I am from Florida so I don't really understand this cold weather. In northern Florida, it may get down to freezing on a handful of nights a year, but by noon the next day it is 65 F or above. I can count on one hand the number of times I have seen flurries and it snows (enough to make the ground white) about once every 100 years. This happened in 1989 and if you ask anyone who lived in Florida in '89...they will remember the year and where they were. It's as big as the moon landing was. I lived at the bottom of the only hill in town (I grew up on an island on the NE coast of Florida so it is relatively flat with one hill that is a whopping 18 feet above sea level) and there were a ton of people who showed up for "sledding". I'll call it "sledding" because people in Florida don't have sleds...so we improvised. My favorite "sled" was the kiddie pool...you know those 5 foot diameter plastic tubs for toddlers that are about 1.5 foot tall? Yeah, a group of guys would pile into one of those kiddie pools and just go until they hit something.
Another fun fact about where I grew up is that they close the schools if it is freezing during the day (doesn't happen often). We don't have snow days...we have cold days. Why do they close the schools? Because the schools don't have a heating system...cause you don't need one.
The point of all this? It's starting to get cold here (just the tip of the iceberg) and my body is very confused. What's is a jacket? How do you put on a scarf? Hopefully someone will help me and any of those from even warmer climates.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Midterms came and went
So...it HAS been a while since I last posted. I can't say I'm really sorry for the long gap...well, I could give you one of those little kid apologies when your parents make you tell your sister you're sorry...but you're not sorry, you just want ice cream. Anywho, the week leading up to midterms was very time consuming for me just because a number of things were culminating all at once (LFM hockey registration and domestic plant trek committee meetings)...and after that my busyness led right into midterm week. So for me, midterms were not that bad. I didn't spend too many hours studying, but I have been keeping up with my economics and financial accounting homework, so for me studying was just a bit of review. Some people went insane on the studying, making intricate cheat sheets with tiny writing (financial accounting allowed 1 sheet of paper, econ was not so nice). All I can say is I hope those people got As...cause I did pretty well and the text on my cheat sheet was readable from 3 feet away. The point is, the tests were not that stressful and there was no homework those weeks, so the workload was not THAT bad. Some of the second years had horror stories for us at the beginning of the semester...but I'm not passing on any horror stories. This continues on with the theme that the workload is as bad as you let it be. You can get your schoolwork done and still have time in the day for yourself...or you can take on 100 extra activities and run from one thing to another. The choice is yours.
So after midterms is SIP. So if there is one thing I have absorbed about MIT it is that they LOVE they days off. MIT takes every imaginable holiday off and once a month we get a day off (anti-suicide day..apparently MIT students are stressed). So in the MIT tradition, after mid-terms the Sloan school takes a whole week off. Sure, they give it a fancy name, Sloan Innovation Period (SIP), and sure they require you too attend seminars during the week...but for most people it is just a sweet week of vacation. I know a number of people went on fun exotic trips but yours truly is pretty lame, so I just sat around the house. I did go on a long a strenuous 20 mile hike the first Saturday of the week. A couple of the rugged outdoorsy-type LFMers put together a hike along the Presidential range in New Hampshire and they made the mistake of inviting everyone in LFM (j/k). I have not been hiking in quite some time, so I took them up on their offer. I wont lie, the damn hike was tough for all of us, but I was in the worst shape so I was the "herbie" of the group. Read "The Goal", you'll understand. The hike begins with an 1,100 meter assent and for those of you other non-hikers out there, that is bloody hard. Checkout the elevation profile and path of the hike in the pictures below.
[caption id="attachment_203" align="alignnone" width="150" caption="Elevation Profile"]
[/caption]
[caption id="attachment_204" align="alignnone" width="150" caption="Hike Path"]
[/caption]
The terrain was very tough (extremely rocky and tough on the knees even on the way down) and to top that off, it was icy on the summits. In the end, I was in such bad shape that we split up into two groups and so that I could bypass some of the out-and back summits...so i did not walk the entire path from the picture. I've attached some of Amy's pretty pictures from the hike.
[caption id="attachment_211" align="alignnone" width="150" caption="We started at 4:30 AM...very dark"]
[/caption]
[caption id="attachment_212" align="alignnone" width="150" caption="Here you can see me trying not to throw up while the rest of the group enjoys the light stroll up 1,100 meters"]
[/caption]
[caption id="attachment_213" align="alignnone" width="150" caption="Needless to say, it was pretty up there"]
[/caption]
[caption id="attachment_214" align="alignnone" width="150" caption="More pretty"]
[/caption]
[caption id="attachment_215" align="alignnone" width="150" caption="Post lunch...and on the way DOWN...I look less like death"]
[/caption]
[caption id="attachment_216" align="alignnone" width="150" caption="A good example of the tough icy rocks"]
[/caption]
Back to SIP week...I did have to go to my engineering classes, but my Engineering load on its own is a light schedule. Quick Fact: LFMers are not required to attend SIP seminars because we still have our engineering classes going on...nice. With the rest of my week I watched a large assortment of movies including, but not limited to, Braveheart, Patton, A Bridge Too Far, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (the live action one), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II (the one with Vanilla Ice), 300, Harry Potter 1 - 5 (I cant wait until July 17 2009) , Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, and a few more movies that are escaping my memory right now. What an awesome week. I was not sitting around idly during these movies...I was working on my Halloween costume. My costume has become a bit of a tragedy. More to come on this later, but the point is it HAD potential...until things fell apart.
So after midterms is SIP. So if there is one thing I have absorbed about MIT it is that they LOVE they days off. MIT takes every imaginable holiday off and once a month we get a day off (anti-suicide day..apparently MIT students are stressed). So in the MIT tradition, after mid-terms the Sloan school takes a whole week off. Sure, they give it a fancy name, Sloan Innovation Period (SIP), and sure they require you too attend seminars during the week...but for most people it is just a sweet week of vacation. I know a number of people went on fun exotic trips but yours truly is pretty lame, so I just sat around the house. I did go on a long a strenuous 20 mile hike the first Saturday of the week. A couple of the rugged outdoorsy-type LFMers put together a hike along the Presidential range in New Hampshire and they made the mistake of inviting everyone in LFM (j/k). I have not been hiking in quite some time, so I took them up on their offer. I wont lie, the damn hike was tough for all of us, but I was in the worst shape so I was the "herbie" of the group. Read "The Goal", you'll understand. The hike begins with an 1,100 meter assent and for those of you other non-hikers out there, that is bloody hard. Checkout the elevation profile and path of the hike in the pictures below.
[caption id="attachment_203" align="alignnone" width="150" caption="Elevation Profile"]
[/caption][caption id="attachment_204" align="alignnone" width="150" caption="Hike Path"]
[/caption]The terrain was very tough (extremely rocky and tough on the knees even on the way down) and to top that off, it was icy on the summits. In the end, I was in such bad shape that we split up into two groups and so that I could bypass some of the out-and back summits...so i did not walk the entire path from the picture. I've attached some of Amy's pretty pictures from the hike.
[caption id="attachment_211" align="alignnone" width="150" caption="We started at 4:30 AM...very dark"]
[/caption][caption id="attachment_212" align="alignnone" width="150" caption="Here you can see me trying not to throw up while the rest of the group enjoys the light stroll up 1,100 meters"]
[/caption][caption id="attachment_213" align="alignnone" width="150" caption="Needless to say, it was pretty up there"]
[/caption][caption id="attachment_214" align="alignnone" width="150" caption="More pretty"]
[/caption][caption id="attachment_215" align="alignnone" width="150" caption="Post lunch...and on the way DOWN...I look less like death"]
[/caption][caption id="attachment_216" align="alignnone" width="150" caption="A good example of the tough icy rocks"]
[/caption]Back to SIP week...I did have to go to my engineering classes, but my Engineering load on its own is a light schedule. Quick Fact: LFMers are not required to attend SIP seminars because we still have our engineering classes going on...nice. With the rest of my week I watched a large assortment of movies including, but not limited to, Braveheart, Patton, A Bridge Too Far, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (the live action one), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II (the one with Vanilla Ice), 300, Harry Potter 1 - 5 (I cant wait until July 17 2009) , Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, and a few more movies that are escaping my memory right now. What an awesome week. I was not sitting around idly during these movies...I was working on my Halloween costume. My costume has become a bit of a tragedy. More to come on this later, but the point is it HAD potential...until things fell apart.
Sunday, October 5, 2008
IM Foosball
So I played on the Sloan Intramural Football team today. My core teammate Chris helped organized the team and he talked me into participating. Originally we were going to have an A and a B team (I am 100% B league) but we went from 30 people to 10 people when it came time to play so now we only have an A team. Overall it was fun, we won, and personally I got my butt kicked. I forgot my cleats today and the grass was a bit wet...but that was only a small portion of my butt kicking. Mostly it was my lack of talent, size, or physical ability. Think Rudy without the heart to captivate America and gross $22,750,363 domestically.
I'm a good team player though and I don't mind riding the pine. There is just no room in football for a small guy who is slow and can't catch. The surprising thing about flag football at MIT is that it IS physical. Flag football at UF is more or less no contact. O-Linemen can get in the way of rushing defensemen, but they have to keep their arms down so really they are just big pylons. AT MIT pretty much anything goes.
Don't get me wrong, it wasn't Necessary Roughness out there (Staring Scott Bakula, Sinbad, and of course Kathy Ireland)...though we were playing iron man football.
Overall we were more or less civil, but who knows what will happen when we play a super competitive team. We might stand a chance though because one of our big guys is a former Navy Seal (super badass) and he more or less looks like the Hulk, we have a speedster who played track at Georgia Tech, and we're lead by a former Army football player.
Again I will reinforce that I was sapposed to be on the B team with the foreigners who have never played football before. Anyway, back to the physicalness, the refs at the games are just players from the team playing before or after you...so they are not really in control of the game. Like I said, who knows what happens when the serious contenders get on the field.
I'm a good team player though and I don't mind riding the pine. There is just no room in football for a small guy who is slow and can't catch. The surprising thing about flag football at MIT is that it IS physical. Flag football at UF is more or less no contact. O-Linemen can get in the way of rushing defensemen, but they have to keep their arms down so really they are just big pylons. AT MIT pretty much anything goes.
Don't get me wrong, it wasn't Necessary Roughness out there (Staring Scott Bakula, Sinbad, and of course Kathy Ireland)...though we were playing iron man football.
Overall we were more or less civil, but who knows what will happen when we play a super competitive team. We might stand a chance though because one of our big guys is a former Navy Seal (super badass) and he more or less looks like the Hulk, we have a speedster who played track at Georgia Tech, and we're lead by a former Army football player.
Again I will reinforce that I was sapposed to be on the B team with the foreigners who have never played football before. Anyway, back to the physicalness, the refs at the games are just players from the team playing before or after you...so they are not really in control of the game. Like I said, who knows what happens when the serious contenders get on the field.
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