As I take the intro to MEMS course at UW, I am also reviewing basic undergrad chemistry because it has been a billion years since I’ve done so. I’m using Amazon.com: Principles of Modern Chemistry: Books: David W. Oxtoby,H. Pat Gillis which seems to be a fine book, but gosh do I think we teach chemistry bass-ackwords. I just don’t see the value, in 2006, of teaching first the classical bonding models and then much later reexamining from a quantum perspective. The classical models just seem brain-damaging to me. Learning things like “The formal charge on an atom in a Lewis diagram is simple to calculate…it would have a postive charge equal to its group number…from this positive charge, subtract the number of lone-pair valence electrons…and then subtract one half of the number of bonding electrons…” is just painful, it just seems like black magic alchemy when it isn’t founded on a deeper understanding of the underlying behaviour. Oh well.

Xia_soft_lith_review.pdf (application/pdf Object) – good overview of soft lithography (pdf)

* Rich on ipod backup and ipod diagnostics * Judysbook launched deals site a while ago, i’m late on this one * 111 search plugins for Berry411 now. Awesome. Oh and maps that don’t suck * Brett on 802.11n. Looks like you should wait * Rich on video conversion * Andy on improving board meetings. good ideas. i hate wading thru status.

• Don’t Buy Product Warranties – no shocker here. Anything the stores are pushing that hard can’t be good for you.
• How higher RPM drives rip you off – some contention around this but interesting
• Hidden light bulb camera – cool
• Parallel Jaw pliers – also cool
• Han Solo in lego carbonite – ouch
• Unfortunate domain names – very ouch
• Unlimited gmail addresses – wish our stupid exchange server would do this
• AStores. interesting, I guess I should have one.
• Viewscore – aggregated product reviews. Would be nice to combine with Astores.
• Bob points to Hikipedia – useful
• Winsnap in here is a nice replacement for the windows screencap tool
• Getting markdown to work with editpadpro – nice, wish this kind of linking was easier to do on Windows.
• New Wikicalc beta. Just love the idea.
• Sharpcast to cover all file types. Might be worth trying again.
• DropMyRights – useful, previously blogged.
• Animated BCS Race – go bucks
• Adventures in cablecards – I will wait until football is over before I dip my toes back into this pool.

UPDATE 11/6/06: I’ll leave the original entry below for history but Alienware finally worked this out with me. I received a full refund. So at the end of the day they were reasonable. I have to credit Amex with assistance, I am sure that raising a dispute via them helped to resolve things. Original entry follows.

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Why? Because I ordered an Alienware box in July, it arrived broken in August, and it is now October and I have yet to see the fixed box returned to me. I have moved on to trying to get my money back. I have contacted support via phone and email so many times I’ve lost count, and all I get is handwaving.

* Alienware Sucks! – the classic with a complete guide to providing pressure on recalcitrant merchants. Even merits a small WIkipedia mention * Another guy who managed to get a refund * some guy has created a t-shirt immortalizing the sentiment * another set of gripes * plenty of forum posts about unhappy alienware users – for instance, or here * Reseller ratings which shows a lot of dissatisfaction, and dropping overall scores

Personally I am contacting American Express in an attempt to get my money back, I am sending mail to Alienware daily. I’ve given up on phone support as you will a) spend a lot of time on hold, b) have to reeducate someone new each day (Groundhog Day), and c) learn that they don’t know what is going on and can’t find anyone to help you.

Tong Family Blog: No more A9 Rewards – well why the hell will i ever use a9 again? the only point was the reward.

I don’t think I’d do a better job than this guy – Bowl Championship Series Ratings. Obviously the Buckeyes control their own fate. The interesting discussion is the #2 position which USC currently owns. It is amazing to think that if USC wins out and say an Auburn or Florida wins out, USC would go to the title game and the SEC team would get screwed.

A reader recommended this – Haunt Controller - Software for automating your haunt - holiday display - animatronics – PC software that interfaces with these kit74 relay boards. Looks kind of cool. I think it is too late for me to play around with this halloween but I would certainly consider for next. I guess it doesn’t give me materially different controllability than my DMX software and dimmers but it is a lot cheaper.

I am refreshing my education – links for ME 504 at UW

* Class Page * Feynman’s talk – handed out at first lecture * Streaming video of lectures * MyUW page

* welcome to hawk central – Iowa City newspaper coverage * Blog at the Des Moines Register; Des Moines Register Iowa section

Consider this early pre-reading for the trip to East Lansing.

EDSBS ? Archive ? JOHN L. SMITH FAILS TO FINISH SANDWICH, PUZZLE

EAST LANSING, MI–Michigan State Coach John L. Smith was unable to finish a pastrami on rye sandwich at Side Streets Deli today, citing the overly generous portions of lunchmeat on the sandwich and the “really thick bread” it was served on.

“It was just too much for me,” said Smith, packing the remaining half of the sandwich into wax paper sheepishly. “All that meat and bread. I felt pretty confident going into the second piece, but one bite and I was finished. They really pile on the meat at that place, I tell you.”

J pointed out to me there is a book about “Charlie Weis and Notre Dame’s Rise to Glory” which seems a little odd, since you generally need to both achieve glory and rise to have a “Rise to Glory”. I decided to do a little amazon sleuthing to compare Charlie with some other coaches who just maybe have a greater claim to a “rise to glory” given that they have won national championships – Tressel, Carr, Stoops, Carrol, Paterno. I’m looking for books with the coach’s name in the title, or where he gets an authoring credit of some form:

* Amazon.com: charlie weis. Sure enough, we have “The New Gold Standard: Charlie Weis and Notre Dame’s Rise to Glory”:amazon written by some 3rd party. And we have “Echoes of Notre Dame Football: The Greatest Stories Ever Told (Echoes of)”:amazon with a foreword by the Super Genius himself. But most damningly, we have “No Excuses: One Man’s Incredible Rise Through the NFL to Head Coach of Notre Dame”:amazon coauthored by “one of football’s greatest minds who has helped shape today’s game” – if you think today’s game is all about pillow soft defenses I guess. * Jim Tressel – just one book – “What It Means to Be a Buckeye: Jim Tressel and Ohio State’s Greatest Players”:amazon. Jim writes a foreword here, the book is not about him though. Kind of akin to the 2nd book in the Weis listings, the least self-aggrandizing title. * LLoyd Carr. Nada. Apparently people in Michigan can’t write. Or read. * Bob Stoops. Two titles, the obligatory “What It Means To Be A Sooner: Barry Switzer, Bob Stoops And Oklahoma’s Greatest Players (What It Means)”:amazon and “Heir to the Sooner Legacy: The Championship Story of Oklahoma Coach Bob Stoops”:amazon written by some 3rd party. Apparently people in Oklahoma are doubly infinitely more literate than people in Michigan. * Pete Carroll. No “what it means to be a trojan” title, just a 3rd party championship season “Conquest: Pete Carroll And The Trojans’ Climb To The Top Of The College Football Mountain”:amazon title. * Joe Paterno. You don’t coach longer than Stoops and Tressel have been alive without getting a truckload of books written about you. Deservedly so. Some authored by him, most not. If I were to buy one, it would be Quotable Joe

So I’d have to say – Paterno is the clear accomplishment winner – great accomplishments, long career, many books. Stoops, Tressel, Carroll all seem to be right in line with their accomplishments. Carr needs a better PR firm. And Weis wins the pompous bombast title – maybe he should be coaching defense instead of writing a fricking book.

Last book posting for a little while…I am heads down on a lot of other things and probably won’t get a lot of books read for a while.

* “Three Days To Never”:amazon by Tim Powers. If you’ve never read Powers before, this is a good place to start. Good characters, the typical Powers scenario of magic and evil just under the surface of our rational world. If you have read Powers before, I’m not sure this will add anything to your life. * “Gone for Good”:amazon by Harlan Coben. A decent twisty coben mystery. Won’t stick to your ribs but a good beach/airplane book. * “The Enemy”:amazon by Lee Child. Another great reacher story. Earlier in his career. I think I like the later career stories better. * “The Man Who Stayed Behind”:amazon by Rittenberg. Very engaging memoir by someone who lived thru some of the most dramatic events of the 20th century. You can really feel the revolutionary fervor of mao’s china. On reflection it seems amazing how well the america revolution ended up – the quick settling into a durable democratic structure is quite a different than what china went thru or what france went thru. * “Frameshift”:amazon by Robert Sawyer. been on the shelf forever. a decent medical mystery with better-than-average characters who you can really care about.

On other book fronts:

* Brad Feld’s vacation book list. Probably some gems in here * This Collecterz thingy might be worth trying. I couldn’t get their site to accept any credit cards tho, all my banks rejected the charges. Oh well.

* Mechanisms and Movement – online resource for mechanical motion mechanisms – how to convert rotary motion to linear, irregular, etc. great great stuff. * Lindsay Books – great catalog of all kinds of tool and craft goodness. * Surplus Center – all kinds of motors, pumps, mechanisms. pneumatics and electrical too.

Apparently I have failed to link to the system I use for my primary fog system at halloween – fogmachines. The system hasbeen trouble-free for me for years and puts out a ton of fog. It is very wet of course, but then it is usually wet around here at Halloween anyway