Hooray for the bleeding edge

Beyonce came to Ukraine to open the new football stadium in time for Miner's Day and she got paid $1,5M for THREE SONGS. Work it Beyonce!!!!!

Astronomers have spotted a hot, heavy Jupiter that circles its host star with an orbital period of less than a day. We've either lucked out and caught it shortly before it plows into its host star, or some of the parameters that we've been feeding our models of planetary evolution are badly off.

Geeky astronomy fun!

Hmmmmmmmm. I was not sure this was such a good idea until I saw the trailer. Could be a winner.

Ha ha, a response to the housing crunch...

the computer science landscape has dramatically changed in the nearly four decades since Steve Cook presented his seminal NP-completeness paper "The Complexity of Theorem-Proving Procedures" in Shaker Heights, OH in early May, 1971. Computational power has dramatically increased, the cost of computing has dramatically decreased, not to mention the power of the Internet.

Today marks the 18th year Ukraine has been an independent country. I have been in and around Ukraine for about seven of those eighteen.

Things I have learned about Ukraine in that time are the following:

1. Ukrainians don't like it when others call their country 'THE Ukraine'. I should say English-speaking Ukrainians don't like it, since there is no 'the' in the Ukrainian language.

2. Ukrainians aren't afraid to class it up a bit. The above photo is just a taste of what I am talking about here. You see that? Classy stuff, there.

3. Never save money in Ukrainian currency. Never transfer money to a Ukrainian bank unless you know that bank's president. In fact, try to route around the entire financial system by dealing in cash and foreign accounts. Can't stress that enough.

4. Trains are fun. More on that later.

5. Gorilka and Salo. If you haven't tried it you don't know what you are missing.

Happy Independence Day!

"The urge to disappear, to shed one’s identity and reemerge in another, surely must be as old as human society. It’s a fantasy that can flicker tantalizingly on the horizon at moments of crisis or grow into a persistent daydream that accompanies life’s daily burdens. A fight with your spouse leaves you momentarily despondent, perhaps, or a longtime relationship feels dead on its feet. Your mortgage payment becomes suddenly unmanageable, or a pile of debts gradually rises above your head. Maybe you simply awaken one day unable to shake your disappointment over a choice you could have made or a better life you might have had. And then the thought occurs to you: What if I could drop everything, abandon my life’s baggage, and start over as someone else?"

90% of our debt is educational. That really pisses me off; you're told as a naive 18 year old that college is the only way to guarantee a career. So you do whatever it takes to secure that education, which may mean unwittingly borrowing from less-than-scrupulous lenders, and upon graduation you discover that hey, that degree isn't worth the paper it's printed on and you're going to wind up working in a crappy job outside of your field anyway, and why didn't anyone tell you that diesel mechanics make three times what you owe the government after just 18 months of training as opposed to four years of classes you're never going to need, like 'Comparative Religions' and 'Carmen: Novel, Opera, Film'?!?

Not an uncommon problem. I had to work outside my field after getting my first IT degree. After that, I had a 'never go hungry again' attitude and kept a job even through most of graduate school. That at least kept my debt down to a manageable level.

So like I said, this summer we needed to collect a lot of cash in a short amount of time. The amount of cash is unimportant. The amount of time: a month, give or take.

Some of the cash we were able to float by acting as bill collector with a cop who also happened to trade processed wood in eastern Ukraine. However, that only answered for part of the solution.

Some of the cash we had to get out of Russian ATMs, more to the point, Moscow ATMs. Why Moscow ATMs? Because there is lots of money in Moscow. And lots of rich people. We could get crisp, fresh bills which would not be turned down anywhere in the Eastern bloc from a Moscow ATM. Super crisp. The ink still smelled fresh on the bill

You may think I am joking, but I am not. If bills had blogs, they would read like: "Day One. Hello, World! I just got printed at the US Mint in Washington DC, how exciting! I am ready to take on the world!"

"Day Two. I am in a Moscow ATM??!? How the hell did that happen? This is some seriously messed up crap right here. What am I going do be now, heavy collateral in a Caucasian drug deal? Fodder for Chechniyan ransom money? How did I deserve this?"

You get the idea. Anyway, I had a $5000 limit on a Russian card (yes, no weenie credit union $600 limits in this country) so I got my cash-n-carry on for a few days, but then I needed to transport it. To Ukraine. Which involved a border crossing.

Two crossings, if you count exiting Russia.

... to be continued ...

How can a facility featuring state-of-the-art diagnostic equipment use less-sophisticated information technology than my local sushi bar?