maggied’s blag

…has kind of sucked. Two virtual all-nighters in a week makes this probably my crappiest week academically. Not necessarily the most stressful, by any means, but an extremely erratic up sleep schedule is never good. Many readers will probably scoff at these statements and think about how hardcore they are, but I don’t really care. Not sleeping sucks no matter who you are.

Now for just a little bit more complaining (there isn’t much more, I promise):

I seriously get the impression that the 6.003 staff takes problems that everyone is going to have a bitch of a time solving, and throws n+1 of them on the p-set, where n is a reasonable number of problems. Once you think about it for a while, the problems make sense, but it’s just so ass. The p-sets take longer than my other two p-set classes combined, and to top it all off there are Matlab questions at the end that involving dicking around with .m files until you get something that looks sinusoidal. The only good thing I have to say about these p-sets is the fact that they are now due on Fridays, rather than Wednesdays.

On a happier note: Rachel and I went on Vinayak and Drew’s radio show. Despite the fact that Drew was in Providence, his presence was still felt there in the studio. It was a lot of fun, with a little bit of nostalgia, a little bit of rocking out, a little bit of bumping, and a little bit of cool reflection packed into one hour. I also can’t forget Vinayak’s priceless “rolling his eyes at the girlies, again” kind of face the dominated a lot of the time in the studio, interwoven with statements of serious business. Alas, that’s how Auditory Stimuli seems to roll.

Things to look forward to: Fifth East party tonight! They always throw great parties, so I’m looking forward to unwinding for a bit. Saturday I’m hanging out with Sarah J. (whom I haven’t seen in months!). We’re going for Indian food and catching up on the times.

Pandora update: The station I made has panned out really well. With just the three original seeds, it’s playing Iron Maiden, Metallica, System of a Down, Testament, DragonForce, Black Sabbath, and AC/DC. I’m really satisfied.

It’s a little before 8am now. Late enough that, for me, it’s highly likely that if I go to sleep now, I won’t wake up in time to turn in the p-set I stayed up all night working on (oops). I’ve already battled with Useful for a few minutes, and decided that printing on hall is a useless endeavor. Building 66 seems so far away right now…

I think sleep wins out here.

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It seems that the trend of me pulling virtual all nighters on Tuesday nights is becoming more of a tradition. No Amp this time, but I did go to 7/11 with Rachel and Vinayak to acquire emergency ramen, peanut butter M&Ms and Arnold Palmer (half iced-tea, half lemonade). If you haven’t had an Arnold Palmer before, you should really consider trying it. They are very tasty.  The kind I get is made by Arizona and comes in a large 23 oz can.

Wikipedia be the death of me: I wiki’d Arnold Palmer, and went Arnold Palmer –> Tom Collins –> Drinkware. Not an unexpected path, but certainly an interesting one. I never realized that a Tom Collins is the same thing as a Gin Fizz. I’ve never been a big fan of Gin, but those Gin Fizzes are really fucking good.

Now comes the big decision between napping now and going to class at 10am, or continuing to be productive for the next 3 hours and napping later. We’ll see which side of me wins out…

P.S. I made a Pandora station with the big bands playing at Gigantour and I am soooo psyched.

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I see you sitting there, all content.You think you’ve got it all figured out.

But get this:

The fact that I can’t prove you wrong doesn’t make you right.

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I pulled my first virtual all-nighter of term today. It wasn’t terrible, actually. After a brief UA senate meeting, James and I stopped by Verde’s where I grabbed a can of Amp. As many people can attest to, I was CRAZY WIRED on that stuff. Not having caffeine for 8 weeks and then chugging a can of Amp does that to you, I guess…

The Amp lasted from 11pm all the way until 1pm the next day, but the crash was pretty killer. I passed out on my futon from 1:30pm - 9pm. EPIC FAIL. So goes having 3 p-sets due on Wednesday. Fortunately, this means that I’m DONE for the week, and can spend the rest of my time playing Spades in the lounge. Sean and Jason also taught a bunch of us to play Durak, which is addictive and a lot of fun.

Here’s to trying to fix my sleep schedule…

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I’ve wanted to post, but haven’t been able to think of much to write about. This has led to a nagging feeling in the back of my brain that I should put something down on paper (figuratively speaking), but I never managed to bring myself to do it. I’m sitting here in the 66 cluster, considering that escaping briefly from Second East will allow me to clear my head. Capen’s sitting to my left browsing the internet, and the printer spools are whirling softly behind me. I’m printing out a bunch of lecture notes and assignments from what I missed this week. Tired, I went to classes all day Monday and Wednesday, but punted Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. Oops.

My weariness is hardly due to a lack of enthusiasm about classes; rather, it seems as if the body is often stronger than the mind at times that prove to be inconvenient. This is something people around here hate to admit, but seems to creep up behind us when we least expect it.

Now I’m somewhat inspired. Things to write about: Term, movies, books. Term is going well so far for the one and a half weeks that it’s lasted. My classes are each enjoyable, although all the p-sets I have are due on Wednesdays. This doesn’t bode well for my weekends, but it is kind of nice to be “done” with work in the middle of the week.

Charles and I went to see Persepolis over IAP, and I never got a chance to talk about it. It’s based on a graphic novel by Marjane Satrapi, and was a movie that brought me to tears both by laughter and by sorrow. I highly recommend it. Yesterday, we watched Paris, je t’aime, which is a series of 18 vignettes about each of the sections of Paris. Some of the pieces were very artsy and really neat. Others were sad, and still others made no sense at all and were over seemingly before they started.

I just finished reading Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami, and I understand now how countless people have fallen in love with his writing style. Wikipedia even tells me he gave a lecture at MIT in 2005! Although I never got to spend as much time reading it as I would have liked, Norwegian Wood captivated me as much as if I had sucked it up all in one sitting. Depressing, yet elegant, the book left me reflective and even more appreciative for those little things in life.

There are a few things to look forward to in the upcoming weeks: Gigantour (the concert I blogged about earlier) has moved to Friday night as part of a three day New England Metal Festival. Rock on. The MIT Concert Band’s annual tour is in April, and we’re going to Canada. Diss it as you might, I’ve never been to Canada so it should be fun. Spring break also isn’t far away, and hopefully I’ll do something much less lame than I did last year.

But to bring things back from the future, a bunch of us are going to stuff ourselves full of arguably delicious, cheap Chinese food at 7pm, followed by Across the Universe at 10pm. This will be my third time seeing the movie, but I think I will still enjoy it just as much as when I first heard “Girl” playing on Vinayak’s laptop speakers.

Now Capen is impatient. “Why is this revolving around Revolver?” he asks, and we leave the cluster.

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Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,

You are cordially invited to the annual EAsT camPUS Inaugural Ball, hosted by the venerable Beast from the East. Come and enjoy fine delicacies, beverages, and tastefully selected music.

Inaugural speeches at midnight.
Serious rocking out to follow.

Formal wear requested - Black tie option.
The ball begins at 10 o’clock on Saturday, the 9th of February. Be there.

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All credit for the referral goes to Cristen…I made a Tumblr blog. It is nifty. Totally for linking little things, acceptable for actually writing posts with content. I’d prefer not to let the Wordpress versus $FOO blogging system battle begin, but suffice it to say that I feel more comfortable spamming a Tumblr blog with random crap than a Wordpress one.

But fear not, dear readers, maggied’s blag will never die.

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It would be sad if it weren’t so damn catchy.

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<shameless plug>

Capen discovered Gigantour, a tour featuring Megadeth, In Flames, Children of Bodom, and Job for a Cowboy. It’s coming to the Palladium April 24th (a Thursday, drop date). The concert starts at 4:30pm and should be fucking awesome. Megadeth, In Flames, and Children of Bodom are worth going to see for themselves, so the $47.50 you have to shell out seems totally worth it.

</shameless plug>

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Before I say anything else, yay new skin! I like blue and black, so this one seems to fit nicely. I might tweak it if I have time, but for now it will stay this way.

I’m sitting in the Media Lab setting up a configuration file for the new Mobile Dexterous Social Robot that they are developing here. It’s interesting so far, but I haven’t done much yet.

This term is probably going to be the most exciting yet most challenging term yet. I’m sticking to four classes, but I’ve got a lot of extra-curricular activities on my plate. The classes I’m taking are: 6.003 (Signals and Systems), 6.012 (Microelectronic Devices & Circuits), 6.041 ( Probabilistic Systems Analysis) and 9.00 (Introduction to Psychology). The UA will pick up again this evening, and my term for that continues until the end of the year. Inauguration for the new East Campus exec is this Wednesday (I’ll be serving as EC VP/Room Assignment Chair). Then I’ve got the UROP I’m working on and (hopefully, if I have time), Concert Band again. I have no idea how crazy it will be, but we’ll see.

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