Today I met my composition professor and got an overview of some of the duties I'll have as a research assistant. Dr. Wingate will be creating a brand new electro-acoustic studio of sorts, since the school hasn't had one since the 70s. My duties will be to help in the planning and setting up of the studio this semester, and then tweaking and running it once it opens. I may also teach classes on the software (once I learn it myself, of course), and do general purpose web development and graphical work for the studio, which could ostensibly have international importance. The entire affair sounds very interesting, especially since I haven't done much with combining my two areas of study in the past.

I've always been extremely cautious with the idea of mixing technology with music, simply because there are far too many examples of people using technology because they can, and not because it's a good idea. At Virginia Tech, the morbid fascination with technology often overshadowed basic musical ideas (in my opinion). If the money used to buy worthless laptops and outdated computer lab equipment had been directed towards decent facilities, instruments, and more accompanists, the department would have leapt in credibility overnight. Luckily this project seems to be a healthy extension of basic musicality, rather than a technological wrapper which only muddies the musical waters.

This weekend, I think I'll explore Tallahassee a little more and search out the hidden bookstore north of the city which seems to be the exclusive seller of all my course books.

I've added a new subsection to the URI! Domain: The artwork of Mike's Apartment. Since last fall, people have been painting and creating artwork which gets hung throughout Mike's Apartment. Now, all the projects to date have been added to the Artwork page with space for the artist to explain why it's excellent or horrible. I don't remember all of the creators or titles, so please send me an e-mail identifying any of your works so you can get credit for them.

You can also e-mail me to add some commentary to each of your masterpieces. The only catch: You can use no more and no less than seven words.

Another article on violent video games. It's telling to realize that the number one selling video game for the past few months is Grand Theft Auto 3.

College classes start up tomorrow at Virginia Tech and Florida State. I think I'll miss teaching, but it's good to finally be staying in one place for awhile. My roommate's sister is going to be a freshman at Tech so we'll probably go down a few times to see her and my sister.

Last Friday ended five straight weeks of working with consultants at work, and I'm definitely looking forward to going back to my old schedule and coming home around two in the afternoon. More afternoon time away from work will give me more time for composing and other bad habits.

John & Marsha
AAA finds Waldo
RIAA will not target midgets
The Madden Curse
Homeless people don't appreciate classical music
Becuase THAT's why movies suck
So where do we plug these things in?
All cellphones should do this

The complete set of Calvin and Hobbes cartoons is being released as a massive hardback tome: . This is excellent. Calvin and Hobbes is my favourite comic strip, probably followed in no particular order by The Far Side and the very early Peanuts (the collections from the 1950s). Sluggy Freelance was pretty decent until it decided to start sucking and never recovered.

I can't decide whether it was good that Calvin and Hobbes stopped in its prime, or whether a few more years would have been nice. Two cartoons which should end immediately and unequivocally would be Garfield and the Family Circus. This opinion is rather ironic, since my family owned every single cartoon book in both series when I was a little kid. On Saturday mornings, the only cartoon I ever watched was the Garfield and Friends animated show although I hated its sister show with the barnyard animals. In retrospect, the barnyard show (there was a pig named Orson Welles or something) was probably funnier. Garfield was good for maybe three years tops, and now it's the same tired spider joke told nine million different ways. It's got a cat and sarcasm -- how can you possibly make that winning combination uninteresting? Sometimes I suspect that the creator just erases the words from old cartoons and reuses them in the daily papers. Correction: Occasionally the storyline shifts to involve Mondays, Jon getting a date, or lasagna.

The Family Circus is just painful now, and needs a quick shotgun blast to the circle to put it out of its misery. Somewhere in the past twenty years, the thrust of the comic went from "cute things that kids say, aww how cute" to "boy you really raised some stupid and/or retarded kids". In addition, mentioning the Internet and e-mail in your comic does not automatically make your cartoon topical. If Billy was 7 in 1982 and Billy is 7 today, then he should be living in a fantasy world where e-mail does not exist. For Better or For Worse, at least, did this right. Those kids grew up over the years so talking about current events in the strip made sense. It's scary though, to see how much those kids have aged and realize that you yourself have aged an equal amount.

Let me just add that the Family Circus cartoon on your left is plain creepy. I don't want to know what kind of pictures Bil Keane is hiding on his computer, or how Dolly discovered them. And get that raw buffalo liver off your head, Dolly.

About twelve years ago, I took some summer cartooning classes at the Torpedo Factory in Old Town (this was when I still believed I could be a viable commercial artist without the ability to see reds and greens). I decided that I would create my own comic strip and invented the character, Shar Peng, the Oriental Pencil Sharpener (and his sidekick, Smudge). There were a few supporting characters, like Broccoli Man and T-Bone, and Shar Peng's nemesis was Pencilman. Like most of my projects, this comic strip died to apathy before the first story was ever written. I still have the sketchbook though, because I am a packrat of a higher magnitude. Among other unpolished gems are a sketch of a whale in jail with the caption, "Free Willy", a shadow study of a kneaded eraser which looks like nothing more than a pile of dog poop, and an Eggo waffle with wings (belonging to someone named Luft) .

News flash! It was pointed out that I already wrote about how bad the Family Circus is: . Good to see that I was able to come to the same conclusions independently even if it was a year and a half ago. Two out of two BUs agree that reading the Family Circus is not conducive to high mental reasoning skills.

Yesterday's search terms:
weird female quarterback, verne troyer with the killian's red girl, etymology of boo-yah, dominatrix wmv -clips4sale -strap

Congratulations!

American schools have always loved to shower their unique snowflake children with awards, deserved or not. Nowadays, it seems that everyone on a team gets trophies for outstanding effort even if they didn't deserve them, because to do otherwise would shatter the fragile psyche of underachieving kids everywhere. This seems like a new phenomenon, but it's actually been around for many years. Here are some samples from my youth and how they should be translated.

Good Citizenship:
Congratulations on not being the guy with the money when some girl accuses the class of stealing a dollar from her desk and the teacher orders all the guys to empty out their pockets! Congratulations on being the only Asian in the class, because black and white kids obviously can't be good citizens.

Tries Hardest in PE:
Congratulations on being able to run the 600 yard dash without giving up even though it takes you ten minutes! Congratulations on not doing any pull-ups and just hanging there for an hour! Congratulations on climbing halfway up the rope!

Most enthusiastic learner:
Congratulations on being the only guy in class that can put the numbers 1 to 100 in the proper order! Congratulations on understanding classroom etiquette when half of the class is a bunch of ADD kindergarten rejects!

Fitness Goals Award:
Congratulations on trying all of the Physical Fitness Tests and only getting a 55%, which isn't even passing when applied to normal grades! Congratulations on being weaker and less fit than 45% of the student body! This award will come in handy when applying to technical and Ivy League schools!

PE Shorts Award:
Congratulations for understanding the concept that gym is offered twice a week and that you should be wearing shorts underneath your pants for those two days so you can strip down and run around the multipurpose room jumping over cones that are twice your height! Congratulations for never having to resort to the ragtag box of abandoned shorts in the nurse's office which probably had scabies, mites, and poop stains on them!

Perfect Attendance:
Congratulations on attending every single class in your sixth grade year! No seriously, you wasted one hundred and eighty days of your life coming to school where you could learn about Mesopotamia and aphids, two subjects that will never again come up in the rest of your natural life. This award will serve as an ironic reminder when you are in your fifth year of college and your attendance rate dips below 25%!

Friday Fragments

the literary cure for syphillis

♠ A recent glance at my server stats shows that the Americans continue to charge cowboy into my website -- a veritable Pac-man on the pie chart, consuming all lesser countries in a single obesity-driven gulp.

♠ I'm guessing this means I should cater more to my target audience, with NASCAR Day, Fat Day, We Require A National Language Day, and Eating Fake Chinese Food Day, since getting Chinese carryout is an American pastime that every child must experience at some point. Canada is a "close" second on the chart, so I can also talk about ham and tooks.

♠ Sometime in the past year, I seem to have started pronouncing the word, toast, like a Canadian might pronounce the word, hoser. I don't think I can blame this on Blacksburg or Florida, the scapegoats for all my other peculiar pronunciations.

♠ The greatest snack in the world when you're hungry at bedtime but it's too late for a real meal is lightly-browned toast with butter. Yum!

♠ While searching for succulent images of toast to illustrate the above fragment, I found a site with one of those fuzzy 3D pictures emblazoned on a piece of toast. I was always pretty good at seeing stereogram images, but I know people who could stare at them for hours without seeing a thing. The funniest part of stereograms is listening to people who CAN see them try to explain them to frustrated people who desperately WANT to see them.

♠ Sometimes I want to make a fake stereogram with nothing in it, just to see how many posers (rhymes with hosers) pretend that they can actually see something. I'm betting it would be a much higher number than expected. In fact, here is a stereogram of a pony on my belly. Can you see it? The ass is on the right.

♠ This weekend, the plan is to work, start planning out the ridiculously posh improvements to be done to my basement this Fall, and attend Anna's church bell concert, featuring Ella as the bell dampener. It's supposed to be a highly musical experience, so come on out.

♠ Happy Birthday tomorrow to Nancy Livingston and Beth Smith!

Weekend Wrap-up

Following an afternoon meeting on Friday where I met with our caterer to make sure she knew that we were still getting married and wanted to eat wedding steak instead of wedding cake, I returned home for a couple more hours of Friday evening work. The phenomenon of things going wrong at work late on Friday seems to be increasing linearly over time. Had I been elected in 2006, my Three Day Work Week initiative would have nipped this problem in the butt (because problems don't have buds).

I also picked up a copy of Orange Box, a collection of five top-rated games which actually came out two years ago. It's okay to be outdated though since this is the first PC game I've bought that's not a World of Warcraft expansion in several years. Despite a cover that looks like it was designed by the Virginia Tech poster department, the games I've played are pretty entertaining so far.

On Saturday evening, we dodged Hurricane Bill for a CustomInk social at the uselessly-named Carpool in Arlington, which would be a better b(ar) if they dropped the "C" and made it pirate-themed. We had free wings which were spicier than my dance moves, and pulled pork that will probably make a full recovery.

Sunday was densely-packed, yet lazy, not unlike a glacier. Besides bouts of wedding work, exercising, and finishing the third season of Dexter (which I enjoyed, although I was underwhelmed by the last episode), we also tried out a new chain, Mimi's Cafe, for a delicious dinner. I had a cup of chicken noodle soup that mixed the best of both brands: the tasty broth and fake chicken of Campbells with the noodles of Progresso. The soup was followed by a half-rack of ribs that effortlessly peeled straight off the bone, and a bowl of chocolate mousse dipped in strawberry sauce.

Census Results Day

Congratulations to Anna Ahlbin, who is the winner in the census bribery random drawing! I am presuming that she does NOT want a copy of Music Theory From Zarlino to Schenker: A Bibliography and Guide and will send her the $10 Amazon.com gift certificate shortly.

The total number of census replies is very close to the results of 2007 census, which means that although readership has decreased, the loudmouths have stayed behind. Notable in their laziness were readers like Brianne, Kim, and Dan Shiplett, and also my Dad, who has not commented on the website since 1996.

The respondents tended to fall within two degrees of BU separation, cleanly delineated into the following arenas:

1. People I Am Related To
2. People I Went to School With
3. People I Worked With
4. People I Met Through Other People
5. People Who Play Warcraft

A number of these fine folks have blogs of their own, which you should give a visit to -- all are linked from the original census replies. Thank you for responding! It's always nice to know that you have an audience.

Aftermath Day

In the aftermath of the 5.9 magnitude earthquake which tore through our simple town like a dotted line on Tuesday afternoon, I thought it best to capture some of the destruction on my camera, just in case I have problems with insurance agents later on. Thankfully, everyone is okay, but the amount of structural damage caused by this event is obscene.

A sinkhole to hell, or possibly Petropavlovsk, has opened up in the kitchen:

Sewage has backed up into the basement, and looting is rampant in the neighbourhood:

Rebecca lost her right leg and eye from falling debris, which is severely impacting her study habits. In addition, Andy Richter has inexplicably arrived in our living room and refuses to stop measuring things:

I'm sure I'll find more damage in the rest of the house, but I have stopped temporarily to search for a potable water source. Be safe out there.

Recipe Day: Improved Egg Drop Soup

I originally posted this recipe for Egg Drop Soup back in 2006. Because recipe improvement is easier than self-improvement, here is an updated version that gets closer to my goal of delivery-restaurant-quality soup.

• 4 cups chicken broth, made from Bouillon cubes
• 1/8 teaspoon ground ginger
• 2 tablespoons chopped chives
• dash of white pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 tablespoons cornstarch
• 2 whole eggs and 1 egg yolk

Directions

• Make chicken broth in a pot, then cool 1 cup of the broth in the fridge until it is no longer warm. Stir in cornstarch (into the cool broth) until it is clump-free.
• In a small bowl, whisk the eggs and yolk together with a fork.
• Pour the remaining 3 cups of broth into the widest saucepan you have. Stir in ginger, chives, pepper, and salt. Bring to a rolling boil and then lower heat to simmer.
• Stir in the cold cornstarch broth to thicken.
• Apply academic knowledge of angular momentum to set up circular waves in the saucepan. Keep slow but steady waves circling the saucepan throughout the next step. This is critical to obtaining egg strings instead of egg clumps, and it's very helpful to have someone else stirring constantly!
• Drizzle egg a little at a time from the fork into the broth. It will cook immediately, and the broth in motion will cook it in strings rather than clumps.
• Once all of the egg has been added, remove from heat and serve. Makes 2-3 bowls.
• Garnish with chopped green onions if you have any left in your fridge, since every recipe calls for one stalk's worth and they're sold by the bushel.

CMMI Lessons Learned

• Using part of the broth to make Rob Kelley's slurry instead of cold water minimizes any thinning of the taste. Previously, I had to resalt the broth to make up for the cold water and often ended up making it taste like the ocean.
• Using a wide radius saucepan instead of a pot makes it much easier to drizzle the egg in strands rather than clumps.
• Adding the slurry before the egg improves the suspension of the egg in the broth.

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Weekend Wrap-up

We kicked off the weekend at the Smith household, where we ate corn chowder for dinner and played several board games in the recently finished basement, including Trans Europa, Exploding Kittens, and the poorly-timed 12 Days of Christmas.

On Saturday, Rebecca went out gallivanting with Emily and her twins and then went stand-up paddleboarding in Georgetown with Marc, while I stayed home and started learning about video game development over a Domino's pan pizza.

On Sunday, my dad came out to help deliver a new queen bed as a very early Christmas present (timed against Costco coupon windows), replacing the eleven-year-old full mattress which feels a little smaller every day as Booty continues to gain her own gravitational field. In the evening, we started the show, Silicon Valley over chocolate truffle ice cream and a farmhouse ale.

How was your weekend?

Hiking to Quandary Peak - The Dirty Details

In Monday's post, I provided a skimpy, fluffy travelogue of our trip up Quandary Peak. Today's post provides a bit more detail, for anyone interested in doing the hike themselves. Although none of the Colorado 14er peaks are EASY hikes, Quandary Peak's East Ridge is a worthwhile starting peak for anyone of reasonable fitness and good preparation. For comparison, I am a middle-aged suburban that eats fried chicken too often and runs about 12 miles per week at a jogging pace while watching bad TV shows on the basement treadmill.

Important Stats

• 6.6 miles round-trip, with 3375 ft elevation gain


• Took us 2 hours for the first 2 miles (to the saddle ridge), then 1.5 hours for the final 1 mile. Stayed on the summit for 30 minutes, as the weather was mild.


• Took us 2.5 hours to get back down to the trailhead (6.5 hours total).

Preparation

• Do some hikes with serious ups: This hike is almost completely uphill with only two short sections even close to horizontal in nature (You go up about 1000 feet for every mile you travel). The elevation gain will kill you before the overall distance. Get used to the slow and steady "alpine plod" approach to making steady progress without burning out. This hike is steeper than the famed "Roller Coaster" section of the Appalachian Trail in Virginia.


• Do some hikes at similar elevations in the days just before this hike: We did two ten milers in Rocky Mountain National Park (each with about 1600 feet of elevation change), and definitely felt the effects of the reduced air pressure at high altitudes. This gave us a better appreciation of our limits during this hike and gave our lungs time to acclimate to the changes.


• Be fit enough to carry the standard kit of hiking gear: You will definitely need good lightweight hiking layers (we had a range of 35 - 64 degrees Farenheit in a single mid-August day) and an appropriate amount of water for your body size. I favored quick-to-eat granola bars over meal foods like sandwiches, but left heavier food to look forward to back at the car. I also needed a flashlight for the early portion. Don't forget your sunscreen and sunglasses.


• Come EARLY: This is an incredibly popular hike with limited parking. The main trailhead fills up by 6:30 AM on the weekends, forcing you to park down in the overflow lot (at the intersection of 850 and CO-9). Hiking from the overflow lot adds another half mile to your trip, and no one wants that. Come on a weekday if you want a more serene experience. We hiked on a Monday and got to the trailhead at 5:30 AM, and there were already 8 cars there.


• Leave EARLY: Hiking after 12:00 PM can be unpredictable weather-wise. Plan to start early enough to be back down below the treeline before any thunderstorms occur.


• Treat this hike as a challenge: This is a difficult, strenuous hike, and you will have a greater chance of success if you go into it expecting the challenge instead of treating it as just another outing. Your physical endurance will get you most of the way, but the last 1/4 mile is all mental.

What To Expect

• The trailhead is easy to find on Route 851 with great signage. The start of the hike may be difficult to see if you come before sunrise -- it is beyond the triple trailhead maps on the left side of the road and ascends very quickly.


• The first 100 ft of the hike will give you some idea of how steep the end is, but it calms down quickly after that. The trail crosses several old mining roads, but newer "TRAIL" signs are very easy to follow. You may need a flashlight here before sunrise.


• The first mile is fairly pleasant. The trees continue to thin out, only to be replaced by boulders you will learn to hate. When you start seeing small stands of trees covered in stray mountain goat fur, you will know that you're at the treeline. This will be your last chance to pee in privacy (peeing later on involves long treks away from the main path and ducking behind very small rocks).


• Above the treeline, you will face neverending staircases of rocks, punctuated by the occasional cute pika. Conserve your energy here and understand that the final ascent will be HARDER than this section.


• Around the 2 mile mark, the hike will flatten out to form the saddle ridge. This area is relatively flat and the worst is yet to come. This is the point where you should seriously judge your reserve energy and not be afraid to turn around if your body or the weather are not cooperating. The views from here are amazing enough that even this stopping point is a worthwhile hike. This area was the windiest and coldest portion, during which I put all of my layers on).


• The final ascent from the saddle ridge is the most challenging section, but you will be cheered on by everyone else already on their way down. I survived by going about 15 steps at a time, then standing still until my heart rate normalized, with a longer 3-5 minute break whenever I felt like it. The one time I felt like I wasn't going fast enough and tried to push harder, I immediately regretted it and had to lie down for a few minutes doing some mindful breathing.


• As you ascend, you will see a "false summit". The real summit doesn't actually come into view until you're nearly there, and can be recognized by a wooden stick planted at the top. The GOOD news is that after the false summit, the remaining 0.1 miles is nearly flat.


• After this, you've made it! Seek out the geological marker embedded in the rock roughly in the middle of the summit, and celebrate with the many other hikers who will be up there taking pictures of the great views and mountain goats. When we went, someone had left a cardboard sign with the name of the peak and elevation wedged under a rock near the geological marker.


• The descent is wholly possible if you've made it to the top. You'll just get super annoyed that the neverending boulder staircase lasts for so long. Start coming down with at least 2 hours to spare before any brewing thunderstorms so you can reach the treeline with time to spare.

Any questions? Let me know in the comments section! Good luck!

Booty Retrospective Day

It has been just over a year since we lost Booty to mouth cancer (the actual condition and not a euphemism for eating vegetables). Between a one-month-old baby and the tail end of my job at the software startup, it was not an easy time, and I definitely cried. I recall going to bed that day at 6 PM after vigorously steam-cleaning Booty's drooly end-of-life dens simply because I was done being awake for day. (This was also the day I got 11 hours of sleep as a new dad). Thankfully, Annie came out from LA soon after and helped Rebecca take care of Maia, allowing me a little extra time to get my psyche back in order.

I did not expect to get as emotional as I did over a cat because, at the end of the day, it's just a cat. I love cats but I'm one of those people that take cats to the vet only when they're sick and do the best home care I can the rest of the time (Amber hasn't had a rabies update since 2005). If there was ever a situation where I had to choose between paying for a cat surgery or taking care of my human family, I'd pick the humans every time with minimal guilt.

I guess Booty was different because she spanned multiple discreet eras of my life, from the conclusion of my life as an occasional composer in Florida, to my quiet bachelor years looking for love in the wrong places, to my life with Rebecca (who eventually became Booty's real true love). I didn't feel as strongly when Kitty died and probably won't be overcome when Amber dies (sorry, Amber!).

Booty was a great cat, but she also made Amber into an end table cat. Jealous for any signs of affection, Booty would consistently prevent Amber from getting close to any humans for naps or snuggles or other Booty-centric activities. Once Booty was gone, Amber transformed into a much more cuddly cat almost immediately. She started by sleeping on Rebecca's pillow right next to her head, and graduated to always napping with Rebecca in the bed or on the couch. Though never as food-oriented as Booty, Amber now meows for breakfast in the morning, conspicuously near the sleeping baby room as a form of blackmail.

There is no real point to this post other than to note that pets will unexpectedly and immeasurably enrich your life, either with loyalty and affection or a 3 AM vomit all over the bedspread. Also, my definition of a pet implicitly includes the word "mammal" -- snakes are not pets.

Maia's 12 of 12

After explaining to Maia that I take 12 pictures of my day on the 12th of every month, she decided that she, too, wanted to participate. We gave her a camera, showed her how to push the button, and sent her off into the world. Here is a subset of the 74 pictures she took over the course of the next 32 minutes.

Also at one point, the camera definitely got toggled into video mode:

Other posts in this series: Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV | Part V | Part VI | Part VII | Part VIII | Part IX | Part X | Part XI

RI Day

We spent Tuesday through Friday last week with my sister's family in Rhode Island. This was my first trip up since we took Maia in 2018. We had a trip planned in 2019 but I caught a weird flu bug the day before and Rebecca and Maia went up without me.

The plane trip up went very well, in spite of the fact that we left from the three-character A terminal of Dulles which required at least 20 elevator rides for our stroller, car seat, and kids. Maia disliked how much patience each phase of travel required, while Ian enjoyed everything about the trip until he reached ultimate tiredness and boredom on our descent.

My sister has three kids, Sam, William, and Luca, and a commensurate number of toys to wow my kids. Ian was in heaven because almost every single toy had wheels. We listened to a garbage truck that sang "To the dump, to the dump, to the dump, dump, dump" to the William Tell Overture at least 500 times. Maia liked that the boys were so interested in video games and had fun being a "cat obstacle" in their Mario Kart Live races.

We spent an hour or more each day in their giant pool which was heated to a luxurious 91 degrees and has spoiled me from ever going into a normal temperature pool for the rest of my life. Maia still refused to go underwater and get her eyes wet, but she did wear goggles and float around the pool on a noodle without much oversight. Ian went in just once and successfully avoided pooping in the pool.

Other highlights of the visit include a bike ride to Del's for frozen lemonade, smoked meats for dinner, and scooter/vehicle rides around their court.

We came home on Friday afternoon. The trip was uneventful other than a 30 minute delay sitting on the tarmac in Providence. Ian's restlessness was assuaged by a friendly seatmate who let him look at nature videos on her phone. Having learned our lesson on the way into Dulles Airport, we skipped all of the elevators on the way back by putting the car seat in the stroller and riding escalators all the way to freedom.