Feeling at home in the corn

Beautiful fall day at Erwin Orchards.

Too much GM?

Above: normal corn. Below: scary corn.

When you see a booger, think of me

fillip |ˈfiləp|

noun

1 something that acts as a stimulus or boost to an activity : the halving of the automobile tax would provide a fillip to sales.

2 archaic a movement made by bending the last joint of a finger against the thumb and suddenly releasing it; a flick of the finger : the Prince, by a fillip, made some of the wine fly in Oglethorpe's face.

• a slight smart stroke or tap given in such a way : she began to give him dainty fillips on the nose with a soft forepaw.

verb ( -liped |ˈfɪl1pt|, -liping |ˈfɪl1pɪŋ|) [ trans. ] archaic

propel (a small object) with a flick of the finger : our aforesaid merchant filliped a nut sharply against his bullying giant.

• strike (someone or something) slightly and smartly : he filliped him over the nose.

• stimulate or urge (someone or something) : pour, that the draught may fillip my remembrance.

ORIGIN late Middle English (in the sense [make a fillip with the fingers] ): symbolic; compare with flick , flip ¹ .

Obsequious

Hilarious signs adorn a certain asian all-you-can-eat buffet restaurant chain (this particular one in Chicago). In addition to asking people to “take a respectable amount of food per visit,” the clincher was this one posted below a wall-mounted TV: “… will not be held responsible or liable for any and all damages that might occur due to customer’s carelessness or curiosity.”

I’d call that a big break

Last week during the end credits of The Simpsons, this great a capella version of the theme song was featured. This one’s for Kristin, who is some kinda a capella fan, and to whom I owe a lot.

So wrong

Saw this at the grocery. The (Da’) bunny is wearing a beanie, hoodie, saggy pants, a gold chain, and totally flashing the horns.

Occupational hazards

This is in the lab where I work. What is wrong with this picture? Hint: it is a beaker labeled “Aluminum Etch”, and it’s covered with … aluminum foil.

Clearly, British humour is more ingrained than I thought

New York Times Article

Christmas time

Dogs have to be trained to do that?

TMI

Today, on the Performance Today broadcast, was an odd little explanation of how a certain conductor gets ready for a performance. It’s all normal-sounding until the part where he dwells on the details of his “rest” phase.

If you want something done right, do it yourself

There has been a long standing bug that causes EyeTV to crash OS X when piping out digital audio. Due to much finger pointing, no one has done anything about it for years. Seriously, kernel panics in this day and age? Errors in the bitstream, originating at the TV station, aside, I’m going to try running a script in the background to stop playback a few seconds before the ill-inducing recording start or stop events. It hasn’t been tested yet, but it goes a little something like this:

on idle
   set interval to 3 * 60
   try
      tell application "EyeTV"
         set now to current date
         set next to now + 60 * 60 * 24
         repeat with UID in (get unique ID of every program)
            set test to get (start time of program id UID) - interval
            if test < next and test > now then set next to test
            set test to (get start time of program id UID) + (get duration of program id UID) + interval
            if test < next and test > now then set next to test
         end repeat
         set next to next - (current date) - 5
         if next < 600 then
            delay next
            stop
         end if
      end tell
   end try
   return 600
end idle

Eureka

Today at Meijer, for the first time, I finally found yellow sweet potatoes! Most sweet potatoes in the US are orange, so this is very exciting. See, Asian people are obsessed with yellow sweet potatoes because Asians are yellow. And white people like orange ones because they are orange (well, at least in places like sun-drenched Florida). Hahaha, I kid, I kid; actually, they are all the same species, ipomoea batatas. People are all the same species too. Isn’t that a nice thought?

It must be all the … other grad students …

Camaraderie

A few days ago, our personnel manager (“HR”) sent out an email about the annual department picnic, with a link to photos from this past summer’s picnic. In them, I counted many happy staff and their families, and two professors from my division (out of over 20). Probably no more than half a dozen professors or grad students from the entire department. Today, HKN held a student-faculty mixer in the atrium, with tons of free food. Several dozen students came and went, and maybe two professors showed up. Our department has over 90 professors.

Now, I’ll admit that I didn’t go to the picnic, and I was holding office hours during the mixer (in the atrium, alongside everything, however!), but what does this say about our department? Or am I just being naïve?

Just the facts, ma’am.

Okay, so apparently this was because of some miscommunication about the date of the mixer event. In reality, the mixer was redone, and this time, some friendly faculty came by. Yay!

Shhhhhh!

I was walking through the parking lot, and some dude totally snuck up on me in his hybrid. His tire flex sounded like a car maybe 50 feet away, but when I turned around to look, he was right there! Seriously, like within arms length. If I hadn't moved, he would literally have been riding my ass. I think this guy was completely oblivious to it too.

We hope it was just seafood

Somewhere in my department, there lurks a stinky-fridge bomber. His weapon of choice:

At least I have an excuse to go to REI!

If you lost this at the side of Ellsworth Rd., my bike tire and I would like to have a word with you.

Smokin!

My car had been whining for three weeks. I finally tracked it down to an idler pulley ($47) and the alternator ($220). Well, start small, right? After replacing the idler pulley the noise went away, mostly. It became quieter and quieter, until three days later, it went away completely. Yay?

Two days later, I was at the dealer returning extra parts. When I started my car to leave, it cranked dangerously slowly. At this point, I had three options:

1) Leave the car at the dealer and tell them to fix it.
2) Try to make it home, since it’s just two miles away.
3) Just keep going to campus, six miles away in stop-and-go traffic.

Well, what self-respecting enginerd would pick choice 1? And what’s life without a little adventure, right?

On the way, the transmission disengages, the anti-lock brake controller gives up, and the fuel pump thinks there’s no gas. Rev the engine! Electrical power comes back, good. Slight burning smell, hmm. Whining comes back, ugh. It’s no longer a polite little “you might want to think about buying a new alternator,” whine, but more like a “NOW YOU’VE DONE IT!” death-whine. Well, I am beyond the point of no return now, and the revving thing seems to be working. Keep on truckin!

One mile from campus, my car dies, completely. Since there’s no electricity, I have no brake lights, I can’t turn on my hazard lights, I can’t even roll down the power window to wave my arm. Now several people think asians with Iowa plates are slow-ass drivers. Luckily I can coast down a gentle hill to the defunct Pfizer driveway. Only enough vacuum left for one brake; better make it count.

I try to jump my battery. But it becomes clear enough that my (once again silent) alternator has not only stopped helping, but developed a short circuit. Smoking alternator. Hot jumper cables. Dead in the water. Time to wait for a tow truck, while Pfizer security (I guess they must be lonely these days) keeps driving by giving me the evil eye.

One weekend of waiting for Mr. UPS, and a couple of filthy hands later, everything is back to normal. A happy car with no more whine (for real this time). Burnt alternator windings are smelly. New alternator cases are shiny!

Can I use it to brush my teeth?

This time, in the cleaning supplies aisle. It was bound to happen sooner or later. These look confusingly similar: