Do you know what I’m tired of?? Tech articles that have titles like “Must Have Gadgets” and “Gotta Have Gear” and then list a bunch of crap that I can’t afford and can actually live without. Am I to understand that if I don’t own (or want to own) any of these things that my life will be somehow sub-standard? It seems like every news outlet, in print or on the web, has these same stupid articles. Why don’t they title them something a little less sensational, like “Stuff That We Got for Free So Now We Have to Write About It” or “More Crap That Cost Several Hundred Dollars and has a USB Port”.
The worlds largest party was in Gainesville last night as many many thousands of fans rushed University Avenue at the end of the NCAAF championship game. I’m happy to say that I was there! First a basketball championship and now football, we’re getting good at celebrating in the streets here!
I stumbled upon this lovely item at my local grocery store last week. In case you can’t see for yourself, it is a sausage link wrapped in a chocalate chip pancake. And to meet the needs of young professionals trying to beat the morning rush, the wonderful folks at Jimmy Dean have placed this delightful treat on a stick. This is a perfect example of what happens when you leave a 13 year old in charge of new product development. Don’t get me wrong, pancakes and sausage are two of my favorite things for breakfast, but chocalate chip… on a stick? I’m guessing that these won’t be available much longer since they were being sold at a hefty discount and there was still a stack of them sitting there. Hey, Jimmy Dean… stick to making corn-dogs.
I celebrated the 4th of July in Cocoa Beach this year. It worked out well since the Space Shuttle blasted off while I was baking in Florida Sun. The picture to the left was my view of it from the beach (about 20 miles away from the launch pad). It’s too bad I’ll miss the twin sonic booms on Discovery’s return.
Isn’t Florida great? (see picture of sign) I used to live in Pennsylvania… the most ass-backwards of the 50 states. In Pennsylvania, you can’t buy beer at a grocery store or even a liquor store. It must be purchased at special “beer distributors” that are only open a few hours a day. You can still buy a beer in a bar or restaurant though. It’s nice to know that Pennsylvania’s politicians have curbed drinking at home and made it necessary to drive for a drink. (Did you know that PA is one of three states whose population has decreased in the last census?)
Anyway, I’m glad that Florida has it’s priorities straight. Keeping those kegs off the beach, haha!
Notice anything odd about The Weather Channel’s forecast for tomorrow? “A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible… chance of precipitation… 0% ! WTF weather channel? Talk about covering your ass! I wonder if any of the forecasters at The Weather Channel have taken a class in statistics. As I learned it, a 0% chance means that that something is not possible!
I won a medical device design competition in my Problem Based Learning graduate class. The challenge was to design and build a wearable device to minimize essential tremor. Essential tremor is a neurological disease that causes uncontrollable shaking of the head and hands. Anyway, after a lot of late nights of drilling and sawing, I finished my prototype last week and gave the presentation yesterday. The judges liked my design the best. I got this snazzy certificate and $150. You can see me wearing the gizmo in this picture. It uses viscous dampers to suppress the tremor. Check out my “projects page” for a better explanation and the PDF of the presentation.
Tomorrow is my final anatomy exam. For some reason, my graduate program requires us to dissect cadavers along with learning the names of every wrinkle of every organ in the human body. The novelty of cutting up dead people wore off about 5 minutes after I started this class. It meets a few times a week and lasts four hours each time . My attention span, on the other hand, lasts about 30 seconds. Combine that with the fact that it starts at 8 am and you can see why I’m happy that it’s almost over. Actually, it’s the exams that I hate most. There has to be a better way… All we do is memorize 500 latin names that all sound the same and forget them as soon as the exam is over. I was hoping that this class would at least make me sound smarter when I talking about the human body. No such luck. I still call an arm, an arm, and a toe, a toe.
It wasn’t all bad though. There were plenty of unique experiences this semester. Like when I held someones heart in my hands or when I accidentally broke the cadavers arm (and all her fingers too). There are several, more gruesome stories I could share but I don’t think everyone wants to hear that.
There were 5 bodies for our class to work on. The one body smelled so bad that even the professor refused to do anything with it. He affectionately become known as “Stinkey”. Most of the other bodies were quite overweight which made it a group effort to flip them over. Luckily I spent most of my time on the cadaver of a very, very old women. She didn’t have much muscle on her, but then again she didn’t have much fat either.
Anyway, back to studying!
Toilet paper and fireworks filled the air last night as we (the Florida Gators) won our first NCAA basketball championship. After the win last night, people poured into the streets to celebrate. I only live a couple blocks from all the action so I joined in. The police were there too, riding their horses through the crowd but they let the party burn itself out naturally. I took the oppurtunity to do a cart-wheel across a normally busy University Avenue. No one got killed and no cars were set on fire so I guess it all worked out just fine. Go Gators!
I’m an uncle now! My sister gave birth to her first child last week. I haven’t had the oppurtinity to meet the little guy yet since my sister lives in PA. Maybe I will in about a few weeks when I have some time between semesters.
