Across the Universe

My car must have heard that I ordered new struts for it last night.  While I was driving to the nursery this afternoon, the “check engine” warning light came on.  I have no idea why it came on, although it might be related to the fact that the car acted as though the battery was completely dead earlier in the day!  This morning I tried to start the car, but it didn’t respond at all. Then I tried again without a response.  On the third try, the car started normally–no hesitation.  This evening I ordered the rest of the parts that will be needed for the planned maintenance work.  I’m hoping that all of the parts will arrive via UPS this week so I can arrange an appointment for next week to get the planned work done.  While it’s in the garage, I suppose the techs can diagnose the new problem that’s causing my check engine light to glow.  If they cant figure it out, I may have to go to a Toyota dealership to get it fixed.

Melissa and I bought some Italian parsley, cilantro, purple sage, and peppermint at the nursery today for the mini herb garden.  I also bought two small azaleas to turn into bonsai.  Azaleas grow well in shade and azalea bonsai are beautiful when they are in bloom.  Unfortunately they grow rather slowly, so it takes a long time to train them and their trunks require many years to achieve appreciable girth. The result will be worth it though.  I’ll try to take some photos of the trees soon.

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After getting an estimate for the hardware and labor required for my car’s suspension maintenance, I decided to order the hardware myself and then have someone install it. By doing it this way, I will only have to pay a mechanic for labor and I get to choose my own parts. After doing quite a bit of research online, I finally bought some Sachs struts tonight.  I haven’t bought strut mounts yet because I’m not sure if there’s a meaningful difference between the different brands.  The prices range from $24 to $108 per strut mount.  As far as I know, all strut mounts for my Avalon are doomed to wear out prematurely because of a flaw in the original design specs of the vehicle.

Melissa and I are going to San Diego for the weekend before we go to VA.  It’ll be part of my spring break.  We’re taking advantage of a special AAA vacation discount plus a free admission pass that covers lots of the attractions.

Yesterday, Melissa and I visited the University Hills apartments, mentioned previously.  The apartment complex seems much nicer overall except for the fact that there are no one-bedroom apartments with balconies  There’s an accessible flat roof that could be used for growing plants, but things wouldn’t be safe from passersby.  I’ll keep searching…

Next week is the last week of classes!  I need to remind my students to evaluate me.  Next weekend may be spent entirely on a take-home GR exam…depending on the length and difficulty of the exam.

I’ve been working on the details of my lecture series.  Hopefully I’ll have the details worked out and I will have started making the presentation document by the time we leave for VA.

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After handing in my GR assignment this morning, I graded three classes worth of quizzes and then came back home.  I applied for the summer school program in computational astrophysics, registered for classes for the spring quarter, filled out my FAFSA, and did a required online “training” course that all employees of the university are required to complete by the end of the year.

Then I went outside and worked on the huge scrape on the side of my car.  It turns out that most of the areas that appeared to be scratches were actually due to the paint on the poll rubbing off onto my car.  I managed to remove the paint and polish the remaining scratches.  It doesn’t look nearly as bad as it did.  There are a few very shallow dents in the door, but it’s not serious enough to warrant repair work.  Then I went to the car wash and cleaned the car. When I returned home from the car wash, I started searching online for a local garage that can replace the struts and strut mounts and do the other maintenance things to my car…like an all-wheel alignment.  I used the AAA website to find the closest reputable garages and then I sent an e-mail to the place that looked the best.  I’m hoping they can give me an estimate via e-mail.  The place that seemed to be second best was the place down the street that I’ve been planning to get an estimate from.  I suppose I’ll compare estimates and get this work done fairly soon.

Basically I spent most of the day doing a lot of things that I had been putting off… next I’ll have to work on lowering my car insurance rate.

I took some photos of the Japanese maple bonsai this evening.  The tree as a whole doesn’t look good enough to show off yet, but here are some pieces of the tree.  This time I used the open source RawStudio software and the GIMP rather than the Canon software and Photoshop to edit the photos.

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I finally met Melissa’s Brother, sister-in-law, and niece on Sunday!  They live in Hermosa Beach.  I used my new camera to take photos for the occasion.  Here are a few of the better ones:

There just happened to be a parhelic circle and two faint parhelia (sun dogs) at the beach.

Melissa’s family seems quite nice!  Her brother Phillip (Phil) is a bit of a comedian.  I had sort of “met” his wife Phil’s wife, CharLee on Facebook.  She seemed the same in person as online–very friendly.  She also cooks quite well.  Melissa’s niece, Willow is a cute six-month-old…and she has a powerful little grip.  She squeezed my fingers when I was holding her.

Other things that have happened since the last entry…

I finished the HST theory proposal and it was submitted on Friday morning. In the process of writing the proposal, I came up with an idea for my small, pre-advancement project.  Now I have an idea of what I’ll be working on in terms of research for the next few months.  By the time I finish the project, I’ll be ready to start my PhD thesis project.  I’ll need to set up a comittee for the oral exam so I can advance quickly.

Melissa and I found an apartment complex on the other side of campus that seems to be better than my current apartment…if I can get a one-bedroom apartment with an appropriately aligned balcony anyway.  I need at least a Western exposure and preferably a balcony with southern exposure for my plants.  The area is very clean and quiet compared with my current apartment and the rent seems comparable to my current apartment.  It’s also closer to the physics department and the astronomy building than my current apartment.  I want to take a tour of the place soon so I can find out if the interior of the apartment building is as nice as the exterior.

In the garden….

• I’m propagating the Irish moss using the method that I discovered through observation and trial and error over the last few months.  It seems to be working.  The only problem is that it needs to be watered at least every other day.
• The tomatoes still haven’t been transplanted into larger pots.  They are already blooming and they are growing very rapidly, so they will need new pots very soon.  Hopefully I can get that accomplished in the next week.
• The alyssum started sprouting on Friday and it’s getting ready to get it’s second set of leaves already.  the plants will need to be thinned a bit because they are planted too closely together.
• I’m strongly considering getting one or two azaleas to turn into bonsai.  They will do well in the less sunny part of the balcony where few other things can grow.  Azalea bonsai are beautiful when they are blooking…and they are pretty cool during the rest of the year too.
• The Japanese Maple is growing.  I pruned it a bit more and I used some wire to train a few of the branches.
• The smaller, older bonsai is covered with new growth.

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Last week Melissa and I bought two tomato plants for the balcony garden.  Over the weekend, we added a few more things.  We sowed seeds for purple and white alyssum, we went to the local nursery where we bought some lemon thyme, and I was finally able to find a Japanese maple suitable for transforming into a bonsai! I spent last summer unsuccessfully searching the local nurseries  for a japanese maple of the right shape and size.  Here’s what it looked like after the initial pruning, but before it was planted in its new pot:

I will likely remove a bit more from the top of the tree and use my bonsai wire to bend some of the branches soon.  Melissa helped with the root pruning and re-potting procedure on Sunday.  I’ll try to get a photo of the “finished” product in a few days.  The tree  should look significantly different by the end of the growing season!  I also applied wire to the branches of my older bonsai this weekend.  It is loaded with buds, so it’ll probably need to be pruned sometime in April.

We’re planning to grow a few more herbs, in addition to the thyme, so we won’t have to buy things like cilantro that would then go to the bad before we use them.  By the time we add the other herbs and a few more flowers, there won’t be much useful growing area remaining on the balcony.  One part of the balcony is essentially useless for anything other than shade plants  due to the lack of direct sunlight.

Yesterday Melissa made TBLTs (turkey bacon lettuce and tomato sandwishes) using the bread from Sprouts.  They were quite good!  Replacing the pork bacon with turkey bacon and using high-quality bread helped a lot with the overall nutritional value. Earlier in the week, we tried steel-cut oats for the first time.  They are healthier, more filling, and have a more pleasant texture than rolled oats, but they are also more expensive.  The slight health benefit is due to the extended digestion time;  they have a lower glycemic index than rolled oats.

I made a copy of my apartment key at Lowe’s for Melissa so she can get in and out of the apartment without having to borrow my key when I’m at UCR.

I worked on my HST theory proposal more today and I was able to get a considerable about completed.  I think that I’ll be able to finish drafting tomorrow and edit on Wednesday.

I got a new USB memory stick this weekend because my old one stopped working a few months ago and they are cheap and handy to have.

My tax refunds were transferred to my bank account on Saturday.

My rent was effectively increased by about $10 per month today because trash pickup is no longer included as part of the rent.

I filled out my jury duty deferral form today.  I requested to defer until May.

I found a Windows program that reads PDFs just as well as the Adobe reader, but it does the job much more efficiently and it runs in Linux with Wine, so I can use it for viewing PDFDs that my olf version of Evince can’t handle properly.  The software will be redundant once I upgrade to Ubuntu 10.04, but it’s useful for the poor souls who still use Windows.  It’s called Foxit: http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/reader/

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It has been quite a while since my last entry.   Here’s a little summary of the previous week:

Melissa arrived here late Friday night after her Haiti fundraiser show.  On Saturday, we went shopping again. We went to Sprouts, which is an organic food “farmers market” in Riverside.  They sell a lot of things that I can’t find anywhere else except online.  I bought some yerba mate and some whole grain, low glycemic index, low gluten bread.  We went to Lowe’s and I finally found weather stripping that works with my front door, which means that I shouldn’t have to deal with cigarette smoke from the next-door neighbors anymore!!! I scraped the passenger side, back door of my Avalon on the pole beside my parking spot.  The scrape is huge and there may be a slight dent. I’m going to see how effective rubbing compound is at reducing the severity of the blemish.  I don’t really have enough money to have the door painted and I’m not sure if it would even be worth fixing since I’ll probably only have the car for 3 or 4 more years.

Sunday was Valentine’s day.   We mostly stayed in on Sunday because we figured that most places would be busy.  We just went to the local frozen yogurt shop, Mumbles. Monday was President’s day, so I didn’t have to teach.  Melissa and I went to the Mexican restaurant, Las Companas, at the Mission Inn.  While at the Mission Inn, I took some photos using the new battery grip on my camera.  Example:

I was very busy and unproductive Tuesday through Thursday because of my teaching class schedules. I was sleep-deprived pretty much the entire time.  I managed to learn a few more things about black holes, but other than that, I mainly performed my teaching duties.  I graded quizzes, taught, and proctored the second exam for the course. This time I also had to make copies of the exam myself because the physics department has decided to use their small photocopier to make all copies rather than paying the copy center to print tests for the large classes.  I expect that the small copy machine will break down fairly soon.

Last night I was finally able to get enough sleep because I didn’t have to wake up early.  I’ve spent most of the day working on the HST Theory proposal which is due next week.  It shouldn’t take too much longer to finish writing this since I can edit the proposal that I wrote earlier in the month.  I just have to add a few small things and tailor it to fit the expectations outlined on the HST website.

This afternoon Melissa and I went to Kmart and bought two tomato plants to grow on the balcony!  She’s never tasted a home-grown tomato before.

We had four little earthquakes near Riverside today–all in the same spot and all of comparable intensity (magnitude 3.0 – 3.4).  Melissa has been helping out a lot around the apartment lately.  She has been here for a whole week now!  It’s nice to have someone around.  This evening she used “body wax” on my back to remove the patches of crazy hairs that have been developing over the last decade…yeah, most people probably think that’s weird, but it was ANNOYING…always itching.

Melissa will be going to VA with me during my spring break in late March.  This should be quite fun!

I got a jury duty summons, but I’m going to do a 90-day deferral.

It looks like it’ll be rainy this weekend.

I hope I’ll have time to work on a small project once the GR class is over and the proposal-writing craziness is finished. I need to complete a project before I advance to candidacy.

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After a little “research” on the IRS website, I discovered that my fellowship money last year was not taxable income. I filed my taxes on EZtaxreturn.com.  The software found a tax credit that I was unaware of.  My total refund (federal +  state) is slightly over $1,000 as a result.  This year EZtaxreturn.com has a very nice scheme set up.  Once you finish filing, they give you a coupon code to share with other people.  The coupon is a $5 reduction in the cost of the service.  My coupon code is:

MTADE5

For each person who uses the coupon code, I get $10.  This is a smart way of advertising.  Everyone benefits.  Once you file your taxes, you can get a code to share with others.

So let’s see… In the last 8 months or so, I’ve reduced my cell phone bill, I drastically decreased my food expenses and adopted a healthier diet in the process, my stock value has almost returned to the price I originally paid for it, and I’m starting to get tax refunds again rather than having to pay in taxes.  Next, I need to try to reduce my car insurance bill.  I received a thing in the mail about Costco car insurance (it’s a partnership with Ameriprise).  I’ll check their price and also see if I can lower my Farmers insurance…then I’ll go with whichever option is better.  After that, I need to try to find a less expensive place to live.

This morning I made a 16 page outline of the math topics that I need to make sure that Melissa understands so she can pass her test and so she’ll be more mathematically literate.

I vacuumed with the Dyson for the first time today.  It’s so nice!  I also used it with my Flowbee because I was seriously needing a haircut.  It’s considerably more powerful than the old vacuum and the suction doesn’t noticeably decrease–just as advertised.  It had been a while since I used my mom’s Dyson back in VA.  I forgot how nice it really was.

I spent a considerable portion of the day reading general relativity.  It had been a while since I read the text.  I learned a few more things about black holes in the process.  This is very valuable information, considering the topic of my research. Of particular interest is the rate at which the separation distance between two objects in a binary system decreases:

Which shows that the approach rate depends on the cube of the mass if the masses of the two objects is comparable, thus super-massive black holes should merge quite rapidly compared with other objects.  This result is only approximate and of course it doesn’t take into account the effects of the stars and gas in the neighborhood.  As far as I can tell, the exact rate would be larger than this.  I’d have to do a bit more research to say that definitively though.  Another interesting result is the maximum amount of energy which could be released during the coalescence of black holes;  it’s enormous.

Melissa played at a Haiti benefit event in Venice, CA.  It was streamed live on the web.  The event started 22 minutes late, which was lucky because Melissa was stuck in traffic and she arrived late.  The best song I heard was “She gets what she wants”, after that the video stream started breaking up, so I wasn’t able to hear much until the last song.

Facebook has opened their chat system.  Now any IM client that supports XMPP (i.e. Jabber) can use Facebook chat.  I’m using Pidgin, but I may use Empathy once I switch to Ubuntu 10.04 later this year.  The instructions for setting up Facebook chat can be found here.

There’s apparently some sort of music festival tomorrow at UCR.  This weekend is homecoming weekend.  The area around my office looks very different now.  There are temporary structures, temporary fences, and portable toilets in the area near the bell tower.

I’m considering showing Melissa the summation and product notation.  Things like…

and work up to

then

then

The notation looks formidable, but the concepts are really simple.  Hopefully that will illustrate the fact that notation which appears complicated is oftentimes quite simple.

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Most people have experienced microsleep while driving or while attending a lecture or movie.  Today I had an episode of microsleep while walking.  I was returning to my apartment after attending the general relativity lecture and I fell asleep.  It lasted long enough for me to walk about 30 feet.  This sort of thing could be just as dangerous as falling asleep while driving.

I led the journal club today.  I chose a paper that I thought would be entertaining.  The paper and the discussion  generated a few laughs, so I was successful.  In 1996, the author of the paper found a solution to the Einstein field equations composed of a wormhole with a toroidal mouth.  He coined the name “ringhole” for this solution.  The journal article we discussed was a recent paper written in seeming desperation to provide observational evidence for ringholes.

After the journal club, I went to the physics colloquium.  Then I came home and took a much-needed  nap.

In general relativity we continued discussing Swarzschild black holes.  Much of the lecture involved the Kruskal coordinates.  Dan Wegman summarized today’s class like this:

Supermassive black holes, white holes, time relativity being compared to Valium vs Extasis, creation and anihilation of civilizations, world and Supernovas in a blink of an eye.. and me in a box crossing an even horizon before a very painful dead by being pulled apart… it was a good GR class.

In other news…

Corinna has decided to get a doctoral degree in education at UCR.  She may be able to continue being a teaching assistant for the physics department.

Tomorrow Melissa is playing at a charity / fundraiser / relief event which will be raising money for Haiti.

I’m teaching Melissa some math because she has to pass a certain test and I want to be able to communicate my science stuff with her more efficiently. We’ll be accomplishing a few things at once.  Like most people, she doesn’t have the mathematical vocabulary needed to talk about things without giving long, over-simplified explanations.  This is already turning out to be quite a fun challenge.

Bill Clinton had two stents installed today.  He had chest pain, but no heart attack.  The doctors are taking precautionary measures.

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