city fun...

Last night was a good time in the city! We had an afternoon meeting downtown and stuck around and had a few drinks after work which was very nice :) It was fun to get my fix of city fun after my day of lake geneva relaxing.

Cubs fans, make sure to read Gaper's Block's Cubs in Five. Everything you need to know about the cubbies updated every week. Of course they start this with only a month of baseball to go! And speaking of baseball, the Tokyo Giants are playing when I'm in town! I may just have to go!!!! :) :)

Not a ton else new. This week is super busy with work, but I'm still taking time to have dinner with old friends!! Jen and I had dinner tonight, and tomorrow I get to see Sam again! It'll be fun to see people again!!

Oh, and it looks like I might be out in Boston again September 22nd for the MIT career fair! Which will be awesome...possibly staying out that weekend or going down to NYC...I have to figure out plans. Will anyone be around that weekend?

weekend...

I just got home from a wonderful weekend up at Lake Geneva! Although it sounds like I missed quite the time on Friday night, the rest of the weekend was wonderful. It was two days of the most perfect weather you could imagine, not a cloud in the sky and 80 degrees, and wonderful lunches outside by the lake, games of cornhole on the lawn, good food, and fun times with friends. Just the break I needed!!

Things you should check out...
If you haven't seen the "new" Eminem video (yes, it's from last November) for Mosh, go on iTunes right now and watch it for free. It's amazing to me how the Dixie Chicks saying that they are ashamed to come from Texas made the fuss that it did, but this video didn't get any press, at least none that I remember. That's all I'll say, you need to go watch it, and it's free so you have no excuses :)

Also, did you know that Bush was jeered by members of the Australian Congress when he was speaking there in 2003? Yes, it's all about the old news today. This story comes courtesy of Joe.

Ambidexterous Magazine. It's awesome! I got my first issue today! How could you not totally love a magazine that has a centerfold of taking apart a parking meter to see how it works, a review of Blink, an article on battery operated razors, and tons of articles on good design and places you can see it :) Too bad it's only quarterly right now!

long time...

It's been a while since I've posted. It's just been one crazy busy week! And the week ahead doesn't look to be any less busy! But this Friday I'm heading off to Beijing and Tokyo for a few weeks, so look for pictures coming next week sometime!!!

Last night was a fun Ivy League + MIT happy hour at Twisted Spoke! Lots of fun and good to see a bunch of people again. And I'm now convinced that everyone at Duke knows Deborah Lee :)

OK...now I'm off to go hang out with Joe, Kelly, Gina, Chris, and Christine up in Lake Geneva! Should be an awesome day!!

Wrigley!

Wrigley!
Originally uploaded by bentley79.

It was a fun night at Wrigley with my dad tonight! Even though the cubbies lost! Zambrano did a great job through 8 innings, only letting up two. And it was tied going into the top of the ninth, and our new "closer" Kerry Wood comes in. And sadly, he let up two runs :( He still needs some time to get used to his new role I think! Even with rally caps on, the cubbies couldn't come back in the bottom of the 9th. Sadness! But I did keep score the whole game, which was a lot of fun!! :-D

my dad rocks...

So I'm over at my parents place for dinner and my dad is like, I have a book for you that you really have to read. Now this is surprising for a few reasons...but first that my dad really doesn't read. But I got him this book about how walmart is evil a few months ago, and I think that got him going. So second reason that it is surprising is that the book was Bushwhacked! Yes, my dad, mr. red white and blue himself, getting me Bushwhacked. And he had read it himself and was like, "but this isn't even the half of it, this was just what happened *before* he got reelected!" My dad rocks! :)

cedar point

So I was going to meet up with Susan and Adam at Cedar Point today. I was really looking forward to seeing them and riding all the wonderful roller coasters there! But unfortunately it's raining on Ohio all day, so we decided to put it off. Which leaves me with a day with nothing planned. How nice :) It looks like a day of reading, running, and maybe dinner with my parents...

Fun night in Chicago!

0817_192248
Originally uploaded by bentley79.

Fun night in Chicago tonight! Reading in Millenium Park while a wonderful concert was going on in front of me on the stage. I love it!!! Summer in Chicago is awesome! :)

longhorn and more...

So I finally got to play with Longhorn (Vista) tonight! We installed it on an old laptop at work. And I have to say I was underwhelmed...it really just seemed like a face lift on XP for the most part. The new metadata-based searching and virtual folders was cool and all, but nothing the mac hasn't been doing for a while already. But it was cool to see all my photos in virtual albums by month. I must say that IE7 seems pretty confusing...the tabs are like big buttons on top of the menu bar and the stop/reload button is in a confusing spot at the end of the text field. Bizarre!

Let's see...lots of other fun things...

I love how lonely planet Beijing includes "I would like to buy a SIM card" in its list of essential mandarin phrases :)

Check out MIT's new child care facility in the Stata Center! I wish I went to preschool in a Frank Gehry building with a bunch of smart people!! :)

Boston's parking tickets are now all fancy and electronic! Too bad it also makes it easier to catch people parking too long in the 2 hour zones...

NCSA says that Yahoo lies about the size of their index!

And finally, for all you public transportation lovers and ipod fanatics, you can get subway maps for your iPod!!

OK...I should watch the Daily Show and go to bed!

hybrids...

Make your prius more like an electric car! You've gotta plug it in then, but you may just get over 100 MPG! :)

last.fm

So for the past few months I've been playing with this site called Audioscrobbler (now all of the UI is on a site called Last.fm. Basically you stick a plugin in iTunes or WinAmp or XMMS or whatever player you happen to use on your platform and it keeps track of everything you play. You can go online and see your top artists and tracks as well as see your "musical neighbours" - people who have similar taste to you. Through the last.fm player, you can also hear your neighbourhood radio station, which is music from people who like things similar to what you like, which is pretty cool. Which leads me to my big Friday night project. Finding myself without plans at the last minute, I decided to try to compile the player for os x since the last.fm people hadn't gotten around to it yet. So I download QT and compile that and then try to compile the player like they say you should be able to do and of course it doesn't work. It seems no one can get it to compile so I guess I'm just going to have to wait for the binary to come out (hopefully this weekend). Anyway, you should go check it out, it's a cool site. And here's my profile page if you're interested.

Oh, and I finally got my Mighty Mouse yesterday!! :) Yay!! It's pretty cool, but I keep right-clicking by mistake...darn mouse with no buttons :) But the scroll ball is very very cool!

This post is way too geeky, even for me...oh well...

crazy fans!

So it was another day at the ballgame today! And a little bit wet outside, but still super fun! I took the 8:30am train into the city to go stand in line at Wrigley! It was only a little drizzle and I didn't want to have bad bleacher seats!! By 11:20 everyone had shown up....by gametime there were 10 in all, 4 on my tickets and 6 on Prashants. After a bit of a rain delay, I saw the second Maddux start in one week :) And an awesome complete game, 11-4 win!! Yay, the cubbies found their bats! And I got to see Nomar too which was awesome after being sad and not seeing him in myc last weekend!

But if you think all of that is crazy, I have to tell you about the ultimate baseball fan I met today. Even more baseball crazy than all of us put together! I had a spare ticket to the game since a coworker didn't want to come, so I asked our intern Drew if he knew anyone who would want it. He calls this friend of his in Madison last night, who is "jumping off the walls" at a chance to go to wrigley. She bums a ride off of a friend and comes down into Chicago at 8am, and goes to the game. Right before the game, she introduces us to her "scorebook" - not scorecard...this is a fun sprial notebook filled with specialty scorecard paper with every game she's been to since jr high perfectly scored in it. Wow. That takes dedication!! And 3 hours later, a game from Wrigley was added to all those Fenway games in there. And then grabs the greyhound back to Madison. Craziness.

After the game I got my vegan french toast fix at Pick Me Up, mmmm. I really do need to try the gnocci there sometime!

OK...I'm tired and nasty from a day in the rain...it's time for a shower and some reading before bed!

not my day...

Today was so not my day. Among the frustrations...

1) I bricked a prototype phone at work today that we probably can't get another of
2) I tried to install Longhorn (Vista) on a computer at work, then to realize that the computer doesn't have a DVD drive (and why? It's like a 2 1/2 year old 2.4GHz machine!)
3) I went to the apple store to get a power cord for my mac. They wanted $79 for it! Needless to say I didn't get it!
4) While at the apple store, I decided to buy a Mighty Mouse, of course they were out
5) I decided to call Fry's in case they had any MIghty Mice in stock. They assured me that they did, so I drove 1/2 hour down there and of course they said they've been out since the first day they were available.

OK...tomorrow will be better!! Cubs/Cards out in the bleachers!!!

pictures!

IMG_0217
Originally uploaded by bentley79.

Pictures from the game and Boston!! See the new funky kenmore square T station and all of us at Shea!

awesome weekend out east!!

Hi from what used to be the entrance to the bush room (but is now a lonely bench along the infinite) :)

This weekend has been awesome!!! Just *so* much fun! And it's not over yet!! Friday night I went to Grasshopper with Susan...so great to get some No Name and "Chicken" Fingers again! And I run into KatieH for the second time in one day...it's so awesome to be able to come back to a city 3 years later and still run into so many people you know everywhere you go!! Yay! No report on Roads since people couldn't come out...we went to Big City instead which was a nice way to end the night!

Yesterday was craziness. I was introduced to the best bagles in Bosotn at Bagles Rising...they even have 5 different kinds of tofu cream "cheese"!! And then we were on the road to Queens. The game was awesome and it was so wonderful to catch up with Jess and to see Steph again!! Yay for WHS people meeting up in NYC! :) And yes, Jess is still the nicest girl in the whole world :)

So we're driving into Boston...and it's like 9pm on a Saturday...and we were hungry. So where did we go?? Pour house for 1/2 off burgers of course!!! It was so just like old times...but this time with Susan and her friends instead of the usual student house crew. Man, I love this city!

Anyway, today is wandering around day...I'm about to get on the #1 to Harvard and then I think I'm getting Burrito Max BBQ Tofu burrito for lunch and heading over to the common to chill and read a book until my plane tonight. Such a nice relaxing day in the hub. :)

See all of you in Chicago soon!! And baseball pics hopefully will be posted when I get home tonight!

oh how I love MIT....

hi from lobby 7 :)

Have I ever told you how much I love this place? Being back after all this time I still can't help but running into at least two people I know every time I walk down the infinite :) Even during the summer! It's fun! Including people I thought were long gone from here. It's true...no one really ever leaves MIT! :) So far I think I've bumped into at least 8 people I know in just 3 hours!

boston!!

Hi from W20! :) I love being back where buildings have numbers and not names!!! :) I had an awesome ride here on the new Silver Line, which is a bus, that then has an identity crisis and becomes a subway of sorts...I guess Boston just can't decide what vehicles they want to have...streetcars and busses become subways, some street busses have electric lines above them...craziness.

So I get to MIT and I'm all about to order a burrito from anna's, when I see a sign that their rice has chicken broth in it! Sad!!! :( Oh well, I just had a hummus bagel and that was tasty :)

And the Tech says that Elizabeth Shin's death may not be a suicide! That she didn't intend to die and it was an accident. Apparently all charges against MIT have been dropped and MIT didn't have to pay them anything. What an interesting turn of events. The decision is here (it's a pdf).

boston!!!

So after a few short hours of sleep, I'll be off for a weekend out east! Starting with heading over to MIT to talk to a few people, then dinner at Grasshopper, and finally drinks at the "new" Roads. So excited to eat some No Name, my favorite food in the whole world!! But I don't know how I feel about a refurbished Roads...I guess I'll find out! Sadly, many of my friends who live in Boston are out of town this weekend. It will be fun nonetheless!

Of course the real reason for this trip is Saturday, a trip down to NYC for a Cubs/Mets game. Steph has informed me that Normar won't be playing, which is so sad!!! I guess they are playing him Friday and Sunday to ease him back in. So sad!! But it will be very awesome to go to the game and hang out with Susan and Steph and Jess! I haven't seen Jess since 1998! So much time!!!! So yes, it will be fun! But since all my NYC friends are out of town (this seems to be a theme for this weekend!) I think I'm heading back up to Boston with Susan and hanging out up there on Sunday. I have a late flight back home, so if anyone wants to do something on Sunday, let me know!! Otherwise I think I might just take a book to the common...it's been ages since I've done that!!

So if anyone is around and wants to go to Grasshopper or Roads on Friday or do something Sunday, give me a call!! It will be fun to see all you east coasters!!

movie in the park...

So our MIT event last night was a flop attendance-wise, but it was still a ton of fun!! We had a happy hour in Grant Park and then watched ET, a movie I have not seen in at least 10 years! (Anyone correct me on that if you remember watching it with me sometime since high shcool!) But seriously nothing beats sitting out in the early evening on a blanket in grant park, with the whole city skyline behind you and a nice bottle of wine (hidden of course - the policy is that alcohol is ok as long as the containers are hidden). And ET was good! I rememebered nearly nothing!

neighborhood bars....

It's fun to have two awesome bars close to my new condo! It's even more fun when friends decide to celebrate their b-days at one of them! :) Today was joe's b-day part two and I had a nice two block walk over to Emmett's. Yay for good food and good beer with friends :)

This week is going to go so slow I know it...I can't wait to get to boston/nyc this weekend!!!