On the upside, the iPhone I ordered finally came in so I am now 100 percent reconnected with the world at all times. Of course one of the great things about the iPhone is all the great apps you can download. For example, right now I am writing this post from the WordPress app!

You can even add pictures from the iphone to your posts. For example, the first photo below is of a church just down the street. Not bad, but you know there's hundreds of apps for that right? So check out the second photo taken with the ProHDR app. Yep you can take HDR photos with your phone now.

Uh, ok. The stupid app wouldn't let me upload the pictures. Whatever. Trust me, they're awesome. 

One thing I noticed, Marcel Rocque (Ferby`s Lead) is a beast! Except that his left arm appeared much larger than his right arm.

OK, so I agree with Mike and am very disappointed with Edmonton`s pro teams right now. Seriously. I hope they can pull it together!!!

Is anyone watching the office? It is my prediction that Michael Scott will start dating Pam`s mom and that it will be hilarious! Also, the last episode gave Kevin a lot of face time and it was great! The kleenex box shoes and the wig? Hilarious!

One more thing:

OMG, some people play Muggle Quidditch.

See here

And here

Weird. Also, I think there are some fundamental problems with the rules of the game. Just sayin`.

Kristen and I spent the rest of the weekend in the CSpot visiting the Christies (and Kristen's mom, Kendall and Mark). We had a great time even though it was tough trying to fit in a visit with everyone. Highlights of our time with the Christie's included: Washing my car for the first time in months (with Christie), some night time photo shooting with Kristen and Mike, Lil G farting loudly at breakfast and then farting on me later when I was holding him.

You know what sucks? I had several dreams over the past few months where I'm running for one reason or another and it's great! But, then I wake up and realize "oh yeah, I can't run at all these days". Yeah, that's what sucks. I have an appointment with the surgeon tomorrow so we'll see what he has to say.

Note that I've updated my blog roll by adding a new link – a link to Kristen's new photo blog. She's only been at the photo blog for a week and a half but she's got some great shots in there.

So… Have you guys ever heard of the Ig Nobel Prizes? They are given each year in early October — around the time the recipients of the genuine Nobel Prizes are announced — for ten achievements that "first make people laugh, and then make them think."

Some of my favorites include:

• Chemistry: Sheree Umpierre, Joseph Hill, and Deborah Anderson, for discovering that Coca-Cola is an effective spermicide, and C.Y. Hong, C.C. Shieh, P. Wu, and B.N. Chiang for accidentally proving it is not.
• Biology: Marie-Christine Cadiergues, Christel Joubert, and Michel Franc, for discovering that fleas that live on dogs jump higher than fleas that live on cats.
• Linguistics: Juan Manuel Toro, Josep B. Trobalon and Nuria Sebastian-Galles, for determining that rats sometimes can't distinguish between recordings of Japanese and Dutch played backward. 
• Chemistry: Antonio Mulet, José Javier Benedito and José Bon of the Polytechnic University of Valencia, Spain, and Carmen Rosselló of the University of Illes Balears, in Palma de Mallorca, Spain, for their study "Ultrasonic Velocity in Cheddar Cheese as Affected by Temperature".
• Peace – Presented jointly to Claire Rind and Peter Simmons of University of Newcastle, in the UK, for electrically monitoring the activity of a brain cell in a locust while that locust was watching selected highlights from the movie Star Wars.
• Fluid Dynamics – Presented jointly to Victor Benno Meyer-Rochow of International University Bremen, Germany and the University of Oulu, Finland; and József Gál of Loránd Eötvös University, Hungary, for using basic principles of physics to calculate the pressure that builds up inside a penguin, as detailed in their report "Pressures Produced When Penguins Poo — Calculations on Avian Defecation".
• Chemistry – Presented jointly to Edward Cussler of the University of Minnesota and Brian Gettelfinger of the University of Minnesota and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, for conducting a careful experiment to settle the longstanding scientific question: can people swim faster in syrup or in water? It was found that swimmers in the experiment reach comparable velocity in both media.
• Physics – Presented to Jack Harvey, John Culvenor, Warren Payne, Steve Cowle, Michael Lawrance, David Stuart, and Robyn Williams of Australia, for their irresistible report "An Analysis of the Forces Required to Drag Sheep over Various Surfaces".
• Sociology – Presented to Steve Penfold, of York University in Toronto, for doing his Ph.D. thesis on the history of Canadian doughnut shops.
• Engineering – Presented jointly to Donald J. Smith and his father, Frank J. Smith, of Orlando, Florida, for patenting the comb over (U.S. Patent 4,022,227). 

Full list of award winners here.

OK, so I did not have super high hopes for the new Star Trek movie since it looks so different from the old ones, but I'm shocked (and happy) to see it at 94% on Rotten Tomatoes. I guess we're going to have to go see it after all!

So, you know how American Idol and other shows of that ilk often feature the weirdo crazies looking for their 15 minutes? Here's one from Britain's Got Talent – She's 47, lives with her cat pebbles, is unemployed and has never been kissed! But there's a catch…

Susan Boyle on Britain's Got Talent

Anyway, I had a great weekend. The guy party at our place on Saturday was a great time. The guitar hero world tour got some good use! The drum pads look well worked in. Most importantly, it was great to see everyone who came. It had been too long since I'd seen many of you, mostly due to my lack of mobility.

Speaking of my lack of mobility… I may have gained some additional mobility. There was no food for lunch today – nothing. So, I HAD to drive to go get an extreme pita. My hands were tied. There was nothing I could do. Anyway, I had no issues driving even though I've read I shouldn't be driving for another week or two.

But more seriously, this lack of physio thing is absolutely driving me nuts. The doc says not to do physio until after 4 weeks post-op. According to my research (and I have done A LOT of research), all of the post-op protocols that I have found for my exact surgery have patients in physio after 10 days to 2 weeks. I have already established excellent range of motion and reduced swelling. Meanwhile, my quads have weakened substantially. I feel that I can handle more. If not full physio, at least partial physio. I guess I will respect the doctors orders (partly), but I will add "mini-squats" to my repertoire of exercises in order to help build/preserve quad strength. I can do those with no pain whatsoever.

Looks like we're going to Canmore for the Easter weekend. That should be a nice weekend break!!

One other thing: I came across this great article about The Settlers of Catan – check it out!

2) I set a new record in Brick Breaker (the game on my blackberry)… 9300! I only play this while I'm waiting for the LRT. I don't know if that's any good compared to the rest of you, but I was impressed with myself!

I finally have a surgery date. March 20 is the big day. I am not looking forward to it at all. I have done extensive research on the recovery and I'm really dreading the pain and the crutches. There's a good chance I won't be able to drive for a month! A MONTH! Looks like Kristen will have to suck it up and drive for that month. I'm working my butt off right now to increase the muscle mass and flexibility in my quads and hamstrings before the surgery.

Chaps: I don't know if you're familiar with Chilean wines, but we hit up the Concha Y Toro and Santa Rita Wineries. At Santa Rita they ferment the wine in 50,000 L vessels… 50,000 L!!! And there are at least 50-100 of these vessels. I picked up a bottle of a Concha Y Toro Carmenere. The story of how it came to be in Chile is (very) mildly amusing (at best) but Carmenere is a distinctly Chilean variety of wine.

The conference ended last Friday and was generally great. This international congress is only held every four years so it's kinda like the olympics (for nerds)… I went to a lot of talks, some I understood and a few that were way over my head (or out of my areas of knowledge). I was hoping to get some good ideas for my PhD research, but most of the talks pertaining to my chosen area of research were not really all that related and were a bit disappointing. Still, most of the big names in my field were there and it was interesting to meet some of them. It was cool to see that my research group probably sent more delegates / authors than any other research institution in the world. My supervisor co-authored 11 papers at this conference (i.e. papers authored by my student colleagues)… The next closest was a prof from Stanford with 7 and after that the next guys came in around 4 papers. I'm consider myself lucky to be a part of this group.

On Saturday I went wine tasting with some friends / fellow students from our group. We rented a car and drove about an hour out of Santiago (to the south). Like many, I've done the wine touring in the southern BC, but this is on a whole new level. Both of the two wineries were easily 100 – 200 times bigger than most of the wineries in BC. The scale of these operations is staggering. At the first, we got a great tour of the wine making process plant. At the second, we got a tour of the grounds, vineyard and cellars. I picked up a couple of bottles to bring home.