Ryan Morlok’s Blog

Someone is selling an exact replica of KITT on ebay. Well, by exact I mean it can’t break through walls, drive itself, jump over semis, scan buildings and instantly produce floor plans in cheesy 80’s style graphics, or carry on a conversation with you…but you get the picture. Knight Rider was one of the major reasons I got into computer science. I wanted to build a car that could talk to me. Sadly, 15 years later, I’m still here without a car that talks.

Since I’ve moved to IL, Dusty and I have periodically discussed the regional language idiosyncrasies as we’ve observed them both from our home locations (Minnesota/Tennessee) and what we see in central Illinois.  Perhaps the most famous debate is Pop versus Soda versus Coke.  I ran across an article on Digg this afternoon that has an interactive map that shows the regional usage of the terms.  Unfortunately, I haven’t actually seen the site because it is down to traffic load, but I was able to find another blog entry that has a map that shows similar information by county in the U.S.

When I lived in Minnesota, I almost always said ‘pop’, but since I’ve been in Illinois, I switch off between ‘pop’ and ’soda’ (though I still use pop more). That’s pretty consistent with the region, which seems to be right on the boarder between ‘pop’ and ’soda’.  Looks like ‘pop’ is used most often of the three in the U.S.

Kim Laboratories celebrated Myung’s 40th birthday this last Friday at Kennedy’s at Stone Creek.  It was a nice, fancy place but I wasn’t overly impressed with the food (especially for the price).  I know most people reading this don’t know who Myung is, but if you do, you might be interested in these pictures.  As a gag gift, we got him a cheap plaid jacket from Walmart.  To say Myung is normally a classy dresser is about as big of an understatement as saying the Pope is Catholic.  Anyway, we put a gift card to Back Rack (fancy men’s clothing store) in the pocket.  We still made him try it on so we could get a few pictures.

It actually snowed here in Champaign (gasp!) Sunday morning. Enough snow to do something. Obviously, we had three options for the day: go sledding, or build something out of snow, or have a snowball fight. Champaign is flat like a pre-pubescent boy (does that even make sense?!?), and the one man-made hill in town specifically designated for sledding is always packed with children whenever it snows. So that eliminated sledding. Dusty throws like a girl, so that eliminated the snowball fight. The only thing left to do was to build a snowman!

And build a snowman we did…

It took us several hours and half the snow available between the townhouse complexes, but we build a snowman so big frosty would have wet himself. The snowman came out to be about ~2 lauras tall (8–10 feet), and weight in somewhere in the ballpark of 8–10 lauras (I’m guessiong 1000lbs, but I’m just making that up).

The sections were so large (and more importantly, heavy) that we had to cut in half the middle and head snowballs so that the pieces could be lifted into place and then reassembled. That construction strategy came from our resident mechanical engineer Amanda Hilldore. Our chemist, Doug Davis, tried to take credit for the idea, but accidentally breaking a snowball in half while you’re trying to assemble the snowman doesn’t count as an idea. Full pictures of the ordeal are available here. Videos of the process are here and here.

Last Saturday was the first (hopefully annual) Hockey Day Minnesota.  Although I was stuck in Illinois, I was able to partake in the festivities thanks to my satellite subscription to FSN North.  I watched the Lake of the Woods/St. Paul Johnson outdoor game, the Gophers and even the Wild.  Normally the Wild games are blocked out in our viewing area, but for some reason, this time it wasn’t.  Lake of the Woods won (though it didn’t really matter as I wasn’t rooting for any particular team), Gophers won, and Wild lost in an 8 round shootout.  Great day of hockey.  In honor of the event, here is the State of Hockey anthem.  I’d like to get an MP3 of this song, but I haven’t been able to find one.  If you know where I can get a copy, leave a message in the comments.

That’s a variation on a (fairly) famous Bible verse (Matthew 15:27) that emphasizes how pet food/care is getting ridiculous. I ran across this website today that sells dog food that is supposed to improve your dog’s health. Specifically, their dog grub contains “natural bioactive ingredients, which specifically target harmful biological processes responsible for ulcer, cancer, arthritis, cardiovascular disease, and other chronic diseases.” That’s all well and good — I’m in favor of healthy dogs — but at $2 per dog biscuit, it almost becomes a commentary on modern society. While 852 million people don’t have enough to eat each day, we’re spending $12 (+shipping) on a box of dog treats.

Katy and I were back in Minnesota for the weekend and were able to experience our first real winter of the year.  On the way back, I switched the clock in my car into thermometer mode and played a variation of the childhood game warmer/colder with the positive and negative reinforcements reversed.  When we left Champaign, it was 36 degrees, and arrived to a balmy 4.  It even snowed over the weekend to cap off our winter excursion.  Global warming hasn’t totally won  yet.

Today marks the completion of my first year of blogging.  152 posts in 365 days.  Not too bad, though granted I tend to post random short stuff, like links to interesting websites (or at least stuff I  find interesting).  All-in-all, I think I’ve done my part to give back to the great ring of procrastination — the world wide web.

From the perfect temperature to the process of paining the lines, this article from How Stuff Works has all the info.

I’ve been calorie counting for years.  Even though I’m never really on a diet (a diet implies something that’s temporary) I do think it’s important to understand what you’re eating.  For those of you who don’t always pay attention out there this site might be of interest to you.  It shows 200 calories in a variety of different foods, and makes you appreciate how many calories processed and deep fried food actually have.