I'm required to get a Twitter account for school, so I can Follow some, uhm, Great Researchers or something.  I'm supposed to submit a list of what I'm learning by Following great researchers.  This just seems so-all-about-the-popular-kids, but I supose counting Twiter followers and the scholarly peer review process are just different iterations of ( Read more... )

Maybe you've seen that game show on which contestants (among many other remarkable things) run at a brick wall upon which appear two doors-- one a sheet of paper painted to look like a door, and the other just the same brick as the wall, painted identically to the paper one.  This past week, I've been the guy running full-out into the painted brick ( Read more... )

My next course at the U of Eh starts in some couple of weeks; we've been advised to work on our literature reviews.  Is it pure puffery to cite your own work?  If you can answer that, please restrain yourself if you're able: I want to be able to say that I learned at least one useful thing in grad school.

So right now I'm cramming on electronics and ( Read more... )

I'd never been to KMS Tools before, but at first encounter with their Edmonton store, I signed up for their "KMS Club" flyer every month, in aid of getting a tiny discount and allowing them to mine whatever meager data they can from the purchasing habits of a fat middle-aged white guy.

"Finding everything you need?" asked fat middle-aged brown guy, ( Read more... )

Somehow I seem to be doing at least a full day of simulation every day this week; either a group all day, or two groups for a half-day each.  This is great for our numbers, and good for customers, unless something breaks and needs a hasty or detailed repair.  Laerdal Medical down in Toronto is finally shipping one of my SimMan3Gs back to Edmonton, ( Read more... )

Broke a tap in a bolt hole.  Christalfuckingmighty.  Making tools with which to make tools.

And then breaking tools for making tools, for making tools.  Demoralizing, given the schedule of the two weeks ahead--but you can spend time to save money or money to save time.  I have no time off until Armistice Day, what with the Airway Management for ( Read more... )

Just got new windows installed, this past week.  Since the windows which they replaced were already fucked up when they bought the place in 1995, at least you can't say we rushed into it.  Today I learned to install blinds, and we looked for curtains in the afternoon.

Also bought a vise for my drill press for doing knife handle pinholes, and a cute ( Read more... )

I really envy the hovercats, you see.  But I've never owned a glass coffee table, and I doubt they make them that'll hold a hundred kilos of squirmy East Coast flesh.

One new experience I've had this week is putting a picture of a bunch of naked people up on a website.  I sent a message to the nice lady in the foreground, just in case she'd changed ( Read more... )

Shitfucking Black and Decker breadmaker pan's leaking.  Had the damned thing less than six months, and things are never under warranty once you've tried to fix them yourself.  Oh well.  I can afford a new breadmaker.  Like they say, "Keeping your job is the new getting a raise."

Chipping away at the PanFest website.  Unlike seemingly everyone I know ( Read more... )

Started reading about the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71.  There's one miserable slap-fight among the popular kids!  I wish I'd read about this before!  My great-great-great-grandparents supposedly came from Alsace-Lorraine, but I'm not cheering for anybody in particular, not even that guy who got the WW2 battleship named after him, the one that ( Read more... )