1.21 GigaWatts?!?!?!

You're HIRED!

Looks like I'll be changing positions over the next year here at UNL. I'm going to be transitioning from lecturer to tier-2 computing here at UNL this coming year. YAY!

My physics career gets a stay of execution!

Physics Exams Cause the Flu

Judging from all the emails and no-shows to my exam this morning Physics Exams cause the flu. (As well as other *numerous* family emergencies.)

Now I have to figure out how to get these 220 exams graded. Any takers?

I am doomed.

Recently I've been less than thrilled with my career choices. It has a lot to do with being on the dead end track of lecturer, having skipped the 30 years most spend as a tenured professor first. Now I'm trying to figure out what I'm going to do in 18 months when I'm out of a job at UNL. To help me begin I went to one of those 'career helper' websites and filled out their 'things I like to do' questionares and they gave me back some graphs of what my career choices should be.

(I did one of these in high school, it said I should become a 'fish stunner' for the park service. Maybe I should have listened.)

Here are the two graphs it pooped out.


Fat lot of help that is. Nothing new here. Move along.

Quite frankly I think the top line of the first graph and the bottom line of the first graph are incompatible in terms of career choices. All scientists (certainly in my field) have to be super assertive.
I am screwed.

N Report...week 3...3-0

So another couple of games have come and gone. To be frank, Nebraska looks terrible. Bill Callahan, our new coach, has brought with him from the NFL the "West Coast Offense". Watching the game Saturday against Pitt we're running the "Gulf Coast Offense", it sure looks like a disaster to me. We got a single touchdown on what Coach Callahan would call an 'ill conceived run', since the QB took off with the ball. That was it for our scoring. It took a last second miracle to keep the game from being a loss. (Those of you who watched the game on TV know of what I speak.)

What's odd is our running back (I don't remember what they're call in the West Coast) got 153 yards rushing, but we only had two hundred some odd yards total offense.

All I can say about Bill Callahan is I have a lot more respect for Rich Gannon.

So let's recap the season so far:
Beat a Div 1AA Maine team by 18 points. Maine lost a home game this weekend.
Beat a Div 1 ACC bottom feeder in Wake Forest 31-3. Wake Forest is the Kansas of the ACC.
Beat an 0-3 Pitt team 7-6. This is a Pitt team that lost to our fomer coach.

Its going to be a long conference schedule. Looking over what we have left I'd say:
ISU: Loss (close?)
Texas Tech: Loss (Big?)
Baylor: Win (close?)
Mizzou: ????
Oklahoma: ???? (At the beginning of the year this was a sure loss, now??)
Kansas: Loss (First time in forever, the last of a long line of in conference, decades long win streaks. It'll be sad to see this one go.)
KSU: ????? (Oh I hate these guys.)
CU: Loss (Oh I hate these guys too.)
That puts us with a season ending 4-4-3
So at best I'm guessing 7-4, at worst 3-8 (An 8 loss streak would spell the doom of someone.)

I don't see a bowl in Nebraska's near future (since the Maine game does not count towards bowl eligibility). I hope I'm wrong. My hope is that Callahan somehow gets the offense on track and our defense is for real and we win the Big XII north and get to play spoiler for a certain group of big headed spoiled brats from the lone star state. (We all know the lone star is Vince Young.) Pay back for '96 would be sweat.

Ah but I can dream.

I will say our defense looks pretty good, but I don't think they've been truly tested. We'll see what happens when Iowa State and Texas Tech come to town.

Oh, by the way, there's a picture showing where my seats are in Memorial Stadium. This picture is 12 years old, but the seat is still there. (This is looking East.)

Job Interview Madness

One of the numerous things keeping me away from my appointed rounds is that I had an interview for the CMS tier-2 job here at UNL. Here is the WTF moment of the interview. Since all the other interviewees were remote and the tier-2 project didn't have funds to bring them here to interview them, they decided that ALL the interviews had to be done via remote videoconferencing. So I too had to interview over the videoconference equipment. So I sat in one room on campus and the panel sat in another room on campus and we teleconferenced.
Awesome.

My 'N' Report, Game 1: Maine

This is my first year with season tickets to Nebraska Cornhusker football games. Those of you in the know know that college football season opened up this week. Here's my report for the game, Nebraska vs. Maine.

Crowd: We had some jackass in our section who would not sit down. A cop (with a gun mind you) asked him nicely to sit down. This Mensa reject argues from across the section. Realizing that the cop is still asking him to sit down he stomps over to argue face to face with him. "I don't have to sit down. I paid to watch the game!", he exclaims. The cop point out the people behind him also paid to watch the game. This cow turd with a mullet remains unmoved. He returns to his seat, or his stand in this case. The guy behind him, two rows up yells, "SIT THE FUCK DOWN YOU ASSHOLE!". I quite agreed with the sentiment. Our contendor for fan of the year spins around and yells back "DON'T CALL ME AN ASSHOLE YOU DICKHEAD!" It was like the presidential debate minus Jim Lehrer. At this point our armed governmental representive steps in, "IF I HEAR ONE MORE SWEAR WORD OUT OF ANY OF YOU, I'm KICKING YOU OUT. NOW SIT THE FUCK DOWN!" It was a nice moment of Zen. But I missed the first few plays watching our sectional comedy.

At the end of the game a young girl of about 10=12 years old puked on the steps leading out of the section. BAD FORM! It stank about as bad as the Husker play, but more on that later.

I give the crowd a C-

Student Section: The gate I have to use is NEXT to the gate they let students into. My gate was PACKED with yelling, super drunk students who don't know how to behave. It must have been over 100 degrees in the concourse and no one was moving. It was frustrating. Once I hit the stairs to go to my section it was smooth sailing. I wouldn't have even brought up the student section but when the stadium announcer asked for a moment of silence for New Orleans and all the Katrina victims 70,000 people went quiet and 10,000 students took the opportunity to start a "GO BIG RED" chant. I was stunned. Their parents must be so proud.

Student secction: A grade inflated D

Huskers vs. Maine: Our defensive line looked good. Our special teams were hot and cold. We beat a Div 1AA team by only 18 points. I told my collegue I attend games with, "We should line Memorial Stadium with particle detectors so that when the program finally does collapse fully we can observe whatever flies out. There might be a Nobel Prize in that somewhere."

Huskers: ??? Next weak's game against Wake Forest will be even less enlightening. I give this performance 2 puke covered stairs out of 5.

So that's all for this week. More 'N' Reports Next week.
Cheers,
Carl