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Last night, I was missing Carol, so I made lasagna (do I really need an excuse?). It turned out wonderfully, but that only made it worse...
There are a few not-so-great-because-they're-taken-with-a-phone-but-whatever pictures over at Flickr. I'm leaving myself enough in the way of notes to be able to hopefully duplicate it in the future.
The sauce was two jars of pasta sauce (some manner of garlic flavor) plus a pound and a half of ground beef, a pound of sweet italian sausage (cut into little slices), slices of onion, shredded fresh basil, and some parsley. The ricotta had garlic salt and parsley added to it, as well as one egg. The noodles are some manner of whole wheat variety, and I did cook them before construction (as Carol does, but apparently Mom does not). I left the top noodles naked, and they got crispy-but-not-too-crispy, leaving a nice topping.
Just a few hours ago, yet another class of Colchester High School students walked down a makeshift aisle in their gymnasium to the sound of their own names being called, to become Colchester High School graduates. Through the cheering, beaming smiles, and flying caps, there was — as there always is — a slight sense of doubt, mostly due to the as-yet-unanswered questions, "O.K, now what? What's next? Where am I going?" For at least thirteen years, the answer to that question has come easily to most of this class: "School, then graduation."
Today was the intended destination for most of them, and now it's done — the majority of their life's expended effort, finally come to fruition over the course of just a few hours. What they have yet to realize is that this is something to be excited about: for the first time in practically their whole life, each graduate now has control over the new answer to that question. Now, it's finally time for them to really define themselves, for themselves; to come out and shine, and to determine for themselves the answer to "Where am I going?" It might not always be as easy as being given a clear and uniform purpose, but it is assuredly more exciting, and also significantly more satisfying when you make progress towards that goal.
This class is very special to me personally, as it includes my little (only) sister! She can't even imagine how proud I am to have seen her up there, leading the packed-full gym in the Pledge of Allegiance, and walking — along with her good friend Meredith — as the first pair of students down the aisle. Nor can she know how amazing it's been to see her grow up and become who she is today, through all of the exciting and happy times of the first 18 years of our lives together. It's certainly been an honor.
Amy thinks that she knows what the answer to my question will be: "three more years of school, then another graduation!" — but that's not it. While she may be going to MCPHS for the next three years, and graduating once again, this time with the class of 2013, the answer is no longer "graduation" — it's now more complicated — "Where am I going?" becomes "Who will I be when I'm done?" instead — and she doesn't know that; no one can. But, as she'll soon find out, figuring that out is truly the fun part...
There are 350 adorable pictures from graduation on Flickr. Note the pagination.
Work
If I'm counting correctly, I just finished the first quarter of my summer internship! Both Qualcomm and San Diego have treated me quite well so far — my team (the QChat client team) is awesome, the weather's been beautiful, and there's lots to do.
I won't talk about what actually goes on at work, since it seems like nearly nothing we do is public at the moment (likely intentionally), but about work itself instead.
Right now, I get up at 7:15, shower, eat, etc., and leave my apartment at 8:10 or so. I get to walk about two miles along — among others — the very busy Genesee Ave. to building AA; I get there right around 9:00, depending a lot on how quickly crosswalks turn in my favor — sometimes they turn instantly, sometimes it takes well over a minute.
We have a daily status meeting at 10:30, where the 12-or-so of us meet and go through a list of in-progress work, talking about what work has been done. Pretty standard stuff.
I'm — someday — going to get a laptop; at the moment, I run back and forth between my office and the lab quite frequently (there are computers to use in the lab, but my development environment is on a VM, and RDP seems much faster from my thin client, for some reason — also, the display in my office is much, much bigger). In theory, the laptop is coming on Monday... we'll see! Then I'll get to cease this laggy RDPing and hang out in the lab with everyone permanently... poor them!
I usually leave at 17:00 or 17:30, or 18:15 one day. Luckily, there's a bus on the way home, so I get to skip a good part of the walk in that direction. I tend to call Carol for the part of the walk before I get on the bus, and call home after I get off; a nice daily routine.
Not-work
There's usually not a great deal of not-work during the week, as it's usually almost 19:00 by the time I get home; just time enough to read the news, make and eat dinner, watch an episode of something (I'm currently making my way through Mad Men), and go to sleep (usually by 22:00 or 22:30 or so).
The weekends are a different story. I don't really seem to associate with the other interns — I don't work with them (in fact, I work five miles away from most of them), and I'm not forced into non-work-related interactions with them like I was during freshman year (when I met all of my friends at school), so I really just don't see them. That's OK with me, there's enough to do here anyway!
I've got an org-mode file (somewhat unfaithfully (where'd my newlines go!?) rendered to HTML here) filled with trip ideas from a reddit thread. I've been going through them slowly, and everything I've done so far has been excellent! There are lots of pictures, as always, on Flickr.
Next weekend I'm going to refrain from exploring San Diego, because I'm going home! I'm leaving early in the morning on Friday, and coming back late on Sunday. It's going to be a whirlwind trip across the country so that I can be home for Amy's high-school graduation! Should be fun, though... I'll write more about it as the time comes. I'm quite tempted to just sling my camera over my shoulder and take nothing else on the trip — I've got clothes at home, and won't have time to need a computer other than my phone. We'll see. I also get to figure out how to get to the airport at 5AM... that'll be a trick!
Other Stuff
I'm quite excited because Nate, Carol, and I are going to see Belle and Sebastian in NYC (outdoors, at Brooklyn's Williamsburg Waterfront) in September! It's far too far away, though... should be fun :-)
I ran over to the aquarium near La Jolla Shores today, but it's hard to take pictures through glass. There are a bunch here, but I'd rather share my little lizard friend (there were actually dozens of them along the walk down to the aquarium):
In any case, the aquarium was very cute — if a slight bit small — lots of local sea life. I especially enjoyed the seahorses... they've got a whole exhibit full of all different shapes and sizes, and they were quite active and very neat. The baby-shark-still-inside-its-transparent-egg was neat in a somewhat disgusting way, too...
Pepa wanted to take a peek at my morning route, so I figured I'd post some maps! These might take a second to load, be patient!
From my apartment to Qualcomm building AA, every morning:
View Larger Map
And the trip back, making good use of my unlimited bus pass:
View Larger Map
To go get groceries at our local Vons (because Whole Foods was scary):
View Larger Map
If I wanted to go into Qualcomm's main campus:
View Larger Map
I wrote about six "perfect" albums about a year and a half ago, and added another to my list in August. Using the same definition, I have four more to share! These are different because they're all recent — all four were released long after I was born; three of the four were released within the last decade.
None of these will be a surprise to anyone even remotely familiar with modern music... quite the opposite; at least three of these are considered by many people to be among the best albums of their year (or decade, in one case). But some people (Dad!) might not be familiar with new stuff but might still want to listen...
Without further ado:
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Wilco — Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2002)
This was initially "The Mike Album" to me, but it's taken on a life of its own over the course of the last few years. It's almost impossible to listen to just one song, it's a start-to-finish-style epic album.
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Phoenix — Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix (2009)
I recently stumbled upon this album accidentally, and have listened to it with ridiculous frequency since then, something which seems to perplex Nate — who also loves the album, but doesn't expect me to — constantly pointing out that Phoenix has other albums (someday, Nate, someday!). Countdown and 1901 are my favorites, if you make me choose, but the whole album is fabulous.
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Sufjan Stevens — Illinois (2005)
The second album in Sufjan Steven's now-defunct Fifty States Project, this is one of the few albums I've experienced with songs (click the link, listen to the lyrics, it's a beautiful song — but only if you're alone) that can quite literally make you cry. I got into it through Chicago, like most people probably did...
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Oasis — (What's the Story) Morning Glory? (1995)
One of the stereotypical albums of the decade of my childhood (99.999% due to Wonderwall), I didn't even acnowledge the existence of the other songs until Carol played the last track for me one day; since then, I've listened to the album in its entirety many times, convinced each time that I've heard the whole thing somewhere before — I think that's the 90s calling!
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22:33 PST — Made it! Got a taxi to the apartment complex, wandered around with my 40+ pound bag 'till I found the right poorly-marked building. Roommate had gotten here a few minutes before, seems awesome :-) The place is nice, everything looks good, hopefully! That's the end of this post, then!
21:22 EST — Turns out first-time in-flight WiFi is free; silly me! So now I'm posting this. From a plane. Awesome. 21:12 EST — We're over Albuquerque, apparently. I'm switching all of my clocks to PST. I should have waited to see if Apple's magic location-based timezone code works, but it certainly won't work here. 18:37 EST — I can't look out the window any more, it hurts my eyes too much. I wish I had this much light on the ground all the time (ISO 100, f/10-12, 1/400s, LOL! it's like shooting a lightbulb...) Should have put headphones in backpack; whoops.  18:31 EST — Here's some meaningless nonsense that Photoshop HDR just spit out. Garbage in, garbage out, I suppose... the plane is moving, the clouds are moving, I'm moving, etc.  18:23 EST — Took some pictures of clouds; neat! I have the whole half-row (the three seats on the right side) to myself... how bizarre? And most of the rest of the rows only have two people in them. Very empty flight, though there are still a lot of people here. We theoretically have in-flight WiFi, but I'm not paying for that sillyness! (someone should bring two wireless cards, and ...)   17:09 EST — Made it to my outgoing gate in Philly! The landing was a bit bumpy, but not horrible. Got off, had to take a bus to terminal C to get to the right gate; checked it on the display before I left, it said C24, by the time I got there it was C27 (I heard "San Diego *mumble*" on the intercom, so I made sure to double check). Got there in plenty of time, anyway, as it was only a few more feet. 16:12 EST — Apparently everyone (our stewardess especially) wants to go to San Diego instead of wherever they're going. Ha! Come with! 14:40 EST — Sitting next to two thirty-or-fourty-something test pilots in BTV having mid-life crises. Pretty funny guys (apparently they just became the first two to go through the training program for some bizarre new aircraft). 14:22 EST — At Burlington International; I got a " how many laptops do you have with you, sir?" at security. Only two, sir. Boarding at 14:58, hopefully.
M-o-o-n... that spells moon!
From Japan With Love
A few months ago, I thought it would be neat to try my hand at using (*gasp*) film — mostly just for the experience, to see where we've come from, and what I've missed.
I got in contact with someone who was selling a whole kit (which he had acquired from his father) — discussing capabilities and the condition of the equipment. A few weeks later, we came to a very (too!) reasonable price (something like 40$, I believe), and he shipped me a perfect-working-condition 1975 Nikon Nikkormat FT2, a basic 50mm f/2 lens, the bag, a whole filter system, and another random lens he was trying to get rid of which doesn't fit on any camera either he nor I have (I eventually identified it as an Olympus mount, if anyone wants it; I think it's 70-200mm f/2.8 or something like that).
While it was on its way, I shopped around for film, eventually settling on one roll of Kodak Ektar (color, ISO 100), and one roll of Kodak TRI-X (black and white, ISO 400). Mike wanted me to get a roll of Kodachrome, to get the whole retro experience; unfortunately there's only one Kodachrome processing facility remaining in the world, and it's quite expensive to get film developed (and nearly impossible to do independently — apparently it's a very complicated process).
After it came (the day before Zoe, actually, so it got preempted slightly), I ran to RadioShack and got the battery required for the built-in light meter. I hadn't considered it needing power, and wasn't really expecting metering at all (a pleasant surprise!). The film still hadn't arrived, so I spent a little while toying around with all the buttons and levers, getting acquainted with the camera. One thing I've noted to people on numerous occasions is that it's relatively easy to contain almost the entire mechanism of the camera in your head and be much more "in tune" with the hardware than you could possibly be with, say, my D80, which I find rather neat!
The film arrived right in the middle of the second-to-last week of work on my final projects, so I didn't have a lot of time to take pictures. I did decide that I'd use up one roll before I left Troy, just to see what the pictures looked like, and if I was capable of metering and focusing with it and whatnot. So, I did exactly that! I ran around, taking not-horribly-interesting photographs of things around Troy, onto the color film.
The sound of the Nikkormat's shutter is much, much more satisfying than on my D80, which is much, much more satisfying than that of any other camera I've ever been around (and quite a bit nicer than the XTi/XSi shutter sound of Nate and DJ's cameras). Just thought I'd get that out there.
It's also incredibly heavy. I don't know why; I guess it's just well-built. I'm not sure that it's actually heavier than the D80, it's just... that looks heavy.
One neat thing: I get metering on my really long prime and my macro, which I don't get at all on the D80. That strikes me as bizarre, and I'm angry at Nikon for keeping that feature reserved for the D300 and up...
I took the film to Rite Aid; it turns out they no longer have 1-hour-photo, but instead have to send it away for processing ("Photo Lab" apparently now means "we print digital photos"). A week later (through ROFLCon weekend), I went back and retrieved my pictures!
They all turned out OK, surprisingly. A few right at the beginning were blurry, as I had a habit of grabbing the wrong ring (adjusting aperture instead of shutter speed) which had to be broken. All were exposed more or less correctly, thankfully (I was initially somewhat distrusting of the seemingly extremely simplistic light meter), and focus was generally good (I really wish they'd add that split focuser back onto the DSLRs; or maybe the highest end ones have it? it makes manual focusing much easier). Not interesting pictures, as I said, but they worked!
Now I've got the roll of black & white, which I'll probably end up taking to California with me, maybe. It'd probably be easier to get film developed there, too...
I sent one neat picture to Vivian in a card; a few out of the set that remain are sprinkled above.
Yashica and Soligor
Shortly before the Nikkormat showed up, but after I'd paid for it, Dad asked whether or not I'd be interested in some of his father's old photography stuff. Apparently Papa Cliff doesn't use his old Yashica TL-Electro much anymore (not a surprise; someone let him have a digital camera at some point), nor his old 500mm f/8 mirror "lens" (even less of a surprise; I said 500mm... he'd be lucky to be able to take a sharp picture of the sun at that focal length, with his shaking... I can't even begin to get sharp pictures at anything less than 1/800s exposures, and I'm relatively steady).
So, of course, I said yes!
How could I not? Another camera to play with and compare would be neat (I haven't gotten a chance to acquire film and try out the camera yet, but I will!), and the lens — once converted — could legitimately be useful; on the crop sensor on my D80, it turns into a 750mm lens. Wow! My next closest lens is my 180-turned-270mm, though it goes to f/2.8, so the shaking problem is drastically reduced from all angles.
Last night, Dad and I epoxied a Nikon lens-reversal ring (for turning that nice zoom you've got into a macro lens) onto the back of the lens; a bit of sanding and forcing things on seems to have gotten the lens to focus properly to infinity, unlike what some people on the internet seem to have managed.
I took it out today, and, as you can see, took some pictures! There are more (and larger versions) on Flickr. A lot of these would have been very hard/impossible to have taken with any glass I had before. Very neat! Thanks, Papa Cliff, I promise I'll treat it well and have a lot of fun :-)
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