青い空 から！

Here I am again, out of the blue. It seems I only update when I need to procrastinate. Well, not really "need" so much as have an uncontrollable urge to do something other than what I'm supposed to do.
I bought my first actual digital camera! And like anyone else, the first pictures I took were of my cats :P I mean, seriously, what kind of cat-owner doesn't? Now you have to endure stories of my dearums.

Jet looks so forsaken. I've been away for so long now, I'm surprised he even remembers me.
But he still has an unrelenting urge to lick my toes.

And here's Jade, also quite mellow. She's kinda schitzo, actually. One minute she's all "loveme-loveme-loveme" and the next she thinks we're trying to kill her. She also utterly loathes Luna, which I can't understand for the life of me. He's a very sweet and passive cat; I don't have a pic of him yet though.


Then there's Jasper. I always knew he was mischievous, what with figuring out how to open doors and all, but then he really started acting up and spraying in the house. We've started letting him outside, and I think it's helped him calm down a bit. It's certainly helped him slim down.


And of course Felix is still around. Grumpy ol' coot.
I'm pretty sure he's the one who taught Jasper how to spray.

And now...

a random Green Lynx Spider that happened to be chillin' on the laundry yesterday.

Time to get back to work, I suppose. This weekend is the Heartland Conference in Kansas City where I will be presenting my summer research yet again. I'm still nervous

Good Karma

I probably used all mine up yesterday.

Arun, Kristine, Atsu and I decided to visit the Domain (an outdoor mall) by bus, but as luck would have it, we got off on the wrong stop. We ended up walking something like two miles in the hot sun before we arrived. It's a nice place; lots of fountains, ridiculously expensive stores, and of course a Starbucks and Borders (I bought an OK GO cd). Unfortunately, the closest bus stop for the ride home was a little under a mile away. Arun had a fast enough pace to make it there in time, but the rest of us were still on the other side of the street waiting to cross when the bus pulled up and turned down the road. He tried asking the bus driver to wait a minute, but as we were running up the street the bus pulled away, poor Arun throwing up his hands in futility.
Before we could even bemoan this new turn of bad luck, a minivan pulled up beside us, a mother and her teenage daughter. She asked (en español) if we needed a ride; Kristine is a native Spanish-speaker and was able to explain what happened, and the four of us piled into the back of the van with a round robin of "muchas gracias." She offered to take us all the way back to the university, granted that we could give directions; that ended up being something of an adventure as well, with a few wrong turns and missed exits before we pulled up next to the dorm. We then piled out, tired and sweaty but ever so grateful. Before they drove off, Katherine talked with her about how to find scholarships (she was looking into college for her daughter, I think). I wanted to offer gas money, but none of us was carrying cash; I kind of doubt she would have taken it anyway.
We went out to eat dinner later, and drank a toast to wonderfully kind ladies in minivans.
On the way back, we were stopped by a man who wanted "just a few minutes" of our time, which turned out to be something like fifteen and up, to talk about Jesus. Since none of us were rude enough to tell him to buzz off, he began lecturing at length about how we were awful people and deserved eternal damnation for being flawed, etc. In the midst of his proselytizing, a girl popped up and asked if we wanted free Red Bull. Eternal salvation? Meh. Free energy drinks? Hell yah! I do feel bad about ditching the guy's sermon (he's just trying to save people's souls and all), but not too bad, really.

Moral of the story: sometimes the point of enduring hardships and annoyances is to put you in the right place at the right time.

SO, I'm in Austin at UT for summer research. I've got tons of background reading to do for capacitors, batteries, and whatnot. Tomorrow we'll likely decide on what my specific work will be. In the meantime, I've got readings to do and safety training at the center today.
Mom came up to visit yesterday and we went to the Magic Mushroom Pizzaria. Food was great, and the atmosphere was... trippy?
On Saturday, I went with some of the other REU students to look around Austin. We visited the LBJ library and walked around a bit. We also went to Texas History Museum (Museum of Texas History?) which has a gianormous star sculpture in the front.
I was surprised at how much history I actually remembered. I suppose it's ingrained into us as children.

And then we fed squirrels.(Like this one needed feeding.)

It was awesome til they started swarming. Then it got a little scary.
I'll try not to lose any fingers while I'm here. Ta for now!

XP toolbar trouble; resolved

About a week ago, the taskbar at the bottom of my desktop stopped displaying tabs for any running programs. It was utterly random and bizarre, and I had no way to pull up minimized windows without [Alt-Tab]ing to them.

I didn't have time to fix this until today, but a quick google search led me to the answer I needed at MetaFilter. There I found a link to this site from which I downloaded the necessary fix. I double-clicked the file, the screen blanked to the background for a few seconds, and then everything was restored, including the capacity to see windows on the taskbar! The fix took all of five minutes to find and execute. Hooray, happy ending!

The garden is doing well. I need to fertilize stuff, but I'm tuckered out from scrubbing down the patio. Maybe tomorrow :P

Also, grades are in: all A's which is a relief considering I think I forgot a few assignments here and there.

Countdown to Austin, t-minus 15 days.

the abundance!

I turned around for a second and everything started flowering and/or sprouting food stuffs!

I have about 15 bean plants total across the garden. I had pretty good yields with them in the past, so maybe I'll have enough to barter eggs off the guy across the alley who keeps chickens in his yard. How agrarian!
Now here's a crop combo I'm really excited about:
tomatoes...
...and jalapeños.

There's also onions in the works, but they're rather un-photogenic seeing as how they're under ground and all. But now to the point.

Ultimate. Garden. Salsa.

The anticipation is killing me.

Flower Power

Attention ppl: please stop posting porn in the comments section -_-; I really did not need to see that.

Now, down to business. My brother, Philip the Magnificent, has begun gardening up in his New York apartment, and his success in rearing life in such an unforgiving land is inspiring. Do go visit him and send your accolades. Do not send him your porn.

Since spring starts right after autumn very early in the heart of San Antonio, I have something of a head start. I put seeds in the ground starting in February: beets, corn, spinach, carrots, green beans, squash, cucumbers, tomatoes, and probably a few that I'm forgetting. The strawberries were an utter disappointment; of the 10 bulbs only two came up, and neither is looking particularly berry-ful.

I have pictures from my camera phone, but let's face it, these beets might as well be swiss chard for all you can tell from the quality.


Most of my battles have been with weeds (especially those dreaded hackberry trees), but now the arthropods are coming into their prime. I've got some smashing rocks at the ready by the squash (aptly so) to take care of the Mexican bean beetles (or perhaps they're squash lady beetles. I can't really tell.) Dealing with the stink bugs of course is never pleasant, and the snails at one point were on the verge of wiping out all my black beans, though they seem to have retreated for now. On the plus side, there is a swarm of ladybugs (the regular, bug-eating kind) scouring the persimmon tree for prey.

Now it's a matter of maintaining and letting the plants do their thing. I'm eagerly awaiting the first harvest....

in like a LION >:3

Bet you thought I'd forget didn't you, my non-existent audience? Well, more or less I did. Between McNairs, homework, my neglected research and upcoming poster presentation at the ACS meeting, not to mention taxes/FAFSA, community service and my newest charge: the backyard garden; yeah, I'm a bit frazzled.
So here's a short post... which should probably have some content besides my lame excuses. How about this:You may be able to guess what I'm getting at from the picture alone. I'm not sure if it's been done before or if this is some geometry thing that everyone thought was too obvious to ever point out to me but:
Placing a certain number of points equidistant on a circle and then drawing lines from each point to the others generates a certain number of equilateral polygons with that same number of sides. Using an even number of points will generate the same number of polygons as the odd number before it. Example, five points generate two pentagons, six points also generates two of its corresponding polygons. This is because the number of N-sided polygons that can be made is directly proportional to how many *pairs* of lines can be drawn from each point (note, the paired lines are at equal angles).
Something else that's kinda interesting: when drawing all these lines, it becomes apparent that even numbers of points generate symmetric forms, while odds generate centered forms. Anyway, I thought it was spiffy.
I don't know if all this is completely true because I haven't proven/disproven it. Someone else probably has, but I'd like to try it on my own as I figured this out on my own. It'll probably require some sort of inductive proof... though it seems pretty intuitive, so maybe observation alone is enough?... or ya know I could just ask a professor. That's what they're there for, right? :P

Whew, not so short after all. OK, I'm done being a math nerd now. Hopefully Spring Break won't be completely used up with poster prep and I'll be able to relax. I'm starting to fall apart...

Time to stay up all night to finish my art project. 'night.