Columbia

I got my first dreaded thin envelope today, from Columbia. Not a big deal, since I'd probably rather live in Seattle anyway. And of course, Washington is the better program. It think it's getting to the point that I need to start thinking about moving to Seattle.

Weird

I was expecting two in-class exams today, in electromagnetic theory and math models, but my e+m professor decided we only had to do one problem in class and could take the rest home. Then in math models we were running long, so we were allowed to take that home too. Cool! Of course now I have two exams to finish tonight. After that I'm done with just about all meaningful work until spring break!

Based on some information I found on the web, it seems that Scripps gives an open house for prospective grad students on Thursday and Friday their last week of classes, winter quarter. This would be 3/10 and 3/11 this year, assuming the pattern holds. Therefore if they don't invite me really soon I think it's reasonable to conclude that I won't be invited. That's not completely unexpected, because based on some other information I found they enrolled only THREE new physical oceanography students in one recent year.

I still haven't heard a thing from Columbia, Oregon State or Rhode Island either. Rhode Island is probably out of the running entirely since I got into Washington, and Oregon State might be too, but it would still be nice if they'd beg me to come so I could turn them down. I would definitely like to hear from Columbia.

Next week I visit Duke on Tuesday, then Friday I fly out to Seattle to meet with Washington the following week. I got my official acceptance papers for Washington today, though my assistantship paperwork is still in the works.

Free Market Follies

CNN says today that Carly Fiorina will receive more than $42 million in severance, stock options and pension after being fired this week from Hewlett Packard. And this is a company that's regarded as somewhat of an industry model in linking executive pay to performance.

They should have hired me; I would have fucked up their company for half that much money.

Oceanography Fact of the Week

The rate of flow of an ocean current in measured in Sverdrups (Sv), which is 1 million cubic meters per second. The Gulf Stream has a flow rate of 100 Sverdrups, would could fill 100 football stadiums to the top every second, and is more than 100 times greater than the combined flow of all the world's rivers.

Accepted at UW

I was sitting in class this afternoon, waiting for math models to start and checked my mail. Lo an behold I got a message from a professor at U of Washington saying that I'd been accepted to their program. I haven't got all the details yet, but a formal offer letter is on the way. Washington is my #2 or #3 choice (behind Scripps and possibly Columbia), and probably the #4-ranked school in the country, so I'm pretty happy. It would also put me within visitable distance of my sister and her family, assuming they go through with their move to Alaska, and of course I'd have my friends Dave and Laurel to hang out with.

Superbore XXXIX

I watched the Superbowl last night -- or at least as much of it as I could stay awake for. It was by far the most boring competitive Superbowl that's ever been played, and the Pats are easily the most tiresome "dynasty" of all time. Their strategy seems to be to bore their opponents into submission, and judging by the Eagles' incredible lethargy with two minutes left in the game, it works.

Almost Forgot...

I almost forgot. The top Beatles album, by miles and miles: The White Album.

Top Ten Beatle Songs

For some reason I was thinking today about my favorite Beatle songs. Here are the ten greatest Beatle songs of all time, with composer:

1) Norwegian Wood -- John
2) While My Guitar Gently Weeps -- George
3) Blackbird -- Paul
4) Paperback Writer -- Paul
5) In My Life -- John
6) Across the Universe -- John
7) A Hard Day's Night -- John
8) Here Comes the Sun -- George
9) Revolution -- John
10) I Saw Her Standing There -- Paul

The worst...

N-4) Lady Madonna -- Paul
N-3) Love Me Do -- John
N-2) Long and Winding Road -- Paul
N-1) Run for Your Life -- John
N) Ob-la-di-Ob-la-da -- Paul

...where N is the number of songs they ever recorded.

So if we score one point for each song in the top ten, and deduct one point for each song in the bottom five we have: John: 5-2=3 Paul: 3-3=0 George: 2-0=2

New Feature: Oceanography Fact Of The Week

The world's oceans, at 360 million square kilometers, cover an area nearly twice as large as the surfaces of the Moon and the planet Mars combined. Yet only 5% of the ocean floor has been mapped as accurately as the moon's surface, and there are places in the ocean as large as Kansas where no ship has ever done a sonar sounding.