Archive for January, 2005

Day Trip: Skiing

Saturday, January 29th, 2005

Max and I have been mean­ing to go ski­ing this IAP and we finally got around to it today. So, this morn­ing at about 7a, Max, Bryan, Gus and I set out for points north. By 10:30a, we had rented skis and were get­ting on the ski lift at Waterville Valley in New Hampshire. It’s worth not­ing the costs asso­ci­ated with get­ting to this point: $34 for a lift ticket (with col­lege ID) and $32 for equip­ment rental; totally $66. We then pro­ceeded to ski, with a brief lunch break, clear through about 4p. The drive is not that bad, the price is pretty good and, over­all, it’s totally worth it for 5 hours of decent ski­ing with my friends.

photos are up now

Friday, January 28th, 2005

Since my side­kick can oper­ate as a dig­i­tal cam­era, it only makes sense that I take pic­tures of things every so often. Now, tak­ing pic­tures is one thing, shar­ing them with other peo­ple is a slightly dif­fer­ent thing and as such I have set up a photo gallery/photoblog/whatever called gwax’s sit­ings (now I can rum­ble and site). There aren’t any com­ments or names for the exist­ing pho­tos (I might add some later) but from now on I’ll be adding them.

Enjoy

Update: I have culled a lot of the pho­tos to elim­i­nate redun­dancy and low qual­ity pic­tures. Also, I have added descrip­tions for all of the old pho­tos. Some of the ear­lier pho­tos are in a funny order because the time stamps were a lit­tle messed up.

The Greatness of the Melting Pot

Wednesday, January 26th, 2005

I am an American, from my mon­grel blood to my world views (I’m talk­ing ideal American, not the mod­ern polit­i­cal major­ity). Being American puts me in the unique posi­tion of being able to enjoy the ben­e­fits of the so-called melt­ing pot that is my coun­try. The melt­ing pot involves the mix­ing and exchange of var­i­ous bits of var­i­ous cul­tures; one such bit is fusion foods, foods that bor­row from dif­fer­ent cul­tures. Right now I am eat­ing fried kiel­basa (Polish) and sip­ping good scotch whisky (Scottish). The scotch and kiel­basa com­bi­na­tion isn’t ter­ri­bly mul­ti­cul­tural but it reminds me of my favorite food, kiel­basa fried rice. Kielbasa fried rice is a won­der­ful Polish/Asian fusion food. I was too lazy too make kiel­basa fried rice but that doesn’t change my love of fusion foods.

No Sleep for the Wicked

Wednesday, January 26th, 2005

Well, in the­ory I’m leav­ing very early to go ski­ing on Thursday and I kind of want to see Ian and Ben’s robot for 6.270 at 10a tomor­row so I don’t think that I’m going to sleep tonight. I’m pretty sure that I’ve got enough Mountain Dew and Cherry Coke in my appart­ment to help me stay up through the night as long as I can find ways to keep myself entertained.

I don’t expect many peo­ple to be awake, so AIM isn’t going to serve as an ade­quate passtime. I haven’t got DSL to my appart­ment yet, so I can’t waste away on the inter­net or do much with my com­puter other than watch movies or tv shows that I already down­loaded. I’ll make food at some point but that will occupy a lit­tle bit of my time. I might try read­ing this book that I found in an Athena clus­ter (more details likely later). Maybe I’ll steal some Athena paper and do some art. I might even build a Whitewing.

It may be a lit­tle after 5a right now but this night still has a long time until it’s over.

AuthImage for WordPress

Monday, January 24th, 2005

Having become annoyed with comment-spam, I have cho­sen to imple­ment Gudlyf’s AuthImage plu­gin for WordPress. The plu­gin makes one of those pic­tures with funny text that’s hard for com­put­ers to parse. The plu­gin also demands that you type in the con­tents of the image or you don’t get to post a com­ment. I don’t really like forc­ing some­thing like this on peo­ple but the spam was piss­ing me off and this seems less obtru­sive than send­ing peo­ples’ com­ments to mod­er­a­tion and then accept­ing them later. If this is really unpleas­ant for peo­ple, let me know and I’ll con­sider other options.

Blizzard Reanalyis

Sunday, January 23rd, 2005

My pre­vi­ous analy­sis of this bliz­zard was insuf­fi­cient. Having walked back to my appart­ment late last night and now hav­ing been out­side once the bliz­zard has stopped drop­ping snow, I can give a bet­ter expla­na­tion of things. I need only one adjec­tive to describe this blizzard.

This bliz­zard is ludicrous.

Blizzarding, like a whole bunch.

Sunday, January 23rd, 2005

Oh holy crap, it’s bliz­zard­ing out­side right now, like a whole bunch. We’ve prob­a­bly got about half a foot of snow and some drifts up to two or more feet; that’s not to men­tion the snow-plow piles that are like 6 feet high. Also, there’s like a whole bunch of wind and it’s mak­ing the snow fly all over the place and into your face and crap. It’s really cold too. Oh and it’s sup­posed to keep snow­ing until tomor­row evening. Also, they declared a state of emer­gency. I love this kind of weather so much. Blizzards are the like the bestest things of all.

Also, my sen­tance con­structs are stu­pid in this post.

Spyjinks (aka How to Get a DSL Modem)

Thursday, January 20th, 2005

I now have a DSL modem for when the DSL to my appart­ment actu­ally gets con­nected. It was a bit of an adven­ture to get the thing and I will explain the tech­nique so that oth­ers can obtain DSL modems more efficiently.

  1. Call speakeasy
  2. Sign up for DSL service
  3. Don’t be in when UPS tries to deliver the DSL modem
  4. Go to the UPS track­ing web­site and ask them to hold the pack­age for pick-up
  5. Get annoyed because Third Ave gets cut in half by a bunch of stuff at the Cambridge/Somerville border
  6. Take a long annoy­ing detour to deal with the sev­ered Third Ave
  7. Get your package
  8. Decide that you don’t want to take the detour again
  9. Find the break in the barbed wire and hop the fence into the MBTA train repair facility
  10. Hide in the shad­ows while a train snowly backs some cars into a hangar because you are tresspassing
  11. Book it across the train tracks
  12. Find a gap in the barbed wire on the other side and hop the fence
  13. Jump down off a big stone wall
  14. Return home
  15. Congratulations, you now have a DSL modem

Ok, I guess that’s not really the best way to get a DSL modem but that’s how I did it.

Death by Peanut Butter

Tuesday, January 18th, 2005

I remem­bered hear­ing, long ago, that peanut but­ter doesn’t tend to go bad but that when it does, it becomes very car­cino­genic. Not know­ing the details of this lit­tle fact, I turned to the inter­net and found a bunch of sources to explain what was going on.

The molds Aspergillus flavus and Aspergillus par­a­siti­cus grow on a num­ber of things and grow espe­cially well on peanuts. These molds release a chem­i­cal known as afla­toxin, which is a strong car­cino­gen and has been linked to liver cancer.

The FDA mon­i­tors afla­toxin lev­els in com­mer­cial prod­ucts and it turns out to be the case that the big brand peanut but­ters (Skippy, Jif, etc.) have the low­est lev­els of afla­toxin. Also, if you go to a health food store and get freshly ground peanut but­ter, you’re dump­ing tons of afla­toxin into yourself.

So buy big brand peanut but­ter and don’t let it go bad.

Captain Sam Makes a Generalization

Monday, January 17th, 2005

Sam Felton, of all peo­ple, has a blog now. You can all go read about his lat­est gen­er­al­iza­tions now. Hooray!

Bachelor Burgers

Friday, January 14th, 2005

Having set­tled into the bachelor’s life pretty solidly at this point I have recently dis­cov­ered a won­der­ful new food which I have decided to refer to as the Bachelor Burger. Here’s how it works; you start with cheap gro­cery store brand burger pat­ties (all beef) and you fry them up on a grid­dle, then you drop a nice slice of pep­per jack cheese on top (I’m using Cabot brand) and then drop it on a cheap gro­cery store brand bun. I don’t bother with condi­ments (not my style) but the cheap burger, cheap bun and good strong cheese makes for a really tasty and inex­pen­sive com­bi­na­tion. Such is the Bachelor Burger and it’s mighty good.

Application Away

Thursday, January 13th, 2005

I turned in my appli­ca­tion for grad school ear­lier today; yes, that’s sin­gu­lar. This year I am apply­ing to only one grad school and if I don’t get in I am going to go do some­thing else. That is my plan and I’m stick­ing to it.

Anyway, the appli­ca­tion is in and now I just need to worry about grad­u­at­ing. The rest of my future is out already deter­mined as far as I am concerned.

I’ve cho­sen the track that I’m going to be on and now I just need to toss coal into the fur­nace for a while.

Myers-Briggs Typology

Sunday, January 9th, 2005

The friends have been doing up the Jung — Myers-Briggs typol­ogy test so I gave it a spin (go take the test; blog about it or some­thing). It’s a fun and inter­est­ing lit­tle thing and it’s a bet­ter put together than most inter­net per­son­al­ity quizzes (cer­tainly more infor­ma­tive than some­thing that tells you which Britney Spears song you are).

I turn out to be ENTP, or Extro­verted Intuitive Think­ing Perceiv­ing. This type is some­times referred to as the Inventor style. Descriptions of the ENTP type can be found care of D. Keirsey or M. M. Heiss and J. Butt; per­son­ally I think they’ve got me pinned to a “t” (or nailed to a cross if you want some taste­less humor).

I took this test once a few years ago and last time I scored as INTJ. I agreed with that scor­ing then and I still agree that it is rep­re­sen­ta­tive of who I was a few years ago. Back then, I sure as hell wouldn’t have seen myself becom­ing an extro­vert or becom­ing less judgemental.

The return home

Saturday, January 8th, 2005

I fin­ished the return trip to Massachusetts today and am writ­ing this from my room in Concord. Total trip mileage was 3553 (keen, it’s sym­met­ri­cal). I’ll prob­a­bly get myself back into the city tomor­row, though it might take more than one day.

Today was an inter­est­ing one. I started at a rest area in Virginia where I ignored the two hour park­ing limit and got eight hours of sleep. Between there and New Jersey, things were pretty unevent­ful. However, an inter­est­ing thing hap­pened when I stopped for lunch and gas in New Jersey, I picked up a hitch-hiker head­ing for New York. Mind you, this was no nor­mal hitch-hiker, this was Ludovic Hubler (you’ll want to click the British flag if you can’t read French)(also, it’s kind of flakey in some browsers). I’m sure you’re ask­ing who is Ludovic Hubler and why should I care? He’s this French guy who is hitch-hiking around the world, try­ing not to spend any money at all on travel expenses. He started in France, hitch-hiked across the Sahara, across the Atlantic, to Antarctica, up to the US and I gave him a ride from the mid­dle of Jersey to New York.

That’s my excit­ing news of the day; I picked up a hitch-hiker. The first time I ever pick up a hitch-hiker and I get the hitch-hiker to end all hitch-hikers.

Da North needs Waffle House

Saturday, January 8th, 2005

I’ve come in con­tact with a new chain restau­rant on my trip into the South, Waffle House. Waffle House is pretty much what you’d expect given the name and is pretty tasty. It’s a lit­tle bet­ter than IHOP or Bickford’s in my opinion.

Also, they have grits, which are a new thing for me too. Grits are good.

3000 mi

Saturday, January 8th, 2005

This morn­ing it’s the 3000 mile mark.

FL sure is a beaut’

Friday, January 7th, 2005

I’m not lost but I’m some­where in Southern Florida and I don’t know exactly where I am. It doesn’t much mat­ter as my time is val­ue­less right now and I am pretty good at fig­ur­ing out where I am in strange places.

Truth be told, I am actu­ally kind of glad that I am bush­whack­ing through unknown ter­ri­to­ries. This is a beau­ti­ful part of the world that I had never seen before. It reminds me of Southern California a whole lot.

I’ve found I-95 now, so all my prob­lems are solved from here to Massachusetts.