The unfolding disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi plant has me spending all my spare time and then some till the wee hours reading about reactor design and safety systems and makes me want to go into nuclear engineering. Am I weird ( Read more... )

It was... a semester. And now it's over. *flop ( Read more... )

I am finally back in town from adventures across the country and beyond. Unfortunately, after spending twelve days racing around Israel cooped up in a bus with 50 other people and snoozing poorly on trans-Atlantic flights, I’m now getting over a nasty cold. Hopefully life will resume for real once I’m less obviously miserable and contagious. :P

TAing is over!
Now, back to my own pile of responsibilities. O.o

I have to put together a research proposal, precursor to my doctoral thesis proposal, for fellowship funding applications I'm trying to get together ASAP. For a while now, I'd been meaning to post here an overview of my new research program but hadn't gotten around to it yet. So, what better opportunity than head-on-the-chopping-block to throw ( Read more... )

Conversation during staff meeting today took a bit of an ugly turn. This was my emailed follow-up:

Hey, .

For future reference, please note that your implied threat that the department might retaliate by refusing continued TAship opportunities if I helped a student with a documented disability file an appeal is in fact illegal to carry out and ( Read more... )

I fell asleep at the office by accident last night, violating the "Do not sleep at the office more than once a week" rule. I'd been messing with my hackjob Tesla coil and (after spraying rainbow iridescent fragments of zapped foil from a CD all over the room) was apparently too tired to finish the last bits of cleaning and packing up. Instead, ( Read more... )

Adobe has been subjecting us to quite the parade of zero-day security vulnerabilities, lately. Here are two steps I took not too long ago to reduce exposure, which I'd recommend to most everyone:

1. Disable Flash except for selected websites.
   
   Flash has become ubiquitous, yet the most common use is for displaying annoying animated ads. This doesn't ( Read more... )

Dead? In a coma? No! He's teaching undergrads!

Yeah, I'm TAing again. Couldn't get my act together enough over the summer to find no-strings-attached bridge funding (if such a thing could be found) and didn't make enough progress to sign a new advisor yet (assuming they even had money), so I had to dip into the pool of less-than-desirable options. I ( Read more... )

I am back in the land of drinking fountains, English, non-borked Internet service, and a busted-up bed to call my own. Yaaay. -_-
Also paranoid customs agents. And marginal public transit, at best. Oh well. c.c

Now, on to planning the rest of my life. O.o