Stephen Skory

I’ve posted my photos from Corvallis. There aren’t any truly spectacular photos, but the fall colors in town and on campus (below) were nice. The outcome of the Cal/Oregon State game was disappointing, as you can see on our faces. Everything in Corvallis and on campus is beaver-themed; he jumbotron in Reser stadium is called the “Dam Cam.” On Sunday Matt, Tona, Jenny and I walked around campus, which is quite nice with many brick buildings and leafy tree-rimmed quads. The weather was great on game day, but cold and overcast on Sunday.

The Bears lost to the Beavers today. Another season of mediocrity for the Bears is confirmed.

I attached the GPS to the window on the plane from Oakland to Portland. Check out the speed (it’s in M.P.H.)!

More photos to come!

UC Berkeley has bear statues, UCLA has their bruin statue, UC Irvine even has an anteater. Now UC San Diego has a Triton!

As I walked to lunch I saw the unveiling ceremony ending while the UCSD band (we have a band?) played the UCSD fight song (we have a fight song?). Below the statue there is a few streams of bubbly water and a a plaque which explains that the Triton doesn’t get to use his awesome trident, he just blows really hard on his conch which scares all the other gods and baddies away.

I, for one, am now waiting for the UC Santa Cruz banana slug statue.

My adviser Professor Mike Norman, as part of his job at the San Diego Supercomputer Center, purchased an optiportal system for the new SDSC building which is opening today. An optiportal system is a wall of monitors powered by networked computers such that the screens behave as one monitor. Very high resolution images and movies can be tiled across the screens, as you can see below. Movies and animations can also be tiled across the screens.

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Today Steve Lynch and I did some exploring off Peñasquitos Park and came across these derelict cars dropped into a small gorge. A VW Beetle, Audi and Ford Explorer (high gas prices, you know) were ones I could identify. There were two others rusted beyond recognition. It looked like after the cars had been shoved into the pit, they had been sledgehammered, to make sure they were really dead, of course. The Beetle was missing its motor, among other things, while the Ford didn’t have any seats in it. The Audi was probably a nice car once upon a time, it had a sun roof (or moon depending on trademarks).

I like to imagine this is what might happen if the world order collapses. People just junking once useful and valuable things when you can no longer get gasoline or electricity. Kind of like Mexico.

Update: you can see the Ford on Google Maps.