High Energy in Nebraska

Two Different Weddings, Two Different Worlds...

2006-12-19T12:03:00.000-06:00

I had originally written this article in July after I attended two weddings. I told my friend about this post and he said I should finish it and fire it off...

July, 2006

I attended two very different weddings this past weekend. The first wedding was on a Saturday and was exactly like every wedding I've attended in Nebraska since I was a kid. A coworker (well, he's actually a grad student) got married in small town Nebraska in a small protestant church. Even though I only knew only the groom and the guy I carpooled with, it was like coming home. Every familiar small town character was there, almost like a Simpsons episode. I expected Comic Book Guy to bumble through the door at any moment.

The weird thing about these types of weddings is the general tension in the air. An almost tangible feeling that something could go horribly wrong at any moment. Everyone seems to be on pins and needles. When the candle lighter had troubles due to the blasting AC you could see the near panic crossing everyone faces.

What in the world causes this level of stress? Why were they so worried? I couldn't tell, but it didn't feel any different then all the other weddings I've been to.

The reception was quite different. There's a definite feeling of 'Thank God that's over' in the air. Food is placed out and people are encouraged to help themselves and have a good time.

Contrast that with the wedding I went to on Sunday. First of all, a Sunday wedding is pretty rare for me. The reason it was on a Sunday is part of the overwhelming differences between the two particular weddings. This was the first Jewish wedding I've ever attended.

I was pretty nervous about going. I'm not familiar with the customs and I really, really didn't want to offend anyone. I was worried about how easy it was at weddings I was familiar with to set things in motion that would snowball into a bad scene.

I could not have been more wrong. The wedding had a feeling of congenial reverence. I got the feeling that if something went wrong with the ceremony, then that was ok because it wasn't the ceremony that was important, but the long road to follow. It felt like the celebrants were saying 'its ok if this goes of the rails, God will still be happy with it'.

When I asked about covering my head before entering the temple the people at the door were very gracious and were certain to tell me that I was welcome to do what made me comfortable. They were not offended by my ignorance, nor were they pushy about what to do. It was a small thing that hinted at much larger differences. I was tremendously grateful for the consideration.

The reception was a more formal affair. Waiters and waitresses served the guests on the staff's timetable. It wasn't until the reception that I started to feel the constricting grasp of foreboding, and then not to the degree I was accustom to at small town weddings.

It was a strange weekend and I was happy to go. I have another wedding soon, I'm sure it'll be even stranger. (Cowboy weddings ne

Rude Awakening...

2006-12-17T06:32:00.000-06:00

Its 6:15am and I still can't get back to sleep. Why? At 3:30 am I was awoken by some extremely loud booming/crashing sound. It sounded like someone was in my house tossing around free weights tied to an elephant.

I take the nervous walk downstairs (boom) with the phone (boom) in my hand. Is it the furnace (boom, BOOM)? Is it a car (BOOOM!) door?

WTF?

BOOM...knock..knock...knock...BOOOM.

Nope, its some dude trying to break down my front door.

Why? Who's to say. Before I really knew what was going on, I turned on the porch light and peer out the window of the door. There's some guy standing there. This guy looks up at me and he looks to be covered in blood, but thankfully he stops trying to break in. He just stands there. Every now and then he'd look around, sometimes right at me. I give his description to the 911 operator and I wait for what seems a liftetime for an officer to show up. I'm nervously fingering an implement of galvanized pipe I playfully call my mace and this guy starts to slump against the door frame. Its clear he's about out of it. The 911 operator seems to think that this guy was attacked and is now seeking help. "Is he breathing ok? Can you see a wound? Where
did the primary assailant go?"

What am I, Columbo? I don't see any wounds now, but if this jackhole gets in my house I'll sure as hell make a few.

The cops arrive and tell me he doesn't really know his name and that the 'blood' on his head is actually vomit. Well, ain't that nice.

Oh, yeah, UNL had graduation today. Welcome to the real world dude. Now get in the damb patrol car and don't come back.

Now the deadbolt and door handle on my door are all fubar and the door has some structural damage (thank $DIETY for solid oak doors). Guess I know what I'll be doing tomorrow.

The real kicker is that this isn't the first time this has happened. After the 1998 UNL/Texas game I had almost the exact same thing happen. After pounding like mad on my door that dude tried to break into my friends car.

Ah, the joys of city living....

My take on the Pope's Take on Islam

2006-09-19T13:13:00.000-05:00

I had a huge post written in my head about this whole affair with the Pope and his recent brush with controversy. I then found the perfect quote to sum up what I was getting at:

"Anyone who describes Islam as a religion as intolerant encourages
violence."
-Tasnim Aslam, Pakistani Foreign Ministry

I couldn't put it any better. The biggest threat to free speech and free press in the world is militant Islam. We saw it with the Danish cartoons and now we see it again.

Heavy Heart...

2006-09-05T10:36:00.000-05:00

My 12 week old daughter started daycare today. She seems to be doing just fine, mom and dad are pretty sad.

Evil Lawyers Strike Again

2006-08-23T11:06:00.001-05:00

Its been a while since my last update, but that's because every time I think of something to post about I veto it as 'unimportant' blathering. Last night I sat down to practice my guitar and out of the darkness of the internet pure evilness reared its ugly head. Yet another revenue stream was dreamt up by a group of lawyers 'representing' artists. When I went to my favorite guitar tabs site I was met with the following from the website manager:

"The company which owns this website has been indirectly threatened (via our ISP) with legal action by the National Music Publishers' Association (NMPA) as well as the Music Publishers' Association (MPA) on the basis that sharing tablature constitutes copyright infringement."

There's quite a bit more to the letter, which you are welcome to read, but the above sums up the problem. No tabs were available.

So I guess that Cliff's notes can expect a cease and desist? If I sum up the plot line to Snakes on a Plane will Samuel Jackson and the MPAA show up at my door?

Guitar tablature is rarely (if ever) pulled from a publishers song book or sheet music. Guitar tabs are interpretations of music by other muscians. Its not uncommon to find multiple, highly different versions of any given song. If, in the wildest dreams of the RIAA/MPAA/NMPA, tablature was copyright infringement, only ONE version could possibly be in violation.

This new sue early sue often by large groups of lawyers 'representing' artists is getting out of control. Its become a form of extortion and I hope it stops.

Maybe PirateBay will have to start hosting guitar tabs...

Two Different Weddings, Two Different Worlds...

2006-07-25T09:52:00.000-05:00

I would walk 500 miles, and I would walk 500 more...

2006-07-12T10:54:00.000-05:00

I realized that I've packed a lot of weight on since January. What happened in January? I stopped teaching.

Now that may seem a minor thing, but I did a (literal) back of the envelope calculation involving my teaching style. You see, I pace when I teach. Back and forth, back and forth. Its annoying, but it makes me a hard target for sharp-shooters. Anyway, if I averaged say, two miles an hour (that's slow for my regular pace--long legs you know) I've calculated that I was walking about 18 miles a week just teaching. (!)

Just for fun, I ran the numbers against my lecturing career (no recitations, no labs) here at UNL. Accounting for the variable number of sections I had and the summer sessions I taught, it came out to about 4300 miles over my career. That's a Journey from Chicago to Houston and back. Twice.

Forrest Gump ain't got nothing on me.

Now I'm in the gawd awful gym huffing and puffing to go 1/2 a mile on the stupid treadmill.

Sadness speckled with hope

2006-07-11T11:16:00.000-05:00

The first paragraph of this article really hits home.
Wired Article

Napster made me buy my guitar

2006-06-28T10:15:00.000-05:00

Last night during a marathon guitar lesson I and the instructor had a short discussion about Napster and downloading songs off the internet. I had mentioned that I downloaded many of the songs that we are learning of iTunes, but got tired of paying $1 a piece for them so I grabbed a bunch from bittorrent (for instructional use only, I promise not to enjoy them). While on the subject I said "I guess I'm in this class because of Napster".

You see, a long time ago, on a workstation far far away I used to run gnapster (a Linux client) to get songs to listen to while working (this is back in the pre-corperate Napster hay-day). One December day, as Christmas approached I did a simple napster search for "Christams" and a Dave Matthews song "Christmas Song" came up. It was off the "Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds Live at Luther College" CD. I was really intrigued by the unique Matthews sound so I downloaded a few more Dave Matthews songs. Cool stuff.

Later I purchased the full CD (yeah, I do that, it was actually 2 CDs). Its an awesome collection of music and I highly recommend people jump out and buy. After listening to Dave and Tim I got this creeping notion that I too could play guitar. It was a slow festering sort of idea that laid dormant for several years. During that time I purchased more guitar oriented music. I added more James Taylor, John Denver (and old favorite, his "Wilderness Concern" rules) and Paul Simon to my music collection. Last year I finally asked for a guitar for my birthday.

My guitar arrived almost a year ago. I then went about buying song books, how-to DVDs, picks, capos and paying for lessons. Its started to amount to a large amount of money and I'm starting to eye electric guitars in the music store. It can only get worse.

Last night I purchased a CD recorded by my guitar instructor's band. Had I not been in his lessons I would never have bought this CD because I wouldn't have known about it.

Long story short--the evil Napster, a technology which was supposed to destroy music sales and kill the industry sold a CD last night....and a guitar...and a pile of song books...a couple of learning guitar DVDs...24 weeks of guitar lessons...

Hot Race for Texas Govenor

2006-06-27T09:04:00.000-05:00

I can't wait to cast my vote for Carol Keeton (ne Rylander, ne McClellan) Strayhorn. Yes, her father was the famous UT professor. I can't see any reason NOT to vote for her. She's clearly an open minded moderate. GO CAROL!

Universal Healthcare in San Fran

2006-06-21T13:02:00.000-05:00

San Francisco looks to be attempting to implement universal healthcare for its citizens. I certainly have mixed feelings about universal healthcare. From a human perspective it certainly would be nice. I used to be quite the proponent for socializing healthcare until I realized that too many people don't play fair to make it work. After all the stories I hear from my sister about abuses of free access to emergency rooms I find it hard to believe that people will make the effort to allow a system of free healthcare to work. (The healthcare industry faces a large number of supply problems without artifically inflating demand.)

San Francisco has further muddied the waters. Their coverage is only for those without private health insurance. So, I wonder, for what reason should I maintain a health insurance plan if I live in SF? If I'm an employer, not only do I pay for my personal health insurance, but I'm to contriubte $1.60/employee hour to the system. Furthermore, what's the tax rate going to be for the citizens to support the estimated $200 million/year budget. Yikes.

I do like that the plan isn't free. Even if you live under the poverty line you'd be expected to pay a $3/month premium. Anyone making under $40K would have to pony up $35 a month. There is a huge difference between free and affordable. There should also be a sliding scale of copays (the article mentions such, but doesn't elaborate). A visit to a doctor or hospital should come with some cost.

If nothing else I'll be interested to see how this plays out. SF could serve as a testbed for the country. I also await the numerous law suits that will arise from the fact that SF will not cover people who work in SF, but don't live there.

Alison Hazel Lundstedt

2006-06-11T20:59:00.000-05:00

Alison Hazel Lundstedt

Linux vs. Windows...again

2006-06-01T13:32:00.000-05:00

I don't think you can put 5 geeks in one place without a Linux vs. Windows fight erupting. Each side has its fanboyz and neither side is very accepting. I use Linux for any serious computer work I have to do and if I could I'd uninstall Windows and never think of it again, however I use my computer to play games. Thus I have to have Windows on board and that's fine for what it is. Here's my latest take on the Linux vs. Windows debate.

I just bought a new PC for home, a suped up machine perfect for gaming. It has an AMD x2, lots of ram and two nvidia video cards SLI'd together. Whenever I get a new machine its reopens my eyes as to how bad Microsoft Windows really is.

Installation trouble: I often hear that Linux is very hard to install and not for the feint of heart. Well, Microsoft Windows is no panacea either. I started the XP SP2 install and it proceeds along nicely until it gets to 'detecting devices' there's a long pause and then the process continues where upon it asks for my XP SP2 cd. “But the CD is in the drive”, I exclaim. To no avail, Windows won't listen to reason. So I cancel the request for media and the install continues. It seems that the 'detect devices' method is making my DVD drive go missing (the eject button won't even respond). Eventually XP comes up, but it looks....odd. No rounded corners, no pretty background of verdant fields, no opera dogs...it's all missing. Hmm. “Well that's fine.” I mumble to the cat.

Hardware Issues: “Hey, where's the sound?” I often hear that Linux doesn't support some hardware. Well the truth is Windows doesn't support ANY hardware, hardware vendors support Windows. Now that my crippled system is alive its a DaVinci Code-esque hunt for driver disks. Install sound card drivers. Reboot. Install wireless network card drivers. Reboot. Install display drivers. Reboot. The 'install after the install' takes more time than the OS install. Nevermind that there is no word processor installed, no modern web browser installed, no safe email client installed. Nothing. It does come bundled with that cool application 'calculator' (which probably has floating point round off errors lurking).

Ok, fine. So the machine now has sound, video and network. Time to install a game. Put in Quake4. The installer dies. That's weird. Try install Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter (came free with the video cards). The installer dies. Weird x2. Install Oblivion. IT WORKS! Looks awesome. Plays great. Yay.

So what's wrong with the other games? Well, I'm glad you asked. The abortive installations didn't get everything installed correctly. It seems that XP is missing a great deal of stuff. I can't install it correctly since the installation process drops the DVD drive as a matter of course, checking for devices. Eventually I had to copy the whole XP disk to my harddrive (after another abortive install, taking another hour of my life I won't get back soon) and install windows from the harddrive. (I'll bet I've broken some kind of DRM law in doing so.) Then I had to do the 'install after the install'...AGAIN.

My SuSE linux install went off without a hitch. It detected my soundcard, video card and wireless network card during install. There was no 'install after the install' session. Heck my favorite web browser (firefox) and email client (Evolution) were installed by default. As were a news reader, an office suite, an image editor, a compiler suite, an instant messenger, a calculator, a nifty drum machine (great for helping learn guitar)...need I go on?

Why do people think Windows is so great? A) They don't see the cost. Since it comes pre-installed they don't see the $100+ they paid for it. B) Its easy to install since they didn't have to install it. C) Hardware and software vendors support it well since its the only choice for them to be viable in the industry.

The only 'virtue' that Windows brings to the table is that it has a monopoly on home market. Without the gaming industry and unfair OEM contracts it has with PC makers, Windows would be dead and gone.

No I don't think Linux is for everyone, but neither is Windows, but its what we are forced to use.

The Tax Man Cometh

2006-06-01T09:57:00.000-05:00

I got my property re-evaluations yesterday for Lancaster County. My property evaluation went up 107%. (The county assessor was on the radio yesterday and he said "I don't do percentages", I can only assume that's because he can't do the math in his head.) He found the whole thing funny.

This is the second time they've upped my evaluations. Since I bought the house in '99 my evaluation has gone up 300%. The first time they did it I had an escrow account that suffered an underrun, so I had to pay hundreds of dollars in fees.

The average evaluation increase across the county was 17%.

I'm mad as hell, but I'll have to just take it because that's the system. The fact you can't fight city hall has never been more true. There is a method by which you can protest, but the assessor gave a veiled threat implying that if you protest, they may well further increase the evaluation.

I guess I should count my lucky stars that they don't want to put in a resort on my property. If they did they'd just eminent domain my ass out.

USE IT!

2006-05-18T16:01:00.000-05:00

Google has a new tool out called "notebook". Its an awesome way to organize online data and material. Coupled with the FireFox 1.5 plugin of the same name you can copy and paste to you notebook without leaving the site you're surfing. Since google is storing the notebook, your notebook is available from anywhere in the world. I have numerous workstations and computers that I use. Bookmarks and hand notes were not getting it done. I hope this does the trick! Give it a try...
(www.google.com/notebook)

Missing the good ones

2006-05-17T23:07:00.000-05:00

In this day and age, with a seemingly endless supply of TV channels its hard to believe that any series gets canceled. Fox in particular seems to kill off shows that are quite good before they have any chance to get their legs. I recently saw the movie "Serenity", based on the Fox TV show FireFly. I'm really sorry I missed that series because the episodes that I've seen and the movie are truly excellent. I think 8 or 9 episode got made and that was it. If you like SciFi and you like Westerns, this show is an excellent blend of the two.

And to think 'Will and Grace' has been on since the time of Christ...

Neighborhood joys.

2006-05-14T21:40:00.000-05:00

A couple of weeks ago my neighbor across the street crashed his car. (He's never had very good luck with cars.) It looks totaled. He had it towed back to his house (I have no idea why) and its sitting in his driveway between the sidewalk and the street. In Lincoln (and I'll wager most cities) you can't park in your driveway between the sidewalk and the street. The predictable happened. The car started to accumulate parking tickets. First there was one ticket, then two then four. It was comical to see.

Yesterday morning I hear yelling outside. Not an uncommon occurrence around these parts. I went out on my upper porch to see if there was a fight and if I needed to call the cops, again, not an uncommon occurrence in these parts. It was said neighbor standing in his yard yelling obscenities about his horrible neighbors turning him into the cops. He sees me on the porch and immediately starts swearing at me and demanding to know if I was the one who turned him in.

After laughing him off I went inside to rob him of a target of his rage. Later in the day he posts a note on the window of his car to the effect of 'My car is legally parked and you all suck!' (No Mark, that's not a direct quote.)

My only hope he goes postal at work instead of taking out his neighbors.

What 'level' do you write at.

2006-05-12T21:41:00.000-05:00

As if I needed another reason to feel bad about myself my better half told me that WORD (that evil word processor from Micro$oft) has a function where it rates your writing level. I ran some of my writing through it and it comes up between 7 and 9th grade level.

I are stupidie.

'W' as Jimmy Carter...

2006-04-26T12:33:00.000-05:00

I've heard the rumblings from some on the internet that 'W' is really just another Jimmy Carter. Other than both being unpopular presidents, 'W' and Carter could not be more different. And while it might be interesting to compare and contrast these two, I had a thought I found more compelling. I think 'W' is the new Nixon.

I think Bush will leave the Republicans high and dry in the upcoming elections. The Democrats stand a good chance to sweep many national elections and will probably put a person in the white house in '08 regardless of who they put forth, solely on the public opinion backlash against Bush. I don't see the Democrats earning these seats on merit or promises, but merely on the bad state of public opinion left by the Republicans, much as Nixon left things in the early '70s.

What came of the Nixon backlash was what I consider to be the worst economic period of my lifetime, the late '70s and the Carter administration. I truly fear that a directionless Democratic party will take their new found power and make matters worse. The Democrats need to shore up their platform and start planning now. I was watching a Michael Moore speach on CPAN a couple of months ago. He was talking to a large group of Democrat big wigs. He asked a very simple question: "What do the Democrats stand for?" I was the only one with an answer, the Democrats are the party of abortion. Its their one unifying issue. Its not an issue that will help with any of the large problems the country faces now (large deficits, oil dependance, Iraq etc). Without a more reasonable response to this query the country stands to lose greatly in the upcoming elections.

The white house has already come to the same conclusion as I have as evidenced by their staffing shake-down. They realize that they have very little time to reverse public opinion and shore up poll numbers before election time. I know I hope they can turn things around, but I know many more people who are gleefully fiddling while Rome burns.

I'd be interested in seeing what others think (and explore the 'W' as Nixon/Carter angles).

Meeting with the Neighbors

2006-04-10T14:26:00.000-05:00

So I'm typing this entry while sitting in the USCMS meeting in Lincoln Nebraska. About 90 physicists from around the US (and the world) are here to give status reports and concerns about the status of the CMS experiment from the US collaborators. Its meetings like this that give me mixed feelings. Although I'm very proud to be a small cog in the 'most complex undertaking in human history' (not my words, but I assure you its true), I'm always bothered by being but a small cog. I could throw my half drunk can of pop and hit any number of luminaries in the field but I assure you no one cares to throw a soda at me.

It also bugs me that very few consider me to be a physicist anymore. I'm a sysadmin. A computer guy. I'm basically staff now. The equivalent of a mail room clerk. Although they're right, its rude of them to remind me.

I will say that watching all the reports on what people have done over the past n+1 years makes me want to get more done. If nothing else these meetings make us want to work harder.

Not dead yet....

2006-04-04T14:27:00.000-05:00

I know I haven't posted for awhile, but I'm finding myself pretty busy of late. I'm still finishing up the new kitchen. The University of Nebraska is hosting the USCMS meeting this week (which means there will be more big wigs around than you can shake a stick at). I have to give a short talk Thursday about the joys of trying to hurd cats in grid computing.

We're still on pace to have a baby in early June. The house is totally not ready for it and neither am I. The cat has no idea what's coming.

I'll give some thought to other issues and give them voice soon.

-C

Demand Open Standards

2006-02-13T10:58:00.000-06:00

I work with Open Source software on a daily basis. Linux runs on our clusters, desktops and servers. I used OpenOffice to do all my grades. I wrote my latest paper in LaTeX. All of this software was free to use. I forget how spoiled I am until I have to use a closed source, closed standards piece of software. My latest gripe? TaxCut software.

I've been using TaxCut for the last 3 years since it is much cheaper than TurboTax (which seems to think they should charge more for their software than what it would cost to have a professional just do them). Each year I put the file safely away and print out a hard copy of the taxes and e-file away. Part of the e-filing process (as you may know) is the electronic signature, where you specify last year's adjusted gross income so the IRS knows its you.

Well last year I must have forgot to print the hard copies of my taxes since they are nowhere to be found (all the W-2, 1099s etc are in the file, just no forms). No problem I say. I'll just look at my 2004 TaxCut file and read the number from there and print out the forms.

Here's where the closed standards come into play. TaxCut 2005 won't read 2004's return except to pull the personal data out to auto complete the forms. Their website even says "reinstall TaxCut 2004 to read last years returns". Like I can find that disk laying around. Does TaxCut provide a free 'tax file' reader? Nope. Does TaxCut give any indication how to open last years file beyond stupidly reinstalling their software? Nope.

Now granted this is all my fault since I must have forgotten to print last years return, but for TaxCut to demand I have their software from a specific year to read a specific file is insane. I demand that software companies adopt open standards to their file formats can be *read* by any software supporting those standards.

This bit me a few years ago when I tried to print off all the class notes I had written in WordPerfect. "Sorry, that company is basically gone, so all your files are useless now." Grrr. All that work gone.

Microsoft is fighting hard to not adopt open standards and formats for their Office product. I wonder why? Is it to lock people into their product line? You betcha.

Since you've clearly missed the point...

2006-01-26T12:17:00.000-06:00

There is a secret message in my previous post.

Re-reading is fundamental.

Its been a busy Month...

2006-01-20T14:04:00.000-06:00

Crud. I see its been a whole month since my last post. I suppose I should try to find time to pontificate more.

First, congrats to the Texas Longhorns. Thank you for beating the best team to ever play football ever. I was so tired of listening to ESPN goosh over U$C that I would have rooted for Colorado to beat them. I have not purchased any Texa$ t-shirts or hats yet. I doubt I will, there are too many lame bandwagonneers in Lincoln already.

The new job has a huge learning curve. The going is slow. The powers that be gave me a pile of computers and said 'doing is the best way to learn'. Get these on the OSG-ITB! Pronto! Of course I spent the first week trying to find out what the hell the OSG-ITB was. Now I have a tiny little cluster to call my own. Ain't it cute?

The kitchen remodel is stalled. Our cabinet hanger hung the cabinets in mid-December, but there was a number of trim pieces he needed to have made at the factory. Now that those pieces have come in he's been too busy to come back and finish. I explained to Paul that I will never purchase BEHR paint again. I suggest you also boycott them on my word alone. Once I get the kitchen done I have to move my office/work room since we'll be housing an infant in June. We expect that it'll stay until it moves off to college. This stupid house stuff is never done.

My guitar playing is progressing. I finally got into a group lesson with the local guitar hippy. I've learned little in the class, but it gives me incentive to practice so I don't look like a piker compared to the 10 and 11 year olds in the class.

My brother-in-law (Randall) had a heart attack. I guess he'll be ok, but it was close to being the proverbial 'big one'.

Other than that its been business as usual.

End of the semester...end of an era

2005-12-19T15:03:00.000-06:00

I finished up my grades late Friday night. I doubt many of my students will be happy. This marks my most difficult semester teaching. I think the students are starting to read too much into my 'good press'. They think because I come highly recommended that I'll be easy. They are sorely disappointed when they find out that they have to work hard and there is no free lunch.

As it turns out this will be my last semester teaching for the forseeable future. My department could not find a person to cover the single course that I wanted to drop to begin my new position part time. To get someone to cover they went back to the search committee that hired me to teach and asked them to approach the second place finalist. They hired him to replace me totally in my teaching role once it was determined that CMS could hire me full time immediately. I'm happy they could hire the second place guy. He's 63 and his group had lost their grant funding a couple of years ago. He had left physics to be a used car buyer in Omaha. He'll work in the department until he retires.

For me there will be no more students. No more lectures. No more rigorously defined time scales & schedules.

I'm a creature of habid and order. I hate change and its looking as though 2006 will be a year of tremendous change for me and I'm none too excited about it. I'm entering a poorly defined position that will demand a great deal of skills I have yet to develop.

I have friends who thrive on change and flux. I am not such a person.

Well, here's to 2006. Hopefully it'll be a good one.

Intelligent Design and Inheriting the Wind

2005-12-09T11:18:00.000-06:00

(This was sitting in my 'edit' queue for a while. Might as well publish it without further edit."

One of my all time favorite films is the original 'Inherit the Wind'. Its a Hollywood version of accounts from the Scopes monkey trial and the difficulty faced by teachers wishing to introduce the theory of evolution to American classrooms at the beginning of the last century. Of course both sides are caricatures of the people represented. The pro-evolution crowd is portrayed as calm, intellectual or forward thinking youths. The creationist are portrayed as violent alarmists who are stuck in the past, threatened by progress.

I recently purchased the original and while watching it I was mildly creeped out by the parallels we're seeing with intellectual design, the attempt to re-insert creationism back into the classroom. Its a roll reversal I would hope most American's would find compelling.

One scene in the movie sticks out in my mind. The attorney for the defendent (charged with teaching evolution) attempts to read a passage from Darwin's 'Origin of Species'. The attorney for the state (a hot shot politician from Nebraska) objects and no passage from the 'Origin of Species' is allowed to be admitted as evidence. Today I could image the exact same set of circumstances with a lawyer holding up the book of Genesis and having it struck down.

If I had the time and talent I'd love to redo the script for Inherit the Wind with the roles reversed. The frothing masses of malcontents would jeer at the peaceful, calm, intellectual creationists as they tossed Bibles onto a bonfire.

Ah fun with stereotypes.

I really don't care too much about the ID issue. Even as a scientist I don't have a passionate response to those who I clearly think are barking up the wrong tree because I feel that the ID debate is a symptom of a much deeper issue. Its the same issue that making people shout Merry Christmas at the top of their lungs and vote for Bush even when its not in their best interest. I suffer from some of the effects as well, but I hope I'm self aware enough to be more analytical than most.

But in the end, whom so ever makes trouble in their own house shall inherit the wind...

The Procrastinator Returneth...

2005-12-01T20:51:00.000-06:00

I'm supposed to be working on a paper that my collegues desparately need published and I simply can't bring myself to do it. I'm weary of the topic and can no longer find the strength to push it through. What a horrible thing.

If someone would like to finish this paper for me please step up.

Remodeling sucks

2005-11-23T14:35:00.000-06:00

I have been absent in my posting since I'm working on putting a new kitchen in my house. Boy does that job suck. I've spent the last 2 days redoing the hardwood floor.

Hopefully I & my dad can get the wiring and plumbing done before the cabinets arrive Monday.

Kay....ESS....YOUUUUU

2005-11-14T11:01:00.000-06:00

"Two objects are released from rest high off the ground. They collide. What is the result?"

27-25

Saturday's contest with KSU brought together two programs on the slide. It appears that KSU has slid more than Nebraska, even without all the damage a coaching change does. KSU did not seem to have the talent or intensity that they've shown for the past 10 years. It was a sad game in Lincoln.

The most dynamic unit on the field was the great plains wind that whipped through here Saturday. It felt like Memorial Stadium was trucking down the interstate. What was cool, from a football perspective, was how it 'tilted' the field. All the action took place in the opposite endzone, the endzone downwind. Really fascinating.

I was wrong about this being my dad's first Husker game. He attended the 1955 Iowa State game (a win, 21 - 0). He said he sat in steel bleachers in the south endzone. The place has changed a little in the past 50 years.

Now the Huskers are bowl elligible. I am glad for that. We can use the extra practice time.

KSU put up two safties on us. The last time UNL gave up two safeties was during the 'debaucle in the desert', 19 - 0 versus ASU in 1996. I hope someone notices.

During the game Callahan burned his highly recruited quarterback's redshirt (Harrison Beck). Two games left in a dead season and he burns a 5 star recruit's red shirt so he can throw an interception, hand off 4 times and complete two passes. I question the sanity of that course of action. But I don't make the big bucks. I'll bet Mizzou has some insight into this since they did the same thing to one Brad Smith.

Well, no more home games for the year. Nebraska has a loss looming in Boulder. CU looked vulnerable with the loss to ISU, but that was AT ISU with the same howling winds we had in Lincoln. I doubt the Golden Rapists will be caught sleeping at home.

Nebraska to Houston and the EV1.net bowl!!!

Holding it in...

2005-11-11T13:19:00.000-06:00

If there is one character flaw that I have that I wish I could get rid of its my inability to 'let things go'. I'll have to work on it, but in the mean time...

About 6 years ago I came across a 'University of Dallas Alumni' discussion group on Yahoo. One of the threads that came up (being that it was 1999) was 'who was the greatest person of the last millenium?'. The regular cast of predictable names came up, Washington, Lincoln, Reagan (it was a UD board after all) etc. One person had the audacity to say Einstein or Newton (and no, it wasn't me). One of the big brains from UD posted a response that, quite frankly, stunned and pissed me off. Their response was (paraphasing here), "No scientist should be considered great because they only find what's already there".

Clearly this person rode the short bus to class.
I closed the browser and never returned.

Do you think that's true? No scientist can be considered great since 'they only find what's already there'? My opinion is that this person has no clue what a scientist does. They image some dude in a white lab coat saying "OH, THERE'S COLD FUSION! I left it under the couch. Let the Nobel committee know that I discovered cold fusion."

If I had to explain the modern scientific process to this person I would use the following analogy. You want to play at being a scientist? Here's the recipe.

1) Go to your local toy store. Buy eight or nine unique 2000-2500 piece jigsaw puzzles. (You know, the really hard ones.)
2) When you get home dump ALL the pieces from all the puzzles into a large bag.
3) Shake to stir.
4) Throw 3/4 of the pieces out.
5) Hand the remaining 1/4 of the pieces to someone who never saw the box lids and ask them to describe all the pictures on the puzzles boxes.
6) Tell them if they don't describe at least one of the pictures by next year they are fired.

This seemingly impossible task is what scientists face on a daily basis.

I would maintain that it takes a very special kind of a person, with either tremendous luck, extraordinary vision or unquestionable dedication to even approach this task. In other words it takes someone with a quality of greatness to succeed in science.

I truly admire and envy good scientists. I wish I were one.

I don't post this to brag up scientists, or put down other professions, but to merely answer that unknown UD graduate's assertion that scientists are nothing more than on a cosmic scavenger hunt.

"Honey, have you seen my grand unified theory? I had it a minute ago."

Now I can let that go...

Seeing Red....

2005-11-10T21:03:00.000-06:00

Wow, the Husker fanbase is coming apart. Everywhere I turn Husker fans are tearing each other up trying to figure out a) what happened and b) (more importantly) what should be done.

There are very loud supports of Pedersen and Callahan doing their best to prove that the option was dead and Callahan is a good coach with the wrong talent. There's an equally loud group that thinks Callahan is a joke and needs to be chucked aside before its really too late.

Where do I sit? At the start of the week I was a 'let us give Coach C a chance and see what comes' kind of a guy. Mostly it was because I wanted to be a 'good fan'.

Now I've been talked with ex-players and friends of current players and I say get the bum out now. I have heard some pretty awful stories about how current players that Solich recruited are being treated and it chaps my hide. This is college ball! That kind of crappy, underhanded stuff shows what a creep Callahan is. I have also heard that the team isn't having full contact drills in practice. How can that be? How can players be ready for a full speed, full strength game when they are being hamstrung in practice.

I read a really interesting blog entry by Scott Frost. He's very unhappy with the turn the Huskers have taken, but more on the loss of class and integrity than anything else (if I read it right). It made me sad. Husker football used to be a reflection of the people of Nebraska. Hard working, honest people who gave all they had for what they loved. Now we're just like everyone else. The Huskers are an entry in Stevie P's big balance book. A line item in the pages of a business model.

This current situation at Nebraska is like learning that Santa Claus was real, but he was acquired and downsized by Toys 'R' Us.

Its like finding out your grandfather is terminally ill, but instead of allowing him to linger on your slimy, used car saleman uncle comes in, pulls the plug and marries grandma off to the neighbor so he can inherit grampa's Mustang.

There are some very hurt and angry people in Nebraska. To everyone else its a ballgame. To the folks around here it was our way of life--and its simply gone to hell.

Saturday should prove interesting. I'm taking my dad to his first Nebraska game. He picked a fine time to stop in for a game.

Now what?

2005-11-07T20:16:00.000-06:00

So Nebraska has successfully fielded its worst team in my lifetime. I've been talking with my friends about what's up and we're all asking the same question--"What do we do now?".

When UNL ousted Frank Solich I was very concerned. I thought the AD had played his hand early. Frank had assembled a very good team of assistants, he had handed off the reins of the offense and had the team moving towards improvement. I thought he deserved more time. I knew that once we fired Frank our backs would be against the wall. That situation has certainly come to pass. Now we are stuck. The program is in the tank and there's no clear plan for improvement.

The same people who were in a toot to get rid of Frank our now screaming for patience and those that wanted Frank to stay are crying for Pederson & Callahan's job. Meanwhile a good group of kids will probably be home for the holidays for the second year in a row.

I feel bad for the students. Most came here with visions of bowls and conference championship games. What we've delivered is history making losses and barely enough TV coverage to know we're in the Big XII.

We hired Callahan to buck up recruiting. So far that's all he's delivered. I can't see him continuing to pull in kids when his team isn't even competative. At least CU gets their players on TV and pretty good lawyers when needed.

This Saturday will mark the last home game for Nebraska this season. Its a game that Nebraska has to win to be bowl eligible. There's no way that UNL can beat rapist U. in Boulder. CU has only lost games to the #2 and #4 teams in the land. We couldn't even stop the 110th worst rushing attack in the nation.

Next year the stadium here in Lincoln will open with 3000 more seats. Those new seats, our lackluster team and ticket interest at an all time low it may spell the end of our 276 consectutive sell out record. Of all the streaks that Nebraska has tossed to the curb, that one will be the hardest to deal with. That day will be a dark day indeed.

When Pederson fired Frank he said "We will not surrender the conference to Oklahoma and Texas." You're damn right Steve, we've surrendered the Big XII north to Colorado, Mizzou and Kansas. Nebraska isn't even worthy of washing UT's jocks. Nice job.

So now what? I wish I knew...scratch that, I wish Bill Callahan and Steve Pederson knew.

Dear Texas, Welcome to the Big 8

2005-10-24T13:18:00.000-05:00

Now that Nebraska's football season is almost over (hoping for a date in Shreveport), I've taken a look around the league to see who is having a 'good year' and my eyes land on our orange clad neighbors to the south, UT. The University of Texas (at Austin) stands a good chance of going undefeated this year after hanging half a hundred on Texas Tech (of beautiful Lubbock). My advise to UT fans, don't start buying those plane tickets to Pasadena just yet.

Texas is looking overcome what Nebraska had to face in the 80s and early 90s, being undefeated in a down conference. Even though UT played a gutsy (at the time) game at Ohio State, their schedule is looking pretty pathetic compared to the likes of Virginia Tech. Texas is out of the 'meaty' part of their schedule and looking to the carb laden portion of the year with cupcakes like Baylor and Oklahoma State (who nearly lost to Div 1AA Montana State). Virginia Tech on the other hand is moving into the hefty part of their schedule with the likes of Miami, Boston College and FSU. If they don't lose a game then their stock will surely rise. Texas may find itself on the outside looking in come Rose Bowl time due to strength of schedule considerations.

To make matters worse for Texas they've handily destroyed the only 'good' teams in the Big XII (CU and TT), thus dumping them deep in rankings. Your schedule always looks worse when you destroy your opponents by 30 points or more (sound familiar?).

If U$C, Va Tech and Texa$ all remain undeafted at the end of the year I look for a U$C/Va Tech Rose bowl and a lot of bellyaching from Austin.

Welcome to the Big 8 Texas. You get what you pay for.

--

After posting this I saw the new BCS rankings. Texa$ is number 1. I still stand by my analysis, but now I think if all the unbeatens finish unbeaten it'll be a 'Bama vs. Va Tech Rose bowl.

Texas might play USC in the Fiesta.

Speechless

2005-10-19T15:45:00.000-05:00

Today a group of robe clad students walked into my 8:30 am lecture and read the following:

"Mortar Board is a national honor society that recognizes college seniors for distinguished ability and achievement in scholarship, leadership and service. Founded in 1905, the Black Masque Chapter of Mortar Board is a national honor society at the University of Nebraska honoring college seniors. The mortarboard is a symbol of ancient honor and distinction that carries with it grave responsibilities. Each year, Mortar Board hosts the "People Who Inspire" Celebration to honor individuals who encourage and motivate those around them. We are pleased to announce that Dr. Carl Lundstedt has been nominated as a "Person Who Inspires" and will be honored at our upcoming celebration."

...

I thought they were coming in to accept a senior into Mortar Board as they sometimes do. The look on my face must have been priceless.

Snatched...

2005-10-09T17:24:00.000-05:00

The Nebraska Cornhuskers faced the highest scoring offense in the land in the Texas Tech Raiders this past week. They took a direct hit in the chin in the first quarter spotting the Raiders 21 points. Then the unimaginable happened. The Nebraska Cornhuskers reached deep down and fought back. They even took a 31 - 27 lead late in the contest, then their luck ran out. A lapse of judgement by a defensive lineman, a half step by a dynamic passing quarterback and Nebraska is in the loss column for the first time this year.

Am I upset? Am I angry? Am I calling for Callahan's head? Nope. I'm really pleased with how the Husker's played Saturday. It showed real character to come back being down 21 points and be a play away from winning. I am disappointed in the loss. I'm not, like my sister, crowing about how Nebraska is 'BACK'. I'm just pleased that the team doesn't fold up and quit. I'm happy that Nebraska is improving.

The game Saturday was a hell of a lot of fun and I'm happy to be a Nebraska fan. I'm hoping that Nebraska can continue to improve and maybe (maybe) run the conference table (there are some real challenges ahead for the team) and maybe get a rematch with Tech in the conference title game. (Yeah, I hope Tech takes out the U. of Texa$.)

Ah...give us a hug now...

2005-10-07T13:41:00.000-05:00

Link Enclosed

Now that's just beautiful.

Its a Small World in Nebraska

2005-10-01T20:08:00.000-05:00

One time I and my college roommate were at DFW airport and I made the comment that I thought it was weird to see so many people and to not know any of them. My big city roommate thought that was hilarious. Well, here's a story that shows where I get that stuff.

Today at the game I was talking with the guy who has the seats next to me. He's a really nice guy who's fun to watch the games with. I mentioned that I was worried about Nebraska playing Baylor down in 'Wacko'. He says, "Have you ever gone to the Texas Marshall Museum in Waco? Its really cool. I went one time when I was visiting my daughter at this small school she attended, the University of Dallas in Irving." Once I picked my jaw up out of the row in front of us I said, 'You're kidding right? I got my degree from UD." Turns out her freshman year was the year after I had left. Anyway, that was pretty funny we both thought. So after our moving rendition of the Star Spangled Banner I told him about meeting the people in Paris, France who knew where North Loup Nebraska is but had no idea where Beaumont Texas is. He then asks, "Did you go to North Loup/Scotia? Did you know Medburries?" "Sure", I replied, "Wilber was my math teacher." "Oh, my nephew's ex-wife was his youngest daugther Amanda." He then filled me in on what the Medburries are doing.

A couple of weeks earlier at the game I noticed a woman behind me who looked terribly familiar. I finally figured it out. She is the sister of one of my best friends from high school.

77,000 people go to games at memorial stadium. Each week I see lots of people I know, or know people I know. I've heard it said that no matter where you go you can always make a Nebraska connection. Now I believe it.

As for the game? SUPER fun to watch. Although the horrible refs tried their best to cost Nebraska a win, Callahan's team looks a lot better than they have in the past couple of weeks.

I was a fan of overtime until I had to sit and watch my team go into overtime with a real shaky offense.

1.21 GigaWatts?!?!?!

2005-09-26T11:20:00.000-05:00

You're HIRED!

2005-09-23T16:47:00.000-05:00

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

2005-09-23T10:46:00.000-05:00

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.

2005-09-22T11:22:00.000-05:00

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

2005-09-19T12:18:00.000-05:00

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

2005-09-16T18:26:00.000-05:00

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

2005-09-04T16:45:00.000-05:00

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

Happy Popcorns Days

2005-08-31T17:12:00.000-05:00

Popcorn, done the Nebraska way!

The Myth of the Lazy American

2005-08-30T14:21:00.000-05:00

With obesity numbers on the rise in the U.S. I've been hearing more snide comments from international posters in the Usenet groups I frequent decrying the 'lazy American'. I have a gut feeling that obesity in American is due to Americans working too much.

How can this be? This seems like a contradiction.

The average American takes 13 days of vacation every year. This is time to recreate, have fun and excersise. For comparison the average French worker takes 37 days off a year. Even the notoriously industrious Japanese worker takes off 25 days a year. In that year the American worker produces almost $45,000 per citizen (man, woman or child). The French worker only produces about $28,000 per citizen. (Not that I'm picking on the French, but their numbers were easy to find.) Americans are certainly working, but is it work that will make them healthy7

The modern American has very little truly physically demanding job opportunities to choose from that will earn them the money needed to have the quality of life most Americans desire. There is certainly a monetary incentive to become 'white collar'. This leaves a large percentage of the population sitting in front of computer screens doing various tasks. After typing away for 8 hours, stopping only long enough to gulp down a 600 Calorie Big Mac, 450 Calories of Fries and 1 Calorie of diet cola, the common worker retires to their domicile to indulge in a form of entertainment that requires little more than an occational thumb press. Then its off to bed for 6 hours of restless sleep so they can get up early enough to make their long morning commute.

Its no wonder that Americans are fat and crabby.

Things that would improve the American health spectrum:
a) More vacation to encourage physical activity.
b) Longer lunch breaks to encorage healthier choice at lunch time.
c) Compensating a worker for excersising on the job, maybe with pay incentives or extended health coverage. Places to excercise should be readily available.
d) Health insurace coverage of gym memberships. (Ok I'm reaching now.)
e) Penalties for unhealhty lifestyle choices (including smoking and drinking).

I can't believe that it would cost more to implement the above and have a healthier populace than to deal with the cost of the health problems that arise from obseity.

Its true that Americans are getting fat. Its not because we're lazy, its because we are almost encouraged to work too hard and pay too little attention to our physical well being.

Old Journals and Letters

2005-08-25T12:37:00.000-05:00

I was looking through some of my stuff the other day to see if it needed thown out or sold at our garage sale. I came across a journal I kept during my first year of graduate school. Along with a bunch of pointless ramblings it contains a bunch of letters I had received over the years from various people. I read through most of the letters and then read through the journal. I came upon this old gem from Oct 16, 1993, 12:50 am (although it was at the end of a long entry, so it was probably written closer to 3:00 am):
...
It was a night like this many years ago when the dark lord came to sit before me. He looked at me from behind ancient spectacles, their bright silver frames reflected the red light which emanated from his eyes. He was a small man, his hair dark black with flecks of grey. He smelled of tar and coal.

Shuffling slightly he looked me over, “Young man, what would you want in trade for your soul?”, he rasped. His voice sounded like a pile of dry leaves rustling in a cold autumn wind.

“Give me fame and glory. Give me power over others. Let me be beautiful in the eyes of the young. Let all men fear me. Let everyone tremble at my name. Let me have a dominion with many servants and slaves. Give me this and I will forfeit my soul.” He stared at me long and hard, then slowly he smiled. “That's exactly what I wished for as well.”

...

School On!

2005-08-24T11:16:00.000-05:00

I'll post a new entry tonight. I'm a little overwhelmed with the new semester right now.

Go Big Red!

2005-08-15T13:51:00.000-05:00

Our compute nodes arrived last week (while I was on vacation)).
condor_status
Machines Owner Claimed Unclaimed Matched Preempting

X86_64/LINUX 260 4 0 256 0 0

Total 260 4 0 256 0 0

1.9T 263G 1.6T 15% /home
256 computer CPU cores, doing nothing right now.

Spare Parts (part deux)

2005-08-12T21:57:00.000-05:00

I took off work yesterday and today to collect my thoughts and sit on my ample posterior. I spent yesterday afternoon with a kitchen designer. Hopefully we'll get a new kitchen soon. I spent today working on my cluster since all my parts are now in. In short no joy.

I tried to power up the first motherboard. Nothing. Nothing. (Switch wires around.) Nothing. (Cuss loudly.) Nothing. Exam the capacitors on the motherboard, curse even louder. The capacitors on the motherboard have all gone bad (yeah it happens, motherboards of a certain run shipped with bad caps). They've weeped dielectric like an old battery weeps acid. CRAP. I wish I'd noticed that before I started this project.

Ok, next board. Install the next board into its case. Hit the power button. Fans come on, then go off. Frell. Hit the power button, fans come on, fans go off. No beeps, no boops, no joy. "Hmmm, maybe this power supply is bad." Switch out power supplies, since its easier than removing the board. "Hmm, this power supply has a rattle to it. What could that be. No worries." Switch out power supply. No joy. Wow. This power supply is really bad.

Back in with the other supply, at least it makes the fans move. Hit the power button...BANG!!! SMOKE! WHOA!! SHIT! The rattle? A diode fell out of the power supply. Utter garbage. A quick call to Tigerdirect and these crappy power supplies and cases are on their way back to Illinois. You get what you pay for.

So now what? I'm down to one board that may or may not have been fried when ol' smokey went off and now I'm out of time before the school year starts.

I hate it when a plan doesn't come together.

What was I thinking?

2005-08-05T21:05:00.000-05:00

So my wife asked me what I wanted for my birthday (beside plastic models). Well, my brother-in-law is an accomplished guitar player and I thought "hey, that'd be cool".

I don't know if it was John Denver, Dave Matthews, Tim Reynolds or Vertical Horizon but in the midst of all my music listening I decided I could play the guitar so that's what I asked for. After much delay (my wife asked my brother-in-law to pick out a good model) my guitar came in two weeks ago. A real sweet guitar, a Washburn D30S Dreadnaught. (Which makes it sound like a spaceship to me, which is cool too. "Han, you can't outrun that! Its a Washburn D30S Dreadnaught!" "Well, they're in for a surprise, Punch it Chewie!")

Well, trying to learn to play is frustrating as hell. Just once I'd like to try something that's "as easy as it looks".

(Any advice from Mr. York? I recall he was a hell of a guitar player in college.)

Spare Parts

2005-08-05T14:00:00.000-05:00

I was looking around my oh so messy office at home and I noticed that I had a couple of AMD Athlon XP processors, motherboards and memory left over from various upgrades over the years. Digging deeper I found a 17 Gig harddrive I got at Nebraska Bookstore for $15 during a close out and a DVD Rom that I had pulled from my computer at home when I got my DVD Dual Layer burner. What to do...what to do?

I've decided that I need (ed: 'need' is such an interesting word to use here) to build a small cluster out of these processors and my workstation at my work office. (I'm not going to rewire my house just for the cycles of a couple of aging Athlon XPs.)

There were still some parts missing that I needed. Not to fear, Tigerdirect and Overstock.com are here! I ordered some more memory from Tigerdirect (which I ended up ordering incorrectly and had to send back...correct memory on the way, 2x256 Megs at $22 each) and some network adapters from Overstock. Overstock had Intel GigE cards with Boot Agent for under $30 each, which I thought was a good deal. You can never have too many GigE cards. An 8 port switch (I could only justify a 100 Mbit switch, $19 -- I recall a time when these were $100+) and two of the crappiest cases (with power supplies) you've ever laid eyes on ($29 each from Tigerdirect) and I'm almost ready to go.

I had orginally planned to build some FrankenCase out of plexiglass and bailing twine, but who has time for that? Besides I couldn't find powersupplies cheaper than what I paid for these craptacular cases. The extra screws will be helpful if nothing else.

So far I've installed the first motherboard into its case. The second will have to wait. Its amazing what little things you need to get this stuff going. I need a dang IDE cable. Scrounging time since I refuse to pay $4 for a cable that I should be able to find in any geeks junk drawer.

A quick raid on my former office netted me two IDE cables and a 4 Gig Harddrive. The machine they came out of hasn't been used in over a year. :)

I'll keep everyone updated on my progress and a final budget. I'll also invite suggestions as to what I should do with my new found CPU cycles. I was hoping to do some DVD encoding since that takes forever, but I'm open to intelligent suggestions.

Cheers,
Carl

Actor's Nightmares

2005-08-04T13:18:00.000-05:00

As the summer winds down and the semester starts to creep up I've be plague by actor's nightmares and night terrors. I think a part of me doesn't want to go back to lecturing.

He's Dead Jim...

2005-07-22T23:06:00.000-05:00

For those who didn't hear, James Doohan, "Scotty", died Wednesday at the age of 85.

:(

Two Years to live...

2005-07-22T21:07:00.000-05:00

I'm currenlty working with a physics experiment called CMS (Compact Muon System). This is a large collaborative experiment with 1000s of experimenters all over the planet. I'm working this summer on helping to build a tier 2 computing center here in Nebraska. All the things I didn't like about being on DO are magnified a thousand times on CMS. Thousands of people all working on a single experiement and hardly anyone wants to help anyone else. So what do you get? People re-doing tons of work with hardly any oversight. I hate it.

Nothing I've done this summer has felt like I've added a bit of wisdom to the project. My entire existance could be replaced by a fairly adept email bot. Its horrible. So where does that leave me? I can't stand being in a position where I feel useless, so what I thought would be my professional future here at UNL is looking very unappealing. My physics career is back to two-years to live.

I'm on a teaching contract here at UNL to teach pre-meds. Its a fine job and I enjoy teaching, but I don't think I'd care for teaching at anywhere but a fairly large 4-year college. I can't get a job at at a large 4-year school without an impressive research resume. It's appearing more and more that I'm just not a good researcher (at least in HEP), hell I don't think I'm a very good physicist period. So my entire career as physicist might just stop in two years.

So now I have to figure out where to go from here and the clock is once again ticking.

When will this shit start getting easier?

The Face of Evil

2005-07-18T11:35:00.000-05:00

As most of my friends know I have two sisters, a 'good' sister and a 'bad sister'. We've recently had another chapter in the saga that is my bad sister.

Last week I called my mom to tell her happy birthday. Almost in mid-expression she asks,"So, what are you doing this weekend?" Being a little slow on the uptake I said, "I don't know, why?" Big mistake. My bad sister, who lives in central Nebraska had gotten evicted. My mother was under the belief that she had just a week to move out. "She needs to be out by Saturday."

"Aren't there laws about how much time you have after an eviction?", I naively ask. "She asked for more time but they wouldn't give it to her", my mother hotly replied.

So my mother wants me and my wife to once again rush up home to help my good-for-nothing sister haul 5 metric tons of sh*t from one place to another. I was, to say the least, pissed.
Now you may be saying to yourself, "This Carl seems like a prick. Why not go help your poor sister out?" The history is a little deep to go into, but my sister is a user of the first order. She does nothing but live on the kindness of family and strangers. If there was ever a reason why I can't abide socialism, it is my sister and the example she provides.

So I call my mother back the next night and say "I can't, in good conscious, come help her move." Her reply was understated and sullen, but the message was clear, "If you don't do it, who will?"

I'd be happy to help if I thought it would change my sister's behavior in the slightest. She's 43 years old and acts like she's 10. For the past 25 years my folks have been going above and beyond the call of duty to bail her out. Now the entire family is sick of it, only my mother keeps enabling her to behave this way. My folks are in dire financial straits and can barely get by even without the added load of my sister's incredible mooching.

To add hot sauce to the diarrhea, my good sister was home visiting when all this broke. She too refused to help and told her children that it was up to them to help or not. They refused to help outright. My mother was completely unforgiving about the whole deal. She even stopped talking to my good sister because she was so upset that she wasn't helping.

I've come to the conclusion that my bad sister isn't stupid or lazy, she's just plain evil. I mean a Dr. No, Goldfinger, Darth Vader, Britney Spears level of EVIL.

Maybe I'll put to digital print some of my sister's more incredible activities and see if you agree. Or maybe I won't. You'll just have to trust me.

By the way, my sister was evicted June 9 and the landlord had already given her an extra week to get out.

Carl

The Liberal Media

2005-07-14T11:29:00.000-05:00

I've always been one that maintains that the mainstream media is quite leftist. My more liberal friends have claimed I'm nuts. Well I'm starting to come around. Why? Well I've been introduced to the world of podcasting and real leftist media.

I subscribed to a bunch of podcasts that sounded interesting. One of them is called '2600, the Hackers Quarterly: Off the Wall'. I thought "Cool, a L33t computer show." My mistake. Basically the guys on the the show talk about politics from what I would catagorize as an anarchist viewpoint. Their overwhelming contention is that all government is bad.

I appreciate the change of perspective, and I'll continue to listen to these New York elitists, but some of the things they say make me question their understanding of reality. I know that I'm taking them out of context, but I assure you I'm not coloring the meaning by much.

Some quotes from the show anchor (Emmanual Goldstein, aka Eric Corley) include:
About the bombings in London: "Tony Blair has succeeded in bringing a little Iraq to London."

I see, so the bombings are Tony Blair's fault. Stop the investigations, we now know Tony Blair is behind this horrendous act.

"All the media could talk about after the London bombings was how Wall Street would be affected."

I was watching MSNBC after the bombing and yes, they talked a lot about what stocks would be affected by the bombing. Why? IT WAS THEIR FINANCE SHOW. THAT'S WHAT THEY TALK ABOUT. No other new outlets or shows even mentioned the affect of the bombing on the markets. One of the other guys on the show pointed this out and was discounted immediately.

"...this cop racially profiled himself he said, 'How does a small Chinese guy like me fit in a car like this?' I was like, why are you being racist towards yourself. Apparently this is something you get taught in the (Philadelphia) police department."

Nice. No Comment.

There's a real undercurrent of distrust with these guys. They distrust the government, they distrust corporations, they distrust the mainstream media. After listening for a couple of shows its clear that they have no faith in anything other then themselves. Sad.

They make many good points, mostly about personal freedom and privacy, but their tone of distrust really undermines their credibility with me.

Another show I've listened to is 'DemocracyNow'. The 2600 guy interviewed Amy Goodwin from Democracy Now about their show. Amy was very angry with the media and their 'complicity' with the Bush administration. She went on and on about all the thing that the Bush administration has done that she takes issue with. Fine. Then she says "But we're not partisan. We go after both sides." I said, "Great, let's hear some examples of what she's gone after liberals for." She then gave examples from an interview she had with Bill Clinton while he was still in office. Everyone of her 'hard hitting' questions were basically attacking Clinton for being to far to the right.

Basically she goes 'after both sides' by attacking conservatism in any party.

My favorite quote: "We're supposed to be there to bring out the full diversity of opinion...Its not just about a Truth, but about the many Truths."

The implication being that there's no such thing as 'truth' and if there was she wasn't responsible to report it.

These podcasts are pretty interesting and very eye opening. I'll probably continue to report on these shows in the coming months.

Carl

Terrorism

2005-07-11T11:08:00.000-05:00

I heard this morning (written Monday) that the death toll in London now stands at 52. I'm as saddened by this event as I was by 9/11. Its even more frustrating that England was attacked simply because of their support for the U.S.

After one of these events I often hear the rhetorical lament of "why do terrorists do these things? What do they want?" It may be strange, but I have no doubt why terrorists do the things they do. Terrorists are impotent people that can't find their own solutions so they strike out at those who appear to have what they need hoping to get what they desire.

You can see the same behavior in undisiplined children. Go to your favorite toy store and watch the parent with the spoiled child. The child, upon not receiving what they desire will lash out. At that moment its no longer a struggle for what they asked for (a toy) but a struggle to achieve control (getting their way). Its the same with terrorists. Its no longer about what they say they desire, now its about gaining control. Spain capitulated to the terrorists after the Madrid bombing. Certainly the ire of the terrorists will move on, until Spain again tries to assert its will against them, then they will once again be subjected to attacks.

Its clearly a case of it being easier to destroy than to create. Its easier to demand solutions than to work towards goals. Terrorists are trying to get the U.S. and England to hand them the solutions they have no ability to work towards. Its not about policy. Its not about troops. Its about control and discipline.

I don't hold any illusions about the U.S. being a purely altruistic country with nothing but goodness in our hearts, but I know we're better than those S.O.Bs that blow themselves up for a cause that's nothing more than a protracted temper tantrum.

I hope our good friends in Britian find justice and help to move us toward a world where this type of things is only read about in history class.

Fun with plastic models...

2005-07-07T22:30:00.000-05:00

Well, it's time for a post. Here's some shots of my AT-ST that I bought on my Birthday.

For a mere $300,000...

2005-06-29T16:58:00.000-05:00

Its amazing what happens when you start to be thought of as a real person in an organization. When I was a student at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln (UNL) I was shielded from all the crap that faculty have to do in a day just to begin to do work. Now we're trying to buy hardware for our new USCMS Tier 2 facility (read that as supercomputer) and people are actually asking my opinion on what to buy (!).

Geez, what do I know about multiple processor clusters that the next guy doesn't know? All I know is people are asking me about how we should spend roughly a half a million dollars in the next 3 days. (!)

Its also amazing what kind of thinking has to go into buying your run of the mill supercomputer. We thought we could go with solution x, but solution x would saturate the cooling of the machine room, which we'd then have to replace. So, even though solution x was the cheapest bid, it would cost us $100,000 to upgrade the cooling and replace the facilities capabilities that we'd be tying up. Once you fold in $100K into any bid it stops being the cheapest. The stupid part is someone in facilities told the vendor that 'cooling wouldn't be a problem', then told US 'you know, cooling is going to be a problem'. Nice to know buddy. Now the vendor is going to be pissed when we don't go with their bid.

We're also in the market for some storage. We need about 10 - 15% of the total storage that we'll need in 2007. For you and me that 20-30 Terabytes. That's Tera. With a T. 1000 Gigabytes. You just don't go to bestbuy and pick up storage in the size range. We're hoping we can get that under $40,000 so that we don't have to send that out to bid because that would take too long.

Some day (next 1-2 years) we'll have to have 200 Terabytes ready to go. Mindboggling.

To top it all off, I have no earthly idea how to do anything useful with any of this stuff.

Another Year Older...

2005-06-28T10:42:00.000-05:00

I passed another milestone Saturday. I turned another year older. I'm not what you'd call old, but I've long since passed being called young. Birthdays are supposed to be a time of reflection and re-evaluation. I've grown very tired of reflection and re-evaluation. I went out and bought plastic model kits and xbox games. Bully for me.

The sad part is the plastic model kits don't seem as slick and inspiring as they used to and the xbox games are hard as hell. What kind of super freak can play these things anyway? I used to be one of the best modem dial up quake players in the world. Now I'm fodder for thugs in Spiderman. Depressing.

Happy freakin' Birthday, Carl. Welcome to dullsville.

Linux Resurrection

2005-06-24T10:28:00.000-05:00

I've been without linux on my desktop workstation at home for some time now. Its no big deal since my research group saw fit to provide me with a powerbook. (OSX just wishes it was as cool as linux.) With my powerbook in hand I can work from home, which is nice for a procrastinator like me.

The problem with my desktop was that we (my wife and I) had recently moved all our computers to the second floor of our house. Since the cable came in downstairs I thought, "Heck, I'll just get a wireless router and some wireless pci cards and I won't have to run wires upstairs." It worked like a charm for my wife's Windows machine and my Windows laptop, but not so well for my dual boot workstation. I've gone through 3 different wireless cards looking for the magic combination of card and linux distro to get everything to work. I'd all but given up, using my desktop for the occasional Windows game, but little more.

Recently I had to replace my wireless router (I think lightning ate it, but it might just have been a POS). I replaced it wish a nice 802.11G router. Through some horse-trading I got an 802.11G PCI card for my workstation for nothing (free as in beer). I was positive that it wouldn't work with linux. It didn't, out of the box. No surprise.

I kept hearing about this open source project called ndiswrapper. It was supposed to magically use windows drivers in linux. I scoffed at the idea. "That trick never works!" Well last night I installed Ubuntu Linux. Its supposed to be "Linux for real people". Huh, I never considered Linux to be for anyone else, but what the hell. (Their homepage looks like a 'United Colors of Benetton ad from the 90s'.)

I installed Ubuntu. It has a real old fashioned feeling to the install. No gui, no pictures, no whistles, no bells, no problems. After grinding through the install I found it weird that it never asked for a root password. "Oh well, it'll ask upon first start." Nope. Ubuntu has this philosophy that you never need to log in as root (what real person would want to do that?). It adds all users to the sudoers, but no root log in. That confused the hell out of me for a bit, but after I figured out what was going on I 'sudid' a passwd change for root and tried to log into root via the window manager. That pissed it off. "Root not allowed to log in via this method".

Well excuse me.

After logging back in as a pedestrian user I installed ndiswrapper (sudo this...sudo that). I then proceeded on a quest to find the driver disk for my net card. After killing several orcs and an ogre magi I was rewarded with the 'Diske of Drivers +4" and was able to copy the .inf file and associated folders over to my computer.
Then it was simply a matter of
ndiswrapper -i driver.inf
ndiswrapper -l (Shows what drivers are loaded)
modprobe ndiswrapper (To load the module into the kernel)
Fire up the wireless networking utility nicely provided by ubuntu.
ndiswrapper -m (To load the drivers on boot).
IT WORKED!

I was thrilled, but cocky. If it works for this tinker toy linux, I'll bet it'll work for a real distro like Fedora Core 4.

I wiped ubuntu and installed FC4. Long story short, ubuntu is back on the workstation and its working just ducky. (FC4, you's got a lot of 'splaining to do!)

I've now found that ubuntu has some real nice features and I'm going to give it an honest trial run.

This makes my day. It amazing that it takes so little to make me so happy.

Carl

First Post

2005-06-23T13:33:00.000-05:00

I don' t know if I'll do this 'blogging' thing. I tried this 'post my thoughts and stuff' on the web back in '97. I didn't do it very long before I trashed it and gave up.

We'll see...