Bicycles

That’s all you see at the Super Wal-Mart up on Danforth in Edmond, OK. Just go there and check it out. It seems like an entire quarter of the store has bikes hanging from the ceiling. I don’t know what the deal is. I guess Christmas was filled with sedentary gifts this season.

The movie has been shot. Not like with a gun but like with a Arriflex Camera (made in Western Germany). Everything went well, although we stayed up until 5:00 finishing. We even ordered a pizza at 2 in the morning from a place that offers baklava and milkshake delivery as well.

We watched the entire movie Backdraft between the first and second shots of the day, thus creating the new unit of time, the backdraft, equal to 132 minutes. We spent 7.5 backdrafts filming. You do the math.

I shot two hours of behind-the-scenes video footage and took about three hundred photos, which I just uploaded to my computer. Needless to say this was a well-documented venture.

The day after shooting, Jon, Austin, Lauren, Jesse, Farah, and I ate at the Chuck House, the best place to get a Chicken Fried Steak Dinner for about five dollars. Yes, five dollars. You know it’s quality when you have to order over a telephone at your table. For some reason, Jesse's phone was wired to the PA system. Farah played some early electronic music for me in the car and after we saw her off, the rest of us waited about thirty minutes in a Walgreen’s parking lot as Jesse complained to the managers and whoever about the scratched negatives on his pictures.

After that I had dinner with Stephanie at Ted’s Café Escondido, the best place to eat in Oklahoma City. This ’hidden cafe” has the best Mexican food you can find, which would blow the minds of the New England types I’m consistently surrounded by. It also blew my insides when mixed with a Chicken Fried Steak Dinner. Well, not really, but that’s a lot of food for one night.

My grandmother came down yesterday to help us move stuff between my old room and my new upstairs room. Now all that’s left is to do is move my bed and put a million things in their places.

Documentration

I'm filming the behind-the-scenes documentary for Jon’s new short entitled “Jeremy”. Today I spent from 11 am to 3 am shooting both production stills and video of the production process. I also helped the grips and others with various odd jobs. It's been quite an adventurous day.

I woke up today at 10 am which is about five hours earlier than I usually wake up. I then followed that with sixteen straight hours of working on the film. Needless to say I am somewhat tired.

Jon really pulled out all the stops and is shooting his latest short with a full professional film crew. The lead actress was in Miss Congeniality as Miss Tennessee, and has been featured in several other films. It is a pleasure and privilege to work with her. The lead actor met Jon through Jon’s parent's church connections and is a stage actor who is doing splendidly in his first on-screen performance.

Tomorrow will be the second and final gruelling day of filming. And to think I really only had less than twenty-four hours notice that I would be on the crew!

Monkey ball

These two words have dominated the previous week. As Jon was out of town, the gang and I have found it necessary to find new places to hang out. Monkey Ball and Monkey Ball 2, both by SEGA and for the Nintendo GameCube, have been crowd favorites. Anyone who’s buying any GameCube games anytime soon, get three for the price of two over at Amazon using this coupon. Just thought you should know.

Well Christmas happened. If you ask Austin, and I know you will, there were two christmases. “Christmas 2” was at Jesse's dad's house. And yes, they are Jewish, so it really wasn't Christmas at all, but this is Austin we're talking about. Anyway, Austin, Jiongyi, and I ate an eighteen-pound turkey over there (not seventeen-pound as earlier advertised). A@ron, Jesse’s brother, continually called Jiongyi “TC”, since he only ever knew of TC. Anyway eventually a ton of gravy spilled onto Jesse and, well, that changed the course of dinner substantially. Check out the picture from Austin’s site, “and then...”.

Other than that we held a more traditional Christmas at my house this year, albeit traditional doesn’t describe this one well. My cousin Nick played guitar, my brother Jon or I would play bass guitar, and my brother Kyle or I would play drums as Nick, my mother, or at one point a good portion of my aunts would sing the lyrics to Nirvana’s “In Bloom”. Yes, really. On Christmas.

If you want to be all superficial about Christmas, I got clothes and money. For once I realize that these are really what I want.

My life is slowly being sucked away by Linux. I have been optimizing my Gentoo Linux installation a lot over the last few days. Gentoo is wonderful. I compiled everything, starting with the compiler, so I know each program is fully optimized for my system. Also, installation is a breeze since I only need type emerge <progname> in order to install anything. Once I can find a way to update my web site in Linux, there will be a lot more updates to this site.

Last night we played poker to celebrate Jon’s return from Seattle. Everyone was there and we started out with 5 draw and 7 stud. After a while we tired of throwing around so many cards and instead settled on Texas Hold’em. I highly suggest Texas Hold’em as a more pleasurable poker experience.

I’m going to make a DJ mix. I think I might burn it to a CD. I might even give out a few copies. I don’t know.

Back home.

Oklahoma, that is. I’ve seen a bunch of people so far. I haven’t seen Erin, Jim, and Heather for quite a while. We haven’t done much yet. Jon Denmark went to Washington, which has created a power vacuum as no one knows whose house to go to anymore. I’ve invited a bunch of people over here tomorrow.

My brother Jon and I traded rooms today. I now live upstairs and have inherited a conglomerated mess of old things that have passed down from me to Kyle to Jon and back to me. Sifting through old things has revealed lots of things like the prissy little journal book that my piano teacher gave to me years ago and has been sitting in the bottom drawer for nearly a decade.

Also found today was the VTech Video Painter. This device allows one to draw on his television. Tucker and I used it to make movies back in about fourth grade. Such classics as “Spacekids—The Final Generation”, “Jon: The Movie starring Jon Hutchins” and “Spacekids II—Journey to Triethyl” captivated audiences of my immediate family and neighbor friends for many years. We would draw each frame and then record it onto the VCR, adding a soundtrack later on a cassette tape. Well beyond our years. Perhaps the most epic of them all was “Giraffic Park”.

Every time I come back from Olin Jiongyi, Austin, and I talk about playing poker. Maybe it will happen tomorrow. Stay tuned.

Jon, Jesse, and crew are working on filming a short. Watch for it. It involves mystery, death, blood, and deception. In fact you might say it involves Murderous Deception. Be sure not to miss it.

Jim wanted me to write about how we went to go see the new skate park but didn’t skate on it and also how we went to the Taco Cabana and also how we went to go eat dinner tonight at the Delta Cafe and ate for free because Erin works there. I had my beloved Fried Corn on the Cob. Happy, Jim?

Jesse, my photographer friend, has a photograph of me from a few years ago up on his site, Painting Light. Go check it out. It’s the one entitled “Breathe”. There are a couple of Jon as well.

Oklahoma in 2 days

I poked around on the Internet a lot these last few days of freshman semester I. The first oddity I came across was Splorp. I have been thinking of doing an independent study / passionate pursuit (as we call them) on typography. Essentially I’ve been considering designing my own font and getting some side credit for it. Well after casually browsing I found this Splorp site which is a blog of a certain Grant Hutchinson. Grant Hutchinson who has made fonts and is interested in several things I am also interested in. Grant Hutchinson who brags that he is number one when you search for “Grant Hutchinson” on Google. It so turns out that I am the number one result for the “Grant Hutchins” search on Google. Needless to say he will be receiving an email in his inbox shortly relating to this matter.

The scary thing is that this isn’t the first time I’ve run into this strange doppelganger phenomenon. A few years back when I was considering becoming a Japanese translator, I found a Grant Hutchins who lives in Oregon and is a Japanese translator. Needless to say I feel less unique when I find these people.

Another oddity I’ve found is this shoddy college report on medieval British literature that stole the image of Olin’s campus. Why did this person decide to steal an image from our website and reassign the Academic Center as a Beowulf museum? Since when is the Campus Center a shrine to King Lear? And the Olin Center as an archive of information on Arthurian Legend? Laughable at best!

Other than that I’ve just been sticking to pages like Sharpeworld and Coudal Partners for wasting time. The links here are marvelous. I’ve also been visiting Plep a little bit, but not as much as much of the content isn’t personally that interesting to me. One recent favorite is the Japanese park animals gallery.

Back in reality I’m finishing up my finals. All I have left is my Differential Equations exam.

Somehow I busted up my laptop. Thanks to Dell’s great service plan that I have bought into through my college, however, I have gotten, for free, a completely new plastic shell, touchpad, and motherboard for my laptop. And all just because my USB port was busted. No questions asked. I feel spoiled, but I am paying for it I guess.

Where to start?

Yesterday I went to the WBCN Xmas Rave Moby show at the Paradise Rock Club in Boston, MA. He billed it as a show in which he will be playing older songs in his journal. I was quite excited to get to hear some of the earlier more electronic songs. I found that this really wasn’t the case, however. The only old songs he played that he usually wouldn’t were “That’s When I Reach For My Revolver” and “Next is the E”. After playing a couple songs, he came out and said, “We have a goal for tonight. We’re going to play the longest show we ever have,” which was met by much applause. I was quite close to the stage. So close, in fact, that Moby himself stepped on my hand. I was right in front of two of the subwoofers and essentially leaning on them as Moby would jump up on it and play his guitar in such a manner that I would have to look directly up to see him. I was jumping up and down a lot, and had to watch the height so I wouldn’t bump into his… crotch. He stepped on my hand at one point and might have been pointing to me as I was jumping. Anyway Dan and I had a lot of fun. Dan was especially happy when Moby left and came back in a cheaply made shirt with iron-on letters that spell “COVER BAND”. Moby covered about ten of Dan’s favorite classic rock songs, some in different styles. Read about it on my new concerts page.

Anyway, after the show Dan and I waited around with the hope that Moby would come out and meet us or that something else interesting would happen. While waiting around I noticed that Moby’s beloved carrot juice was sitting on stage. I wondered if they would give it to us if we asked, half-jokingly. Dan pulled a roadie aside and said “Hey will you give us that carrot juice? It was his birthday,” to which the man responded, “You really want his backwashed carrot juice?!” Needless to say we received said carrot juice, which is now sitting in my room. It’s in a Dasani bottle.

This morning I checked Moby’s online journal to see if he had mentioned the idiotic jumping fan in front of him at the show or the fact that his carrot juice was missing, and instead I learned that after the show he had been attacked by three “preppy” men “with mace” who punched him in the face for no apparent reason. This comes as quite a shock, but Moby is not mad and did not fight back. Such is his style.

Just a few minutes ago I learned that the lead singer / Moog player / trombonist for Stereolab, Mary Hansen, has died in a freak bicycle accident. I am glad that Stereolab got to reason as much music as they did, something like an album a year for a full decade. I am quite impressed by their wide assortment, and have several of their limited edition vinyl singles. Every single they release comes in limited edition versions. I had the fortune to attend their recent show in Boston at the Avalon, one of the only shows that resulted in a double encore. I read a funny review of this show once, calling mine the “lamest crowd” ever for Stereolab. I thought it was quite laid back, and this reviewer thought it was rowdy. This shows the disparity between the shows the two of us are used to.

December 13, 2002

Actually, Mary Hansen was the vocalist /  guitarist. Laetitia Sadier is the lead singer / Moog player /  trombonist. Pardon my mistake.

No more teenagehood.

My twentieth birthday was yesterday. It was one of the busier days I’ve had in a while, but it was nice that a few people did something for me! First at the Math Table showing of Good Will Hunting, Prof. Sarah Spence brought some cupcakes and even some salsa and chips. Much appreciated! After that I retired to my room around 11:30 p.m. and discovered that my bed was covered with balloons. There was a jar of silly string sitting next to my bed, and no one to be found anywhere. I wandered down the hall and ran into Nicole and Kathleen realizing they had missed their chance to surprise me. They had been waiting in my room for over an hour and went to look for me. Dan had no idea and was in the other room.

I went bowling the other day at Lanes and Games. I have been improving considerably lately. The second of two games resulted in a tie of my personal record. With just 100 in the 8th frame, I hit a strike on the 9th, strike on the 10th, third strike to make perhaps my first turkey in my life, and then rounded it out with seven more to make 157. I didn’t get the Ms. Pac-Man high score, however.

My cohort project course has completed. I feel that we could have done better on our design, but we did find a good amount of success. Our crowning achievement is that we spent only 6.5% of our budget. One of our goals at the outset was to set an example for thriftiness.

Similarly, all my other classes are winding to a close. A week from Thursday I’ll be flying back to Oklahoma for a full month. Not a full-month flight, but a full-month vacation. I just realized that I used “winding down” to describe my classes in the last post. I’m not very creative lately after all!

I was perusing the Coudal Partners website the other day and wandered onto the Photoshop Tennis competitions. The idea is that two designers representing different design groups send Photoshop “volleys” back and forth (spending approx. 30 mins–2 hours per volley) and then editing what comes back. The evolution of these graphics is quite interesting and often unexpected. One of my favorites is the transition from this to this. Anyway, I’ve challenged Jesus Fernandez to a little sparring match. Watch for this sometime soon.

The other day I became very interested in abandoned subway tunnels, tracks, and stations in the Boston area. I have been learning about parts of the MBTA “T” subway system are no longer running, including an elevated train called the “El” that used to run near Washington Ave up until the 1980s. It is being replaced by the new Silver Line. Anyway it makes me want to go visit an abandoned train station, although that would probably be a very bad idea.

Today I’m feeling creative. Maybe it’s the great amount of light outside reflecting off of the snow. Maybe it’s the fact that my classes are winding down. Maybe not.

Today my Moby tickets arrived! Moby is holding a concert this Wednesday at the Paradise Rock Club in Boston. This is where I saw Fountains of Wayne a couple weekends back. This should prove to be a good show, because Moby mentioned in his online journal that he is going to play his older more electronic songs. He’ll also have been off tour for a week at home in New York City, so he should be even more energetic than ever. Moby is also not only the headliner, but the only act playing. This means he will get all sorts of time to try new things and wow the crowd. Plus, the Paradise is such a cozy venue, where it’s literally impossible to stand more than about 30 feet from the stage. The show was sold out right after I decided to go, so I perused eBay for people reselling tickets. However, I found them pricey, so I emailed a guy whose auction didn’t sell and made him an offer and now have two tickets in my possession.

I went to Oklahoma for Thanksgiving. The first night ended in a controversy that lead Jon, Austin, and I to leave Rima’s birthday party. That’s all I will say for now. Later that week, I bought a Korg Electribe EM-1 Music Production Station, a type of half-drum machine half-synthesizer little sound unit, at Mars Music, which is going out of business and having a huge sale. I literally watched it get marked down from 30% to 40% off. That’s like 40 bucks less. My brothers and I are going to form a band and try to record some music over Christmas break. Jon plays bass and (increasingly) guitar, while Kyle plays drums.

I’ve been sleeping a lot lately. My naps are dominating my days now. I’ve got to learn to stay awake.

My mom enters a lot of contests (or “sweeps”, if you’re so inclined). She wins about four or five contests a month now! The most significant prize won is an MP3 player. Now she’s got me hooked on Lee Dungarees Pants of Chance. This is the best slot machine ever. Free credits, and you might win oysters or tube socks. What could be better?!

Fear the Clown named one of my songs Song of the Day a couple weeks ago. Three of my friends used to be in a band named (at times) Pivot and (at other times) Shamespiral. I wrote a little ambient song entitled (creatively) “Shamespiral Intro” that was used to introduce their final two shows. I’ll throw it up on my Grant Music page in a bit.

I’ve added some pictures to my Grant Pictures page.

I’m about to go to bed so I can take the Putnam Exam tomorrow. The snow everywhere reflects the moonlight and makes it feel like day. This will be an adventure. I prefer to sleep in total sensory deprivation myself.

Don’t worry. I’ll post up here really soon! With a lot of new material, including details of my trip back to Oklahoma. I promise. And yes, I have stories to tell!

I bet you didn’t know that JFK did cocaine.

December 10, 2002

No one pointed out to me that it said procaine and codeine, not cocaine. Man, you’d think someone would catch that when it was only one line to read and one link to click. Especially with such a controversial subject. Oh well, I’m sure JFK did cocaine as well.

11/11

I’m sitting at my desk sipping an Orange Slice. Newton’s Principia was stolen the other day. I guess they let anyone request it and put their grimy paws on it. Someone’s grimy paws were sticky this time.

I’ve had the busiest weekend imaginable! It all started Friday (as weekends usually do) when I left with Nicole, Jesus, and (note the change in roster) Kori Haymore, one of the new students. We went to the Ipswich River Wildlife Sanctuary of the Massachusetts Audubon Society. It was very nice. We stayed in the Innermost Cabin, which was barely enough to fit four people and a Franklin stove. We walked around a bit and then sat by the fire and kerosene lamps reading the journal entries from previous guests. Of particular interest were the horror stories by various eleven-year-old children. My favorite was “Werewolf Man” although “Pigmonkeyman” was also a favorite. I’ll post fulltext up here soon.

The next morning I got back from Ipswich with less than 15 minutes to go before once again leaving to go to the only proper bowling alley in all Boston. It turns out that New England has its own special type of bowling called Candlepin Bowling that seems inferior. The balls are smaller and the pins are simple cylinders. Hardly engaging! Anyway I got my best three game series in my life. I’m launching a new section of my page devoted to bowling scores. This may sound odd, but I’ve wanted to do this for about five years now. I got 137, 128 and 149. 149 was the best game of the night and my second best score ever, although the best average score goes to Emma Goodman, an IMSA girl from the great bowling state of Illinois. The last game was quite eventful in that I hit the first 50 pins down without a slip. Four spares and one strike.

Later that night back at Olin we held a Dead or Alive 3 tournament in the Dining Hall on the big projected screen. The scene was quite impressive, quite larger than life. I’m not a big fan of 3D fighting games or the X-Box in general so I merely spectated. Afterwards I felt nostalgic so I downloaded MAME in order to play Galaga. Well worth my trouble.

The next morning I woke up to attend a five-hour session on the traditional Japanese board game Go. I am starting to enjoy it more and perhaps I will get better at it. It is perhaps the most complicated game I know and there’s no chance for me (or any human or even a computer) to ever master the game. The best Go-playing computers can’t beat twelve-year-olds. Go was heavily featured in the movie Pi: Faith in Chaos which is coincidentally my favorite movie.

Right after that I took my take-home physics final in what would turn out to be the only three-hour patch of free time for the weekend. Keep in mind it’s already Sunday by this point. I had to hurry up and finish the exam (which I felt I did quite well on, even though there were many little details to consider).

I really wanted to go to the local Mars Music store because they are going out of business nationwide. Everything must go! Prices marked down 20-40%! That means a lot for musical equipment! That can make or break so many potential sales! My mom and I were talking about buying an electric guitar so that we can complete the newest boy band craze at home, Hutchins. Hutchins is like Hanson except instead of being from Tulsa, OK, we are from Edmond, OK. No difference. Except shorter hair. Anyway it turns out that both locations near me were in the list of four stores nationwide that have already closed, so I didn’t get to go run around crazily and pick out items like candy. Oh, bother.

The weekend ended on a wonderful note when I went with Sheeva to the Fountains of Wayne concert. It was at the Paradise Rock Club in Boston on Comm Ave. This venue is great! I highly recommend it! The place is so small and cozy and right when I walked into the auditorium I found myself right in the center only 6 or 7 people back. I stayed there and danced with Sheeva the whole time, often to an extent much greater than that of the considerably older populace about us. While there I bumped into Que Anh and Erin McCusker, both of whom had accompanied Alex Valdivia. This means that 7.5% of our school was there. I got there an hour after doors opened and I completely missed the first act, OKGo. I should have known Que Anh would come since she is obsessed with them. The show ended relatively early but started relatively early as well. I knew every song except for the ones that are on the new album. The verdict on the new material? Fountains of Wayne are coming back for more in their third release due out this spring, moving in a more experimental direction while continuing to capture the familiar catchiness and heart of their earlier work. By the way, nothing beats the final piano of “Leave the Biker”. It sent shivers down my spine. After the second (!) encore I grabbed a nice brown shirt that says simply “FoW” and got back home with a good amount of time to goof around and then get a good night of sleep.

Keep in mind that I am also sick and this last weekend was met with much coughing. I’ve vowed to slow down my plans this week and let this finally subside.

Pretty much everything is done!

Not really, but I don’t have much to do anymore. I got my EC lab written up.

In other news, our Project class is wrapping up with the ASME ramp project and moving on to new projects because we feel that we should be covering more material than we are. I am currently brainstorming some project ideas, including one that might involve developing a product with Jay Gantz to possibly try to get to market. Depends on how ambitious I’m feeling. We have a good idea that might be profitable, or might not even be possible. We’re through with calculus in my Mathematical Foundations in Engineering I course, so now we’re starting Differential Equations. I am quite happy for that, as I haven’t really had any new math for three years now.

Dan Frey, the Professor for our Project class, recently decided to leave Olin and go to MIT to head a high-profile design class that involves robots and some sort of competitive edge. It often makes it onto television shows like Scientific American Frontiers. The MIT course has previously been run by Woodie Flowers, who used to host Scientific American Frontiers and is currently shared by both Olin and MIT. We’ll all miss Dan but it sounds like a wonderful opportunity that he definitely deserves.

Sheeva and I are going to the Fountains of Wayne concert on Sunday! Fountains of Wayne are great. Every song I’ve ever heard from them sticks in my head and I know all the lyrics even though I don’t try.

Also, today Nicole invited me to go with Jesus and Kathleen to a cabin in Ipswich for Friday night. I think it should be fun. I’ve never been to Ipswich and frankly I’m not sure where it is. It’s an hour away.

November 11, 2002

But Kathleen was busy so Kori ended up coming instead. Why is this important? I have this strange obsession with who is with me and where they are situated in relation to me. I often have dreams where I can only remember sitting with a group of people at a table. I remember where each person sat and somehow it seems quite important to me. Just one of those things.

In other words, I am quite busy this weekend and I’ll get a Physics test tomorrow that’s due Monday. I hopefully will get it done tomorrow night. Then there’s the Calculus test I get tomorrow as well, but isn’t due until Wednesday. It all compounds.

Will everything ever be done?

I have shown up approximately 2 minutes late to each and every class this week, which is quite embarrassing. I also haven't been getting much sleep. Oh well. I'm getting all my work done, even if it means spending four evenings out of my week trying to get data for my silly lab.

Nicole and I are currently trying to measure the temperature of a hot plate and a cup of water being heated by the hot plate. We wrote a program in MATLAB that measures the temperature and then controls the hot plate so that the water ends up at exactly 50 degrees Celsius.

Other than that, I'm leaving for the Big Apple late tomorrow night. I'm excited because Tucker and I are going to a really nice Mexican restaurant. Dan, Tucker, and I went to Taco Bell after the Area 2 show and it was like manna sent from heaven. Other than that we don't get much Mexican food up here. When I say that, however, I am lying through my teeth. Our dining hall makes some really good tacos and nachos and whatnot, as per our request. We have the freaking best dining hall on the planet.

Jam Master Jay was killed today. He was influential in early 80s hip-hop and as the DJ for Run-DMC helped pioneer much of what music is like today. He was not a gangster/thug/idiot. He leaves behind a wife and three children. It comes as a shock to see him go, as there seems to be no reason for anyone to have a grudge against him. He was shot while in the recording studio. News stories compare it to Tupac and Notorious B.I.G. but there really is no comparison, as those two had lifestyles that put their lives at risk anyway.

hey! k. sitting.

Austin made an AI bot for AIM. You can talk to him and he will spit out a mish-mash of words that other people have said to him. IM him at A35U. If it says anything offensive, don't blame Austin. It only says what it learns from other people.

I'm writing some C code to prove to the EC professors that I can program and therefore don't need to sit through the C lectures. Sounds good to me! The program takes the numbers 1-9 in order and using only the operators + and * finds the value 2002. For instance, "1+23+456*7*89" equals something that isn't 2002, but if it did then my program would show that it works. Anyway they're having us write it in emacs in Linux. What better way to program than in a foreign text editor on a foreign operating system.

Tonight I'm going to the CS Discussion Group, which meets weekly. We discuss computer science type stuff. Last week I was the host and did a presentation on security.

Other than that I need to pack for New York and get music ready for the big Olin Halloween party this Friday night. I'm the DJ.

You know what's cool? This is. Watch the Full Live Demo if you have twenty minutes to burn. Jon D., you'll like this. I entered to win the contest. Everyone enter the contest and if you win, give it to me and I'll write you a song and name it after you. Also, if you want to donate $1795 to the Get Grant an MC-909 Groovebox fund, I'd be much obliged.

Another day, another dollar.

I'm eating Trader Joe's Shredded Bite Size Wheats while waiting my turn for the shower. I'm about to go to Project class with Dan Frey where I'm going to work with my team on our design for the ASME Design Competition. The contest is to see how much rice we can move up a ramp by using only the energy from 2 liters of water that drain out of a bucket about a meter or so off the ground.

Anyway, I'll get into more detail later, as Dan (Lindquist this time) is now getting out of the shower.

Yesterday Jon Denmark was talking to me about how he had just learned that his grandparents read his webpage. Not more than two hours later my dad called to check up on me and offhand mentioned that my grandparents read my webpage. On the same day.

I'm thinking about going to the Fountains of Wayne show a week from this Sunday. Their music has been in my head for the last two 24-hour cycles. I sent out an email to Sheeva and Brian so I could catch up with my webpage's two greatest (only?) fans. I'm gonna see Sheeva in a couple weeks which is good since it's been forever. I just got an email from good ol' Brian Morrow. I've been catching up with him and he's doing good. He's inspiring me to start an Olin academic team. I think we need one, and I'm ready to start it and be captain if need be.

Other than that I'm reading Richard Wright's Black Boy for my Bodies in Motion class. Aiee! I have to read 384 pages. Oh well at least I enjoy it.

There's a lot going on, but also not much.

I'm going to NYC next weekend with Kathleen (Dupaya). I'm going to meet up with my good friend Tucker, who goes to Columbia University. I'm very excited because on Saturday night I will be seeing the Chemical Brothers! The Chemmies are the number one ultimate best most wanted band for me to go see in concert ever, so hopefully this will be good. I've already missed the opportunity to see their shows four times. While I was in Paris, they played two shows in London. While I was in London, they played a show in Paris. They had their first US tour in three years, but only came as close as New York. I planned a trip to go down to see them, but then couldn't find a ticket after they sold out. Now, finally, they are playing another final show in New York. (The only show only according to their itinerary) This means that this show is some sort of special occasion, so I won't be seeing them in the tour mode where they're playing shows each night. Hmm, sounds like a good opportunity to debut some new material, eh?

Save Karyn. Don't save Karyn.

I just got back from the Knight Party at Pepsico Gymnasium. I don't know why it's a Knight party when it's not at Knight Auditorium, but it is. That's Babson for ya. Anyway I had fun until they played Rednex's "Cottoneye Joe". Whoever wrote that song should be shot! I refuse to dance to it.

October 29, 2002

My mom reminded me that "Cotton-eyed Joe" is an old song that's been around for centuries and has been recorded many times over the years. Let's all hope the next person who does makes a much better song than, shudder, Rednex.

I'm DJing a party at Olin this weekend (right before I leave for New York). I think I'll play some U96 and a track or two from Fatboy Slim's "On the Floor at the Boutique" mix album. It's always good to play good has-been music.

Everything's on the up and up.

Right now I'm in between classes. This morning I had my Arts and Humanities course, "Bodies in Motion", which is all about immigration and stuff like that. It's really great to learn about early 1900s life. I also like having a class with Babson students (and a Babson professor) in it.

Later this afternoon I have Engineering Computing, which is a course all about using computers to receive inputs and control things. Our homework last night was to write programs that record sound and then play it back. We also made some that are triggered by clapping. This should be one of my favorite courses this year. We're going to do other things like control hot plates based on the temperature and stuff like that.

Yesterday my team of four started building a structure for our ASME Design Contest courses. In other words, we are all operating dangerous machinery. I'm now trained on the circular saw, jigsaw, drill, and router. I must say I enjoy it, although I can really tell that I'm going to be an ECE major.

Over the weekend I went into Boston proper, or actually Cambridge I guess. While in the land of the Cantabrigian we frequented the Tower Records in Harvard Square. They have a section of singles (almost half of which are imports) that are priced quite surprisingly low, so I picked up about 5 or 6 CDs each under 3 dollars. That's less than the price of an album nowadays it seems. I also bought an Atari Teenage Riot vinyl EP and a couple of DVDs, namely Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy and the Prodigy's new video "Baby's Got a Temper".

And all day long I listen to Radio FG.

For now, it's lunch time!

Anyway, hopefully I'll post a new message up here when I have something more positive to report. I have done many great and fun things lately. Also I hope to have a pictures section soon.

Things are hectic.

I haven't had a break in ten days. Yes, ten days. I think it will be better by this weekend, but I literally have only had about 24 hours of free time so far, and they have been spent climbing a mountain.

Not that I'm trying to sound too negative here. I'm just involved in a lot of things right now. It should taper off pretty soon. But it's just that I'm not completely unpacked yet and I've lived here for ten days.

I'm going to speak with my professors about my workload, although I do think it's getting more reasonable.

No more complaining.

I've actually updated my site! Unfortunately this is one of those crappy updates where I cop out and say I'm really busy and can't update nearly as often. Maybe I will move away from the news model and go more towards random pages of random content. I think that would be more fulfilling. If I'm really ambitious I'll do a weekly update.

But don't count on it, I have physics homework.

Move in day is tomorrow!

People are arriving in droves. The anticipation is building. Sweat is forming on everyone's brow.

September 1, 2001

...and right then I lost the connection to my webspace. I've only just now been able to get back on. I know, I know. It's horrible. Well live with it, I'm starting school again.

Two more days.

For lunch I had McDonald's. It was fun. I hadn't been in awhile. I ordered the Double Cheeseburger Meal, confusing it for the Two Cheeseburger Meal. I guess I'm just that unobservant, at least at McDonald's. I've been using ketchup on my fries again lately. I went many years with no ketchup. It was somewhat nice to taste the potatoes more. Now ketchup is exciting again, however. I enjoy it. I guess that's the secret to enjoying life. Artificially prevent yourself from doing something, then do it after a long enough delay. It makes life more interesting.

Today I was all over the place. From the (old) ECE Lab to the (fake) IT room on the (real) campus, I ran around with the Linux Posse. The Linux Posse is Gill, Brian, Ben, and I. We stormed on into IT and told them how to partition the machines. We were quite the vigilantes, I must say. I also met Aaron, the new Linux/Unix admin. Well anyway we had trouble figuring out how to do it, so I gave up and left.

While I was up there, I helped Adam and Rod move Jesus and Adam's big table to its final resting place. The table is filled with memorabilia from last year. Jesus joking said he could make anything (including a coffeetable) for his art project last year. Well, it morphed quickly from a joke to actuality, and it's a beauty. The History and Mystery of Mars - Episode 4 is on there, as is the tiny vase Adina gave me before she had to return to Transylvania.

I saw the first new students arriving today, Ben Bloom and Mikell Taylor. There will be a large flood of people coming in tomorrow. Joy! Both the emotion, and the Olin student.

I'm going camping! The Olin Outing Club is going to stay the night up on the border between New Hampshire and Maine. Afterwards will be a hike up some mountain, which I may or may not do, considering my strange shallow breath syndrome.

Cough, cough.

I packed a ton of stuff today. Tomorrow I'll finish up the little things, and the next day I'm out of temporary housing once and for all!

Tired. So very tired.

Today was quite a long day. It all started simply enough, with yet another day of toying around with op-amps and such. Then Sara barged in and abducted me from Ben.

We went to get the Olin Honor Code back from the framing company. The framing company on the way to Framingham, that is. We got there and had to pick out a blue for the matte. The workers very visibly wanted to slack off, so we ran off to Wendy's and both had Spicy Chicken Sandwiches.

As we were leaving, there was a guy who drove by with the letters WOW who held up a card that said "WOW" to Sara. It stands for "Whip Out Wednesdays". It's from the Opie and Anthony radio show, which seems to be drivel. Essentially when a girl sees this on a Wednesday, she's supposed to flash the guy back. Yeah, that'll be really successful.

After Wendy's, we picked up the Honor Code, along with the wrong frame for the [secret Orientation 2002 activity deleted]. I got to deliver the Honor Code to the new campus and see the Campus Center again.

Bret, Alex, and Julie are now here. Along with Susan, they've moved to the real residence hall. They are this year's R2's. I never thought I'd see the day when Olin students would live in real buildings.

After work, I was instantly pulled along to go eat at the Cheesecake Factory. Only, it didn't work out. The wait for our unannounced group of fourteen would have been a couple hours, so we instead went to Papa Razzi across the street. Yes, two words. Anyway I highly suggest it. The food was great and they worked very hard to seat us within about 20 minutes. Plus I got to have garlic!

Mmm, garlic. It's healthy for you, you know.

After that I packed a lot of stuff. It's going to take a lot of boxes, as my room is filled with tons of crap. The hardest part is pretty much out of the way, though.

Have you heard the song from the new artist Mario? Yes, " Just a Friend 2002". Well I don't like it! They took a wonderful Biz Markie song and did a cover. Well, it's not so much of a cover as taking the chorus from a humorous sarcastic song and making it into a sappy R&B tune. I must say I am appalled. The original is one of those few videos I remember watching and loving from MTV back around 1989 when I first discovered music videos. It's right up there with Deee-Lite's "Groove is in the Heart" (which I have on vinyl, no less). DJ Towa Tei is the coolest! The lead singer, Lady Miss Kier, is now a DJ as well. So that, along with Supa DJ Dmitry, makes every member of the band an active DJ right now.

Astronomical!

Tuesday, August 20, 2002

Sometimes you just gotta let the nerd out of yourself.

I generally try to adopt a nerd-free attitude on life, but today was an unusual situtation. I started by wearing my RAM necklace that Gary made for me back in Mr. Gowen's class.

Later in the day, while I was marking up the C tutorial into validating HTML, just as a nerd might do, Sean pulled me aside with a few people to take a picture for the new Olin Library website. Like the nerd I am, I picked up 2600 and started reading it for the picture.

The plot really thickened when yesterday's plan worked out. Olin made Slashdot!!! It really killed our website. Traffic halted to a stand-still. I was pretty happy with the hundreds of comments that came pouring in after the article got posted. Sean and I frantically worked to dispel rumors and generally share our experiences with the Slashdot community.

Anyway, Grant Page Central was the recipient of direct attacks! I must say I find it highly entertaining. Maybe I shouldn't have glorified this flame with a response, but I had a lot to say. Hopefully I was fairly professional about it.

Also, some MIT students want to throw a party with us now that they discovered us on Slashdot. I know it's scary to imagine making social connections with MIT through Slashdot, but I still think it has a good chance of working out! (NERD ALERT!)

In other news, Sara and I ate at Pacini's today. We both had the lasagna. Very cool.

I saw Tucker for the last time today. He's off to New York and Columbia University on Sunday; until then he's back in Oklahoma City. How ironic, he's in OKC and I'm in Boston. We talked about Einstein's Theories of Relativity for a while and he took off. We've been getting in long discussions lately. It's healthy. You should try it.

I'm starting to really think television is dumb. From defending my blog today to engaging in long conversations, I must say the human factor is much more important than watching the boob tube. I know I watch it a lot, but I at least try to do more productive things. If you ask someone what the best thing they did while watching TV was, I bet it's a ton worse than the best thing they've done without TV.

I've starting ripping down my posters and packing some stuff up. With only three packing days left, time is of the essence for sure.

Sheesh! I'm pooped! I'm going to bed!

Welcome to the future.

Have you ever noticed that we live in the future? I know we literally don't, but at least we are starting to live in what I call the "classical future". For instance, we now have cloning. We talk about sending people to Mars as an afterthought. I can play poker against Gerard Depardieu online and not even know it. The Segway Human Transporter runs off your subtle subconscious movements.

What if going to Mars was an economic question rather than a technical one?

Reading Slashdot clues me in on several technological innovations and generally cool things. Sean and I are plotting to get Olin on Slashdot. That would be good, even if it would kill our servers. The hype alone would generate new applicants almost certainly. Keep your eyes peeled.

I babysat for four hours today. Mark Somerville's two daughters and I ran around Needham Center in the park there. We would have played with the children statues running in a circle, but they had new concrete poured underneath them. After that we watched the Blue's Clues DVD, guest starring, of all people, Ray Charles. Luckily they don't have a TV to watch at home (which probably is a boon to their development), so they watched very intently, making my job all the easier.

That last sentence was rife with dependent clauses.

Other than that, today Dan packed up most of his things. The room is now very bare. The move is upon us! We're all so ready. Just five days to go, which reminds me, I need to make sure the sign is getting updated in the MAC that shows how many days are left. As the MAC is actually called the Modular Academic Center, I've heard the use of RAC for Real Academic Center pick up. I don't really like this new name, but perhaps it will stick. It wouldn't make sense too many years from now, in the real future.

Some WTC survivors/families are adding insult to incredible injury by suing the terrorist funders for trillions of dollars. To demonstrate the size of their suggested amount (US$116 trillion), the Gross World Product is around $US46 trillion. That means all economic output of all countries would have to go toward paying these people for three years. That's the equivalent of a Bill Gates per each person killed in the September 11, 2001 attacks. It's also 20 of our national debts. I hate to have to be the one to break it to you, but I don't think these Saudis have as much money as you're wanting.

Tort reform may save the world someday. It certainly could have saved my mother from sitting through a frivolous lawsuit involving a guy spilling a coffeepot on himself. Accidents happen. We've got to learn to live with them. I refuse to suffer for your unrelated random misfortune.

Tuesday, August 20, 2002

I forgot to mention my mom was on the jury. I don't want people to start inserting her in random roles such as judge or bailiff, or even lawyer.

I'm not trying to come off as so ranty. I'm really in a good mood. I promise!