Kristine Washburn
 PhD Candidate in Astronomy
 University of Washington

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"In theory, practice and theory are the same thing - but in practice, they're not."

The front page of this website is for miscellaneous stuff that is pretty much only useful for me, like remote access to bookmarked links and site stats. To learn more about me and my research use the links on the left.

  • Kristine & Jesse's retro party 2006
  • Astro 101 Summer '04
  • My PRIME Project from 2003
  • My trip to Morocco
  • Pics from the Fremont Solstice Festival 2005
  • UW Planetarium

    About this site...

    • You are the 31645th person to view this webpage since July 9th, 2005.

    • This site comes up first if you do a Google search on the phrase Home of the Whopper.

    • For those who can appreciate normalized statistics, on average -545.60 people visit this site everyday. And through clever use of cookies, I am certain that not all of them are me. Might I add that, given the enormity of the web and the lack of useful information on this site, it is amazing that -545.60 people find there way here everyday. God bless Google rankings!

    • Owner: Kristine Washburn
      Last modified: 09 July 2005

    • The Home of the Whopper - This site is in no way affiliated with Burger King. In fact there is nothing here that has anything to do with hamburgers or fast food of any kind, just astrophysics and my odd self. A couple years ago, this site came up first if you did a Google search on the phrase "Home of the Whopper". But the man quickly got wise and beat me down the rankings list to as low as 40th at times. Ever since I lost my prized Google ranking it became a favorite past time to find out how to get it back and maintain it. My hypothesis is that if people link to this page from outside the UW it will help boost my ranking. Does this goal make any sense? No. Does it contribute in any way to bettering mankind? No. Will it get me a quarter pounder with cheese? No. Couldn't I just look up the thesis of the guy who designed the main part of Google's search algorithm and figure it all out from that? Yes, but that takes all the fun out of it. This way is more phenomenological and fun! So if you're feeling generous, link to my page and help me maintain my #1 spot in Google! No one wants to be #2.

    • HOW ARE PEOPLE FINDING THEIR WAY HERE?
      Through the miracles of PHP, I recently implemented a logfile to track how people were finding their way here. Sadly, many of my visitors are site-combing robots :-( And of the few real visitors, most are perverts. Except for you, of course... For the interested, here are a few of the ways people have gotten here, roughly in order of how often they are each used:
      • By typing in the full URL or having this page bookmarked
      • Via the Astro department's people page
      • Google searches on any of the following phrases -- "home of the whopper", "whopper", "glittery pics for web pages", "scooby-doo wearing a cape pic", "phallic plant", "no one in the world ever gets what they want and that is beautiful"
      • Via MagicMorocco.com (to see why check out the ME page)
      • Google Image searches on the following phrases -- "wedding humor", "caution tape", "women in hot tub", "hot tub women", "women tub", "women hot tub", "women hottub" (notice a theme?), "they might be giants" (large images only), "amy daryl", "golightly", "ladies ass" (another disappointed web surfer), "ass ladies" (what's with you web surfers from Saudi Arabia?), "suzanne hot", "astro ass", "graeme lufkin", "fremont solstice 2005"
      • An AOL search on the phrase "pictures of women caught in the act" (boy this site must've been a let down!)
      • Altavista and alltheweb.com searches on the phrase "fremont solstice"
      • Via the Physics department's directory
      • Via links from the UW Super-K site
      • Via my friend Devlynn's website at CSU

    Hear what critics are saying about The Home of the Whopper...
    "now normally i wouldn't e-mail strangers that i just happened to stumble upon their home page out of boredom, but maybe its lack of sleep or that boredom again... but here i am e-mailing you. i found your page by looking up they might be giants pictures... not that you couldnt' have figured that out because i was looking at the home page of your site and you are quite computer savvy. enough rambling for one night. i thoroughly enjoyed your site. thanks for putting it all out there."
         --M.E.miles from comcast.net
    "Kristine, the open, joyful, and fearless writing style you have created melts my heart. What an abrupt end to my sighing reverie it was to see first mention of your husband. Lucky devil....... Make no mind that I'm old enough to be your grandfather, I've still got this incurable thing about really intelligent women who have retained their humanity and humor. What a rare and magical combination it is! I'm not the world's worst writer (but seventh place isn't bad!) and I should the last to offer you a suggestion, but at the end of fourth paragraph on your ME page, your friends might appreciate being whomses instead of whiches (and you thought YOU had mastered the run on sentence!)."
         --Bob Spafford

    "No one in the world ever gets what they want and that is beautiful. Everybody dies frustrated and sad and that is beautiful."
         -TMBG

    "Rolly-poley fishheads are never seen drinking cappucino in Italian restaurants with oriental women... yeah"
          -Barnes & Barnes

    This grad student brought to you by

    		The Huckabay Fellowship
    and the letter 'q'.

    •      University of Washington