Graphs Aplenty: DOES NOT COMPUTE

This one is easily my favorite Graphs Aplenty so far. Venn Diagrams are almost inherently funny, but when paired with a dystopian future joke, that is a recipe for success every time. Come for the math, stay for the dystopian futures, guys! I miss the days I used to write about going to the bathroom.



This one is pretty self-explanatory, my favorite part is that our future oppressors will not only speak to us in a hybrid of the two most widely spoken languages in the United States now, but also a 30 year old programming language. So when the robots take over, programming technology will not have changed since you computer science 101 as a freshman in college. Although, to be fair, my roommate studied biology, which I'm not even sure uses computers.

Interesting side note: as a mechanical engineer, I would only be able to satisfy A and B of the diagram above. I never learned to program in C++. I know you are probably thinking, "How embarrassing!" Well, I speak Spanish and a little Irish and you're reading my blog, so I don't need your sass.

Interesting side note 2: my roommate is all grown up. He started his own blog! Go read it, the three of you who are still out there. And post comments! Comments are how we measure our self-esteem, like the way women do with their weight. Except more is better for us.

¡Feliz Navidad! Nollaig Shona! Felix Dies Navitates!

I'm going to throw this up here now since I probably won't be writing tomorrow. So everyone out there in internetland, Merry Christmas. The title tells you how to offer that holiday greeting in Spanish, Irish and Latin, in that order. The Spanish and Latin are both phonetic, but the Irish is pronounced No-lahk Ho-na, in case any leprechauns come across your path tomorrow.

People made a big deal this year about how stores are saying "Merry Christmas" again instead of "Happy Holidays." I have to wonder who exactly gets offended by being wished a Merry Christmas. As a Christian, I can't say I would be offended if a member of any other faith wished me a Happy Hanukkah, Happy Ramadan or whatever. In fact, I think I'd think it was kind of nice that they thought enough to offer such a salutation to me. Just because I don't celebrate one of these holidays, they still happen. I've been wished Happy Diwali before, and I didn't answer with "I'm not Indian, jackass." I answered with, "Thank you." What is wrong with people? I think that "Happy Holidays" is a little obnoxious because it's so non-committal. If you go into Wal-Mart and the greeter says "Happy Hanukkah" am I really going to stop shopping there? This really seems like kind of a petty thing to worry about, doesn't it?

One of the things that helps make my Christmas merry is that when I go back to my church down here and they have an insert in the program (which, inexplicably, didn't have a schedule in it; making me think that the purpose of the program is to serve as a coat for this insert) that includes a shortened version of a Longfellow poem called Christmas Bells. I am going to include it here, but it's important to note that this was written in 1861, as the Civil War was beginning.

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old familiar carols play.
And wild and sweet the words repeat
Of peace on earth, good will to men.

And in despair I bowed my head
"There is no peace on earth," I said.
For hate is strong and mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep
God is not dead, nor doth he sleep.
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail
With peace on earth, good will to men!
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The rest of the poem is just as good, and you should look it up and read it. Nollaig Shona!

No funciona la computadora

My regular schedule has been slowed due to a catastrophic failure in my laptop's backlight, making it very difficult to do things like see what I'm clicking. Instead, I have to use my lab computer as if it were my own, which is ok, I guess, but it makes me feel like one of the foreign people who basically lives in their offices, like the tall Sikh or the Chinese girl who has a boy's haircut but is still somehow kind of cute. I'll bet they know how to make good food, though.

Anyway, I'm sitting in my lab, trying to justify my time here by looking for articles on how to improve the vacuum seal of my project, but really, I don't think there's any search terms that will give me any sort of useful journals, since "vacuum seal" is pretty generic. It's like the mechanical engineering equivalent of searching for something like "existential angst" in an English database; it's not the most common thing, but you have your hands full looking through the results.

As you can probably imagine, at 8:15, I'm not making a lot of progress. I'm pretty sure the answer is that my setup won't work, so I'm not really that concerned anyway. I'm in here by myself rocking out to Pet Sounds. Actually, there may or may not be a post doc in the next lab over, listening to me harmonize. But who is he to judge?

Anyway, I didn't want to lose my surging fanbase of 6 because I have been having trouble updating. I expect to resume my normal level of output sometime next week, after I steal my little brother's hand-me-down, which is a little shaming for an engineer to admit.

This abuse of a preposition shall not stand

You may not know this about me, but I speak Spanish. Actually, most of you who read this have met me, so you probably did already know that. To give you an idea of how well I speak, I will say this: My accent is better than the President's but not as good as Salma Hayek's. I am also an amateur writer, but I take it seriously enough that I usually leave of the adjective and just say "writer," but I didn't want to mislead anybody. I haven't gotten paid yet, so I haven't turned pro. I can still compete in the NCAAs of writing. Which, I guess, is just regular college. I will write as if you have no knowledge of the Spanish language, so if this offends you, no me importa.

All of us have probably enjoyed (or at least eaten) chili con queso or carne con queso. Those translate to "chili with cheese" or "meat with cheese." (Chili is the same.) However, I have recently seen in two different places, the use of "con queso" without a noun with which the cheese is. Moe's Southwest Grill uses in their ads that are read repeatedly during Clemson baseball games the expression "the best con queso dip..." there is something at the end of that, but Moe's is a fast food restaurant, so whatever follows is probably a lie. Jason Whitlock, a writer for espn.com, also made a reference to con queso dip. (If you really want, I can try to figure out where, but after two weeks, you need to be an espn insider to read it, and I'm pretty sure it's been two weeks.) You can't have con queso dip. You have to have something con queso. If not, it's just queso. ¡Díos mio! How hard is that?