Randomness

Two Dozen

2012-01-04T23:59:00.000-05:00

That's right: Two whole dozen years. Appropriate enough for the year twenty-dozen, but that particular happenstance is more a function of mathematics than anything particularly cosmic.

Today went really well, actually, what with it being the first day back to classes (which I realize I still haven't written about). My first class was actually quite engaging and I'm looking forward to the future lectures already. My other class first meets tomorrow morning.

And although I don't necessarily hold the number 24 in quite as high regard as the number 23, it's already growing on me. Embarking on a relatively new chapter of my life is leaving me with much the same "anything-can-happen feeling" I described last year, and I'm pleased to report that it's actually lasted all day! I have a feeling it'll last for quite a while longer, too.

The only (minor) damper was that the local Arby's appears to have discontinued jalapeño poppers. If you know me well, you know that this is a big deal. But I had a birthday coupon for a free shake, so it was all good. And besides, I got jalapeño coins on my burger at my birthday dinner at Red Robin, where I was joined by all sorts of friends and family from the area.

All in all, a good day. And a great start to my twenty-fifth year on earth. Soon enough, I'll be a member of the quarter-century club!

2012

2012-01-01T23:50:00.002-05:00

Time for another New Year's Day doodle to get me revved up for the year ahead: Twenty-dozen..., er, -twelve. This one was done a bit simpler, since I had to do it in Photoshop on my father's computer (which crashed three times in the process of making this), but I feel it encapsulates the emotion (or "artistic vision") that I'm trying to convey. Or something like that.

Last year, I'd said that the blank slate that 2011 held was both "refreshingly inspiring" and "paralyzingly daunting." Well, I obviously got through it alright. Now, for 2012, I've at least got some sort of plan... now I just have to execute it well in order to make this the best year it can possibly be. Talk about potentially daunting! But I'm up for the challenge!

Currently, I'm packing up my stuff to head back to Pittsburgh tomorrow morning for the new semester which begins on Wednesday 4 January. Thankfully, I was able to get this done in between other tasks. But it also means you'll have to wait a bit longer for "real" stuff.

Oh, well. I think you'll be fine.

A High-Velocity Year

2011-12-31T23:56:00.001-05:00

Ah, 31 December: The last day of the year. Time for reflections on the past, New Year's Eve Nachos, and OHMIGOD has it been five MONTHS since I've written on my blog??!?!!?

Well... the best explanation for why it's been so long since I've written here is because, simply, I have way more interesting thoughts than I have time to write any of them here. This may be some form of the proverbial "good problem to have," but really, I'm not sure. I find it nearly impossible to bookmark or backtrack to a thought for long enough to write about it, as my thoughts are constantly moving forward. I think they call this phenomenon "stream-of-consciousness."

Anyway, the thought-time imbalance is caused mostly by the fact that one can think from anywhere, in parallel with performing other tasks, while writing here requires being at a computer and not being busy doing other things. Most of the time, I have one of these, but rarely do I seem to have both.

But enough of this meta-blogging nonsense. I find that too often I set out to write something novel here only to end up writing ever-longer diatribes about why I haven't written anything novel here for ages, and it just spoils everything for everyone. Why should I write about writing, and specifically about not doing it, when I could just be doing it instead? Who could possibly care enough to read what I have to write about (not) writing?

Crap. Now I'm meta-meta-blogging.

Anyways, onto the "meat" of this post, which is primarily on the topic of the year that we've just been through (twenty-eleven, for those keeping score) having reached its inevitable ending.

As you've no doubt guessed by now, the reason I've been so busy this year has been due to the immense amount of change that has been going on in my life... and the high velocity with which it has happened. While at home earlier this year after graduating, I struggled to figure out what my next steps in life should be. Through February and March, I studied for the Fundamentals of Engineering (FE) exam, the first step toward professional licensure for engineers, which I took (and passed!) in April.

Then, in May, a lightbulb went off in my head that, academically, computer science was the missing key. So I signed up to take the GRE in June, began making arrangements in July to take courses, and headed back to Pittsburgh in August. And now I'm a student again!

Obviously, it wasn't quite that simple, and there's a lot more to explain... but as has become as much of a tradition as writing these year-end posts, I'm writing a good deal of this in the last several minutes of the year while also trying to do other things simultaneously. As such, I'll be cutting this short but intend to continue in the near future (ha!). Nevertheless, I'm pleased to report that my first semester of courses in the CS department went exceedingly well, and I have high hopes for the future.

I wasn't lying 364 days ago when I said that I had no idea what 2011 would bring. It certainly didn't fail to bring me, and I can't wait to see what 2012 will bring.

Random tangents:

Oh, and the computer issues from July are issues no longer; as a computer science student, I was more or less forced to get a new computer in September, the arrival of which was very welcome. The only reason I mention it is because the aforementioned issues were featured in the post adorning the frontpage of this blog for the last five months.
As with last year, we're watching Carson Daly on NBC tonight. We're quite the anti-Seacrest family now.

Computer Issues

2011-07-31T23:59:00.000-04:00

Well, I knew this day would come. I was just hoping it wouldn't for a few more months.

A few weeks ago, I was just looking at a few low-cost replacement parts for my laptop, like a new bezel and hinges for the monitor. Now, I'm considering getting a new computer altogether.

About a week ago, some mysterious vertical lines started appearing on my screen near the cursor. Then they started appearing all over the screen. Then the computer started hanging when it came out of hibernate. Then it started crashing more frequently.

After a good round of diagnosing, I'm pretty confident it's my graphics card. So now I'm faced trying to decide whether I want to:

buy a refurbished replacement card for around $150–250 and hope it works,
buy a new replacement card for around $450–600 but only get a few months' use out of it, or
buy a whole new computer right now for... well, a bit more than that.

Each option has its pros and cons and none is terribly desirable. Decisions, decisions!

Couch-to-5k

2011-06-30T23:54:00.004-04:00

Most of you are probably at least remotely aware that I'm not the most athletic person in the world by a long shot. Nevertheless, this past winter I found myself getting a little bit stir-crazy. Wanting to run, walk, get-out-of-the-house — whatever — but not being able to do so, primarily because it was winter.

I kept myself busy (with all sorts of stuff I haven't bothered blogging about, as usual) and made it through the winter. Most days, though, I still felt a general sense of malaise. And then in May I stepped on a scale and finally confirmed my suspicion that I was a little bit heavier than I had remembered. (The technical phrase for the amount is "a couple kilograms" which, of course, translates to "a few pounds"; thankfully nothing more.)

So I looked at my schedule and picked a date to start the Couch-to-5k Running Plan, which had actually been in the back of my mind ever since my friend Jen posted to Facebook well over a year ago. And when that day came... it rained. But I did it the next day!... in the humid afternoon heat at 16:00 on the day of the summer solstice which made it downright miserable. To say nothing of the fact that I was also out-of-shape and attempting a moderately taxing workout.

I mean, I'm still out-of-shape now. Just a little bit less out-of-shape. I've got a lot of work to do, but I figure I'd better do it while I still can.

And you know what? It feels great. I've always known this, really, but the stresses of life have often taken their toll and prevented me from getting out as often as I'd've otherwise liked. But now, there are no excuses. I'm doing this for me.

Of course, that's not always easy with everyone else who's involved in my life. With the exception of that first workout, I've typically been starting about half an hour before sunset, which is around 20:30 EDT here right now. Unfortunately, twice already that has come within about 5 minutes of dinnertime in this household. Faced with the choice between running now and eating later or eating now and not being able to run until nearly midnight, I've picked running. And hungry as I've been during some of those runs (tonight was spaghetti and meat sauce), I haven't regretted it yet.

Hopefully the same will hold true in Week 4, when I'm going to be counseling at Lambec Music Camp and will have to wake up with the sun at 05:45 to get my workouts in before the bustle of the camp day begins. I must persevere!

Now assuming I can keep to the nine-week Ct5k schedule (which may not happen since you're encouraged to repeat weeks if necessary), I'd be at the end of Week 7 for the 5k at Dan Rice Days on 6 August, which would have me running 4 km (2.5 mi) straight, but perhaps I'll register just for the fun of it. Obviously, that'll be a decision I make much closer to the day of the event, but it would be an experience nonetheless.

I've been tracking my progress at MapMyRun.com, an awesome site for all sorts of fitness tracking, which I've actually used since before I became terribly concerned with my fitness. For the record, I'm doing a slightly modified version of the time-based version of Ct5k, with basically the only difference being that I'll be planning the "straight through" routes in Weeks 5–9 by distance in metric, since the actual Ct5k program peters out at 3 mi. (Which — I'm sorry — is only 4.83 km. I know, I'm a stickler. Sue me.)

Here's my planned Ct5k workout calendar, all nicely worked around the oddities of my schedule and everything. We'll see where I am physically on 20 August, but whether I'm running 5 km or not, hopefully I'll be a lot better off!

Start on the Other Hand

2011-05-14T23:54:00.003-04:00

Once again, it's mid-May. Whoa.

You see, six years ago today, I started this blog. That means it can't show you its age on one hand anymore...

It's also still worth mentioning that this blog still exists, I guess. I've got some ideas for what to write more of here, but they're all pretty radically different from the existing content. So we'll see if any of them actually come to fruition. (Hint: Probably not anytime soon, if ever.)

Anyway, tradition dictates that I bake a bloggy cake today, but since today was an awfully busy day, I did it after midnight last night. Which still counts. Totally.

It's perhaps worth noting that today was busy in the same way as the day I started this blog in that it was the day of the National Association of Letter Carriers' Stamp Out Hunger food drive, the second Saturday in May. Each year, I've volunteered to help the local food pantry take in all of the donations from the area, which usually amounts to about 2 tons of assorted food coming through the doors in 7 hours.

It's always fun and rewarding, but also somewhat exhausting. So that explains why my first post was so short and uninspired. And it explains why I'm finding it difficult to come up with more to write here now.

I guess I'll just loosely tie things together by saying that we saw various cake things at the food pantry today. But don't worry, for my dearest bloggy's sixth birthday, I baked this one fresh! Enjoy! And get used to counting on two hands...

An Unwise Commitment

2011-04-15T01:56:00.000-04:00

I wasn't planning on posting anything here for a couple more days, but I couldn't resist passing this particular gem along. There is a slight chance that this may be the birth of a new "series" on this blog — but then again, series have historically died here faster than they've been created. But in any case, this one might be fairly more sustainable than the others I've tried. (Key word: "Might.")

Welcome to Bad Quotesville. Or whatever you want to call it, really. Often, I read the news and come across a quote that sticks out like a sore thumb in the context of the story. In most cases, including this one, it's not so much a "bad quote" as just "less-than-desirable juxtaposition" — but that's not as catchy a phrase.

So without further ado, the following is excerpted from the front-page story of Thursday's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

A napping air traffic controller who forced a medical flight to land unaided in Nevada brought swift reaction from the Federal Aviation Administration, which on Wednesday added a second overnight controller at 26 airports and a radar facility. The move came after several other recent incidents of controllers sleeping during their shifts.
"This is absolutely unacceptable," Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said in a statement. "The American public trusts us to run a safe system. Safety is our No. 1 priority, and I am committed to working 24/7 until these problems are corrected."

Now I'm all for the principle of what Secretary LaHood is saying, but I truly hope that he fails to uphold that commitment. Because actually working 24/7 just can't be good for one's health. I mean, after a while you'd get tired and have to go to bed, lest you accidentally fall asleep while on the job. ...Oh, wait; that's what we're trying to avoid in the first place!

You're certainly not going to fix the air traffic control system on no sleep, Mr. Secretary. No one can actually work completely tirelessly, much as they may try. Since "[t]he National Air Traffic Controllers Association has warned against... assigning tiring work schedules," perhaps you would be wise to adhere to the same standards.

Get some rest, man!

On Fears of Fukushima

2011-03-31T23:59:00.001-04:00

I was thinking about what I wanted to write here today, since I hate missing a month on this blog even though I've done it before and will likely do it again. I've been talking myself in and out of writing about the situation at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan, but I wasn't sure what I was going to say about it. After all, it's been nearly three weeks since the earthquake and tsunami rattled that region of the world, and most of what can be said has been said already — and a lot of it by people more qualified to say it than myself.

Nevertheless, I got a little bit upset watching ABC World News this evening. The first four minutes were all about fears that fractions of trace amounts of radioactive iodine have been found in milk supplies in California and Washington... fears that are entirely overblown.

Even though the associated article is entitled "Radiation Levels in West Coast Milk 5,000 Times Lower Than Danger Threshold", from watching the main story presented in the newscast you'd think levels were 5,000 times higher than the threshold. Go ahead and watch it yourself. Of course, at the end, they bring in their medical expert to assure the public milk is safe, but all the while they're playing up the fact that the nation is abuzz about this dire situation, making very little mention that it isn't dire at all. Especially not here in the United States.

Now I don't claim to know everything about nuclear power, but considering I took several classes on it and even helped teach one, it was frustrating seeing something which I know isn't a big deal being blown out of proportion in the mass media. How many people who saw that report are thinking, right now, "I'd better avoid giving milk to my kids until this blows over"? At what cost to our collective public health? Do the benefits outweigh the risks?

In this particular case... probably not.

Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson managed to put many of these fears in perspective this morning with a sobering tweet entitled "Causes of death worldwide in March 2011." He noted that while 3,000,000 died of starvation, 250,000 of Malaria, and 100,000 in car crashes, less than 28,000 have died in the aftermath of the 11 March earthquake and tsunami. (I would even go so far as to point out that there have been no deaths related to the so-called "nuclear crisis" at Fukushima Daiichi.)

Yes, there is potential for much worse to happen from the reactors at Fukushima Daiichi. But it's important to remember that there is potential for worse in anything. Work is being done around the clock to protect public's health, safety, and well-being. And while there will always be disagreements on how the specifics are handled (we're only human), we must remember that it is because this work is being done — diligently, tirelessly — that a true nuclear crisis is being averted.

We must remember that, even without the fear of radiation, there are already hundreds of thousands of people in Japan whose lives have been directly affected by the 11 March earthquake and tsunami. And while remembering that, we must guard ourselves from the easy fear of the "unknown" by educating ourselves with facts whenever we can.

And in the age of the Internet, there's really no excuse anymore for not having the facts.

If you're on Twitter, consider this a "Follow Friday" (even though it's still Thursday for a little while longer). Countless organizations have been diligently sifting through conflicting reports and cutting through the media hype, but the ones I've found the most useful in the past three weeks are (in no particular order) @ans_org, @W_Nuclear_News, @neiupdates, @iaeaorg, and @NuclearStreet. All have provided timely updates, presenting the data clearly and concisely and providing context, despite the difficulties that arise when trying to put radiation figures into perspective.

If you're not on Twitter, you can get updates from ANS Nuclear Cafe's Fukushima page, World Nuclear News' Fukushima portal, and the Nuclear Energy Institute's Fukushima page.

In short, there's really nothing to be worried about. But you have to prove it to yourself.

P.S.: There's no way in hell I'm attempting BEDA this year. More on that later.

Ten Years Later

2011-02-03T23:58:00.002-05:00

On the morning of 3 February 2001, my great uncle, Michael L Troiano, passed away at the age of 66.

It's difficult to get a grasp on all that has happened in my life and the lives of those around me since Great Uncle Mike, or "GUM" as I came to know him, left us. Obviously, the first week or so was the roughest for me. But there have been countless ups and downs over the last ten years. Somehow, demarcating ten years from this point seems more significant than arbitrarily demarcating a decade according to the calendar.

I'm almost positive the last time I saw GUM was for Christmas 2000; I was 12, going on 13. Gosh, when you put it like that, it's scary. And here I sit in 2011, a 23-year-old. I honestly can't begin to fathom what percentage of the things I think about in day-to-day life — my ambitions and desires, my worries and fears, my hopes and dreams — were even part of my conscious existence when I was 13. Simply put, so much has changed.

GUM, even though you were affectionately known as everyone's "Uncle Mike," you'll always be my "Uncle Mike." Life isn't quite the same without you, but it is in part because of you that things have turned out as great as they are. And while I still remember old memories of you fondly, I can't wait to share my newer ones with you someday.

1/11/11

2011-01-11T23:59:00.003-05:00

Today was 1/11/11. A "numerical somersault" of sorts. I've mentioned before that our dating system is quite arbitrary, but it was still notable.

In fact, at 11:11:11 today, I noted that the date and time (at least in its most common format) wasn't just comprised entirely of ones, but that there were 11 ones. Now, if that isn't cool, I don't know what is.

I hope everyone enjoyed writing the date today and assure you there will be more meaningful stuff on this blog soon.

Twenty-Three

2011-01-05T03:47:00.000-05:00

I just turned twenty-three years old. This may not seem terribly important, but as anyone who knows me well can attest, 23 has been my favorite number for a long while.

First things first, though. As it turns out, I didn't ever write about my twenty-second birthday like I said I would. But, as 2010 was a rough enough year, I'm going to have to apologize and forgive myself for that. As I will have to do for a lot of other things. (Especially this blog. How've you been, ol' bud?)

But anyway, Tuesday started out well enough. I woke up rather earlier than normal, and grabbed a Dr Pepper (full of its "23 flavors"), ready to enjoy the day. David was getting ready to head back to Pitt, packing the final things just before leaving for his orthodontist appointment which awaited him on the way.

This somewhat euphoric anything-can-happen feeling, however, was quite shortlived for a number of reasons I'd rather not get into on account of me having spent the couple hours after my brother's departure stewing, which I'm quite glad to have out of my system at this point.

Once I'd finally calmed down enough to figure out what I wanted to do, I went to the bank and had lunch before stopping by the grocery store. Taking a version of my uncle's advice to make lemonade from the morning's "lemons," I bought some lemonade which I later enjoyed. I watched a little bit of television on Hulu which I had still to catch up on (only two things left in my queue!), and then I resumed coding the latest of my semi-secret pet projects, which is actually coming together much quicker than I thought it would. (In this case, that is a very good thing.)

Around 18:00, my mother called me from work and asked, rather out-of-the-blue, if I wanted to go see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1 with her, a request to which I almost immediately replied, "Yes." So we drove into town, got to the theater just in time for the movie, and ate plenty of popcorn because we hadn't yet been able to have dinner.

The movie was great! It's amazing how vividly some of the scenery came back to me just from having read the books. It really was a well-done film, and I can't wait for Part 2 in July! (And that's all I'm going to say about it, lest I spoil it.)

Afterwards, Mom and I grabbed a late dinner at Chipotle (which finally exists in Erie!), and then headed home. I did a ~~little~~ lot more work on my project so that I would feel more able to do other, more important things on Wednesday. And then it somehow became the wee hours of the morning, so I fought through to write this. After all, I can't miss writing about two consecutive birthdays, can I?

I guess I'll have a late start in the morning. Or maybe early afternoon. But I wanted to get every last bit of enjoyment out of my birthday, and I think, despite the "lemons," I did! And if real life as a 23-year-old has to wait a couple extra hours so that I can fully experience the last throes of whatever-this-is, then so be it.

Last Day of the Holidays

2011-01-03T23:59:00.001-05:00

Tomorrow morning, my brother has an orthodontist appointment (and thank God it's not with Allcare), and then it's time to take him back down to Pittsburgh for his second semester.

And once that happens, things will slow down a bit here. The holidays are coming to a close. For those inevitable few who will be wondering, that means that the job search resumes in earnest on Wednesday 5 January. Wish me luck.

Still, I'm enjoying what's left of this break in the action. Because tomorrow's travel falls on my birthday, my family and I had a nice dinner tonight at Olive Garden. I seriously couldn't get over how wonderful their Steak Gorgonzola-Alfredo was!

We used a $5 coupon from their Facebook page, too... if you haven't been to Olive Garden lately, I suggest you do the same!

To the Pennsylvania PUC

2011-01-03T02:44:00.002-05:00

In December 2010, it was announced that the 814 area code, or NPA, would be split into two, with the Erie area receiving a new designation of 582 effective 1 February 2012. Not surprisingly, many Erieites haven't taken too kindly to this proposal, and an online petition at save814.com has since garnered over 11,000 signatures. As the deadline to file the petition with the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC) is Monday 3 January, I thought I'd add my two cents. Seeing that I actually have some semblance of a cohesive opinion on this matter which is too long for any comment field, my "comments" are below:

Firstly, the public comment process on these proposed changes was a farce. Neither sufficient effort nor adequate foresight was put into determining how and where these meetings would take place. As a result, four of the five hearings were held in the area which is to retain the 814 Numbering Plan Area (NPA) designation. The only hearing in the proposed 582 NPA (in Erie) was delayed due to weather by two months, and it wasn't anywhere nearly as publicized as any of the others.

Are we really supposed to believe that all of this adds up to "fewer people from [the Erie] area protest[ing] a possible change"? Where were the hearings in other Northwestern Pennsylvania cities, like Meadville and Warren? Most of the people signing this petition were never given a legitimate chance to voice their opinions.

Secondly, an NPA split effectively discriminates against those receiving the new designation, to the tune of millions of dollars spent reprinting letterhead, promotional materials, and internal directories. Moreover, every company in the nation which retains customer phone numbers will have to comb through their databases and manually determine which records should be changed and which should not—or, more likely, they'll just shift the onus to the customers themselves: an even more cumbersome proposition. Introducing an overlay designation avoids every one of these pitfalls and eliminates these unnecessary costs, both monetary and human. The only "expense" is introducing ten-digit dialing.

In an already-digital world where ten-digit dialing is already the norm on cell phones and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services (not to mention most of the rest of the country), why should we even think to undergo an NPA split, a system whose only tangible benefit is the retention of now-antiquated seven-digit dialing, instead of an overlay, a system which has been implemented countless times around the country with nary a problem?

It couldn't be clearer that the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC) in no way exercised due diligence in soliciting comments from a broad-based sample of the populace of the existing 814 NPA, and that they completely failed at the simple task of considering all of their options. This entire process has been flawed from the start, and I implore the Pennsylvania PUC to seriously rethink its decision in light of this petition.

2011

2011-01-01T23:58:00.001-05:00

Now that it is officially 2011, it's time for me to present my annual doodley thing for the year. I must admit, it was notably harder this year because of the two "ones."

I noted a year ago that we typically spend 31 December overly romanticizing the coming year, while we spend 1 January getting used to the fact that the first day of the new year is, in fact, exactly like what we'd already been used to. For 2010, it took, at most, a few hours for me to get acclimated to that. Just a flaw of human nature, I guess.

But so far this year, I really haven't had that problem. Honestly, today, the first day of 2011, has felt a lot like a continuation of 2010. There are probably a number of reasons for that:

It's still the holiday break, and my brother is still home.
Today started, unfortunately enough, with some of the same gripes that many a day in 2010 did.
I didn't do much different today from what I did yesterday. Mostly watching football, blogging, and doing year-end website stats.
I'm still closing out my post-graduation list of things I'd put off doing.

Still, it's important to look forward. While I'd always known that 2010 was at least going to bring the end of my undergraduate career, 2011 is effectively a blank slate. There is absolutely nothing on my life calendar which is more-or-less guaranteed to fall in 2011, and there hasn't been. Whereas at the dawn of previous years, there was always something somewhere on the horizon, I simply don't have that this year.

In some ways, that's refreshingly inspiring. In others, it's paralyzingly daunting.

But I'm looking forward to it. Who knows what 2011 will bring? It's exciting, in a way. I have some ideas of how I want to shape this year (in ways both big and small), but who knows where exactly I'll end up?

I've already set my bearings. All that's left to see is how far I go. ;)

Here We Are Again

2010-12-31T23:31:00.003-05:00

Well, here we are again. The end of another year.

As I write this, I'm half-watching NBC's Minute to Win It while mom finishes cooking the second course of our "fancy"-ish New Year's Eve dinner, even though it's nearly two hours since we had the soup. I'll probably have to go eat well before this ever gets posted, but the beauty of blogging is that you'll never know where I left off!

(And yes, if you happened to remember from last year's end-of-year post, the second annual New Year's Eve Nachos are going to be one of the courses. Eventually.)

Twenty-ten has been an interesting year for me. I know you probably couldn't tell that from this blog, but it's true! Most of the stuff I've gone through in 2010 has been rather personal in nature, which is a large reason why I didn't write much of anything here. Still, it comprises a lot of what has shaped 2010 for me, so I'll do my best to summarize things a bit for the benefit of my readers.

If you've been paying particular attention, you may have noticed that I recently changed my mini-bios on many of my social networking sites (including, naturally, the "About Me" section on this one). That's because I have officially graduated from the University of Pittsburgh on 18 December 2010 with a Bachelor of Science in Chemical and Petroleum Engineering, an undergraduate certificate in Nuclear Engineering, and a minor in Music.

But wasn't I supposed to graduate in May? Didn't I actually participate in Commencement back on 1 May? The short answer to both of these is yes.

The slightly-longer-but-not-too-in-depth answer is that I had had some personal issues in the fall of 2009 which had affected my schoolwork and caused me to earn some incomplete grades. After a full 19-credit slate of senior-level courses in the spring of 2010, I then could refocus myself on finishing those last requirements for graduation. Unfortunately, other external pressures prolonged this effort past August and reset the goal to December. And I hate being so vague, but it really is better in this case. Sorry.

I moved back in with my parents at the end of July, which I'd written briefly about at the time, and which has thusfar remained neither largely good nor largely bad. It just is.

Although I worked toward my graduation steadily throughout the year, I spent the last part of November and the first half of December frantically picking up the pace and finishing everything that was left, at the expense of putting off other routine tasks (among which, obviously, was writing for this blog). And so, on 20 December, once all of the graduation stuff was finalized, I found myself with nothing more than a long list of things to do (literally, I made a list, even including individual episodes of television shows I'd intentionally missed). And I've been slowly whittling away at that list ever since, so that I can begin 2011 at least mostly unencumbered by 2010.

Anyway, here we are again. In the waning minutes of 2010. I'll forgive myself for having written last year that I was excited for a new decade to begin in 2010 when, as ABC Australia wisely noted, this is technically when the decade rolls over. I guess I was just dealing with the "modern" understanding of a decade. Writing the "1" seems to have meant more. But surely writing two of them will be even more significant?

So, I'll put up with the unfortunate double-keystroke in "2011" which I'd mentioned last year. And I'll actually post some of the photographs I took in 2010. For as much as I'd looked forward to 2010, I'm looking forward to 2011 more.

Random tangent: Carson Daly is saying "Twenty-Ten" and "Twenty-Eleven," whereas Ryan Seacrest is only further promulgating the ignorance in the old "Two Thousand and..." way. No disrespect to Dick Clark, but I think that after tonight, I'll be switching my New Year's Eve loyalty to NBC until further notice.

I'm Alive

2010-11-30T21:09:00.001-05:00

It's true. I am indeed alive. But you certainly wouldn't know it from this blog alone.

I'm truly sorry for that.

There are a number of reasons I haven't been writing here as frequently, but to itemize them here would be moot. Those who know me personally have an idea of what's been going on in my life recently (although you probably don't even know the half of it). It's been a bit of a stressful time, to say the least.

Nevertheless, it is indeed the last day of the month, and as I prepare to say goodbye to November while still feeling as though I'd just welcomed it in, I feel I owe you guys ten minutes of my time to write something just saying that I'm still here. At least in some manner of speaking.

Last week, I did churn out something markedly longer than this post with the intent of putting it here. It's not particularly timely, but it just happened to be something that was on my mind and, as is usually the case, the simple act of writing about it proved quite therapeutic. After thinking about it for a while, though, I decided that it's going to need a lot of careful revision before it can ever be allowed to see the light of day. And that's something I don't particularly have time for right now.

You can see my dilemma, hence this post.

On the plus side, this all promises to be temporary. I will properly emerge from this cave of bloggy nothingness in a few weeks. And I have to say... I can't wait for that day to arrive.

The Eyeball

2010-10-31T23:37:00.001-04:00

I know I've been ignoring this blog (what else is new?), but today I do have a quick little Hallowe'en anecdote to share with you.

My mother was handing out our candy to the Trick-or-Treaters this evening, and to get into the spirit of the holiday she put a fake eyeball (a decorated ping-pong ball) into the bowl with the candy for fun.

Well, even though we only got a couple dozen visitors this year, nearly every single kid (especially the young ones) saw the eyeball and wanted it. Mom was getting a bit frustrated by having to keep telling these kids that it was just there for decoration and that they couldn't have it. At one point, she even mentioned that she should just decorate a bunch of ping-pong balls as eyeballs and pass those out instead of candy next year.

Then she mentioned that that might actually disappoint the children. And that it might be a choking hazard.

She's probably right on both accounts.

Dream 6

2010-08-20T03:25:00.002-04:00

Oh, goodness. I mean, I have all sorts of dreams all the time, but fortunately (or unfortunately) they've been more tame the last few years. Granted, most nights, they're pretty cool. On occasion, they're awesome. But then, every once in a while, I get the most bizarre things, sometimes disturbing things. And although it didn't start out that way, this dream certainly became one of those.

Dream 6: A Sharp Staff Picture, night of 18-19 August 2010

I am approaching the bottom of a grand staircase in slow motion. There's no one around yet, but there's a voice from my past encouraging me, "If you want to affect the way the world sees these things, go do it. You can be that kid who makes the difference." It is clear that this voice is a father figure, though he's a mixture of two roughly equal parts... one of my actual father and one of every other male I've ever looked up to.

Whatever exactly my "father" was alluding to, I'm here now. A new beginning. There's a great hallway behind the staircase and many rooms on either side. An ornate wooden door with shiny, brass handles is at the bottom of the staircase, sort of behind me, but not quite.

I ascend slowly to the top of the staircase and retrieve a large, ovoid mirror, about 2 metres high, 3 metres wide, and at least 30 centimetres thick. The mirror's edges are rather jagged and its back is weathered rock. It's as though someone took a roundish boulder, somehow made a clean, flat cut through it, and stuck the glass on the flat part. How I can lift this monstrosity, never mind why I'm doing so, is beyond me.

As I move the mirror into its position about a third of the way down the staircase, people start filing in. Another young man in a suit and tie, about my age and stature, but a few inches taller, is nearby. He calls out to one of the faceless others, "Hurry up; you'll miss the staff picture!"

I assume my place in front of the giant inexplicable mirror. The others fill in the remainder of the staircase. I am halfway to my right of center, with only the young man in the suit between me and the plated railing on my right.

Then the President comes in. Roughly equal parts George W. Bush and Barack Obama in both appearance and personality, but that's unimportant. He smiles, makes some small talk with the others, then comes to me, shakes my hand, and situates himself at my immediate left, directly in front of the giant mirror.

The photographer at the bottom of the staircase sets up his shot, and it's only as he's ready to take the picture that I notice I'm a bit squished between the President and the young man in the suit. And then I realize my face is being squeezed from both sides. Not squeezed out of the picture, no. Just squeezed. As though the President and the young man in the suit were playing some sort of practical joke on my visage. Except they weren't.

Somehow that all ends and everyone files back to their offices to resume their normal duties. Someone else takes the mirror back to wherever it was before. As I make my way back down the staircase, it shifts from mid-afternoon to some time in the middle of the night. Everyone else is sleeping but me.

A faint streetlight outside the front door is the only light entering the spacious anteroom. I lock the door, but just as I turn away from it, there's a knock. I look through the marbled glass into the darkness and can just barely make out the silhouette of a familiar face. I let him in and relock the door behind him.

"Good evening, Mister Prime Minister. How are you tonight?"

"Oh, hello. I'm just fine." Then a pause and a smile. "Did I miss the staff picture?" We start chatting amicably and jovially about policy or whatnot.

This jolly, old chap is, at least in appearance, roughly equal parts Benjamin Franklin, Nick Clegg, and Robert Gibbs in a top hat. There's not really a well-developed personality to speak of, except I already knew from prior experience that I like the guy and that we got along quite well.

Before I know it, we've spoken for several minutes and the Prime Minister decides he'd better depart. I turn to face the staircase and he disappears into a large room to its right.

But instead of ascending the staircase to where I belong, I sit down for a while. The door immediately behind me and the staircase directly in front of me, I just think. My legs are crossed, "Indian style" like they teach you in kindergarten.

I soon discover that, somehow, I am floating some distance above the floor. As if I were sitting in a chair with my legs crossed, but the chair is not beneath me. A small puppy briefly passes underneath me.

"Hello, there, Beverly."

Beverly just scurries off silently into the pitch blackness, into the distant reaches of the building.

Facing the staircase, I'm presented with a list. Boldface Roman type, numbered from the bottom upwards, alternating white and pinkish-tan rows. Two columns: a song, and a key in which to sing it. Almost like a track list of sorts.

Suddenly, I start vocalizing. But these were not songs. More like wails. Think Moaning Myrtle, but twice as loud and thrice as demonically creepy. Each "song" is only a few seconds and a few words long, and while it may start on a "note" of sorts, the very nature of wailing greatly distorts the eventual final pitch.

Basically, I'm screaming beyond the top of my lungs.

The process soon becomes entirely involuntary. My voice becomes raspy and the "lyrics" become increasingly random. One "song" is a simple plea for Beverly's return. Another states that it's not dinnertime.

And, every four or five, there would, quizzically be a "song" called "A-Sharp" to be sung in the key of A-sharp. It was always prefaced by a brief pause, but once it started it was far louder than the rest, and the only words were "A-sharp." Often, but not always, this was followed by a slightly softer, but still obnoxious song listed as "B-Double-Sharp," again with titular lyrics, but to be sung in G-sharp, even though it only sounded a single semitone lower when it came out.

Though I was still floating, this semi-paralytic process continued for some time. I physically couldn't do anything else. I probably came back to "A-Sharp" three or four times before I felt a pair of hands abruptly squeezing my neck.

I was only able to glance up for an instant. The darkness obscured the Prime Minister's face as he swiftly grabbed a blunt object and hit me twice in the head. I fell to the ground.

* * *

I awoke from this dream at 04:48 EDT and could not move for several seconds thereafter. The chorus of wails was still resounding in my head, "A-Sharp" being by far the most prominent. Once I came to, since I am a geek, my curiosity was naturally piqued. After having checked the time, I reached for a nearby pitch reference. Eerily enough, the original A-sharp itself was perfectly in tune.

Summer Stasis

2010-07-31T23:59:00.001-04:00

This summer has been flying by so quickly, it's not even funny. Every once in a while, I've gotten the itch to write something here, but my attention has too often been diverted elsewhere. (Which, to be honest, has often been a good thing.)

The main highlight, activity-wise, was another week of counseling at Music Camp this year. Before I knew it, earlier this week, I was packing up my belongings at my apartment in Pittsburgh and heading back home to Girard.

At home, right now, things are a bit off, to say the least. Mom's been overworked lately, and Dad's been overstressed as a result. David, preparing for college, is caught in the middle. And I'm trying to get acclimated to our normal family structure as I'm used to doing, except such structure doesn't really exist right now.

It would be unfair to say things are bad, since there are so many families which deal with much worse for much longer periods of time... but it's definitely "a bit off," which is at least somewhat unsettling.

So for now, I'm in a bit of a stasis. Yes, there are things going on in my life, but right now, I'm marking time until things are a bit more settled in the lives of those around me. Nothing right now is so urgent it's bursting at the seams. Which is actually quite refreshing when I think about it.

I've been doing some introspection during this quiet time. The sort of thoughts that help you figure out exactly where you are, what you are, who you are... so that you can have any hope of knowing where you're going, what you're doing, who you're becoming. And while I may not have the most ostensible pieces quite nailed down, spending time alone with my thoughts has definitely paid some rich dividends.

I'm working on the rest. As my friend and I have said to each other, "one of these days, we'll figure it all out."

Quinquennial

2010-05-14T22:05:00.002-04:00

Has it really been five whole years since I started this humble blog?

The short answer is yes. Yes, it has.

A lot has happened in the last quinquennium... more than I can ever hope to have written about. And so, as I've done so faithfully in the past, I whipped up another Bloggy cake in celebration of this achievement.

That said, it wasn't that easy. It's getting harder and harder to find good clip art birthday cakes. Yes, I do have certain standards when it comes to selecting clip art cakes, the biggest being that it has to be workable with the black background of this blog (which, much like the title, I've been meaning to change for a long while, but I haven't yet found the motivation to come up with anything better).

And it has to be somewhat professional-looking. I mean, clip art is vectorized by definition. For some reason, people think that the things they draw with the "pencil" tool in Microsoft Paint qualify as "clip art." (Hint: They don't.) As far as I'm concerned, they're just drawings. And while some of them are very nice, many aren't... and in any case, they're not what I'm looking for.

Still, is it so much to ask that new and halfway decent clip art images of birthday cakes be uploaded to the web and make their way to the first 20 or so pages of Google's results at a minimum rate of one per year?

The short answer is yes. Apparently, it is.

Maybe in future, I'll actually use 14 May as an excuse to bake a real cake. But for now, this digital cake is my sincere thank you to the 1160 visitors this blog received during its fifth year. Yes, that's down 53%, but it's completely understandable as I've written 66% fewer posts with 71% fewer words [1]. In my defense, for much of the past twelve months, I've been a senior at university who has neither been traveling abroad nor attempting to blog every day (and even being way too busy to write every other day, let alone more than once in April).

But "I'm not dead yet... I'm getting better...," er, something like that.

Anyway, in addition to the admittedly contrived and self-centered celebration of five years of admittedly poor blogging, tonight I'll be celebrating my friend's 22nd birthday (which was yesterday), and on Sunday my home church will be celebrating its 175th anniversary... both are significant achievements, if you ask me.

Here's hoping I'll see you again soon... whether in person or in the blogosphere!

* * *
[1] I should note that these figures were somewhat hastily calculated/estimated (and obviously do not include this post). As such, they might be a tad off. But they're certainly close enough and I don't particularly care to go back and figure it out exactly.

BE(E)DA

2010-04-03T01:37:00.001-04:00

So, I've decided on a compromise. I totally don't have time to actually do BEDA this year. After taking a look at my schedule of exams, presentations, and performances for the next few weeks, I've noticed that many of my roughest days are going to be the odd-numbered ones. So I've decided to be clever and try to blog every even-numbered day. Hence, this year, I'm attempting BE(E)DA... Blog Every (Even) Day in April. (It'll even be pronounced the same.)

"But, Tim," you say, "what's this about posting on even days when you're posting on an odd day?" Like last year, I'm going to consider it to be the same day right up until I go to bed. After all, half of the time I'm not even home by midnight. Ah, the life of a college student!

Of course, April being what it always is, there is the inevitable case that something more important ~~may~~ will come up, so much like last year, I reserve all rights to amend my BE(E)DA goals, skip days, or just call it quits at any time. I think I did pretty well in 2009, considering that I got 14 days through daily blogging before, as I put it then, I had "bigger fish to fry."

Speaking of which (and I swear, I did not plan this transition), I really was looking forward to going to a fish fry tonight. Being in college, I've been in Pittsburgh for pretty much the entirety of Lent every year for the last four years. (Although I have spent a few Fridays therein traveling to basketball tournaments.)

Anyway, it's not that Pittsburgh doesn't have fish fries (they do). It's just that for the longest time, I've not known where they were. Or at least, didn't care so much to look... until earlier this year, I realized it had literally been four years since I'd been to one. So then I got this thing called a craving.

Of course, Lent came, and I forgot all about it until the last possible week (this week). So I looked up a list of local fish fries and was dismayed to find that most of the ones anywhere near me wouldn't be serving on Good Friday. But I found one in the South Hills, scoped it out, and invited Dylan to come along.

Unfortunately, life got in the way. Two reports due by midday, rent due in the afternoon, and not much sleep had drained my energy. And apparently, at the time he'd considered coming along, Dylan wasn't remembering that his parents would be in town.

Not being able to find another friend to go with me, I lacked the motivation to make such a long trip just for dinner. So I stayed home, got some stuff done, and made "Charlie shells" for dinner (don't ask). Oh, well. Better luck next year. Or maybe I'll just get fish at a restaurant some day soon.

Anyway, happy Easter to all! We'll see where the rest of April shall take us soon enough.

March-ing On...

2010-03-31T23:59:00.003-04:00

I hate missing a month on this blog. To be fair, I'm not terribly fond of missing a week, but life happens, and you've got to go with what you've got.

Speaking of life, it's been incredibly busy lately and is showing few signs of slowing down. I mean, I'm a little over a month from donning the cap-and-gown (and yes, if you're from Girard, "cap-and-gown" is one word). And that's scary. But there's all sorts of things to wade through on the way.

April is going to be really busy. As such, I'm sitting on the fence about attempting BEDA again this year. Either the posts are going to be really short (like this one), or they're simply not going to happen every day. Perhaps shooting for every other day would be more reasonable? But alas, "BEODA" just doesn't have the same ring to it. We'll see.

In any case, I'll be March-ing on through April to see what the future May hold for me... hopefully it'll be great!

My Crazy Friday

2010-02-13T01:45:00.005-05:00

So, today was a pretty crazy day. Here's a (not-so-)brief synopsis:

01:31 - Finish drafting and mapping Singing Valentines delivery schedule
02:42 - Finish final (printed) version of Valentines delivery schedule
03:06 - Bed
07:05 - Alarm
07:15 - Check for last-minute messages
07:42 - Morning correspondence
08:03 - Shower and morning hygiene
08:41 - Send schedules remotely to campus printer
08:44 - Briefly look over Music Theory homework in preparation for quiz
08:54 - Gather belongings with intent of being on campus early to study and eat
09:00 - Leave apartment
09:02 - Arrive at bus stop
09:09 - First bus passes me and two others (too full)
09:23 - Second bus passes me and five others (completely empty, but was a training bus)
09:27 - Third bus passes me and seven others (not headed to Oakland)
09:29 - Fourth bus passes me and eight others (too full)...
09:30 - Bus right behind it (thankfully) has room for all of us, but no more
09:39 - Arrive on campus
09:42 - Frantically cram in some last-minute quiz studying in what little time is left
09:59 - Sit for quiz
10:02 - Quiz begins
10:24 - My phone rings... probably urgent, but can't answer
10:40 - I finish the quiz
10:41 - See call was from John Goldsmith, Heinz Chapel Choir director
10:42 - Go knock on his door since it's right down the hall; no answer
10:44 - Listen to voicemail; he emailed some additional last-minute orders that were in his mailbox; also, he's going home (pretty early, I might add)
10:49 - Head to computer lab to pick up schedule printouts
10:51 - See that only one of the three copies actually printed, despite the fact that I was debited the sheets for all three from my print quota
10:53 - Use my laptop to print the other two copies
10:58 - Second of the other two copies actually prints and makes it to the "output" table
10:59 - Frantically and apologetically call Patrick, making sure everyone's already there and ready to begin
11:02 - Arrive at William Pitt Union
11:16 - Sing two telephone Valentines
11:35 - Head to a few local businesses for "Random Acts" of Valentines
11:51 - Leave group for class
11:57 - Send a series of advisory text messages to the second-in-commands
12:02 - First class (ChE 0602) begins
12:18 - Mind wanders briefly to "when the heck am I going to eat?"
12:40 - Class seems like it's about to end; it doesn't
12:49 - Class ends
12:50 - Ask friend if she might be able to deliver a lunch to me later in the day if I pay her back; she's not able
12:51 - Take long elevator ride down to Einstein Bros. Bagels to see how the line is and if they have salads
12:54 - Line is long, no salads; take same long elevator ride right back up
13:01 - Second class (ChE 0613) begins
13:33 - Class comes to its ten-minute break early; professor says we'll be done early; I rejoice
13:45 - Class resumes
14:23 - Class ends
14:27 - Arrive at Quiznos Subs; order sub
14:30 - Receive and eat sub
14:40 - Depart Quiznos Subs
14:45 - Arrive at William Pitt Union, discuss the past three hours' of Valentines with second-in-command
15:00 - Take over Singing Valentines again
15:22 - Deliver seven Valentines across campus in 40 minutes... one undelivered due to bad campus address
16:08 - Head to new address given at old address; recipient's office is actually elsewhere
16:31 - A few more phone Valentines
16:56 - Finally deliver previously undelivered Valentine
17:23 - A slew of phone Valentines... basically sing the same 90-second song repeatedly for a couple hours; people come and go, but I stay
19:36 - A number of complimentary phone Valentines undeliverable because the numbers were disconnected (very curious)
19:59 - Deliver final Valentine; dismiss and thank singers profusely
20:05 - Arrive at Benedum Hall
20:09 - Arrive at my locker, retrieve trumpet and pep band clothes
20:14 - Walk up hill
20:20 - Arrive at Petersen Events Center
20:23 - Change clothes, gather belongings
20:29 - Enter arena just in time to play
20:51 - Phone battery dies
21:02 - Tip-off, Pitt v. West Virginia
21:21 - Eat some chips I had from lunch while watching the game to try to stave my hunger
21:34 - Start to get a bit thirsty from chips and repeated use of voice
21:51 - Halftime
22:07 - Plan to eat a late dinner at Arby's after the game since they close at 24:00
22:57 - People start leaving, Pitt down 66-59 with one minute left
23:04 - Regulation ends tied 68-68
23:17 - Portions of voice may have been lost
23:26 - First overtime ends tied 78-78; forgo the option of dinner
23:44 - Second overtime ends tied 88-88
23:55 - Portions of sanity may have been lost
24:02 - Game ends, Pitt wins 98-95 in 3OT
24:11 - Spend about two full minutes at the drinking fountain quenching aforementioned thirst
24:14 - Leave Petersen Events Center
24:23 - Arrive at Benedum Hall
24:25 - Change clothes; return trumpet and pep band clothes to locker
24:31 - Walk to bus stop
24:42 - Board bus to Shadyside
24:53 - Arrive in Shadyside
24:55 - Arrive home
25:00 - Bathroom; settle down; ears start ringing
25:14 - Start writing this post
25:45 - Click "Publish Post"
25:47 - Bed

That said, today was really fun. But I'm also glad that my days aren't like this every day.

And with that, good night. I've got reports to write in the morning.

Snowcation

2010-02-11T10:07:00.001-05:00

Before I start, I should note that the friends I mentioned a few weeks back, as well as their newborn child, are doing very well. However, there will inevitably be some challenges over the coming weeks and months, so please keep them your thoughts. If you want to stay updated on their progress, you can head over to their CarePages blog here (free registration required).

* * *

Yes, I'm stealing a post title from a friend. No, I am not ashamed. ;)

Anyway, as you have probably surmised from said stolen title (which is really the best possible title for something like this), the main reason I'm writing this post is because the University of Pittsburgh canceled classes on Monday 8, Tuesday 9, and Wednesday 10 February. The reason? All the snow, of course!

That's my friend Marie at right, standing in the freshly fallen snow that came down on Friday 5 and Saturday 6 February in front of a car parked in front of our apartment. I was standing in the middle of the street to take the photo, which was largely fine, as nobody was really driving at the time (and if they were, they were painfully slow, giving ample time to get out of the way).

The official total for the weekend storm at Pittsburgh International Airport was 21.1 in (53.6 cm), and from how things looked, that sounds about right. Obviously, if I had a yardstick, I'd have checked myself. But short of taping my rulers together, I have no way of measuring anything higher than a foot on my own. And that would be a terrible waste of tape, not to mention the inaccuracies involved. So I have to trust the authorities on the matter.

Then on Tuesday and Wednesday we got another 7.9 in (20.1 cm) from a separate storm as the city scrambled to keep up, and we're still getting a few flakes even now. Fortunately, they've been better at keeping up lately (although still far from perfect, according to many complaints).

Anyway, I've actually got classes today. That is, of course, unless the people planning to push snow into the roads to prevent that do something drastic in the next few minutes. But somehow, that seems unlikely.

Sunday was awesome... I had lunch with my friends, then we did some work, then we walked to campus, went to a massive snowball fight, did a bit more homework, had a late dinner, found out classes were canceled, drew a massive Bunny in the snow, and then just hung out. We didn't even watch the Super Bowl at all. (Although I'm personally glad the Saints won.)

Monday and Tuesday, as each day was canceled, I found all sorts of things to do to occupy my time. Some were fairly important and others were rather frivolous, but the point is that I kept switching from one to the other thing and no real progress was made on anything. But Wednesday, I decided to just pick something I would enjoy and see it through to a reasonable end.

It should be noted here that most of the projects I enjoy don't really have an "end", so this just meant staying "focused" to some degree or another regardless of what "other things" I could be doing. Basically, I was ignoring all "opportunity costs", to get back in the mode of the macroeconomics lecture I'll be attending in a couple hours' time.

Anyway, as fun as it was not knowing what was coming next and having copious amounts of time to do anything, there is something to be said for routine. I'm glad that we're done stagnating for now and I'm excited to move forward. Even if that means the next 36 hours are a crazed kind of busy as a result!

Friends in Prayer

2010-01-18T00:20:00.015-05:00

I’m going to take a little time out from the normal banter of this blog today. Yes, as usual, I have some thoughts on my recent birthday. And for a while now I've also been meaning to film some stuff for an upcoming post here. You read that right. Film. Don't get too excited; it'll be a while yet.

Alas, life goes by much faster than I have time for here. A lot has happened to me in the last couple of weeks, more than I will ever be able to write here. But every once in a while something happens that simply can't be let go, something that just needs to “get out there.” Now. And so, today, I’m writing about just such a something.

On Friday 15 January, two of my friends [1] welcomed their second son into the world, a truly joyous occasion. Unfortunately, there were some complications.

A CT scan revealed a subdural hematoma, and on Saturday evening, this not-even-one-day-old child underwent emergency brain surgery to treat it. Though the operation was a success, he remains in neonatal intensive care where he is being carefully observed to ensure that there is no more bleeding or swelling.

His parents are strong believers in God and are clinging to every bit of good news and every prior success story from the doctors. So far, things are looking good; however, the next several days will be critical.

Please, dear readers, keep this precious child, his parents, and his entire family in your thoughts and prayers during this trying time. With God’s help, he can be another success story for a new generation.

I’ll resume my regularly scheduled programming soon enough. And in due time, Lord-willing, I hope to report good news on this front.

* * *
[1] To avoid the confusion I caused some people when I had mentioned this to them earlier, it should probably be noted that these particular friends are not as near to my own age as the word “friends” might connote. The parents are both in their 30s.

2010

2010-01-01T23:52:00.000-05:00

Well, it'll still take a bit more time before I'm fully comfortable with it being 2010. I'll give it about a week. Once I start writing it down at the beginning of every class, it'll sink in quickly, I'm sure.

I feel that my annual doodle is somewhat reflective of my mood and optimism for the year. Of course, a lot of the glamour of the new decade has faded since midnight. We romanticize the coming of the new year to end, and a somewhat mystified once it finally arrives, but after about a day or so we quickly realize that everything's pretty much the same.

And the next year, we do it all over again.

Still, even if 2010 doesn't lend us a complete escape from the negative aspects of our lives, it still provides a clean slate of sorts. And it's kind of refreshing.

I rang in 2010 in a much more normal fashion compared to last year, which for me meant sitting at home in the living room and counting down with the family. At midnight. Not at 03:00.

Earlier this evening, I made New Year's Day Cheese Sticks, and while I was perfectly satisfied not making it a new "tradition" like the Chips-'n'-Salsa and Nachos, my brother insisted otherwise. Let's just hope he remembers all these things next year.

And right now, I'm watching Florida beat Cincinnati in the Sugar Bowl, which is making me very happy, for a number of reasons. (None of which involve any animosity toward any of my friends who happen to live in the Cincinnati area. I love you guys.)

Anyway, I'm going to declare a moral victory over my 2009 blogging resolution. Although I did post more than in 2007 or 2008 due to attempting BEDA and my trip to China, I completely failed at even providing a basic update on my life for nearly three months toward the end. I'd like to move past that so that I can get beyond mundanes and actually write something meaningful from time to time.

So for 2010, I resolve that I'll make progress. Progress in writing more often, both for this blog and for myself. Progress in school. Progress in whatever comes after school. It's a lot of unknowns, but part of me thinks that that's what makes me so hopeful.

Best wishes to all for a happy and blessed Twenty-Ten, in whatever forms it may come!

Hopes for a New Decade

2009-12-31T23:39:00.001-05:00

Alas, it is time for another year-end post. But it's not just the end of a year, it's also the end of a decade. Yikes!

There is now less than half an hour left in the 2000s. I'm writing this on my laptop in the family living room with my mother falling asleep in the chair next to me and my brother upstairs microwaving the New Year's Eve Nachos. Dad's upstairs and will come down later.

New Year's Eve Nachos are a relatively new tradition in the Parenti household, actually, in that they've only existed since 24 December. You see, on 20 December, Mom came back from the store with chips and salsa (among other things, of course). By 22 December, David was insisting that we eat said chips and salsa. I suggested we wait until a special occasion — Christmas Eve, in particular. Christmas Eve Chips-'n'-Salsa would become a new tradition. Okay, fine.

Christmas Eve came and we were eating dinner and Mom asked if we were "still doing the New Year's Eve Nachos," completely getting both the holiday and the food item wrong (although to be fair, she was kind of close). We corrected her, but then decided that New Year's Eve Nachos would also be a good tradition to start.

So we did.

Anyway, I still can't quite grasp the fact that we're on the cusp of 2010. It's just always seemed so far away, and yet... here it is! Heck, it's already here in so many parts of the world.

Earlier today, I was doing some year-end data management and typing 2010 repeatedly into some spreadsheets. I mentioned to my brother how much I like typing 2010 as compared to recent years like 2009, 2005, or even 1996.

You see, for as long as I've been able to type, every year has had a repeated digit in it (and in the cases of 1999 and 2000, a triply repeated digit). In order to type a doubled digit, one has to release the appropriate key before depressing it again. It slows you down. However, for 2010, I don't have to fully let go of the zero before I hit the one. It's wonderful! (Or at least, it will be until 2011 puts a kink in the works for a year.)

But not only will the new year bring the end of the "double-ohs," it will also bring new beginnings for my life.

As 2005 turned into 2006, I wrote that I was excited for new "firsts" entering my life in the coming year. That sentiment is certainly repeated again now, four years later, as I prepare to finish my college career in just a few short months. I still have no idea what I'll be doing come May, but I'm excited to live 2010 to the fullest.

That will certainly mean some big changes for me in the coming year, some personal and some not. I may not know what 2010 or the ensuing decade will bring, but I'm ever hopeful that things will turn out for the best.

Busy, Bussy, and Fussy

2009-11-30T23:53:00.007-05:00

Okay, so it should be abundantly clear from the fact that I basically haven't blogged at all for the entire semester that I've been pretty busy. I've had a lot of things on my mind. Lately, it's been the three group reports, a presentation, and a concert that are all in the next 72 hours amongst a hectic race-to-the-finish week of band practices and other meetings.

So needless to say, when I got on the bus to head back to Shadyside just a few moments ago, these things stayed with me. I'd been fussing about, and had a lot of thoughts running through my head. And when I finally looked up, the sign at the front of the bus flipped from my stop to the one after. Rats. My three-month-long perfect streak was ruined. But it's okay; I got about 160 meters more exercise than normal, and I got 160 extra meters' worth of fresh air.

I needed that.

Term 2101 Schedule

2009-08-31T23:59:00.003-04:00

8 November 2009: It's been way too long since I've written here. Nothing I say or do can make up for that, but I'm going to make some sort of effort anyway.

* * *

Here is my class schedule for the Fall 2009 term (Term 2101):

Class Title and Credit Value
ChE 0500	Systems Engineering 1: Dynamics and Modeling	5 cr.
ChE 0501	Systems Engineering 1 Lab	1 cr.
ChE 1085	Departmental Seminar	0 cr.
ENGLIT 0325	Short Story in Context	3 cr.
ENGR 1700	Intro to Nuclear Engineering	3 cr.
ENGR 1702	Nuclear Plant Technology	3 cr.
MUSIC 0222	History of Western Music to 1750	3 cr.
		18 cr.

It's kind of weird not having any classes in the mornings, and yes, Wednesdays will suck, just as I had predicted. Classes start 31 August and end 11 December; finals are 14-19 December.

The Things I've Been Doing

2009-07-31T23:08:00.003-04:00

Yes, the laid-back blogging part of me wanted to name this post something like "What I've Been Up To," but then the anal-retentive part of me kicked and screamed about the preposition at the end. While I usually don't care about such grammatical things in most contexts (and often err intentionally for stylistic purposes), committing such an error in the title seemed a bit too egregious for my taste. So eventually, I came up with the one I've got, and I'm sticking to it!

Anyway, I've gotten a lot of questions about what I've been doing this summer, apart from the "obvious if you've read this blog at all in the last three months" trip to China. Well, let me be the first to say that what I'm doing this summer is actually pretty complicated to explain. And that's why I thought it would be perfect to write about here.

Sometime while I was in China, during one of my Skype conversations with my parents, after they had asked all they wanted about how I was doing, I asked how they were doing back home. I recall my father mentioning something about church music. Specifically, the fact that ours basically had none. I didn't know quite what he meant by that until I came back.

I guess a number of circumstances caused our organist to leave, the greatest of which were that her husband's job was moving them away and that she was expecting a child. At one point, she became too pregnant to fit behind the organ console and began to only play the piano. But eventually, she had to leave.

For whatever reason, our church was unable to find a replacement in time, leaving quite the void. Hymns were sung to accompaniment CDs, which often wouldn't have the same number of verses as our hymnals, or wouldn't adhere to some of the stylistic musical traditions our congregation is accustomed to. The doxology was sung a cappella, with similarly mixed results.

When I came back from China, I endured one such service before my father suggested that we get the organ working again. You see, when the organ was refurbished with an all-digital system a number of years ago, a MIDI-based input control was installed. In theory, it would allow any song to be recorded in MIDI format to a floppy disk (yeah, remember those?) which could then be played back at will.

So we looked at the manual, developed an understanding for how this system was intended to work, and then we went to the church one day with some hymn files and tried it out. It worked flawlessly the first time. Yeah... that was easy.

Far easier, at least, then actually learning and rehearsing two or three hymns a week. I've learned hymns before and have performed them in church, but it took me a month to learn a week's hymns. That would not be feasible, while this new option would be.

Within a few weeks, the session decided to hire me for the summer at a substitute organist pay level to create MIDI files for all of the hymns in advance of each week's service. And so you can see why I don't like explaining it to people:

"Well, I'm kind of a church organist, but not really."

Anyway, in addition to that, I've been volunteering about ten hours a week at Saint Vincent Health Center in the Quality Department. Basically, in order to analyze the data that needs to be analyzed in order to work on improving quality of service, someone has to enter the data. Or at least take a large chunk of computer-generated data and manually weed out outliers and points that don't quite match what we're looking for on a particular project.

Occasionally, there is also the opportunity to create a spreadsheet that will actually do something with that data, or in one case actually doing some analysis... but the bottom line is that the volunteer often gets the menial work. And I'm completely fine with that, as my supervisors are always quick to keep me "in the loop" and tell me why I'm doing what it is I'm doing on any given day. And that is wonderful.

Of course, there's also my annual time at Camp Lambec as a counselor for Music Camp, as well as preparing newsletters and everything else involved in that. And lately, the big project has been preparations for moving into my new apartment in Shadyside for the coming school year.

So I really have been quite busy. I'll get back to work now.

Quite the Storm

2009-06-30T23:45:00.000-04:00

I've got half of a post written about what I've been doing to keep busy this summer, but I'm just too tired from everything that was going on today to finish it before midnight. So I'll finish it tomorrow.

But I can still post something short while it's still June, since I've actually got something else to talk about. ;)

How about that rain? It was certainly quite the storm! The lightning woke me up at 05:30 this morning, and we had a bit of trouble traveling the roads in the afternoon (but with a little extra care, we got everywhere safely). The little "creek" in our backyard flooded all the way up to our garden and completely covered it. Apparently, that's the first time that's happened since we've been in this house... over 17 years.

I heard that the football field at McDowell High School, where my family just watched a DCI competition last night, was almost completely flooded today as well.

All in all, we got 4.6 inches (117 mm) of rain today at our house in Girard. I guess after the widespread flooding in Pittsburgh on 17 June, today was Erie's turn.

Any area readers with other impressive (or not-so-impressive) rain totals for Tuesday?

Reading

2009-05-27T23:32:00.001-04:00

According to Google Reader, I have a lot of reading to do. Some of my closer friends also write for their own blogs (of course, some don't). Regardless, it seems I haven't read a single post on any of their blogs since 28 April. In under half an hour's time, that will have been a full month ago.

Of course, part of this is due to the China trip, but it doesn't help that everyone's been so gosh-darn prolific in May. One friend who had two posts in the first four months of the year has already had three in May.

So, I have some catching up to do. And I will be doing it.

And then I'll be getting more pictures up from China. 'Cause it's been a while for that, too.

HCC in China: Day 15

2009-05-16T23:18:00.000-04:00

Well, I'm still as jet-lagged as ever (getting over it a bit, but I've got a ways to go). Anyway, it's been four days at home now, so it's about time I write about our final day. Of course, I'm multitasking at the moment, watching Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire with my mother on TV, but that's beside the point. Anyway, let's get on with it.

Day 15 – Tuesday 12 May 2009
日15：2009年5月12日（星期二）

You wouldn't ordinarily expect a day of long flights to be all that eventful, and for the most part, it wasn't. But the day wasn't without hiccups.

After a quick final breakfast at the hotel, we packed up and said goodbye to our local tour guide, Yvonne.

We bade farewell to Hong Kong, lined up to check in, and made our way to the plane for our departure.

Unfortunately, there were some issues with the airline staff over the serving of peanuts on our flight… something I'm amazed wasn't taken care of beforehand by the touring agency. Nevertheless, it prevented one of our number from flying with us. Because of her severe peanut allergy, our friend was waylaid in Hong Kong a while longer.

A few stayed behind for support and to help sort things out, including Mr. Goldsmith and his wife, and eventually everyone got back, even if it was a day later than expected. And now, the truly weary travelers have returned to the States, many stories in tow, ready to share their experiences with their families, their friends, and the rest of the world.

A very few pictures from Day 15 can be found here. But honestly, how interesting is a long flight?

Coming up: Pictures galore! Give me some time to get them all online, but they'll be there, and you'll be soon to know… stay tuned!

Random side-note: This is my 200th post on this blog! More celebration! Hooray!

Four Years

2009-05-14T23:59:00.005-04:00

And now, for something completely different...

No, this post has nothing to do with China or my recent excursions there. Yes, I do plan on posting the happenings of our final day (and trust me, it was eventful).

There is something else that needs to be mentioned first, and that would be the fourth birthday of this very blog! That's right, it has been four full years since my extremely lame first post on "Randomness," which was really supposed to just be a temporary name for the blog... I still haven't come up with anything better.

Now, tradition states that I must bake a digital cake for dear old "Bloggy," and so I did, but not without some hangups. You see, I don't have Photoshop on my laptop. Ordinarily, this wouldn't be a problem, but the family computer at home has been having its own issues. To make a long story short, the OS was just reinstalled onto a newly wiped hard drive. So the really old version of Photoshop we had at home is no more.

So this evening, I quickly downloaded GIMP, installed it, and figured out enough about how to use it to cook up this yummy cake. All in about an hour. Pretty good, if you ask me!

Last year, I'd been lamenting having not written much. But this year, between a half-victorious BEDA and my trip to China, I've been blogging a lot. So leave some comments in celebration, and here's hoping that (within reason, of course) it continues!

I will be writing about our final day in China shortly, but to pass the time you can read my posts on past birthdays: 3, 2, and 1.

HCC in China: Days 12, 13, and 14

2009-05-11T18:13:00.001-04:00

Well, not really mainland China, per se. But Hong Kong works, too.

Days 12, 13, and 14 – Saturday 9 through Monday 11 May 2009
日12～14：2009年5月9～11日（星期六，日，一）

What better way to end the tour than with a big chunk of largely unstructured time in Hong Kong? Having been a British colony until 1997, Hong Kong is extremely western when compared to the rest of our experiences in mainland China. Upon arriving at the hotel early Saturday afternoon, many of us went straight to places like Pizza Hut, where my group of seven easily spent HK$502 (US$64.77) on lunch.

And so now I'll have a story to tell about when we spent five hundred dollars at Pizza Hut. Only once I get the incredulous looks will I mention that I mean Hong Kong dollars.

On Sunday, we dad have a little bit of a structured time. We spent the large part of the morning taking a bus tour around Hong Kong, to the market at Victoria Peak (which was conveniently the starting point of a charity walk that morning) and to the beach at Repulse Bay. We then spent the afternoon at Stanley Market, where many of us scoped out some last-minute deals for family's gifts and others had a leisurely lunch (I had very British fish and chips this time, no imitations). Afterwards, many of our members enjoyed the vibrant nightlife of Hong Kong.

Monday was almost completely free, and so many went out into the 31 °C (88 °F) sunshine back to the beach. I got a bit burnt in places (as is inevitably the case), but it'll be tolerable. I took care not to burn myself in places that would be inconvenient on a long flight home the next day. After a whirlwind tour, Hong Kong was most certainly the place we could kick back and relax, and so we did.

Our final event was a buffet dinner at the hotel, followed by a time of reminiscing about all of the memories we've made together: The first of what will likely be many story-telling sessions in the months and years ahead.

Apologies there aren't any pictures, but I wasn't going to miss out on relaxing myself! They'll certainly be online in the near future, and if you keep watching this blog, you'll be quick to know when they are.

And so this morning (Tuesday), we had our wake-up call at 05:30. Right now I'm doing my final packing, getting ready to head home, as we leave for the airport within the hour at 07:00 HKT. Our departure will be bittersweet, but we'll have so many memories of the times we've had — good and bad, funny and embarrassing — in China.

Coming up: Our homeward flight departs Hong Kong International Airport at 09:30 HKT and is due to land in New York City 15 hours, 40 minutes later, at 13:10 EDT. Personally, I'll be on another flight back to Pittsburgh later on, due to arrive at 17:58 EDT, where my father will take me home. It'll be a long day, but we'll be reflecting on memories the whole way home. And that will make it be worth it.

HCC in China: Day 11

2009-05-08T17:38:00.001-04:00

I'm going to cut right to the chase and give you the good news. My roommate, Sam, has been gracious enough to lend me his camera for the last day-and-a-half. So, though I may still be getting a new one, it's slightly less urgent… and I can show you some photos in the meantime, but we've got an early morning, so it might not be so many, as I'm really tired and just figuring things out was hard enough.

Apologies for all this extra "drama" on my end of things, but I suppose it keeps you coming back, right? After all, you never know quite what you're going to get!

Day 11 – Friday 8 May 2009
日11：2009年5月8日（星期五）

It is fairly obvious that we have been "taking it easy" a bit more the last couple of days. We haven't had quite as much of the hustle and bustle of Beijing, which is refreshing, and also much-needed since it's so easy to get tired now.

We went to Yu Yuan Garden in Shanghai… we started in the actual garden, but then we made our way to the shops outside which bear the same name. Many people tried their hand at bargaining one more time, while others enjoyed the comforts of some familiar American brands.

After spending the morning there and eating lunch, we returned to the hotel for a free afternoon to prepare for our final concert at He Luting Music Hall at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music.

The concert was incredible, and though we were incredibly unprepared for an encore (we eventually settled on just doing the final number faster), it was probably one of our best performances of the year. It's good to go out on a high note, I think, and we did just that.

At dinner, we thanked our guides, who will be staying in mainland

China

, for their wonderful help over the last ten days and just generally unwound, since the tour is coming down the home stretch.

Some more pictures from Day 11 can be found here. Thanks again to Sam for the camera usage. You're a great guy.

Coming up: On Saturday, we wake up at 04:30 again, this time in preparation for our morning flight to Hong Kong (which is, for all intents and purposes, an international flight). Once there, we'll meet our new tour guides, who will take us on an orientation tour before lunch on our own. The rest of the day is free, and the weather promises to cooperate: Brilliant sunshine is forecasted, with a high of 28 °C (82 °F).

HCC in China: Day 10

2009-05-07T20:46:00.003-04:00

I must start today's post with very sad news (although in the grand scheme of things, it's not that bad). If you've been following this blog since well before this trip, you'd know that I've been working with a half-broken camera this whole time (and I bet you didn't even notice). It's been tough at times, but I've made do for several months now.

And so, it is with regret that I must inform you that my camera is, for all intents and purposes, dead. It started acting weird mid-morning and died at lunch on Thursday, and though we tried other batteries and just about everything we could think of, it just wouldn't work. It took about five minutes and a lot of patience just to get the lens to close. Sadly, it doesn't look like it will be coming back anytime soon, if at all.

I'm half-tempted to just buy another camera here in Shanghai if I get the chance, but who knows what cans of worms that could open? Besides, our tour guide says that for electronics, despite how many of them are made in China, they are much cheaper in the U.S. for the same quality.

So, although I know that a lot of choir members' parents having been playing "Find My Child!" with my photos, I'm afraid that will have to wait at this point until something can be figured out. My apologies.

Nevertheless, it is still my duty to tell you what we've been up to, so here's a short narrative:

Day 10 – Thursday 7 May 2009
日10：2009年5月7日（星期四）

We started Thursday by heading to the Lingering Garden in Suzhou, a five-acre traditional house that was owned by a wealthy family. The small entrance to the huge house proves the humbleness of the Chinese people despite this family's wealth. Designs on the pathways symbolized the balance between spending money and earning it. If you're always earning money and never spending it, then you don't get to enjoy the fruits of your labor. If you're always spending but never earning, then disaster occurs.

After spending some time lingering in the Lingering Garden, we made our way to a local silk factory, where we learned how silkworms are raised, how silk is extracted from them, and how that silk is then turned into the silk products we use. We also learned how to differentiate between real silk and fake polyester "silk."

We walked around the gift shop area of the silk factory for a time before walking upstairs to a restaurant in the building for lunch. Some people were freaked out by the snakes in jars that welcomed us along the sides of the entryway, but everyone was able to get through okay and eat.

Outside the factory, we discussed the museum issue from Wednesday. Did everyone want to go? The consensus was no, we'd all like to go directly to Shanghai, and so we did.

Once in Shanghai, we went to Nanjing Road, which is basically one big shopping district, 5 km (3 miles) long. We walked around many shops, and although a few of us bought things, most of us just soaked in the atmosphere and looked at what there was to be sold.

After an early dinner, we then made our way to an acrobatic performance, entitled "Era: Intersection of Time." Ironically, photos and video weren't allowed at this performance anyway, but I can link you to their website. Everyone was amazed at all the different acts, some with trampolines, some with bicycles, others with pottery, and ending with eight motorcycles in a spherical cage.

Yes, that's right. Eight.

It was mind-boggling, and everyone loved it. We talked about it all the way back to the hotel.

Coming up: On Friday, we travel to Yu Garden in the morning, spend the afternoon in another Shanghai shopping area, and conclude the evening with our final performance of the tour (and of the year), at Shanghai's Conservatory of Music.

HCC in China: Day 9

2009-05-06T20:36:00.001-04:00

Another quick post. After nine days of travel, it's very easy to get tired quickly. Sorry about that, but it's better than nothing, right?

Day 9 – Wednesday 6 May 2009
日9：2009年5月6日（星期三）

First thing in the morning, we boarded our coach and travelled about two hours by highway to Suzhou, making one stop along the way. We went directly to Han Shan Temple, where we saw many Buddhist prayers and wishes tied to trees around the temple itself.

After lunch, we travelled to Suzhou Museum, only to discover that flip-flops aren't allowed inside, which would have excluded about a third of our group. So, we hung out for a while whilst alternative plans were made.

We went to the Grand Canal for a boat tour through parts of Suzhou, seeing a teahouse and some residents living on the canal.

We then got back on the buses (although that didn't deter the "mosquito" vendors), and went back to the hotel before dinner. After dinner, we had the evening free to explore Suzhou in our own ways. My friends and I went to the nearby streets of Suzhou, first in search of lip balm, but then we found some clothing stores with amazing "Engrish" shirts. Even though they were way to small for any of us, we couldn't help but buy a few… only ¥19 ($2.79) each.

More pictures from Day 9 can be found here.

Coming up: On Thursday, we travel to Lingering Garden and Silk Factory, and return to Suzhou Museum before heading to Shanghai in the afternoon. Once there, we will attend an acrobatic performance before heading back to the hotel.

HCC in China: Days 7 and 8

2009-05-05T20:29:00.000-04:00

Tuesday's technical difficulties have been resolved at this point. It's amazing how useless an electrical converter is when it falls out of the wall socket on its own. It's also frustrating when the hotel staff won't bring the one you asked for until you go back the next morning. But that's what I get for trying to do this at the end of the night.

So, my apologies that I am unable to write a true narrative, but I have 893 pictures to go through and that alone will take forever if I don't hurry. Don't worry; I'll give this due attention once we're back in the States, so you'll get to see and hear about everything you would have missed.

Days 7 and 8 – Monday 4 and Tuesday 5 May 2009
日7／8：2009年5月4～5日（星期一／星期二）

On Monday, we visited a Terra Cotta soldiers reproduction factory in Xi'an, the Terra Cotta soldiers themselves, and the mausoleum of the first Qin emperor, Qin Shi Huang (for whom China is named). We then made our way to the airport for our flight to Hangzhou.

On Tuesday, we went to Hangzhou's West Lake, visited Flower Harbor Park (featured on the Chinese ¥1 banknote), and toured the National Tea museum. We then visited a metropolitan park before heading to the Yuquan campus of Zhejiang University for our exchange concert with the university's Wenquin choir.

View some of my pictures from Days 7 and 8 here. Again, I can't get many up right now, but we'll take care of everything in due course. Leave some comments to make me feel better!

Coming up: Today (Wednesday), we travel all morning to Suzhou — a 2 hour, 15 minute drive. We'll visit Hanshan Temple in Suzhou and Suzhou Museum before taking the evening easy. The weather promises to be nice: sunny and 26 °C (78 °F). We'll get back to normal posts then.

HCC in China: Brief Update

2009-05-04T21:04:00.003-04:00

Greetings from the Business Center at our hotel in Hangzhou. Technical difficulties (adaptor/converter/power supply) with my laptop prevent me from posting about Day 7 at this time. I will rectify the problems in the evening CST (Tuesday morning EDT) and hopefully post a Day 7/8 post then.

But rest assured, we're all fine.

HCC in China: Day 6

2009-05-03T20:04:00.001-04:00

Again, after a long day Sunday, I'm writing this on Monday morning here in Xi'an. You'll soon see why.

Day 6 – Sunday 3 May 2009
日6：2009年5月3日（星期日）

After an exhausting day at the Great Wall, we would certainly want to get a full night's sleep to recharge. But we were awoken by our hotel phones at 04:30 to get us ready for our flight to Xi'an in the west of China, which was the capital city for eleven dynasties and has a very rich history.

Though Beijing was chosen as the capital of the People's Republic of China, Xi'an is home to 8 million people and it is undergoing a boom of construction these days, including its first subway system which is due to be completed in a few years. After having landed at Xi'an Xianyang International Airport at around 09:30, which was just opened in 2003, we made our way to a lunch buffet which featured a mixture of Chinese and Western cuisine. While rice is the staple in the east of China, wheat and corn are grown here in Xi'an, so the west of China revolves around noodles. It was very interesting (but also a bit refreshing) to have fish and chips next to my noodles and rice!

Our local tour guide, May, then talked more about the rich history of Xi'an as we made our way to Xi'an Conservatory of Music for the second of our four concerts here in China. The real treat for us was the local women's choir we got to hear perform after us. It was simply splendid! One surprise we had is that they sang a very similar arrangement of Shenandoah to the one we had sung just a short while prior. This particular American folk song is always very well-received around the world, and so it was nice to hear their rendition.

After the concert (and a short rest period), we went to dinner at a Tang Dynasty dinner theatre. There was live music played on the zheng… the kind of soft, peaceful, and reflective music you'd expect to be played through a speaker at Asian restaurants in the States… except it was live. The food was a feast of over 18 different kinds of dumplings, so there was more than enough for everyone to get things they already enjoyed and to try things they never knew were so good, including rice wine.

Dinner was followed by a performance about the Tang Dynasty, which was centered in Xi'an and which is regarded as one of the most peaceful times in Chinese history. I have a lot of pictures from the stunning and breathtaking performance, and though I can only show a few here, I hope you'll please check out the others. We were completely captivated by the show, and after the hustle and bustle from Point A to Point B all morning and afternoon, this was truly our welcome to Xi'an.

Then, it grew late, and we returned to the hotel to catch up on some much-needed rest and prepare for a new day.

There are plenty more pictures from Day 6 here, including several from the Tang Dynasty performance. Check them out and leave some comments!

Coming up: On Monday, we visit the Terra Cotta Soldiers of Xi'an and Qin Shi Huang tomb before boarding an evening flight to Hangzhou.

HCC in China: Day 5

2009-05-02T12:09:00.002-04:00

Day 5 – Saturday 2 May 2009
日5：2009年5月2日（星期六）

We started the day by heading to a jade workshop, where we learned about the value of jade in Chinese culture. Apparently, while gold is worth about 200 yuan per gram ($910 per troy ounce), jade is worth 1000 to 1500 yuan per gram ($4550 to $6850 per ounce). There were pieces of jade embedded in each of the Olympic medals awarded in 2008.

We learned how to distinguish between the different qualities of jade, and then we walked around seeing what there was to buy. Many things were way out of our price ranges, such as a jade Buddha for ¥58,000 ($8,500) or a large jade ship for ¥680,000 ($99,750), but it was still really cool seeing everything. We learned about some of the meaning behind the "happiness balls," which were being sold for ¥640 ($94), though most of us who bought things settled on some cheaper (but just as interesting) pieces.

Our tour guide, Scott, taught us a little bit of Chinese on the way to the Great Wall, which was about 55 km (34 miles) north of our hotel. Because of the continuing holiday weekend, traffic was continually an issue for us, but we got there alright.

There were two paths we could take from where we parked, and obviously, one is harder than the other. After talking it over with our guide and with friends, I decided to take the more difficult path for what promised to be an even better view.

And difficult it was. When the Wall was built, it was built with uneven steps so that horses couldn't traverse it. And we can certainly see now why it worked! Immediately after a series of several tall, 16-inch (40-cm) steps, there would be a small, 4-inch (10-cm) step, which caught all of us off-guard.

Finally, after about 1800 steps (with many rests in between), we made it to the top… of this section of the Wall. The view was utterly spectacular… words simply cannot describe it.

We made our way to a late (and traffic-delayed) lunch, before heading to Silk Street market to practice the Chinese art of bargaining. It is customary for the sellers to start with an absolutely ridiculous price, and for the prospective buyer to refuse several offers by simply walking away. Basically haggling to the extreme. It was tempting to take a closer look at many of the items for sale, but the sellers were all very aggressive, and even a second glance (and sometimes even walking by) would effectively begin a negotiation… and of course, walking away would only make them shout a lower price to get you to come back.

One of our members managed to buy five small items for ¥225 ($33) after taking the saleswoman down from ¥1,750 ($255) for only four. But it took a lot of determination and a good half an hour to do so. Afterwards, we consulted with our guide to see how we did with our purchases.

We finished the evening off with a dinner featuring Peking Duck, and headed back to the hotel early, full of fond memories of Beijing, but eagerly awaiting our flight to Xi'an in the morning.

I have more pictures from Day 5 here. Enjoy!

Coming up: On Sunday, we take an early morning flight westward to Xi'an, perform the second of our concerts at Xi'an Conservatory of Music, and attend a Tang Dynasty show and dumpling dinner.

HCC in China: Day 4

2009-05-01T13:22:00.001-04:00

Day 4 – Friday 1 May 2009
日4：2009年5月1日（星期五）

Today was Labour Day here in China. To my knowledge, there are no parades or anything like we might be used to in the States, but people just go out and have fun at various attractions and events throughout the week. As such, a lot of the popular tourist attractions were filled with locals even without us.

We started the day at the Olympic Park, home of the Water Cube, where Michael Phelps earned his eight gold medals last year; the National Indoor Stadium, where gymnastics events were held; and of course, the Bird's Nest. Later in the evening, a Jackie Chan concert was to be held in the Bird's Nest, the first concert since the Olympic Games, so we had to visit first thing in the morning and couldn't go inside any of the venues. But it was still really cool knowing that we stood just a few hundred meters away from where some of the greatest athletic feats in recent memory occurred.

We then made our way to Beijing's zoo to visit the giant pandas. According to our guide, the pandas are relatively active in the morning, but if you go in the afternoon, you can't tell if they're real or not, because they don't move much. The path by the exhibit was extremely crowded (as was much of the zoo), but we were able to see two of the pandas nonetheless, even if it did require a little bit of pushing and shoving (which, by the way, is very common here). Because of some slight drizzle earlier in the morning, some of us even bought souvenir umbrellas to match the one carried by one of our guides.

We continued onward to the Summer Palace, where it began to rain a bit heavier for a brief time. Along with the pagodas and ornate gates, there was a marble boat in the man-made lake. Though it's obviously not a real functioning boat, we did take a ferry across the lake which allowed the opportunity to soak in the surrounding area.

After a late lunch, we made our way back to the hotel to prepare for the first of our concerts. The concert was moved on short notice to the concert hall at Mínzú University of China (中央民族大学) to better accommodate our opening act, the Jin Rong Philharmonic Chorus (Financial Street Choir), directed by Zhao Dengan (赵登安). After a wonderful concert by both choirs, we were presented with neck-hangings as small gifts from the host choir, symbolizing friendship, which we all wore to dinner afterwards.

See more pictures from Day 4 here. Some of them are pretty funny, and you might see someone you know! And don't be too shy to leave a comment… I'd love to hear from you!

Coming up: On Saturday, we celebrate our last day in Beijing by climbing the Great Wall of China and doing some bargaining at Yashow Market at Silk Alley. We'll conclude the evening with a Peking Duck dinner, before retiring early to prepare for our flight to Xi'an early Sunday morning.

HCC in China: Day 3

2009-04-30T20:01:00.000-04:00

Thursday was a pretty exhausting day, but well worth it. That's why I'm writing this on Friday morning.

Day 3 – Thursday 30 April 2009
日3：2009年4月30日（星期四）

We started our Thursday with a wonderful breakfast at our hotel, featuring some of the best of Western and Eastern breakfast foods. We ate up, because we knew we had a long day ahead of us. The group made its way to the north gate of the Forbidden City, now known as the Palace Museum. After learning about some of the history behind the museum, we began to make our way through the huge area, entering in traditional style through special gates constructed to keep out Chinese vampires.

The northern section of the city was a residential area, while the center section, home to the Hall of Supreme Harmony, was primarily ceremonial back in the days of the emperor. We were lucky to have seen the external ornamentations that had been newly refurbished last year for the Olympics.

The sheer grandeur of the area was striking. It seemed that every time we walked through one gorgeous area of the city, we would pass through a gate that led to a bigger and more impressive area, saving the best for last. So take a word from us: If you ever visit yourself, start at the back (north) gate.

While there, we met many visitors from more rural areas of China who were not as familiar with foreigners such as ourselves. One group, whom we were told is from Shaanxi province, was particularly eager to meet us. We left one of them with a unique gift from his visit with the American tourists: a Tootsie-Pop.

After our visit was over, we passed through more gates until reaching the front (south side), which borders Tian Anmen Square. We were told that the picture in the middle is of Sun Yat-sen, who is regarded as the father of Modern China, and that the picture is only in the square at the national holidays, 1 May and 1 October.

After lunch, we made our way to the Temple of Heaven, where immediately upon entering, we saw many dancers. After many of us danced amongst ourselves (and even with some of the locals), we found some musicians and singers as well. Apparently, many of the folk who come here are retired, and so they just spend their days hanging out in the park. How wonderful is that?

Though the main attraction for us there was the Hall of Prayer, we couldn't escape the local charm.

Before we knew it, it was time to head back to the hotel before dinner and the alumni reception, which was hosted by the CEO of COFCO Wines & Spirits (which was selected as the exclusive supplier of wine for the 2008 Olympics), Mr. Ning Gaoning, a graduate of Pitt's business school. A few of us went out afterwards; among other things, we saw many of the embassies that are in our area of Beijing, and then we came back, truly tired from all the walking, for a great night's sleep.

There are many more pictures to show… you can see many of my favorites from Day 3 here.

Coming up: Today (Friday), is Labour Day here in

China

. We will visit the Beijing Zoo, Summer Palace, and a jade workshop, before heading to the Olympic Park for pictures. We will conclude the day with our first concert at the Central Conservatory of Music in conjunction with Beijing's Financial Street Choir.

HCC in China: Days 1 and 2

2009-04-29T13:26:00.002-04:00

Days 1 and 2 – Tuesday 28 and Wednesday 29 April 2009
日1／2：2009年4月28～29日（星期二／星期三）

It has certainly been a long day. Well, a long day-and-a-half, to be fair. And I am really tired.

To keep things simple on my end of things, I'm going to link to a few pictures at a medium resolution throughout my narratives, as well as a few more at the end. I do hope you'll take the time to view them.

After staying up until about 02:30 in New York on Monday night (Tuesday morning), the guys in my room decided to get a little bit of rest before waking up around 05:00 for final preparations. We took the 06:00 hotel shuttle to JFK's Terminal 7, and met director John Goldsmith there. Check-in was surprisingly quick, and many of us were completely through security before 07:00.

Since our flight wasn't scheduled to leave until 10:10, we had some time to kill in the terminal. After grabbing breakfast, many of us just hung out around the various shops and the food court, while others stayed by the gate.

Finally, it was time to board. And at 10:41 EDT, we finally took off and began our 8068-mile (12984 km) journey to Hong Kong. In order to fight jet lag, we were wise to immediately adjust to Hong Kong time, but that made it a bit weird when the staff were bringing around "brunch" an hour later at about 23:45 HKT.

By 01:00, the cabin lights were shut off so that we could get some rest. And from having stayed up much of the night before, it was much-needed. Taking the polar route was a lot of fun, too. We flew over northern Greenland around 04:30, and by then the lights were on again and people started milling about to stretch and to get their blood flowing. "Lunch," as they called it, was served at 06:30, and then the whole process was repeated again with a mid-morning nap, more stretching, conversing, and the like.

We landed in Hong Kong at 14:25, which was a little bit disconcerting, as our boarding passes instructed us to be at the gate for our connecting flight to Beijing at 14:35. At Hong Kong's airport, they don't really make airport-wide boarding announcements; rather, they have people with signs that inform passengers of what's going on. It was a little bit frustrating being told that it was final call for our flight immediately after going through security, but we hurried along. We all made it okay, and were off again by 15:36, albeit a half-hour behind schedule.

While most people I talked to said that the 15½-hour flight to Hong Kong was tolerable, and was operated in a manner that helped them adjust well, our three-hour flight to Beijing was, for all intents and purposes, a simple domestic flight on a Wednesday afternoon. It was rough for a few of our crew, but all-in-all, everyone's doing well. Because we hadn't eaten since 06:30 (and had no time in Hong Kong), the meal served at 16:30 was received quite eagerly. We landed at 18:26, queued up into a big alphabetical line for passing through immigration and customs, and before we knew it we were gathering our baggage and heading off to the buses.

Dinner was held at the Jin Tai Fulong Restaurant, and while we weren't always exactly sure what everything was, we were, for the most part, adventurous, and tried a lot of it.

Upon arriving at the hotel, most people took right to bed due to exhaustion from the 30-hour marathon that was Days 1 and 2. I found it very interesting when being given my room key, though, that I am in room 444, due to the negative connotations the number four has here in China. It's basically akin to getting room 666 or 1313 in America — while it's really just a number, it still doesn't leave you with the greatest of feelings.

You see, the word for "four" (sì, 四) is very similar to the word for "death" (sǐ, 死), with only the tonal inflection being different between the two. And since the Chinese are very superstitious when it comes to numbers, many hotels avoid the number four altogether.

Apparently this hotel thought it would be just as well to give the "room of death" (which is actually quite nice) to non-"four-fearing" American tourists. Yay.

You can see more of my hand-picked images from Days 1 and 2 here.

Fun fact: In case you couldn't guess, Beijing is still very proud of its hosting the 2008 Olympic Games. Later this week, we will visit the "Bird's Nest" and the "Water Cube," two of the most recognizable venues built for the Games.

Coming up: On Thursday, we will have tours of Tian Anmen Square, the Forbidden City, and the Temple of Heaven. We will finish the day with a reception for local alumni of the University of Pittsburgh.

HCC in China: Day 0

2009-04-28T01:33:00.003-04:00

Well, BEDA wasn't a complete failure. I did succeed in blogging nearly every day for the first half of April, just not the second half. But it's okay. I had more important fish to fry, like finals. Yeah.

But, I'll be making up for it to some extent by posting daily for the next two weeks. Yeah, in case you haven't seen the countdown that's been in this blog's sidebar for about the last two years, or if you haven't noticed the big banner that's been at the top of this blog for the last month, I'm going to China with the Heinz Chapel Choir. And that's a pretty big deal.

Although I was already planning on doing occasional blog posts here anyway, Pitt's Music Department have asked me to blog daily for their site, and so I jumped at the chance! Since the Internet in China can be finicky, the idea is that I'll be posting both here and there, so in case anything goes wrong with posting to one site, we'll have the other. So remember to check back daily for updates… and with that, we'll jump right into it!

Day 0 – Monday 27 April 2009
日0：2009年4月27日（星期一）

My personal journey began at about 05:30 this morning, doing some final packing before heading out to Pittsburgh International Airport, catching a late-morning flight to New York's John F. Kennedy airport. The tour departs from New York tomorrow morning, and everyone was finding their own way here, so it was a pleasant surprise to find some other choir members on my flight.

The rest of the day has been fairly leisurely here. Because China is 12 hours ahead of Pittsburgh, we'll be pretty jet-lagged when we land in Beijing on Wednesday evening. So, I used my fatigue from waking up early to take some strategic naps during the afternoon — the Chinese night. After heading back to the airport's food court for our last state-side dinner (a classic all-American McDonald's meal), we came back to the hotel to play a little bit of pool. I played one round, which I was surprised to have won.

Now, we're approaching the wee hours of the morning here in New York, but the six of us in my hotel room are staying up and active. We'll be on a plane by 10:00, and we can sleep then. It'll be sixteen hours to Hong Kong, then another three-and-a-half to Beijing, where we'll start our tour. So, it will be a long, but fun trip.

Obviously, since I'll be on planes or in airports for 24 hours straight, the next post won't be until sometime Wednesday (EDT)… from Beijing!

N.B.: Uncle Dave, our plane is scheduled to fly over Cornwall, Ontario at roughly 10:46 EDT on Tuesday. I'll be sure to wave.

Tacit

2009-04-14T23:56:00.001-04:00

I really don't have much of anything to say today. I must point out that it is getting markedly more difficult to come up with creative titles for these posts. And no, I don't mean "tacet"; that would be the verb. "Tacit" is the adjective. Sometimes musicians' words for things cloud our perception of the actual unadulterated words themselves. So I just wanted to clear that up.

The weather was gorgeous this morning as I walked with Will to the post office to mail my tax return before swiping an extra meal pass for him to join me in Market Central for lunch since I have such a surplus. But I'm down to eight passes with ten days left to use them, and I have plans in the works for getting rid of another extra, so I should be pretty much okay.

But anyway, back to the weather, it was gorgeous when I walked into my 13:00 class and it only started to be gloomy when I walked out at 14:15 (so obviously sometime during my class). This morning, we had nice sunshine, but still several bright clouds that kept the sun from being too overbearing. To me, that's about as close to a perfect day as you can come. And although I wasn't able to enjoy it much, I made sure to do so while I was outside.

The China trip with the choir is shaping up. We leave in a little under two weeks now, and we just got what will probably be the final pre-departure version of our day-to-day itinerary, complete with times of things instead of just what's going on each day. I'll have to look a bit more closely into that, again for an important reason that I haven't yet mentioned here.

So, that leaves us with the following (thankfully short) list of important things I haven't yet mentioned here, which I will need to write about this week:

Why I want to know when we'll be certain places in China, and
Whatever the heck happened on Tuesday 7 April.

I should add that if you already know the "answers" from talking to me, please don't spoil them for the rest of my dear readers. It'll all be revealed in due course. I've got to let the suspense get to them a bit first. ;)

If it weren't the week before finals, I'd just keep writing about both those topics now and give you a "normal Tim"-style blog post. But this is also BEDA; I've got to have some content up my sleeve for slow days, right?

Nuclear Engineering

2009-04-13T23:59:00.003-04:00

First, a couple brief tidbits from today:

Today we had elections for ΚΚΨ. My Big Brother, Mike, won the presidency for 2009-2010. Congratulations!
As it turns out, my short time in Girard was overstuffed with things for me to do, and as such, my father forgot to have me sign my tax return which he prepared for me while I was there. So he sent it to me and now I have to go to the post office tomorrow. Yay for walking to the post office! Yay for exercise! Yay for setting a dozen alarms for a simple task, lest I forget to do it!

And now I turn to something that I don't think I've mentioned here before. (That's another reason why BEDA is helping me out a little. Even some relatively important things have gone completely unmentioned here.)

There's an undergraduate Nuclear Engineering certificate available here at Pitt that I've been thinking about getting. You see, to have anything nuclear at the undergraduate level is rare, let alone a whole certificate. So it's, you know, probably a good idea, since I actually like the class I'm in now. Unfortunately, I only heard about the program this past fall, and so I'll have only taken one of the three classes by the end of this term. The other two are only offered in the fall semester. And this is where the problem comes in.

They are all night classes, and although I took a night class opposite band this past fall, it was only one night a week and it was over at 19:55, so it wasn't so bad. In order to complete the certificate, I'd have to miss both Tuesday and Thursday nights completely, and that's when the band does most of its work.

So, when registration came around in March, I had registered for just the Thursday class in Fall 2009, and had talked to the chairman of the program to see if there was some way I could take the remaining class in Fall 2010 as a post-graduate if I should remain in the Pittsburgh area. I was somewhat okay with this option, although to be honest, I still wasn't completely satisfied and would have liked to have been able to complete the certificate this year.

But apparently, so many people signed up for the Tuesday night class that there is no more room. So to make room for the increased demand, they've opened up a Wednesday night section. And there's no band on Wednesday nights. Hooray!

There are a few things that aren't wonderfully desirable about that, though. First, that means that I have all five of my evenings taken up (although I'll have almost completely free mornings, so it will just take some extra motivation). Secondly, it will put me right back up at 18 credits instead of the 15 credits I was planning on taking... and none of that counts ensemble participation. Thirdly, my schedule is quite densely packed, due partially to when the classes I need are available, but also under the consideration that I'll be living 1.6 miles (2.6 km) off-campus next year. Unfortunately, you can look to the image at left and see what that extra class will do to my Wednesday schedule. Not pretty. Sitting in lecture from 12:00 until nearly 21:00, without so much as 15 minutes for a meal? Eek!

So my next step is to see if I can maybe move my Music elective or my EngLit requirement to a different time of day, preferably as late in the morning as possible. Like MWF 11:00-11:50 would be perfect. But I know that's a lot to ask, considering it was hard enough to get into those sections as it was. I'm a senior... isn't early scheduling supposed to work to my benefit?

Easter Crash

2009-04-12T23:59:00.001-04:00

Not saying I don't like Easter candy and the sugary goodness that is associated with in, but boy, can it make you feel like crap, too. Rather than having my normal two meal day, I've been grazing all day today and now I can tell.

I'm back in Pittsburgh now for the last week of classes, but spent most of today with my father's side of the family. Specifically for me, this meant Grandma's homemade spaghetti (among other wonderful foods), which is a wonderful treat I only get to enjoy a few times each year. But there were also lots of sugary candies, and even though I exercised quite a bit of restraint, I still probably had too much and I now lack almost all energy. Hopefully I'll be better in the morning and able to operate normally, since this is not the week I can afford to be lethargic.

Seeing my family was nice today, too. My cousin Juliana is going to be seven in May, which is hard to believe. She really is growing up quickly.

Speaking of growing up, since I was in Grove City on Easter for the first time in three years, I was able to participate in Measuring Day again. I haven't grown all that much (which was, frankly, to be expected), but I am squarely 5 feet, 8 inches (172.7 cm) tall, about an inch and a half (4 cm) taller than in 2005. My brother is 5 feet, 8.5 inches (174.0 cm).

And now I must sleep. I don't think I'll be eating much chocolate for a few days...

Home, Sweet Home

2009-04-11T23:59:00.001-04:00

I'm now at home in Girard, typing on the family computer. My brother David is talking to me about something related to FM radio presets. Ah, it's good to be home!

I got in around 22:45 Friday night, and will be leaving after church tomorrow to see my dad's side of the family for Easter before heading the whole way back down to Pittsburgh for my last two weeks of classes. Well, one week of classes, one week of finals. My last class ends at 12:00 next Friday, 17 April, and then I've got finals on 17, 20, and 24 April. I leave for New York on 27 April and for China the next day. I won't be back here in Girard until 12 May, a month away. And I haven't been here since my birthday back in January. So yes, there's been an element of homesickness these last few days.

Mom and David came to Pittsburgh to pick me up at around 18:30 on Friday, well after my OChem lab. We had dinner, and then we brought some of my belongings back home so that we'll have less to worry about in two weeks' time.

Then, when I got home, my mother and brother insisted that I watch an episode of the 1960s sci-fi comedy "Lost in Space" with them, which I had never seen before. And I must admit, it was pretty funny, as I'm sure those of you who grew up with the program would agree. But I also find it interesting to note that the series was set in 1997, so it is doubly interesting to see what people thought of the future back in the past. I'm sure some day we'll look back on our current "futuristic" notions with as much laughter.

But anyway, it was pretty much 24:00 when we finished the episode, and everyone was tired, so there was no blogging to be had. My apologies for not writing, but I'm still not doing bad on BEDA overall. And besides, I've seen half my readership in the last 24 hours anyway!

This morning, my mother called to schedule a haircut appointment for me, only to be told that the best time was pretty much right away. So she woke me a mere half an hour before the appointment. But we got there and my hairs are now cut.

It was also good seeing Barb and (most of) her family today as well. It makes me glad that I finally get to spend Easter with family again. In 2007, I went home for Palm Sunday weekend to see David's school play, and I had a huge group project to finish for the following week. In 2008, I was en route back from Denver after the Pitt Men's Basketball team lost late Saturday night. We landed in Pittsburgh at 05:17, and I got to my dorm room at 06:45, at which point I promptly fell asleep and slept through every Easter service in the city. So it's really nice to be home this time, even if it's only for about 48 hours.

And now, I'm tired again. All of the Easter food (and candy) is getting to me already. Ugh. To bed with me.

A Day of Remembrance

2009-04-09T23:53:00.006-04:00

Today was a mediocre day. And as far as the week has been going, that's great. The best part, though, is that I'll be home in less than 24 hours celebrating Easter with my family, and then it won't matter anymore! Er, at least not until Monday.

The memorial for the three City of Pittsburgh police officers who were killed on Saturday 4 April was held today. Chancellor Nordenberg volunteered to host it at the Petersen Events Center, which certainly had ample seating capacity. Fifth and Forbes Avenues were closed for almost the entire day. Thousands upon thousands of police cars from all over the area (and even some from farther) used most of the roadway as a triple-parked parking lot. Walking down the street, there was quite a sense of melancholy, even just from the silence of not having cars whizzing by. The many people lined up along the street with American flags waiting for the procession only added to the poignancy.

Although, from a logistics standpoint, I was a bit surprised by the University's decision to continue operating normally. (Apparently, I'm not the only one who thought this, too.) Practically all of the major thoroughfares on campus were shut down for much of the day, public transit was spotty at best... I'm surprised they didn't cancel classes, although I'm sure they carefully weighed their options before deciding. Perhaps the fact that we're only a week and a half from finals had something to do with it, too.

After classes, I had quite a nice time talking outside with Will for about an hour, something I haven't done in a while. It really brought a smile to my face, and was one of the more enjoyable parts of my day. It certainly helped that the weather was beautiful and that everything was so quiet and peaceful.

I'm sort of realizing why I like the idea of blogging every day, or at least blogging often. In the past, I've only blogged about "important" things that happened in my life. And too often, the things that "affect" me the most are negative, by their very nature. It's really refreshing to take note of the positive things that are happening nearly every day, to reflect upon them, and to be thankful for them. I feel that that's something I haven't been doing as often as I could have recently.

Brothers

2009-04-08T23:59:00.000-04:00

This evening was Third Degree for ΚΚΨ. We have six new Brothers now. Amongst everything else that's been going on in my life, I was glad that something so positive was scheduled to occur. I helped read part of the ceremony, which was a nice change of pace for me. A good time was had by all.

Sadly, not everything can go perfectly. Those of us who were reading had a brief run-through rehearsal this afternoon, and I walked all the way up to the band room in Trees Hall only to find out that we were meeting in the Cathedral of Learning. Thankfully, there was a shuttle waiting to take me back down just as I left the building.

As a consequence of being late, I was a little bit rushed to get to my evening class, Fundamentals of Nuclear Reactors, for my exam. Fortunately, the exam itself was about as simple as I could have expected it to be, and the professor even said it was because he didn't want to spend hours upon hours grading everything. So it was one of those, "put your answers in the blanks, and if it's wrong, then I'll check your work"-type exams. And it wasn't bad.

I have my ChE 0401 presentation tomorrow morning. Sadly, though, our ChE 0401 report isn't coming together as well as I'd like it to, but it's out of my hands. I had assumed that since we've all done this at least three times before, everyone would know how to communicate with their team members. Unfortunately, though this is true for most of my teammates, it is not true for all of them. And I regret that I dropped the ball as far as emphasizing strong communication from day one, and now it's irreparable. But it's also over after tomorrow. So that's fortunate.

And that's about all that's going on here... I will post about Tuesday's troubles at some point, but I have an OChem report to do tomorrow night, so it might not be until late Friday. But it is important. Just know that everything's already much better. Thanks for your concern.

...What Shall Be.

2009-04-08T00:31:00.002-04:00

I did post briefly at 23:48 EDT on Tuesday saying that this would be late. For the benefit of BEDA, that much is reproduced below:

I know it will take until far past midnight to write about all of the stuff that happened today, so I'm posting this so that I have something. In fact, I may just wait a day to post because there's so much going on it's not even funny.

In short, though, I am going to wait... well, sort of. I suppose this does count. But the bottom line is that I've dealt with too much crap for one day, and the last thing I want to do right now is blog about it. Anyone who has spoken directly to me in roughly the last 12 or 13 hours has known how rough Tuesday was for me, far beyond my normal "oh, this sucks" gripes that lack any substantial meaning.

Although I'm trying not to conflate separate issues, it's just been one blow after another all freakin' day, and right now, I just need to lie in bed and walk amongst my thoughts, assessing where I am in dozens of facets. This is something I do occasionally... sometimes too often, which leads to breakdowns... but sometimes not often enough, which can lead to crap like this. In the end, though, it always makes me stronger. It just doesn't seem like it at the time.

Mind you, not everything that happened Tuesday was ostensibly bad. It's just that everything took on a negative connotation from before it even happened. That's why I need to step back and assess. Because I truly believe that things aren't anywhere near as bad as they seem at face value at this very instant in time, and that anything bad that remains will blow over soon. I just need to mull it over a bit. And if there's anything I've learned in this whole blogging thing, it's that mulling things over for a night can be a wonderful thing.

If there's one thing you can do, it's praying for me. To steal an analogy from a professor this morning, we're near the end of the term, and I just need to sprint that last 100 meters. The problem is that I've been running the last six miles, and I'm burning out. Pray that I find the strength and the willpower to continue to do what needs to be done. I'm trying to remain positive, but I definitely need God's help at this juncture.

And of course, if I haven't made it abundantly clear already, these are all short-term issues. Some will be solved when I wake up in the morning; others will take a couple of weeks. But this is not a long-term, life-changing event. Yes, it may eventually evoke change in my life, but I really just need to get through these next couple of weeks with enough sanity leftover at the end to reassess and move forward from there.

Again, I get the feeling that all of Tuesday's events just conflated themselves and that, when viewed separately, most aren't anything to be upset about at all. It just takes time.

I'm inspired by Jane Henkels' recent post on Holy Week, short and sweet:

Ah, this most blessed week of the year. So far it has been loaded with suffering. It's only to be expected. Embrace the cross, y'all. Just do it. It makes the resurrection that much sweeter.

Well, if that's the task, so be it. I'll be off now; I've got a lot of sorting out to do.

We Shall See...

2009-04-07T00:48:00.000-04:00

Even though it's after midnight, this does not fall under the category of "fail." I was not expecting tonight's ΚΚΨ meeting to run until 23:50. As such I've only just gotten back and so it's still Monday as far as I'm concerned right now.

We had a lot of normal business to attend to tonight, but moreover, we have a lot of people running for office in ΚΚΨ for 2009-2010, which is truly wonderful. But it also meant that there were a lot of people giving speeches tonight, and answering questions from the Brotherhood. For some of the more contested positions, questioning sessions lasted up to ten or fifteen minutes per candidate. And that discussion is wonderful; I'm truly glad to see so many people excited to take an active role in the organization.

However, despite starting our meeting at 20:00 instead of 20:30, we still cut it precariously close to the building's lockdown time of 24:00. After a few hurried remarks at the end, I made a carefully-worded motion to "suspend all remaining business and adjourn the meeting," since we actually did have some (comparatively unimportant) business left on the agenda. Thank goodness the actual elections themselves are next week.

ΜΚΥ elections are tomorrow, by which I mean later today (ugh!), and I'm running for reelection as Webmaster for 2009-2010. We shall see how that goes, but in any case, I don't think it will run as long as tonight did. ΜΚΥ tend to be less discussion-oriented than ΚΚΨ anyways, which is both good and bad. And that's why I love being a part of both organizations.

I was feeling a lot better today, though still not up to last week's par. We shall see if that trend continues, or if today was just a fluke.

Also, the second ChE 0400 exams were graded and they were much better overall. I realize I haven't mentioned my qualms about the first exam on this blog before, and that is for a number of reasons, not the least of which has been time. But let's just say that personally, I more than doubled my score exam-over-exam. This is not something that should normally be able to occur. The class average also increased by factor 1.45. Again, we shall see if future data warrant future discussion on this matter.

As for everything else that happens Tuesday, in keeping with my favorite words from the last few paragraphs... we shall see.

Aches and Pains

2009-04-05T23:59:00.001-04:00

Twelve minutes left in the day. Why do I keep doing this to myself?

Today, it's because I just came back from dinner, which was only late because I couldn't move from the chair at my desk which was only because the achey back and scratchy throat I had yesterday have turned into a headache, congestion, rnnny nose, achey legs, achey arms — the works. I hadn't eaten in ten hours and I still almost couldn't finish my dinner. That's bad.

I took some acetaminophen right before I left, but it hasn't kicked in yet. Hopefully I'll be able to sleep well tonight, as said aches and pains have caused me to sleep for much of the evening. And hopefully I'll be able to be my normal mostly-functional self in the morning.

The concert this afternoon was alright. We had a few hiccups and the like, mostly because people were talking over directions from the director and generally not paying attention to his cues and the like. Although, even some of his cues were off. It seems the whole choir were having somewhat of a bad day.

As it's Palm Sunday, I picked up an extra palm branch from the church we visited in Uniontown, but I've yet to determine where to put it or what exactly to do with it here. I've had one in my bedroom at home for probably about twelve years... the same one, to be precise. So it's been a while since I've done anything with one of those.

It still hasn't completely sunk in that it's April, though. I mean, in a little over three weeks, I'll be in China, and I've been looking forward to that for about three years. But here it is. I've got my last really busy week of the semester coming up here, then the last week of classes, then finals. And that's it. I have to start doing all sorts of things around here to get ready to pack up, and yet it just doesn't feel like it's time yet, you know? Whatever. I should be "feeling it" soon. I hope.

Mother called and asked me if I really was going to be blogging every day in April. And yes, that is the intent, although I never committed to the BEDA project. As you can easily see, these posts have been much shorter than my usual fare here, mostly because I tend to start about 15 minutes before either midnight or leaving for wherever I'm going to be at midnight. So that's a fixed constraint. And it's kind of nice. Like those "freewriting" exercises in tenth-grade English. Wait a minute, those weren't nice...

But it is a busy week coming up, as I've said, so I may miss a day. And I won't be too disappointed, because this is still more than I've done in a while. As I said on the first, this is simply motivation, and not a requirement by any means.

Productivity

2009-04-04T23:59:00.000-04:00

Whew. The "rock festival" today was fun. All of these rocks were placed in a matter of about five hours. I was there working from about 14:00 to 17:00, because of the ΜΚΥ lunch.

Once we had finished the "decorative pattern," there was extra gravel, so we patched potholes in Lou's driveway, too. Unfortunately, the extra gravel was at the top of the driveway, and the potholes were at the bottom. No problem. We just had some people shoveling gravel into plastic buckets, some people sliding filled buckets down the pavement, some people dumping the buckets, and some passing empty buckets back up the hill. That's one of the many advantages of having about 25 people helping out. It was very efficient work.

As I said earlier, ΜΚΥ had its Fifth Degree this morning, and we now have three new members. And before that, we had band recruitment, and we spoke to 16 interested prospective students (which isn't that bad for one of those events). Gosh, that seems like forever ago.

Once I got back at around 19:10, I collapsed in bed. I only arose about four hours later to write this and catch up on some emails so that I wouldn't get behind on all that. I felt bad that I ignored my mother's phone call at first, but I am now having trouble feeling my arms. At least, I told her, I won't be as physically tired after tomorrow's concerts.

And I would be remiss if I didn't mention my cousin Ted's birthday today. Twenty-three already; wow!

All in all, though, a productive day. I'd love to have those more often.

So Much to Do...

2009-04-03T21:01:00.002-04:00

Tonight is ΜΚΥ's Fourth Degree of Initiation. Tomorrow morning, at the Fifth Degree, we'll have initiated new members. That's always exciting.

Tomorrow is a busy day. Honestly, this whole upcoming week is a busy week. But tomorrow comes first. At 07:30, there's a band recruitment event at Pitt's final "Day for Admitted Students" of the year. At the Pitt Band table, members of ΚΚΨ basically talk to high school seniors who are prospective students about why they should join the band. It's really cool, despite the fact that it's really early in the morning (since it's an open "fair"-type thing that's before the actual event). But it's over by 09:00, and most of us usually go right back to sleep.

I can't, though, because ΜΚΥ Degree starts at 10:30, then we're soon off to a celebratory lunch at the Waterfront. Meanwhile, Brothers of ΚΚΨ will be making their way to the home of Lou, the band's operations manager, to help him out with a project. The double-brothers like me will join them after the ΜΚΥ lunch.

At Lou's house, we will be participating in a "rock festival." In the most literal sense of the phrase. In exchange for a modest payment to the fraternity and a lasagna dinner for everyone involved, we will be spending the afternoon moving a total of 25 tons of rocks and placing them in a "decorative pattern." So that will be a lot of fun, but also a bit of work. But there will be many hands... And then my fixed obligations for the day are done.

Sunday, I go to Uniontown with the Heinz Chapel Choir for a full two-gig day. I get maybe about a day's rest before gearing up for a Nuclear Reactors exam on Wednesday night, which is conveniently followed immediately by ΚΚΨ's final Degree, only because a Wednesday was the only day we could do it, what with the awkward placement of Easter this year.

Then it's a ChE presentation Thursday, a CHEM lab report Friday, and — what do you know? — it's the last week of classes. So that'll be fun.

Still no luck on the newest of the camera issues, which is giving me quite the sad face. I need a fully functioning camera before leaving for China, and that's only 25 days away!

Dapper Dan

2009-04-02T23:59:00.000-04:00

Tonight was the 73rd Annual Dapper Dan Dinner and Sports Auction, which was held this year at the Petersen Events Center. They invited a small pep band to play during short periods of applause, mostly while honorees were making their way to and from the microphone, much like the awards shows you see on television. Except everyone was really close by, so they weren't kidding when they said that most times it wouldn't be more than five seconds at a time.

Anyway, it was a really nice event (despite the fact that the band didn't get to eat). And there were many distinguished guests. Pitt Women's Basketball's Shavonte Zellous was honored along with the Pittsburgh Steelers' Dick LeBeau and Mike Tomlin. All three spoke.

I would show you pictures, but wouldn't you know it... the day after I finally blog about my camera being fixed, it starts acting screwy again. Now, though it will turn on and remember all of my settings, it won't stay on. Sometimes it will shut off after five or ten seconds, and sometimes after only a fifth or a tenth of a second. In any case, it would not retract the lens; it would only suddenly seem to lose power and force a restart, which would only work every fourth or fifth time.

So taking pictures was difficult. That's how things go, I guess.

The dinner did go a bit long, so I only just now got back from my own dinner (Arby's, since it's the only decent place open at 23:15 and I had a coupon). That's about all that was interesting in my life today.

BEDA?

2009-04-01T23:58:00.000-04:00

It's time for another little note to tell you how I've been doing for the last three weeks, I guess.

March Madness went well, for the most part. The men's team was disappointing in New York, but you'll have that. At least we didn't turn around and head right home; they let us stay in town for much of the next day. So it wasn't a total loss. If you haven't seen them already, I took some pictures on the trip.

And of course, that means: My camera is fixed! Hooray! I was right; it only took a watch battery. It was a bit overpriced at the RadioShack I went to in Connecticut ($5.82 altogether), but I figured that's still way less than a brand new camera, and paying a 400% premium was worth it if it meant my camera could be working right away (but moreover because 400% was only $5).

And I have just realized I haven't taken a picture yet today. This is a minor problem. (Pause.) Okay. Sorry, I just really want to get the whole "halfway decent picture every day for a month" thing done sometime soon, and it really doesn't help if I miss the first day of the month. February was ideal for that due to its brevity, as I mentioned before, but then the little mishap happened. And it screwed up March in the process. So here's hoping I can get back on track with that, because I like taking photos and it's spring and there are beautiful things all around and it's about time I finished this run-on sentence.

Much like my picture thing, I've now heard of several people who are attempting "Blog Every Day April," an idea that young adult author Maureen Johnson just came up with the other day. A couple of my YouTube subscriptions are even taking it to the next level, replacing daily blogging with daily vlogging.

Now, I am intrigued and inspired by how much this has caught on (it even has a Twitter hashtag), but I'm not sure I want to commit to anything like that, given how Aprils tend to go around these parts and how much other stuff I've got going on. But I figured I could at least write something today, and perhaps actually make a concerted effort to write shorter posts throughout the month. (And yes, I know I've said this before, but I haven't had something like this as motivation.)

So here I am, having reserved the last 15 minutes of my day specifically to write this. Or something like this, anyway. We shall see if this continues, as I have come to the realization that with the bunches of stuff going on in my life, I actually do have a lot of things I can talk about.

A few quick notes about today, Wednesday 1 April 2009:

Today was George Bandik's birthday. In case you don't remember, he was my OChem professor. I tried stopping by his office for a quick visit before PChem this afternoon, but he wasn't in. What a shame.
Google's April Fool's pranks were fun this year. Whoever came up with the idea, kudos on coordination across so many Google products!

Apologies for not saying much of actual substance today. We shall see if this continues... again, no promises. ;)

Laundry, Camera, Apartment, and Daylight

2009-03-08T06:27:00.004-04:00

It's late. Or rather, it's early. Depends on how you look at it, I suppose. But the bottom line is that as I write this sentence, it is 04:11 EDT. And what am I doing, apart from blogging, you ask? Laundry. Of course. Isn't that what everyone does at this hour?

I kid. But the last two weeks have been especially busy, and now (once again, as evidenced by the fact that I'm actually blogging) I'm leaving town. Specifically for Hartford. Specifically in under three hours from now. Specifically having clean laundry... something I don't have right now.

Anyway, I've been wrapping things up that required wrapping up for most of the evening. Namely getting a long-overdue newsletter for Music Camp put together. Hopefully I'll be able to initiate the sending process from the hotel computer in Hartford in the afternoon. And then I went to dinner, did a little research on my camera issue, and then started doing laundry, right through the temporal oddity that causes a load of wash started at 01:44 to finish at 03:22 because we feel like winding our clocks forward a bit.

Wow, that was a dense paragraph. Let's see:

As far as laundry goes, to get that out of the way, I've got until 04:41 before the first of my seven loads is ready to come out of the dryers. And once I've got everything nice and folded, I've got about two hours to pack (and perhaps finish this post). Which isn't unprecedented. I figure, though, that:

I'll be able to sleep through most of the first leg of the bus ride, which is true, since everyone will likely be too tired to watch a movie until after we've made the first stop which will then wake everyone up.
If you're going to stay up all night, it's significantly easier when the night is an hour shorter to begin with. :)

Moving on to the camera, it occurs to me that my blog readers don't know what happened to my camera. Really, honestly, the only clue people on the Internet would have (apart from the occasional whining on Twitter) is that my February 2009 calendar on Flickr, which should be the easiest month to complete, is actually quite sparse. So what happened?

Well, hearken back to 1 February, when there was this little event in Tampa Bay known as the Super Bowl. You may have heard of it. And apparently a local team came out of the event victorious. And apparently, it's a little tradition to cause $150,000 of damage to our campus when said victory occurs.

Naturally, I was out filming the happenings, since similar celebrations are practically all that's on my YouTube channel anyway. (Except Ramen. What I wouldn't give for some Ramen right now...)

I was walking up Forbes Avenue, with three or four of my closest friends and three or four thousand of my furthest strangers, and observed, among other things, that rolls of toilet paper had been thrown at the street from one of the residence halls. Elise was next to me at the time, and picked up one of these rolls of toilet paper. Since it's obvious that throwing a roll of toilet paper in celebration only once is wasteful, she attempted to procure more enjoyment from it by throwing it upwards so that it could fly through the air a second time.

Unfortunately, she didn't throw straight upwards, but rather at an angle that caused the item's trajectory to collide with my camera. With quite some velocity.

Strangely enough, Marie was actually filming in my direction at this time, and so I can actually show you the event by having you watch from 0:20 to 0:31 in this video:

I don't fault Elise for this, but really I can't fault myself, either. It was just an unfortunate accident. I was lucky enough to find the camera itself and both batteries that had fallen out within about 20 seconds despite the onslaught of stampeding Steelers fans. The only damage seemed to have been a small crack in the battery cover. Or so I thought, until I started getting this screen every time I turned the darned thing on:

Eep! I actually use timestamps to figure out what a picture is for! And here, I must either spend precious time setting it upon each startup, or just not set it and have less context when I go back through my photos. This would not do.

(Thanks to Will for letting me photograph my camera with his camera, by the way.)

So, I'd talked to Elise, and I told her that although it was important for me to have a fully-functioning camera, I could do without for a little while. She offered to pay for a new camera entirely, and I said that although I agree in not seeing why I should pay for the whole thing, I certainly don't see why she should pay for the whole thing, either.

So I did some research to no avail, and started looking up new cameras. I had my eye on this model's successor, the 8-megapixel Canon PowerShot A590IS at $130. Then Best Buy removed its online listing, so I had an alternate plan for the Canon PowerShot A1000IS at $170. Both were actually cheaper than the A570IS when I bought it in July 2007, but still quite a bit of money for an incidental expense.

And then, earlier tonight, I found a site that made mention of a CR1220 battery and I had a "Eureka!" moment. So I instantly sought out ways to find out where this battery was and how I could find it. I stumbled upon this page which contained the following image of a similar model:

See that little panel that says "CR1220" next to the AA batteries. Compare with mine as shown in this picture just taken by my comparatively shoddy phone camera (which you have to forgive, because what else was I going to do?):

Well, there you go. I guess that had gone missing, too, and has since been run over by a million cars and/or swept up by a street cleaner, or something of that nature. A little more research, and it turns out this things typically retail for two or three dollars. One place even advertised them at 89¢ each. And to top it all off, it's a pretty standard battery, so it should be available somewhere in Hartford if I can get to the right place.

So guess what, Elise? If this works, you may not even owe me a whole dollar! And then I'll have pictures for my trips again! And decent ones at that!

* * *

Uh-oh. You know a post is getting long when it requires its own set of asterisks to keep things in order.

In other good news, I finally have an apartment for 2009-2010, which is quite a load off my shoulders. In the last two weeks, I missed a whole choir rehearsal, parts of two ChE 0400 classes, and an OChem lab recitation to go to all sorts of viewings. But the fact of the matter is that it's done. The lease is signed, the deposit paid, and the paperwork is off to my parents to co-sign.

For obvious reasons, I'll decline to state here exactly where or what my future apartment will be, but it is in Shadyside and was a bit of a compromise between the "Let's live four miles away from campus because I have a car and this place is loads cheaper" camp and the "Let's live closer even though this place is a bit pricier because we don't all have a car" bunch. The four of us were successfully able to find something that was middle-of-the-road in both regards (distance and price), and once we viewed it to make sure the interior wasn't crap, we took it.

Those of you in my extended family and friends list will be sure to get the address come August, especially those on the Baxter side, since we've got that family directory thing now. Aren't you glad I resurrected that?

And oh my goodness, Daylight Saving Time. When the dates were first changed to the way they are now, I immediately knew that having eight months of DST would only accentuate the other four months, and boy did it. It sucks finishing up for the day with the sun already far below the horizon.

So I will be very excited this evening when the sun doesn't set until (realizing I'll be in Hartford) 18:51. Eh, that's a half an hour's improvement, but that's the penalty for travelling to the east. I'll get the other half hour when I come back to Pittsburgh.

Which hopefully won't be for a while. Since I am going to Hartford and New York for basketball tournaments, our return to Pittsburgh is entirely contingent on the successes of our basketball teams. Pitt's women earned a 3-seed in the tournament, and play (6) DePaul at 20:00 EDT tonight. If they win tonight and Monday, they'll be in the championship game on Tuesday, which means we won't have time to come back to Pittsburgh and will go straight to New York. The men earned a 2-seed, and will play some random team from the first two rounds on Thursday night.

I say "some random" team because the Big East have changed the format of the tournaments this year. Since both our teams are in the top four, both get two byes in the five-day tournament. It's a little weird, but it's basically a convoluted way to have all 16 teams in each tournament while still rewarding those who perform well in the regular season with a little extra rest.

* * *

There it goes again...

It may be hard to believe, but I actually had more to write. I'm running out of time now, and that's the main reason I'm stopping. And I know back when I first started this blog, I would say "I'm soon going to write about all these things," and then never did. So I don't want to do that.

But other things on my mind at this time include:

ChE 0400;
Things I need to buy; and
The China Tour with the Heinz Chapel Choir.

If a post about these things never materializes, feel free to ask me about them at any time. Just don't ask me here, and don't ask me now.

I'm now just 40 minutes from being on a bus to Connecticut (albeit in a sleepy state), and I just want to let everyone know that you can follow my updates on the basketball trail this year on my Twitter page, since I can SMS now, and I can no longer access the mobile site I wrote last year. It'll be infinitely easier to just send a few quick text messages than peck out long and painful password-protected updates into a mobile web form.

And if you don't have or want Twitter (although the real question here is "Why?"), my recent updates are always in the sidebar of this blog and are also linked to my Facebook status. So that'll work, too.

To my Pitt friends: I hope you have a wonderful Spring Break this week, whether at home, elsewhere, or even with me at the tournaments.

Au revoir!

Super Bowl 43

2009-02-01T16:51:00.002-05:00

Here it is. The day is finally here.

Since the last time the Steelers won the Super Bowl, a lot has happened on this blog. I would love to put the Steelers logo up here again (except not just a dinky little icon again). In fact, even if the Cardinals were to win, I don't think I'd put their logo here. Or at least not larger than five or six pixels.

I'm just about to leave with friends for a game-watching party.

I'll have my camera ready to take video and pictures of any celebrations that may ensue later tonight, which you'll probably be able to find on YouTube and flickr, respectively, before the sun rises on Monday. And I'll be making a few tweets here and there on Twitter, too.

Enjoy the game, and Let's Go Steelers!

Pitt Students Celebrate Steelers' AFC Championship Victory

2009-01-19T00:21:00.006-05:00

©2009, Timothy J. Parenti. All rights reserved.This video is 4:24 in length.

Another big victory, another big celebration!

On Sunday 18 January 2009, the Pittsburgh Steelers defeated the Baltimore Ravens 23-14 in the National Football League's AFC championship, earning themselves a spot in Super Bowl XLIII, to be held in Tampa, Florida on 1 February 2009.

This is video from the celebrations on the University of Pittsburgh campus.

You can also see my pictures from the celebrations, too.

Term 2094 Schedule

2009-01-06T23:39:00.000-05:00

Another year, another semester.

I didn't really blog about finals last semester because (1) it wasn't all that exciting, and (2) it was super-duper busy. Right back from Thanksgiving Recess on Monday 1 December, we had a major presentation to present the next day (we finished it at 03:00). Then a music exam on 3 December and a Materials exam on 5 December, all before the real Finals Week was to begin.

Then it was BioChem and Transport on 9 and 10 December, respectively, before we could finally calm down. By drawing bunnies at other people's remaining exams.

Anyway, you're probably wondering how I did. Well, here you go:

ChE 0300	Transport Phenomena	6 cr.	B
ChE 0301	Transport Phenomena Laboratory	1 cr.	A
ChE 1085	Departmental Seminar	0 cr.	S
ChE 1530	Biochemistry for Engineers	3 cr.	C+
ENGR 0022	Materials Structure and Properties	3 cr.	B+
MUSIC 0311	Introduction to World Music	3 cr.	A-
MUSIC 0612	Heinz Chapel Choir	1 cr.	A+
MUSIC 0630	Marching Band	1 cr.	A

These grades represent a QPA of 3.208 on 18 credits, giving me an overall GPA of 3.460 on 88 credits. BioChem hurt the ChE scores a bit, but I still have 3.521 on 24 credits in my major.

And now, here we are at the close of a second day of another semester. This semester's classes are as follows:

Class Title and Credit Value
ASTRON 0113	Introduction to Astronomy	3 cr.
ChE 0400	Reactive Process Engineering	5 cr.
ChE 0401	Reactive Process Engineering Lab	1 cr.
ChE 1085	Departmental Seminar	0 cr.
CHEM 0340	Organic Chemistry 2 Lab	1 cr.
CHEM 1480	Intermediate Physical Chemistry	3 cr.
ENGR 1701	Fundamentals of Nuclear Reactors	3 cr.
MUSIC 0612	Heinz Chapel Choir	1 cr.
MUSIC 0631	Symphonic Band	1 cr.
		18 cr.

Classes begin 5 January 2009; final exams are 20-25 April 2009. No classes 19 January for Martin Luther King's Birthday Observance, or 8-15 March for Spring Recess.

I'm a little bit frustrated by the PChem recitation overlapping with Nuclear, because that's not how it's listed in the system, but that's how it is. Apparently some people had talked to the professor ahead of time since the original 17:00 start time conflicted with something. So the system was changed to read 17:30-17:50, but a 20-minute recitation isn't going to be useful, so we were informed that recitations will be 17:30-18:15.

Of course, I know for a fact that I'm not the only one for whom that poses a problem, so maybe if enough people band together, he might add an alternate time.

Other than that, everything's going well. Judging from "syllabus day," the ChE 0400 professor is definitely well-versed in effective pedagogical techniques, so she's definitely trying to help us learn. Let's just hope that that translates well into actual practice. ASTRON seems to strike the right combination of fun and challenge, at least judging from today's lecture and a quick skimming of the first homework set.

Exams look to be nicely spaced. Tentatively 4, 9, 18, 26 February; 18, 23 March; 8 April; and then finals. This is a feature not many of my other semesters have been able to boast. Of course, there'll be a couple reports and a presentation in there for ChE 0401 (same as always), but hopefully I'll be able to make the best of everything.

The homework is regular, too. Reactive Processes will be due Wednesdays, Astronomy on Thursdays, and, of course, the OChem labs will be due Fridays, since that's when I have it. This is also a relief. It will allow me to get into more of a routine, because I know from experience that when homework is due on seemingly random days that vary each week, I don't do well with its time-management.

Random tangent 1: I like this blogging with a goal in mind. Like blogging right before midnight, trying to get the post done on time. It keeps me on my toes.

Random tangent 2: I found a dime on the ground today, the first coinage picked up this year. Perhaps I should do a running count, akin to Laurel's coffee count?

Twenty-one

2009-01-04T23:59:00.005-05:00

Today was my twenty-first birthday, which is often made into a much bigger deal than a typical birthday is.

No, I did not get drunk. And no, I did not drink the rum I'd gotten as an early birthday present. Don't even go there.

But I did have a nice dinner with family and friends. My grandparents; Bev and her son Danny; Barb, Mark, and their daughters (including Laurel); my aunt Lisa; Marie; Jen and her friend Candice; and the entirety of my immediate family celebrated together at The Cheesecake Factory in Pittsburgh's South Side tonight.

Although I probably made a bigger deal about the vigintennial anniversary of my birth last year (at least on this blog, mostly because my age suddenly started with a "2"), I certainly had a bigger party (of sorts) this time. I mean, you only turn 21 once, right? Of course, you could say that for any year, really...

There were lots of pictures taken as I sipped my first sip of alcohol, a white zinfandel, at 19:24. I've always heard that alcoholic drinks are an acquired taste, and I can now fully understand why. Though I'm sure it'll grow on me eventually, I don't think I liked it as much as I could have. Perhaps it didn't "match" the food I was having.

But at least I can say I tried it.

Twenty-one doesn't really feel any different from twenty right now, except that my liver is probably saying, "What's this? A new chemical to process? What fun!" The real differences will happen during this semester: simultaneously looking for a job, an internship, roommates, and an apartment. All while taking classes and having resolved to blog more? I must be crazy.

That, and I'm really tired from having packed up earlier this morning and having come down to Pittsburgh to begin a new semester tomorrow. What a whirlwind!

Honestly, I think if we called our twenty-first birthday our "sesquiquattuordecennial," a word referring to "one-and-a-half periods of 14 years," we would intentionally not make a big deal about it, just because no one would want to say it.

Except for me.

But all that matters today is that I'm 21 now, right? I certainly won't take advantage of that fact too much, too soon...

Random tangent: I was looking for alternative birthdays using decimal-based methods the other day, and noticed that 11 September 2001 was my 5000th day of life (counting my birthdate as the first). That's a little bit creepy.

Telephony

2009-01-03T23:55:00.000-05:00

If you've tried to call me even once in the last two or three months, you've probably noticed that my Motorola RAZR V3m phone has not been kind to me. Dropped calls, random shutdowns, and just general instability.

Sometimes it would freeze, and the only way to get it back would be to take out the battery and restart it. Other times it would show full signal strength, only to have not actually communicated with the cell towers all day... something I'd only find out when I plugged it in to charge and suddenly had three voicemails.

I was more than a little unnerved when my phone, which had been so reliable for 22 months, started doing this periodically:

What caused this to happen and how it worked this way is beyond me. Honestly, you'd have to try to program in something like that. If it weren't that I were expecting (and relying on) this device to function properly, I'd find it quite amusing.

So my parents and I went to the Verizon Store on Friday, and after some thought and trying out the phones that were there, I picked the LG Decoy:

The first one the salesperson got didn't work, but he got out another one, and it's been wonderful ever since! The menu setup is very similar to that of my old phone, and it has some new features as well as improvements on old ones, including a 2-megapixel camera.

The only thing I've found that I'm not thrilled with is that the recent calls list only lists the single most recent call to, from, and missed from a given number, whereas my old phone listed each individual call. I used to use that if I couldn't get a hold of someone to remind myself how many times I'd tried their number and when.

But I think I'll get over not having that anymore.

My parents also decided to splurge and add on a small SMS plan to the contract. Yes, that's right. Texting. Hell hath frozen over.

Since the allotment is small, I probably won't be using it for much, but it's good to know it's there, especially since nowadays college students will just assume you can receive SMS. Especially since it'll help for those times when people won't answer their phones.

So to those of you who know me, give me a call, send me a message! I'd love to talk sometime.

Random tangent: I don't usually open birthday gifts at Christmas, but I decided to make an exception for my Uncle Dave's gift this year. I don't know why I did, because as it turns out, it was a bottle of rum. In five minutes' time, I will be able to legally consume said rum. I think I'll wait a bit longer.

2009

2009-01-01T23:59:00.001-05:00

Continuing a tradition going back to 2006, it's time to ring in the new year on Randomness with a little token of well-wishing in the form of something somewhat creative.

Happy 2009!

I was indeed on a bus as the ball dropped in Times Square, somewhere between Pittsburgh International Airport and the Petersen Events Center in Oakland. I have a general idea of where I was at the exact moment, but I haven't yet been able to find it on a map and Street View isn't being much help.

But I will find out. Even if it means catching a bus that'll go past that spot, GPS in hand. That, I can assure you.

One thing I do know is that I started writing my last post 43 miles (70 km) northeast of Kansas City, Missouri and finished it 25 minutes later, 8 miles (13 km) northwest of Decatur, Illinois. So yeah, I was right about Central time.

Since we didn't actually go into the airport after landing, I wasn't able to get a wireless signal, so I had to wait until we were back at the Pete to upload the post. But even though we didn't get there until 00:19 EST, and I uploaded the post at (according to Blogger) 00:44:53.639 EST, it still contained 100% raw, unedited, word-for-word 2008-me.

And now 2009-me can point and laugh, I suppose. But that would just be mean.

After collecting my checked luggage (and discovering that its handle had been completely snapped off during its handling), I got to the hotel at around 01:45, and was flipping through channels, about to doze off, when at 02:00, CNN and Fox News started rebroadcasting their Times Square coverage for the West Coast crowd.

So, naturally, in an effort to achieve some sense of normalcy by ringing in the new year properly, I stayed up until 03:00 EST (00:00 PST) to watch the ball drop on tape delay. And then I went to bed.

This morning, a friend who was heading to Binghamton, New York picked me up (along with several other bandies), and took me most of the way home, since she was going that way anyway. So I was home by 13:30 and it saved my parents three out of four hours of driving. That was good.

It's been a fairly busy day, with parents wanting to see my pictures (I promise they'll be posted soon) and football-watching and the like. Friday is the last business day before I go back to Pittsburgh, so I need to deposit all of my Christmas/birthday money so I can buy books and pay for the China trip!

Have a happy 2009, everyone!

Resolved: That I'll blog more this year. In each of the last three years, I wrote a post 74, 36, and 18 times. That needs to change. And it needs to change now.

Way Over Your Head

2008-12-31T22:28:00.000-05:00

I bet you thought I wasn't going to do my traditional year-end post, didn't you?

For those of you who knew about my recent travels, this post may just come as a surprise. It certainly won't be in the same form as usual, but I'm getting it out there nonetheless.

As I type this sentence, it is currently 0304 UTC, and I only express the time that way because I'm miles above the ground and have no clue what state (or time zone, for that matter) I'm over at this time. Although I suspect we're over the Central time zone, and I promise I'll find out for sure later.

In case you're a little bit confused, I've been in El Paso, TX since Monday 29 December with the band and am now on our return flight to Pittsburgh. Since we're expected to land at about 23:20 EST, the only way I can get this post out by year's end is to use two-thirds of my remaining battery life to type this and the remaining third to take brief advantage of the free wireless Internet at Pittsburgh International Airport and upload it quickly before we leave.

Pitt's football team played in the Sun Bowl this afternoon against the Oregon State Beavers, and the last three days in El Paso have been one big "fiesta" leading up to the main event.

We met in Pittsburgh at 06:30 EST on Monday, and were busy either flying, practicing, performing, or whatever until we returned to the hotel at 22:30 MST (i.e., 00:30 EST, a full 18 hours later). Then Tuesday morning was a continuation of the whirlwind with a Battle of the Bands and another brief rehearsal before we got about 90 minutes of free time. I'm pretty sure most of us took a nap. Then off to the Fan Fiesta (where another Battle of the Bands was held), and we were free for dinner.

So all in all, over the course of the last three days, the band have had precious few hours of unstructured time. Not to mention that our hotel was right across the street from the airport, and there's not too many of those "authentic Mexican restaurants" within walking distance.

And then, of course, there was the game. Which we lost, 3-0. As one of my colleagues said, it was far more a matter of Pitt losing than of Oregon State winning. Such low-scoring games are always frustrating, especially when you're down and there are so many turnovers (including two in the first minute of play). Pitt stepped up to the plate in the waning moments of the game, but it was too little, too late. If only they'd played like that from the beginning...

But it certainly wasn't all bad. Not at all. Although the lows in El Paso were nearly identical to the lows in Pittsburgh on Monday and Tuesday (about 34 °F or 1 °C), the highs ranged from 60-65 °F (16-18 °C), whereas Pittsburgh was... well, let's just say it was colder back home. I got a bit of sun at the game today and am probably burnt. Which doesn't typically happen in December.

And then, of course, there's the time spent with friends. We may not always get along like peas in a pod, but it's good to see some of the people you care about and haven't seen for a while. And it provided a little bit of an escape from the hectic holiday season.

As I said, earlier, we're projected to land in Pittsburgh at around 23:20 EST, which means we'll probably be busing back to Oakland when the ball drops. And since I'll be away from home for the first time on New Year's, staying at a Pittsburgh hotel until my parents come on New Year's Day, I don't want to ring in 2009 in such a lackluster way as just saying "Happy New Year" on a darkened bus full of sleepy, grumpy people (grumpy because we lost and they're tired, not because they're generically grumpy people).

Anyway, I think that, should the celebration be unsatisfactory, I'll reserve the right to stay on El Paso time for celebratory purposes only until after it's midnight there. Maybe somewhere they'll be selling sparkling grape juice at 01:00? I don't know, but it's worth a shot, right?

In any case, I hope all of you have had a very happy holiday and I wish you all the best in 2009.

This is Tim, signing off from way over your head, at 0328 UTC (with 25 minutes of battery left for Pittsburgh).

Random tangent: Apparently, the in-flight movie for this flight was really short, so they're supplementing it with an episode of Numb3rs. Too bad my headset doesn't work.

Vote!

2008-11-04T15:58:00.000-05:00

If you haven't heard it already, you're going to hear it again.

VOTE!

If you are eligible and registered to vote today, there's no excuse for you not to. Let your voice be heard.

I overheard a piece of a conversation yesterday between two people, one who was planning on voting for Obama, the other for McCain. And they (albeit jokingly) said that they should just agree not to vote and not waste their time.

What a horrible way to look at our electoral system! I voted absentee last week, and I haven't yet told anyone who I voted for. For all you know, dear reader, I could have canceled your vote. Should that matter to you?

On the contrary, it shouldn't cause you to do anything different but place your ballot as you were going to anyway. If you happen to agree with me, great. If not, fine. At least your voice will have been heard.

Obama or McCain, I really couldn't care less who you particularly vote for. I mean, obviously, it does matter who is elected, and so your vote does matter, but your particular choice isn't going to make me think any higher or lower of you.

On one condtion:

When you vote, whomever you vote for, it matters to me that you do so consciously and not blindly. You should actually think about all of the many issues at hand (taxes, economy, social security, foreign policy, health care and education to name only six)... and then make a decision that you're most comfortable with.

It may sound at first glance like I'm referring to those who are seemingly enamored with Obama, but there are just as many "McCain-iacs" out there who aren't looking at the issues. Likewise, there are just as many people on both sides who actually know what they're talking about and have made an informed decision one way or the other.

I know no candidate is perfect, and quite honestly, neither candidate will be best for all of the wide range of issues we must consider. But it is my belief that one should be able to justify to oneself why they voted for whomever they did in every category (or at least be willing to concede in a few cases that you can't have it all). If you can't do that... well, you still have every right to vote however you choose, but maybe you should reconsider your options one last time.

I may never ask you who you voted for to see if you can defend your choice. Most likely, no one will. But you should be accountable to yourself. Pro-McCain, pro-Obama, I don't care. Pro-thinking is the way to go.

This is the closest most of us get to running the show. Don't mess it up for stupid reasons. Think... and vote.

Polls are open in Pennsylvania until 20:00 EST. For customized local voting information, click here.

Random tangent 1: Yesterday, I was handed a bag of Doritos as part of a "get out the vote" campaign. It read: "Two parties, one America. Ranch and Pizza Cravers." And in my oh-so-perpetual 24-hour-laggy-wittiness, I realized that I was in fact registered "Salsa Verde." I should be offended.

Random tangent 2: Do they even make Salsa Verde anymore? That was a really good flavor...

On the Road Again

2008-10-30T23:19:00.000-04:00

Why do I always seem to blog right before leaving town?

But alas, another month has gone by, and all too fast. It's amazing how that happens. And I really ought to be writing.

In a few short minutes, I'll trek up the hill to get on another band bus to Notre Dame. We'll be spending most of the day and evening tomorrow (Halloween) in Chicago, IL, where our hotel is, before heading back to South Bend, IN for Saturday's game, and ultimately returning to Pittsburgh in the wee hours of Sunday morning.

As a side effect that only a geek would notice, that means I'll be travelling into UTC-5 (Central Daylight Time), travelling back into UTC-4 (Eastern Daylight Time), and then changing the clocks to UTC-5 (Eastern Standard Time) on the way back. So I might as well just get used to "new time" now.

As far as politics goes, I voted on Monday. At 12:12 EDT, I filled in a bubble on a bubble sheet that somehow represents (in an absentee manner) my choice for president. It was a little bit scary, and I actually did pause a little beforehand. But I did it. And the ballot's in the mail.

I watched Barack Obama's 30-minute infomercial last night, just to see what he had to say, since it obviously couldn't sway my vote in either direction. I really don't know how to feel about that. I mean, sure it was uplifting and inspirational, but are paid infomercials really what our democracy is coming to? Please tell me it isn't so.

In any case, I'm sure glad to have gotten that over with. Obama referred to "having gotten to know Americans over the last 21 months," which really made me frustrated that this spectacle that has been the 2008 election cycle has been drawn out for so long. My one choir friend even wrote an Op-Ed for the Pitt News warning people to watch out for the onset of Post-Election Depression Syndrome.

But as important as the presidential election is, it's not been at the front of my mind lately. I had mostly made up my mind about a week and a half ago, which is a very good thing... because I haven't really been able to keep up with the news for the last week and a half.

If you've been reading recent tweets on my Twitter, you'll have noticed that I've been having computer troubles lately.

I was having a remarkably awesome dream on the morning of Saturday 18 October, when at 05:30, it was interrupted by a grating and whirring sound within my laptop. At first I thought it was the hard drive, and my tech-support/friend Corey was inclined to believe me, until I had him actually come over to run some diagnostics, which proved that it was in fact the cooling fan which was failing.

So in order to not overheat my laptop, I've been working out of computer labs for about the last fortnight. And when I get back from Indiana, I'll have to somehow find a replacement fan.

Classes are going well, and the same with all the extracurriculars. I'm a little bit frustrated that two of my classes decided to have big group projects for the end of the term but didn't assign them until just now, but I'll deal with it.

And, oh yeah, I'm a membership candidate for ΚΚΨ, the national honorary band fraternity. In fact, if all goes well, I'm just over two weeks from becoming a Brother.

Oops. Guess it really has been a while, eh, blogosphere?

Hope October was great, everyone. I'll see you hopefully sooner this time.

Random tangent 1: First snow in Pittsburgh yesterday! And I don't have my winter coat down here because my parents forgot to bring it down with them on 12 October. I'll survive, I guess.

Random tangent 2: The Cathedral of Learning has been lit up in all kinds of cool manners lately, as part of the Festival of Lights celebrating Pittsburgh's 250th anniversary next month. I have some awesome pictures, and I'd certainly like to link them, but (as you've probably guessed) uploading them just won't happen without a working computer.

Back to Blogging Basics

2008-09-13T00:10:00.003-04:00

So, I feel like I should write here a bit more often. There are a number of reasons for this, which are listed below in no particular order:

I miss blogging.
A lot of my readership have just gone off to college and are physically further away.
I want to feel as though I'm connecting with my family and friends as much as I have in the past.
I've gotten 3 IMs in the last 24 hours basically saying "you should blog... now." ;)

Not that I'm one to cave to peer pressure (at least not often), but it's really a good point. For all of those reasons, I should be writing this right now.

And so I am.

But enough nonsense. A self-referential blog post isn't what you came here for. No one wants or needs that. You, dear reader, want to know about my life!

Or at least, I'm assuming you do. After all, you came here.

First and foremost, my classes are going pretty well. It's always hard to tell just three weeks in how things are going to be, but I'm fairly confident this time around. As always, there are many annoying quirks in each class, but I won't dwell on them (at least not here). After all, they pale in comparison to Laurel's dropped class, although I'm sure I find them just as frustrating at times.

I'm actually pleased with all of the members of my ChE 0301 lab team, which was a pleasant surprise considering I didn't know any of them prior to our first lab session on 4 September. As expected, Biochem is an interesting class despite the fact that it annoyingly falls on Tuesday nights. World Music is definitely fun and interesting; however, I'm a little bit anxious about the first exam on 17 September because I've never taken a formal music class here before and I have only a vague idea of what the exam will be like in terms of format, content, and the like. So I'll definitely be studying up for that.

I've been doing okay with waking up, too. For example, on 3 September, I watched Gov. Sarah Palin's speech at the Republican National Convention online, since I figured I might as well hear what she has to say in order to have any hope of making an informed decision in November. Her speech ended at around 23:15, at which point I decided to head for bed. One problem: I hadn't yet read over the lab for ChE 0301 the next morning.

I told myself that I'd get up at 07:00 to read it and do some other work before lab at 10:00... and I actually did. After a wakeup routine of about 20 minutes, I was actually alert enough to read and comprehend the lab manual. And then I realized that I was ever-so-slightly more of a morning person for doing so. Really, when was the last time I subconsciously decided to go to bed before midnight?

This isn't to say that I'm suddenly a morning person. Au contraire, mon frère. I mean, I'm writing this in the late evening hours, so that should be at least something of an indicator.

On a typical weekday this fall, I've had my "gentle beep" alarm go off at 07:50, followed by my louder "music" alarm at 07:56. I then fumble for my computer and wake it up, and it starts playing BBC World Service Radio at 07:59, just in time for the hourly news bulletin. Early on, I'd be out of bed when it ended at 08:06, but lately I've listened to the program in a half-dozed state until the break at 08:30. That's not good on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, when I have the 09:00 class, but at least I'm waking myself up... and I'm trying to stay informed while doing so.

Speaking of the 09:00 class (Materials), we just had a guest lecturer who presented a case study on airplane engine failures. I can't speak for anyone else, but I'm sure glad that that lecture was on 12 September and not 11 September. Because it wouldn't be very tactful to be talking about things going wrong with airplanes on 11 September.

I might be informally tutoring Physics 1, because I've got a couple of acquaintances who aren't having such a good time in that class right now. I helped one of them with kinematics just this afternoon. It took a little while to get the juices flowing in that direction again, but I think we made progress. And progress is good.

Um, that's about all I have now. Hopefully I'll be able to blog about some other things in the near future. But for now, it's late... and I must get to bed.

Random tangent: I've gotten back on a caffeine-regulated schedule. So long as I control my intake, all is well with the world.

Term 2091

2008-08-28T13:45:00.000-04:00

Very quickly, and very briefly, before we get started, I need to stick to tradition and mention that I got a C in Organic Chemistry 2 over the summer, which puts me at a cumulative average of 3.525 on 70 credits; the old concern with the old OChem 1 grade being counted has been resolved.

This fall's classes are as follows:

Class Title and Credit Value
ChE 0300	Transport Phenomena	6 cr.
ChE 0301	Transport Phenomena Laboratory	1 cr.
ChE 1085	Departmental Seminar	0 cr.
ChE 1530	Biochemistry for Engineers	3 cr.
ENGR 0022	Materials Structure and Properties	3 cr.
MUSIC 0311	Introduction to World Music	3 cr.
MUSIC 0612	Heinz Chapel Choir	1 cr.
MUSIC 0630	Marching Band	1 cr.
		18 cr.

Classes begin 25 August 2008; final exams are 8-13 December 2008. No classes 1 September for Labor Day; no classes 13 October for Fall Break, Monday classes instead observed on 14 October; no classes 26-28 November for Thanksgiving Recess.

As you can see, I have nice big open afternoons. I'm not sure what to think of it yet, but I have the feeling it's a good thing, because I can do errands, do homework, do internship searches, or whatever else needs to be done during that time.

I'm still not used to the fact that my ChE courses are at 10:00 and not 08:00 yet, but it means that instead of my friends and I going out for bagels afterwards, we go out for lunch. Which is a lot of fun.

The only thing I don't particularly like is the ChE 1530 (BioChem) lecture that spans Tuesday nights. It causes me to miss the last half-hour of choir, miss all of band, and risk missing my meeting for ΜΚΥ in the event that band should let out earlier than normal, which I'm sure will happen on at least one Tuesday between now and November.

Fall break is a bit of a complicated thing, too. Because we miss a Monday for Labor Day; and we miss a Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday for Thanksgiving Recess; it makes sense to miss a Tuesday for any Fall Break we might have.

But you can't just call off a random Tuesday, so we're going to call off Monday and then make up the Monday classes on Tuesday in lieu of the Tuesday classes, effectively canceling the Tuesday classes even though we have Monday off. I am envisioning mass chaos on those days.

All in all, I think that this can and will be a good term. I'm doing well on forming good habits, although it hasn't even been a week yet, so we'll see how everything holds up once it comes time for midterm exams.

Random tangent: Pitt's Bonfire & Pep Rally is tonight at 20:30; I will be playing there. And apparently, my grandfather won tickets to tonight's Steelers preseason game and is taking my father. So that's exciting.

Waiting for College

2008-07-31T23:59:00.002-04:00

Granted, it's an experience I've already had for two whole years. But I still can't wait to go back.

But for now, here I am, sitting at my computer in the last half-hour of a month which has, all things considered, been quite good to me. I suppose having neglected this blog for the entirety of June, it would be prudent to write something here before we say goodbye to July. In fact, I've thought this for several days now and have kept putting it off.

So now, I will force myself to try.

Because of the extended hiatus, I'll skip over a lot of the things that my recent posts have set me up to write about, as they're not really at the front of my mind right now. Rather, I'll start with the week I recently spent at Camp Lambec counseling campers at Music Camp from 12 to 19 July.

It may seem odd that I'm starting with camp on my blog, especially because I never have the words to describe my experiences there. It was simply amazing, as always. To think that there is a place so beautiful, peaceful, and full of God's love... it's been quite reassuring throughout the tougher times of my life.

Since words seem to fall short, I'll share what I can through the photographs I took. It is simply breathtaking to hear so many voices singing praises to God and to see so many people doing His work and learning about His Word.

As I've done for the last several years, I plan to manage the camp newsletter this year, periodically reminding the campers that though they were at a spiritual high at camp, God is with them even in the deepest of spiritual valleys.

The rest of my spare time has been easily filled up with projects for pittband.com and Mu Kappa Upsilon. I'm somewhat confident I can tie up all the little loose ends by the time I have to leave.

Which is Thursday 14 August, by the way, just two weeks away. It's kind of scary that I'll be entering my junior year.

My sincerest apologies for not being too comprehensive or comprehensible in this post. I just wanted to get something out there to let my readers know I still care.

June

2008-06-30T23:59:00.004-04:00

Apparently, June was rather uninteresting, at least as far as blog fodder goes. See my post of 31 July 2008.

It's BPRD, or is it?

2008-05-23T23:50:00.001-04:00

Wow. It's been a whole year since I last celebrated my made-up holiday which had, just prior, been made effectively made useless. There's not much point in remembering lost blog posts when they're autosaved. In fact, this post just autosaved when I paused after writing that last sentence.

I knew something would have to be done with this holiday, and last year, I said that I would "have quite a while to change things around or decide to do away with [the holiday] altogether."

Well, obviously I didn't think too hard about that, now did I?

So here I am, on another 23 May, and I have no blog posts to remember. No Blog Post Remembrance Day. Nothing to celebrate.

Or do I?

At 02:11 EDT today, Randomness logged its 8,000th hit from New Jersey. So I do have something to celebrate! Now, if that isn't the made-up holiday gods looking down on me, I don't know what is.

Now, if I could only get around to telling you all about what's actually going on in my life, other than the fact that I'll be going to Laurel's graduation party on Sunday. I mean, that's exciting. But you probably already know about that. She has her own blog, and besides, half of my readership will be there!

Until next time, have a great Memorial Day weekend, everyone!

Random tangent: I happen to be in a computer lab next to Emily. When I mentioned I didn't know what to write, she suggested, "Pancakes are good. Yum, yum, yum."

Bloggy Cake!

2008-05-14T22:39:00.002-04:00

Egads! My blog, Randomness, is three years old! Yes, this very blog!

And, to celebrate, as has apparently become a bit of a tradition on this blog, I baked a delicious little bloggy cake. By which, of course, I mean I went to the computer lab, found some clip art, and then Photoshopped it a little.

The best part about bloggy cake is that it can be whatever flavor you like. It's digital, so it doesn't matter. Dig in!

It's hard to believe that for three whole years I've been here, sharing the nonsense that my life so often is. Personally, I'm proud that I've persevered for that long, as I've never been able to stay focused on a project for as long as this. I don't know what I envisioned when I wrote that first post in 2005, and I don't even know what I envision now for the future of this blog, but I really like what I'm doing here. It makes me happy.

Now, I acknowledge that I haven't written as much here as I would have liked to over the last few months. And that's understandable. Academics come first. However, I'd really like to get back into the habit of blogging more often. Even though this little exercise here is done for nothing but my own benefit, I have to remind myself that I do have an audience, and that they do care about my life, whether I write about it or not. In the past year, 2803 hits have proven that to me (down 11%, if you were wondering, like me; oh, well).

And so, to my blogging friends (many of whose blogs also turn 3 this summer), consider this a little nudge for you to continue blogging as well. Because I'm part of your audience, too, and I certainly care.

Here's to a wonderful fourth year of blogging...

Academic Update

2008-05-14T20:18:00.003-04:00

Well, finals came and went, and contrary to popular rumor, I'm still alive. I know you're all disappointed. But not really.

Gosh, where has all this sarcasm come from lately?

Anywho, I went online on the evening of 30 April and found some nice little letters from my professors, some of which are adorned with mathematical symbols:

ChE 0200	Chemical Engineering Thermodynamics	6 cr.	A+
ChE 0201	Chemical Engineering Thermodynamics Lab	1 cr.	A-
ChE 1085	Departmental Seminar	0 cr.	S
CHEM 0310	Organic Chemistry 1	3 cr.	B+
ENGCMP 0400	Written Professional Communication	3 cr.	A-
ENGR 0020	Probability and Statistics for Engineers 1	3 cr.	A
MUSIC 0631	Concert Band	1 cr.	A

These grades represent a QPA of 3.819 on 18 credits, and that makes me very happy. According to official University policy, this gives me a cumulative average of 3.593 on 67 credits; however, the online system is still counting the old OChem 1 grade in its calculation and says my average is 3.482 on 70 credits. This is wrong, and I'm going to address it quickly to make sure that the right people are aware of this disparity, especially because (as of now) it would mean the difference between graduating Cum Laude and Magna Cum Laude. I mean, "magna" is an important word!

Of course, there is a slight downside to this news, and that is that my lovely 4.000 in ChE classes is no more. It's all because of that pesky little A- in the ChE 0201 lab. It was mostly group work, and I missed the A by six points, and although I'm sure those six points were within my grasp, I can't help but think that one of our more difficult group members also lost us those six points at some point. Nevertheless, I'm not here to make excuses, and besides, my QPA in my major is now 3.982 on 14 credits. Which is still pretty darn good, if I do say so myself.

Anyhow, many of you have probably already heard that I'm taking Organic Chemistry 2 as a six-week summer course. It's already started, and it's going well. So here's the obligatory information, which is quite streamlined since it's only one class:

Class Title and Credit Value
CHEM 0320	Organic Chemistry 2	3 cr.	(6Wk1)

Classes begin 12 May 2008 for the Six-Week 1 term, and end on 20 June 2008. No classes 26 May for Memorial Day.

My professor is Dr. George Bandik, who I had for OChem 1 (the first time) in the fall. One might think that's a bad thing, but he's a really good professor who genuinely cares about his students' progress, and my choices were either to take his six-week course, take someone else's four-week course, or possibly be a year behind in chemistry. So I think I made the right choice.

Fortunately, I'm understanding the material so far. I just have to spend a lot of time poring over it. I've heard from my friends that OChem 2 is easier, especially once one has the OChem 1 foundation. Although that's not enough to lull me into a false sense of security, it's still nice to know.

I won't bore you with any more details, though. Just know that this is what I'm doing for a while.

Random tangent: The maintenance crew was testing the fire and smoke alarms in my building today, and they got to my floor just as I was coming back from class. Let's just say that knowing there's a reason such alarms are so piercingly annoying doesn't make them any less so. It sort of acted to get people out of their rooms, though, which was nice. I talked to a few guys on my floor.

Term 2084 Finals

2008-04-21T23:18:00.001-04:00

Okay, let's get this over with.

I know, it's been eons since I've blogged, and I have a ton to write about (not to mention the pictures to post!), but the fact of the matter is that it's a busy time of year here in Collegeland... namely, Finals Week. Here's what's on tap:

As you can clearly see, the reason this post is going to be so gosh-darn short is because I'm frantically trying to get together everything for my ENGCMP 0400 Portfolio, which is due at 12:00 EDT tomorrow.

After that, I have a few phone calls to make and errands to run before the fun studying starts Tuesday night, specifically for ChE 0200 (Thermodynamics). The week is rounded out with CHEM 0310 (Organic Chemistry) and it spills over into Saturday (ugh!) with ENGR 0020 (Statistics).

I don't know what to think about this, aside from the fact that such a back-ended schedule is less than desirable. Thermodynamics is generally regarded as the hardest of these courses by my peers, but I actually haven't been having too much trouble with the style of exams in that course. Statistics has been relatively straightforward... and to top it all off, it's a non-comprehensive exam. Again, the whole course has basically focused on applying principles that I've been using, in some form, since I was ten. Not that I was taught how to use them then... I was just that much of a nerd. See? It can pay off!

So, although I will of course be studying for both of those exams, I'm not very concerned about their outcome.

Organic Chemistry sticks out like a sore thumb. It's not quite the bane of my academic career, but admittedly, it feels like it sometimes. The curriculum is supposed to go through Chapter 13, so what do we do? After sloughing through Chapters 1-8, we covered Chapter 9 in two lectures, ahead of Exam 3 on 11 April. There were two questions on epoxide ring opening on that exam, material that was covered only in the last five minutes of the lecture immediately prior. I'm pretty sure I figured out what to do, but I genuinely feel bad for those who are taking this class the first time around. While that wasn't fair to anybody, it was much less fair to them.

Naturally, the topics of Chapters 10-13 were breezed by in the ensuing week, and we didn't get Exam 3 back in that time, so we don't know what we missed, and thus don't know what to focus more heavily on in studying for the Final. Normally, exam turnback has been within two lectures' time, with a period afterwards to challenge grading errors. This time, though, the idea is that our exams will be checked over so thoroughly that regrades will not be necessary. It's great in theory, but when the mantra all along has been "make sure the students know where they're not understanding things," even at the expense of keeping pace with the curriculum, it comes as a shock to have one-third of the material dumped on the students in the last week while they're kept in the dark about what they missed on the material before that.

I apologize for being so cynical, but on the academic front, my biggest peeve lately is probably how that class has been run.

Anywho, with a portfolio deadline closing in on 12 hours away, I've got lots more writing to do... just not here.

Random tangent: It is really, really hot in my room. Like 77° hot. I might trek to the lobby, or even Hillman Library tonight if this keeps up, because for me, warmth equals sleep, which I can't necessarily afford exactly now. (Don't worry; I'll get some sleep. Just not much.)

Basketball, etc.

2008-03-18T12:54:00.003-04:00

It's amazing what fancy Photoshop-type stuff you can still do using just Microsoft Paint.

Pretty much by the time anybody reads this, I will be in the air on my way to Denver, CO for the first- and second-round games of the 2008 NCAA Men's Basketball Championship; we're heading to the airport at 14:00 EDT. By the time most of you read this, I'll already be there. And by the time a select few of you read this, I'll already be back in Pittsburgh.

We'll likely stay until Sunday 23 March, except in the unlikely case that Pitt loses their first game.

This is, barring something really weird happening, the only NCAA tournament trip I'll be making this year, as other obligations in Pittsburgh will prevent me from traveling to subsequent rounds.

The men earned a 4 seed and will start the tournament by playing (13) Oral Roberts in Denver, CO on Thursday 20 March at 13:00 MDT (15:00 EDT). The women earned a 6 seed and will play (11) Wyoming in Albuquerque, NM on Saturday 22 March at 14:30 MDT (16:30 EDT). I took my bracket template and made up printable brackets for both these tournaments, so go download them and follow along! They're made to fit 8.5"×14" paper, but will look just as nice (only smaller) if printed on 8.5"×11".

Unfortunately, my departure means I'm missing a lot of class this week. Fortunately, things have been worked out so that even if the Internet isn't free at our hotel (I don't know which one we're at), we will chip in to get it cheaper, and our director Jack may even help us out so that we can continue to send work into Pittsburgh... because it will be necessary.

I'll be keeping everyone posted on happenings in the tournament and my life at my Tournament News page throughout the week, so keep checking there as well for updates.

Things I must remember to do:

Wednesday 19 March - ENGCMP readings; polish Proposal
Thursday 20 March - ChE 0201 Report due; print remotely to Pittsburgh by 07:30 EDT (05:30 MDT, ugh)
Friday 21 March - Online Housing Selection for 2008-09 at 14:45 EDT (12:45 MDT)
Saturday 22 March - Work on ENGCMP Interview Portrait
Sunday 23 March - Find a nearby Denver church; potentially attend a really early Easter service before leaving (assuming a Thursday win)
Monday 24 March - OHMIGOSHLAUNDRY!!!!

Haha, yes. Seriously, though, that last one must happen, or I die. Figuratively, of course.

In the spirit of the season, I've started up the Pool of Randomness 2008, the successor to last year's Facebook pool that strangely didn't get mentioned on this blog. If you go to the pool, just login to Facebook or sign up and get started! Pick the winners of each of the 32 first-round matchups, then pick the winners of the second-round matchups you've created, and so on to a champion. Brackets are due Thursday 20 March at 11:00 EDT, which I have to remember is 09:00 MDT. Tonight's play-in game between Mt. St. Mary's and Coppin State is not included in the competition.

I'll have a safe trip to Denver, I'm sure! Everyone have a great Easter!

Random tangent: It's my first time flying today. "Excited anxiety" is about all I can call my feelings right now, and by the time I read any of your comments (which would otherwise be filled with advice), it'll be over. I'll be fine.

Intercalation, Quantification, Blast from the Past, and Lofey

2008-02-29T18:47:00.005-05:00

You didn't seriously think I was going to let 29 February go unrecognized on this blog, did you? Clearly you don't know me very well.

February is really weird. In non-leap years, it seems so abrupt when the calendar flips from 28 February to 1 March, as though February got gypped. Which is pretty much true. But today, even though 29 days is still shorter than any other month, it just seems like February is unnecessarily "hanging around." I don't know.

I still find these quadrennial intercalary insertions fun, though. And if you think about it, this little "glitch" in the Gregorian calendar is that bad compared to possible alternatives: The Hebrew calendar inserts a month in 7 out of 19 years. Heck, the calendar system I made up has an extra 39-day month every 12 years... it doesn't make my calendar less accurate (although it does drift from the seasons), it's just more inconvenient for a greater number of people and on a grander scale. Can you imagine being born in a month that was only observed duodecennially? Granted, that being said, it is Fimadin 27 Negkamun 8 on my imaginary calendar-I-never-use-but-have-a-computer-program-to-calculate-anyway. And quite frankly, that "date" matches up nicely with the weather outside right about now.

Speaking of which, it's pretty bad, which is why I'm glad that I only had to walk between two buildings today. It was fairly slippery and snowy as I was walking back from my last class, when I saw some kids making snowballs and throwing them over the construction area off the side of Benedum Hall toward the street on the other side. Sadly, I was one of the only people leaving the building at that time, and they quickly saw me as a good target.

But I'm not stupid.

Rather than running away and inevitably slipping on the slush, I kept my amused eye on them until I got to the stairway that would take me from the plaza to the street level, still genuinely interested in their activities, but pretending to be naïve to their plans. But between them and the stairs is a big auditorium building (which won't be there soon), which would give them an opportunity to sneak up on me. So as soon as I rounded the corner, I turned around on the step, and knowing how many steps were in each set (because I'm a nerd), I cautiously and slowly walked backwards down the stairs. And I just laughed when I saw each of them peeking around, hoping I wasn't looking... only to have them see my eyes looking straight at theirs!

Anywho, the nasty weather is preventing the ΜΚΥ camping trip from starting as planned. Instead of leaving for the campground in Farmington, PA this afternoon (in which case I'd already be gone), we are going to someone's house for the evening before making our way to the campground tomorrow morning. I'm sure it will be just as much fun.

But back to leap-yearing and intercalation (which are both fun words). I was fortunate this year that my watch has a "minus" button to page backwards through the numbers, because, as usual, it jumped ahead to read "3/1" at midnight. In the past, this would have meant going through all the months and days to get to "2/29," but it ended up being a quick and painless fix this year.

At least we make an effort to have our years match up to something, though. My made-up calendar has a 362-day year, which is fairly reasonable, and when you add the intercalary month, you get 4383 days in twelve years... exactly the same as we get with the real one. But my high school friend Jaci once made a calendar with six 64-day months... 384 days that continuously fall out of cycle. Similar to mine, it's an imaginary calendar-we-never-use-but-Tim-has-a-program-so-he-can-calculate-it-anyway. And today is Friday 16 Molybdenum 5. Can you tell this concept was designed in Chemistry class?

No, she didn't get uncreative with the days of the week. On her calendar, tomorrow is Tuesday. And the next day will be Tuesday as well. In fact, the week is comprised of seven Tuesdays and a Friday. Today just happens to be special in a coincidental case.

Then there's the calendar my brother decided he wanted to make. It's so convoluted it's not worth explaining, but one should note that it alternates between 5- and 13-day weeks. Anyway, today is Uvuladay 20 Shrub 1.

Yes, he named a day of the week after the uvula. No, I don't know why.

It's quite clear that this is just arbitrary stuff. Certainly on those other "calendars," this would be a normal day. And for the most part, it is. But this day is certainly special to us, even if for arbitrary reasons.

I think it represents a willingness to accept that things won't always delineate themselves cleanly enough to satisfy our scientific drive to "quantify." Really, if you think about it, science boils down to a bunch of empirical equations that mean practically nothing to the casual observer. The reason? Because the quantities expressed by these equations are often so abstract! I think it's amazing that scientists over the years developed a method for quantifying some really crazy concepts. What does 24 kJ of energy feel like? What does it mean to have your entropy increase by 1 J/K? You can't answer these questions... and yet, part of science is being comfortable with the fact that we can only observe the effects of these quantities and not the quantities themselves.

Wow. That was a tangent.

Anyway, I was in my ChE Thermodynamics Lab yesterday, and my group and I were doing some stuff with compressing carbon dioxide at different temperatures to observe a liquid-vapor transition (at normal pressures, it goes straight from solid "dry" ice to vapor). The apparatus was attached to a really old computer which was taking data the whole time ("really old" as in "it was running Windows 98").

When we were done, we had to get the data off the computer for our report that's due next week. Since USB drives aren't plug-and-play on such old machines, I was given one of these things:

Oh, wow. What is that thing? It looks familiar... How does it work? It's so amazing! WHAT DO YOU MEAN, "IT ONLY STORES 1.44 MB"?!!!???

Haha. Good thing the data were only 102 kB. So then I had to go to the computer lab and rent a drive for this contraption. Apparently, just like scanners, you can go up to the desk and lend them your ID card, and they'll lend you a drive that plugs into a USB port. So now I actually do have the data on my USB drive (yay!).

I just found that interesting. I mean, I can accurately say that it's been years since I've used one of those things.

And, in other news, let's go back to the land of Silly Animals, a group of imaginary friends my brother and I had during our younger years that sort of fizzled out around 1999. Today is Lofey and Rebecca's second anniversary. Happy anniversary, Lofey! Here's the gift I gave them: It's a photograph of the happy couple, can't you tell?

I just got off the phone with them, and they are doing quite well, as are all of Lofey's siblings, Lofay, Lof-eye, Lofoh, and Lofoo.

Now, I did say that we didn't pay much attention to Silly Animals after 1999, but the wedding date had already been set. Of course, 29 February 2000 was a Tuesday, so that's a bit weird for a wedding, but then again... Did I mention I was a weird kid?

Did I mention I'm also a weird ~~teenager~~ twenty-something? (Granted, that something is zero, but I've heard that nothing is something.)

And now, as if this post weren't incoherent enough, I'm going to attempt to make up for having not posted in almost a month by wrapping up with a random tangent rapid-fire:

1: Apparently, there's an event going on in a lounge in my building tonight entitled, "Happy 5th Leap Year Party!" Excuse me. Many of the sophomores in this building are 20 now, and thus this is their sixth leap year.

2: I bought a new air freshener yesterday, and it's really quite fragrant. Almost excessively so. I don't think any room needs to smell that much like "After the Rain." Then again, who's to say that's what it smells like after the rain? Quite frankly, I usually smell wet socks after the rain. Oh, no! I've been duped by a fragrance-based commercialized lie!

3: Will is celebrating Leap Day by "touching the sky." And if you knew him (or his dorm room's theme song), you'd know why that's annoying. ;)

4: Jen is still singing the "Kenya" song that's been stuck in her head for about a month. In the past, I've yelled at her for not being considerate to the Kenyans in their time of political instability, but in theory, that's all over now.

5: Me? I got a creative burst and started writing a song on 17 February, but it hasn't gone anywhere yet... mainly because I've been too busy. Perhaps today would be a good day to do some work on that... I mean, 29 February has to be good, right?

6: Speaking of good days to do big things, the new Heinz Chapel Choir website that Joanna and I made went online in the wee hours of this morning! Check it out!

7: When I was uploading things to another site, I noticed that my FTP program doesn't like Leap Day. Any time it adds timestamps (and since the one server in on Mountain Time, I tell it to), it just adds the hours, but the way it recalculates the date ignores 29 February in any year. So according to that program, I uploaded some things tomorrow.

8: I'm tired, and this post is long enough. Peace out!

No Asterisk Required.

2008-02-04T00:37:00.002-05:00

Yeah, I had actually decided that if the Patriots were to have won, I was Photoshopping in an asterisk, probably bigger than the Patriots' logo itself. Now that's one "Giant" asterisk. (Haha.)

But that is no longer necessary, as they lost. Granted, there was that ridiculously questionable challenge early in the third quarter. Since when can you challenge for a penalty call? The Patriots played just how they have all season... and they finally got their just desserts.

I watched only the second half of the game, and did so in the ninth floor lounge here, as there were a bunch of trumpeters hanging out there, as well as others from nearby floors. Now, to be fair, one of those "others" who was rooting for the Patriots did mention that Plaxico Burress of the Giants specifically left the Steelers after the 2004 season for a team that would get him a Super Bowl victory (and recall the Steelers won the Super Bowl in his absence the next year). So this kid at least justified his rooting for the Patriots as rooting against Burress' ego, even though that logic didn't change the fact that he was outnumbered.

Still, though, in the wake of the Spygate scandal, it is sickening that such corruption seems to actually go rewarded. Many professional athletes are paid hundreds of times more than the highest-paid of those who actually do important things that matter, all while actually upholding their moral standards.

I'm not saying that there weren't genuinely good-natured people playing Sunday, but there are some sore losers, too. After the Patriots' failed to convert a fourth down, their coach Bill Belichick angrily returned to the locker room, even though there was still one second on the clock, and thus a play had to be run. During his post-game interview for TV, he really looked like he didn't want to be there.

If only he would suck it up and lose graciously. He's taken his team to four Super Bowls in the last seven years. Nothing lasts forever. Quit whining.

I really hate being harsh, but I really had strong feelings about this one. Last year, I really couldn't have cared less, having practically ignored the playoffs once the Steelers failed to get in. But because of all the buzz and controversy surrounding the Patriots' potential 19-0 season, I had to take a side. There was no forgetting about football this January.

On a lighter note: Did you notice the red, white, and blue confetti that covered the field after the win? Apparently, the NFL saved money this year because both teams had the same colors, so they didn't have to rig up two sets. Economization for the win!

But cheaters aren't champions. You got what you deserved.

Giants 17, Patriots 14.

Term 2084 Schedule, Revised

2008-01-11T15:49:00.000-05:00

I was finally able to register this afternoon. Based on the numbers, they were unable to justify adding more space to the section I needed, so I had to get the Chemistry Advisor's signature to enter a closed lecture and recitation.

I was the third one that he was able to get into this class. Since he is taking great care to not "over-enroll" any one of the four recitation sections, he must evenly distribute the students amongst them. By the time I got there, there was one extra person enrolled in both the Monday 14:00 and Monday 18:00 sessions. Since Thursday 09:00 wouldn't fit in my schedule, I took Wednesday 14:00. The next person would either have to take Thursday 09:00, wait for someone else to take it (opening up a new round), or not get in.

The TA for the Wednesday 14:00 session is the same one who teaches the Monday 14:00 session (which I attended this week), and he also happened to be my OChem Lab instructor (CHEM 0330) in the fall.

So here is my revised schedule:

Academics

2008-01-07T23:57:00.000-05:00

As you may know, today was the first day back to classes here at Pitt. And that usually brings some sort of schedule with it on this blog. But you may also know that I usually talk about how my semester went once it's over, in terms of meeting expectations as well as grades.

Well, I put one off, and now it's time to do the other... and they're really a lot related, more so this time around then ever. Anyway, here's last fall's roundup:

Finals week started with OChem, and I'd made it no secret that I wasn't grasping the concepts as well as I'd have liked. On the other hand, I did feel confident that I had done better on my final than on some of the other recent exams. I got my exam grade back (a number) that Friday afternoon, but forgot that I had signed the exam allowing my professor to post my grade by ID number later that day. So he didn't have the exam or the signature, and my grade wasn't posted and I had to wait. And that was hard.

The Diff. Eq. final was a bit of a non-event. It was a departmental final, written by my professor and one other guy, so it was fairly predictable. The last of the ten problems was on material squeezed into the last week, though, and I put the wrong types of information on my "cheat sheet" that we were allowed to use. So, I had practically nothing for that one. But I did well on all of the others, and even caught myself in the process of making a reading mistake similar to one I'd made on an earlier exam.

The ChE 0100 exam was easy, but long. Not to mention it was open-book, so even if you got stuck, you were there for three whole hours. Really, that class was a breeze, but it's those basic concepts of various chemical properties, expanded to a more general sense, that will really lay the foundation for the future ChE courses. I'm already seeing that in ChE 0200. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Anyway, I'd been debating with myself over how to approach this next part: the summary. You see, as it turns out, though I passed OChem 1, my grade did not end up being satisfactory by my standards, especially considering that I'm going to have to take OChem 2. So, I'm retaking OChem 1 (and again, I'm jumping ahead), as there are a lot of important concepts that I must look over again.

So it is with some trepidation that I summarize my grades, although really, in the end, I decided that having a class like this is fairly normal, and that it really won't matter once my new grade replaces the old one. So, if I can quit talking about this term, here's the breakdown of last term:

ChE 0100	Foundations of Chemical Engineering	6 cr.	A
ChE 0101	Foundations of Chemical Engineering Lab	1 cr.	A
ChE 1085	Departmental Seminar	0 cr.	S
CHEM 0310	Organic Chemistry 1	3 cr.	D
CHEM 0330	Organic Chemistry Lab 1	1 cr.	C+
MATH 0290	Differential Equations	3 cr.	B-
MUSIC 0612	Heinz Chapel Choir	1 cr.	A
MUSIC 0630	Marching Band	1 cr.	A

As it stands, these grades represent a QPA of 3.094 on 16 credits, giving me a cumulative average of 3.365 on 52 credits. Obviously, I'm disappointed with the drop caused by OChem, but I'm glad it was only 0.12. And of course, the retake will replace the old grade in the QPA calculation, so barring a complete meltdown, it'll really be higher than that.

On the plus side of things, you can see that I actually have grades for my major now, and that it stands at a perfect 4.000 on 7 credits. Oh, how I'd love to keep that...

Now that I'm done with that, I'd ordinarily start talking about break thusfar; obviously, it's not only done, but it's already been blogged about. So now, it's onto the present. Here's my schedule for Term 2084:

Class Titles and Credit Values
ChE 0200	Chemical Engineering Thermodynamics	6 cr.
ChE 0201	Chemical Engineering Thermodynamics Lab	1 cr.
ChE 1085	Departmental Seminar	0 cr.
CHEM 0310	Organic Chemistry 1	3 cr.
ENGCMP 0400	Written Professional Communication	3 cr.
ENGR 0020	Probability and Statistics for Engineers 1	4 cr.
MUSIC 0631	Concert Band	1 cr.
		18 cr.

Classes begin 7 January 2008; final exams are 21-26 April 2008. No classes 21 January for Martin Luther King's Birthday Observance, or 9-16 March for Spring Recess.

The first and most important thing to notice is that the OChem 1 classes are in a different color. It's not actually that color on my calendar, but I did that while taking the screenshot to illustrate that I'm not technically registered for it... yet.

You see, there are two sections of OChem 1 offered this term: the one shown above, and one that meets Tuesdays and Thursdays at 09:30. Obviously, that one won't work with my ChE 0200/0201 complex that clogs up the top of my schedule and allows me to progress through my major. So it's pretty important that I get into the 10:00 sessions.

Only problem: it's filled to capacity... and as of this morning, there were 48 seats open in the other section.

If the students were distributed more evenly, even if one was closed, I could probably get in easily, just with a few extra forms. But the "capacity size" of each section is linked to its corresponding recitation sections (mine is shown Monday at 14:00). Each of the two lectures as four corresponding recitations, or review sessions, that hold 30 students each. Hence, capacity for the lectures has a fixed cap at 120. The Chemistry Department could add more recitation sections to accommodate a popular course, but they can't do that until the other one gets closer to filling up.

So after running around from building to building, department to department, I found out that I'm not the only one in the same boat, where ChE 0200 precludes taking the more open section. And since I happen to already have an established rapport with the Chemistry Department's Undergraduate Advisor (my original OChem prof, as well as through ACS-SA), he greeted me with open arms (literally), and said that we'd have to wait to see some movement from one section to the other. But he also assured me that if the add/drop deadline of 18 January was to sneak up and no such movement occurred, he would gladly sign the necessary papers and help me jump through the proper hoops to get registered in time.

In the meantime, I'm still technically registered for OChem 2, and I'm going to attend the lectures until things are finalized, and maybe even occasionally throughout the term as my duties will allow, just so that I can get used to seeing that type of material before I'll need it. And after one day of add/drop, there are only 16 seats left in that other OChem 1 section. So things are looking good.

ChE 0200 today was uneventful. Being a two-hour class, we actually started on material — review material — but that was to be expected. I've heard that the class is quite challenging, but very rewarding, and is also curved to account for the challenge. It's thermodynamics, so that should be very interesting.

CHEM 0310 was... CHEM 0310. My professor is a very nice lady, although it's her first time teaching OChem 1. She did take about 40 of the 50 minutes going over the one-page syllabus, though, because she kept thinking of things she forgot or "words of wisdom" and advice for the course. She also helped me in my quest for registration, though there really wasn't anything she could do.

ENGR 0020 is fun. It's common knowledge that statistics can be manipulated to "demonstrate" nearly anything. So as an exercise, each day this class will start with a brief discussion about a "statistical lie," a scenario in which the truth is hidden by the way the numbers are presented. Some important parts of being a free-thinking and honest engineer are to detect such tactics when employed against you as well as to prevent accidentally doing it yourself.

And that's all I have for now. I'll talk about how weird ChE 0201 works this semester in a later post... even though it's listed as Thursday above, I have it tomorrow instead of the ChE 0200 recitation. Very confusing. At least there's no OChem lab.

That and English Comp. tomorrow, as well as sitting in on an OChem 2 lecture. Band and choir start up Thursday. And I still haven't unpacked since I've been running around all day.

Random tangent: How about that nice weather we've been having? I'll take 63°. But warn me next time; I went out in the morning with a coat because it was cold, and then I had to run around all day with it.

Vigentennial

2008-01-04T23:52:00.000-05:00

Well, today is the vigentennial anniversary of my birth. That's right, in case you haven't yet heard, I'm 20. I've gotten about twice as many Facebook wall posts as last year, either because I know more people, because the people I know care more, or because 20 is more of a milestone than 19.

There are obviously some who would argue that 20 is not nearly as much of a milestone as 21, but I respectfully disagree. Teenagerhood, whether we like it or not, is something that becomes a part of us. Although it never really leaves, it's sad to say that it technically is no longer there. Is this making sense? or am I already going senile?

Twenty-one, although special, has no such significance. It seems that 18 and 19 are the "last hurrah" of adolescence that mesh into college life. And although, even after reaching this age, some continue to act as though they are about four years old, sooner or later, the expectations of adulthood arrive. The number 20 is indicative of that change in my eyes. It comes with the "2," I suppose.

Of course, I'm not bitter or mopey. Rather, I'm excited for what my third decade has in store for me. All of you who are older, and I'm sure many who aren't, know that there's a lot which typically happens between 20 and 30. I eagerly await the challenges ahead, as well as that which will come as a result of finally overcoming them.

Today was a rather ordinary day. I got that haircut that I mentioned yesterday, but not after going to the grocery store with my mother. We got some much-needed foodstuffs, then she sent me off to get milk and said she'd meet me by the cake mixes. After waiting there for quite some time, I went and found her buying my birthday card. Silly mother.

After having stayed up for most of the night doing what seemed to be an inexorable amount of homework, my brother basically crashed and slept until it was time for dinner, which was celebrated by my immediate family as well as my local grandparents at Outback Steak House.

I suppose that's been a sort of tradition for my birthday (compared with Barb's family's Christmas Eve tradition). But it really isn't. I just like their food, and seems I either pick there or the Olive Garden for my birthday dinner. I distinctly remember that three of my last seven birthday dinners (including tonight) were held there, two at the Olive Garden, one at Mike 'n D'Angelo's Italian Restaurant, and one (last year) at the Schenley Café in the William Pitt Union.

I'm glad to be with family this time around.

Afterwards, we all went to my house, where I opened cards, and we attempted, with varying degrees of success, to stuff in some cake and ice cream. "Happy Birthday" was sung to me in the key of B, which was rather high, as my family didn't take the pitch I suggested in quite the way I'd expected.

Now, my mother is sitting downstairs, half-asleep, watching my Christmas present, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007), which she has implored me to let her watch almost nightly since I've opened it. Apparently she wasn't with us when I saw it.

All in all, my twentieth year has been a good one. And I thank from the bottom of my heart all those who have wished me well in ushering in my twenty-first. I think there are about 49 of you who've wished me a Happy Birthday in some form or another. Thank you. I really appreciate it, and feel quite loved.

Random tangent: My brother felt the need to point out the beer section of the menu at dinner tonight, making fun of me for not being able to have any. I then pointed out that he's 15. Silly David.

Last Day as a Teenager

2008-01-03T23:41:00.000-05:00

My day started with my sleeping in rather late, which I mustn't do tomorrow, because that's a teenager-ish thing to do. Although it really has more to do with me returning to school this weekend.

No one was home, which was a bit unexpected, but not necessarily unwelcome. I showered, tidied my room a bit, and ate a little.

After enjoying much of the day, when my brother got home, I helped him with his studies a little. We then ate dinner, after which I primarily distracted my brother from his studies. Oh, well. Then I looked up information on the Iowa Caucuses as it became available.

And now I sit here. A rather uneventful day, actually. My mother took tomorrow off, not specifically for my birthday, I'm sure, but she's scheduled haircut appointments for 15:00, and we still have a bit more work to do in tidying my room for some guests they're housing in March (Region Choir folk).

I'd said there was little point in trying to squeeze lots of things into the last moments of teenagerhood. And I epitomized that statement today by having what was really an ordinary Winter Break day.

Birthday post tomorrow, and some combination of third semester results and 2008 resolutions over the weekend.

Random tangent: I've also got a small programming project that needs to be done within the next week. With my luck, the code and database structures will just come flowing through my brain tomorrow when my mother needs me to be doing other things.

2008

2008-01-01T23:29:00.000-05:00

527,040 minutes: How do you measure a leap year?

No Photoshop doodle this year. Instead, I'm letting my creative juices flow in another way. Can you tell Mom, David, and I played Uno the other day?

There's just something about 2008 that seems neat and orderly. Unlike a year with a "sloppy" seven on the end. Yes, I know I said seven was a great number, but eight rhymes with "great." Beat that!

School starts back up on Monday 7 January, and we still haven't decided when during this coming weekend I'm going back down. Probably Sunday, though. My birthday is on Friday, in case you've been forgetting, so I'll be home this year to celebrate.

David goes back tomorrow, as we've been reminding him throughout his break, though despite this he insisted this afternoon that he wasn't to go back until 3 January. We had a hard time convincing him otherwise, but eventually proved it to him. He's sleeping now.

Speaking of which, I'd better get back to normal sleeping hours soon. Another 08:00 class this coming term... yay...

Of course, a big thank you to those of you who keep coming back here because you'll read what I have to say no matter what it is. Through thick and thin, I blog to preserve memories. Any subset of my memories, good or bad, would not suffice to summarize the whole thing. Alas, I can't blog everything, but I continue to do what I can because you care enough to keep me going.

A thank you to those who came here through my campus celebrations video, giving me an unexpected boost on 2 and 3 December, as well as to Robert, who made my day on 17 September.

Here's to a happy, healthy, and fun-filled new year!

Random tangent: The first commercials aired on ABC in 2005 and 2006 were for Vytorin. In 2007, it was for Zetia, which is half of Vytorin. Apparently, we all needed to resolve to manage our cholesterol. This year, however, the first commercial was for Gardasil, which means lots of resolutions against cervical cancer. Just thought you ought to know.

Revisiting a Rather Nice Year

2007-12-31T23:17:00.000-05:00

Here we are again in the last few hours of a rapidly waning year, waiting patiently for the arrival of 2008. It's a time of reflection for many, and so, in keeping with what appears to be becoming this blog's tradition, it's time for me to reflect.

January opened with a second consecutive Photoshop doodle just before I went off to begin my second semester at college. As usually happens around the fourth day of a new year, I had a birthday, this one rendering me nineteen. Once the celebrations died down, I was re-assimilated into life in the city as well as classes, including a rather challenging honors chemistry lab.

February, or Feb'y as I called it for much of the month, was really, really cold and snowy, but it passed by without much incident. I'd been afraid of what 02/07/07 had in store for me, but it really ended up being a rather normal Wednesday. I officially declared my major, had a bunch of exams, and was just plain swamped. But it all turned out well.

The madness of March came upon me, and I ended up travelling quite a bit, to Hartford, New York City, and Buffalo with the pep band. In favor of my academic pursuits (which, after all, is why I was at school), I opted not to go to San Jose, though, so I still haven't experienced the West Coast. Oh, well; I'm sure I'll have more opportunities to travel in the future.

April was peppered with concerts as I came down the home stretch, and then tragedy struck another college campus, while our own was slightly jarred as well. I finished my group service project with DRS, and my first college year went out with a bang.

May and June were fun, even though I wasn't able to end up with a job for the summer. I had a few projects of my own to keep me busy. One of them, which came to fruition in July, was to arrange four-part harmonies for the Canadian and American national anthems. The ultra-hyped 07/07/07 came at the beginning of my first "stint" as a camp counselor, but other than that, nothing really radical happened.

August brought the end of life to four of my teeth, but I'm sure they're okay with that. Then, after over three months at home, I got itching to get going again back at school. I also escaped the curse of Friday the Seventeenth while I was at band camp in Bradford, so I don't have to worry again until October 2008.

September and October were the bulk of the first semester in my major. Some classes were much easier than expected, some were much harder. In November, after a busy band season, I was inducted into one of the band fraternities, and that has turned out to be a very rewarding experience.

December started on a high note with Pitt's stunning upset victory over West Virginia in football, but then finals came around, and that wasn't so stunning (and I swear, I'll post more about that at some point). The holiday season snuck up on us all as usual, as well as the annual slew of colds and general malaise. I don't know; this December just felt different. But Christmas was fun, in all its iterations.

Before being caught up in the "Christmas high," I recall having thought that 2007 just needed to end. I think that was just because of recent events, though. I mean, if December wasn't great, but the rest of the year was good, then that's not all that bad, isn't it? All in all, 2007 was a rather nice year, I'd say.

Still, I'm optimistic for 2008. I'm growing up. Life is getting to be more important. Big decisions will have to be made. It's scary, but it's also exciting. I don't usually make resolutions for January, but this year I've got plenty. And if I can manage to keep just a few of the big ones, I'm sure to have a great 2008!

Happy New Year everyone!

Random tangent: You'll recall that my brother got angry that we had sparkling red grape juice to ring in 2007 rather than our traditional sparkling white (actually, you might not recall that). Well, this year, after a trip to the grocery store, Mom realized that we didn't have any non-alcoholic celebratory beverage, and proceeded to blame us for not reminding her. But then she realized, as I had done much earlier, that there was, in fact, sparkling grape juice in the refrigerator already. Of course, it's red. Oh, well; David'll live.

A Christmas Complication

2007-12-25T21:06:00.000-05:00

©2007, Timothy J. Parenti. All rights reserved.This video is 0:43 in length.

As you can probably tell from the still shot, I had a little problem earlier today. My seven-year-old cousin Danny was a bit too excited to see me today at the family gathering and transformed into Magnet-Boy! Fortunately, I was able to get a little help from Uncle Richard.

I'm enjoying the holiday with my family (immediate and extended), and I hope everyone is having fun doing the same!

Have a ~~Magnetic~~ Merry Christmas!

And of course, I'll have more of the usual stuff later.

Philippe

2007-12-18T00:10:00.000-05:00

I have really been in need for a creative outlet lately. Here it is.

I've decided to launch a francophone webcomic, Philippe! Philippe started out as the unofficial "official mascot of French class" back in high school, and after learning that my brother had chosen the name as his French pseudonym this year, I had to revive the character.

I plan to have a new installment every Tuesday I can manage, even if that only ends up being four weeks (which is how much I've drawn as of now). If I hit a dry spell, that doesn't mean I won't pick it back up at some point.

To avoid people asking, Philippe is a squiggle. His basic form was derived out of boredom at the markerboard in French class. There's really no other way to describe what he is. And yes, I realized that no arms and legs would become an issue. Oh, well.

The comic is drawn using regular markers and paper. My art's not good enough for anything fancier.

If you have any ideas for future editions of Philippe, please send me an email. If I like them, I'll get right to drawing them!

OChem Update

2007-12-11T16:56:00.000-05:00

Just a little update... while I'm sure I didn't "ace" the OChem exam, I certainly did much better than the last two. Granted, I said that about the last one and it didn't end up meaning much, but this time I have qualitative evidence that I did better:

I was able to do 10 of the 12 "complete the reaction" problems (only 10 are graded), and I finally was able to complete a full synthesis problem on my own. That, and I only ended up leaving two problems unfinished.

I'm holding out hope for the benefit of the doubt being given in the name of improvement. And then, of course, there's the chance that I did everything wrong... but I don't think so.

One down, two to go!

Term 2081 Finals

2007-12-11T00:30:00.000-05:00

Not much to explain; it's Finals Week. What else is there to say? Anyway, here's my schedule:

Aw. They're in descending order of difficulty. How quaint. Obviously, any prayers between, oh, 14:00 and 15:50 EST on Tuesday are appreciated... because no matter how much studying I have done, and no matter how much studying I continue to do between now and then, I will not reach a point where I will be able to call myself "prepared" for the CHEM exam. Sure, I will have prepared, but to "be prepared" implies completion of the preparation, which won't even come close to fruition. Come test time, I'll just go in and write what I know; that's all I can do. And that's all I have to say about that.

The MATH exam I'm not too worried about, as I've done fairly well on the midterms and have gotten pretty good at fitting the necessary equations and transformations on my one-page "cheat sheet." I'll be making that Tuesday night at around 18:00 after I've had a couple of hours to wallow in self-pity. And I hope I'm kidding there, but the way things have been going in CHEM, you never know...

As for ChE... please. In a matter of 60 seconds, my classmates got my professor from "bring your Felder textbook (for the data tables), a calculator, and a ruler" to "bring your Felder and Wankat's books, a calculator, a ruler, and a one-page cheat sheet." I've been getting high-90s on the exams and 100s on the quizzes as it is.

Of course, I won't blow off studying... what else do I have to do all week? But if, after two or three hours of studying, my mind has gone numb because of the seemingly simple and repetitive concepts, then I won't feel bad calling it quits. My only concern is that this exam is three hours long, as it's a six-credit class... our midterms were two hours and our quizzes were one. Yikes!

I'm going to stay in Pittsburgh all day Friday to tie up loose ends, and begin my journey home shortly after the men's basketball game against Oklahoma State on Saturday 15 December. I'll be home for three full weeks before classes resume on Monday 7 January 2008.

Random tangent: I'm usually adamantly against New Year's Resolutions, because January is such a horrible time of year to start anything. I much prefer March, June, and October for resolving to do things, for reasons to long to fit in this already-long tangent. But I've got a January resolution this year already, although I'll probably start it Friday after my finals. It was more or less prompted by the most recent episode of my all-too-frequent emotional breakdown series. No need to worry; good comes out of all of my breakdowns, you see, in case I haven't made that obvious by mentioning the resolution in the first place.