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Summer School is Crazy!

Posted on June 21, 2006 by admin |

Man, this IPE class is killing me. So far I’ve read a textbook, two other books, taken a mid-term, and written a paper, all in two weeks. And to think, I have another month-long summer class after this one. Bleh.

I’m finding it difficult to focus on … well on anything with the move coming up. It’s much more fun to shop for a european power adapter for my laptop, or think about how much I’m going to be missing mexican food. Little things like that creep in when I’m supposed to be studying.

I gave notice at my job the other day. My CEO was very supportive of the move and made it clear that they would be waiting when I came back. So far everyone has been really supportive and I’ll be sending a ton of thank you cards … from Europe, of course!

I also turned in my post-acceptance (SFSU) forms and grabbed an ISIC card (lyss did too). At this point I’m just waiting on my official acceptance packet from the UvA, which should tell me how to register for classes and all that.
The anticipation is mounting!

Posted in All, Journal, Main, Study Abroad

Knee stuff

Posted on June 18, 2006 by admin |

So for those of you that don’t know, I had knee surgery about two weeks ago. Here’s the pre-op photos:

Me in my funny gown/robe/hat/chair

This knee is both the right knee and the right knee. I’m so punny. Also note the sexy shaved-ness.

Here’s what it looks like now. It’s far less purple than my webcam makes it out to be.

So anyway, I’m able to walk around on it and everything, and I get the stitches out on Tuesday. Stairs still suck a bit, but I’m looking forward to running again sometime in the future. Yay4working knee!

Posted in All, Journal, Main

History of the World in Six Glasses

Posted on June 7, 2006 by admin |

The California World Affairs Council has a wonderful lecture by Tom Standage, Technology Editor for The Economist and author of A history of the World in Six Glasses. His overview of his book seperates history into six eras, dictated by types of drink. It’s available here (mp3 or real audio). Good stuff starts about 5 mins into the lecture.

Did you know?

Pyramid builders were paid in beer
Agriculture may have been ‘invented’ to make beer, not bread
Scholarly gatherings are called “Symposiums” because of Roman communal wine drinking
Jesus’ first miricle involved wine, and it was the last drink before his death
Trade Triangle (Slave Trade) involved brady/liqour trade as much as slaves
Britian’s Naval supremacy was due to rum (grog, actually)
At one point there was 1 coffee shop in London per 300 people in 1700s (take that, starbucks)
The London stock exchange started as a coffee shop
The French Revolution started in a coffee shop!

… and there’s lots of other fun bits of knowledge. Obviously history has more factors than just beverages, but this is a wonderful way to learn about the historical impact of our favorite drinks. It’s about an hour long, check it out.

Posted in All, Main, Random, Spirits

Major Changes

Posted on May 13, 2006 by admin |

This week some very exciting events have gone down, and as you can tell my blog is reflecting them.

On Wednesday, the Office of International Programs at my school held a ceremony for all the study-abroad selectees, of which I am one. Also, earlier today, lyss and I visited our new landlord and signed a lease for an apartment in Amsterdam in the Watergraafsmeer district.

We are go for launch.

It still hasn’t quite hit me yet, but that could be because we have yet to buy the plane tickets…

Also After 7 months of using Serendipity (s9y) to power my blog I have decided to switch to WordPress. S9y was the Humvee of blog software, with all sorts of possible configurations, add-ons, and extras. WordPress is quite a bit leaner, faster, and prettier while still having a nice ammount of available plugins. Now that I’m going to be blogging a lot more, I also appriciate that both posting and viewing posts in multiple browsers works a whole lot better.

The downside is that I had to semi-manually migrate over all of my old posts, and the extras didn’t follow. The comments (all 9 of them) and some other metadata just couldn’t make the switch, but c’est la vie.

Right now I need to put off all that future stuff and focus on passing my courses, so you may not hear anything from me for a week or two. Tot ziens!

Posted in All, Journal, Main, Study Abroad

School House Superparamagnetic Rock

Posted on April 17, 2006 by admin |

So I was reading about Seagate’s new perpendicular hard drive and, like you, thought to myself “I wonder what a perpendicular hard drive is…” I hopped over to google, typed in perpendicular hard drive, and got this site.

Wow.

Since it’s the first hit on google I assume a lot of people have seen it, but if you haven’t, you should. It’s hilarious.

Posted in All, Main, Tech

Affirmative Action Helps White Males?

Posted on April 17, 2006 by admin |

This article over on the New York Times OP-ED page was really interesting. It basically outlines the side affects of encouraging so many women to go to college. In a nutshell, so many more women apply for college than men that the standards for women are higher. The end result is that women with outstanding GPA’s are turned down, and men with the same (or lower) scores are admitted easily.

We have told today’s young women that the world is their oyster; the problem is, so many of them believed us that the standards for admission to today’s most selective colleges are stiffer for women than men. How’s that for an unintended consequence of the women’s liberation movement?

It turns my ideas about the admissions process upside-down…

Posted in All, Main, Random