coppermine photo gallery software on top of the old PHP-Nuke CMS. No user account compromise or password cracking (thank God), but the attacker was able to install an IRC chatbot.

It looks like they compromised it on July 17; I'm just glad I caught it at this point rather than later. Grr!

This made me take extra time to accelerate the transition from the old version to the new; I've now scrapped all prior content and ported over all the old photos that were in the gallery. 301 Redirects abound; I've kept around the old Quotes page and backported other content like the Ultima guide and the Windows Tips to my new Drupal system.

Ultima VIII Guide Remade

Well, I finally got around to re-implementing the Ultima VIII: Pagan guide that I made several years ago.

It was almost painful to look at the gawd-awful HTML that FrontPage had generated. But then again, it got the job done when I didn't know (or care) much about HTML standards, CSS wasn't working correctly in (m)any browsers, and people were just looking for information about Ultima.

Recasting these old pages into stories here took more than a bit of hand-editing; a cursory glance at the output looks like things are OK in general. Perhaps in time I'll go back and really do it right; however, it should be in pretty good shape for now.

The only thing that I should probably take care of next is making HTTP 301 redirects to let Google, et. al. know about the changes!

More Updates

What's more fun: updating your spiffy-new site or studying Frobenius analysis and inverting Laplace transformations? I thought so too.

So... the non-LJ'd news posts I had put on the old version of Kravlor.com have now been backported here (again manually). Perhaps one of these days I'll muck about in the database to correct the posted times, etc.

After I get the old photo gallery ported over properly, I'll shut down the old site for good, and give the old server a well-earned break!

Car Repairs

I decided to bite the bullet today and perform auto maintenence on my '94 Buick LeSabre. I ended up getting four new tires, an alignment, and a recharge on the AC system. (Things are now blessedly cool in the August heat!)

Still, I have this sneaking suspicion that I'm putting the mechanic's kids through college...

In other news, my garage door broke yesterday night. While I had never thought that the door itself would be the problem (rather, the opener machine) I was proved wrong. Apparently a torsion spring responsible for assisting the open/close operation hit its maximal lifetime and snapped.

Ah, the joys of auto and home ownership! :)

Bush and Intelligent Design

Well, it was bound to happen one of these days. Today, President Bush presented his views on Intelligent Design -- namely, that it should be taught to biology students.

For those who don't know, intelligent design proposes that some biological features are so complex that they could not have possibly arisen from chance (i.e. evolved); therefore, they must have been designed by some other entity. Note I avoid 'created' in the description, as Creationism has already been declared illegal to evangelize in the public schools by the Supreme Court.

I see intelligent design as thinly-veiled Creationism. The fact of the matter is that the scientific community overwhelmingly rejects intelligent design and embraces evolution. Shouldn't we have scientists write science books?

Frankly, any theory that purports to replace Darwinian evolution would need to explain the overwhelming evidence of its existence -- that is, a replacement would need to incorporate the current, scientifically accepted form.

With this kind of debate going on (amongst politicians; scientists have considered the case closed for many decades by this point), it's no wonder why America is (rapidly) losing its leadership in science and technology.

Drupal Importing Fun

Ack.

Let's just say that the act of pulling a LiveJournal's entries into a static file and then importing them back into a fresh Drupal site isn't easy.

After a couple day's worth of Googling, I decided to bite the bullet and manually transfer over all my LJ/old Kravlor.com posts. Grr.

If I had some spare time, I'd be interested in figuring out how to get said LJ-rip-Drupal-dump functionality working. It shouldn't be altogether hard; I'd just need to learn some PHP and maybe a bit o' Perl. :) But no -- now it's time to be studying math. (The Linear Algebra book is finished as of this evening!)

Website Progress

I'm making progress in my trek to move Kravlor.com from my old PII, 300MHz box on a slow DSL connection to a faster (1.2 GHz Athlon) box that has a faster pipe. This will mean that things like the photo gallery will actually work on a usable level!

Another nifty little thing: I figured out how Apache VirtualHost directives work. Now, by re-structuring my web content area a bit, I was able to get www.kravlor.com, gallery.kravlor.com, and the prior kravlor.dyndns.org all living happily together on the same machine, acting as independent sites.

I like it -- I like it a lot! :)

Miscellaneous Nifty Stuff

1) Following zandera82ole's lead...

[Blog Quiz:
I am nerdier than 95% of all people. Are you nerdier?]


... oh yeah! That's what physics and engineering graduate school will do to you!

2) As a follow-up to (1), I was browsing through my webserver logs the other day (if only there was a way to sort of nonchalantly say that) and happened to see that Google was giving high referral rates. I think I now know why.

3) I don't watch much television, except for 24 these days. (Freaking addictive TV shows...) Does anyone else think that it's ironic that Kentucky Fried Chicken is using the theme from 'Sweet Home Alabama' in their television advertising? I'm sure I'm not the first one to notice this, but it's been bugging me more each time I see the commercials!

Back in Space

I, for one, am glad to see that the launch of Discovery went well this morning. I can't remember the last time I was so nervous in front of the television. (And considering that strong thunderstorms knocked my sattelite dish out of alignment last night [no CNN], I was happy to be watching it live at all!) It was amazing to watch the shuttle separate from the external fuel tank -- especially since I went to a talk given by the engineering research firm that helped re-design the tank's support structures (the triangle-shaped mount) which attach the tank to the shuttle.

Here's hoping to a successful mission and safe re-entry. It'll be good to have construction work on the ISS continue. Maybe we'll even get some science out of the thing!

News from 'Down Periscope'

I'm now a little over two weeks into Qualifier-preparation mode, and feel like poking my head up above the water to both take a break and let my friends know what's going on!

The days are starting to blend together as I continue my preparation. I've gone through my entire modern physics text form college, and am in the middle of a more meaty nuclear physics one for the moment. Still on the docket: classical physics, electrodynamics, differential equations, linear algebra, and quantum mechanics -- oh my! ;) I still have a little over a month to get those topics all in my head, so it's not quite time to push the big red panic button. After reading all that physics I get to solve really tough problems from the past 10 years of qualifiers as a break. (Or better -- something else, like writing up a little thing on the blog.)

Madison, like many other cities around the nation, has been the unlucky recipient of 100+ degree weather recently. In an attempt to combat this, a group of my fellow researchers and friends decided that it would be a good idea to have a BBQ featuring a Batman Slip-n-Slide. (Recommended users: children ages 5-10, height less than 5', weight less than 110 lb; average grad student: nowhere near that!) A good time was had by all -- even those of us like me who got a fast trip over a cement sidewalk.

I'm also considering some technical revamping of Kravlor.com. Specifically, after the ancient P-II 300 MHz machine running in my parent's closet needed a reboot today, knocking out my email, etc. for several hours while I thought about the problem off and on, I decided to make a more robust system by shelling out some cash to Dyndns.org and use their redundant networks to host my DNS resolution and provide email backup service. The upside: no lost emails, and the ability to use my faster, dynamic-IP DSL link as the primary host.

That means I can use a more up-to-date machine with actual amounts of RAM and hard disk space (and a current Linux distro) to do things like host a shared photo gallery, as well as migrate my blog there. (While I like the aggregator features of Livejournal, I'd rather run the server myself; I'm a Linux dork.) I'm taking a look at using Drupal as the main CMS.

And, for the usual interesting/funny/concerning news story I post occasionally, try this one that demonstrates the US Army propaganda machine being a bit too careless with the quotes they're manufacturing.

Just Desserts

While I may be a plasma physicist, I also enjoy playing armchair lawyer from time to time. :) In that spirit, I was unsettled by the recent Supreme Court decision that would effectively allow local governments to exercise their powers of eminent domain to take land from private owners not just for public projects like roads, but also private venues, based on things like increased tax revenue for the municipality. (Madison, for instance, is looking to bulldoze several homes near the State Street area in order to expand a parking lot (public) and establish a new condominium unit (private).) After all, what's the point of owning private property if you can be kicked out of your home in order for McDonalds to erect yet another set of the Golden Arches?

Well, in a supreme fit of irony, it seems like Justice Souter, who was a supporting member of the 5-4 decision, may be getting a taste of his own medicine. A private developer has started "the application process to build a hotel on 34 Cilley Hill Road. This is the present location of Mr. Souter's home."

I, for one, hope that "The Lost Liberty Hotel," "Just Desserts Cafe," and museum dedicated to the loss of freedoms in America is successfully built. After all, the developer just needs to convince three of the five local board members to go forward!

Shining Goodness

Those of you that know me also know that I am a rather big fan of RPG's. My brother is too. It all got started with a rental (and later purchase) of Shining Force II. It's a strategic, turn based game which has spawned many imitators, e.g. Final Fantasy Tactics.

Well, tonight I close a chapter in the RPG nerdiness of my experience, just in time to start studying for my qualifier in August. Tonight I beat SFII on Ouch! difficulty. And it feels great! Let's just say that Zeon was tough. :)

[brag]To make things sweeter, the bonus fight also fell to my party. For those of us who don't remember, that's situated in the Ancient Tunnels between Grans Island and the Parmecian continent, reached after the endgame has played out by waiting ~5 mins on the "Fin" screen. The enemies: Zeon, King Galam, Odd Eye, Geshp, Red Baron, Cameela, Zalbard, the Chess King, Willard the Rat, Prism flowers, and a posessing ghost from the first battle. All at once. And on Ouch![/brag]

Let us Destroy our Freedom!

It would seem that the US House has again approved a proposed Constitutional amendment which would add a single sentence:

"The Congress shall have power to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag of the United States."

Republican representatives are quoted as evoking images of the WTC disaster while it was under debate. The Senate, which has quashed similar amendments in the past, will take it under consideration after July 4.

Personally, I think this amendment flies against the face of everything that America stands for -- especially that first amendment which our younger generations now hold in disdain. Seriously, what is the harm of burning a piece of cloth? The flag certainly is a powerful symbol -- but it represents the freedom to dissent as well.

If the Congress can Constitutionally ban a form of currently protected free speech, what's to stop them from adding additional one-liners that will enable them to censor which political topics we may discuss without risk of jail? (Hell, let's get rid of that whole "due process" thing and protections against "cruel and unusual punishment" while we're at it, since we're already making a mockery of the Justice system with our base in Guantanamo -- never mind the policy of flying high level prisoners out of the US to torture them.)

Seriously, why throw people in jail for burning the flag when Congress and the President are willing to shred the Constitution already?

Digital Activism

I was dismayed to see today (on /. no less) that the Hollywood *AA types are working to sneak the Broadcast Flag back into our airwaves and into our electronics by tacking on legislation to an appropriations bill.

Personally, I think this kind of underhanded political action needs to be avoided. Major thanks to the EFF for pointing out this move. This type of behavior, and the fact that EFF caught it, pushed me over the edge. EFF needs people to support them financially in order to keep their vigilance against these sneaky lobbyists. I'm now a card-carrying member -- and I invite you to do so as well.

An Update

It's been a while since I last wrote any form of an update, so here goes...

The first year of graduate school is now behind me. It's nice to be working a regular 40 hour/week job again! Things have been very busy despite being finished with classes. (Jackson is successfully behind me forever!) My research group has been preparing for a submission of a renewed project proposal to the Department of Energy, which has been keeping most of us poor grad students working like crazy to get data, references to papers, and fix things when they break. My adviser should emerge from the black hole of the proposal sometime within the next week; with luck, he'll be able to clue me in on the progress we're making with my (eventual) collaboration with General Atomics. At the moment, it looks like I won't be heading out to San Diego any time soon; we're caught up in red tape at the moment.

I've decided that it's time for me to bite the bullet and submit myself as a candidate for the Nuclear Engineering and Engineering Physics Qualifying Examination to be conducted at the end of August. It's the first of three Big Exams that I'll face in my PhD program at UW-Madison. Six hours of closed book exams which test mastery of undergraduate mathematics, classical physics, and modern physics (my choice of topics which are suited to a physics background), plus an oral exam that's a grabbag of concepts. (Ugh!) I'll be disappearing from work in July in order to be adequately prepared by the exam. In the meantime, I'm enjoying what I have left of June!

For instance: RotS was awesome. So are sci-fi books by Robert A. Heinlein. And of course the fantastic Square RPG Chrono Trigger! (That one caught my obsession for a fun-filled week...) I've also been able to spend some time cooking nicer meals, as well as take a few more nights on the town with Kristen. It's great to remember how nights and weekends should be really spent.

And, as a last note: congrats to the class of '05! I wish you the best of luck in the real world. :)

Premeditated War?

Now I may be preaching to the choir at this point, but regardless of what you think of our miserable failure of a President, an article I saw at CNN today raised my eyebrows.

Apparently there's evidence from Britain's MI6 that shows that the US was intent on invading Iraq and deposing Saddam Hussein well before Congress was briefed on the issue; moreover, the blatant lies of WMD as justification were being shored up by the Administration and their cronies in the intelligence community. Among the damning quotes:

"Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.

"The NSC had no patience with the U.N. route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action."

While I don't have my tinfoil hat on too tightly, if true (and the British haven't refuted its authenticity) you might want to ask your Congressional representatives to join in on the inquiry that is being presented to Bush to explain his actions.

Jackson's Last Push

It's hour twenty-something in my review of my electrodynamics notes. 100+ pages of solid math. Then the problems. There is no way I can possibly remember all of it on Thursday -- or likely important parts of it.

The important thing is that Jackson and his Relatavistic Electrodynamics will be behind me forever! Maybe then I can stop waking up with spherical harmonic expansions of potentials dancing around in my head...

Also of import: I learned that I won't be spending a week in sunny San Diego working at General Atomics this summer. I'll be spending two. :)

Cabin! Almost!

Now that my final exams are getting close to completion, my mind is starting to look forward to the existence of free time once again! I was wondering if people in and around MN/WI would like to join me up at my cabin at some undetermined weekend this summer.

What are people's thoughts? Something like this will require a bit of planning on my part, so if you're interested, head on over to the Kravlor.com forums and let's discuss it. (Plus you can get directions to the lake from there too.)

Ok, back to work! At least I'm not working from 8:30 AM to 12:30 AM in the lab, like I did yesterday -- now I can work on a theoretical plasma physics final from those same timescales on the weekend! (Sigh) One more week...

PS I had a great birthday, albeit marred by finals. Thanks to everyone that sent nice notes, etc!

... and the dust settles...

The engineering expo brought more than 2700 people through my lab over the course of three days this weekend. Managing the throng of humanity (much less a bunch of snotty middle-schoolers (or mischievous fifth graders) proved to be an exhausting -- but rewarding -- task. [Snotty middle-schoolers give you more respect when you warn them about how the warning tape they've been casually flaunting around is there for a reason. ;)]

All in all, it was pretty fun. We had a helium glow plasma running inside the vacuum vessel, so people could go up and poke their heads right up to the machine and see a real live plasma (at a relatively cool 20,000 degrees Celsius). I ended up talking myself hoarse, but it was worth it. I remember taking tours of nifty science stuff when I was in grade school and thinking it was the coolest thing ever. Now I get to work in such a place! Not fun, however, was the button making. We made over 3,000 buttons (personal favorite: "Cheeseheads for Fusion") but were out before closing. That was time-consuming! ;)

I ended up poking my head around our basement lab hallway ceiling this evening. Despite working from 7 AM to 7 PM, I successfully ran about a mile of cable for my new toy at work -- the Plasma Control System. I've been designing it since November, and all the parts are finally here; the fun part of assembling them has arrived! (What could be niftier than a Linux box with dual processors -- except one that has another Linux box running inside of it as an embedded processor system? I'm still geeking out about that!)

Congress to Vouch for Women's Rights?

According to this CNN story, Congress is going to be considering a bill that would mandate that pharmacists fill legally-prescribed birth control (including the so-called 'morning after' pill) for women presenting said prescriptions. While one would think that the practice of providing medically necessary medications to patients on a doctor's orders would be standard fare for a pharmacist, it sadly isn't the case for many in this country.

Unfortunately Wisconsin is one of many states where incidents involving pharmacists refusing to provide rape victims with emergency contractption pills ordered by their doctors have occurred -- sometimes even confiscating the prescription to prevent them from filling it elsewhere! Why do they do this? The argument is that it violates their consience; birth control pills are a form of abortion, which they do not condone.

Such actions by pharmacists are unconscionable. While I believe it's fine (although utterly backward) for them to be morally offended over rape victims' refusal to bear their attacker's child, they should not be allowed to force their personal beliefs on the victims -- especially when oftentimes there is only a single pharmacy in an area capable of filling the prescription.

I'm glad to see that Congress is taking this action. It's a sad day to be in where we have to consider such legislation (and get the mini-civics lesson about how a Federal law can preempt a State law), but it's a Good Idea. I wonder about its chances for survival in today's Republican-dominated Federal government. I recommend writing your representatives about the issue if you feel strongly about it.

Expo Fun!

So, after 14 hours of work (plus classes too) today, the Pegasus Toroidal Experiment is ready (or as ready as it will get) for public viewing these next three days. I alone made more than four hundred buttons.

We're planning on having more than four thousand people tour our lab. There are five grad students, including myself. Yikes! We'll be doing our best though; we may be getting a couple of high-profile visitors including US Representatives from WI (Tammy Baldwin) and NJ. Did I mention that Pegasus was up for a DOE grant this spring? The life of the whole project is in a high-stakes competition... just a little pressure! Ah... graduate student life at it's best.

For now, sleep. For the next three days: thousands and thousands of visitors.

Easter

This weekend has been full of milestones, paired with some timely coincidences.

Good Friday marked the third anniversary of my mother's death; Easter fell on what would have been her fiftieth birthday. While I don't put any faith in numerology or believe there's any extra-special significance to those alignments of dates, it did serve to remind me of the meaning of the Easter holiday.

Eating a phenomenal meal with many family members doesn't hurt, either. :)

Congressional Shenanigans

Ever since the Republicans have effectively controlled all three branches of the Federal government, I've been waiting for progressively backhanded, shady-closed-door activities to take place. (The Cheney Energy Task Force meetings, ANWR oil drilling provisions (recently passed, dammit), Enron, squashing the CAFE auto efficiency standards, and more come to mind.) Following the actual election of Bush for a second round, and an improved majority in Congress, I expected more of our backwards, corrupt steps. I figure that it will take some egregious actions on the part of our Republican leaders to convince the nation that they don't deserve their positions of power.

While one would think that the actions of the House regarding Tom DeLay would be such an event, most Americans don't care. (Or likely know who Tom DeLay is.) Today, however, I've become exasparated with Congress much more than I ever have in the past -- keeping in mind that policies that I consider dangerous and harmful to the US are being implemented, by design, by the Republicans.

Today the House and Senate issued subpoenas to interfere with an exhaustive court battle in Terry Schiavo's right-to-die case. This is along the same lines where the Florida's Republican Legislature passed a law (which was quickly struck down as unconstitutional) enabling the Florida Executive branch (Jeb Bush) to overturn the court's decision. Now we're seeing Congress interfering with the sovereignty of the courts. Regardless of one's personal opinions on the case, this meddling should raise serious concerns among US citizenry. It certainly does for me.

For the Love of God, please let this poor, severely brain-damaged woman's wishes be carried out. The US Congress has much more important things to be working on (like balancing the $400+ billion defecit for this year alone) than holding publicity hearings with Major League Baseball stars and wasting time (and money) by holding Congressional hearings where the severely brain-damaged Schiavo, herself, [source] is expected to testify.

I Fart In Your General Direction!

I was hastily interrupted at work today by an announcement from a co-worker that "there was a problem with grounding on SPRED." (It's the diagnostic I'm most responsible for on PEGASUS.) It turns out that today was spent ferreting out ground loops in our experiment.

The idea's that we have one giant experimental electrical grounding point (the same thing as the third prong in home electrical sockets). With big honking currents going through, say, our vacuum vessel, we'd like discharges to ground to go through the vacuum vessel straight to that single ground and not (for example) through a circuitous route through our expensive diagnostic equipment. This means that we have several ground paths: through the vessel; instrumentation; our data acquisition room; and the building itself. Each path should stay separated from the others. Essentially, we can't have electrical contact between two grounding paths -- which can be a huge difficulty to find should there be a problem! (Think two signal cables brushing against the machine -- then multiply by ~5000. That's just the cables.)

Enter the loopbuster. When clipped onto our 'main' ground point, this handy homemade gadget dumps a strong, modulated current to ground. Should a ground loop exist, the current will also seek its way through to the place where the unwanted contact is taking place. We probe for where the current is going with a wand that has an antenna at the tip; near the presence of the modulated current, it will render the current modulation into audio. While this is very cool in and of itself, even cooler is the message that is being broadcast: "I fart in your general direction!"

There's something to be said for being able to make your own gadgets -- and exploit programmable EEPROM's. :)

A Few Things

It's been nearly a month since I made an update. Tonight I can rectify the situation and procrastinate at the same time! Things are getting to be rather crazy in my line of work. Midterms are coming up this week (hence the non-study procrastination) and officially Spring Break is coming up next week. Unfortunately, it turns out that graduate students are expected to be working through the week. (The Real World rears its ugly head a few years earlier than I had expected!) At least there won't be the 800-lb gorilla of J.D. Jackson's electrodynamics weighing in on things over that week...

Work is also yielding some interesting prospects. I will likely need to make a trip out to General Atomics outside San Diego in the near future to work with the fusion group's plasma control system designers. Not bad for an after-finals trip, huh?

I also got something rather interesting in the mail today -- my first international Nigerian-419 scam delivered to my postal address. How they received my name and address is making me wonder... Anybody that would like to claim my $615,000 can simply provide me with all their banking information and a signiture, and I'll be sure to split things 60/40. ;) It's nice to see that the scammers threw away .78 euros trying to con me!

I've run across a hilarious web comic, which I will now be reading daily: Ctrl-Alt-Del. Two years of archives in two days. Pretty damn funny. (Did I mention procrastination?)

And, last but not least, should you not have enough blogtastic readings, you can check out one more: my girlfriend Kristen's. :)

Triumph!

I finished another marathon 26-odd hour relatavistic electrodynamics assignment (antennas, symmetric energy-momentum stress tensors, and relativstic radiation, oh my!) late this evening. (THANK YOU SIR, MAY I HAVE ANOTHER?? ;)) After finishing writing up the twelve pages of solid math (and 2 square inches of diagram on one problem), the my brain had a bit of a short-circuit, thinking along the following lines:

Finished! I can finally get around to enjoying my weekend!
(Checks watch -- quarter past midnight)
... oh... that was the weekend...

Let's just say that I'm already waiting for finals to start; it'll be very good to have Jackson done with forevermore. Until then, I'm coming to the conclusion that I have absolutely no social life on the weekends this semester.

And, by now it's Valentine's Day. I with you all a good one!

V-Day Copycat

Following Joel's lead...

[Blog quiz: Your Seduction Style: Ideal Lover; You seduce people by tapping into their dreams and desires. And because of this sensitivity, you can be the ideal lover for anyone you seek. You are a shapeshifter - bringing romance, adventure, spirituality to relationships. It all depends on who you're with, and what their vision of a perfect relationship is.]

I won't complain with that rating. :) Still, it has to say something when you have a computer telling you this!

Driving Nuclear Weapons Cross-Country for Fun and Profit

"In today's security-obsessed, post-9/11 era, one might think that it would be difficult to haul a convincing replica of an atomic bomb across the country. Not so, as John Coster-Mullen inadvertently proved in October 2004."

It looks like we have some more training in store for those atomic-minded police and DHS officers!

The Media and the Energy Department

It would seem that CNN has very little faith in the new DOE leader, recently appointed by President Bush and confirmed earlier this week by the Senate. After a mainly boilerplate article about how the leader of my funding agency wants to drill for oil in wildlife preserves, you get this great explanation about the DOE:

"The Energy Department, with a $23 billion budget, runs a network of nuclear weapons research laboratories and has over 100,000 employees and contractors." (True; the lions share goes to maintaining the nuclear stockpile.)

In the 'Your E-Mail Alerts' section, there's a nice reminder on the topic of 'Nuclear Warfare!' Yikes! ;)

The First Amendment and High Schoolers

Well, I happened across this alarming article on CNN from Slashdot today. It would seem that a growing and non-trivial percentage of the high school population does not understand nor particularly endorse the First Amendment.

Some of the misconceptions involve believing flag burning is illegal, that the government has the ability to (legally) censor Internet sites, and that it's worthwhile to give up freedoms for security.

Two comments:
1) "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin
2) When I was in high school, I had a civics course. While taught by the football coach, it actually required some study of the Constitution and a basic comprehension of the US government. Perhaps civics education should be beefed up a bit? What were your experiences like in this regard?

Certainly, having a populace that doesn't understand their Constitutional rights makes it easier for the government to take them away. Witness the PATRIOT Act, which is getting knocked down bit-by-bit in the courts... Remember the massive protests, and the razor-thin vote to pass it? Oh, wait...

At least my senator cast the lone vote against it! Thank goodness he's back for another 6 years.

Freaking Jackson

No, not the child molesting pop singer that everyone likes to ridicule. (It'd be great to see him behind bars IMHO -- seducing young boys is NOT cool, even when you pay millions of dollars for it later to keep the family quiet.)

My bane of the past four days has been J. D. Jackson, author of Classical Electrodynamics, the physics/engineering student's dreaded book. Not only did it cost a lot (although not nearly as much as the book Tokamaks for my magnetic plasma confinement class), but it's more of a reference for people who already know the material, as opposed to being a book read for actually picking it up in the first place. Now, the book has a very lofty reputation amongst physicists and engineers, because practically everyone these days holding professorships took "the Jackson" course, suffered greatly, and, more often than not, is happy to see other students go though the same pain. Combine that with the fact that the book is outdated, inconsistent in notation with today's standards (and even itself at times), and that my class is starting at the end of the book instead of the beginning: not fun times for me.

I have begun to see why everyone dreads Jackson; this weeks assignment (4 problems) took me a little over 22 hours to do, with the assistance of available online solutions proffered by good-hearted souls who've been there before. (As my advisor quipped, "those problems are good for your health," followed by general shock when he learned about starting at the end of the book. "F------ physicists!" was his next exclamation. :))

If this is what graduate school for physicists is like, then boy I'm glad I'm in plasma physics -- in the good old department of Nuclear Engineering and Engineering Physics. (Somehow, classes about building giant magnetic traps and confining stuff that's 100,000 times hotter than the temperature of tungsten [the best material at withstanding heat as a solid] is more interesting than doing abstract algebra and tensor manipulations. :))

BTW the Pegasus Group got together for a group photo! I've got one of them hosted here for those of you who haven't seen the scale of the machine I work on!

A Classic Simpsons Ripoff?

One of my favorite episodes of The Simpsons is where Homer becomes Public Sanitation Comissioner and sings "The Garbage Man Can," with a guest appearance of U2.

Well, in reading my daily dose of Bloom County, this cartoon showed up:



Could this be what sparked the writers' interests? It certainly is similar!

Phan-tastic

I was able to catch a showing of Phantom of the Opera this evening. What a show! I highly recommend it to anybody who gets the chance. The neat thing is that despite being on Broadway for n years, this month was Madison's premiere debut of the show. In our brand new Overture Center for the Performing Arts, it found a good home.

Of course, whenever you make plans for a big night more than a month in advance, Murphy's law has to kick in somehow. Much like my last major musical attendance (Mozart's The Magic Flute in May) my date wasn't feeling well. :( Fortunately, she was well enough to enjoy dinner and the show, even if there was the occasional cough or sniffle.

Now, I get to pay for the night -- graduate students don't get 'free evenings' to go on 'dates.' No, they have to work in 'labs' and do mountains of homework. Oh well -- it was worth it. Relatavistic electrodynamics, here I come!

A Victory Against the Creationists

In Georgia today a federal judge forced school districts to remove stickers that were being placed on biology textbooks that WARNED students that evolution was discussed inside, and was "a theory, not a fact."

Now, in my book, the warning was clearly written in a manner that used 'theory' in a manner unbefitting that of evolution or the Standard Model of physics; that is, one that can explain phenomena, make predictions, is self-consistent, and explains available data sets. (Both of these theories are so resoundingly successful that any replacement to them will have to incorporate the existing theory as a subset!) Instead, the warning cast evolution as something that we should be very, very skeptical of; a sham.

It's good to see that our judicial system is still capable of respecting the Constitutional separation of Church and State in all its forms. That separation is a Good Idea. Besides, when it comes to science, phenomena must be accounted for without resorting to God or other supernatural effects. Sheer ignorance of this concept is demonstrated by an attorney for the school district, who said "[s]cience and religion are related and they're not mutually exclusive."

Nope, sorry, they are. That said, it doesn't overturn religion; science simply cannot confront God by definition. Good for the justice system today; hopefully this can be seen as a precedent for other states that are battling fundamentalist Creationist (or the modern-day Intelligent Design) influence in our public schools.

... And the Shoe Drops

Well, I had a bit of a revelation today at work. I've been given the not-so-fun task of renovating and updating my research group's website. Since the URL for the site had changed, I found ways to redirect traffic from the old site(s) that were pointing to the old location. However, there were several human-edited databases that also needed updating, ranging from the Open Directory to the Internet Directory of Nuclear Resources, run by none other than the IAEA.

These are the nuclear watchdogs that you keep reading about on CNN. (They do lots of other nuclear physics things, too; but the non-proliferation activities are what most people hear about.)

Now that's cool. I don't think I've ever had a direct link to one of my websites from a UN agency! Now then, perhaps I should be hacking together a bit of a better-looking website! (I like the Fusion Portal that my advisor provided some of the text for and I whipped together a bit earlier...) With my attention increasingly focusing on a plasma control system for PEGASUS, a spiffy new website will probably languish. At least I gave it a facelift after 2+ years!

An Amazing Day

Well, a cold wind must be blowing through Hell right about now, because the Minnesota Vikings trounced the Green Bay Packers at Lambeau, in the playoffs!

I must admit, I was going into the game thinking that the Pack would win once again, but boy, today is a Good Day for all Vikings believers!

Tomorrow, I will be wearing Vikings purple into work and downtown Madison to flaunt the in-your-face-Farve victory. With luck, I'll survive. It'll be worth it!

A Handy Guide to Migrate from Evolution to Thunderbird

After making the plunge to Linux earlier this year, I also decided (for good or ill) to migrate to Ximian (later Novell) Evolution, the integrated Outlook clone that is now even more tightly bound to GNOME. With Fedora Core 3, I even got an upgrade to the latest 2.0 branch.

Unfortunately, the results were not too spectacular. Common features such as saving images in emails were absent. (I even filed a bug report on the issue!) Evolution wouldn't play nice with email servers that were being accessed by multiple clients simultaneously, causing me untold grief when I would forget to close my email client at work! Add random crashes to the mix (I even wrote a little script to kill all the miscellaneous Evolution processes) and that was enough for me to dump it.

Hello, Thunderbird! Being a big fan of the Mozilla suite, it's nice to be working with the latest standalone client. (I also use it at work.) Migrating from Evolution to Thunderbird wasn't the easiest, but I succeeded. Here's how:

Mail messages: Evolution and Thunderbird both save their local mail in a common format; a simple copy operation is then all that is neded. (They're located in ~/.evolution/local/*; look for files without file extensions.) Copy them to your new Thunderbird profile, at ~.thunderbird/*random dir name*/Mail/Local Folders, and restart Thunderbird. They're all there, albeit unread. A small price to pay, and easily remedied with a click of the mouse. :)

The address book is somewhat more tricky, since there's no common format that Evolution and Thunderbird share between the numerous export/import filters available. Here's how I got my Evolution Contacts ported over into the Thunderbird Address book. First, export all the Contacts by selecting all of them within Evolution with CTRL+A and a right-click popup menu option 'Save as VCard...' Then, with the help of a little perl script, the exported VCF file can be turned into an LDIF file that Thunderbird can then import.

Nifty, huh?