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.