Richland, WA V
Aug. 19th, 2005 01:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nibotI explained my scheme for airline seating assignments to the Skywest couter agent in Pasco, how we should fill out little questionnaires about conversational preferences rather than this whole "aisle" or "window" thing (it seems like they ought to at least include "middle" as an option, for the sake of completeness even if no one would choose it). She cut me off in my explanation, asking, "Why don't you just tell me what kind of cute girl you want to sit next to?" "Any kind," I answered boisterously. "Done and done! Seat next to a cute girl," she answered, and printed out my boarding passes.
And I did get to sit next to a cute girl! With a crying baby! Oh the irony, given the previous discussion of a special "crying baby class." Oddly enough the baby didn't actually cry (very much). Or maybe I was in Crying Baby Class--this row of six seats held the statistically improbable number of three infants. And one cat. I didn't even know cats flew.
In Pasco the flight out was delayed, causing a cascading failure of our itinerary, which was to connect with a United flight in Salt Lake City, to Chicago, to Rochester. Delta picked up the ball and, at the last minute, squeezed us onto an already overbooked itinerary through Northern Kentucky (meaning they were then handing out free ticket vouchers at SLC for volunteers). That was right after we had formulated the ingenious plan to drive to Seattle, spend the night there, and then fly from there the next day—Adrian actually suggested that! So Stefanos and I were mildly heartbroken when they really did find a flight for us, through Salt Lake City and Cinncinatti (however it's spelt).
The woman sitting to my left asked me the age of the baby (on my right). "Oh, she's not yours?" she asked. OKAY THEN.
It was a good trip, though, and I enjoyed working through SICM problems on the plane.
Alas, my car developed a flat tire in my absense—a huge screw lodged in it. That's an annoyance.
The co-op greeted me with a huge batch of pasta being crafted by JP out of our seventeen gazillion metric tons of ripe tomatoes, the overripe ones being processed into food products as quickly as can be mustered. Yum.
Back at the house I had a new toy or two waiting for me. A few days ago I ordered an "ultra quiet" 80GB samsung hard disk for my laptop computer ($100) and it had arrived. Some of you know how insanely keep-you-up-at-night, disturb-neighbors loud this computer is (certainly all of my past roommates). The new harddisk makes nary a sound but a pleasantly faint whir. With a new systemboard, new display (replaced under warantee due to falty flex cable--could have been fixed for $4 part), new hard disk, new power supply (first one was lost in the mail, between Oscar Wilde House and a hotel in Boston), and new keyboard (spilled milk on the first one a few years ago), not much of this computer is the same computer I bought in 2001 prior to my trip to Sweden. (So, kids, what's the Linux distro du jour?)
It was a good trip in the end. Even if the meeting was primarily pretty boring and not all that useful, the tidbits might have made up for that, and somehow I feel better about the whole thing. Their mind control is getting to me—somehow I'm starting to feel like it might be okay to be a LIGO student for real. Maybe part of it is finding out that, however marooned we are out in Rochester, we are not operating in a total vacuum. I hope I can take up Nick on his offer to host us out at MIT for a LIGO-topics mind meld; and it was good to actually be held accountable to some more rigorous scientific standards. I feel better about being a grad student now, and am ready to take a second shot at it.
And I did get to sit next to a cute girl! With a crying baby! Oh the irony, given the previous discussion of a special "crying baby class." Oddly enough the baby didn't actually cry (very much). Or maybe I was in Crying Baby Class--this row of six seats held the statistically improbable number of three infants. And one cat. I didn't even know cats flew.
In Pasco the flight out was delayed, causing a cascading failure of our itinerary, which was to connect with a United flight in Salt Lake City, to Chicago, to Rochester. Delta picked up the ball and, at the last minute, squeezed us onto an already overbooked itinerary through Northern Kentucky (meaning they were then handing out free ticket vouchers at SLC for volunteers). That was right after we had formulated the ingenious plan to drive to Seattle, spend the night there, and then fly from there the next day—Adrian actually suggested that! So Stefanos and I were mildly heartbroken when they really did find a flight for us, through Salt Lake City and Cinncinatti (however it's spelt).
The woman sitting to my left asked me the age of the baby (on my right). "Oh, she's not yours?" she asked. OKAY THEN.
It was a good trip, though, and I enjoyed working through SICM problems on the plane.
Alas, my car developed a flat tire in my absense—a huge screw lodged in it. That's an annoyance.
The co-op greeted me with a huge batch of pasta being crafted by JP out of our seventeen gazillion metric tons of ripe tomatoes, the overripe ones being processed into food products as quickly as can be mustered. Yum.
Back at the house I had a new toy or two waiting for me. A few days ago I ordered an "ultra quiet" 80GB samsung hard disk for my laptop computer ($100) and it had arrived. Some of you know how insanely keep-you-up-at-night, disturb-neighbors loud this computer is (certainly all of my past roommates). The new harddisk makes nary a sound but a pleasantly faint whir. With a new systemboard, new display (replaced under warantee due to falty flex cable--could have been fixed for $4 part), new hard disk, new power supply (first one was lost in the mail, between Oscar Wilde House and a hotel in Boston), and new keyboard (spilled milk on the first one a few years ago), not much of this computer is the same computer I bought in 2001 prior to my trip to Sweden. (So, kids, what's the Linux distro du jour?)
It was a good trip in the end. Even if the meeting was primarily pretty boring and not all that useful, the tidbits might have made up for that, and somehow I feel better about the whole thing. Their mind control is getting to me—somehow I'm starting to feel like it might be okay to be a LIGO student for real. Maybe part of it is finding out that, however marooned we are out in Rochester, we are not operating in a total vacuum. I hope I can take up Nick on his offer to host us out at MIT for a LIGO-topics mind meld; and it was good to actually be held accountable to some more rigorous scientific standards. I feel better about being a grad student now, and am ready to take a second shot at it.
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no subject
Date: 2005-08-20 05:00 am (UTC)Okay. So this entry makes it clear to me that they thought up our perfect scheme ages ago, and have not implemented it out of sheer evilness. Those bastards.
no subject
Date: 2005-08-20 07:45 pm (UTC)Also, Tobin, in like, a week, I'll be in Boston, which makes it like 8x more important that you come and do "LIGO things".
no subject
Date: 2005-08-21 02:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-20 05:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-20 06:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-20 05:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-20 05:04 am (UTC)Congratulations on the baby (jk!) I'm sure in retrospect a snappy comeback will present itself, too late to foist upon the unwitting questioner.
""tomatoes, the overripe ones being processed into food products as quickly as can be mustered. Yum.""... I feel I must make some kind of silly response to the word "mustered" being used in relation to catsup!! (Oh well...)
And this brings me to reminisce that we made homemade kecup (put a Slovakian accent mark over the c) when Brano was here. It was way too much work to make, but the secret ingredients in the kecup were a touch of cinnamon and a touch of chili powder. I highly recommend both. However, unless you truly are swimming in tomatoes, I would recommend just adding said spices to ready made ketchup!
Re: gah!
Date: 2005-08-20 07:20 am (UTC)i'll probably go the deb route. don't trust these newfangled distros. (-: