The beaver is a proud and noble animal

wow.

The 2004 Ig Nobel Prizes were awarded at the 14th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony yesterday. The winners are:

MEDICINE
Steven Stack of Wayne
State University, Detroit, Michigan, USA and James
Gundlach of Auburn University, Auburn, Alabama, USA, for their published
report "The
Effect of Country Music on Suicide."
PUBLISHED IN: Social Forces, vol.
71, no. 1, September 1992, pp. 211-8.

PHYSICS
Ramesh Balasubramaniam
of the University of Ottawa, and Michael
Turvey of the University of Connecticut and Yale University, for exploring
and explaining the dynamics of hula-hooping.
REFERENCE: "Coordination
Modes in the Multisegmental Dynamics of Hula Hooping," Ramesh Balasubramaniam
and Michael T. Turvey, Biological
Cybernetics, vol. 90, no. 3, March 2004, pp. 176-90.

PUBLIC HEALTH
Jillian Clarke of the Chicago High School for Agricultural Sciences, and
then Howard University, for investigating
the scientific validity of the Five-Second Rule about whether it's safe
to eat food that's been dropped on the floor.

CHEMISTRY
The Coca-Cola Company of
Great Britain, for using advanced technology to convert liquid from
the River
Thames into Dasani,
a transparent form of water, which for precautionary reasons has been made
unavailable to consumers.

ENGINEERING
Donald J. Smith and his father, the late Frank J. Smith, of Orlando Florida,
USA, for patenting the combover (U.S. Patent #4,022,227).

LITERATURE
The American Nudist Research Library
of Kissimmee, Florida, USA, for preserving nudist history so that everyone
can see it.

PSYCHOLOGY
Daniel Simons
of the University
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Christopher
Chabris of Harvard University, for demonstrating that when people pay
close attention to something, it's all too easy to overlook anything else
— even a man in a gorilla suit.
REFERENCE: "Gorillas
in Our Midst," Daniel J. Simons and Christopher F. Chabris, vol.
28, Perception, 1999, pages
1059-74.
DEMO: <http://viscog.beckman.uiuc.edu/media/ig.html>

ECONOMICS
The Vatican, for outsourcing
prayers to India.

PEACE
Daisuke Inoue of Hyogo,
Japan, for inventing karaoke, thereby providing an entirely new way for
people to learn to tolerate each other

BIOLOGY
Ben Wilson of the University
of British Columbia, Lawrence
Dill of Simon Fraser University [Canada], Robert
Batty of the Scottish Association for Marine Science, Magnus
Whalberg of the University of Aarhus [Denmark], and Hakan Westerberg
of Sweden's National Board of
Fisheries, for showing that herrings
apparently communicate by farting.
REFERENCE: "Sounds
Produced by Herring (Clupea harengus) Bubble Release," Magnus Wahlberg
and Håkan Westerberg, Aquatic
Living Resources, vol. 16, 2003, pp. 271-5.
REFERENCE: "Pacific
and Atlantic Herring Produce Burst Pulse Sounds," Ben Wilson, Robert
S. Batty and Lawrence M. Dill, Biology
Letters, vol. 271, 2003, pp. S95-S97.

I informed my boss of the McGill job. It went SO MUCH BETTER than I could ever have imagined. I'm so relieved. It's a huge weight off my shoulders. He's uber happy for me, and agrees with me that it's an offer I can't refuse. He told me not to worry about the timing issues, because one thing he's learned is that timing is never right, always a problem, so he's learned to not care about it :) I've offered to give them a hand when needed for the next month or so to ease the pains of transition, given that I basically won't be working here anymore. I start the day after my vacation ends.

SO!

Now that that stress is out of the picture, I can now turn my attention to another stress, which is that Katy will be landing at the airport in…. less than 4 hours.

EEEEEP!

People keep asking me if I'm nervous about the fact that Katy will be here in a bit more than 24 hours. Honestly, I'm more bombed than anything else. Between my cold, mad dashes of housecleaning, and the fact that – like an idiot – I've been reading till the wee hours of the morning, I'm dead on my feet.

The job situation is making me anxious… I need to give notice to my boss tomorrow. The McGill people want me to start on the 16th. The project I'm working on is behind schedule – a situation exacerbated by the fact I'm not at my best right now. I'm leaving for 2 weeks vacation. So, in essence, I will inform my boss at lunch tomorrow that I will no longer be working for him in 5 hours. The timing sucks, but there's nothing I can do about it. McGill needs me ASAP, and with their bureaucracy, I need to start at the beginning of a pay cycle, so it's on the 16th, or two weeks later, and that's not something I want. At the same time, I feel torn about the situation. I'd have loved to have more time to do a calm switch-over, but that's not in the cards. The consolation I have is that it's not like I'm burning all bridges and cutting off any contact I have with my coworkers.

Edit: Crap! I just found out I need to send 3 reference letters instead of 2! I need to find someone else to ask, fast! Shiat!

It's 10pm. Is your windows machine patched up to date?

Seriously, if it's not, go to the windows update site and install the latest fixes to plug up the sieve that is windows (but I recommend against installing XP SP2). If you're running MS Office, go to the office update site and get even more updates.

Right now, I'm downloading 100MB of service packs for Office 2003. This is beyond ridiculous.

bleargh.

My occasional sneezing grew up and became constant coughing. Today would be a day best spent in bed, but that's not going to happen. I woke up twice last night, coughing up a lung each time and my sheets were sweated through. Ewwww, I hate it when that happens.

I was cleaning out my desk tonight when I ran across these gems. They're the proofs of my graduation photo shoot (hence the Jostens logo you might glimpse). Aaaah, those were the days, when I had a head full of hair that went to the middle of my back.

Yes, that is a looney tunes tie. I still have it. Oh, and for those of you who have never seen me with my pre-op glasses, there they are in all their beauty.

Went to have a bit of a chat with the McGill project planner. It was very encouraging. In a nutshell, there are no conditions in the offer they're making me that make me want to say no.

RIght now, they're going through all the red tape on the McGill HR side to see where they can fit me in. From our conversation, it would seem that the position would be a mid-to-senior management one (she mentioned that I'd be a Systems Developer). We still need to finalize out all the details, but they're going ahead as if I'm already hired :) I'm going to be hired as a casual, which means only for a 3-6 month contract to start with. This is because they need me now, and it would probably take 3 months to hire me through the proper channels. Now I know there's a risk that after 3-6 months, I get chucked out on my ass, but that risk is – I feel – negligible. I'm getting a really good vibe from everybody involved. They told me that they're going ahead in good faith that I'm going to be hired for the position I'm applying for now, and even if – heaven forbid – something happened in the interim, this project needs people and they'd find me another position.

Since they're not sure exactly what pigeonhole I fit in at McGill, they can't define exactly what the full benefits are. That's ok, for now, because I stated what I want and what I'm willing to compromise on. The good thing is that they agree with me that none of my demands are extravagant, and both sides are ready to negotiate in good faith. I'm willing to sacrifice on salary^†; if I can get more vacation time, and I'm willing to sacrifice on vacation time if I can have the opportunity to go to international conferences with all expenses paid. Basically, we need to talk about all of those factors, but like I said, I have a good feeling :)

† Funny thing: I was a bit disappointed that the initial salary they offered me was below the lower limit of the salary range they'd asked me for. Turns out, they forgot I'd given them a range, and based the offer on what I make now. When I pointed this out, the project manager looked really crestfallen, and said she'd talk about it with the department head next time she saw him – which is this coming thursday. This will be in my favour in getting more vacation time, conference time and raise schedule (I haven't had one in the 3 years I worked for Sequence. They told me that a cost of living raise shouldn't be a problem).

damn! I know I'm not the most assiduous duster but…. damn.

Back home. Bus ride was ok, managed to sleep most of the way. Had an uber-long shower, so I feel kinda human again, even though Nose is giving me grief.

Cat is on my lap as I write this. He's started doing that – curling up on my lap when I'm at my computer and falling asleep. Right now, I'm stroking the underside of his chin, a spot he particularly enjoys. Things are good in the world.

Well, except for the cold.

But hey.