26 November 2008 | Jason
I’m passing through New Haven as I type right now. An Edart truck just barely cut us off and I should be in 8.01 right now. Let me introduce my day. I was working on my physics pset last night and with the help of Sarah, eventually realized that the last problem that was assigned was straight from the Kleppner book, aka, the 8.012 book. 8.012 also known as physics for masochists. We normal people in 8.01 aren’t masochists, so why are they assigning us such difficult problems they shouldn’t be expecting us to be able to solve? Nevertheless, Sarah was willing to aid my grade and I used her pset as my basis for solving that problem. After freaking out about that problem for a while, I had to go pack. It took me a good 10 minutes to get all of my clothes into the suitcase, mainly because I was deciding what I needed or not. I was packed and ready to leave.
At 5:50 I headed out of my dorm to turn in the masochistic pset and head to South Station to catch the bus to New York to visit my sister. It was dark and no one was around, except for a lot of taxis. A few came up to me and asked if I needed a ride. One even claimed that Kendall was closed for the next three hours and he’d be able to take me to wherever I wanted. Needless to say, I turned him down and turned in my pset.
I get to Kendall and catch the Red Line to South Station where I get off and walk around trying to find the bus terminal. The place felt oddly like an airport, but maybe that’s because I’ve never been to a bus/train station. I follow the signs and finally make it to the bus terminal. I find the signs for Peter Pan buses to New York and get in line. I could not believe how many people there were waiting to get on the bus. I eventually got on and took my seat. We left Boston and I tried to unsuccessfully go to sleep. So here comes my blog post.
Don’t always trust taxi drivers. They’re just out to make money with your best interests not necessarially at the top of their priority list.
25 November 2008 | Jason
Sunday, I wake up at 1:40 and immediately call Sarah. It is our responsibility to supply dinner with drinks, so we head out to Shaw’s to get some. We head down the aisles looking for the drinks. We find the soda aisle and try to decide what everyone would like. I see some large 3 liter bottles that are a dollar a piece. Yay, cheap drinks. Only problem is that all the drinks shouldn’t be be carbonated. We keep looking around for more drinks and find some apple juice and orange juice. Sarah very much wants apple cider instead of apple juice, so we continue searching. It takes us a while, but we eventually some. Ultimately, I think we got about 8 gallons of drinks. A little bit much.
Holiday dinner begins at 5 in the conference room. I visit Caroline to see what she is making for dinner and find her making cheese stuffed croissant things. She is excited because it is her first cooking experience and she is already experimenting. They all quickly cook and we try some. We sample them and they are quite good. At 5, we start bringing the food down to the conference room and set up the room for everyone. Kristina and I carry tables from Porter Room to try to make room. The food all looks delicious.
Mark is elected to cut the turkey and begins to hack away. There is so much food on the table I don’t know where to start. The first thing my fork makes it into is the glazed ham sitting in front of me. Everything was quite delicious. I eat so much that I feel full, and I keep eating. Food is still on my plate before I can’t fit anything else into my stomach. Everyone seems to have finished so Kristina announced the superlatives. I won three: most like a potato, most likely to be asleep in the lounge, and least likely to go skydiving.
When everyone on the floor cooks a dish, there will never be a lack of food to eat. So much food too many times will make you fat.
23 November 2008 | Jason
I feel like I should do a stream of consciousness piece because Wei and Vivian did it too. Yay for copying other people’s blogs. A 10 minute piece of stream of consciousness.
Read More
23 November 2008 | Jason
Craig came over to BC and requested me come down to add him to the guest list. Guest list? Since when did BC have a guest list? Well, I went down to desk to pick him up for a little bit of rockband. We were all hungry so we decided to go to Cosi in Kendall for dinner. After a nice meal, we made it to 10-250 for the Resonance concert. It was a nice concert with the Premium Blend from Ithica College, Logs, and Ridonkulous. They made a video parody of The Killers – Mr. Brightside. I just now watched the real video and realized why they did pick that video to parody. I enjoyed the concert… Not much else to say except for pictures.
23 November 2008 | Jason
Kevin brought a laser from home to use for his Splash class. We were having some fun with it because it was a nice green 20mW laser pointer. Stronger than the average 5mW laser. So…. I want one! Will one of my readers buy me a laser?
23 November 2008 | Jason
So it is 4:30AM and I am doing my laundry. You may ask why I’m doing it so late, I could actually ask myself that same exact question. I think it is because I actually have run out of clothes to wear, so I do have wash my clothes. I was down at 3:50 to put my clothes in the washers and all was well. My clothes were in the washer and the laundry machine took my techcash. Water ran through the place you put detergent and all was good. I headed back upstairs to my room to do random nothings until they were done washing.
At 4:20 my timer went off telling me to put the clothes in the dryers. I head downstairs to put them in. I open the first washer, and to my surprise, there was water still. Had it not spun out any of the water? I check the screen. It says: reselect cycle. I do so and have to frustratingly wait another 40 minutes for those clothes to finish washing before I can dry them. The clothes in the second washer are better, so I take them to the dryer. Everything is good. I go to the techcash machine and I swipe my card. “Please try again” I swipe and swipe, and it finally reads my card after about 40 swipes. Frustrating, but at least it works.
Don’t depend on laundry to follow a tight time schedule. There will be problems.
22 November 2008 | Jason
It’s 5PM, do you know where Jason is?
Well, I woke up just now, not kidding. I checked my phone for what calls I had and called Sharon(Yalie). During the conversation, I realized… The past 24 hours, I did two things. Rockband and sleep. Yes, that is all.
It all began when I finished my 18.01(single var calc) test. (Yay pass) I got home and went online where Craig invited me over to MacGreggor to play some Wii RockBand. I went over with Tim(roommate) and we played for a while. Then it was nearing 9. It was time for the Read More
20 November 2008 | Jason
After an enjoyable nap, I wake up in time for my IM sport this time. Zach comes over to my room just as I am putting on my shoes. We head down to the gym and the pistol range and find Jeff there waiting for us. After preparing the targets, they let us in to shoot. I get the gun and set out the pellets I am about to shoot. It takes me more than a few times to fully understand how to charge the gun and load the pellet, but I do it eventually. I take a good number of practice shots to get a feel for the gun, and I begin shooting the targets. The first two targets I am still fumbling with the gun a bit, but eventually get the hang of it. By the last few shots, my arm is tired and shaking. Holding three pounds with an extended arm for forty minutes gets tiring. I finish shooting and leave to get scored. I finish with a total of 174-2x of 30 shots targets. I got two bullseyes at least!
I go to Anna’s to get a burrito for dinner, and in line, I receive a text. It’s Najah. She’s asking if I’m going to go to the carnival. I had completely forgotten about that! I finish getting my burrito and walk to Johnson. I find a Cathy on the phone as I walk, and we go to the 2012 carnival together. We make it there and find Omar getting some cotton candy. The cotton candy is a nice sugary purple.
In the actual gym, we find lots of inflatable bouncy things like human foosball and slides, but not that many people.
Disappointingly we leave. Cathy has her pistol session soon after so I walk with her to the range. She goes and gets ready to shoot and I head home after a good distraction from my 18.01 studying.
Luckily I had my camera this time to take some pictures. Camera is a necessity at all times. Also is learning how the gun works before shooting.
20 November 2008 | Jason
It was Monday when Johnathan announced to the conner5 mailing list that the new shirts were in. A simple blue shirt with the C5 logo on the front. On the back, each person’s dinosaur name. Mine is Nqwebasaurus (n(click)kwe.ba.sau.rus)and a jersey number, 96.
On Tuesday, we had an IM hockey game against BTB (Burton Third Bombers). Everyone was looking forward to the game including yours truly. After classes on Tuesday, I thought I’d take a nap and be well rested for the game. I went to sleep at around 4, and didn’t wake up until I received a text message asking for help on the Mastering Physics. This was at 11:30. The game was at 9. I overslept! This was very disappointing and I missed out on an opportunity to use my camera to share with you all.
Make sure to be well rested well before anything important, not just immediately before. Sleep can bite you on the ass.
19 November 2008 | Jason
It was 5:30 when I ran out of things to do (except for psets and studying), so I went around revisiting my normal sites. I was on Wei’s blog when I encountered his most recent post. It was a post about productivity. Ironic, I know. One of his items referenced Randy Pausch. I knew I had heard that name before, and it took a few minutes before it clicked. Randy Pausch was a professor at Carnegie Mellon University who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He wrote a book named The Last Lecture that I got from my computer science teacher in high school as an award. I had been meaning to read the book for a while, and I had no excuse to not read. So, I picked up the book and began reading it. I watched an episode of Dateline about Randy Pausch and his book. It was an emotional show and I could feel myself tearing up watching it. The same thing wanted to happen as I was reading the book remembering his inspirational spirit and his story.
I need to read more often, especially including powerful pieces like this book. See Booklist.
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