Al TV

... was amusing.
He busted on Prince (still) and Eminem over the video thing.
His "video" for Bob was.. OK.
The Polka Video was pretty decent too. :)
The whole Harvey the Wonder Hamster thing was very amusing :)
Wish he'd done one for Hardware Store :)
Not much else to say about that.

Did anyone else see it yet?

Things Going On In My Life

There are two major frustrations in my life right now, and I think while I have some time to kill, I want to talk about them.

1) My Thesis - I've been forced to work odd and long hours for 2 1/2 - 3 weeks now just trying to get results of my thesis work to LimnoTech, the company that A) One of my advisors is on and B) who hosts the LOTOX model I need to work with.
To remind those of you who don't memorize such things, my thesis is to combine a water velocity model (named POM) with a toxics and bioaccumulation model (named LOTOX) for Lake Ontario.
The trick is to average the velocities appropriate over the boundaries of those LOTOX grids and to determine some average velocity and mixing term.
This is done. We THINK it's done properly.
There are a couple of problems:
1) When we did that, we didn't take into account that the water elevation can change with time. This should be a small change, but an important one.
2) We MAY have averaged the velocity wrong over each POM grid.
3) The biggest problem... each LOTOX boundary is a fixed curvilinear grid. What we're measuring is the flow OVER that boundary (hence only the component normal to that boundary). If the velocity is going mostly tangential to the boundary, than you lose most of the flow going over the boundary. This is a problem.

So, anyways.. a little more than a week ago, we gave values for flow and dispersion that we (my thesis advisor and I) were happy with and sent them off.
They returned them within a day and told us that the model didn't like the values because of sudden and off changes of sign (where the velocities became more tangential than normal to the boundaries, then "Switched' so that the normal component was going the other way. Very believable.
So we returned them a month average velocity.
But no, that doesn't conserve mass (not that the LOTOX model NEEDS to in each LOTOX cell, nor, my advisor feels, should it.).
So we sent them two sets of numbers that conserve mass (the latter was better than the former due to less change in velocity).
And yet, they still aren't happy with the results, the model doesn't like what we're giving it. At this point in time, my suspicion is.. it's not us, but the model itself. Not that these suspicions are lightening my work load.

2) Josh
I know I mentioned in an earlier post that Josh's car broke, dad wouldn't let him his own while he was away and Josh is now just PISSED at Dad.
At the time, we didn't think anything of it. He has every right to be pissed at dad. But it did seem a bit odd to my mom that it was just so much anger and so quickly.
Last Monday, my brother and I fought. Hard. I accused him of getting lazy. He accused me of being lazy. The usual routine. He stalked off when I told him I didn't think it was unfair if he kept his door open and the best he could say was "You don't understand. I can't sleep with the door open."
At the time, I really felt he was being a selfish little bitch.
Friday we fought again. We were supposed to have hot dogs on Friday. I was stuck at work and we needed hot dog rolls and milk and I called him up and asked him to get it and he accuses me of being lazy again. He hasn't really talked to me since then. We just ignore each other.
And that's very uncomfortable for me.. and for mom.
Mom's mad at him because he HAS slacked off on jobs too (He's home all day, but doesn't actually do much) and yelled at him and then yelled at him for being stupid and not talking to me.
Which meant nothing. He was just THAT PISSED at me.
So I asked him why, yesterday. And I didn't raise my voice and did listen.
I didn't respect him and I don't know how to be a good brother, he says.
Explain, I said, give me examples.
He couldn't.
Is this about Friday? No. Monday? No.
So what is it about?
He's just sick of being stepped on.
How have I stepped on you?
No answer.
In the end, he just told me to go away.

I'm not buying it. I'm not buying that this is about me. I'm THINKING that Josh is transferring anger about something (or someone) else onto me. It really does fit. He doesn't DO much besides sit at home, work and classes. He's slacking on jobs. He's irritable.
I think he's depressed. But I have absolutely no idea why and he's not talking to me.

To make matters worse, I told him up front.. this is making me uncomfortable. If you can't come to your senses by next Wednesday, I'll refund you your money for Weird Al tickets because I'm not going with you. I'm not going to subject myself, Todd or Scott to this much anger while I'm enjoying myself. I can really imagine him sitting in his seat, arms crossed, scowling. Why even bother to go then? Maybe I'm being selfish, but I don't think so.

So, yeah. That's my life right now. Other things happening too, of course, but that's what's really weighing on my mind at the moment.

Road Trip Mix #1

I've been working for an MP3 CD for my car (since I'm getting a little sick to death of the shit on the radio - Also, the longer trip to Rochester).
I figured I'd share with you. Most likely you don't care, but if you're curious about what a decent cross-section of music I listen to it (and perhaps you are!), this is a pretty decent cross section here :)
All this fits onto a 700 MB CD :)

( LITE's Road Mix CD )