Happy New Years
Happy New Years everyone!
Archives
It’s Christmas day and the cat is all a glow.
Merry Christmas everyone! Things are wrapping up here right now but this morning we had our family gift exchange/un-wrapping. Everyone got cool stuff (My brother got me an old 60’s era Civil Defense radiation detector) which is very cool. Meg liked her soap making supplies and her new watch/pedometer and all the random journaling stuff my mom got her (especially the 24 pack of sharpies). My sister and her BF had to head our around 10 this morning to go see his family. We all just pretty much hung around enjoying our Christmas stuff and taking it easy (Last night when we all got home we had about 2 bottles of wine, a bottle of irish cream, and some beer so the quiet time later in the morning was quite welcome. 
This afternoon Meg and I went to see “The Spirit”, we both though it sucked. We were glad we didn’t pay for it but it wasn’t even really worth it free.
We just got finished with our Christmas dinner, Mmmmm…turkey. After we were sitting in the living room and my mom gave the cat some cat nip she had gotten from our neighbor, and while stoned the cat was being playful I was sort of fighting with him with the glow stick bracelet things we had for Christmas morning. Well he some how caught one with his claw or tooth or something and got the liquid in his mouth! He jumps away and at first I didn’t think he got any on him but then he turns and looks at us with his whole mouth glowing bright green. In like seconds he had like 5 people chasing him up the stairs to try and grab him to wash his mouth out some. The glow stick fluid is in theory non toxic but still we didn’t want to take any chances. He seems no worse for the ware for his adventure though sadly isn’t glowing anymore which would of been cool
No major plans for tomorrow yet, we may go shopping though there is some vague talk about the Casino also. Saturday we are planning on heading back up to NYC with all our Christmas booty.
Hope everyone had a good Christmas!
Six more hours of heat
We have just about six more hours to warm weather to enjoy before we have to head back up to the icy Northeast. Yesterday we did our Florida Christmas with dinner and presents. My secret santa, who was Meg’s brother-in-law Ralph, got me this:
Which is a really cook book on how to make all these food related projects the mad scientist way, ie. Liquid nitrogen ice cream, or Dry Ice Martinis. Looks to be a lot of fun, for a science nerd like me
After food and presents we played the game Cranium that Meg’s sister brought. It is a wacky game where you have to draw, sculpt, and act out clues, along with some just random trivia stuff. We played teams and Meg and I totally kicked ass and won! Woo!
I guess we are all going to church this morning and then will pretty much have to pack up all our stuff and head out to the airport. If the weather holds we should get home around 7 or so and then Monday it is back to work for me. Well for 3 days at least, then its up to CT for our second Christmas!
I am in shorts
While NY is about 30 degrees today and waiting for a few inches of snow to arrive I am sitting here in shorts and a short sleeve shirt. We even went out this morning for a walk along the beach to get some exercise.
Our flight out went alright, it was a little delayed, but only like a half hour and when we got onto the plane there were…uh…people in our seats already which as you can imagine was problematic. According to the flight attendant they were like a family of 3 and because they were stupid hadn’t booked 3 seats together but now decided they wanted to sit together. So we were nice and waited in the back of the plane until they got us some seats.
looks like Meg is finally ready so going to cut this short and we are going out shopping for more Christmas presents.
NY Budget issues
So one of the proposed fixes for NY’s budget troubles is: “An “iPod tax” that charges state and local sales tax for “digitally delivered entertainment services”
Which yet again just goes to show you that -
People who pay for digital music = Suckers
People who download illegally=smart, avoiding taxes and crippling DRM on their music files.
Sunday Morning
We are having a nice lazy Sunday morning. I ran out for some breakfast sandwiches and made my self some coffee and we have basically just been taking it easy. Last night we went to Connie and Andrew’s Christmas party which was a lot of fun. I actually managed to make it to and from a Long Island destination with out getting horribly lost for a change
No major plans for today. Figuring I wouldn’t want to do much this morning I did laundry yesterday so really just have to food shop and a few other random errands. This will be a short week work wise. Meg and I are flying out to Fl Thursday to spend an early Christmas with her family. We still have to buy gifts for our secret santa names but we can do that once we get to Fl. We are only spending a few days in Fl this visit and then heading back to NYC for a few days and it’s up to CT for more Christmas this time with my family.
Going to be a crazy few weeks but it wouldn’t be the holidays otherwise
It’s a Major Award!!!
We got a Christmas Box from Meg’s dad/step mom today. Along with a card and some money for Meg and a few other odds and ends they sent along a Christmas Story christmas ornament. It’s the infamous leg lamp and it lights up/says lines from the movie. We got it hanging on our tree in a place of pride
Christmas Tree
We are back in NYC. Drove back yesterday, we could of stayed in CT until today but figured coming back Saturday would give us more time to unpack and set up our Christmas tree. Tomorrow it’s back to work for me. Going to be rough getting up early again after a week of sleeping in but I will survive.
visiting CT
The girl and I are in CT visiting my family for thanksgiving. I have this whole week off for vacation so we decided to come up to CT this past Saturday and will likely be staying till the Saturday after Thanksgiving. No major plans this trip. More a relaxing vacation than a “doing stuff” vacation. We did go up to Northampton and the Yankee Candle superstore as well as a few other random small day trips. My sister and her BF are supposed to come up from Long Island tomorrow and stay though Thanksgiving day. Mmmm….turkey and pie!
Monday it will be back to work time. Finally got signed off to do fire cases, actually did my first one last week before I left. I will have a good deal of stuff to do once I get back so I plan to enjoy my time off to the fullest.
“It’s morning in America. The nightmare is over.”
Congratulations to President Elect Barack Obama! Woo hoo!!!
One day more…
First off…go vote tomorrow. Preferably for Obama but just voting in principle is important.
Second I did my mock trial for Fire Debris this past wednesday and pending some paperwork being signed am officially done with fire training. Woo hoo! Soon enough I will get to start doing fire debris cases on a regular basis, with a sprinkling of Chemical Unknown cases still as they come in / are needed.
Ideally I will be done with training for a while. In theory I will eventually learn explosives analysis also but probably not for at least 6 months or so (or so I hope).
Speaking of work have tomorrow off in theory but am volunteering to go in, and by volunteering I mean I get time and a half plus a day back for later. Plan to stop on vote on my way in, which is easy since our polling place is all of about 200 feet down at the end of our street.
On a sad non work related note for what ever reason they tore up the little weed infested area of dirt and plants behind the building and cemented the whole thing. Granted it was a bit of a tangled mass of weeds and a few rose plants but *I* think at least it was something nicer to look at then a huge square of cement.
Got Forensic Science?
So back when I was at UNH I made a design for a T-shirt for the Forensic Science and Chemistry Club.
Later I edited the images some and made them into compute wallpapers of various sizes and put them up on my website. Over the years it’s been one of the more popular images on my page and has been linked to and used by a number of sites (I actually ended up just posting the files as a .zip to keep myspace and other leachers from hotlinking to the image).
Well about two weeks ago I got an email from someone at American Intercontinental University asking to use the image as part of a display in their School of Criminal Justice. After emailing back and forth a few times and making a few tweaks I sent along a better version of the image for them to use. Well about a week later I got a thank you letter in the mail from the university thanking me for letting them use the picture.
Just goes to show Captain Science is world famous! Now if only I could figure out a way to make money off my stuff and I will be set for life
MORE INFORMATION THAN YOU REQUIRE
Last night Meg and I went into the city to see John Hodgman at the bookstore in Union Square. It was for the release of his new book :
I went down right after work and had Meg meet me there. We were really early but that got us good seats, which proved to be quite fortuitous. Because Hodgman was at a taping for the Daily Show he had Jonathan Coulton as an opening act. I had no idea and needless to say was quite excited, he is one of my favorite geeky singers! He opened with IKEA and treated the crowd to a half hour long set of his songs, ending with RE:Your Brains where the audience got to sing along as a crowd of zombies! A good time was had by all.
John Hodgman was funny, and did the usual author stuff. Told some stories and read some from his book. (For those who don’t know who he is I guess he is most famous as “The PC” on the Mac-PC adds. His book is sort of a almanac of made up facts and knowledge.
After I was able to get my book signed and got to shake hands and talk to both John Hodgman and Jonathan Coulton! All in all it was a really fun evening! We capped off the evening by going out for dinner and drinks at the Heartlan Brewery (Mmmm…. pumpkin ale!)
Flash over
flashover, originally uploaded by zombie_criminalist.
This is at just about the flash over point for the simulated room fire we got to observe today. It originally was a simulated room with a rug, fan, couch, recliner, and two smaller chairs. Now….not so much anymore. This photo is from about 2 minutes after they started the fire using about 2 cups of some ignitable liquid (we don’t know what one yet, thats part of the exercise) tomorrow we go back and will break into teams and process one of the 4 scenes they have. Try and collect evidence from where we think the fire may of started and then try and see what, if any, ignitable liquids are still detectable.
The heat from this thing was really impressive. You can see the pillow smoking which was a few feet outside the burn room. They had a fire team with a hose at the ready and they knocked it down pretty quickly, but what is sort of sobering to remember is that it was that big at 2 minutes. Mind you we had firefighters with a hose waiting and ready to go, if it was a real house fire they would probably be just getting the call still, if that.
