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 Yes readers, it has been a long time.  Lots of exciting new posts are in the works, so until them, enjoy a song by my hero, Guy Forsyth.

 My ears generate an excessive amount of wax.  They always have.  At least once a year I experience complete blockage in one ear and resort to probing the depths of my canals with a foreign object.  This is largely unsuccessful and generally results in pain.  I’ve tried the wax removal drops, which also don’t work.  Yes, I’ve even considered buying the candles that FRR so eloquently debunked a few weeks ago, but after spending 15 seconds thinking about the logic behind them I decided to save my money.  Last year, I resorted to a health center visit after a week of hearing loss to have my ears irrigated.  My ears were probed with a sonicating metal rod shooting out water and peroxide.  I should add that I was prescribed antibiotics to fend off the "probable" ear infection resulting from this treatment.

 Saturday, my ear clogged up again.  Do I stick something up there to fish around for that pesky piece of wax?  Do I run to the health center for a costly irrigation?  Do I go to Target for some pseudoremedy?  Nope.  I steal a 50cc syringe from lab, a plastic pipet, some olive oil (extra virgin) from the kitchen, and grab some cotton balls.  Before bed, I place a dropper full of oil in my ear, stick a cotton ball in so it doesn’t leak all over my pillow, and I sleep on my side with the troublesome ear up.  In the morning, I fill the syringe with warm water, aim my ear to the sink, and flush 50 mL of water through my ear canal, 3-4 times.  On day three of this treatment, my hearing returned as I was greeted by an inch long flake of wax in the sink (that I quickly snatched up for fear that it would go down the drain and clog my sink).  My hearing was so clear that I did the same process with the other ear, with similar disgusting results.  The world seems so loud now…

 Anyway, on to the Million Dollar Idea.  I need to package a 50cc syringe, a medicine dropper full of oil, and several cotton balls together, write up some instructions, and sell it as an ear wax removal kit that really works.  Seriously, it is dirt cheap, easy, and effective.  Who has some start-up funds?  If these hacks can sell candles (that people actually buy) that don’t do anything other than posing a fire hazard, then surely I can sell something that really works…I just need marketing ideas.  The words "soothing, organic, all-natural, essential oils, safe, herbal, green, and hormone-free" need to be worked in somehow.

Notice that recovery.gov is #4 on the list.

 My parents spotted this in Alaska.  Awesome.

 Today marks my Two-Year Anniversary in Colorado.  (You can read about Year One here).  It has been an eventful year, but instead of writing about it I’m going to let the pictures tell the story.  Coincidentally, I purchased my first dSLR almost a year ago (and my second today!), so there were quite a few pictures to go through.

As soon my D1x arrived, I peeled out of the driveway with Jeff and caught the sunset at Pawnee Buttes.

Finally, a gas grill.  It has changed my life.

 First camping trip of the year in RMNP.

I went home for the River Festival, built my stage, and came back the next day to this.  I miss thunderstorms.

Moonrise as seen from Horsetooth Rock.  Too bad there were too many clouds to see the moon.

 The first picture pretty much sums up our trip to the Great Sand Dunes.

 Ryan and I thought that it would be dry enough to backpack the Rawah Trail in July.  Wrong.

Jenni, Aaron and I climbed Castle and Conundrum Peaks.  And glissaded down.

 Backpacking Take II.  Success.  Along with summits of Chiquita and Ypsilon.

Mile High Music Festival brought these two together in my living room.  Now they’re married.

Kelso Ridge to Torrey’s.  Epic.

First trad climb in Gregory Amphitheatre, followed by Standard East Face of the Third Flatiron.

 Watched a triathlon and a bet-gone-wrong.  Yikes.  Still have those tan lines Aaron?

 420’s and bouldering at Independence Pass.

 Joe’s Valley.

 Fall trip to Boston to see Joe, then bouldering with Aaron in Lincoln Woods.

 About this time I became obsessed with off-camera lighting.  My first big project was a CFL.

 We met Aaron and Dan in California for a weekend of bouldering in Bishop.

 After Christmas, I climbed my first pitch of ice.

I took a few days off to check out the X-Games in Aspen…

…and then had the best powder day EVER at Steamboat.

 A new light bulb made an appearance with my bamboo.

Jeff and I launched carbonartphoto.com.

 In Ouray, I was lowered into a 135′ canyon with 2 ice axes.

 Deadpoint Magazine published one of my photos from Lincoln Woods.

I passed my 5th cume.

 In April I finally broke down and pieced together a rack…and then took pictures of it.

 Jeff and I shot our first wedding of the season.

 Spring climbing.

 Then Felix came for a visit…

…and the next week I passed my orals.

So ends another spectacular year in Colorado.

 You don’t have to ride a bike to realize that this guy is incredible.  Watch and be amazed.

It is raining outside, I just tied a pair of aiders, and I needed a break.  Enough said.

 I’ve had a few google hits for my Alien Bee Power Pack post from people searching for electrical schemes.  Since I created a scheme before ordering the parts, I figured I’d post it for anyone trying to build their own.  Keep in mind, I don’t remember the official electrical symbols, and I created this figure in ChemDraw.

 I used a 12v 10Ah NiMH battery with this smart charger, a 180W pure sine wave inverter, and Anderson connectors and fuse holders. 

 It works great and fits in my small camera case.  I’ve powered anything from my Alien Bee B800 to a lamp with a 100W bulb.  Battery life has been great.  My only complaint is the long (overnight) charge time for the battery.  Leave a comment if you have any questions about the setup.  More details can be found on Tim Kemple’s blog.  If you aren’t concerned about weight, an alternative is the stock Vagabond II system from Paul C. Buff, Inc. I obviously prefer my pack, as it weighs far less than the Vagabond’s 18.6 lbs and is considerably smaller. I also don’t need a special accessory to recharge the battery pack in my car.

Jeff took a shot of the Alien Bee and battery pack in action.  It is perched to my right next to the carrying case for the flash head.  Things need to dry up so I can try this out at a bouldering session…

 You may have noticed that the small gathering of links to the right has grown.  Mainly for my own convenience, I updated the list of blogs that I regularly visit.  I went to the trouble to group them into categories (Chemistry, Climbing, Photography, and Blogroll), but Blogsome won’t sort them accordingly on the main page.  Oh well.

 When making category assignments, I found a fine line between climbing and photography blogs.  The following list of photographers have gained my respect and admiration and their images inspire me to get out of the house and shoot.

   Jack Brauer
   Tim Kemple
   Andy Mann
   Tim Tadder
   Erik Seo
   Andrew Burr
   Strobist

 I like seeing what local climbers are up to.  There are a lot of climbing blogs out there, but the following are ones I actually enjoy reading, and most include decent photos of projects:

   Straight Outta Bedlam
   Hayden’s Rock Scaling
   Mountain Project

 Chemistry blogs?  Yeah, I’m a nerd.

   Totally Synthetic
   The Chem Blog

 And people I have the great fortune (or misfortune) of knowing.  Some are better than others about actually updating their blogs.

   Front Range Rants
   Mad Scientists
   Carbon Art Photography
   The Life of Donna J
   Carol’s DC Adventures

 Enjoy.

 I got a new stool today.  Really it is just my old chair.  The question now is do I (a) keep the stool, (b) find a new bolt, or (3) charge a new chair to my A-card?

 Last spring, I proposed a new series of name reactions that every graduate student should know.  I learned a new one last weekend that I call "The MacBook Dehydration Reaction".  The experimental follows:

  MacBook (2).  To a MacBook running Firefox ChemDraw operating at r.t., add hot water (340 mL, 18.9 mol) in one batch, directly over the keyboard.  Stare with mouth agape until screen goes black, then disconnect AC power and remove battery to afford worthless shiny white paperweight 1.  Drain water and blow compressed air over the keyboard and battery compartment.  Place 1 in a large ziploc bag containing drierite (100 g) and seal.  Allow to dry at r.t. over 60 hours.  Plug in AC power and press power button.  Call Apple Tech Support and follow their directions.  After determining that your battery is dead, a new one will arrive in 24 hours.  Install new battery to afford MacBook 2 as a white solid (2040 g, 100%).  MP: 189-690 *C.

 It is complete.  I’m calling it ‘The Bomb’, because (a) it looks like a bomb and would get a second and third look from airport security, and (b) it is truly ‘da bomb’.  Wow, I just raised some flags at homeland security with that sentence.

  Above is a 12V, 10Ah NiMH rechargeable battery, connected to a 180W pure sine-wave DC/AC power inverter that spits out 120 volts of beautiful, clean, AC power via either a 3-prong receptacle or USB port.  Two inline fuses (20A) offer backup protection for the inverter (even though I think only one is necessary).  Originally, I built the pack with connectors from a local electronics shop, but they didn’t seem very secure and placed exposed wire of opposite polarity in close proximity.  The connectors heated up quickly, as did the wire to the inline fuse.  New Anderson connectors and 12 gauge inline fuses (all rated to 30A) arrived in the mail yesterday.  I swapped out the connectors, fired it up, and started plugging in random appliances after confirming that my Alien Bee would work.

 I’m really stoked about the versatility of the set-up.  If I blow a fuse and don’t have a replacement, I can disconnect the fuses and plug the battery directly to the inverter.  The battery can be disconnected and replaced with a cigarette plug, the battery charger powered by my car battery, and the battery charged on the road.  Should all of my camera batteries die, I could plug the ac adapter for the camera into the inverter and power my camera…very badass electronics, at least in my opinion.  I haven’t weighed it yet, but according to the manufacturer’s specs the whole unit should come in just over 4.5 pounds.  It all squeezes into my hip camera bag…oh yeah, I can walk around the house now with a hot iron.

  I must admit that this idea is not original.  I stole it from Tim Kemple.

 I really just want to close this tab on my browser.  It’s been sitting there for 2 weeks, waiting for me to post on here.  While I’m pissed at Obama for wrecking Tuesday night primetime television last night, I think that it is pretty cool that he is the first president to have his portrait taken on digital media.

 The EXIF data for the file tells us that this portrait was taken with a Canon 5D Mark II (21MP) with a 105mm lens at f/10 and 1/125 sec at ISO 100.  I’m a nerd.  Anyway, thanks for sending that to me Jeff.  Office hours are nearly over…

 Remember when Dead Point Magazine posted a gallery of my Bishop pictures on their homepage?  I do.  If you forgot, take a look at the page view report from my website below.  It should be obvious when the link to my site went up, and when they took it down.

 I’ve been in Aspen for 2 days now.  Unfortunately I forgot my CF card reader.  I don’t know how to write a blog post without pictures.  Noteworthy things I saw today include: (a) a giant sign advertising the tent to fill out "WAVIERS"<sic>, (2) Dee Snider (Twisted Sister) on skis, (4) Ed Robertson of BNL (I think), and (d) a lady hula-hooping while snowboarding. 

 The snooze button and I have a very intimate relationship.  The alarm goes off, I smack it and convince myself that in 9 minutes I will really get up, sleep 9 minutes, and repeat (10-15 times).  Reality always sets in when I realize that the time to shower, eat, make lunch, and drive to work is greater than the difference between the current time and 9:00.  I beat myself up for sleeping in so long and vow to never do it again.  Today I went so far as to google "how to get out of bed when the alarm goes off."  I’m going to give the first hit a shot.  Wish me luck.

 To summarize the strategy:

(1) Realize that you make shitty decisions when waking up (aka: snooze).

(2) Stop making decisions when you wake up.  How?  Turn getting up into a habit.  (see #3).

(3) Practice getting up to an alarm.  (At night, set your alarm for 5 minutes, get in bed, and then get up when the alarm goes off.  Repeat over and over).

(4) Set your alarm for the same time, every day, Monday through Sunday.  When the bell rings, salivate.

UPDATE: 6:15 a.m.  Day 1.  I’m awake.  KICK ASS!
              6:00 a.m.  Day 2.  w00t.

 My week of cat-sitting is over.  No more 5:00 a.m. wake-up calls, stinky butt-wiping, or litter box cleaning.  Hell, I’m not going to pretend it wasn’t fun.  Felix was my #1 fan for a week, following me around the house, head butting me, and cuddling on the couch over a bowl of popcorn and movie.  I promised Jenni that I would take some pictures of him.  Felix might have a future in modeling…my favorites below.

Why does California have to be 1009 miles away?

 Hopefully you figured out that Barack Obama won the election.   His acceptance speech was eloquent and reverberated with the promise of change for the next four years.  We aren’t screwed because Obama was elected, and you shouldn’t be scared of what is to come, but I have a hunch that we won’t be seeing much change in the next year, or even the next four.   Unfortunately for P(E)OTUS Obama, his agenda is largely predetermined for him.  Obama now has the real world to face.  Congress ultimately has to write and pass new laws, consumers decide whether or not to buy that fuel efficient car, and public approval limits the risks a president is willing to take.  Obama surely realizes that 48% of American voters did not vote for him and that it is their support that he must gain as he rallies for change.  I also am not certain that the Democrat majority in Congress will work fully in the new president’s favor.  I’m sure there are Senators with their own ideas about health care.  Only time will tell which of Obama’s silver-lined promises are realized, and which of those are put aside to deal with more pressing issues.

 Now, on to what I would like to see as this decade comes to a close.  The economy needs to improve.  Profits are down for most companies, and the last thing they need to deal with is a tax increase.  Keep the tax cut you promised me ($500, according to the Obama website) and invest it in the NIH and NSF.  According to www.sciencedebate2008.com, Obama proposes to double the budgets of the NIH and NSF.  This promise of funding for basic research should be a priority.  New discoveries will spur new business and help to solve problems facing the world, from disease in 3rd world countries to alternative energy sources.  In addition to the economy and research, I’d like to see the world’s impression of us improve.  This is one area in particular that I think Obama can excel at.  That’s all for now.  I’m done talking about politics for a while.  I hope Senator McCain and President-Elect Obama are taking a much deserved nap right now.  I think I deserve a nap too, but chemistry calls.

 I’m going to make this quick since I should be studying. 

 (1) I’m listening to Ingrid and have just decided that I should marry her.  I think I should call her up and tell her that she was my first love.  She’s only 28.  November 14th she is playing a show in Denver…who’s coming with me? 

 (b) I seriously want to hop on my skis.  I know the skiing sucks right now, but I still want to go. 

 (c) The Office was awesome tonight.  I wonder if Darrell would drive me and Ingrid to Ithica, where I could be the big red bear for Cornell.  I also kind of want to go as the Joker for Halloween. 

 (5) I got my post-Office laugh of the night when I calculated my tax credit using the Obama calculator.  We all know that I make over $250k on my grad student salary, and apparently I "will probably not get a tax cut under the Obama-Biden plan."  Why can’t they just say ‘Sorry.  You get a tax increase.’  But then again, I guess I don’t have to worry about that since I don’t make $250k.

 On the bright side, I remembered that command+control+shift+3 will take a screenshot on my mac.  See Jeff, I’m learning.  Now if I could just get PowerPoint (not responding) to quit.  Yes, I tried force quit and it isn’t working.  I’m cropping my screenshot and adding my fancy shadow and border with PP, and it froze when I clicked ’save as picture.’  Word did the same thing.  And now Excel.  Great.  All three Office programs are frozen and will not quit.  No picture for you.  That’s all for now.

 I received the following two emails yesterday:

 2:31 P.M. - "The [University] Police Department has been notified that a tornado is approaching from the west. Please take cover in a shelter designed to minimize damages. Please be careful."

 3:10 P.M. - "The email message that went out regarding a tornado was a TEST ONLY.  There is NOT a tornado coming through town. We apologize for the miscommunication."

Who sends out a test message without using the word ‘test’ or ‘drill’ in it?  My theory is that campus police wanted to determine the volume of phone calls their system could handle. Maybe the university should invest in tornado sirens. 

 I haven’t had the most productive day.  While waiting for the rotovap, I decided to recreate some yearbook photos using Yearbook Yourself.  See if you recognize anyone.  I’ll post the identities later in a comment.

 Last night, I was shocked to see a clump of brown shit, not only on the ledge around my deck but splattered on the screen of my kitchen window.  Cooking dinner wasn’t the same with this crude distraction blocking my normal view out the window.

 I am still pondering (a) what exactly this is, (b) where did it come from, and (3) how did shrapnel end up on my screen, over a foot away? 

 My research group is taking a trip to a Rockies game later in September.  One of the perks to being a large group and buying lots of tickets together is a complimentary scoreboard message.  Suggestions?

 The rules: (1) no advertisements, (2) must be 33 or fewer characters, including spaces and punctuation.

10:28 AM      "Jeff: i didn’t realize this until today 
                     http://www.apple.com/aperture/resources/plugins.html?sr=hotnews"

 Jeff inadvertently contributed to my lack of productivity today when he sent me the above message.  Basically, Apple’s nifty little piece of photo editing and organizing software "Aperture" has a bunch of plugins available for download.  I took a quick glance at them and did a double-take when I saw the flash album creator.  I lack the time and knowledge to create a custom, dynamic website, not to mention the money for a host that I would need to support php.  There are quite a few pieces of software available that can automatically create a web gallery (flash or html), but I have been largely disappointed by the outcome.  I built the galleries for my photography website last year using Adobe Lightroom and was impressed by the result, but frustrated by the lack of control that I had over modifiying the standard layout.  Enter the Flash Album Exporter plugin for Aperture.  While I still only have 5 layouts to choose from and a limited set of options, this plugin quickly pieced together a sexy flash gallery.

 I jumped back to the plugin tab to close it out and noticed the Aperture BorderFX plugin for creating batch custom borders.  It took some fiddling with to figure out all of the options, but I soon created a look that I was happy with (what do you think?).  My main gripe with BorderFX is that it crops my pictures vertically a bit when adding the border.  I can’t find a way around this, and had to go through one by one to adjust my picture within the frame.  Why can’t it just tack the border on the top and the bottom?  It isn’t clipping the sides at all.

 It didn’t take much time to figure out that this was the quick and easy way I had been looking for to update my year-old website.  I did a few trial runs, selected a look I was happy with, and started whipping out new, updated galleries.  Here’s the final look of the wildlife gallery:

 I ended up keeping the same homepage, but I had to change around some of the links.  This required a quick on-the-spot Flash refresher course as I tried to create a new, matching button.

 The new plugins still lack the control I would like to have.  I am still unable to add anything to the flash gallery layout, such as a logo or link back to the homepage.  Whatever.  I just updated my site in less than half a day.  It should be easy enough to keep up-to-date.  Click this link to check out the new look.  Let me know what you think.

 Lately, I have started watching the Showtime series "Weeds".  If you haven’t heard of it, check out the wikipedia article.  To summarize the premise behind the show (a) the husband of Weeds’ heroine, Nancy, dies; (b) Nancy becomes a weed dealer to support her family and their affluent lifestyle; (c) hilarity ensues.  The show is brilliant.  After watching the opening theme, it should be obvious to you that the show is best described as a satire about suburban life.

 I recently purchased a pair of shorts from Steep and Cheap that have a gusseted crotch.  I had no idea what a gusset was, didn’t really care, and forgot all about it after placing the order.  Three days later, I unwrapped the shorts, washed them, and broke them in on the bouldering wall at the gym.  The shorts were amazing.  They never got in my way as my legs reached for distant or awkward holds.  Could it be the gusseted crotch in action?

 In part, I attribute the success of the shorts to the 97% cotton / 3% spandex content.  They stretch!  Cool, but what about the gusset?  Upon close inspection, I found an extra seam and a wedge shaped piece of material that tapered off near the end of the normal inseam and reached peak width at the crotch.

(It’s been an odd day at work…I’ve googled both "wallet back pocket" and "gusseted crotch")

 After a bit of research, I have concluded that the extra material is for (a) extra mobility, (b) added comfort, and (c) increased durability of pants.  Gusseted crotches are popular in bike shorts, as they eliminate a seam on the shorts that rides directly on the bike saddle, causing discomfort.  Together with 3% spandex, the gusset makes one hell of a climbing short for me to wear while bouldering.  I look damn sexy in them too.