Change for a Life...?

Something I've been thinking about lately is the idea that you can change your life by listening to what others say. I find this to be a great tug-of-war inside me.

On one hand, I can't say that the wisdom and lessons of others aren't worth their weight in gold. On the other hand, it's been my experience that no matter how much people tell me things, I usually don't actually learn those things until I experience them for myself.

I guess self exploration and betterment is a two-fold process. You not only have to examine the directions your life can take, but you have to support and analyze them with the help of others. If you decide that being good to others is important to you, and that it is something that needs change, what do you do about it? Do you just spontaneously think of the things you need to do and do them? Are you able to recognize what it is about you that is the problem? More importantly, to what degree do you change your own life, until that change achieves the benefit quotient you are seeking?

Okay, so I'm rambling now, but this blog has a hidden agenda. Yes, the above is important, but it leads to the following:

This may sound funny, but I've got some strange mentors in my life. I think many people would agree that having Mr. Rogers as a life mentor is not unusual, and I did, very much so. But how many people would say the character Hawkeye from M*A*S*H and his actor, Alan Alda, are common mentors? It's interesting to see how different people effect our lives, often without us even knowing it.

Alright, alright, I'll get to the point. Alan Alda has published a new memoir, called "Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself".

If you haven't heard of it, don't worry. It was just published this month, but already it's getting a lot of reads. This is especially the case because Alda's earlier memoir, "Never Have Your Dog Stuffed," was also a best seller.

I just finished reading it last night. I let it soak in for a bit. Plus I've been following each chapter with the audiobook version, which is read by Alda himself.

Read it. Listen to it. I recommend listening to it, since you get the author's tone and characterization at the same time, but either way, I insist you pick up a copy of this and absorb it. (Yes, you can find the audiobook on iTunes.)

Alan Alda has a unique viewpoint on life that is both refreshing and entertaining at the same time. His answer to the age old question of the meaning of life? Well, I won't spoil it for you, you'll just have to read the book. Trust me, you won't regret it. What I will tell you about the book is that Alan goes through his exploration of the meaning of life, by examining his own career, and in particular, the speeches he's given to various institutions and university graduations. Actually, he only gives snippets of those speeches; the bulk of the book surrounds him trying to figure out what to say, and what will have the most meaning to his audience.

So go. Buy the book. Listen to the audio book. Get going! I won't say you'll thank me for it later, because I know that even if you end up disliking the book you'll come away with something. Even if that something is a great coffee coaster.

As always: Enjoy!

What a Lowsy Day

We won't talk about my car breaking down on me today. *sniff* That seemed to be the major problem of the day, until I heard that this guy:



...was dead.

...

Dammit.

Pavarotti was one of my favorite artists. Look at my opera collection, and his name appears in over a third of the list. Needless to say, I greatly admired Luciano, and although I knew he was suffering from cancer, I hoped he would make it through so that I might possibly be able to see him sing again. Alas, it was not to be.

I won't say anything about it. It's just one more person on my list of people I admire that's kicked the bucket, right?

Everyone knows Pavarotti, and I know he will be sorely missed. *sigh*

The BBC has some good coverage here.

Here's a great story about the intimate life and person of Pavarotti. Definitely worth the short read.

I should also mention that iTunes has put up a whole section devoted to Pavarotti, which you should see from the homepage of the iTunes store. Lots of good stuff.

What do I recommend most? It's hard to pick out songs from opera, because like classical pieces, there isn't a whole lot of stand-alone 5-min pieces. But here is a selection of some great pieces that go good alone, or with their associated full works. Some obvious. Some perhaps not. Please enjoy.

Core 'Ngrato (Tutto Pavarotti album is best)
Mattinata (Romantica: The Very Best of Luciano Pavarotti)
Vesti La Giubba - Pagliacci (Essential Opera)
Torna a Surriento (Romantica: The Very Best of Luciano Pavarotti)
"Come un Bel Di Di Maggio" (Andrea Chenier; Luciano Pavarotti: The Best)
"Se Il Mio Giunger T'oltraggia" (William Tell; Pavarotti & Freni: Arias & Duets)
Fedora, Act II, Amor ti vieta (Romantica: The Very Best of Luciano Pavarotti)
Nessun Dorma (Pavarotti's Greatest Hits)
Caruso
La Boheme - Che gelida manina
Notte 'e Piscatore (Pavarotti & Andre Boccelli)
Granada (Pavarotti, Domingo & Carreras In Concert)
Maria, Mari

None of those will disappoint.


Pavarotti. The man may be gone, but his talent and inspiring voice will live on forever!

"Adieu maestro"

Save Energy Surfing the Web

When my friend Gordon hadn't heard of a neat web-related thing-a-magig, I knew I was onto something.

If you haven't heard, there's a new way to Google. It's called "Blackle" and here's why it's so cool: Blackle saves electricity.


Curious?

Check this out:

How is Blackle saving energy?

Blackle was created by Heap Media to remind us all of the need to take small steps in our everyday lives to save energy. Blackle searches are powered by Google Custom Search.

Blackle saves energy because the screen is predominantly black. "Image displayed is primarily a function of the user's color settings and desktop graphics, as well as the color and size of open application windows; a given monitor requires more power to display a white (or light) screen than a black (or dark) screen." Roberson et al, 2002

In January 2007 a blog post titled Black Google Would Save 750 Megawatt-hours a Year proposed the theory that a black version of the Google search engine would save a fair bit of energy due to the popularity of the search engine. Since then there has been skepticism about the significance of the energy savings that can be achieved and the cost in terms of readability of black web pages.

We believe that there is value in the concept because even if the energy savings are small, they all add up. Secondly we feel that seeing Blackle every time we load our web browser reminds us that we need to keep taking small steps to save energy.

How can you help?

We encourage you to set Blackle as your home page. This way every time you load your Internet browser you will save a little bit of energy. Remember every bit counts! You will also be reminded about the need to save energy each time you see the Blackle page load.

Help us spread the word about Blackle by telling your friends and family to set it as their home page. If you have a blog then give us a mention. Or put the following text in your email signature: "Blackle.com - Saving energy one search at a time".

So crawl over to Blackle today and have a look. I've already set my home page to Blackle.com. Okay, so the savings person to person is insignificant, and I probably won't noticed more than a cent or two difference in my electric bill...but the concept is still valid. If you're like me, Google is both your home page, and a page you visit three-thousand times a day. It's not hard to see that adding up as some serious wattage.

Enjoy!

Ruby, Ruby, Ruby, Ruby...

My journey goes on!

Here's a few clips from my slowly growing photo collection.

Sunday, June 3rd...The day begins at Windsor Castle...


We continued on to a collection of rocks out in the countryside that some people might recognize...


...and then, the unexpected jewel of the day...the city of Bath!


Oh, and the Roman baths that Bath is built around (notice Roman dude)...


Monday, June 4th. Recovering from Sunday's 4am to 12pm day, I spent this Monday floating around Oxford. This included a visit to the hidden but world famous (and justly so) University Museum of Oxford. Words cannot describe this incredible museum, which is both a magnificent display of natural history, architecture, and layout mastery! This museum has existed for over 100 years. Notice the Victorian style display cases...


Tuesday, June 5th. Tragedy turned unexpected delight! I was schedule for a tour out of London, when I arrived at the tour station (at 6am mind you) only to find out that the tour was canceled. At first I was upset, because I wanted to see the attractions on the tour. In London, I wasn't about to go back to Oxford just to sit around, so off exploring I went. First stop, Buckingham Palace. Not going to bore myself with pictures of the palace, here's a cool pic of the entrance gardens, in which you can see the British Airway's famous London Eye. Nice "snap"...


As you may know, Buckingham Palace is just a short jaunt from Victoria Station (where I pull in) and is also right inside St. James Park, which is big, relaxing, full of ancient trees and shade. Here's a shot from Buckingham Palace side, looking down the center walking path which leads to Trafalger Square.


After this, I went to the British Museum (been there before, but still cool), then I went to the Imperial War Museum (which has the world's largest collection of WWI and WWII artifacts). After some mealing around, I decided to head home (it takes 2 hours by bus to get back to Oxford) so it was back to St. James Park for another stroll towards Victoria Station.

Surprise surprise, I find myself in St. James Park, only to be barricaded by mounted guards. Wondering what's going on, I hear a marching band, and hey! There's a marching parade!


Back home again. Feet are numb. Look outside...another beautiful sunset...


Wednesday, June 6.

I spent today in London, walking about 30 miles total as I strolled around the Thames. The highlight of the day, though, was attending a performance at the Shakespeare's Globe Theater. Absolutely incredible! I will never forget this performance! I haven't had so much fun, and seen such brilliant acting, in years! Couldn't take pictures of course, but I came away with a load of great memories, plus a few goodies from the gift shop. I've been a donator to the Globe since 2002, but have only just now seen a performance. My life is that much more complete!

Okay, it's almost 2am. Tomorrow (or rather, today) I will be going to the Sherlock Holmes Museum (at, you guessed it, 221B Baker Street) and the Tower of London. See'ya all later!


ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz................

London Calling...

Well here I am in awesome Oxford! I might have some time tonight to throw up more text and pics, but here's some shots I took of the place I'm staying...right before I passed out on the couch!

Internet Jam

As if the Internet wasn't awesome already, check this out:

We've all shared photos online, songs, movies, and spent countless hours rampaging through online theaters of destruction, but what about music? No, I mean actual music. Not sharing songs or music videos, I mean actually creating music...online.

Well that's apparently what's happening on sites such as eJamming.com and JamGlue.com, and let me tell you, it's pretty cool.

JamGlue and eJamming are sites centered around virtual live recording. There's a few differences between sites, but all cool. Here's how JamGlue works:

You login to JamGlue, and with your microphone or computer hookup, you jam. Whether you're a guitar player, keyboard, bass, drums, singer, mouth-harp, whatever. Let's say you play a mean guitar, and you just get on a record whatever comes into your head.

That's not the cool part; we've been plagued by noises from random anonymous people for years. Instead, other people on JamGlue can see your recording, and add to it.

So let's say someone comes along who can play bass, and they like your guitar tune. They record their playin' and mix it with yours. Then comes along someone who thinks up some cool lyrics for your tune. They mix it in.

Before you know it, several completely random people who've never met each other before, have created a song together. Is that cool or what?

It gets cooler.

eJamming takes the process a step further, allowing people to record in real time, together, live! So you start playing yer guitar, someone hears you and joins in with their bass, then someone's singing...next thing you know you have your own recording session.

So we've got virtual gaming, virtual office space, virtual second lives, and now virtual music. The only thing left is virtual woohoo, but we'll probably have to wait for the software compatibility issues to be resolved.

Rock on!

Quantum Quackery

I was talking with a good friend recently about particle physics/quantum physics (I had him cornered at the Wendy's for lunch), and we were discussing some really bizarre behaviors in quantum theory. My friend kept saying "I just don't get it. It just doesn't make sense."

Well, that's okay, buddy, 'cause neither does anyone else!

Truth be told, there's a lot of brilliant thinkers working on new avenues of physics, particularly (no pun intended) quantum physics. My friend is right, there's a lot of stuff that just doesn't sound plausible. It's a hard thing to wrap one's head around these new concepts, especially when they ask us to defy all our foundation knowledge about things. Unfortunately for us mental mortals, there's a lot of math and lab-work that has proven some of these concepts, and we'll never understand it ourselves. Weird, it may be, but what is the universe if it isn't weird? When you think about all the things we take for granted in science, there's a LOT that we actually don't understand as much as we think. Of course there's gravity, but lets not forget basic stuff like how the planets formed, how the solar system formed, how atoms truly interact, or even the mechanics of granular density.

In an ironic downside (or upside) twist to quantum mechanics, the theories are so strange and so "magical" if you don't spend the time studying them, that the whole concept of "quantum" has seen a lot of science fiction mis-truths and misuse. This uneducated or misleading habit has been coined "Quantum Quackery" by many people, especially those in the scientific community who have to deal with this all the time.

"No-one knows the reason for this, but it's probably quantum," is a quote of the dog Gaspode of Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels.

Quantum mechanics seems to provide for limitless possibilities, and so it often becomes the basis for many science-fiction foundations. Lest I remind the readers that "quantum torpedoes" are armed and ready...?

One concept that had my friend's head tilting was the concept of a distance-irrelevant quantum communications device. Such a device would in theory use a series of (usually two or four) quantum particles, in which the devices used the theories of quantum entanglement to manipulate the particle's qubit state. These devices would theoretically be capable of communicating across massive distances, because of the nature of shared-pair particle GHZ states. In lay-speak, I make one particle in my device do something, and the paired particle of my friend's device across the galaxy changes simultaneously. On a mundane scale it's quantum Morse-Code. On an advanced scale, it's supercomputer networking without cables.

The math seems to work, and some observations show effects of these theories, but then again if we truly understood how it really happens, we probably wouldn't be living like we do today.

Science (and especially astronomical science) is a lot like deep-sea vent creatures. We believe that something is impossible, and then suddenly there it is. Now we gotta figure out how, and why.

There's a lot out there that we don't even have to think up to see wacky stuff. Why is Voyager speeding up now that it's left the solar system? If the Big-Bang happened and all that matter was in that tiny little speck...where was the speck? How come when we throw a bunch of particles into a computer and code in Newton's Laws of Physics, everything goes nuts, when in the real universe under supposedly the same laws, we get galaxies, solar systems, and planets? How come we can't find dark-matter, when there's a prime example between the President's ears?


I have a confession to make: I've been exploiting my friends at work. I haven't really had a venue for theoretical discussion since leaving college, and really that's one of my favorite things to do. In my junior year of college, I probably spent more hours in a classroom, discussing and white-boarding astro-physics and theory, than I did anything else. It was nothing for me (and my one astronomy buddy who took the same classes) to descend upon my great professor at the end of advanced astro-physics, and bombard him with dozens of questions about this and that. Once that was over, we'd descend even further into the theoretical stuff, and had a lot of serious fun playing with equations, conceptualizing strange phenomenon, and discussing recent breakthroughs in physics and astronomy. My class ended at 3:45. It was not unusual for us to spend 3 hours in the classroom, then migrate to his office and spend another 3 hours continuing on.

So my apologies to my friends! I'm sure I drive them nuts with all this crap! :o)

Google Ants

Yesterday I was eating my dinner on my deck, when I felt something crawling on my leg. Fortunately it wasn't one of the spiders or wasps that frequent my apartment's deck. Instead it was a small ant. I brushed it off and continued my meal.

Later that evening I went out on my deck to straighten things up, and noticed a small clump of ants happily devouring a crumb of food I had accidentally dropped during my meal earlier.

A lot of people detest ants, and I can understand why. They have a knack for getting into just about anything, and they have beady little eyes. My apartment remains safe; the little intruders crawl up the concrete support posts, rummage around people's decks, and then leave. Fortunately we lack the more dangerous varieties of ants here in D.C., and so a little observation is easy.

I'm telling you about all this because ants are actually very similar to another creature we're very familiar with: humans. Not only that, but they can Google.


Okay, so they can't actually use the computer. The most they can do is throw up while playing merry-go-round on the case fans, and get squished under the keys of the keyboard. Nonetheless, ants behave remarkably like Internet users, and they can show us a lot.

Superorganisms, such as ants, are colonies of many individuals who exist in a single community. Furthermore, superorganisms don't have leaders, per se. While some have queens, the level of direct instruction is incredibly small, or non-existent. When one considers the accomplishments of the colony, and the mechanics required to do such things, these little critters are really quite astounding.

One of these feats is the ability to find things, assess their value, and disseminate to the masses.

The ant crawling on my leg during dinner was likely a scout. For whatever reason, the little ant left her colony (all ants are females) and headed out in an arbitrary direction in search of things. Curiously, despite a lack of long-range communication, blog, or speech, the ant's discoveries will be utilized by the colony, and very quickly. How does it do this? How can one relatively isolated creature, among thousands, impart so much knowledge to others so effectively?

Ants are naturally inquisitive. They interact with their world by directly engaging in anything they find. To tell if something is edible, they eat it. To find out if something is dangerous, they touch it. Sound familiar? It should, because that's exactly the way most people explore the Internet. They see an interesting link, and they click it. They find a picture, sound, or bit of text that intrigues them, and they begin to explore. Using a mouse and keyboard, users "feeler" the web until they find what they want.

Identifying POI's is just one part of the game, though. Ants not only have to find things, but they communicate their findings to the colony, both to benefit the colony, and to gain assistance in their own challenges.

Each little ant does something very cool as it explores. It dots a chemical trail behind it as it searches. If the search proves unfruitful, the ant can retrace her steps, and soon the trail will fade away from lack of potency. However, if the ant finds something, she heads back to the colony trailing a strong, solid chemical trail behind her.

Other ants who are following the trails of others, detect her strong scent trail and know there's something possibly important along it. As they follow and also encounter that something, they too leave heavy trails as they return home. Eventually the trail becomes so strong that many ants abandon their wanderings and follow the chemical highway.


But here's something else. As the ants discover things, they do something remarkable. Not only do they return home leaving a trail behind them, but they take a piece of what they found with them. Once the ant encounters another, she shares what she's found with that ant, showing the worth of her discovery. The other ants see that this one has returned home, and it has found something tasty. Perhaps its trail is worth following...

We can associate with this activity quite easily. Users on the Internet often set out through the digital world, looking for something. As they feeler their way around the web, eventually they stumble upon something interesting. Without knowing their destination, users crawl around the web, looking for things that seem to be what they're looking for, and they click on it. If the page or object turns out to be something other than what they wanted, they might mark the page as interesting and move on, or simply move on. Soon, the links go dead, the history is lost, and all is forgotten. However, when something is found and it is correct, the magic begins.

After marking the site or capturing the object, users often rush to forums of communication; email, IM, chatrooms, their personal website, and blogs. They show what they have found to others. Here's a prime example:

A friend came to me with an email. He had recently discovered an online Flash game called Desktop Tower Defense. In his email he left a link, and a screenshot.

Looking at the tasty screenshot morsel my fellow Internet user brought me, I followed his link and arrived at the DTD website.

Delicious food found. Success!

To humans, the Internet is our forest, full of laborious climbs that lead to potential rewards, as well as dangers. We can't see the Internet as a whole, there is no six-foot-high view down upon the undergrowth, telling us what's ahead, or to go left instead of right to find the dropped candybar. But like ants, we have help.

When an ant leaves its nest, it encounters a variety of choices. Despite popular belief, ants have a surprising amount of free will. They are born with certain desires, but how they fulfill these desires and when, is entirely up to the individual. There are scents in the air, chemical trails on the ground, and as each ant passes another, it momentarily feelers its comrades; this not only affirms the social bond, but gives each the opportunity to inspect what the other has been doing. The ants have built their own search engine, and with it they can find anything, quickly and easily.

Ant search criteria may be very simple, but the results can be highly refined. Chemical trails and scents can tell an ant if the trail leads to food, another nest, or a foe, what kind of food or danger, and how many others have followed. Category, type, hitcount. Maybe the ant is searching for tree sap. She's likely to follow trails that not only indicate food, but smell of tree sap. The strength of the trail tells her whether this is a new find, or something a lot of ants are taking advantage of. As she ventures along, she'll encounter other ants along the trail, and sample what they have found. Two trails with similar qualities present a choice. Does the ant go left, or right? The trail with more users may indicate a good source of food, but the other trail may have a scent that indicates a more valuable source of food. Fresh sap verses week-old goo.

Many people appear to be visiting Slashdot, but more useful information may be at this other site made by an expert on a subject.

People use search engines as their feelers for the web. They type in what they are looking for, and the search engine returns a series of digital scent trails. The users see what kind of result each one is, and how many people have visited. They also see a small blurb about the trail, giving them a sample of the find. Unfortunately for humans, other web crawlers generally don't pass by their desks while they're surfing, handing off bits of their finds. Instead, humans must utilize a different form of passing communication. They do this with technologies such as forums, blogs, newsletters, and IM. From here they can see what's going on, and see what other people are doing.

Hey, these people are talking about BILL-ant Robots. What's that?

Ants aren't devoid of these benefits. Although humans would like to think they invented the chatroom, sorry...these little ants have been doing it for well over 300-million years. That's a lot of backlog!

Ants often gather for no apparent reason, both inside and outside their nest. They are not drawn together by chemical trails or food, but instead by the urge to interact. They are, after all, social insects. They touch and feeler each other, sharing bits of found food, smells, and experiences. From here, individual ants can find out what is happening to the colony as a whole, and they can figure out what it is they want to do. For instance, an ant visiting an insect forum may discover that no one has found any food, and that crops (ant stomachs) are empty. This may spur other ants to go exploring for food. Or maybe the chatroom is too full; time to go find a new nest site. In another case, an ant who has detected a threat may go to the gathering, where others can smell and sense the agitation, stirring ants into action to protect the colony.



Whether we know it or not, humans play both the role of scout, and curious colony. When we search the web, we frequently are searching for what others have already found. We search for what satisfies our needs, follow the trails, and then we pass that knowledge on to others so they can find that satisfaction, too. Sometimes, we stumble upon something that we didn't know about, and in these cases we truly are the little scout, finding the dropped candybar. Pretty soon we have told all our friends, and they come to share the candybar. Then their friends, and their friend's friends, and then the news hits the colony and everyone knows about it.

So you may think you're alone, but when you're on the Internet you're actually part of a supercolony, following the trails laid down by others, while doing a little scouting of your own. Think about that the next time yer feelers fondle something new and interesting, and you go blog it. Where's your colony headed? I know where mine is headed...it's time for a candybar!

Little Trolls

Hey friends! Long time no post. I know, I've been battling the pollen and pressure changes. For most people this is just an annoying time when the eyes itch and the sneezing seems nonsensically endless, but for a few of us it means: migraines.

I've "suffered" from migraines all my life. Not as bad as those poor folks who have to seek medical emergency attention, but I've had my bouts on the merry-go-round, as they say.

If you've ever had a migraine (anyone can have one, its just their frequency that makes them chronic) then you know that there's headaches...and then there's migraines. Let me tell you, it's not fun, and unlike a headache, if you've had one, you don't forget it.

Let's do a bit of learnin' shall we? (Why? Cause after seven bleedin' hours of holding my head, I'm awake, it's 1:00am, and I can't sleep! That's why!)

Scientifically, there's four phases of a migraine. Let me put them into a lay-speak perspective:

Phase 1: Prodrome Phase
Technically this is a period of irritability and fatigue which is usually unexplainable, and is frequently accompanied by yawning, mood swings, and insomnia. Similarities to normal daily activity can make this particularly hard to spot.

In layman's terms: You feel GREAT!!! You don't know why, you are really tired, yet you have TONS OF ENERGY!!! You're bouncing around the room, yet the slightest misaligned object, nosey coworker, or stuck pixel, will send you into a flipping conniption fit that borderlines rabid festering, complete with foaming and consumption of massive quantities of liquids. In other words, the only thing worse is a pregnant lady with a craving for something she can't get.

Phase 2: Aura Phase
Technically this is a period immediately following prodrome, where the individual experiences signs indicating a migraine is about to occur. This usually takes the form of optical hallucinations, which is why it is called the "Aura" phase...but if you ask me it should be called either the "Point of LSD" or the "Satanic Ritual Phase."

For those of you who haven't had a real migraine, let me draw you a picture. Following your wonderful prodrome phase, you'll suddenly experience a sensation like your head has been filled with glass. Nothing will seem 100% focussed, and you'll begin to see things. Each person's experiences are different, and you soon learn what things mean what. Like for instance, if I get tunnel vision and pinpoints (tiny bursts of light like twinkling stars) I know a migraine's coming and it's gonna suck. However, if I see a narrow trapezoid patch in my vision, filled with static (like an untuned TV set) which only appears when both eyes are open, I'm in for the mother-load. This is how I know there must be something worth living for in life, because when these things hit, you'd do just about anything to unscrew your head.

Phase 3: Pain Phase
Hey kids, do you like violence?

It is usually at this point that the fun starts kicking in. You're getting a mild headache, but you manage to put up with it. Your behavior is a bit odd, but then you try to sleep and it only gets odder. You're restless. And slowly, like some kind of medieval torture game-show, the little bulb of your play oven warms up, and you're seein' the fireworks! Close your eyes, and you'd swear there's a tiny troll stomping across your head, driving steel nails into your skull with a rubber mallet. (Savor that vision for a second. You can almost hear the little grumbles.) The aptly-named "pain" phase reaches a point where your head is pulsing with pain, and just about anything could happen and you wouldn't care. At the point where pressing your skull and groaning doesn't help, you're now in a state of zombie, complete with moans, glazed eyes, and maybe drooling.

For no apparent reason, you find comfort in the strangest of positions. Once while in college I had a severe migraine and spent about six hours standing, leaning like I was in a hurricane, staring at a wall with nothing in my head by the repeating words "make it stop!" Another time, I found myself standing in my bathtub at six in the morning (apparently so out of it that my body was going through my morning routine all by itself). Scientists say that this is the body's way of keeping control while the brain is wigging out. Personally, it'd be nice if I could stay in the damn bed!!!

This part can be really scary, as the pain is so strong that what's left of your rational thought is split between wondering if yer going to die, and making up prayers to God for your salvation from the torment. You'll find yourself actually begging out-loud, quietly, for the pain to stop, and it's not uncommon to breath heavily, almost like panting.

At some point you pass out, but yer still awake and conscious. You just don't remember what happened. It's kinda like waking up from a dream you can't remember, suddenly finding yourself conscious even though you never really went to sleep at all. You know you've had a migraine, but you feel more like you've got a bad hangover now. You're extremely tired, shaking, and though your head is still splitting, you find it easy to crawl in bed, close your eyes, and go to sleep. What's happened to your head is so extreme that the cortexes of your brain associated with your senses will randomly sputter sensations without cause. Your ears will ring, you'll have a acrid taste in your mouth, an ammonia smell in your nose, and splotches of light will pulse faintly in your vision. If you really cared, it might be interesting to think that all that strange activity was your brain trying to repair itself and reset, stumbling across a thousand random thoughts and sensations that had just previously been exploded throughout your neural net like charged particle emissions.

Phase 4: Postdrome Phase
Technically, this is the post-migraine period, where symptoms slowly go away. Sometimes referred to as "migraine fallout."

Your migraine over, you wake up the next day feeling like you've just been through an incredible ordeal, like waking up the day after you've had a car accident or something. You feel okay, hungry, dry, and your stomach is a block of wood. You have a mild throbbing headache, and as the day goes on you slowly feel worse, and your headache gets worse, too. No matter what you do, the only thing that will make you normal again is sleep. As you suffer the day away, you will eventually reach a point when your body will let you sleep again, and away you go. Next day, you're back to normal (or as normal as normal gets).

The good news is, if you wake up after a migraine and feel terrible, you're okay. Just another wonderful life experience that you got lucky enough to get stuck with, and you probably won't have one again for at least a few weeks, if not months. However, if you feel euphoric and light-headed, it's time to see doctor. That little brain-disco you went to last night just blasted away some of your little gray friends. Not good.

So now that you've read all that, you're well on your way to experiencing your own migraine! Enjoy!

Now if you'll excuse me, there's some fallout I need to enjoy...

Evolution of Insanity

Boy I tell ya. I work for a company where they give lots of vacation hours, and now that I've got a huge stack of them ('cause I'm such a company slug) I can't make up my mind what to do with them! The days are passing by, it's getting harder and harder to save money when each week brings new cool things to buy, and if I don't make a plan now I'll likely get stuck on some projects that have me too busy to use it! Then I'll end up being forced to take it all at once at the end of the year!

I do have two small trips planned in mid summer, though, and I'm hoping to get somewhere for Christmas this year. That still leaves me with nearly a month of vacation left over...Grrr...

The things people complain about, right? :)

One suggestion was that I start taking off days of the work week. Like, take off every Monday next month. That would be kinda cool. There's perks to sticking around the office Friday, but Monday totally blows 'cause of the horrible commute and everyone trying to get going again after the weekend. I could just kick back and relax, or do something I want to do, while everyone else rats around.

I could also pick a time to take a big vacation. I failed to get up to New England this past year for the Fall, so this would be a great opportunity. I'd also like to take a trip out to the west coast, to Monterey, where I used to live.

The problem is funding. I'd rather not chalk everything up on the ol' credit cards, and lately I seem to have been on a bit of a spending spree. Oh well, I'll figure it out.


In other news....Evolution and Aliens.

Like I've said before, I spend a bit of time dabbling with science fiction, and wondering what the future will be like. That of course sometimes tips onto the subject of aliens. That, and extra-terrestrial life.

There's an interesting argument going around about what aliens will actually look like. Sure there's all that creepy stuff from horror and sci-fi films, but what happens when one takes into consideration evolution?

The problem really depends on how you view the process of evolution. Geerat Vermeij, a paleontologist who spends a bit of time thinking about this, believes that aliens will actually end up looking a lot like us. I follow this point of view probably more than any other, though probably not as strictly. Anyway, the theory is that evolution creates animals and plants based on the needs of the environment. Given that life is predicted to only be found on planets with environments similar to that of Earth, it can be logically construed that the same challenges will face organisms living on the alien world. While exact likeness is statistically probably unlikely, similarities are sure to abound. Many things are likely to be very similar, such as plants being predominately green, due to the biological trends of photosynthesis and the development of chlorophyll.

On the other side of the argument is the theory that, if the time-line of the Earth could be rewound, evolution would evolve wildly different than how we know it. This is a theory promoted by the late Stephen Jay Gould, a Harvard biologist who also spent part of his time thinking about this stuff. Gould, and those who follow this theory, believe that evolution is entirely random, and that the challenges that faced our evolutionary ancestors could be resolved in a number of ways. The fact that we are the way we are is purely due to the particular random path our evolution took. If evolution started all over, it is entirely possible that things could turn out completely different.

Of course, the problem with the later theory is that there's no fossil proof to support it. We can see life evolving in the fossil records, but in truth more often than not we see creatures mutating into new forms, and survival of the fittest cleaning things up. If there were multiple possible solutions, those solutions would evolve right along side the known solutions, and not only would there be fossils, but there's a very good chance that we'd see more examples of alternate evolutionary solutions coexisting in the same environment. About the closest thing we have to an example of this happening at all might be the existence of creatures such as bats and birds. Both have developed flight as a way of overcoming the challenge of height and distance, yet at the same time it can be argued that both bats and birds fly but they developed these abilities out of different needs.

So what do you think?

All I know is that if we one day make contact with aliens, and they turn out to be just as screwed up as us, I'm nuking everything...

Personally, while I believe evolution will lead alien life down similar paths as ours did, I don't believe that alien life will be "human." I'm intrigued greatly by the idea that sentient life could take many other forms, leading from the same creatures we see around us that, for lack of a better description, "just didn't make it."

The fossil record shows that human evolution nearly ended in disaster several times in our primitive history. At one point there were almost too few of us to form a viable gene pool. (If you ask me, "almost" is being optimistic.) So what would have happened if primates had died off, or primitive man went extinct? Who would be next? This is one reason why I enjoy the concept of anthropomorphism so much. The idea that other animals could evolve into erect, sentient creatures, is a fascinating idea, and personally I believe makes for more interesting people...

Guess we'll just have to wait and find out, huh?

Web Comics 4 You

Since this blog is partially for talking about stuff that interests me, I thought it would be good to maybe do a few random blog postings about things I like to do. Who knows, you might read this and say “Hey! I do that too!” or “Whoa, dude, yer #@&!*%$# nuts!” or more importantly, in the spirit of blogging, “Hey, that’s cool! I need to check that out!”

So here it goes.

I’m gonna talk about my favorite comics. Not comic books, comic strips. I’m a comic-strip fan, and I read probably two dozen different titles religiously. Don’t tell my boss, but while I’m checking the morning email at the office, another browser is busy poking through this day’s comic updates! :)

Comics are not just interesting because of the stories or laughs, either. A lot of times they are very in tune with current events, or help examine social or physics problems, and they are also usually taking advantage the newest publication technology. From the later, in a way comics, or rather web-comics, have become a medium which sort of symbolizes the trend of this information age. Without going into anything from my first blog posting...I’ll move on.

Here’s some of my favorite web comics, definitely in no particular order. I hope you’ll find them as enjoyable as I do.




Ozy & Millie is a fun, down to earth comic mainly focused around two young kids: Ozymandias Justin Llewellyn (Ozy for sanity), and Millicent Mehitabel Mudd (Millie, because it’s quicker to yell). There’s a whole slew of interesting main characters, and just reading their short bios can hook you in.

Ozy and Millie aren’t your normal kids. Aside from the fact that the author (D.C. Simpson) has taken an anthropomorphic license with his characters, Ozy and Millie are two philosophical kids who just like to have fun while examining the weird quirks of the world in their own child-like way.



Unfortunately Ozy & Millie as a comic is hard to describe, so I urge you to go experience it for yourself. I suggest either jumping back a month to get some ground on the current storyline, or going back to the beginning (it’s worth it). DC Simpson has been drawing Ozy & Millie for years, is in a couple newspapers, and has a bunch of books out.






(One Over Zero)
One Over Zero is a very interesting (and sometimes silly) comic that has sadly ended, but has about three years worth of strips. It was done by the mysterious author Tailsteak, and it’s a creation comic. By “creation comic” I mean it starts out with nothing, yep blank page, and builds from there, taking the whole Adam & Eve approach. Well, Adam & Eve, but as you’ll see, it starts out horribly wrong and only gets worse! Not only does the author manage to accidentally kill off his only main character some ten strips in, but the readers are left with a talking rib, rebellious eyeball, and a giant molecule called Manny, who all somehow have to get along in the comic.



While the comic is funny, it’s also intellectual, as the characters and author tend to get into arguments about creation, physics, sociology and all kinds of other nutty venues along the way. So, while this comic may have completed its storyline and ended, it’s still available on the web, and definitely worth checking out.






Free Fall is the kind of comic that will drive you nuts, make you burst laughing, and keep you coming back for more! Probably one of the first online comics I began reading, it is ABSOLUTELY worth your time!

Free Fall is a hugely popular story-based online comic surrounding three main characters who live in the future. Sam, an ethically-astray alien who wears a spacesuit to look human, Florence, an artificially created canine engineer with high ethics, and Helix, a spherical robot who’s missing a few circuits (if he ever had them to begin with). The story starts out with Sam and Helix finding themselves accidentally receiving Florence in the mail. She was supposed to be headed to a mega-corporation plant to be an engineer, but wound up here instead. She finds herself morally and physically stuck with Sam and Helix on a colony world, and spends her time between keeping Sam out of trouble, and preventing Helix from pressing the auto-destruct button on their ship, the “Savage Chicken.”


This comic, too, flops back and forth between down-to-earth humor, and philosophy, with a healthy dusting of good ol’ science fiction.


So that’s a few to get you started! Hope you like them! Maybe later I’ll post some more.

Black Holes, Science Fiction...and Oranges???

Those who really know me, know one of my passions in life is exploring and theorizing the possibilities of the significantly-beyond-now. Also known as: the future.

I like to consider myself an avid science fiction fan, modest creative-thinker, and to a mediocre degree, author. For this, I find myself highly qualified.

1. I have a degree in Astronomy.
2. I've spent more time in an observatory than I'd like to admit. (Sometimes actually observing...)
3. I've had night-long discussions with fellow astronomers and egg-heads about theoretical physics...
4. I've seen Star-Wars.

Okay, so what about the oranges?

Well I was cooking my dinner tonight, which consisted of a delicately simmered duet of chicken breasts, smothered in a special blend of soft spices, with some lemon, and a bit of orange. While I was peeling said orange, I was reminded of a lecture I attended about a year ago from a leading astronomer who was studying the shape of black holes.

Curiously, black holes aren't always round. Didn't know that? Keep reading, it gets better...

Turns out there are basically two kinds of black holes (that we know of). The kind that spin, and the kind that don't.

As we know from physics, things that spin tend to get flatter. The Earth is a good example, as is the Sun. So is clay on a potter's wheel if the potter walks off to discuss quantum singularities while the motor's still running...which I hear they do a lot...

Anywho, back to the black holes.

A scientist by the name of Karl Schwarzschild spent some time in 1916 playing around with Einstein's field theory equations and came up with a little thing we astronomers like to call the "Schwarzschild Radius." Basically this is the distance from a massive object at which any mass cannot avoid collapsing to a gravitational singularity. In plain-speak, it's the point at which an object's own atomic forces cannot keep the object from shrinking any smaller. Our own Sun is kept from imploding under its massive gravitational force, by the outward force of the fusion reactions inside it. If it weren't for this outward force, the Sun would keep crushing itself smaller and smaller until it became what we astronomers call a "singularity" which is a fancy name for a zero-volume thingy where all the mass went.

So if you had a really massive object...like, hmm...a black hole...the forces causing mass to collapse in would be so great that there would be a point at which any mass would collapse towards that massive object. This is the Schwarzschild radius.

Still with me? Great!

Okay, so we know black holes suck things into them. That's not correct phrasing, but pthtptpt!

We call black holes that don't spin "Schwarzschild Black Holes," because they need a name and "Schwarzschild" is cool-sounding. :)

Actually, they're called that because there is a clearly defined point or radius at which matter traveling towards the gravitational center of the black hole both cannot escape, and cannot avoid being crushed into the singularity, despite its own atoms protests. Schwarzschild black holes are great to work with, because they are nice and docile and don't do anything fancy that messes with normal equations...like spin.

Unfortunately, it is theorized that most black holes spin. We believe this because black holes are formed from massive objects, called stars, which were once spinning. It's very hard to stop an object as massive as a star from spinning. You either need another equal-mass star...or a lot of tiny objects...like...trillions upon trillions upon trillions upon trillions of them... That's another physics issue to talk about later, though.

Okay, so we call rotating (spinning) black holes "Kerr Black Holes" after another famous (well, not so famous) scientist, named Roy Kerr, a New Zealander who got this particular bit of fame in 1963.

Roy Kerr is famous for developing some math equations, known as "Kerr metric," that described the geometry of spacetime around a massive object, such as a black hole. The math will kill brain cells and drive you insane, but from the fingerpaint perspective it's cool stuff.

Get to the point.

Okay, so the point I'm getting at while peeling my orange is that black holes actually deform as they spin. Why is this significant? Well, we all consider black holes to be...well...holes... In a Schwarzschild black hole, that's a pretty good lay-speak way of explaining things. However, in a Kerr black hole, you have a ring. (Trust me, this is a lot more fun when beer is involved...)

Okay, so why a ring now? Well, a funny thing happens when a black hole spins. You see, there's this thing call the "event horizon" which is a catchy term for a spherical boundary at which matter and light can no longer escape the gravitational pull of the black hole singularity. This has been popularized over the years by countless science fiction films, and is probably the part about black holes people know best, and actually get correct. Again, there IS NO HOLE IN A BLACK HOLE!!!

When a black hole spins, it develops two event horizons, actually. One is known as the event horizon, and the other is something we call the "Stationary Limit." The stationary limit is another spherical boundary that defines where an object can not only avoid dropping into the black hole, but remain stationary. You have to be going at the speed of light to make this happen, but we won't split hairs. The key here is that in a Schwarzschild black hole the two horizons are one in the same, while in a Kerr black hole they diverge. The Stationary Limit actually bows out at the equatorial point of the spinning black hole, while at the same time touching the poles of the event horizon sphere. It kinda looks like this, if you could draw it:




Wait, Shoobie...What happened to the ring?

Turns out that a spinning black hole's singularity becomes stretched around it's angular axis (the point in the center) and forms into a ring singularity. This is where the hard-wood physics in most people's brains breaks down and they either get really violent, or start drooling. Just don't send me any hate mail, okay?

What does this have to do with shape, Shoobie? This was supposed to be about the shape of the black hole!

Okay, so you may not be able to see an event horizon, or a stationary limit...but you CAN see the effects of it. According to the laws of particle physics, both horizons will have a photon sphere. A photon sphere is a spherical plane where photons gather, either because they're orbiting, stationary, or just entering the black hole. To tick your brain, photons that enter the black hole traveling WITH its spin (that is, traveling in the same direction as all the stuff the black hole is dragging around it), the photon will nest itself in the inner photon sphere, at the event horizon. If it's going the other way, it will circle the stationary limit horizon.

To an outside observer looking at this really bright object, the whole thing will appear flattened. So there you have it. A flat black hole...sans all the explanation of the physics. But wait, I haven't finished tormenting your brain yet!

Here's the cool part. If you could travel FASTER than the speed of light, you could theoretically enter the ergosphere (the space between the stationary limit and the event horizon of a spinning black hole) in a Kerr black hole and according to some theories, you could venture along a path which would allow you to avoid colliding with the singularity at the center, and potentially emerge somewhere else, like another universe, or at a time millions or billions of years in the future. If you want to get really funky, you could theoretically position yourself such that you can achieve time travel, owing to the strange effects of the spacetime warp around the event horizon of a black hole! Neat, huh?

Now...before you go sending me emails about how crappy this post was, bear in mind that it's nearly midnight (again) and I'm too tired to be buggered to go make sure my line is straight through this rant. Now go away, before I explain how you don't have any mass! Good night!

Boredom...

I’m bored. I bought a new ironing board today, and I was excited about it. That’s how bored I’ve been lately. I don’t know what it is, maybe it’s the weather or something, but everything’s been very dull and repetitive lately, and I’ve found myself lazing about doing nothing, dreaming about doing even more nothing.

I attribute the problem to a lack of stimulation on two accounts.

1. The entertainment industry (both TV and film) has served up a lot of jack-squat recently. There’s been nothing that has really got me interested. About the only thing I turn on the tube for is nature programs, Battlefront on the History Channel, and endless reruns of “Who’s Line is it Anyway?” which although one of my favorite shows...gets old.

2. Gaming.

I’m not gonna argue about the entertainment industry. I don’t foresee any great upcoming events or shows. Even the new Discovery series “Planet Earth” turned out to be mostly a disappointment. If the entertainment industry can’t provide me with entertainment, I’ll just go somewhere else!

Okay, so...somewhere else is my computer. Which don’t get me wrong, it gives me hours of entertainment in the form of writing, surfing, drawing, 3d-modeling, etc....but a guy’s gotta have his mindless slaughter. All work and no carnage makes Shoobie...very very bored!

So what’s up with the gaming industry lately? There hasn’t been a good new game out in probably six months! At least. In fact, many of my core games that I play frequently are over a year old! I DEFINITELY don’t want to get into a rant about how heavily piracy has actually hit the gaming development community, but what I will get into is the lack of quality in what has been put out recently!

Let’s see. I won’t list the games I’ve bought that are almost a year old or older (like FEAR, SIN, Call of Duty 2, etc). Games I’ve bought in the past few months that are new...

Deus-Ex: Invisible War – I picked this up through Steam for $14 ‘cause it looked cool in the preview snaps. Believe it or not, I never played the original Deus-Ex, so I figured it was about time I got a hint about what this cult classic was all about. Boy was I robbed. Okay, the concept had merit, I was truly impressed by the idea and storyline. However, Eidos, the makers of DE:I, chose to use the Unreal engine to make the game. I have nothing against the Unreal engine, it’s a cool gaming engine that has seen incredible success, but truth be told, Unreal isn’t the world’s best engine for making FPS interactive games. Deathmatch, yes, but when you slow things down the curious, visual and physics intense nature of an FPS, it totally sucks. The interface is very difficult to use, even when you get the hang of it, and at the best of times the game just isn’t anything stellar in both graphics, action, intrigue, or wow-factor.

Okay, so I lost out on $14, so what? No biggie. Although I kinda would have wanted a game that stuck around a bit longer. I played it for a week, and haven’t touched it since.

Medieval Total War II – I’ve never been a fan of the Total War series. There’s two reasons for this. One, even my better-than-average machine couldn’t run it very well, what with all the massive battles, and two, you practically have to BE a military genius in order to kick butt.

Against all my internal processes, I went ahead and forked out the $50 (yes, fifty bucks) for the game, and waited for Steam to get all the files to my machine. I have a brand new machine now, which is a heck of a lot beefier than my last one (which still wasn’t bad) and so this time MTW:II played smoothly, even under the most massive battles. I was happy. The graphics, soldier models, and weapons physics, were top notch, and it really was very trippy getting down on the ground in the battles and pretending to be a general in some famous battles. Although you would assume otherwise, the landscapes and man-made features (like castles) were almost the opposite. The landscapes weren’t very impressive when one takes into account the technologies available today, and the buildings looked like they hadn’t received the same update as the soldiers had for the second MTW release. Sorry, but a fuzzy-shaded box with a slanted roof, doesn’t cut it for a house anymore. It did in the dawning days of Mechwarrior, but not today.

Strategy is what downed me on this game. The world-map view is where you really spend most of your time, because the battles get so petty and repetitive that you get bored with them very quick. Plus if you took the field every time, it would take you about 6 months to win the game. The world-map game-play reminds me a lot of Lords of the Realm 2, which is a game I really loved, so this part was moderately amusing. However, sooner or later yer gonna drop into the big battles, because let’s face it...that’s why you bought a game like MTW:II.

Aside from very minimal training on how to use the interface and command troops, you aren’t given very much instruction on how to actually be a general. Sure the helper dude gives you some tips like “Don’t charge your cavalry into a spear-wall, Sire!” but you’d have to be comatose not to realize that. So unless you were born the reincarnated figure of Alexander the Great, Napoleon, or Benedict Arnold, you pretty much end up making lines of foot soldiers, with archers behind them...wait till a huge mosh pit forms, then charge yer cavalry in and pray.

Personally, while it is nice that I can learn to become a great medieval general by trial and error...I’d rather the game train me to be a general. Just like a nobleman’s son would have been trained by military advisers in medieval times.

So why was this disappointing? Well, aside from a graphics update, it’s still the same game.

Well, I’m off to break my boredom by cooking some dinner. Lemon-pepper chicken aught to do the trick. I wonder if I have any chicken in the freezer...?

Pant, pant, pant...

My second blog posting almost didn't come...

I recently purchased a bicycle. I haven't had a bike since before I finished college, and in that time, even with my other athletic ventures, I've grown insanely out of shape. Okay, not "insanely" per se, but perhaps more along the lines of "pathetic." It's been a while since I've had my heart-rate up this high. Yes, I'm single, too...

So any-who, I bought a bike with the intention of riding several times a week to help burn off fat and get a good cardio workout. I got the bike two weeks ago, and the weather has been terrible, up till this weekend. I've had three days to ride, and all of them so far apart my body isn't coping very well. I just finished my longest ride in probably 5 years...about a mile.

On the plus side, I did get a really cool bike that is rather unique. It's made by Dynamic Bicycles, a US based company that makes shaft-drive bikes. Yes, that's right...SHAFT drive. As apposed to chain drive. It's a pretty neat concept that has been around for many years, but has been hard to obtain and expensive to own, up till now.

Here's the bike I got. It's called the Outback Elite 7:



It's full suspension, with a front disc brake (caliper rear), 22" frame, shaft-drive with a 7-speed gearbox transmission (which Dynamic claims is comparable to 17 gears on a 24 speed bike).

There's a cool little java video on the site, showing how the shaft drive mechanism works, and you can swivel the 3D image around to get a good look at it:

So how good is it? Well, I'm no Lance Armstrong, but I've had a lot of bikes before, both cheap and expensive. What I can tell you from my amature viewpoint is that this is a very well built bike with quality components that fit together really well. Receiving the bike via mail, I had to assemble it, which took some time, but everything was easy. The instruction manuals for the various components and the assembly were written in clear English.

The ride is very smooth. I was endlessly skeptical at the beginning, but after my few rides I am pretty happy with my purchase. As you're peddling, you can change gears using a grip-shift mechanism on the right handle which ratchets you up or down through the gears, same as on a chain bike.

The only difference is that there's no chain clunking away, no grease, and little chance of gear-slippage. If you're keeping a constant peddling rate, gear changes are smooth, however if you're really hammering it, trying to struggle up a hill, the transmission doesn't change easily and you can feel it slipping a little. Sometimes you have to let up a little so that the gears can change. This isn't really that big of a deal, though. One of the nifty things about the transmission, though, is that you can change gears without peddling. So if you're stopped, and find you accidentally forgot to down-shift to an easy start gear, you can just twist the grip and bang, yer all set! Same while coasting down the trail.

I was a bit anxious about the 7 gears. I mean, I've had bikes with 32 speeds, and going to a 7 speed bike seemed like getting a kids bike. However, two things come into play here.

1. I realized I never really used all those gears anyway. I kinda went from whatever gear was easy, to medium, to hard. Didn't really bother which one it was.

2. I'm not Lance Armstrong.

When you ride one of these bikes, you'll quickly notice that the 7 gears really do feel like they cover a good chunk of the gear range on a normal bike. I'd say it's about the middle slice. The 7th gear isn't as tough as I'd like, nor the 1st gear as easy, but there's enough gear range to have a good ride. This is a mountain-bike after all. Speed isn't the name of the game. For me, avoiding sudden death by tree or heart-attack is the name of the game. :P



For those who are really interested, there is an upgrade available from Dynamic for an 8 speed transmission, which gives a slightly wider range of gears. I thought about getting it when I got the bike, but decided that I should experience the new technology before making a $200 decision.

All in all I think I've made a sound buy, and am happy. Sure, I could have bought a conventional bike and received those extra gears and all, but then it wouldn't be unique. I like unique.


On to other news...

Yesterday, as I said in my first post, I journeyed to IKEA.

There's an IKEA in Prince William County here in VA, but from where I am (Sterling) it takes about an hour to two hours, depending on the traffic, weather, and any construction that the government is spending money on for those long lonely roads that really need to have their shoulders in perfect order...

The good news was that it was a beautiful day out! Best weather we've had in months! Sunny, warm, no wind, no clouds! It was awesome! One of those days were you just open the windows and cruise, feeling all warm and good about everything. It was especially good because it's been months since I could get my baby out on the road and really open 'er up, flex that muscle.


Winter is one of my favorite seasons, but the driving sucks. All that ice and salt really puts a damper on things.

Anyway, the trip to and from IKEA was awesome. IKEA, on the other hand...well let's just say I would have better spent my time not getting out and just making a big loop back home. I set out to find some more of these plates I got from there, but they didn't have them anymore. I also was looking for a new lamp for my upstairs but they didn't have anything I liked. I did get a few new cereal bowls which were cool. They're plain glass, and I think they were really meant to be cooking ingredient bowls, but they look cool with cereal in them, and they're big. I hate small bowls that you have to make 20 refills before you get full.

So IKEA was a bust, but at least the day was fruitful insofar as I had a great drive!

Now I need to go lay down and whimper as my muscles cringe in tormented sorrow......ow....