Fishs  

Had an absolutely amazing weekend, for no reason in particular. Also, going to see [these] at [here] tonight.

Just added a page to my site to track my college results, so you don’t have to keep asking me:

[College Tracker]

Why? Because I probably won’t send out email updates when I get denied to schools!

Got an email in my inbox today:

It is a great pleasure to inform you that the Physics Department has recommended your admission to our Ph.D. Program. Congratulations! The official notification of admission, with details on the offer, will be sent to you from the New York University Graduate School of Arts and Science.

We would like to invite you to attend the NYU Physics Department open house on March 28, 2008. This will enable you to meet with faculty and students in your field of interest and find out more about our program. We will provide up to $300 maximum to help defray the costs associated with your travel and local expenses. Please contact the administrative assistant of our program, Mirjami Easton, for help in making local hotel or living arrangements. One possibility is to stay in New York City with a current graduate student in our department (if you decide to do this, we will provide up to $250 to cover travel and other incidental expenses). If you are interested in such a possibility please let us know at your earliest convenience. Once again, congratulations! We look forward to your visit.

Sincerely,
Andrew Kent
Professor of Physics
Director of Graduate Studies
Department of Physics
New York University
4 Washington Place
New York, NY 10003

Yeah, I know it’s a couple days away, and I also know that this holiday is for suckers, but I had a great idea for valentines this year, involving the program I developed for Lucy. This year, I made digitally embroidered valentines. If you didn’t get one, or you got a repeat, don’t feel bad; these are a little tedious to make.

Here are some generic samples I made, so you can give them to your friends if you want:

[Dudes]
[Die]

Additionally, I’m now able to release the program I used to make them, for public download. Have fun embroidering your own images, and let me know of any bugs:

[Roider]

Happy Valentine’s Day, check your inbox, I may have sent you one.

So I spent all of yesterday at home, fighting off a very ominous-seeming cold. I think I may have bested it, but in the meantime I watched a lot of daytime TV. This included:

• Some early morning show hosted by a guy who had his balls cut off.
• A game show called [Temptation], which appears to be directed at housewives; all six contestants that I saw were women. At one point a contestant had to identify from a list of twelve ingredients, which were in chex party mix and which were not. I was yelling at the TV. I can’t believe she thought it had parmesan cheese.
• Martha Stewart and Tyra.

And much, much more. No court TV, though. I was good.

In other news, Lucy IM’d me and asked me if there was a free computer program out there that she could download and use to test embroidery patterns for her. [So I wrote one]. A downloadable version exists, but I still need to implement a simple saving feature. It will probably just save like Mario Paint. Already I’m pretty happy with the fact that I was able to throw this together in a day.

Alright, that’s all for now.

Given the vast number of political predictions we’ve seen (and will continue to see), I thought it would be fun to have people post their red-state, blue-state predictions. Me first!

Yes, you aren’t blind; those are indeed Georgia and West Virginia. This would constitute a landslide, so you might call it wishful thinking. I’ve got a sneaky suspicion we’re going to have a landslide victory, though. A lot of southern conservatives are going to boycott this election. If I got really clever, I’d make an interactive flash graphic that would also count delegates for you. Too bad I’m so lazy.

If you want to make a prediction, you can copy [this image] and fill it out using MS paint, seashore, or if you really have time to kill, photoshop. I’ll even host your image, if you don’t have your own domain for image-hosting. I find 400×250 to be a good image size.

If you’re totally disenchanted with politics, I can’t say I blame you, but I can’t help but get excited at the prospect of finally taking our country back.

So, I just got finished emailing my mother to tell her that nothing at all new was happening in my life right now, and there was absolutely nothing to report, and that I’d tell her as soon as something interesting happens, but I haven’t emailed lately because there’s nothing to say, etc, etc…

Check out our cafe today:

That brown liquid in the container is rain water. You might ask, “How does rain water drip through the ceiling of a cafe on the ground floor of a four-or-five-story building?” Ask away.

The overhead lights are turned off for obvious safety reasons, and we have various light fixtures set up to make up for this. The register has also been moved out of harm’s way, as the water seems to be dripping from many different parts of the ceiling.

This was basically the perfect backdrop for a conversation with my roommate which I wouldn’t call an “argument” exactly, but definitely one of those roommate conversations that we’d both rather not have to have. In any case, both of us had much more important things to be doing than talking about tedious house stuff, so I’d say it amounted to an extremely annoying situation all-around.

Meanwhile, boss-lady Judy had a variety of reasons to be in a bad mood before she walked in the front door to her water-damaged cafe, so suffice to say the hate was bouncing around the room. Heidi and I tried cheering people up, but we’re not really very good at that. It doesn’t help that I’ve been having a bit of a black-mood streak myself lately.

Also, Heidi bought Jack Daniels instead of vodka. Tsk, tsk.