Is there a scientific term that encompasses the concept of "comparing apples and oranges?" Someone told me to use "this is akin to the similarities between Malus domestica and Citrus sinensis", but that strikes me as insufficient and way to punny for my tastes.

Hard at work on my dissertation, I just reached the 50 Figure mark today. That's a lot of fucking figures! I'm at 84 pages right now, but that will grow when I apply double spacing at the end. I should finish chapter 4 tomorrow, or friday at the latest. There's just one last section to write, but it's sort of a complicated one. I need to finish up this chapter quickly because I have to start on a NASA postdoc proposal due August 1.

This week has been full of highs and lows, and it's only Tuesday! For example, on Sunday Kelly, the dog, and I went to play in Tonto Creek by Gisela. There were some huge deep pools and plenty of places for cliff jumping. We totally wore out Ed, and he didn't want to move for the rest of the day and most of Monday as well. On the downside, I had brought my phone along in a plastic bag, and a little bit of water got in. Not much because the money in my wallet wasn't wet at all. I guess ziploc bags aren't 100% watertight. Don't ask me why I needed my phone with me, 'cause I don't have a good answer. Anyways, after that my phone was frozen on this blue emergency screen, so I had to buy a new one. And damn those things are expensive when you aren't getting any discounts! Bare-bones phones that are advertised in the Verizon store for $80 are $200 retail. Luckily they had a refurbished phone for $90. But still, that's more than I thought I would pay.

On Monday I got a lot done on chapter 4, and passed through some writers block that was plagueing me last week. But today I spent most of my day doing menial tasks. The big thing was I found out I had to register for one research credit for 1st summer session. I though I only needed one credit for the whole summer, like last year, so I only registered for 2nd summer session. But I got an email saying I needed both. Of course normal registration is closed, and I needed to fill out paperwork and get some signatures for late registration. Luckily I found out about it today, because the head of the department is gone until next week, and the only person who can sign for him is leaving for vacation tomorrow.

I just got off the phone with George Cody at the Carnegie Institute. I'd never talked to him before, but he's got a sweet lab set up there, and there's a nice postdoc program there too! I was a little nervous cold calling him like that, because I really didn't know how interested he was in my research. But it turns out he's really interested. He told me about some possible projects that are right up my alley. Whew, what a relief. There's a NASA postdoc fellowship deadline August 1 that I'll apply for. The stipend is 50k with an 8k travel allowance plus moving expenses, which is pretty fucking sweet.

A while ago I mentioned that I was going through my mp3 collection and purging the crappy stuff. Four gigs later, I finished this weekend. Now I'm working on ripping my CD collection so I can get rid of some CDs. I mentioned to Kelly that I'm in the market now for a new mp3 player since the free one I've been using sucks balls and goes through AAA batteries like nobody's business. I decided on this one, and Kelly offered to buy it for me as an early graduation gift! Thanks so much sweetie!

For a while I've been thinking about online music stores. I like Yahoo alot, but there's two others that have captured my attention lately. First off, eMusic has been around for a while, but I haven't paid much attention to them because they're mostly independent labels. However, they've been getting alot of press lately because they don't use any kind of protected file format, just plain old mp3. Nobody has to worry about the songs not playing on Macs or PCs, having special mp3 players, or having to have required software. That's something I strongly support now that DRM schemes are so common. eMusic has some artists I like, especially some of their older albums, but there are many of my favorite artists that aren't on the site. So I could never use eMusic exclusively, but I wonder if the concept is worth supporting so that one day, larger labels will allow their songs to be available through eMusic.

The second service is MTV's Urge, automatically available as part of Windows Media Player 11. It's a pretty typical service to Napster, except it has several key things going for it. For one, it is completely integrated into WMP, so you never have to have two separate programs open just to download and listen to music (I like using a single media player for all my music/video needs). Plus, it's really easy to go back and forth between URGE and my music library. I like the ease and simplicity alot. It also has plugin support for other music stores like WMP10 has, but you still need separate programs for those to work. Secondly, URGE allows you to watch music videos for free (if they exist). I like being able to see a music without the complicated browser navigation on MTVs website. Thirdly, URGE allows you to restore your downloads. This may not sound like much, but it makes things so much easier for me. Typically, when you purchase a song for 99 cents, the license only allows playback on that computer. But I have two computers that I use for music: my laptop at ASU and my computer at home. With Yahoo, for example, I would have to buy a song on one computer, burn it to a CD, then rip the CD on the other computer, with a loss in quality. With URGE, all I have to do is go to my account and click on "Restore Downloads". I even tested this with one song and it works great. I think other music stores do this as well, but my current favorite, Yahoo, does not. To my knowledge, URGE and Yahoo have the same offerings, even though MTV proclaims it has about 500,000 more songs.

If URGE is so great, then why isn't it my new favorite? Because of price. It's $10/month and Yahoo is only $7/month. That's a big difference per year, and to me that's worth a little inconvenience. Meanwhile, I'll still use Ruckus because it's free, even though it's a big pile of shit.