Que pasa con Felipe?

My friend Justin, who is also Filipino, sent this to me. The video isn't exactly what I'm about; it's just kind of funny is all. Enjoy!

I'm sure all of you are aware that because of Benjamin Franklin we are blessed with a library system. Well, if you happen to live in a fairly huge town or city, or have a library with the capability of borrowing from a pool of libraries, use them!

One thing I've noticed over the years is a typical American's impatience. If they want something, they want it now. Realizing that, I've learned that if one is willing to wait, one can actually borrow DVDs and CDs, besides books and magazines, from a library. Borrowing CDs is a great way to get songs. And borrowing DVDs? If you're willing to wait one can borrow relatively new movies, as well as old ones.

Think about this. Say a person borrows on average two DVDs each weekend at their local DVD rental house. Say each movie is $4.00, so one pays $8.00 a week. Well, that multiplies to about $390.00 a year. That may not seem much, but consider if you were able to invest that $390.00 a year at an annual rate of conservatively 6% for 20 years. That would equate to $14346.00 earned as opposed to $7800 lost over 20 years. Well what if the rate was 8%? Then in 20 years it'd be $17847.00! Not much, you still say. But add it up and it could help your nest egg a lot! Also, that $390.00 could be used for a trip, considering a round trip ticket from SEA to EWR or JFK, for example, costs about that much, or it could be used to buy something you really want!

I guess my point is consider using your library more often. Heck, you already pay for it. Why not use it?

Today, I'm finding ways to procrastinate. I had a meeting with my adviser yesterday, and he was quite pleased with my analyses up to now with my data. He, as I suspected he'd do, put the bug in my ear to begin considering how to write a couple journal articles assuming (and I'll get it done) I finish my thesis. He gave me a couple articles to to read to get an idea of format. Well first things first. Gotta write the thesis. I aim to write intro portion by end of month, then methods and portion of results by end of February. March will be dedicated to finishing results and discussion and conclusions section. Anywho, got up today, read from a cool book entitled, "Mountains Beyond Mountains" by Tracy Kidder, walked to the grocery store to get some milk and duct tape and soap, and came back to update my blog a little more. There are a few things on my "to do list" with my data I'll get done today. Yesterday I finally installed "Endnotes" onto my computer so at some point in the next few weeks I need to get my citations into that.

Hope the New Year's went well. My girlfriend and I went to the EMP (Experience Music Project) for the New Year's celebration at the Seattle Center. Both of us have never visited, so we figured it'd be a good time. About 3000 people were there. One band was playing disco, another funk, and a third room had a DJ playing today's music. Another room was dedicated to comedians. Of course the museum was open so we checked out the Music portion of the museum, and also the Science Fiction portion. The science fiction museum's collection was quite amazing, many of which are owned by Paul Allen. I knew Seattle had a history of music, but didn't know to what extent!

My girlfriend tried to get me to dance, but I guess I'm such a control freak I didn't break down even with a drink of gin and tonic. We're still considering a ballroom dance/swing class at some point, but that's at a later time. Of course we then went outside to see the fireworks display shot around and from the Space Needle itself. Didn't have a camera, so didn't take pictures of the fireworks. However, here's a night shot of the Space Needle I took in the middle of December 2006.

After hearing about this experiment and the Bellagio-esque display on NPR, and seeing it on eepybird.com I decided to try it. My friend Colin has credits for the movie.

So here's the story. We were doing night operation on the Hole Prescribed Burn in Lassen Volcanic National Park around 10/31/02. Jay, who stood by me, said "Let's get a picture of you," or something rather. So I said, "Awright." And there you have it. Amazingly the picture turned out well. Turns out the picture would get into the National Park Service photo archive. Then last year a friend who worked for me sent an URL with the subject heading, "Is that you?" I opened it and there was that same picture again!!!

The URL to which I'm referring is linked here. Check it out!

Picture credit goes to Jay Fassett, and picture somehow can be found on the National Park Service Photo Archive.