Let The Bad Singing Begin

Well, unfortunately I have fallen prey to bad reality television. I regularly watch American Idol. They are now in the process of eliminating two women and two men each week until they are down to six each, female and male. There have been some contestants who have really shown themselves to have talent and stage presence. Too bad none of the guys brought that tonight. Just felt so let down by the whole thing that I wanted to blog about it.

And what is up with the judges? Are these performances that different if you are sitting in the studio? Maybe it really does make a difference. I thought, however, that the reason they watched the monitors was to get an idea of what the general public is seeing. Guess they regularly just turn those off now because there is no way the comments from the judges are in sync with what we are seeing and hearing on our t.v.

I checked the AI boards to see if people agreed with me to any extent. Some people do but it seems most people just pick a favorite and stick with him or her come hell or high water or just some absolutely horrid singing. It is almost sad. I'm sorry that both pickle and deuce (my nicknames for two contestants) are getting pimped by Simon and co. I'd like to see both of them gone this week! Oh well, I'm hooked now.

Piled Higher And Deeper

So the news reporting here sucks (see a previous entry on city-touring cokers). The really big campus near by does not suck. It's too bad that it is one of the most prestigious universities in western canada because I don't want a job at an R1 institution. My job search would be more likely to end with success if I was surrounded by a bunch of smaller institutions. But the U doesn't suck.

Why, you ask? Because really big U's can bring in speakers that smaller schools wouldn't have a chance to get. And big U's don't notice when people who have never been there show up for talks. It's just one more lost student. Weeeee. And who was impressive enough to bring me out to the prestigious U? Was it Grubbs or Schrock? No. Was it Prof. Kohn? No. Was it Dr. J. Cham? Yes. Oh yeah baby. That's right. It was not a Nobel Prize Laureate or someone of nearly equal stature. Baahahaha. Nope. He draws a comic strip. That's right. He is the creator and author of Piled Higher and Deeper. He gave an hour long talk on procrastination. It was terrific! I bought both of his books (at 50% off retail - woohoo!) and got them signed. It was the highlight of my week (this was the end of January but I've been a little neglectful of the blog so I just finished writing this today).

So, although this big U is detrimental to the job search, it is terrific for creating events that cost me money and are completely void of scholarly learning. Fun times!

Interesting Result... For A Chemist

As seen over at The Disgruntled Chemist:

You scored as Mathematics. You should be a Math major! Like Pythagoras, you are analytical, rational, and when are always ready to tackle the problem head-on! Mathematics 92% Engineering 75% Biology 67% Dance 58% Anthropology 58% Philosophy 58% Psychology 58% English 50% Journalism 50% Sociology 50% Art 42% Linguistics 42% Chemistry 42% Theater 33% What is your Perfect Major? created with QuizFarm.com

As seen over at That's Why They Call Me "Doctor":

You are a Black Coffee

At your best, you are: low maintenance, friendly, and adaptable At your worst, you are: cheap and angsty You drink coffee when: you can get your hands on it Your caffeine addiction level: high

What Kind of Coffee Are You?

Weeee Winter Olympics

Well, I just love the winter olympics. In a strange way I am glad they are over. I have already noticed a marked improvement on my daytime activity/accomplishments. The condo is noticably cleaner and I have been better about cooking dinner again. None of that last minute dinner out because I was busy watching skiing moguls or something similar.

I'm not sure how I feel about the new scoring system for figure skating. It is my favorite winter olympic sport (yes, hockey is a close second but I'm just not yet entirely canadian). That said, however, the new scoring system just isn't doing it for me. The only division that I felt like it had impact was on the ice dancing pairs. The routines were noticably harder and more technical. I felt like the new scoring system brought the "sport" back to the division.

It was the worst for the pairs division. My mom said it best when she said that all the routines were the same with different music. Yes, the lift might be before the spin or vice versus but all the teams did basically the same lifts, spins, and such. Maybe I am just not knowledgeable enough. Maybe there were subtle differences that I just didn't appreciate. It seemed that most of the teams did the same lifts with very similiar entrances and exits. The spins were so repetative that at one point I was sure I had seen the team skate already. I'm really not happy about that.

Then there are the single skaters. When did it become more advantageous to attempt a quad jump and not stick the landing versus a clean triple? Blerg. I dunno how I feel about that. I mean, on one hand it is sure to continue to elevate the athletic level of skaters. On the other, I prefer to watch programs where the people on the podium are not the ones who were on their respective butts during the skating routine.

Also, what is this crap about the new scoring system making the competitions more fair. There is clearly still favoritism. I won't name names but when one skater simply skates from one end to the other doing cross-overs and then does a jump or spin at each end it shouldn't garner artistic scores that are superior to other skaters, who, I dunno, have ARTISTRY in their skating! Grrrr. I've only taken a couple of skating classes and never progressed past the waltz jump and 1 minute routines... maybe there is something I am missing... but I don't think so.

Where's Coker?

Or rather, where's the coker?

So, I've decided I don't much care for the local news crew here. We (the bf and I) were watching the evening news one night in February when a story aired about a coker being transported out of town. For those of you who aren't familiar with petroleum refining processes and equipment, a coker is basically a really big cylindrical structure in a refinery.

Okay, so whoop-de-do, right? Turns out the bf thinks it would be fairly impressive to see them move this monstrosity down the city streets. After all, it is so big that they need to remove signal lights and turn street lights 90 degrees. I can see the validity of checking it out. Plus, we didn't have much else going on (we might as well be married given the excitement of our Friday nights).

The news reporter said that they were transporting the coker and that it had just turned down a particular road not to far from where we live. I finish up my little project and approximately 5 minutes after the airing of the report we leave the house. The route that the coker is scheduled to pass along is nicely laid out such that we basically cannot miss it. The map shown during the broadcast indicated that it would be traveling on the major roadway nearly in our backyard. If it travels an average of 15 km an hour (I would assume that is the highway speed) and was 5 km off when we heard the news, then we should be able to catch it - no problem.

And we now arrive at the point where I have decided I don't care very much for the local news. We could not "find" the convoy with a really big truck with an even bigger piece of industrial equipment strapped to it with a bunch of FLASHING LIGHTS. WTF? We saw the city management working to put back the street and signal lights though. Yeah, because (apparently) the newscast was pre-recorded but they didn't bother to tell us. Hey, the footage was dark. Who would think they would disrupt traffic any earlier than 11pm? I guess we were just to conclude that it couldn't possibly be a l-i-v-e news reports. Grrrr. Not a fan. Not at all.