the grand canyon was sort of a let down. it seemed bigger in my memories. not that it isn't huge...

maybe it's just because the weather was bad. it was raining and visibility was bad. there was some mild thunder which made me uncomfortable.

we did a little hike to an overlook on the north rim and drove to another overlook, but that's about it.

we were going to drive around to the south rim, but when i found that meteor crater was nearby, we went there instead.

the drive around the grand canyon is a long one. we had to drive way up along the side until the cayon was only 100 meters or so across to find a bridge.

nearby, we found a tiny middle-of-nowhere "town" called black canyon to eat lunch in. the place was really nice. each of the outdoor tables had a big round glass cup full of water in which was floating a huge white rose. i don't know where they get the roses, but there they were.

a huge wind storm blew through as we were eating. we thought maybe a big storm was coming but it never came.

rounding the upstream end of the grand canyon, we headed south for flagstaff, then turned onto the interstate and headed east.

meteor crater is about half way across arizona from flagstaff, just south of the interstate. the area around it is flat and treeless. little green things grow here and there, but it's mostly a desert.

from the road, you can't really tell that it's a crater. it just looks like a hill. it's about a mile wide and maybe 4 stories tall. built into the side of the crater is a 3 story building which houses the visitor center and a museum. the museum was interesting. i wandered around in there while abie went to the bathroom.

then we went up over the rim of the crater.

it's difficult to get a read on the size of the crater from the side. it's clearly large. down in the middle there is some old equipment from when the apollo astronauts did some moonwalk training here.

there's a trail that goes around the rim which is 3.5 miles long. along the trail are telescopes for looking down into the crater. looking down at the center, there's a wooden cutout of an astronaut waving. it is life size. from the rim, you can't see the cutout with your naked eyes. that's how big the crater is.

after the meteor crater, we tried to go to the petrified forest, which is just down the road. unfortunately, we arrived too late. they had closed 10 minutes earlier.

so we made our way into new mexico and stopped for the night in grant. we got a small ratty motel room for the night.

cedar city lies just to the northwest of zion national park, which was our next destination.

there are really two parts to zion. kolob canyonm, which lies in the northern end of the park, and zion canyon itself, which occupies the lower end of the park. the nether regions between are only accessible via long hikes.

we took a short hike in the deserted kolob canyon to an overlook about a mile away from the road. it was very peaceful and secluded. there were lots of lizards, butterflies, and strange birds.

abie and i sat on that overlook staring out at the jagged red cliffs and listening to a small stream somewhere far below for about an hour.

driving around the park to the zion canyon entrance took another hour.

zion canyon itself is tourist-overrun. it is the more spectacular of the two, but it is so crowded that some of the charm is lost.

i can remember camping here way back on the great 1984 megatrip with the family. i didn't remember it being in such a long, steep canyon, but i remember the stream.

abie and i went wading in the stream for awhile. white sand, small fish.

the rest of zion was a drive-by. too many people. we saw the temple sinwava ('temple of the sine waves') and the checkerboard mountain that i remembered so incorrectly from when i was a kid.

next, we drove to bryce canyon national park, a bit northeast of zion.

bryce was a lot like i remembered it. abie and i didn't hike down, so we didnt have to experience the endless switchbacks that i remember not liking at all during the megatrip.

we drove along the 20 miles of canyon rim and stopped to look over the edge from time to time.

a big crow was following us looking for food.

somewhere south of bryce we found a middle-of-nowhere resteraunt that was mostly empty. it had great service, and a wealth of hummingbirds.

the waitress told us that usually, boston people "dress more." we didn't know what to make of that.

after dinner, we drove south into arizona towards the grand canyon. we stopped at a campground in jacob lake, AZ.

the campground was surrounded by tall pines and had an ampitheatre buried down in the woods.

abie took out his little drum that he had brought with him (a little under-the-arm hand slapping thing), i took the metal waste basket it was packed in, and we did some impromptu drumming in the woods of arizona.

we drank some cider and drummed away for hours until we decided that everyone in the campsite was probably pissed at us. it was really a great experience, though. something weird and tribal about it.

moab, utah, lies only a few miles from arches national park. we went there first thing in the morning.

the park covers a substantial land area, and the arches all seem to be at the far end of it. after paying our $10 to get in, we drove past 10 miles of red cliffs and desert mesa.

even without seeing any arches at first, the area was beautful.

the first arch we came to was called 'delicate arch.' we parked the car and hiked the mile or so to the lower viewing point. this put us on the opposite side of a deep canyon from the arch.

the arch itself was small and somewhat unimpressive, but the canyon was beautiful. and we were really right up on the dropof.

it was sooo hot up there though. we were stupid and didn't bring any water, so after a short rest on top of the cliff, we hiked back down to the van for about a gallon of water each.

the remainder of the arches were either way too far to hike to in the heat, or they were right by the road. so we did a drive by of the rest of the park.

some areas of the park actually had many visable arches in one place. i got lots of good pictures.

the brochure states that the formation of the arches is somewhat of a mystery. they have theories but none of them seems conclusive. abie said that this was definitive proof that the arches were carved by aliens. he likes to read the weekly world news ("the papers").

just up the road from arches is canyonlands national park. i had never heard of this place, but it sounded cool so we went.

canyonlands is a lot like the grand canyon except it's not just one canyon. they're not as deep as the grand cayon, but wider. and the strata are thinner, giving it a more stepped contour look.

it was amazing! these canyons went out as far as the eye can see, and the entire park is on this "island in the sky" up above it all. great viewing.

around 3:00pm, we took off and drove the rest of the day across utah, towards zion. abie listened to more dr. laura.

we pulled into cedar city, utah, relatively early and picked out a fancy hotel. to date on our trip we've spent $12.00 on lodging (the campground in moab), so we decided to splurge for a nice hotel for once.

the best-western town & country was a pretty nice place. we drank the cider and white russians that we bought up in colorado while watching a history channel documentary on the pharohs of egypt. every time they said pharoh, pyramid, mummy, or nile we drank.

when we packed up our tent and campsite, we found that another car had pulled into the spot after we fell asleep. they slept in a sleeping bag on the grass - no tent. whoa.

we stopped at a truck stop for breakfast. i figured it would be gross and sketchy. but it turned out to be really good. i had sausage-laden biscuits.

nebraska and eastern colorado are nothing to write home about. so i'll skip ahead.

we drove past denver and headed north to boulder, where a friend of abie's lives (as well as lynda, but the odds of me seeing her there are probably zero...). we found the house where abie's friend lived, but aparently he had moved since they last spoke and left no forwarding address.

i thought maybe planet sub would be a good idea, but it was still early for lunch, so we decided to drive up through rocky mountain national park and then back down to boulder for lunch.

the drive through the rockies is beautiful. there was some snow and lots of pine trees. very steep cliffs with rounded reddish rocks on the sides. i wanted to go climbing really bad.

we spent so much time driving through the mountains that we overpassed lunch by a long shot. we decided to stop off at some mountain-top village for lunch but they had just closed the only cafe when we arrived. the proprietor asked if we'd like a drink instead to which we agreed.

we had possible the worst hot chocolate ever while listening to the locals talk about a piece of land that had gone up on the market for a measley $200,000.

apparently, they were all piss-rich, but spent their money just on their land. understandably, it's some of the most expensive land in the country.

abie and i wanted to avoid having to go back to boulder in the hopes that we could travel on new road. so we looked at the map and saw a small road that made a good shortcut back to highway 70 amidst the rockies.

that road was about 10 miles long on the map. we drove down about 25 miles of dirt road until we reached a sign that said "dangerous conditions, alternate route advised" and gave up. the heavily loaded minivan was just no off-road vehicle. besides, we had the wrong road somehow.

we took the long way back to the interstate. through central city, colorado - and old goldrush town that still has goldmines everywhere. much of it is now gaudy tourist crap, but the old mines and their rusty waste piles were real, authentic goldrush.

the highway proved to provide some excellent driving. we went through some great tunnels, over a mountain pass at 7000 feet, got up into the mountains where there are no trees and lots of snow. beautiful.

somewhere inbetween vale and grand junction lies glenwood canyon - my favorite piece of road ever. i'd venture to say that it is the best drive in america (though i don't remember pacific highway 1, which i understand is also exquisite).

glenwood features a split-level highway that winds through a deep canyon carved by the colorado river. the rocks are magenta and go straight up. it was magnificent. in certain points, the canyon is only as wide as the road but hundreds of feet high. there's tunnels, curvy windy road, and the best rest area in the country - No Name, CO.

shortly after glenwood, we reached a wide valley and travelled down it for some ways, heading into the southeast corner of utah. this are is barren. we went for about 7 hours without seeing any town larger than a few shacks, and there was a 125 mile stretch during which there were no services at all. no gas, no water, no people.

abie found it necessary to listen to talk radio. he loves that stuff. for awhile we caught rush limbaugh, and had a good laugh there. then this other lady, dr. laura schlezinger (sp? shitslinger?), came on - and she was horrendus. she was bitchy to her callers and gave bad moral advice. she was preachy and her opinion was the right one. period. abie loved it. it made me sick.

but that's ok, it gave me something to do during that long stretch of nothingness. we almost ran out of gas it was so long. that would have been a disaster... but we made it to some gas station on the border of nowhere - and they knew it. they charged $1.54/gallon for gas. jerks...

we pulled into moab, utah, for the night after failing to find any camping spaces at canyonlands.

got up at about 9:00 and said goodbye to the flaxmans. we met up with a friend of abie's and went to get bagel's for breakfast.

then we took off west again for another long-ass day of driving. we stopped at I-80 (the world's largest truck stop) for lunch. what an experience... we played some vids, as is required when stopping at I-80. it was some modern version of guantlet.

we stopped by coe and i said hi to doc and mario. they had just started the summer research semester that day. it was the big cleaning day that i hated the two summers that i was around. i saw the new high-temp furnace and gave abie a walking tour of the campus.

it was a somewhat less-exciting homecoming than the one last month.

after 13 hours of driving, we stopped in elm creek, nebraska. we didn't actually see the town. it was just a gas station by the interstate. we camped out for the first time. there were no other patrons at the campsite, and we didn't see anyone to give our money too.

after we were in bed, one other group of people came by.

not the most exciting travel day. when a truck stop is the highlight... that's not good.

not that i had a bad day, it just wasn't exciting. i figure tomorrow we'll get into the good part of the drive. start taking it easy, etc. we're way ahead of schedule so we can take our time at the parks, sights, etc.

when i woke up, the house was full high school students. the flaxmans were hosting the annual math club banquet at their house, and it started after abie and i woke up.

i felt sorta weird, since no one knew who i was. i stood around eating the food and talking to mr. and mrs. flaxman.

i was introduced to abie's 13-year-old little brother, seth. seth showed me his fractal generation program he was writing in C++. it was very impressive. he also gave me a long demonstration of why the Be OS kicks ass, and i'd have to agree with him. the machine he was using was a dual xeon 500, but the OS seemed to kick ass anyway.

seth turns out to be a really interesting kid. he asked me for help in disecting his laser pointer so that he could make it steady-state. we drilled and snipped and soldered until we had a working product. this kid can talk electronics and computers like a grad student.

he also plays ultimate. he's in 7th grade.

so i guess abie's whole family is extraordinary or something. abie goes to MIT, his younger brother joel will go to yale next year, and seth is a child genius.

so, here's some more reasons i'm totally jealous of this family: they have an awesome house which they just remodeled last year. they have lots of pets.

abie's dad is a tech maniac, so there are computers everywhere. i didn't really take an accurate count, but here's what i do know: there's one computer in abie's mom's office. there's two in abie's room. there's one in seths room. there's one in the study, one in the living room. abie's dad's office had at least 8, some of which weren't even wired up. i'm not exaggerating. they also have a video toaster and editing deck, and a 56K frame relay (permanent net connection) to their house. the family as a whole has a domain name and an entire network that runs throughout their house. joel's got one of those rio MP3 walkman things. they have a camcorder hooked up to the fancy xeon box. direct TV.

i love this house.

so, anyway, both of abie's parents campaigned for both of us to stay until tomorrow, and we gave in. we've got a lot of time to waste between here and los alamos. after yesterday's drive, we could use the rest and relaxation.

abie and i watched some movies, seth and i threw the disk around, and one of their dogs bit me in the leg. that's about it for today.

we hung out at helen's place until about noon, at which time we said bye to her cool mom and drove around town. helen thought it would be really interesting to show us all the houses in town she had lived in. uh huh.

we dropped helen off at a friend's place and went south to visit my sister.

jenny's doing really well. her studio apartment is nice but small. we drove to pick up her boyfriend, jake, and went into new brunswick for some thai lunch.

the food wasn't very good, but meeting jake was cool. he's a fun guy. (abie would later comment "my favorite thing about jake is that his nose moves when he talks." i didn't notice...). it was a quick visit, and then abie and i had to disappear.

we started in new brunswick, new jersey, at 3:30pm...

...and stopped in chicago, illinois, at 4:30am.

a long, long, long drive. abie had to drive through about and hour of really thick rain, which sucked. throughout ohio, there was a dense fog that limited my visiblity to about 30 meters. yuck. other than that, the drive was uneventful. i'm going to have a sore ass tomorrow.

it was 3:30am chicago time when we walked into abie's house. we woke up his parents, had a short welcome, and then we all went to bed, exhausted.

woke up early to pack. had a considerable amount of stuff to do before we left this afternoon. i got the remainder of my stuff packed and abie and i started loading the minivan at about 12:30pm.

i skipped my meeting with molvig and guy in favor of getting out of here earlier. i also neglected to pack my dishes. i left dirty pots and plates in the sink.

it was really hot today and a big pain in the ass to take the 8 loads of stuff down to the van. we picked up helen from bexley and went to cindy's for lunch.

of course, there was still a ton of stuff to be done. we went to the reactor and unloaded about half my stuff into my office. this freed enough space in the van to fit abie's stuff - so we went over to pika and worked on his gear.

while there, jen burns showed me some of her photography. she's actually quite good. i was impressed. some of the in-house pikans played with megaball while we packed.

the decision to bring the ball was a difficult one, but a unanimous vote of 1-0 got all three balls wedged into the van.

when we finally set sail for jersey, it was 5:30pm.

it didn't start well... we got lost getting out of cambridge. but once on the highway, we were fine. the trip went by quickly. we arrived at helen's mom's house at 10:30pm.

helen's mom is the cutest old woman. she had all this food prepared for us, and wouldn't let us do anything before we had some cookies and cake and fruit, etc.

i tried to call jenny to arrange a visit tomorrow but couldn't get ahold of her.

helen showed us the basement, which housed her mom's dance room and kareoke setup. the walls were all mirrored, there was a huge stereo, wooden floor, and some techno lighting. it was hillarious.

i could just see little ms. lee groovin' out down there.

i slept like a rock after all that heavy moving.

another early start. guy called at 7:45am, i went to bed at 3:30. guy and i worked through the entire day until 7:26pm. for awhile inbetween breakfast and lunch, i had dozed off on the bed - face down on my notes - and guy was slumped over in his chair.

we had some caffiene and ended up doing some good work.

i tried designing my own world for that MUD i downloaded yesterday. i got through about 3 rooms and quickly discovered how much work that stuff takes. looking at the 5000 room default world, i'm somewhat amazed.

abie has moved up the date for our trip to new jersey to 2:00pm tomorrow, so i have to get packing early.

i'll be on the road for about 8 days, camping out in odd places with abie. i'm excited to the point of not being able to sleep now.

well, today was the day that most of young white socially-inept male america has been waiting for for about a year.

a friend of mine went to the 12:01am showing, left the theater and got right back into line for the 3:01 showing. another friend left at 4:00pm for the 7:00pm show, and called me at 6:00 saying he was at the back of the line still.

i left at 9:00pm for the 11:00pm showing and surprisingly there was hardly a line. over the next hour, it grew remarkably. inside, the refills on drinks were free. and since i was parked in line for about 45 minutes in front of the consessions, i had about the equivalen of a 12 pack of pepsi, i think.

when we finally got inside, the people in front of me got into a fight over seats. the climax of the verbal battle went something like this:

"fuck you."
"fuck you."
"no fuck you."
"i'll kick your fucking ass."
"bitch."

and then they both mysteriously shut up and sat down.

anyway, the movie was great. the acting was sub-par considering the star-power. the effects more than make up for it though. and the voices of the droids are great. they're samplicious. i'll go see it again when i get to los alamos.

physical plant took down the R2D2 dome despite telling reporters that they would keep it up until thursday morning. bastards...

i did a majority of my packing today. i disassembled my stereo and lent it to greg. tom and i took a large carload of stuff to my office for storage.

tom also emptied a lot of his stuff out today; the place looks really desolate. both of the stereos are gone, there is no music. it's eerily quiet.

abie, helen, jen, and i went to a place over by BU called the 'deli haus' for late-night grub. helen and abie were very drunk.

it sounds like we're going to drive out of here friday night, visit helen's family in new jersey, probably stop by my sister's place at rutgers, and then drive out from jersey saturday around noon. that gives us a full 7 days to reach our destination.

i'm so excited.

also, tomorrow is star wars! the reviews i read today were really bad! they say it's all SFX and no plot, which seems odd to me. i can't wait anyway. i'm really pissed off at 7 news, they gave out a spoiler on the news.

NOTE: SW:TPM spoiler ahead, stop reading if you care.

the lady just blurted out that the queen was luke and leiha's mother. i didn't know that, and i guess it's probably not a huge plot element or anything, but i would have preferred to learn it in the movie rather from some lady on the news.

today marks the completion of one full school year at MIT.

i got up in the morning at took my one and only final exam. i got rocked. yesterday i sorta felt like i knew what was going on, but none of the topics we anticipated (and studied in detail) were on the test. i felt like i knew about half the material, and the other half i was floudering on.

luckily, everyone else (including evan the supergenius) was groaning and showing visable displeasure with the difficulty level of the exam. since everything is curved, i may yet pull a B out of this course.

the class ended with evan, ben, greg, and i going out for lunch and a drink at the pour house.

...and then we went right back to work. we still hadn't finished the monte carlo assignment due today. in all technical respects it was done, it just needed to be put together. we printed some plots and i grammer checked the copy.

as we were stapling the final version together, i was looking at philip and marco who were in the same room still trying to get their code to compile. this was by no means an easy assignment, and i don't think a lot of the groups got theirs done at all, whereas ours looked really really good.

so we may be ok there.

my sister called me today, which is rare, asking for help with a problem in her computer - the one i built from junk parts last year. apparently the CDROM went nuts. i dunno. anyway, the weird part of the call is that jenny thinks, and i quote, "the matrix is a great movie. i love it."

umm... you're not the real jenny, what have you done with my sister?

just a little preview of what is to come wednesday night, ashdown presented the original star wars trilogy in the 'big tv room.' i went down for about 20 minutes of empire (the greatest of the three) but it was packed and stuffy, so i left. actually, the thing that really drove me out was the overabundance of heavy nerdity of a bad variety.

this one guy would do a bad impression of darth vader breathing, then six or seven guys around him would laugh with bad revenge-of-the-nerdian laughs. other times, people would errupt in unsettling laughter at seemingly random moments.

i don't think i was communicating on the appropriate nerd wavelength or something.

also in celebration of the new star wars film, the great dome of MIT was decorated (read: hacked) to resemble R2D2. made the news an everything.

my radio show tonight got canceled due to mysterious "technical difficulties." so i'm forced to spend another night playing lord of the red dragon again.

i tried to pack today, but all i did was take down my joker collection off the closet door.

this morning was the monthly electronics swapfest, which i got up early for instead of showing up late like the last two times. the difference in selection was not noticeable. nor was there any difference in the crowd. it was packed by 9:10.

i bought a DVD of the director's cut of 'Das Boot,' which it turns out is 3.5 hours long. (!!) i'll probably have to wait until guy and i are settled in at los alamos to watch it.

rolf bought an aluminum atache case. it is hillarious. evan bought several mice, which he says he does every month and then they break in a couple weeks. but for a couple bucks each, you wouldn't save the money if you didn't buy them, right?

after a quick lunch, it was back to studying for the 22.55 final tomorrow. after four more hours of going over the notes, we went home for dinner. i felt somehow confident about my abilities.

MIT has a 'night before finals breakfast' thing just like coe did. it's not as well done though. the food choices were pancakes and sausage. at coe, there was lots of stuff. and the entertainment was a bad MIT jazz band. i went by myself.

i intended to get lots of sleep for the early 9:00am final manyana, but i was searching the web for that old 'infinity complex' game that i love when i found a webalized version of 'lord of the red dragon,' another BBS door game that i used to play.

so that's what i did until 2:00am.

staying up late has its disadvantages. namely, the inability to function well the next morning. specifically, my inability to take part in a study group for the 22.55 final which started at 10:00am.

i made it there and i didn't fall asleep, but i was off in space.

you could sorta say i put in 6 hours of studying, but it was probably only the brain equivalent of 2 or 3.

most of the guys were there, we played a frisbee varient called 'box,' and JJ taught me how to spin the disc on my hand and pick it up with one foot. i made myself a white russian from butter's fridge.

we grilled burgers, hot dogs, corn, and drank a lot. (well, i had my one drink and 4 sodas). it lasted for four hours, and was great time. for the first time of the year, i felt like it was summertime.

i suffered a small but bloody forehead injury during the game of box when jim sliced me with his fingernail. also, i got hog-piled by butter, dean, and edmond after the volleyball game for no aparent reason. i lost the rosham to dean for the jersey - hey wasted his fire on me.

despite this, it was great. i look forward to playing again next year, and getting in shape at LANL this summer.

after the barbeque, i was stuffed and exhausted. abie called and wanted to talk about the trip tonight, so he came and picked helen and i up and we went to get a movie (raging bull) and watch it at pika.

we made movies with emily's barbie digital camera and cooked a gourmet feast of ramen noodles.

when we went down to the TV room to watch the movie, there was a crowd of people watching porno. i convinced them that the cirque de ingeniuex was on and that they should check it out. so we watched that until 12:30am, then started raging bull.

raging bull is really really long. especially if you start it after midnight.

after the movie and a bowl of mini-wheats, i caught the safe-ride home and was in bed by 4:30am. oops! so much for studying tomorrow...

what's the best way to get starwars tickets for opening night at the best theater in town? know a friend who's nerdy enough to sit there for a day reloading movielink.com until it works, and have him reserve a ticket for you.

i just happen to be in the highest nerd-density city in the world, and i know several such nerds. in fact, brian my suitemate is one such nerd. and i have a ticket.

star wars baby, yeah!

i think people that waited outside the theaters had it all wrong. most of my friends got tickets in the first few hours by dilligently waiting as the phone was busy or as netscape said "contacting host www.movielink.com..."

it's weird to think that the first star wars movie came out when i was 2... i hope they mention toshi station again. power converters baby, yeah!

also today was my last class. no more classes for several months. that's a good feeling.

my presentation went ok; i felt like an ass, and they asked a bunch of questions i didn't know the answer to, but they understood because i'm just a lowly nuke-E. i don't think the paper is worth writing home about, and i hope he'll give me a B, but it's over now and i don't have to think about it anymore.

also this evening i finished my final project for 22.55 with evan. for the first time in a long time, i got to code perl for something useful. we got great monte carlo data, and the machine is running the final dataset of 25,000 particles overnight.

so, the only academic thing that remains for me is the 22.55 final on monday. so it's a study-weekend for me. i'll probably slack off some tomrrrow, then work like a maniac on saturday or sunday. or maybe i'll slack them off too. haha

tomorow is the ultimate BBQ (i'm sure of it this time), and i roshambo dean for the jersey. nothing beats rock.

i'm still sorta sleepy from the weird sleep schedule of yesterday, and i spent all day working on the presentation for tomorrow. by dinner i was happy with what i had and i went out to play some frisbee on kresgee.

i can't believe that there's only one day of school left. i've been so busy with everything for the past few weeks that it hasn't really dawned on me. all my spring fever was lost behind my simulations and classwork.

i remember back in higschool when the last week or two was all daydreams of that day when we would walk out of the door into the warm sun and throw the notebooks in the trashcan. we'd throw up our arms and yell a bit. i remember that feeling clearly.

but this year i just feel like the workload will go down a bit when school's out.

i guess my real vacation will be the week between may 23rd and may 31st, while abie and i drive down to los alamos. that should be a fun time.

i'm not sure when today started... usually, i count the post-midnight early morning as part of the previous day, but today...

i woke up at midnight and didn't go back to sleep. instead, i went to the office and worked on my paper for 13.023.

i started working at 2:00am, and worked continously until a bit before 7:00am. the computer i was sitting at was next to an east-facing window, and i watched the sun rise up over the big sky blue reactor containment sarcophagus.

i went to the grocery store on the way home and picked up something called "Hot Beef Burrito", actually, several of them. so i went home and fired up some hot beef, and sat around watching TV as people around the suite slowly woke up and did the morning routine.

it was weird. actually being tired didn't kick in until right before class. typical... after class and my second molvig meeting of the day, i somehow felt completely awake again.

so i stayed up until 3:30 working on my slides.

just today i saw a shirt that had the "top ten reasons you can tell you've become an MIT student" on which reason #1 was "you become nocturnal."

ok, so i gave it away in the last one that i'm writing this week's entries late.

i'm that busy, ok?

i'm speaking to you from the future... this friday morning, in fact - to warn you about your crappy memory! alreay, you can't remember what happened today!

well, it's really because of this end of year rush craziness... but the fact that you can't remember anything significant that happened today is pretty weak.

your self,
mouser

today was the day that evan, greg, ben, and i sat down and coded the monte carlo simulator for 22.55. i learned just how hard it is to get C to generate random numbers. not because there is something particularly challenging about generating a string of pseudo-random numbers, but because C is both really anal and ambiguous about data types and passing information between functions.

i swear, i had code in one function that was generating random numbers between 0 and 1 that were actually numbers in the hundred-billions. i copied the code from one place to another and it worked fine. i don't understand it.

everyone should just code in perl. perl will return nice random numbers of great "randomness" with the following two lines:

srand(time()^($$+($$<<15)));
$myRandomNumber = rand(1);

the equivalent C code is about 15-20 lines long, and was too difficult for evan and i to figure out. granted, i'm no C guru, but evan supposedly is. we almost resorted to using a perl script to choose our random seed for us, but we couldn't get the output from the perl piped into the C program properly because C was bitchy about where the data went.

so, the moral of this story is that i like perl and C blows.

so what if the equivalent simulation in perl would have taken about 1500x as long? blow me.

there's nothing unusual about having to wait around my room for three hours for my advisor to call, but on a saturday? blow. i had to skip a trip to walden pond to wait for his call, which he said would be around 4:30. he ends up calling me at 7:30, half an hour after the walden group got back. !$&#@

on a related topic, my turbulence simulation is not ready for presentation.

i'm supposed to have a paper on it handed in on tuesday, and a 25 minute presentation on thursday. but right now i don't even know how it works, let alone have any meaningful data...

boring day. molvig's out of town, the simulation isn't working right.

so, here's an update on my current thoughts about my body: i'm emaciated. it's gross.

people at coe were saying, "gosh you look thin." which is really bad, since i was a twig there anyway.

anyway, back a few weeks ago when i was sick and had no appetite, i lost about 25 pounds - the ramifications of which are just dawning on me now. i'm down to 155 from 180.

so since i went to coe, i've started a rigorous plan to gain a bunch of weight any way i can. i'm eating meat again, for the time being. this suffices as a nice excuse to eat those steak and cheese subs that they make at the deli that are actually quite nice. and in the name of good health and proper weight control, i've been eating one or two a day.

i'm eating 4 full-scale meals a day.

also, and this may be a shock to anyone that knows me, i'm working out down in the weight room. this feels very strange for me. for one, i've never really done it seriously before. and also, i'm the smallest guy in there by about 100 pounds. i'm over there doing 30 pound butterflies while some guy right across from me is benching 250. well... whatever.

anyway, i'm glad i'm actually working out now because i need to be in shape when i go to LANL. they have an ultimate frisbee league there, i just found out today. it's pickup and they play three nights a week. i'm excited.

the only thing is that it's ultra-high altitude there, and in my condition, i'll probably feint going up stairs. i'm used to my current altitude, about 30 feet, and i'm horribly out of shape. so, hopefully, this gaining weight weightroom thing will help me out. and then playing ultimate at LANL will get me into good shape for the MIT team next term. woo ya!!

i made my first international wire transfer to a numbered bank account in europe today. i felt like i was doing something illegal or something. isn't that what huge drug lords and kidnappers do with their money?

well, i was just depositing the fee for my conference trip to finland.

120 euros? how much is that? i have no idea. i hope that when i get there people are still using normal currancy so i can improve my coin collection without only getting euros.

i put a little note on the ICPS Finland bulletin board for people to bring coins from home, some people have agreed to do so. i guess that's good. i'll finally get that 1/2 escudo coin from portugal that i couldn't find when i was there.

tonight was the nuclear engineering banquet, which i couldn't go to because molvig sent someone over to my room to help me get these simulation codes working. right at 5:30, when it was supposed to start. so alla (the russian woman who's been coding all this stuff for molvig) came over and we got everything working, and had a nice chat about russia and travel on the trans-siberian railroad.

(incidentally, that is a trip i would like to take sometime. train across asia to china, fly out of beijing. if there's any russian speakers out there, let's go. i speak chinese. a bit.)

anyway, alla left and i ran downstairs to the banquet (conveniently, the best banquet hall on campus is in my building). i had missed all of the food, and came in just in time to hear all the speeches which i had no interest in at all. molvig was there... he looked like he probably wasn't hungry.

that monte carlo simulation code that i'm supposed to be writing is due on friday, but moogly-oogly said "turn it in before the 17th." so evan, greg, and i got together to work on it for the first time today.

i was kinda hoping they'd have some stuff done by the time i got back, but they hadn't looked at it any more than i did.

i'm random number guy. my part of the whole thing is to come up with a good way to get "truly" random numbers for our simulation. it's harder than it sounds.

my other big project, the turbulent channel flow simulation for 13.023, is still stalled because of a non-compiling hydro solver. molvig's all pissed because his code doesn't compile on my (new) software, so he wants me to downgrade my C++ to a version 2 generations back so we're on the same page. ugh.

so i got the new (old) CD from him today and was going to spend tonight working on it.

but instead i spent from 10:00pm to 2:00am working on an itinerary for europe. i can't really get to burningman anymore, so i'm going to stay in europe after the ICPS conference and wander around for a couple weeks.

i figure i'll try to get from helsinki to dublin in two weeks, visiting a major city or two each day. this should include stockholm, oslo, copenhagen, amsterdam, brussels, london, edinburgh, glasgow, holyhead, and dublin. aside from london, i haven't been to any of these places before. and it'll be 9 new countries for me (for a total of 16).

of course, thinking about this was far more exciting than reinstalling old versions of microsoft visual C++.

compared to the last five days, today was sort of lack-luster.

i went to 13.023 and realized that my term project i haven't started on is due in a week and two days. ugh. so i went to meet with molvig twice today to get up to speed.

he gave me another book to buy, and some notes, and some code on a disk, and a long assignment. all of which i'm supposed to have ready by tomorrow.

strangely, i feel sort of excited to work on it. unfortunately, i didn't get very far. the code crashed (which was the central part of the assignment), wouldn't compile due to a missing file nowhere on my machine, the install disks, or the data disk molvig gave me.

so i went to compUSA and bought that everquest game instead.

i realized quickly that i'm a complete and total rube, when i found that the game didn't work and then that it only works with win95 and win98. luckily, i dual boot with 95 and can therefore use it, right?

well, no. my 95 has no network drivers and can't see the CDROM to even install the game, bla. i worked with this for awhile, then gave up and went to harvard for a late-night pizza with rolf.

coming back, i worked on getting that stupid game working for hours. nothing. turns out my PCI bus isn't working right under 95 (???) so i can't use my network or SCSI cards, which are both PCI. i don't get it.

in the morning i just packed and went over to physics. i didn't feel like hanging out with anyone during these final few hours.

so i sat in the physics lab and played some game called everquest that TJ had brought into the lab. it's actually a kinda fun game. i'm tempted to buy it.

i shook doc's hand and said yo for the umpteenth time in the last extended weekend, and off i went with TJ to the airport.

retrospective on the trip:
iowa weather was uncanny. i didn't see a cloud all weekend, and it was in the 70s all week. it was great! there was never weather like this when i was at coe. and the funny thing is that until thursday, it was cold and rainy.

of course, it's still 50 and raining in boston. it was raining when i landed, and it hasn't stopped since.
the entire flight was inside a continuous cloud, after about wisconsin. i slept through the boringness. the ennui of it all. woe is... zzzzzzzzz....

i've decided that the best time to visit your college after you've graduated is at the end of the year after you leave. not that i have any other datapoints to compare this one to, but as time goes on, more and more of the people i know will dissapear, until my visits to coe consist soley of "hi doc, hi mario, gotta go."

i felt like a celebrity or something while i was there. everyone wanted to say hi and people waved and there were groupies and that limo was nice too and i got to hang out with elvis. even people i didn't usually talk to when i was there were all friendly all of the sudden.

so, yeah, visit after the first year. then move to beruit.

well, today was the big day. jason went to see aaron off; i had to work on my talk. i felt sorta bad about that - i'd really rather have hung out with aaron than did this talk - but on the other hand i didn't want to look like an ass in front of 50 or so people.

aaron and i hardly saw each other this weekend, i guess because he's got the wo-man and there was so much other crap going on. and the one time i did have the chance to hang out with he and jason together, i had to police the crowd in the alumni house and prevent shawn from peeing in the fridge or something.

i managed to convince jason and nichol to stay for the talk (or, more accurately, i suggested it a few times, and they convinced themselves). i got my yellow tie on and off we went. speaking of the tie, one girl at first glance said "that's the ugliest tie i've ever seen," while another said, "that tie is great." so i think it's clear that this tie is possessed with magical powers. and it's yellow too.

the talk: i think everyone thought it went well. or at least "all-right." in the parts where i knew what i was talking about, i did well (perhaps i spoke a bit fast...). on the slide or two that contained information i haven't yet figured out, i did some nice baloney.

no one asked me questions about the baloney part, which means one of two thigs: 1) they figured it was too complex or not interesting enough for them to care, or 2) they could tell immediately that it was bull and didn't want to hurt my feelings.

actually, paul smith asked me questions about the made up part but he asked questions that were way out of left field. "do you do anything with hyper fragments?" uh, that would be a negatory, paul.

the all-you-can-shit indian food was good. mmmm nan. if i had to eat bread and water for the rest of my life, i'd want it to bed nan. and the water better not be orbitz.

i got eric to move the coe/cornell ultimate game up to 4, but i still missed it. i went straight from the car to the field, tie in hand, to witness the coe players packing up their stuff and no cornell players in sight. turns out only 5 or so cornell players came, so it wasn't a real game anyway. too bad. i was looking forward to it. at least i didn't miss anything spectacular...

of course the evening wouldn't be complete without some mario kart. and to make it even better, we watch 'enter the dragon.' watching that movie is so much more fun when you've seen the kentucky friend movie parody 'fistful of yen.' what was dat? we need total concentwation.

charlie and i went out to buy some dishsoap... to uh... wash dishes with. on the way back, we saw a big owl in a tree and watched it for about half an hour. it was that sort of exciting evening. it watched us, and tried to poop on charlie. it even did the neck-swivel thing once or twice.

at about 9:00, charlie, dan, and i did a little over-the-wall soap commando fountain raid. it was probably one of the best ones i've seen yet. it grew into a 3 foot tall marange donut. perhaps the only bertter soaping was the classic mackenzie soaping at boob's wedding. the only difference then was the high winds, which picked up large chinks of foam and carried them throughout the neighborhood. they flew over the glass-ceiling of the dining room during the reception, and were found in the hy-vee parking lot days later.

for the night's final festivity, we packed 6 people into dan's little saturn and drove to taco bell for some good eatin'.

i said goodbye to everyone and went to bed at 3:30am for the fifth day in a row.

jason and i slept until about 12:30. there wasn't anything scheduled to do today. i played some frisbee with dan, and checked my 96 email messages.

early in the afternoon evan showed up, and was a big hit with everyone. he's so damn funny.

of course there was some mario kart involved, jason played and did well. i played some sand volleyball with dan after dark, which was fun. aside from a total airball set that i did on the first play, i player really well.

we were going to soap the fountain, but i reconsidered because i was going to have a party tonight in the alumni house after the fountain was shut off. so it would look pretty stupid to have us hanging out in the alumni house and there's the fountain full of suds...

the get-together was somewhat ok after awhile. we found some chips and wine and beer and cheesecake that they obviously wanted us to have.

at some point, a crew of people went through and skinny dipped in the fountain. that was interesting...

i eventually kicked everyone out at 3:30 and went to bed.