Katie's blog

My girlfriend Katie is in Turkey doing research for her honors thesis. She's blogging about her experiences there. More interesting than Manteca, not that I feel like I need excitement right now. Restful lack of excitement is good for me. Anyhow, check it out and I've added her to my sidebar for future reference.

Santa Jokes

An Engineers Perspective of Santa Claus Someone read it to my AP Chem class in 1997, so it's been around a while.


See also, Santa's Bad Day. First heard this one via email.

Annie's Anecdotes

I don't know how many of you have checked out my sister's blog, but she's posted her first post in two months and it's a well written reflection on solstice, Christmas, etc. I love how rss feeds mean I don't have to keep checking all these sites...

Ten Political Christmas Wishes

Funny stuff, and pretty good analysis.

Grading marathon

One of the joys of being a grad student is that when you get done with your finals and term papers you turn right around and start grading undergraduates' exams and papers. I got off easy this time and just have to do three short answer questions. There are about 150+ in the class and they had to pick 5 out of 6 questions, so that means I have somewhere in the neighborhood of 400 questions to grade, ranging from a few lines to over a page. I'm done with two of them, and that took 5-6 hours, though some of that was spent talking to Katie while she worked on her project. So it's really not too bad.

National Do Not Call Registry

The best thing Congress has done in quite some time...

They'll be able to call cell phones pretty soon, so be sure to sign up.

War on Santa

Soooo funny. A must read.

After returning from the mall, I've decided that the 'War on Christmas' is being waged in the wrong place, in the wrong way, and at the wrong time. The enemy is not 'Happy Holidays,' the enemy is Santa Claus, and if you'll bear with me, I think it's time for progressives and conservatives, and all the wise refusing such nonsense labels, to unite against this elf.

Santa is Satan and his nefarious goal is replacing the spirit of Christ (open to a great deal of interpretation) with crass consumerism. 'What are you getting for Christmas? What do you want for Christmas? What do you want from Santa? What's Santa bringing you? What's in Santa's bag this year?' Goodies, that's what's in Santa's bag. Goodies massed produced by, well, a bunch of enslaved minority workers secreted away in a hard to reach location.

stats final

Just finished my stats final. I knew how to do almost everything (we were allowed a sheet of formulas) and I'm confident I passed, which is all that matters (our grades are high pass, pass, low pass and fail--i think you're allowed two low pass before they kick you out), since it's not like I'll need grades to apply to the next level of schooling, since there is no next level...

For an example of the kind of formulas I get to work with, check out the wikipedia entry on variance (which is actually one of the more basic concepts). Just need to write 10 more pages for a paper due tomorrow and grade a final that will be given on Friday. So, I appear to be surviving my first semester.

Condo cont.

My offer was accepted and yesterday I signed the disclosure papers at the credit union. We'll have to wait until early Jan. to do the appraisal, but it looks like everything should go fine and we'll be closing late Jan.

Russ

Future home owner?

Friday I made an offer on a 1 BR condo that I really like in Carrboro and Saturday it was accepted. I'll take the contract to the credit union Monday or Tuesday. Assuming no surprises I should be approved for the loan. It's about 500 sq/ft., built in 1965 and in the process of being refurbished (I can pick the color of carpet and some other things!). The home owners association has been doing a great job of keeping the place kept up and safe and I'd be excited to live there. More to come.