soapbox

the only thing that sucks worse than jackson’s e&m is *studying* for a test based on jackson’s e&m. i’m very glad i’m nearly done with classes, cuz i’m getting really bad with this whole studying thing.

From the Oregonian…

Jewelry gifts make a heartfelt statement, whether it’s a simple token of affection or a grandiose display of passion. For example, silver earrings might say, “I like you a lot,” whereas an eight-carat purple diamond ring announces, “Without you I shall waste my life as an empty shell of a man.” Or, er, “I’m sorry, baby.”

scroll down about halfway… it sounds pretty awesome, except that it makes me slightly nervous since i sometimes have a slight wool allergy. [and yeah, i know that cashmere is allergy-free, but still... makes me think of that tabasco commercial.]

actually, you’re really not allowed to do that, but it’s also an excuse to link to a fun and shallow little popularity contest. c’mon people, get out the vote!

why it sucks to be an experimentalist: I’m stuck here sitting on my butt taking data, when I would rather go work out or goof off or something. And I can’t just put it off until later b/c all the data needs to be taken in one set so as to minimize drift/thermal effects.

why it doesn’t suck: kinda like running code that actually works, my “work” tonight consists of sitting on my butt reading/writing blog entries while turning a knob every 5-20 seconds and recording some values every 12 minutes.

[which is much much better than trying to read tricky papers about mott phase transitions and banging my head against the wall.]

for reaching the double-digit post level, well done! Brian really needs to get his butt in gear, with the smallest tally of a whopping zero.

This could be worse, but anyway…

I’ve spent all of the afternoon trying to copy a HW solution set so that it makes some sense. It wouldn’t be so bad except for the fact that a lot of the problems are really long and the existing answer set was written with, um, marginal handwriting.

It’s getting old.