come sit on grampa's lap kids... it's eddie vedder on the tee-vee...

I was flipping channels tonight and I came across a Pearl Jam video...

On VH-1!!!

How the fuck old AM I??

geeky, but not geeky enough...

I decided today that I needed a working, modern TeX/LaTeX package on my Mac besides the one I used to write my thesis on 10 years ago. So I went hunting for OS X TeX environments, and every damned one I found, you need to be a fucking UNIX expert just to install the damned thing. I mean... I'm sorry... if I have to type "sudo sh INSTALL.sh" to install the program, and the configure all of the damned program files myself... it is NOT a Mac program!! It's a Unix program that you've tricked into running on the Mac kernal. Why has nobody written a self contained TeX frontend with a Mac OS installer? Just because I'm a physicist, I'm supposed to be some kind of Unix-head? Fuck THAT.

Anyway, I finally found a weird automated installer system called i-Installer (starting your program name with a repeated identical vowel... good thinking) which grabs all the pieces and supposably puts them where they belong.

We'll see.

the first glimmer of interest...

We've gotten a disappointingly small amount of traffic looking at the house, but today a woman came by who is really interested. She stayed chatting with my wife for an hour and a half. She's coming back on Monday with her husband.

Fingers crossed... it would be REALLY NICE not to have to pay two mortgages this summer.

ugh...

Headache.... weird, behind the face "I Don't Get These Kinds of Headaches" headache. Oh. Ow. Ow. All. Day. Advil... caffeine... Sudafed... nothing. Sleeping in... extra nap... nothing.

Fuck.

Please be gone tomorrow.

the big icky...

We went to New Orleans last weekend.. I never mentioned. I've decided I actively dislike New Orleans. It's dirty and gross and full of freaky people. And I hate Jazz. And Anne Rice is a real bitch.

The high point was almost getting killed on the way there. Fast lane... 3 lane highway... 70 mph... car to the right of us moves over on us... wife slams on brakes... loses control... fishtails left... fishtails right... crosses line...swings back... slides off road into grass... skids to stop.

Love those slow-motion I'm Going To Die moments, don't you?

We also nearly ran out of gas in Middle Of Fucking Nowhere, LA. Thirteen miles beyond "0" on the miles-to-go data center display thingy. Good to know, I guess.

Yeah. Anyway. Fun trip.

to publish...

One of the things I'm amassing in my little black notebook is a list of papers I have in my head that I want to get published. Of course before they get published, they have to get written. They are all quickie things - teaching ideas and essays - it's just a matter of taking the time to sit down and DO them and SUBMIT them. Here is a list of them. Why? I dunno... I've been reading a lot of "professional" weblogs lately, and maybe I feel like I don't talk enough about what I actually DO. (Bitching doesn't count.) Long-time readers... yell at me if I start to bore you with the sciency stuff.

Entropy is a Number: This one will go to The Physics Teacher. It's basically just an account of how I teach the idea of entropy to my students in a semi-mathematical way... somewhere deeper than "entropy is disorder" but not so deep as S = k ln(W).

Statistics and Thermodynamics: Basically turning the above paper inside out and making it an activity for math teachers on how to relate statistics to physics. To be submitted to the journalTeaching Statistics, naturally.

Byron's Darkness: I want to write up something on my use of Lord Byron's poem when I teach thermodynamics, but I don't know where to submit it. The Science Teacher is having an issue soon about science and literacy, but that's a HS pub, and I've never really done this with HS students.

The Scientist on Stage: I also want to write up something on my course about science plays and submit it to either The Science Teacher or The Journal of College Science Teaching. I sketched out a "brief essay" form of the paper the other day which I think would be a good approach if I can find the right place to send it.

Other Laws of Motion:One of the things I do when I teach Newton's Laws is have students evaluate the "Laws of Motion" of OTHER scientists... Aristotle, Huygens, Descartes... to see if they are up to snuff. They are so vague and poorly worded that it can be quite a challenge... and I think it's really good for students to see how much about physics REALLY SMART PEOPLE got WRONG. (It's not just you!) This would probably make a better conference presentation than paper. And I really need to do it again with my class in the fall before I draw any conclusions from it, so this one is a little more long-term.

I'm sure there are more ideas banging around up there, but those are the only ones that have made it into the little black book.

science rock...

I'm not even officially BACK at the college teaching gig, and already everybody wants a piece of me. I got an email the other day forwarded by my Dept. Chair from the guy who teaches music history, saying that the people from the Jazz program want a substantive science course for the music majors, and since I was coming back, would I be able to teach a "physics of music" class?

Would I? Would I? Try and STOP me!

And it wouldn't be just physics of music either... I'd include a fair amount of material on the physiological, psychological, and neurological aspects of hearing and musical perception. It would be a killer course, and I would teach the fuck out of it. I'd have the students bring their instruments to class. Jazz majors would learn Fourier analysis - hands on! IT WOULD BE AN INTERDISCIPLINARY UTOPIA!!

Ahem.

Anyway, I told them all yes - hopefully my department chair will agree with me that it's a useful class to have. I may teach it as soon as next Spring.

Rock and Roll...

ok, except for the french clowns...

As something of an antidote to the previous somewhat "manly" entry, I have a bit of a shameful confession to make.

Cirque de Soliel?

Love. It.

Can't get enough. Seriously. The wife has gone to bed early and the plan for tonight is Me, Bravo, and 2 hours of contortionists and juggling naked guys.

a rare sports entry...

You won't hear Dave blog about sports that often, so take note, and bear with me.

I saw some news story about some baseball team breaking a winning streak, and it occured to me to check the standings in the AL East, so I went over to mlb.com only to find that The Orioles are ahead of the YANKEES in the AL East. Ok, they aren't in first place, they are a game behind the Sox, but still... they are ahead of the fucking YANKEES and I can't even REMEMBER the last time they weren't 20 fucking games behind the Yankees.

Wouldn't it serve me right... after living for 6 years in NY and ignoring sports entirely, I had made the decision that, now that I was moving back, I was going to put aside my childhood alliances and become a Yankees fan... wouldn't it serve me right for the fucking O's to be in the running this season?? TAKE THAT, TRAITOR!!!

Not that I'm a huge baseball fan anyway, but... it's my home team, y'know? I saw Jim Palmer play his last game at Memorial Stadium. I saw Earl Weaver coach one of his last times. My high school band played the national anthem at a preseason game once. And I went through some phases... like the year I worked construction with may dad's company after high school... I paid attention to baseball just so I'd have something to talk to people about. And I mean attention, as in... listening to baseball games on the RADIO and having pitchers' ERA's memorized and shit. Yeah... ME... hard to believe, I know.

Anyway, the Orioles have sucked so bad for the last... hell... DECADE, that I haven't paid much attention, so I figured switching team loyalties would be no big deal. But... the YANKEES? God if my grandmother saw me in a Yankees cap she'll keel over dead right there.

So, now... I'm sorry for even considering it. I TAKE IT ALL BACK!! GO O's!!!

so, dave... what do you want to DO when you grow up...

I exchanged a few emails with the Department Chaair at my Old/New college yesterday. He wanted a list of my "planned professional activities". You see... I'm going to be up for a tenure review in only 3 years. Normally it's not for 6 years, but because of bureaucratic weirdness... they are considering my appointment a CONTINUATION of my old appointment - as if the past year away never happened. Which is cool for a number of reasons - not the least of which is that I'll be eligible for a sabbatical after only 3 years. But it also means I have to squeeze 6 years of "professional activity" into only 3 years of work.

And the thing is... I don't do much "Research". Ok... I don't do ANY research. Which is not such a bad thing, since most of the science faculty here don't. (Most scientists require things called LABS to do research, which we don't really have. I'm a theoretical physicist, so I can't really use that excuse!!) What that means is that I have to cobble together the things I DO do into something that looks like a coherent pattern of professional activity.

Anyway, while trying to think of what to blog this morning, it occured to me that people might find it of vague interest to hear about this stuff... so I'm essentially just pasting my reply to my department chair below.

1) Course Development: I think the physics part of our curriculum is going to fall together into something fairly stable in another year or so. But I'm looking to step outside of that and start developing more multidisciplinary courses in the history and philosophy of science both for the science students and for the University-wide curriculum. It's important to know how much this activity "counts for" - since it's what I see as my personal strength professionally, and the thing I most enjoy doing.

2) Materials Development / Books: I have more than a couple of projects brewing on this front. One is an annotated compilation of short readings from primary sources in the history of physics. Another is a book idea I've been kicking around with a former colleague of mine who currently teaches anthropology at Texas U. I have another project on the back burner with a philosopher I used to work with. (The topic is "String Theory and Plato".) I'm not necessarily setting my sights on being "published" in the short term, but rather having a couple of book-length projects well under way shortly.

3) Grants: I really need to get some solid experience with grantseeking, and my current goal is to have at least 1 proposal submitted every semester for the next few years. They will probably be smallish grants - not big NSF things - at least at first. The projects will focus on curriculum development and instructional technology.

4) Publications: I have at least 3 or 4 short papers and essays in various stages of completion that I need to write up and submit to journals like The Physics Teacher and The Science Teacher. (These are teaching-methods articles... not really "research" projects.) I'd also like to get to a conference a year to present a paper on physics teaching.

5) Instructional Technology: I have loads of ideas and possible projects on this front, although I found institutional maze of the university fairly impenetrable when it came to getting anything done in this area. I would like work towards assembling our own science "media suite", although the obvious question becomes - WHERE?? Some of my grantseeking will be in this direction, both internal and external. (For example, I have a plan to purchase a MacMini for the lab and iPods for all the faculty so you can all record your lectures like I do. For less than $2500 we could have a system where every science and math lecture gets recorded, and any student could come to the science lab and burn a CD with whatever lectures they needed.) I don't want to put too many eggs in the technology basket, because it involves a lot of things falling into place that I have no control over. But it's an area where I think our department needs to move forward.

6) OUTREACH: I'd like to stay involved in some science outreach stuff... whether that means public lectures, putting together a summer science camp, or just having astronomy nights with my wife's Girl Scout troop. I always try to have SOMETHING going on in that area.

Then there are the few things I've done already - The Play, for example. It doesn't really add up to much, though. I figure, realistically... I'll publish 2 papers... maybe get a grant... present at one conference...

It's a good thing I'm a damned good teacher, cuz I don't think this portfolio is going to impress anybody!

hit me...

I'm here are the coffee shop trying to get some work done. But in order to do that, I need to stop clicking on my Sitemeter every 5 minutes. You see, I've been the beneficiary of some good links this week. Monday, I got mentioned in an oblique sort of way by the always-feisty Bitch, Ph.D.. Then on Tuesday I left a comment on a blog that wound up as the top story on Google News for about 15 minutes. And then yesterday, an essay I wrote got picked up by the Tangled Bank biology-geekapalooza, earning me my highest single-day hit count EVER.

So for a few days I've got double my usual traffic, and while I should be taking advantage of that by writing something smart and clever and funny... all I can do is watch my stats and track my links and... it really makes me think I have some not-too-far-below-the-surface tendencies towards OCD.

Anyway, welcome new readers... I'll try to muster up something smart and clever... or at least non-self-referential and narcissistic... sometime soon. PLEASE STAY!!

music stuff...

I got my hands on Beck's latest album "Guero" and tossed it onto the iPod. I've only listened to it once, but it's sounds like it's going to be a keeper. It's very Beck-y in that way that only Beck can be. I found myself wondering what kind of great music Beck could make if he just shut off his GoofyHipster switch and made a NORMAL record, since he's clearly a gifted producer and writer of melodies, but really... what fun would that be?

Word of warning - never listen to a Beck album with a 6-year old in the car. They will ask you to explain the lyrics, and well...

Meanwhile... in "Independent Label Angry Chick named Amy Land" - I just found out that Amy Ray of the Indigo Girls just released a second solo CD last week. Must have. I'll wait a few weeks so I can order it along with Aimee Mann's new one, which is due out on May 3rd I think. Love her.

Mark it on your calendar! Dave PAYS for MUSIC!!

what's in a pope-name...?

Well, it looks like our new Pope is going to be Benedict XVI, which I have to admit is a pretty cool Pope Name. It got me wondering though... once you get to be a big-shot Cardinal - do you start dreaming about your Pope Name? Trying to pick the perfect, coolest one like teenage boys name their imaginary rock bands? Or doodling it in the corner of your notebook in big loopy letters like a lovesick 13-year-old girl does with her name and the last name of some unattainable boy?

Pope Honorius V... ... Papa... Honorius... the... FIFTH...

Or even worse... is one of the guys who was in the running for this election just FUMING now, going - "Dammit, I was going to choose Benedict XVI!!! Now I can't use Benedict XVII or I'll look like a copycat!! You SUCK Ratzinger!!"

dr.dave...

(PS... a special Dave Weblog News Scavenger Prize to the first reader who points me to the inevitable special interest follow-up story - "Who was Pope Benedict XV?")

always something...

The folks at the university have screwed up again... mixing up the History of Astronomy course I teach for advanced students with the General Introduction to Astronomy course I teach for the whole university. It happens every fucking semester. For fuck's sake... is it just because one course title has the word "Cosmos" in it and the other one "Cosmic"...? Is that too fucking confusing for administrators? Do I have no make sure none of my courses have any words in common in the future??

The good news is that my schedule for the Fall kicks ass... both classes on T/Th, one at 10:00, and one at 12:00. Yeah, it only gives me 20 minutes in between to grab a snack and make copies, but it means that some weeks I'll be able to get away with only coming into the city 3 days, and that I won't have to catch a fucking 5:00 AM train in the mornings.

I can't wait for the semester to start, actually... I wish I could just fast forward through the whole summer.

i'm quite sure Goddard didn't have to put up with this...

Launching model rockets with the kids at the park, Saturday... a summary...

Ten...
Nine...
Eight...
Seven...
Six...
Five...
I HAVE TO GO TO THE BATHROOM!!

Why do I ever take them out of the house?

death to america...!

I keep getting extra "attention" at the airport. It always happens the same way. They take my ID. They type on their little airport computer. They furrow their brows. They type some more. They pick up the phone and speak in muffled tones. Some other airport guy comes over. Sometimes he's wearing a vest. He types on the little airport computer. There is some muttering. And more typing. They eventually hand me my ID and boarding pass and say "You're all set!!"

(Except last time I flew alone, I was also handed an orange card, which indicated to the x-ray folks that I was to be all but strip-searched!)

I don’t complain much. The extra time doesn’t bother me. But I have been curious what the deal is. So, the last time I flew with my wife, she asked what the problem was. (Because she does that.) It turns out I'm on the airlines' "DO NOT BOARD" terrorist watchlist. Apparently there is a suspected terrorist using the alias "David Mylastname". Fun, huh? Thank god I only fly out of dinky southern airports anymore. At JFK, I'd probably be pulled aside and shipped off to Gitmo for "questioning".

So I just wanted to take an opportunity to give a shout out to all the fine men and women from The Department of Homeland Security who are no doubt monitoring my weblog! Great job you guys are doing on that whole War on Terr'rr! Keep it up! Nothing to see here! Move along!

the mystique of paper...

I took the kids to Barnes and Noble yesterday (nightmare!) and while they ran amok in the kid's section I wandered around looking at everything that was within audio/visual range. I was looking at the blank books and journals, when I came across one I just HAD to buy. It's the size of a paperback best-seller, with a soft black leather cover and quad-ruled pages. It's like a cross between a lab notebook and a Gideon Bible. I have no idea what I'm going to to with it. I just like holding it. And stroking it. And flipping the pages lovingly.

Because the thing is - I simply DO NOT use paper anymore. I do everything, everything, everything on the computer. The only thing I still use paper for is brainstorming things - like before I start a course or a paper or a script. But I can't imagine I'm going to ever brainstorm 300 pages worth of stuff.

So I'm setting aside pages for the following categories -

1) Publication Planning
2) Course Planning
3) Lecture Planning
4) To Do

Mostly I just want to be able to carry it around once the semester starts so I can walk up to the front of the class, turn on the laptop, throw down the journal and look all professory. Cuz that's really what it's all about.

TO: Blogger.com
FROM: Dr. Dave
DATE: A year or so ago...

Dear Blogger.com - I love your service. It makes it very easy to maintain my web log. It does exactly what I want, and no more. Please be sure to ADD LOTS AND LOTS OF NEW FEATURES UNTIL IT DOESN'T WORK ANYMORE!!!

Sincerely,

Dr. Dave

technical difficulties...

All of a sudden my webcam won't work with Yahoo IM, and I've reinstalled the drivers and reinstalled my chat client and deleted all of my preferences and THIS SHIT IS NOT SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN ON THE MAC, WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON??

God dammit.

dave's poetry month poem...

I've noticed a lot of people are posting poems to their weblogs because it's National Poetry Month, or something. Now the thing is... I really don’t like poetry much. Or rather, I guess I really don’t like much poetry. Either way... I certainly couldn't fill a month, or even a week, with "favorite" poems. But rather than let Poetry Month slip by - I'll present the one and only piece of poetry I use in my physics classes.

Darkness

By Lord Byron

I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;
Morn came and went--and came, and brought no day,
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolation; and all hearts
Were chill'd into a selfish prayer for light:
And they did live by watchfires--and the thrones,
The palaces of crowned kings--the huts,
The habitations of all things which dwell,
Were burnt for beacons; cities were consum'd
And men were gather'd round their blazing homes
To look once more into each other's face;
Happy were those who dwelt within the eye
Of the volcanos, and their mountain-torch:
A fearful hope was all the world contain'd;
Forests were set on fire--but hour by hour
They fell and faded--and the crackling trunks
Extinguish'd with a crash--and all was black.
The brows of men by the despairing light
Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits
The flashes fell upon them; some lay down
And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest
Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smil'd;
And others hurried to and fro, and fed
Their funeral piles with fuel, and look'd up
With mad disquietude on the dull sky,
The pall of a past world; and then again
With curses cast them down upon the dust,
And gnash'd their teeth and howl'd: the wild birds shriek'd
And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,
And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes
Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawl'd
And twin'd themselves among the multitude,
Hissing, but stingless--they were slain for food.
And War, which for a moment was no more,
Did glut himself again: a meal was bought
With blood, and each sate sullenly apart
Gorging himself in gloom: no love was left;
All earth was but one thought--and that was death
Immediate and inglorious; and the pang
Of famine fed upon all entrails--men
Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh;
The meagre by the meagre were devour'd,
Even dogs assail'd their masters, all save one,
And he was faithful to a corse, and kept
The birds and beasts and famish'd men at bay,
Till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead
Lur'd their lank jaws; himself sought out no food,
But with a piteous and perpetual moan,
And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand
Which answer'd not with a caress--he died.
The crowd was famish'd by degrees; but two
Of an enormous city did survive,
And they were enemies: they met beside
The dying embers of an altar-place
Where had been heap'd a mass of holy things
For an unholy usage; they rak'd up,
And shivering scrap'd with their cold skeleton hands
The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath
Blew for a little life, and made a flame
Which was a mockery; then they lifted up
Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld
Each other's aspects--saw, and shriek'd, and died--
Even of their mutual hideousness they died,
Unknowing who he was upon whose brow
Famine had written Fiend. The world was void,
The populous and the powerful was a lump,
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless--
A lump of death--a chaos of hard clay.
The rivers, lakes and ocean all stood still,
And nothing stirr'd within their silent depths;
Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,
And their masts fell down piecemeal: as they dropp'd
They slept on the abyss without a surge--
The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,
The moon, their mistress, had expir'd before;
The winds were wither'd in the stagnant air,
And the clouds perish'd; Darkness had no need
Of aid from them--She was the Universe.

Poetical content aside, it can be read as a fairly striking description of what we physicists call the "thermodynamic heat-death" of the universe. The kicker being that it was written some 50 years before the Second Law of Thermodynamics was ever coherently formulated, or before anyone ever dreamed up the concept of "entropy".

Sometimes the artsy-fartsy types beat us to the good stuff.

time to start paying more attention to those commercials, i guess...

I had a dream last night. I don't remember how it started, but I think we were on vacation somewhere. I went into a men's room, and stepped up to the urinal. Just as I started doing my thing, I noticed that the one next to me had a digital camera on top that someone had left there. (A Canon, I believe.) I picked it up and turned it on and started scrolling through the pictures. Some of the pictures had captions, so I thought they might help me figure out who the camera belonged to. One caption said - "Tim, your silly daughter Anna". Some pictures looked like the inside of my old school. There was a Tim who worked there, and I was trying to remember if he had a daughter named "Anna".

At this point I was having difficulty working the camera with one hand while I was still - you know - with the other. So I made an effort to "stop the flow" as it were, so I could briefly use both hands to use the camera. I was having only marginal success...

Just at that moment I woke up abruptly, with a sensation of... no... that isn't.... I didn't just.... noooo....

You see, a lesser man could have just blamed the wet spot on the cat. It was small enough. But since the next time the cat pees on the bed it will very likely earn her a one-way trip to the vet, I chose NOT to take the easy way out. No, instead I am here to declare to my wife and to all the world - My name is Dave. I'm 35. I have a Ph.D. And I wet the bed!!!

dr. dave

(PS - Hello readers, welcome to a new low in my weblog!!)

fuking doctor...?

Just a few weeks ago, I pulled the "no robots" tag from my template header, which means that now my weblog can show up in Google searches. The whole thing makes me jumpy, since I'm only *somewhat* careful about maintaining my anonymity, but it's fun to see what searches land people on your site. So far, most have been searches for interviews with Patrick Dempsey (alas, none for Patrick Duffy)... but I did get ONE hit for "WWW. FUKING DOCTOR.COM".

I love that. You have no idea. The misspellings, the spurious spaces in the URL...

Love. It.

Although it makes me think that I've probably misspelled "fucking" somewhere along the line. Have to go find that.

Please...s...s...s...s... God...d..d..d..d..d..d... Stop...p..p..p..p..p..p...

You may recall that the Little Guy was fairly non-verbal all the way until he turned two. Then he had an explosion of language right aruond his birthday, and started speaking full, clear sentences. Everything was fine up until a week ago when he started stuttering - just like that, all at once, one day he started. And now it's getting worse and worse and it is driving me fucking CRAZY!!!

And the weird thing is that he stutters the ENDS of words, not the beginning. Which I totally don't get. I mean - you're finished... move on already!

Anyway, when I'm in a crabby mood I just can't handle it. It makes me want to do all of the things that I KNOW you're not supposed to do to stutterers such as...

1) Finish their sentences for them.
2) Yell at them.
3) Make fun of them.

This had better be a short-lived phase, though because I just can NOT deal. It's like Chinese Water Torture talking to this kid now.

Besides - our kids are supposed to be PERFECT! Did someone not get the memo??

Fuck... (k... k... k... k... k...)

contract...

I got my contract in the mail today for my new(old) job. I managed to talk up the salary by $5000 over the initial offer, plus they are giving me a $1000 annual research stipend and $2500 towards moving expenses. I'll also be eligible for a semester paid sabbatical after only 3 years. Not a bad package really. Everything seems to have fallen into place.

I'll just take a moment to mention here, that as shitty as this whole experience has been with the Alabama job... I count myself as VERY fortunate to have landed on my feet so quickly. This whole thing could have been a hell of a lot worse. A few more months and it'll all be over, and I'll pretend none of it ever happened. And I will never leave a good teaching job again!!!!

(And to a certain reader - THERE, happy now?)

dilemmas...

We got our carpet cleaned today. It looks great, but my feet are wet, and that makes them cold, and I HATE having cold feet. I'd put on socks, but the only thing I hate worse tghan having cold feet is having wet socks.

I have a lot of problems folks, if you haven't figured that out by now.

we got it...

Our second offer on the big-but-not-charming house in NY was accepted. We negotiated the price down by $10,000, which we feel good about, but... fuck... is it pricey.

I think we'll be happy there. It cries out for "decorating". And we'll be too poor paying the mortgage to be able to finish the basement right away, but... in a few years it should be a nice house for us. And I think we'll like the village. I just hope our immediate neighbors are ok.

Now the only thing remaining is to sell THIS one. Carpet cleaners come tomorrow. Let the cleaning and packing begin!

sure-fire relaxation techniques...

One thing I negelected to mention about the house-hunting trip was the sheer EXHAUSTINGNESS of it. Just... thinking about one thing for 72 hours... it can make you CRAZY. I woke up at 3:00 AM the first night, and lie awake for two hours.

The only break we had from thinking about houses came courtesy of a fruitful combination of (2-for-one drink night at Chili's) and (wife-initiated hotel room porn). It led to where one would expect it to lead, but really... the whole "watching porn together" thing...? No. It's not a good thing. Because there is nothing LESS sexy than porn once you start deconstructing it, which... if you are us... you do. Which leads to mocking it. And then the whole thing just gets punctuated with comments like - "Oh my God! Did he just SPIT on her?!"

If nothing else, all the watching of the oral sex led to an appearance of the Actual Oral Sex. She must have been inspired by all of the technique on display.

So... there's the 2005 quota.

the latest thing...

Google has added a feature to their Google Maps site where you can click on "Satellite" and get a satellite image of a region instead of a map. Some regions aren't available at hi-res, but when they are... wow! The level of detail is amazing. You could spend a whole day just looking up every place you've ever lived and trying to spot your house.

People have started using the annotation feature on Flickr to make "memory maps" of their satellite photos. I just posted my first one. It's a fun way to reminisce. More will follow, I'm sure. Mouse over the squares to read the notes.

okay... maybe not SO much "fuck"...

The first day of house-hunting was QUITE depressing. The city we were looking in turned out to have NOTING in our price range except 100-year-old fally-down craphole houses in lovely neighborhoods, and lovely houses in fally-down craphole neighborhoods.

Ok. We did fall in love with ONE house. But it was one of those loves where you love someone even though you know they will be mean to you, and perhaps even abuse you, and you'll hope and hope that you can change them but really the whole relationship is just doomed from the start. But there was a barn. Oh! The barn! Three stalls and a second story that was just breathtaking. I pictured painting in that barn... I pictured myself as a liquored-up, chain-smoking, paint-flinging Jackson Pollack. I don’t even remember much about the house anymore. It was all about the barn.

We managed to talk ourselves out of it, but it was very, very difficult. So...

Day number two involved an emergency change of plans. With the aid of a friend-of a friend we changed focus and found a charming little village nearby with great schools and parks and walking-distance things. We snagged a new realtor and started looking at a new batch of houses. I fell in love with one house that was 100-years old and had a creek out back. But my wife vetoed it on account of a too-small-yard and a creepy dirt-floor basement that she was convinced had dead bodies buried in it. It was on such a cute street, though...

There was also one we dubbed the "Civil War House" which was built in 1850 and has, not a barn, but an actual carriage house out back! (The Jackson Pollack visions return...) There was a fire in the 70's that forced an update of most of the house systems (electric, etc...) and even though most of the floors are tilted at a 15º angle in various direction, the thing is well kept up and CUTE, CUTE, CUTE!! The Civil War House is still in the running, actually.

But, being the kind of people we are, we have our eyes on a brand-new, not-quite finished, 2-story modular home on a street full of old Victorians. It's about as stylish as a modular home can be, with bay windows in the front and a spindly-railed porch that doesn't look out-of-place in the neighborhood. The kicker... it is BIG. Fucking HUGELY big. As is, it would be 2400 square feet, and it has a full, dry, studded-out, easy-to-finish basement that would eventually give us 4 more LARGE rooms and a 3600 sq. foot house. A playroom, an office, a workshop, and my music studio back.

No, it's not charming, but it is bright and airy. No, it's not on a cute village street with sidewalks, but it is a quiet neighborhood with a few kids and a dead end road. No it's not on the side of the river where you can walk to everything, but it's a half mile away and still in the good school district. No it doesn't have a 100-year old barn or a carriage house, but it also won’t require $20,000 of renovation up front just to make it livable for us.

The only problem is that it is just out of our price range, and making the mortgage payments work for us will be a REAL trick. The wife handles all that stuff, and she thinks she can make it work if we go for an adjustable rather than fixed-rate mortgage. We're going to offer a little less and see what the builder says. He wants a quick sale, so that will help... if we come along pre-approved with no contingency and say - we can start working on a closing date as of May... we may get him to drop the price a bit. If not... we are seriously considering putting an offer on the Civil War House as a backup.

Anybody out there want to rent a loft in our carriage house?

update...

fuck...

fuck, fuck, fuck...

house hunting...

My wife and I leave in a few hours for NY. Please pray to the supernatural entity of your choosing that we fall in love with a house that doesn't suck. Also that our children don't kill their grandmother while we're away.

Updates are possible, but not likely.

Will return on Saturday

D.

monkey business...

A couple of readers have tried to tell me that Joe the Chimp was actually making an aggressive display towards me at the zoo the other day. I very much doubt it. Joe is a "retired" movie chimp, and while his expression might be interpreted as a "fear grimace" in a wild chimpanzee... i'm sure what we were seeing was a response that was trained. There was nothing in his manner or his body language towards us that suggested aggression. I wasn't kidding about the Jane Goodall comment. When you are 3 feet away from a chimpanzee, there is no mistaking that you are in the presence of an intelligent creature. This is not a cat or a dog... there is someone in there. It was very clear that he was "playing a game" with us.

Just wanted to clear that up so you people don't get the idea that I go around taunting imprisoned chimps for fun.

classical music appreciation with dave...

A quick review of last weekend's concert before we get down to business. Mozart piano concerto? Eh. Not impressed with the soloist. Beethoven's Third? Nice, but it's actually kinda hard to get into a symphony during rehearsal. They stop a lot. More than the last rehearsal.

Ok, now the real observation about the symphony - Concert violinists?? HOT!! I mean... god damn. And I'm not talking about SupermodelHot, like those slutty string quartet babes you see on TV sometimes... I mean, like... BookstoreChick sexy. You know those bookstore chicks with the BookstoreChick glasses and their long BookstoreChick skirts? Fuck.

But SymphonyChicks? God, it's like a BookstoreChick who can actually DO something!! How much cooler is that? All I know is, by the end of the fourth movement, I could have totally jumped that first chair violinist. If I didn't have my kid with me, I would have hung out at the backstage door like a freakin' Aerosmith groupie.

dave finds religion... almost...

Whilst surfing the web today, I spotted the following headline on Yahoo News...

Pope's Body Moved

"OH MY GOD!! IT'S A MIRACLE!!"

Oh, wait... that's probably not what that means at all.

What a difference transitive vs. intransitve makes.

dave tries to stay hip...

I mentioned that my wife and I watched the new hospital show "Grey's Anatomy" a couple of times. It's not bad, but it is very clearly aimed at a demographic 10 years younger than us, as all of the main characters live at home, have issues living up to their parents' expectations, and have sex with strangers. It also is very soundtrackey... and the soundtrack is very young and hip. The way I can tell is that I went to the show's website where they have a list of all the songs they played, and I have never heard of ANY of the artists.

So I've decided that I'm going to watch the show every week, and then download songs from all the artists featured on the show's soundtrack, thereby lending myself an air of youngness and hipness that lately has been sorely lacking. Example... we were up late Saturday, and SNL came on, and it was hosted by Topher Grace. And my wife said "Topher Grace?" and I piped up from the other room (in a fake Grampa Simpson voice) - "IS THAT THAT SPIDERMAN KID?!"

like abu graib, only with monkeys...

Yesterday we went to visit the local animal concentration camp zoo. What an awful place. It's way out of town in Trailer Park Land down a dirt road. There was a weird, sparse assortment of animals - most either housed in chain-link cages or in smallish fenced-in areas. Zebras rooming with donkeys. Six emus and an ostrich who are probaby destined to be someone's dinner someday. A bunch of depressed-looking retired circus tigers. A really sociopathic baboon. An arthritic cougar. A pair of agitated, pacing wolves.

The highlights, if you can call them that, were a Nilgai and a patagonian cavy neither of which I've ever seen before in a zoo. Also we got to play with a chimpanzee, which was fun. He was an adult male, and he was maybe 3 feet away from us behind 2 chainlink fences. He would stamp his foot, and then my son and I would stamp OUR feet and then he'd stamp his foot, and then we'd stamp OUR feet, and then he'd do that crazy-toothy-chimp-smile thing and nod his head vigorously, as if to say "Hey, fellow primate - that was a fun game". I felt just like Jane Goodall.

Anyway, the kids had fun and got to run around a lot. My wife and I found the whole thing a bit depressing, and I couldn't decide whether it made me want to donate money to the zoo or to PETA.

for god's sake, someone imdb "The Man from Atlantis" already...

We Tivo'd "Grey's Anatomy" last week. Last night we watched it. One of the first names to pop up in the creadits was "Patrick Dempsey"

DAVE: Patrick Dempsey?
WIFE: Oh, who is that? He was in that movie...
DAVE: Isn't Patrick Dempsey the guy from "Dallas"?
WIFE: No.
DAVE: Well, it was Patrick somebody...
WIFE: Patrick... Ewing!!
DAVE: No... JR Ewing. Patrick Ewing is a basketball player.
WIFE: Oh. Well Patrick Dempsey was in that movie...

Patrick DUFFY. Jesus. How fucking long did these conversations used to last before the Internet was invented?

movies...

Dave went to the movies last night, by himself, to see "Sin City". but the real show was before the movie actually started. Friday night... the place is crawling with 15 year olds dressed like... well... hookers. I don't mean skimpy, and I don't mean Britney Spears... I mean girls dressed like fucking Bangkok street whores. It's so appalling it's not even sexy. Plus... how do they not fucking freeze to death in a movie theatre?

When my daughter is 15 she is NEVER LEAVING THE HOUSE.

The movie was so-so. Visually it was amazing... stylish... audacious. But the comic book noir dialogue was often just... silly. I know... it's a comic book, but I draw the line at the non-ironic use of the word "dames". And Robert Rodriguez's occasional attempts at "humor" really did nothing for me. Still, worth seeing if only for the stylistic flair.

Today I'm taking my 6 year old to the dress rehearsal of the symphony. (How's that for a cultural 180º?) Beethoven's 3rd Symphony (Eroica) plus some Mozart piano concerto. We'll see if she lasts for the whole thing. Last time she didn't.

Oh, and to the guy I just left a nasty comment for. That was supposed to be "anonymous". Heh. No hard feelings, eh?!

Dr. Dave

random chat excerpts...

drscience: i just submitted a paper to Skeptic magazine!
dr_bitch: did you? heh. next stop - Curmudgeon Monthly
drscience: I could be featured in their swimsuit issue
dr_bitch: uhm...
drscience: although it would probably be more like the "Tattered Bathrobe Issue"
drscience: This month's feature -"HEY you kids!! Get off my lawn!!!"

a dr. dave™ brand opinion survey...

I need help deciding. When chatting with your webcam on, which is the preferred webcam location...?

a) Low, on your desk. (a.k.a. - DoubleChin Cam)

b) High, on top of your monitor. (a.k.a. - RecedingHairline Cam)

google plus...

So, unless it's an April Fool's joke... Gmail is upgrading their service from 1 gigabyte to 2 gigabytes of storage. Now I ask you... what am I supposed to DO with this space? Becuase I sure as hell don't have a gig of EMAIL on my computer. What the hell are these Gmail people mailing to each other? Am I supposed to use it like an online hard drive, and mail stuff to MYSELF that I want to have access to from anywhere? Because I bring my laptop everywhere. Why would I want to redownload stuff everytime I need it?

Am I missing something, or is Gmail just the SUV of free mail accounts - of course it doesn't NEED to be that big... it just IS!