Learning from boredom: Lesson 1

Today was a great day. I got off work early and I came home thinking I’d take a nice nap before dinner at this place called Kathmandu Chullo.

Hey, maybe I should check my e-mail that I already checked on my phone before I got home. So I sat down at my laptop and opened up Firefox. Hmm, CNN has an article on the Hubble (Hubble repair mission OK’d). Wow, the telescope was launched in 1990 when I was only 9 years old and since then it has taken over 750,000 pictures. After looking at a few of the pictures Hubble has acquired, I started feeling mighty small and insensible.

The galaxies pictured each had billions of stars and each galaxy looked like a sprinkle of pixie dust. At this time, I began to feel even smaller. Next was a picture of a galaxy over 100 million light years away meaing the light that was imaged was over 100 million years old! The little description said the exposure time had to be one million seconds. WTF!? I can just picture Dr. Evil asking for the picture. So I wanted to know how long one million seconds was and because I was too lazy to calculate it, I Googled it. It was interesting to note that my query returned over 23 million results.

I got to the third link and I finally found my answer in the FAQ: one million seconds equals 11 days, 13 hours, 46 minutes, and 40 seconds. Even more amazing, the telescope can capture images “without deviating more than the width of a strand of human hair from a mile away.”

Since I was on a roll, I Googled the number of stars in the universe. I got almost 44 million results this time but the first link gave me my answer. I should have just clicked the “I’m feeling lucky” button instead but even more importantly, there are 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars in the universe. How many atoms are in the universe? The first result out of almost 5 million had a good enough answer. To give a little perspective to those who still use pencils, but without specifying what kind, it is written that there are 25,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms in just the lead. Anywho, a scant 4×10^79 is a conservative estimate of the number of atoms in the universe. That’s 4,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms!

Since my finger is tired from typing all those zeros, I will conclude today’s lesson in boredom. But not before talking about Kathmandu Chullo. It is supposed to be a Nepalese restaurant. I’m expecting it to be good simply because Kathmandu (kat-man-doo) is home to roughly 800,000 people and the capital of Nepal which is, in turn, home to 8 of the ten tallest mountains on our tiny Earth.

I’m going to take a nap now to forget I even exist. Happy Halloween!

Calvin strikes again

Calvin and Hobbes really helps bring back fond memories of old times. Today was unique because it brought back fond memories, but only mixed emotions. Eh.

I remember one warm afternoon when I was in elementary school day care. There was Debra (I think) who was the boss/leader, Pauline the assistant, and Darren and Jennifer who I think were studying to be teachers or something. I miss them. More on Jennifer at a later time.

I know the preview is tremendously small, so click to enlarge.

Bill Watterson, Oct. 30, 1995.

Anyway, I was telling some other kid, “uckfay ouyay.” LOL, I thought I was such a genius just like Calvin. But then the day care lady, Pauline, heard me and was like, “Young man! I know what you just said! I’m going to tell your mother.” Needless to say, my mom just laughed. Happy Birthday Mom.

Terror strikes eggling

This morning our faithful puppy, Yuki, discovered a clear and present danger on our table requiring immediate attention and prompt annihilation. Before this, the eggling was slowly establishing itself in an uprising of bushy green stalks with a clear view to the outside world. Thanks to Yuki’s swift action, the eggling is no more. There was no evidence of a struggle as only a few sandy entrails were strewn onto the table.

In an effort to resuscitate it, I quickly added water to the sad, lifeless pot but I must report that the prognosis for a full recovery is poor. Thanks Jackie, but the eggling had no chance against Yuki’s surprise attack. Sadly, we only have memories of the eggling’s birth (an eggling is born).

Persistence

Some of our friends are going through some trying times so I thought it was fitting when I came across this today.

I know the preview is tremendously small, so click to enlarge.

Bill Watterson, Oct. 28, 1995.

Michigan Ablaze

Two weeks ago, we were lucky enough to have time to drive up to Traverse City. I’ve wanted to see the fall color display for the past couple years and this year, I was so inspired by the Pure Michigan radio ads that I couldn’t resist.

260 miles and 3.5 hours later, we got to our condo rental. It happened to be the only place available since the city was filled with people like us trying to catch the trees’ last hurrah.

What an amazing weekend.

Click below for a few more or here for the full gallery: Michigan Ablaze

(more…)

ASCII

So I was pleasantly impressed by the Canadian border officer’s breadth of knowledge. Maybe it’s just because I’m in Michigan and not many people know much about computers, but this guy did.

During our brief interrogation at the Canadian border, the dude asked me what I did for a living. Hmm, a perfectly valid question from him to try to make me crack, I thought. “I’m in medical school,” I said. “At wayne.” Then he comes right out from left field and asks if anyone does computer programming. What the? I go, “Uh, oh yeah, I used to do that,” wondering how he came up with that one. “Is that why your license plate says that?” he said seeing the expression of wonderment on my face. And it all became clear. I told him how impressed I was because he was the first person in Michigan to know what it was. :happy: