ARAMARK Giveth, ARAMARK Taketh Away

Today was a melancholy day at the MD Anderson cafeteria. The best item on the menu, the Big Time Burrito, is being served for the last time. ARAMARK has taken over the dining services here, and tomorrow they begin remodeling the cafeteria, which brings with it a new menu.

I can't stay too bitter at ARAMARK--back at Trinity, I ate at their burrito station quite often, and it was there that I met one of my closest friends. And for that reason, I can't get annoyed over burritos.

The Most Outrageous Thing Since Lunatics Unleashed

I'm sitting here writing a presentation and watching I love the 80s: 3D, which is also a form of dragging your fond (kinda) childhood memories being dragged through the mud, when I found a link to this:

http://www.cbc.ca/story/arts/national/2005/10/26/Arts/muppet_show_051026.html

I hate ambiguity

For the last several days I have dwelt in a state of ambiguity.

Was I exhausted? That would explain the weakness and sleeping for over 12 hours per day over the weekend.

Was I sick? That would explain the chills.

My current theory is that in my physically weakened state, I got sick.

Not that it matters, I still have to finish this abstract...

I am going to spend much of the rest of my life disliking October, for that is when I shall be suffering over the ISMRM abstracts.

I was cheering for the other guy...

Cool little rat kicks scientist's rear.

I liked the story until the ending. But the real question is: who the heck thought penguin meat was an appropriate bait...?

Thanks to Griffin for the link...

Sillyness Compounded

Today, for the first time, I saw "This Page Intentionally Left Blank" in a pdf.

I know that such things are useful in printing, no matter how self-negating they may be, but online...?

(No, it wasn't a scan of something, but there is a paper version of the document)

Halloween Costumes, Part 2

So I volunteered to be part of my church's "Trunk or Treat" in a couple of weeks.

Part of this, the part I did not think through, was that we are expected to decorate our cars.

If anybody has ideas, let me know...

The Netflix Rush

So last year I became a fan of the TV show Veronica Mars, except that I missed a couple of shows in the middle of the season when the plot was beginning to be revealed.

So I kinda gave up on it.

Now, because I heard that they revealed the identity of the killer in the season finale I have hesitated to watch the new episodes. They are all lingering on VHS in my apartment. Right now I am rigging my Netflix queue to get all 6 discs of season 1 to me as soon as possible--it came out on Tuesday.

Luckily, I got the first disc sent to me today. If I can keep my return rate high enough that I can keep ahead of everyone else who is watching the series in order, but not high enough I suffer from Netflix "throttling", I think I can start watching the new episodes in a couple of weeks.

This raises 2 questions:
1. Wouldn't spending the money on a Tivo be a much more efficient use of my time, and
2. Is this post sufficient, by itself, to diagnose me with obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Halloween Costumes

One of my officemates was is looking for paired Halloween costumes for her and her hubbie. Her are the suggestions my office came up with:

Pirates
An electron and a proton
The Curies
Romeo and Juliet
Ghosts
The ghosts of Romeo and Juliet
Each other (dismissed because it would probably end in divorce)
Liu Bui and Guan Yu
An obelisk and an ape
A ying and a yang
Thing 1 and Thing 2

The Evolution of Source Code

For my research I've started to delve into the source code that the MR scanners use.

Since a new version of the operating system for the scanners came out, I have had to do a bit of updating of source code for some of the in-house modified programs we use. These varients generally keep the original source comments. One of my favorite changes is that, without modification of the code, several uses of "this is a kludge" have vanished.

I'm guessing someone got a little sensitive :-)

Dustin Makes History

I am pretty sure that I am now the first person in history to operate an MR scanner while watching The Muppet Show.

I figure that there is a right way and a wrong way to work on the weekend, and I have a laptop with a high quality monitor for a reason.

And even if someone else beat me to that distinction, surely they weren't imaging a trashcan...

Musing on the grad school salary

I'm watching The Apprentice tonight.

This is the second consecutive week where the project manager has blatantly ignored The Donald's advice on who to bring into the boardroom.

This is sorta like a grad student repeatedly ignoring his advisor's instructions and doing something silly, like measuring radiation dose to a baseketball. Even The Nameless Lady of the Torus had better sense than that.

Why do these people make over 5 times as much as I do?

My New Socioeconomic Class

Today I filled out an online survey for Physics Today, asking about the reader demographic.

I actually was not in the lowest income bracket. I feel oddly satisfied...

Closet Physicist in the Sports Section?

Headline on Yahoo! news earlier today:

"Torre always feels pressure to win"

Of course Torre feels pressure, that's the definition of the unit.