Action at a Distance

I'm sure all you folks from the Midwest are laughing your asses off about how we Washingtonians can't handle a bit of snow. I think it was Tim Kaine who referred to our snowstorm this past weekend as, "an April day in Chicago."


WE didn't get our mail delivered to-day, and it sounds like we're not the only ones.

From washingtonpost.com:

1:30 p.m. Postal service is delivering, sort of

The U.S. Postal Service has been making attempts to deliver mail throughout the region. But they, too, have been affected by the snow in unexpected ways. The post office in Vienna had to be evacuated when snow on the roof started to make its presence felt.

Fairfax County fire department spokesman Dan Schmidt said postal employees noticed the ceiling beginning to bulge at 200 Lawyers Road NW, just off Maple Street in downtown Vienna early Monday morning. The ceiling was "fluxing about four to five inches," and so the office was closed about 8 a.m., Schmidt said.

It was not clear when the Vienna post office would reopen.
--Tom Jackman


The Washington Post is also running an online poll to name this next snowstorm scheduled to start to-morrow (for the last one, Snowmageddon seems to have beat out Snowpocalypse). The leading candidate right now is Snoverkill.

Wow. Just wow.

I. Am. Married.

So I've done a fair amount of traveling over the last few years. Flying to Austin to visit Jen, flying home for the breaks, flying to various cities to check out grad schools... I thought I knew the system pretty well.

Specifically, at BWI, I have *NEVER* had a problem getting through security. Between the TWO most convenient checkpoints, the longest it's ever taken me to get through has been about 25 minutes.

So to-day, when people kept INSISTING that I needed to be at BWI a full TWO HOURS before my flight, I told them they were crazy. "It's the last day of the holiday break," they said, but I ALWAYS travel on such days, and I've NEVER had a problem. Still, I decided to listen to them (thank God), and ended up getting to the airport a full 2 1/2 hours before my flight's scheduled time of departure.

And boy am I glad I listened, because WHAT A NIGHTMARE it was! The lines were short, orderly and well-run, and it took me a good TWELVE MINUTES to get though (I was delayed when they got confused about my laser pointer).

TWELVE WHOLE MINUTES!! To get though AIRPORT SECURITY?!? What has our world come to? Well, I wasn't going to stand for that kind of efficiency, and I was glad to find a conveniently-located feedback kiosk that was set up with a short survey so I could give these TSA goons a piece of my mind. It made me feel so much better to be able to tell these people what an incredible job they do (I mean, how do they sleep at night? The bastards).


So an inauspicious start to my trip, to say the least, but I'll attempt to put this indignity behind me.

Oh yeah, I'm going to Chicago (Evanston, actually) for a Nonlinear Dynamics conference. I'm presenting a poster.

I was in a store last night, and when I went up to the register, the woman at the counter said, "I bet you're from New York." Not sure if that's because of my semetic good looks or something else--I certainly do not have a New York accent--but I said, in a somewhat affronted tone, "Uh, no. I'm from Silver Spring."

AND PROUD OF IT!

In other news, Jen got her security clearance (woohoo!) and started the morning shift this morning. That meant leaving the apt by 5:30am, getting to the Metro by 6, and getting to Federal Triangle by 6:45. I went with her this morning to show my solidarity. The timing didn't work out exactly right, but we're experimenting. It's the first time since she's started the job that Jen's left before it was light out, and, I gotta say, it was really beautiful coming out of the Metro tunnel on the way back to College Park with the first rays of sunshine shining on a frozen creek outside West Hyattsville. The first snow of the season doesn't appear to have disrupted the roadways, but it sure has added some wintertime beauty to the area.

Courtesy of Allstu (I'm gonna miss it when I no longer get them):

Man throws shoe at Iraqi shoe-thrower

The highlight: "Zaidi's brother, Maithan, then chased the attacker and threw a shoe at him as he left the room."

In describing the story to Jen: "Someone threw a shoe at the guy who threw a shoe at the guy who threw a shoe at Bush."


Completely unrelated: I Love You Man is an awesome movie and is officially the first Netflix movie Jen and I have successfully watched together since we moved in together. Actually, that's kind of sad, considering we moved in together in June.

It was just pure unadulterated awesome.

I can't decide whether the crowning moment was when John Darnielle joined the opening act to perform "Alpha Omega," a song so deep into his back catalog, I hadn't heard of it (Jen, of course, had, but she's a bit more l33t than I am about these matters), or whether it was when he chewed out an obnoxious guy in the audience for requesting "Free Bird," or maybe it was when the ENTIRE AUDIENCE was singing along to "Love Love Love," or when he decided to play an extra song (before the encore), because, in his words, "I'm not ready to go."

( However, I can definitely identify the LOW POINT for me: I am so incredibly over "This Year." )

Not sure how many of you out there watch Castle (you should, by the way, because it's AWESOME), but last night was their Halloween episode. As the episode opens, the protagonist, novelist Richard Castle (Nathan Fillion) is trying on a Halloween costume--suspenders, revolvers... brown coat. He comes out of his bedroom to a bewildered look on his daughter's face.

"What are you supposed to be?"
"A space cowboy."
"There are no cows in space. Besides, didn't you wear that, like, five years ago? It's time to move on."

 I've never been to a webcomics expo before. I've been to a BRIDAL expo and a PHYSICS expo, and I've wanted to go to a webcomics one for a while, but I've never had the chance.

Now I get to! The Small Press Expo is being held this weekend in Bethesda, right outside White Flint station, which is super-easy for me to get to (straight shot on the C8). It's really exciting--I've been reading a lot of the exhibitors for years, and now I get to actually "meet" them.

My must-see list is as follows:

Kate Beaton of history-themed awesomeness
John Campbell of Pictures for Sad Children
Joe Comeau and Emily Horne of A Softer World
Aaron Diaz of Dresden Codak
Jeph Jacques of Questionable Content (will probably skip if too crowded)
Jon Rosenberg of Goats (my first and favorite webcomic)

In other webcomics-related stuff, after the LJ-RSS-feed glitch of last week, I've switched all my webcomics over to Google Reader. At first, I thought it would mean that I'd never check my LJ any more and thus miss out on all the updates from my actual friends. In actuality, I'm checking my LJ almost as much, and now that there's no webcomics on the page, I actually NOTICE my friends' entries. 

 So, my responsibilities right now are the following:

Prof: "How many of you were math majors as undergrads?"
(several hands go up)
Prof: "Shit."

---


Prof: "Some notational issues:"
(writes on the board) 1 = -1 = sqrt(2) = pi = e
Prof: "But with my handwriting, you won't be able to tell them apart, anyway."

---

Prof: "If the order of differentiation matters, it's called the math department."



It kinda sucks that I've got 2-3 hours of back-to-back physics Monday, Wednesday and Friday (with 1.5 hours of physics Tuesday/Thursday) but at least I'll always be done by noon.

Got an email this morning from a fellow Kenyon physics major.


"Hey Everyone,

I hope you're all beginning to settle in to your post-Kenyon
endeavors. I wanted to share with you a small story from this summer
that I though you might appreciate. I was scrolling through the guide
menu on my TV looking for shows on one evening not too long ago, when
I came across a peculiar name for a show. I saw a half hour segment of
"Gilad's Bodies in Motion." I though to myself, "self this is strange.
This would be the perfect title for one of Gili's 140 review
sessions." I went ahead and went to the channel and looked at the show
description only to be disappointed to find that bodies in motion were
in fact human bodies not point particles to model projectiles. It
turns out this was a fitness channel. The point of this story is
two-fold. 1) Should physics not work out for Gili he'll always have
personal training as a second option. 2) Should physics work out for
Gili, he'll need to be careful not to title a course "Gilad's Bodies
in Motion" for copyright reasons.


Take care everyone, and good luck,"

I just finished The Eyre Affair, which is officially the first novel I have read--to completion--for pleasure in quite some time.

Very much enjoyed it; I've started on the sequel.

I used to be such an avid reader as a kid; it upsets me that I haven't been reading more. I hope this is just the beginning of my return to bibliophilia.

Jen's PODS unit arrived yesterday, filled with most of her stuff, including 47 boxes of books, five bookshelves, a king-sized mattress and a loom. The job of unloading the unit fell on me, Jen and Jen's parents. To make matters worse, there's no adequate parking by our apartment building, so the pod was parked waay over at the other end of the complex, so moving in her stuff was a two step process: move it from the pod to Jen's car and her parents' minivan, then unload the cars and bring the stuff up to our third-floor apartment.

Jen's father and I, being the two manly men of the party, were tasked with the moving of the large furniture; I can't decide which was harder, the mattress or the loom, but pictures of the former will probably be posted to our Facebook in the coming days.

We started unloading at around noon and weren't finished until 9pm. But we got it all done, and that's pretty phenomenal.

Can't say it was fun, but it was all worth it to be able to sleep on a REAL BED and be able to permanently put away our air mattresses, and while my legs were killing me last night, I woke up this morning feeling strangely fine. No aching muscles, no weariness... Hey, I'm not complaining.

 

So here's the deal: Jen and I decided to go with Verizon DSL instead of Comcast, the premise being that we were gonna cut down on the evil factor. So we purchased it two weeks ago Thursday, they said it'd be activated in 1-7 days, which meant there was a decent chance it would be online by the time I moved in the following Sunday.

I get there, and there's a UPS slip that said we missed delivery of the router. Fine, okay. My parents have to take me to the UPS shipping depot in Laurel to pick it up (since there's no guarantee I would have been home for the second or third attempts). So on Tuesday I get the router, set it up... and discover my service hasn't been activated yet, and, in fact, it WON'T be activated until... Thursday.

Fine, okay. So I got unlucky with the whole 1-7 days thing. Thursday rolls around, it's STILL not activated. I call Verizon, they say there's some sort of problem with my service, and they'll get back to me. Friday rolls around, I call them back (they never actually got back to me), and they said, "Oh, nonono. It should all be good." I insist that it's NOT, they tell me they'll get back to me and might have to send out a repair tech on Monday (to-day). I'm grumpy, but what can I do?

I call them back later in the day on Friday to check in. They say the problem isn't on their end, and they'll need to send out a tech after all. I ask them on what time Monday should I be expecting the tech, and they tell me that, oh no, the tech won't be arriving 'till TUESDAY (to-morrow)!

This is absolutely WONDERFUL, considering JEN IS MOVING IN TO-MORROW!! So in addition to all the stress of moving her stuff in, we're ALSO gonna have to worry about a Verizon guy who will be coming "some time before 7pm."

But the bottom line is, it's been a WEEK since I moved in, and whenever I'm in my apartment, I don't have internet. Luckily, my University of Maryland network account is up-and-running, so I can use internet while at the office, but, considering my "work" right now is teaching myself all about Lyapunov Exponents, if I had INTERNET, I could be DOING IT FROM HOME!!! Plus, it's been a bunch of lonely nights, what without the comfort of Google LiveJournal and Washingtonpost.com (on the plus side, I have managed to get Wikipedia Offline)

For years, my pseudonym / screen name / etc. has been Antar (as in, the name of this blog).

After doing a Wikipedia search on the name, I feel I should make it abundantly clear:

The name comes from Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's Symphony No. 2 "Antar", which melodically chronicles the tale of the great 6th century Arabic Warrior-Poet Antarah ibn Shaddad.

It IN NO WAY references the home planet of the main characters from the 1999-2002 teen drama Roswell and associated young adult novels.

I think I need to go take a shower....

Wow, this is gonna be weird: I'm done traveling for the forseeable future.

No more flights to Austin or back and forth to Gambier.

My home, my work, my school and my fiancee* are now all in the same place.

That is kind of crazy.

*Technically, fiancee arrives in a week-and-a-half...

http://wonkette.com/408962/fox-news-asks-commenters-to-write-funny-questions-they-would-ask-obama

although, to me, this isn't NEARLY as bad as:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/22/AR2009052200793.html

Say what you will about liberals--they don't make racist comments and ban conservative organizations.