Oh no... no, no, no, no

http://callingvaderdarthislikeaslapintheface.ytmnd.com/

This makes me sad.

(What do they mean when they say Starwars isn't real???)

Dinner table discussions with home school kids...

OK so we are talking at the table about math (I still have to grade Rene's paper from today) and Nathan uses the term Jillian, as in there are a jillian stars. Then I think it was Rene who brought up the googleplex which as you may know is a 1 followed by 100 zeros. Then my wife was wondering if there was anything in the universe we could apply googleplex to and I told her I didn't think so, at least not in the visible universe (meaning everything we could potentially see with the world's best telescope.)

This of course brought me to my computer after dinner to do some research and fairly basic exponential math.

Here is what I came up for a universe comprised entirely of salt (that just happened to be the first figure I came accross that I could use to start some computations) and based on Internet info which of course is not always precise. With numbers this big, I felt I could get away with a bit of imprecision. I also rounded up in many cases for easier math... it is just to see how close to a gooleplex we come anyway.

10 to the 18th power of atoms = 1 grain of salt (half sodium and half chlorine)

5000 grains of salt in 1 gram

453 grams in a lb

(22 to the 24th power) 22,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms in a lb of salt

(12 to the 24th power) 12,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 lbs = earth

26 (49) atoms in the earth (times 300,000 for sun's mass)

78 (54) atoms in the sun (rounded up to account for entire solar system =>

10 (55) atoms in solar system (times 400 billion stars in galaxy => rounded up to 1 trillion to be conservative)

10 (64) atoms in the entire Milkyway galaxy

============================

Now at this point we have 35 more zeros to account for before reaching a googleplex of atoms in the universe... therefore we would need to see
100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 galaxies which is far beyond our technology at this point. Now the Bible says that regarding the increase of God's government there shall be no end... so prophetically we can expect a truly infinite universe, but as for what we can see right now even with the Hubble deep field observations we come far FAR short of being able to utilize the term googleplex in any practical way. You could even start going the other way and subdividing the atom but even if you found 1,000,000,000 unique particles in a single atom that only lowers the necessary exponents from 35 to 26.

OK I've done more thinking than is absolutely healthy right after dinner. I think I am going to go practice on the new guitar I just borrowed from a friend of mine.

Welcome to penultimate Monday...

Well as I begin this week at MPIA it occured to me that this is the next to last Monday I shall ever get to experience at the imaging center. It is not with regret or sorrow that I face today; in fact it is with a rather high degree of jubilation. Here are just a few things I've been pondering this morning:

- Since we are on a two week backup tape rotation, I shall never again after today insert the tape labelled "Monday - I" into the quantum tape drive.

Oh, well upon further reflection that is in fact all that I've actually pondered today. I shall post again in the event of additional ponderings.

3 (possibly more off camera) darwin award potentials

Yes, they are floating a powerstrip on flip flops to power the electric grill on the table which is also surrounded by the same water surrounding their bodies...

I'm sure they are thinking to themselves that since the surge protector (hopefully) has a built-in breaker, were it to capsize, the breaker would trip and save them from a rather horrible and painful death... that is what they are "thinking". Ya know sometimes air quotes just don't do justice to a particular irony or profundity... or in this case stupidity.

*Yes I do in fact realize that those were real quotes and not as I suggested "air-quotes"... oh man, I just blew my mind! I put the phrase air-quotes INSIDE actual quotes. I need to sit down.

**For those wondering, I was in fact already sitting down so I stood up... but then had to sit back down to add this bit of meaningless drivel.

2 weeks to go!!

Well I have finished updating all of my network documentation to prepare for my departure from MPIA... Here is my network's logical map if that sort of thing interests you...

In the words of Dr. Evil...

It's freakin cold!!!! Man I am getting sick of this single digit weather. Oh I know it is because of global warming and all and that I myself am to blame for eating beef, driving a car, exhaling, etc... here are some other things caused by global warming: too much snow, too little snow, hot weather, mild weather, glacial expansion, glacial recession, ocean salinity increases and decreases, etc etc etc etc... (also sick of the global warming debate).

I read a facinating article recently (and also found numerous others on the same subject... google the correlation between temperature and CO2 levels in the global warming debate) regarding Algore's (pronounced similar to Igor...) data and even the very visual he uses in his dog and pony show.

It shows the results of ice core examinations which clearly indicate a parallel rise and fall of both temperature and CO2 over several thousand years. A correlation would seem to indicate logically a cause and effect relationship... and we of course know that CO2 has been named the cause by the Left. Here is the funny part... in his own graph (and more clearly in the actual data he based his graph upon) the spikes in temperature always slightly precede the spikes in CO2. This is easily overlooked by those emotionally engaged in the idea that Republicans are destroying the planet by not caring much about our minuscule CO2 contribution to the Earth's atmosphere, but elementary logic tells you that in a cause and effect relationship... the cause comes before the effect. Now as to what caused the temperatures to change, there are MANY theories, all of which involve powerful forces of nature far beyond human control or influence. So I will enjoy my hamburger today knowing that bovine flatulance will only effect me when I stand behind the cow and is not in any way contributing to future catastrophies.

Beef... it's what's for dinner!

This is freakin hilarious! (language warning on the subtitles)

Well one guess who Adolf represents in this video. I don't even care one way or other; I just want to know that the HiDef format I choose is around for a long time. Also if you happen to speak fluent German, this will not be nearly as amusing.

4 1/2 months is a long time to wait for good news...

This by the way is the afore mentioned ambiguity which is now for public consumption...

On August 31st this last year, I got an email from a former employer and friend who was planning on creating a new networking position at my old place of employment. This excited me for many reasons:

1. I LOVED my time working there (I only left because I had an opportunity to move up from tech support to be a network admin at my current job and it was a good career move... but I really missed the old work environment).

2. This is really an addendum to point #1... but my old boss was/is an AWESOME boss!! Just in every way I admire and respect the guy as a boss and as a good Christian friend. Also I loved working as part of an I.T. team... right now I am a department unto myself.

3. Mo money Mo money Mo money!

4. My current job is looking more and more like a planet in the path of an extinction level event asteroid... and that asteroid is called the Saint Evil Corporate Bastards Health System (refer to a previous post for clarification).

Well that said... I am VERY happy and pleased and satisfied and blessed and happy (happy people often find themselves repeating themselves) to announce that I am now the Network Administrator for the Layne Christensen Corporate office and I will be starting in February. God has blessed me far beyond what I deserve in so many ways... He is just truly amazing!!!

In the seven years I have been gone, Layne has grown tremendously and their IT needs have grown as well. This is a good thing for me because I will have the opportunity to help plan and in some cases likely implement a brand new Microsoft Exchange infrastructure (company wide) and also help in redesigning the entire company's WAN environment. Good stuff! I'll also act as sort of a mid level manager for the tech support team (I think they have about 4 analysts).

Anyway that is my big news and now that it's official I obviously had to BLOG it... this is probably the sort of thing BLOGs dream about... I imagine at any rate if I were a BLOG I'd be rather less impressed with random youtubes and panoramic rooftop images of the city.

Re: the vagaries of purely enigmatic ambiguity

About that post I posted a little over a week ago regarding the 2 days remaining before a particular clandestinity... The present inscrutability should become... scrutable, by this Friday.

A neat trick for all you pyromaniacs

Of course I must include myself in that category... not that I am going to run home and try this myself. As a kid I was a fan of spraying lysol on my hand and lighting it up. It produced a relatively cool blue flame and would burn off in only a few seconds... but more to the point made you look like a level 9 magic user... (or a passable level 7 illusionist).

umm... scratch that from the record.

In the absence of any new Hobbit movie news...

I present to you Leonard Nemoy... apparently on an acid trip and quite enjoying it.

Progress

I could put my socks on unassisted this morning. Just thought you should know. Actually I am only posting this because I have no other important news to post... as of yet.

Remote posting from my blackberry

So this is day three of bed rest for me. Sunday morning I woke up with a lot of back pain... I went upstairs to the kitchen to get some ibuprophen and as I was reaching into the cabinet my entire lower back starts spasming. I would compare it to getting a mild taser hit... I went down to my knees and the spasm kept going so I continued down and next thing I knew was lying on my back trying to find a position my muscles preferred. Once I found it, I stayed there for about five minutes before making my way slowly back to bed.

I don't recall hurting or overextending my back at any point so it is rather a mystery. It has been suggested I may have a virus of some sort and that seems a realistic possibility (though I have no other symptoms). Either way I am starting to feel better. Instead of having periodic spasms of severe pain, now it is more or less constant but moderate to light pain... No doubt soreness from the previous two days' spasms. Tomorrow I expect to be back at work.

**Regarding what I mentioned a few days ago, I haven't heard anything. If I still have no news by this evening I will make an inquiry with the appropriate individual and obviously when I have some news I will post it in a much less ambiguous fashion.

Sent wirelessly via BlackBerry from T-Mobile.

2 days to go

I cannot comment further, but don't get your hopes up. I haven't started a Solder Man sequal just yet.

Greedy corporate bastards

OK I have a serious rant and I can't hold it in. I work for a medical facility that was somewhat recently 'acquired' by a very large hospital system... whom we will henceforth refer to as "Saint Evil Corporate Bastards Health System". Since the acquisition our profit margin (which was quite impressive prior) dropped through the floor due to several negative repercussions beyond our control. To add insult to injury, a couple weeks ago we were informed that we will have to start paying a small monthly "shared expenses" fee for the privilege of being part of their glorious enterprise. This small fee is over 40 grand! That is not the annual by the way that is the actual monthly fee!!! Which of course means we have to pay the Saint Evil Corporate Bastards Health System a half a million dollars a year for the privilege of being... I'm trying to think of a family friendly term... let's just say we bent over for the soap and from there use your imagination.

I predict when it becomes obvious to some 'higher-up' that we are no longer the money making machine we once were it will be 100% our fault.

At the risk of making this blog political...

We don't want Huck!
We don't want Huck!
We don't want Huck!

I hope Fred Thompson sticks with it... 3rd place doesn't necessarily mean there is no hope.

Nothing spectacular...

This is the view from my parking garage just off of the Plaza.

hhhhhh... I've been in I.T. for how many years??

So I brought my new digital camera to work today thinking I would be able to post something on the blog... I get up to the roof of the parking garage and take a really nice panorama of Kansas City from the Plaza (my camera has a three frame stitch feature that does really nice panoramas) only to realize that I neglected to bring the USB cable that would allow me to offload the image to my computer. It isn't that I forgot to bring the cable mind you... it never occured to me that I would NEED the cable. Hhhhhhhh... IDIOT!! Gosh!!

On a side note... roof top parking is highly underrated especially during the colder months of the year. You see people think it's just inconvenient: further to drive up, longer elevator ride down, etc. What they fail to calculate in is the fact that the lower levels maintain their temps for a very long time even when the outdoor temperatures change. Today for example due to the single digits we had the other day, the basement of the garage is colder than my ice box at home and will remain quite cold well into the several day warming trend the weather guessers are forecasting. People will park as low as possible because they think they are saving themselves time (shaving merely seconds off of their total travel time). I on the other hand parked on the roof... in the center of the roof. As of 8:15 a.m. I was one of two vehicles on our roof. This will provide me with about 4 hours of cloudless solar radiation which will warm the cab of my vehicle to approximately 50 degrees at a guess. When I leave for lunch I will not have to shiver while I wait for the car to warm up. I will enter my green house sanctuary and drive in complete comfort to the fast food restaurant of my choosing while those other fools raise their freezing fists and curse the cold.

If I remember, I'll post the panorama tonight at home... as if you've never seen a panorama before.

Norwegian wood can be funky!

I apologize to any beatles fans out there... but this is definitely a new and improved cover of an old tune. Paul McCartney eat your heart out... what a strange expression that is...

(He's going to be in Kansas City by the way in February... the Beaumont)

Victor Wooten