I finally got my office on Thursday. Now somebody else is in limbo for a while, but I'm all set. I moved all my stuff in, but I'm still waiting on my new computer. I guess it had to be reordered on Wednesday because the initial order did not go through for some reason. The guy said he was going to get overnight delivery, but I haven't heard anything about it yet (although I was busy on the FIB all day Friday).

The weather has been really nice here lately. Sunny and not to humid or hot. So much more comfortable now than in AZ.

I'm going to apply for beamtime at the Canadian Light Source in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. I was checking out the website, when I found the online synchrotron status webpage. It seems someone in Canada really likes Star Trek.

I met up with my friend William and his girlfriend yesterday. We ate at a good Ethiopian restaurant in Georgetown. It was nice to catch up, especially since he's moving to Ohio soon. And, as per his request, here's a picture of our new backyard. Yes, it is frickin' huge.

Kelly and I had a great day today. This morning we took Gunner to Great Falls National Park on the Potomac and walked him around. The falls are really cool, and there are miles of trails to explore. Then we went and got sushi for lunch at this place in downtown Falls Church. Then we went and got library cards and the regional public library that's within walking distance from our house. It was a lot of fun spending time with Kelly, and decompressing from a stressful week. I really like where we live now, and there are lots of things nearby that weren't that convenient in AZ. Although now there are things that aren't nearby, like good Mexican food.

Kelly and I met up with Eulynn and Victor this weekend in DC. We ate at this awesome Vietnamese restaurant in Georgetown. Then we walked around a bit and ended up at a bar called Brickskeller that has like a thousand different kinds of beer from all around the world. It was a lot of fun, but we stayed out late and were very tired by the time we got home.

We also got our new VA drivers licenses. They look so much crappier than AZ drivers licenses, and neither of us are happy with our pictures. We did a bunch of shopping too, now that I've been paid, so our house looks a bit more organized. Now that that's over, we don't have to waste our weekends running errands or unpacking.

Happy 4th everybody! This week both Kelly and I started work. NRL looks like most military bases I've seen (I have a few uncles in the armed forces, so I've seen my fair share of military bases). I'd post a picture, but there are no cameras allowed on-site. I'm not even supposed to bring my laptop in. But I have to bring it in to work until my new computer arrives (I'm getting a new Sony Vaio laptop with a docking station, wireless keyboard and mouse, and a 24" LCD monitor). I don't even have an office yet until some science director guy gets back from vacation next week to officially assign me one. The weirdest thing so far is that most of the administrative staff leaves at 3PM every day. And I still have personal stuff to do to get us fully settled in here, like registering our cars in Virginia, and getting insurance policies. Hopefully I'll have most of that miscellanea done by the start of next week.

Sorry for not posting in a while, but an awful lot has happened in the last two weeks. Needless to say, Kelly and I are now residing in Falls Church, Virginia, a suburb of Washington DC. We drove both our cars from Arizona to here over five days, and I don't know if I ever want to do that again. We've been staying in an empty house, but the movers will show up tomorrow morning with all our stuff. We have been pretty busy cleaning up the place. I guess the owners moved out two days before we arrived and say they didn't have time to clean up the place. The carpets hadn't been cleaned and the walls were all dirty. And the owners had some sort of shaggy dog because there is wiry gray dog hair everywhere! But we've gotten it looking pretty presentable by now. Plus a handyman showed up yesterday to rip up the filthy carpet in the sunroom and replaced it with a clean, painted cement floor.

This article makes me mad. People should not be punished for trying to use alternative energy sources.

There's an awesome Wolfgang Tillmans exhibit at the Hirshhorn Museum in DC.

Thursday I had some free time in the afternoon, so I went over to Woodlawn Plantation, which was right across the street from my hotel. The grounds were very well-tended, and aside from the main house, there's also a Frank Lloyd Wright house on the property.


Next to the mansion house there was a tiny pool with tons of tadpoles in it.


There were also a few Southern Magnolia trees on the property. I didn't realize that the magnolia was a tree and not a bush. They were just beginning to bloom, but only near the tops of the trees.

I saw six homes today. This is the one that sounded good to me, so I made plans to see it first in the morning. I also stopped by again later in the afternoon, after my expectations had been calibrated, and I decided to apply for it. It is smaller than the home we are renting now, but compared to other homes in the area, the price for the size is a great value.

Pros:

• large yard (and it's fully fenced)
  
• semi hidden from street (although that slope might be trouble for our cars in the winter)
• largest living room and laundry room I've seen all day
  
• has a nice sunroom extension in back
• has large storage shed in back (in very good condition)
• Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, Starbucks, and video rental store in walking distance down the street
• very near Metro station, and right on bus line (which goes to Metro station)
• just a few miles south of Tysons Corner malls
• backs up to Pimmet Run creek, so only neighbors on the right and left
• very close to major freeways (495 beltway and 66)
  

Cons:

• small kitchen
• small bathroom with no toiletries storage
• the two bedrooms combined are about the size of our current bedroom
• one lane parking along side of house (no garage)
• the slopes in the front and back yards might make mowing the lawns a pain
  

I'm blogging from my hotel in Mount Vernon, Virginia. According to internet reviews, this place is supposed to be a shithole, but I guess the owners have remodeled it over the past two years, and I think it's not that bad. My room is actually pretty nice, if small. I was surprised to walk into the place and see this huge courtyard in the middle, so I thought I'd post a picture. The hotel has free wireless, as you can probably guess.

Early tomorrow I'm meeting up with a realtor to see the rental home in Falls Church I like the most, then I'll head over to Fairfax and check out this other place. I'll be meeting up with another realtor in the afternoon. However, if the first home turns out as good as it looks on the internet, I may not have to. We'll see, and I'll keep y'all posted.

I keep forgetting to blog about camping Memorial Day weekend. It was basically Kelly's and my last chance to camp in AZ before we move (less than a month away!!). We went with Kelly's parents, her brother, Ed, and a family friend, to a place we know just north of Strawberry on the Mogollon Rim. I think Strawberry is one of my favorite Rim towns, and I have many good memories from there. It was also Gunner's first time camping, and I think he had a blast.

Anyway, there were plenty of animals, so I got a chance to test out the macro mode on my camera.

I was really excited to get a new cell phone, and I decided to go with the LG Chocolate over the Motorola KRZR. Well, I quickly discovered that mp3 ringtones for my phone cost $2.99 apiece! I grumbled enough paying $1.50 for a polyphonic ringtone, but $3 is just too much. So I spent a bit of time finding a workaround to get my own ringtones on the phone. I quickly discovered a piece of software called BitPIM that will access contacts, calendars, messages, and ringtones on a large assortment of cell phones, including the Chocolate. However, to use BitPIM you need a special USB cable to connect to the phone. The cable itself costs $20, but it comes included with a headset in the Verizon Media Essentials Kit for $30. I found the kit on eBay for cheaper.

So after about a week I had everything I needed. BitPIM automatically recognized my phone. But when I click on the "Get Phone Data" button, I got an error stating the file directories on the phone where not accessible. After some internet searching, I found out that I have version 6 of the Chocolate software. BitPIM only works with version 4. An upcoming version of BitPIM will work with version 5, but version 6 is locked down tight. Well, at least I can use the USB cable to transfer mp3s to my phone just to listen to them, but to be honest, the Chocolate is not better than a dedicated mp3 player.

But wait, there's another option. I actually tried this before I shelled out any money for the Music Essentials Kit. You can send text messages to any verizon phone by email! The address is just [phonenumber]@vzwpix.com (remember to include the area code in the phone number). It also allows you to transfer pictures, audio, and video files this way. So I tried it by sending myself a couple of very short (30 seconds or less) mp3 files. My phone received the messages right away, and allowed me to save the audio as a ringtone, but the audio sounded horrible! It appears that somewhere along the way, the mp3 files were converted to crappy qcp files (don't ask me what those are!). So I gave up on that option right away and went ahead with the BitPIM method.

After BitPIM failed with the Chocolate, I thought about the email method again. QCP seems to be more of a container format than an actual encoding, so I thought to myself, "Why not just change .mp3 to .qcp on the file name and try that?" I mean, the phone already plays mp3s, so I just have to get the file to my phone without it being downconverted. As a qcp file, it should pass through unaltered to the phone. And what do you know? It works!

OK, so here's how to get free ringtones on a locked-down LG Chocolate:

1. Create a short mp3 file (about 30 seconds at 96kpbs). I think it needs to be less than 350 kb.

2. Open the folder on your PC containing the new mp3 file. Go to Tools > Folder Options..., select the View tab and uncheck "Hide extensions for known file types". This makes the ".mp3" part of the filename visible.

3. Change the file extension from ".mp3" to ".qcp"

4. Attach the qcp file to an email sent to [yourphonenumber]@vzwpix.com

5. Once you receive the message on your phone, select "Options" and then "Set as Ringtone". Voila!

A lot has happened in the past few days! I flew to Chicago to give a geology colloquium talk at Northwestern. Then Kelly, her family, the dogs, and I hiked to the Jug for Mother's Day. Then just yesterday I got a brand new cell phone.

The weather was quite nice in Evanston. I guess it was during those two or three weeks of Spring every year. But it was sunny in the mid-60s, with only a little bit of wind. My talk went well. I just gave basically the same talk that I did for my Carnegie interview, but without the proposal stuff and a bit more general explanation. I also brought samples of my cherts to pass around, which I think the audience liked. I didn't have a lot of free time, though. I arrived Thursday night, hung out in the geology department and met people on Friday, then left Saturday morning. But I did have some time to meet up with Eric Singley for some whiskey at a local Evanston bar. Eric's a pretty cool guy. I never really hung out with him that much as an undergrad, but I should have.

Then on Sunday we all hiked to the Jug. There was water flowing this time of year, but it was a bit lower than when Kelly and I went last Spring. Ed wussed out a bit after we got to the water, so Jace and Kelly's dad stayed behind while Kelly, Kelly's mom, and I went to the swimming pools. Gunner went with us and had to swim for the first time ever in his life. He looked pretty clumsy and made tons of splashing, but I think he had a good time. But both he and Ed did not like the hike out. By then it was hot and the trail was burning Gunner's feet. Ed also got overheated and he was wheezing like a steam engine. Jace and Kelly's mom had to carry Ed for a little while, and I carried Gunner for a little bit. They were both out of it for the next few days. They both seem back to normal today, though.

I'm having a great time reading The God Delusion. It was a bit boring in the middle when Dawkins was talking about evolution of religion, why the anthropic principle doesn't prove God's existence, and why God's supposed omnipotence and omnipresence also implies that he doesn't exist. But now he's talking about morality, which is really interesting. I've always been told that an atheistic society will decline into immorality. Dawkins does a very good job of showing the separation of morality and religion, and how morality and ethics are beneficial (evolutionarily-speaking). One way he puts it is to think about how morals and ethics have changed over time, leading to more gender and racial equality. But if morality is based on religion, which is based on a document (or set of documents) that hasn't changed in a couple thousand years, morality shouldn't change over time. This change occurs because religion and morality are separate sets of memes.

I just finished reading a great section about something I've come across as a scientist, and I've seen it from other scientists, even at conferences. Dawkins tells the story of Kurt Wise, who runs the Center for Origins Research. Kurt was set to become an outstanding geologist. He got his graduate degree from Harvard under Stephen Jay Gould. But Kurt was raised as a fundamentalist Christian, and realized that there were contradictions between the Bible and what he studied at graduate school. Fed up with the internal conflict, he sat down with his Bible and cut out (with a pair of scissors) all the passages that disagree with the current scientific worldview. Needless to say his Bible was a shambles afterwards. At that point he made a choice, either "Science" or God, and he chose God...

"It was there that night that I accepted the Word of God and rejected all that would ever counter it, including evolution. With that, in great sorrow, I tossed into the fire all my dreams and hopes in science."

He could have taken the Bible as an allegory or symbolic text, as many do. But this is what fundamentalism does to people. It causes people to ignore scientific evidence. It causes people to want to be dumb!

Sometimes Gunner's cute facial expressions remind me of Lil' Brudder.

It appears that geologist have finally discovered kryptonite...Yes, you heard right.

It's not really a glowing green mineral, but it has almost the same chemical formula given in the most recent Superman movie. The real mineral name will be jadarite, named after the town in Serbia nearby where it was discovered.

I wonder what the mineral name for dilithium crystals would be?

So I've been reading this Richard Dawkins book, The God Delusion. Kelly started reading it and recommended it to me. I really like the book so far. It's basically a book about why everybody should be atheists, or putting it another way, believing in a personal god is just downright silly. I don't consider it a detailed critique of religion...more like a common sense "when you really think about it" kind of book. For example, Dawkins talks about the idea of "Religion" and "Science" being separate but equal, and neither can ask or answer questions about the other. Dawkins points out that this is a line of reasoning to pacify or pander to religious people, and it doesn't work in practice. If there really was a way to scientifically prove that a diety exists, or that miracles happen, or that prayer works, you can be absolutely sure that religious people would jump on it. And if science shows that prayer doesn't work (a test study actually showed that people were worse off if they were prayed for!!!), then religious people claim that Science can't test Religion. In theory, it sounds like a great mantra for dealing with controversial Science vs. Religion questions, but in practice nobody follows it.

I could go on, but you get the picture. The book looks at some basic concepts about the idea of God from a practical viewpoint. I've said for a long time that religion always boiled down to pure faith. You either believe or don't believe and there will never be enough evidence to suggest one option over the other. I've always thought that this makes a person's religion more important and special, because it takes a conscious decision. I think that Dawkins tries to make the same case, but then takes it one step further by saying that if it really does boil down to faith, then why bother! He also mentions that you can't force faith. If you don't believe in something, then all the church in the world won't get you into heaven, so why bother.

Whether you agree with the book or not, it definitely makes you think. Several parts have resonated with ideas I've come up with on my own, but I've never really taken them seriously before. I'd strongly recommend it to anybody, religious or not.

The only problem I've found so far it Dawkins' claim that God must be a part of the universe. If he is, then he must be within the realm of scientific exploration. But I'm pretty sure that all Christians believe that God is external to the physical universe (or else how could He create it?)

I also recommend reading the introduction to Misquoting Jesus by Bart Ehrman. In that chapter he explains how he changed from a fundamentalist Christian into a full-fledged athiest because he became a Biblical exegesis scholar (studying and translating the original manuscripts, which are actually copies of copies of copies, etc.). The more he studied the original manuscripts the more he became convinced that the book we know of as the Bible is not really the "Word of God" as we are told . It's a fascinating read.

New White Stripes! Fuck Yeah!!!

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