Dude! Wait, what?

This was supposed to have been posted yesterday. Something went screwy.

Here is yesterday's post in all it's lovin' glory. I'll have a new post tomorrow after my physics test.

...I've even been known to jot down the odd poem, when the muse descends.

What a wonderful day. And not because it's Valentine's day. I'm not really sure that I buy into all of that. Hearts and candy and teddy bears, all seem like a cross between Christmas and National Get New Teeth Because Your Old Ones Rotted Out Day. On the other hand, it is as good an excuse as any to creatively express one's love for another.

In that vein, I've tried my hand at a sonnet. It's been a minute, and I'm rusty. Once I have SWMBO's permission, I'll post it here.

What a wonderful day. Seventy degrees, light breeze, partly cloudy, and no rough weather for at least a week. Don't get me wrong, I love my snow. I just like my spring-y weather too. I'd like to think that I can get in an extra two runs this week. My neighbor is a fair-weather runner, so this stuff shouldn't be too tough for her.

Speaking of running, I should mention that I've managed to hit my running goals for last week. I'm back to where I wanted to be mileage-wise, and I'm on track to run the Rock-n-Roll half at the end of March. Every once in a while, I'll pop out a seven minute mile as motivation. Like, I can't believe that I can run this for a mile, much less for thirteen! Maybe by the end of the year I'll be able to do that.

What a wonderful day. My new laptop is here! A Dell Inspiron 15R. It's fast (zOMG!!1), pretty, and mine! Microsoft has finally made a good operating system in Windows 7. It's fast, stable, and pretty. Too bad it took twenty years, but better late than never, eh? Speaking of fast, Office 2010 Professional (Plus! w00t!) installed in about twelve minutes. I'm blown away. This is what I've always wanted n a computer.

If you're wondering if this means that I'll be back to regular updates, fear not. It does. My goal is to get about ten posts ahead by the end of the semester. That way, any problems that I have will be covered by blog filler (blog + bondo = blog-do? bond-log?). No more weeks and weeks with nary a sign of life.

Okay. Here's what's on base. I want to do something about how private spaceflight ventures are really working well with NASA. I have personal research to do and report on. I finally figured out what the thrust of my masters research will be (fluid dynamics!) and want to get started into that right away. There are also posts on kids, babies, tweens (no Beiber), and married life. Stay tuned, it's gonna get hot in here...

Cheers,

-- Zach (Dude! I gotta Dell! (great, I just verbed a computer company))

Another lame post day.

Still snowed in. And now, the power company has ordered rolling blackouts. Grand.

No post today. I'm working on one following an NPR segment about safety in spaceflight.

Until tomorrow...

Cheers,

-- Zach

Snow Day

I say snow, but I really mean sleet.

Here in Dallas, we have pretty awful weather conditions. Twenty degrees, an inch of sleet on the ground, everything's closed. Hence, nobody went to school this morning. So I'm on duty, as it were.

This is the extent of the blog for today. I'll go play in the white freezy stuff and write a proper blog post tomorrow.

Cheers,

-- Zach

Feature: Tasty Food

Today I'd like to talk a little about a subject neat to everyone's heart - food. Having three children with another on the way means that we spend a large part of our time devoted to the simple acts of preparing food, shoving it in our faces, and then cleaning up afterward. This is the first in a long-running and semi-irregular series on cooking in our house. One of my goals for this year has two parts. First, I want to do more of the cooking. I like to cook, even though I'm not any good at it. That will improve over the course of the year, but I have to actually cook more first. Second, I want to try one new recipe a week. I'll post those here, along with some feedback as to how the cooking went and if the food was tasty.

Coincidentally, my wife went grocery shopping last night. She returned with twelve paper bags full of primarily breakfast and lunch foods, along with a smattering of fruits and veggies. Oh, and five pounds of ground beef and a ROAST! Woo-hoo! We love roast.

Okay, on to the cooking stuff. We have now two crock pots. I'd like to think that we'll use them maybe twice a week for roasts or chicken stuff or what have you. There are six one-pound bags of different types of beans in the larder. I'm dying to try out a slow cooker bean recipe. One problem - the baby and I are the only two people in the house that eat beans. What I really need is a way to cook beans so that they don't have the texture of beans.

We usually keep a couple of pounds of frozen veggies. There's almost always frozen chicken breasts too. I wonder if you could stir-fry frozen chicken and veggies at the same time and have it come out right. There's an avenue of research.

We love fruit and vegetables. Often, a bowl of fruit becomes a meal. Another recipe that I'm dying to try out involves a steamed veggie plate. I could be bad and add cheese to it, to make sure that the kids eat it. Or, I could just wait until they're really hungry ;-) Fruit salad should be a weekly thing in our house, but I don't know if it's substantial enough. What would one pair with a fruit salad? Would you put salad in your fruit salad? Inquiring minds want to know.

I think that we maybe eat too much red meat. Rather than have it four or five times a week, I want to cut that down to once or twice a week. That should help with our health and with our budget. If I could figure out how to get everyone else to eat beans, I'd be home free. Beans are a prime red meat replacement. Maybe I'll just have to wait and make the bean-things for my lunches.

There's another topic for discussion - lunch. The Pickle gets her lunch for free from school, but she usually doesn't like it. I want to send her lunch with her, but it needs to be inexpensive. Sandwiches are only palatable for so many consecutive days. Maybe she'll start taking leftovers once or trice a week. Pizza, chicken, and roast are all good cold, and she loves them all.

Okay, I'll admit that this isn't my best post ever, but it will get better. Tonight, the missus wants to make a roast. Tomorrow, I'll try making something. I'll let y'all know how it goes.

Until then, bon appetite.

Cheers,

-- Zach

Finally getting caught up

It's incredible. Even with all the best intentions, updating this blog is still incredibly difficult. Here goes.

Family life proceeds apace. My wife was sick for a while. Then I caught an unexpected case of strep throat. Then SWWNO came down with the same thing. My daughter and I both had to go to the doctor in order to get better. I'm still not anywhere near 100%. Maybe by December I'll be back to myself. I sure wish I knew what it was that we caught.

School is kicking me. Hard. Calculus is more difficult than it was last semester, but I think I'm doing better. We didn't focus as much on logs and trig last time. I'd like to think I'm becoming good at trig and inverse trig. Now, we're working on integration by parts. This wasn't even covered in my last class.

I'm doing much better in physics now, thank you very much :-) It seems that I'm much better with relativity and quantum mechanics than I am with waves and optics. I know what to work on for the final, at any rate.

This post is coming to you from a loaner laptop that my kind neighbors are letting me use. They have three total and can only use two at a time. It's about three years old, 17" Gateway (which is at this point really HP), and incredibly heavy. I always think of the old Compaq Portable computer as I lug it around campus. On the other hand, I love it. I can't imagine trying to do all the stuff I'm trying to do without a laptop.

caveat: it's missing the "a" and the "4" keys, and I broke the number "6". Anybody know how to replace keys on a full sized laptop keyboard?

Two quick aeronautics items today:

Boeing refits old Seattle plant for P-8 aircraft production

They made B-29s here. That alone is reason enough to keep the plant active.

FAA reinstates requirement to stay back from Boeing 747-8

So, I guess I'll start looking into precipitating wake turbulence again. I wanted another project!

That's about all I have time for today. It is my intention to get on a Monday-Wednesday-Friday posting schedule. I have tons of material available, so the weak link is me taking the time to write it up. Wish me luck, fellow netizens...

Cheers,

--Zach