Les Bonnes Choses

So you may recall me complaining about how NSERC is plenty happy to give you money to subsidize business interests. You might then be just as surprised as I that I received the following email just now (emphasis mine):

I am pleased to inform you that the NSERC Selection Committee that reviewed your Postdoctoral Fellowship (PDF) application, identified you as a meritorious candidate for the VF Inventory. You indicated your interest in the VF program by ticking the appropriate box on your application.

Given that I am opposed in principle to the award, I'm reasonably sure I did not tick that box. But thanks for making me feel so very meritorious today. I also recall that this happened to me last year as well, so the mystery remains: who the hell in the NSERC mailroom has a penchant for ticking off empty boxes?

It seems I can no longer go 24 hours without taking something apart. This evening, Rebecca was whipping up some icing with the electric hand mixer and found it was making rattling and grinding sounds, in addition to throwing off the occasional bit of plastic. Plastic in your icing is not Good Eats. Here is the offending noise-making part that was just rattling around loose inside the mixer:

So, I have decided to scrub my plans to go to Chicago for a postdoc and instead open up a Fix-It Shop franchise.

Ever take a look at the prong on a headphone jack? Ever wonder why it's shaped the way it is? Ever wonder what would happen if the tip broke off in your portable audio player? I found the answer to these questions and more over the last week.

Jude has an mp3 player. It's a fun little thing that drains batteries like the Nosferatu drain necks, but it's far easier to load it up with tolerable kid tunes than to fumble around with a book of CDs. The idea was to pipe Jude's music through the car using a cord that has a TRS connector at either end, with one end plugged into the headphone jack, and the other end plugged into the auxiliary input jack in the car. We're going to have to listen to it anyways, so we may as well let him at the controls and give him something to do. It worked fine for a couple of trips before the sound stopped coming through the car speakers. An examination of the cord revealed the cause: the tip of one of the prongs had broken off, presumably inside the headphone jack of the mp3 player. I resolved to fix the problem by removing the headphone jack and dislodging the broken off nib, only to make the problem worse when I irreparably damaged the internals of the mp3 player when I took it apart.

Total: $30 for a new mp3 player, plus replacing the broken end of the cord.

I discovered today to my great consternation that the nib had in fact broken off inside the auxiliary port in the car (so I wrecked Jude's mp3 player for no reason). I may have said something that, from a distance might have sounded like "another sucker". Despite being between the two bumpers, I had serious doubts that something lodged in there would be covered by the bumper-to-bumper warranty and dealer repairs would probably run a few hundred dollars. Despite last week's electronics mishap, I was sufficiently emboldened to remove the jack myself, and was met with success. I brought it to the dealership and showed it to the parts guy who ordered one in. For some reason the part is on back order (which makes me wonder how common this problem is) and was going to cost me $60 (running total of $90 so far). Figuring that there's no way I can make the problem worse, I made it my project this evening to disassemble the jack and remove the nib. Not only did I get to practice soldering, but I was able to remove the nib from the jack and reinstall it. I also found another cable laying around that I used to verify that I had indeed fixed the problem. On one hand, I could say that I had saved $60. On the other hand, I spent about 3 hours fiddling around with that stupid jack today, so at a bargain wage of $20/hr I just broke even.

Yesterday morning, our real estate agent came by with reams of paper for us to sign. I shouldn't have been surprised when, an hour later, we had a For Sale sign on our lawn and an open house scheduled for this afternoon (there's half an hour remaining at the moment) and a couple of showings, including one for the day before Rebecca is due. She'll probably hit me when she reads this, but at least we have gotten the house cleaned up. And I'm finally finished painting. I don't know how the fetishists do it, because I was getting pretty sick of being covered from head to toe in latex.

Update: despite being unadvertised, four groups of people came through, one of which expressed an interest in the house. Unfortunately, they are looking for a closing date of June 26. Seriously? A 30 day close? We're expecting company in July, so that's not going to fly. Still, I hope that bodes well for our chances at selling our house in a timely manner.

I got the big poo-poo from my aunt on talking about my hair. I know, it's pretty edgy stuff, so she might have to switch over to Fifty-Five Plus magazine and read up on what's new in hip replacements. Zing!

I kid, of course. She's a few years away from joining that demographic. I won't go on about how awesome she is, except to say that she's awesome enough to take a good ribbing. And maybe awesome enough to let me ride her motorcycle the next time I'm up that way.

All this is padding on what is otherwise a very short note about a phone call I just received on my cell phone. It was a long-distance call from 706-913-2861. I didn't know this until I looked it up afterwards, but that's a San Diego area code. Unfortunately, when I answered, I was greeted by an automated "Congratulations..." message, which, as a telephone solicitation to a cell phones, is illegal. I hung up immediately, so I didn't get to find out what I had won, though I imagine it to be a vacation. I seem to be on a winning streak for those things, as I have won at least 3 vacations in the last month. I've never played along with one of those offers long enough to find out how they rip you off, though screwing around with con-artists passes for fun with me. I had an opportunity earlier this week to do just that, after Amy forwarded me a craigslist ad for a TGTBT rental in Evanston. The reply I received from the email left little doubt that it was one of those craigslist scams: the writer blessed me multiple times (seriously, why do spammers always end their emails with "God Bless"?); despite holding an academic position in London, England, the writer was unable to string together a coherent English sentence; and he was extremely eager to get my $700 deposit.

Hopefully Kathy finds this one at least somewhat more interesting. If not, I'm going to have to do something drastic like follow through with my intention to browbeat Rogers into extending my 15% bundled services discount until August.

One summer night back in 1995, I came back with Brad, Ben and Paul back to Paul's parent's house. There had been some discussion that night about shaving heads. Brad got me to agree to buzzing my head if he did likewise. It wasn't really a fair deal, mind you, as Brad had buzzed his hair before that. Nonetheless, I am nothing if not a man of my word, and so began my 14 year streak of keeping hair off my head (with some outside assistance).

Paul was the barber that night (there's really no finesse involved in shearing a scalp), but I soon realized that I would have to get my own set of clippers. Since that night, I have gone from using a #2 clipper attachment to no attachment to using a Gillette Mach 3 razor blade in the shower without the benefit of a mirror -- which is how it was that I came to my PhD defense with a Nike swoosh of stubble just above my right ear before E alerted me to it. I still own clippers, but I now mostly use them for grooming my facial hair. I once tried to use my old pair of clippers on Heather's cat, Ron, who left swaths of long, soft hair all over the place. It used to look like we were hoarding cotton balls.


Shearing Ron's hair is best left to the professionals

This evening, I looked up at myself in the mirror and realized that my facial hair was getting a little unkempt. Some guys grow a playoff beard around this time of year. I don't really follow hockey (or any sports, really -- I suck at the orange Trivial Pursuit questions), so it would be a complete charade for me to try and grow one. It did occur to me that I could grow a 'selling the house' beard, but it's already at the point where it feels like I have masking tape on my face. I think that the irritation would go away if I let it go just a little longer, but the only thing keeping me from shaving right now is finishing this blog entry.

Tuesday nights are Rebecca's choir nights, where she gets out to sing with the Amabile Prima choir. That means that Tuesday nights are the nights that I get to fashion Jude as I please. I found out last night that, in addition to berries, carrot sticks and peanut butter and banana, Jude is a fan of the beef jerky. I didn't have it before I was in my twenties, so Jude can start his high-sodium diet off early.

On the home front, I will be painting the patched-over dents in the bathroom walls and the box that John and I constructed over the weekend to cover over the shutoff valve controlling one of the outdoor water faucets. Unfortunate that it took until we were putting the house up for sale to get that finished off. I need to make a list of the other odds and ends to get taken care of, but we are meeting with the real estate guy on Saturday morning to sign some papers to get the ball rolling. Hopefully not in an Indiana Jones kind of way.

Today began round 2 of painting. I tackled the bedroom-turned-office at around lunch time. It's 9:15 and I'm waiting to apply the second and final coat of paint. All this time I have been listening to mp3s from my laptop, over speakers from my disassembled computer. As I mentioned in that 25 things about me Facebook meme, most of the songs in CBC Go's show featuring the Gayest Songs of all time appear in my mp3 collection. It wasn't until earlier this week that it occurred to me that one of those songs, Freedom '90 seems to be where the artist, George Michael, came out of the closet. To be clear, I was aware before this week that I have a better shot with George Michael than most women; he achieved some degree of notoriety after that well-publicized incident in a LA washroom. But that wasn't until 1998. But a full eight years earlier, the artist released Freedom '90 with the following lyrics:

I think there's something you should know
I think it's time I told you so
There's something deep inside of me
There's someone else I've got to be

I often assure people that "nothing gets by me". Except that, I suppose. How did I miss that? It must have been that red herring of a music video, featuring the hottest supermodels of the time.

You know, this painting is depressing. All that money spent on professional painters, and my own time spent painting the smaller rooms, knowing that the first thing the new owners will do will be to paint over everything.

Remember the other day when I remarked about the harsh chemicals to which I have been exposing my hands? My laptop has a fingerprint reader that I use to log in. It does not currently recognize my index finger. I still have another room and some exterior trim to paint, some gardening and a box to build this weekend with John. I think it'll be a little while before I get my identity back. As long as my fingerprints are messed up, this might be a good time for me to go commit a crime though.

I'm at home today because, as I mentioned yesterday, the carpet cleaner is here. And while I'd be inclined to trust this guy if I left the house for a few minutes to run an errand, he's here by himself, and occassionally needs a hand moving furniture around. However, I'd be happy to recommend him, should you need your carpet cleaned. As I said, he uses some kind of milled corn husk product to clean the carpet, and it seems to do a fine job, and because it's a dry cleaning process, you can walk on the carpet immediately afterwards, and without the use of any harsh chemicals. His name is Barry Gollan if you want to give him a call (519 227 1427). The guy who stretched our carpets recommended him as "the best in the business".

One thing worth noting if you call him, he's a bit hard of hearing in his left ear. After spending the day in the house as he uses the carpet cleaning equipment, I can understand why. Interestingly, he brings with him a mask to protect his lungs from particulates (the milled corn husk bits), but doesn't seem to use any hearing protection. As I have recently noticed an abrupt slight loss of hearing, I've been sensitive to these things lately. I'm not sure whether this hearing loss is temporary (e.g., plugged ears from allergies) or not, but I plan to get my hearing checked before too long.

Um, yeah, so there's been a bit of a delay in putting out new material here. We're trying to get our house in shape before the For Sale sign goes on the lawn. The carpets have been stretched, all but one room has been painted (this will probably be how I spend Friday) and the carpet cleaners come tomorrow. I'll report back on how that goes, but I'm optimistic, and would be happy to advertise a green chemical-free dry-clean carpet cleaning process (it uses milled corn cobs).

As for my other job, we're having a lab meeting in a few minutes, so I'll find out whether Ken has read my revised manuscript and reply to the action letter, and whether I was excessively snarky, or just snarky enough. I did have fun writing the action letter though, and did so in my favourite understated sarcastic style. Perhaps I will publish excerpts.

For over a year now (I estimate), Canada Post has provided 'permanent' stamps. The purchase price for a permanent stamp is the going postage rate, but unlike denominated stamps, these stamps do not require additional postage when the price of sending a letter goes up. You can still buy denominated stamps, and I have an old book of $.55 stamps for sending letters to the US and $.46 stamps for mail within Canada. I just looked up the price of stamps at canadapost.ca, and holy cow they must be old because letter mail postage to the US is $.98 and $.54 within Canada. Inside the book of stamps, it says that "mail with insufficient postage will be returned to sender to make up the correct postage for re-mailing." How do they know where to return the mail? Well, that would be the return address that you specify on the letter. So, can anyone tell me why I might not just use an old $.46 stamp on a letter, and put down the recipient's address as the return address? Okay, as far as scams go, maybe this isn't the most lucrative, but still, I find it odd that the system puts so much trust in user input. Maybe it's the computer programmer in me...

Click on the image if you can only wish you were nerdy enough to get the comic

Unfortunately, I missed the introduction of the interviewee, but just before I stepped in the shower, I heard Wei Chen interview someone who I took to be the the federal finance minister, or someone similarly motivated and qualified to defend the Conservative government's cuts to research and development.

Basic research holds the advancement of knowledge as its primary objective. Applied research, in contrast, is the application of scientific knowledge and theory to the advancement of commercial interests. Now, when pressed on the point that Canada is at the bottom of the G7 in terms of percentage of GDP funding for research and development, with $150M cut in the last budget, the interviewee responded,

Look, Canadian researchers are doing fine. We have lots of smart people doing lots of great work. Their problem is in getting their research to the marketplace.*

And that is exactly why they just don't get it. This government is focused on the marketplace. Remember the post I made a few weeks back about how they are happy to give out NSERC money for industrial internships? This is why: our government seems to only value applied research. In August, I will be going to a lab at Northwestern to work with a guy who, in his words, "just wants to learn how the brain works."

So what's the problem? What does it matter what kind of research gets funding? Well here's how these two approaches differ:

Applied research lab:
"Hey, check this out. I redesigned the fuel cell."
"Why?"
"It'll let cars drive up to 4 hours at highway speeds on a single charge."
"Cool."

Pure research lab:
"Hey, check this out. I just teleported my lunch across the room."
"Why?"
"Because it's cool."
"Think we can do something with that?"

The topics of applied research are limited by the market: you have to already have an end product in mind (e.g., more efficient cars) so you can figure out how to get there. The topics of pure research are limited only by the questions you can ask (e.g., what rules govern atomic particles?). Applied research allows iterative linear progression. Pure research allows giant leaps. Yeah, I'm biased. Deal with it.

*Paraphrased, except for the last sentence, which is a direct quote.

The painters arrived this morning at 8:00 sharp, and our formerly red kitchen and formerly terracotta living room is now a creamy yellow:

The painter was going to buy the paint for me at his price, perhaps with some small markup, which is fair if it's below what they charge at the Home Despot. I had relayed two colours to our painter over the phone. This first colour was the brighter of the two, and intended for the bedrooms, which I was going to paint. The other colour was more of a taupe, picking up a colour in my sofa, and was intended for the living room, kitchen and basement:

As it turned out, the creamy colour works fine with everything, so I'm not terribly put out or anything. In fact, our house now looks like one of those fakey staged houses, albeit with more random boxes lurking in the out-of-focus background. I just got up from downstairs where I was moving all the furniture to the middle of the room. I'll be sad to see the basement colour go:

During this time, I was listening to the Ceeb, anxiously waiting for the hourly news. Rather than the chick on nitrous oxide with the strange inflection, the weather forecast had been brought to us this evening by the incredibly intense guy. I had hoped to get upstairs in time to figure out how to get a digital recording of the forecast so that you could hear what the heck I find so funny, but alas, they changed it up at the top of the hour -- to what I believe was the forcast from earlier in the day, no less. You'll just have to trust me when I tell you that, if you can imagine James T. Kirk doing the weather, you'd have a decent approximation.

The UV index tomorrow ... will be seven ...or... very high

Warning: if you are sensitive about the environment, you should plug your ears right about now, because I am about to admit to things that will offend you. No, scratch that, this is a blog, and plugging your ears won't do anything. Poke yourself in the eyes instead.

I just set the record today for gittinerdun. Normally around here I take Saturday as cleaning, though this is customarily limited to general tidying of the kitchen, washing the dishes that have been "soaking" for the previous 4 days, and washing the floor as I listen to Quirks and Quarks on CBC. However, as we are having some painters come on Monday to turn our house taupe, starting in the kitchen, I felt obligated to give the room an extra thorough cleaning, which involved pulling out appliances. Though it wouldn't affect the painting of the room, I also chose to use the self-clean option on our oven.

Quick question: the self-clean on our oven has a 2-hour and a 3-hour option, I believe with 3 hours as the default. Assuming I don't want to run it longer than needed, how do I know which one to use? 2 hours seems like plenty - is the 3 hour option for people running a small-scale crematorium on the side?

Despite having a self-clean oven, I also have some Easy-Off oven cleaner under the sink, and it can be darn useful. Take, for example, my bathtub cleaning problem. Our tub has a no-slip textured bottom, which makes it really good at trapping grime over a long period of time. I have tried scrubbing the heck out of the tub before with soap and baking soda. I've tried bleach. Today, I even tried trisodium phosphate, which, if you don't know, can also be used to remove oil spots from your driveway. None of this worked, even with a considerable amount of elbow grease. A google search later, I found that a 20 minute oven-cleaner treatment works wonders. Unfortunately for my hands, our only pair of rubber gloves disintegrated recently. I did try to wear latex gloves when scrubbing the tub, but TSP managed to get into them. Some diluted oven cleaner also probably made its way down my wrist and into my glove when I was washing out the tub afterwards. So right now, my hands are itchy, dry and look something like the Bonneville Salt Flats.

People are strange. I'm not sure what the morbid obsession is with the stabbing, but this continues to be a big draw, as I had another blog hit on my now legendary Ides of March post of aught-eight. The next unidentifiable flying hit that I saw came from a google search for -- and I quote -- "sexy elderly".

Look, people, when I talk about going out and taking part in stabbing festivities for the Ides of March, or when I use the phrase "sexy elderly" in my blog, it is not to be taken seriously. This blog is like flypaper - you put it out there, and all kinds of random gets drawn to it.

You know what I do take seriously now? Flossing. Flossing kicks ass. I mean, yeah, I have always brushed the heck out of my teeth, but it used to be that I would save flossing for special occasions -- you know, when you eat pork ribs, or corn on the cob. Whenever I went to the dentist, they would ask, "how often do you floss?" As if they don't know. They just like watching people lie. The last couple of visits to the dentist, I even told the hygienist that she should recommend to her patients to eat more things that usually gets stuck between teeth so that they would floss more often. However, since I started brushing my teeth with Jude, and introducing him to dental floss, it's been a regular deal. Hell, I even floss after soup. I thought they were making crap up when they told me that regular flossing would stop the bleeding that usually occurred when I went to the dentist. I mean, with the way they attack your face with garotte wire and sharp metal picks, how can you not bleed? But no, I think next time, I'll be able to turn down their offer for a transfusion.

Amusing update: This blog entry is the number one hit for Norwegians interested in sexy elderly.