To whomever nearly rear-ended me this afternoon:

Go fuck yourself.

Both my turn-signals and my brake-lights work, so don't give me the finger and lean on your horn as you go speeding away after you nearly rear-end me while I'm turning into my driveway.

You might think about hanging up your phone while you're at it.

I have spoken.

Not quite gunpowder-
The myriad fireflies
Dotting the fields

I just now discovered that the online dictionary has targeted advertising. For instance, if one looks up "bolt", the dictionary helpfully provides a link to a seller of fasteners. I immediately started looking for an entry for which there wasn't an ad, and I stumbled across something that reminded me of how absolutely perfect the universe is. It ( Read more... )

I'd never thought I'd be one for taking internet quizzes, but I thought this one was interesting. Some of its questions, however, made me want to hit things.

You scored as Strong Egoism. Your life is very much guided by the concept of Egoism: You work primarily to promote your own interests.

“I swear by my life, and my love of it, that I will ( Read more... )

There once was a student named Asher,
A notorious frat-party crasher.
He'd show up quite late,
And scare off your date
With talk of his big Atom Smasher.

When a girl met a graduate student
He thought of a plan hardly prudent:
To venture inside her
Symmetric collider
And engage it in ways that he shudent.

—Anonymous

Counting psi mesons,
At best a tedious chore,
Occupies my time.

It's funny that the University could care less about its graduate students starving, but when I pointed out that I could no longer afford to sign up for Cornell's health insurance, people began to notice. Vladimir had a "discussion" with our former P.I. who claims to have done nothing to my raise. However, this person has demonstrated his ability ( Read more... )

The Principal Investigator on our ill-fated grant is a jerk with whom I've had some trouble in the past. Unfortunately, since he is the P.I., he's first in line when it comes to receiving money from the NSF. It is up to the P.I. to distribute money as he sees fit. Apparently he has seen fit to keep the piddly amount still trickling in entirely ( Read more... )

I'm settling into a routine at the lab. Today I actually got some work done on my thesis project instead of doing things that people at the lab have been handing off to me now that I'm readily available. Also, as I guessed, it's somewhat more work breaking the ice with a bunch of scientists, but progress is being made. There was a minor snowball ( Read more... )