My Bookshelf

The other day I reached up to my bookshelf to grab a text book and realized that I have a very geeky and characteristically me bookshelf.

For my graduation speech I described the link between teenagers and their footwear:



I'd like to draw a similar analogy to my bookshelf. You can tell a lot about a person just by looking at the books on their shelf. To demonstrate this, I've taken a picture of my bookshelf and would like to go over the books on it with you.



From right to left:
Assembly Modeling with SolidWorks 2006
SolidWorks is a 3D solid modeling computer program that I use for making neat models online.

SolidWorks 2006: The Basics
Again, SolidWorks guide.

Engineering and Computer Graphics Workbook Using SolidWorks 2006
More SolidWorks!

MIT Freshman Photobook
This is so I can look up the names of random people I meet/forget. Also a nice reminder that the odds are good, but the goods are odd.



How To Survive a Robot Uprising
A birthday present from my roommate. I think it'll come in handy some day, especially since any robot uprising is likely to start from somewhere within MIT.

1337 h4x0r h4ndb00k
Do I really need to explain why I have this? Yes? Because it's amazing!

Mysterious Spiral Bound Book
Another SolidWorks guide, this one focusing on how to use macros to make life easier.

How to Get Around MIT
If you're ever at the MIT bookstore (The Coop (rhymes with hoop)) and are even kinda considering MIT, buy this book. It has absolutely everything and was written/published by students. Forget any other book about MIT, this is the one you want.



Typographic Design: Form and Communication
One of the several textbooks for my Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (HASS) class. It's about fonts is actually very interesting!

The Iron Whim
Another book for my HASS class, this one not interesting at all and actually quite maddening. I made it 3 chapters in before giving up. It's about a guy's obsession with typewriters, honestly, why was this book written!?

Sprague High School 2007 Yearbook
Muchos Kudos to the yearbook staff for my senior year in high school, this is the best yearbook I've ever seen. I keep it around for nostalgia and because it's just so well designed and laid out.

Really Thin Book
Wired's "Geekapedia," which defines any and every Web 2.0 slang or jargon that any non-geek needs to become the next Michael Snively.



Not So Thin Book, But Still Pretty Thin
MIT Career fair guide. Not sure why I still have this, I've never even opened it.

University Physics
My physics book. I think we all know my stance on physics (hate hate hate hate hate) but the book is fairly decent. We'll see how my physics test on Thursday goes though.

Multivariable Calculus
Mmmmmm, calculus. Calculus and I have never really gotten along well (surf through some of my entries towards the end of last school year, you'll see what I mean), but this year I think I'm actually starting to absorb it. I've passed everything in the class so far, which is a good sign.

Modern Art
Another HASS book, one I have almost no intention of reading.



Two Composition Books
Tip to prospective freshmen: Composition notebooks, while terrible for taking notes in, are WONDERFUL for just doing scratch work in. It eliminates loose paper and you can just scribble random work inside wherever you want. Plus, they're light and compact. Definitely bring a few of these for scratch work.

Introduction to Solid-State Chemistry
I have a test in this class tomorrow! The chemistry book is a beast. It's been rumored that some poor east campus kids use it to kill small animals for food. However big it may be, it's very useful for learning chemistry so I keep it around.

Three Binders
Each one is for a different subject, an attempt to stay organized. Unfortunately, that attempt failed, seeing as I can't remember which subject is in which binder and I haven't opened them in several weeks. Oh well, nobody's perfect.

Mysterious Spiral Bound Black Book
This is my shooting journal for pistol. After every practice I write down what happened during practice so I can learn from it for next time.




Ethernet Cable
This is in case I ever need hardwired Internet. It was free, I took it.

Dead Cell Phone
This is my old, broken, dead cell phone. I'm still trying to come up with a creative way to dispose of it (BOOM!).

So, that's it, my bookshelf. Can you see where I'd believe it was characteristic of me? Where else will you see books like that? Stay tuned for more exciting blog posts in the future, I won't disappoint. Ciao!

Flame War

MIT has a rich tradition of spontaneously producing campus-wide spam/flame-wars that have been known to overload MIT's e-mail servers so badly that it takes up to 5 hours for an e-mail to be delivered after having been sent. One such flame war happened about a week ago, and I've decided to post it. I haven't read all of it (I've got better things to do) but I thought you may like to see the scope of such a flame war.

Click

We Hate Plastic. . .AND THE YANKEES!

Last night, in case you didn't hear, the Red Sox won the World Series. People here in Boston went nuts, and I was there to capture it all with my handy dandy video camera. I proudly present the 2007 World Series Red Sox Riot, as shot through my video camera:

We Hate Plastic. . .AND THE YANKEES!
(Note that at 3:14 remaining in the video, some guy decides he's going to try to kill me by throwing a sharp and jagged plastic barrel directly at me)



Cars, Cops, and Horses

Pumpkin Drop

As a guy, I must say that I have an affinity for the following:

(-) Explosions
(-) Dropping stuff from really high up
(-) Explosions
(-) Loud Noises
(-) Explosions

Naturally, when I heard that pumpkins were going to be dropping off the Green Building



I knew I had to be there. At midnight last night/this morning a bunch of us Conner 2 peoples headed over towards East Campus to watch some gourd-a-licious destruction. I, of course, brought my video camera so that I could share everything with you. I hear that there was a camera in one of the pumpkins that was dropped so I'll be looking around for that footage and I'll post it if/when I find it. Enjoy!

Staying on Track

This post probably doesn't need to exist, but I wanted to get some feedback from you guys really quick.

When I started my blog I used most of my entries to tell stories about stuff that's happened to me in the past and to talk about cool new fads/crazes/youtube videos I find on the internet. Lately I can't help but feel that I've been pulling away from that and mostly talking about MIT. Granted, I kind of live here, but are you ok with me blogging about it so much? I'd be more than happy to blog about more stories that aren't MIT related if I'm burning you out. Let me know what you think by either leaving a comment (I read them all, I promise), voting in the poll in the right margin, or both. Thanks, and happy reading!

HACK! GO SOX!

[Monitor this post, I'll be updating]

I woke up this morning to a text message that said "Hack between MacGregor and Tang" and of course had to check it out.

Check out this site for more details:

http://www.ericschmiedl.com/hacks/index12.html

MIT hackers put a 'GO SOX' banner over New House on the morning of Thursday the 25th in recognition of the Boston Red Sox competing in the 2007 Baseball World Series. The banner, which was clearly visible from the Boston side of the Charles River, was strung between MacGregor and Tang Hall dormitories—a distance of well over a thousand feet.

I love hackers!

Red Sox

As I find more content, I'll post it, so check regularly:

Let me explain something to you. If you're in Boston (as I currently am) then you pretty much, automatically, have to be a Red Sox fan. At the very least, you have to be anti-Yankees. That being said, last night was game 7 for the Red Sox, the one that decided whether or not they moved on to the World Series. It was a home game at Fenway park, which is literally just across the river from where we live. We can actually hear the fans from our windows, believe it or not.

Game 7 found the residents of Conner 2 all sitting in the floor lounge, after an exciting day of apple bake, watching baseball. Come the bottom of the 8th inning, I get a brilliant idea!

"Hey guys, there's going to be a huge party/mob outside Fenway tonight, let's go!"
(5 others) "Ok!"

We ran around the floor looking for Red Sox gear to put on. I got a shirt, some others got hats, and one other had a shirt. We ran from the door and to the Harvard bridge. A quick jaunt across the river and we were on our way. That was when we had our first clue that this was going to be insane.

A taxi drove down the street with people hanging out the windows screaming "RED SOX, YEAH!" We decided to get into the spirit of things and scream back, making for a lovely conversation with the drunken cab-riders who were already on their way down the street to yell at more people. As we got closer and closer to the stadium we began to see more and more people. Soon, we found the mob. Oh, and with the mob, we found 75-100 police officers in riot gear, motorcycles, German Sheppards, and police cars. Everybody in the mob was screaming and cheering as loud as they could, so we smashed our way in and towards the center to participate in the festivities.

There was a streetlight post on the corner of the intersection we were mobbing in and people decided that it would be a really good idea to climb it, so they did.



They used 2 flimsy street signs as a step and climbed onto the "Do Not Walk/Walk" light-up box so they could lead chants and yell. Soon, the street signs were all bent and messed up, so (and I'm assuming this) for the safety of all involved, 3-4 crazy guys just started pulling and ripping and yanking the signs. Eventually they ripped them completely off, which caused more screaming and jumping by us, the mob.

Next to that sign was either a car or a series of garbage cans that people were standing on, screaming chants and riling up the crowd. Some favorite chants were

"F*** The Rockies!"
"Let's Go Red Sox!"
"Yankees Suck!"
"Ole, ole ole ole"





That's when flash lady appeared. Let's face it, with a huge mob, there's going to be a flash lady. What made it fun (other than the fact that she was flash lady) is that while she was on the garbage cans/car doing her thing, there was a guy on top of the traffic light swinging his shirt around and cheering. The mob was cheering wildly and this guy thought it was all for him, so he kept screaming and chanting and being cool, completely oblivious of the naked lady that everybody was actually cheering for. Good times! That's when some genius decided it'd be fun to try to climb another post. He made it halfway up and was holding onto the street sign when all of a sudden the street sign snapped off and he just fell, straight down, with nothing under him but concrete. There was some laughing that happened at his expense.

At this point cops, in full riot gear, decided that the "illegal assembly" should go away, so they began their crowd dispersal tactics (which were actually quite effective).







They blocked off two sides of the intersection with police so there was only one street. They then ran lines of motorcycles, with sirens blaring as loud as possible, down the street, flushing people to the sidewalks. They did this several times, and all the while a recording was playing from the SWAT-looking tank/van thing:

"You are unlawfully assembled. Under order of Massachusetts state law, if you do not immediately and peacefully disperse, you will be arrested."


Red Lines = Motorcycles
Blue Lines = Police
Blue Boxes = Police Cars
Big Blue Box = SWAT-looking/Van thing
Oval = Mob

After several waves of motorcycles they started to get serious. If you look on the map, see the little park where are all the police cars are parked? Those cars are K9 units. Guess what came out of every single car . . .

The motorcycles then lined up in the street, but this time didn't move. Another line of motorcycles formed behind them. Then, police on foot behind them, two lines. Finally, the SWAT-looking/van thing, followed up by a Gator, retrofitted to be a police Gator. This was the final flush. They started moving forward and not letting a single person stay, anywhere. We were in the park by the dogs, but that was until we noticed the dogs. I'm not a fan of being on the wrong end of a police dog (mainly, the mouth end) so I was all for getting to the other side of the park and watching the final flush from a safe vantage point.





And so that's how it happened. We walked peacefully down a street parallel to the mob/flush street and watched an extremely large number of police flush the Red Sox mob down out and away from our location of unlawful assembly. All in all, it was an amazing night! I'd never seen that many cops, I'd never been part of a mob of Red Sox fans, and everybody was in a great mood. Then, the cherry on top happened on the way home.

The Harvard Bridge connects Boston to Cambridge/MIT so we had to cross it to get home. There's a passenger sidewalk and then right next to it is a bike lane. It's REALLY irritating when you have to move for a bike rider who decided that the sidewalk would be a better choice, but normally you just move and bitterly complain. Last night, the four of us formed a line across the sidewalk, making it impossible for the bike to pass. Eventually we let him pass, but that started a rousing game of "Bike Lane." The rules are simple, one person says "Bike Lane" at a fairly low volume. Then, another person immediately follows by saying "Bike Lane" at a slightly to moderately louder volume. Eventually, all four of us were screaming "BIKE LANE!" in a bitter, angry tone, as loud as we could. Then, we looked across the 4 lane street and saw, lo and behold, somebody riding a bike in the bike lane! We turn our attention to him and start screaming "YEAH BIKE LANE, WOOOO!" He acknowledged by raising his fist into the air, to which we cheered wildly. He then screamed "GO RED SOX!" to which we screamed even louder! It was a good night, I can't wait until the world series. . .