Feed on
Posts
Comments

caltech weenies

about a week ago, a couple of mit kids pulled the first spectacular hack i’ve seen during my short tenure here.

the kids sacrificed their spring break to travel to caltech (which shares a pranking rivalry with mit) to “appropriate” this:


it’s a 3-ton cannon that’s been a fixture on the caltech campus for decades. a friend told me that caltech students would shoot spaghetti out of it during finals week.

this wasn’t the first time the cannon was stolen: harvey mudd (that lovable engineering school) lifted the piece of artillery in the mid-1980s. there’s an enjoyable retelling of that story here.

so to commemorate the 20th anniversary of that heist, the mit pranksters shlepped over to california and hatched the following scheme. they formed the howe & ser moving company (a play on the word howitzer?) and wrote up fake work orders. the mit’ers then simply walked onto campus, flashed the work orders at some befuddled security guards, and quickly absconded with the cannon.

there was nothing fancy, though, about getting the cannon back to mit. i hear it cost something like $4K to hire a legitimate moving company for the shipment of a 3-ton antique. (where do these kids get this kind of money? perhaps they solicit funds from wealthy alumni hackers.)

in any case, the hack has been considered a great success around here and everyone’s been living vicariously through it. for a while, caltech couldn’t even figure out who took the cannon. harvey mudd was initially accused; i guess people didn’t think to look 3000 miles across the country for their missing gun. and for good reason: i went over to see the cannon the other day and was amazed by how big the thing is – it looked to be about 10 feet tall.

the cannon was also adorned with this classy brass ring:

in the end, caltech got its cannon back. their solution, however, wasn’t nearly as elegant.

word on the street is that caltech initially threatened some kind of prissy legal action. to save face perhaps, a couple of caltech students decided to counter-prank mit by stealing the cannon back themselves. unfortunately, they did a pretty lousy job of it. their first misguided plan involved a helicopter and was ultimately deemed infeasible. the second couldn’t even get past campus police. tails between their legs, the caltech students were finally “given” the cannon back in broad daylight. they were even being chaperoned by a caltech vice president.

i imagine the howe and ser movers still get the last laugh – they didn’t have to pay the return shipping costs.


Bookmark and Share

providence

about 2 weeks ago, i was elated to hear that one my favorite bands – wolf parade – was coming to boston. i was subsequently crushed to find out that their one tour date here was also sold out.

luckily, christina had the fantastic idea of catching their april 8th show down in providence. tickets were still available and rhode island is less than an hour drive from here. it would also be a good opportunity to take a break from all the housing stuff and get out of town (the last time i left boston was near christmas – depressing.)

april 8th came yesterday and we hit the road. we decided to make a day trip of things and do touristy things around providence. extensive googling, however, revealed that providence is remarkably bereft of tourist attractions. the best we could manage was the rhode island school of design’s modern art museum.

the museum was fantastic, especially given our low expectations of providence. it was cheap ($3 – such a rarity to find non-exhorbinantly priced museums) and well-stocked with pieces from just about every major western artist of the 20th and late 19th centuries. i had a great time taking photos; oddly enough, i learned that i couldn’t snap pictures of the more modern art, since it was still under copywrite protection. you’d think that a museum is sorta like public space and therefore, whatever’s on display should be fair game for photography …

in any case, some of the photos turned out ok. i’m still learning about focusing and aperture, but i’m getting there.



(the rest of the photos live here.)

the museum kicked us out around 5 and we still had a couple of hours to kill until the concert. we killed the remaining time in a delightful bookstore called “cellar stories.” ironically, it was located on the second floor of a building. in any case, the bookstore was one of those you wish you could just live in – almost strand-like in abundunce and eclecticism, but much cheaper. i think we showed good resolve by walking away with only 4 books. (the reader’s digest bible of home repair looks like it’s going to be indispensible as christina and i start building out the loft.)

after dumping the books in the car and eating in a restaurant for the first time since new year’s, christina and i showed up to lupo’s heartbreak hotel about half an hour after the doors opened. since we got there a bit early, we were able to stake out some choice standing room on an elevated platform only about 10 feet from center-stage. (having endured up to 8-hour roadside stakeouts along tour de france routes, we fancy ourselves experts at the art of spectator positioning.)

the concert itself was a blast – the best i’ve ever been to by far (not that i’ve been to that many.) things started out a bit auspiciously though, as an electronica band named Holy Fuck opened. they certainly earned an A for enthusiasm. but, the beats weren’t too interesting and at times, seemed to try and make up for it by raising the volume to cataclysmic levels. i thought the eardrum i punctured in undergrad was going to start bleeding.

wolf parade though, was beyond awesome. of course, i’m biased, since i’ve listened to their album about a dozen times in the last 2 weeks. regardless, when they played “you are a runner and i am my father’s son” accompanied by 12 members of the university of rhode island marching band, i just about lost it. wolf parade, the marching band, the audience – it’s hard to explain what it was like. just pure joy.

needless to say, christina and i were both glad that we ended up missing the boston show. the performance definitely merited snagging some sweet wolf parade swag from the theatre:


[update]:

here’s a photo from chop-chop the chimp, member of “the what cheer? band” (see comment below) that performed at the wolf parade concert. if you look hard, you can see christina and i in the picture.


Bookmark and Share


our housing search has finally come to an end. hooray! in a couple of months, we’ll be living in the building pictured above.

i’m rather pleased with how things ultimately turned out. christina and i snagged a unit in an artists’ community called Brickbottom, across the tracks in somerville. it’s been a bit of a fairy-tale ending in fact; several months ago, we’d seen the building and thought out loud how cool it would be to live there. the building is a former cannery / factory – it’s full of these gorgeous lofts with entire walls of windows and tall ceilings. being from new york city, we’d always dreamt of living in a loft, but understood that affording one required a pact with the devil (like becoming an i-banker).

turns out that you don’t need to sell your soul to afford a loft. instead, the following helps a lot:

  • living in boston (ok, sorta like giving up your soul). although expensive by national standards, real estate here is still not nearly as insane as in new york.
  • buying on literally, the other side of the tracks. the neighborhood isn’t crime-ridden or anything – it’s more like there isn’t a neighborhood at all. instead, there’s a bus depot, recycling plant, and towing company nearby. blighted is a good adjective.
  • a slowly deflating housing bubble. the seller had bought this condo as an investment a couple of years back. today, his mortgage payments are higher than the rent his tenant pays.
  • a space that’s a bit rough around the edges. the 18-year old kitchen is hopelessly shabby, the floors are all concrete, and we need to tear down a couple of partition walls.

yikes. as unappealing as all of that sounds, we thought the loft was still worth it. we get:

  • a thousand square feet of space (about 200 more than we could afford in cambridge).
  • a top-floor unit with a freaking skylight, a 20-foot stretch of 6 foot-tall windows, and 10-foot ceilings. the place gets absolutely beautiful light.
  • to live only a 5-minute bike ride from “bustling” cambridge st. and a 10-minute ride from school.
  • lots of freedom, since only the four perimeter walls are load-bearing. partitioning rooms the way we want them to look + feel is fun.

dragging ourselves to about 50 open houses and house viewings was a bit painful, but i’m thinking it was worth it.

we’ve postponed our big celebration for now, however, as we still haven’t completely slain the home-buying dragon. we’re still not sure when we’re even moving in – the current renter in the unit has up until august to leave. (we’ve agreed w/ the seller, though, that every month’s delay will translate into a purchase price reduction.) in the meantime, we’ve still got to find a real estate attorney, get a home inspection performed, and hammer out the details of our mortgage plan. it’s still a bit overwhelming, but i’m sure that in the end, true love will triumph over good.


Bookmark and Share


christina and i finally got out of the house today. (i managed to go approximately 36 hours without leaving the apartment; christina 24 hours, up until this morning.)

we certainly made up for our saturday lethargy though. chris had the great idea of enjoying the pre-summer weather and taking a bike ride through boston. those plans had to be slightly amended when we got to the charles and realized how crowded and poorly paved the esplanade was.

but no worries – we headed back up mass ave, up past porter and davis squares and onto the minuteman trail. about 10 miles later, we found ourselves in lexington, where it just so happened an american revolutionary battle was being re-enacted. i was thrilled – i’d obsessed over the american revolution in grade school (boys love books about war) and this was the first re-enactment i had the pleasure of watching.

truth-be-told, it was all rather anticlimactic. the battle of lexington was being staged; it turns out the “battle” lasted all of about 30 seconds, 25 of which consisted of the americans getting shot in the back as they ran from the british ministerial troops. nonetheless, it was still highly entertaining to watch 200 middle-aged men get together in home-made uniforms and play fight.

i was also amused by the 5-year old next to me rooting for the militia-men to win. i think he was a bit confused: in the age of freedom fries and the war on terror, why is it patriotic to re-enact an american defeat?

we made it home by 3 (2 if you don’t count that hour the farmers stole from us), having ridden a respectable 25 miles. for good outdoorsy measure, we went out and played frisbee and soccer with jesse and hillary in the park across the street for about an hour.

i don’t think i’ve done more than 3 hours of real science all weekend. i’m an efficiency disaster.

this weekend wasn’t a total accomplishment black hole, however; i think christina and i may have just bought our first home. (more on that tomorrow.)


Bookmark and Share

sandals

the weather was gorgeous today. i walked around and played frisbee in sandals. first time i’ve gotten dirt on my feet since probably october.

and, we got to go to a bbq in the afternoon.

what a wonderful day.


Bookmark and Share


a profoundly old tortoise died today.

he was 250 years old, meaning his birth predated the american revolution … it’s absolutely remarkable that any animal could live so long.

makes you wonder what tortoises do that other critters don’t. sounds like a good phd project, in fact.


Bookmark and Share

ajaxwrite

found this on digg today. it’s called ajaxwrite – it’s an online text editor that looks a lot like a stripped down ms word. ajaxwrite is, not surprisingly, written in ajax, a language i’ve been hearing a lot of hype about lately. perhaps the hype is justified though; ajaxwrite is really really fast + smooth.

all they need to do is add online storage of documents (perhaps save to your 2 gigs of gmail?) and you’d have a nice thin-client. no more ms word licenses – 90% of people would probably be able to get away with just logging onto this ajaxwrite server.

of course, god only knows how private those documents you write will be …


Bookmark and Share

dragonforce

andrew sent me a link to this fantastic dragonforce video the other day.

in case you haven’t heard of dragonforce, they’re a british “power metal” band who’ve been trapped in the early eighties. they put on quite the spectacle – i had no idea anyone c0uld play an electric guitar as fast as these guys do. then again, perhaps talent like that is to be expected when 6 dudes all grow their hair down to their waists.

check out their video here.

try and endure the video to the end – there’s a fun “battle of the crazy long-haired guitarists” about 3/4 of the way through.


Bookmark and Share

big kid stuff


christina and i got pre-approved for a mortgage the other day.

craziness.

over the past couple of months, we’ve doing some math regarding how much it’s going to cost to live in boston for 5-7 years. it turns out we’d spend over $100K in rent – who knew we had that kind of money? whereas if we buy a place, even if it doesn’t appreciate, it works out that we only lose about $30K (due to paying interest on a mortgage).

so before we knew it, we had started going off to open houses and visiting mortgage brokers. trying to get a mortgage was especially interesting; i found out that since i’m being paid by a department of defense fellowship (i’m one of donny rumsfeld’s minions), i withhold my own taxes and am therefore self-employed. “self-employed” evidently means “unreliable source of income” to a mortgage broker. ultimately, we had to go straight to a bank (the MIT credit union – god bless them) and beg directly for a loan.

nonetheless, true love eventually conquered all and we got approved. immediately, the oddest feeling swept over me. i’ve never felt so grown up and immature at the same time. on the one hand, having a mortagage and the ability to buy a house is a certainly a very adult thing. but, on the other hand, christina and i both really have no idea what the hell we’re doing. for chrissakes, the majority of our house-hunting training has come via google and “the idiots guide to buying a house.”

oh well. luckily, we’ve found a really nurturing buyer’s agent who hasn’t seemed to mind hand-holding christina and i. we’ve had to have dragged the poor guy to at least 2 dozen condos by now. thankfully, he mostly refuses to encourage us to buy things, instead pointing out all the flaws of a house – exactly what you hope a buyer’s agent will do. and, he buys us snacks before he meets us. if you’re you want to want to buy a place in cambridge and like snacks, i highly recommend him: jonathan mitchell of coldwell banker.

of course, take my recommendation with half-a-grain of salt; i could just be suffering from a mild case of stockholm syndrome.


Bookmark and Share

googlicious

heh, i learned from my server logs today that my blog is currently the top hit for the google search: stupid boston. christina is delighted.


Bookmark and Share

« Prev - Next »