hortont · blog · personal

A Birthday

2010.07.20 in personal

Apparently I'm 21 now!

I have nothing to say to that. It's crazy.

Also, I'm glad I'm here, and not elsewhere:

Independence Day Weekend, San Diego : Part 3

2010.07.05 in personal

The last day of this weekend involved very little other than the ending of an almost-fifteen-year-long tale (75% of my life!) — that of Woody, Buzz, and company. Toy Story came out just about a year after we moved to Vermont; the second, when I was on my way to middle school; the third and final, just before I start my last year of college. All along, I've been just a few (about three) years older than Andy (indeed — he's exactly Amy's age), growing up alongside his story. Nothing I can say can add to the tens of thousands of words already published about their many wonders, I can only thank Pixar for giving my generation our stories, something unique and special to hold onto and cherish as a part of our childhood for the rest of our lives, and also for bringing me to laughter and tears in public on many occasions. I can't wait to see what's next...

Comments...

Independence Day Weekend, San Diego : Part 2

2010.07.05 in fooding and personal

Does anybody remember when there used to be code on this blog?! What happened to that?? :)

Today was a bit more relaxed than yesterday — I spent a few hours picking out food for the week, shopping (my first time at Ralph's, following Mike's suggestion), and cooking. I made a pretty awesome broiled steak (there are grills downstairs, but that whole concept is way too scary for me!), some potatoes (butter and rosemary), and Nigella's white chocolate mint mousse (which I love dearly and have made quite a few times).

I've never tried to cook a fancy steak before, but I think it came out pretty well; less well-done than I usually prefer, but I was told that brown-insides and broiling don't go well (something about burning the edges), and I didn't mind, as it tasted great.

I also got some of reddit's favorite dipping sauce, sriracha, and dipped some of the less-seasoned potatoes in that. It was... pretty hot. Dad would probably enjoy it immensely; I'm going to try cooking with it tomorrow and see how that goes — it will either be a huge disaster (my vote) or wonderful (the opinion of many people on the internet whom I have no reason to trust but go along with anyway).

By the time I was cooking, I was resigned to a firework-less July 4th (probably my first!), mostly because of transportation issues. After I was finished eating, I decided that I'd take the bus over to the beach, and walk back if I had to...

When I got there, the La Jolla Cove fireworks were just starting. All, in all, an average fireworks show, comparable to Burlington's — exciting mostly for the rarity, but I would have been sad had I missed it! Unfortunately, I didn't get any decent pictures of the fireworks, as I was sans-tripod and not in a great spot anyway... they're always better in real life!

We were also treated to two other regional fireworks shows, running simultaneously with ours — one up on the hill just south of La Jolla Shores, and one over the ocean a bit northward. Being able to look around at different shows actually made today somewhat neat and unique, certainly more interesting than having a single set in the sky!

I managed to catch the last bus home, just after the show ended, yay! No four mile walk in the dark for me!

Comments...

Independence Day Weekend, San Diego : Part 1

2010.07.04 in personal

As always, there are a lot more pictures on Flickr, but below are the highlights from my trip on the 3rd.

This trip started based on a recommendation from some random La Jolla news site talking about things to do this weekend — their suggestion was to go to PrepKitchen on the 3rd, get a large quantity of takeout, and pack it in your picnic basket for the 4th. Since I'm not planning on having a picnic, I figured I would stop by and see what they had to offer instead. I had a wonderful turkey sandwich, and was quite pleased — I would highly recommend a trip, and will likely be returning in the future!

But the food itself wasn't the most interesting part of the beginning of today's trip — the area surrounding it was. For once, I felt somewhat "at home"... Downtown La Jolla seems to be the part of San Diego that I'd been missing; it felt more like the middle of Burlington or Cambridge than the rest of San Diego, with the random and varied restaurants and small shops and things. Eastern La Jolla (where I live) is very confusing, because it lacks reasonable (read: non-fast-food, non-mall-chains) food and other things. Other places I've been, like Kearny Mesa, or San Diego itself (the Marina and Balboa Park, at least) all felt... less welcoming. I was very happy, anyway!

After lunch, I wandered down towards the ocean, very quickly stumbling upon a whole bunch of seals! There were lots of people standing on the breakwater observing them, and there were signs warning that we shouldn't disturb the seals, as they need rest after swimming for long stretches. They would occasionally make those noises that seals make, but other than that weren't moving around very much — napping, indeed!

I walked south along the ocean for about a mile and a half, trying to stay off the sand and on the rocks or grass (I only have sneakers, at the moment!). I ran into a few squirrels... if you want to call them that. They're sort of bizarre, coming from the East Coast, but still easily identifiable (some of them were extremely fat, though...).

There were lots of tidal pools — I wish I'd had more glass with me (and better shoes) so I could have investigated some of the crabs and things up close... next time!

I got in a little bit of trouble taking this picture, and never quite got the shot I wanted. I had to drop down into the channel, and had some autofocus oddities (understandable, I suppose, with the moving water and the super-varying depth), and wasn't paying lots of attention, so I ended up with very wet and very sandy sneakers. Luckily, they dried before long, and I didn't really mind — though the water is quite cold!

I made a circle back around to Fay Ave., where I had already had lunch, and stopped at the Cold Stone Creamery, which I would recommend even more than PrepKitchen. However, if they offer you a bottle of water, take it; if they don't, get one! The ice cream is extremely rich, by design, and they fold all sorts of stuff into it (I watched them fold a brownie, some sort of chocolate chunks, and something minty into mine, it was pretty awesome...).

After the ice cream, I headed up the coast, towards my bus stop, passing by Scripps Park and a very crowded, tiny beach on the way, as well as a cave, and some kayakers! There was a contingent of very messy pelicans (and a variety of other birds, but mostly pelicans) watching over the swimmers, stopping occasionally only to stretch out their big beaks. Mike likes pelicans, so I sent him a nice picture of a few :)

All in all, today was a good day! I was planning on going to Coronado for their parade, but that would have required a 2+ hour bus ride at 7AM, and that just wasn't going to happen. I'm actually quite glad that it worked out the way it did, because I found a very happy area instead!

Comments...

Ocean Beach Street Fair

2010.06.27 in personal and photography

I accidentally ended up in the middle of OB's Street Fair today. I made the best of it by avoiding the crowd, heading out on the pier, and taking a picture of the festivities (this one *really* requires a click to make it bigger, though I am not responsible for browser crashes resulting from the loading of the 25+ megapixel image):

And a 1:1 crop:

Comments...

Bookmarks, in 2004

2010.06.27 in personal

I just found a backup of my bookmarks from a Linux install in 2004. Oh, how things have changed. To put things in perspective, I was 15, used Gentoo (and KDE!! instead of GNOME) and OS X (the latter for less than a year, at that point), and was working on remerge (link excluded for the health and benefit of readers)... pretty bizarre.

Thirteen out of the 32 links are dead in some way or another. 40% bit rot over the course of six years... not good!

KIO Namespace Reference (kio Library)
Gentoo Linux Documentation -- 2004.1 Information Guide
Options for Theme Engines
Chapter 3. How to make themes for KSplash
kde:
Gentoo Forums :: View topic - The Gentoo Framebuffer, Bootsplash & Grubsplash How-To
Network Theory Ltd - Making and Applying Patches - A short introduction to GNU diff and patch
Comparing and Merging Files
Mozilla CVS Modules
Bash Guide for Beginners
The Programmer's File Format Collection
Open Ideas
idea a day
Ncurses
Linux Network Programming, Part 1
Linux Socket Programming In C++ LG #74
Programming Linux sockets, Part 2
freedesktop.org
Logitech Quickcam QC-USB driver for Linux
Amazon.com: Books: C++ GUI Programming with Qt 3
Index of ftp://ftp.cs.unm.edu/pub/chris/quickcam
http://qce-ga.sourceforge.net/#Installation
Video for Linux resources
KIOSLAVES
Advanced Bash-Scripting Guide
NewOS Source Changes
mplayer - movie player for linux
The Termcap Library
MSN Messenger Protocol - Home Page
Qt Designer and KDevelop-3.0 for beginners
Qt Reference Documentation (Free Edition)
JavaScript Source: Free JavaScripts, Tutorials, Example Code, Reference, Resources, And Help

Comments...

Lasagna

2010.06.22 in fooding and personal

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.

Comments...

Class of 2010

2010.06.20 in personal

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.

Comments...

First Quarter Summer Update

2010.06.13 in personal and qualcomm

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 :-)

Comments...

Birch Aquarium

2010.06.06 in personal

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...

Comments...

	hortont · blog · personal
	A Birthday 2010.07.20 in personal Apparently I'm 21 now! I have nothing to say to that. It's crazy. Also, I'm glad I'm here, and not elsewhere: Comments... Independence ~~Day~~ Weekend, San Diego : Part 3 2010.07.05 in personal The last day of this weekend involved very little other than the ending of an almost-fifteen-year-long tale (75% of my life!) — that of Woody, Buzz, and company. Toy Story came out just about a year after we moved to Vermont; the second, when I was on my way to middle school; the third and final, just before I start my last year of college. All along, I've been just a few (about three) years older than Andy (indeed — he's exactly Amy's age), growing up alongside his story. Nothing I can say can add to the tens of thousands of words already published about their many wonders, I can only thank Pixar for giving my generation our stories, something unique and special to hold onto and cherish as a part of our childhood for the rest of our lives, and also for bringing me to laughter and tears in public on many occasions. I can't wait to see what's next... Comments... Independence ~~Day~~ Weekend, San Diego : Part 2 2010.07.05 in fooding and personal Does anybody remember when there used to be code* on this blog?! What happened to that?? :)* Today was a bit more relaxed than yesterday — I spent a few hours picking out food for the week, shopping (my first time at Ralph's, following Mike's suggestion), and cooking. I made a pretty awesome broiled steak (there are grills downstairs, but that whole concept is way too scary for me!), some potatoes (butter and rosemary), and Nigella's white chocolate mint mousse (which I love dearly and have made quite a few times). I've never tried to cook a fancy steak before, but I think it came out pretty well; less well-done than I usually prefer, but I was told that brown-insides and broiling don't go well (something about burning the edges), and I didn't mind, as it tasted great. I also got some of reddit's favorite dipping sauce, sriracha, and dipped some of the less-seasoned potatoes in that. It was... pretty hot. Dad would probably enjoy it immensely; I'm going to try cooking with it tomorrow and see how that goes — it will either be a huge disaster (my vote) or wonderful (the opinion of many people on the internet whom I have no reason to trust but go along with anyway). By the time I was cooking, I was resigned to a firework-less July 4th (probably my first!), mostly because of transportation issues. After I was finished eating, I decided that I'd take the bus over to the beach, and walk back if I had to... When I got there, the La Jolla Cove fireworks were just starting. All, in all, an average fireworks show, comparable to Burlington's — exciting mostly for the rarity, but I would have been sad had I missed it! Unfortunately, I didn't get any decent pictures of the fireworks, as I was sans-tripod and not in a great spot anyway... they're always better in real life! We were also treated to two other regional fireworks shows, running simultaneously with ours — one up on the hill just south of La Jolla Shores, and one over the ocean a bit northward. Being able to look around at different shows actually made today somewhat neat and unique, certainly more interesting than having a single set in the sky! I managed to catch the last bus home, just after the show ended, yay! No four mile walk in the dark for me! Comments... Independence ~~Day~~ Weekend, San Diego : Part 1 2010.07.04 in personal As always, there are a lot more pictures on Flickr, but below are the highlights from my trip on the 3rd. This trip started based on a recommendation from some random La Jolla news site talking about things to do this weekend — their suggestion was to go to PrepKitchen on the 3rd, get a large quantity of takeout, and pack it in your picnic basket for the 4th. Since I'm not planning on having a picnic, I figured I would stop by and see what they had to offer instead. I had a wonderful turkey sandwich, and was quite pleased — I would highly recommend a trip, and will likely be returning in the future! But the food itself wasn't the most interesting part of the beginning of today's trip — the area surrounding it was. For once, I felt somewhat "at home"... Downtown La Jolla seems to be the part of San Diego that I'd been missing; it felt more like the middle of Burlington or Cambridge than the rest of San Diego, with the random and varied restaurants and small shops and things. Eastern La Jolla (where I live) is very confusing, because it lacks reasonable (read: non-fast-food, non-mall-chains) food and other things. Other places I've been, like Kearny Mesa, or San Diego itself (the Marina and Balboa Park, at least) all felt... less welcoming. I was very happy, anyway! After lunch, I wandered down towards the ocean, very quickly stumbling upon a whole bunch of seals! There were lots of people standing on the breakwater observing them, and there were signs warning that we shouldn't disturb the seals, as they need rest after swimming for long stretches. They would occasionally make those noises that seals make, but other than that weren't moving around very much — napping, indeed! I walked south along the ocean for about a mile and a half, trying to stay off the sand and on the rocks or grass (I only have sneakers, at the moment!). I ran into a few squirrels... if you want to call them that. They're sort of bizarre, coming from the East Coast, but still easily identifiable (some of them were extremely fat, though...). There were lots of tidal pools — I wish I'd had more glass with me (and better shoes) so I could have investigated some of the crabs and things up close... next time! I got in a little bit of trouble taking this picture, and never quite got the shot I wanted. I had to drop down into the channel, and had some autofocus oddities (understandable, I suppose, with the moving water and the super-varying depth), and wasn't paying lots of attention, so I ended up with very wet and very sandy sneakers. Luckily, they dried before long, and I didn't really mind — though the water is quite cold! I made a circle back around to Fay Ave., where I had already had lunch, and stopped at the Cold Stone Creamery, which I would recommend even more than PrepKitchen. However, if they offer you a bottle of water, take it; if they don't, get one! The ice cream is extremely rich, by design, and they fold all sorts of stuff into it (I watched them fold a brownie, some sort of chocolate chunks, and something minty into mine, it was pretty awesome...). After the ice cream, I headed up the coast, towards my bus stop, passing by Scripps Park and a very crowded, tiny beach on the way, as well as a cave, and some kayakers! There was a contingent of very messy pelicans (and a variety of other birds, but mostly pelicans) watching over the swimmers, stopping occasionally only to stretch out their big beaks. Mike likes pelicans, so I sent him a nice picture of a few :) All in all, today was a good day! I was planning on going to Coronado for their parade, but that would have required a 2+ hour bus ride at 7AM, and that just wasn't going to happen. I'm actually quite glad that it worked out the way it did, because I found a very happy area instead! Comments... Ocean Beach Street Fair 2010.06.27 in personal and photography I accidentally ended up in the middle of OB's Street Fair today. I made the best of it by avoiding the crowd, heading out on the pier, and taking a picture of the festivities (this one really requires a click to make it bigger, though I am not responsible for browser crashes resulting from the loading of the 25+ megapixel image): And a 1:1 crop: Comments... Bookmarks, in 2004 2010.06.27 in personal I just found a backup of my bookmarks from a Linux install in *2004. Oh, how things have changed. To put things in perspective, I was 15, used Gentoo (and KDE!! instead of GNOME) and OS X (the latter for less than a year, at that point), and was working on remerge (link excluded for the health and benefit of readers)... pretty bizarre. Thirteen out of the 32 links are dead in some way or another. 40% bit rot over the course of six years... not good! KIO Namespace Reference (kio Library) Gentoo Linux Documentation -- 2004.1 Information Guide Options for Theme Engines Chapter 3. How to make themes for KSplash kde: Gentoo Forums :: View topic - The Gentoo Framebuffer, Bootsplash & Grubsplash How-To Network Theory Ltd - Making and Applying Patches - A short introduction to GNU diff and patch Comparing and Merging Files Mozilla CVS Modules Bash Guide for Beginners The Programmer's File Format Collection Open Ideas idea a day Ncurses Linux Network Programming, Part 1 Linux Socket Programming In C++ LG #74 Programming Linux sockets, Part 2 freedesktop.org Logitech Quickcam QC-USB driver for Linux Amazon.com: Books: C++ GUI Programming with Qt 3 Index of ftp://ftp.cs.unm.edu/pub/chris/quickcam http://qce-ga.sourceforge.net/#Installation Video for Linux resources KIOSLAVES Advanced Bash-Scripting Guide NewOS Source Changes mplayer - movie player for linux The Termcap Library MSN Messenger Protocol - Home Page Qt Designer and KDevelop-3.0 for beginners Qt Reference Documentation (Free Edition) JavaScript Source: Free JavaScripts, Tutorials, Example Code, Reference, Resources, And Help Comments... Lasagna 2010.06.22 in fooding and personal 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. Comments... Class of 2010 2010.06.20 in personal 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. Comments... First Quarter Summer Update 2010.06.13 in personal and qualcomm 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 :-) Comments... Birch Aquarium 2010.06.06 in personal 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... Comments...