The Arizona Rifleman

I was in MA for Christmas with the in-laws.

It blizzarded¹.

Evidently standard socks and Doc Marten shoes don’t count for much when it comes to insulation. Brr.

Observe my frigid wife:

Also related, wool hats are made in hilarious fashions:

In related news, my father-in-law is an Environmental Police Officer, and so gets some fun toys² until they go off to evidence³. Lots of old Mausers and the like. Way cool.

1. That is now a verb. [↩]
2. Nearly all stuff confiscated from law-breakers and the like, though some of his own things. [↩]
3. He works mostly from home, and takes stuff down to the station every week or so. [↩]

I’ve been submitting graduate school applications like crazy, and have submitted several.

In the past, I’ve normally waited until just before the deadline, but I’ve decided to get things out early — the application to the University of Oregon got out within a week of the opening of the application period, and the applications to schools in Sweden were out within a day of the period opening. International mail, while usually reliable, can be somewhat delayed, so my applications to schools overseas are getting sent out early to avoid any such problems.

In less then a year, I may have to change the name here to “The Swiss Rifleman”. Now there’s a thought…

…from robots cleaning your living room to robots cleaning the Earth of humanity.

I’m staying at a friend’s place this week, and there’s an iRobot Scooba driving around the living room cleaning.

As amazing and futuristic as this is, it’s somewhat creepy.

Note to self: get someone else to proofread the letters and statements I’m sending to graduate schools.

Somehow I managed to mash together the username for one’s departmental email address and the domain for the main, non-departmental email service from the university (resulting in a syntactically-correct but non-existent) in a cover letter.

I didn’t catch it in my own proofreading, as my brain mentally divided the email into the username and domain parts, and didn’t notice the mismatch. Now I have to write an email to the graduate school apologizing for any confusion and sending them the correct address.

Stupid.

Once again, the news is blathering on about “Cyber Monday” and how a bunch of online retailers are expecting lots of shoppers.

Whether or not those shoppers materialize is still up for debate (the day is young, after all), but I will not be among them.

This is two-fold:

• I already have too much stuff. I’m looking at getting rid of most of my stuff, either by selling or donating it to those who need it more, and living a simpler, less-cluttered existence.
• Things prefixed with “cyber” irritate me nearly as much as describing the internet as an “information superhighway”, let alone calling it a “series of tubes“. Anyone referring to anything as “cyber-something” should go die in a fire.

Starting a carbureted engine after a cold-soak of several days, when it’s only a few degrees above freezing, is remarkably challenging. Riding the two-wheeled vehicle propelled by said engine is similarly unpleasant.

In related news, it’s damn cold in Tucson. Denizens of the Great White North may laugh and doff their jackets when it’s 34F outside, but down here, this is We’re-All-Going-To-Die cold.

After months of mad studying for the Physics GRE, I’m now applying to graduate schools. One of the steps involved perusing the various university websites getting information about costs, deadlines, etc.

Nearly all of the schools had deadlines in mid-January, while some Swiss schools had deadlines in April. Cool.

About two-thirds of the way down the list, I come across the University of Oslo. Their deadline is the 1st of December. I need to step things up to get the application out and in the mail before the deadline. No pressure, right?

I simultaneously have Mad Scientist Hair and a Beard of Laziness +2.

Being that the Physics GRE is this weekend, I really don’t care. I’m barely willing to don pants for work on a good day; asking me to maintain hair in a presentable way for this week is completely out of the question.

I’m looking at graduate schools overseas, including schools in Sweden, the Netherlands, Norway, the UK, Australia, and Switzerland.

Any readers study overseas? If so, any advice would be most welcome.

I’ve been focusing on Swiss universities due to their proximity to CERN, as well as being quite enthralled with the country, the cities, and the people when I traveled there in the past. Gorgeous country, and it looks like a great place to live and study. It looks like there’s a not-insubstantial amount of paperwork to study there (let alone work there), but I imagine that’s pretty common and not a huge hurdle to overcome. Any advice with dealing with it? I imagine the local consulate is a good place to get information, but I figure that some people have more advice.

I’ve got a friend in Sweden who can help out with some aspects of moving and settling in (e.g. getting a phone, driver’s license, get acclimated to things, etc.), but things are different for foreigners than residents in many places, and I’d hate to screw things up in some way.

Moving domestically is hard enough. Moving internationally is likely to be a bit harder. Fortunately, I’m not the only prospective grad student to consider studying overseas, so I’m sure there’s procedures and whatnot. Now, I just need to start getting applications out…

I loathe crappy pens.

Only problem: I lose pens all the time, so losing expensive fountain pens and the like is a pain.

I’ve made up for this by buying disposable fountain pens like the Pilot Varsity, but those have trouble on certain types of paper.

The best inexpensive ballpoint I’ve written with is the $1.50 Pilot G2. I’ve never had issues with smearing (I’m left-handed), it writes smoothly and consistently, and it’s cheap enough that I don’t cry if I lose it. Basic Bic pens almost always work (but the knockoff ones suck), but I prefer the retractable point on the G2.

Thanks to the internet, I recently discovered — to my immense glee — that Mont Blanc rollerball refills fit in the G2 barrel with only a slight bit of filing on the plastic cap opposite of the point. Once about 1/8″ of material is removed, it fits perfectly. My main G2 needed a refill last night after a substantial amount of writing, so I bought a pair of the Mont Blanc refills as well as a 12-pack of new G2s (just in case). The Mont Blanc refills were only about $12 for a pair, so now I have a $7.50 pen that writes as well as a $200+ fancy pen. While losing a $7.50 pen is a bit more of a hassle than losing a $1.50 pen, at least I’m not losing something really expensive. If so, I do have spares.

Since the Mont Blanc refills apparently last longer than the G2 refills (gel pens go through ink like crazy, while the Mont Blanc refills are designed to write for 10,000 meters), I may end up actually saving money this way. We’ll see.