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September 22, 2005
lost, mba, qa
Yesterday turned out to be a good day. The premiere of Lost was excellent. Also, I loved Boston University. I'm definitely going to try to get in there for my MBA next fall.
Kara called briefly this morning; she is doing fine and having a good time. I miss her.
We're rolling out a big project this weekend so I'm mainly doing QA for that. I have some pieces of my own project that I also need to work on, but I think there's time to do both.
Posted by Mark at 01:23 PM | Comments (0)
September 20, 2005
work day
I am currently dragging my feet. I need to get started on a piece of this substantial project, and I I don't wanna. Kara would tell me to try working for 15 minutes, and take it from there. It's always better when you break the job down into smaller bits.
I don't have anything pressing to do tonight. The motorcycle is back at home, Lost isn't on until tomorrow, and I've only just started Deus Ex. Today is set aside to be a work day. That doesn't change the fact that I don't feel like working.
Posted by Mark at 04:10 PM | Comments (1)
September 19, 2005
savin ill
You gotta check these guys out. They play like a combination of early Limp Bizkit, Fiona Apple, Red Hot Chili Peppers, maybe a little Spin Doctors...very good stuff. One of the DJs is the cook downstairs at our little lunch cafeteria, and he clearly has the talent to go places besides elsewhere in food services. Check out their website:
Very good stuff. Album drops soon. You heard 'em here first.
Posted by Mark at 02:07 PM | Comments (0)
new things
Kara has been bundled off to Thailand, and is either sleeping or dining on Pad Thai as we speak. Actually, sleeping; I just checked the time difference. They are 11 hours ahead of us, so it's just after midnight there as I write this. I hope she is having a good time.
It's interesting not having her around, since she has been here the entire time I've lived in Boston. Now I get to experience what it's like living in this city and not having her around.
The weekend was good; MJP was in town. I didn't get around to picking up the motorcycle--I'm doing that after work tonight--but I did cross a lot of things off my list of places to check out. We hit Game On! in Fenway to watch the Syracuse game on Saturday, then later went out to Village Smokehouse for a BBQ dinner, and then had drinks at Matt Murphy's. Murphy's wasn't what I expected. They are supposed to be a great place to hear live music, but the place is tiny, and the decor is more traditional Irish pub in Ireland (as opposed to an American Irish pub) than someplace you would think of when going to see a band.
So, that was fun. I didn't really do anything yesterday but catch up on sleep, and I have to admit, I feel good and well-rested now. I owe Matt a birthday call and a gift, and I have to go shopping for Mom too. Happy birthday Matt! Hope your interview is going well...
On Wednesday I'm heading out to BU. I'm excited about that, and I hope I like their program. I think I'm most in favor of going there for various reasons that don't relate to the program precisely--the name recognition and the location--and I hope that the program is up to par.
Anyway, things are moving along, I'm crossing things off my list. I'm glad I got a chance to do and see some new things.
Posted by Mark at 01:10 PM | Comments (0)
September 16, 2005
revolution
But. But! A one-handed controller? Nobody, nobody saw that coming, including me, including everybody else who thought the gyroscope was a no-brainer. With the analog stick attachment, you could move around the room and use the actual "remote" part of the controller to aim your gun, or steer you car with one and aim your viewpoint with the other, or who knows...it's a 3-D mouse, is what it is, and it's probably the closest a console has come to the born-of-necessity WASD-mouse configuration used by basically every FPS since Quake. I have to say, I am in awe. They have really, really redefined exactly what a controller is. There's never really been a one-handed controller...well, maybe the Power Glove, but that sucked. This has enormous potential.
Posted by Mark at 12:30 PM | Comments (1)
September 15, 2005
omg teh hatch?!?!?
Just remember when Nintendo announces their new controller, I totally called "gyroscopic sensor."
In other words, tilty thing.
Going to Bentley after work today. I am so excited to have tomorrow off. It will be nice just to have a chance to breathe, even though I do have things that I need to do.
Oh, and the guys from Penny Arcade are apparently going to be at MIT tomorrow giving a free lecture before they head down to the Baltimore Comic-Con. I think I might try to go, depending on what time Kara needs to be at the airport.
What is in that hatch?!?!?
So I didn't immediately catch it until I was thinking about it later, but the French chick says that the Others wanted "the boy." Which everybody assumed was Aaron, Claire's new kid, but actually seems to have turned out to be Walt. So I think Walt and his strange semi-psychic abilities are going to turn out to be at the heart of what is going on.
I also read that they are going to have a new actor on the show with a very African-sounding name, and that plus the empty manacles on the Black Rock make it almost a certainty that there is going to turn out to be an escaped slave who somehow survived, or something...is there some kind of time-warp thing going on as well? Maybe there is a tribe of escaped slaves who are living on the island? But if that's the case, why haven't they shown themselves?
And what is the weird thing that grabbed Locke? It made a mechanical sort of sound as it dragged him.
I've seen the shot in the ads where something from the hatch says "Quarantine" on it, so I'm curious to see exactly what that is all about.
There is one major dilemma that the writers are facing, and that is how to resolve all this. If they come up with some sort of plausible explanation, it will probably turn out to be disappointing to people. The best way to work around that is to not reveal 100% of "why" everything is going on. Stuff is happening, the rules on the island are different from reality, and there may just not be a clear explanation of why things are the way they are...not unlike real life. I mean, there are lots of things in real-life that are never explained...there's no big moment when somebody sits down and reveals the entire plot. So in the end, maybe they get off the island, there are a lot of weird unresolved unexplained things, that maybe can't be explained or resolved, that maybe weren't meant to be, but just were. That way you don't run into "it was all a dream!" or "it was all a mass hallucination!" or "they actually died and this is the afterlife!" or "it was space aliens!" It was all weird, inexplicable, and that's the way it is.
Posted by Mark at 02:36 PM | Comments (0)
September 14, 2005
looking at schools
I screwed up the appearance of the blog in trying to put it back the original way. I think it's mostly fixed now, although some of the archives pages aren't displaying correctly. Oops.
I realized today with no small amusement that it has been 10 years since I started looking at colleges for my undergrad, and now I am doing the same thing in looking at MBA programs. If I end up starting a program next fall, as I plan to do, it will be the 10th anniversary of my first semester at Syracuse. In a sense, Mike and I are going through the same thing right now, and that's kind of funny.
The pre-season catchup for Lost ends tonight with a 2-hour episode. Can't wait.
Kara is leaving for Thailand on Friday, and she's going to have a neat adventure. It will be the longest we will have gone without talking to each other since we started dating, and the longest we have gone without seeing each other since I moved up here. I am confident that, with the help of video games and Corrib, I will survive with minimal tracks carved by bitter tears.
I was at Northeastern tonight and I'm looking at Bentley tomorrow, and BU next week. I have to decide if I want to do some kind of lockstep program or do a self-paced thing, and of course I need to also find out how much work is going to pay for it. I probably won't know that until closer to 2006 when the benefits package is revised.
Motorcycle is fixed. I have to pick it up this weekend. Hopefully MJP will be in town and will go up there with me in my car so we can get it, and head back here together.
Uh oh. Gotta get ready for Lost.
Posted by Mark at 08:32 PM | Comments (0)
September 07, 2005
if
The blog looks different, you may have noticed. It will likely change styles again at some point soon; Mark was good enough to upgrade my installation of Moveable Type (my blogging software) to get rid of all the comment spam, and the ability to use layout templates is part of the upgrade.
I feel like I should write something on the hurricane, so I will. Here are a number of tidbits:
- How does something like this happen in the United States, where a whole city is slowly wiped out, and nobody in charge seems to do anything about it until it's too late?
- The looting and crime would have been significantly lessened if supplies and food had been delivered more quickly to the areas where people were told to gather.
- Mandatory evacuation means you must provide transportation for those without cars to get out of an urban area. Like, oh, maybe a fleet of school buses that I saw half-submerged after the hurricane passed through.
- We can liberate a foreign country and provide aid halfway around the world, but we can't help our own citizens?
- Where's all the National Guard? Oh, that's right, they're guarding another nation.
- We knew the levees wouldn't hold. There have been articles, TV specials, all sorts of things on exactly this disaster. It was not unprecedented. It was entirely precedented.
- We couldn't prepare for a disaster that gave us days of advance warning, but we expect to be able to handle a sudden major terrorist attack?
- Government exists to protect people. If our government cannot protect us, it has no reason to exist.
- If foreign countries want to offer us aid, I say we should accept. We helped others. It's time for others to help us.
- People are saying "this isn't about assigning blame." Oh yes it is. The head of FEMA let people down. Bush let people down. The President is the leader of this country, and is ultimately responsible for making sure that government protects us. Remember that the next time you vote.
I'll write some stuff about our weekend camping trip in a bit. The whole thing makes me angry, because it could have been prevented. If only we had a real leader as President. If only the head of FEMA had done his job. If only we had done more evactuations. If only somebody, anybody, had airlifted supplies into New Orleans the same way we managed to do during the Berlin Airlift, this wouldn't be such a disaster. If, if, if.
Posted by Mark at 12:59 PM | Comments (1)
September 01, 2005
war zone
I am listening, live, to a scanner in New Orleans over the Internet. I have seen before and after satellite photos where you can literally mouse over them to see where bridges stood, and now are rubble. I am reading the blog of a guy who is stranded down there, trying to maintain an ISP in the midst of looking, sniper fire, bodies in the streets. It is amazing.
CNN is obsolete. And it is a war zone down there.
Posted by Mark at 03:25 PM | Comments (0)