Count the beard-seconds!

Yesterday: Very Bad Day. Today: Very Good and Somewhat Odd Day.

Since I haven't talked about the beard much lately, I figured a close-up to demonstrate progress was in order. So here you are. In my humble opinion, t looks good for a 2.5 week old beard. I still haven't decided whether to keep it or not after the month is up, but I'm certainly pleased with my progress. I did have to trim it as I thought I was going to play accompaniment at choir rehearsal last night and figured I should look less scary. Instead I drove at night through the rain for over an hour to no purpose. C.f. Very Bad Day.

That said, if you're pleased with my progress as well, you know what to do.

Not sure this is the right size...

Despite the amusement factor, this hat actually has a bit of history to it. As in, World War II history. This was sent back to our family by my great-uncle Eddie, who was touring in Europe at the time. As far as I can tell this was a local police cap from Germany. He also had a German officer's cap, and a couple of stormtrooper helmets, complete with swastikas. I know my cousin has the cap and at least one helmet -- not sure where the other ended up.

The hat is all I have to remember Uncle Eddie by, as he didn't come back from Germany. Yeah, this may have been more appropriate a week ago. But it's still good to remember those who have served, even when it's not a special day. So here's to you, Uncle Eddie.

If you look close, you can see the inside of my feet!

Here you see me hitting the F above high C. What you aren't seeing is the resulting mess in the kitchen. No, I don't mean all the broken wine glasses -- the Mythbusters, for all practical purposes, debunked that. I mean the mess when Mur dropped the wine bottle in laughter.

And she made me clean it up. I mean, really.

A jolly duo

Apparently the Gods did not want this post to go up. But like Kratos, I defeat them! With fewer bloody chunks, though. Just moxie. Moxie, I say!

This picture is from my phone, as I intended on using the data connection there to send it up. Haha, said the Internet Gods, we shall take down both connections and leave you blind to the workings of the Web! Screw you, Internet Gods, said I, and went to play Professor Layton and the Curious Village instead. This post is thereby backdated to maintain the verisimilitude of continuity.

The gent behind me has been featured in a few pictures, so I thought I'd him more attention. Happy Party Cthulhu (as I call him -- the real title is "Cthulhu's Day Out") was a gift from Mur, and was created by the lovely and talented Ursula Vernon. Word has it that Ursula has boobs too, so by donating here you are helping her in some way -- though if you want to be more direct about it you can go to Metal & Magic and purchase something nice.

No one gets between me and my Interwebs...

This post nearly didn't happen. For some reason our Internet connection keeps dropping out. First they said it was the modem. Then they said it was an external problem with the neighborhood amplifier. Now we're back to "It's the modem" again. Anyway, we're on the air again, for now.

In non-beard related news, finally got to play Reiner Knizia's Spiel des Jahres winning game Keltis. It's a 2-4 player boardgame version of his 2-player card game Lost Cities and has been further remade into an English version called Lost Cities: The Board Game. Whatever it's called, it's a fun little card collecting game where you're progressively building sequences of different card suits. There's also a board where you track progress and have additional scoring opportunities. Mur and I tried it with 2-player. It think it would be fun with 3 or 4 as well. Highly recommended.

Finally, in manly news, took the Pink Tornado (our daughter) to see a hockey game today. Her luck was good -- the Carolina Hurricanes managed to squeak out their first win in 15 games. No fights, though one of the 'Canes got knocked out of the game by stopping a potential goal with his body. Now that's manly.

Emmitt Kelly, eat your heart out

Well hey, we made it to two weeks. So why the sad face? Because happy clowns are creepy, that's why. See, sad clowns represent the pathos of modern life. We see them and think "Hey, my life isn't as bad as this sad sack. All is right with the world." But happy clowns contradict that -- they're far too jolly given all the bad things that happen to them -- pies in the face, etc. It's like the uncanny valley of comedy.

What does this have to do with beards? Not much. I just needed a justification to put a silly hat on and make a frowny face.

I am thinking deep thoughts... wait, I smell wood burning.

To counter all the superstition flowing about today, I figured I'd talk a bit about the science of beard growing.

Most people reading this are probably familiar with the term "light year," the distance it takes for light in a vacuum to travel in one year. This distance is approximately 9.460730 x 10^15 meters, or 5.878630 x 10^12 miles. This is a very long way.

What does this have to do with beard growing? Well, it turns out that there is an equivalent term for very small distances called a "beard second." This is the distance that the average physicist's beard grows in one second (presumably not in a vacuum, unless said physicist has a space suit). The actual measurement of this distance is under some dispute: some say it is 5 nanometers; others say it is 100 Angstroms, or 10 nanometers. I've also seen 3-5 nm.

So, math time. Let's assume we're all average physicists. In addition, I'll assume that we all shaved at the crack of midnight, November 1st. So at midnight tonight, given 86,400 beard seconds/day * 13 days we will each reach 1,123,200 beard seconds. Assuming a beard second is about 5 nanometers, we've generated about 5,616,000 nanometers of beard, or 5.616 millimeters, a piece. And at about 10,000 hairs in the average beard, if you lined up all those hairs, it would be a giant hair 56.16 meters long.

So gentlemen, despite all appearances to the contrary, we've been busy. Proved by science! And math!

Where all the clones at?

Down here in the swamps of Carolina, we're dealing with the remnants of Inge, or Ira, or Ignatia, or something. For the past two days it's been cold, rainy and miserable, so as you can see I'm doing the best to keep warm and dry.

Or I'm trying to look like Obiwan on Kamino, and use my Jedi powers to coerce you to donate... You will give us money... money for beards... money for breast cancer research... do the right thing...

What a handsome devil

It's late, so this will be a quick one.

Status: The beard, it continues to grow. Isn't it lovely? I am inordinately pleased.

Thank yous: I put in a call at work for donations today and at appears that I got at least one bite. So thank you kind anonymous work person for putting me (barely) in third place, and thank you as well for giving me the opportunity to mix metaphors.

And that is it. Bon nuit, for now.

Tired of the monitor reflecting off my glasses

Kind of a blah day here, so not really coming up with the funny. For those who might have been offended/insulted by yesterday, I was trying to bring the funny, but I'm not sure that came across. Too much snark, perhaps. So to be clear, y'all are delightful and intelligent people, even when the testosterone is poisoning your brains. (Just can't stop, can I?)

One thing I didn't mention yesterday was that due to some Twitter activity I got another bump in donations. So many thanks to you people, and the boobs thank you too. And I don't mean the other participants in this contest, though they probably do as well. (And there I go again. Oh well, it's how I roll.)