Based on what other people are saying, it has been unusually cold most of the time that I have been here. Yesterday was pretty chilly, and it even snowed briefly during the afternoon.

A couple weekends back I caught an episode of A Prairie Home Companion. It happened to be their “joke show”, which included “The Sound of Chickens”, a parody of “The Sound of Silence” by Simon and Garfunkel. The song was actually a repeat from last year’s joke show. Listen to it here.

That was a month-long blackout. Internet service was established in my new apartment today.

I have not posted yet that I have found a job in the Seattle area as a Research Scientist at Microsoft, mostly because I have been really busy as a result. More details on this will be coming.

I was contacted earlier this week by a system administrator back at UIUC about Proteus, my old workstation. Proteus is still hosting my old site, another former graduate student’s website, and the UIUC SIAM Chapter’s website.

Welcome to the year of the ox. Enjoy!

I have, while speaking to some of you on the phone, mentioned the yellowish haze often hovering over Denver. The photo below is an attempt to capture what I am talking about and was taken on December 10, 2008, which was a worse-than-average day in terms of appearance. It was not, however, the only time I have seen it so bad.

A few posts back, I promised (with conditions) some deer and turkey photos from my trip home last month. Here they are!

A coworker sent me a link to a transcript of an interesting talk titled “You and Your Research” that was delivered by Richard Hamming in 1986. It contains observations made and opinions formed by Hamming over his career — particularly the portion of his career at Bell Labs — about how to be a successful (or unsuccessful) scientist.

For some reason the following quote from today’s strip in Dinosaur Comics really resonates with me right now.