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Well, last night was very exciting if you’re a science nerd! Physicists from CERN reported that two independent experiments at the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) confirmed that they have very strong evidence for a particle that is consistent with the expected energy signature of the long-sought Higgs Boson.

Angry Birds celebrated in geeky style with an homage…   🙂

Why is there so much hype about the Higgs Boson? Well, according to the Standard Model of physics, the Higgs Field^ is what ‘gives’ mass to all the particles that have mass. If we didn’t find the Higgs Boson roughly where we were searching for it, that would suggest that the Higgs Field doesn’t exist. And that would indicate that our current understanding of some fundamental physics was wrong. But nope, it seems like we’re on the right track – we’ve ‘seen’ the Higgs Boson, and can be confident that the Higgs Field is real.  *whew*

With the Higgs Boson where we expect it – and with an ability to ‘see’ it (indirectly) – we can start figuring out how gravity works. Which is kind of a big deal. (If you’re a nerd.)

Now the hard work really begins…   🙂

^ The Higgs Field surrounds and permeates everything. It binds the universe together. Y’know, kind of like The Force.   😉

I had a few colleagues come up to peer at the sun through my filtered binocs during today’s transit of Venus. While we have amazing images coming in from huge telescopes and orbiting spacecraft, there’s nothing quite like seeing an astronomical event *live* with your own eyes.

I’m always super-excited when I remind myself that the photons annihilating themselves on my retinas at that very moment CAME DIRECTLY FROM the object I’m looking at—whether they started their journey 3 seconds (Moon), 8 minutes (Sun), an hour (Saturn), or millions or billions of years ago (galaxies).

Mind = blown, every time. 🙂

If you’re like me, the time will come when you decide to blow away then re-create the Windows install on your Mac.

Maybe you want some of the space back that you originally allocated to the partition, maybe you’re sick of Vista and want to play with Vista SP3 Windows 7… Maybe it’s a little from column A, a little from column B.  🙂

So anyway, you’ve resized your Boot Camp partition, and (re)installed your Windows of choice. You boot back into OSX, fire up VMware Fusion (hereinafter just Fusion), and… OH NOES! Does. Not. Work.

Here’s how to fix.

(NOTE: As always with advice from teh intarwebs, YOU’RE USING THIS INFO AT YOUR OWN RISK. If you’re not confident about what you’re doing, then DON’T.)

1. Quit Fusion
2. Navigate in Finder to /Users/{$username}/Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/Virtual Machines
3. Delete the entire Boot Camp directory
4. Start Fusion
5. Start the Boot Camp VM, which will still be listed in the Virtual Machine Library
6. Voila! Fusion will re-create your Boot Camp VM automagically.
7. Enjoy.

A good friend of mine—who hasn’t yet placed so much as one delicate toe into the opaque waters of Twitter—asked me whether it’s something she could use to promote a product that she sells. Personally, I’m not a fan of Twitter marketing, but I also don’t believe in forcing my world view upon others.

Here’s what I told her (sans anything identifying):

OK, so – Twitter.

Most people use Twitter to just blurt out little tidbits of info about what they’re doing. Some people use it to promote a product, service, or to build their “personal brand” (ugh!). Many (most?) of the people who just use it as a great big chat room to hang out with their friends resent the ‘intrusion’ of the marketers & promoters into ‘their’ fun space. Some don’t, but many do.

Like the ‘net has “netiquette”, so has Twitter (“Twittiquette”?). It isn’t written down anywhere, and the rules are not universally agreed upon – but when you breach it, you’ll certainly know. It’s really easy to go from hero to persona non grata in the blink of an eye. (continue reading…)

There’s been a bunch™ of stuff™ lately that’s made me think, “gee, this $topic really needs more than just a tweet”, so I’m setting up a blog.

I expect it to be sporadic, and eclectic. Hope you enjoy!

If you want to follow my less-verbose musings, you may wish to follow me on Twitter.  🙂