My 2007 Christmas Card

Merry Christmas!



Pretty much along the same lines as last year, I'm slacking off on the physical Christmas card front, and giving you this cheaper, electronic version.

As I look back at the year that was 2007, I guess what probably stands out is all the traveling I did. I don't really consider myself a big travel nut, but this year I traveled to San Antonio, Palo Alto, Germany/Austria, and Chicago. Four places I'd never been, and in the case of Germany/Austria, a place I'd never really considered visiting. The trip to San Antonio was a family vacation to visit my brother and his family who live there, and the rest were all for school. If you want to read more about my trips, and/or see the pictures I took on my new digital camera, which I love, you can check out some of these links:

San Antonio (Pictures only)

Palo Alto (Pictures only)

Germany/Austria
Days 1 & 2 - Exploring Munich
Day 3 - Mass Transit Extravaganza
Day 4 - Stop looking at me, schwan
Day 5 - Austria, eh? Throw another shrimp on the barby!
Day 6- The depths of Hall
Day 7 - I got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell!
Day 8 - Monday Night Football
Day 9 - In with the Innsbruck Crowd
Days 10 & 11 - The Voyage Home
(Pictures only)

Chicago
Chicago Travelogue, Pt. 1
Chicago Travelogue, Pt. 2
Chicago Travelogue, Pt. 3
Chicago Travelogue, Pt. 4
(Pictures only)

Here's a small sample of what you might find:











When I wasn't busy gallivanting around America and Europe, I spent most of my daytime hours working on my dissertation research. Getting my research project off the ground end up taking much longer than I had anticipated, but alerts are finally going out to doctors, although not quite as often as I'd like. Additionally, I passed my qualifying exams back in the spring, and its nice to have that step out of the way. I also presented a poster at our annual NLM training conference that was at Stanford University this summer. I also was on a panel at the AMIA Fall Symposium. (Luckily the number of people who attended doesn't have to go in my CV.)



Its my goal to finish by the end of the coming summer, although given my inability to guess how long things would take me so far, that might or might not happen. At the very least, much of what I'm doing now is entirely up to me, and other than one small fix, hopefully I won't be waiting on other people. I've got a lot of writing to do in the coming months and hopefully that will go well. Certainly I would hope to have graduated by this time next year, which seems doable, but at the same time seems like it would still be quite the achievement.

Aside from school, I was released from being the executive secretary for my student ward in May, and was given what seems like a pretty cushy job as the ward communications co-chair, at least in comparison to the busy jobs I had before. Pretty much, I run the ward website, and make sure that people get their pictures taken, and that we have a sacrament program on Sundays. I've got a small, but efficient committee which makes things pretty nice.

Also this year, I moved to a new apartment in February just a few blocks away from my last one. The guys I live with here are nice and relatively clean, and in the brief moments that we're here at the same time we have good times.

(Picture not taken in February)

And yes, I continue to be single. I've managed to go on 16 dates so far this year, which is a 15% increase over last year, for those of you keeping score at home (mom, dad, I'm looking in your direction). Not as many as I'd like, still, but a lot of times I just don't get excited about dating for dating's sake. If there's someone I'd like to get to know better, or that I'd like to spend time with, then yes, I'm all for that. So, yes, I do look at the numbers, but try not to put too much stock into them.

In the meantime, I still had time for plenty of random fun this past year.


I went snowshoeing for the first time.


Back in the spring I won our ward Guitar Hero tournament, and then retired effective immediately so I could go out on top. (Not really, but I haven't played much since then.)


I did a fair amount of bowling.




I went to a couple Salt Lake Bees baseball games, and tried out the "Fireworks" preset on my camera.


I once again had tickets in the Muss, and only missed one Utah home game. Beating UCLA 44-6 was of course the highlight of the season.


Halloween was fun.

I have to say that looking back it was a pretty great year, and I have no reason to believe that next year won't be just as great. At times I've wondered if I'm on the right path, and then I have to realize that if I weren't where I am now, I would have missed out on a lot of experiences, and especially on meeting so many great people that I'm lucky to know. I hope that this Christmas finds you all doing well.

Watch This Wednesday #12: Fa-ra-ra-ra-ra Ra-ra-ra-ra

That's right...its time for more Christmas themed video fun. This week, its the part of the last scene of the classic film "A Christmas Story", which I can't imagine that you haven't seen, especially now that TNT shows it for 24 hours straight (or is it 48?) at Christmas time. I actually know someone whose family actually likes to go out for Chinese on Christmas, an idea they got from watching this movie. Oh well, I guess when its the season to be 'jorry', everyone has their own traditions.

Random Thoughts on the English Language #16: Laundry Day

I've got a big pile of laundry that I need to wash when I got home, and that may have resulted in the phrase "laundry list" going through my mind today. As in "I've got a laundry list of things to do in Salt Lake" or "a laundry list of ways to reduce workplace stress", etc.

Anyway, where did this term come from? Have you ever made a list associated with laundry? If you did, what would it consist of? "#1: Wash Laundry"? or perhaps with more detail? "#1: Wash Laundry. #2: Dry Laundry. #3 Fold Laundry.

Grocery lists I have seen. Laundry lists, not so much.

End of Year List HQ

Just like last year, the site Fimoculous.com is compiling end-of-year lists for 2007, from all over the web. Already a decent-sized list, I'm sure there'll be plenty more to come. You can see them grouped by category, source, or date for your conveniences. Recently lots and lots of lists from Time and New York Magazines.

Some of my favorites so far: Time's top television ads and top viral videos, and New York Times' Year in Ideas.

Watch This Wednesday #11: Five Goooo-ooold Rings, Ba-dum-bum-bum

In keeping with the Christmas theme of the month, I found this Muppet version of the 12 Days of Christmas from the John Denver/Muppets Christmas Special. We had the soundtrack on tape growing up, and its forever influenced the way that I think the song, ought to be sung, especially the Five Gold Rings part.

Thoughts I had while doing a left outer join on severity indices

Warning: These are some pretty random thoughts

1) Obviously mistletoe is a Christmas tradition, and at numerous singles events (and non-singles events) people hang this over the entryway to the house, but more often than not, no kissing actually happens. So I was thinking, we should get some new plants that mean different things that could be hung. You know, like "stalk of wheat = hug", or "sprig of parsley = backscratch". How about "clove of garlic" = "necking", which guarantees that only non-vampires would be biting your neck?

2) As a friend of mine pointed out to me, if Quidditch were a real sport, it would have some of the dumbest rules in the world. Lets review: (From the Wikipedia entry on Quidditch)

"Teams continue using the same goal posts to score throughout the game. Capturing the Snitch earns the Seeker's team 150 points, equivalent to 15 goals scored by Chasers. Since the game ends immediately after the Snitch is caught, the team which captures the Snitch is very likely to win the game."

Lets compare this to a basketball game with some Quidditch rules. 4 players from each team play regular 4-on-4 basketball, while one player from each team has to get the special ball and make a shot from the opposite free throw line (lets call this the "long shot"). The game can't end until someone has made this difficult shot, and whoever makes the shot gets 30 points for their basket.

How many basketball games are won by more than 30 points? Very few. So only in rare cases would the team who made the long shot not win, no matter how bad they were. So why are the other 4 players even playing 4-on-4? Just to give the crowd something to watch while they wait for someone to make the long shot? And if your team was behind, and you were the long-shooter, wouldn't it be in your interest to not only not make the long shot, but to prevent your opponent from doing so? However, if your team was losing by more than 30 points, the odds are that they aren't going to be closing the gap as time progresses.

Or maybe a football game where the kickers tried to make a 60 yard field goal worth 70 points?

Anyway, I didn't hate the Quidditch parts of the HP books like some have, as I thought they were a good excuse to show off some broom-flying, but still the rules leave something to be desired.

Random Thoughts on the English Language #15: Gender Equity

So a man can be a 'womanizer', but for some reason when I used the word 'manizer' no one knew what I meant.

Who Do You Want to Be Today?

If you're one of the rare brave souls who has ventured to scroll way down on this blog, you may have seen in my sidebar some of the books I've been reading lately. Anyway, I was reading Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury for a minute today (its actually a book that lends itself quite well to brief moments of reading), and came across a real gem of a thought there. An older lady with a penchant for saving ticket stubs and theater programs is upset by the children who refuse to believe that she was young once, but then later that night she has this thought in the form of a rebuke from her deceased husband:

"My dear, you never will understand time, will you? You're always trying to be the things you were, instead of the person you are tonight. Why do you save those ticket stubs and theater programs? They'll only hurt you later. Throw them away my dear....

It won't work...No matter how hard you try to be what you once were, you can only be what you are here and now. Time hypnotizes. When you're nine, you think you've always been nine years old and will always be. When you're thirty, it seems you've always been balanced there on that bright rim of middle life. And then when you're seventy, you are always and forever seventy. You're in the present, you're trapped in a young now or an old now, but there is no other now to be seen."

As I read this passage, I thought how true it is. No matter our past, we are only the person we are right now, and we should make the most of today. No sense in beating ourselves up over past failures, or resting on past victories. Who do you want to be today?

Something else I would buy (or at least think about buying) if I could find one

This entry could be considered the 2nd in a series of posts, but given that the first entry was nearly two years ago, the link is perhaps tenuous.

Anyway, I've thought several times lately that I have a car that would comfortably seat four people, and yet usually its just me in there. Like easily 90% of the time. And most of the other people on the road are in the same situation. Shouldn't there be some motor company addressing this issue? What I'm talking about is a one-seater car. Not a motorcycle, because honestly, I don't want to die if I get hit by someone else, and this one-seater car shouldn't have any kind of balance requirements. And because we're still talking about a car here, not a bicycle with an engine.

I mean, honestly, I don't normally need all the space in my car, and it seems like there should be a smaller car that is still roomy for the driver, goes at normal speed, and isn't like a $40,000 sports car. Couldn't somebody come out with something like a "Camry-for-one"? You'd assume that by making the car a little smaller, the gas mileage would be better, and there'd be more space on the road if everyone was commuting in them. Maybe there'd be some kind of Voltron-esque way to have a driver's seat that joins up with the rest of the car when you need to have some passengers, but could separate out into its own vehicle when its just you.

Maybe I'm just being naive and assuming that other people would want something like this. Or maybe the space that my car has right now is no extra cost for the auto makers, so they're just throwing it in for free. I don't know. But if someone was making these, I'd think about getting one.

Watch This Wednesday #10: A cowboy who rides...an ostritch

I'm a staunch believer in limiting Christmastime to the space between Thanksgiving and New Years. No Christmas songs right after Halloween, no Christmas shopping until after Thanksgiving, etc. That said, the unseasonably warm weather we'd been having didn't really get my into a Christmas spirit either. Luckily, yesterday a snow storm started here in Salt Lake, and this morning everything is covered in white. And I feel perfectly fine about sharing a Christmas movie with you all today.

This clip is from the stop-motion animated Christmas special "Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer", which I'm sure everyone is familiar with. This is when our crew of protagonists arrives at the isle of Misfit Toys. I don't love the song, but I've always loved the crazy toys there. "How would you like to be a choo-choo with square wheels on your caboose?" "Or a water pistol that shoots jelly?

Chicago Travelogue, Pt. 4: Morning at the Museum

On my last morning in Chicago, I headed over to the Field Museum of Natural History to check it out for a couple hours before I had to head to the airport.


Some window washers I saw along my walk to the museum


Click on this image to see an autostitched panorama that I took from the museum steps of downtown.


This Tyrannosaurus is named "Sue" after its finder and stands on the main floor of the museum.

I paid a little extra to check out a traveling exhibit on maps that turned out to be pretty cool, at least to me. There were some super old maps, and some that were newer. The ones that stood out to me included a book containing John Snow's Broad Street pump cholera map; a map of the London tube system that set the precedent for pretty much every other subway train map I've seen since (big circles for the stops, brightly colored lines for the different lines); and some hand-drawn maps by Tolkein, including Thorin's map that appears in the front of the Hobbit; and a map of Napoleon's attack on Russia that I'd studied before in a data presentation class. Sadly, photography was not allowed in this area of the museum, as I quickly learned.

Anyway, after checking out that exhibit, I wandered around through a lot of Native American stuff, taking particular interest in all the stuff they had from the Northwest, and up into Canada and Alaska -- lots of totem poles and ceremonial masks and pipes. They also had a lot of ancient American artifacts.


Totem Poles


Masks


Replica of an Aztec Sunstone

Once I finished with the human stuff, I wandered through their animal displays, including quite a few dinosaurs and fossils.



In the basement I came across about 4 of these Mold-a-rama machines that I remembered from the Hogle Zoo as a kid.


Stegosaurus


Apatosaurus


This amazing fossil is of some kind of ray (manta, sting, other) that is pregnant.


Woolly Mammoth

On my way back to Chris's, I took a few more photos of the downtown skyline.





Phew, well that wraps up this Chicago Travelogue. Now I guess I'll have to find something else to blog about.

Chicago Travelogue, Pt 3: John Hancock? Everyone knows its Herbie Hancock

I'm sure by now you're bored to tears of hearing about my trip to Chicago, so I'll keep the chit-chat to a minimum. These next pictures were taken a few hours after our boat tour, when we went up in the Hancock building, which is not quite as tall as the Sears Tower, but is still very tall, and has a nice view of downtown. We timed our visit to allow us to be up there at dusk so we could get some different levels of light. Strangely the observation floor wasn't really set up for great picture taking with lots of lights on behind us to reflect off the glass, and windows that were pretty dirty. I guess there aren't a lot of people who want to be washing windows on the 95th floor. Anyway, here's some pictures:


The Hancock Building just looks to me like a mean building. Just a big tall black building in the sky. If you jump off the top, there aren't any wider levels to stop you before you hit the ground. Just one long drop.


See, if you jumped off the Sears Tower, you might not make it all the way to the ground.


Looking North up the lake shore.


Looking South down the lake shore.


Looking North with some lights coming on now.


Looking south at dusk


With more lights on


Looking westward

Chicago Travelogue, Pt. 2: Boat Tour

On my second day with Chris, we headed out for a drive, and swung down south to check out the University of Chicago campus where Chris goes to law school, and then headed up north to see some of northside Chicago, including Wrigley Field.


Driving north into downtown


Harry Carey


Wrigley Field

After that, we headed back to Chris's place, and then took a walk up Michigan Avenue to the river where we bought our tickets for a boat tour of the architecture along the river. As the boat was about to embark, we only had 4 people signed up for the tour. 4 more showed up at the last minute to bring the group up to a whopping 8. It was cool to be able to wander around the top of the boat looking at whatever we wanted without having to worry about being in people's way.

The tour was perhaps the highlight of my trip. It was just so neat to be able to look up at all the amazing buildings along the river.


Corncob-looking condo buildings





Sears Tower on the left


Our private boat


A scrap metal barge that came by


Me and the City


Great name for a boat, right?


Looking back into town from the edge of Lake Michigan


Navy Pier

Chicago Travelogue

I realize I haven't been doing much writing on here lately, and I have to think some of thats tied up in the fact that I've got a lot of writing I need to be doing for school, and if I'm writing here instead of there, I feel a little guilty. Kind of like when I have a lot to read for school, its hard for me to read for fun.

Anyway, today, I'm doing laundry and cleaning up my room a bit, and figured I could take a second to show off some of my Chicago photos, for those of you who haven't already seen them on Flickr, and maybe give a bit more information about what I did.

I went to Chicago for the Fall Symposium of the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA), a conference that ran for parts of 5 days. During the conference, I spent most of my time at the hotel where the conference was held, and the only fun we had was going out to dinner at night. So most of the pictures I took during that time were at night.


This one I took just outside the hotel on the riverwalk during the day. In the middle is the Trump building going up, which you might remember from the first season of "The Apprentice". The inaugural winner chose to work on the development of this building.


This is the Wrigley Building (Wrigley gum, Wrigley field), and it was located pretty near to where we were staying.


I took this one at night on a walk I went for, down by the lake.


This the old water tower, one of the oldest remaining buildings from this part of town.


I really like this shot looking out across the river from the Michigan Avenue bridge.

After the conference ended, my buddy Chris picked me up at the hotel and took me to his place, not too far south of downtown, and we headed out to see Millennium Park that night. Here's some of those photos:


In the summertime these screens have fountains of water placed so that the water appears to come out of the mouths of the faces that rotate across these screens.


They've got an ice skating rink there, and in the background you can see the "bean" or I think its official name is "Cloud Gate". More of that to come.





Later that night, Chris and I walked over to a bridge near his place that had a nice view of downtown, including the Sears tower, and Chris showed me how to adjust the exposure settings on my camera so I could get a decent shot.



I guess I'll leave off here for now, but I've still got a bunch more to show and tell from my trip.

Watch this Wednesday #9: You have selected...Agent Zero

This week I bring you a favorite Seinfeld moment of mine. In this episode, Kramer get a phone number that used to be the moviefone number, and people keep calling him to ask about showtimes. Rather than explain the number has changed, he starts doing the moviefone service himself.

Haka 2007

Back in town

I'm back from Chicago, and had a great time there. I'll try to write (thanks, CJ) up some of the highlights later this week, but for now, here a link to where I've put some of the photos up, and will be putting more up in the next couple days.



(Click on the picture.)

Watch this Wednesday #8: Sweet Home Chicago

I'm still in Chicago for my conference, but I did find this video to share with you from a classic Chicago movie, "The Blues Brothers". One of the best parts of the films is the concert that they put on to raise the money they need to save the orphanage, including the song "Sweet Home Chicago". Enjoy.

My bags are packed, I'm ready to go...

I'm leaving for Chicago in the morning, and then I'm sure I'll have some pictures and stories to share when I get back. I've never been to Chicago before, and as always I'm grateful for my funding and the amazing places I've been able to visit since I started grad school: Indianapolis (okay, they weren't all amazing), San Francisco, Washington D.C. (x3), Nashville, San Diego, Palo Alto, Germany/Austria, and now Chicago. This might be my last trip as a grad student -- we can only hope, right?-- and I'm super excited to get to spend a couple days with my old roommate Chris who is now in law school at the University of Chicago.

Hopefully the weather isn't too gloomy...looks like some rain in the forecast, but hopefully thats while I'm stuck inside anyway. And if not, so be it.

Watch This Wednesday #7: You Remind Me of the Babe

This week, I'm throwing you a little clip from the bizarro film Labyrinth. There's definitely a lot of weirdness in this film, but you can't deny that David Bowie really throws himself into the role of the Goblin King Jareth (and also throws himself into those wacky outfits).

Watch This Wednesday #6: This is Halloween!

Happy Halloween everyone!

For today's clip, I bring you the introduction to Tim Burton's "Nightmare Before Christmas" which is out in 3-D this year, and while I haven't seen it, I heard good things about it from some friends who went. In conjunction with the re-release of the film, there was a special edition Soundtrack released as well with covers of the film's songs, and this clip of the Intro is set to a Marilyn Manson cover of the song. There is also a Panic at the Disco version out there if you search on YouTube.

The I scream of the future

I'm sure you've all seen "Dippin' Dots" at some sporting event or at a special stand at the mall. They're tiny balls of super-chilled ice cream that they mix together to create different flavors. I'm not sure how long they've been around, but its been at least 15 years I would guess. Anyway, they still are labeled as the "Ice cream of the future". Not sure when that future is going to arrive. Right now I feel like its the "Ice cream of 1996". Were people that bummed out by ice cream? Were people looking for something new in the ice cream arena?

Anyway, the whole reason I started this post was to say that I was at a hockey game on Friday and at a vendor stall where they were selling these "Dippin' Dots - Ice Cream of the Future", they listed them on the menu as "Dip and Dots". At first I thought maybe it was some knock-off, wannabe ice cream of the future with a strikingly similar name. Then I noticed a special "Dippinl Dots" sign hanging in one area of the stall. So clearly someone had just mistaken the name "Dippin' Dots" as "Dip 'n' Dots" and then put it on the menu as "Dip and Dots". Someday I'll have a camera phone that takes acceptably see-able pictures and I'll be able to record these bizarre moments in signage. For now you'll just have to take my word for it.

Sometimes the tooth hurts

I went to the dentist this morning to get a filling adjusted that was causing me some discomfort, and in the end, I think I did get that problem fixed, but ended up leaving with a new trouble spot. Its always so hard for me to tell how its going to be until I leave and eat something. I'm starting to get pretty frustrated with the whole situation. I feel bad that I keep having problems, but I don't think its my fault. I'm not the dentist. He is.

Meta-Blogging

Quick note, I just added a couple things to the side menu today. First is a list of the the labels that any of my posts have, so you can get to those easily. Second is a list of books that I've read, or am currently reading. Just FYI.

Different Box, Same Drug?

So, last night I figured I better get to the store and pick up some cold medicine to get some help getting over the sore throat and other suspicious symptoms I was suffering. In the past, I've found Tylenol Cold to be helpful, so I started looking for that in the medicine aisle at Wal-mart. Turns out there are now several varieties of Tylenol Cold. The first one I found was Tylenol Cold - Head Congestion, which seemed about like what I wanted, except that I didn't have much congestion, and I was actually sensing maybe a touch of fever.



After some more looking I found Tylenol Cold - Multi-Symptom, which listed Fever as one of the things it was good for.



But now that I was holding both boxes, I realized that both boxes listed the same active ingredients. I thought, "hmm...maybe there's a different ratio of ingredients between these two." Further inspection of the packaging revealed that, at least as far as I could tell, there was absolutely no difference between the two products. The amounts of each active ingredient, the warnings, everything. Is that weird or what?

From Tylenol's website:

Tylenol Cold Head Congestion Day/Night Pack

Daytime Ingredients:

Active Ingredients
-Acetaminophen
325 mg in each caplet
-Dextromethorphan HBr 10 mg in each caplet
-Phenylephrine HCl
5 mg in each caplet

Inactive Ingredients
Carnauba wax, castor oil, cellulose, corn starch, flavors, hypromellose, iron oxide, silicon dioxide, sodium starch glycolate, stearic acid, sucralose

Nighttime Ingredients:

Active Ingredients
-Acetaminophen
325 mg in each caplet
-Chlorpheniramine maleate 2 mg in each caplet
-Dextromethorphan HBr 10 mg in each caplet
-Phenylephrine HCl
5 mg in each caplet

Inactive Ingredients
Carnauba wax, cellulose, corn starch, FD&C blue #1, flavors, hypromellose, iron oxide, polyethylene glycol, polysorbate 80, silicon dioxide, sodium starch glycolate, stearic acid, sucralose, titanium dioxide

Tylenol Cold Multisymptom Day/Night Pack

Daytime Ingredients:

Active Ingredients
-Acetaminophen, 325 mg in each caplet
-Dextromethorphan HBr, 10 mg in each caplet
-Phenylephrine HCl, 5 mg in each caplet

Inactive Ingredients
Carnauba wax, castor oil, cellulose, corn starch, flavors, hypromellose, iron oxide, silicon dioxide, sodium starch glycolate, stearic acid, sucralose

Nighttime Ingredients:

Active Ingredients
-Acetaminophen, 325 mg in each caplet
-Chlorpheniramine maleate, 2 mg in each caplet
-Dextromethorphan HBr, 10 mg in each caplet
-Phenylephrine HCl, 5 mg in each caplet

Inactive Ingredients
Carnauba wax, cellulose, corn starch, FD&C blue #1, flavors, hypromellose, iron oxide, polyethylene glycol, polysorbate 80, silicon dioxide, sodium starch glycolate, stearic acid, sucralose, titanium dioxide

Watch This Wednesday #5: Halloween! A witch with magic!

As mentioned a couple years ago in this post, a friend of mine gets people together for old Halloween specials and chili in the weeks before Halloween, and one of the cartoons is called "Witch's Night Out". Anyway, someone finally posted the theme song portion of the show to YouTube, although it almost seems like someone must have just pointed a camera at their TV to digitize it. Anyway, for some reason I always like this song.

I think I'm loosing my mind

UPDATE (10/22/07): Sometimes lately I feel like I'm fighting a loosing battle. Everywhere I look, people are loosing things. Not so much in published pieces, although I do catch it there occasionally , but definitely its rampant in online text. I realize that words change when you add -ing at the end, but if anything it would be the consonant that would change from lose to lossing, but not even that rule applies here. C'mon people. I feel like I'm loosing you. The next time I hear someone use it like that I'm going to tell them to "Get Loosed". That'll show them.

UPDATE (9/11/06): The article has now been fixed. Should have taken a screen cap to post here. Oh well. At least someone, somewhere, realizes that loose does not mean the same as lose.

UPDATE (9/11/06): Long time readers will remember the post below where I bemoaned the use of the word "loose" in the place of "lose". Just this morning I am perusing the online version of the Salt Lake Tribune, only to find this headline: "Needy Utahns loose food stamps." Maybe I have loosed my mind.

********************************

And not just because a post that I had up disappeared and had to be salvaged from a permanent link that a friend's feed reader happened to hang on to.

It actually because I've seen the word "loose" be used to mean "lose" so many time lately that I'm starting to wonder if I'm the one using it incorrectly. I was just reading someone's profile that said "I love loosing myself in a good book." Last semester when I was grading papers I saw the word "loose" used uncountable times in place of "lose". And these are graduate students. Granted not all of them speak great English, but every team had some born and raised "Englicans." You would think that they would pick that up in proofreading (not that the quality of writing indicated any kind of proofreading).

Did I miss somewhere where this was an alternate spelling or something?

Watch This Wednesday #4: I'm a miracle man

This week, I bring you a scene from what, to me, is the most re-watchable of M. Night Shyamalan's films, Signs. Unlike some of his other movies, this one doesn't hinge so much on a crazy plot twist, although you could argue there is a bit of a big "reveal" at the end. Anyway, I think its the most re-watchable because of the humorous elements in the film. One of my favorite scenes is the one where Mel Gibson explains that people break down into two categories: those who believe in miracles and those who don't, and asks Joaquin Phoenix which category he is in.

Fun with catalogs

There's a Flickr user who scans in old catalogs page by page along with other things. Just in the first few pages I found this picture of a stereo from 1986:



The sad part? My parents still own essentially this exact stereo. Other than a few cosmetic differences, this is a picture of my parents' stereo. I keep thinking we could replace it with something one-fifth the size, but then I think, without the big stereo speakers, where would they keep the phone?

Random Thoughts on the English Language #14: When Latin goes astray

A few years ago in a course on Medicine for Scientists and Engineers we spend a while looking at the parts of Medical vocabulary and seeing often by understanding the Latin roots of a word you could figure out what it meant. Occasionally its not that easy. For example the word "orthopedic" has the roots ortho- and -ped- in it. "Ortho" means straight, and "ped" can mean either foot or child (not sure how that works). So orthopedics should have something to do with straightening feet or straightening children, and originally it must have been coined in that context. Now it refers to "A branch of medicine that focuses on injuries and diseases of the musculoskeletal system (the body's muscles, skeleton, and related tissues), including the spine, joints, ligaments, tendons, and nerves." (link) Essentially, there is some straightening and/or fixing of bones and muscles going on.

So thats a term thats drifted a bit from its original meaning. However, the real drift comes in the way the word 'orthopedic' has been commandeered by companies in search of medical sounding trademarks. I'm thinking specifically of Sealy's 'Posturepedic' mattresses. Sadly, they've taken the wrong part of the word 'orthopedic' for their product. Their mattresses apparently promote posture for kids and/or feet. Maybe they should change the name to Sealy Postorthotic Mattresses.

Watch This Wednesday #3: You're The Best!..Around!

This week's clip comes to us courtesy of The Karate Kid. I have a hard time imagining that someone out there has never seen this, but just in case, this is a montage from the All-Valley Karate Tournament featuring a great song by Joe "Bean" Esposito.

You might be having bizarre car troubles if...

...if the parts guy at the dealership spends half an hour on his computer, and still needs to look under your car twice to figure out what he thinks is the part that needs replacing.

...if the part he orders for you is so obscure that it only returns 3 hits on Google.

...if you ask the service staff at the dealership if they'd be able to install it for you and they say, "Well I can't say for sure since I've never heard of that, but probably."

Question for you

So, several years ago, I told a friend to look for my calculator in the back pocket of my backpack. He looked in the wrong pocket and said "its not here", and I said "no the BACK pocket". Please take a moment to click where it says "Comments" at the bottom of this post and tell me which pocket on a backpack you consider to be the "back pocket."

Watch This Wednesday #2: Moon Child!

If you grew up in the 80s you've probably seen The Neverending Story, and if you're like me, you could never figure out what the heck Bastien yells out the window at the end, when he has to give the empress a new name. Well thanks to the Internet, I was able to find out that supposedly he yells "Moon Child", although in my memory it was pretty much an unintelligible scream. Well I found the clip, and I'm posting it here, and you can see for yourself, that "Moon Child" actually does sound like what he yells, although why Bastien's mother was named Moon Child, that I can't answer.



Also, as a bonus Watch This, I'm including one of my favorite parts of the movie, which I'll simply call, "They look like big...good...strong...hands...don't they?"

Only 9 Years? I thought Google invented the Internet

Today is Google's 9th birthday. Personally, I guess I've only been Googling things for about 6 years, but it really seems like Google is a mile marker for the Internet. Meaning the advent of Google seems to have happened along with the Internet starting to look a lot better. Fewer frames, more good design.

Anyway, who could have guessed that 9 years later Google would be providing me with free email and blogging and RSS feed reading, along with permanently living in a search box in my browser window. Now if only they could get a few more modules on iGoogle, I might be able to ditch Yahoo! completely.

Watch This Wednesday #1: I Said Good Day, Sir!

As promised yesterday, I'm starting a new feature, where basically I find a video to share with you. At least starting out, I'm going to be showing favorite clips from movies, limited of course to what I can find online. I haven't quite mastered the whole getting pieces of videos that I already own and doing something with them other than watching them.

This week, I give you a favorite scene from the REAL Willy Wonka, Mr. Gene Wilder. My only regret is that this clip, of which I found two versions, omits the first part of the rant, where Mr. Wonka spouts some Latin. However, if you click through to the actual webpage on YouTube, the text of the first part of the rant is there. In fact, since that person doesn't actually own the copyright on the text, I feel okay about giving it to you here:

Wrong, sir! Wrong! Under section 37B of the contract signed by him, it states quite clearly that all offers shall become null and void if - and you can read it for yourself in this photostatic copy - "I, the undersigned, shall forfeit all rights, privileges, and licenses herein and herein contained," et cetera, et cetera..."Fax mentis incendium gloria cultum," et cetera, et cetera..."Memo bis punitor delicatum!" It's all there, black and white, clear as crystal! You stole fizzy lifting drinks. You bumped into the ceiling which now has to be washed and sterilized, so you get nothing! You lose! Good day sir!

Some of my favorite lines to quote:
"Its all there! Black and white! Clear as crystal!"
"Build up a little boy's hopes and then smash all his dreams to pieces."

Buttered Pop Tarts

You know how growing up you assume that everyone else lives the same life as you and then as you grow up and meet other people you slowly find out that you do some things differently than everyone else. Growing up we could never have the Pop-Tarts with frosting on them, because that would be dessert, not breakfast. Not that we got Pop-Tarts, with or without frosting, all that often. So pretty much they were a delicacy. Anyway, when you toast the unfrosted Pop-Tarts, putting butter on them is pretty much the only way to go. The butter melts into the crust, it's great all around.

Lately I've been finding out that putting butter on Pop-Tarts is greeted with a near universal "huh?", followed by a semi-universal, "wait, what? gross." Not sure why no one else I've talked to lately has ever done this. Probably because they only eat frosted Pop-Tarts. It's rare to ever see more than the strawberry flavored Pop-Tarts in the unfrosted form these days, although I did happen upon some unfrosted blueberry about a month ago. Anyway, I think they are great, and I encourage you to try it out.

The todo nebula

I know I haven't been the best blogger ever lately. My mind has been pretty jumpy lately and I'm having a hard time focusing on much of anything. I need to take some time and write out what all I need to get done I think. A lot of times when I'm feeling unsettled like this its because I have this nebulous feeling that there are things I need to do, but I can't put my finger on them. And when I feel that way, it really helps me to write down everything that I need to do, and then attack that in an organized way. In any case, I do plan to attack the blogging in a similar organized fashion, with at least one small weekly item (coming Wednesdays this fall!), and maybe something a tad more substantial if I decide my hectic life can handle it. In the meantime, I found a topic I wanted to write about in the draftbin, and you can check that out in a bit once I finish writing it up.

Great things in September 18th History

From wikipedia:

Year:

323 - Constantine the Great decisively defeats Licinius in the Battle of Chrysopolis, establishing Constantine's sole control over the Roman Empire.
1502 - Christopher Columbus lands at Costa Rica on his fourth, and final, voyage.
1793 - The first cornerstone of the Capitol building is laid by George Washington.
1810 - First Government Junta in Chile. Though supposed to rule only in the absence of the king, it was in fact the first step towards independence from Spain, and it is commemorated as such.
1851 - The New-York Daily Times, which will become The New York Times, begins publishing.
1952 - Rick Pitino born.
1970 - Jimi Hendrix found dead in his basement in London.
1974 - Xzibit born.
1978 - BigDigital blog author, "J" born.
1982 - First smiley-face Emoticon sent by Carnegie Mellon Professor Scott Fahlman.

Yes, thats right, today Xzibit is 33 years old, and Chile celebrates 197 years of independence.

And yes, today is my birthday, too. If you enjoy the blog, leave me a comment. I'll turn on anonymous commenting for those of you who don't have a blogger account for a day or two as well.