maggied’s blag

Another term, another several months that I go without updating  my blog. Oops. Anyway, as of a few days ago I have completed my junior year at MIT. Junior year was probably the most challenging year for me at MIT academically so far, but in the end I came out on top and am happy with how I did. Everything seems to be on track for me right now and I am looking forward to what’s in store for the future.

After term ended I spent a few days in Boston hanging out with people before my train home Friday evening. Saturday morning my mom, dad, brother and I headed out for Lancaster, Pennsylvania to visit my aunt and her husband for the weekend. All of my cousins were elsewhere, so it was just us six. My uncle joined an oldies band a year and a half ago and they had a gig in Mount Joy, PA, so we all went over there to check it out. As it turns out, they were playing at the Mount Joy Popcorn Festival, which turned out to be loads of fun. Here’s me standing next to the sign. (To see all the photos in this entry and more, check out this set on Flickr).

When we first arrived, not only were we shocked that we were at a Popcorn Festival, we were also shocked by how awesome the park was. James and I took a joy ride on the swings for a while and he hung out in the tire swing for a bit.

After enjoying the park we explored the rest of the festival. When we first got there in the early afternoon it wasn’t very crowded, but it definitely picked up as the night went on. One noteworthy attraction was the popcorn kernel spitting contest. The record spit for the junior division (14-40 yrs) was over 27 feet!

There were several other contests as well. There was a coloring contest for the kids, a popcorn hat decorating contest, and a contest to guess the number of kernels in a jar. My dad, James and I did our best to estimate the number of kernels in the jar by estimating the number of kernels per cubic inch. We actually came very close (all three of our guesses were within 10%), with my dad off by only 400 kernels from the winning guess. There were about 27,000 kernels in the jar.

After wandering around for a bit we decided to grab some Italian ice because it was just so ridiculously hot out standing on the pavement.  While we were eating the ice the old school popcorn truck also showed up and we got some delicious popcorn here at the festival.

After my uncle’s band the Ravens finished their second set, organizers of the festival convinced them to play an encore show because they had done such a tremendous job. In order to convince my aunt to let him stay later, the band played Freebird. It was hilarious and awesome. I put a video of it (with commentary from the crowd!) up in my public here.

The next day we were all pretty tired and didn’t get out of the house until after 2pm. We decided to go shopping at the mall so I could get more clothes for my internship this summer (It’s with Boston Scientific in St. Paul, MN), and James got a few things too. I picked up a nice pair of casual sandals and a pair of dress shoes, along with some slacks to go with all the blouses I got a few weekends ago.

After shopping we headed over to the Tilted Kilt Pub (also in Mount Joy) to listen to a few guys play that James and my Dad know from New York. One of them is a really mean keytar player, and things were great until it rained and we headed home.

I had a great time. Hopefully I’ll be posting more over the summer!

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After spending a few days with family in Florida I flew out to Tucson, Arizona to visit Dale. My first impression of Arizona that it was very red/brown and flat (in a pretty way), and there were cacti everywhere. I had never been to the desert before, so it was really neat. You can also see so many more stars at night than back in New York or Boston. If you drive out for even just a few minutes the view is gorgeous.

My flight left from New York at 7:55am, but it was only 11:40am Arizona time when I arrived. After a stop for lunch we drove down to Tucson (a 2 hr drive or so). Most of the rest of the day was spend driving around Tucson. It may be hard to believe but I had never been to Sonic before and the whole drive and sit in your car thing really blew my mind. A picture was taken to commemorate this momentous occasion.

The next day Dale took me to the Desert Museum. We didn’t manage to catch a glimpse of any javelina, even though a little kid nearby piped up that he had spotted five of them on the trail. The museum had a fake cave to explore, a cactus garden and a hummingbird exhibit. I learned all about the different kinds of cacti. I still can’t get over how huge some of them are. I also shouldn’t forget to mention that there were vicious aviary predators out to get Dale.

Wednesday was New Year’s Eve. We relaxed during most of the day because our sleep schedules were slowly approaching normal (I started getting sleepy by 9pm most days). We went out to see Milk, which I would highly recommend seeing. The evening was spent at Dale’s friend Sarah’s apartment where we played Rayman and Mario Party on the Wii and watched Dick Clark. Oh yeah, and there were cupcakes. Delicious.

Thursday we spent time in. I read my new book I got for Christmas and Dale took care of a few things around the house. Thursday night we drove out to Mt. Lemmon and looked at the city from above. The lights glimmered and the sky was really clear.

Friday we drove out to Sabino canyon. The terrain was similar to the Desert museum but we got to hike in the canyon. The weather was really nice (especially in the shade of the mountains). There were a few streams that were nice to hang out by, and a main trail you could take to the top of the mountain. We walked about 2 mi in each direction (not counting when we wandered a bit off the trail). While we were resting before heading back to the car I got to practice my myspace photo taking skills. I’d say they are okay but still need a little work.

 

Saturday we headed back to Boston, where it was very windy and cold. Fortunately it’s Independent Activities Period (IAP) now, and there’s plenty of time to do whatever you like. This IAP I’ll be taking an Ice Skating PE and working on a project with my 6.011 TA from last term. Although a week has passed already, there are still 3 more!

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At the Museum of Science, for a limited time only! The group I am working with is conducting a study over in Cahners Computer Place involving our latest robot. The Computer Place is pretty fun to hang out in; when the little kids aren’t around, occasionally the UROPs will sit at the computers and play old games like (my personal favorite) Star Wars Pit Droids. I don’t want to spoil the study for anyone, but it takes about 15 minutes, and is a lot of fun.

I’ll be at the Museum Saturday and Sunday, probably from about 10 or 11am until 5pm. The Computer Place is to right next to the Theater of Electricity; starting from the entrance, you turn right, enter the theater and turn left and head up the stairs.  Pretty straightforward. Unfortunately the robot is out of commision pretty often; she is kind of tempermental and gets a little stressed out with all the people around. But we swear, she is a star. Anyway, if you are curious about coming to the Musuem, admission is free to MIT students, and the Musuem itself is also a lot of fun to explore. Be sure to give me a heads up if you want to swing by and I’ll let you know if everything is up and running.

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I’m sitting in my lovely air conditioned room, watching typ0 run a distribution upgrade from Ubuntu Feisty Fawn to Hardy Heron (by instinct, I almost typed our “other” name for this distro, but I managed to restrain myself).

Watching and praying that libc6 won’t break gets a little boring after a while, though, so I decided to take some pictures of my room, even though it is still in disarray.

Here is my new desk corner. Yay for two desks and AC! You can see Ubuntu whining at me on the CRT, too.

Up next is the full length mirror (I actually only had a very cruddy mirror in my old room). It has a crack at the bottom, but I’ll survive.

No lofted bed this time, folks. This is the first time I’ve slept on a non-lofted bed (for an extended period of time) since February freshman year, but it seems alright so far. Hidden to the right of the bed in that shot is the black hole. Hopefully I don’t get sleepy and roll right into it

Up last is a shot that has the lamp in it but is intended to display the full range of colors of the room. The top green is a sort of mint green that I think it pretty nice and was here when I moved in. The white trim was also there. I painted the middle blue and the blue trim (to replace a gross kind of yellow), and the light blue was also there when I moved. Although I originally considered painting the green part, it turned out to match the blues reasonably well.

I’ll post more photos when I’m done my room for reals, so you can see the layout better.

As a neat aside, I am way behind on this one but found that I really like Flickr. My photostream (which I’ll populate some more when I get my desktop running) can be found here.

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I moved all my stuff from B203 to B210 today. B210 is a complete mess, but at least I’m checked out. The next few days will be lots of sorting and organizing; I’ll post pictures when it is complete.

A web browser called Flock seems to be becoming more popular around on the internet; it’s basically an enabler for people who are super addicted to social websites of all varieties. I downloaded and tried it out and it seems interesting. Pretty well done and is intuitive particularly if you’ve used Firefox before. Am I likely to use it as a primary browser? Probably not, because I don’t really like the clutter and don’t feel the need to know that one of my facebook friends who I don’t even seem to recognize updated their profile.  Worth checking out, though.

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It’s finally here. And right when it needed to be. The end of term wound up being my most hosing time at MIT, through a combination of classes and extra-curricular activities. In retrospect, I’m starting to appreciate the idea that yes, even us MIT students can’t do everything they want, and we should try to keep ourselves sane first and foremost. Summer should help with that.

I’ll be working in the Media Lab with the Personal Robots Group. We will be working with the MDS (mobile dexterous social) robot and conducting a study at the Museum of Science. I’ll post back with more details of the study; you know you want to participate.

This past week after classes has been very relaxing; I spent a lot of time hanging out with friends that I hadn’t seen in a while, and getting psyched for Bonnaroo. It’s June 12th-15th, and should be totally awesome. I might have watched 4 Seasons of the Office in under a week. Maybe.

Other things to look forward to: There are other concerts over the summer, including Journey and Iron Maiden. I am also looking into getting a new, lighter bike, and getting my endurance back. My computer is in need of an upgrade; I’ve had it for almost 4 years now (16th b-day present). I turn 20 June 21st. An underwhelming birthday at best. I guess the next big birthday is my 21st, then my 25th, and if my mother is right, once I turn 29 I’ll stay that age forever. Now that’s weird to think about.

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Capen, Jo, and I set out earlier today to see Nightwish play in concert. When we were about half an hour out of Boston, Jo gets a phone call that says the concert’s been postponed. Apparently the band’s gear got stuck in Mexico. Whoops.

While we were all sad that we didn’t get to see the concert, we decided to go see Iron Man instead, and still made it back to hall before 9pm. The movie was really good, actually, and it was neat to see the MIT grads wearing brass rats. They got the fact that MIT’s commencement is in June right, but everyone always seems to forget that you can’t graduate with honors from here.

In other wonderful news, myself and most people I know are crazy hosed for Friday. Excitingly enough, the list of things I have to complete before the end of term is dwindling:

• 6.012 Design Project (have barely started, doesn’t seem terrible)
• 6.003 P-set (last one, haven’t started, seems just as terrible as all the others)
• 9.00 Final Paper (not bad at all, I’m almost done my first draft)
• EC’s Fall 2008 Rooming Assignments (the hall chairs do most of the work, but I still need to put it together)
• EC’s Summer 2008 Rooming Assignments (a bit more of a pain, but not unmanageable)

I think I have my head on straight now, but written out these things still seem somewhat daunting. –> Reading, then sleep, then back to the grind.

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…was fucking amazing. Getting into the Palladium turned out to be surprisingly difficult for me, though. First, they noticed a small pocket knife I always carry with me. I’ve brought it to the Palladium twice and on four air planes and no one has said anything about it until now. Even after I got rid of it, I came back and they started questioning my pill case and arguing with me over whether it was allowed in or not. What do I look like, someone who is going to shiv a guy at the concert? Seriously, they have better people to be concerned about than me.

Anyway, we arrived just on time for Children of Bodom. I recognized a bunch of their songs but not as many as I would have liked. The set was short because they weren’t the main attraction, but still really solid. Next up was In Flames. Dale and I pushed our way to the front between sets and were two bodies away from the railing for most of their set. They started with Cloud Connected, and the crowd was really, really into it. Other notables included Clayman, Come Clarity and The Mirror’s Truth. Overall, fucking great.

Oh yeah, and then there was Megadeth. Ironically enough, I don’t really know any of their stuff, so I didn’t enjoy the set as much as the other two. Then again, that may have also been because I was drenched in sweat. Sweet.

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Continuation of this post, and cut for length. Continue Reading »

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So it’s been a while. Lots of things have been going on. I went home for a bit, then had a week of classes, then went on Spring Break (wooooo!!!). Have been back at MIT for a bit more than a week now.

I have compiled a few photos for various days of our trip. Note: photo credits go to a few people, including Rachel Bainbridge, Sarah Hopp, Harvey Jones, and Jo Tong. It isn’t completely comprehensive, but I thought it would do a decent job of describing how things went. They are all located here.

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