Chris Mihos

Microsoft didnt donate all that money just to get a ballroom!

Since we often complain about getting bad referee reports, I thought I'd give a positive shout-out to the anonymous referee who wrote the report I just back on one of my papers. The suggestions have me rejiggering the analysis and presentation in a way that's going to make the paper better.

A young deer with antlers, lying on the grass next to a wooden fence.

Just chilling in my back yard.

My main problem with 2 factor verification is that by the time I find my phone, open the app, enter the code, and go back to the login screen, so much time has passed that I've forgotten why the hell I was trying to log in in the first place....

(you can take the boy out of grad school, but you cant take grad school out of the boy....)

a woman is sitting at a table looking at a tray of food . ALT: a woman is sitting at a table looking at a tray of food .

my office is directly across the hall from the break room. Free food doesnt last nearly that long around here, not if I have anything to say about it.

hah, we got a "FOR GODS SAKE, FACULTY, IF THE PRESS CONTACT YOU, DONT TALK TO THEM WITHOUT TALKING TO US FIRST!!" email from university administration today.

Back in junior high I did exactly that experiment but using a bowl of semi-solidified plaster. Blew gobs of plaster all over the walls of my Dad's basement workspace. He was not all that enthused with my science experiment....

Just asked The Google if M101 was a LINER and Google AI replied "Yes, M101 is a specific shade of MOB Beauty Cake Liner, a product designed to be used as an eyeliner." So add that to the list of M101's interesting properties.

I don't allow cheat sheets, but I do give the questions ahead of time ("here are 10 questions, 3 will be on the test"). Not sure which option puts the students most at ease. The grade averages are almost always invariant to style so it's just a matter of making students comfortable in the exam.

Are we sure it wasn't just live fire from Pendleton?

BREAK UP THE BROWNS!!!

Wouldn't it be something if this year's college football national championship game ends up being Vanderbilt vs Indiana?

CHARGE!!!!!

It seems... inevitable.

He was always very well behaved during lectures.

And no worries, the dog hair on the filter flat fielded out just fine. (I kid, I kid....)

Aww, a picture from years ago, on an observing run with Jack the Great White Dog (and Paul and Cameron) at the KPNO 2m. 🔭

Thinking about that time I got an email from someone saying that their mag - surface brightness relation of m = mu * area was equally valid to what my course notes said [m = mu - 2.5log(area)], as long as we restricted the area to one square arcsecond.

Really couldn't argue with them there....

Looking forward to seeing these, Shannon.....

Oh I never teach the day before Thanksgiving!

It's midterms week around here (including in my class). So I cancelled class on Tue. Students asked me why, and I said "Because we're all busy enough this week." They seemed stunned.

I mean, Jesus Christ, what kind of track is this? Go home, AGB star, you're drunk.

I always try to convey to my students the long term goal of using the Sun's W-velocity to get a peek at the Galactic center from above the disk plane...

I'm partial to Sea of Cowards, but all their albums are great.

Oh my gosh, how much do I love The Dead Weather. Can't be played loud enough.

In fact, our department used to "carpool" -- we'd stuff a FedEx box full of proposal packets from different PIs to save a bit on shipping costs.

I am *so* there for this. Who's with me?

FedEx overnight got a lot of business out of me back in the days of paper submissions.