Month: March 2005

Hello everyone.

I’m in Oklahoma City, about to head back to Boston.  I didn’t get to see too many people this time around, because I was only here for three non-flight days!

American Airlines cancelled my reservation because the lady at Chicago didn’t scan my ticket when I got on my flight, so they bumped me to a later one.  What a bunch of hoodlums.

Other than that, I went dogsledding last weekend.

That’s me on the right in the ridiculous sunglasses.

We’re on a frozen lake in Maine.  We slept outside on the lake itself.

Here’s one of the dogs (and Carrie too).  The dogs obsessively pull when you put them on a leash.  They are certainly bred for pulling sleds.

Yesterday I bowled the best game of my life, a 162.  My dad didn’t beat it, but his three-game series still won.

Anyway, I’m gonna go back to waiting for my new flight.

My streak ended.  No, not that streak.  Maybe later for that one.

But anyway I forgot to post last night.  Yesterday I went shopping
for some major school supplies, on the halfway day of the semester!

I also had my first 8 am class, which was wonderful!  I’m so excited about complex numbers.  I simply adore them.

Anyway, I went to the special collections
at the library of Harvard’s Graduate School of Design.  Before we
got into the library, we saw the best working environment I’ve seen in
my life, a giant stairway of desks where people design
architecture.  Imagine a grand staircase of open cubicles, with
the newbies on the bottom and the PhD’s on top.  After we went
into the library we saw a ton of stuff, such as hand-drawn plans for
the St. Louis Arch and Gropius’s clipboard.  I held Gropius‘s
clipboard.  I simply love clipboards!  I bought another one
at Staples today so that if I lose my current clippy I don’t have to
fall behind in my classes!

And today I went to parties at Wellesley and briefly at Babson.  Had a lot of fun.

Quick post to keep my streak alive…

I have an 8:00 am class today!  It’s 3:52 am so I better run off to sleep.

Yesterday was extremely busy, but worthwhile.

Have a nice day!

Today is my Xanga’s 250th day.  That’s right, it’s the “quarter mille”.

I finally did my laundry today.  I’ve been keeping myself busy enough that I have been way behind.

For my student government position I often administer surveys to
various groups of students.  The other day I made three different
mockups of a single survey I’m about to give to the entire student
body.  I presented these mockups to my Human Factors: Interface
Design class to let the students test them out.  I learned quite a
lot from the process, and now I think the survey should be quite easy
to take (once I implement the best suggestions from the class).

This monday, the Data Destruction Tour is coming to Boston.  The
Data Destruction Tour is the only tour I know of that specializes in
the tiny little subgenre of music known as lofi or 8bit or chiptunes or
gamemusic or about a million other things.  The idea is to use
1980s computer technology or video game systems or similar sounding
synthesis techniques to make music.  Hear some at micromusic.net. 
I have considered burning a few CDs of a some songs I have written in
this style and giving them around to the people involved to sorta jab
myself into the scene a bit.

From a micromusic.com email:

Mar 14th 2005 Data Destruction Tour 2005
artists: Nullsleep, Bit Shifter, Covox
venue: The Enormous Room, 567 Massachusetts Ave., Boston, MA, USA
start:  9:00pm
fee: 21+ no cover
more info:  http://www.enormous.tv/

I wonder if it will be a snow day.  The weather is completely
horrible and miserable.  If it’s a snow day, it will have no
impact on me, however, because I have no classes on Wednesday.

A snow day on any other day would help me catch up so much, but a Wednesday snow day does nothing for me.

I say “catch up” but I’m not too far behind on things.  I
certainly have a lot going on, but when I sit down and think about it,
they are moving along fine.  Some of my things could use some more
enthusiasm, and the occasional jolt back into action, but really I am
on top of most stuff right now.

We made a transistor radio in Analog and Digital Communications,
hard-tuned to WEEI 850 AM sports radio.  The class is really
starting to make a lot more sense these days.  It only makes me
wish I could spend more time designing circuits or software for
processing audio.  Designing audio filters, in hardware or in
software, is one of my favorite activities.  Luckily, I’m majoring
in the right thing, Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Grant: “Why is J. Lo a popular singer?”
Dan: “Cause she’s got a nice ass.”

Wow, thanks Dan.  Really classy.  That wasn’t what I
meant.  Jennifer Lopez has an annoying nasal voice.  Her
latest song has an annoying sax line.  I… secretly wish that I
didn’t like it in a disturbing way.

I’m going dogsledding for the first weekend of Spring Break up in Maine.

I came up with a new way to make my todo list.  I put todo items
up on Post-It notes on my wall.  The higher notes represent more
important things I need to do, like get a job for summer.  The
bottom notes are not important, such as fixing my digital camera. 
That way I still see everything I have to do, but I don’t forget the
important stuff.  I’ll tell you how it goes.  I think this
will finally be the method I keep.

Today I stopped doing things for an hour.  It was splendid. 
Since last Thursday, I hadn’t stopped for even ten minutes. 
Constant activity, moving from class to party to class to meeting to
meeting to the candidate’s weekend and back again.  Finally I can
get some sleep.

Starting this Friday I will have an 8 am class, Complex
Variables.  I’m actually really excited about Complex
Variables.  They really come in handy for messing with audio
signals.  But anyway this means that my first classes each day
will look like this:

Monday 2 PM
Tuesday 8 AM
Wednesday (no class, nothing until CORe meeting at 6:30 PM)
Thursday 2 PM
Friday 8 AM

It doesn’t get any weirder than that.

Also, elections are going to be soon for CORe (The Council of Olin
Representatives), so I will sadly give up my post as Vice Presdient of
Communication.  I might run for another executive position, but I
haven’t decided yet.  The CORe Digest is my baby!  I will
miss it!

Someone needs to tell Google that their stuff isn’t in beta
anymore.  Napster killed that word forever, and now Google is
desecrating its coffin.

If you find yourself in a slump, as I have, then clean up your
room!  It does wonders for the psyche!  Throw away lots of
stuff.

Tucker IMed me today and we talked through some programming issues on
our software synthesizer.  Good news!  It works on my
computer for the first time!  Now we can finish up the GUI and we
will have a product that is ready for real-world beta testing! 
Keep posted.

The check came in the mail to Oklahoma yesterday!  I will probably cash it while I’m home for Spring Break. 

I remembered what I was going to blog about last night, but forgot to.

Yesterday my professor didn’t show up for my class
Synchronization.  There are 6 students in the class, but only 5
showed up.  We waited for a bit and then one of the staff came in
and told us the professor wasn’t coming.  We then spent the entire
remainder of the class period going over the homework, writing stuff up
on the board, and debating it.

I love this school.  The subject matter is interesting enough that we don’t even need a professor to hold class!

Back to blogging!  A lot of people are getting involved on the Olin College blogring these days.

We just had the first Candidate’s Weekend of the year.  It went
very well.  The students are getting inspired again to be at Olin.

Today I put a bunch of pictures up on flickr.  Just go to http://www.flickr.com/photos/nertzy for more.

Today the rest of the CORe E-Board and I went to the senior
administration meeting for Olin.  We gave student feedback to the
President, VPs, and heads of various departments.  I think it went
well.  I got to learn a lot of details about running a new school.

I got my camera back today in the mail.  I’d left it in Drew’s car
in LA.  It reminds me of all my broken items.  My camera’s
flash doesn’t work.  My palm’s screen doesn’t work.  My next
palm’s screen cracked.  The face broke off of my nice watch. 
If only I weren’t so lazy I would fix them all.

Now all I really need is a summer job.  A nice internship.  I
have some wonderful contacts lined up so I guess I should start asking
them for advice.

The new Chemical Brothers album, Push the Button, is
very nice.  I like the first two tracks best, “Galvanize” and “The
Boxer”.  I didn’t like “Galvanize” the first time I heard it, or
even the second, but now it’s one of my all-time favorite Chemical
Brothers songs.  It’s interesting to note that I also didn’t like
“Block Rockin’ Beats” the first few times I heard it.  I still
haven’t figured out how the Chemical Brothers are able to evoke this
initial disinterest.

Well I shall try to get into a better habit of posting on here.