Kravlor.com blogs

Blog migration...

Sat, 28 Aug 2010 03:14:22 -0500

It's time. More than time. Really, really more than time for me to migrate away from my old self-hosted blog.

I've given up, and am now hosting with Google/Blogger. See the new site at blog.kravlor.com.

Waking up on the Funny Side of Bed

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 07:27:04 -0500

Since my wife started her new job as a Assistant State Public Defender, we've been working on getting used to a much earlier schedule.

This has forced us to do several things, in the spirit of making the 5:30-5:45 AM wakeup period as automatic as possible, including:

Streamlining the bathroom
Adding new bathroom shelving
Reorganizing drawers in the bedroom
Pre-making coffee and tea (a lifesaver!)

Still, since we've been at it only for a week, we haven't quite gotten in the groove; I end up getting in her way taking showers, etc.

So, it was a little bit surprising to me when this morning my wife started laughing while the alarm clock was not-so-pleasantly waking us from peaceful slumber. It turns out she had a very elegant, parallel solution to the morning "bathroom problem."

Use the second bathroom.

It's really a shame that it took two people with advanced degrees in law and nuclear engineering a week to figure that one out. :)

You Know You're In Love When...

Tue, 13 Feb 2007 21:36:49 -0600

... you hear the following from your significant other:

"Well, if I go crazy, just give me a duck that quacks like a whale and put me in a padded room. I think I'd still love you."

The scary thing is, I've already heard the duck. It quacks like a whale.

You Know You're In Graduate School...

Thu, 04 May 2006 16:05:48 -0500

... when your pen runs out of ink as a result of working on the math for your magnetohydrodynamics final. :)

As a followup to my last post, there has been an amazing response at a blog set up to thank Colbert for his performance. With more than 45,000 comments (the vast majority compliments/thank yous) in less than a week -- and growing rapidly -- it would seem that his performance struck a resonance with the American people!

Two Losses (one real)

Mon, 06 Mar 2006 22:52:36 -0600

Today Kirby Puckett died following complications from a stroke. I remember going to Twins games as a kid and hearing the Metrodome roar when the announcer called his name. He was a role model to many Minnesotans, myself included. It's a shame for things to end this way.

... and although I probably shouldn't mention these in the same posting, Fox killed off Edgar Stiles (along with tons of other agents) (CTRL+SHIFT+F5!) on 24 tonight. (How could they release the nerve gas in the headquarters? Damn them!)

Ok, back to solving linearized magnetohydrodynamics. I've had my night of TV for the week. It's a shame when it brings bad news, real or otherwise.

my real blog

Fri, 23 Dec 2005 18:35:43 -0600

Here's the link to my livejournal...
http://www.livejournal.com/users/midgetsidekick/

Most of the entries are "Friends Only"...in other words if you have a livejournal account or create one and then post a response to one of my entries I can add you to my friends list and you can see all of my entries.

The Components, they are Gathered...

Wed, 07 Dec 2005 12:06:51 -0600

It's been a while, mainly because things have been going crazy at school and work. Despite working long hours (I am a grad student, after all) I have been able to devote some more time to my pet project at Pegasus -- the Plasma Control System.

Essentially, what we would like to do is to enable real-time detection and correction of plasma physics parameters such as plasma current, plasma position, shape, etc. By real-time, I mean "fast on a timescale relative to the discharge length." In Pegasus, for instance, we can only keep plasmas around for a few thousandths of a second; my first ballpark correction rate will be on the order of tens of millionths of a second. I'll be doing this with a state-of-the-art acquisition and control unit coupled with software based on that used on DIII-D, one of the major research facilities in fusion research.

My job has been to assemble the hardware, get the software components up and running, and then somehow turn this PCS into a working tool for Pegasus!

This summer, I was able to get the hardware up and running, which in and of itself involves a bit of geek factor -- an embedded Linux system (the digitizer), linked as a virtual PCI card in another Linux system, itself controlled by -- wait for it -- another Linux system! The software is written in bits and pieces of four programming languages I've found so far (C, IDL, stitched together with serious bash and csh scripting). On top of that, it interfaces with an independent data acquisition, storage, and retrieval solution, MDSplus, the de facto standard of the fusion community. (It works well, but is very poorly documented.) After I get that working, I just need to patch it into our existing bunch of independent LabView codes! (A programmers nightmare/delight, depending on your point of view.)

Recently I was able to get an MDSplus system up and running, so all the pieces are now on the proverbial table. Now I "only" need to get them to all talk to each other correctly, when not doing real plasma physics or finding vacuum leaks. :)

Thanksgiving was good -- lots of food, friends, and family. I'm looking forward to Christmas, however, since by then I'll be done with this semester! Since I've passed my qualifying exam, I only need to wrap up my courses before I start serious, in-depth research on my thesis, which will likely be coming from using the completed PCS system to study physics issues on Pegasus. The upside: only a year to go, entailing much lighter semesters than I've been pulling in the past while at UW-Madison.

Yes, it's a meme. It's still fun.

Thu, 24 Nov 2005 02:09:00 -0600

You scored as James Bond, Agent 007. James Bond is MI6's best agent, a suave, sophisticated super spy with charm, cunning, and a license's to kill. He doesn't care about rules or regulations and somewhat amoral. He does care about saving humanity though, as well as the beautiful women who fill his world. Bond has expensive tastes, a wide knowledge of many subjects, and his usually armed with a clever gadget and an appropriate one-liner.

James Bond, Agent 007

67%

William Wallace

67%

El Zorro

67%

Neo, the "One"

67%

Maximus

63%

Indiana Jones

63%

Captain Jack Sparrow

54%

The Terminator

50%

Batman, the Dark Knight

50%

The Amazing Spider-Man

50%

Lara Croft

42%

Which Action Hero Would You Be? v. 2.0
created with QuizFarm.com

Robertson: Yet Another Example of Hypocrisy

Tue, 23 Aug 2005 09:05:48 -0500

I thought that I was used to radical right-wing Christian conservatives going way off the deep end. Well, today I was unfortunately proved wrong again.

Pat Robertson, creator of the nationally televised "The 700 Club," has now publicly advocated that the United States assassinate Venezeulan President Hugo Chavez. The purported justification of the deliberate murder? He's "a dangerous enemy to our south, controlling a huge pool of oil, that could hurt us badly." The fact that he's chummy with our good friends the Cubans irks him too, I'm sure.

If Robertson was just another right-wing extremist, that'd be fine; I could just ignore his rants as hateful rage against one of the many groups of people he thinks will be going to Hell. The difference here is that we have a Christian minister advocating murder -- and then for the reason that he has *gasp* OIL!

Perhaps Robertson needs to be reminded of the Second Commandment: "Thou shalt not kill." Or perhaps the single most important Commandment imparted by Jesus: "Love your neighbor as you love yourself."

Hopefully remarks like these will cause Robertson's viewers who actually care about their faith and its implications to turn away from him. This type of behavior only serves to further drag the name of Christianity -- and all that it stands for -- through the mud.

Shining Goodness

Mon, 27 Jun 2005 00:00:00 -0500

Those of you that know me also know that I am a rather big fan of RPG's. My brother is too. It all got started with a rental (and later purchase) of Shining Force II. It's a strategic, turn based game which has spawned many imitators, e.g. Final Fantasy Tactics.

Well, tonight I close a chapter in the RPG nerdiness of my experience, just in time to start studying for my qualifier in August. Tonight I beat SFII on Ouch! difficulty. And it feels great! Let's just say that Zeon was tough. :)

[brag]To make things sweeter, the bonus fight also fell to my party. For those of us who don't remember, that's situated in the Ancient Tunnels between Grans Island and the Parmecian continent, reached after the endgame has played out by waiting ~5 mins on the "Fin" screen. The enemies: Zeon, King Galam, Odd Eye, Geshp, Red Baron, Cameela, Zalbard, the Chess King, Willard the Rat, Prism flowers, and a posessing ghost from the first battle. All at once. And on Ouch![/brag]

Premeditated War?

Wed, 11 May 2005 00:00:00 -0500

Now I may be preaching to the choir at this point, but regardless of what you think of our miserable failure of a President, an article I saw at CNN today raised my eyebrows.

Apparently there's evidence from Britain's MI6 that shows that the US was intent on invading Iraq and deposing Saddam Hussein well before Congress was briefed on the issue; moreover, the blatant lies of WMD as justification were being shored up by the Administration and their cronies in the intelligence community. Among the damning quotes:

"Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.

"The NSC had no patience with the U.N. route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action."

While I don't have my tinfoil hat on too tightly, if true (and the British haven't refuted its authenticity) you might want to ask your Congressional representatives to join in on the inquiry that is being presented to Bush to explain his actions.

Triumph!

Mon, 14 Feb 2005 00:00:00 -0600

I finished another marathon 26-odd hour relatavistic electrodynamics assignment (antennas, symmetric energy-momentum stress tensors, and relativstic radiation, oh my!) late this evening. (THANK YOU SIR, MAY I HAVE ANOTHER?? ;)) After finishing writing up the twelve pages of solid math (and 2 square inches of diagram on one problem), the my brain had a bit of a short-circuit, thinking along the following lines:

Finished! I can finally get around to enjoying my weekend!
(Checks watch -- quarter past midnight)
... oh... that was the weekend...

Let's just say that I'm already waiting for finals to start; it'll be very good to have Jackson done with forevermore. Until then, I'm coming to the conclusion that I have absolutely no social life on the weekends this semester.

And, by now it's Valentine's Day. I with you all a good one!