The Postponement of a Dream

Hello faithful readers. As many of you know, last June I submitted my application to NASA’s astronaut candidate program. This is the program in which one starts if one wants to be an astronaut with NASA. I have been waiting to hear from them as the interviews were supposed to have already started. Well, I just went to check my application status, and it said that the “vacancy has been canceled.”

So, my dream of leaving orbit (or at least getting in to orbit) has been postponed for the time being. I guess it is not much surprise in these trying economic times. This is much better than a rejection letter, that is for sure.

Thanks to all for your support.

25 Things About Masagua

So this is a thing that’s going on facebook right now, and Greta tagged me, so here I go. I thought that it would make a good blog entry, too.

1. I am sad most of the time, but I am not as depressed as I used to be. I am learning to tell the difference.
2. I long for close, dear friends who are interested in me and what I think and say. I think my personality might make this impossible, though.
3. I ache for tenderness, but find none.
4. I would sacrifice just about anything to be part a manned trip to Mars or other long deep space mission.
5. I feel like I am a terrible father.
6. Morag and Katya are probably the best things that have ever happened to me.
7. I long for intimacy with men, but, in general, I hate gay men.
8. For 2.5 year or so, I was in a polyamourous relationship with Morag and a man named David. It didn’t work out so well. I ended up slicing up my left wrist with a kitchen knife. Never going back again.
9. I have had sex with 8 of my facebook friends. You know who you are. Any others care to guess?
10. When I was 21 or so, I left my home and job on a whim and drove from Medina, OH to Wake Forest University to confess my love to Aaron Gibson.
11. I secretly rejoice when cops are killed. I was twice threatened with bodily harm by police, had my guitar stolen by police, was cut with wire cutters by police (I’ll show you the scar), watched a woman get sexually molested by police while being stopped for no reason and forced to sit in his car while they called the drug dogs – they didn’t find anything and let us go.
12. I would like to know what it’s like to kill another human being.
13. When people get angry with me or disagree with me, I fantasize about doing them bodily harm.
14. I think it’s funny when people think that I think that I better than them. Give me break. Do you have any idea what I think about myself? If you did, you would wail.
15. People don’t seem to understand that when I say that people are stupid, I am including myself. Hello, I am a person… (Stupid!)
16. I am most happy after a nice long run.
17. I stay up too late all the time. Boo.
18. I am jealous of just about everyone.
19. I am absolutely terrified of death and have had panic attacks about it.
20. My father is so pathetically weak that he chose his piece of shit partner over me.
21. I love to take walks with my daughter.
22. I wish I could just enjoy things without having to feel like I need to be “good” at them.
23. I enjoy getting injections of anesthetic prior to dental procedures.
24. I think that people who believe in God are fucking morons.
25. I like the word “fuck.”
26. This is very therapeutic, and I think that I will do it again.

Masagua’s Christmas Wish List

Hi masagua fans.  Well, here it is.  The moment you have all been waiting for.  Yes, it’s what to get me for Christmas.  I have conveniently included links for you!

Star Trek: The Next Generation – Complete Series

This is probably what I want most of all. It’s a high ticket item, but TNG is probably my favorite TV show of all time. It will keep me company as I run on the ‘mill over those cold winter months.

Gore-Tex Storm Pant

OK, this, too, is a high ticket item, but damn Gore-Tex is wonderful stuff. This will keep my leggies warm and dry when I run. Size: Medium

Gore-Tex Storm Jacket

The jacket that goes with the pants. Size: medium.

Hand-Sliced Iberico de Bellota Paleta

Oh. My. God. This is cured Spanish ham, but saying that is like saying Rachmaninoff is piano music. This stuff is from free range pigs in Spain that eat acorns. Some wine with this is a must, but I could provide that myself in a pinch.

Pata Negra Jamon Iberico – Deli Sliced

A different kind of Spanish ham. Also, Spanish Jamon Serrano would be good. Just be sure get it sliced because it is difficult to get it sliced thinly enough by hand (as I found out when Morag and I went to a Tapas place for my birthday, and their slicer was broken). Any of these hams should be served with small slices of crusty bread.

Aged Manchego Cheese

You can get this at a decent supermarket. Yummy.

Brut Rosé Champagne

You know how I love it.

Laptop RAM

To make my chess engine run faster! If only it could make me run faster.

Ruby Port

A new love.

Pedro Ximenez Port

An old love.

Hoodie!

I like my geeky math hoodie. Maybe I need a black Linux hoodie.

Well, that’s all I can think of for now. Of course I always like gift certificates, gifts that slosh, dinners out, CDs, etc.

My Favorite Emails – Part Two

Okay, masagua fans (all one of you).  Here it is, part two.  This is more from Alan.  This is really incredible.  Yes, people like this really do exist in the world.  Again, it just seems okay with everybody.  One of the main themes of this email is Alan blaming me for my Dad’s lack of money.  Classic!  This email has been edited for length.

<begin email>

Josh,

I waited to respond until today out of respect for your schedule.

Your father and I live with the mistakes you made every day.  Because of interest on credit cards and delayed payments, he is still paying in so many ways for the drug deal you made in Louisville and the college you were thrown out of in Yellow Springs.  He was already in debt in a huge way from the divorce and he [sic] and Pat’s life together( do you even know what the settlement was? What he did to keep you in his daily life?)  It isn’t any of my business other than it affects our lives today.

Your father gave you so much and at every turn backed you. And now you say for once?  I found it funny that you included that because I’ve always said he never backed me up when it came to you!

<…>

I don’t control Floyd. We have a great relationship and you KNOW in your family it’s the strongest and longest.  He isn’t taking a side by attending your graduation.  I wouldn’t think of trying to influence to try to punish you.  Grow up.  You have a doctorate and you still use this kind of childish response?   Like saying, “maybe we should have shamed her or beaten her, too, would that have made you happy?”  God, emotionally you must be like 12.

Don’t say that all I think about is money.  I could say the same thing to you because you’ve cost your father so much of it.  Do you realize he drives a 17 year old car that the paint is falling off because he can’t afford to have it painted, has little money for clothes, not much of a retirement and STILL has to work two jobs at the age of 57 to try to keep his head above water.  Our expenses here are minimal for Florida, his share of our expenses has ALWAYS been modest. He has NEVER had to pay more than what a modest apartment would have cost.   Because of his financial situation we can’t travel, we can’t enjoy luxury that normally goes with the aging process. Don’t blame me.

So if your reference to not responding to your feelings has to do with little connection from Floyd and I [sic], again, I am NOT controlling him.  I do remind him about birthdays, anniversaries, visiting you, calling you.   It is a bit frustrating because NO ONE ever knows what MOOD you’ll be in.  You can call and sometimes your [sic] talkative and sometimes you make it very clear that you don’t want to talk and you aren’t nice about it.

This is one of those times that people make excuses for your rude and selfish behavior.  I’ve been listening to these excuses from your family members right from the beginning.  It’s always been about YOU.  Keeping YOU happy.  Tip toe ing [sic] around the house because YOU stayed up and drank too much the night before.  Avoiding talking about something vital because YOU will explode. ( NOTE previous email)  Keeping secrets from the Boyds so they won’t know everything about YOU.

God and Delta airlines willing, your father will attend and love and support you like he always has.  ( we made the mistake of buying our tickets from Delta and didn’t realize about the possible pilot strike).  At your request, I’ll stay home.  Please remember while you are celebrating that it was the love and support of Pat, Floyd and Morag and ( probably the Boyds ) that got you there.  It wasn’t just Josh.

I love you.  I hate it when you act like this. This email has concentrated on the wrong things you’ve done and why I couldn’t let your attempt to control my actions go without comment because of all the horrible things you have so selfishly done that affect our lives even today.

<…>

I do recognize all the positive things in your life and the changes you’ve made for the good.  I sincerely hope we can be friends again someday. That will be up to you.

Alan

<end email>

Oh my God, it just gets better, doesn’t it?  You all owe me a beer the next time I visit you.  And send Alan a thank you for lightening your day.  Lord have mercy…

My Favorite Emails – Part One

Hi all. Welcome back. It’s been a while. I have decided to start a series of my favorite emails that I have received from others. The first is from Alan Parkhurst. Alan is my Dad’s “partner’ or whatever. He is a total piece of shit. He was forced on me like a bully would take lunch money when I was a child. Much later in life, with the help of a social worker (they ain’t all bad), I learned that now that I was a big grownup, I didn’t have to have him in my life. Newsflash.

My mom and Alan didn’t get along so well. For my Ph.D. graduation, they were both planning to attend. I sent them an email asking them to “play nice” for my sake. I was very nervous about it, and I was pissed that I was nervous. Here is Alan’s response.

<Begin Email>

Dear Joshua,

I’m glad that you are touched that I will be honoring you by coming to your graduation. That was my intention. On my part, you have nothing to worry about. I don’t remember your mother and I EVER making a scene in public. I thought the relationship between you and I [sic] was doing well and that you appreciated what I brought to your father’s life.

I am a little surprised after all you put me through in our early relationship that you would have the balls to “warn” me. If you remember correctly I defended your mother on more than one occasion when you were badmouthing her.

I was VERY hurt during our last visit that your daughter told me that “I wasn’t a part of this family” and both you and Morag let that comment go. I didn’t sleep for four days. Children repeat what they hear. You heard it and chose not to comment or apologize, yet here you are “protecting” your special day.

I do believe that it is more important for your Mom to be there on this special day, so if anyone stays away, I will. I’ll give it some thought, I’m sorry that you would look to the negative when I was just being positive. When we’ve had problems, all I’ve ever wanted to do was iron them out by talking about them but that’s something your family has never done. If this is part of your therapy I would welcome a dialog so you understand both sides of a story. I’d love some closure as well and I’d be happy to wait until after your special day and all the stress you are under now has passed.

Pat, do you have any input here?

Alan

<End Email>

Is that a riot or what? There is just so much I can say, but I think I’ll let Alan speak for himself for now. I will post more of Alan’s emails in the future; they get better. Apparently, this was all kosher with my father. If someone spoke to my daughter that way, I would probably have something to say about it.

Narcissist

The trees that are so far away
And the Sun’s warm smile
For a moment I cried so hard
For what was pain in me

The subdermal ripples gasp
And the sweat it smells

For this it’s true
I am more than you

Race Report: The United States Air Force Half Marathon, Wright Patterson Air Force Base, 20 September, 2008

I actually thought of doing the full version of this race for my Fall marathon this time, but it was too early. It turned out to be a great half marathon four weeks before the Columbus marathon, which I am planning to run. I was flying solo on this one, i.e. no road crew along with me. My daughter didn’t want to get up so early, and Morag didn’t want to leave her home alone with us so far away.

I woke up at five and did all the usual things. The race was set to start at 8:30, and I left around 6:15. I thought that this would be ample time to make it to Dayton, but there was a nasty accident on I-70 that delayed me for a while. Also, when I arrived at the race, we had to wait a LONG time to park. So, I parked at about 8:20, and I still had to change, catch the shuttle to the start and, um, visit the port-o-potty. Well, I was in the john when I heard the start of the race. No trouble, there were thousands of people running, so I knew it would not be a problem. I just had to dodge a bunch of slow pokes, well slower-than-me pokes, for the first few miles.

The first few miles were pretty hilly, and I had my Garmin on the wrong screen, so I was a little off pace. I quickly made up the time, though. Other than the airplanes, the course wasn’t that great. It even went on a divided highway for a bit, which was bizarre. I was worried that there were going to be a lot of military retards, but there weren’t too many. I mean, you always get the dumbasses yelling “thank you for your service, sir” to the pigs and stuff like that, but there was nothing out of the ordinary. The stations were good; they even had sponges, which I had never experienced before. I liked them.

The finish was great.  The runners ran down the final stretch through several old airplanes lined up on either side.  Incredible.

Plane Along the Finish

I was very happy with the way I ran. I was able to keep form pretty well. I ran the hills well: remaining patient on the ascents and letting gravity pull me like crazy on the descents, just allowing myself to skip off my legs. I still don’t understand why some people speed up on the ascents and slow down on the descents. It doesn’t make any sense. Several times, someone would pass me going up a hill, and then I would pass them right at the top.

After they race, they had some old military farts (generals or something) shaking hands and giving out medals. There was free pizza, but for the beer you had to pay $2. Well, I didn’t have $2, so I pathetically walked up to the beer counter and asked if they took cards. “No.” I walked away when I felt this tug. “Do you want a beer?” asked a lady who worked at the beer counter. She hooked me up with a free beer. It was awesome.

Here are the splits according to my GPS device, which differed from my chip time a little (and not in my favor).

Mile 1: 7:44
Mile 2: 7:55
Mile 3: 6:54
Mile 4: 7:48
Mile 5: 7:46
Mile 6: 7:48
Mile 7: 7:21
Mile 8: 7:41
Mile 9: 7:40
Mile 10: 7:36
Mile 11: 7:35
Mile 12: 7:17
Mile 13: 7:33
Mile 13.1: 0:41

Total time: 1:40:10
Pace: 7:39 min/mi

Results
Overall: 150/2,496
Age Group Men 30-34: 25/160

I am thrilled. My goal was to run 1:40, and I did! This gives me great confidence for the Columbus marathon coming up on October 19, 2008.

You can see pictures from the race on my flickr page.

20 Miles With Ike

I did a 20 mile training run on Sunday. For those that don’t know, you need to do this if you want to run a marathon. Anyway, running 20 miles is hard enough, but I headed out right as the remnants of Hurricane Ike were rolling into town. It was just crazy! Okay, for the first 6-8 miles, it was just really windy. But then it got really windy. I mean shit was falling down everywhere.

The trail that I run on is a paved multi-use trail along the Olentangy river. There are a couple little wood chip diversions through the woods that I normally take. Well, I went to take one, and it wasn’t there! Well, it was there, but trees has fallen down on it so it wasn’t there. Also, I kept hearing the sound of what I thought was lightning. I looked around and realized that it was trees snapping. Yikes. As I ran, limbs and such fell around me. It was like being shelled. I figured it was highly unlikely that anything would actually hit me, so I ran on. Nothing hit me, but it was quite an adventure. At one point I looked over at the river to discover that it was flowing in the wrong direction.

Funnily enough, it was one of my best training runs ever. I managed to stay pretty strong for the duration and finished strong, which is always a goal. Maybe I should run in tropical depressions more often. It seems to beat running in my temperate depressions.

When I got home, of course, the power was out. It was out for 20 hours. Half of our neighborhood still has no power two days later. All the schools are closed. Etc, etc.

Hooray for the LHC!!

I am so excited!  Today, CERN fired up the Large Hadron Collider for the first time.  For those of you who have missed this story, the Large Hadron Collider (or “LHC”) is the most powerful particle accelerator.  The (very basic) principle of a particle collider is that it is able to accelerate atomic particles to speeds approaching that of light.  The particles collide and subatomic particles are produced and can be observed.  One particular (haha) particle that people are looking for is known as the Higgs boson.  This theoretical particle explains mass.  Did you hear that?  It EXPLAINS MASS (if it exists).  Please learn a little more about all this stuff.  You can start with a great article on howstuffworks.com.

How the LHC Works.

Of course, on the down side, people still exist in the world. And people fucking suck. People are claiming that the LHC will destroy the world. These claims are baseless, as any sane physicist will tell you. Why are people such fucking morons? Jesus Christ, I need a drink. In fact, a 16 year old girl in India reportedly committed suicide because of these doomsday fears. Who will be held responsible for that? She was just a kid. Maybe instead of a lawsuit against CERN, we should file charges against the fucking worthless pieces of shit who spread this crap. Damn.

Topalov is at it again

Hello faithful readers.  I know that I have been neglecting you, but the Olympics have been on.  What’s more, we are entering politcal party convention season.  Needless to say, I don’t have much time at the computer.  But, as you all know, one of my favorite things to do is to point out the many ways that people suck.  I just read an interview with chess grandmaster Veselin Topalov.  Topalov is one of the World’s top chess players, yet he still manages to be a bozo.  Perhaps you have heard of “Toilet Gate.”  In a championship match GM Topalov accused GM Kramnik of using the bathroom too often.  BO ZO.  You can read about it on the above-linked Wikipedia article.

Anyway, Topalov is at it again.  Let me quote him.  Regarding competing against computers (as if this were still an issue) Topalov said: “The problem for man is time. In a game with unlimited time per move, man will still win.”  This is just absurd.  Firstly, what the hell does “unlimited time” mean?  I think a computer will definitely win in that case because its human opponent will eventually perish.  That small detail aside, computers are better at chess than humans.  Period.  It’s a fact.  Take any human on the planet, match him up with a copy of Rybka 3 (for example) run on a laptop you can get at Best Buy, and the computer will win.

It still seems hard for humans to get over the fact that computers can beat them at chess.  I don’t know why they can’t get over it; it’s just another reason why people suck, I guess (the fact that they can’t get over it, not the fact they lose to computers).  As Noam Chomsky said, a computer beating a human at chess is about as interesting as a bulldozer winning a weightlifting competition.  I can’t do better than that.

I think that Rybka should take Topalov up on this challenge.  Of course, you can’t have unlimited time controls, but something could be worked out.  How about we let Topalov play white in all the games, give him as much time as he wants and limit the computer’s next move to the amount of time Topalov took.  I’d like to see Grandmaster Topalov claim that the computer was cheating in the toilet.  B O Z O.