strange behavior

just a bunch of interesting "goings-ons" i experienced today.

today during research, we noticed that our laser was being really picky (more than usual...) about its temperature.

i got a couple more nice comments about my talk on tuesday. how "using a diode laser to study the 13C/12C ratio in CO2" turned out to be such an interesting topic to a bunch of non-physical chemists i have no idea, but it was nice to hear that people understood what i talked about, because i really tried to make it accessible.

got a call from the DNC (democratic national committee), wanting to hit me up for money. i told them the honest-to-goodness truth that my wife and i support different political parties, and rather than give money to both and grumble about having our hard earned dollars go to "the other side" we decided not to give money to either, unless its random personal cash on hand. the guy on the line was amazed and started laughing. little did he realize, i was telling the truth!