Melyssa-with-a-Y

... Brought to you by the color yellow (mango, corn) and the letter C (cumin, cayenne, corn) :) yum!

Two years ago, when I was in LA for Thanksgiving, I went down to the Getty Villa (thanks, Marc!) and took some pictures on a beautiful sunny day. I eventually posted them on Flickr, where they were discovered by the people from Schmap. Last week, I was notified that my picture of the Getty Villa fountain (right) will be included in their California guide ! Pretty cool!

I am fully aware of the fact that I work in a rather specialized part of industry/academia -- supercomputing has always seemed sort of esoteric and "out there" to most people, even though they watch the weather forecast every day (generated with a supercomputer), drive in cars and fly in planes that were designed with supercomputers, watch movies made on supercomputers (Pixar, DreamWorks Animation) ... and don't get me started about all of the Procter & Gamble products, like coffee cans and diapers and Pringles. But still, a topic that tends not to be too mainstream -- unless you watch Numb3rs. :) Here's a real-world application that, while it's a little scary, is definitely the wave of the future. One of the supercomputers here at TACC directed a laser in Houston that was doing surgery on a dog! Pretty cool, huh? Before you ask, we never found out the dog's name, and while the surgery was successful, the dog had to be put down afterwards. :(

Driving back from a conference in Houston, we passed three pairs of these (two turbines worth). They're enormous!! Must be headed for the wind farms in west Texas.

Have you seen the "Boom dee-ah-dah" commercials for Discovery? Here's a stage version, with Mike Rowe, Bear Grylls, Ben Bailey and the Deadliest Catch captains (yay!)... and another guy I don't recognize (with good hair). Update: I have now been educated. The guy with the good hair is Josh Bernstein, formerly of the History Channel's "Digging for the Truth." He's moved over to Discovery, but I don't think his new show has started yet. Yes, he's a nice Jewish boy, but apparently he's looking for a "tall blond Jewish girl who is interested in the environment." As Eliz. says, we'll have to figure out how to make me taller. The hair dying is easy! Of course, I also have no urge to live in a yurt in Utah, so that might be a challenge. ;)

There are parts of my past that I don't talk about often. Other than my junior year in Spain, I don't talk about college much, and I hadn't spoken to anybody from Rutgers in many many years. Lo and behold, one of the guys I used to hang out with at RU looked me up on LinkedIn and sent me a message. And presto! I have three old friends back! So here's a little of my backstory, brought to you by the reminiscing I've been doing since I heard from Arc two weeks ago. --- At the end of my freshman year in college, I made friends with a bunch of odd guys in my dorm. And when I say odd, I mean, interesting, different, funny, strange, goofy... They were mostly roommates -- Chuck and Adam, Bill and Chris (aka Arc), Tom, Ken (Clubber), Jason and Chad. I don't know how I hooked up with them, but by the time I left for my trip to Spain after sophomore year, I couldn't imagine how I was going to live without them. We watched a lot of Star Trek: TNG and played a lot of ca...

I've been to enough Disney parks to note how theming can be done well (like, say, the Indiana Jones ride , with creative things to look at while you're standing in line, and John Williams music playing in the background) , and let me tell you, the Great Wolf Lodge needs a lesson. Yikes! Once you get past the giant wooden (or faux wooden) wolves in front of the hotel, you are accosted by a theme-filled lobby : stuffed wolves on platforms on either side of the fireplace, three stories high... a clock-tower with a Pocahontas-style Indian that animates in a show three times a day... there's even a little fiberglass squirrel sitting on top of the trash can -- creepy! Then when you get to your room, the wallpaper is bears, wolves, moose and elk (see picture of bathroom wallpaper) ; the sofa pattern is bears and moose... the rustic wooden furniture is everywhere. Bleh. Oh right, forgot to mention that, much as I tried to stay home for an entire month, I ended up having to come...