Skip navigation.

exploreopera

| Help

Sign up | Help

Posts tagged with "observatory"

Television!

, , , ...

So I am at home now. One of the comforts of home that I can enjoy this summer is television. My parents switched cable providers in my absence, and now we have more channels.

Earlier I watched about five or seven minutes of Queer as Folk on LOGO, as a sort of anthropological experiment. It was very dated and contrived; I felt like I was watching Saved by the Bell.

There is a guy on The Daily Show discussing Obama's preacher in context, but not really in context. From what I hear, some of the religious figures McCain associates with are crazier.

Now I've been distracted from The Daily Show by the Science channel. They have a silly logo that is meant to look like a periodic table box with an atomic symbol. The program is about the Solar System, and totally more interesting to me than The Colbert Report. I'm fairly sure that fact means I'm supposed to be having some kind of college-student-quarter-life-crisis-identity-freak-out right now. Oh well.

Today was actually rather productive. I finished tweaking the brand new GUAS website, and I'm rather proud of myself. I've never actually done anything like that before, beyond the occasional HTML markups on this blog. Except that they aren't really HTML, because they use []'s instead of <>'s and slightly different tags. Anyway, I am particularly pleased with the header; this makes up for some nagging technical issues that aren't currently in my power to fix. Joe and I figured out the error problem on the GUAS listproc, so now I'm the only person who gets them, and after today I won't have to send out anymore spam test messages. There is one more thing I want to test, but it can wait.

I am almost done with the first season of 30 Rock. And because now on the Solar System program they are discussing the possibility of water on other planets (and therefore carbon based life forms) I will link to this AP write up of an interview by Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes, S.J. with L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican's newspaper. Rev. Funes is the director of the Vatican Observatory, and discusses the implications of the possibilities of extraterrestrial life for Catholic teachings. Apparently this (aliens) is also one of those things that people get irrationally worked up about.

I seem to be particularly enamored of the bold tag today.

EDIT - Today for breakfast I had scrambled eggs, wheat toast with butter and grape jelly, bacon, and orange juice. This is notable because the eggs tasted like eggs, the toast tasted like toast, the bacon tasted like bacon, and the orange juice tasted like orange juice. Eating non institutional food is like eating for the first time. Everything tastes delicious. Kraft Mac & Cheese is even better when you have fresh grated cheese to toss into it.

EDIT EDIT - I have made this entire post courier new. Because I felt like it. And that might be my favourite font right now - see the GUAS website header.

It is 10:30 - where are all the lattes?

, , , ...


All the near coffee places are inexplicably closed. In fact, the circ desk in Lauinger is also inexplicably closed, and I'm 105% sure it isn't actually supposed to close until midnight.

I have done nothing academically productive since I went to class on Thursday. So, since 4 pm on Thursday. So, 54 hours and 36 minutes of non-productiveness.

But I saw the nebula in Orion last night, for the first time in years. Yay! for Bob the Dobb(sonian).

Wisconsin Death Trip, just now. I may have been the only person in the theater who really got what they were trying to do. Few of the comments during the talk after were really positive. This blog post is what I'm doing instead of the reading for my paper which is due on Monday.

It shouldn't be impossibly difficult, but I am loathe to actually get the process underway. I know I can do the paper, I just don't really know what I'm doing with the paper, if that makes sense.

I am by no means socially isolated or reclusive here, but that does not prevent me from being isolated. Possibly, I have been listening to more Modest Mouse than is good for me. Also, I would like to know what grade I got on my second philosophy paper, but Blackboard reveals no answers to me yet.

I was paid today, I want to blow it on latte's and theater tickets. But there isn't any point in buying theater tickets until tomorrow, and that's why it's a problem that there are no lattes. I ran into B---- from one of my classes at the theater, and finally told him that his green shoes are made of awesome. I think perhaps he is too nice for his own good - it is written in his face and movements. When did I start spelling theatre theater? I just noticed.

On a final note, I hate B------'s pants. Those who are adept at counting dashes or estimating distance will notice that B---- and B------ are not the same people. Sometimes, adding tags is the best part of blog-post-making.

EDIT: Also I would like it noted for history that F----- shared cookies with me. I havn't gotten to eat them yet, though, because I am in a room in the library where food is not allowed. :frown:

My macbook comes tomorrow!

, , , ...


And fortunately, except for a meeting in the morning, I have nothing tomorrow (day off from class and work) so I can spend lots of time freaking out over it! Also, it has been named: Silent Cal Coolidge. Because dead president nicknames are the bestest ever.

I was considering taking up recreational lock-picking, but apparently it's a felony or some such nonsense to possess lock-picks within the district. Whatev. I got a job instead. For ten-ish hours a week I get paid to listen to my ipod. And also re-shelve books, but mostly listen to my ipod. It's good, as I require some sort of external motivation to get up at the same time every day, and now I have to do that on weekdays.

Finally went to the grocery store today (yay!) and have also finally gotten in touch with some of the people that I hadn't yet gotten in touch with. Dinner in fifteen minutes with Jon, zB. Observatory things seem to be progressing alright, and are not taking over my life as I feared. I was more concerned about that after I decided I felt like getting a job.

On a side note - isn't the point of job interviews that you know you want the job, but they don't know if they want you for the job? It totally didn't work that way at all. Not that I'm really complaining, I'm just a bit confused.

I do need to get homework done, but the reason that hasn't been done isn't to do with my cushy library job or the observatory - it's because I finally decorated my room. The only thing left to do is fold some cranes and hang them from the ceiling above my bed. I think I'll tackle that next weekend. And yes some of the posters and whatnot are supposed to be crooked/upside down/sideways/not entirely attached. It looks like a habitable place for civilised people to live now (in my admittedly slightly odd opinion), and it was totally worth the several hours I spent.

The photo is Fr. Tondorf in the observatory with his pet Seismograph. Apparently the acquisition of this seismograph was so exciting the NYT wrote an article about it. Or they didn't have anything better to write about at the time. Or Fr. Tondorf's obsession enthusiasm was contagious.

I was mucking about in Student Access last night

, , , ...

And I found that sometime in the late afternoon or early evening I had been enrolled in the courses I wanted for next semester. Yay! So, now I don't have to worry about taking care of it later, and I was able to do geeky things like input my schedule from Jan to May in my palm pilot and make an Excel sheet of all of the books that I need and how much they cost.

Two things I'm still not used to even though I am now embarking on my third semester of not-science only coursework:
  1. Apparently, in humanities courses, you actually have to bring your books to class. I find this annoying.
  2. The cost of all of my books for the semester is less than the cost of one science text. I find this much less annoying and I'm always a little shocked at the beginning of the semester.


Early today a yellow ball appeared mysteriously in the backyard. I didn't recognize it, and neither did anyone else, but Mister Bones had apparently decided it was his. We arent sure where he got it. This evening another ball appeared mysteriously in the yard - or, rather, I just hadn't seen it before. Mister Bones apparently is also the proud owner of a red cricket ball. I briefly considered returning it to the league, but it's already covered in tooth marks, and if it has managed to make it from their playing field to our yard I imagine they gave up on it long ago, as Mister Bones doesnt venture that far on his walks.

A photo of the Heyden Observatory:

August 2008
SMTWTFS
July 2008September 2008
12
3456789
10111213141516
17181920212223
24252627282930