welcome to bat country

Woo-hoo! Brian's site is back up. Let the online stalking resume. :)

Today is creeping along pathetically slowly. I'm waiting for a guy at work to send me some necessary inputs to my code, and I've done just about as much of the editing / commenting / cleanup as I can without actually changing any of the math, so I am now quite bored. My homework is (mostly) done, so the only productive thing left to do is read for my classes. Oh, the excitement.

Is it Wednesday yet??

Black and white

Carlos and I went to the Ansel Adams exhibit at the MFA last week, and I was inspired to poke through some old photos I've taken that I photoshopped into black and white.

Snow Lake, Washington

Smith Tower, Seattle, WA

I like turning some of my pictures into black & whites because, for one, I don't think my camera captures colors as well as it used to (or maybe I've just gotten pickier), and also because it somehow makes my pictures seem more like "real photographs" instead of just snapshots. I don't think I have the eye or the energy to ever become a serious amateur photographer, but I like being pleasantly surprised every now and then when I get one that turns out okay.

Today has been a lesson in "how to procrastinate from doing homework." Step 1? Stay out way too late the night before, and consequently, wake up at noon. Shower, eat breakfast, laugh with roommates and out of town houseguests about the previous night's barcrawl, talk on the phone for a couple hours, go out shopping for a friend's birthday gift, then come home and prolong eating dinner/watching TV until the only choices left are Entertainment Tonight or reruns of Friends that you've already seen four times. Then, think about doing homework, but convince yourself that you won't really get anything accomplished between now and aforementioned friend's birthday party, so it's really not worth it to get started.

~sigh~

I think writing about this has made me feel guilty, so I guess it's time to get started.

Sunday blues

Yet again, I've been facing the Sunday blues today... I don't want to go back to work tomorrow, I'm not smart enough to finish my homework by myself, I don't feel prepared for my test this week (which I really need to pull up my grade in that class), and there's been some other personal stuff going on this weekend that's been on my mind.

I wasn't really looking forward to go to the Tech meeting tonight because I still don't really know many people there, so socializing is still an effort, and I don't feel like I have much time this week to dedicate to photo assignments. At the beginning of every meeting, we go through the "mocks" (the previous week's issues of the paper) and critique the photos, and I wasn't really looking forward to that because I wasn't very happy with my most recent photo in the paper (it was posed, not very exciting composition, etc.), so I was extremely surprised to get some nice comments from the other photographers there. It was a very well-timed ego boost. :)

The earlier part of the weekend was a lot more fun - I saw Jarhead on Friday night with the regular collection of roommates and their significant others, and then last night I saw The Squid and the Whale with a friend of mine from high school (plus roommate) who's currently living in Boston, working on her master's degree in children's literature. We hung out for a while at her place after the movie, just catching up on the high school gossip that we knew. The only problem was that we both have the same gossip source, so I'm not sure that either of us really learned anything new... It came up that another girl from our graduating class is trying to put together an informal five-year reunion this Thanksgiving though, and neither of us are really interested in going. We want to know about all of the crazy things that people from our class are up to (which, at this point, mostly means getting married to other people from high school and having kids, although not necessarily in that order), but we don't really want to actually talk to them... A newsletter would be much better!

It's interesting for me to remember who I thought I would keep in touch with after graduation and then compare that list to who I actually keep in touch with now. The number is about the same as what I thought it would be, but the people aren't. It's a little unsettling to realize that the same thing will inevitably happen with some of my current friendships.

TV and Veteran's Day

Last night I watched 3.5 hours of TV. Three and a half! It started out gloriously, but by the time I went to bed, I felt sort of disoriented and had a bit of a headache. Oh well... In case you did not watch TV until your eyeballs fell out last night, here's how it went: teen angst on the OC continues as usual, more people got fired on The Apprentice, and more people died on ER. At least I got some emails written and other miscellaneous things accomplished while I was parked in front of the tube... having a laptop is nice.

I'm mildly annoyed that I had to come to work today. It seems everyone in the world has Veteran's Day off, except us. Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating a little, but it's a federal holiday! I guess this is one of those reasons that people work for the government...

At the gym

After work this afternoon, I went to the Z Center for some much-needed running and lifting. As I was walking into the main part of the gym, a couple of guys stopped me to pitch their "Bike for Charity" program. All I had to do as a volunteer was bike for 10 minutes, and for every mile I biked, they would donate $1 to the charity and pay me $1. It seemed like a reasonable offer (although I couldn't imagine I could bike a respectable number of miles in only 10 minutes), except when I asked about the charities that would receive the money. The guy told me he would roll a 4-sided die (do these exist?) and the number that came up would dictate which charity would get the money. I was still on board at this point, until he showed me the list and I saw that the last charity was the NRA. I am not interested in raising money for Charlton Heston and the National Rifle Association. However, I also wasn't interested in confronting this guy about it, so I begged off by explaining that I had just signed up for a treadmill slot. It's a very handy excuse actually - I used it to get out of filling out some sophomore's survey a couple weeks ago. I dunno... I'm not opposed to raising money for charitable causes or participating in a survey that could improve the athletic facilities at MIT, but whatever happened to just being able to go to the gym to work out?

Rate My Life

Inspired by Becca and some passing boredom at work, I took a quiz to rate my life:

This Is My Life, Rated
Life:	7.4
Mind:	6.2
Body:	6.8
Spirit:	5.9
Friends/Family:	6.8
Love:	7.7
Finance:	7.7
Take the Rate My Life Quiz

Apparently my spiritual life is lacking.

Saturday

Yesterday I was supposed to shoot photos at the MIT sailing race on the Charles River. It ended up getting cancelled because there wasn't enough wind to actually sail, but I had some fun taking random photos while waiting for the wind to pick up.





I got some other shots of womens crew practice earlier that morning, but I downloaded them at the Tech office, so I'll have to post them later.

The rest of the afternoon yesterday didn't involve anything really exciting... I finished my astrodynamics take-home test, cleaned my hamster's cage, vacuumed, Swiffered, and went grocery shopping. Later that night, I went out with the roomies (plus Kartik, plus assorted girlfriends) to Pourhouse for dinner, a bar that is well-known for really only one thing: half-off burger night on Saturdays. Their burgers are between $4 and $5, so Saturday nights mean you can get a burger and fries for less than a Coke. The food isn't fantastic, but it's hard to complain when you can pay for dinner with the change you find in the couch. Needless to say, in a college town, the line to wait for a table on Saturday nights is very long.

Afterward, Phil and I went down the street to Cactus Club. Soon after Glenn met up with us again, I left to go find the restroom, and when I came back, I found both my non-single roommates chatting with a couple of flirty girls, so after several minutes of feeling like the fifth wheel, I decided to go home. I was exhausted anyway and didn't really feel like having more to drink, so I was ready to call it a night. I felt awfully lame though when I glanced at my watch on the walk home and saw that it was only 11:00...

gobble, gobble, boggle

Got my ticket to go to Houston for Thanksgiving... is anyone staying in town?? :)

The tall and short of it

Last night I went out running for the first time in a week. I did one of my regular loops around the Charles River, and on my way across the BU Bridge, I passed a hand-holding couple that must have had at least a 30-inch difference in height. I think it was the dude who was ridiculously tall, and the girl was just regularly Asian-sized, but it was hard to tell since there weren't any other normal people around to provide a reference. But seriously, she barely made past his elbow. The logistics of how they work together are just mind-boggling, sort of like when you see extremely overweight couples together, or hear those stories on 20/20 about adult conjoined twins that share one digestive tract and are both married.

How do they do that?!?

"Never updating slacker"

Yes Sarah, I do fall into that category! Needless to say, it's been quite a while since I updated, and I'm wondering whether it's worth it at all to keep posting here. Anyway, I'll spare you the details, but don't be surprised if this site dies out after a while...

This morning I walked past the main entrance to MIT on my way to work. I passed TIM the Beaver, MIT's mascot (think: beaver = nature's engineer), and he and a few other people were handing out candy and wishing passers-by a happy Halloween. It was great! Somehow it made my morning to get a cheerful greeting and a mini Snickers bar from a complete stranger in a $7,000 furry beaver costume.

Last night after dropping Josh off at the airport, I stopped at Shaw's on my way home to pick up some groceries. I didn't really mean to, but I got on an E train going back from the airport, so I figured I may as well stop at the grocery store since I'd have to walk home from around there anyway. So I get my few things and start walking back to my apartment.... right after I turned onto my street, I heard in a low voice, "Hey, how's it going." I turned to my right to see a man standing between two parked cars on the side of the street. I mutter, "Fine," out of habit and surprise and keep walking quickly, but I noticed as I passed the guy that he had his pants open and his hands were, um... busy. I couldn't tell if he was peeing or doing something else unmentionable. I must have given him a surprised/weirded out look though, because as I turned back around and continued walking, he called out, "Don't hate me!"

I guess I'll have to work on my poker face for public urination.


P.S. My second photo was published in the Tech on Friday!

On my way home

Storrow Drive, from the Harvard Bridge

Mass Ave, a couple blocks from my apartment

A basement bar

Neighborhood stats

In searching for a weather website that would tell me when the rain in Boston will end, I stumbled upon this website that shows all sorts of details about any neighborhood in the U.S. Demographics, income level, ethnicity, education level, climate, even the "poisonous brown gases" index. Definitely useful if you're investigating a new neighborhood to move to... also fun for spying on your neighbors. :)

For more miscellaneous internet entertainment, type "failure" into google and see what comes up as the first hit.

Travel to...

...the U.S., Canada, Latin America, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, China, Japan, Southeast Asia, Africa...

Start here: http://www.photobloggies.org

:)

A happier time

On the road to Seattle, back in June.

Just reliving a good memory.

Sorority Life

A friend of mine is living with his girlfriend for a few months between when his lease ended and when he moves across the country to start a new job. His girlfriend, however, lives in a sorority house. As a former resident of that same house, I found his AIM profile particularly funny:

[sorority life]

things learned while living in a sorority:
#1: clothing is always optional.
#2: if you must wear something, pick either underwear or outerwear, never both.
#3: it's hard to win a naked pillowfight while wearing clothes.
#4: blasting songs from gwen stefani's solo album is always encouraged.
#5: if you've lost your sex and the city/orange county/friends dvds, no worries, at least 14 of your sisters own these classic collections as well.
#6: it's perfectly acceptable for 2 girls to spoon for hours on end; it is not acceptable to call this "hot girl-on-girl action."
#7: placing a "because i have a penis and you don't" sticker on your door is typically frowned upon.

Rock on.

1 down, 5 to go...

Yes, I took my first exam as a graduate student today. Astrodynamics, exam 1, actually didn't go too badly. And now that my major hurdle of the week out of the way, I can focus on more fun things: shooting the women's field hockey game tonight, watching trashy TV tomorrow night, not going to work on Friday because the building is closed, and having a fantastic four-day weekend.

Since I haven't taken any actual pictures of my own recently, I'll leave you with this one:

Published!

For better or worse, my picture from the volleyball game was printed in the Tech on Friday. The picture was the best out of a crappy bunch, so I'm not posting it here. But it was still cool to see my name printed under the photo.

Life here seems to have gotten much busier over the past couple of weeks, mainly because I actually have work to do at work now, instead of being able to just check my email and do my homework. Eventually, I'm supposed to be doing error analysis of the navigation system on a missile, but for right now, I'm just reading and becoming thoroughly confused about discrete Kalman filters. Classes are okay... astrodynamics is cool, especially since Battin is teaching it - life is never dull with an 82 year old professor. Stochastic Estimation & Control sucks, but hopefully it'll help me out a lot with the work that I'll be doing at Draper.

Yesterday LeeAnn and I went to Starbucks and worked on homework. LeeAnn is a friend of mine from undergrad who just finished a year in AmeriCorps and is now starting law school in Boston. After three and a half hours at Starbucks, we both reeked of coffee, but I got a lot of homework done. Plus, I've now learned that I don't want to go to law school, which is one more thing to cross off the list of "things to be when I grow up" ... only 1,123,874 left to go.

On Friday I went to a housewarming party for a friend of a friend. It was actually a lot of fun, considering that I knew only two people there. The hosts were a couple of Irishmen and an Incan. Ahh... accents.

Today is shaping up to be a regular ol' student Sunday: heading over to the Z Center this morning to lift, back home to shower, eat, and do homework until 6pm, when I have to be back on campus for the Tech meeting. Free dinner, photo assignment for next week, then back home to do more studying for my exam on Wednesday. But next week will be a short week because work is closed on Friday (something to do with the A/C repair...?) and it'll be a long weekend since next Monday is Columbus Day. Plus, I'm looking forward to the General visiting. :)

Photo newbie

Today I had my first assignment as a photographer for the Tech - shooting photos of the women's volleyball game. The camera that I got to use was really nice, but the lighting in the gym was pretty low and I didn't have a tripod to use, so the VAST majority of the 72 pictures I shot of the actual game turned out pretty crappy. But I had some fun playing around with the camera after the game...

The program for the volleyball game against Mount Holyoke:

A poster in the Tech office for the movie Be Cool:

A random bottle of ketchup sitting in the Tech office:

A stuffed snowman:

Roadtrip, part deux

Well, yesterday was my last day at work, and today my mom and I are beginning the roadtrip from Seattle to Saline. Wish us luck! Here's the plan:

Washington
Idaho
Montana
South Dakota
Minnesota
Wisconsin
Illinois
Indiana
Michigan

Whew!

I want to bang on the drum all day

It's been a rough week. And it's only Wednesday. My fuse at work seems to be shorter every day. There are several concrete things that I'm frustrated with, but the bigger problem is that my quarter life crisis seems to be rearing its ugly head everywhere I look. I read an interesting article over the weekend that was written by a photojournalist in New York:

If you are not passionate and love what you are doing for a living, and if you do not get any personal satisfaction out of your accomplishments, then you will lack the desire to get up in the morning to go to work. There are too many people who go to work every day and spend it watching the clock, year after year, because they can't wait to leave "that place" and get home. These are the people who spend their working life waiting for retirement. When they do retire and look back on their careers, they see only misery. It doesn't have to be that way.

---

I studied commercial photography at Syracuse University. While I was a student there, I was offered a job at the Observer-Dispatch as a part-time photographer, and even though I had no interest in photojournalism at the time, I took the job because it was the only job I could find where I could make money doing photography. My first day on the job I was driving around town with a two-way radio and a police scanner chasing fires. My whole world changed that day. I knew I was in love. It was the first time in my life that anything felt so right.

I can't say that I've ever been struck by a "brick wall" feeling like that, at least not about work. I wonder if I'll finally be happy with the kind of work I've been doing once I don't feel so dumb in it; once I have the technical knowledge to back it up. But if not, I'm not sure I know what other fields to look in to find my equivalent of falling in love with a two-way radio and a police scanner while chasing fires.