wind and warmth

Last night coming back from dinner with Stacie, driving down 53, with the windows down and the stereo up, warm wind blowing at me from the perfect 80-degree evening, the last sign of daylight on the horizon, suddenly made me feel like I was back in California, driving down the 101 on an equally wonderful evening. Such a nice relaxing feeling :)

old friends and summerfest...

So I just had coffee with an old friend from high school that I haven't seen in seven years! Turns out she lives in the same town as I do not too far away! *So* much fun to see her again, to catch up, learn all about her phd topic, what she's been up to the last few years. Honestly it doesn't feel like so long ago and it was a lot like old times again. Very cool! And yay for more friends to hang out with this summer!! :)

Speaking of which, who wants to go see Lewis Black up at Summerfest on Monday!? And the fireworks! And Ben Folds. And anyone else on this list! My friend Elizabeth from Madison is already coming over for it! I'm probably leaving the chicago area around one or so for those interested in coming along!

google earth

Hands down the coolest thing ever! Even cooler than that cloned cat :) Make sure you use your wheel to zoom in and out!! :) And fly around the world!

possibly the coolest thing...

Plane Graveyard from Google maps!

fun weekend!

So lots of fun things going on with me this weekend! I've been super busy, so now you get the whole weekend in one big post :)

Thursday night was the fancy MIT dinner for people helping to plan for MIT On the Road in Chicago next summer! It looks like Susan Hockfield is coming along with some professors to talk about her two hot topics, energy and life sciences. It should be a very fun event! The dinner was great and it was nice to meet some MIT alums that I didn't know and hang out with ones I did!

Friday was a day of happy hours :) First to say goodbye to my manager at work which was sad, and then a fun Ivy Leauge Young Alum on at Zella's, which is a very nice beer garden on Clyborn. Highly recommended! My friend Hayden is in town from Boston this weekend, so we got to hang out with a bunch of alums there and then went on an uncuccessful hunt for Thai food with Connie. Oh well, we found a cool bar we might be able to have MIT happy hours at, and it's right by the train station! :)

So yesterday was very cool. We went down to Wired NextFest which is basically this "world's fair" of science and technology. Very very very very awesome! I saw my first cloned animal ever! They had this cloned cat and it was just amazing to see it in real life. I mean, you know that they are cloning animals, but until you see it and you're like, holy crap, they made a clone of this, you don't really get it :) Other highlights were finally getting to play Brainball, my co-thesis advisor's game from when he worked in Sweeden. Basically, it measures brainwaves, and you have to try to be calm..and the person that is the most calm "pushes" a ball towards the un-calm person by being calm...usually making the uncalm person more uncalm :) A very fun game!! And of course Motorola had a huge area set up with PTV and Dynamic Idle and all sorts of other cool things that came out of the labs :) If you haven't gone yet, go today!! It's so worth it!!

And I got to see the part of the "bean" that's polished. That thing will be amazing when it's done!! :) Oh, and funny story from the Art Institute. There was this guy in there that didn't believe that the paintings were real. He kept going up to guards and being like, is that a "real" Picasso, or Monet, or ... And then he'd be like, that's amazing! Anyway, hard to keep from falling over laughing, but I think we did a good job!

So yes, it's been a crazy weekend. Some things did not turn out as I had hoped for...but it's ok in the end. Let's just say it's the difference between a serial approach and a parallel one. Much like a previous situation. Those who know, know what that means.

Does anyone want to see Wicked sometime this summer? I know I'm like the last one to see it, but if anyone wants to go, let me know!! I want to get some tickets soonish!

home

working at home and listening to pat and ron may be the perfect way to spend an afternoon :)

matlab and cubbies...

So I played with the new version of Matlab today! And oh man is it awesome!! So so so so so so so cool :) So for some background, I learned matlab back in 1998 in good old 18.02C at MIT (Multivariable Calc).

At that time matlab was this command line thing that had no GUI and no way to interact with it other than typing commands...you want to plot something - plot(x,y) you want to label an axis - ylabel("text") etc. You want to execute a whole bunch of commands, write a .m file in emacs and load and run it from the command line.

Well, matlab has changed a bit! Now it's got this awesome GUI that lets you edit .m files, highlight statements and run them, drag and drop statements back and forth to the command window, edit plots with a nice GUI to add labels, axes, etc. (and give you the .m file that you'd need to recreate it!), and edit vectors and matrices in this excel-like interface. I'm sure there are a million other very awesome things it can do, but I just had a few minutes to play. Man, I've gotta use this more often! So so so so so cool! :)

So I'm listening to the Cubs game on the radio as I write this. And the Brewers just had an 8-run 2nd inning. And Ron, after all of his "gosh"'s and "oh no, no, no"'s finally was like, well, we held them to 8. We just have to hope they don't score more and we can come back." What an optimist. He rocks!

courtroom 302 and work...

I finished up Courtroom 302 this weekend. Super super interesting book and highly recommended. It's amazing to think about our legal system, especially in a big city like chicago...how it's about processing cases fast, often without the real witnesses even testifying and the lawyers just telling each other and the judge what people would say. Or how many people who are clearly guilty are set free because of procedural issues. It's also scary how short of a time people actually spend in jail for fairly serious offences. And all the abuse and torture in the Chicago police department. Anyway, highly recommended if you want to know some crazy things about how our courts work!

So work...my manager told us yesterday that he's leaving our lab! Ahh! He will be seriously missed! I've worked with him since he first came into the lab when I was an intern and he's been a great person to bounce ideas off of and get help with just about any technical question imaginable. But his new position is awesome, so it'll be good for him! And good for us that we'll just be able to run our own projects without a "manager" figure. So that'll be super fun! :) Still sad though!!

busy week!

Looks like it's going to be another busy week here! But I"m totally looking forward to a fun and fancy MIT dinner on Thursday! We're helping to plan an MIT On the Road in Chicago and get this awesome dinner in some swanky club downtown :) Fun!! :) ANd I found an organic cleaners in the suburbs so that was exciting! And it's right on my way to work. It's at the corner of Euclid and Quentin if anyone is looking for it.

Not much else right now. Look for an interesting post tonight :)

e-dreams...

Watching e-dreams last night (a documentary movie about kozmo.com) got me thinking of the good old days of ordering Ben and Jerry's at midnight :) Which then brought me to this site. Is the idea of Kozmo back!? They charge $4.95 delivery fee though for orders under $50 and deliver all the good stuff that kozmo used to! I remember the outrage around kozmo's $5 minimum order with no delivery fee! Anyway, interesting to look around at some of the latest startups and wonder if some of 1999 is coming back. Too bad maxdelivery only delivers to manhattan.

Also interesting is that I had to wait 7 days to get the movie from Amazon, the exact problem kozmo.com was started to solve. :) It's interesting to me to think about things we could do back during the boom that we just can't today. Sort of like going backwards in a way. Too bad these companies actually had to make money at some point ;)

out of evanston...

I finally got all my stuff out of Evanston today and finished cleaning the apartment. Locked up and said goodbye. It was good to say goodbye to a place that has a lot of memories I'd rather not think about. Although a ton of them came flooding back as I finished cleaning. It's officially putting an end to that chapter of my life finally which feels really good!!

It's fun to listen to Pat and Ron when the game is such a blow out, they really don't feel like talking about the game. Today's discussion, trying to come up with players that rhyme with their positions, e.g. Hurst, first or Sheffield, outfield. Yeah, you can tell they were bored with the 8-1 score. Hopefully tomorrow our cubbies can come back and show the Yankees that they indeed do suck!

reunions and things going on this summer...

Just got back from a fun 10 year WildStang reunion! More current students than old students, but it was still fun. BBQ, softball, and a HUGE bonfire at a park in Rolling Meadows. Good times and good people! :) Hard to believe it's been 10 years since we started WildStang though...man, times flies!!!

So I think I'm going to do a bunch of fun stuff this summer, and you're all invited to come along!! Let me know if any of you are interested in any of this!
1) NextFest at Navy Pier on June 25th
2) Taste of Chicago! Sometime before the 4th!
3) Summerfest on the 4th of July, including Lewis Black!!!
4) Lots of cubs games - too many to mention :)
5) Cedar Point - August 20!
6) Random trips to TMLMTBGB
and tons more, but that's what I can think of right now...

cubs/mets

It looks like I'm going to the Cubs/Mets game in August! Any of you New Yorkers who want to join us, let me know! :)

printer's row!

I can't believe I missed Printer's Row this year!!! Soooooo sad! I'm in need of some new books too!

a movie about kozmo.com!!

They made a movie about my favorite .com!! Susan and I used to order from these guys like every day at Student House :) Especially before the infamous $5 minimum order. I mean, come on, you want a bottle of gatorade, they're at your door in 15 minutes. What more could a bunch of college students want?? :) Movies too! And you could return them *everywhere* in these little drop boxes they installed all over Boston and MIT. They were awesome!!

nice relaxing day!

It was another nice relaxing day here! I've been having a lot of those lately :) Enjoyed the beautiful weather this morning and got a lot of reading done out on my balcony!! It's just so nice to wander out the back door and have a nice relaxing place to sit and read :) Then watched the cubbies beat the sox for the second day in a row!! Cooked up a nice stir fry for dinner and caught up on all my numb3rs episodes that I had been saving! It was a good day!

So here is my travel dilemma...I have two options:

1) Go to the Pi Reunion and also go to Boston again later this summer - this trip lets me see a whole bunch of people I haven't seen in a while and some good friends in Boston again.
2) Go to Paris and swing by London again - I get to explore Paris, where I've never been and get to have awesome food with my awesome friend Helen in London.

Oh the choices. If you're going to Pi, let me know! So far I only know a couple people who are going...

fun with google

It's awesome that google is letting people do all this! So cool!!

good week!

It's been a good week here! More BBQ'ing took place Wednesday night and I had a bunch of my family over! Good times and good food :) And I managed to get rid of *some* of the left over beer I had! It's so fun to have a place where I can have a bunch of people over!!

Work is going well too! Lots of fun possibilities coming up! I was almost scared that I destroyed my phone yesterday while upgrading it, but it was all good in the end! :) What a scare!

Who has fun red-sox/cubs plans for this weekend?

Oh...and who is going to the Pi Reunion!!?? I need to make up my mind really soon!

cubs woo cubs woo

Ronnie Woo Woo was quoted on the front page of the times Man, I can't' wait for this series...if I only had tickets... :)

frogger (again)...

So on the daily show last night, yet another mention of Frogger in the context of the Seinfeld episode that was rerun last week. Is everyone watching (and ripping off from) Seinfeld reruns? Or is Frogger suddenly vogue again???

relaxing evening...

After getting totally nothing done at work all day yesterday, I decided to come home and work on my balcony. What a fantastic idea! Threw on some shorts and a t-shirt and got more work done that I did in the last 3 work days! And enjoyed the awesome 85 degree sunny weather up until it got too dark to see what I was doing :) I think I'm really going to enjoy being able to sit outside this summer!!!

Skype from the plane...

WiFi and hence Skype on planes! Very cool!!

carriers....

Those silly carriers :) Speaking of carriers, T-Mobile had a 4 hour outage in all of chicago today! Boo!

walking for santo and the influence of seinfeld reruns...

Man this guy's feet must be tired!! Very cool though walking (at least most of the way...except through east st. louis) from AZ to IL to raise money for JDRF!

An interesting line in the story states that he was playing a game of "human frogger" trying to cross the street. Which made me think that the Seinfeld that was on a couple days ago had George at the end trying to cross the street with a literal Frogger machine but with an overhead view of him basically playing frogger trying to move around the oncoming cars...sound included. Which made me pretty strongly question if that was the inspiration for the wording. And last weekend I heard a friend say "Helllllloooooo" in the Stomach Voice a few days after that episode aired. Interesting how like 10 years later a show can still have so much impact on us :)

director!

We have a new director!!! :)

radio ad

I think I just heard possibly the most offensive radio ad ever...ok...I take that back, second only to the "our trucks aren't built in riceland" commercial. Anyway, it was for a company called "rent a husband" and basically it's to hire people to do "manly" tasks around the house...paint, build a deck, put up a shed, etc. So number one, can you enforce stereotypical roles any more?? And second it ended with the line "we'll do anything but your wife" which I have no words for. How can this stuff get on the radio????

more party...

So now that I'm actually awake and have a few bottles of water in me, more about the party yesterday!!

All day was spend running around getting ready...things like finishing setting up my bookcase and buying a grill. But everything came together in the end! Tons of people came from all different areas of my life so that was fun! And there was a bunch of really good food and of course plenty of Spotted Cow thanks to Elizabeth :) It was good to see Richard and "officially" hear the news in person and to see a bunch of WHS people I haven't seen in a while. Fun times! And vegan jello shots were a success too with the kosher cherry "gelatin" which is good to know :)

But there is a "problem" in that so many people brought beer that I'm close to the level of beer that I started out the evening with...so possibly a get together will occur around a red sox/cubs game next weekend! Anyone interested??

In other sad news learned from LauraJ last night, WJMK isn't playing oldies anymore!! What!?!?

party! :)

The housewarming party was awesome! Thanks to all who came!! It was so good to see everyone and so many different groups of people show up :) A very fun night, and good to see the cubbies win too!

OK..I'm super tired from a very fun night! Goodnight everyone!!