8 posts tagged “fun things”

Ashia and I drove to Pittsburgh yesterday.  It was a long, dull ride through a lot of nondescript and mountainous highways.  We stayed at a pit stop which was an altogether creepy experience.  Before going to bed the place was packed with really sleazy truck drivers, and in the morning it was filled with what looked to be Amish.

Pittsburgh, isn't such a bad place. It does have it's cons:
  The Smoking ban got appealed so people smoke at bars and restaurant ( Qdoba has a smoking section wut? )
  A lot of streets near the university are not bike friendly, i.e. no bike lanes, lots of cars, no shoulders
  Some areas are really run down ( but none near the school )
  If you get lost while driving you inevitably end up on a bridge bound for the opposite shore
  If I brought my car it would be a colossal pain in the ass. ( huge hills, parking, snow )
  
It also has pros:
  Everyone I met at the school was friendly.  I actually got 2 impromtu tours from people in the program. I walked into the BME offices and a random student called his friends.  Judging by their attitudes they really enjoy the program.
  The BME labs are totally sweet.
  There are several large parks
  There are a few neighborhoods reminiscent of Brookline/Arlington
  In the nice weather the campus is lovely.  There are several large roads running though it, but today was move out day so I think they were busier than normal.  It's not as nice as CMU, though, that place is amazing.
  There is stuff to do ( contrary to popular belief )

It's not the greatest place on Earth ( an honor reserved for Bawston ) but I think I could be happy there.  I was honestly a little afraid it would totally suck.  If I could change two things it would be remove or reroute the cars and ban smoking.

I've been accepted into the UCLA Biomedical Engineering program.  2008 is looking like a good year.

The Saxyderms played a nursing home today, and of course they all loved us.  Knowing that at any given time 90% of our audience will be Irish American we constantly keep Danny Boy ( Irish Tune from County Derry ) in our back pockets to tug at hearts and purse strings.  Today we laid it on thick, and they along which is a first.  Poor Tom was close to losing it.  The song works wonders I tells ya.

The progress of the Saxyderms is very similar to career mode in Guitar Hero / Rock Band, except that we play for old people instead of dive bars. Close enough.  Tom is trying to land us a gig playing the National Anthem for a Lowell Spinners game. Straight to the top folks!

Except I have three chain rings and brakes :3

http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=1456104

I got bored tonight and thought it would be fun to bike up Chestnut hill in the freezing cold.    Driving up it on the way to Showa, I always thought it would be ab impossible feat but I was actually accelerating towards the end. Time to look for another hill.  I stopped at NEU to hit up Connor Larkin's, so it's not like I did that in one sitting. 

I caught the start of the Perseids last night. I was out from 10PM till Midnight and I think i saw about 15, most of them quite bright.  If watching these things wasnt so damn inconvenient I would've stayed out much later.  I remember back sophmore year or so Karen, Dan, maybe Sean, and I went to a park right by the Prudential for the Leonids. I remember seeing a few which is rather amazing given the awful location.  For future reference: Great Brook State Farm has a huge sky but its still awfully bright despite being in the middle of nowhere.  I was thinking about going up to Plum Island, Newbury but thats maybe 2 1/2 hours round trip.  I might go there this weekend though because it looks so damn interesting!

I'm off to rehearsal now, can't wait to hear how the new axe fits in with the group!

Went to Waterville Valley today with some friends from work.  Conditions were not nearly as good as last week and I had a pretty tough time not dying.  Case in point: First run down I hit my head hard enough to knock the lens out of my goggles.  Cheap goggles or bad fall? Little bit of both I think, without my helmet I think it would have been the stuff concussions are made of.  I have a nice bruise on my eye and across the bridge of my nose now.  The top of the mountain was solid ice and the winds were strong enough that I had trouble not getting blown off.  This will probably be the last outing of the season, a little dissapointing, but I'm stoked that I can check this off my todo list.

This morning I tutored kids in pre-algebra at BLS.  At one point I had a girl with a compound interest problem.  "Thats awful!" she said when she realized the result of paying off a $500 TV in monthly installements of $100 with 1% interest.  "I know", I replied and put the fear of credit card debt into her.  

Saw This Binary Universe at Kendall last night.  I thought the visuals were kinda hit or miss, the theatre sound made it worth it though.  I'm really starting to appreciate what he did here; there are a lot of robust rhythmic and tonal vignettes that reward the listener for paying attention.  After the film was over BT did a little Q&A.  He seems like a smart guy to me.  At one point he mentioned that there was probably no one in the audience that spent their day staring at spectrographs and FFTs and I smiled to myself.  And then I realized I'm a huge fucking nerd.

Also, although I know almost nothing about it, Managed C++ seems like some sort of terrible joke.