Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Solar Decathlon Results

As faithful readers of this blog well remember, Dale worked on Santa Clara University's solar house entry in the Solar Decathlon, held in Washington DC on the Mall.




The results are in and Team California won third place! This is an awesome accomplishment given the competition from much bigger teams with more money behind them. They won first place in architecture and communication and won second place in engineering. Apparently there were a number of cloudy and rainy days in Washington DC during the competition which gave the house a low score for Net Metering (amount of excess electricity created). The overall winner was Germany, which literally had solar panels covering the entire house.

Here's Team California's house, the Refract House. Isn't it a beauty?



Congratulations to Team California!

Thursday, October 15, 2009

The Office Wedding

Did you see The Office wedding of Jim and Pam? If not, don't worry this isn't a spoiler, at least not a big one.

In the episode, Dwight wears a cool Three Wolves t-shirt. It turns out that the t-shirt is an Amazon.com review phenomenon. Check out the reviews on the shirt. Very funny.

This isn't the first time when an Amazon.com product attracted creative writers to the review section.

Tuscan Whole Milk

Uranium Ore - the first review is my favorite

Friday, October 09, 2009

Game Report

Tim, sorry I deleted the picture of Miss San Jose from my phone. I couldn't take looking at that Random Guy who got into the picture staring at me.

But instead, here's my game report.
Sharks won 6-3! They looked great after a lackluster first period. Dany Heatley scored a hat trick with the last goal coming on a penalty shot. Thornton had 4 assists.

Other notes:
* Tim and I had a nice sandwich at Togo's. I had my usual meatball sandwich. It appeared Tim had pastrami.
* Tim's seats have new neighbors on both sides. Tim actually spoke to his neighbors on the right, ending a streak of 45+ games of not speaking to the previous neighbor.
* Even with the Sharks scoring six goals, I didn't see any high fives between Tim and his new neighbors on the right. I'll continue to monitor the situation for any developments.
* I'm concerned about the new neighbor on the left however. She's a yeller and a clapper, doing so constantly - LET'S GO PATTY...CLAP CLAP CLAP...WHAT ARE YOU GUYS DOING...CLAP CLAP CLAP...GO SHARKS...SHOOT THE PUCK...BOYLE DON'T GIVE UP THE PUCK...CLAP CLAP CLAP...LETS GO SHARKS. Repeat (many times).
* Neither Tim nor I joined in the lame attempt at The Wave that some of the bored fans tried to start in the upper bowl. And we never will. This isn't some football game from the Eighties.
* Both Tim and I labeled some guy a dumbass for trying to orchestrate the lame attempt at The Wave. I yelled at him to sit down.




I couldn't believe Nabokov was doing his pregame warmups in an outdoors inflatable rink with kids shooting plastic pucks at him. No wonder he's been playing so poorly.




The players lined up before the faceoff for the traditional opening game introductions.

Great first home game of the season



I know Dani will be disappointed I didn't throw my hat after the hat trick. I am more disappointed that Steve hasn't posted the picture of Ms. San Jose that he took before the game.