Troy is back!

The Pats have re-signed Troy Brown! Yay! Now who's going to teach our favorite d-back/receiver/etc to kick? ;)

By the way, I am going to be taking a week off from blogging to enjoy a nice, relaxing Spring break. I'll talk to y'all again on the 2nd. Have a great week! =)

This is the spike sharpeners' year!

Dudes. I love my fantasy baseball team. No, not the one that automatically drafted A-Rod. I have two teams: one with Massachusetts folk, and one with Georgia boys. I love the latter league, as I seem to always get my choice of the American League. Anyway, break is over, here's the team:



Things to look for: my all-steroid bench (Giambi (21st round), Bonds (18th round), and Huff (20th round)). And my all-toe injury pitching (Pedro).

Dartmouth + MIT =

I had a revelation last night. All these years, I was always bothered by the expression "Going to sleep." I always figured that sleep wasn't a place, and so the "going" word really bothered me.

Well, last night I finally figured out that it could also be like, "What are you going to do?" "Well, I'm going to sleep." So, instead of being a noun (people, thing, in this case, place), it's a verb! (something you do)

I feel so much better now. Man, I really need the upcoming spring break.

Hectic Days

I know I have been awful about blogging. This has probably been my toughest term at MIT time-wise. I am currently taking four classes, all of which have us working in groups. Scheduling for these have been absolute hell. Here is a listing of my groups so you can see the variety of names:

PDD - Rachael, Biju, Paul (all work full-time), and now three others, including Nhan
Disruptive Tech - Rajiv, Kevin (works full-time), and three Sloanies
System Safety - Paul, Maggie (both work full-time)
System Optimization - Joe, John (both work full-time)

As you can guess, with the majority of us working pretty regular hours, getting in all this work has not been easy. In addition, most of the tasks for all these projects have been very difficult to divide, unlike other terms.

Swearing off Sports

First McGinest, then Arroyo, now this. Argh. I'm going to take up knitting.

Mad at the Sox

Bronson Arroyo took less money then he probably could have gotten elsewhere to remain with the Red Sox, and the Sox trade him for a backup outfielder. If I didn't have to get some work done, I'd be on a major rant right now. Sooo mad at the Sox. There is so little loyalty in today's sports world and they completely snubbed someone who displayed it. Disgusting.

Worst....bracket....ever....

Just go ahead and cross out UNC in my final four as well....

Adopt from Shelters!

Here is a moving article on some of what goes on in animal shelters. Those of you who know me know that the one constant in my life (other than love of family) over the last eight years has been my shelter kitty, Scully. The thought of giving her up for anything is unfathomable to me (and actually bringing tears to my eyes...or maybe that's just that UNC is losing and I have them winning it all...kidding, it's Scully). I cannot imagine the reasoning in a person's head that leads to giving up a pet, though this article has a couple of examples.

If you're looking to get a pet of any kind, I recommend at least visiting a shelter and spending some time with pets there. You can often find young puppies or kittens in addition to the older pets (they estimated Scully at 9 months). Definitely worth a look, despite the risk you may want to take all the animals there home with you. Scully says, "Go Tarheels!" I mean, "Thank you!"

Kansas?

When did I jump on the Kansas bandwagon? For some reason, I had them going to the final four!! D'oh! Not good. I have them beating out Indiana, having taken the opposite tack as fellow bracket-filler Yoav, who had them lose in the first round this year. My total potential points for the Oakland bracket therefore tops out at 12 out of 32. Ouch.

Television show on US Soliders Returning from Iraq

This show on Iraq will detail the returns of three soldiers, including one who is a fellow Dartmouth alum. It looks very sad, but worth watching.

Mad PowerPoint Skilz

Sometimes working on a PowerPoint-happy defense firm can really pay off!

Upon arriving in product design and development today, my team discovered we had missed a presentation deadline. I was able to whip up 10 slides complete with pictures in under 20 minutes! Yeah, I'm just shamelessly bragging because I am happy my rapid prototyping powerpointing has finally come in handy =D

Please, please let the lawyers take all his money...

Can you believe this guy?

Oh no! Not A-Rod!

I had to miss the draft for one of my fantasy teams due to my PDD meeting Tuesday night. As Lance pointed out, I ended up with the first pick...and my stupid picker took AROD!!! YUCK! The name of my team was the dirt dogs. Now it has to be dirt dogs plus one. Ain't no way I'm calling A-Rod a dirt dog.

Argh...I have no pitching.

Isaac Hayes leaves South Park

Isaac Hayes, who plays Chef on South Park, is leaving due to religious differences. In this article, creator Matt Stone alludes to the fact that Hayes never objected to making fun of religions other than his own. Bummer. The Chef character was awesome, and hypocrisy is uncool.

Happy Birthday, Dad, Happy Anniversary, Blog, Happy Slacking, me

Duuuude. I have been busy. Events I have missed:

March 12 was the one-year anniversary of this blog. This is my 520th post. I thought I talked a lot....now I know I can write a lot, too! Thanks again to Robbie, Yoav, and Matti for providing me the inspiration to start my own blog.

March 13 was my dad's official 60th birthday. Happy birthday, dad!

So where have I been? I was buried in work and school, then left for Atlanta for Suzanne's wedding. A quick run-down:

Friday: Finished up class, took a deep breath, then went to the Sloan Unity Party for about 20 minutes and the Cowboy Mouth concert with Will. The concert was incredible, as usual.

Saturday: Will took me to the airport for my 6am flight. I passed out cold as soon as we got in the air, which is very rare for me. Upon landing, I picked up my rental car and drove immediately to Ulta, where I spent way too much money on makeup and hair stuff. I also checked out DSW Shoes, but was able to withstrain (aka restrain) myself. Then Shannon called to say she was running late for lunch, so I went to Intimacy. I was just waiting for AmEx to call to see if my card was stolen.

I had lunch with Shannon at Neuvo Laredo, then went up to Tara, Goober, and Jeff's where I would be staying. We hung out and talked for a while, then I had to leave for the wedding. The wedding was wonderful: I barely recognized Rachel and Emily as both girls looked like beautiful, grown-up women. It was very strange. =) Matthew looked great as well, as did Suzanne and her new hubby Burt. Unfortunately, Suzanne's oldest son, Adam, was home sick with the flu =(

Anyway, the wedding was great, and then I went back to the house where I joined a party in progress with Grant and Tracy and the housefolk.

Sunday: Went to the wedding brunch. Very nice. I got to spend more time with Suzanne's parents, who are just wonderful people. From there, I went to see Pat and Amy, two of my freshmen from when I was a floor mom. They have a gorgeous daughter, Meghan, who is now 18 months. I stayed there for some time before having to head back to the house to go to a party at Tracy and Grant's. We were later joined by Patty, Nate, Sully, and Badonkadonk. It was great to see everyone. I was in bed by 8:30 =)

Monday: Dentist, then a walk through Piedmont Park. I was feeling very contemplative, and enjoyed sitting on a swing staring out at the city. After that, I went to the CNN Center (where I used to work), and saw Shannon, Steve, Yuliya, Firf, Mark, Unni, Jeff D, Mick M, David, as well as several others I hadn't planned to see, such as Joey, Mark and my favorite security guard. It was great just running into them. I hadn't seen some of these folks for quite some time.

I then flew out, arrived in Boston, was picked up by Will, then went over to Sloan for a meeting.

Today: Dude, I'm tired.

Olives in my Black Pants

Last night, Will, Elizabeth, Nick, and I went to Olive's to take advantage of Boston's restaurant week. Food was delicious and company was great. After dinners including steak, gnocchi, fish, and chocolate cake with a yummy red zin, we headed over to Warren Tavern. I actually had to pay cover! They are under new ownership and apparently the local discount is over. So annoying. The place was hopping and I got to see Brie, Andrew, Gregg, Jimmy, and of course singer Justin. Too much fun.

I wore black pants out. I have worn three different pairs of black pants in the last 24 hours and still have 5 or 6 pairs in my closet. I guess I really like black pants.

Demo Complete!

The big demo I have been ramping up for during the past week is over. It was actually one of those dream demos: my boss was in the room, and the customer said (and this is an exact quote): "I cannot believe how much functionality you got into that application in such a short time and small budget." Duuuude. That was awesome.

I really love doing demos and presentations, so it was fun, especially since the walk-through of the product went really well, with none of the blips that can pop up and kill a demo occurring. It was my first demo of a Ruby on Rails product. Looks like I will be doing more of those. Yay! =) The customer is already talking about funding for FY07. (By the way, when did we leave 2003? I can't believe it's 2006. I must have missed something.)

Ice, Ice Baby

Professor Utterback gave an absolutely amazing talk today on the history of the ice industry and how it was affected by innovation and technology. It was probably one of the best lectures I have heard since arriving at MIT, which I guess means ever.

I'm not going to try to paraphrase it, as there is no way to do it justice. However, you can read the bulk of the information here.

Long Day

Today was a long, long day. Too many meetings, not enough fun. I was excited for dinner with Susan Hockfield and the Graduate Women's group, but the first speaker was so god-awful that she makes my stories look coherent. I mean, really, top 10 worst speakers I have heard.

Anyway, I wanted to blog to get something out there, but now need to get back to doing some work. Hopefully after Wednesday I will be able to catch my breath and blog some more.

Dad's Birthday - Duke/UNC

I got back from Sharon, where I celebrated my dad's 60th birthday at Coriander with my mom, dad, Jeff, and Eve. Unfortunately, BT couldn't join us. Probably scared him Friday night when Eve made me laugh so hard that I couldn't swallow the water I was drinking at the time and inadvertantly spat a little of it into the water pitcher on the table. I tell ya, sometimes I'm class on a cracker.

I am now watching the end of the UNC-Duke game. Holy crud! What a game! I guess I have to cheer for North Carolina to make Robbie happy. =) Just a great game regardless of who wins for us unbiased NCAAB lovers.

UNC won! Yay, Robbie! From unranked at the beginning of the season to beating Duke at Duke during their senior night. Dude!

Would you like some Jesus with that pepperoni?

I don't like Domino's pizza, not only because it tastes terrible, but because the founder donates copiously to anti-abortion causes.

I've been trying to summarize this article graciously, but just can't seem to do it. Just read it.

Sloan Visiting Committee

On Wednesday, I met with members of the Sloan Visiting Committee along with Jim, Monica, Luis, Uday, Alex, and Sam. The Visiting Committee evaluates all of the Sloan programs once every few years. The committee consisted of four men, all MIT alums, from a range of classes, the youngest of which was 1972.

I thought we presented SDM very well, and that we were very well received. We talked about our interactions with Sloan and the classes we take there. Good times, good times. =) For more details, come talk to me. Class is starting =)