Knight Life

by Peter David

While I’d found David’s style fun in his Star Trek novels, I had trouble getting into his non-ST book, Sir Apropos of Nothing. I wanted to give him another chance, but going in I wasn’t expecting much from Knight Life.

Though Knight Life was still fluffy, it was much more enjoyable than Sir Apropos. I got suck in right away and had a fun ride until the last page. King Arthur has returned, and is running for mayor of New York City. The whole gang is present — Merlin, looking like an 11-year-old boy since he’s been aging backwards all these years, Morgan Le Fey, nasty as ever, and Modred. There is even a Guinevere of sorts — she is a reincarnation of the original Guinevere and goes buy the name Gwen DeVere Queen.

Fun read. I’ll have to look up the sequel: One Knight Only

Ring Shopping

Andrew has decided that he wants the ring before he proposes, so we went ring shopping today to get an idea of prices and styles. Our first stop was Bailey, Banks and Biddle, where we were impressed by the salesman. He didn’t pressure us, and even listened when I said that I really wanted something kind of subtle — nothing very large. He showed us several settings that I liked, and explained how to tell if the cut of a diamond was correct (it should be shiny, even in the shade, and shouldn’t have any “dead spots”).

We went to a smattering of other jewelers, like Shaw and Kay, but their selections were suspiciously similar and not really what I was looking for.

However, we were also impressed by the collection at Christian Bernard . The saleslady also mentioned that they would be having a bridal show in the next few weeks, and would have hundreds more styles to choose from.

We were contemplating lunch, when we walked past Helzberg Diamonds. I decided that we could handle one more jeweler before lunch. Silly me. The saleswoman seemed nice enough. She gave us a long lecture on the four ‘C’s of diamonds. I realize that she is used to dealing with Joe Public, but Andrew and I are in general smarter than Joe Public and, for example, don’t need to be told that if one carat is a dollar, then .52 carats is like 52 cents. We get decimals.

Then, she decided to pull out the “loops” to show us how “other jewelers” would show us the diamonds we might purchase. But, she assured us, HD would let us see the diamond under a microscope, giving more a 3-D picture of our investment. Good goddess. Give me a break. We are not diamond experts, and that’s why we want a certified diamond. We don’t know what to look for. And, frankly, I’d already told her that I didn’t really care if the diamond a few small flaws, since none of my friends were going to look at the diamond under a microscope. I just wanted something that would look nice to the naked eye.

During all of this, she tried engaging us in conversation about how we met, when we were getting engaged, etc. At one point she turned to me and asked, “Isn’t this exciting?” “Yeah,” I replied, but not as giddy as she probably expected. I’m not actually engaged yet, so I’m trying to temper my excitement — I want something left when the big day actually comes. Later, I was pretty sure that she had been trying to get Andrew to see how excited I was, so that he’d be spurred into buying something.

So, with 30 minutes of our lives gone, I was trying to make it clear that we were now ready to leave. I asked if she had a card that we could take. No, of course not, instead they wanted some information from us. While she had bored us half to death, I had no other reason not to give her my address.

Having completed the form, she turned to us and asked, “What haven’t I done for you?” I thought this was just an invitation for us to ask any further questions that may not have been answered by her 20 minute lecture on diamonds. So I answered, “Nothing. Like we said, this is our first day out, and we wanted to get an idea of what we’re getting into.”

Then she asks again, “What haven’t I done for you? What’s holding you back from taking one of these home today?”

Suddenly my mood darkened. I replied, with all the venom I could muster, “Don’t even start that with us.”

The saleswoman tried backpedaling. “Oh, no, that’s not what I meant.”

“I told you this is our first day out. We are not buying today. Do you have a card we should take or not?”

“No, I’m here pretty much all the time.”

“Well, then, thank you for your time.” And we left to get lunch.

Needless to say, HD will never get a cent of our money. Ever.

Fast, Cheap and Out of Control

2/5 stars

What an odd documentary.

Fast, Cheap and Out of Control is a documentary featuring four men from very different and somewhat eccentric fields. Dave Hoover is a wild animal trainer, George Mendonca is a topiary gardener, Ray Mendez is a mole-rat specialist, and Rodney Brooks is a robotics scientist. I connected most, of course, with the robotics scientist — since he was a bit out of touch in similar ways to me. The wild animal trainer rubbed me the wrong way, because of my feelings about using wild animals purely for our entertainment.

I’m pretty sure that the documentary was trying to make connections between these disparate-seeming men. While I will agree that they were all eccentrics, any other connection was lost on me. By themselves, the stories of these men were quite interesting — how they got into their chosen field, what accomplishments they’ve made, and how their field will be perpetuated (or not perpetuated) through future generations. However, it’s beyond me why these four in particular were chosen and why their stories were told as an intertwined narrative.

Also, I was confused by the origin of the title. Brooks mentions it as a title to a paper submitted to the Planetary Society, in which he proposes to use armies of very small robots to explore the planets in our solar system. However, fast, cheap and out-of-control are not adjectives that I would use to describe any of the subjects of the film.

Thesis Meeting

I met with Kim and Chris today for the first time since my proposal defense. Since then, I’ve completed a good, working version of my data pipeline. I’ve been quite pleased with my pipeline, but I really wanted to discuss my method for determining how to extract spectra with Kim and Chris. I had just kind of made it up over a few days, and wasn’t sure if it was a good method.

I illustrated how the pipeline choses the break points for spectra by defining count-rate bins based on 25% increments around the average overall XTE count rate. Both Kim and Chris thought that it looked like a good method! (Chris’ words, I believe, were “Actually, that’s quite clever.”) One of the good things about this method is that while it does smooth out some small variations to get a bigger signal, it retains large variations. It has the potential to probe time-scales of a few days. If we wanted to probe smaller time scales, I’d need to use a different method, but this is sufficient for the goals of my research.

Things I need to do:

• figure out how to make smart_fit do 1-sigma errors instead of 3-sigma (actually, I need both)
• choose a few representative sources, and play around with the minimum time for the spectra
• plot figures using 1-sigma errors, and do some fits to constants to see what we come up with
• work on plotting a “stack” plot automatically with ppgplot

Home Again

Dad took me to the airport this morning. About the time my plane should have started boarding, the gate attendant announced that a part needed to be replaced in the cockpit, and they would have a status report at about 10:30 AM (10 minutes after we were to be taking off). Around 10:30 AM, she came on again and announced that the replacement part didn’t help, and that we would be changing planes. Fortunately, there was one available at an adjacent gate, and they would start boarding after the crew was onboard. Shortly after that we boarded, but then waited, strapped into our seats, for what seemed an eternity. After about 15-20 minutes, the flight attendant announced that the catering had just arrived, and we would be free to take off just as soon as the catering stuff was stowed. Ugh. I want my 20 minutes back. I could have done without my pop…

Oh well. This certainly wasn’t my worst experience with lateness and delays at the airport.

Labor Day

Dad had a bunch of stuff to get ready since he was now going to Arizona Tues-Thurs and then leaving Friday for his long-awaited fishing trip with “the guys”. Once that was all ready, though, he wanted to do something that might occupy his mind with something other than his sadness over losing his brother yesterday (the reason for the trip to Arizona).

To that end, I dragged Mom and Dad off to see Pirates of the Caribbean. We picked up Sweetie on the way, so I could spend a bit more time with her before heading home tomorrow. This was their first time seeing it, but my second, and frankly, the second was just as good as the first. This time, I made everyone stay through the credits, since Andrew had read that there was something after the credits. So we waited. And waited. And waited. And waited. And waited. Mom had time to head off to the ladies’ room, and make it back for at least half of the credits. I won’t give away what’s after the credits, but frankly it wasn’t worth waiting 10 minutes for — wait for the DVD and fast-forward through the credits.

After the movie, we went to Broadway Pizza, which seems to be Mom’s favorite restaurant. Not that I’m complaining — I love pizza, and theirs is quite good.

Como Park and Cafesjians Carousel

Early fall is about the best time in Minnesota for a picnic. The humidity is usually at a comfortable level, along with the temperature. While rain can’t be ruled out, at least snow is only a remote possibility. It was with this in mind that Dad decided that we should have a picnic with my brothers and their families while I was home. We decided on Como Park , perhaps because I had yet to visit Cafesjians Carousel in its new location.

Side note: I love carousels, and am a collector of all things carousel-related. I hope to one day have a full-sized, wood-carved, carousel animal in my house (don’t tell Andrew…). Cafesjians Carousel was originally build in the 1910s for the Minnesota State Fair. In 1988 it went to the auction block. A group (calling themselves “Our Fair Carousel”) raised money to purchase the carousel whole. They then went about trying to find a new home for it. For a while it resided in a mall in downtown St. Paul, but it was hard to get to (parking and all). In 2000, it was moved to a better location at Como Park. Como also has a free zoo and conservatory, which both draw a lot of people each year. Hopefully that will mean that the carousel will be able to get enough ridership and donations to continue operating for years to come.

Anyway, we had a nice picnic with Mom, Dad, Kevin, Brock, David, Jennifer, and Kira. Brock’s birthday is in a few days, so we also incorporated a birthday party for him. After that we went up to the carousel, which everyone knew that I would have to ride — everyone else rode too.

Here’s a not-too-great picture of the carousel, and a picture of Dad on his horse.

After riding the carousel, we walked through the zoo. I can’t remember the last time I went to the zoo, but it must be at least 10 years. It was fun to watch Kira (my 22-month-old niece) watch the animals. She’s still at the point where she’s discovering a lot of things for the first time. Since my brother, David, doesn’t like the idea of zoos (I can’t say I like it much, either, but I still go), Kira hadn’t been to one yet.

All-in-all, a great time with the family.

Grandma’s Ring

Grandma Bengtson had given Mom her wedding and engagement rings from her first marriage — her marriage to my grandfather. Mom wasn’t sure what to do with it. She didn’t want to pass it on to her sons, but she couldn’t figure out why that felt wrong. When she brought it up, I suggested that if she passed it on to either Kevin or David, and they got a divorce, then Grandma’s ring could be out of the family forever.

Anyway, Mom mentioned this while we were at the fair on Friday. While there isn’t anything official that I could say to her, I suggested (out of Dad’s earshot) that she might want to make up her mind soon if she was going to pass it on to me (her only daughter).

Mom gave me the ring today! It’s very small (both the size of the ring, and the size of the diamond), as Mom had mentioned, but suggested that I could use the diamond as a side diamond in my engagement ring. I’m thinking more along the lines of using it as a central diamond on the wedding band — having a string of about 5 similar-sized diamonds, and as the central one, I will know just by glancing at the ring which one was Grandma’s.

Mom also talked with Grandma this weekend, and mentioned that she had given me the ring. She said that Grandma sounded very happy. I hope she’ll be even more pleased when I show her the ring with her diamond in it.

The Fresco

by Sheri S. Tepper

After picking mushrooms near her New Mexico home, Benita is confronted by two strange-looking aliens. They hand her a cube and $100,000, and ask her to see that the cube gets into the hands of someone in authority. For Benita, an abused wife who has worked at a bookstore for the past 16 years with two kids in college, the job looked frightening and exhilarating at the same time.

Her role did not end, though, with the cube safely in the hands of her congressman in Washington, D. C. Instead, she is called on to be a liaison between the Pistach (the aliens who gave her the cube) and the US government. The Pistach’s mission is to help Earth achieve “neighborliness”, to learn how to live in a way that will not disturb or harm nearby neighbors. And things start to get better. But the Pistach are not the only aliens on Earth…

Tepper’s style remains top notch. However, this novel does give Tepper a platform to express her feelings about the current state of our world — disappointment/outrage at poverty, overpopulation, religious strife, political shenanigans, and the state of the environment. At times the novel sounds a bit preachy, but that’s fairly easy to get past.

Another great read from Tepper!

Quiet Saturday

Besides going to the fair, I had one other mission for my trip to MN — Uncle Hugo’s Science Fiction Bookstore!

Mom, Dad and I all had a slow start this morning. We got out of the house in time to go to the Malt Shop in Edina for lunch. Then we all trekked up to Uncle Hugo’s and Uncle Edgar’s Mystery Bookstore in Minneapolis. Mom likes mysteries, so she went off to the Uncle Edgar’s half of the store. I spent my time in the sci-fi. Dad went off to a nearby sporting goods store to pick up a few things for his fishing trip (he’s not a big reader, and even if he was, I don’t think sf or mysteries would be his “thing”)

We also had to stop at the Mall so I could pick up a birthday present for Brock. Finally we went back home and lounged for the rest of the evening.