Just watched Star Wars in Concert at the Nokia theater last night. OMG GEEKGASM.
Now, I will be the first one to admit that I am a
So many people came in costume. Various Jedi, Sith, and random aliens I was sitting next to a family with their kids dressed up as Luke, Leia, and Darth Vader. I was the Trekkie surrounded by Star Wars fans all around. I managed to keep my mouth shut by nursing a margarita though, so I didn't get jumped by angry fanboys. Still, their enthusiasm was very contagious, and even if I cringed every time Natalie Portman or Han Solo came to stage (because they fucking signed a petition in support of a CHILD RAPIST), I still got swept by the tide of emotion. Fun times.
It was rumored that George Lucas came to the show last night. Interesting.
Anyway, that was my try at Star Wars fangirling. Not a very good one, but wev.
*watches Tribbles episode to wash the taint of Star Wars away*
- Mood:
amused - Music:John Williams - Imperial March
( Behold the awesomeness )
There you have it. Teh Kitteh is an artiste. Can't wait to see what the little monster makes next.
- Mood: amused
I'll do a longer update later, but right now I want to address the problem of unwanted attention that
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
farewell_mask wrote about recently.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ever had those times when you absolutely feel beautiful, attractive, and generally good about yourself, then some jerk bothers you and totally ruins your mood by being pushy, demanding, and generally...creepy?
Most of us women, and some men, have experienced unwanted attention. I've blogged about some of those here and here. If you think about it, you can probably recall an occasion or two. Or three. Or...several, if you are a decent-looking woman. As a feminist, this type of thing really grinds my gears.
Let me just say right off the bat that not all unwanted attention is bad. Not all attention given to you is creepy, rude, and objectifying. I've had encounters before where people would try to chat me up in a polite and respectful way, and those encounters left me feeling even better, even if I did refuse their advances. But that's the thing--they were polite and respectful about trying to hit on me, and they stopped when I asked them to.
As long as you make it absolutely clear that you do not want any sexual/romantic attention from someone, then they should respect that and stop whatever the hell they're doing. It doesn't need to be rude either--just say, "please stop that, you're making me uncomfortable" or "I'm not interested in you that way" or similar. If they persist, THEY are being rude, and then you are absolutely justified in being rude back to them. When you tell people to bug off, you are NOT the jerk!!! They are the jerks for still giving you unwanted attention. Seriously, people--usually MEN--should get a clue.
I've developed a "Stare of DEATH" for occasions like these. I also now run to the authorities if I'm creeped out enough. I get called a bitch by creeps, but the people who count know that I'm in the right. I know it can be hard for us women in these situations because we're always told to "be nice," but quite honestly, when we aren't treated nicely by some people, we have no obligation at all to treat them nicely back.
- Mood:
awake
 |
| From Brommie at the Beach |
( More pics under cut! )
- Mood:
tired
( Moar pics under cut )
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In other news, the WDCH Youth Orchestra Festival was great. Well, the parts of it I saw, anyway. I was only there for the first two (Pasadena and CSUN), and I must say, CSUN's performance blew me away. I enjoyed their rendition of Dvorak's Slavonic Dances #2 and 3 and Mascagni's Intermezzo from Cavalleria Rusticana, but what got me was their really, really moving rendition of the Infernal Dance and Finale from Stravinsky's Firebird that brought the audience to a standing ovation. *fans self* Their Bernstein Overture to Candide was a bit dirty--quite understandable, as it's a hard piece--and I would've loved to compare their performance of it to Claremont's rendition, but...no. Teh bf and I had errands to run at the central library that took waaaay too long, so we missed Olympia and Claremont. Oh well. I see the folks at Claremont all the time anyway, but I would've loved to see Olympia in concert.
I was gonna post a Weekend Opera report on Das Rheingold, but I am waaaaaay too busy, what with finals coming up and all. I shall post it after finals!!
- Mood:
creative
Abstract: The exponential dependence of resistivity on temperature in germanium is found to be a great big lie. My careful theoretical modeling and painstaking experimentation reveal 1) that my equipment is crap, as are all the available texts on the subject and 2) that this whole exercise was a complete waste of my time.
Introduction
Electrons in germanium are confined to well-defined energy bands that are separated by "forbidden regions" of zero charge-carrier density. You can read about it yourself if you want to, although I don't recommend it. You'll have to wade through an obtuse, convoluted discussion about considering an arbitrary number of non-coupled harmonic-oscillator potentials and taking limits and so on. The upshot is that if you heat up a sample of germanium, electrons will jump from a non-conductive energy band to a conductive one, thereby creating a measurable change in resistivity. This relation between temperature and resistivity can be shown to be exponential in certain temperature regimes by waving your hands and chanting "to first order".
Experiment procedure
I sifted through the box of germanium crystals and chose the one that appeared to be the least cracked. Then I soldered wires onto the crystal in the spots shown in figure 2b of Lab Handout 32. Do you have any idea how hard it is to solder wires to germanium? I'll tell you: real goddamn hard. The solder simply won't stick, and you can forget about getting any of the grad students in the solid state labs to help you out.
Once the wires were in place, I attached them as appropriate to the second-rate equipment I scavenged from the back of the lab, none of which worked properly. I soon wised up and swiped replacements from the well-stocked research labs. This is how they treat undergrads around here: they give you broken tools and then don't understand why you don't get any results.
Fig. 1:
Check this **** out.
In order to control the temperature of the germanium, I attached the crystal to a copper rod, the upper end of which was attached to a heating coil and the lower end of which was dipped in a thermos of liquid nitrogen. Midway through the project, the thermos began leaking. That's right: I pay a cool ten grand a quarter to come here, and yet they can't spare the five bucks to ensure that I have a working thermos.
Results
Check this **** out (Fig. 1). That's bonafide, 100%-real data, my friends. I took it myself over the course of two weeks. And this was not a leisurely two weeks, either; I busted my ass day and night in order to provide you with nothing but the best data possible. Now, let's look a bit more closely at this data, remembering that it is absolutely first-rate. Do you see the exponential dependence? I sure don't. I see a bunch of crap.
Christ, this was such a waste of my time.
Banking on my hopes that whoever grades this will just look at the pictures, I drew an exponential through my noise. I believe the apparent legitimacy is enhanced by the fact that I used a complicated computer program to make the fit. I understand this is the same process by which the top quark was discovered.
Conclusion
Going into physics was the biggest mistake of my life. I should've declared CS. I still wouldn't have any women, but at least I'd be rolling in cash.
- Mood: amused
That's all.
P.S.
farewell_mask, you're going to the Youth Orchestra Festival on Sunday, right? See you there!- Mood:
ecstatic
CREATE YOUR BAND NAME & ALBUM COVER:
To Do This
1 - Go to Wikipedia. Hit “random”
or click http://en.wikipedia.org/wi
The first random Wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.
2 - Go to Quotations Page and select "random quotations"
or click http://www.quotationspage.
The last four or five words of the very last quote on the page is the title of your first album.
3 - Go to Flickr and click on “explore the last seven days”
or click http://www.flickr.com/expl
Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.
4 - Use Photoshop or similar to put it all together.
5 - Post it to FB with this text in the "caption" or "comment" and TAG the friends you want to join in.
I find my album very amusing...oh yes.
- Mood: amused
The story of neko-hime-lj? Not very interesting. I moved to lj after the great diary-x crash (*sob*) and found out that nekohime was already taken here. So neko-hime-lj it was.
The story of me using nekohime as a uisername almost everywhere is more interesting, though still not dreadfully interesting. A couple of my friends from elementary school gave me the nickname nekohime (cat princess) because I was, and am, very cat-like, both in demeanor and looks. Also, I love cats. Looooove them!! (Except those nasty hairless ones like the sphinx breeds. Eww.)
- Location:Bus
- Mood:
bored
