Les Bonnes Choses

I feel I should write something as 2008 draws to an end, yet I find myself without any keen observations to make. Karen has finished her blogging, and I have left demands in the comments section of her blog's carcass to step up with a new blog for the new year. I have given up on waiting for any of the others to resume blogging; they know who they are. That is my gift to them this year: soul-crushing shame. What did other people get me this year? A few things from my wish list, found just over there to the right on my blog. I have (or will shortly) scratch the portable DVD player and replacement hard disk for my laptop off of that list. My laptop is very recently mostly restored to its full former glory (albeit with much more disk space). All that remains is for me to reinstall ePrime for that fMRI project with Marc. I'll need more participants in the new year, so drop me a line if you're interested and right handed with no history of neurological impairment.

Hmmm. Brad never did get me that pipe & cherry tobacco...

There is a predator in Masonville Mall. She's caucasian, possibly from the Mediterranean region, about 5'4" - 5'6", 120 lbs., brown hair and very aggressive when approached.

You will find her manning the temporary booth on the first floor, selling Dead Sea skin products. I was shopping yesterday for a stand lamp for Rebecca when I was approached by this woman. It's a bit of a blur, but this is what I told the police:

She addressed me by asking whether I would like to try some lotion. My hands are presently very dry, as in the sort of condition you might expect my skin to be in if my job was to scrub floors all day. Without gloves. With lye. So I figured, 'hey, what's the harm in getting some lotion on my hands?'
She squeezed a blob of this revolutionary lotion on my hand, and I rubbed it in, only then realizing that this was a very feminine smelling product. She then told me how this lotion was made with ingredients from the Dead Sea as the final horror sunk in that I was now going to be walking around the mall smelling like a floral arrangement.

Now my mind was racing to figure out an exit strategy, so only part of my attention was focused on her - just enough to allow me to react in case she jumped at me with an avocado facial.

"Do you want to see something amazing?" she asked.
"Something amazing?" I repeated, estimating that she would probably not show me anything sufficiently amazing to justify what I had just endured.
"Show me your fingernails. What's your worst finger?"
'Oh my God, I smell like flowers and now she wants to give me a manicure,' I thought. "No, thanks," I replied, now walking away.
"Don't you like the cream?" she asks after me.
"It smells a little -- girly," I replied back, I'm sure with a disgusted look on my face.

Shortly after this encounter, I came across one of the members of my Cohort, Jon, who was also shopping for his wife. Wait. Let me be clear: He was shopping for his wife, and I was shopping for mine. I was not also shopping for his wife. Whatever. In any case, I could not greet him by shaking his hand because my hand smelled like Aunt Esther. It was awful.

Yesterday I finally got myself to see the family doctor. I brought Jude along too because we've both been afflicted by some sort of contagion for the last 3 weeks, with Jude's most troubling symptom being that he coughs until he hacks up a lung and throws up at least once daily. Me, I also had a cough, but my coughing-fu is much more advanced. In the end I was prescribed some antibiotics, and Jude was left to suck it up, as the doctor figured he's just been suffering from a series of viral infections by way of the germ spawning ground known as preschool. Ironic (coincidental?) thing is that shortly after I left the doctor's office, I noticed that my lungs felt clear for the first time since I defended 3 weeks ago. However, I also noticed the onset of a head cold at the same time. So I'm back to feeling miserable, and my nose is red, despite my strict adherence to the policy of using Puffs lotion-imbued facial tissue.

Speaking of contagion, I have just started reading The Andromeda Strain, by the late Michael Crichton (if you have invited him to anything, he will in fact be very late). This book is going by much more easily than the unabridged original version of Sense and Sensibility, which, most liberally, makes use of needless commas; semicolons as well. I meant to read a Cole's notes version, or Wikipedia entry on the book so I could get my head around what the hell was going on.

Now, off to the rings and blankets party. My contribution is less than stellar, and I can't taste it (or anything, for that matter). I appeal to my illness, should anyone choose to judge me.

If you're reading this on facebook right now, take a look at the right hand side of the page. That's where they display paid advertisements. Now look closer at one of the ads. Underneath are three icons: bad ad, good ad and next ad. The intention is for you to have an opportunity to rate the ads. Is it me, or is a bizarre expectation? I'm going to have to agree with sentiments expressed by some of my other friends about consumerism. It's as if we have gotten to the point where marketing has become the end-goal. They even have a link at the end of those ads to see even more ads. Unlimited ads? Sign me up!

Speaking of useless "products", on the way to my parent's house, there is some business set up in the plaza where I get my car serviced (plug: Teeple Tire. I highly recommend them). They have one of those black portable road-side signs. I'm not sure what the business is; all I take away from the sign is that they use lasers as a solution to many of life's problems. Want to quit smoking? They can fix that for you with lasers. Whiter teeth? Lasers. Depressed? Lasers. Death Star threatening your planet? Lasers (but they have to be very precisely aimed with The Force). I'm going to stick my neck out here and take a position on lasers as a panacea: they're quacks, and it's a waste of money. Now, let's assume I'm right, for the sake of argument. I wonder how many social problems could be solved by the amount of money taken in by snake oil salesmen?

Of course, like I always do, I'll just leave this box open for people to observe that the same could be said about aestheticians and luxury yacht salesmen.

I should preface this by admitting that I have never taken an economics class. But like I said before, I am now authorized to spout on about whatever I want. So I was thinking this evening about how I would like to have a front-loading washing machine "in the new house"*. Naturally, I started thinking about how (at least the last time I was in the market for a washing machine) those ones come at a premium. One thing that seems to be a constant is that, well, price points are constant. A really good example of this is in computers. As long as I can remember, stores have been selling desktop computers at three or four price points. There's always an entry level system for about $999, then two more models, say at about $1299 and $1599 and then there's that deluxe gamer system for $2299. Check again 6 months later, you still see the same prices, but all the hardware has moved down a rank. Most of the hardware that made up the superdeathmachine computer is now found in the mid-range office computer, and so on, down the line until you get to the old entry level system, which is no longer offered at any price. What occurred to me was that, in the stock market, you can do something called shorting, which basically amounts to a gamble that the price of some commodity will fall in the future. But things like computers and washing machines that are sold at various price points are virtually guaranteed to fall in value. I don't want a front-end loading washing machine now, but I will in the future. But that entry level front-end loading machine may not be available then. It will be replaced by a fancier machine at the same price.

Okay, so the solution is probably going to be to go to some clearance center, but I thought maybe by writing about this finance construct and trying to apply it to something like buying a washing machine someone would have a useful idea. I'm an idea guy. I try to find connections between seemingly disconnected things. And that's why I'm not in chemistry, where seemingly disconnected things are disconnected on purpose ... so that they don't blow up.

*The new house is shared fantasy about the future held by Rebecca and I. It can be approximated by imagining a Utopian world shrunk down to a quarter-acre lot.

I don't know how I remembered the conjugation of that verb.

Another email sitting in my inbox is the motivation behind this entry. I have been asked to review an article for Brain Research, which is kind of cool. The first article I was ever asked to review was from some unknown online European journal. I was also asked to review for CogSci 08, but given that Ken was one of the organizers, and at least one of the editors is personally known to me, that didn't seem especially remarkable. Things started getting kooky when I was asked to review a neuroimaging article for Brain (especially kooky because I have no neuroimaging publications at this time), and today I am asked to review an ERP paper. I guess "they" are actually taking me seriously. How interesting.

UWO staff (and possibly students) received this email today:

As you may know, The University of Western Ontario has been in negotiations with the International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE) Local 772 since June to negotiate a new collective agreement for 10 employees involved in operating the steam plant that produces heating and cooling for both Western and University Hospital.

I'll suggest that the University's position should require assurances that the employees actually maintain the buildings at reasonable temperatures. We're always complaining in the Social Science Building about it either being too hot and stuffy or else too cold.

I've been looking up recipes for the upcoming rings and blankets potluck. The only food item that makes use of blanket technology is 'pigs in a blanket', and variations thereof. That is extremely limiting. I may have to invent something. Miranda and Daniel should be whipped with wet noodles for coming up with this theme.

Speaking of appropriate punishments, this morning Jude was refusing to cooperate in getting dressed, and threw a fit. When I told him to knock it off, he asked to go to the naughty spot in between sobs. He even prepared the naughty spot by moving his stepstool into the hallway so he could sit on it. That boy is weird. He's like a little George Washington. He'll chop down a cherry tree one day, and then come tell me about it so he can be appropriately reprimanded.

Karen's about to get grilled. She doesn't even get to fully enjoy her day though, as she has to give an exam later on. That is sad for her. Happy for her is that she's just about done.

Bonus points if you can figure out why I chose this particular title for my entry.

There's always one straggler at the end of the exam: one student who takes right up until the bell rings. In my case, the bell rings in about 15 minutes. Then I get to trudge back from the Health Sciences Building, up UC hill to my office in the Social Science Center. I'm looking forward to getting back home. Hopefully the Pokes will be in bed asleep by then. I'll need a decent night's sleep if I am to get to school in time for Karen's talk. I've got to look into this ASL sign for 'boring'. Maybe I'll do 'fox' - it's the only other nose one I know.

Karen is probably at home right now, doing last minute prep for her big day which, unfortunately for me, begins at 9am tomorrow. I hope others are able to make it in for her public lecture. Maybe I can get dropped off.

Now that I'm finished, I'm still coming in regularly, mostly because the ancient version of PDP++ that I'm using for this project with Stefan has a crap load of windows and is unusable with less than 2.4 megapixels of screen real estate. I need to invest in a new monitor for home, I think. The other thing I have to do is take a look at the fMRI data for three participants that I have run so far, to make sure everything is on the up and up. Plus, my participants might like to have their brain for a desktop image.

Over the weekend, we had to say goodbye to Doc Hudson. Jude dropped him on the way out to the car yesterday morning. We were running late and couldn't find where the heck the matchbox car fell in to the snow. Unfortunately, our neighbour's snow blower found it during the day. My mom found a shredded part of Doc's front end on the driveway this morning. That is sad.

I learned this evening that famous neurological patient H.M. died this week in his nursing home in Connecticut. I also learned this evening that 'Connecticut' has a silent 'c' in the middle.

Heather sent me an email a couple days ago. As I mentioned, she's checking out the housing market. Here's one of the reasons why:

I also lost it on my neighbours last night - I've told them at least 20 times before yesterday to keep it down, I've called the police on them for being too loud at 3am for 2 hours and I've gotten my landlord involved who at one point eluded to evicting them if they kept it up. I don't know what the grand total of "warnings" this amounts to but I'd hazard a guess and say somewhere in the vicinity of 40 over the course of 2.5 years which amazes me that last night they decided band practice was a good idea...DRUMS AND ALL. I marched outside in my PJ's, rang their doorbell, stood there for 5 minutes with my arms folded until someone came to the door and asked this little twirp of a guy to riddle me this: how many times I'll have to ask him to keep it down before he finally understands that I don't want to be a part of their household activities - to which he replied with "oh. you can hear that?" - like what the F&%$ do you think moron, you've plugged in a guitar and are whaling on drums and you're surprised that I find this disruptive???? You should blog about this or something.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. I'd post the asshat's address because I'm all about culpability to the mob, but Heather and X also live at that address. Any lawyers out there feel like putting the fear of God in someone this holiday season with some pro bono work?

I think our members of parliament could benefit from a good public flogging.

So imagine it's the morning of the first Tuesday after Labour Day, and you find yourself in your new third grade class room following a long summer spent at basketball camp. There's a few other boys in the class that play basketball too, many of which were at that camp, so you guys are tight. In fact, there's enough of you to play a little 4-on-4 action at recess. During the first recess, you ignore the group of 5 or so European dorks wearing soccer jerseys. They can only twiddle their thumbs because, really, 5 is a useless number for soccer. There are 3 rocker kids who just sort of hang out and act all cool, but it's grade 3, so they're mostly harmless. And finally, there's that new kid to the school from out-of-province. He speaks with an accent, so nobody talks to him. He doesn't much want to be there anyways. I can't imagine why, because the student to teacher ratio in this class is unrealistically low, but anyways...

When the lunch bell rings, the kids pull out their lunchboxes and the teacher is unexpectedly called to the office. Chaos ensues. The guy with the best layup looks over at the soccer players and notices one of them with yet another alternative to good old peanut butter.
"What's that? Pudding sandwich? Nice sandwich, loser."
"It's Nutella, and who are you calling a loser, loser?"
"Don't they speak English in Europeland where you're from? I'm talking to you. You guys bring in the most retarded lunches. Do you have real food, or are all your dads unemployed or something?"
"Hey, dork, my dad lost his job. I have a baloney sandwich. How about I stuff it down your face," says the biggest of the rocker kids, pausing from drawing a tattoo in pen on his forearm.
"Whatever, you and what army?"
"I'll 'elp just to shut you up (tabernack!)," says the new kid, more convinced than ever that he wants to transfer schools again.
"Yeah, so will we," reply the rest of the soccer players, finishing their lunches.
"See you outside," one of the kids calls back, leaving the basketball players alone in the room.
The teacher returns.
"Miss,can we stay in this recess and clean the chalkboards?"

I believe the moral of the story is clear: do a head count before you run your mouth off. And also, no matter what you do, they will see you after school.

So it looks like my sister, Cake* is in the market for houses: her Facebook status says as much. Me, being a smartass, commented that there's some good deals in the Detroit/Windsor area. Then, out of a morbid sense of curiosity - the same one that causes me to go to the websites of online businesses that shut down, and probably the same one that causes people to slow down to see a car wreck, caused me to google Detroit foreclosures. There's alot. I saw a house listed for $6000. There was no picture listed for it, but the listing gave the address, and I figured out that I could use the street view on google maps to check out 15331 Cruse St, Detroit, Michigan. Okay, it's in a pretty sketch looking neighbourhood. You couldn't pay me to live there. Scanning further down the list, however, I saw a listing for an even more affordable $1095. Now, the ad says rent to own, so maybe I'm misunderstanding it and they are advertising the monthly rent and not a purchase price. But if I'm not, then that is very, very sad, because the house looks very similar to my parent's house.

This just in. The doctor called from the urgent care clinic that I visited this weekend. I might or might not have pneumonia. Don't let me kiss you.

*Cake is how Heather is known to Jude, which is funny. Also funny is how I originally typed Caka.

Well, it's now all over but the crying. I still have some revisions to do, though I have no idea what they might be, as I have yet to meet with Ken. I've been home these last few days with the flu, you see. But I'm not here to complain about that.

Instead, I'll complain that I feel pretty-much like I did at the beginning of the week. I'm a dot-your-i's and cross-your-t's sort of person, so until I hand in the final revised version of my dissertation, I have not fulfilled the requirements for the PhD. And then there's the technical "graduation in absentia" in February, when my degree is technically conferred. It isn't until the June convocation that I get my pomp-and-circumstance and the official paper, suitable for framing. That reminds me, I still have to find out whether I ever did pick up my MA degree from the registrar's office. I hope I didn't, otherwise I seem to have lost it. Come to think of it, I don't know where my BA degree from '97 is either. I hope that isn't taken as an indication of how much I value all the work I have done since 1993.

I'd like to write some essays, or somesuch. It seems like I now have the authority to spout off on any random topic. Lately, I have been wanting to get my head around greed, as the backbone of capitalism. I agree with hardcore capitalists that greed and self-interest should be the gas that fuels the economy, mostly because it's probably the only human behaviour we can actually rely on. I do think measures should be in place to check it, however. Mostly, it's the wage disparity that bugs me because, consistent with the capitalist ideal (I think), I believe in meritocracies. Are CEOs exponentially more capable than the lowest level employees of the companies that they run? Why are they paid exponentially more? When I analyze error-rate data, I first transform the error rates by taking their square root. It pulls in outlier values. For example, the difference between 1 and 100 is 99. The difference between the square roots of these numbers is 9. Just thinking outside of the box.

I don't mean to sound anti-union (though, admittedly, I am anti-union), but what with all the talk about the automotive sector in the news, I wanted to check a few things out. It kind of definitely bothers me that so much of our economy is dependent on cars, one way or the other. Our cities are designed around them (I am now taking great effort to avoid an urban sprawl rant), the flow of money requires that they are regularly replaced, we wouldn't even be in the middle east, were it not for their oil ... the list goes on. Now that I am on the cusp of graduating after (2008 - 1979 = 29) 29!!!! years in school, I'm hoping I can look forward to a decent job before too long. Know what would be nice? A job that paid as well as those CAW jobs that are drying up. After their last round of negotiations, workers in the top of three tiers could expect to make $62/hr. Calculating a yearly income from an hourly wage is easy enough: multiply the rate by 2000 (50 weeks * 40 hours). That's $120,000 per year. The second-rate workers? They can expect $47/hr, or approximately $90K per year. To piece together Ford Explorers. Or maybe just push the buttons on the machines that put together Ford Explorers. I don't know. What I do know is that it's much clearer why the heck these companies are in danger of going bankrupt (I mean, aside from not adapting to the changing times and instead relying on old cash cows like SUVs built on 40 year old technology).

Show Jude a picture of Santa Claus: he has no idea who it is. Yet he can name Barak Obama from a video and identify him as the president-elect of the United States.

I mention this not [primarily] to boast, but rather, to serve as a bookmark. That way, we can all look back and say, "yeah, you could tell he was a little bit different right ... about ... here."

I don't know if this means anything about this pass through the job application process, but I received in the mail an Equal Opportunity / Affirmative Action Information request. I'm certain I've filled out at least one of these for another job, and perhaps for as many as two. Last year, I applied to four or five jobs and received none of these requests. So either I've made it a little bit further into the hiring machine and haven't been simply rejected out-of-hand, or else I just coincidentally applied to departments last year that did not require this information.

Either way, is there anyway I can argue that "metrosexual" constitutes a minority group?

I received a phone call last night from Weed Man, the now-former provider of our "lawn care". The only reason I ever got mixed up with them in the first place was to take care of a bindweed problem in our back yard two summers ago. "Sure, we can take care of that", they said, when I explicitly asked whether they could care of our bindweed problem. I understand from my reading that the conventional treatment for broadleaf weeds doesn't really affect bindweed. As we now have more, not less, bindweed in our backyard than we did two summers ago, I'm not clear they knew what the hell they were talking about.

Earlier this year, they called to set up an overseeding, whereby they apply a thin layer of topsoil and grass seed, to help thicken up the lawn. This was their suggestion as a cheaper alternative to laying down some sod. Now that I think about it, a newly sodded lawn probably doesn't need much treatment for weeds. Anyways, I agreed to it, and they came and overseeded my lawn. Someone then showed up about a week later to apply the spring weed treatment. To be clear: weed killer will prevent newly planted grass seed from germinating. Fortunately, I had not left for school the day they showed up to kill the seed I had just payed to have spread on my lawn.

Last evening's phone call was in regards to an overdue charge on my account. I had received a phone call about 2 months ago about aerating my lawn. Their fantastic weed prevention program had not stopped crabgrass from overrunning my front lawn, so there are currently dense patches of dead (or dormant?) crabgrass all over the place. Ignoring my better judgment, I agreed to have my lawn aerated. I mean, I most certainly do have a thatch problem. I kept waiting all September and October for the day that I would come home and see soil plugs all over my lawn. That day never came. Accordingly, I didn't get an invoice for the service either. And yet, when I called this evening to find out what this overdue payment was for, it was, as I suspected, for having my lawn aerated.

I think I may take my lawn care into my own hands in the spring. It couldn't possibly be any more amateurish than this operation.

November 26th, 2008, 1pm. That's the time and date for my public lecture for my Senate Defense. UWO requires a minimum of 6 weeks to schedule your senate defense following your departmental, ostensibly to allow your external examiner time to read your paper. This is probably more of an issue for those fluffy disciplines that I make fun of for routinely having dissertations that require multiple volumes -- you can write about the significance of the Mister Men books on contemporary culture if you want, but make sure you use 3600 pages to do so because you otherwise may as well just submit Liam's grade 2 book report on the same topic.

Yes, there is such thing as academic snobbery.

Also, I will explicitly state that I am not taking a dig at Karen's dissertation. She studies interesting stuff too -- at least interesting enough to deserve mention in the media, which is more than I can hope for with my research topic.

So, if you find yourself with naught else to do, feel free to stop by the Dean's office on the 26th, and check out this presentation from which I am currently taking a break. Party at Ken's afterwards.

For those of you not on top of the saga of how I came to be a hog-riding hardcore biker*, my brother-in-law Billy put the idea in my head at the beginning of the summer. He got himself a Honda CBR125, which is, in his words, "a scooter that looks like a motorcycle". We have one car in this household, which doesn't generally cause any problems, though there is the odd occasion where Rebecca is out and about with the car, leaving me to rely on London's shoddy public transportation system. For times like these, and in the event that I go somewhere like San Diego for a postdoc, I thought that a small-engine motorcycle, similar to Bill's, would be handy. The thinking was that I would not want to have to rely on any 4-wheeled vehicle that the $3000 I spent on the motorcycle (about $3600 if you include the equipment and the motorcycle training course) would buy me.

I'm really methodical, and when I dive into an area about which I know very little, I research the hell out of it. It took about 8 weeks for me to actually purchase my motorcycle, and I ended up buying it from a guy in Sarnia - about the nicest guy I have ever met in my life. Seriously, if he had my mailing address, I wouldn't be surprised if he sent me a Christmas card asking how I enjoyed riding the motorcycle this fall. Of course, by the time I actually got the motorcycle home, it was already mid-September, and I had yet to take the motorcycle safety course, and I certainly wasn't going to venture out into traffic without having some formal training on riding the thing.

Two weeks ago, I passed the motorcycle safety course at Fanshawe which, if nothing else, gave me the confidence to drive around on London's streets. And then it snowed. Fortunately, it warmed up again this week, and I rode in to school for the first time this week on Tuesday and Wednesday. Yesterday I stayed home to finish writing questions for exam for the stats class I am teaching through distance studies, and today I am home again copying the questions to a word processor document that I can provide to the UWO distance studies coordinator. It's currently 17 degrees and cloudy, and we will probably not see this weather again for another 4 months, at least. So I came up with an excuse for one last ride around the neighbourhood, and rode over to the gas station to make sure that my tank was filled to the top, and that my tires were inflated to the correct pressure in anticipation of storing my motorcycle for the winter.

Now all I have to do is clean out my bloody garage. I'm not so good at finding excuses to do that, however.

It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that I pay attention to the sorts of things that Jude says with an ear for different developmental markers. I think his regular exposure to members of my family have somewhat warped his developmental trajectory. He's all over the map.

For example -- and my friends Karen and John, who know something about metaphor use can jump in here with their opinions -- the other day, Jude was watching Batman Returns with his Nana (I will leave the discussion of whether it was appropriate for him to be watching Batman for another time). Unlike the campy television series, or even the first set of movies from the early 90's, the latest Batman franchise has a fair amount of depth, and the plots are fairly sophisticated, especially for a 2 year old. The unsurprising part of the story was when he asked his nana "what happened?" at some point in the movie. The surprising part was his word choice when he then said, "I'm lost!"

I'm saving the next memorable Jude quote for when he's older. He's not always amenable to taking a nap, so sometimes, we have to engage in some modeling. At Nana's house, she does this by taking Carolyn's cabbage patch kid, Noah (Spiff), and pretending that the doll is going to sleep. However, Jude has a pretty good imagination, and has no problem having conversations with stuffed animals like Kesswick, or between his toy cars from the Disney movie. A few weeks ago, Jude reportedly asked the sleeping cabbage patch kid, "hello, baby. Who's your mommy?" That would be an awesome pickup line.

I'm teaching an intro to stats and research methods class this year, the former Psychology 282. A significant chunk of the marks for the course come from carrying out a little research project. Nothing ground-breaking, mind you. Just a little something to give the kids a chance to think about how to turn questions into experiments and run some numbers. I've TA'd the course in the past, so when it came time to write up the syllabus, I was tempted to include a requirement that the research topics cannot, in any way, have anything to do with self-esteem. When I first TA'd the course, I found every third research project I had to mark was titled something along the lines of blah blah blah and its effect on self esteem.

I was doing pretty well this year too. I had seen 7 of 9 proposals, and the only problem I had come across was one of my students was proposing to panhandle in North Toronto while wearing one of three different outfits. He said his dependent variable was going to be the amount of money he was able to collect in a day, though perhaps a more interesting thing to record would be whether he would be able to go the day without being curb stomped by a gang of thugs. Unfortunately for me, the streak ended at proposal number eight, which was indeed a self-esteem experiment. Even worse, she proposed testing whether viewing photographs of attractive models and actresses would lower women's self-esteem scores. Hmmm, do you think?

While I was waiting to hear back from the Department of Obvious Research on what they thought of the matter, I decided to find out how many times this particular experiment had been done. It seems there are several authors out there who really should have had someone like me to tell them that conducting trite research with foregone conclusions will only get you mocked in somebody's blog. However, because I am currently applying for academic jobs, I will refrain from naming any names, just in case somebody knows somebody who happens to do a google search.

My advice to the student was to throw in another factor that might interact with the body-image/self-esteem effect, just to make it even the least bit more interesting. She of course is free to do the experiment she proposed, but I suggested to her that, because there is no shortage of articles detailing the exact experiment she proposed, I would be holding her to very high standards. Even now, I'm considering just requiring her to come up with a more interesting idea.

I just read the following signature line, which I thought was funny enough to remark on:

Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes.

Anyways, my worst suspicions about Jude were confirmed this evening. I made a fruit smoothie for him because he didn't want to eat the pancakes I made for dinner (don't judge, we got home late. Besides, who the hell ever heard of a kid who won't eat pancakes for dinner?) Jude didn't want any smoothie either. So I told Jude I was giving the smoothie to Kesswick (his teddy bear). Jude then gets up, takes the glass and drinks the smoothie. When he was finished, he was sure to go up to Kesswick and tell him that he had drunk all of it.

I like the om nom nom eating meme. It makes me happy. I also apologize in advance for the paucity of humour in this entry, and for the use of the word 'paucity'.

Right now, I'm in the final four weeks of my PhD, basically just waiting for my defense date to come around, and I'm busier now than I have been at any time in the last 6 years. I'm just about to start up an fMRI experiment (for the second time), and am trying to figure out some software that psychology researchers use to model how the brain works. That's two pretty hefty projects that I am sort of obliged to follow through on because I have been making reference to them in my job applications, the process of which is almost a job in itself.

In addition to the above academia-related obligations, I also have obligations to Jude's preschool. This evening I was there scrubbing down toys because children are notorious harborers of plagues. I might add, however, that I actually enjoyed my time cleaning toys with a few other parents, which makes me wonder if perhaps I need to get out a bit more. On top of that, I have taken on the challenge of building the website for the preschool because they had let their previous and shoddy one lapse. I will create a new, less shoddy website.

And finally, this past weekend, I passed my M1 exit road test, so I am now a licensed M2 motorcycle driver, just in time for today's snow squall warning. It was a really good class, I learned alot, and would recommend it to anyone. Actually, if it weren't so expensive, I'd recommend it to any driver because it really hammers home the importance of paying attention while driving, which I'm afraid most of us don't do enough of most of the time. There'd be a lot fewer accidents if everyone drive as if their lives depended on it.

One funny side effect of all this learning I've been doing lately: today on the bus, some guy got on carrying a UWO course book for some senior level philosophy course. For some bizarre reason, I felt anxiety because it occurred to me that I knew nothing about whatever that book was about. I think I have some issues to work through.

I don't know if I've written about this story before now -- I may well have, but I can't be bothered to go back and check, and in any case, it's just a preamble to the follow-up:

Shortly after we moved into this house 5 years ago, we had our immediate families over for our first New Year's day lunch. An hour into our lunch, our doorbell rang. It was my next door neighbour, and, as I had never met him, my introduction to him was by way of his complaining that he did "not want the street in front of [his] house to be a parking lot for my friends". Now, bear in mind that we live in the circular part of a court that has no island. That means that everyone in the court, for all intents and purposes, has a parking lot in front of their house. I suppose I could pace it off and do some math to figure out how much parking space we have available, but it should suffice to say that it is quite ample, and that he should have no concern for the ability of any of his house guests to find parking. An aside: in the last 5 years, I have observed that he seldom has guests. I should also point out that we also seldom have people over, let alone regularly parking in front of his house. The take away message here is that, from the moment I met my neighbour, I could only conclude that he is an ass with a bizarre territoriality that extends to the public roadway in front of his house.

This past fall, he had his driveway sealed. As one often does, he parked his van on the street in front of his house while the sealant was curing. It's been well over a month. He still parks his van in front of his house. Now, I don't want to give OCD a bad name, but this guy gets up in the morning, moves his van from his garage on to the street in front of his house, where it sits all day long like a sentry. Then, before he goes to bed, he moves his car back into his garage for the night.

I guess all this is to say that I live next to an idiot.

I'm on pace with my buddy Karen, as we both have our dissertations in on time for an end-of-term senate defense. My date is tentatively set for Wednesday, November 26. If you're free in the afternoon, and want to hear what the hell I've been doing with myself for the last couple of years, stop by the Social Science Building for my public lecture at 1:00. Three hours after that, I should hopefully receive the "well done, now get the hell out of here" handshake from Ken, at which point, everyone retires to the Grad Club for beverages.

By this time, the people at NSERC should have my postdoctoral fellowship application. I think it's much better this year than it was last year, which is good because this is my last shot at getting it. No sooner had I mailed off my NSERC application than I began revising my various statements of interest that I will be using for upcoming job applications. I think those are much better as well. I've learned that I have to be more than a little sophisticated when it comes to applying for academic positions. I'm not sure if I really appreciated that last year when I was applying, or if I was really that naive.

Anyways, everyone here is on notice: I wear a size 42 jacket. Brown with beige suede elbow patches will be fine. For my pipe, I think I would like cherry tobacco. I don't really know. I don't smoke, so when I take up pipe-smoking as an affectation, it should be interesting. My side project next year will be to see if I can get any cool swag from those anti-smoking groups who offer prizes for quitting.

Every time I hear talk about the $700 Billion "Rescue Package" recently passed by the US government, I think about this regular feature from this popular children's cartoon. If you're familiar with the cartoon, I hope this happens to you now, too, because it's really funny to imagine the song interjected everytime they talk about the financial bailout on the evening news.

I received in my UWO mailbox a birthday card for Pokey from Amy. Because the card crossed the border, it was subject to search by Canadian customs agents. I gather this, because it was already partly opened. Unfortunately, the technique used to open the envelope also damaged the card. They suck. But thanks for the card, Amy! And keep on working on that sweater. It's bad luck to fail to finish a project once you've begun.

I couldn't help it. I had to use my photoshop skills for the greater good. So without further ado, I present my contribution to the US presidential race.



I hereby give permission to freely distribute it.

I'm currently on hold with Rogers, as I attempt to find out exactly what will happen to the 15% discount I am enjoying should I choose not to commit to a 2 year contract with them for the services they provide...

...sorry. Got interrupted by a Rogers service agent. As it turns out, if you have 4 services with them (we have phone, cable, wireless and internet) and you tell them that it would be stupid to sign on to a 2-year contract because you expect to move, thereby breaking the contract, you will be in (and I quote), "a unique situation", and an exception can be made. This is good because I would have taken little pleasure in alerting the Philipina-sounding woman on the other end of the line to the reality that some idiot business grad working for Rogers, making probably 20 times her salary was responsible for a decision that was the ultimate cause of me ceasing to be a Rogers customer, and she was going to have to deal with it. Believe me, it is demoralizing to work for people whose judgment you find lacking.

In other news, I tossed out the bridesmaid's bouquet of callow lillies that Rebecca brought home from Heather's wedding (which I realize I have not blogged about yet). It was sitting in water on the table, but the petals were starting to drop off as the flowers died, and I learned that dying callow lillies start to smell like dead fish. I hope Heather's bouquet is doing well. It was saved especially for my aunt Kathy, who was unable to attend, but holds a special fondness for bridal bouquets, as does one of Heather's bridesmaids, Lila, who went to an adjacent reception hall during the evening (The Old Mill having been converted from a flour mill to a wedding mill during its restoration) and caught the bouquet there.

I checked the mail on the way home today. I believe it was pretty much all crapface^a, so the effort would have been a total waste of time, were it not for the fact that it provides fodder for my blog. So in no particular order, here's what was noteworthy in my mailbox today:

An opportunity to join The Allied Network, which appears to be a matchmaking company. They provided a business reply envelope and a questionnaire to describe yourself and the sort of person you'd like to meet. There's also a chance to win a dodgy cruise to the Bahamas - I can't imagine that the prize for a contest that requires no outlay of money could possibly be anything but the shabbiest, most disappointing and peril-ridden experience one could ever have. However, part of me wants to screw with them by submitting bogus information about myself looking for the most unlikely combination of characteristics in a single person. Perhaps a wealthy Scientologist with an advanced university degree who enjoys opera, fishing and MMORPGs.

The other thing in my mailbox that raised my ire was a notification from Rogers that, if I want to continue enjoying my "good deals"^b, then I need to contact them as soon as possible and commit to a 2-year contract for all my services. I will certainly be contacting them, however it will be to tell them that they can thank the jackass who dreamed up this obvious ploy to guarantee future income on their accounts for losing a customer. I was just checking out Primus to see what their home phone rates are like. I will then make good on my promise to cancel my cable, because we watch approximately 4 hours of television per month, at a whopping rate of $19.50 per hour of television watched. I'd wager that the naughty channels at the hotel are less expensive than that^c.

^a Crapface is the name we give to telephone solicitors. As in, "the phone is ringing - oh, nevermind, it's Crapface.
^b The use of the term "good deals" is intended to be ironic here, as we are paying Rogers about $200 per month.
^c The actual dollar-per-minute for the naughty channels may in fact be higher because I recall that John once read that hotel PPV programs are watched for an average of about 5 minutes, presumably because the plots are unengaging.

Allow me to begin by admitting that Jude is a biter - under very specific conditions. He goes to the West London Co-operative pre-school with his cousin Lydia, who is 1 month older, but about 30% lighter. The classes are small, with 2 adults (one of which being Lydia's mom, also Rebecca's sister) to 5 or 6 children. Jude and Lydia are the only children under 3 years of age, and Lydia is the only one that Jude seems to bite, though she's also the only one who regularly competes with Jude for the same toys. We have repeatedly told Jude that he's not to bite Lydia, or anyone for that matter. You can even quiz him and he'll tell you:

- Jude, what's the rule?

- No biting.

So perhaps I should have been more distressed to learn this evening that Jude bit Lydia yet again this morning. Upon hearing this, I asked Jude if Lydia was crying today, and he replied with his usual "yep". When I asked him why, he replied, "Jude bit Lydia".

'That's awesome,' I thought. He used the correct verb tense.

I don't remember anymore what prompted me to google for it, but I stumbled across a blog that answers what the hell interviewers are on about when they ask, "what do you see yourself doing 5 years from now?" Actually, I doubt 99% of interviewers know why the hell they ask 99% of the boneheaded questions they ask. I firmly believe that the logic behind the battery of typical trite HR questions has been lost to all but a select group of HR professionals who guard their secrets like modern day Templar knights. The rest of the world's managers are left only with clipboards filled with checklists of pithy questions and the commonsense advice passed on from their managers not to hire someone who sees himself five years from now atop a bell tower with a high-powered rifle. If you have an interview in your future, you're welcome.

Today on my way to the bus stop, I was intercepted by a guy handing out religious pamphlets. Unfortunately, he wasn't a Jehova's Witness, so I didn't get a copy of the Watchtower to help complete my anticipated Hallowe'en costume, but I held on to it nonetheless. The bus was a little bit late in arriving, so I opened it up to see what sort of slant this particular publication had. It was an assortment of New Testament verses grouped together under summary headings, such as Redemption Only Through Jesus Christ, and God's Mercy. I found the heading on page 5 to be sort of funny: Some Miracles Jesus Did -- I think it was their use of the word some, which to me makes it read like a catch-all "here's some other stuff and junk". I don't know, maybe I'll be the only person who thinks this is funny. Except John. He'll probably think it's funny too. He's like that. He always laughs inappropriately.

Stephen Harper and his Conservatives are leading in the polls, last I heard. It's even possible they may get a majority government, which I would dislike immensely. I was just wondering how weird it would be if Obama won the US presidency, with Harper as the PM with a Conservative majority. Harper is like George Bush in a cardigan. It could actually be preferable to live in the US - in the blue states, that is.

I'll begin by thanking everyone, many preemptively, for the birthday wishes. So far the day is shaping up well. A little later on, I will be going down to the MTO office and getting a plate for my new motorcycle, which Aaron was good enough to ride back to my house from the cycle center. And this evening, there will be some dinner and shopping to cap off the day.

Another thing that made my morning was the news report about various political figures making some public blunders. I found the story about the (now) former NDP candidate posting a drug-induced video on the internet to be somewhat boring. Not that I can vote for her anyways, but I was somewhat troubled to learn that Sara Palin belongs to some kind of crackpot religious group (really? Alaska is God's haven for his chosen people to survive Armageddon? No, thanks, I'll pass on the purple kool-aid). No, what I found funny was the fallout from remarks made by Gerry Ritz. In poor taste? Perhaps. But for me, his stock just went up, as, in contrast to his party leader, he appears to have a sense of humour. However as soon as it came to light, they had him reading a scripted apology, no doubt drafted by party officials. I swear, there's not a member of the Conservative party that would pass the Turing test.

I know a number of people born today: my sister Erin, Robyn Phillips, Brad's dad. In a couple days comes my buddy Ben, followed the next day by me, on the 18th. I was minding my own business at brunch this past Sunday when we were all rallied around the table for dessert. I turned to find a cake lit up in my honour. I was surprised because it had completely slipped my mind that I was celebrating my 6th annual 29th birthday this week. For reasons related to my impending PhD defense, and arrangements to buy and retrieve a used motorcycle from Sarnia (pictures forthcoming), I clearly haven't given my birthday much thought lately. Good thing I have a wish list posted on my blog for just such emergencies. On the topic of wish list, Rebecca stumbled across what might be an appropriate gift for Jen, Miranda and Amy, who are three ladies who have suffered cold hands a the computer every fall and winter since I have known them: USB heated fingerless gloves!

I just finished sealing up 5 small mason jars with hot, hot crabapple jelly. There was a little bit left cooling at the bottom of the pot, so I toasted up a cranberry-orange breakfast pita and smeared it with the remainder. Damn, it's good. The mulling spices really make it interesting. I hope to share it. Here is the final recipe that worked (sorry, it uses imperial units):

• You will first need:
  
  
  
  1. A few pounds of crabapples - mostly ripe, some not quite ripe. No bruised ones.
  
  
  2. For each pound of crabapples, one cup of water
  
  
  
  Wash and cut the crabapples in half, to make sure that you're not making crabapple and worm jelly. I read you're supposed to take the stems off too. I didn't bother. Put the apples in a big, big pot.



• Boil until they are mushy, mushy. Drain it all for several hours in a colander lined with cheesecloth (you should have cheesecloth from my previous experiment draining yogurt for tzatziki). Now you have a bunch of juice.



• Make sure that the juice has enough pectin. That's what wrecked it the first time for me. You can test this by putting 1 tbsp of rubbing alcohol on a saucer, then adding 1 tsp of the juice. If there is enough pectin, the alcohol causes juice to congeal in to a jelly that you can actually lift out on the tines of a fork. I have no plan for what if it doesn't congeal at this time, though I might consider reusing the juice in place of water to boil another pile of apples.



• Now for the jelly. You will need:
  
  1. Your pectin-laden crabapple juice. Note how many cups of juice you had.
  
  
  2. For each cup of juice, you need one cup of white sugar.
  
  
  3. A teaball or small cloth baggie (perhaps fashioned out of cheesecloth) containing 1 tbsp of mulling spices (sticks of cinnamon and cloves work fine)
  
  
  
  
• Throw the spices into the juice and bring to a boil.


• Add the sugar. Bring the resulting syrup to a rolling boil, occasionally skimming off the foam.



• During this time, you may as well be boiling a bunch of jelly jars in a big pot of water, because you will want them sterilized by the time your jelly is finished cooking. Unless botulism is your thing. To my knowledge though, there is not an underground market for homemade botox.



• When the syrup takes on the consistency of cough-syrup, and appears to move like a rolling sheet on the back of a spoon, it's done. Alternately, if you have a candy thermometer, it should reach 220°F. At this time, you can ladle it into your sterilized jars.

I think my jelly took longer than it should have because I may not have had the syrup boiling hot enough. It seemed to be taking forever until I cranked the burner up high enough that it boiled into a foaming mass that threatened to boil over the side. Then I turned it down, and when I did so, I noticed that it was no longer watery, but instead seemed to flow on the spoon. If I had a candy thermometer, I may have figured it out earlier.

Now, back to paring down my dissertation so I can get it published.

I've not updated in over a week, though I am sure you will accept my excuse that I was finalizing my dissertation so that I could hand it in yesterday. The deadline for handing it in was today, at 3pm, by which time I had noticed that I had not changed the titles on some of my tables and figures as I had planned, nor had I found and fixed the two cross-reference text errors that occurred because I was trying to be all fancy in MSWord. Oh well. That will be the low-hanging fruit for Marc, Paul and Stefan, my departmental examining committee.

Speaking of low-hanging fruit, I tried and failed, and have begun again to make some crabapple jelly. My parents have a crabapple tree in the backyard that is currently weeping small fruit all over the lawn. Mom sent a bunch over to me the other day, and I tried to adjust the recipe to account for the fact that I had no pot large enough to contain 2 kilos of crabapples. Something didn't scale well, however, as the juice apparently didn't have enough pectin to form a jelly, so this morning I made scorched crabapple candy as I boiled the syrup of juice and sugar in vain. This evening when we picked up Jude from his Nana's house, I climbed a step ladder and picked some more crabapples, scaring the crap out of Rebecca in the process (though my insurance is paid up, so I don't know what her problem is). My innovation to the recipe will be to infuse some mulling spices before I add the sugar. That should be damn tasty.

Also from my kitchen lab (I have been on a cooking spree this week), I tried to make a sweet balsamic vinaigrette the other day. Balsamic vinegar can be made into a sweet syrup by reducing it. It is also sometimes used to marinate strawberries. So I thought that reduced balsamic vinegar mixed with olive oil and pepper might make a good vinaigrette for a green salad with strawberries and walnuts (Rebecca also added some goat cheese to hers, which made it look even more fancy). I think it needs a bit of work as a vinaigrette, but it was pretty tasty, and I couldn't stop dipping my bread in the stuff.

...one man stands between freedom, and the end of life as we know it.

You may have read the title of this entry in the particular deep baritone voice that you've hear a million times during the movie trailers. I'm sad to report that the owner of that voice, Don LaFontaine, has gone on to the great feature presentation in the sky. In memory of Mr. LaFontaine, I present a funny skit I saw on the interwebs about a year ago. More news after the jump.

I spent the Friday before the Labour Day weekend cleaning out the microwave and refrigerator in my office. Some of you may have seen my facebook status updates on the topic. Ken has always owned these two appliances since I've been in his lab. The microwave wasn't even in use when I started in 2002. The refrigerator was in use, at least by our lab manager, though its capacity was diminished by the ice that had been forming inside. Fast forward 6 years. The microwave had never been properly cleaned before it was recommissioned, and the refrigerator had never been defrosted. So I brought the appliances down to the SSC loading dock area where a hose was available, borrowed a hammer and large screwdriver, and removed the ice from the fridge. I had been meaning to tell the geography department that I had uncovered fossil water in the form of ice in the fridge. I uncovered some Jamaican patties, a brick of cheese, and a wooly mammoth encased in the ice that solidly filled the freezer. So that was gross. I cleaned the microwave by turning the hose on the inside of it. Normally, you might think this was a bad idea, but I had tried scrubbing it out with brillo pads before, with no real success, so I would challenge any of you to come up with a better idea. Seriously. Food stalactites had formed on the inside.

The real flaw in my plan became evident when I brought the newly cleaned appliances back into my office. As soon as the microwave was plugged in, it started microwaving. Water must have gotten inside the fan area and caused some sort of short. However, as the microwave was probably 15 years old and reclaimed, I was able to come to terms with the possibility that I had destroyed it. As it happens, it just needed to dry out and now works fine. So I now have two clean appliances in my office, just in time for my last semester at UWO.

I received notification today of my departmental defense. I don't know what proportion of readers are familiar with postgraduate academics (yes, I realize it is a bit of a funny overstatement to describe you as being part of my 'readership', as if I'm in syndication or something) so let me just say that our departmental defense is basically a dry-run where they make sure that you're not going to embarrass yourself during the senate defense. This is important because if you fail your senate defense, that's it. You're done. Hope you enjoyed wasting the last 6 years of your life. My defense date will be the afternoon of September 25th, one week after my 34th birthday.

There's a reunion for my high school graduating class on the previous weekend. I'm still sitting on the fence about attending. I watched the deadline fly by, but, because of ticket sales, it was apparently a 'soft' deadline. So just when I thought my fence-mounted perch would have to come down, I find myself still trying to come up with reasons to go. On the cons side, the people with whom I would most likely spend time talking with are those that I could easily have in my kitchen for a game of Settlers of Catan, forgoing the $51 hors d'oeuvres and awkward explanations of what the hell I'm doing.

Yes, I'm still in school. No, it's not because I'm scattered. I mean, yes, I am scattered, but that's not why. And no, forget I even mentioned psychology. I don't care about your relationship problems. I'm more into neuroscience - brains and stuff. The only problem you could possibly have that would interest me would be if a steel rod shot through your head — and even then, it would be more of an academic curiosity than a concern.

Ask anyone who knows me, and they will tell you that one of my major rant topics concerns urban sprawl. One of the outcomes of urban sprawl is that you have to have a car to get anywhere, as retailers move into those bleak parking lot malls anchored by a big-box store. Even if distance isn't a factor, sprawling cities are designed around moving cars around (London doesn't even do a particularly good job at that), so eventually, you're going to hit a major thoroughfare. Now, London is maintaining a ridiculous fantasy about being green, and healthy. If you go to the City of London map and display bicycle routes, you might get the impression that you can hop on your bike and go from anywhere to anywhere in the city with ease (pedaling effort aside). I believe the appropriate word to use here is "fraud".

Most of the "routes" on this map are actually just relatively quiet streets, relative being the key word. Where they exist, the dedicated bike paths are lovely, taking you for a scenic ride along the Thames. However, what they have labeled as Bike Road Routes (signed or otherwise) should be removed from the map until they meet some minimum safety standard - a painted lane marker would be nice, as would the repair of the potholes and cracking asphalt that I routinely have to avoid. A couple of weeks ago, while cycling along a section of Huron that is marked as a bicycle path, I hit a pothole, jarring my saddlebag off the back of my bike, and narrowly avoided having it get run over by the SUV that was coming up behind me. I might also mention that my laptop was in my saddlebag. Given that the signs might give the impression that the routes are safe for cycling, I think there's a lawsuit just waiting to happen.

I no longer remember why the hell I bring this up now, other than perhaps that it's tangentially related to my possible second attempt this week to get my M1 motorcycle license - my first attempt found me lacking a key piece of identification. Apparently an Ontario driver's license is insufficient ID when applying for an Ontario driver's license. Go figure.

Ken is back from his vacation, and has sent back his revisions to my dissertation. As I expected, it's a little bit on the short side, but in a way that will allow me to expand on some points, rather than in a way that requires me to address a glaring omission. So I went ahead and notified Val of my intention to defend in September. That's right, baby, after 15 years of post-secondary education (less 18 months between 1997 and 1999 when I was working for Nelvana, then ThinkTank, then Polar), I am in the home stretch for my doctorate. I'll save the acknowledgments for later. On the whole, there's not as much red as I expected, so I feel emboldened -- so much so, that while Rebecca is away this weekend, I may just go down to the Ministry of Transportation and get my M1.

Speaking of -- ah hell, nevermind. I can't come up with a segue from Motorcycle licenses into tomato plants. Anyways, I had been meaning to blog about this little triumph of nature ever since I discovered it, but I felt the entry needed an accompanying photo. I still don't have the photo, so hold on just a second while I go out to the side of my house and take one...






Is that not crazy? A tomato plant randomly started growing beside the compost bin at the side of the house. As you can see from the second photo, they seem to be growing pretty damn well for plants that haven't been tended at all. You may not be able to judge the size of the fruits, so you'll just have to take my word for it that they're just a bit smaller than fist-sized. I'm just waiting for the things to ripen, then BAM! It's sammich time! Too bad bacon and lettuce plants didn't spontaneously grow alongside the tomatoes.

A couple of weeks ago my laptop battery went south. I wonder whether it might be the wiring in my parent's house, because that's where I was when the battery on my last laptop went out too. Regardless, my laptop was telling me that the battery was malfunctioning and needed replacement. I went to the Lenovo website and ordered a new one to find that it would be 2 - 3 weeks before the they even shipped it. That was a week ago. In the meantime, I checked on ebay to find that one can find genuine Lenovo batteries, as well as generic knockoffs (both produced in China, possibly even by the same manufacturers). I ordered a new knockoff battery from a Toronto-based company two days ago, and it just arrived today. The battery is charging even now, the only catch being that there is a caution icon that displays beside the battery status indicator that warns that I'm not using a genuine Lenovo battery, and might not meet Lenovo's safety and quality standards. But then again, it might. For 50% off, I'll risk it.

This morning, Jude found one of Rebecca's decorative dolls, and brought it to Kesswick so that Kesswick could make the doll walk around. Please bear in mind that Kesswick is Jude's teddy bear.

It's turtles all the way down.

Jude is spending much more time interacting with his daddy. We can often be found playing with his die-cast cars from the Pixar movie of the same name, which is what happened tonight. He's a creative little guy. For example, rather than play directly with me, he wanted to play cars with Kesswick, his stuffed bear, who was, of course, animated by me during the following scene:

Jude: Crash!
Kesswick: [rolls the car back]
Jude: [stands] *thhhppb*
Me: Jude, did you toot?
Jude: Kekkik
Me: Kesswick tooted?
Jude: Yep
Kesswick: [looks on, mortified at the accusation]

Of course during all this Kesswick didn't defend himself, partly out of loyalty to his buddy Jude, but mostly I think because he's a stuffed toy. And I wonder whether that might be why Jude blamed the bear. It'll only be a matter of time before he takes plausibility into account and starts blaming his aunt Pretty.

In response to the avalanche of interest I have received regarding my drained yogurt experiment, I feel I must follow up. I have also abandoned my dissertation and have begun work on my first book, which will be part travelogue and part cookbook, called The Princess Dairies - I plan on touring and developing yogurt recipes inspired by famous European castles.

How did the drained yogurt fare as a spread? I sacrificed about a tablespoon of the yogurt from my 'tzatziki stock', mashed in some coarsely chopped strawberries and some sugar, and spread it on a piece of toast. It had a bit of a tangy zing, owing to the fact that yogurt is a bit more acidic than cream cheese, but I didn't mind. I thought it tasted pretty good and would try it again. But first, I have to make the tzatziki. This is the recipe I will be using, which I cribbed from elsewhere on the internet:

* 3 cups regular plain yogurt, drained as described in my previous entry
* juice of one lemon
* 1 garlic clove, chopped
* 2 medium cucumbers, seeded and diced
* 1 tbsp kosher salt for salting cucumbers
* 1 tbsp finely chopped fresh dill
* Kosher salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste

Peel cucumbers, then cut in half lengthwise and take a small spoon and scrape out seeds. Discard seeds. (If you use the small seedless or European cucumbers with few seeds, you can skip this step.) Dice cucumbers, then put in a colander, sprinkle on 1 tbsp salt and let stand for 30 minutes to draw out water. Drain well and wipe dry with paper towel.

In food processor with steel blade, add cucumbers, garlic, lemon juice, dill, and a few grinds of black pepper. Process until well blended, then stir this mixture into the yogurt. Taste before adding any extra salt, then salt if needed. Place in refrigerator for at least two hours before serving so flavors can blend.

Every now and again, I like to grace my readers — both of them — with a helpful tip, because I feel it is important for everyone to live as blissfully as do I. I presently have about 500 ml of plain yogurt draining in a cheesecloth-lined colander in the refrigerator in preparation to make some tzatziki. As it sits in the colander overnight, all the whey drains out of the yogurt, so that it has become about the consistency of cream cheese. Because it is easy to find yogurt in all denominations of fat content, one might be able to use it as a spread in place of cream cheese if one would like to have finer control over their fat intake (also note that, as the fat content of dairy decreases, its proportion of protein increases).

I still plan on making tzatziki, so I won't be able to try this any time before my next trip to the grocery store, but I think that 1 container of drained yogurt either coarsely blended with strawberries and sugar, or else with minced garlic and dill might make for a good bagel spread. If I get around to trying this, I'll have to remember to post an update with my findings. If either of my readers beats me to it, reply with a comment to let me know how it turned out. Remember to save the cheesecloth, as it can be washed and reused.

When this gets imported into facebook, I'm going to tag a bunch of people that I think might be interested in trying this out. It's also part of my master plan to triple my readership!

I have a few minutes to kill before I have to leave with Jude for church. Rather than exhaust the online news outlets, I decided to use the Next Blog link at the top of my blogger page, which jumps to a random blog, which has a Next Blog link of its own. I had hoped to randomly stumble upon something of interest, but instead found myself sucked into a vortex of crap - a flushing toilet, if you will. I came across the following "blog":
http://spro-bro.blogspot.com/
Go ahead. Try it yourself. I have no idea who these pudgy kids are, but once I hit this page, I hit a disturbingly large number of very similar pages. Statistical anomaly? Or a harbinger of things to come? Only time will tell.

I wasn't watching, but according to Erin and Carolyn, Jude can breakdance.

Also, Wonder Woman is on the telee.

We now resume our regularly scheduled programming.

So as you may have noticed, Scrabulous has been pulled, when I was but seven tiles from finishing a tied game. Now I'll never have closure.

In other news, I'm back from Washington, where I got basically no sleep in the $2000/night (that's not a typo) room I shared with Ken. Ken snores. He also requests 7:45 am wakeup calls that don't actually wake him up, which is understandable because people were in our room until 1, then 2 then 3 am on successive nights. The wakeup calls, however, were effective at waking me up, as I would lay there thinking, "Is he going to get up? He said he really needed to make the 8:15 talks...Damn! Now I can't sleep!". Remarkably, I didn't feel really crappy during my stay, and I seem to have reset my internal clock so that I am tired by 10 pm because I'm not yet caught up. So to recap: free stay at an expensive hotel, a chance to do some sightseeing, and a recalibration of my sleep cycle. I'll call that a big win, all-around. Now I just have to wait and find out whether the whole reason for my traveling down to D.C. paid off.

Oh, and when you're traveling in a Robert Q shuttlebus, please have the good sense to turn off (or at least turn down) your bloody Blackberry. I couldn't have been the only one in that small van who was irritated with 20 minutes of near constant custom alert tones at 80 dB.

Final story for the day: yesterday I made my way to White Oaks Mall where Rebecca would pick me up on the way to sushi with Amy, Aneta, Jeff, Daniel, Deanna, Miranda, Graeme, K-Max, and someone else whose name escapes me because I've only met her once before. En route, the bus, driven by a really abrasive female driver who sometimes drives the Windermere bus I take most days, stopped to let on a woman with a stroller. A bumblebee also got on at that stop. This was apparently worrisome to enough people that the bus driver wouldn't proceed until the bee was off the bus. So we sat there at the stop for a few minutes. As they can't comprehend the concept of windows, flying insects are notoriously bad at navigating out of interior spaces, and I saw the thing fly out of the side door twice only to immediately fly back in and bump along the windows while the rest of the bus cringed as it swooped around them. Fortunately, I have never been stung by a bee, so I'm not particularly afraid of them and instead think of them as industrious little guys, which was helpful in this situation. Seeing it fumble around the side door again, I got up and sort of pushed it out of the door, letting it bounce off my hand as it flew around. I was listening to my mp3 player at the time, so I was not able to hear the applause and exclamations of "my hero!" that certainly followed. I think the main point of this story isn't that I'm awesome (though I clearly am), but rather, that bumblebees make good terrorists, and can effectively take a city bus hostage.

So I'm here in Washington, DC as a result of a last-minute decision to go to this year's CogSci conference (I link to the conference website both because it's relevant, and also because I was the person who actually created it -- I take full responsibility for its limited aesthetics and early 2000's design sensibilities). I'm here to meet with Jeff Elman to discuss the possibility of doing a postdoc with him at UCSD. A few minutes ago, I found myself in a conversation in the lobby with: Ken McRae, Jeff Elman, Larry Barsalou, Larry's new grad student Jon, and Alex Martin. If this is any indication, Jeff and Larry have Wikipedia pages, and Alex probably should. That was really cool, in a science geek kind of way.

I now take this opportunity to say hi Smu!

I just got in from the big Ottawa trip this afternoon. I picked up a TomTom One 130 GPS unit on the morning of the 11th when we left because I knew there would be quite a bit of driving in unfamiliar territory. For one, we were staying with Dave, Kathy and the girls, who live about 45 minutes outside of Ottawa in Oxford Mills. Where's Oxford Mills? Exactly. But Jane (the British voice I selected for the TomTom unit) knew. It generally did a very good job during the whole trip, though I discovered on our way into Ottawa to pick up Magda and visit with Heather that the GPS unit has problems picking up the satellite signal in bad (rainy) weather. It's also a little bull-headed about some routes, as was evidenced when it kept on routing us through a blocked on-ramp, despite my best efforts to force it to reckon a new path.

During the visit, we went to an alpaca farm and picked up some really expensive wool. I asked many questions of the farmer, who I believe had concluded from my inquisition that I was interested in starting up my own farm down here in SW Ontario. I also had a few run-ins with some nasty mosquitos, which left me with more than a few bites--one of which left a small red welt or rash so I hope I don't get lyme disease or something.

Tim and Wendy's "cottage" was also really, really nice. Normally, when I think of cottages, I imagine walking through a sheet of spider webs on the way to the outhouse, and sharing a bunk with vermin. Because the building and surrounding sleeper cabins are constantly used year-round, they were all well kept and were more like a secluded home than a cottage. Location-wise, one couldn't ask for anything more either, as they are located at the Davis Lock, on the Rideau canal system. I've got a lot of saving up to do to get us a cottage like that for our retirement.

It's the fourth of July. For all my devoted readers in the US, I hope you're enjoying your day at home. I know I am. Today I stayed home to work on my dissertation. I'm presently taking a lunch break (at 3pm). Holy crap, did I just make myself a good sammich. We have a George Foreman grill, which I like to use to make grilled panini sandwiches, which Rebecca and I fell in love with in Montreal. My sandwich, however, does not use panini buns, but is instead a black forest ham sandwich with smoked cheddar slices and tomato on sourdough bread. I brush the outside with olive oil and dried rosemary and fresh ground pepper before putting it on the 'George. It's just - wow. How wow? Well, I'm blogging about it, that's how wow.

As for the dissertation, I've planned to write it in 5 sections. I'm at the end of section 4, and I have a good idea about what I will be writing for section 5. Then I will give it to Ken, and in usual Ken style, he will hand it back to me with revisions that amount to deleting every third word, and then replacing half of the remaining words with different words. Or maybe, just maybe, after 6 years, I have gotten so used to his editing style that he'll have relatively few changes. I can only dare to hope.

Gah! Effing fruit flies! I hate them!!!!

I've blogged about my dreams a couple of times before, usually because they are funny. The other night, however, I had a decidedly unfunny dream in which I was on an airplane that hit turbulence and went into a nosedive. I mention this because it's kind of interesting how dreams can give you insight into your behaviour because one often takes the dream to be real at the time (I say often because I usually disbelieve my nightmares and take over them, turning them into movies, for example, where I can redo the scene until I get it right). Anyways, the interesting thing about this particular nightmare was the chance, however unpleasant it was, to find out what would go through my mind in the event of a plane crash. One generally only gets that chance once, and by that point, they don't get a chance to share any insight gained.

Speaking of nightmares...

Okay, not really, but I couldn't easily segue from nightmares to routers. But I was just reviewing the comments people left behind for some of my earlier posts. It turns out that Pat was able to identify the problem I was having with google going AWOL, when he suggested that the router might be to blame and likely just needed a reboot. Evidence supporting his theory was provided just before I started today's entry.

Pleasant dreams! (ooh! thunder and lightning! I love thunderstorms)

Yesterday was the birthday of an old friend of mine, Chris Hayes. He was my next door neighbour during my formative years living on Beechbank Crescent, in what I now recognize to be a somewhat ghetto part of London, albeit not nearly as ghetto as other areas, including the one in which I now live. Chris was one of my best friends for ages, and we used to do all kinds of funny stuff: for example, between the two of us, we tormented the hell out of Vivian by constantly morphing nicknames for her as we all walked home from school (Vivian also lived on Beechbank, as did my wife, Rebecca). However, I believe some of our finest work was done as songwriters. I must have come up with a few dozen little ditties as I grew up, with such hits as "Thanks to Mooshie", "Three Eyes", "Ooh, Banana" (I came up with that one walking home with Martin in 8th grade). But perhaps the most offensive song would be "Hey Kid, You're Ugly", and it goes a little something like this:

Have you ever had a kid say, "Hey Kid! You're Ugly" to you?
Well, here's your big chance kid: Hey kid! You're ugly!

Unfortunately, I lack the requisite skills to write down the tune, but if you want to hear it one day, perhaps to pass on to your kids for their walk home from school, just let me know and I'd be happy to teach it to you.

I already emailed my sisters about this little episode, but it's funny enough to share with the general public.

Jude is currently at the stage in his English language development where he repeats the last word that he hears when you speak to him. He's also still working on his pronunciation, though there's a few words that he says (e.g., "herbs") that Carolyn finds hysterical, and probably hopes he never changes.

Anyways, that's the introduction to the present story, which takes place two nights ago. The setting: our car, on the way home after picking him up from Nana's house. We were playing Track 9 from Blue Moo, called Big Band Sound. And so begins the following scene:

[Music plays]: I want the Jazz, pizazz, the razzmatazz, I want that Big - Band - Sound
Rebecca: We want the razzmatazz, Jude!
Jude: Ass.
Rebecca: Razzma-TAZZ
Jude: Ass.
Rebecca: ...

The other day, after reading a little bit about bill C-61, the US-style copyright bill that basically strips any right you may think you have concerning any form of media you can imagine, I dropped the Liberal industry critic, Sukh Dhaliwal, a line. Oh, and I CC'd Stephane Dion, Jack Layton, and Gilles Duceppe, because I basically told the honourable member Mr. Dhaliwal that the Liberal party needs to grow a pair and actually do their job for a change. Since the last election, and even before that, actually, the Liberals have been voting along with the Conservatives on pretty much anything of consequence out of fear of triggering an election. Basically, Mr. Harper has made them his bitch. I'm not sure if Mr. Dion was aware of this, but some of us have noticed. I suppose he could count on the general public being a bunch of absent-minded morons who don't keep track of these things, but that would be a rather offensive position to take. So, I suppose the alternative is that the Liberals are off in their own little world. I'm not sure if that's any better.


Doesn't this guy look trustworthy? I think so.

Anyways, Jack Layton, or at least an agent who reads his email, replied today. Unsurprisingly, the NDP will be voting against bill C-61, which has some elements that are impractical to enforce (such as the provision that would make it illegal for you to back up one of your DVDs to some other format to watch on your iPod), and some that are frighteningly easy to enforce (such as the provision that would allow your iPod to be confiscated at the airport if some agent suspected that it might contain illegally obtained media). How pissed would I be if some jackass took my laptop on my way to a conference based on a hunch? So, yeah, don't worry about triggering an election, because there are many people out there who would not hold it against you.

Today has been a big day in the Psychology Department: Amy and Sarah D successfully passed their defense against the dark arts and got their owls. For my part, I've been running like gangbusters what I hope to be my final experiment, and just checked the data for the first 20 people who participated. So far, it's exactly what I was hoping for, so that bodes well. I also got a ping reply from Scott Veenvliet, who sent links to some photos of his relatively new (6 mo. at this time) daughter, Casey. This is of particular relevance because his daughter has been permanently branded as the spawn of a nerd because she has been outfitted with a onesie that I found particularly amusing (though I never did pick one up for Jude):



I love it.

So to recap: Amy is on her way to leaving UWO with great honour (though Sarah is still stuck here, I'm afraid), I can see the light at the end of the tunnel for my ticket to doctoral goodness, and old friends are alive and well.

I was just filtering through my emails when I came across one that Amy had sent me that contained a link to the Cognitive Science Society website. Amy's got my back, so she has been sending me links to, and descriptions of potential postdoc positions. I had apparently not yet bookmarked the one at the Cognitive Science Society website, which is just as well because, in trying to find it, I discovered that the URL was no longer valid because the site has undergone some revision. On one hand, this is good, because it is now prettier than it was before the revision. On the other hand, the timing could have been better because I borrowed many of the design elements from the old website when I did the conference website for the CogSci08 conference. Not because I'm an unoriginal hack, mind you, but rather because I think continuity is important in maintaining the coherence of a website. That reusing graphical elements and even entire page templates makes your job easier is gravy. Anyways, all this is to say that I wish that the prettier CSS page was in place earlier so that I could have mirrored prettier graphical elements. I'm all about the pretty. Just ask my wife. She's pretty. Ka-Chow!

This just in: it looks like I will be simultaneously teaching and developing the former Psychology 282 (stats and research methods) course next year. Shoutouts go to Joan for finding herself in a scheduling bind that could only be solved by me doing both jobs.

Morgan is probably going to accuse me of wearing a tin-foil hat when I say this, but I find it suspiciously odd that I regularly have problems connecting to google -- and only google -- when I am at home. This wouldn't be so strange were it not for the fact that I can have one browser window open and unable to connect to www.google.ca, and at the same time have another browser connecting to google through the UWO proxy server (http://www.google.ca.proxy1.lib.uwo.ca:2048/). Not only am I unable to use google to search the web during this time, but I am also unable to sign in to gmail and write blog entries such as this one. Is there a good explanation for this? Because all I got is the fact that Rogers, who provides my internet access, is affiliated with Yahoo, who competes with google. When I can't use google to search the internet, where do I go? Yahoo?

Jude continues to grow up, and with that comes the end of nighttime daddy. Starting some time last week, when Jude would wake up in the middle of the night, I, instead of mommy, would go to his room to comfort him. This lets mommy get a better night's sleep. Me, I don't sleep well to begin with, so it doesn't seem to matter much. The first few nights, he was difficult. He has come to expect different types of comforting from each of us, and my role is as the guy who bounces him on an exercise ball, putting him to sleep, and strengthening my core and quad muscles simultaneously. Except 3am is not generally when I want to be working out. The first few nights of this, he was difficult. This is because he would fall asleep while I was bouncing him, but would wake up again either when putting him down, or shortly thereafter, and want to be bounced to sleep again. He would throw a fit when I refused, but it appears he has since come to learn that this gets him nowhere. So for the past couple of nights everyone has gotten a decent night's sleep.

Completely unrelated thought: I wonder how often people find themselves in a career path that they really didn't intend to follow and would rather not be in, but find themselves stuck because it's too late to go do something else.

Last week, I had ordered the final bits (the motherboard, for those who care) for my new computer. This was to fill the void left when the company from whom I bought the other bits (tigerdirect.ca) failed to notify me that the motherboard I had ordered from them was never going to arrive. That evening, I placed an order for a similar motherboard from another Canadian online computer bits store, directcanada.com, who had good prices and promised fast shipping. At the end of the order process, an email arrived instructing me to click some sort of link so I could receive a phone call with a verification PIN. At this point, it was late, and Jude was asleep so I decided not to go through this phone call step and to just go to bed. The next morning, I checked my order status to find it was not yet complete, and I took this to mean that it was still waiting for me to initiate the phone call step. I figured by this point, it might be just faster to by the item locally, so and after I went with Jenny to transfer over her gym membership, I went out and bought the critically missing computer piece. I spent the next day installing software and just after I got everything 'just so', the doorbell rings. Purolator. With the motherboard that I thought was in stasis. What the heck am I going to do with this thing? The motivation behind this blog entry is that after I contacted directcanada.com and explained the situation, I received an apology for the confusion and an offer to pay for the return shipping and refund the purchase. I decided that because I didn't get the screwing over that I anticipated, and because their shipping was so ridiculously fast, that I would favourably mention them in a public forum. I have no need for it now, but the next time I need to buy some computer bits, directcanada.com will probably be the first place I check.

Why all the hyperlinks? Blogger is owned by google. And hyperlinks factor in to (or at least, they did once upon a time) search engine rankings. So if someone googles directcanada.com, this should show up near the top. At least, that's my theory. And perhaps I can be faulted for having theories about search engine rankings.