The RRoD tells you what type of error it is, depending on the number of lights. Three is the number you never want to see, which indicates hardware failure. I could return it to Microsoft, but since I’ve owned this for about 5 years now, it’s well out of its 1 year warranty, and would cost $119 to fix otherwise.

There is an alternative, unorthodox method to fixing the 360; wrapping the machine in towels and praying:

This actually works sometimes. Essentially, there is a part in the machine which will come loose from overheating. By wrapping it with towels, and leaving it on, you’re forcing overheating, which can reform the connections.

I did it, and it actually worked… for a week. Now it red ringed again, and I need to try it more legitimately, by opening it up and using some thermal paste. Buying a new 360 wouldn’t be ideal, especially since the 720 isn’t far off.

LA was an excellent visit, which was made even more amazing by Andrew’s expert itinerary making skills. This was seriously ridiculously detailed. Amazing.

I started the day wandering around Chinatown, and then explored Exposition Park, including the Rose Garden. The only thing is the Rose Garden was apparently closed, and I only ended up wandering in there by first going through a film shoot, and had trouble escaping. Entertaining. This was mostly killing time until the California Science Center opened, which was filled with tons of cool stuff, most notably, the Endeavor:

After wandering there for a few hours, headed to the Grove and had Umami Burger, mmm. Next up was LACMA, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; fun stuff.

Went over to Beverly Hills and wandered around, and finally met up with Andrew for Korean BBQ, and crashed at his place. In the morning I rented a bike and biked around Venice Beach:

After a few hours of biking around, went up to the Getty Center, which had some great art, but the center itself was amazing, in terms of architecture and the view of LA.

Headed down toward Hollywood to wander around, and wow, that is not the glamorous, glitzy neighborhood I was imagining, rather think Times Square before it got cleaned up. Met up with Andrew and we went to Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles with Sangwoo. Finally went to the Griffith Observatory. They had a periodic table with samples of each element:

Definitely a fun trip; I can’t see myself living in LA, but a fun city to visit. The tour is almost complete (well, the documentation), only Portland left to go.

“Scientific knowledge grows like the accumulation of bric-a-brac in a vast and disorderly closet in a house kept by a sloven. Few are the attempts at ridding the closet of rusty or obsolete gear, at throwing out redundant equipment, at putting things in order. For example, spurious distinctions are still made between reflection, refraction, scattering, interference, and diffraction despite centuries of accumulated knowledge about the nature of light and matter.”

Craig F. Bohren, Penn State
Handbook of Optics, Vol. 1: Fundamentals, Techniques, & Design, 2nd edition: 1995.

[Igor Morski via Illusion]

Bond: What do you mean?

Dr. Ångstrom: The room is slowly filling with hydrogen.

Bond: You mean to blow me up?

Dr. Ångstrom: Not at all! You see, the floor is nickel and very soon-

Bond: Damn you! You know my weakness.

Dr. Ångstrom: Yes Mr. Bond! As the temperature increase hydrogenation will weaken you!

Bond: Too bad you didn’t try an ozonolysis Dr. Ångstrom!

Dr. Ångstrom: What? How did you get free?!

Bond: Simple Dr. Ångstrom, by reducing me to be a single bond I was capable of rotating and-

Dr. Ångstrom: Why, of course! How could I have been so foolish?

Later

Bond: Still.. so.. weak..

Bond Girl (Asstitine): Bond! Why not let me help you return to your double bond status.

Bond: But how?

Asstitine: Well I was thinking that perhaps a halogenation might help?

Bond: Raises brow suggestively

[Reddit via Reddit]

After defending in November, working through most of December, I took a long needed break. Never took off any time after high school or undergrad, so I realized this is my last chance for a long time to have a real extended vacation like this. It required taking out a loan, but so worth it.

Started with a trip down to Florida, to see my Grandpa, who so kindly gave me his old car, which for the first time makes me a car-owner, about 9 years after most people. Took a short road trip back up to DC, crossing a few states off my list (Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina), a trend which continues throughout this vacation.

Went to the Philippines for Chelie’s wedding, had an amazing time being guided around by all the Filipinos in the chemistry program, and got engaged myself. Just taking this “becoming a real person” thing full force.

After my 24 hour flight, and being back in DC for about 3 days to adjust to the 13 hour time difference, I set out on Dr. Will’s Transcontinental Victory Tour (which I still haven’t finished writing about here), spending 99 hours on trains, and seeing tons of new places. (Again crossing more new states off my list: Ohio, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas.)

The final part of my vacation ended with a road trip down to New Mexico, taking two doped cats along with us. I’m still not a huge fan of being in the car for long periods, so I agreed to this as long as we could stop along the way, crossing more states off the list (Kentucky, Indiana, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma).

At some point I’ll put up a few more posts from vacation, but I’ll actually resume writing about science again (like we just cured HIV? holy shit), since I’ll be back in the lab, seeing how government compares to academia.

I made a vow that when the time came for my next paper, I would try my best to convince my boss to let me aim for TOCROFL. I went so far as to make a Powerpoint, given in group meeting, explaining the urgent need to do this. Thankfully, she gave in to my whims and quest for glory.

Although I tweeted in back in November when it happened, I somehow forgot to post my achievement here:

What solves that problem? Drugs! Feed the cats some tranqs, throw in some calming pheromones and it’s pretty tolerable; the meows are muted (but more pathetic sounding). As you can see, their eyes look creepy as hell.

You can look through the whole list of them easily from the post on BuzzFeed, and here’s the artist, Kaycie D.’s tumblr.

On the box they packed the TV into. Neat!