Today I reached an important milestone in the unpacking process. My room is not 100% unpacked, and 98% free of junk the landlord left. For the uninitiated, my new apartment comes fully furnished to the point that it is a problem. There is junk everywhere. Every little cubby hole where you think, oh I can store some the junk there is itself filled with junk. This makes the process of unpacking take a lot longer, because I must find a box of stuff I want to unpack. Take that stuff out of the box, throw a bunch of the landlord’s stuff into the box, and stash the box in one of the lofts. Then place my stuff where it goes. As promised, pictures of my room, now that it is done.
Please ignore the distortions created by stitching together this fish eye view.
This year my family’s annual trip to the Outer Banks of North Carolina with one of my best friends from back home’s family was in August. I got back about a week ago but I’ve been too busy with moving to write up a post. The trip was fun, but I was too busy flying my new kite, watching the Olympics, and playing some Diablo 2 to take out my camera. I did take out the camera during my flights there and back.
First things first, in the Boston airport under some of the seats they now have new electric sockets for charing phones and laptops. They also have usb charging ports, so those of us with the right cable can use those and free up the electric socket for someone else:
Now on to the flight. Cape Cod:
Martha’s Vineyard:
Week of fun at the beach.
On the flight back I got a great view of New York City. The harbor:
Manhattan Panorama:
New Haven, CT:
I didn’t get any nice shots of Boston due to our approach pattern, but I did get a nice one of a lighthouse in Boston Harbor right before we landed:
Well, on the Saturday after seeing The Dark Knight on my birthday I was invited to go to an all night beach party in Newburyport honoring the full moon with a fire. It was a blast. I met a bunch of new people and got to know a few kids I met on the 4th of July a bit better. One of them even managed to remember my name from then, which made me feel bad that I didn’t remember his. The weather was cloudy so there wasn’t a great view of the moon, but there were professionally done fireworks from a nearby by that we could see. As the night wore on batches of fog rolled in and out as the wind shifted. The wind off the water was quite cold, for about a minute once we could see our breath, but the wind off the land was comfortable. At one point the fog was so tick that you couldn’t see more than 15 feet it seemed. I arrived back home at around 5:30 am, by which time dawn had begun.
Lets see, what else… On Thursday of last week I went to that awards dinner for work, dateless. I wanted to take pictures of the supposedly lovely estate at which it was held, but it was raining quite a lot, as it had a tendency to do last week in Boston, so I just gave up on the idea that I’d get any nice looking pictures. The rain also turned what I was hoping would be an exploration of the land into a social event requiring copious amounts of small talk and pretending to like beer. The food, however, was quite good, so no complaints there.
On Friday of last week I went to see the Free Shakespeare on the Common production of As You Like It. I didn’t know anything about it going in, luckily they summarized the play in the program, which made it easier to follow along. It was really enjoyable, and seemed well done; the music was especially well suited. There were two lights operators, who climbed the towers to man the lights for the show. I really liked the whole idea of having them climb the towers, It seemed like they had really good seats as well (being so high), I wanted to be them. I was surprised to learn that the quote from Civilization 4 for when you discover drama, “All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts,” is from this play. I must say that the quote is much more enlightened sounding without the rest of the monologue that follows. The play was preceded by a picnic dinner; it was a date actually, but that’s you get to hear about it.
I had a rather unplanned Fourth of July, but all in all it went pretty well [map]. I woke up and saw that my friend Sparky’s away messages was a map to where he and some of the other xkcd Cambervile Meetup Thread forum users were going to spend the day. After having lunch I gave him a call and got invited to come down. I’d also been invited by Erik to watch the fireworks from his roof deck at the foot of Beacon Hill, so a plan to do both quickly emerged.
The xkcd fourm users had a nice spot staked out in the median of memorial drive. I arrive around 3pm and found them just wrapping up a game of some sort. They had plenty of games including Scrabble, Boggle, Flux and Carcassone. Being as bad a speller and I am I played a lot of the latter two, and none of the former two. I generally dislike flux, as there is essentially no strategy when it is not your turn. On the first game I lucked into the take another turn card on my second turn and managed to use scramble keepers to end up with two keeps for which I had a goal.I felt kind of bad for ending it so quickly with newbies playing, but I guess you have to learn that can happen sometime. I won another game of flux, I think we played 5 games, but all of them were short. In one game one of my opponents got the The Rocket and Chocolate, which should totally be a goal. I’m thinking it’s like a chocolate easter bunny but sold in a NASA gift shop.
Around 7:30 I made my way over to Erik’s roof deck. He had some other friends of his, mostly from community boating, over. We took dinner up to the deck and were surprised to find that we were the first people up there. Usually the roof deck is packed with various friends of everyone who lives in the building, but at this point there was no one else up there. Later on there was a small group of kids my age as well, and during the show there were one or two other tenants up there, but it was by no means crowded at any time. To avoid walking up and down the stairs to let people in, Erik devised a plan by which he would throw the keys, attached to bright yellow string, down from the roof.
The Fireworks
The fireworks were perhaps the least impressive I have ever seen. This was because there was not any wind to be found in the area. The smoke just sat heavy right over the barge eventually obscuring the entire show. Now, as an auditory experience it was still exciting. Someone described the show as more of a “Oooooh” show and less of an “Awwwwe” show, emphasizing the lack of pretty things to awe over. I took the T home after the crowds dissipated, after learning my lesson last year. All in all it was a much better day that it could have been.
Last Sunday I went down to the beach with some of my room mates and some friends of there’s. We went to Quincy on the south shore. As you can see from the panorama it was not very far from Boston, but it took us over an hour to get there. The South Shore Expressway was closed one exit before the one we needed to take so we ended up getting off of it 2 exits before we needed and winding our way through the city. We didn’t have a gps or a detailed map so we tried to stick to the big roads on our non detailed map, but we failed at that. It was quite the adventure. I got see a whole new side of Boston including Jamaica Plain, Roslindale, and Hyde Park. This is the route we took on the way there.
It wasn’t the best beach, but it was perfectly good for kite flying. There was a good bit of clouds moving through the area brining with them enough wind to break my strings, again. But it was a lot of fun. It was my first really successful kite flying near Boston. I’ve taken my kite and attempted to fly it around here before but I failed because there wasn’t enough low to the ground wind to combat my shortened strings. Yesterday I found, after some running around, a local store that sells kite string like items. I picked up 150 yards of 36 lb. nylon string. I’m not sure exactly how strong my old string was, it was what came with the kite, so I’m guessing 30 or 50 lb. The store was closing so I just got what the shopkeeper recommended. I know the old stuff wasn’t nylon. I hope this stuff will be strong enough, at least to get me through till August when I’m going down to the Outer Banks. The $25 fee for a second checked back makes bring a kite down there too expensive, so I’m going to buy a new nice one there and mail it (or pay the $25 to fly it) back home. Here is another view of the beach because I really enjoy playing with making panoramas:
Finishing off the blog posts from last weekend’s activities is my review of the new Indiana Jones flick. It was the first time I saw anything in the main stage at the Somerville Theater. Let me start off by saying that I don’t have any nostalgia for the old films. I thought that they were awful for many years. I wasn’t raised on them, I guess my parents skipped that chapter. Anyways, seeing them on TV didn’t help, there was no magic, there was nothing. However, in college my friends convinced me to go see Raiders of the Lost Ark at a midnight showing in a real theater. It was a blast with a sold our crowd, and gave me a whole new window onto the world of Indiana Jones. I never saw the other two in the theaters, but I figured I’d give this one a shot. I went with Andreas and most of my board gaming group.
The new movie delivers just like Raiders did for me in the theaters, there is magic and by the end I was sitting up in my chair. The plot was out there, a bit too much for me, especially the ending, but by then I had been drawn in. Some parts were too hokey for me. It was again fun to see it with a sold out crowd; there were plenty of crowd pleasing scenes, and they kept the Indy is old jokes to a minimum after the first act. Anyways I have to recommend it for a fun time, but not as an excellent film, hence the term flick.
Not that there was any fighting on my Friday night, but there was a party. It was on a roof of the Harvard Science Center with a telescope. It was *Shambles: The Party* a manifestation the ROFLCon staff’s “abundant but abstract gratefulness [to the volunteers] into physical form,” and general Team Fatty event. There was Blue Ribbon BBQ, which I came to learn was integral in the genesis of Team Fatty. TF is a loosely formed group that made the mistake of incentivizing overeating; blatantly disregarding the results of a study which indicated that obesity is a social phenomenon. Blue Ribbon and Redbones vie for the title of best BBQ in Boston. I am undecided between the two, I only know that my summer in Texas eating at Rudys has spoiled me. If this is really the best BBQ new england has to offer then this is a sad, sad, state of affairs. That said, it was enjoyable food wise.
Aside from the great views and the food, it was fun to get a chance to see everyone again a month after the conference. I did actually pass one of them around town in the mean time, a sure sign that my plans to meet new people are not completely failing. I also met a girl named Lorelai at the party. She does not look and is not particularly similar to the Gilmore Girls character, but I have actually never met anyone with that name before. It isn’t particularly significant, but I was surprised and interested when she told me her name, and it showed. We had a above average chat until her boyfriend arrived. I later learned she was a vegetarian, so it doesn’t matter anyways in that regard.
As far as discussion topics go there was a great debate over whether it was a conference, where academics meet to discuss issues, or a convention, where fans go to meet celebrities in a given genre. I wasn’t really aware of the consciousness of this choice before; by the time I found out about ROFLCon the format was already well formed, and it sort of was what it was. It was both, a hybrid, with a lean towards conference, at least in my mind. The staff believes that this was instrumental in the success of both convincing internet celebrities to come as well as the success of the overall event. The open question remains how to tweak this delicate balance for the future.
From March 19th through March 24th I was skiing in Utah with my friend from back home, Paul, his dad, his roommate, his roommate’s girlfriend, and his roommate’s girlfriend’s roommate. It was a blast. The second two days were the very best skiing I’ve had in my life, which skiing wise is still rather short mind you; anyways, it was great. But I’ve gotten ahead of myself. I’m going to tell this story in short form with pictures, be sure to click on them to read the captions.
We spent the first two days at Snow Basin, host to the 2002 Oylmpics Downhill course, and probably others. We however stayed mostly on the green slopes here teaching the girls to ski. I did make it up the gondola at least once the first day, and skiing down from there was really tiring. Much more tiring than anything I did the previous week during my warm-up in New Hampshire. (The warm up post is not forthcoming, its just lost with all the busyness. ) The second day at Snow Basin I got a little more advanced skiing in, and it was not as tiring.
On the third day we switched to Powder Mountain, which is nearby and known (apparently not very widely) for not having crowds ever, even on weekends. I’m pretty sure this view looks into the salt lake basin to the northwest, which is away from the city.
Despite that it snowed only very little, if at all, while we were there Powder Mountain still had untracked powder if you looked in the right place. Of course, learning to ski in Ohio I’ve never skied on such stuff before. It was difficult but I got the hang of it.
On the second day at Powder Mountain (the last day overall) Paul, his dad and I again went in search of some untracked powder. It was harder to find that day and we ended up having to walk up this ridge a bit. In the end we found it too dangerous and skiied down the back side, where it was less steep and had fewer trees. But as we went down we looped around and had some fun darting through the trees.
By the end of the trip my confidence in my skiing abilities was way up. Too bad I didn’t start skiing until the end of the season.
This post is primarily a response to Chris’ comment on my previous post. Last week was the fourth time I’ve been to Las Vegas. Three of those have been in the last year (one before I started the blog, one this summer, and this one) for work. The other one was when I was 13, with my family.
So, what exactly did I do there. Well the work part occurs out in the middle of the desert and involves testing software with the actual hardware its designed for, its super exciting </sarcasm>. We stay in the podunk little town except for the two nights actually in Las Vegas that bookend the trip. There is one restaurant in this town, which sucks, oh and this part isn’t interesting.
When I’m in Vegas I usually hit up the strip, but I tend not to gamble. Gambling is one of the few activities that you can go out and do alone, but like most things it’s not as good as with a friend — to commiserate over your losses with. I can really only let myself play blackjack, given that I understand the odds involved with all the common games, and its so hard to find a $5 table, I have looked for them on occasion. The one time I did gamble (trip 2) I put up $60 for $5 blackjack, played for an hour and half and got up after I’d made it back to $65 and then lost the hand, breaking even. On trip 3 I saw a show instead of gambling.
This time I got in before dinner, so I grabbed a Chipotle burrito, part of my quest to use up those gift cards, and took it to the Bellagio, and ate it watching the fountains. This is a video of them from where I ate. It sounded like it might be the song from the end of Oceans’ 11 so I turned on the camera. I’m yet actually compare it, maybe you all can do that for me.
After I finished my burrito, which cost a whole lot less than they do here in Massachusetts (at least $0.25 less in Nevada), I walked around to the other side of the fountains and watched for a while. Taking this video:
They really are the best free show in town. These aren’t even the best two songs I saw. It’s of course hard to tell before the music starts playing what song it will be, and if that song is any good is even harder. They should announce the song name before it starts playing, to get people’s attention and provide the information. There is one song I’ve seen 3 times (2 of them on the same night on trip 3), Luck be a Lady, and wow that song is sub par. The fountain work is unimpressive, its long, and the lyrics get old fast. I know its the The Chairman of the Board and all, but its not so good. I do hope to one day see the show for Fly Me to the Moon, I think that is the one I would request of the songs they do, if I could.
After that, I just perused the strip and did some people watching, which is fun. It was cloudy and the moon was dimmer (through the clouds) than the light from the Luxor was shining on the clouds. This makes sense if you think about it, but it was neat. I park at the Bellagio because my hotel is about a block off the strip up by the Hilton. The Bellagio’s parking is great because unlike other hotels its not in the very back, its more off to the side, so its quicker to get in and out. On my way back to my car I checked out their conservatory display, which was themed for Chinese new year.
After that I went back to the hotel watched some of The Office. I wasn’t feeling very well on the ending bookend in Vegas, so I pretty much just slept. I think I’ll be going back again this spring if I can get the next version of the software up in time and work out some of the hardware issues I had this trip. So what else should I be doing while I’m there, Chris?
I feel like I haven’t updated the blog in a while. I don’t know, I’m thinking maybe a change in formats/coverage is in the works, but I’m not really sure. Anyways, I was checking out our winter vacation spot in North Carolina on google maps when I found something really surprising. Our cabin was only about 3,400 feet away from the Smokey Mountains National Park.
I wish I’d know that when I was there, it would have been cool to drive all the way up the road to the ridge. The trip was otherwise fun. I won 2/4 poker tournaments, none of which were played for money, much to my dismay, but that was really surprising given the crowd, although I’m sure had money been on the line I would have done worse, cause it changes everyones play style. Lets see, what else, I spent at least half a day playing with my cousins who are finally old enough that I feel like I can relate and play fun games with. We played sardines and sharks and minnows and some other stuff. Oh, we also played the Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader board game, I was on a team with my cousins and we as a collective (total grade level totaling ~30 between the 4 of us) were indeed smarter than a fifth grader.
Oh I got connecting to the internet on my laptop via a usb cable to my cell phone working in about an hour in preparation for the trip. I used it a little bit as it was the only connection available, but I tired not to use it too much because I’m unclear as to what the billing repercussions of doing so are. Although from what I can tell, since only the verizion 1x network was available I didn’t violate my terms of service. You only violate the terms of service when you “tether” to the EvDo network (the faster one)without signing up for overly expensive data plan, which I didn’t do, anyways we’ll see in a few days when I get my bill.
The above image is a badly reconstructed panorama from the front porch of the cabin. It was raining then as it was most of the trip, which was no problem, we just played games inside the whole time. It did clear up enough for a night of casual stargazing and a fire complete with smores, yum.
