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.