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Not the Clash song, per se, but the question itself. Should I stay or should I go…from the ACS and APS.

For many moons, I’ve been a member of both the ACS (American Chemical Society) and APS (American Physical Society), the former for ten or more, the latter for a few.  As a theoretical chemist, having a membership to these societies was quite useful. You get a subscription to a very good “popular” magazine, Chemical and Engineering News and Physics Today, discounted registration at conferences, and, perhaps most importantly, access to the respective job banks.

All this, though, comes at a cost. When you are a grad student and recent postdoc, the membership cost isn’t too expensive and the benefits well outweigh the costs.  But once you are a “professional member” the costs double–I think–at least to $140 and $118 per annum.

Okay, that’s not bad, not great, but not horrible. *But*, I am no longer a practicing chemist/physicist. I’m a code monkey. A membership to IEEE or ACM would make more sense, really. Heck, I’m kind of attending SC09, the supercomputing conference, next weekend.

But, but, but. I am a chemist. I am a physicist (according to Feynman, no less). I still think of myself as such and I suppose a part of me thinks one day I might be a practicing chemist/physicist again.

I’m not sure what to do.

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Saturday has been a busy day…well, busy by my lazy standards.  This morning I went to have my blood let and got a sweet button and pin proclaiming that. I then went to my local library’s “Friends of” semi-annual booksale.

But the main event: cookie making! Specifically, a recipe my grandma used to make back in the day for Christmas. There is a Don Rockwell picnic tomorrow and this is my contribution. Now, to the picto-recipe after the cut!

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Sometimes, when I’m alone in my apartment…

Okay, that’s redundant.

Sometimes, when I’m in my apartment…

…

…

…I make car noises as I walk around.

Vroooooom! as I move forward.

Vreeeewww! as I turn a corner.

Skreeeeee! as I stop.

Sometimes I sound like an F1 car, sometimes a Cup car, sometimes a World Rally Car.

Yup.

See what you are missing, ladies?!

Yours in you know you do it too,

Matt

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Nothing like completing a sudoku puzzle in 4 minutes to make one feel better.

Okay, yeah, it was an easy puzzle.

Okay, a really easy one.

Yes, I am doing the Jumble next. The really hard Jumble!

Shut up.

Hugs,
Matt

ETA: Completed the crossword in ten minutes as well. Woo! Gotta love Tuesday puzzle easiness! (Easiosity?)

ETA2: Found the 12 differences! And it was an advanced puzzle as well!

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This post is part warning about the perils of autocomplete with Gmail and part a whine fest for ol’ Matt. Thus comes the Cut!

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Oh! I forgot to mention that I recently bought some of that new fangled AquaFresh Isoactive toothpaste. If you don’t know it, it has the fun property of getting really foamy (I suppose to get fluoride everywhere).

The science-y part is that it does this by way of isopentane, a substance with the cool property that it boils right around room temperature (28 degrees C or so).  So, the isopentane is in the gel that is put in your mouth, which is at 37 degrees or so, and, voila, the isopentane boils causing the gel to get foamy!  I imagine the heat generated by the friction of brushing helps move things along as well.

Right now I’m trying to figure out any cool demos or something that I can do to have fun with gelled isopentane.  Everything I think of seems to use equipment I’d have in a chem lab, but not at home.  But, then again, are a Bunsen burner and a gas range really that far apart?

The answer, by the way, is yes! A thousand times yes! Don’t use a gas range burner as a Bunsen burner! Sigh…time to find a lawyer…

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I’m hoping to have a better, longer post soon, but I just wanted to say that SPX was quite fun.

Decided to take the Metro which, surprisingly, got me there early. That is pretty rare in my experience when you take a long Metro journey on the weekend. So, I sat around waiting for the expo to open reading Report from Iron Mountain. (It’s an interesting read if you’ve never picked it up. I’ve always wondered if someone could translate it into today’s political landscape.)

Then, huzzah!, the doors opened to us attendees and the scrum commenced.  I did my usual pre-buying journey up and down the aisles seeing what was there. After the first go-around, started buying and talking.

I’ll try to get pics or links to the things I bought up soon, if I don’t have them now.  First item was a “She Blinded Me With Library Silence” totebag from the estimable Jeph Jacques. Or well, bought from the inestimable Cristi as Mr Jacques seemed to be a bit busy/overwhelmed with sketch requests.

I also grabbed “DAR! Volume One” from Erika Moen who was gracious, beautiful, and who looked pretty much exactly like she does in her comic!

I got to meet R Stevens and picked up a copy of “CRUSH ALL HU-MANS!“. He seemed happy to be paid in ones (which were gathered as change as I made my way over to his table). I can only imagine the sheer number of twenties that are gathered each day at SPX…

Let’s see, I picked up a cool graphic biography of Niels Bohr. I’m assuming cool as I haven’t read it, but, come on, Niels Bohr! And a variety of cool minicomics. The type that are one or two bucks and sometimes more amusing/distressing/amazing than the more mainstream comics on offer at SPX.

Fun day! If you’ve never been to SPX, I highly recommend it. I just wish I had more money to buy more books. But, luckily, most of what I saw is available on internets of various types, so I’m sure they’ll be finding their way to me soon enough.

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Much to the astonishment of many a high-school or college student, us old folks like to attend lectures for fun.  And since I am old…

That’s right, tomorrow night I am going to a lecture on Frank Lloyd Wright at the Pope-Leighey House, one of his Usonian houses on display here in Virginia (moved to the site of Woodlawn).

The lecture is being given by Thomas Schmidt, Director-Emeritus of Fallingwater, usually considered Wright’s masterpiece–and rightly so. (One of these days I’m finally going to tour Fallingwater, though its distance from me is just enough that I’d probably have to make a weekend of it. It’s about a 4-hour drive from DC to southwest PA, which isn’t bad, but if I tried to do it in one day…hoo boy, that’s a lot of driving.)

When I saw this come up, I thought it’d be fun to attend.  As an architecture fan, and a fan of Wright, it was a no-brainer.  Wright is not my favorite architect (that’d be Niemeyer followed by Salmona–discovered at an exhibit I attended here in DC), but he is way up there.  I’ve always had a dream of living in a Wright house, even if I’d be whacking my head on every doorframe and ceiling. The “if I had all the money in the world” Wright house for me? The Ennis House, Wright’s textile block apotheosis, which would be a money pit to restore, but it’d be worth it.

And, yep, give me textile block over the Prairie or Usonian Wright works. (I also like his commercial works like Johnson Wax more than most of his homes.) In fact, that’s probably why I’m so enamored with Salmona, who was a master of using bricks. Something about that sort of modernism-meets-solid-stone that lights my imagination and wonder.

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I am sad to report the end of the Goatee of the Summer of ‘09. Its end was swift-ish, and blame is placed on the brutal Braun.

Yes, this morning, as I was shaving with my (admittedly old) Braun shaver, that weird cutter bar thing in the middle of the foils decided that the best course of action was to grab onto some beard hairs. Too many hairs. At once.

This was…painful, shall we say. Apparently, when pain is greater than a stubbed toe, but less than a kidney stone, I swear. A lot. Voluminously.

After swearing and blinking away the tears the pain brought to my eyes, I groped around and finally groped for and found some scissors, I was able to extricate shaver from beard. At this point my beard was suddenly and severely lop-sided, so, after clearing out the shaver, the rest went away as well.

Au revoir, mon barbe!

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I think I’m in the mood to do some baking this weekend…but bake what?  I have a recipe for some brown sugar peanut-butter cookies which sounds yummy…

…but I also have some low-fat cream cheese in the fridge which is keening for a cheesecake.  Maybe a Key Lime Cheesecake? Marble Chocolate? Hmm…

Any ideas from internetland?

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I’m thinking about shaving off the goatee I’ve been sporting.  I’m hesitant to do so because, well, I kinda like how I look with it.  Makes me look like I have a chin and reminds me that, hey, I can grow hair. Maybe not on top of my head, but on the head, at least. But, the downsides of the beard are beginning to annoy me.

First, the itching is back. Now, all beards itch and, for me, it usually comes and goes in waves. We’ll it’s back now and annoys the crap out of me.

Second, there is the occasional beard dandruff. Despite shampoo and conditioner, it seems as if the skin under the beard just wants to dry out.  It’s annoying, especially with dark shirts. (I know there are all sorts of treatments for this, but I’m not spending $10-20 on tea tree oil that might not work to fix it.)

Third, it’s getting all tangly and I’m too cheap to buy one of those beard trimmer kits. And if you’ve priced those, that means I’m pretty cheap.  Maybe a sale will happen soon…

Finally, maybe I just want a change? I dunno. My (almost-) Daily Mugshot is getting pretty boring.  Perhaps the appearance of Matt No-Chin Potato-Face will spice things up, eh?

Hmm…

Well, what say you my readers and Russian spammers? Keep the beard or lose it?

Matt

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Welp, it’s the time for school to begin for elhi to college students alike. And, perhaps feeling the vibes, I’m actually thinking about taking a class or some classes myself. Part to learn something new and cool and part, if I’m being honest, in the hope of meeting new people.  Though, really, hard to do in a 3-hour one-time class…hmm…

Still, classes!  As a resident of Fairfax County, I’m looking over the Fairfax County ACE courses.  I’ve looked at them all, and most of  them sound cool, but FC is a big county and I’m not really looking to have to drive 1 hour in rush-hour traffic after work to get to a class.  So, I’m focusing on ones near me (Annandale-ish area, the Plum Center is ideal).

To that end, I’ve identified two courses that I might do.  First is Lebanese Cuisine: Vegetarian and the other is Indian Cuisine: Vegetarian. Very veggie of me, eh?

I’m also looking at Thai Cuisine as well, but it conflicts with the Lebanese course. I suppose right now I’m trying to decide, do I do Lebanese or Thai?

So, my two or so readers and my 5603242237 Russian spammers, which one should I choose?  (I thought about doing a poll, but polls on Wordpress aren’t as easy as I thought so I said screw that. It’s relaxing weekend time!)

Yours in student,

Matt

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Been thinking about what to do this weekend…if Danny doesn’t decide to wash it out here in DC.  The models generated at my work seem to be a bit conflicted at the moment.

However, I am going to assume the best! And what might my weekend entail? Museum! Yay! In fact, two museums! Double yay!

The first one I want to hit up is the National Geographic Society Museum. They currently have two exhibitions I want to look at. One is “Lions and Leopards” by the famous Jouberts. Maybe you don’t recognize the name, but you’d recognize their photos, I bet! The other exhibition is “Kodachrome Culture” which celebrates “the American tourist in Europe” and their photos using Kodachrome film. It also is a bit of a tribute to Kodachrome which Kodak recently stopped production on.

The other museum I plan to visit is the OAS’ Art Museum of the Americas. They have an exhibit on Colombian architect Rogelio Salmona, master of the red brick. I’m a bit of an architecture nut, so I’m excited about this one.

In fact, it isn’t my first architecture exhibit at the OAS. They had a Niemeyer exhibit there last year which was great as well. But then, I love love love Niemeyer.  One of my current goals in life is to go to Brasília and view all of Niemeyer’s works there. Ahh…perchance to dream.

Other than the museum, the weekend is probably normality. Library, grocery store, Trader Joe’s…

Yours in weekend,

Matt

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There was a book review in this week’s Nature that I had to pass along (link, sadly, for subscribers only, but you get the first few lines of it).  It reviewed a book, Lilavati’s Daughters: The Women Scientists of India, published by the Indian Academy of Sciences.

If you like, the whole of Lilavati’s Daughters can be found at the IAS’ website here. Some of the autobiographical essays that I’ve read–and I haven’t read them all–are just great.  So good, in fact, that I’m thinking I might buy the book (available from Scholar Without Borders). Sure there is a slight (okay, whopping) premium over the base price of Rs300 to get it here, but $25 is worth a great book. Plus, I suppose I see buying a book like this as a show of support for women in science.

Even if they are all usually smarter than me. Damn you, nerds of the fairer sex!

Yours in women in science,

Matt

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…the new Swatches are here!

Okay, not that exciting, but they are.  Going there, I look through the watches and see this one:

Good job setting the hands, there. Hey…I can be juvenile with the best of them!

There were also some just horrible ones:

I wouldn’t wear that on a dare.

There were some that I do like.  This one, for example:

So, I look at the “specs” and see…

Dammit!  Ladies get all the good watches! Or this one at least.

Yours in watches,

Matt

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Did some walking today (trying to do some every other day, at least). Sadly, no efts were seen today. Crickets were, though, quite a few.

As for the walk, 37 minutes of aerobic walking comprising 3563 steps. So, about 1.5 to 2 miles of good walking. Yay!

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I saw an eft today while I was taking a walk around at lunch. Just thought it was cool.

Also cool: Im trying to walk more so I bought a pedometer. According to it, I did 20 minutes of aerobic walking at lunch. Yay!

ETA: After an evening walk, today I walked 3012 aerobic steps. Thats 34 minutes of aerobic walking. Overall, about 4500 steps. But most were aerobic. Double yay!