Last week was spring break. Despite knowing that grad students don't really get breaks, I chose to visit with my immediate family in New York. Joining me was my GF, who would thus get another chance to socialize with my parents, as well as seeing my old hometown.

We decided to take my car, as Hil's father was taking her car to a dealership while we were away. We made the correct choice, as her car ended up getting its steering column replaced. That would have been mightily expensive, but the car was just barely still under warranty. The downside is that my car has a manual transmission, which Hil doesn't know how to use, so I did all the driving. The trip isn't too long, so the task was not excessively onerous.

The trip down was disappointing, with rain and fog limiting visibility. The route along I-390 is quite scenic, but Hil was probably annoyed by my saying "To the left, behind all that fog is a beautiful valley!" and "Most days you can see a wind farm to the east!" and so forth.

We spent a couple of days with my father. We saw a ballet of Sleeping Beauty, rode bikes around Big Flats, and spent a bit of time at the Corning Museum. We even figured out a better way to load the bike carrier on my car. Hil has a step-through frame, while the carrier was designed for bikes with top-tubes that are parallel to the ground. The original rigging had a very off-center weight distribution, which was suboptimal for a variety of reason. With Dad's advice, we detached the front wheels and mounted Hil's bike on upside-down, which evened out the balance. As a bonus, small children in other cars on the highway stared at the strange-looking arrangement.

On the way to my mother's, we stopped to visit an aunt of Hil's. The aunt lives up a steep dirt road outside of Elmira. It's not on maps and not in the GPS, but we managed to find it, and my car growled up the road in low gear. She was nice, but we spent little time there, as the aunt was on lunch break. We concluded that visit by driving Hil's cousin to her riding stable.

At my mother's we were somewhat less active. We went to the town history museum, which had a new exhibit on the area's clockmakers of the nineteenth century. I had to grit my teeth a couple of times, but perhaps I should be generous to the efforts of the volunteers that work on a local museum. After all, I'm not taking the time to do that. After the museum, we hit up a large local used bookstore, a place that is very dangerous for members of my family. Despite our hopes, we didn't get to bike around Owego, as the weather was nasty for the whole time we were there.

The last stop on the itinerary was my sister's place in Springwater. Their choice to live on a hilltop with a dirt road means I don't take my little car up to visit them until the snow melts! But things were quite pleasant up there. My brother-in-law had a client visiting to work on a hotsaw, so we didn't see him much. My niece, now six, used to be terribly shy. This visit it seemed that someone had flipped a switch to "gregarious" and she happily chatted away and showed off her room and her stuff. The dog seemed disappointed that the humans were spending all their time talking and not nearly enough time throwing balls to be chased.

On the drive back to Buffalo, the weather cleared up. So Hil got to see the valleys and the windmills. The valleys are more attractive when they are green, of course– even in the sunlight, this time of year all the forests and fields are brown and gray. Still, spring officially arrived during the last day of the trip, so I have hopes.

Sadly, I had a lot of research and writing to do over the break, and I got precious little of it done. In fact, my writing this blog post is itself a form of procrastination.

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We were talking about Hitler in seminar. My professor said "I read a couple of dozen grad school application essays every year. At least half follow a particular model: 'I have faced many difficulties in my past. But I overcame them through strength of character. Now, work with me and we will have a glorious future!' You know what that sounds like to me? Mein Kampf."

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Hey, Winter. What's up? That white coat looks good on you.

Hey, listen. We've been seeing each other for about four months now. And it's been great! Great times! But, you know… it's over. I'm sorry. Please don't make this awkward. It's not you, it's me!

All right, fine. It's true. I did meet someone else. Spring is cute and fun and happy and all the things that you are not. There? Happy? I met Spring last week, and we had a fling for a couple of days, and I realized that it was time to make a change.

Don't cry! Lots of people like hanging out with you! Skiers, snowboarders, snowshoers, ice skaters! You just need to find someone that likes being really cold all the time more than I do.

And now you're getting all clingy. Just go, would you?

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I was getting read for class Thursday, when I realized I'd not yet packed a lunch, and I had to leave in short order or I'd be late. I grabbed the loaf of bread and slathered some peanut butter on a slice, thinking "PB&J!". Only then did I realized I was out of jelly. Hmmm. I had some deli turkey, and some cheese, I could go with that. But you can't un-peanut butter a slice of bread! So I said "hell with it" and made myself a sandwich of peanut butter, turkey, cheese, mayo, and spinach leaves. It turned out to be surprisingly delicious.

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I got that from a interesting blog series on human adaptability.

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At my university, you can sign up to get a text message when there is an important university-wide announcement. A friend of mine was in the Student Union when everyone's cell phones vibrated with the message that classes were canceled for the rest of the day and all day tomorrow.

He said he's never heard cheers that loud at any of our football games.

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In the late 1990s, I lived for a time in an old Buffalo apartment. The neighborhood had above ground power lines, and what with Buffalo weather the power went out every six to eight weeks. One evening I was typing a paper on my computer when the power abruptly failed, causing me to lose my progress. I decided to invest in an uninterruptible power supply.

I'm using it again, even though my current apartment has only lost power once in the last year. The UPS wasn't all that healthy, though. It could be connected to a PC via a USB cable, and it wouldn't charge past 22% anymore.

Two weeks ago, it died entirely. I figured that the lead-acid battery inside had given up, as those things don't last forever, and it was over a decade old. I could buy a new, equivalent model for about $50, or get a replacement battery for $20, which seemed like the obvious choice.

Sadly, I should have taken the time to hook a multimeter to the leads inside the UPS that connected to the battery. Because while the battery may have been in poor health, upon connecting the new battery I discovered that the UPS's electronics were the real problem. The thing's dead as a doornail.

I'll have to eat the shipping charge to return the new battery. I'm not sure if I'll be buying a new UPS or not, as it's not quite as necessary as it was in my old apartment. Still, the power-conditioning function of a UPS might prolong the life on my computer. Perhaps I'll keep an eye on advertising flyers until a decent UPS goes on sale.

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The fruits of Google's policy that pays all their programmers to work on whatever they want to, for 20% of their time:

Note: I intend the title jokingly, as for a computer, solving Sudoku is really not very difficult.

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As most of my regular readers know, I went to Baton Rouge for the first part of my holiday vacation. The second leg of travel, up to Champaign, Illinois, I decided to take via train. And not just any train– the famous City of New Orleans. I didn't get on at New Orleans itself, but at the first stop: Hammond, LA. As a Christmas present to myself, I sprung for a second-class ride in a roomette. It was small by the standards of an apartment, but luxurious compared to most other methods of travel. To compare, I have about quintuple the personal space of my accomodations on the USS Essex, and here I don't even have to scrub the bathroom! The scenery is more exciting too, although I do miss the tang of the salt air.

At the start of the trip, we slightly underestimated the time it would take to get from R&R's place to the train station, or perhaps we overestimated the extent to which the two kids would dawdle getting into the car. Either way, instead of arriving 45 minutes before the train arrived, it was more like 20 minutes. Even so, I invited R&R to leave without seeing me off, as it was cold, and the kids had been napping during the drive. Sure, it would have been fun to talk to everyone for a few more minutes, and the kids would have enjoyed seeing the train arrive and depart, but naptime is important, especially for kids overstimulated by holiday excitement. Waiting in line to check in and get my reserved and paid-for ticket, I was getting concerned as the minutes ticked by. The only ticket agent was also calling out to suggest that people have IDs handy, because "We're running out of time! The train'll be here in a few minutes, and they ain't gonna wait on us!" I got my ticket in hand at 2:38 PM, a closer shave than I'd prefer for a 2:45 PM train. The train pulled in seven minutes behind schedule according to my watch, but when I was boarding the car attendant told me they expected to pick up time on the way. As I write this, at 8:20 PM heading towards Memphis, we seem to be about on schedule. There have even been a couple of freight trains waiting on sidings for us to pass, which is a reversal of roles from the prior American train trips I recall.

My dinner was included with the passage, so I had the catfish, which was decent. The dining car has limited space, of course, so I ate in companionable style, four of us to a table. One gentleman was in coach and had been in line right in front of me in Hammond, where he bought his ticket with cash. The other two were a married couple, staying in first-class. Over dinner, I made a point of chatting, although the other single gentleman at our table had brough a book to entertain himself.

So, the married couple lived in a small community in Arkansas. She worked for the county judge, while he worked for the county trying to get industry to move to town. More interesting was the fourth at dinner, a Taiwanese man just one year younger than me. His father had retired from running several restaurants, and the son was now working as a traveling restaurant consultant. In essence, he advertised his services in a nationwide Chinese-language newspaper. If one was wishing to open a new Chinese or Japanese restaurant (Japanese being more profitable right now), he would help you find a space, negotiate local regulations, equip the place (including working with the local fire department so you could get the needed exceptions to put in hibachi tables), and help you train cooks and staff. He'd do two or three different restaurants a year, each one taking three or four months, and spend the rest of the year visiting friends or relaxing in Chicago, his "home base." It sounded like an interesting life. His parents moved back to China upon retirement, which is a sign of relaxing political tensions, as they'd come from Taiwan originally. Being in coach, his dinner wasn't part of his ticket; he paid in cash, with a crisp $100 bill. After paying for tickets and then dinner with cash, I am suspecting that he works as a cash consultant, and perhaps some portion of his annual earnings are not fully reported. But perhaps I have an overly suspicious mind– some people just prefer to use cash.

The train rolls along through pitch-black rural Mississippi. During the daylight, I looked avidly out the windows at the Louisiana swamps and Mississippi forest. Now, I can finally get some studying done. Which is to say, I ought to conclude this blog post, even though I won't be able to upload it until tomorrow. If we continue to be on-time, I'll be getting off at 6:10 AM, so perhaps an early bedtime is in order.

UPDATE (morning): Well, what an unpleasant night. Previous train trips, I slept in the lower deck, down between the bogies. This time I was an upper deck. What is a minor rocking motion when down between the wheels, becomes a two-foot violent lunge up on top. It's something to do with moment arms, I'm sure. At any rate, that was one of the worst nights of sleep I've ever had. That's not a metaphor– I've slept better while under enemy bombardment. Ah, well. It was still probably better than coach would have been. And much more comfortable than flying!

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Off to Louisiana! At the airport, I got frisked. They didn't do a very good job, either: as a "brig chaser" in the Corps, I learned how to search people, and the TSA guy didn't. Of course, the TSA is kind of in a bind, as a real search requires getting very intimate with the searched. I'm annoyed enough about the pointless "security theater" being perpetrated by the TSA, and I don't think a more professional search would have actually improved their effectiveness rate.

Waiting at the Buffalo airport, watching the lake-effect snow blow past the windows, I was not surprised when my flight was delayed. But it wasn't a weather problem– my aircraft had sprung a hydraulic-system leak. Believe me, I know all about those. With a good aircraft, we loaded up, taxied away from the terminal- and the head flight attendant announced that we had a weight-and-balance issue, and that five volunteers were needed to get up from the back of the plane and get an open seat at the front, so we could take off.

I had an isle seat three rows from the back, so I stood up. I ended up sitting next to a garrulous old guy who had been an Army medic in Korea and then a fireman (eventually a captain) in Buffalo. I prefer to spend my flights reading or in quiet contemplation, so once we were in the air I got permission to escape back to my original seat, with the excuse that my stuff was still back there.

My scheduled three-hour layover in Charlotte was now just fifteen minutes, and I needed all of them to hustle across the airport. It's a pity, because Charlotte's airport has a pretty decent sushi restaurant. At any rate, I got crammed into a turboprop for the hop down to Baton Rouge. My bad luck with seatmates continued, as my seat was occupied by a rather confused elderly lady. After some discussion, I and the other nearby passengers just shuffled around, as being easier than convincing her to move. She had a broken arm, and her cast was jamming me in the side for the whole flight. All in all, not the most entertaining trip I've been on.

But at the terminal was my sister, brother-in-law, and their two children, who were cheerful and happy to see me; I suspect they were not so pleasant during the wait for me to arrive, but hey– not my problem!

Once in Baton Rouge, after some initial skepticism, the children have decided that their uncle is an acceptable substitute for a grandparent. While Uncle does not supply candy or cookies, Uncle is substantially more durable than Baba or Gram and is willing to carry people around on command, wrestle, and serve as gymnastics equipment. But when little Zoe asked for her Uncle to change her diaper, said uncle stood on his principles and passed the child off to her parents.

Christmas is in just a few days, and enthusiasm is high. Zoe asks to open presents just about every day. Nick is somewhat more patient, except that his sister's enthusiasm is annoying. There are rules about when presents get opened, and Zoe just can't seem to understand them, which is very very frustrating.

Sadly, before I left, a professor "offered me the opportunity" to rewrite a paper over break, including recommending a book that "might be useful for me to read." So while the postman was delivering presents to be put under my sister's tree, he also brought me a some work to do. There is only one thing left to say…

Bah! Humbug!

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