Cynically Optimistic

I started to get this annoying message from my work computer today.

Warning! Your Startup Disk is almost full!

Also, I wish that web applications wouldn't crash right when I need them most. AARRRRRGGGGGHHHHH!!!!

Posted by Jeff Smith at 06:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Black Friday and Cyber Monday have come and gone. I've managed to complete exactly no Holiday shopping thus far, after swearing last year that I would buy all my gifts in October. Such is life I suppose. Lately my minds has been all over the map, in some cases literally. This whole "personal statment" thing is really a sadistic torture exerscise. I just like science, I want to study it. I should already have a Ph.D. Just let me in damnit!!! Somehow I doubt that's persuasive enough. We had quite the Dog-and-Pony show today in the department, as my boss gave a big talk in recognition of his endowment *snickers* as the Memorial Something-Something Watermellon Chairman. Lots of rich folks being paraded through the lab, meaning I actually had to do experiments instead of write and work on applications. I need to puut some more happy, upbeat music on the iPod, since after my reset software re-load and complete wipeout I just added on the stuff I've been into recently - too much emo. But that Maroon 5 album... it's too too good, I'm still digging it. Must focus. Do not let yourself get distracted. Taaaapa-Taaapa Tappa.


1000 Bonus points if you can figure out the exact Manhattan location where this photo was taken. And if you were there it doesn't count, so shaddup!

Posted by Jeff Smith at 12:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Did the subway somehow take me back in time? What is with the old cars on 72nd Street? Oh, wait, they must be filming a movie - it is New York City after all. The "No Parking" signs said the film was called "The Misson" which I hope is somehow misspelled.

Oh, and could I procrastinate writing my personal statments any more? I don't think it's possible.

Posted by Jeff Smith at 04:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

As promised, selections from Thanksgiving dinner. Everything turned out just right and everyone was full by the end, except we still made room for the pecan pie. I would be remiss without mentioning that I was coached through the whole procedure over the phone by my mom. I'm so glad to have an earpiece for my cell phone.

Posted by Jeff Smith at 12:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Tradition in my family requires that during Thanksgiving dinner everyone state at least one thing for which he or she is thankful. In celebration of the miracle that I cooked Turkey, Stuffing, Yams, Giblet Gravy, Cranberry Sauce, Biscuits, and Pecan Pie without burning anything, hereÕs my list for this year:

I am thankful forÉ

• My health, both physical and mental
• My caring, loving, helpful family
• My new friends I have made this year
• My international friends who open my eyes and challenge me daily
• My old friends (who continue to amaze me Ð I donÕt give you guys enough credit)
• My job, which I still enjoy after nearly 5 years
• My decision to move on from this job and go to graduate school
• My boss, who encourages me to do whatÕs right for me
• My washer and dryer, and dishwasher, yes they are truly luxury items
• My liver (my liver rules)
• Microbrewed Beer, so I can enjoy the flavor and get drunk
• Fresh Sushi, the most delicious food on the planet
• I am a Mac User
• My digital camera, so I can remember the blurry moments in my life
• Snowy Mountains, so I can ski and enjoy beautiful vistas
• Sandy Beaches, so I can try to tan my pasty white skin
• Hawkeye Sports, proving IÕm a crazed fan, since 1996
• Crazy New Yorkers, who amuse me so
• Old music videos on VH1 Classic
• Thousands of other thingsÉ. Life is good.

Dinner was complimented by a couple of veggie dishes from Naoko and beverages provided by the French contingent.

Posted by Jeff Smith at 05:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

While the tourist portion of my trip to DC was only about 4 hours long, it supplied me with basically all of the postable photos from the trip. The drive took 4 hours from NYC when we left Friday morning at the ungodly hour of 8 AM. Had a bite of lunch and then was delivered to a Metro station all alone (as George had other plans for the day and night). In general I like the DC Metro a lot. It's clean, fairly convenient, and has a nice open feeling which is a big contrast from the NY Subway. The major downfall I feel is the confusing (espeically for tourists) ticketing system. I took the easy way out and bought the day pass instead of trying to calculate in advance the exact stations I'd be using throughout the day and the various fare prices in between the stations based on the time of day. I already took the damn GRE.

I rolled out of L'Enfant Plaza Station about 2 PM and took a leisurely stroll towards the US Capitol. One lap around the reflecting pool and I was inquiring about a tour. Luckily both the House and Senate were "in session" Friday. There was no line at the security booth, so the older man in a red jacket who was security helped me locate Jim Leach's office on the big board and sent me towards the Longworth Building to grab visitor passes. Now, had I been thinking clearly when I realized I was in the wrong building, I would have pretended to be from any state and walked into the nearest door to get the tickets. Instead, I ran into a young intern who thought perhaps I should look in the next building over, Rayburn. How, exactly, do we do this you ask? Why, through the secret tunnel in Sub-Basement 3 of course! Straight out of the X-files with the eerie lighting and everything. All those federal office buildings must look the same.

Eventually I meander down the correct hallway and the young Iowan staffer at the desk is WAY too happy to see someone walk into the office. Tickets acquired, I return to the House of Representatives and do the security dance 3 times to even enter the building. I'm eager to see laws being made and my tax dollars at work so I head down the hall to the elevator bank to access the viewing area. I'm handed a small red ticket that says, "superflous" for unknown reasons. Oddly, there's no one else waiting for the elevator so I get join the two young staffers and head up. Ding! Second floor. A middle-aged plump man with no neck and a tacky comb-over gets on the elevator. Suddenly, both staffers become entranced with their own shoe-laces. As the doors close I start to feel really uneasy as this man obviously emanating pure evil. I think if he touched a flower it might instantly wilt. I held my breath until we all exited on the 3rd floor.

It's at this point that the security checkpoint actually takes all your battery operated devices and then sends you through yet another metal detector. Apparently some people are either idiots or they don't think the rules apply equally to everyone. Lucky for us, the security guard was an enforcer. The disgruntled woman with rediculous fingernails and cute hair was my favorite person in the building that day. This guy comes through with a leather jacket in his hand and sets off the detector 3 times, making everyone wait. He takes off his belt. Beep. Removes his wallet. Beep. Finally he hands the coat to the guard and they wand it. Yep, cell phone is inside the front pocket. The guard gives this guy the best eyeroll I've seen in my whole life [and I was a witness to the eyeroll, with a head-flip and a door slam that has gone down in roommate history], and loudly exclaims , "CELL PHONE! BAAAAAAAACK OF THE LINE!" without sympathy. I could have applauded her on the spot.

Finally, I'm through the detector and they hush me and I quietly enter the viewing gallery where we are being directed to seats all together in one section. I sit. I look around. What.The.Fuck? The viewing gallery is huge, but they're funneling everyone into this one tiny section with 40 seats max. Best of all, NO ONE is in the chamber. So much for being "in session" when they're all, "back in the office working with leadership". I'm outta there and sprint to the Senate side since someone is actually giving a speech (I notice on the C-SPAN feed nearby).

I repeat the same basic procedure on that side of the building. They take my electronic devices and I'm re-re-re-re metal detected. The difference is the Senate will not share their elevators. You take the stairs. Inside, Senator Byrd from West Virginia is giving a speech. I can clearly read the speech as he says it because the font is that huge on his podium. The senate floor is littered with Senate Pages, mostly young men, who are literally napping. I saw at most 2 of them get up do bring a piece of paper from one desk to another. Hope that pays off down the road for those kids. Senator Byrd is older than carbon dating, and at one point in his speech he reminisced of the good-old-days when he was 82. I should be so lucky.

Next stop on the tour was the Library of Congress. I had hoped to maybe come up with some idea of a way to get access to some cool old book to peruse for the afternoon, but that didn't happen. Instead I casually eavesdropped on a tour led by (I'm assuming) a volunteer who must have been a former librarian from Virginia. She had a very pleasant accent and demeanor; I could have listened to her speak all day. The building is beautiful inside, and I was fascinated by the intricate ceilings that in different places were frescos, tiles, stained glass, and plaster inlays. Just give me a repeated geometric pattern and a long hallway and I can spend hours trying out different angles and zooms and whatnot. It's a good thing I only travel with my ultra-compact digicam these days, or I really would be out of control.

The Walt Whitman exhibit inside was interesting historically, but I was more fascinated by the photo displays they showed of the post-depression lives of people. All the photos were taken using Kodachrome film, a new invention at the time. It made me think of the few snapshots I'd seen from my grandparents album that were really old and rural. I went back into the main area to exit the building and noticed a beam of sunlight was bisecting the floor of the atrium in an "Indiana Jones" type of way. Wonder where the treasure is buried?

Next door is the Supreme Court and I wanted to get a few snapshots of the exterior before all the light faded away. They look ok, but I wish I had a fun fisheye lens sometimes. For one shot I lay down on the steps and waited for the security guard to wander out of my shot. I realize that someone has walked up to within 3 feet of me but isn't saying anything. Click. I stand up. "It seems I've just witnessed the court case of Perspective v. Distance", the man says to me. "Uhhhh..." "It took me 2 minutes to come up with that joke" "Oh, well, all right, yeah." *awkward pause* "Well, enjoy your constitutional right to take photographs, have a nice night." "Ok, thanks, bye." As he walks away I wonder if he was just being friendly, or if that was quite possibly the worst pickup line I'd ever heard.

It's now evening and I arrive at Titan, where I eventually meet up with Tom and am introduced to a whole slew of other bloggers. Earl, Mike, Carl (who I'd actually met ona previous visit), Cary, and I know I'm forgetting at minimum 2 other guys... someone help jog my fuzzy memory. We stayed out until around 10:30 and decided it was now dinnertime. Bussboys and Poets was very yummy. We had front row seats for the poetry show... that had already finished. Oh well.

Saturday after brunch we walked downtown to try and find a place to watch the Hawks kick some Gopher ass. The ESPN Zone gave us no love, so we were forced to brave the Lehigh Valley Fans in the sports bar at the Grand Hyatt and beg the manager to put ESPN2 on one of the screens so I could get my fix. I ended up having dinner with a couple of friends in Virginia and then returned to DC for more partying at various bars around the city.

Sunday I had lunch at the Lost Dog Cafe in Arlington, and then we on the road at about 3. Got home before 9 PM so it was pretty good time considering we lost a half-hour trying to avoid traffic due to an accident on I-95. And now I must finish my graduate school applications.

Posted by Jeff Smith at 12:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Headed back to DC for this past weekend. My trip included secret passageways, packed bars, chilly evenings, and even a brush with evil (among other things). I met a bunch of new people this trip again, many of whom are bloggers. My memory is cloudy at best (due to too much Ketel One and Miller Light) so if you feel left out I'll gladly accept complaints in my comments. And just because I'm sure you're all expecting it, the end of the rut (hopefully). Now I must sleep and recouperate.

Posted by Jeff Smith at 11:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm all done with the GRE now. It went reasonably well, overall. I didn't do as well on the verbal section as I had expected based on the practice tests I took. Those giant words make my brain hurt. My quantitative reasoning skills, however, shined through and I did pretty well on that part. I also think I rocked the analytical essay portion, but humans are slow with the grading process. So, we wait. While waiting, I played around with photoshop and my fire hydrant fetish as of late. Can you tell which one is the correct color. This one is from some street in Chinatown, or maybe it was Little Italy. They're basically the same place anyway. These lack coveres, which BC says doesn't mean it's broken, because you turn on the thing from the pentagon on the top. So, there ya go.

Posted by Jeff Smith at 10:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Tonight I was treated to the videos for Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" with the light-up sidewalk and bizzare cats jumping out from behind trashcans. This was followed by Sheena Easton's "The Lover in Me". She has huge heart-shaped dangly earrings in both red and black. And rockin' abs.

GRE is today... 12 hours from now. Perhaps I should think about getting some sleep.

Posted by Jeff Smith at 12:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm taking the night off from studying, since my second practice test (after studying a lot) didn't go so well. To relax, I'll share a few photos from this past weekend in NYC. George's birthday was Saturday, and he treated us to dinner at Keen's Steakhouse. The service was impeckable and the food was delicious. Below are a few selected photos.

Group shot: Jeff, Dave, George, and I.

The Chateaubriand Steak (for two) which George and I split. YUM!

Apparently you're not supposed to eat it in one bite.

The place was decorated with over 20,000 pipes on the ceiling.

I almost forgot , they also had my favorite Single Malt Scotch, Glenturret.

Posted by Jeff Smith at 08:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I scheduled myself to take the GRE. I have had some hellacious luck with realtime online scheduling this week. On Monday, I was trying to get tickets to see the Eddie Izzard in NYC this weekend. They even charged my credit card, but alas, I get no tickets (the charges did get reversed, but still). And then, today, I'm trying to schedule a test date and the link disappears as I click it. Thankfully my disgust with the whole real-time web reservation system in general prevented me from immediately reserving a December date, as any sane person would have done. As luck would have it, however, a glitch while trying to register for the December test date tonight (stupid flash animations in another tab dragging down Firefox) caused me to inadvertently close the window. Start over, and *poof* there are new November dates available.

It's on for November 15th. Now, I need to run out and have the quadratic formula tattooed on my forearm. I do NOT remember how to factor these equations. I also do not remember how to perform algebraic manipulations of radicals, or of fractions. And let's not even get to the parts with the triangles and circles and angles.... Oh... my head hurts....

Posted by Jeff Smith at 12:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

One of the things I like about my current house is this tree in the front yard. Anybody care to guess what species of tree we're viewing? I think this is the only time in my life I wish I had access to an Audobon Society Field Guide. The trees here have just peaked at full color, and now the ground is quickly becoming covered in leaves. It smells like fall, despite this weekend's 75 degree weather (which I greatly appreciated). Yesterday afternoon on my jog through the neighborhood I smelled a fire going inside someone's house. I wish my house had a fireplace. Maybe one day.

Posted by Jeff Smith at 04:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Oh, the times they are a-changin'. I think I've decided to go to graduate school this fall. With application deadlines fast approaching and yours truly not yet having taken the GRE, it appears this fall will be busy and stressful, and not just in relation to the lab. The impetus for this decision had to do with the grant situation in the lab, which I wont really delve into. Suffice it to say, for a few days it seemed as though we would be without money completely for several months, but then the boss man did his magic and now we'll be ok. But even he still thinks I should go to grad school.

Now, the choices are wide open for fields and programs, but I think I'm going to try and find something that fits in New York City. I've always wanted to be a real city mouse, and I don't think there's another way I can afford to live there without cheap student housing. Just to keep my options open, I'll probably also apply to UW in Seattle and UC San Francisco. And the location I don't pick now could always be a post-doc in 5 years.

This all looks like a big plus on paper, but there's one tiny thing that I was hoping to be able to do before graduate school. I have this fantasy trip to Southeast Asia planning in the back of my head. The idea was to stay on another year, allowing me to amass the small fortune needed to stop working 3 months before grad school started and spend the entire time tramping around Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, and possibly Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand. I can't really forsee another point in my life where I'll be able to get away for that length of time purely for my own benefit.

That's not to say that it's for sure that I'll be in grad school next fall, just that I'm applying. And the first step is that this weekend I'm going to take the practice test on the computer for the first time and see how well I can do. Oh, and get home in time to watch the Hawks.

Posted by Jeff Smith at 02:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I have a few leftover images from last weekend's trip to New York City that I didn't include in the photo album because they were just too random to post there, but interesting enough to warrant mentioning. I'll start with the above photos of fire hydrants. These images are inspired by BC, since on our Whistler Ski Trip he kept pointing them out, and I even almost got detained by customs trying to take a picture of one at the border crossing. On the left, we have a nicely weathered, formerly red hydrant located in Central Park near Sheep's Meadow. It's location is curious because nearby flamable material was scarce. Just a few trees in the park. It also appears to be non-funtional. On the right, we have a criminally damaged black and silver model. How did this happen? It looks too carefully placed on top of the hole to have been hit by a car, and those things weigh a lot. Anybody have any thoughts?

Somewhere on 7th Avenue between 40th and 36th Streets, someone lost a Lee Press-on Nail. Was this part of a Halloween costume? It's not Halloween yet. Who lost this? A sassy drag queen? A trashy sorority girl? Maybe there was a brutal catfight on this very street corner. Poor lost little press-on nail.

Finally, this image presented itself to me on the LIRR as I was making my way home Sunday night. The train was pretty crowded and a bit messy. After most of the people had disembarked, I snapped this photo. Maybe it's just happenstance that these two little pieces of littered paper found each other, but it poses an interesting question as to what went on at Belmont that day, and whether or not Rossy will get a phone call. Did Mr. Belmont Guy string her along just to have some company at the track? Maybe he just put her number into his cell phone and dropped the paper along with his ticket. Or maybe they're making babies right now.

Posted by Jeff Smith at 10:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)