First, however, some background. I’m a chemist (or used to be one), so I’m a super nerd when it comes to relativistic chemistry. It turns out that as elements get heavier, relativity becomes more and more important. As a theoretical chemist, one thing you learn quickly is that if you don’t take relativity into account, your calculation will be way off.

Without relativity, for example, my thesis work on IBr- had to take into account relativity. Iodine is a heavy element so relativity is important, so, I had to consider it. I did this the easy way: I let others take care of it! I used what’s called an ECP that sort of built in the relativity without my needing to worry.

I can hear you saying: so what, IBr isn’t that important and I’ve never heard of it. But, let’s say you want to calculate the what color gold metal should be or what mercury should be like at room temperature. Without relativity, gold looks like silver and mercury is a solid. With relativity, gold is gold and mercury is a liquid.

So now to the main event: why your car battery only works because of relativity. Couple  weeks ago, a paper came out in Physical Review Letters (PRL, 106, 018301 (2011) if you have access to it) by Pekka Pyykkö and collaborators called “Relativity and the Lead-Acid Battery”.  This paper uses relativistic quantum chemistry to model the reactions in a lead-acid battery (like the 12V battery in your car) and it found something rather amazing. Of the voltage generated by a lead-acid cell, which is ~2.1 V (there are 6 cells in a 12 V car battery), fully 1.7-1.8 V is due to relativistic effects. 80-85% of the voltage in a car battery is there because of relativity!

As the authors note in the paper, while the lead-acid cell has been known for 150 years, this paper is the first doing ab initio, or first principles, calculations, compared to the more modern lithium-ion cells of which ab initio calculations abound. The major reason for this is that lead is heavy and a heavy atom is a hard atom to calculate.

(They also show that without relativity, it’d make for a crap battery. They do calculations with lead’s lighter brother tin and find that a tin-acid battery wouldn’t be worth it’s weight in, well, tin.)

I just love it when something I studied, I’ve used, I know about has such a cool result like this.

Yours in NERD!,

Matt

First, when you sign up, you get to go to a training course a month or two before the election. There you get a crash course in being an official. It’s a lot of information coming at you. In the end, I took away two things. First, a packet of information I read a few times before the big day, and second, “When in doubt, ask the Chief.” The latter dictum ended up being the credo for Election Day.

Speaking of, soon enough comes Election Day.  In Fairfax County, the polls are open from 6 am to 7 pm.  Since we have to set up the machines and get ready, you report to the polling place at 5 am. Which means waking up around 3:30, 4…early even for this early bird. Also, once you are at the polling place and sworn in, you cannot leave. Period. So that means you bring food and have a long day ahead of you.

So, on Tuesday, I got to the middle school I’d be working at at 4:45 am and met our Chief. The Chief, in what I’m sure will amaze the no one reading this, is the head official and the “boss” for all intents and purposes. After a few minutes, the custodian lets us into the building and we get to work. Like in many polling places at schools, we are in the library and when we get there, I find that the room has already been rearranged by the Chief and Assistant Chief. Nice, no table hauling.

But once in the room, the day begins. First, the oath, before we can touch any election machines or ballots or anything, we are sworn in as election officers. We also get a sweet button! (Sadly, it’s returned at the end of the day…dang it.) After being sworn in, I learn I’m helping the Asst Chief with setting up and opening the WinVote touchscreen machines.  This involved a long procedure/checklist. Everything was sealed up and all seals were accounted for and recorded. Then after doing the origami-like manipulations to set them up, we then had to make sure all the machines started at zero.  This involved each machine (there were three) printing out a long tape that assures that every ballot issue and race has zero votes before the day begins.

Soon poll opening time approached.  In the elections there are essentially three jobs to do. The first I’d be doing is working with the WinVote machine. I was one of the people directing voters to either the machines or to the booths where they could fill out a paper ballot (both are options in Fairfax). If they choose electronic–something about 90% of voters did–then I was one of two people who would take a smartcard and activate the machine.

Once activated, most people have used the touchscreen machines before and power through the ballot (though not always quickly…some read the issues carefully for the first time there). A good portion though aren’t quite comfortable with the tech yet, and it was also my job to help where I could. Usually the Asst Chief who was helping did that and did it well. I helped a few times and was…less good at it.  The main problem is that, technically, I have to help the people without actually looking at their ballot; it is a secret ballot after all.

It was also at this point in the day that I was most frustrated. I worked the WinVote machines for about the first five hours.  There was a bit of a rush of voters when the polls opened, but since there were two of us working the machines then, it was manageable. Soon, though, the Asst Chief had to be called away. Usually this was when someone who couldn’t come in needed to vote which meant one of the machines had to go out to them in the car. (By the way, never knew this was possible…and it happened 4 or 5 times!) When this happened, or the AC was needed by others because the Chief was busy, well, it is not easy for one person to manage the voting of 90% of everyone coming in.

Gah.

But, I made it. Sure, I cursed my fellow officials at times for not leaping to help as fast as they could, but, eh. Besides, working the machines meant I got to experience the best part of voting from the other side: I gave out The Stickers!  Woo!

After 5 or so hours of this, the Chief decided it was a good time to switch up jobs. My next post was working the pollbooks. I was then one of the people that greets you and looks you up in the book to make sure you can vote. It turns out that the pollbooks are probably the most important part of the election. Why? Well, they are the record that shows how many voters came in to vote. When someone comes in, I’d say this person is voter 210 (in A-K) and then cross an X through the number.

At the end of the day, this must match the number of ballots cast. About once an hour (or more if more voters came) the Chief would come to the books to make sure that the count we had matched the ballot count on the machines and the ballot scanner. If they didn’t, his hair got a little whiter. Unfortunately, every so often it wouldn’t match. It took a while each time, but usually we’d track it down to either assigning a duplicate number or skipping one in the book that was X’d out. (Note: I must admit that during my 4 hours on the books, I didn’t mess up. Woo! I mainly thank the Official who showed me the technique she was using.)

It was also while working the polls that I put to use the credo “When in doubt, ask the Chief.” When someone’s name wasn’t in the book, I asked the Chief. When their address didn’t match their ID, I asked the Chief. When someone said they needed to help their relative translate the ballot, I asked the Chief. When a voter didn’t want to present ID, I asked the Chief.

As the day wore on, I moved to the final job, working the paper ballots and the optical scan machine. This was the least stressful job, mainly because there were fewer people choosing paper ballots. It was cool watching that scanner take the ballots. Shooop! And I got to give out The Stickers again!

Finally, 6:45 came around and the Chief announced “The polls will close in 15 minutes” and then at 7:00, boom!, polls closed. Everyone still in line at that point could vote, and so they did. When all the voters were done, the doors were locked and we then entered the counting phase. As I helped open the WinVote machines, I also helped close them. This involved printing out the results (multiple times) and extracting the wee USB drive with a backup record of the votes. These results were then combined with the paper ballots and the pollbooks consulted to make sure the number of voters equaled the number of ballots. And they did! When all was done, I had the fun job of calling in our precinct’s results to the County Election Board. So, if you saw the results for Fairfax County, my voice reported some of those.

After a bit more time rearranging the tables so the library was returned to library spec, we were able to leave…at 8:50 pm. That is indeed a 16-hour day. A long exhausting 16-hour day. But it was worth it because it was for voting!

Really, don’t read further if you value, uh, not being bored out of your skull, I guess.

Okay. Anyone still here needs a cure for insomnia, and I aim to please! Frankly, I just wanted to write. Write about myself, I guess, because sometimes I feel the need to do that. To vent. About the good and the bad and the middling in my life.

First off, it’s been about a year since I started my new job with SAIC at NASA Goddard. Much like all things in life, it’s been a combination of good and bad. Now, if I went off the last few weeks, it’d probably seem quite bad. My guess is is that at higher levels, things are getting near end dates or something, because the pressure on Matt? It has been being applied.

Hmm. I’m not too sure about that last verb tense, but it’s the combination that seems to work in my head. But maybe I’ve just watched too much Futurama with time travel and all. But I digress…

I’ve been working my…rear end off the last few weeks. Some days, the pressure gets to me, I admit it. I don’t think I’ve felt this pressured, this driven to complete work since the bad days of grad school.  I work 10-, 12-hour days, slump on home, and then can barely function and remember what I’ve done until I hit the bed and wake up the next day. I know, I know. I’m not the only person ever who has long, hard days at work. But it’s just been a bit constant for a while now.

Plus, I often feel afraid that I’m not doing well enough at my job. That the successes I feel I’ve achieved don’t live up to what expectations the bosses have for me. I report what I think is a stellar result, and I sometimes get this “yeah, yeah, now what” feeling back. Of course, that sort of is the purpose of a boss. They expect results because I’m paid for results and results are expected by higher-ups of them.

I…I just hope I am doing well. I make mistakes. Made a doozie this week. Handed off some code I thought was good, but in the end turns out I was breaking the Fortran standard. Well, maybe not the standard, but I was assuming something that a conservative reading of the standard would not. One compiler allowed for the lazy thinking I was doing, but another didn’t. Weirdly, the latter compiler sometimes worked, sometimes didn’t. I imagine the optimizer sometimes managed to code around the bug or something.

Wow. I am boring.

I know, I know. Complain complain complain. But you know what? On the whole, though, my job isn’t bad. I like the co-workers I’ve gotten to know. I find my work interesting. I’m learning new things about a subject, meteorology and modeling it,  I know little about. And even the things I know a little about, I’m challenging myself every day. While that’s often frustrating, if I’m able to fix something, learn something…I like that.

Now for the more maudlin portion of our evening: Matt’s personal life! And, BONUS!, this section will probably be shorter that the above. Why? Because my personal life is, well, nigh-non-existent.

First and foremost, I’m alone. No, not alone, I guess. I’m lonely. I have friends, dear friends, on the internet, but it seems as if I’m destined to lose the ones I form here in DC, in real life. I find some, but they seem to drift away. Perhaps I’m too invested in the friendship and thus too “into” it. Or maybe not enough and they think I think they’re not worth my time. I don’t know.  I try and be a good friend, a good person. I can only be me. I still go to bed every night alone, wake up alone, go through the day alone. Gets to you, you know?

As for the more-than-friends part of life. Think, hmm, Washington Generals. I’ve had a few dates in the last few months and each was a disaster on a bad-Hollywood-sitcom level. One I got stood up. One, I’m pretty sure, just used me for the dinner. Another, I think she was visibly disgusted by me. Or something…I dunno.

I know those reactions are my fault. I’m not that attractive, I’m not all that fun and interesting. And, I suppose, I should just give up. But, well, they thought at least enough of me to want to meet in person. I guess I suppose at least virtually, I’m not a bad guy.

And I like me, ya know?  And I know from past experience that at least one woman seemed to like me too, maybe even love me. Sure, I managed to screw everything up with Jay somehow, yeah, but, you know what, for a while there, things were good and I guess that glimpse of something better, that feeling of belonging to something greater than me, of things being just right, it hooked me. I was genuinely happy in those days. I want that back again.

So I soldier on. I get insta-rejected on OKCupid now and then and now and then (a lot, okay?), rejected in real life. But I try, try again thinking someone out there might see more of me than the surface.

What’s that adage about insanity? Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Guess I’m a bit insane when it comes to relationships, eh?

Ah well, I suppose that’s enough rambling for now. Guess I had to get some stuff off of my mind.

Onward and upward. Tomorrow’s another day. And all that jazz.

On Firefox, I am able to use Tab Mix Plus so that when I press “v” in Google Reader, the item will open in a background tab. I’m the sort of bloke who likes to open a lot of tabs before reading them.

Now, however, I found this extension: Google Reader Open entry in background tab

With this extension, hmm, Chrome might just win.

I hope everyone likes them…because they are staying! (Read, pricey.)

I apologize that there aren’t any pictures, but, well, FOOOOOOD. However, I hope to below list the order of food with my impressions of it. The “names” of the dishes are what I can either glean from the menu or remember from my head. There is also a chance I’ve missed a dish, but I think I got them all. Now, the food:

1. Three BBQ Meats/Marinated Delight/Platter: A platter of mystery meats. Our guesses were roast pork, roast chicken, and intestine/stomach/something. All quite good and yummy.
2. Watercress with Clam Soup: A soup chock full of clams and watercress. The broth was very good as was the watercress. The clams? Well, I’m not the biggest fan, but I was told these were good.
3. ByBa Duck (aka Pipa Duck): Perhaps the best roasted duck I’ve ever had. So good.
4. Fried Sliced Fish, Salt and Pepper Style: Slices of a white fish, coated with a crispy breading and fried. The breading itself had salty, spicy kick to it. In fact, it was probably the hottest dish of the day, spice-wise. Served with some preserved anchovies and jalapenos.
5. Oyster with Ginger & Scallion Roast Pig in Casserole: The first casserole of the day. Again, not the biggest shellfish fan, but the oysters I tried were yummy. The best part of this dish were the onions at the bottom. They had absorbed all the sauce and flavor…mmm.
6. Sauteed Abalone with Chinese Vegetables and Chinese Mushrooms: I really liked the veggies (mustard greens?) and mushrooms. The abalone? Eh. Still not a fan of its weird texture.
7. Braised Eel with Roast Pig Garlic Sauce: This too was very good. One issue I had was that the eel was not boneless or bone-cut, but rather just chopped. The eel had great flavor, but the picking the meat from the bones (the many, many bones) was annoying. However, see that “garlic” up there? In this dish were the most flavorful garlic cloves ever. I kept picking them out, perhaps to the consternation of my tablemates.
8. Salted Fish, Diced Chicken, and Eggplant Casserole: A classic of Cantonese casseroles. I’m a big fan of all the ingredients, add them together and you get a happy Matt.
9. Sauteed Kingdom Mushroom, Braised Tofu, and Snow Pea Shoots: The final dish of the day was a “on the board” special. It’s about what it sounds like, except the mushrooms were…odd. I have *no* idea what species they are, but the whole mushroom must be enormous. The slices of mushrooms were bigger than an Ike dollar. Still, a very good dish.

All in all, an amazing feast. The cost, while not cheap, was still a great bargain for the variety of dishes. In fact, the whole meal per person was probably about the same cost as one order of that abalone dish. And the kids held their own, let me tell you. They had their own table with, while not all this food, not exactly just a few dishes.

Now? Now I’m going to sit like a bump on a log and try and digest the feast.

I know, I know, not that exciting, but, man, is it fascinating! The object of my focus this afternoon is the LA Public Library’s online Menu Collection. Just give it a whirl and I dare you not to be sucked in.  Marvel at what ten bucks would buy you 30 years ago compared to today.

I’m not the first to find this site, but I’m damn sure not going to be the last!

However, there is a bit of an issue with its integration, I believe. Namely: they give different answers!  I know this because I tried out an example in the first link up there, that of 2^2^2^2^2.  It turns out the answer to this is a bit vague, so differing solutions are not unexpected, but still…

Why? Exponentiation is not associative, unlike addition or multiplication (it might satisfy the Lie algebra equivalent of the Jacobi identity, I dunno), so the order matters. A lot.  Thus, while 2+(3+4) = (2+3)+4, and likewise for multiplication, 2^(3^4) !=  (2^3)^4. This being exponentiation, it really doesn’t. The latter is 4096, the former is 2417851639229258349412352. Juuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuust a bit different. So without parentheses, things are vague.

Now how about the example in the article? We’ll get to that. Let’s start with 3 2′s. (2^2)^2 = 16, 2^(2^2) = 16. Phew safe. So, 2^2^2 is fine.

2^2^2^2? Given that, Bing outputs the “bottom-up” answer: ((2^2)^2)^2 = 256. W|A outputs the “top-down”: 2^(2^(2^2)) = 65536. Ah ha.

The disparity is growing, but not bad. So adding one more ^2 shouldn’t be too horrible, right?

Wrong.

Exponentiation grows quickly so order reaaaaaallly matters.

2^2^2^2^2? As expected from above, Bing should do 256^2=65536 and it does. W|A? Well, it does 2^65536. This is a big number. How big? Well…

20035299304068464649790723515

602557504478254755697514192650

169737108940595563114530895061

308809333481010382343429072631

818229493821188126688695063647…

…8091458852699826141425030123391

That is a 19729 digit number. Big.

Therein lies the difference, but which is right? Hmm. Most mathematicians think of repeated exponentiation as “top-down”. So, my main question is why isn’t Bing using W|A as it says? Or is there some extra option I need to assemble?

Oh well. Just an odd thing I noticed.

For many moons, I’ve been a member of both the ACS (American Chemical Society) and APS (American Physical Society), the former for ten or more, the latter for a few.  As a theoretical chemist, having a membership to these societies was quite useful. You get a subscription to a very good “popular” magazine, Chemical and Engineering News and Physics Today, discounted registration at conferences, and, perhaps most importantly, access to the respective job banks.

All this, though, comes at a cost. When you are a grad student and recent postdoc, the membership cost isn’t too expensive and the benefits well outweigh the costs.  But once you are a “professional member” the costs double–I think–at least to $140 and $118 per annum.

Okay, that’s not bad, not great, but not horrible. *But*, I am no longer a practicing chemist/physicist. I’m a code monkey. A membership to IEEE or ACM would make more sense, really. Heck, I’m kind of attending SC09, the supercomputing conference, next weekend.

But, but, but. I am a chemist. I am a physicist (according to Feynman, no less). I still think of myself as such and I suppose a part of me thinks one day I might be a practicing chemist/physicist again.

I’m not sure what to do.

Okay, that’s redundant.

Sometimes, when I’m in my apartment…

…

…

…I make car noises as I walk around.

Vroooooom! as I move forward.

Vreeeewww! as I turn a corner.

Skreeeeee! as I stop.

Sometimes I sound like an F1 car, sometimes a Cup car, sometimes a World Rally Car.

Yup.

See what you are missing, ladies?!

Yours in you know you do it too,

Matt