Monthly Archive for September, 2003

The Worst Jobs in Science

Those guys at Popular Science have done it again. They have found eighteen reasons for me to not feel so bad about where I am in the world:
Ah, science! Ennobling. Fascinating. Deeply challenging. Also, dangerous, gross and mind-bogglingly boring. We at Popular Science are sometimes brought up short by the realization that there are aspects of science?entire jobs, even?that, when you strip away the imposing titles and advanced degrees, sound at best distasteful and at worst unbearable. Having chosen last month our second annual Brilliant 10?a group of dynamic researchers making remarkable discoveries?we turned to this pressing question: For the rest out there, just how bad can a science job get?
I haven’t had a chance to read through the entire article, but it seems interesting enough after having read the first one. I’ll post more once I have a chance to read it.

I’m such a dork

I just wanted to let everyone know that I’m a dork. After finishing that last post about reading, I went and put my leftovers from the Cheesecake Factory on a plate and tossed them into the microwave. Then I spent the next five or ten minutes going through the blog and splitting up some of the entry bodies so that they go into the extended entry. Again, I’m a big dork.

Reading scrambled text

I first saw this on my daily visit to slashdot. It is some particularly interesting research that has recently been published. I have yet to find the actual source, but there are mentions of it at Uncle Jazzbeau’s Gallimaufrey and at languagehat.com. Continue reading ‘Reading scrambled text’

Pre cana class

We had our pre cana class today. It was 8 hours of boring, with a little “do it yourself” fun. It probably didn’t help that Chris and I were both dead tired from yesterday. We were the youngest couple there, probably by two or three years. I thought it was sort of interesting, I guess, but most of it was stuff Chris and I had already thought about. Continue reading ‘Pre cana class’

Do I ever want to do that again?

Well, chaperoning was “interesting.” Tonight’s games were against the Wheeling Wildcats. Overall, it wasn’t such a bad night, but it sure as hell wasn’t all that fun, either. Continue reading ‘Do I ever want to do that again?’

Couldn’t get much worse

So, I started off the morning with busted labs, bad network connections, and screwed up Novell contexts. Then, I started tearing down my dual 15″ LCD screens to get my desk ready for my dual 17″ CRT setups, only to be interrupted by DN about the above mentioned Novell contexts. Continue reading ‘Couldn’t get much worse’

BigChampagne gives P2P a non-infringing use

Wired has an article titled Wired 11.10: BigChampagne is Watching You. BigChampagne is a company that keeps a database of P2P statistics, then sells this data to the record companies. The record companies use the data to get more airplay for songs that appear to be shared and downloaded more often that others in a given physical area’s IP address range. Continue reading ‘BigChampagne gives P2P a non-infringing use’