Post Homecoming, Pre-Unviverse

In cosmically cool news, a refrigerator probe launched by the European Space Agency (the EU's answer to NASA) successfully touched down on a comet two times as far away from Earth as Mars and about 1.5 miles across at its widest point. (xkcd covered it live). This is the first time anything human made has purposefully landed on a comet. The Philae lander is taking pictures and recording sound, and taking and analyzing samples and what it has sent back (with a 27 minute delay, of course) is pretty amazing.


In relatively inconsequential local news, homecoming was a lot of fun. I didn't go to the game (I know, shame on me, no excuses, how could you, etc.), but I got to help present UA Rube on the Mall. We were in the College of Engineering tent, where all the best food (and the coolest people) were, sharing a table with the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (Bake sale!), who were pretty cool. We showed a video of our machine so far (from the beginning cup cascade to the pan zip line), and, when little kids seemed really interested, I showed the MTD/waterfall piece (that I painted!) from last year's machine. It was really cool to see people, especially kids, so interested in something that I spend too much time doing. Oh, and the homecoming parade was pretty cool, too. Funny thing - the only Greek float that got a cheer from the COE tent was the Theta Tau (engineering fraternity) float - the rest seemed to be met with death stares. The Society of Automotive Engineers, who showed their Baja and Formula cars in the parade, got huge cheers, as did the band. I guess we're all slightly vindictive nerds.

It was fantastic seeing my parents over the weekend. I'm glad they came, and I think they had a good time too. They got to see a lot of their old friends, see the campus again (including a personal tour of the rec center), and (of course), see their darling daughter again.

We've started playing with solenoids (large coils of wire) in lab, using magnets to induce current, inspiring all the manner of dirty jokes. In learning about electricity and magnetism, I've also learned a lot of right-handed physics gang signs along the way.
We've almost finished reading a play, La dama del alba, in Spanish. It's pretty depressing - it's a soap opera with a characterization of Death in a pilgrim woman, which leads to all kinds of shenanigans and accusations. I'm enjoying it so far.
The theater dance of the past few weeks has been "Sherry Baby" from Jersey Boys, featuring an annoyingly high falsetto singer and a tricky six-step.
Nothing that exciting is happening in my other classes, but I'm powering through. I'm going to be okay this semester.

Song of the week (because I've got xkcd on the mind and it's funny) is "Every Major's Terrible," based on "Modern Major General" from Pirates of Penzance.

(Original comic here)