Personal on traviscj/blog

38 and Grateful

Tue, 03 Dec 2024 13:03:37 -0600

It’s been a while since I’ve written an update – 2.5y! – and a long time since I wrote very frequently. On top of all the crazy ways the world has changed in the last five years, a bunch has changed for me personally in the last five years as well, along a bunch of different axes.

I think part of the reason it’s been hard to post is wanting to avoid coming across as bragging about the high points of this journey and also not really wanting to admit some of the low points, but I feel I’ve had a lot on my mind that doesn’t really make sense in blog form without the greater context; I’ve decided that I’d rather just share a lot of what’s been going on in the hopes that some part of it is relevant to someone out there or gives them some fortitude for whatever low spot they’re going through or can learn something from it.

more light, better pictures

Sat, 05 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000

We were trying to take some Christmas pictures but feeling a bit unsatisfied with the way the pictures were coming out:

I wanted some flash or something, but the batteries on all the “better” cameras were already dead, so I went looking for an alternative. We tried to get the overhead light turned on, but couldn’t find the switch for that.

The next-closest source of light was a sheet music lamp on my mom’s piano! Borrowing that for the cause, I was able to get this one instead:

personal finance resources

Thu, 03 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000

I wanted to say a tiny bit about personal finance stuff, as I feel like I have gotten a fairly good feel for it.

Some great resources to start getting up to speed include:

r/personalfinance, especially
- the common topics
- the wiki

index investments

Ideally you want to own a lot of different companies, so you’ve diversified your asset ownership. One of the easiest ways to do this is through index investing, where the index “tracks” a broad swath of the market, like “All S&P 500 Companies” or “All stock market companies”.

skydive!

Sun, 21 Oct 2018 00:00:00 +0000

For my 32nd birthday, my wife took me skydiving!

big-ish personal storage

Wed, 25 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000

I was curious what it would cost to have something like 5-30TB of storage space on hand. The obvious choices are between buying some hard drives and paying for an S3 bucket or something.

The amazon costs are pretty straightforward: you pick a region, they tell you the cost. Starting with their pricing table:

aws = [
    {"level": "standard", "c_millidollars": 23},
    {"level": "infrequent", "c_millidollars": 12.5},
    {"level": "one_zone", "c_millidollars": 10},
    {"level": "glacier", "c_millidollars": 4}
]

we can say

dancing bull pricing structure

Thu, 04 Jan 2018 00:10:00 +0000

Dancing Bull is a great Korean BBQ restaurant that opened nearby recently. They have this pricing scheme:

Note that the unlimited bulgogi is \$23/person, but the bulgogi a la carte is \$25/grill (with each additional orders after that costing \$9). This raises an obvious question: which is the better deal?

Spoiler: it depends on both how many people you have and how hungry they are.

First, we had to clarify how it actually worked. It’s not clear from the menu, but the “\$25/grill” includes the first order of bulgogi. Introducing $P$ for the number of people, $G$ for the number of grills, and $O$ for the total number of orders, we would pay $$UL = 23\cdot P$$ for the unlimited price scheme vs $$ALC = 25\cdot G + 9\cdot ( O - G)$$ for the a la carte scheme.

everything has a failure rate

Wed, 03 Jan 2018 07:09:49 +0000

I was happily riding in to work this morning on my motorcycle. Periodically while riding, a spark of terror that I’ve forgotten to buckle my backpack to the bike’s frame hits me. So frequently, in fact, that I’ve grown used to reaching behind me to feel for the backpack in a spare second when I don’t need to clutch.

Today was different:

I reached for the backpack but felt nothing.

500 Million Dollars!

Fri, 27 Oct 2017 12:19:00 +0000

I watched Destin’s $500 Million Dollars video:

and had a few thoughts:

my highschool CS education

My highschool had computer teachers, but no computer science teachers. Luckily, we did have a teacher (Dick Van Kirk!) that was willing to sponsor an independent study of some computer science topics. I read the AP Computer Science A study guides and a bunch of the Java: How to Program (Deitel & Deitel) book and managed to get through the AP test with a top score. This enabled me to skip over the intro CSE142 at University of Washington.

klr650 planned upgrades

Mon, 17 Jul 2017 00:00:00 +0000

I’m planning on “civilizing” my KLR650 just a tiny bit, since it is coming up on 1500 miles and I haven’t made it offroad at all yet.

There are two (fairly minor) issues with the stock setup, as far as I’m currently concerned:

First, I’d prefer the gearing to be just a little bit taller so I don’t have to wind it up quite as much. The engine just runs a little faster than I’d like at freeway speeds, and even driving around town it just feels slightly off. So I’m thinking about swapping out the stock 15T countershaft sprocket for a 16T. That changes the final drive from 2.87 to 2.69, and saves about 400 RPM at freeway speed, which doesn’t sound like much, but should quiet it up nicely. I found a website called gearingcommander that allows all of these calculations pretty nicely.

sprat: multiplayer solitaire

Wed, 29 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000

I took a quick pass at describing the rules of a card game I grew up playing, Sprat:

Each player(or team) has 1 deck of cards. initial setup is 4 cards face up (the “personal piles”), 13 cards (top card face up, others face down) in the “sprat deck”, and the remaining cards in the “flip deck”.

The center of the table is the space for the “ace piles”. A new ace pile can be started by any player with any ace; any player can play the next card of the same suit on any ace pile.

christmas commute

Thu, 29 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

I did a 725-mile drive yesterday from Prosser, WA to San Francisco, CA. I captured the daylight hours with a GoPro timelapse and turned it into a video!

This was the actual loop we took, including the trip up to Washington. We spent two nights in Oregon – one in Grants Pass and one in Portland.

![]({{ site.baseurl }}/assets/christmas_commute_s.png)

My GoPro mount held the pictures upside down, so I transformed all of them with a quick

motorcycle learnings at 250 miles

Fri, 02 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Two new learnings at the 250mi point:

The backpack straps down to the back!

![]({{ site.baseurl }}/assets/backpack_straps_s.jpg)

The balance of the bike feels so much better with the backpack low and riding without weight on my shoulders is so much more comfortable.
Ear Plugs are amazing! I noticed earplugs being worn on The Long Way Round and decided to try it out. It is really surprising how relevant noises (other cars, etc) make it through fine, but how much nicer it is to not have the wind noise!

KLR-650 first month & american gumball

Wed, 30 Nov 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Yesterday I finally got the title for my motorcycle and realized that I’d owned it for exactly one month!

![]({{ site.baseurl }}/assets/klr650_first_ride_s.jpg)

So far, I haven’t done anything very adventureous – still getting used to riding again. I had a couple things that were making me nervous about it:

The bike gets warm (>1/2 way on the heat gauge, but still significantly below the red) tooling around, usually on my commute home in the evening.

streaks vs statistical streaks

Mon, 26 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Hacker News et al are obsessed with streaks, but I think they have some problems:

A single regression resets to zero.
There’s not an easy way to gradually ramp up your streak-commitment over time.

I prefer a different approach: statistical streaks.

Suppose I made a commitment to do something differently on 2016-08-26, and did it for the next 5 days; then my 30-day statistical streak avg = 0.166, but my 5-day statistical streak avg = 1.0.

i fucking love mangoes

Sun, 24 Apr 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Specifically, the Philippine Brand Dried Mangoes. They are amazingly good.

But there is a slight problem. Costco sells them in 30 oz bulk packs, which is 20 servings at 160 calories/serving or 3200 calories total. Left to my own devices and lack of self discipline, I could probably eat (and subsequently regret eating) the entire bag of mangoes.

I need a self-check to disgust myself and impose a bit more of a speedbump than an already-opened bag provides. So I fired up the FoodSaver and made individual serving sized-bags:

individual sealed ibuprofen & zyrtec

Wed, 30 Dec 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Today I made some individually sealed ibuprofen (Advil) and cetirizine (Zyrtec) packets:

![ibuprofen]({{ site.baseurl }}/assets/ibuprofen_s.jpg)

I did it by cutting about a two inch strip of vacuum sealing bag, then doing several perpendicular seals far enough apart that I could pop a couple of pills in it.

![ibuprofen strip]({{ site.baseurl }}/assets/ibuprofen_strip_s.jpg)

Why bother? Mostly, I want to keep a few doses in my backpack / car, but don’t want them turning into dust. (The softer coat on Kirkland seems especially problematic.) The next best idea is of course just buying the commercial version, but I don’t really need 50 packets at a time. I’d prefer to keep more stock in the “more liquid” bottle form. Finally, waterproof can’t hurt!

first canning adventure: brandied pears

Tue, 29 Dec 2015 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been wanting to get into canning for a while. It was finally time to take the plunge. I made brandied pears. One of the really striking things is how simple the ingredients list is:

pears
lemon juice
sugar
water
brandy

Here’s the setup just before I started:

![canning prep]({{ site.baseurl }}/assets/canning_prep_s.jpg)

Allison got me a pressure canner/cooker for Christmas:

![pressure canner]({{ site.baseurl }}/assets/pressure_canner_s.jpg)

It’s huge! After I cooked the pears I packed them

pragmatic edc

Sun, 27 Dec 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Lots of folks wax poetic about their every day carry kit, and then include things like fishing hooks. That might make a “pragmatic hiking edc” kit, but I’m interested in some of the more realistic things that might happen:

Phone is dead and need to call someone (wife, parent, car insurance company, whatever) but don’t have the relevant phone number / insurance number / etc.
Minor illness like headache, indigestion, things like that.
Forgot my wallet at home and need lunch or cab fare.

purell sanitizing hand wipes pac-kit hydrocortisone pac-kit medication triage pack

recent projects - sous vide, hydroponic pump, and another table

Tue, 17 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been working on a few fun projects recently.

First: I built a temperature controller out of a crock pot and a cheap import temperature controller. It looks like this:

![temperature controller top]({{ site.baseurl }}/assets/temperature_controller_top_s.jpg)

![temperature controller bottom]({{ site.baseurl }}/assets/temperature_controller_bottom_s.jpg)

I’ve used it to cook eggs and steak. Both turned out great! Here’s the only shots I got of the steak:

![steak vacuum sealed]({{ site.baseurl }}/assets/steak_vacuum_sealed_s.jpg) ![steak cooking]({{ site.baseurl }}/assets/steak_cooking_s.jpg)

Next, I’ve put together another refinement of the hydroponic tomato setup we have in our living room. Also, just realized I haven’t added the backposts about it yet. Allison and I started three tomato plants back in May:

life pro tip curb rampant consumerism by identifying actual needs

Sun, 23 Aug 2015 00:00:00 +0000

A while back, I realized that I wanted a nice digital SLR camera. Before I bought it, I made a list of all the things that I wanted to do with it. Ultimately, this ended up being a sort of self-justification for buying it, but it did serve one deeper purpose: I now had a list of about 20 things that I had committed to doing with my new camera. So while it didn’t actually prevent me from being rampantly consumerist, I did have a whole set of worthwhile things to do with my new camera!

car is paid off!

Sat, 16 May 2015 00:00:00 +0000

I finally sent the last check for my 2013 Ford Focus a couple of weeks ago, and finally got the title in the mail today. It also came with a “congratulations for paying off your car!” letter, which was a nice touch.

I opted to pay it off early, despite the (moderate) financial disadvantage it put me at. The loan was only 2.4%, so the cost of carrying the loan actually wasn’t super significant. I had started paying the loan ahead of schedule during graduate school because I was worried about whether I would have the cashflow available to keep making payments during the time between graduate school and real paid work. Then when I did get a job, I just kept making the higher-than-required payments.

square

Sat, 16 Nov 2013 00:00:00 +0000

I probably should have been working on my thesis, but I had a phone interview with Square. I wanted to write a bit of code to get myself “warmed up” but wanted it to be kinda fun. So I decided to write some code that drew a square.

#include <iostream>
using namespace std;

int main() {

    cout << "+";
    for (int i=0; i<8; i++) cout << "-";
    cout << "+" << endl;

    for (int j=0; j<5; j++) {
        cout << "|";
        for (int i=0; i<8; i++)
            cout << " ";
        cout << "|";
        cout << endl;
    }

    cout << "+";
    for (int i=0; i<8; i++) cout << "-";
    cout << "+" << endl;

    return 0;
}

which yields a nice little square:

org-mode emacs to track mileage

Wed, 15 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been trying out emacs org-mode lately for keeping track of everything. One thing that seemed worth tracking is the mileage the new Focus gets. Turns out that org-mode supports a kind of spreadsheet, so I made a quick little video demo on how I use it:

Some Recent Photography

Sun, 16 Dec 2012 00:00:00 +0000

My girlfriend and I were out by the lake taking pictures recently. I was trying to get the Chicago skyline, but we really weren’t in the right place for it. So instead I settled for taking some long exposure photos of stuff I found.

I think they came out pretty good, especially because it was all a ruse to get her to the lakefront so that I could ask if she would marry me. She said yes!

Game of Life

Tue, 20 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000

When I was a sophomore in high school, I was fascinated with [ Conway’s Game of Life]. I still am. I did a pretty rudamentary study of the kinds of patterns that could form from the simple rules of the game.

One thing that wasn’t available when I was a sophomore was Youtube. Two of my favorite Game of Life videos:

Another direction that Game of Life has gone recently is something that I really should have thought of, honestly. Many times I’ve thought that there’s at least some superficial relationship between Game of Life and diffusion equations. Turns out that S. Rafler has extended Game of Life to continuous domains through what he calls SmoothLife.

McCormick Interview - Outreach 101 + QUALS

Wed, 13 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000

I was interviewed and given a semi-prominent placement in Northwestern’s McCormick Magazine for the outreach work that 2011-2012 NU-IEEE President Curtis Wang and I have put together. Permalink to article. It was a really nice writeup and really great to get to throw out a mention of Joyce Stark!

In other news–I had a crazy couple of weeks due to preparing for (and eventually, taking!) my PhD qualifying examinations. They consist of a panel of three professors questioning me on intricacies of material that I’ve been learning over the last couple of years, namely: Numerical PDE methods, Analytic PDE methods, and optimization. Professor Kath had a particularly interesting question where I derived the heat equation from a minimum-energy problem. The exams went for 95 minutes, followed by a 5 minute deliberation, after which each professor came out with handshakes and congratulations.

chicago 2012 marathon

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve signed up for the Chicago 2012 Marathon with Team To End AIDS or my donation page–PLEASE! every bit helps!). It’s a bit of an unusual choice, probably, to not run for the American Lung Association(I have asthma) or the American Cancer Society(my dad is a survivor.) But it’s actually been a good opportunity to learn a bit more about the current state of AIDS, AIDS policy, and what it’s like to live with it. I’ve also had some really good discussions about it with people it would not have come up, so it has been nice all around.

digital photography

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Recently I’ve decided to dedicate a slight bit of time to get a bit better at taking pictures. I’d always wanted to get a truly nice camera, and the opportunity presented itself, so I decided to go for it and bought a Nikon D5100 DSLR. I also ended up getting a complete steal on the Nikon 55-200mm DX VR lens, which was pretty awesome. Project 365 would be a great move from here, since I’m certainly no photographer, but it’s been fun just learning about it all the ins and outs and how it all works together. In any case, I did start a Flickr: drtraviscj account which I’ll be posting stuff.

Why We Know Less About the World than Ever

Mon, 11 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

In a short break from studying for tomorrow’s preliminary exam, I came across a TED talk about Why We Know Less About the World Than Ever. I’ve spent quite a lot of energy thinking about the main question Alisa Miller brings up, which is: how did we get news get so focused on things like Anna Nichole Smith’s death while ignoring North Korean nuclear disarmament, the IPCC’s global warming report, and other arguably more important news stories?

TED Talks

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been downloading a lot from iTunes recently, both in the form of TED talks and iTunes U videos. I’ll post about iTunes U later.

TED talks, for the uninitiated, are 5-20 minute lectures on something that someone(usually a researcher or philanthropist) has been working on to make the world a better or cooler place. I’ve been watching them the last few days, and they’re really great for hearing an opinion you might not, otherwise. A few of my favorites, in no particular order:

Goodbye, Walter Cronkite

Fri, 24 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0000

I am in no way qualified to write a proper goodbye to the late Mr. Cronkite–him having retired a half-decade before I was born–but I have the greatest respect for the man, and wish in a lot of ways that I could have been around for it. On the other hand, reviewing videos of his newscasts, what strikes me is the massive impact and bleakness of many of these newscasts and how that contrasts with the emptiness of many more recent newscasts that I can recall. So most of my wistfulness revolves around our shared interest in spaceflight, his reporting obsession and a large source of my own scientific curiosity. I couldn’t say it better than Couric’s memorial commentary, which posited ‘It’s a measure of the man that he preferred the triumph of the space program to the despair in so much of the news,’ and that is certainly the way it was.

Blog Segregation

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0000

I’m slowly feeling more and more that I want some more compartments in my blogging. I’ve been thinking about stuff I want to blog, and stuff I don’t want to blog, and invariably they tend to get filed in both places. For example, I’d like to move toward a more professional blog that I could talk about my research, papers I’ve been reading, web sites I’ve found interesting, course projects, professional meetings, etc.

Northwestern University

Sun, 19 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +0000

I finally committed to graduate school a few weeks ago. I’ll be headed to Northwestern University in Evanston, IL for the [Engineering Sciences and Applied Mathematics]](http://esam.northwestern.edu) department.

I really enjoyed both the visit at University of North Carolina and Northwestern the week before last. But I think I could like Chicagoland quite a lot, so I guess that’s where I’m headed!

Mission Graduate School -- Success

Wed, 25 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve officially been accepted to two PhD applied math programs: Northwestern and University of North Carolina. I’ve also been accepted to the Masters of Science program at the University of Washington. Both of the PhD offers came with full fellowship offers(at least for the first year), which basically means that I just need to go and give them the best bang for their buck with my brainpower for five years, and then I’ll have my PhD. Awesome. All three schools are outstanding and have amazing faculty, as best as I can tell.

Graduate School Applications and Microsoft

Mon, 09 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0000

I finally finished graduate school applications last weekend. I applied to University of Washington, University of North Carolina, Northwestern, University of Colorado, and University of Nevada. It’s a lot of work getting a bunch of applications out like that: I definitely underestimated it. Hopefully my personal statement measured up to the letters of recommendation that people wrote for me.

I also ended up having an interview with Microsoft that week, just to add a bit to the stress there. It actually went fairly well, though I haven’t heard back on the round-two interview yet. They said it would be a while though.

David Liff is a Master

Fri, 30 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Life is keeping me so crazy that I should not be taking the time to write this, but posting a link here was irresistable. David Liff is an amazing photographer. I think the best comment on that page(if you can make it to the bottom without running out and buying a plane ticket to one of these places) is “Your photos have more life than the subjects themselves!”. Wikipedia, you may be proud. David Liff, thank you.

Graduate School Applications

Fri, 02 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000

I am finally getting around to starting my graduate school applications.. and overall having a lot of fun with them. The places I’m applying to are:

University of Washington, Seattle
Northwestern, Evanston
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
University of Colorado, Boulder I’ve got my UW Seattle application about half done, and just starting the other ones.

The UW has apparently gotten my full GRE scores, because they are now reporting them through the unofficial transcript interface. I don’t quite recall where I sent them already.. I’ll probably get that going soon.

Boom De Yada

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000

I think I’ve already told most of my friends about this… but it’s just way too awesome to not have documented somewhere. Doubly-pronged awesomeness, actually: - The Discovery Channel’s Boom De Yada video. - XKCD’s Boom De Yada comic strip always makes my day that much better.

Happy Birthday to Me, Pt. 2

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000

As always, a picture’s worth a thousand words:

Happy Birthday To Me

Sun, 26 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000

I should have written this up sooner, but I guess it worked out well because the last of it didn’t happen until just recently.

My friends did a fantastic job of throwing me one hell of a birthday this year. Beals made it up a little bit early to begin the celebrations with food and manly stuff. Then Katie and I had a joint birthday dinner at Boca de Beppos. Tuesday Sharvil and I made it out for a while. Wednesday we had a nice dinner at Shultzy’s, though they’re kindof in the doghouse for the service that night. Thursday Jackie took me out to Sonrisa, which was absolutely delicious. And finally, Friday night Jackie gathered up a bunch of the Brazil crowd into Finn MacCools, and it was absolutely wonderful to see them all.

Smart People Shows

Sun, 26 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Sharvil and I started watching Numb3rs today, from the pilot episode. We both basically decided that it’s really nice to watch shows that are sortof motivational in a way. Admittedly, they’re mostly designed to motivate you to watch more shows… but I think Numb3rs has been an important show for me, if for no reason other than motivating me to keep working on stuff when I’d rather not or when I’m nearly too frustrated to keep going. (I have been watching it for a couple years now, if that wasn’t obvious). Anyways, it’s usually worth the Numbers Painfully Awkward Lines and just general cheesiness and admittedly odd scenes. (Look up Numb3rs on TheRecapist and prepare to giggle a bit.) And it turns out a fair bit of the math is pretty legit, even if usually the equations he’s writing on the boards are sortof generic and not necesarily what he’s talking about.

Mugged!

Sun, 24 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Friday started off a pretty decent day in Brazil. I finally got comfortable enough with my phrase book to start busting out phrases to the Taxi driver and it ended up making our taxi rides a fair bit more comfortable, quicker, and cheaper. So, there’s one place that Portuguese is coming in really handy, even if it is even just a tiny bit of it. It’s getting a lot more comfortable interacting with the native Brazilians here, probably for all of us, but it was pretty pronounced today, and I was feeling pretty good about it. I had intended to get some pictures at IMPA, so I happened to have my camera today.

More Updates from Rio

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Sorry for not getting this updated a little bit sooner, but it has been an eventful week sortof. Apparently it’s been almost a week! Time flies, apparently.

Wednesday was pretty standard. More classes, more modeling, more cool climate stuff. IMPA has pretty good coffee for free on supply until 4pm, and all of us Seattlites are pretty much living on it, and on the verge of staging a coup when they try to shut it down. There are currently a bunch of very fun, very loud Irish guys outside the 9-bed dorm room, so everyone in our room is pretty sleep deprived. Hence the coffee addiction. We also finally formalized some ‘cab groups’, or a set of people we’re going to share taxis with for all the taxi rides we’re taking to and from IMPA and other places around Rio.

First Couple of Days in Rio

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0000

So Monday morning was really lazy. Some people went to get a volleyball, a bunch went down to the beach again, and I let my sunburn cool off. It was also really warm and sunny, which is a nice change from Seattle! We left for IMPA around 2, got on taxis to get over there, and eventually made it. The taxi drivers are apparently pretty vicious. We took 5 cabs, 3 got charged around 15, one around 20, and one 25. So they try to rip you off.

IN BRAZIL

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0000

I finally made it to Brazil. It was a very long and tiring flight, but I was seated next to a couple of very nice locals that fed me all sorts of useful information. I ended up pre-buying a ticket from the Taxi company, but apparently this is sortof a bad call, because they way overcharge if you don’t have them use the meter. Anyways, not too big of a deal. He took me right up to the hostel, and a bunch of familiar faces were there.

In Atlanta

Sun, 17 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Well, I made it at least as far as Atlanta. The Boeing 757 we flew in had touchscreens in each monitor that told me I’ve traveled 2326 miles so far. Landing was pretty smooth, and the flight was relatively easy. A bit longer than I’d expected, and a little bit more restless than I’d hoped.

I stopped to get some food immediately on arriving, somewhere called Krystal Hamburger. They have a Sausage Scramble Combo, a cup full of scrambled eggs, sausage, and grits! How awesome.

iPhone 2.0 - Impressions and Favorites

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0000

I know that about every other iPhone owner has posted to their blog about this and almost a month ago already, but I’ll throw my own take into the mix.

I originally planned on waiting a while before installing the second major revision of the iPhone software, but Sharvil tried it almost immediately and told me that I needed to give it a shot. So, I finally upgraded it, and have not been disappointed. Some highlights:

Final Pre-trip Brazil Updates

Sun, 03 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0000

I have been meaning to write for almost two weeks that I’ve got my Visa back from the Brazilian Consulate in San Francisco, which is pretty cool. I saw a picture of it and it looks really sweet. I’m slowly turning into a world traveler! It took about a week inside the consulate, then they FedEx Next Day Air’d it to Memphis, then Spokane, then the Tri-Cities, then Prosser. They dropped it off with Mom.

Of Weddings and Best Men

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 12:00:00 +0000

This past weekend I had the honor of being the Best Man at my sister Crystal’s wedding. It was a beautiful wedding at Silverlake Winery in Zillah, WA. I highly recommend it to anyone looking for a pretty spot like that, and it was definitely adequate for our relatively small 120 person party. Also, the wine was excellent. I enjoyed their Chenin Blanc most of the night, though I tried everything about twice, and ended up going home with some of their Reserve Chardonnay.

Odegaard Copy Center

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 12:00:00 +0000

This is going to be sortof a short post with not much worldwide applicability, but I just learned a couple of weeks ago that Odegaard’s Copy Center will bind a packet of papers for fairly cheap, it turns out. They do it with a clear front cover and a back cover of your choice, plus binding you pick out from their samples. They do it while you wait and have good hours. I had no idea they offered this service, and was very impressed with their output.

Skeletool CX

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0000

So, I finally got fed up with never having a screwdriver when I needed it unexpectedly. Perhaps this was due to the recent MacGyver watching binge, but either way, I’m calling it excess frustration. It seems like it always throws me off when I’m trying to do something at work or at a friend’s house to their computer or… whatever. I had started to carry my little red Swiss Army knife a while back, and it came in handy at least a couple of times a day, so I decided it was probably worth further investment to get one with a real screwdriver on it.

Brazil Tickets

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0000

I’m a little bit late announcing this, but…. I BOUGHT MY BRAZIL TICKETS!

It ended up being like 1300 bucks, and I have a 13 hour layover in Atlanta on the way there…. but I think that’ll be okay. It’s actually enough time that I think I might go in and see the world’s largest aquarium, the CNN headquarters, and the World of Coca Cola.

We’re going to be staying somewhere called El Misti Hostel, and make up about 70-80% of the residents there. It’s right off of Copacabana Beach, which is very, very exciting.

Where I'm At

Sat, 03 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000

So it’s almost the end of Winter Quarter 07 at the University of Washington. It’s cold and rainy and lame. Last week I got turned down from the Computer Science program here, which meant I spent the weekend generally freaking out.

In any case, I then remembered that I liked the idea of an ACMS degree. The base of the major consists of the physics series, a Numerical Methods course and a Continuous modeling course from the AMATH department, and discrete models and statistics from the math department.