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ratatosklemur's LiveJournal:
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| Sunday, November 29th, 2009 | | 1:59 am |
Getting to Know Me (again)
Meme from http://www.livejournal.com/users/contrasedative/You know how sometimes people on your friends list post about stuff going on in their lives, and all of a sudden you think "Wait a minute! Since when were they working THERE? Since when were they dating THAT PERSON? Since when?" And then you wonder how you could have missed all that seemingly pretty standard information, but somehow you feel too ashamed to ask for clarification because it seems like info you should already know? It happens to all of us sometimes. Please copy the topics below, erase my answers and put yours in their place, and then post it in your journal! Only if you want to, of course. Please elaborate on the questions that would benefit from elaboration. One-word answers seldom help anyone out. FIRST NAME: Daniel, or DWR, or lemur, or other things AGE: 22 LOCATION: Cambridge, MA OCCUPATION: Physical Chemistry grad student. I'm just starting, but I'll be shooting oxygen at silicon to try to oxidize it, basically. PARTNER: Unsure what this means. The previous person interpreted it as "romantic partner" in which case I don't have one and shouldn't have one, as it would probably go badly. KIDS: None right now, and none likely, given the previous answer. BROTHERS/SISTERS: None, unless my parents are hiding them from me for some reason. PETS: My dorm doesn't allow them, although they don't seem to consider fish pets. In any case, I don't have any and don't really expect to anytime soon. 3 THINGS GOING ON IN MY LIFE: 1. Grad school is eating me, which probably isn't that surprising, as I think that's what it's meant to do. If I procrastinated less, I might have actual free time, but as it is I only get free time by procrastinating on doing things I should be doing. 2. I'm planning on visiting people in New York City this December, probably around the 19th-20th. If you're going to be there in that time frame and want to get together, let me know. 3. Uh, I'm trying to do science and I think I'm still alive? PARENTS: Are still in New Carrollton, PG County. CLOSE FRIENDS: I have local and distant friends that I care about a lot. But I'm not the sort to sit down and make a list, so I'm not sure what to write here. I guess I could point out that since it's December I'm trying to send everyone I know a card/letter, which is probably an impossible task. But if you want one from me, please send me your mailing address. | | Monday, June 8th, 2009 | | 1:33 am |
| | Monday, April 13th, 2009 | | 2:43 am |
Grad School
Well, it looks like I've finally made a decision. I'm not sure it's right, but I don't know how to be sure about that except to see how I feel about it in ten years. | | Tuesday, November 11th, 2008 | | 5:01 pm |
| | Saturday, December 22nd, 2007 | | 11:54 am |
Happy Solstice!
The Shortest Day
by: Susan Cooper
And so the Shortest Day came and the year died
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen;
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive.
And when the new year's sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, revelling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing behind us - listen!
All the long echoes, sing the same delight,
This Shortest Day,
As promise wakens in the sleeping land:
They carol, feast, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends,
And hope for peace.
And now so do we, here, now,
This year and every year.
I'm back in Maryland now and will be going back to California on the morning of Jan 4th, so if anyone wants to get together for lunch or to go biking or anything in the meantime, you should let me know. Happy Holidays! | | Monday, March 5th, 2007 | | 7:37 am |
RMS ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman) gave a talk at Caltech on Tuesday that I attended. I don't know if you've heard of RMS, but he's very famous and generally admired among students here, especially CS majors. For some reason, they decided to hold it in the CS department lecture hall, 74 Jorgensen, which is fairly small and only held about half the number of people who attended. I managed to get a seat, but a lot of people ended up standing in the hall. The subject of the talk was the history of copyright law and how he believes it should be changed. he argued that there are basically three types of material currently copyrighted: reference materials (he included all software in this category), expressions of opinions, and artistic expression. He said that for the first category, people should have the right to reproduce, disseminate, and change works however they wish, and for the second and third categories, people should be allowed to disseminate but not change the works while they were under copyright. He also said that he didn't think copyrights should last for more than 10 years. Some parts of his plan strike me as questionable--my main concern is how authors are going to make money under his plan. Stallman was definitely an unusual lecturer. When the person introducing him mentioned that he'd won an award named after Admiral Grace Hopper, he immediately started hopping around on one foot for about thirty seconds. He also started his talk and then, about a minute into it, dug into his backpack, pulled out his laptop, and checked to make sure he was giving the right talk and explained that sleep deprivation confused him. Being sleep deprived is understandable, given that apparently he doesn't actually have a home, just and office. He also made a point of standing in the doorway while talking so the people in the hallway could hear him, which was nice. At one point he stopped his talk to ask if he could have a Pepsi--he'd noticed people in the audience drinking them--and to mention that he didn't drink Coke because the company is evil and that http://www.killercoke.org/ had more information. When he was asked whether he wanted sugar-sweetened or corn-syrup sweetened Pepsi, he said he hadn't known there was a choice. It was explained that the sugar-sweetened stuff is from Mexico (CDS orders the stuff from across the boarder because a lot of people apparently think it's better than the syrup-sweetened stuff one can normally buy in the US) and he tasted both and decided that he wasn't sure which one he preferred, but since he wouldn't be able to get the sugar-based stuff very often, it was just as well that he didn't prefer it. Someone then pointed out that kosher Pepsi is also sugar based, which led him to ask why corn isn't kosher. (I looked it up online--it turns out that corn is usually kosher, but that it's not "kosher for Passover" because, during Passover, Jews aren't supposed to eat anything containing grain except for unleavened bread because it might contain leavening agents. Apparently this applies to things like corn syrup that obviously wouldn't contain leavening agents, but doesn't apply to carbonation, which basically is a leavening agent. Unfortunately, I had to leave the lecture early because I had to go to chemistry lab, so I missed the questions at the end. | | Friday, March 2nd, 2007 | | 4:50 pm |
Meme from Allandaros
Leave me a comment saying, "Interview me." I respond by asking you five questions. You WILL update your LJ with the answers to the questions. Or not, as is your choice. I don't believe in forcing memes on others. Peaceful propagation! :D You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the post. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions. 1. I've heard all about the various MIT traditions. But I don't know much about the CalT traditions. What's one which you think is really cool, aside from the Valkyries thing? Let's see. I like the oral culture associated with the steam tunnels, but I don't know if that qualifies as a tradition. Basically it's a collection of stories which are told about different parts of the tunnels (which themselves are never mapped--everything about the tunnels is done completely orally). Ditch day is neat--basically the seniors leave campus for a day third term and leave behind campus-wide scavenger hunts and puzzles for groups of ~5-10 underclassmen to solve.2. Why lemurs? I don't have a good answer to that. I do, however, have a bad answer to it which also happens to be true. In 11th grade, when my quizbowl team was trying to organize a high school tournament, I got angry at people for messing around and not getting things that needed to get done done, and I screamed at them. They decided my scream sounded like a lemur's, and when it was noticed that a lot of my other behavior was lemurlike (I climb on everything, including chairs I'm sitting in.), it was concluded that I must be a lemur. The name Ratatosk comes from a question at PACE to which the correct answer was Ratatosk, as the question stuck everyone in the room as incredibly humerous and I needed a lemur name.3. How'd you get introduced to filk? I read Fallen Angels by Niven, Pournelle, and Barnes. One of the subsubplots involves a character who's trying to write a filk song, and the characters use lyrics from Julia Ecklar's "The Phoenix" as part of a secret message and lyrics from Cynthia McQuillin's "Starfire" as a passphrase. This led me to use Google to find as much filk music as I could. Also, generalized plug for Fallen Angels.4. What would be your ideal job? I really have no idea. I'm not competant at anything involving interaction with humans. Perhaps xenodiplomacy could be interesting. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be an option this century. At the moment I'm planning to do chemistry research because my dad told me to and I don't have any better ideas.5. What was your first reaction to seeing the PICTURE going along with that article about confiscating LEGOs? I don't think I looked at the picture before you mentioned it. When I did it reminded me of a lego set advertisement--normal people don't actually use people with Legos that much. | | Saturday, February 17th, 2007 | | 3:54 pm |
| | Thursday, December 14th, 2006 | | 12:29 am |
Winter Break
Hello, various humans and non-humans. I'm back in town and will be around until December 22nd. If anyone wants to get together, let me know. I'll be attending Mr. Menella's review session on Saturday (it's at 9 AM and in Mr. Samordic's new room as far as I know). | | Monday, October 9th, 2006 | | 7:34 pm |
| | Tuesday, October 3rd, 2006 | | 9:03 am |
| | Saturday, August 26th, 2006 | | 12:13 am |
Home, finally!
I'm finally home for Summer break. I returned by Amtrak: I took the Southwest Chief from LA to Chicago and the Capitol Limited from Chicago to Washington, DC. The ride home was enjoyable--I got to meet some interesting people, I got to see parts of the country I'd never seen before, and during my layover in Chicago I got to go to the top of the Sears Tower. I took a lot of photos, which I will put online as soon as I have a chance. Given that I have AOL dial-up at home, that may take a while, though. If anyone's in the DC area and wants to get together with me, let me know. I will be returning to Caltech around September 15th. Current Music: "The Wabash Cannonball" | | Sunday, July 2nd, 2006 | | 1:18 pm |
| | Saturday, July 1st, 2006 | | 12:08 pm |
STS-121
Discovery's launching around 3:15 PM EDT / 12:15 PM PDT Sunday. http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.htmlYe gods of old who know us well, who guarded us on the seas, Who guided us by wind and stars to distant unknown isles; Ye who led us through the night, who brought us the gentle breeze, Who held the storms, who held the waves, and brought us safe to port: For those who fly beyond this world, who travel beyond the skies, We pray you guard, we pray you guide them safe and sound to home. Ye gods of old who know us well, who guarded us from above, Who kept our cities safe from harm and gave us crops to sow; Ye who gloried in our vict'ries, who spoke to us of thy love, Who held famine, who held disease, and kept us safe to grow: For those who fly beyond this world, who travel beyond the skies, We pray you guard, we pray you aid them as they pass your realm. | | Tuesday, June 20th, 2006 | | 5:52 pm |
"I always wait for the longest day of the year and then miss it. Don't you always wait for the longest day of the year and then miss it?" MAKE A NOTE, IT'S TOMORROW. | | Wednesday, May 17th, 2006 | | 2:33 pm |
Ditch Day
Unfortunately, I expected Ditch Day to be Thursday, so I agreed to come in today to make up for missing chem 10c last week because my mentor had a meeting she had to go to. So I got to do Run a Silica Column, The Stack. | | Monday, May 15th, 2006 | | 11:30 pm |
I just got back from my geology 1 field trip. It was amazing. I don't have much time to write, but photos can be found here: http://s29.photobucket.com/albums/c281/ratatosklemur/Geology%201%20Field%20Trip/Mostly the photos are neat, but the Trona ones are depressing. First, because the reason we went there was to see evidence that just 10,000 years ago the place was a lake 200 m deep. Now it's a desert. Amazing what a few degrees increase in global mean temperature can do. Second, because the lakebed there is a chemical mine more valuable in today's dollars than the California motherload. Even though huge profits are being made off the mine there, the town is one of the most economically-depressed looking places imaginable. Someone's getting rich, but the miners are clearly very poor, besides living in an environment that pretty well approximates hell--it's incredibly hot (was over 100 when we visited, and from the run-down look of the houses, I don't think they had air conditioning) and the soil and the dust that blows off the lake are toxic. | | Friday, May 12th, 2006 | | 1:33 am |
| | Saturday, April 22nd, 2006 | | 2:11 am |
Prefrosh Weekend
Well, Prefrosh Weekend 2006 is over. I didn't get to host a prefrosh, which is really too bad, since chances are strongly against me living somewhere where I'll be able to host one in the future. It was still fun, though. I did three tunnel tours--one last night, two tonight, and played in Lloyd's Capture the Flag game. It was the first time I'd played Capture the Flag here and it was really fun. I need to do a bunch of homework now, though. | | Sunday, April 16th, 2006 | | 2:54 am |
Build Interhovse, Frosh!
Today was Interhovse. It went well. I didn't really help much with the construction--certainly not as much as I should've--but I did nail cleanup duty in the afternoon and I helped Jason and Andrea and Dahvyd fire off model rockets over the Steele House backyard where the party was held and onto Holliston. Also got to watch a group of moles fireing confetti, fruit-loops, and newpaper from the Blacker Cannon, which was hidden inside a fake tank. Overall it went well, but now I'm tired and have a lot of work to get done. |
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