Enjablog

I spent my walk from the office to the metro today contemplating my mail. I have a major backlog of snailmail. But I don’t seem to have any kind of comparable problem with email.

What if there were some way for individuals to register their mailing address and name and associate it with an email address? Companies could then pay to have their mailings distributed via email. Even if it cost as much as postage, the money saved in paper and printing would still be significant.

Could the post office incorporate this? Companies could be assured (as much as they would be with physical mail) that their distribution would go to the appropriate individuals. But people could keep their email addresses private if they so chose. And there would be much less chance of getting mail for years for people who used to live at your address multiple tenants ago.

People could opt in and out as desired, the post office would incur revenue from it while continuing with the potential decrease in mail delivery days. Granted, implementation of this would require more manpower — different from what they currently have at their disposal, I’d assume.

Just thinking out loud, mostly… but I’m selfishly hoping it’ll happen.

It’s here! It’s here!

One of my coworkers and I have been discussing buying hardhats back since sea trials last summer. It was mentioned again last week at happy hour and she took the initiative to put the order in. The hats arrived today and now I’m ready for any shipyard related trips to which I might need to attend. *giggles*

I think this is going to be a perfect opportunity to use my gmail unicorn sticker. And I need to go find some of those Hello Kitty stickers I’ve been joking about for the past few years.

Oh. My.

I’m going to end on this because I have nothing more to add. I went looking for Hello Kitty stickers… and started clicking around amazon and found this:

Ian and I had been considering going out for to the Post Hunt this year, but hadn’t really gotten a team together. So when Mindless told us that he and Chu were looking for a team, we were convinced!

Ian and I arrived a few minutes early, so we had just enough time to stop by a few of the tents to see what was going on before venturing into the crowds for the opening clues.

We started at the debate puzzle where the two participants were debating House Bill #98999 and emphasized how we needed to focus on the TEXT of the bill. The key was accountability.

In high spirits, we solved that and moved on to the Memorial of Failed Monuments. I didn’t bother fighting through the crowds to get a good shot of the middle statue, which was a vacuum cleaner:

That one took a few minutes longer, but we were soon pleased with our find. “Boo-cannon,” “Hoover,” and “Eyes-an-hour.” Buchanan, Hoover, Eisenhower. Next!

From there, we went to the statues… which we were clueless on for a good half hour before deciding to move on to the other clues and come back to this one (I’m not sure what I did with our clue sheet, so this is the gist of it):

According to Native American legend, Earth was originally pooped out of an eagle.

PLUS

It is believed to be the world’s largest freestanding polyp.

MINUS

Little Alice enjoyed hanging out with Uncle Henry, but always kept a sledge hammer close by in case he got frisky.

We were slow going on the next clue, which was handed to us by a silent man. It wasn’t until we realized that he was this week’s feature First Person Singular that it all made sense.

The last of the main clues was back at the start, where [fake] money was being thrown out to the crowds. Ian solved this in about 15 seconds, which only lead us to be suspicious of the puzzle/answer. But it was the only answer that made sense.

With over an hour left, we headed back to the statues and waited for Mindless and Chu to arrive. Once they did, we went over the thought process we had gone through and all continued to scratch our heads until it was time for the Final Clue.

The music started up: “Old MacDonald had a farm…”

And we were told to “turn that around in our minds.”

The 1337 puzzlers that we are, we paired that up with one of the other answer clues to call a phone number telling us to find, “an important message immediately after 4.”

That’s about as far as we got. We doubted ourselves too much because of our missing clue. And as it turned out, we could’ve gotten to the next step with what we had, but the missing clue from the statue puzzle was key to move on from there.

All in all, a fun day. But those statues sure did stump us! In the end, we were supposed to go to the locations of the statues on the map and not just look at the map. It sounds kind of obvious now, but we thought all the information we needed for the clues was at that location. Oops.

Next year, though… I think we’re getting better. And we made a lot more progress than our team last year. Maybe we’ll even make it to the part where we leave the main stage area for the final puzzle next time. :)

Despite all my entries about school lately, I have been up to other things…

I went to Ian’s company outing thing yesterday and got to visit his coworker’s alpaca farm! We got to meet many of the alpacas, their pet pig, the ducklings and chickens, the horses (including the surprise pregnant one!), and the miniature donkey (so cute!).

Plus videos of his coworker’s wife spinning some string out of alpaca fur, their pet pig wandering around outside, and the miniature donkey hanging out in the stable with the horses.

I hadn’t checked my blog stats in months, so I went by today. The latest search that turned up my blog: vagina cake pans.

What is wrong with people?

And how awesome is my blog?

Wow, I can’t believe I’ve neglected my blog for over a month. The end of the semester is in sight though…

I went down to Blacksburg on Thursday for my design presentation, which went fairly well. Met my design team for the first time after working with them for close to a year. We presented on Friday, had lunch with the advisory committee, and came home.

I’d spent the better part of the past week working on our presentation and finalizing assignments that needed to go into the presentation. We’re working on the report now and have that due in a little over a week.

Still to come, a presentation and report for my other class and a kickoff meeting for a study at work that I’m leading.

On the work front, I’ve been getting more interesting work to do and starting to serve as a task lead. Mostly because I almost quit a few weeks ago… which was part of the reason I stopped blogging. Something something unprofessional, etc. Things are better now and a few new people have been hired/started who are closer to the standard that I would expect my company to employ.

I’ve been having all sorts of fun with my professional society’s new website… And by that, I mean “fun.” They have discovered Web 2.0. I have attended one training session and been invited to attend dozens of others. I find their hour-long tutorial on how to upload a single document to be a waste of time. But maybe that’s just me.

In exciting news, I went to see the DC Rollergirls a few weeks ago. And it was a life-changing experience. I had been considering joining since I found out DC was starting a league a few years ago. But then I started grad school instead. And, for some reason, thought I wouldn’t have enough time for both. So… I have put that off until I finish. But I’m almost certainly decided on joining. Or at least trying out. I’m hoping my years of ice skating will translate well to roller skating.

Oh, and batting a thousand… wore my Quark Quark shirt to the roller derby and had someone stop me to ask where I got my shirt from. Happens every time.

On the grad school front, I think I might finish before 2012! I am sold on the idea of doing a thesis. I was hesitant mostly because I didn’t want to defend, but I find my public speaking skills almost completely dependent on my confidence in my work. And if I’ll have worked on something for over a year, I’m going to think I know my stuff. During my group’s design presentation, I found that I was able to answer questions for other people in my group when they were trying to dodge answering, not because I knew more than them, but because I was familiar with what the people on the committee (all people working in industry) were looking for.

In any case, with the thesis option, I’ll be able to continue my studies during semesters when I don’t have other course options. Plus, I came up with a thesis topic last week! And I mentioned it to one of my profs when I was in Blacksburg and she said that was an interesting idea that we could definitely work with. I could still make use of our design project (which was the original idea when I signed up for this course), but is much more interesting to me than studying aluminum.

Other stuff I’ve been up to…
- Volunteered for SeaPerch
- Went to Dahlgren for a couple meetings only to find out one of my friends knocked up his wife
- Also during the trips to Dahlgren, went with TLD to buy a new car
- Hosted a brownbag session at work, “Introduction to MathCAD,” which was received with a surprising amount of enthusiasm
- Later met with some MathCAD employees who were interested in the brownbag session and want to come in to do a follow-up
- Set date and found location for wedding (unfortunately, no moonbounce)

Took a break from my studies today to hang out with Jen and be girly. She took me to her stylist to finally get my hair chopped off. She was getting her hair permed today too, so got me an appointment while she was at it. Then we hit up a couple Asian markets looking for mochi ice cream. (Successfully, btw) And then back home for a nap and more homework. A pretty full day.

Saturday, I tried out the boot camp class at the gym. Ian thought that was more age-appropriate for me than the step class I attended last week. Aside from the fact that the step class was demoralizing because the elderly women were all better than me and I was unable to figure out the calls fast enough to even face the right direction on my step… it wasn’t terribly aerobic or high energy. Boot camp was more physically challenging and required slightly less coordination. And then there was the whole age thing. So I think that’s my new weekend class for the semester, which is a little early for me for a weekend, but works out with my homework schedule and family lunch.

Other finds:
- 2 boxes of unopened mail
- ~5 years of Marine Technology and Maritime Reporter
- 2 calendars from 2005
- 12 pads of paper, 20+ new postcards
- 2 AP review books for classes that I never took; 1 LSAT review book, which I also never took
- Sonny’s dimebag

Note to self: Do not delete blog.

Thanks to Ian for saving my last 5 years of memories. And it only took him a couple hours! :)

I know this video has made the rounds and I’m like a day behind on this. But I think it’s awesome that Virginia is getting so much attention this year!

Today is National Depression Screening Day. So if you’ve been thinking about getting screened or know someone who should, consider doing it today.

Wow, I finally got around to using Bluehost’s one-click upgrade feature for WordPress. I don’t know what took me so long. I was probably about 3 versions behind.

This new stuff is so nice! I can upgrade all my plugins with one click now, there are so many more options in the settings, and everything is just a little prettier.

So very pleased so far. Need to click around some more.

I know most (all?) of you are registered already. But I wouldn’t be doing my bloggy duties if I didn’t make sure. So, if you haven’t already, do it. Do it now. We’ll wait…

Last night’s debate, in my opinion, had an obvious winner: CNN.

Their technology is far superior to what the other networks demonstrated. Their HD broadcast had 6 analysts who were scoring the debate real-time, as well as independents in Ohio with dials who could react throughout the debate.

I love watching independents react. Last week’s debate, they reacted positively every time someone spoke. Last night, they were divided on the graph as men and women. At one point, the men went back in time and reacted very negatively. The women reacted positively as stereotypically expected — personal stories, things that would cause empathy or other strong emotions, etc.

And then the analysts! Last week, Begala was asleep for the first half hour, but totally came back and had a score close to the rest of the analysts.

Rosen and Rollins were the token extremists. Their scoring was clearly partisan, sometimes giving their candidate more points than the other analysts combined. Last night, Rosen was keeping up and was pretty even with Rollins… until about 10 o’clock. At which point, Rollins fell asleep on the plus button for Palin and gave her 10 points all at once, even though she had stopped talking. This was obviously a mistake, because soon after that, he reduced that to only a 9-point increase.

By the end of the night, Rollins definitely had the win for the most total points on his scorecard, awarding Palin 4 times as many points as other analysts and twice what he awarded Biden.

QOTD: “Did Rollins just have a thumbgasm?”

I love the look on Katie’s face 35 seconds into this clip. That’s the look I offer my coworkers way more than I mean to.