Turkey Day and Michigan weekend

Turkey day was a rousing success with much food, revelry, and Guitar Hero.  All the food turned out to be eatable, if not quite good.

After turkey day, Char and I decided to a mini vacation was in order; with four sports games to watch in 3 days, what other option was there? =)

Well the Blue Jackets played well against the Red Wings on Friday, but failed to pull out the win, losing 2-1 at home.  Surprisingly I had no problems with the loss, since they played and competed with arguably the best team in hockey the entire 60 minutes, but were stopped by a hot goaltender.

The Nevada vs Boise State game was a wild one.  At two points Nevada (a 14 point underdog) was trailing 17-0 and 24-7.  I stopped watching during the third quarter and went on two watch something more entertaining, like Swamp Loggers on the History Channel.  ( what is so historical about swamp logging in the present day? )  Due to a passing interest I flipped back to the game and lo and behold Nevada had come back to within a field goal.  We got that field goal to tie the game, had a defensive breakdown to let a 50+ yard hail-mary pass succeed to put them in position to win the game with 2 seconds left with a field goal, they BOTCH the field goal, it goes to overtime, they botch another field goal, and Nevada wins the game with a field goal, by a red-shirt freshman in front of 30000 fans.  Did I mention that Boise State was #4 in the nation at that time?  ( we were #19)  Wild and crazy game.

OSU convincingly finished off UM in short order after a shaky first quarter.  Good start to a Saturday (game started at 9 am PST).  Char and I celebrated by going out for some sushi for lunch; very tasty.

Then the bloody Blue Jackets have to go and stink up the weekend by playing a stinker of a game in Detroit on Sunday.  When you have a 4 minute powerplay that included a full 2 MINUTES of 5 on 3 and you only get one actual shot on goal.....you know our powerplay fucking sucks....

But now it is Monday and the work begins again.  Back to thinking in Fortran for the next week ( I'm sure my brother will be proud).

25 x 25 matrix!

I've literally spent all day re-learning matrices and using them to attempt to solve the first hurdle of my MS thesis.  And it even sorta kinda worked...when you have 25 unknowns, matrices cease to be trivial...

The best part...this was just the hypothetical test case...designed to be simple...yay!?

The Blue Jackets are getting nearer and nearer to hiring a new coach!  Only 4 months till I can watch CBJ play again!  Meanwhile I'll amuse myself by cheering on the Blackhawks - Go Hawks!

Yea and blah!

The Blackhawks won Game 2!!!  Philly is going to have a fun time digging themselves out of that!

Twas a blah day for me, where I woke up wrong and the day just went with that.  Now that I've done nothing useful today, time to make some coffee and write some MS proposal.  Tomorrow is also the beginning of my new job for the next year, which is just computer analysis stuff...pretty boring, but good to be back on some sort of a schedule.

I've got to find my motivation mojo that I going at the end of last semester, just a couple weeks ago.  I got more done in about a week than I had the rest of the semester.  Sad how that is...

Last, but not least, I applaud the armed forces, present and past.  I don't always believe that war is the right answer to problems, but I always believe the grunt who does the work is never to blame for doing their job; a job that I cannot conceive doing.

Finally a nice day here in Reno; mid 70's, slight breeze.  I've got the windows open and it feels nice.  Much better than the last 2 weeks, where winter had refused to let go.

Welcome to Paul Nelson, my newest nephew!  He hatched a week or so ago and I'm still tickled pink about it.  Through the wonderful world of Facebook, it seems like everyone I know has or is having kids.  Makes me take a step back and realize that I am 27 and a perpetual student still.  But I've got one thing going for me: I got married going on 3 years ago.

Well so much for the first real blog post...time to go wash some dishes (my favorite! =P ).

Josh

Welcome to the Beginning

Hello all who will read this blog.

I have decided to write this blog as a form of self-therapy (I tend to internalize things).  While I don't intend to be morose all the time, I look at this as more of a social experiment: for me and for whomever is reading this blog.  My intentions are for me to express my current thinking; be it quirky, morose, scientific, funny, or cynical.

I hope that my ramblings of spontaneous efficient normality* will expose some of the inner workings of my mind and provoke your thoughts and/or emotions.

Josh

*No...it isn't supposed to make sense...except in irony....