PolarLava::Blog

I've been incredibly busy the past several weeks, thus I've had little time for blogging.  And this post is probably about a week late, but as they say, "better late than never"…

For all of you who have been whining "It's too hot", please just shut the hell up!  You're likely the same people who will be whining about it being too cold next winter.

Summers here in Western New York are generally a nice 75-80 degrees most of the time.  I can accept that, but the past month we've seen a lot of 85-90 and even several 90-95 degree days.  Warm, you bet. Oh, and it's also been quite humid so it is somewhat suffocating.  What can I say?  Bring it on!!!  Sorry, I miss the warmer, muggy weather I grew up with in Illinois.  I believe it was just last week that I heard on the news that this is the warmest summer we've had in a decade.  Let's hope we don't have to wait that long again!  In the meantime, it's wonderful weather to hop on a bike and go climb the steepest hill you can find!

Yesterday was spent trekking off to one of Colin's concerts and attending a picnic at one of my wive's relatives.  So after a long day we got home last night and plunked down on the couch and started channel surfing.  As is typical on a Saturday night without cable TV, there was little too choose from.  Thus we stopped to watch some of the LIVE 8 concert.  After a couple of acts there was a musical montage of photos featuring malnourished children in Africa (obviously).  After this was a commercial break…for TRIMSPA.  So as I was watching this I'm thinking it's kind of strange that here I am watching something about the plight of poor starving people in Africa and it's sponsered by this?  A company that exists and thrives off selling pills to overfed, fat, lazy Americans to help them lose their world leading excess pounds!  It was at this point that my wife turned to me and asked, "Does anybody else see the irony in this?".  I doubt most people did, but I certainly did honey!

Tomorrow marks my first anniversary since starting with the BOINC project.  And just yesterday was my 6th year of churning numbers for SETI.  Since the switch to BOINC, in addition to SETI I now also crunch numbers for climateprediction.net.  Since I started doing that, I now split my time as 60/40 between them respectively.  It seemed like a reasonable split as I really do want to support both.

Things have been very, very busy for me at work the past several weeks, but this past Tuesday I had a few minutes and needed a distraction.  So I bopped on over to the website of one of my favorite musicians, Adrian Belew.  I was mentally spent and sunk futher down when I got there and learned that Adrian was going to be at the TRALF on Friday (6/17), last night.  I'm guessing I could have gotten tickets, but with the way things have been at work and my general lack of disposable income these days, I knew it wasn't going to happen.  And it didn't, as I was at work until a little after 7pm last night.  Very sad.

Adrian doesn't tour solo very often and it's generally only to select locations.  Thus that fact that he seems to come here when he does is truly amazing.  I was fortunate enough to see him at the TRALF back in 1999 with my wife —then girlfriend, a friend and his date.  Truly and amazing experience.  After a nearly 2 hour show, Adrian did as he always does and came out for a "meet and greet" with his fans.  I had to wait a while, but how many musicians do this?  Not many my friend.  I got the chance to talk to him for a few minutes and had him autograph the Coming Attractions CD I had recenly purchased.  I know, geeky, but a memorable experience.  Just wish I would have would have know he was coming back and could have planned ahead for it.

Further proving the point that I'm not the only polar lava in the universe.  During a recent flyby of Titan by the Cassini space probe, scientist appear to have found a methane volcano (cryovolcano) on the surface.  See, I'm not the only one spewing out cold methane! ;)