World Jump Day - July 20, 2006
If 600 million people all jump at the same time at the particular moment the Earth moves into a "fragile" position in its orbit, the orbit can change such that global warming will decrease. Is this scientifically possible, or just popular myth?

Ninjas are awesome!

What a great President's Day Weekend! It rained alot on Friday and Saturday, so we took Ed out to the flooded green belt to run around. He had a blast splashing around in the puddles. He got absolutely filthy from digging muddy holes, so he got a bath afterwards.

Yesterday, Kelly, Kelly's Dad, Ed and I hiked up to Quartz Peak in the Sierre Estrellas just southwest of Phoenix. It's only a 3 mile hike, but the elevation increases 3000 ft in that distance. Quartz Peak is a pegmatite vein with huge tourmalines, micas, and some garnets. We brought back a bunch of samples, including a huge piece of white quartz with giant tourmalines in it. My back was so sore, but we soaked in the hot tub for a little bit at Kelly's house, so I'm not so sore today.

Kelly and I had a great Valentine's Day on Monday. We went to Veggie Kabob. For some strange reason, we had forgotten how awesome the food is there. Yummy!

This morning I finished a new Java program. FileCombine solves a time-consuming problem I have when analyzing EELS data. In order to mess around with the data in Excel, I have to import every spectrum individually as a two-column text file and then copy and paste into the final worksheet. That can take a while if I have a dozen spectra or so. So I wrote FileCombine to take those individual text files and combine them into a multi-column, tab-delineated text file. Then I only have to import one file into Excel. It works with any text file, too, not just two column text. To run the program, open the command prompt and go to the directory where FileCombine.class is. Type java FileCombine, and assuming you have Java installed on your computer, you should the file chooser popup. Select the directory of your text files, and the program will ask which text files to include. Then you get another popup to choose the destination file. That's it. I like to create shortcuts with the Java command on the desktop or Start menu so I can just double click to start the program.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Kelly and I went to the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show again today with her sister-in-law, Tabitha. It was pretty cool to go again and see how much prices dropped from two weeks ago or how selection has changed in that time. I found a huge piece of vanadanite in one vendor's bargain bin for only $1. That piece would normally be between $40-$60 because there are a bunch of huge gemmy crystals on it, so I snapped it up quick. I also found a nice piece of vesuvianite in matrix for $10 and a framed slab of marble or something for $20.

Yesterday I noticed that a Java applet that a wrote a while ago wasn't loading in Internet Explorer. I spent alot of time yesterday and all of this morning working on the problem. The frustrating thing was that it would load on some computers, like my home computer, but not on my laptop at ASU. Both computers were using the same version of IE and Java, so it had to be an issue with browser settings. I played with every thinkable security and advanced setting. The one thing I noticed was that my browser was using a Microsoft Java plugin regardless of whether I had the official Java plugin from Sun or not. This Microsoft plugin is obsolete, but I couldn't figure out a way to uninstall it. Somehow, reinstalling the Sun Java plugin got rid of the Microsoft Java plugin, so now everything works fine and I can stop worrying about it.

Now I just have to fix all the other computers that won't load the applet.

Man! I've already fallen off the blogwagon. Time to get back on. All I have is a couple of news notes:

• Hope everybody had a decent Super Bowl Sunday. Kelly was off living it up with drillers while I was winning $30 from her dad.
  
• I got my LOTR box in the mail last week, so now I have something to put my special edition box sets into!
  
• In the beginning of GTA: San Andreas, your character becomes involved in gang warfare. I've been taking over territory for a few weeks now, and I only have one tiny area left. I can't get enemy gang members to spawn there because my territory surrounds it, so only my gang members spawn.
  
• The Onion AV club is starting to do video game reviews, but guess who they got to do it. Wil Wheaton! That's right, the punk ass kid from Star Trek: The Next Generation!
  
• Do you think you're a loser? You'll feel better once you check out these people!

Last night I dreamed about a new cool reality show. It's either called "Manhunt" or "The Chase". There are eight regular people on two teams: The Fugitives and the Bounty Hunters. The fugitives are given food and supplies to survive for two weeks in the wilderness and a few hours head start. The bounty hunters have unlimited supplies that they don't have to carry themselves, and their goal is to find and return the fugitives to the home base. Now here's where the money comes in. Each fugitive returned to base is progressively worth more.

1st fugitive = $100
2nd fugitive = $500
3rd fugitive = $1000
4th fugitive = $5000
5th fugitive = $10000
6th fugitive = $25000
7th fugitive = $50000
8th fugitive = $100000

The bounty hunters only have two weeks to catch the fugitives, and only the hunters who return to base with a fugitive will get the money. The further the game goes on, the longer it takes to return a fugitive to base and return to find and catch more fugitives, but they're worth more money. But why even be a fugitive? Any free fugitive after two weeks gets $100000! That's a big incentive, but difficult to actually accomplish.

In my dream, I imagined the first season of this show. All the fugitives but two were caught during the first day, mainly because there were a series of deep ravines and rivers to cross. Some of the hunters decided to share some of the bounties, so only one hunter decided to skip the easy money and go for the big payoff ($150000 for two bounties). But the fugitives decided to work together and headed for the mountains. It took about a week for the hunter to track and find them in a meadow high up in a pine forest. By that time the two fugitives were tired, cold, and hungry from the pursuit (they were running or hiking hard for most of the day). They didn't resist, and the hunter took both of them in at the same time, but they barely made it back to base before the two weeks were up. No fugitives earned money that time, but one of them would have if they had split up in the mountains.

This show would only have to pay between $191600 and $800000 per season, and most likely a lower number. There are no props and sets, so the only production cost would be filming, which would probably be mostly hand camera and helicoptor shots.

Maybe it's a stupid idea, but I sure as hell would watch it.

Here's some mineral pics:

pyrrhotite


sphalerite


ruby


emerald

I wanted to take some pictures of the cool minerals Kelly and I got in Tucson, but most of them came out fuzzy (I'm not good with cameras). Here's a pic of amazonite.

Our water heater burst yesterday. The apartment manager noticed water flowing and pooling up in the driveway, so they shut off the water and replaced the water heater. Luckily, downhill is away from the building, so nothing got ruined, although all of Kelly's rock samples in the laundry room got soaked and smell something awful now. There's also a thin layer of sediment in our carport. It's just another member of the Hermanson Formation, an accumulation of work-related mud and dust that forms wherever Kelly goes. You can always tell where Kelly has parked her car by the mud that builds up in that space!

I've finished and submitted by last proposal. Now I have to just wait until April or so to see if I'll be getting any money for next year.