Thank you!
After a harrowing day of homework and Assassins, Pechous and I stopped by the mailboxes. I'm used to not getting much mail, but I was expecting a book for my physics class. To my astonishment and suprise, my mailbox door was ajar--and a bouquet of colorful flowers were sprouting from its brass frame! I took them home, converted a CD spindle into an impromptu vase, and placed this unexpectedly joyful gift on my desk. It brings some much appreciated color to my space.
Thank you so much, mysterious giver of floral festivity. This makes me very happy. :-)
0 comments
Ah, College.
It's a crisp autumn morning, the trees are alight with midwestern color, and cool sunlight defines sharp shadows on the pavement, grass, and leaves. I'm making my way down to the dining hall for lunch, and observing the trajectories of warmly bundled students flowing towards the chapel for convocation. Suddenly I realize that the half-familiar melody chiming across campus is not the bell tower's usual sonorous intonation, but the Hogwarts theme from Harry Potter.
I love this place.
Snow!
It's snowing today: dry flakes swirling down through the cones of light from the street lamps. -17 degrees celsius wind chill, says the observatory's weather station. Walking to work at this hour of the night is an exercise in self-control, moving from step to step with care to avoid slipping on the icy walks, squinting to keep the flurries of snow from smacking into the eyes, and keeping hands tightly within pockets to keep the frigid air at bay.
Really, though, the snow and the cold make me happy. The vortices of air swirling around buildings whips the flakes into an intricately fractal frenzy, and the biting cold is a reminder of how crisp the world can be, absent of warmth. Tomorrow morning, I look forward to opening the door onto a landscape transformed into smooth forms of black asphalt, white snow, and grey stone and sky. Black and white has a certain, quiet, eloquence.
Stargazing
It's 11 PM, and once again I'm stargazing on the hill of three oaks. There is no trace of human activity here--only the full moon for light, the soft sound of snow crunching beneath my boots, and winds slipping fiercely past my coat. An hour at these temperatures concentrates the mind; one's world contracts to the blazing, tingling flame igniting in one's fingers and toes from the cold, the taste of blood flowing from frozen, cracked lips, and the howling of the wind against one's face, slowly numbing into a frostbitten simacrulum of one's former physiognomy. At the same time, there's nothing else like looking into this white expanse, tinged blue by the cold light of the moon and stars; to wonder at the majesty of the trees which stand here year after year, etched in black against the sky; to look up, and fall softly to the ground at the sight of ten million brilliant and specific stars.
I lay here, and wait to become a part of the landscape.
Back Home
I guess I'm back. Woke up Tuesday at 7:30. 11 hours of cars, airports, airplanes, half-hearted goodbyes, J.D. Salinger, The Samples, Neil Gaiman, and Something Corporate later, I arrived (somewhat displaced) at the doorstep of my old house. A lot's changed since I left. The walls, once a gallery of landscape and family photographs, are home to spare collections of hooks where frames once hung. The plan is to re-paint most of the interior walls, hence the spare decoration. The back door, the one that never closed properly, is replaced as well. All the doorknobs feel small here.
Writing the title of this post makes me wonder really where home is. I don't have a permanent address, really, just a probabilistic chance of successfully being reached. I live a quantum life, shifted by finite yet predictable uncertainties.
Stopped by my old school today to say hello to friends and teachers. Meetings were brief but enjoyable--the security personnel ordered me (contrary to official policy) to come inside, which I gladly obeyed. Mark and I went out to Sushi afterwards, which was amazingly delicious. ^_^
Went to my favorite local music store as a result of my evil habits of digital media piracy, and bought Kaki King's album "Legs to Make us Longer". It's a different kind of music than I've been listening to lately: no real melody, or strong emotion, but it grabs your attention with skill, complexity, and character. I don't know how to describe her style, but there's a guitar, and it's impossible not to listen to.
One thing I've really enjoyed about the last two days has been the ability to read--not a technical manual, not a news article, not an essay or thesis or comic strip, but real books with plot and characters and description. I didn't like most of Salinger's short stories, but "Catcher in the Rye" was very moving, in a strange, poignant sort of way. Right now I'm reading "American Gods", which is good for entirely different reasons.
I'm waiting to hear back from my employer, but it's entirely likely that I won't be working until Monday. Feel free to stop by and say hello. :-D
Thanksgiving
I am thankful for good friends, fun, educational, confusing, and generally unforgettable college experiences, a warm (comparatively speaking) house, cats, music, large quantities of delicious food, a job doing what I love, bicycles with functional pedals and brakes (The Brick, I'm referring to you here), photography, and hugs.
Winter Term
So stuff here has been busy as heck the last few weeks. Classes are beating me up: Classical Mechanics, Ordinary Differential Equations, and Japanese 205 this term. Aikido hasn't been going at all recently, which is sad. First week I caught whatever cold was going around, then this Monday I knocked my shoulder out of commission on one of the 4th kyu sacrifice throws. It's slowly coming back, but I'm still not up to rolls, or really much of anything with that arm. Realistically speaking, I'm probably not going to test this mid-term: I've just missed too many classes.
This week was full of out-of-town visitors: Des and Bitsy came out here for the weekend, which was full of Aikido, reading, and photography. Bitsy helped me out with the alumni interview for Physics, which was more informative than I had initially expected.
When it came time to head back to the airport, Max, Des and I borrowed Pechous' car for the trip--or at least his keys. Turned out the car was across campus, encased in snow, low on gas, and incapable of starting. Luckily, as we were just about to give up, Chase arrived! He pulled out the jumper cables, which after extensive maneuvers eventually reached between the cars. We *still* couldn't get the car to start, so Chase kindly offered us his car for the trip. After he left, though, Max couldn't get the car started! I tried, but the keys just wouldn't move. As it turns out, starting the CRV requires focusing very intently on the engine turning over and rumbling into life, and believing the car to be in motion. After buying gas by committee, I restarted the car for Max, and we made it to the airport in record time.
That evening, Rachel's friend Justin showed up, which was a welcome surprise. The whole gang went to see Ebony on Thursday, which was amazing! Grace did an awesome job in On Pointe, and there was a brilliantly choreographed performance of Evanescence's "Bring me to life"... for three week's work, it was incredibly well orchestrated. Fun times. :-)
Eighth Weekend
Classes haven't killed me yet!
It's eighth week, and time for overdrive. Two take-home finals (one expected to take two weeks!), an ODE lab, an 80 hour final project for Computational Mechanics analyzing the dynamics of our tinkertoy siege engines, and all the regular Japanese and ODE coursework on top of that. Of course, this can only mean one thing: it's time to take harder classes.
So I'm registering (hopefully) for Partials, Electricity and Magnetism, and some mysterious third course. I'm thinking about Epistemology or Philosophy of Physics, although those courses fill pretty darn fast. Philosophy of Physics looks particularly awesome, talking about issues with non-locality, causality, and the far-out world of quantum. Only a few spaces left, so I've got my fingers crossed.
Broomball has drawn to a close: the aiki-fumitsubusu team "Harmony on Ice" made it to the playoffs and won our first two games 11-0, only to suffer defeat 0-4 in an intense match later that week. We really played well this year, coming together as a team over the course of our twelve games. I'm disappointed that we couldn't play more: Broomball has got to be the best winter sport ever.
Max and Sophie convinced me to follow them on Book Across The Bay, a 10 km ski race across a frozen lake at night. So I learned how to cross-country ski in a week, rode the bus up to Wisconsin, and found myself standing at the starting line of a vast frozen plain, lit up by an wandering path of candles in hollowed-out blocks of ice, stretching into the distance. Way stations handed out cookies and hot chocolate, and as Max and I passed the fifth kilometer, the first of the skiers crossed the finish line, made evident by a brilliant fireworks display. I'm really glad I got to go, and look forward to heading back next year.
Winter Term 2007
To sum up the last term:
I took three classes: Ordinary Differential Equations, Japanese 205, and Classical/Computational Mechanics, affectionately (though with a thin edge of nervousness) referred to by many physics majors as "Classy" and "Compy". These last two ate me alive: the average weekly problem set was 18 hours in length, although one went up to 25 hours. I spent a lot of mornings (9:00 P.M. -- 3:00 A.M.) in Olin, the physics building, staring at Mathematica and struggling through Lagrangians. "You know, the windmill is really pretty at sunrise," my friend Max told me. "You can see it through the windows of the Olin hallway."
The last two weeks of the term were consumed by a massive final project: building and modeling a tinkertoy siege engine with the use of Lagrangian and Hamiltonian mechanics. My partner and I wrote hundreds of lines of code, and dozens of pages of equations, trying to model the energy transfer between the pendulum falling and the motion of the wheeled base. The problem consumed my life; walking to dinner, waiting in line, even in other classes, I'd think about drag models, wheel inertia, and projectile efficiency. We worked somewhere around 60 hours per person over two weeks.
Then there was the take-home exam.
A 30 hour monstrosity--one problem, parts A through O, we wrote our own Runge-Kutta solver, derived Lagrangians and Hamiltonians, and non-dimensionalized the problem three different ways. By this point, eight hours of sleep a night was right out: I spent those two weeks doing coursework contiguously, with a one-hour break each weekend. Then, finally, it was done: the paper was finished, the model made accurate predictions, the powerpoint was finished, and we gave our talk. Maybe we did well, maybe not, but it was done.
There was another take-home for ODEs, and a Japanese final, but they didn't seem that hard. Everything worked out all right in the end. And, looking back, I'm sort of happy about the whole thing: much as I resented the professor at the time, he got us to accomplish some pretty incredible things. :-)
Other things happened, too: I was fortunate to play for two broomball teams: Harmony on Ice (the Aikido club), and Gays on Ice (self-explanatory, really). Harmony started out a little uncoordinated, but game after game we got better at passing, knowing positions, and controlling the ball. Joel-sensei is an astonishingly good player! We made it to the playoffs, and won our first three games 11:0. We were defeated in the fourth, but it was a great season. Totally ruined the knees of my pants, though: this summer, I'll have to patch them with something tougher.
After five terms of Japanese, I've decided to not take 206. It conflicted with Partials, and would have made made my schedule a lot harder. It's a tough thing to give up, though; I love the language.
I tested for pre-fourth kyu mid-term, and fourth at the end of last term. Despite messing up the timing of the buki technique (there were fourteen!), it went pretty well. Can almost do jump-breakfall #2 now. I'll be working on pre-third stuff most of Spring term, along with demo stuff for Ann Arbor.
Electrostatics, and Then I Found Five Dollars
A couple of funny things happened to me today. Over break I got a series of e-mails with tips for taking the Collegiate Learning Assessment, a scenario-based assessment of critical thinking skills. The names for each tip started with the letters B and S: "Be Specific", "Be Skeptical", etc.* However, the e-mail for tip number four was:
TIP #4: READ DIRECTIONS ($5.00 extra to anyone who can come up with a version of this tip's name that starts with an “S”) Check that you’ve done what you’ve been asked to do. If you’re being asked to play a role, think about who you are suppose to be writing for. Don’t assume that your audience knows what you’re writing about.
I fired back a tongue-in-cheek response, suggesting a bunch of S-phrases like "Satiate Curiosity", "Suppose Nothing", "Study Directions", and so forth. I didn't realize they were serious about the money, but a week later I got a response: they wanted me to stop by the Dean's office and pick up the five dollars. That was... rather unexpected. :-)
A while later, I was sitting in a CMC bathroom stall, reading the graffiti ("Kyia can't normalize a wave function", et. al.), and moved slightly to one side. Suddenly, my head prickled. Moving around, I discovered that there was an enormous electrostatic gradient between the two plastic panels of the stall. My conjecture is that when people take off their coats, the position of the door forces them to brush against only one of the two walls. Rubbing coats against the plastic deposits a large static charge on that wall, and sets up a strong field. Low humidity made it especially noticeable--moving my hand within a foot of the wall resulted in audible pops as the potential difference broke down the air. Yay electrostatics!
*Yes, I thought it was a poor choice for an acronym, too.
Weekend, Tests, Genyokan Trip
The weekend was pretty darn awesome. Sophie and her housemates invited Nik, Max, Rachel, Anna, and I to dinner, where they'd made tons of delicious Jewish food. There was salad, fresh-baked bread, delicious kugel, and a massive roast with carrots and other veggies... it was *soooo* tasty! After weeks of Sodexho, getting to have a real meal with good company made my day. Max and I washed the dishes, and after we hung out on the couches, studying and watching Grey's Anatomy.
The two tests from Monday's classes went okay--I was definitely more confused by the EM material than Partials. Of course, the Partials test didn't actually ask us to solve any PDEs, and that's the part of the course I totally don't understand yet, so I got off easy. Seeing the unusual connections between function spaces and Linear Algebra is mind-bending at times.
This weekend is the Genyokan trip! Ten of us are packing into Sophie's car and Joel-sensei's van, and driving up to Ann Arbor for the weekend. Unfortunately, we're leaving Thursday night, so I've got to get all of Friday's HW done by then. There'll be classes, clinics, and the demo, which we've been preparing for every class of the last two weeks. I'm really looking forward to going--I didn't make the trip last year, so this will be my first time.
Fire Alarm
Two hours after going to sleep, I awoke to a shrill alarm with a start, kicking off the bed and into the air. Three things went through my head in the second or so before I touched down.
- Hmmm, that's not my alarm. It's much too high-pitched, and isn't intermittent.
- Gosh, there's a lot of smoke in here.
- Hey, is that the ground?
"Wow, it must be a fire. As in, stuff is actually burning," my sleep-addled brain mumbled to itself. "I guess if the building is going to burn down, I should probably grab my EM homework. It would really suck if that went up in flames and I had to do it all over again before Friday." Pulling on my bathrobe and grabbing the backpack which contained the precious homework in progress, I checked the door for heat, made my way down the stairs, and out into the cool night air.
About five minutes later, I remembered that this is Minnesota. Even though it's spring, the nights are still pretty darn cold. While I appreciate my half-awake self's efforts to preserve the academic parts of my life, next time, I really would appreciate it if he'd grab something warmer.
Eventually, Security declared a burned pizza the source of the smoke, and we all got to go back inside. Didn't sleep too well, but at least it was an exciting night.
Summer
So, I'm back in town! That was fast!
Managed to get out of school okay: finished my two papers on time, and despite my notes disappearing managed to make it through finals without too much difficulty. The papers are actually pretty cool: for Philosophy of Physics I got to look at two accounts of the mass energy equivalence relation, and talk about how we revise the scientific process for education. I didn't get to explore that thread as much as I would have liked, but I did get to read all of Einstein's work on special relativity. I know it's been said before, but the guy's a genius. The reasoning itself is straightforward, but he makes these intuitive jumps that are very surprising unless you know where he's going.
My roommate for spring term moved out early in finals week. Or at least, he himself moved. Most of his stuff stayed behind, and the friends he said would come pick it up never arrived. Hence, at 22:00 the night before flying out, I found myself reluctantly dropping cubic meters of clothes, games, books, and food down at the Lighten Up donation area. That was kind of a tough break, and I hope his friend manages to save my roommate's stuff in time.
I did, however, manage to find space for almost all the room stuff! Sophie kindly let me put some oversized items (buki, lamps) etc. in her basement, and Anna will be taking some of those for the summer, now that she's got her new apartment. I did have some problems with shipping boxes home though: just before hopping on the bus to the airport, I found a package slip in my mailbox. Turned out my computer never made it off campus: the UPS folks dropped it right back off across the street! Lucky for me, the nice guys at the post office have said they'll make sure it gets back to UPS, and it should arrive in a week or so.
I encountered mono somewhere early in the term: that knocked me out of Aikido and pretty much all physical activity since fifth week. Most of the symptoms have faded by now, and I only get tired if I push myself physically. Unfortunately, "pushing it" now means something like running three blocks. I've been taking pretty good care of myself, getting lots of sleep, and hope to return to normal operations as soon as possible.
Or do I?
Typically, I'm averse to risk. I plan things carefully, deliberate on important choices, and get my work done on time. That's good, but I also I got stuck in a rut: wonderful as familiar friends and activities are, I feel great when trying things I've never done before, going on adventures, and learning new people, places, and cultures. There have been some pretty cool adventures this term: the Genyokan trip, the trip to the cities over midterm break, learning to fire a bow at an 1800s rendezvous... it's been really darn awesome!
So this summer, I'm resolving not to live the same week over and over again, and to get out there and have irresponsible adventures. I've no idea where I'll end up, but I do know it will make a great story!
Assassins, Broomball, Class
Brief update, as reading is tearing my life into tiny shreds right now. I died in assassins, after effecting a fifth kill in Burton. Decided the first Aikido Broomball game was worth going to, even though I knew Kevin and his partner would probably be there. I wasn't killed at the game, but Henry Keiter waited in the trees outside the Libe for the whole game, tailed me home by running the long way around the Olin-Hulings-Mudd complex, and met up with me at the entrance to Nourse. I had time to block his 10-shot, but was exhausted from a hard game, so I was too slow. Henry went on to test his luck against Bendikson in a re-enactment of the Princess Bride iocaine powder scene, featuring two goblets of juice, one with tabasco sauce as a deadly poison. Man, those guys are winners at this game. :-D
Class has been interesting: quantum is tearing my brain to tiny little pieces, metaphysics is alternately interesting and infuriating, and psych of prejudice is absolutely fascinating. Lots of cool stuff about stereotype formation and metacontrast bias, but I won't write much right now--maybe a paper or two to come later.
Broomball has been absolutely awesome: Reid and I are on four teams each, this year, and that means 1-3 games per night, on top of 11-14 hours a week of Aikido training. I haven't been this sore in ages, and it feels great. The new liner gloves are holding up great and keeping my hands warm (thanks Dad!), and I even splurged and bought an Underarmour shirt as a base layer. The first game has convinced me it was worth the money: the fabric is warm (I was comfy with it and a fleece at -17 on the ice), breathable, and doesn't get snow and ice stuck in it. On the other hand, I think the fit is designed for people with much thicker pectorals than me. Ah well, another reason to keep up on those pushups! :-)
Justin's visiting this weekend, which means a packed schedule! My plan is to rush the philosophy reading tonight, finish up my REU application paper tomorrow morning, and then work through quantum HW until dinner time. Saturday is open mat, shopping (it'd be nice to get a second pair of shoes, cause these hiking boots are heavy), and then Ebony, which apparently half my floor is in! So yeah, here goes!
Spring Break
Winter term concluded nicely: solid work through 9th and 10th week, then caught a ride with Anna out to Madison for a couple weeks with Justin & company. Finished up my finals and emailed them in from WI--everything was either a paper or take-home, so I was able to take my time, put in my best work on everything, and turn them in without a 4 hour drive. So, spring break felt like 3 weeks, which was a really nice change. I needed the space to decompress, get to know myself again.
I'm taking up the guitar again: bought an old Suzuki from a guy in Madison through Craigslist, which sounds pretty good. Deeply resonant sound, bit of a buzz (in the tuner?) on the open G string, but otherwise plays nicely. I ran into Dirk's Guitar Page, which pleasantly has many of the same pieces I played as a kid: Carcassi, Sor, Paganini. Progress has been surprisingly fast, but I'm a long way from playing well.
Carrie, Justin, Jenny, Bobby, and I all trekked down to Florida for Spring Break; my first independent vacation! It was really nice to spend the time with friends; screaming through the Tower of Terror at Disney World, swimming and hanging out with new friends from Ohio State at the beach, learning to play tennis, and just relaxing on the beach. I do regret not reading more of Quantum State Diffusion, but that's a small complaint.
I attended my first church service in a long time: communion at Unity church, a very open Christian community. Some of the books in their bookstore were a little laughable (crystal healing, for example), but I found many aspects of their faith beautiful. "Namaste", meaning "the spirit within me recognizes the spirit within you." It's a nice thing to remember, I think, because it is a statement one can make regardless of the acts or character of one's partner. No matter who you are or what you have done, we share a common part in humanity, and that much can always be honored. That brings up a question of the separability of humanity from character, but... maybe I'll talk about that later.
I came back to photography again, and the six photographs posted today are the product of that. I'm not entirely sure about the new direction in color; part of me feels like I'm aiming for bold, abstract statements that may be overreaching the original view, but I've also tried to remain true to my experience. Justin took me on a tour of the Wisconsin State Capitol, which started by walking with my eyes closed along the long northwest corridor to the central dome; when I looked up and opened them for the first time, this view of the dome's interior burst into view. It's hard to capture the overwhelming scale and dynamic range in the interior here; I've settled for a crisp dark/light contrast to retain the sunlight detail without introducing noise, but some parts don't feel right at all; for example, the central ceiling is almost totally black, instead of being well illuminated. That's partly a factor of dynamic range, but also of available light: handheld, all the longer exposures I took were too blurry for use.
Images like In the Gallery on the Third Floor are more natural, and reflect the vivid sunset colors without being overpowering. I think that's the direction I'll try to take more in the future. Please, enjoy.
Anyway, only 2 days in to the new term, and lots of work to do! More to follow, I hope.
Fall 2008
Term's almost over; one final left. Research reached a nice finishing point this week; I finished the comparative Lyapunov analysis and prepared the graphs for submission. Noise really kills the linearity we're looking for, but it does suggest an experimentalist will see some unexpected things, which is what the original paper tried to show with power spectra--and moreover, the figures are in the right ballpark for More on that when we draft a response to PRL.
Tested for 2nd kyu this week. It was tough--especially remembering the right vs. left distinctions for techniques that sound very similar in Japanese! Mechanically things felt pretty solid, though, which was nice. I was even able to clear 3 feet on jumping-over-partner, which was a great feeling. Plus, the front strike continuation is just plain awesome.
Other than that, planning a second book, which will explore the various off-limits parts of Carleton, getting ready for Comps, and starting the post-graduation job search. Now, back to that last paper!
Implant Surgery: Part 1
I went in for the first implant surgery today, to replace the missing three upper teeth from my January Broomball accident. For those of you who haven't heard of dental implants (I hadn't!), they're roughly 1.5 cm titanium screws which are inserted into the bone where the tooth's roots used to be, ending right under the gumline. Artificial teeth are then attached to those screws.
The impact shattered two teeth, so I had to have the left-behind roots extracted from my upper jaw. Between the injury itself and having to dig around a lot to get the roots out, I'm now missing the thin sheet of bone which runs over the front of the roots, for the canine side of the upper jaw. Luckily the bone near the middle is reasonably intact. This is problematic, because the implants need solid bone to anchor to. If, upon opening everything up, they found that there wasn't enough bone to place the implants, I'd need a bone graft taken from my mandible behind the molars, and six months additional recovery for that graft to integrate. Luckily, this wasn't the case! The implants took hold in the jaw even though the labial bone wasn't intact. (Note to kids: another reason to get your calcium!)
The procedure took about an hour and a half for two implants, and was pretty much painless under local anesthesia. Started with novocaine (and another longer-lasting nocioception blocker whose name I don't remember), followed by a few incisions in the gums to expose the bone, and a lot of tugging. They drilled out the implant sites with three progressively larger bits, which go way up there. I suspect my sub-nasal sinus got real familiar with that drill, which apparently is okay. The implants themselves look like stocky, truncated conical screws, coated with a rough titanium dioxide layer which actually bonds to the osteoblasts in your bone, creating an extremely strong connection. They literally screw right in to the jaw—I remember thinking "I've stripped screws before," as they twisted in—but everything took hold right away and felt solid. After that, they packed in a processed bovine bone substrate around the sites. Over the next six months, my intrepid little osteoblasts will move into that substrate and grow new bone, hopefully back to the original thickness. Bunch of sutures finished up the job, and I walked out of there a little sore and bloody but doing okay.
The whole site is really tender, so I'm sticking to Mac & Cheese for now, but if the last extractions were any indication, I'll be basically healed in 4 days, and back to normal in a couple weeks. It is a pretty big incision to close up though, so it could take a while. Regardless, I'm pumped that they were able to place both implants today. I could get real teeth by fall, which would be terrific.
Moving to San Francisco in 3, 2, 1...
It's midnight, and the car is almost packed. All our stuff in one little minivan, moving back to the west coast! Oh man it's exciting! Should be there in a little over a week.
Back on a bike...
So Justin took my bike out for a spin with some friends from out of town—and while locked up out in the Marina, it was stolen!
I'm sad to see you go, little grey hybrid.
I bought that bike seven years ago with my first paycheck from Kryptiq. Saved up $400 cash and bought myself a brand new Trek 7200 FX. We rode through thick and thin, all over the city. It got me to school, to work on Fridays, to friends' houses and through the rain to Aikido out in east Portland. It braved flooding, 80 MPH winds, power outages, nails through the tires, and kept on going. We ran Zoobomb, trails through the west hills, construction sites, and freeways. Mostly, though, it got me places without a car.
This happened six weeks back. I've been riding the motorcycle a lot more since then, and got my commute down to 20 minutes--only a tad slower than biking to work. Still, I really miss cycling. It's easier to hop on it and go, without a jacket, helmet, and gloves getting in the way. Anyway, yesterday I finally snagged a so-new-you-can-smell-it 7.3 FX via craigslist. It's quiet, shiny, and fast. I'm excited to move again. :)