Housing Isn't Bubbly

the new york times has an interesting article on why there isn't a housing bubble and why prices won't drop.

Note to self.. and whoever wants to read it

posted a comment on a blog post about motorcycle pollution and should return and comment again after reading the article.

New House

we did our inspection yesterday. it was fun to see the house pretty much done. they have to do a couple of things (fix the gap between the frame and the front door and the gap between the garage door and floor, and fix the garage door opener and some other little stuff like small grout cracks). but here it is in some sort of glory.

front of house

two shots of the kitchen, 12 inch granite tile, we had to buy a fridge (delivery next friday)

from the dining room looking to living room & front door

family room, gas fireplace, we added a plug and ethernet plug to the wall

view out the window upstairs by the stair well

our bedroom, forgot to get the master bath... will have to get it later and improve this picture it doesn't really show anything... the window is behind where the pic was taken, the door to stairwell is to the right of keith and the door to bath is to the right close to where i was standing

Just a Couple of Mukluks

warning: misuse of the word mukluk ahead. mukluks are in fact a soft boot or sock. i am using it in the sense that mukluk just sounds like a scoundrel... and i suppose one could think of it as something that looks nice on the outside and is fuzzy and warm, but is kinda stinky on the inside.

that's keith and i... the mukluks. we both forgot each other's birthday this year. alodia had a beautiful spiel about her husband kevin. me, i made him pack stuff up for our weekend of house sitting and pick up the renters' check.

at least we are a pair. we do appreciate each other and love each other. we just aren't so good at dates. we have a copy of our wedding invitation on the wall (at least we do when we have our own living quarters) so we know when we are married. otherwise i would just have to guess at sometime in the spring.... uhhh march i think.



btw: the pic is from visitnunavut.com which is a pretty interesting site and makes me want to visit the newest canadian province.

Grace Murray Hopper

today would be Grace Hopper's birthday if she hadn't died (in 1992, born 1906). in computer class in 8th grade my friends and i liked to call her grass hopper in order that we might remember something close to her name for tests. but really i have always admired her. she was a pioneer in programming in many ways.
according to the biography here

Perhaps her best-known contribution to computing was the invention of the compiler, the intermediate program that translates English language instructions into the language of the target computer. She did this, she said, because she was lazy and hoped that "the programmer may return to being a mathematician."

so she's who we have to blame for lazy programmers =).
but seriously she is worth reading about. besides the above short biography below are another couple of links of interest.
gracehopper.org biography
article at wikipedia (also includes a picture of a moth that was in a computer, after removal it was taped into a lab notebook. just awesome record keeping if you ask me.)

Who\What am I?

Taller than an average guy or gal
yet not so tall as to reach the ceiling
I brighten the room without any feeling
Shaped like an I, but not an uncial
Everyone must own one of me, so goes the rationale.

Bend to Alturas

our squat blue car sped along highway 31, the gas pedal on cruise. the morning was ear freezing cold, but only if you didn't put on your hat. we were prepared for all kinds of contingencies--tools to fix the car, new relay 109, warm jackets, boots, camera, motorcycle helmets, snorkling gear.

ranch fields fenced by barbed wire were intersperced with evergreen forest. in one field two deer munched on the calf-high grass. as we approached the intersection to fort rock, there appeared a flock of ravens. then two golden eagles launched themselves from 15 feet off the road to our left. on the horizon we saw the pale gray clouds were dropping to road level. snow was on the way.

the small town of silver lake arrived on the road. along with some cows. a man on a horse with two dogs was herding the faster bunch of cows with a woman behind the slower cows. keith waved at the man, then the woman, and they raised thier gloved hands in return. as we moved away at 5 mph from the man, he turned in the saddle. perhaps he wondered if he knew these people in the car or why they waved. but who did he know that owned such an impractacle vehicle as a foriegn made car?

the snow began to fall and collect on the road. the back windshield wiper was utilized to wash off the snow spray and the gray dust of road travel that had collected over the last several months. a herd of antelope watched us as we passed. they were content to eat next to the now dormant sprinkler system.

as we neared paisley, the snow picked up into a definate storm. we stayed on the road, slowly driving on, trusting the studded snow tires and brakes. on through lakeview the flurries followed us. just before the border several deer bounded across the road in front of the vehicle before us. even the deer just born this year effortlessly cleared the fence.

at alturas the snow was still falling and we were hungry. we made it through town without noticing anything exciting enough to stop the first time around. at the end of town, keith started his u-turn with the steering wheel and finished it with the emergency brake. the road was slick enough for some fun. at the black bear diner we ate burgers (vege and massive cow) with mounds of french fries. outside the weather was warmer and the roads a bit clear.

Sometimes it works

i'm boiling off solvent today. sometimes it works better than other times...don't know why. there is a good explanation of
how to rotovap. the basics are you reduce the pressure and solvent boils. sometimes it boils nicely for me other times it bumps and spatters when i am boiling off water ... today it is being nice, yay =).

Reminded me of my mom =)

i went to make biscuits tonight, couldn't find my cookbooks so looked on-line and found this recipe
never fail bicuits
read the reviews and this one reminded me of my mom.

I'm a great cook (even if I say so myself)but I have never been able to make biscuits, well ones people want to eat. That is until now my family ate them all (12 biscuits wow) instead of the boys using them for weapons.Thanks alot Madison.

Moving...

yesterday we moved. fortunately we had several good friends with trucks and trailers to help us out. we got everything out except a couple things that we picked up this morning. we packed all our stuff into the garage, house, and sheds at my in-laws' house. we signed the papers for selling the house this morning. so hopefully wednesday we'll be rich... okay not rich, but in good financial stead for a month and a half.
i don't know where anything is... so i'll have to get the kitty a new food bowl for her wet food. the kitty is adjusting quicker than i thought. she started exploring last night (came out from her blanket nest under the bed). hissed at the resident cat and meowed for a while. maybe tonight i'll get the clothes out of the boxes and bags... or i could work on my novel (i've been inspired by watching the movie serenity).

That Works?

i've been packing this week. i went to pack my two combs... well not pack, but just set aside so that i wouldn't pack them as i emptied out the bathroom drawers. there was a build-up of hair oil, shampoo oil, and what-not on the teeth. usually i throw away the comb after a while because this is kinda gross. i have tried various things to clean out the comb... hot water, shampoo, flossing the comb(way too time consuming but decent results). i was feeling very cheap so i didn't want to throw out the combs. i thought of the blue tube of cleaner some barbers/stylists use to clean their stuff and wondered if i could find out what was in there. google returned an interesting result to my comb cleaning query. baking soda so i thought i would give it a try. i put some lump of baking soda in the sink (i buy a large bag since i use it in the cat litter, very effective and cheap when combined with wal-mart cheap litter) and ran hot water. i put the combs in the water and waited for magic. nothing swirled them around. nothing. left them in the sink while i packed the bathroom. bingo. it really did clean the comb off very effectively. so next time you peer into your comb or brush and see the build-up just throw it into a sink of baking soda for a freshing-up.

Pronounciation? Bah!

i shouldn't have gone to the trouble of finding out how to pronounce the street name. the automated system at the power company pronounced it mis-cue rather than the correct mee-ehsk. no big surprise really. our rental house is on caballo dr. which is spanish for horse and should be pronounced cah-bi-yo but everyone says cah-ball-o.

It's October 31st

for most people that means halloween. eh, whatever. we don't hand out candy, sorry kids, and do our normal thing. what this date really means, is that tommorrow is november 1st and thus begins NaNoWriMo! (national novel writing month). yipee!!! sarah and i (jen) are doing it again this year and you can follow us on the blogs by clicking on our names. mine will be sporatically good while sarah never fails to give a consistantly good read with great characters.

Honor Deserved

according to a story on msn

Parks, who died Monday in Detroit at age 92, also will be the first woman to lie in honor in the Rotunda, the vast circular room under the Capitol dome.

thank goodness for good people like rosa parks.

Just Walking my Wasp

it seems many children have tied an insect to a thread at some point. apparently some people never stop. now there is the possiblity that wasps will be used to sniff chemicals in airports and such.

National Chemistry Week-Part 2

hope everyone had a toy filled week where you remembered that all kinds of cool stuff is due to chemists making cool stuff. yesterday was national mole day, naturally. see one mole is 6.022 x 10^23. so on october (10) twenty-third (23) of every year is mole day... and all true supporters observe it at 6.02 am in the morning.
on another fun chemistry note, the chemistry ignobel prize this year: Edward Cussler of the University of Minnesota and Brian Gettelfinger of the University of Minnesota and the University of Wisconsin, for conducting a careful experiment to settle the longstanding scientific question: can people swim faster in syrup or in water?
REFERENCE: "Will Humans Swim Faster or Slower in Syrup?" American Institute of Chemical Engineers Journal, Brian Gettelfinger and E. L. Cussler, vol. 50, no. 11, October 2004, pp. 2646-7.
if you're like me you probaby are thinking isn't this more physics or fluid dynamics? but whatever, they don't stick on technicalities at ignobel. further, it is very important to know that swimming in syrup isn't any slower or faster than swimming in water.

Mr. Rogers' Influence

i remember mr. rogers' neighborhood. i liked it. the puppets were neat and i generally don't like puppets. he read things and i dunno what else.. but i do remember the shoes and the sweater. you remember, right? he would come in and change his shoes and his sweater and then switch back when he left at the end of the show. it all seemed quite ridiculous to me at the time.
well i seem to do that now. i get to work and take off my jacket and put on my sweatshirt or lab coat. and change my boots (for when i ride my motorcycle) to my lab shoes. and when i leave i reverse the process. when i get home i talk off my shoes and coat. and put on a coat since it is easier and cheaper than raising the temperature in the house. oh well... at least he taught me something.

National Chemistry Week - pt 1

This week is national chemistry week! woot! Theme this year: The Joy of Toys (yup TOYS!)(National Chemistry Day aka Mole Day is next sunday, more on that on 10/23 posting)
to start you off on a fun week: first go and play the cute game where you make a bouncy ball. after your trial and error has yielded you the proper bouncy ball ratios go to the pdf on how to make your very own bouncy ball.
Have a Ball!

Fire Extinguisher Training

i went to fire extinguisher training today. some people mock it but i enjoyed it. there was some good information about what kind of fire extinguisher to use in what situation. also good review of how to assess the situation as to whether you should just exacuate or use the fire extinguisher. basically if you are by yourself it is safer to evacuate; also if there is a lot of smoke just leave. the best part about the training is you get to use a fire extinguisher on a real fire. they had a little box that they had some diesel and regular gas in which they set on fire. each of us had to put it out with an abc powder fire extinguisher. kind of like this

some of the people there were disappointed because they were computer geeks who lived in the server room and that has CO2 extinguishers, but we didn't get to practice with any of those. last time i took the training we used one, they are heavy! the guy also said if you have an extinguisher at home that is dry chemical abc with a metal head on it the university would service that for free every year. that was pretty cool. personally i have one with a cheap plastic head so i'll throw it out in 5 yrs.

New Street Name

the house we are moving to dec 29 (yup that's when we sign our papers to get our house) is on a street called Miesque. i've read about the filly on-line, very impressive miler. but i couldn't figure out how to pronounce it. taking a break from reading journal articles, i thought i wonder if there is a video of her breeders' cup win. so i looked up what year she won her second one, and then searched for a breeders' cup website. and ta-da. the 'time capsule' of ntra.com has her 1988 win of the mile.

oh ya... it is pronounced mee-ehsk (jennifer's system of pronounciation) with emphasis on the last syllable.

Fall Menu

last night i cooked a meal i like, and keith does not. i thought he would be in class all evening but he got out early. he came home and ate cereal. i however had the following, which i found very tasty & warming.

brown rice & lentils
sauté one large onion
add 1 cup lentils, 1 cup brown rice, 7 cups water
bring to a boil; reduce heat and simmer until water is absorbed.
butternut squash & apple
bake or microwave cut in half, cleaned out squash until soft;
peel squash & mash
add half a stick of butter (salt if butter is not salted), 3-5 tablespoons brown sugar
mix together and microwave for an additional 2 minutes
top with chopped, crisp apple

had it again for lunch (mmm leftovers).

Time Well Spent

i wish that was truth. yesterday morning i was preparing for a productive day. importantly trying to track down a problem with LaTeX. my advisor comes in and has some weird idea about this vacuum pump controller we have. she messed up and bought a valve that isn't totally compatible with everything we have. after she said we were keeping the valve, i looked at the thing and wrote down what we would need to make it work. she ordered only one of the four things i wrote down to order and then came to tell me that we should use quick connect couplings for it. despite the fact that parts for this route were not obviously available from our usual supplier and the fact that we don't really have a need for quick connect couplings. but whatever. i spend something like an hour talking to her and then another hour and a half looking up part numbers and trying to figure out parts that would work (reducing a tube that has an inner diameter of 3/4in to a threaded tube connection that is something around 1/8 in, measuring the current threaded tube connector to determine if it was tapered iso or npt, etc...). the drawing was the fun part... and took the least time.

Chemistry Nobel Prize 2005

the chemistry nobel prize in 2005 has been awarded for "for the development of the metathesis method in organic synthesis". three people recieved the prize. one of them, Robert Grubbs, actually came to speak at the school i go to a year ago. super nice guy and some great chemistry. check out the brief description at nobelprize.org, the animation is a good rendering of what happens and it is kinda fun to watch.

Hydrophobic Water

yup, water that doesn't like water.... it seems to be possible at low temeratures in the first layer. see the blurb here. kinda weird.

Just a Reminder

i don't like to blatently steal by reposting work by hard working artists etc... but this comic has a such good reminder that i am. sometimes i lament having a cat that is reproductionless because i think about how nice kittens are. but i must remember that there are far to many cats that need a home to want kittens of my own.

Femto

i love our kitty. she is nice without being overbearing. it is a treat when she curls up on you to get some pets. there is nothing quite so complementary and warm as femto snuggling in on a cold evening.

I Can Paint

okay i can only kinda paint something... but you can see my painting/watch me paint my beautiful (uhh ya) picture here. make your own at art.com.

Not Quite Right

seems that someone in environmental health and safety here was having fun when they put up the new log in for waste forms (waste as in chemical reaction waste, spent batteries, mercury lightbulbs, lab trash, sharps... not normal human waste).

i'm not exactly sure what they were trying to go for there... but to me it looks like a bathroom sign or maybe a pregnancy test for boy or girl...

One Way to be a Loser

stop someone's NMR experiment before their time is up and then not even be able to speak/understand english enough to communicate about what you did when you stopped it.

Eat Cheddar and Call Me in the Morning.

apparently cheese consumption before bedtime can determine your types of dreams. listen to the story at npr.org.

Onions! with Onions

the food selection on campus has shrunk for me. the imitation taco bell here doesn't serve their "veggie burrito" (think 7 layer) this year. the veggie burger has been really not so good the last two times i have gotten it. and today i was just trying to order a little tiny variation on the bean burrito. i wanted it with onions. now the imitation taco bell serves their bean burrito with the following ingredients: flour tortilla, beans, monterrey jack cheese. no red sauce, no onions. there is a salsa/hot sauce thing that you can add after. quite good, but quite hot. so today i wanted a bean burrito with onions... the lady didn't understand english and so i thought she understood my order but instead she made a beef burrito. i noticed the packaging wasn't the bean burrito color and so i asked again, "BEAN burrito??" the poor lady (i'm not really mad at her, more so the people who hired her) pretty well abandoned me at this point. another lady working back there, straightened it out and i got my burrito with onions. so for the days i don't bring a lunch and i don't want to leave campus. my known options are:
mexican: bean burrito, rice, beans, chips & nacho cheese
asian: stir fried rice
sandwich: veggie sandwich or wrap more expensive than it should be
not so good american: french fries, garden burger, way too cheesey pizza (2 varieties), bread sticks
looks like i shouldn't forget a lunch

Surprise Book

i'm reading The United States of Europe by T.R. Reid. i've seen it sitting on the library book self a few times and it has shown up in my reccomended area of amazon. what finally convinced me that i should read it was the radio show Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me... from NPR. one week they featured the author, Reid, as their 'not my job' guest. the host, or someone on the show, made the comment that the book was actually a page turner. which is a real accomplishment for a political non-fiction book. i thought he was making a joke, but the host said, "no really, it is a good book." so when i saw it in the library last week i picked it up. thus far it is very interesting and not like reading a high school civics book (yawn!)

at lunch i read this gem of a paragraph.

Sill, the Welch years weren't good for everybody at GE. He was ruthless about cutting jobs—well over 100,000 people were forced to leave GE in his first decade at the top. The press , in turn, was ruthless in reporting on the mass layoffs he engineered. For years, a man who loved the limelight couldn't stand to read his press clippings. The media kept bringing up all those layoffs. Somewhere along the line, Welch acquired a nickname he absolutely loathed: "Neutron Jack," after the bomb that kills humans by the thousands but leaves the building standing. Even those who survived at Neutron Jack's GE spent their careers under intense pressure; one union leader observed that Welch "squeezes his people dry, like lemons."

Whaling

if you don't like what you have to eat, use it to catch something different. at least that is what i learned from this whale.

Hearing

i subscribe to a newsletter from occupationalhazards.com because it has some good safety information that i'm not aware of every now and again. this week there was a blurb from a company about radio headsets. i thought it was interesting so here it is.

When headset radios first appeared in stores several decades ago, they were not marketed as hearing protectors – a good thing, since they offered very little attenuation of noise. At some frequencies, the headsets were even found to amplify background noise (with the radio turned off) due to resonance in the earcup. To be a hearing protector, an earmuff must be designed to be a hearing protector from the start.

The volume settings of typical portable stereo headsets have been measured at 81 dBA at 50 percent volume setting, 91 dBA at 75 percent volume, and 96 dBA at 100 percent volume--a hazardous noise level if listened to continuously for several hours. Ideally, a radio headset should allow the enjoyment of music at safe levels, but also reduce the background disturbance in a noisy environment.

Today's new hearing protectors do just that: built-in radios contain circuitry that limits their maximum radio volume. When the radio is turned on, the sound output is electronically limited to 82 dB. The noise level of the radio will certainly fluctuate (even though there is an 82 dB peak cutoff in the circuitry, the average noise level of the signal may be much lower). But for the sake of the following example, let's just assume the worst-case radio noise--a constant noise level of 82 dB from the radio worn in a noise environment of 90, 100 and 105 dB.

When two noise sources are added together, the decibels are added logarithmically, not arithmetically. This means that the sum of two identical sound sources (90 dB + 90 dB) would sum to equal 93 dB. Using a logarithmic calculator, let's determine the effective exposure for 90, 100 and 105 dB of environmental noise, with an assumed 20 dB of attenuation from the earmuff, and constant radio signal of 82 dB:

Total Effective Exposure for a Radio Earmuff Worn in 90, 100 and 105 dB of Noise

Noise Level	90dB		100dB		105dB
Attenuation	-20dB		-20dB		-20dB
Passive Exposure	70dB		80dB		85dB
Plus Radio Noise	+82dB		+82dB		+82dB
Effective Exposure	82dB		84dB		87dB

Since the radio output is limited to a safe 82 dB maximum, the radio adds very little noise to effective exposures in high noise levels. In a high-noise job that is also repetitive or monotonous, a radio earmuff can add significantly to worker satisfaction and enjoyment, without sacrificing hearing protection.

Brad Witt, MA, CCC-A, is audiology and regulatory affairs manager for Bacou-Dalloz Hearing Safety Group.

Death comes

the hurricane katrina cut a swath of destruction from new orleans to someplace in the southern united states. most of the coverage has centered on new orleans and southern louisiana so the terminus of destruction is not known to me. some people evacuated others stayed. some died because they were convinced that they could 'stick it out' yet again through a storm and other because they didn't have transportation out. the effects of the storm will be felt in the region for a longer period than any news publisher will cover. thus far the death toll is said to be 'in hundreds maybe thousands.'

today another story of death came with its sharp sickle. shia muslims marching as part of a religious festival were trampled to death and jumped to their deaths when rumors of a suicide bomber in the crowd circulated. this wasn't an incident like the americans who wanted the $50 ibooks where only 17 people were hurt. in this case, close to 1,000 people died, according to the last tally i read. this didn't happen over a wide swath of land and didn't come with a weather forcast. it was mostly women, children, and the elderly who died. sticks and stones may break my bones, but words are sure to kill many.

Ta-Da!

this sunday we went to pick up a new addition to our garage, my new (to me) motorcycle.

it is a BMW F650 GS
with all the goodies i want. heated grips, side cases, top case, abs, the key is the same for the bags and ignition, engine guard, hand protectors, tall windshield, acessory socket, and some other misc. stuff.
it rides wonderfully and sits probably shorter than my xt 225. so i definately flat foot it.
we rode out on sat. afternoon to mt. diable state park near san fran. camped on sat night and then picked up the bike sunday morning. we then rode up highway 1 for a little while before turning off and heading through napa and then over to sacramento taking 50 back to reno. it was a long day and i am still tired. but worth it, after all what is work for other than to recover from the weekend?

Jury Scam

i usually find scams reveal themselves fairly easily but this particular scam may catch some off guard. people call claiming you failed to report for jury duty and can be arrested. just in case it starts up in your area, check out snopes. it is a good refresher course in how not get your identity stolen.

motorcycle signals

some of these are a bit to similar to the left turn signal but interesting and pretty good none-the-less. see page 2 of group riding from MSF.

Sounds

this morning, and almost every morning, i hear our cat trot across the carpet. it is a careful, friendly, inquisitive sound that i love to listen to as i wake up.
what sounds do you love?

Coming Through at a Rapid Pace

watch it when you go to the hospital. if you get an MRI don't count on the people in the room to check for loose metal. the magnets in MRI's are very strong but people get complacent and forget things like small amounts of metal. these small and large pieces of ferromagnetic metals end up flying across the room and getting stuck to the magnet. check out this article at NY times and these pictures. i can't believe the government doesn't regulate this better.

Yay! for chemistry

i can't wait until a product is put on the market using this surface tension reduction to get the water between the holes in cloth. i would love to use less electricity to dry my clothes and i imagine the clothes get cleaner too.

Old Old

i heard a snipet of this article on the elderly parent on the radio yesterday. read it this morning over breakfast and it is a really good piece.

Golden again

yup golden palace casino spends yet more of the profits of people who are willing to pretty much dump money at them in exchange for blinking lights. this time they bought an image of Jesus in a potato pastry. the story also includes a few items i missed out on earlier like a pretzel in the shape of mary holding Jesus. exciting stuff i tell you.

Switch to uhhh whatever you want

check out this linux ad type thing. pretty funny.
thanks to my brother for finding this.

Trees

planting a tree helps the air right? well not always as much as you think. apparently some trees actually make some pollutants and don't sequester as much carbon (remove CO2) as others. check out the article at chemistry.org.

How long has it been?

this afternoon we rode our motorcycles in a forest that had just been rained upon. i need a scratch-n-sniff blog. =) it had been ages since i'd been in a freshly watered forest; perhaps because most of the moisture in nv is from snow rather than rain. it was a great sensory experience.

Golden Palace... Again

i haven't kept up with the golden palace casino like i should have been. a quirky series of untracibly odd associations led me to remember that a while ago i heard that a researcher was auctioning off the rights to name a new species of monkey to benefit conservation. so i wondered who won the auction. i should have known it was the golden palace...
your new monkey species name is a combo of latin aurum (gold) and near as i can verify palatii is indeed palace:
Callicebus aureipalatii

Phytoalexins from the Crucifer Rutabaga: Structures, Syntheses, Biosyntheses, and Antifungal Activity

this is a title of a paper in J. Org. Chem. 2004, 69, 4471.
i get the tables of contents of several journals delivered to my inbox automatically. sometimes i don't get to reading all of them. today i was reading through some of the old ones and this title popped out at me even though it has nothing whatsoever to do with my research. i just couldn't pass up "rutabaga" without saying it aloud. rutabaga, rutabaga, rutabaga (a suprisingly difficult word for me to type.)
the article had something to do with isolating a chemical that defends against particular problems that rutabagas (and apparently other crops). here are some pictures of rutabagas with problems.

Hall Effect

HyperPhysics
NIST

remember: conventional current uses positive charge carriers; positive charge carriers obey the right hand rule in a magnetic field; negative charge carriers obey the left hand rule in a magnetic field => using the hall effect one can measure if a semiconductor is a p-type or an n-type as well as the mobility of the material

And We're Off

our house is now officially for sale. the realtor is putting the sign up in the yard tomorrow (has to enter the info in the computer first because people start calling as soon as the sign goes up). we have a lockbox on the front step. and the house is clean. i hope it sells quickly =)... now we just have to pack up the rest of all our junk and put it in storage 'till the new house is done.

here's the pictures of the house that our realtor picked out as good enough to use in her brochures for the box and what-not.

May it die

atkins, the company is filing bankruptcy. a good death i say. that diet is just unhealthy!

Its Raining

really raining here! water is running down the road and windows and it smells like water. i suppose this isn't big news for most places, but according to NOAA, reno only gets on average 2 days in july with precipitation above 0.01 inches! and only 51 days out of the year usually hit that mark or go above, so water coming out of the sky is news =).

Pet Peeve

a pet peeve of mine is the natural eating / drug movement. you know, the people that think if they eat organically grown all natural foods they will be superior to those who choose a small amount of pesticide rather than eat a lot of bugs. there's many things i can say about this... there are good things and bad things. but i think in general the bad is not proclaimed loudly enough because i know i hear some pretty wild claims about thier good things.

in that vein i was happy to see that a study of echinacea shows it has no affect on getting a cold or getting over it. what caught my eye even more is the quote at the bottom of the story from Dr. Wallace Sampson, an emeritus clinical professor of medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

[T]hey [herbal remedies] are drugs and toxins and most plant species out there have a more likely chance of harming one than helping one.

Thing you go back for

it was a hot sunday morning as i pushed through the atmospheric gases at 60 mph when i lost my hat through the doorless passenger side of my jeep. it only took a second to lift from my head and fly out as the giant semi-truck passed me. the loss saddened me, but i wasn't about to skid to a halt for its loss. it is an old black baseball cap with the emblem of the colorado rockies on the front and black electrical tape holding the "adjustable" strap on the back together. probably beyond its time; but i missed it. somehow i didn't want to admit that this now little worn hat was important to me so i drove on.

later that day we drove the same stretch of highway in the beater datsun truck. i knew exactly where i lost my hat and recognized its limp form from a further distance than i thought possible. keith was so gracious to stop for my hat. out i popped from the truck and retrieved the hat; it hadn't been run over and i dusted a bit of something off the bill and it was good to go. one of the best parts of the day was me on that elevated concrete retrieving a bit of black cloth and cardboard.

Lame Immigration Agents

immigration agents posed as OSHA training agents and arrested illegal immigrants. we shouldn't do that. read the article from occupationalhazards.com here. as it points out, the immigrants bear the brunt of work place accidents and if we make them afraid to show up for safety training, then we are just hurting them more. unethical in my book.

Eeek & squeak

on my commute to and from work i go through an area known as the spaghetti bowl. it is a joke to name such a place, really it shows just how small this big city is. traffic here is not that great, but comparatively there is nothing terrible about reno/sparks traffic. but people like to complain and they like to name so we have the spaghetti bowl. it is the only large scale intersection in town; it is where I-80 and Hwy 395 meet on the north side of town. it is usually a bit slow through there and there are frequent accidents---mostly minor but people still like to stop to look---and there is construction going on---for the last four years. today there was an exceptionally minor accident at the off ramp of 395 to get onto 80 so people had to slow down to look at the minor crunch on the driver's side tail lights of a white car and traffic crawled behind them. while i was inching along on the clutch i noticed a mouse. in the second of four lanes of traffic. there it was snuffling along the concrete like it was going to find something to eat. perhaps once its long forgotten ancestor had roamed a sparse sage brush field there, but now it was fat on the litter of passing cars. i wonder if it ever made it back to the berm.

Sunset

click on my picture to view it big! sunset in newport, rhode island taken from goat island.

Flag of ....

while i was at the organic electronics workshop in rhode island someone from the netherlands was there and asked why did the us use the dutch flag (netherlands=dutch for those who get confused like me) as an open flag.

Netherlands


OPEN

my only thought was because it has red white and blue, which americans think is so american, and it is very visible....
what would you do/think if you went to a foreign country and saw OPEN printed on the US flag?

some quick traveling thoughts

i'm in newport, rhode island for an organic chemistry workshop. so far pretty good. here's a few random things.
• why does someone in boston need a hummer? there is limited parking and what on earth are you going to do with that massive thing in a city? get a moped.
• a hostel can be a nice place to stay. the lady that runs the one here was nice and picked me up from the bus stop and gave a full walking tour of the town.
• it is nice to meet someone before you actually get to a big meeting. while on the bus from boston to here i met a guy from the netherlands who was going to the same conference. he also was cheap like me and was staying at the hostel ($25-$30 / night) instead of the hotel where the conference is at ($199 / night). so now i don't feel so lame at the meeting because i know at least one person that is nice and doesn't mind talking to me.
• don't try to cram everything you have ever done in research into one 40 min presentation. just have one main topic!

One step forward, One step backward

the sda church is holding a general conference session in st. louis right now. there are many things going on there... like voting in a 28th belief (voted in already but controversy over the wording so that may change).

two stories show me, dramatically, that there are different beliefs in the church that conflict with each other. dealing with conflicting ideas i think will tear the church apart eventually. people believe very strongly about some things and compromise is not an option, which can be a good thing and a bad thing.
• a black woman named Ella Simmons was elected to the position of vice-president of the world church. ('bout stinkin' time in my opinion, an old white guy (no offense to jan paulsen, president) doesn't represent the majority of the world sda church to my understanding...but it is hard to find demographics for the world church)
• the delegates voted to make the office of president of the world church open only to an ordained minister. women cannot be ordained and thus cannot hold the office of the presidency.

personally, i think the church should ordain women. but if i were a delegate i wouldn't make it a make or break issue. God will see that justice is done, not me. i don't think it is something that should break up the church, but it may end up doing that some day.

Ten Commandments

At a time when we see around the world the violent consequences of the assumption of religious authority by government, Americans may count themselves fortunate: Our regard for constitutional boundaries has protected us from similar travails, while allowing private religious exercise to flourish. -Sandra Day O'Connor

I heard the above quote on an NPR piece on the way to work. I wanted to think on it further when I got a chance so I looked up the document from which it came and also found the following quote. (source: I don't cite supreme court stuff at all so here's how I got there. www.supremecourtus.gov , opinions, latest slip opinions, McCreary County v. American Civil Liberties Union of Ky., pages 41-44 of the pdf is the O'Connor, J. concurring section I read.)

It is true that the Framers lived at a time when our national religious diversity was neither as robust nor as well recognized as it is now. They may not have foreseen the variety of religions for which this Nation would eventually provide a home. They surelycould not have predicted new religions, some of them born in this country. But they did know that line-drawing between religions is an enterprise that, once begun, has no logical stopping point. They worried that “the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other Sects.” -Sandra Day O'Connor

I believe in Mosaic Law and God. I also believe that the founders of this nation used such beliefs as the motivation to our nation's founding documents. However, I think that this nation has grown beyond being a Christian nation and our government should reflect that. That isn't to say that I think we should go back and strip out any hint of religion from everything governmental. Rather think of Newtonian physics and quantum physics. Newtonian physics works well for a lot of things, but a more thourough understanding comes from the application of quantum physics. We haven't gotten rid of Newtonian physics and we haven't burned all the old physics books or stopped mentioning it in textbooks. But we have made note of why we still keep it around and don't use it when it isn't applicable. Today, this country has the opportunity to allow, and protect, religous freedom. Not just my religion and not just my general category of religion. All religion, or lack there-of. Honor the past but don't offend the present or hinder the future.

Grilling, Microwaving, Meats, and Veggies

for those readers who grill meat, this article from ACS may be of interest. some basic things i found interesting.
1. carcinogens form at high temperatures from amino acids (basic builders of protein)
2. microwaving meat before cooking it on the grill helps reduce the formation of a particular carcinogen class called HCA (heterocyclic amines) [i've heard enough rumors about how "bad" microwaving is for foods and how it destroys vitamins and what-not so this a nice thing to hear.]
3. marinating meat protects it from some of the formations of carcinogens
4. don't poke it and let the juice run out of the meat
5. a good endorsement of plant matter making up most of the meal instead of meat is at the end of the article

CAS Numbers

chemicals. there's lots of them. you are made up of them, you eat them, you can't get away from them. take a guess now how many we have identified.
now check out CAS to see what their current count is.

as each chemical is published in a journal, patent, conference proceeding, it is assigned a number by the chemical abstracting service (CAS). they also do things like write an abstract for the article or whatever it is and extract some of the information into the database for searching. the number though is quite ingenious. it isn't a simple thing where they started at 1 and went up from there. first off, having a number is important because it is an easy way to id a molecule without the confusion of the IUPAC naming scheme. though the scheme is good it still requires some work to always get the same name. but the number also has a check sum built in so that errors in numbers are reduced. so this number is the one that you want to use when doing stuff like looking up government regulations, msds, and whatever. doesn't vary even when one of the many common chemical names is used rather than the IUPAC.

just in case you thought we were getting close to knowing a lot of things, they add about 4,000 new entries every day, yup day.

as a side note, there is currently a spat between ACS (american chemical society, who owns CAS) and NIH (national institute of health) because an NIH project has started to overlap with the CAS registry and ACS argues that the government shouldn't compete with the private sector. you can see ACS argument here. i think they are right to some degree. certainly if NIH makes this free information that used to be private sector there would be good argument for duplicating windows and making it free... after all it is just information.

gleitkommaüberlauf

gotta love postcard ware from germany.

Oil (the motor variety not cooking)

on friday we had to get two limbs out of our tree before they finished blowing out, which would result in something in our neighbors yard taking a hit. keith wanted to be manly, justifiably, and use a chain saw to cut the one limb that was clinging by a third of its former attachment. so he did things like put gas in and oil and what not and finally got it started. unfortunately the saw was quite used and didn't live up to its expectations of actually running longer than 3 seconds. so i went to pick it up somewhere in this process and got used oil on my jeans. not super dirty jeans, not even mostly dirty jeans, nope on one of my jeans that i call generally nice looking. serves me right, i should've changed when keith did... oh well. i washed them right away with some misc stain remover and it did a pretty good job. there is still a spot but it isn't horrible.

today i got my weekly, but not always on the same day, american chemical society newsletter. there was a brief blurb on this article about transforming polyethylene into a motor oil. this would be way cool in my opinion. hopefully then someone would also figure out that instead of dumping used oil into big containers at auto shops and what not, home recyclers could submit used oil in a polyethylene bottle for recycling and it may just work out all the way around. but probably not.

patience is a virtue

keith is ever so patient with me... sometimes.
one of the times that i can count on keith to be patient is when we go motorcycle riding. i suck at it but i have a good time and i think i am slowly getting better.
tuesday evening we went on a ride that we have meaning to get back to for about a year (or has it been more?). last time i went on it we were barely a quarter of a mile on the dirt and i fell and busted my clutch lever. we didn't have a spare for my bike so we used one for keith's bike making it work through the wonders of a zip tie. after that we got a spare clutch and lever saving guards on my bike (which i so love).
anyways, we went back to this trail and made it quite a ways. after looking at the map, i think we made it to what they call hunter lake, it is more like a wide point where hunter creek starts. but pretty cool none-the-less. the great thing is that i made it up and down without dropping my bike (or having keith ride it). i was a little slow in a couple areas... okay most areas, but i made it. it isn't a super easy ride, check out the mountain bike review. we didn't make it all the way to the big meadows further on, which i think is actually a shallow lake when there is a lot of water, like this year. it was getting late and there was snow, but we'll be back.

Ground + Flag = Burn?

snopes.com is a wonderful place to find information that you need and didn't know you need. which is why i have the rss feed on my homepage. the writing and information are top notch and this morning i found a new page. it starts with:

"One of the signs of creeping old fogeyism is finding out how many of the irrefutable truths we learned as youths turned out to be false." what a great sentence! i love it. finish reading the at http://www.snopes.com/holidays/flagday/burnflag.asp.

Nice People

it is nice to meet nice people. i'm probably not one of them most of the time, which tells me i should try harder to be one.

i just got done with a training meeting on using the chemtracker program to do chemical inventory. it could have been horrible and boring, but the guy was nice and did a good job, so it was reasonably enjoyable. he answered my questions which were probably kinda annoying because the whole thing was geared toward people who don't use a computer much and so i had more in-depth questions. he went through the whole thing even though i was the only person that showed up (the other person scheduled to come didn't show). at the end we talked a bit about misc stuff related to the storing of chemicals and he talked some about his experience in industry. he printed out a very helpful thing on how to categorize our chemicals. further, he said when i get around to looking for a job to let him know and he'd help anyway he could. which was super nice. we'd only met today after all. a good way to start a weekend, too bad i still have a half hour or so of work left.

well ain't that a dandy

i read the comic "close to home" most mornings. sometimes okay sometimes downright lame and occasionally pretty good. check out June 10th at ucomics.

is it bad or not?

a while ago i recall hearing that the high temperature cooking of fried foods that are carbohydrates made a carcinogen (as if we didn't already know that fried foods were bad). but now it looks like it may not be that bad. well at least there is some doubt cast on the potential trouble maker, acrylamide. so continue eating those french fries and deep fat fried whatevers, the taste is worth the fat =).

flat bowl

i noticed in the recent rei catalog that they now offer fold flat dishes from orikaso. i particularly noticed the bowl and the cup. i remember the crummy acordian style cups from 5th grade-ish that leaked, but were novel. the bowl looks like it might actually be a reasonable bowl. i am tempted to try it (rei sells it for $3), but i still have memories of the leaking plastic cup. what do you think?

What type are you?

i heard a snipet about typing the american people in relation to political views. it was pretty interesting to hear how people categorize themselves and how people can be categorized.
find out your category at beyond red vs blue. i'm an upbeat =).

Another Reason to Walk

here's yet another reason to take a parking space that isn't one that somebody else wants: fatal fist fight.

What color is it?

i was having a discussion about color with k2h (specifically talking about the range of the UV-vis spectrometer that was in an advertisment). something often forgotten (or never known) is that your monitor cannot display all the colors we can see because we use red, green, and blue as the primary colors (see hyper-physics and color cell.org). other primary colors are possible, but since those are the colors that our eyes use in the cones makes sense to use those colors for monitors. an interesting thing about color is what you see isn't necessarily what you are getting. for instance pink has no wavelength that corresponds to it, but we still see it when the light reaching our eyes matches the right spot on the cie diagram. in science, we frequently forget out purple and pink and talk exclusively about the wavelength colors. the spectrum is then red (625-740 nm) orange (590-625 nm) yellow (565-590 nm) green (520-565 nm) cyan (500-520 nm) blue (435-500 nm) violet (380-435 nm) [note: indigo is not in the rainbow and cyan is probably since we use it in printing CMYK]. so why did i list it starting with red instead of violet? two reasons: 1) we always start with red when listing the colors as children, or at least i did 2) the light with longer wavelengths (red) has lower energy and short wavelengths (blue) higher energy. people give off infrared light because we don't give off much energy in our black body radiation, however the sun gives off higher energy and thus covers more of the spectrum and through scattering and absorption of the atmosphere we end up with somewhat equal amounts of each light. here's a the path black body radiation takes as an object heats up plotted on a cie diagram. and if you've ever wondered what being color blind means... check out the super fun page here, its fun to play with even on a simple page like google.

oh ya... and what does cie stand for? International Comission on Illumination of course. the french (?) probably helps you out more for the letters Commission Internationale de l'Eclairage.;
and the rainbow picture was shamelessly used without permission from the blogInformatics, Chemistry & Life in General, which actually showed up in google images on the forth page of rainbow searching.

An Unexpected Gift

i got a message that i thought was probably a mistake on the phone at home. call a flower shop in town... so i thought i'd call whenever i got around to it today.
this morning keith discovered that there was a potted plant arrangement at the front door with the note, " Thank you so much for allowing Keith to come out to Ohio and help me. I know that this is a sacrifice for the family. I really appreciate it. Sinccerely --2 levels up boss dude--"

kinda nice. the plants are packed in there and the pot is super nice




oh ya and notice our super nice faucet in the background which is actually the part that is in focus. the faucet is really nice and deserves a good ooo and ahhh too =).

May I see your ID please?

last week keith went grocery shopping with me and so we got a bag of animal crackers from stauffer's that has 4 colors. it is kinda fun to eat a bright blue animal. stauffer's makes another tasty product called whales (they are as tasty as goldfish but at half the price). although the colors are identifiable on the animal crackers i have been wondering what exactly some of the animals were so i went to their web site and found out. (it appears to be a very common question =). stauffer's animal identifier

Anchorman

i watched anchorman tonight. it was funny because it didn't try to be realistic. i was curious if anything portrayed was even remotely real and found this excellent story on it at poynter online.

Over the Mountain

Here's a fun little game that will waste about 3 minutes of your time =).

alcohol & fire

a while ago k2h told me a story about how at work an alcohol soaked bench top was set on fire when someone used a heat gun. now here's a story about setting a patient on fire. it seems that simple fire prevention is actually pretty difficult.

Flowers & Snow

the weather decided to snow, again today, just before sunset. i went outside and snapped a few pictures of some of the flowers in our yard.

snow

yup that's right snow. it is currently snowing outside my window (and presumably in the rest of the city, but one never knows for sure). should be good for moisture. i don't think our trees had decided to bloom yet so i think they are safe, although they may have just been gearing up to start in which case that could be bad...

update: it quit and the sun is out. not a whole lot of moisture was dropped, more like a light rain than a snow.

Personality

i went over to tickle.com and took a personality test and confirmed that as with previous takings of the test, i am an ISTJ. introverted, sensing, thinking, judging. the best description i found was here.

God of the Lost

i was looking for my passport since i wanted it for the cruise we are taking in late may. found k2h's but not mine. they should've been in the same place. i cleaned and sorted and wondered what in the world i did with it and why i moved it. after getting frustrated (instead of before like i should have) i prayed. i said God it is silly, i should be able to keep track of important stuff, but i lost my passport. you know where it is. let me know to, when you are ready. and stopped looking. okay i kept peeking places but i didn't worry intensely or start cleaning every square inch of the house just for this one thing. and this morning God said oh here it is. you may have looked here 50 times already but this is where i put it for you.

Thanks God!!! you care even about things that are insignificant in view of eternity. that's what is going to make eternity so great!

it's the little things

two things i consider the most important items i have learned in my phd thus far:
1. communication style of your boss is very important.

my advisor doesn't communicate in the same ways i do. i like written information and direct statements. my advisor talks and is vague.

2. goal definition, progression, and termination

how do you define a goal, what information do you feel you need vs. what other people feel you need, and when is the goal accomplished or abandoned? i like to have a short goal with a list of subgoals, i like to be well informed about how and why things work or are used (not just approach and solve a problem willy nilly), and i like a time limit on my goal (can be revisited but needs a definite end to reanalyzed).

so in the future i will look at potential bosses and companies for the qualities that will work best for me. i would rather work at a job below my abilities rather than try an work in an enironment that frustrates me to the extent my phd has thus far.

oh ya... what brought me to revisit my thoughts on this, again: group clean up day. i didn't know when it was scheduled to begin (8? 9? apparently 9:30), there was no list of things for me to do (just ask everytime you finish something), and it continues even now even though it was two days ago. before i left monday i made it clear i wouldn't be in on tuesday but would be back monday. i had suspected my desk was going to be moved but nothing from the advisor. i came back today and found my stuff moved. it would have been nice to have been told since pretty much everything on my desk and shelves is my personal items (my monitor, computer cables, power strip, books, eyeglasses, plant). it just irritated me. probably irrationally, but it did.

a word i missed

i have lapsed in my reading of the dictionary for entertainment value. there are some words that i learned previously through reading the dictionary and through school and through my parents.

word that i reaquainted myself with tonight: thigmotropism
this is a great word to say (say it out loud =) and has a great meaning. i should start my dictionary reading and have a word of the week... i love words.

A Real Employer

Cabela's is going to build a store near reno. now this is good news to me because i have been wondering about the economy here. housing prices are shooting up (which is good and bad) but i haven't seen a lot in commercial development. i'd like to think that more business will move here so that someday i can get a real job. currently major employers are casinos and casino related industries like IGT and i don't want to work for them.

Cabela's is also cool because they have a cool store. i've been to the one in nebraska and it was a lot of fun to visit.

A Good Reason

one good reason to not be a lawyer is to avoid doing such a thing as sueing yourself. oops!

i don't get it

i read a story about a student protesting the pledge of allegiance in languages other than english. i don't understand why this is offensive. what am i missing here? as i recall the united states doesn't have an official language so aren't all language a valid form of communicating the pledge?

Subliminal and Liminal Messages

how much do you think you are affected by watching TV? personally i like to pretend that i don't integrate things i see on TV into my 'likely to be true things' region of my brain. this means that i don't like watching TV news. but then this isn't true when i watch things like nova or myth busters; so my line of believablity seems to be smudging. i think that even when we deny it, TV affects us (that's why they have commercials, duh).
one example: people think real forensics is like CSI. check out this quick article from ACS.

Cat

inspired by sarah's cat blogging i have found two friday cat items. the first is a story of a cat from AP.
Cat Survives 10-Mile Trip on Top of Car.

the second is a couple of pictures of my cat, femto.


i love to run away when you come near!


corners are particularly fun to run around.


i've got something to say about you chasing me!
i love it!

Yet Another Auction

i'm interested in seeing if the golden palace casino goes for the fake breast too.

Oh Where....

oh where oh where
has my husband gone
oh where oh where can he be
with no e-mail, no post
and no phone call
i don't know where he could be.

Whatever

suddenly

there is sunshine not quite waning when i leave work

it is pleasant to walk outside

february ends

keith leaves monday

it is friday

i wish i were in a field such as this

Reaping the Rewards

today i got a package in the mail (i love small packages in the mailbox!) from janell. she sent me my reward for my guess on the number of corrections on her thesis. i got a box of something called 'seafoam'. janell made it and it is chocolate encased crunchy sugar type thing that looks like foam but tastes really good! i reccommend janell's kitchens for any of your gift basket needs =).

now if only i can collect on my promised cookies i'll be set on dessert for a week or so.

Casino Collecting Crap

so i watched the super bowl and its ads.
there was an ad from mcdonalds about a fry that looks like lincoln (the deceased pres of the bad young us of a). i figured that the casino that has been buying weird stuff would get the fry too. so far the golden palace casino has obtained a grilled cheese with the virgin mary's face and a cane of a ghost that was haunting a kid. and if you check out the fry auction it is possible you'll see the golden casino too. it was the high bid when i looked.

The Future is in Plastics

paying with plastic doesn't have to mean paying with a credit card. it turns out some countries use plastic instead of paper for bank notes (cash). very cool in my opinion. too bad the u.s. is sticking with paper.

Wake-up!

this morning our cat, femto, was so gracious as to wake us up. she accomplished this with a gift. we were grateful, but wished she had chosen a different gift and a different time. we are proud of our hunter for eraticating mice, but this morning she chose a bird. i woke up because she plopped her bird next to me on the bed and then started poking it with her paw. good kitty. next bring a dead mouse once we are out of bed.

Bring on the Acid

i picked up a very academic book that i ordered through interlibrary loan today. walking to a library i was reading another book, assesibly academic, from a different library. both very close to the same size but i was shocked at the weight of the very academic book.
amazon lists the very academic book as having a shipping weight of 2.2 lbs.
that means around 0.15 ounces per paper (or 4.4 grams) and it is printed on acid free paper (feels glossy but no color pics).
amazon lists the assesibly academic book as having a shipping weight of 1.4 lbs.
that means around 0.12 ounces per paper (or 3.4 grams) and no mention of type of paper used (feels pretty much like normal printer paper).
i would much prefer the less weighty book even if it does have acid! 1 kg is a lot to carry around in one hand while walking and reading at the same time. =)

didn't expect to see that

so i get the adventist review tables of contents delivered each week to my e-mail (junk address). it is interesting sometimes. this time i was interested by the reference to the number one christian porn site.

A Nifty Piece 'O Glass

something at work wasn't working... so i changed what i was using. now i am using what is called a soxhlet extraction and so there is this nifty piece of glassware that i get to use (called a soxhlet extractor, of course). typically, this setup is used to extract something (well call it stuff 1) from something (plastic, a mix of compounds, whatever) when stuff 1 is only very slightly soluble in a solvent. when something is only slightly soluble you pretty well have three options (1) use a ton (almost literally) of solvent to get miniscule quantities of stuff 1 (2) give up or (3) use a soxhlet extractor.
here's the set-up and the run down.

1. knob to turn up stirring. this is a magnetic stirrer so you just turn on one magnet to spin and if you put a magnet in your solution that magnet will stir too. way easier then trying to stir by hand (esp. if overnight or in my case it looks like i'll be doing this several days).
2. knob to turn up heat. gotta love the combo of a stirrer and hot plate. this baby is expensive ($420 if i need a new one), but worth every penny. there are some super spiffy digital ones that monitor and maintain temperatures for you, but i haven't had a problem with just setting the knob on mine and monitoring it for an hour or two to adjust the temp at first.
3. some sort of liquid bath to keep the temperature even and distributed on my flask. in my case i am using water since my solvent boils at a measely 31.7 °C (89.1 °F, in other words a nice summer day). but i do have oil baths to use if i want a warmer temperature. the little bubble looking thing is a teflon coated magnetic stir bar.
4. a round bottom flask (round so there are no corners for things to get trapped in and to promote even stirring) filled with the solvent i am using and contains a teflon coated magnetic stirring bar also. teflon is good since it is very un-reactive and stuff doesn't stick to it and it does well in high and low temperatures. stirring is needed to promote even boiling (otherwise large bubbles form and that can get problematic). the round bottom flask has what is called a ground glass joint at the top with a standard tapper. basically this means that various bits of glassware can be combined in multiple ways and still make a good seal.
5. here's the beautiful piece of glass. vapor (from the boiling solvent) enters the bottom portion, through the tapered ground glass joint, and then goes into two tubes. one of the tubes ends up not really collecting vapor, so we'll ignore it for now. the tube on the far right is where most of the vapor goes. it travels up the tube and then into the main chamber of the soxhlet extractor. (we'll come back to 5 in a moment.)
6. a water jacketed condenser; this is also a nifty piece of glassware. there is a tube in the middle where our solvent vapor enter (again via a ground glass joint) it then condenses in this tube because there is an outer 'jacket' with cold water running through it. so the cold water absorbs heat from the vapor, the vapor the falls to a temperature below the boiling point and condenses into a liquid. (note that the water comes in via a hose at the bottom and exits via the top. the water also never comes in contact with the solvent, there is a layer of glass between the two chambers.)
back to 5. once the vapor condenses it drips back down into the main part of the soxhlet extractor. this chamber will contain a thimble (usually made of cotton and cellulose) which contains the poweder or sample of whatever you are trying to extract stuff 1 from. stuff 1 and its surrounding material can't go through the 'paper' unless it dissolves in the solvent. once the thimble and the volume outside the timble fills up with solvent to a point that is at the top of the second tube (smaller and makes a u-turn) liquid starts dripping down the second tube back into the round bottom flask. this liquid contains some of stuff 1 dissolved in it.

once the liquid with stuff 1 in it returns to the round bottom flask it starts to boil again. but stuff 1 doesn't boil, instead it stays in the round bottom flask. so 'clean' solvent vapor travels up the outside tube again, condenses, picks up more stuff 1 from the timble, and drips back to the flask. repeat for a while; ta-da you have extracted stuff 1 even though it is only slightly soluble. and you did so without using a ton of solvent since the solvent self recycles through the process.

Cell Phone for Those who Don't Like Phones?

so i hate the telephone... blah blah blah... awkward pause... blah blah blah
but it seems that sometimes it is convenient to have a cell phone, sadly.
now, perhaps this new ogo thingy isn't as useful as a cell phone, but it looks more like something i would want to have than a cell phone since 1. it uses text 2. it uses text and 3. it uses text.

when computers aren't needed

people love to digitize things. put it on the computer, do it with a computer... arghh! not everything needs a computer.
for instance we have some shared NMR machines here. the previous system was sign up for a time on a piece of paper next to a machine. now it is digital. i suppose a good idea because people can sign up for times without actually being at the machine. but not really needed. today i thought i signed up for a machine at 11am. apparently i signed up for another machine. so the "instrument director" (read: i want an important title since i am not yet a professor with tenure) came down and told me to sign up for the time i was using. i thought i had. he figured out i signed up for the wrong machine. question 1. why didn't the person whose time i had taken actually talk to me instead of just complaining about it to other people? i would have said, oh sorry i guess i screwed up. here use the machine now, i'll go figure out when it is free again. question 2. if he really directs the place shouldn't he have looked at the schedule and figured out what was going on before he talked to me? don't just run around with horns of accusation. be a manager, duh.

advantages of a paper system for this case:
1. you know what machine you are signing up for since the paper is right next to the machine
2. if the intranet goes down, who stinkin' cares
3. you don't have to remember another stupid password that isn't even remotely secure since you put it on a piece of paper in your desk
4. once can always verify the state of the sign up by just glancing at it while at the machine
5. data entry is easy (i have had problems with entering the times on the "on-line" system, annoying that you have to click the times instead of just typing them in.... ahh i dream of dos, sadly)
6. it worked well before why fix it?

Snowing Again

it snows yet again here. good and bad. keith picked up a co-worker that slid off the road and it took around 2hrs to get to work. but it looks nice and the skiing this sunday should be excellent. i should go shovel the walk now though so keith can get back in the garage tonight.

It Melts and Freezes

pretty much every day we wake up now to another trace of snow on the sidewalks. it warms up and melts and then it gets cold at night and things freeze. so now we have icicles hanging off our roof. we broke off a lot of them so that it wouldn't injure our roof. this one was memorable; keith hefted it off into a snowy grave.