Hey everyone,

Laurie and I got jobs in Fort Collins! We're starting a little vacation road trip down to California at the end of the week and will arrive in Colorado around mid April. I won't be able to make it to game night on Thursday but I'll definitely be back for the wedding-spree this summer.

Hey everyone, I'm all done with school! I'll be heading to Hawaii for 2 weeks then I'll come back and start looking for jobs :) Corvallis will be my home for only a short time longer. After that...

Has anyone else tried using Live Mesh? A friend recommended it but I haven't tried it yet. It allows you to remote desktop to a computer that has the software installed through a web browser. You can sync folders as well.

My friend Skyler found this interesting video on the credit crisis:

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

Hey everyone,

I'm planning on doing some beginning West Coast Swing lessons next month at the Ballroom Dance Company in Tigard. Would anyone else like to join in?...I know that Heidi was interested in going. West Coast Swing is my favorite dance by far. You can dance to most hip-hop, pop/rock, blues, R&B, soul, jazz, and pretty much any song that has a medium to slow tempo. If you haven't seen West Coast before, here are some videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3ZxiPKmacg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-J11uP9OmoI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3i6kyLLB2g

There are lessons Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday taught by different people. The lessons are $35 for 5 weeks. The Thursday series starts this week (10/30), the Monday series starts next week (11/3), and the Wednesday series starts the week after that (11/11) (11/12). Let me know if you are interested.

Hey everyone, I'm doing an internship in Hillsboro for fall term! The company is called Analog Devices and they're over by Streets of Tanasbourne. Does anyone know of any rooms that might be available for three months in the Beaverton/Hillsboro area? I could possibly stay with my dad, but he is moving into his office and that's a less than ideal living situation :) I'll probably be moving up around Sept. 25. I can't wait to hang out with ya'll :D

can be downloaded now :)

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/

The volume of a Pizza with radius z and depth a is (pi)(z)(z)(a).

Ahoy Mateys! It's International Talk Like A Pirate Day. So be sure to be extra piratey today :)

Top Ten Pickup lines for use on International Talk Like a Pirate Day

10 . Avast, me proud beauty! Wanna know why my Roger is so Jolly?

9. Have ya ever met a man with a real yardarm?

8. Come on up and see me urchins.

7. Yes, that is a hornpipe in my pocket and I am happy to see you.

6. I'd love to drop anchor in your lagoon.

5. Pardon me, but would ya mind if fired me cannon through your porthole?

4. How'd you like to scrape the barnacles off of me rudder?

3. Ya know, darlin’, I’m 97 percent chum free.

2. Well blow me down?

And the number one pickup line for use on International Talk Like a Pirate Day is …

1. Prepare to be boarded.

Last night I saw An Inconvient Truth, Al Gore's movie on global warming. I thought it was a really good documentary. It had interesting information and was tied together well. There were only some parts that seemed like a campagin ad. If anyone has a chance to see it I would recommend going.

This last weekend Amy and I went to an event put on by the Organic Growers Club. It's was called the Hoo Haa! It was basically a big planting party with music, lots of food and hand blistering work. The Organic Growers club owns a farm on Hwy 34 just past the golf course. They have about 3.5 acres in which they grow over 50 different crops. They sell the produce on campus and what they don't sell they donate to the food bank. We spent most of the day pulling grass, spreading compost, and planting seeds and starts. It was nice to be able to work up an appetite for the giant foot long burritos they were serving.

To get ready for our organic adventure we went to see "The Real Dirt on Farmer John", a documentary on the life of John Peterson. I thought this was a great film. Being raised in suburbia I have never really understood the nostalgia of the farming life. This film opened my eyes to the allure of the farming life and also how much farming has changed over the century.

Has anyone seen a program where you can organize journal/conference papers based on referring documents into a tree structure? I'm picturing something where you could put a paper into a database with links to what it references and what references it. Then the program would give you a graphical display of a tree that you could browse through. I was thinking this would be useful for researching a topic and keeping all the references organized. The society that I use exclusively (IEEE) is supposed to have citation links when you are browsing their papers but they are usually not filled out.

Since we seem to be on the topic of oil a lot these days I thought I would throw up some new electric/hybrid-electric vehicle innovations. Battery systems in these types of solutions have a long way to go before they can start to make a dent in our gas consumption but a new technology recently discovered seems to be going in the right direction. A123 Systems released late last year news of a new lithium-ion battery technology that is a big jump ahead of traditional lithium-ion batteries. It is based on a nanotechnology material called doped nano-phosphate.

Traditional lithium-ion batteries can provide the highest energy density of any other battery but they have some drawbacks:
- They tend to vent fire and/or explode if over charged or punctured.
- Their internal resistance increases with use (this amounts to loss in battery life).
- If they are allowed to completely discharge they will die and not come back.
- They are the most expensive battery.

The new lithium ion technology improves in almost all of these areas:
- They are intrinsically safe because the nano-phosphate is thermally stable. Over charging is not a problem because the lithium is fully extracted from the cathode when the battery is fully charged.
- The internal resistance actually decreases with use.
- They can be discharged completely.
- They will probably still be expensive, but I haven’t seen any cost comparisons.
- All of this and they provide more energy density and power density than normal lithium-ion batteries.

Lithium-ion batteries right now are bit too expensive to push into hybrid-electric vehicle market. They are mostly used by wealthy hobbyists looking to pimp out their electric or hybrid-electric vehicles. Though, with greater energy/power/safety performance the new batteries may find larger markets to help push down the price.

It’s cool to think about some rough performance numbers: A123’s website quotes an order of magnitude higher energy density over conventional lithium-ion batteries. Looking at Wikipedia and some other EV websites it seems that lithium-ion based EV’s can go up to 300mi per charge. These cars were probably hacked down to the bare essentials so let us say that a more practical car could only go 100mi. So with the same size battery you could now go 1000mi. Or you could replace the old battery with one that is 1/10 as small saving you both weight (which lets you go a little farther and 100mi) and money in battery costs. Any way you look at it, even on a log scale, an order of magnitude is a big jump. If you are interested, their website has more info and press releases.

www.a123systems.com

This game looks fun! Adam, I think you’re going to love this one. You get to create any type of organism you can imagine and then play it from being a micro-organism to conquering galaxies. I hope they release it soon.

http://www.spore.com/

Here is a great demo video that shows all aspects of the game

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8372603330420559198&q=spore

My friend James has started a free advice column and its actually pretty funny.

http://www.advicefromjames.blogspot.com/

If you submit a question you will get some very witty advice that may or may not be helpful :)

Peeks