Monday, October 25, 2004
Did I mention that it has been almost two weeks since we last saw the sun? Well, today (Monday of course) it's sunny! We must be living in the Midwest.
Sunday, October 24, 2004
We had a really fun weekend! We had our second "feed your favorite medical students a home cooked dinner" this weekend with the group that we did not have room for on the first dinner late last year. ML made a fantastic pork rib dinner with a wonderful vegetable-root stew and rice. I made my famous homemade spaghetti sauce for one of our guest who is a vegetarian and for dissert, ML made her (just enough flower to hold the chocolate together) brownies with ice cream. We all had a great time chatting and sharing stories. Well, in reality I probably did most of the story telling because I had the captive audience and they were eating my wife's fabulous cooking, but that's the way it goes sometimes. I did try to not talk the whole time, but I don't really know if I was successful. :-)
I posted a handful of picture include some from the raspberry picking trip, the dinner, and just some fall-type pictures from the neighborhood. There's also a shot of a very special house plant which has a story with it:
When I was in 10th grade I went to a science magnet school at Fernbank. It was called the Scientific Tools and Techniques (STT) program. (I'd put a link to the program up but the web site was down when I was posting this.) It was arguable the best educational thing that ever happened to me. I got to learn about physics, ornithology, meteorology, botany, physiology, computer science, chemistry, astronomy and on and on. I could go on for hours. In my botany class we planted a few plants including a Wandering Jew. We were allowed to bring the home after the class if we wanted which I, of course, did. My mom kept the plant in a small pot in a window for several years and it always served as a reminder to me. When I went to graduate school, I decided to take a cutting with me which I had kept from 1991 (when I left home) until the beginning of this summer (2004). All of the sudden it died and there was nothing I could do to stop it. The only thing I could figure out is the soil became contaminated with something. Well, my mom still had the original plant (in several pots at this point) and she snail-mailed a few cuttings to me. We planted it in some fresh soil and it has been doing great. There is a picture of the Wandering Jew Version 2.0 in with the fall pictures. It may not seem like much, but it's important to me. I was very upset when the one that I had for 13 years had died, but I'm glad to have it's brother with me now.
For those of you that may remember, I also used to have a Norfolk Pine bonsai from the same class. It unfortunately died when I moved back to Texas in 2001. The cactus from college (more specifically from a college girlfriend who will remain nameless to protect the innocent, if there is anyone left) is still with me and taller than ever and the bromeliad that I've had since I first moved to Texas. The wild thing about the bromeliad is it has put out 4 flowers since I have moved in with ML. It is only supposed to flower once every 10 years! Must be a sign of a quality marriage, or something!
I posted a handful of picture include some from the raspberry picking trip, the dinner, and just some fall-type pictures from the neighborhood. There's also a shot of a very special house plant which has a story with it:
When I was in 10th grade I went to a science magnet school at Fernbank. It was called the Scientific Tools and Techniques (STT) program. (I'd put a link to the program up but the web site was down when I was posting this.) It was arguable the best educational thing that ever happened to me. I got to learn about physics, ornithology, meteorology, botany, physiology, computer science, chemistry, astronomy and on and on. I could go on for hours. In my botany class we planted a few plants including a Wandering Jew. We were allowed to bring the home after the class if we wanted which I, of course, did. My mom kept the plant in a small pot in a window for several years and it always served as a reminder to me. When I went to graduate school, I decided to take a cutting with me which I had kept from 1991 (when I left home) until the beginning of this summer (2004). All of the sudden it died and there was nothing I could do to stop it. The only thing I could figure out is the soil became contaminated with something. Well, my mom still had the original plant (in several pots at this point) and she snail-mailed a few cuttings to me. We planted it in some fresh soil and it has been doing great. There is a picture of the Wandering Jew Version 2.0 in with the fall pictures. It may not seem like much, but it's important to me. I was very upset when the one that I had for 13 years had died, but I'm glad to have it's brother with me now.
For those of you that may remember, I also used to have a Norfolk Pine bonsai from the same class. It unfortunately died when I moved back to Texas in 2001. The cactus from college (more specifically from a college girlfriend who will remain nameless to protect the innocent, if there is anyone left) is still with me and taller than ever and the bromeliad that I've had since I first moved to Texas. The wild thing about the bromeliad is it has put out 4 flowers since I have moved in with ML. It is only supposed to flower once every 10 years! Must be a sign of a quality marriage, or something!
Wednesday, October 20, 2004
So if you have been paying close attention, you may have noticed that I try not to use anyone's full name including my own. This is in an attempt to keep the web site traffic to just friends and family. That is, I have tried to make it so the page does not come up on a search engine. Well, a few days ago I requested a web site traffic review from last September, which is the most recent it would allow, and I discovered that I have not been doing a good job. In one of my posts I had put my last name so it started popping up on some of the search engines. More over, when I had received my first parking ticket here I posted a PDF of the letter I sent to the referee. Well, turns out that too was searchable and generating hits for my name. I'm not exactly sure why I want to keep traffic down, but I do. Here is a list of a few of the search terms people of used to find my sight followed by the number of hits:
1. frozen bubbles 32
2. white coat ceremony 6
3. umpa lumpa picture 5
4. ekg strip picture download 2
5. photos of car accidents due to drinking 2
6. umpa lumpa 2
What I really don't get are numbers three, five and six! Nowhere in my site do I discuss the Umpa Lumpa, until right now! And I have no photos of car accidents due to drinking! Now, granted there may be some similarities between myself and the little orange fellows that work in the chocolate factory, but it does not seem worthy of a hit on a search engine.
The other mildly amusing discovery is that my page has been hit 76 times by Yahoo and MSN. I have no idea who. Actually, in theory, I can pose that question here and get an answer. If you are the person(s) that searched my page via MSN, please let me know! You can click my name in the top frame there and it will open a message to me. And that goes for you Yahoo folks, too.
Finally, I discovered that there were many broken links from my day at the Brave's game where I got to sit in Ted Turner's seats. I uploaded the rest of the pictures so please enjoy. And, if there are ever more broken links, please feel free to tell me about them! (ML, I know you told me once, but I never knew which ones pictures.)
Oh, I went through and deleted the offending search terms like my family name and the PDF file: the jpeg's aren't searchable so I will use those in the future instead. I don't know if all of that will help (in time) or if the damage is done.
1. frozen bubbles 32
2. white coat ceremony 6
3. umpa lumpa picture 5
4. ekg strip picture download 2
5. photos of car accidents due to drinking 2
6. umpa lumpa 2
What I really don't get are numbers three, five and six! Nowhere in my site do I discuss the Umpa Lumpa, until right now! And I have no photos of car accidents due to drinking! Now, granted there may be some similarities between myself and the little orange fellows that work in the chocolate factory, but it does not seem worthy of a hit on a search engine.
The other mildly amusing discovery is that my page has been hit 76 times by Yahoo and MSN. I have no idea who. Actually, in theory, I can pose that question here and get an answer. If you are the person(s) that searched my page via MSN, please let me know! You can click my name in the top frame there and it will open a message to me. And that goes for you Yahoo folks, too.
Finally, I discovered that there were many broken links from my day at the Brave's game where I got to sit in Ted Turner's seats. I uploaded the rest of the pictures so please enjoy. And, if there are ever more broken links, please feel free to tell me about them! (ML, I know you told me once, but I never knew which ones pictures.)
Oh, I went through and deleted the offending search terms like my family name and the PDF file: the jpeg's aren't searchable so I will use those in the future instead. I don't know if all of that will help (in time) or if the damage is done.
Saturday, October 16, 2004
Who said that the UM Residency committee aren't a slimy bunch of SOB's? Certainly, it was not me. As you can guess, our appeal was rejected, and, as I had been forecasting if they were going to reject us they would have to change their reason from the first time the rejected us. If you recall, our first application was rejected based on their inability to determine ML as a full time, permanent, employee of the U. That was the only reason they provided. In response, I was able to get a memorandum from the human resources department stating that she was a full time and permanent employee. So, now they have determined that we "have not established a permanent domicile as defined by the University's Residency Classification Guidelines." Funny, when I read the guidelines it states that home ownership does not establish residency. What is worse is the following line: Please note that the Appeal Committee's review is the final University recourse available for residency consideration, and the decision of the Appeal Committee is final. The way I read that, it is game set and match. I have set up a meeting with someone in the Registrar's office to have this all explained to me. But, I don't see how I can be expected to justify a problem of which I am not aware. In the first denial, they should have listed all of the items to be addressed and, moreover, the application should request all of the information the need to make such a decision.
I don't mean to be bitchy here, but I am a little pissed off. In less bitchy news, we're going to go to Bella Ciao for dinner tonight. We tried to go last night, but we did not have a reservation and the wait was too long. I cannot have the duck, only the chicken. (L.A. Story)
I don't mean to be bitchy here, but I am a little pissed off. In less bitchy news, we're going to go to Bella Ciao for dinner tonight. We tried to go last night, but we did not have a reservation and the wait was too long. I cannot have the duck, only the chicken. (L.A. Story)
Wednesday, October 13, 2004
Hey, look what I found on the Car Talk site: a transcript of the puzzler answer. Too bad the butchered my name on the transcript. They said it correctly.
My little sister seems to think that I am going to be talking about this for several years to come. I cannot see me bragging for more than a decade or two! (Did you know I won the Car Talk Puzzler??)
One Seat Left. Is It Yours?
RAY: I made it multiple-choice. And the options were A) one out of two, B) one out of ten, C) two out of 50, which happens to be one out 25, D) one out of 100, and E, zero.
Now our guy with the lost boarding pass, he could by dumb luck wind up in his assigned seat, right?
TOM: He could.
RAY: In which case each subsequent passenger including me, if I'm the last person, will get the right seat.
But what's more likely is that he takes someone else's seat. It's much more likely.
Now, here's the counterintuitive part. There are only two seats that count, my seat and his seat. All the other seats don't make a difference. Whoever gets on the plane subsequent to him, those people are going to take some seat or another.
Nothing matters until either my seat gets taken or his seat gets taken. If my seat gets taken by some displaced passenger, then I have zero chance of getting my seat.
Are you with me?
TOM: I'm with you.
RAY: If his seat gets taken by some displaced passenger then every other passenger who walks onto the plane including me, will have his assigned seat.
And how often does that happen? One time out of two. Half the time my seat's going to get taken by some displaced passenger, and half the time his seat is going to get taken by a displaced passenger.
TOM: So your chances are A) one out of two.
RAY: 50/50. Hard to believe! Do we have a winner?
TOM: We do. The winner this week is Eliot Gazanski from Ann Arbor, Michigan. And for having his answer selected at random from the thousands of correct answers that we got, Eliot will win a $26 gift certificate to the Shameless Commerce Division at Cartalk.com where he can get among other things a distressed Car Talk T-shirt. And trust me you will look distressed when you're wearing it, Eliot.
My little sister seems to think that I am going to be talking about this for several years to come. I cannot see me bragging for more than a decade or two! (Did you know I won the Car Talk Puzzler??)
One Seat Left. Is It Yours?
RAY: I made it multiple-choice. And the options were A) one out of two, B) one out of ten, C) two out of 50, which happens to be one out 25, D) one out of 100, and E, zero.
Now our guy with the lost boarding pass, he could by dumb luck wind up in his assigned seat, right?
TOM: He could.
RAY: In which case each subsequent passenger including me, if I'm the last person, will get the right seat.
But what's more likely is that he takes someone else's seat. It's much more likely.
Now, here's the counterintuitive part. There are only two seats that count, my seat and his seat. All the other seats don't make a difference. Whoever gets on the plane subsequent to him, those people are going to take some seat or another.
Nothing matters until either my seat gets taken or his seat gets taken. If my seat gets taken by some displaced passenger, then I have zero chance of getting my seat.
Are you with me?
TOM: I'm with you.
RAY: If his seat gets taken by some displaced passenger then every other passenger who walks onto the plane including me, will have his assigned seat.
And how often does that happen? One time out of two. Half the time my seat's going to get taken by some displaced passenger, and half the time his seat is going to get taken by a displaced passenger.
TOM: So your chances are A) one out of two.
RAY: 50/50. Hard to believe! Do we have a winner?
TOM: We do. The winner this week is Eliot Gazanski from Ann Arbor, Michigan. And for having his answer selected at random from the thousands of correct answers that we got, Eliot will win a $26 gift certificate to the Shameless Commerce Division at Cartalk.com where he can get among other things a distressed Car Talk T-shirt. And trust me you will look distressed when you're wearing it, Eliot.
Monday, October 11, 2004
I suppose I should add, in my list of "things" I did this weekend, that I washed the sebring. Normally, this would not be such a big deal, right? Except I have been meaning to get to it for about a year now! Well, maybe a half a year. The other week the car got covered in pine tree sap and I worked really hard to get it off--without much luck. Once ML discovered where I was (I started washing the car while she napped) she came out to see if she could help. I asked her to look on the web to see if there was a recommendation. Returning in a full fledged giggle, she said, "Lard!" They say put lard on it and it will come right off! Having the healthy household that we do, we have no lard so she brought out some shortening. We smothered the hood with white, creamy shortening and let it set a spell, but, to no avail. Ultimately, we were able to use ML's fingernails to "gently" scrap it off without too much damage to the paint. (She likes to brag about the fact that she can drive a philip's head screw with her nails. I won't tell you what aspect of her nails I brag about.) Scratching my back! Get your mind out of the gutter. Good thing she does not read this anymore.
I'm famous!!! Fabulously famous!!!
You are not going to believe what happen to me this weekend. I won NPR’s Car Talk puzzler! You can click here and listen to a clip that I made or go here and listen to the show. If you don’t know what Car Talk, you own it to yourself to find out. It plays on your local NPR station on Saturday at 10a. It is a really good program. I do occasionally disagree with their assessments of various problems, but that is in my nature. And, they know they are not always correct. Every few programs they have a segment called stump-the-chumps where contact someone that they gave advice to in a prior program to find out if they were right or not. I’d say they’re wrong about 10 to 25% of the time. To their credit, they tend to call people where their diagnosis is likely to be wrong.
I have been telling everyone I see that I won. I’ve told ML about a thousand times! Been on top of the world, baby!
In other news, my mom and her friend Terry went down to Florida to look at a property (a house) that was close to ML’s mom’s house. It would be very convenient to have at least some of the two families in the same place. Unfortunately, ML’s mom was out of town. (Actually, my mom was going to go down about a month ago and was going to meet up with ML’s mom, but the hurricanes put the trip off. By the time things settled down ML’s mom was already out of town on a trip she had planned at the beginning of the summer. My mom met up with one of my brother-in-laws (on ML’s side) who owns a restaurant down there. They had a great time and I am so glad I had arranged it. I just wish I could have been there too.
It’s been a relaxing weekend except for a book report I had to write. I have not done such a thing since high school and I’m hoping to not do it anymore. It was a slightly interesting book, but I would have much rather spent the free time with ML. We did have a nice day together and we are watching a movie together now. Well, I’m watching and typing this. The weather has been nice and we were able to enjoy doing our weekly shopping with the top down. And, over the weekend, we have found out that ML is quite good an making pot-stickers! Yummy!
Enjoy the clip and listen to it often! I love how they say my name SEVERAL times. :-)
You are not going to believe what happen to me this weekend. I won NPR’s Car Talk puzzler! You can click here and listen to a clip that I made or go here and listen to the show. If you don’t know what Car Talk, you own it to yourself to find out. It plays on your local NPR station on Saturday at 10a. It is a really good program. I do occasionally disagree with their assessments of various problems, but that is in my nature. And, they know they are not always correct. Every few programs they have a segment called stump-the-chumps where contact someone that they gave advice to in a prior program to find out if they were right or not. I’d say they’re wrong about 10 to 25% of the time. To their credit, they tend to call people where their diagnosis is likely to be wrong.
I have been telling everyone I see that I won. I’ve told ML about a thousand times! Been on top of the world, baby!
In other news, my mom and her friend Terry went down to Florida to look at a property (a house) that was close to ML’s mom’s house. It would be very convenient to have at least some of the two families in the same place. Unfortunately, ML’s mom was out of town. (Actually, my mom was going to go down about a month ago and was going to meet up with ML’s mom, but the hurricanes put the trip off. By the time things settled down ML’s mom was already out of town on a trip she had planned at the beginning of the summer. My mom met up with one of my brother-in-laws (on ML’s side) who owns a restaurant down there. They had a great time and I am so glad I had arranged it. I just wish I could have been there too.
It’s been a relaxing weekend except for a book report I had to write. I have not done such a thing since high school and I’m hoping to not do it anymore. It was a slightly interesting book, but I would have much rather spent the free time with ML. We did have a nice day together and we are watching a movie together now. Well, I’m watching and typing this. The weather has been nice and we were able to enjoy doing our weekly shopping with the top down. And, over the weekend, we have found out that ML is quite good an making pot-stickers! Yummy!
Enjoy the clip and listen to it often! I love how they say my name SEVERAL times. :-)
Thursday, October 07, 2004
Drink I nice call glass of water. Hold on for just a minute. Go to the bathroom and micturate until your heart is content! You've just finished renal.
We had our renal final exam today and it was a doozy. What was worse is I really had to redeem myself. This is, in part, why I have not been updating during the sequence. The sequence started on Wednesday week before last. We had a quiz the following Monday. For some reason, which I'm still not sure, I did not finish studying for it until very late on Sunday. So, when I took it, I only had 4.5 hours of sleep. I did get spooked during the quiz and so, for what ever reason I did not do well enough to satisfy myself. (I did pass, but I know I could/should have done better.) So, I did what any G0zansky does when the going gets tough: I hunkered down and took a big bite. Today, my performance was much more in line with my own expectations.
The exam when very well, I came home and went for a bike ride. Then, I took my sweet wife out for dinner to celebrate and now I'm going to go watch some Law & Order with her. (The old episodes because the new ones STINK!) Since I've been so busy studying, there really isn't any other news to report. Other than between starting the sequence and today we went from summer to winter! I suppose today was more like fall, but we have had our first morning frost already. Yikes!!!
We had our renal final exam today and it was a doozy. What was worse is I really had to redeem myself. This is, in part, why I have not been updating during the sequence. The sequence started on Wednesday week before last. We had a quiz the following Monday. For some reason, which I'm still not sure, I did not finish studying for it until very late on Sunday. So, when I took it, I only had 4.5 hours of sleep. I did get spooked during the quiz and so, for what ever reason I did not do well enough to satisfy myself. (I did pass, but I know I could/should have done better.) So, I did what any G0zansky does when the going gets tough: I hunkered down and took a big bite. Today, my performance was much more in line with my own expectations.
The exam when very well, I came home and went for a bike ride. Then, I took my sweet wife out for dinner to celebrate and now I'm going to go watch some Law & Order with her. (The old episodes because the new ones STINK!) Since I've been so busy studying, there really isn't any other news to report. Other than between starting the sequence and today we went from summer to winter! I suppose today was more like fall, but we have had our first morning frost already. Yikes!!!
