Why I'm Not on Facebook

But maybe I should consider it.

Christmas Blogging Tradition

D'Or says, "Not again!"

The Latest From DC

I haven't posted in awhile and thought I'd give everyone an update on life here in DC. I have one semester left in school and am due to graduate in May (yay). I also just got a full-time job as a DNA Technician at AFDIL. I start my new position Jan 2nd, right after I get back from California. It's a great job and means that I'll be living in the DC area through July 2009 at least. I'm still riding and playing polo, though not as often. My latest job at the ranch is helping Mary to get 3 hunters in shape, trained up and ready for her to sell next fall. They also updated the website recently. There are a bunch of pictures of the recent tournament up on the site. I'm easy to spot in red on the big black and white horse in plenty of the pictures. (I'm in a few others on another horse, but those are harder to pick out).
I hope everyone has a merry Christmas and a happy New Year!

Another Sign of the Apocalypse

It seems Merriam Webster declares some word to be the Word of the Year every year. Who knew? Their pick this year: w00t.

This year's winning word first became popular in competitive online gaming forums as part of what is known as l33t ("leet," or "elite") speak—an esoteric computer hacker language in which numbers and symbols are put together to look like letters. Although the double "o" in the word is usually represented by double zeroes, the exclamation is also known to be an acronym for "we owned the other team"—again stemming from the gaming community.

I consulted my own expert, Garrett. I decided to begin by simply trying it out on him. I forget how the conversation led up to it, but the important part went like this. "Woot!" I say. Garrett gives me this kind of disgusted cockeyed look, with the raised eyebrow. "Dad! I don't ever want to hear you say that again." "Why?" "It's just... wrong."

Upon further investigation, it appears to be inappropriate to actually say. You can type it. If you're l33t enough. I think it would be inappropriate in an online Scrabble game, but you could give it a shot. You have been warned, though.

Physics Is Fun

I read this NYTimes story in the SJMercury yesterday. At the time I was thinking, "What a great story! I'm surprised I haven't seen it on the top 10 most EMailed articles in the Times." Lo and behold, there it is. I loved physics in college, but being the money grubbing type that I am, I decided to forego my love of physics for the better paying engineering route. Still, I had some great physics teachers at GW. Particularly with intro physics, the classroom demonstration ruled. Now the power of online videos has made this MIT prof an online rockstar.

“We have here the mother of all pendulums!” he declares, hoisting his 6-foot-2, 170-pound self on a 30-pound steel ball attached to a pendulum hanging from the ceiling. He swings across the stage, holding himself nearly horizontal as his hair blows in the breeze he created.

The point: that a period of a pendulum is independent of the mass — the steel ball, plus one professor — hanging from it.

“Physics works!” Professor Lewin shouts, as the classroom explodes in cheers.

He's even bridging socio-cultural barriers:

A fan who said he was a physics teacher from Iraq gushed: “You are now my Scientific Father. In spite of the bad occupation and war against my lovely IRAQ, you made me love USA because you are there and MIT is there.”

Now that, as my old physics prof and this one would say, is beautiful.

Synchro Memories

I am still jolted mentally back to sitting at poolside for long hours waiting for Dara coaching or swimming synchro whenever I smell chlorine, even after 30 years. Neither the sport nor the technology has stood still, however, as this YouTube video attests. It seems the routine is called a combo. Normally a routine is a solo, duet, or team (8 people), but according to one of the YouTube commenters:

That was the first time that there was a combo event in int'l competition which is why it was so cool that the USA won gold-in 2007 at Trophy Cup in Rio they didn't. Combo allows up to 8 swimmers to be performing at any one time. There are usually 10 in the pool...sometimes 2 or 4 or 6 or 8 or 9 are eggbeatering off to the side waiting while the other part of the group performs.

To think Dara's given all that up for snowboarding now.

Wet Local News

Every year, depending on the arrival of big surf, they hold a big-surf contest at a place called Mavericks, just on the other side of the hills from us. Crazy big waves. The picture above was from yesterday. Although the competition hasn't started, the waves have been ridiculously large. The guy in the picture is just standing there realizing he is going to get creamed by that wave. You can see the resulting wipeout shots here. The article is worth reading, too. He survived and went out to catch another.

In other news, a sea lion apparently stopped traffic in San Carlos, just up the street from us.

More Gift Ideas

You have to hand it to Dave Barry. With the mob of readers sending him suggestions for his annual Holiday Gift Guide, he always has something for everyone. Keith, you may want to check into this one: "shotgun pellets that are actually made from seasoning, so that you season the bird when you kill it!" What a timesaver if you ever bag one of those wild turkeys.

Bear Griles vrs Survivorman

Since no one at home wants to discuss presidential candidates with me for some reason, I was only able to instigate some meaningful debate last night on which of the 2 survival gurus currently on Discovery is the most authentic and entertaining. Actually this debate has been raging for some time and last night did nothing to settle it but it was fun anyway. Dan and his buddies all agree Survivor man is the real deal, their allegiance is based mostly on the fact that he is truly by himself and can't take any off camera help from his camera team or share any of their food and drinks which obviously they must have, they also site some instances where Bear Grilles got in a little to deep and accepted help on camera.(only because he was about to die). They all agree Bear went a little to far in the African desert for water when he squeezed an elephant turd till some precious moisture dripped into his mouth,They also all agreed they would rather die than drink that. Kirsti can't understand why anyone would put themselves through such discomfort for the entertainment of others so she is in the undecided category,I should say, she has decided, they are both a couple of nuts. For me its a close call, the points the 13 year old crowd make are all valid. For authenticity Survivorman scores highly. He may eat a bug or 2 along the way but he won't humiliate himself by drinking the moisture from animal waste. Griles lays it all on the line, maybe because there is always someone there to bale him out/ or carry his body out, but even so he takes some chances that are completely insane and for me that puts him slightly over Survivorman. For me the final nail in Survivor Man's coffin was when he left a team of sled dogs to fend for themselves in Labrador while he was airlifted out to safety. I hope they went to get them later, but there was never any mention of their fate. They are both interesting to watch and probably fit that frozen Bozo category refered to periodically here.

Silicon Valley Humor

Update: Due to someone complaining about the use of copyrighted materials (thanks, Digital Millenium Copyright Act paranoia!!!), the original video was taken down and a new one was put up.

Wakarimasen

That's one of the few Japanese phrases I retain from reading Shogun a long time ago: I don't understand. Years ago Japanese schoolgirls texting to each other on their cell phones seemed bizarre to me, but today I'm texting quite a few times a day. I can't believe, though, that this new trend is going to catch on here:

Remarkably, half of Japan's top-10 selling works of fiction in the first six months of the year were composed [...] on the tiny handset of a mobile phone. They sold an average of 400,000 copies.

In just a few years, mobile phone novels - or keitai shousetsu - have become a publishing phenomenon in Japan, turning middle-of-the-road publishing houses into major concerns and making their authors a small fortune in the process.

Usually they are written by first-time writers, using one-name pseudonyms, for an audience of young female readers - who, in Japan especially, consult their mobile phones so regularly that the habit could be mistaken for a tic. The stories traverse teen romance, sex, drugs and other adolescent terrain in a succession of clipped one-liners, emoticons and spaces (used to show that a character is thinking), all of which can be read easily on a mobile phone interface. Scene and character development are notably missing.

I'm pretty sure James Clavell could not have written Shogun on a cell phone.

Sunset from our balcony

Here's our view from the new digs at Arbor Trace. We've been spending a lot of time on our screened balcony and the weather is warm enough to enjoy it.

Besides the sunset we are enjoying other benefits, including delicious dining at the club across the street, weekly maid service, and a real garage.

With many thanks to Missy and Mike, we've decided to keep the place.

Geek Squad, Personal Edition

Our DSL line has been dropping the Internet connection for a while, so I bit the bullet and called AT&T. Hours on the phone later, threats of moving to Comcast, and two on-site visits managed to narrow the problem down to the ancient modem we had. Rather than pay them to replace it, I decided to buy one myself and plug it in. How hard could it be, anyway? Um, let's just say it was not exactly plug-and-play. It's working now. I wrote an Amazon review of the modem to document my labors for future innocents.

Funny Politicians

Speaking of quick comebacks by politicians, I enjoyed the exchange between Tom McClintock and the SJMercury in today's letters to the editor. A while back, McClintock, a conservative Republican who often berates Ahnold for being such a profligate spend-and-borrower, used a word in a context the Mercury staffers thought was funny. McClintock defends his usage:

Your staff took me to task (Page 3B, Nov. 18) for misusing the word "climacteric" when I recently wrote, "I remain convinced that California is moving toward a climacteric in which an awakened electorate will soon call for a fundamental restructuring and downsizing of state government." "Climacteric," they snickered, means "menopause." If they would broaden their dictionary searches beyond Wikipedia, they would discover that the word is also defined as "constituting an important epoch or crisis" (Oxford English Dictionary). I suppose I could have written that "events are moving toward a climax," but I shudder to think what your staff would have made of that.

Touche.

Political Comentary/Not

The subject of politics may be somewhat tabu here but Im not making a political commentary, I am making a personal observation about how the new debate format has made it a little easier for an average guy like me to evaluate our candidates. I have seen a considerable amount of critisism of the format by pro journalists and politicians, most of it is leveled at the quality and depth of the questioning. In my mind this line of questioning is far more interesting than the formal debate format seen in the past. The questions are simple and pointed, I like that, and I like it even better when the answers are simple and pointed, and that is where I begin to sort out who I like and who falls into that "buiseness as usual" politician catagory. I have paid more attention to the candidates this year than I ever have and I think its because they are a little easeir to sort out. Of course I agree with some and disagree with others so I have a good basis for who to support, but when their basis for my support is shattered by smartass answers or worse yet avoiding answers altogether, it makes the others just a little more attractive, and opens my mind a little more to the ideas of the others. Its actualy fun being one of those undecided voters who seem so important to them, if I only lived in Iowa or NewHampshire.