Small.Island.in.World.Three

I turn 30yrs old at around 9:15pm or 9:45pm tonight, don't recall which. I'm not really prepared for that, but the movement of the masses in space goes on anyway.

Got a iPod nano from my wonderful gal. After some kernel fun (which turned out totally unneeded, habits die hard), I've got a couple of gigs of tunes on it, via wallace (my gentoo machine). Thanks, baby. My early product review on this one is that it has a good solid feel, good sound. It does take more attention to start/stop than my previous (tiny capacity) player, so I don't know if the previous solution (player under shirt on lanyard, operate it through the fabric) is going to work (I hope it does since I want to wear it, not carry it). Right now I have it attached to my phone as they seem to share about the same "work-function" to use.

Extra friends in town. That should be nice.

This product is not nothing. For that price, it probably even has about 1ATM of air in it. Nothing? Ridiculous! Air has like 30,000,000,000,000,000,000 molecules per cubic cm! ref

Heck, even out in the midst of the voids there is still quite a bit of stuff around. Interstellar space has about 1 atom per cubic cm. Intergalactic, perhaps a few times less. So this sphere probably has at least half a dozen atoms in it. And even if they closed it up without any, the plastic would out-gas some over time. I see no rating for how long this cheap little sphere is expected to hold its nothing at various temperatures, or any of the other specifications I would expect to see from something actually containing nothing. And all this is putting aside the various photons (the darn thing is transparent!) and neutrinos (way transparent to those) and maybe some dark mater (depending on what that turns out to be).

Having spent more than a few hours considering the age old question of why there is something rather than nothing, I find this little gag-gift a bit insulting. As such, I recommend not buying this product.

Yep, done. Did it take too long? Sure. Did I procrastinate a lot? Yeah. Did I obsess over details that didn't matter? Oh yeah. Do I care? Nope.... well, maybe some. I really should get better at such things.

Anyway, just a few revisions (next week) and turning in, and the master's chapter draws to a close. The PhD chapter begins. The little storm clears to reveal a larger, more foreboding one on the horizon. It is still a ways off.

Sorry, dear reader, I had to put blogging on the back-burner. Now I can resume my frantic once-a-month updates!

Gee, what has been going on? My gal and I are doing great, thanks for asking. She has been a wonderful source of compassion and caring and support and calming and motivation and inspiration these long months. Thank you, baby.

I've frittered away much of the time that an old friend has been in town. It has been great having J.B. around.

I've put off any large changes to Darwin, my computer, lest I screw it up during my writing. Time to dust off the plans (something about ubuntu/gentoo dual boot, bigger hdd, beagle, virtualized windows, and some other things), make some sense of them, and tear this functional system apart.

Oh, my brother and his wife are expecting a child. That is cool. I've got being a crazy uncle to look forward to.

I am, of course, leaving out the hundreds upon thousands of everyday events that make up the tapestry of a life, and have altered me from he who lived months ago, into he who writes now. One that I will mention, Kurt Vonnegut dying. It has got me thinking/saying "If this isn't good, then I don't know what is." a lot lately. I read that his uncle lamented that people don't realize that sentiment enough, and thus Kurt's mental echos of that are now ringing in this head. Maybe I'll pass along this meme when I become the uncle. Kurt, you were a great guy, but now you don't move anymore (which creaps the rest of us out a bit) so you've been placed in the ground. So it goes.

That event also got me wanting to read some non-science book or two in the near future. One of Vonnegut's more recent would be nice. Or perhaps The Time Traveler's Wife. But also a classic or two.

Anyway, another thought for the day. There is some nothing to be done.