Wasted time on the internet

Ctrl-Alt-Del

I think we’ve all been here. I have been reading too much of the Dallas Mavs blogs over the last few weeks staying up on trade rumors, reading public opinion on deals, and keeping my finger on the pulse of the mavs fandom. This is of course a complete waste of time. The boards all run into heavy stupidity with great insights like, Josh Howard sucks, Jason Kidd is too old to be useful, and I can’t believe we could let go of Diop and Hassell. The fact that many of you might not know who any of these people are, or at least Diop and Hassell, shows what a complete waste of time and brain power this is.

Shameless Birthday Present Mongering

Someone’s got a birthday coming up in only 2.5 months (and a wedding two weeks later). If anyone is out there, scratching his or her head, thinking, “What can I get John to make his birthday the very best one ever?”, look no further. This soccer jersey, while not the greatest thing in the history of the world, is pretty darn close. Black goes with everything (including my wedding tux) and it’s of my favorite player (Wayne Rooney) on my favorite team (Man United). I’m just saying …. please please please.

Church of Ceiling Cat

All hail ceiling cat, creator of the heavens and the earth. For anyone who hasn’t been clicking on my links to LOLCats, first look at those. Then follow this link to the LOLCat bible; this is a wiki effort that I found through Sage’s blog. They are rewriting the entire Bible into pigeon kitty English and it’s hilarious.  As a young historian of science, I feel that we have significantly under-studied the importance and impact of the ceiling cat on the ways in which people have understood the universe and their place in it.  Look at how the ceiling cat has benevolently created an Edenic hang-out for the first (ultimately non-gracious) humans.  Theories of the Earth, Natural theology, epistemology, and ontology will all be impacted by studies of the ceiling cat.

Getting sick

I’m not feeling so good today.  I’m definitely coming down with some sort of head cold.  When I woke up, all I could feel was phlegm draining down my throat.  Freaking awesome.  Other than that though things are going well.  I finally got my oil changed in my car yesterday.  I was only like 3000 miles over where I should have gotten it changed, so about 6000 miles after the last change.  My car said it was ok though (I think it’s related to Night Rider, but the accent is a little different).   I’ve got a Honda Fit and they come with oil gauges that tell you when your oil life is getting low; oh the joys of the technological age.

Anyway, I’m supposed to be finishing John Ray’s Three physico-theological discourses today, so I’ll get back to work now.

Licorice is so good

I’m up at Winan’s right now, and they have their Easter jellybeans out.  I couldn’t resist a nice sized bag of licorice jellybeans, and they do in fact go very well with a nice big mug of coffee.  I’m about to start reading John Ray’s Three physico-theological treatises and will continue to pop jellybeans while doing so.

For reader participation, can we get some comments on favorite brands/types of jellybeans.  I personally like Starburst jellybeans except that they don’t have a licorice flavor.  Winan’s is one of the best I’ve had for licorice.

Sappy silly post

Enter the ICHC online Poker Cats Contest!

The In-laws

We went up to see Lisa’s dad and step-mom today and discuss wedding planning with them.  We were pretty worried, because they seem to be operating under a different set of assumptions than us.  They had also picked out a different officiant than us, and we were nervous that they would stick to their pick.  Everything worked out in the end though.  Marty had a ton of questions for us: what kind of flowers did we want?  Had we thought about drinks for the reception? What hotels are people using?  Oddly, the biggest argument of the night occurred over when we should have the champagne toasts.  We had planned to do them after the cake, before the bouquet and garter toss.  She wanted to do them as we were serving food.  Neither side flinched.  Voices were raised, things were thrown, Lisa’s three year old sister, Kim, punched a teddy bear, and her dad, Bob, got freaked out and cried.  Dogs and cats living together.  Real Armageddon type stuff.  The last few parts of that weren’t true, but it was surprising how much people care about the timing of a champagne toast.

Ultimately we won the day and decided to keep the toast where it was.  We went over the rest of the details, created some basic to do lists, and sorted out the issues that needed to be taken care of sooner rather than later.   Hopefully we can avoid having to think about getting married for at least a few weeks now.

Lots of Blogs

I’ve been spending more of my time than I probably should looking around in the blogosphere for more HSCI blogs.  History News Network has a long list of blogs, including several that I have listed here, but there are many more out there.  My friend Sam Spence just started his own, Future of Our Past, and many of the people in my department here at Oklahoma have their own.  I was surprised to find newly started blogs by one of my professors, Piers Hale, and by several other people I’ve met over the last year or two.  I’ll put up more specific links later, but check out our blog roll when you get time.

Mentally barren

I haven’t had a coherent thought in like 2 days now. I wrote a section of my thesis Thursday night, and I’m not sure that I’ve regained consciousness since. I had thought for a while that my undergraduate days would be the end of me: playing video games 24/7, drinking too much, never sleeping, etc. Stil, I was always able to talk at length about sports, politics, movies, books. Grad school on the other hand has me so focused on History of Science that I can’t function any more. I haven’t read a novel in months, and all I can do is play ESPN and watch tv. I’m having trouble even writing about how little I can do. Hopefully my brain reengages at some point this week. We’ll see.

Thesis Work

I’m writing (or should be) the Salem part of my thesis right now.  For those of you who don’t want to go back a few posts to my Salem trip log, I’ll give a quick recap.  I went to the Salem Athenaeum to look at their collection from Richard Kirwan’s library.  I was hoping to find marginalia or at least clear up confusion about the exact make up of the original collection (this had gotten confused when Kirwan’s books were intershelved with the rest of the library).  Ultimately, there was no marginalia, but I did find the original list of the Kirwan books.  The interesting, and depressing, part of this, was that the list was much shorter than anyone expected.  Apparently, at least one of the librarians at the Athenaeum had completely fabricated an account of the collections, presumably to make it a more impressive cornerstone of the library.  This section of my thesis reiterates the importance of doing first person archival work via the ways in which the confusion over this collection have been perpetuated throughout the Kirwan historiography.