Back-In-the-Office Rambly Bits

[gnomi]

-- So, I'm back in the office, which means that my schedule will be normalizing.

-- Also, my laptop has been repaired and will be coming home tonight, thus returning me to normal communications at home.

-- We still have no new stove, much to the consternation of many, but I was assured last night that I should be coming home this evening to find a new stove in my kitchen. Which is good, because it's predicted to top out at about 18 degrees today. And since that's too cold for my oven to function, we're dependent on the microwave until such time as my new stove appears.

-- Yesterday was The Great Pluto Debate, and it was quite an interesting event. Over 250 people showed up to hear the debate, and I can now say that I have shared a stage and a conversation with Brian Marsden and Owen Gingerich, as well as Arsen Hajian of the US Naval Observatory; Andy Cheng, Principal Investigator for the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) for the New Horizons Mission to Pluto; Gareth Williams, Associate Director of the Minor Planet Center at the Harvard Center for Astrophysics; Kelly Beatty, Executive Editor of Sky and Telescope magazine; and mabfan.

-- As mentioned above, the weather today is good for penguins and polar bears and that's about it. It was 10 degrees when I left home, 9 when I got to the office, and it's now back up to 10. With the wind, it feels like -17, they're saying. Brrrrrrrrr!

Comments

[tygerseye.livejournal.com]

It's too damn cold. It just IS.

So did The Great Pluto Debate have any kind of conclusion? Or was it just discussion?

Have the angst penguins.

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

The Great Pluto Debate basically ended with the agreement to disagree and the agreement that, no matter which way you feel about Pluto itself, the IAU's procedure was flawed in this matter. But we did manage to convince some people to change their minds (the head of the Clay Center, who had been in the anti-planet camp at the beginning of the debate, told us afterwards that he was now pro-planet).

I see your angst penguins and return some recreational-therapy penguins.

(oh -- and with luck, I'll have your ms back to you tonight or tomorrow. Thank you both again for being so flexible.)

[tygerseye.livejournal.com]

Hee! The only other penguins I have are my mommy penguins. :D

(And hey, no need for thanks. *hugs* Just give us a hard deadline to get it back to you and we're good to go.)

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

Heh. I have collected a number of penguin icons at this point. Penguins make me grin, almost inevitably.

And, yeah. I can do that. Hard deadline? No problem. :-)

[madfilkentist]

Nothing to add here. Just throwing in another penguin. :)

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

All penguins are welcome here. :-)

[rikchik.livejournal.com]

Sorry I couldn't make it to the debate. I saw the story on it in the Metro - y'all got a mention on the front page and a story on page 3.

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

Today's Metro? I'll have to grab a copy, if so!

[rikchik.livejournal.com]

Yep.

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

Cool! And I found the article on their website, so I got a chance to read it. Thanks for the heads-up that it was there.

[rikchik.livejournal.com]

No problem!

[kuroshii.livejournal.com]

something to make you feel a little better (maybe): right now (9a) in chicago it's minus six degrees. the high for today is forecast to be one measly degree above zero.

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

Yikes. That's mighty cold, indeed. Bundle up and stay warm, OK? No freezing off important body parts.

[kuroshii.livejournal.com]

trust me, i'm not planning on peeping so much as my nose outside till next friday night. by which point even the lows should have gone back above freezing. ;)

[ladyrutile.livejournal.com]

SO so glad I moved to Seattle!

[kuroshii.livejournal.com]

yeah. there's something to be said for having a nice big ocean to regulate things, that's for sure! :)

[jenwrites.livejournal.com]

Oh crap, I wanted to go to the Pluto Debate, but for some reason I thought it was later in the month.

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

Alas.

However, since it proved quite popular, the folks at the Clay Center are interested in doing other such fora, so there may be others of its type in the future.