Woah... I was serious when I said I was entering the dreaded stage of "everybody is freakin' getting married." Now one of my exes is engaged. Congrats, Brian!

BTW, last night was my first bachelorette party. I thought of derailing our plans by heading over to Swingin' Richards (the male strip club near Tech), but instead we had a great, wholesome time at Shoguns then bowling.

Engineer-nerd alert:

Watchmaker With Time to Lose - because of the difficulty of constant conversions to "Mars time", NASA enlisted the help of a watchmaker to create a watch that runs 39 minutes slow.

Seems like it would be easy to just tell a watch to run slower... but obviously not. As always, you can get more detailed info on how watches work from How Stuff Works.

(link courtesy of metafilter)

Update: Grad School Race 2004

Temperatures Hit Record Lows in Northeast

Every school above the Mason Dixon line just lost 20 points.

Back on the train,
I ask why did I come again?
Can I confess
I've been hanging around your old address?

And the years have proved
To offer nothing since you moved.
You're long gone
I can't move on.

Everything but the Girl - Missing

Did I mention already that this song has been haunting me (almost to the point of harassment) for the last month? Like a radio-stalker... interesting parallel. This proved true:
"I've learned that you cannot make someone love you.
All you can do is stalk them and hope they panic and give in."

I just finished The Devil Wears Prada (Laura Weisberger). Which has a similar vibe to The Nanny Diaries (i.e., a relentlessly demanding boss, cute love interest, tiny apartment and roommate troubles) with several laugh-out-loud moments (but none that had me in hysterics like Nanny Diaries). I would like another book of this sort... any suggestions from the peanut gallery?

Some people have a hard life... this guy isn't one of them.

Man says he’s addicted to cable; wants to sue Charter

"Dumouchel blames Charter for his TV addiction, his wife’s 50-pound weight gain and his children’s being “lazy channel surfers,” according to a Fond du Lac police report."

Here's the kicker:
"According to the report, Dumouchel told Charter employees he plans to sue because his cable connection remained intact four years after he tried to get it canceled.

The result was that he and his family got free cable from August of 1999 to Dec. 23, 2003."

Of all the addictions I can think of, a cable addiction that doesn't drain your bank account sounds like a pretty good deal.

(link courtesy of the Drudge report)

Three things: More quotes from psychologists (that I don't think I've posted before):

"Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten."
B. F. Skinner

"A particularly beautiful woman is a source of terror. As a rule, a beautiful woman is a terrible disappointment."
Carl Gustav Jung

"The juvenile seasquirt wanders through the sea searching for a suitable rock or coral to cling to and make its home for life. For this task it has a rudimentary nervous system. When it finds its spot and takes root, it doesn't need its brain anymore so it eats it. It's rather like getting tenure."
Daniel C. Dennett

Obviously I can't be the only one with a blog not to mention a certain celebrity wedding this weekend... While searching for a list of the shortest celebrity marriages, I came across the worst pun I've seen in a while... "Cher thought she wanted some Allman joy, but was really more in the mood for a Mounds." Oh NO. Anyway, turns out the Britney annulment article listed some very brief marriages for us:
"Dennis Hopper and the Mamas and Papas' Michelle Phillips were married for
eight days in 1970. Zsa Zsa Gabor was apparently married to Felipe de Alba - her eighth husband - for one day in 1982, though since the wedding was performed by a ship's captain at sea, and she was still married to her seventh husband at the time, the validity of the union is in question. "

What about Dennis Rodman and Carmen Electra? Their marriage was a whopping nine days long. Ahh, true love.

Back on my liberal soap box:
(Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr...)

Bush's Budget for 2005 Seeks to Rein In Domestic Costs

"Facing a record budget deficit, Bush administration officials say they have drafted an election-year budget that will rein in the growth of domestic spending without alienating politically influential constituencies. [mmmmhmmm]

They said the president's proposed budget for the 2005 fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1, would control the rising cost of housing vouchers for the poor, require some veterans to pay more for health care, slow the growth in spending on biomedical research and merge or eliminate some job training and employment programs. "

Pardon me if I'm wrong, but in the last year it seems that our spending outside of the US has risen just a bit while most of the states were in financial crises... You're right Pres. Shrub, let's cut domestic spending... that will be just PEACHY.

Ooh, I'm right:
"Richard Kogan, a budget analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal-leaning research and advocacy group, said the increase in military and domestic security spending in the last two years dwarfed the increase in domestic discretionary programs, which did not quite keep pace with inflation."