So I'm at ultimate last night, and I'm talking on the sideline to some of the other summer students about where they go to school. When I tell them I go to MIT, one of them starts talking about some of the more nerdy things he's heard of going on at MIT. Specifically, he brings up the EC washing machines which you can finger to see if they're busy, and the coke machine, etc. Then this other guy chimes in and says:

"I hear one guy there is actually building a real railgun."

It was so awesome. Umm, yeah, that would be me. So on a short list of wackiest things going on at MIT, somehow the railgun project made it. That is so great.

Today some of my office supplies arrived. And I can't help but surrender to the urge to unleash a huge gut laugh at the inadequacies of the federal government. First of all, the order (which was placed all at once) arrived incomplete in three shipments to two different locations, neither of which I have physical access to. Dimitri had to wheel the boxes out of the secure (getting searched along the way) so that I could have my stapler, etc.

Next, because of the ordering system, it was not possible to get exactly the quantity of items I asked for, so when one pencil jar was not available, they sent me two. And when one stack of post it notes wasn't available, they sent me a gross. Not a gross of post it notes, but a gross of stacks of post it notes. A huge box filled with nothing but stacks of post it notes.

The one thing they did get the right quantity of was the highlighters. I asked for one each of green, pink, and yellow [catalog shopping leads to these sorts of gratuitous purchases]. And they sent each one individually packaged in a giant transparent plastic bag, easily two feet on a side. The giant bag with just a pen in it was too funny; I couldn't open it...

...but I could use one of my 5000 new push pins to stick it to the wall of my cubicle for future entertainment.