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I guess, when MovableType decides that all your posts are too old to be worthy of display, that it’s probably time to write a new one. Certainly, I have no lack of material.

Two weeks ago was Vermont, which was enjoyable, as usual. Once again, weather forbade us from ascending the mountain. This left me bitter, and a little salty. But there was 8-player Halo, Spiderman 2, Shadowfisting, and lots and lots of BBQing, so I’m not complaining. Much. Colin and I beat co-op Halo in perhaps the most dramatic conclusion of any video game performance ever. The hot tub was very hot. Our neighbors called the cops on us while we were setting off fireworks. My suggestion that we kidnap her dogs until she agreed to let us set off the remainder of our stash was largely ignored. Please send me your pictures. I foolishly took none.

After watching Geoff play much Final Fantasy Tactics Advance on his GBA SP, I decided to get one of my own. Geoff repeatedly described the game as being “gameplay for gameplay’s sake,” as an excuse for a story line that is considerably weaker than most of its FF predecessors, including the original FF Tactics. It doesn’t seem to matter much, however, because we are both rather addicted.

A mere two days after my return, Carl and Goggin came down and stayed at my apartment for a few nights. While I spent the days at work, they ventured into the city and did more than their share of walking. On Thursday night, I went with them to visit Patrick (later joined by Hung), who had some sangria at the ready. I confess to having been completely unaware of the magical properties of fruit in alcohol, whereby said fruit absorbs said alcohol. None of us had eaten dinner by this point. Thus, when the quartered oranges and limes from the bottom of the sangria were offered up, Carl partook hungrily. Fast forward 15 minutes, and he’s lying face up on the stoop in front of Patrick’s place, sweating and pale. Totally coherent, but totally not in the mood to stand up. When it was finally time to go, Carl made it the few steps to a pile of garbage (one of thousands lining the NYC streets) and invoked Undo on the Drink Sangria command. It was “the most pleasant puking experience” of his life. From what I saw, I’d wager it was also the pinkest.

On a whim, I then drove Carl and Goggin down to DC, where we stayed at Carl’s gf Jessica’s place. While there, I also visited Yong-Hwa. We walked around Bethesda a bit, and then joined up with everyone else for some dinner. Subsequently, we stopped by Starbucks. This was primarily at my request, since I was about to make the drive back to NY all by my wittle self. And I was tired. I grabbed another bold, black coffee with a shot of expresso, for the road, and said goodbye. I got home shortly before 3 AM. I woke up at 6 AM for work.

And then, I posted.

This blog entry was brought to you by Nintendo, Starbucks, and the type “R”.

It’s been a relatively lousy couple of weeks, for various reasons. I’m sure a good portion of it has been stress, which I attribute to the daunting length of my TO DO list, which currently begins with seven grad school applications, three fellowship applications, GRE general test, GRE subject test, TAship and RAship applications, three papers, a patent, and (lest I forget) my Master’s thesis.

Avoidance is a popular method of dealing with problems, so I’m taking a last contemptuous glance at my responsibilities… and leaving. I’ll be heading into the depths of the Vermont wilderness, completely severed from all forms of communication, where I’ll be staying at the luxurious Tranquility Base II on Killington mountain. I’ve been going to this house with some friends every summer since I was in high school, making it one of our oldest traditions. This is the first VT since I started my blog.

I said that I was cut off from communication, and I don’t mean to confuse you. This isn’t a cabin. Indeed, we intend to spend a good deal of time playing 8-player Halo on the two TVs, playing pool downstairs, lounging in the hot tub, enjoying the vista from the balcony, BBQing dead animals and the occasional struggling one, hiking the trails, playing cards, and blowing. shit. up. Historically, it is one of the best weeks of the year. Given how much I need a vacation, I don’t think the title is in jeopardy.

In a bit of housekeeping news, I’ve updated the Writings page with last summer’s paper. If fault-aware job scheduling for supercomputers interests you, then go have a look. If you’re a normal person, just keep reading.

On the subject of movies, go see Fahrenheit 9/11 if you haven’t already. Especially if you’re voting. Especially if you’re voting for Bush. Critics are flapping their jaws about factual errors in the film without actually citing any. Even sites like MooreWatch, which are dedicated to revealing inaccuracies, do not seem to have a single, actual, lie. They try to list some, but they are either 1) not lies, 2) misinterpretations, or 3) uncited. My point is this: For all the talk, I have yet to hear a single, proven, cited instance of Moore lying in this film. If you know of any, please share. Even if you don’t care about the politics, go watch. It’s a good movie.

Speaking of which, Spiderman 2 is apparently the greatest thing since penicillin. Thus spake this NY Times review, this CNN review, moviegoers in general, and Roger Ebert, who apparently said it was the best superhero movie he’d ever seen. I might be going on Saturday, when the movie is poised to break the record for single-day sales.

I’ll be in VT until July 11th, so don’t expect to contact me before then. I’ll have my cell phone, but I don’t even get good service within eyeshot of the Boston skyline, so I’m thinking the side of a mountain 30 minutes from town won’t be a good deal better. Incidentally, I was kidding about the struggling animals; Colin never leaves a job unfinished.

Things seem to move faster in the summer. I saw Phish on Sunday at SPAC. We had a nice little group of people there: Colin, Anna, Fred, Emily, Jamie, Jen, and Ashley !(Nied || Brady). We tailgated in the parking lot beforehand. Jamie assembled the grill in record time, and only attached three parts upside-down. I sipped bourbon from my flask as I watched him. I was a little too buzzed to follow grill-assembly instructions, but exactly buzzed enough to properly soak the coals with accelerant. And so our fire was born. A hungry girl approached our encampment and requested munchies. Apparently, the appropriate question to ask after “If I pay you, can I eat that?” is: “Are they… you know?” That second question being hippie-speak for “Will those cookies get me high?” We gave her a cookie and sent her on her way. It turned out we had plenty of food, which we gave to some random guys; it was the happiest day of their lives, and so they gave us water.

SPAC was smaller than I had expected, and it was cramped on the lawn. But the weather couldn’t have been better and I enjoyed the music. Phish did some fantastic jams following Drowned (The Who cover) and Twist. YEM was fun as always, though the a cappella at the end lacked the energy and variety that I prefer. In honor of father’s day, Page’s dad came out and did a little singing and tap dancing. I shit you not. Fan-made balloons later declared: “Page’s dad’s the shit!” The glowstick war during Seven Below was one of the most energetic I’ve seen, due, I’m sure, to the sheer density of people.

Speaking of things getting faster, my group at IBM is celebrating our accomplishment. As of yesterday, we officially have two of the top ten fastest computers in the world. They’re just prototypes of the full machine, which we anticipate will beat the fastest machine with a severity typically reserved for red-headed step-children.

In closing, I’d like to point you toward this comment, in which someone on /. decides to lay the beat-down on someone else for not RTFA. Also, I recently spoke with Elie, who had won a Porsche playing online poker, about his thesis. He apologized for not including me in the acknowledgments:

If I were to write it now, I would foretell of a day when another would arrive for a semester in my place, just as I had that fateful year, and bring with him copious knowledge of even faster projections of partitions, as the wise men had once foretold, elucidating all those around him in his didactic teachings, evoking awe and fear in the hearts of mere mortal professors.

Apology accepted.

The voice on the new Green Line cars disturbs me. Stop after stop is announced in a deep, soft, sensual male voice. “Next stop, Boylston,” the voice drawls like a slightly inebriated pedophile. Hung and I concluded that it reminded us of HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey. That is a close approximation of the voice, in case you’ve never ridden the new Green Line, or never been approached by a creepy old man with whiskey on his breath and a peculiar interest in holding your hand. This isn’t a cry for help, merely a segue into the main event: we got off at Kenmore and meandered among the Sox-garbed crowd into Fenway Park.

It was Red Sox vs. Mariners. The game itself was pretty good. It went to 12 innings, and was tied at 7-7 for a while. In the end, Sox won 9-7. That was good, because I didn’t sit out in the sun for more than four hours just to watch the home team lose. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and when I first entered the park, and looked out over the green field and saw the crowd, I thought for a moment, “What a simply perfect day.” Jump ahead an hour, and you’d see me with the entire back of my shirt soaked through (two layers) with sweat and hear me cursing about forgetting sunscreen. Skip ahead another four hours, and you’d see me on the T again, looking at the reflection of myself in the window with my sunglasses off, and thinking that I look something like a raccoon.

I wasn’t entirely honest when I said it was a cloudless day. In all fairness, there was a cloud. It was only a little larger than the sun as it appears in the sky. Somewhere in the tenth inning, like a quarter eclipsing a penny, this cloud blotted out the sun that had beat down on us all for hours. The crowd sighed with relief, “Ahhhhh.” Moments later, this tiny puff of condensation passed from in front of the sun, and the crowd voiced their disappointment, “Awwwww.” After four years at MIT, three of which I spent with the lights from Fenway illuminating my room, this was my first time actually being there.

Hung and I met up with Alice afterward for some food. Then we went to CVS, where she picked out some aloe and moisturizer for my sunburned face. We also bought alcohol, because what’s an entire day spent dehydrating in the sun without some booze to really finalize the heat stroke? It’s just a half-assed effort, is what it is. I’ve been making plans for the week, which include having just about every possible meal with someone else. In fact, I’m at the point where I’m inventing meal times so that I can see people before I leave on Saturday. My favorite is brunchfast. It’s not quite breakfast, and it’s not quite brunch, but it happens in the morning and there’s a little slice of cantaloupe at the end.

I recently finished running an experiment for one of my projects. The results were, at best, disappointing. Daniel and I are now working to justify our bad results. This seems like a good time to reflect on happier times. Like, say, last night.

I went with Heather to Senior Ball at the Park Plaza hotel in downtown Boston. As documented photographic evidence will show, a good time was had by all. A table was reserved, under my name, for 10 of us: Me, Heather, Carl, Jessica, Goggin, Cece, Hung, Amy, Rob, and Yong-Hwa. Because it was under my name, I declared myself Tablemaster, a.k.a. Lord of the Table. This amused some people (Amy), confused others (Y-H), and incited revolutionary tendencies in Hung, a.k.a. The Peon.

There was drinking, there was dancing, and everyone looked, according to Heather, “Amaaaaaazing.” There was a raffle, for which our table had three winners. Actually, both of the tickets that Carl bought won gift certificates to Best Buy. Hung won, as well, but his insolence shall cost him a tidy tax. Meanwhile, I was one digit away from a free night at the Park Plaza. (That reminds me of a joke. *laughs to self*) The table gift was a Class of 2004 flask, which, I contend, is The Coolest Thing Ever just after the iPod and Air Conditioning.

The pictures speak for themselves, but I say this: Last night taught me many things. I learned that cufflinks can be fixed with a screwdriver, but that you might slice your fucking thumb open. I learned that wearing suspenders is OK, as long as no one can see them. I learned that not everyone has the same tolerance for alcohol as I have. I learned that there are a lot of beautiful people here at MIT, and that they only seem ugly because they work for days on end in frumpy clothing, without showering. Finally, I learned that training Yuret’s lexical attraction algorithm on synonyms and hyponyms only condenses the representation space and prevents effective hyperplane separation, a la Yip and Sussman.

And remember: Call your mom. Her love is conditional.