Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Courtney called!

Courtney will be coming home tomorrow night, but today when I got back from work in the morning, Alex had picked up my phone because she was calling! I got there just in time to talk to her. It was great to hear her voice, but I am not sure she was having a great time. (Perhaps the fermented horse milk has something to do with it.) Anyway, she seems really excited about coming back to the states, and told me I should get to the airport a few hours early just in case her flight came in early. I have been frantically trying to do everything on "the list." Anyone know of any good wedding readings?

Tuesday, May 23, 2006

Alex on his way

I have a friend who I met in St. Andrews, Alex Yabroff. He is actually from California, and graduated last year but has been wasting his time in St. Andrews being the student association president. Right now he is in the air flying here to Washington, to stay with Courtney and me for a few days, and hopefully to find a job in international relations. Should be good fun. Other than that, not much going on with my bachelor life. Only two more days and then Courtney will be home. Yay!

Tuesday, May 16, 2006

2003 technology!

A couple of weeks ago I borrowed an EyeTV 500 from my friend Dustin Johnson. I also ordered a 500GB hard drive from Dell. Of course the hard drive was backordered, twice, so I only received it yesterday (the price was awesome, though). Last night, after a little finagling, I was able to record television shows with my computer, ala TiVo! I recorded William F**king Shatner on David Letterman. Even though my underwear is all over the living room, I am living in a pig sty, and Courtney is going to kill me for not taking care of everything before she gets back, I have a working DVR, and everything is right with the world.

Friday, May 12, 2006

Did you get a haircut?

No, I got many of them cut! (Cue laughter.) Well, Courtney is out of town, and my hair was getting shaggy, so I asked my friend Mike Fowler to cut it for me. Thirty minutes later and about a pound of hair on the floor, the deed is done. I think it turned out pretty good, except the huge gapping hole in the back where I thought Mike was being too timid, so I grabbed the buzzer and took out a patch myself. It will probably take a day for Mike to clean the hair off.

Thursday, May 11, 2006

Everybody wants a treehouse

Ezra Idlet, part of Arkansas folk duo, Trout Fishing in America, built a tree house for himself on his 100 acres in the Boston mountains. Pictures of the abode and the accompanying story are in the NYTimes today. I really enjoy TFiA. I have a couple of their CDs and attended a free concert at Gulley Park in Fayetteville while in college. I am glad to see such a fun house in Arkansas.

Sunday, May 07, 2006

Photography class

I mentioned earlier that Courtney bought me a photography class for my birthday. Well, we just finished up our final field session yesterday. We visited three places, and for Tuesday we are to pick our 10 favorite shots to bring into class for a critique. I picked 11, and put them up on the web. Take a look at them if you have time, and if you really don't like one, let me know, and maybe I will drop that one so I get down to the requisite 10 photos.

Biofuels

Courtney and I attended the Carnegie Evening lecture on Thursday night at the Carnegie Institution. It was fantastic. Christopher Somerville spoke all night about meeting our energy needs with biofuels. He wasn't so into the biodiesel that is now being marketed, but instead feels that in the next few years advances in the process of converting cellulose into liquid fuel will allow a conversion to biofuels. He suggested that Miscanthus, a tall perrenial grass, could be largely grown to convert into liquid fuel. The benefit of using grasses to make fuel, of course, is that it is carbon neutral. In the case of petroleum, we are taking carbon from the ground and putting it into the air. However, with Miscanthus, to be grown it has to take carbon from the air, so we don't release any more carbon than is already out there.

Monday, May 01, 2006

France should surrender

I am always a fan of complaining about the French. Moreso of late, because of the inane legislation to breakup the iTunes music delivery model. I suppose many Mac enthusiasts have been following the story, and I thought it was particularly ironic to hear the French trade minister support the legislation while in Silicon Valley trying to drum up technology spending in France! Today there was an excellent piece in the New York Times that explains the situation from an economic point of view. I thought an excellent line in the piece was:
French politicians have abandoned one of the guiding principles of antitrust economics: penalize companies that harm consumers, not the ones that succeed by building better products.