Abstract Permutations

My cousin is getting married in late September, in Michigan. My family was invited and since my Mom handled the talking with my cousin's Mom, all the important details were worked out. Specifically my sister and I can bring dates.

On Friday I talked to my sister about this. She wanted to know if I am going to bring someone. That made me laugh pretty hard. Then she told me I had to bring someone. So I explained to her the unlikelihood of that happening. It's going to be right after summer break and that means I'll have had to find someone with all the students gone. There is a chance, Stacy will be here over the summer but she's not about to start dating me. Maybe someone else will come along, it's always possible I suppose. But I don't mind going alone. If I were legitimately in a relationship I would like to bring her to introduce her to everyone else. But otherwise I like the idea of being able to mingle and move around freely. But my sister would hear none of this. She wants me to bring someone. Apparently she thinks it'll look bad if we go alone and she finds these types of things important.

Then I explained to her the second problem with all of this. The wedding is in Michigan, 7 hours away for me and 8.5 hours away for her. So we'd have to spend the night. Rooms are $200. I don't know about her, but I don't feel like shelling out $400 for my room and my date's room. There's no way I'd be getting just one room and then having to put up with all the scowls from the rest of the family all weekend long. My sister said she has a solution to that. We can have a switch. And to that I said, "I suppose this could work, but I don't know. What if they fall in love and run off together. Then we'd be in the same situation and out $100 each." "What are you talking about?" "I was just joking. I doubt they'd hit it off and run away with each other if they stayed in the same room." "What?! No. You'd sleep with my date and I'd sleep with your date. Guy guy, girl girl." "Oooh, I didn't think of that combination."

I gotta hand it to her for thinking that up, she's a smartie. I taught her well.

Full of Hot Air

Okay, it took me 1o months but I finally made one of those updates that I said was coming. And what a pain it was. It required Photoshop, Flash, and a lot of trial and error. It's my own art, but to give proper credit the air-balloon is not from my own photo collection. I would like to give credit to the photographer but I found this back when I was still in Denver, cropped it out from the rest of the photo, stored it for future use, and can no longer find the original. Now that I think about it, the sky is the same way. Gracious this is starting to sound like a bunch of copy and pasting! The sun though, that's all me.

Afternoon Outing

Whew, three posts in one day. The last time I did that was when I just started this blog and still had a ton of good things to share. But I have a nice glass of Cherry Pepsi and a caramel chocolate bar I bought from a Cub Scout, and I'm trying to put this sugar rush to good use before I die later this evening.

At work, my cubicle next door neighbor decided that he wanted Bob Evans pancakes for lunch today. He hasn't been there since 2003, but remembers that they have this unique sweet taste to them which he believes comes from vanilla flavoring. I need to mention that this guy likes solitude. It is nearly with pride that he states he has no friends. It's not that he is unfriendly or even doesn't like people, he just prefers solitude.

Okay at this point I also have to pause for another second. A few days ago I talked about a piece of art I recently got. Well I had entirely forgotten that I had already chatted on the artist. Funny how I talked about the same things, but at least I'm consistent. Which I find important in things like art, because if you are not consistent then what you buy today you may not like tomorrow. Anyway, I wanted to reference that past chat, and the two others in this blog, because of what I spoke about Bob Evans. In this case that I don't speak about Bob Evans.

The guy at work with the sudden craving for those pancakes knows this as well. He also knows about my attitude on chicken pot pie. So out of the blue, he decides we need to go immediately to Bob Evans so he can get his pancakes and I can get the chicken pot pie. This was actually quite the occasion because this would be the first time in 4 years working there that anyone would ask me out to lunch, other than the one I had as a new hire requirement with my manager. He told me it would be therapeutic. Given some recent changes in my approach to these types of things, it wasn't a big deal for me, and so I went.

The chicken pot pie and two biscuits were tasty but just a bit too filling and of course the inside of the pot pie was magma which destroyed the roof of my mouth. Our conversation was very varied. First we talked about the smell of bathroom chemicals in the morning. Then he, a Mormon turned atheist, wanted to hear my opinions on the practical aspects of Trinitarian theology. Then we talked a bit about the nature of angels. And finally we talked about the last time I went to Bob Evans, which was probably in 2006 to buy a banana-cream pie for my Mom.

I guess because it was his idea that we went, he felt obliged to pay. Being a former Mormon he kept all there crazy high standards of ethics and morals. Anyway, he did let me drive because he doesn't like driving So I drove. As we were walking in he realized he left his wallet in his car. So I drove and paid. This doesn't sound too funny, but understanding his high ethical coda and if you were there to see how adamant he was about paying and how my driving apparently had balanced things out, you'd understand the laughter that ensued when he found he could neither pay nor drive.

So in the end, after four years I finally got to go out to lunch, by request from the most solitudal colleague where I work, to the last place I ever would have suggested. Maybe 2012 really is the end.

Bird Brained

Self-awareness in the animal kingdom is an interesting phenomenon. Other than humans, apparently there are a few animals that recognize themselves when they look into a mirror and not another animal of the same species. I wonder how old humans have to be before they realize this themselves. My theory is that we infer we are looking at ourselves. This is because as a youngster we are usually with at least one other person. So if we look into a mirror we can recognize that person looking back at us in the mirror and thereby infer the other individual must be ourself. Or if we are alone maybe we recongize the person in the mirror is wearing the same clothing and is mimicking our movements.

Today I saw an unfortunate bird who did not realize he was looking into a mirror. I arrived home early from work and the parking lot was a bit sparse. The spot I took was one spot away from another shiny black car that had parked close enough to the curb of the sidewalk that the front bumper was extending over and onto the curb. As I was getting out I saw the little bird furiously pecking at the bumper, and beating it with its wing. It took me a second but then I saw that he was drawn to his reflection. For several minutes he just kept pecking away and beating his wing at himself. Then another little bird of a different species or gender flew in and start chirping quite animatedly at the bird. It was like he was trying to tell him "Hey that's not another bird!" After a bit of this the chirping bird tried to fly into the other bird and started pecking him too. But it was to no avail, the little bird just would not budge. So the chirping bird chirped a bit more in vain and finally flew off.

At this point I took pity on the poor bird who didn't realize it wasn't another, and I got out of the car to spook him away. But he wouldn't fly away! Instead he just started hopping around and under the car trying to hide from me while still pecking at that reflection, until finally, after entirely too much effort on my part, he flew off.

Cut Throat World of Electromagnetics

The government's newly established health care reform policy has made many people worry that the government is becoming too big and controlling. There's many reasons for this. Personally I do not yet know how I feel about it, mainly because I haven't taken the time to fully understand what changes are going to happen and how they are going to be implemented. Right now I'd say I am both pleased and upset with what I do know. I am pleased that insurance companies will no longer be able to reject children with pre-existing conditions. Although I am displeased that apparently one of the revenue raising tactics is going to be an increased tax on investment income. Obviously forcing insurance companies to take on pre-existing conditions will raise prices. But raising taxes on investment incomes doesn't seem right. I'm not a politician but I say let's tax the stuffing (how's that for family friendly wording) out of alcohol and cigarettes. Let our main source of revenue for paying for health care come from the purchases of unhealthy products. That's health care reform. In fact positively this is already happening to some extent by the 10% increase placed on tanning bed services. And I realize that would mean a higher tax on my pop and junk food but I'd be happily willing to pay that tax before one on my investments. Especially with all this talk on needing to improve the economy. Putting higher taxes on investors doesn't seem like a good way to stimulate and encourage economic growth.

While I am still on the fence about health care reform and whether or not the government is overstepping it's bounds, there are also other areas that the government is trying to exert some control. And one of those hits very close to home.

About four years ago the government decided to create an inhouse program called CREATE. The purpose of CREATE is the development of a new electromagnetic solver. Electromagnetic solvers have a variety of purposes. Say for example you're a cell phone company seeking to bring coverage to a new city. Some EM solvers will let you model that city in 3D, and place towers at different locations. Then the solver will graphically show you the coverage region and strengths. The cell phone company can then use a bit of trial and error to decide where the best place to put a tower is to ensure the greatest amount of coverage. There are a ton of EM solvers out there, from those written by grad students to those that have been consistently developed for 20 years or more by some of the major US corporations like Boeing. Basically they all revolve around the same math, and the answers they give should be about the same. Differences come from what approximations are made. A full-wave solver for example will solve for Maxwell's Equations without any approximations. There are 5 Maxwell's Equations and they describe the behavior of electromagnetics. For example, cell phone signals obey Maxwell's Equations. A full-wave solver will produce results that are essentially exactly what the real-world scenario will exhibit. The only limitation is the accuracy of the models being simulated. For example, that town with the cell phone tower may be modeled by a few cubes representing buildings, or it could be represented with full architectural precision where even the material properties like glass, concrete and the leaves and trunks of trees are accounted for. But these full-wave solvers take forever to perform simulations. Typically only small canonical problems can be solved because the processing power and memory required to solve many problems of interest simply does not exist right now. So approximations are made to solve Maxwell's Equations. With these approximations, some problems that might take years to solve using a full-wave solver may be reduced to only minutes. And the answers will still usually look reasonably close to what we would observe in the real world.

You may be curious to know that these solvers can cost anywhere from nothing at all because they are freely distributed, to over one-hundred thousand dollars, to not even readily available because the government has deemed the need for them to be classified.

Since forever, the government has been using these programs developed by the major corporations to solve its electromagnetic problems of interest. But with CREATE the government is going to mandate that it is used by all corporations instead. Now in reality this is really just a dream, because CREATE is a full-wave solver and the technology to reasonably finish the government's problems of interest simply does not exist. Although in the next 8 years, the time period left for CREATE to be developed, maybe sufficient advances will be made. At any rate, one of the hats I wear is to help one of those EM solvers that the government is seeking to replace with CREATE. So in 8 years I may very well find myself with a cold head.

Sewings and Glass

What a day. It started this morning when I got in the back near my right kidney by a gang of thugs carrying shot guns who I was trying to run away from because I could neither hide from nor fight them. I’m lying there in my back yard, near the long needled pine trees, on my back looking up at the clouds and the sunshine coming through them. I noticed they looked very pretty and had a small disappointment that I hadn’t laid in the grass more often to look up at them. I was thinking about how odd it was that I never thought of death before, and that while it was quite depressing to know in a few minutes I would be dead, I was happy to have had a good run. Then I started wondering if the ambulance workers would manage to resuscitate me after I passed out from the blood loss, and maybe I’d have one of those after-life experiences. If anyone called the ambulance that is. At that point my phone rang, it was my sister. She wanted to talk about some movie, but I wasn’t listening. I was trying to be patient with her. I had wanted to tell her to leave me alone because I was trying to die here, but then I thought that might be selfish since this would probably be the last time she got to talk to me. At this point my alarm clock rang.

All day the weather was bleak, I had that dream, my stocks lost two hundred dollars, the Flaming Lips’ “Do You Realize” was stuck in my head which wasn’t helping the dream thing out one bit, and then to top it off at the end of the day as I was talking to a co-worker about the latest news regarding the Church scandal another co-worker came up and asked “Do they teach you in school how to molest children?” Gah! Still I’m pretty happy today. Or at least joyful, which I suppose isn’t quite the same thing. This is all very good suffering that I can offer up for some people I know who need some extra grace. Good stuff. And the weather got beautiful, and salsa was fun. One of the two pretty girls showed up which was nice too.

Moving on, I wanted to talk a bit more about art today. I like art, and I love sharing the art I appreciate with others who will also hopefully appreciate it. While I was home this weekend past I went to visit my friend’s - the friend who had the mushroom bread - Mom at her store. About three or four years ago she opened a shop that sells three main products, Avon, tapestries, and glass works. The Avon is basically what brings people to the store and is her main seller. The tapestries and glass are essentially her way of exposing others to the kinds of art she appreciates.

The tapestries she has are hand sewn by Italian seamstresses over in Italy. Her Mom is Italian and she works with her to place orders and import the products over here. They are kept simple in design and are useful things like table sheets and runners. Most of them have a very early 1900s European traditional flare to them. They would not look right in my apartment, but would be perfect for any very traditional home where the Mom is in charge of the household. However, as I was looking through them I found one that was perfect for my apartment. It was one of the few purchases I’ve made where I didn’t need to think. I saw it and bought it, the fit was just perfect. It has a bit of an African theme to it, which I sort of have going on here, and with my black furniture the colors were going to pop. I thought about using it as a runner for my sofa table, but didn’t really want to cover up the wood. My Mom had the suggestion, of draping it over my recliner. At home we have a very old runner, which we have draped over a chair. I liked that idea but the problem is my recliner is leather and the chair at home is cloth. My runner would likely slide down the chair. But it does look cool, and the colors look amazing against the black backdrop. However, because it isn’t practical there, Mom also had the idea of just hanging it up either framed or exposed. I’m probably going to frame it and hang it because some of the weaves use very long threads and I worry dust will be very difficult to remove from them, and I can’t wash this particular piece because of how it was constructed. Apparently, in order to support the long threads, there is a sheet of paper that runs down the middle and under all the weaves in a way that it remains hidden. Washing the runner would likely ruin the paper.

The next thing I paid attention to in her store was the glass. As you hopefully know, two of my friends are getting married in May and I had to get a wedding gift. Their registered at Kohl’s and Crate and Barrel, but both of those places don’t offer very unique gifts, and I thought it might be nice to get them a decorative piece for their new place. But in the end I decided to go with a set of 8 wine glasses. These were hand made in Sweden, probably in the 60s, by Kosta Boda. I like them because Kosta, Sweden is hand-etched into the bottom of them, although I couldn't get a clear picture of it. I hate wine but my friends like it from time to time, and I thought that even though wine glasses are a pretty typical gift, hopefully the uniqueness of them will give them some use from time to time. I figure maybe they can be used for special occasions. Or better yet, maybe they can be used to hold finer drinks, such as Mountain Dew or Coca-Cola.

A Few Stories and a Print

After this weekend, having received a boatload of candy and the ability to once again drink pop, I have found myself with superhuman energy and peppiness.

That's my own hand-dyed easter egg in there. Hopefully this will lead to a slightly increased frequency of posts. Easter was amazing. My family had it's own little Easter miracle in the form of none of us having a complete meltdown. I even didn't make my sister cry. Mass was better than I thought it would be too. I'm very spoiled here on campus by the quality of our Masses, but the one at home was great. Interestingly the Priest devoted his entire homily to the scandal currently going on, and it was generally felt he did a very good job addressing the situation.

A part of the reason I haven't been posting as frequently is because like Easter the rest of the past several days haven't been filled with many juicy fiascos. It's mostly all been chicken soup for the soul type stuff. For example, yesterday I heard from my undergrad friend who I haven't heard from in probably over a year. That was fantastic, and it made me so happy. Turns out he is going to be here for the Film Festival later this month and wants to meet up. So we're going to try and plan a mini-reunion with all our old friends. But for you readers this is probably all a yawn.

On Easter, once I got back into town, I got a hold of my salsa friend who wants to be a nun. Remember I haven't really considered her as a potential because of this, but she is fun to hang out with and since I hadn't talked with her in a few weeks I thought I'd call her up. I didn't really think she'd want to hang out that night being it was Easter and all, but surprisingly she did, so we went to one of the local pubs and chatted for a couple hours. It turns out she went and got herself a boyfriend! I wasn't exactly happy about this and asked what about the nun thing? She explained how she still is very much considering becoming a nun but decided that God must have put this guy who asked her out in her path for some reason so thought to go with it and see where it leads. They met each other through a Church group that I have not yet joined. Anyway, I wasn't heartbroken or anything, I wasn't even considering asking her out, but I'm going to be upset if I just lost my second and currently last dance partner because she needs to start spending more time with this new fella of hers.

That story isn't all that interesting either. So even though it's not yet tasteful Thursday, I thought I'd spend today talking about some art. One of my favorite artists is James Christensen. Ever since I was a little kid I've loved his paintings. They have a fantasy type quality to them, which appealed to the little kid in me, but even now they still do not fail to impress. At one point he wrote a picture book called the Voyage of the Basset. I think this was about when I was in the 8th grade so about 1996. Back in the 8th grade all of us Catholic children had to prepare for the sacrament of Confirmation, and one of the things we had to do was meet with our Priest (parents were present) to chat about some subject I cannot remember. Everyone in town loved that Priest. He was exceptionally smart, joyful, and simply fun to be around. He was one of the few adults who managed to retain their childlike nature and it was infectious. Well when I went in for my meeting I saw that book lying on his coffee table, and I was super excited to see that he too liked Mr. Christensen. That made me think I was cool because I had the same taste in art as my superstar Priest.

James is neat because he sometimes works as another artist. I can't think of the word but its like how Mark Twain's real name wasn't Mark Twain. Pen name or pseudonym maybe is the word I'm looking for. WAM help me out here, you are good with words. Anyway, you'll see in that link what I'm talking about. While most of his paintings are fantasy based, every now and then he'll paint a Renaissance like work that looks like it came right out of the 1400s.

A few weeks back I got my hands on one of his prints. It's called '6 Bird Hunters in Full Camouflage', and is signed and numbered by James. Now if you look closely you'll only see 5 of them. That's because the 6th is so good you can't see him! The neat thing about this painting is that it's divided into three sections. That allowed for some unique framing options. For example, I had considered putting them all in one massive frame but staggered. In the end I decided to frame them all separately and stagger them, which is what you see in the picture below.

Update: I've recently noticed that the photo looks incredibly different depending on the monitor it is displayed on. For example, on my laptop the background of this photo is white, and the details in the right panel are clearly visible. However, on my monitor at work the background is yellow and the details in the right panel are nearly indiscernably blackened out.