No, Becky isn’t cheating on me… and no, I haven’t replaced my problem-plagued PowerBook. Though you might say I’m cheating on it, but more on that in a moment.

First of all, about Becky’s “boyfriend” — which is actually a body pillow, not a “boyfriend pillow,” but she refers to it as a “boyfriend” anyway, just to annoy me. :) She’s been talking for weeks about getting one, anticipating the need for extra comfort when she becomes unable to sleep on her stomach later in pregnancy. So today, we finally went to Target and bought it. Here’s a photo of Becky in bed with her new boyfriend:

Note the cute pajama pants. They have puffy clouds on them, and they’re fuzzy. Also note the teddy bear. I gave that to her years ago. His name is Brain (because he has a giant head). Oh, and that cute girl in the photo? She’s got my baby inside her belly.

(Which reminds me of yesterday’s funny-exchange-of-the-day. Me to Becky: “You’ve got a baby in your belly.” Becky to me: “It’s not really in my belly. It’s in my uterus.” Me, indignantly: “It’s in your belly. Don’t you question my euphemistic biology!”)

Anyway… Becky has a thing about naming inanimate objects. Her car, for instance, is Janet. So naturally, she wants to name her “boyfriend.” So far, the leading contender is “Alejandro,” but suggestions for alternative names are welcome. Meanwhile, I think I might name one of my pillows “Megan.” Turnabout is fair play, right? ;)

As for my new computer… I’m sorry, darling PowerBook, but I’m cheating on you with… [cue horror movie music]… a PC!!!

That’s right: I bought a used Compaq Armada E500 at Computer King this afternoon. [Horror music continues, then gradually subsides, replaced by sad-sounding violins.]

But… but… it’s not what you think, PowerBook!! I don’t have feelings for the Compaq! Our relationship is purely professional! And anyway, I had to do it!

See, the Colorado Board of Law Examiners lets you take the essay and performance-test portions of the Bar Exam with a laptop, but it has to be a PC because Examsoft doesn’t support Macs. I type much faster than I write, so this is very important for me — but my old Dell Inspiron isn’t reliable enough for bar-exam purposes. Its battery doesn’t hold any charge whatsoever anymore, so if the power supply came out for even a second, I would lose all my work. (Back before Notre Dame’s cheating-prevention program honor-code supplement of choice, SecureExam, supported Macs, I actually took my first-semester 1L exams on the Dell, with the power cord masking-taped to the desk so it wouldn’t come out. It was a nerve-racking, rigged-up arrangement, but it worked. I’m not going to take that sort of risk with the bar exam, though… especially since masking tape probably isn’t allowed in the examination room.)

My original plan was to either borrow a laptop from Kristy or V, or rent one when we get to Denver. But then yesterday, I found out that I needed to download and register Examsoft on my computer by this Monday, so that meant I had to get one here in Knoxville, and fast. I called Rent-a-Center yesterday and they said I could rent a Toshiba for three weeks for $125, so I went in today planning to pick it up. But then they said they couldn’t give me the laptop until they’d confirmed my references and such, and they wouldn’t be able to do that until Monday. Because I’m taking a PMBR multistate mock exam at UT on Monday, and then the Examsoft deadline is at the end of the day, that was no good. So I went to Computer King and, after listening to their rental options (as well as some rambling nonsense about the Illuminati by the oddball shopkeeper), I decided to just bite the bullet and buy a used laptop for $300. It meets Examsoft’s requirements, and hopefully after the exam, I can resell it and get most or all of my money back. So this might end up being a better deal than renting, actually.

So, yeah. Becky has a new “boyfriend,” and I have a new computer — officially the fifth laptop that we own. (My PowerBook, her current iBook, her old barely-functional iBook, my old barely-functional Dell, and now the Compaq.) All in all, an eventful day in Loy-land.

On the topic of lolcats, bar-studying law grads really shouldn’t miss the Bar Exam Lolcats Facebook group. A few samples:

Heh. (Hat tip: Anonymous.)

Marat, we’re poor, and the poor stay poor.
Marat, don’t make us wait anymore.
We want our rights, and we don’t care how.
We want a revolution — now.
- from the musical Marat/Sade

Marat was an extremist among extremists, a polemicist. He whipped up the French to bloodthirsty mobs in 1789 with the diatribes he wrote and published. He signed the death warrants of Louis XVI ane Marie-Antoinette. He was instrumental in bringing on the bloodbath of the French Revolution.

Marat had a disfiguring skin disease that kept him in a medicinal bath almost around the clock. He did his writing there. And he was ultimately assassinated there.

The artist who painted him was a polemicist also — in art. He also signed those death warrants. He painted Marat unblemished, almost unbloodied, gracefully slumped, a hero, a martyr, almost a dead Christ figure.

You can see this Marat by googling MARAT DAVID PAINTING. You will see how we are supposed to believe he was, how we are supposed to believe all the instigators of the years-long massacre were, when we sing The Marseillaise today, Bastille Day.

The hurricane season hasn’t given us anything to fear yet in the tropical Atlantic, but there is some cause for concern looking forward, particularly along the Gulf Coast. The Houston Chronicle’s SciGuy looks at the Tropical Cyclone Heat Potential maps, and notes that the Gulf and Western Caribbean are warmer than they were this time in 2005 — and the “heat potential generally should only increase during the next few months unless a major storm passes through and stirs up cooler water from below.”

So what does this tell us? I’m certainly not saying there’s another Rita or Katrina in store for this summer. But given the heat potential in the Gulf it’s possible, and coastal residents ought to be quite wary of tropical systems that develop in the Caribbean or reach the Gulf of Mexico.

So let us hope that wind shear, Saharan dust or other factors ensure that they do not.

Unfortunately, according to Dr. Jeff Masters, one of those “other factors” — the global steering currents — are about to shift in a way that would make a Gulf hurricane more likely:

[T]here is there a major development to report–it appears likely that a major shift in the weather pattern will occur in late July across the Northern Hemisphere. If the GFS model is correct, the trough of low pressure that has been consistently in place over the Eastern U.S. will finally move off, to be replaced by a ridge of high pressure. This would bring a hurricane steering pattern much like we saw in 2004 and 2005, with increased risk for the Gulf of Mexico and reduced risk for the U.S. East Coast from the Carolinas northward. The east coast of Florida would remain at normal risk. The GFS model has been inconsistent in its prediction of the timing of this shift, but has been persistent enough about it that I’m forecasting a 70% likelihood of this major pattern shift occurring by the end of July. Such a shift would bring the western U.S. some relief from the current heat wave, and bring high heat and air pollution problems to the Midwest and East Coast. How long such a shift might last is impossible to predict–it could last for a week, or could remain in place for the remainder of hurricane season.

If you’re along the Gulf coast, there’s obviously no need to freak out — we’re talking about purely hypothetical hurricanes at this point, not even a twinkle in Mother Nature’s eye — but don’t get complacent, either, amid all this fallacious slow-season talk.

P.S. Alan Sullivan has more on the expected steering pattern shift:

The Dog Days may come early this year. Though the GFS model has been varying from run to run, the trend is unmistakeable. The hot western high pressure ridge spreads east over the next couple of weeks and merges with a strong Atlantic high to bring sultry weather for much of the US. Only the Great Lakes and the Northeast seem likely to retain a cooler flow from the persistent trough over eastern Canada.

This is hurricane weather. Such a pattern will steer tropical waves westward under the flank of the Atlantic high. They will tend to turn into the zone of weakness between high plains and Atlantic ridge axes. With such a pattern in place, any Atlantic or Caribbean hurricane is likely to strike Florida, the Gulf Coast, or both.

Fortunately there are no tropical disturbances at the threshold right now. Upper winds remain unfavorable over most of the tropical Atlantic. Any storm that does form will have to fight through numerous upper vortices. Surely one of more of the waves will organize in the next few weeks, but the storms should remain weak unless the swirly flow unkinks.

Time.com catches up with the lolcat phenomenon:

Fans can watch the layers pile up in real time. I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER? has already begotten a gray cat licking its chops and saying I DID HAS CHEEZBURGER–and has jumped species to include a white bunny, its mouth open wide, saying INVISIBLE CHEEZBURGER. Further interspecies hybridization has produced loldogs, lolbirds, lolhamsters, lolmice and–a little masterpiece of verbal economy–the tusked, amphibious lolrus. (The I HAS A BUCKET lolrus, starring a tragic walrus deprived of its only possession, is threatening to spin off into a freestanding meme in its own right.) Humans are also fair game: there are lolgeeks, lolgays and lolbrarians. A popular image of Nancy Pelosi being sworn in as Speaker of the House has been given the caption I’M IN UR HOUSE IMPEACHING UR DOODZ.

See for yourself here. Personally, I prefer this:

Many more lolcats at I Can Has Cheezburger.

I solved the Mail bug. It had nothing to do with hardware problems, and everything to do with the fact that, several weeks ago, I renamed my “bloy[at]nd.edu” account to “brendanloy[at]alumni.usc.edu” (an address which, in actuality, forwards mail — for the moment — to bloy[at]nd.edu). Details after the jump.

(more…)