| drowning blimps |
[05 Apr 2006|10:20am] |
I woke up and looked out my window. It was daytime, but the sky right above me was very, very dark, like a really bad storm.
I jokingly thought "the mothership has come" and then I looked at the edge of the dark area and realized it *was* a really big craft of some kind. I ran to another window in Wharton and watched a huge blimp soar slowly over the lake in Danawell courtyard, brush the roof of Dana, and start to go over. I ran to the top of Parrish which was nearby) to get a better look once it went out of my view. There, I alternated playing cards with some people against my will and watching the blimp. I asked what it was filled with. The girl said "hydrogen". Then the blimp brushed our roof, making everyone jump. And then some person thought of a brilliant idea. They brought the blimp into the lake, and released the hydrogen under the water a bit at a time, so it wouldn't explode since it was underwater! This seemed like such a genius solution at the time. There was also stuff about a waterpark and housing in Germantown with a clueless teacher.
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| dream |
[03 Feb 2006|10:12am] |
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I had this awesome and awkward dream last night about a reunion with all the people that I haven't seen since fifth grade when I left P.S. 29. We all went camping, and of course I was driving a van full of us. Zach (from swat) was also there with some of our friends. I finished parking and went to go to the campsite but we were actually living in a house, and it was Zach's house but it was not his actual house. Everything was wood paneled and weirdly laid out, like with a shower in the study that also had beds. I got to meet a bunch of people- Max thought I was Jenna and Tracy didn't remember me. There was a little bit of frisbee and I did really badly. I was pretty excited the whole time.
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| my dream cell phone |
[01 Dec 2005|08:49pm] |
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I would love to have an old black rotary phone that I could plug my SIM card into. Heaven.
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| damn you, apple |
[12 Oct 2005|06:47pm] |
I've been fighting it for over three years now, but dammit I'm going to get an ipod. Today they released the new video iPods, which can play videos you buy for $1.99 from iTunes music store, just music videos and TV shows for now. As usual, Apple's website is totally useless for technical questions and the third party Mac sites haven't had time to pick up the slack yet. I have some questions:
Can I play my existing downloaded movies? How hard is it to convert AVIs to MPEG4?
Can you import DVDs?
You can play videos from the ipod on a TV, but how's the quality?
Why doesn't the new ipod have a power cable listed as In The Box?
What the hell is a Universal Dock, and why would you tempt me with the ipod remote without also selling the product it depends on?
C'mon, Apple. Get it together.
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| sweet home, chicago |
[10 Oct 2005|01:07pm] |
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I drove back to Evanston with some friends. If anyone's in town they should hit me up. More later.
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| new music |
[13 Aug 2005|06:06pm] |
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Kronos Quartet's newest album comes out on August 23, and I think it will be the first CD I've bought since high school. It's a collaboration with the most-recorded Bollywood singer backed with the Quartet's fantastic instrumentation. Check out the Preview link on their website for four of the songs. And then check out the weed-themed translation of the lyrics. Brilliant.
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| Sleep and I are fighting |
[10 Aug 2005|11:16am] |
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I accidentally went to sleep last night at 8:10pm. I woke up violently when Stephanie sighed in her sleep at 1:30, slightly panicked because I was sure I was sleeping on the wall. The contents of my many dreams disappeared as I fell to my bed on the floor, but she told me in the morning that I was talking in my sleep. When she came in I yelled OW and turned over, and later I clarified that things were STRANGE AND BEAUTIFUL.
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| nerd games |
[10 Jul 2005|04:33pm] |
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I would love to see a Qwerty vs Dvorak dodgeball game.
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| notes |
[22 Jun 2005|06:18pm] |
They never come close to the life actually lived, but I savor the bits of news from long-lost friends. It's funny-- they're bittersweet, nice to hear but just makes me miss them more.
Off to polish mirrors.
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| california! |
[21 Jun 2005|09:21pm] |
I'm now in California for the rest of the summer. I'm working at UC Davis (around two hours northeast of San Francisco) at their physics REU program, which means that I get paid to spend my days doing physics that I find interesting, and spend my nights and weekends doing whatever the hell I want. My advisor (who is Paul Bloom's thesis advisor) is very laid back and very good at explaining things, which is really a perfect combination. The people in my program also seem pretty neat, which is a big relief. There seem to be ultimate pickup games every day. The weather has been AMAZING so far-- no bugs and not humid at all, hot in the sun but nice in the shade, and at night it gets nice and cool. Weather.com says it's 90 by day but it certainly doesn't feel that way. The dorm I'm in feels like a Florida motel because the outside is painted pink and there's a pool and two palm trees in the central courtyard. A pool. In. My. Dorm!
There are a few other things that seem really surreal here. It's a really big biking down, especially on campus, and there are lots of big bike paths. There are also bike ROUNDABOUTS. And bike TRAFFIC LIGHTS at big intersections. I'll take pictures when I finally get a camera.
This weekend I'm going with my advisor and a grad student out several hours into the desert to work here washing huge heliostats. There's some outdated basic information and more photos here. If you don't know that I love deserts I should tell you that now, except my grad student has been scaring me with stories of black widow spiders, snakes, and half ant half scorpion insects that chase after light when you shine it on them. I really, really wish I had a camera for this one.
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| chicago visit |
[21 May 2005|06:20pm] |
I'm home for about a week, using up that flight voucher I got for taking a later flight last summer because my own was overbooked (don't ever do that! It sounds like a good deal, but they make it really hard for you to actually cash in). Food, family, shopping, and sleep. All good in small doses. And friends! Better in bigger doses. Too bad so many aren't here. I miss everyone!
Here are two things that I wish to see happen in the next five years:
1) Bus tracking. CTA buses are already equipped with GPS systems that announce every cross street as you pass it. Why not combine that with Google Maps at bus depots, so that you can see whether the bus you're waiting for was gone five minutes early, or is just running twenty minutes late? If you knew exactly where the buses on your route were on the internet, you could decided whether to stay and enjoy your coffee, or whether you should run with no pants on. The technology is there, but now someone has to bother. It just seems like a matter of time.
2) Bra stores. I want to see a store full of bras that does not include a single underwire or pad in the whole goddamn store. If you think this is silly, try finding a bra without either of those uncomfortable and unnecessary things. It's nigh impossible. Makes we want to claw my breasts off. That actually isn't a bad idea-- bras, along with most things culturally forced upon women, are really expensive.
I also saw some movies. I saw Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy on Thursday and I wish I hadn't. It was an extreme disappointment. That's all I'm going to say. Wandering around downtown with David on one arm and mexican hot chocolate from kafein on the other was very redeeming.
I succumbed to temptation and saw Star Wars III last night and to my great surprise and relief, thoroughly enjoyed myself. The graphics were good and in terms of character it was a huge step towards the older series. It was still really lacking in dialogue quality, plot consistency, and character design. And the Frankenstein scene? Come on! I also don't know how they got Hayden Christiansen's "acting" to not spoil this one (he is honestly all I remember from II, since I was cringing constantly when he was onscreen) but I think the key was having him be constantly conflicted, so the emotion he was intended to show was always ambiguous. And I think Padme was a really out of place character in this one-- Leia came first and showed that women can be beautiful love interests and still be forces to reckon with, but Padme's got the stay-at-home dollface thing that's straight out of the '50s. How tired.
I still want to see Kung Fu Hustle (ostensibly good and funny martial arts movie) and Double Dare (interesting documentary about stunt doubles) as well as many other old movies. This is the summer I finally catch up and see all those things that I Should Have- Karate Kid, the Godfather, The Aviator...everything you're probably thinking "you haven't seen that???" to. I haven't seen it. Shut up.
Outside the theater, I've been hanging out with some of my friends from high school. It's been really good to see them, and lots of fun and very interesting. That's one thing I realized that really confuses me-- my friends from home make me feel really interesting and get me interested in the world, but Swarthmore people don't so much. I need to think more about this and figure out what's going on, since it's really counterintuitive that I wouldn't have those sorts of conversations with that sort of population. It also occured to me that the people with the lives most worth reading about are those least likely to blog about them...a thought that is probably upsetting to everyone who will read this.
Tomorrow I'm going back to Philadelphia for two weeks of Matt, my seniors friends, lying in the sun, and sewing. I must be doing something right because I can't wait, and I can't wait to come back.
Off to go lie in my hammock and read,
-sasha
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| summer plans |
[23 Apr 2005|01:08pm] |
The bulk of my summer plans have been decided. I'm going to do either elementary particles or high-energy astronomony research at UC Davis this summer. I'm doing research because it's my last chance as an undergrad and I need to decide whether I want to go on with physics in graduate school, and if I decide to do so, it's really valuable for my application. The job I got also looks pretty sweet. If you are on the west coast and want to come visit me or have me visit you or have cool places i can go, hit me up. I've never really been there before.
That's going to put me on the East Coast from June 19-August 23sh, at which point I will have to fly straight back to Philadelphia. I'm still trying to decide what to do before then- I can stay here and hang out with Matt and my senior friends for three weeks after exams end and then have two weeks at home, or I can just have five weeks at home. So I am definitely going to be in Evanston June 6-19, and possibly May 16-June 19. What are you doing this summer?
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| yowza |
[03 Apr 2005|08:54pm] |
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2000 hits on this silly thing since summer 2002.
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| yay geeks! |
[28 Mar 2005|11:09am] |
90.9% of the people who read this use Firefox! Yowza. For that 9.1% of you still using IE, it's totally worth the ten minutes it takes to install and figure Firefox. I love it so much- it's worlds better than Explorer, and I highly highly recommend it.
On a completely unrelated note, we went 6-1 this weekend at Layout Pigout, losing our only game in the semifinals and thus taking 3rd place out of 12 teams. The Earthworms won the men's bracket, making this their third tournament of the season.
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| speaking |
[20 Mar 2005|08:58pm] |
I've decided to start speaking in the borders between linguistic grammar and prescriptive grammar. I'll keep my reasons hidden for now, although they may be obvious to any in cognitive science (ask me if you want).
For example, "unconfuse me" is clearly a request for something to be clarified, although it would make an English teacher scream. According to the grammar of the linguistic unit in your head it is perfectly valid, although "proper" grammar would disagree. To further clarify, there are many words that look like real words but are ungrammatical in both senses- to use an example from class, "unsoftable."
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| the eagles |
[06 Feb 2005|09:29pm] |
I did some errands on the Pike today (out in the real, offcampus world) and I swear every third person was wearing an Eagles jersey. There were people on the side of the road waving flags and every other car was honking up a storm. Southeastern PA has gone crazy.
They just scored a touchdown and there were fireworks.
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| unprocrastinating |
[11 Jan 2005|10:30pm] |
Through 43 Things, which I'm thinking of starting as a way to break me out of my jadedness, I found this article about how to stop procrastinating. I found this part the most striking, most swatties will understand why:
"A fourth mental block is associating deprivation with a task. This means that you believe that undertaking a project will offset much of the pleasure in your life. In order to complete this project, will you have to put the rest of your life on hold? Do you tell yourself that you will have to go into seclusion, work long hours, never see your family, and have no time for fun?...The solution to the deprivation mindset is to simply do the opposite. Guarantee the fun parts of your life first, and then schedule your work around them...Guarantee an abundance of all your favorite leisure activities. Then limit the amount of working hours each week to whatever is left. The peak performers in any field tend to take more vacation time and work shorter hours than workaholics. By treating your working time as a scarce resource rather than an uncontrollable monster that can gobble up every other area of your life, you'll begin to feel much more balanced, and you'll be far more effective in using your working time."
The rest is behind this link in case the site ever gets taken down. It seems like the sort of thing that I'll want to have around to remind myself of, so please don't rip off the author and instead link to his page if you want to.
( Read more... )
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| lonely goatherd |
[05 Jan 2005|02:20am] |
By the way, check out Mixed Company's website and listen to their version of Lonely Goatherd, that song with the puppets from Song of Music. If you missed Jamboree this year you missed the hilarious choreography that went with it, but I'm sure the audio is well worth it. I fuckin' hate acapella and this song is great, so GO LISTEN ALREADY.
http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/org/mixedco/index3.html
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sashita's journal
