New Digs

It seems that all four of the most regular contributors to this site have moved recently. After getting hired on permanently, I moved back in with my parents over the summer. I finally sold my house on the last day in July, but took a pretty brutal beating financially. That forced me to continue to rent in Myrtle Beach until I can afford to buy a new house.

The place I chose is a guest house, quite small compared with what I’m used to. It is about halfway between the school and the beach, and is right on the Intracoastal Waterway. A major advantage is that all utilities are included, and I can rent month-to-month. So as soon as I’m able to buy, I can move out immediately.

As you probably know, Hurricane Hanna is headed straight for the Georgia/South Carolina coast. I’ve only technically ever been through one hurricane. In 1989, Hugo hit the South Carolina coast and was still a hurricane when it hit our house 200 miles inland. Based on where my house is, I’ll be the first that will be forced to evacuate. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get a renter’s insurance policy.

Blog on the Run

It’s a brave new world. In the latest update to the iPhone, the ability was given to third parties to develop their own applications for the device. There are several killer apps, like I mentioned in the comments of the Pandora blog entry. Now: writing WordPress posts mobily. Hi from SC state road 8, aka Easley Highway!

The Summer of George*

Brian's "Summer of George"

After my first year (read: two semesters) of living in the real world, I still hadn’t sold the house I’d lived in while in grad school. So, to save money on rent, I moved back in with my parents for June and July. My biggest fear going into this arrangement, other than a loss of a great deal of privacy and independence, was the prospect of being unconscionably bored.

So far, it seems I needn’t have worried. Within two days, my father came down with what he estimates to be his fifteenth or sixteenth kidney stone. Less than a week later, a young woman driving an SUV rammed into my family’s office building. Shortly after, I came down with my first kidney stone. (Oddly, and forebodingly, my dad’s first was when he was twenty-nine.)

I’ve also been helping out with the family business, making bi-weekly trips to the county courthouse, driving by potential investment properties, and hours and hours of computer research. And let’s not forget what I actually get paid for: I’ve written most of the labs for my fall semester classes.

What happened to John?

Hi everyone. I’m still alive and life has been interesting. Ann and I bought a house that we’ll move into in August, but in the mean time we’re packing up and heading to an apartment in Chapel Hill. The lease on our rental house is up at the end of the month and the crummy owners wanted to get it on the market so as not to miss out on those oh-so-common July renters rather than give us an extension of less than a year.

In addition to that fun, I’ve been to both Huntsville and Jacksonville briefly and watched one of my EPA mentors head off for industry.

Finally, on Sunday night, as we were driving into RTP to get some paperwork for the next morning’s mortgage signing, we got caught in a freak rain storm that caused puddles to form on Martin Luther King Parkway (a newly built, divided four lane road). The first puddle was fine (I was going less than 20 MPH so we didn’t even hydroplane) but the second one was two to three feet deep and as we plunged in my engine cut out and still hasn’t restarted. The water was most of the way up the passenger door and we were stuck for a good fifteen minutes or so before the water drained and we could push the car off the road (with the welcome help of some samaritans).

Fortunately, Andy’s googling and Mary’s dashing rescue allowed us to get out of the lightning and retrieve the needed papers in time for the morning.  Unfortunately, I may have totaled my relatively new, unpaid-off car. Oh, why couldn’t we have hydroplaned over that puddle? (Feel free to discuss the physics of that, or lack thereof, in the comments section.) In the meantime I am driving a rental pick-up truck — you should have seen the rental agent’s draw drop when I asked for one — in order to help with moving. For some reason everyone wants a compact right now. All I know is I’ve already ordered my “W - The President” bumper sticker.

In the meantime, I have a great story on how two ball boys saved Michigan’s undefeated season in 1997 as well as a nominee for the blog roll:

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/

It’s like crack for anyone who likes graphs, statistics or politics (a triple-whammy for me). Also in the intersection of cool graphs and politics is Presidential Watch 08, which has great tools for plotting the political blogosphere as well as trends. Without these very impressive analyses, would we have ever been able to tell that Fox news leans Republican?

Finally, if you can show that playing Minesweeper is NP-complete, you can win a million dollars…

…and sometimes it rains

Just got back from my first visit to the new Nationals baseball stadium and, indeed, my first Nationals game. It felt like a good DC experience. I went with my family, took the Metro, and walked through a mob of ExxonMobil protesters to get to the stadium. (The seventh inning stretch is brought to you by… big oil. They wanted people to boo, and many did.) Playing on the oily theme, the Nats hosted Texas, George W’s former team and the erstwhile Washington Senators version 2.0, in an interleague game. We ate our $4.50 hot dogs and half-watched the game. Dmitri Young ended a rally by overrunning a base (he takes a while to get going and a while to stop, it would seem). And in the eighth, former Durham Bull and Questionable Character Elijah Dukes tied the game with a solo (this one’s for you, Joe) dong. Like good DC non-football sports fans we headed for the Metro as our team headed for extra innings. I listened to the ending at home on the radio; Dukes singled with the bases loaded in the bottom of the 14th to score the winning run.

I have to say it’s a pretty park, although the sight lines from the seats are, sadly, none too sightly. The area around it will improve, I’m sure, at which point it could be quite nice.

Primary Day in South Carolina

Tuesday was the non-Presidential primaries for South Carolina. In essence, at least in my parents’ area, it was an election. The main competition for offices in the state are between conservatives and ultra-conservatives. (Spoiler alert: the ultra-conservatives won!) This is in mild contrast to when I posted months ago from the far-eastern part of the state.

Probably the most relevant result to you is that SC Senator Lindsey Graham fended off an outside contender, which nearly guarantees another term in office if he’s not chosen as McCain’s Vice-Presidential choice. It’s odd, though, since Graham is generally considered a more moderate Republican (well, not moderate to you and me, gentle reader, but by my region’s standards). His opponent used such slogans as “vote out the traitor” and “put an end to Graham-nesty”, a jibe at Lindsey’s illegal immigration policy.

Also of note: former Bengals coach Sam Wyche, who is now a coordinator of a local high school team, won his bid to represent his county on the local council. And speaking of councils, my cousin Cindy won re-election to her seat on county council, even though she is a major polarizing figure in local politics. In just the past two weeks (leading up to the primary, go figure), she’s been ruled against by the State Supreme Court, been accused of libel, and been investigated for misappropriation of campaign funds. Her political opponents are among the most ruthless I’ve ever seen.

BBQ ‘em if you’ve got ‘em…

Today is Memorial Day, where we honor our military casualties by not working and (hopefully) barbecuing. For every Memorial Day weekend that I can remember my grandmother has traveled to her family’s old stomping grounds in Indiana to place flowers on the graves of all of her deceased family members, military or not.

For many of us, the day is more leisurely, and so I thought it would be worthwhile to recommend Chronotron — a time-themed distraction that I have found to be quite enjoyable. In the game you use a time machine to create multiple instances of yourself in order to solve a puzzle.

Ignore Always

I just sent off an e-mail containing the elegant construction “Oh no [pronoun] di’n't!” and was stopped by the spell checker. Now, I can only imagine the cringing you are doing reading that dead, beaten horse of a catch phrase, but when I was presented with the options of “Ignore,” “Ignore All,” or “Add” I had to think for a moment. After all, I’m pretty sure that “di’n't” is the clearest way of expressing the non-word I intended, so in the future I might want my spell-checker to recognize it. On the other hand, it’s absolutely not a word so I really can’t see adding it. Therefore, I suggest a feature for those of us with grammatical neuroses — “Ignore Always.” That way, we don’t have to validate a word in any way when the spell checker runs. Of course, not using such words is unthinkable…

Anyways, the news is reporting that

Carolina “Classic”

There are some things about North Carolina almost everyone knows, such as tobacco, basketball, and NASCAR. Then there are things that you only learn if you live here for a while; e.g. coleslaw is a condiment.

That’s right, any self-respecting North Carolinian restaurant serves a tiny cup of coleslaw on the side with every sandwich (and many other orders) so that you can put it on your sandwich if you care to. It actually works quite well because the cole slaw here is the best I’ve ever had: unlike its Midwestern brethren it contains only a bit of mayonnaise, and unlike the local barbecue it’s light on the vinegar.

Coleslaw features prominently in Carolina-style burgers, which also have chili, chopped onion, and mustard. Even Wendy’s has a fast-food version that is sold regionally. Apparently there is some sort of difference between coleslaw and “slaw,” but either way I find them to be delicious.

Another, more interesting North Carolina “quirk” has to do with how I’ve used quotation marks in these last two sentences.

Football in April

The blog has been quiet lately… too quiet.

It’s understandable. There are exams to be graded, weddings to be planned, and research papers to be written. I just realized I have seven different papers in various stages of completion (six of them are thankfully nearly done). I’ve been pretty stressed and the EPA is about the nicest, lowest stress research environment I can imagine. All the same, it’s time for distraction. Thus, I present the April football round-up:

First off, offensive lineman Justin Boren — whose right to do as he saw fit I defended not long ago — has indeed decided to transfer from Michigan to “the” Ohio State to play with his brother. I wish him well, but if he’s playing offensive line for this year’s match-up, I think we may see the OSU quarterback sacked a dozen times. A cocaine-fueled Jeff Smoker (who to his great credit has recovered) took that many sacks and still won the second-most-recent “Greatest Michigan-Michigan state game ever”