Day 44: Trivia

[anarchist_nomad]

Doing about the same as yesterday, which is not bad. However, rather than delve into the depths of my psyche yet again -- especially with nothing really new happening there -- I shall, instead, throw a grab bag of trivialities into the public domain:

• For those following the seat-gripping saga of the Kelvinox, I should say that we are now attempting yet another cooldown. The cryostat is now at liquid nitrogen temperatures (77K), and we shall put liquid helium in tomorrow. I don't expect this attempt to achieve base temperature, but I do hope that it will gather useful diagnostic data for the good folks at Oxford Instruments.
  
  
• I took my first quiz on OK Cupid: Which DC Superhero are you? It turns out, according to OK Cupid, that I am the Question. THE QUESTION?!? I mean, don't get me wrong -- I like the guy and all -- but why not Batman or Flash (Wally, not Bart!) or Green Lantern (Kyle or Hal would do)?!? Heck, I'd even settle for being Superman. But... the Question? Hmmm... maybe the fact that I am like a guy without a face holds some deep inner truth.
  
  
• Being the penultimate day of the month, I received my October paycheck today. Since the annual raises go into effect on October 1st, I was expecting a higher check. To my surprise, though, I jumped an extra step on the payscale from what I had been expected. This is a nice surprise! When I started my job at the university, half a year ago, I was taking an 8% pay cut to come here. Since then, however, the value of the pound versus the dollar has gone up by about 9%... meaning that even my original salary is now worth slightly more than I was earning at Fermilab. And I have received two raises, for a total of about 9.5%, putting my salary definitively higher than it has ever been. Not that I am terribly materialistic -- as anyone who knows me worth a darn can attest -- and I could make two or three times my current salary in private industry, if money was my primary concern. But, nonetheless, it is nice to have a little bit more cash in the bank... especially when everything in this country costs so gosh-darn much!
  
  
• Speaking of living in England, it sure gets dark very early now that the clocks have been turned back! Oxford is at 52 degrees latitude -- by far the most northern location that I have ever lived in. For comparison, Amherst (MA) is at 42 degrees, Chicago (IL) is at 4.5 degrees, NYC (NY -- duh!) is at 40 degrees, Kamioka (Japan) is at 36 degrees, and Phoenix is at 33 degrees. It is still October, and yet sunset here happens before 5pm now. I can only imagine what it will be like in the coming months, as the solstice draws ever closer. Time in invest in some sunlight-frequency lamps!
  
  
• I now know all of the English monarchs from the present back to 975 (no -- I didn't forget a "1" *grin*), when Edward the Martyr, of the Anglo-Saxon house of Wessex, took the throne. Yes, my inner geek is shining brightly. What's more, I have a new camera and seven more postboxes in mind to use it on!

And that's all the news that is fit to print for today. Not important? Well, what did you expect from a post entitled "trivia"? Besides, I can't have ground breaking discoveries or life-changing leaps every day. What do you think my life is? A comic book? ;-)