from the desk of stinkpot

spotted the other night on berkshire st. while on the way to the pub.  perhaps this car’s owner is just very forgetful?

craigslist is our travel agent for boston; following used bike listings keeps taking us to new parts of the city. a couple of weeks ago, in the hopes of finding a $100 bianchi road bike, we made our way to hingham, on boston’s south shore. [unfortunately, we were out of luck. the nice old woman […]

i’ve been in the hospital for the past 5 days. there’s no internet here and i’ve got two IVs in my arms. i’m not really in the mood to write code. i figured i might as well fill in all the blanks in my blog over the past couple of months — scroll down to […]

this whole bleeding escapade was really poorly planned. going to the hospital effectively ruined what i had been looking forward to throughout my thesis proposal/shingles-racked summer: a trip to LA to see my cousin get married, followed by 3 weeks of backpacking through thailand, cambodia, and burma. my disappointment in missing those trips officially cinches […]

it’s been a rough couple of days. thursday morning, i get a call from my gastroenterologist. apparently, my polyp had a pre-cancerous adenoma in it. [bad polyp, bad!] that doubly sucks: 1) i had something with the word “cancer” in me (scary even with the prefix pre-). 2) i’ll have to start getting regular colonoscopies […]

my body is sorely confused — it must think i’ve joined AARP or something. last month, i’m struck by the bane of geriatrics: shingles. today, i underwent the universal rite of senior citizenhood — the colonoscopy (a fancy word for a butt exam). you see, my quals weren’t the only test i took this summer. […]

worst. night. ever.

i narrowly passed my thesis proposal defense the other friday. it wasn’t catastrophic or anything like that, but it certainly didn’t go as well as planned. for one thing, the oral examination was much more serious than i had anticipated. i hadn’t been so naive as to think my orals would be fun — a […]

i saw a terrific bike today on mass ave. in cambridge, right by city hall. what set this bicycle apart was its electronic wiring.  it had 2 headlights and 2 tail lights.  each was homemade: the designer had taken some translucent salt and pepper shakers and studded their ends with LEDs from radioshack.  i followed […]

the weekend before my quals, i decided to relax a bit and go camping on the boston harbor islands with some friends. we had a great time and i took some nice photos. getting out to the islands is easy — you just take the subway to the ferry run by the national park service. […]