Trolling for summer work ideas

Hello World.

So here it is, Monday morning. I awoke to an amazing splitting headache, in a dorm-style room with too few blinds, too thin walls and with an amazing, tall, driven and educated woman at my side. This May morning feels like the kind of morning you sit out front of Hulings and listen to Rob Oden (dated reference, I know) pontificate about how today is the beginning of it all but that since the day you arrived at Carleton, you were destined for this change... Blah Blah Blah. It's just such a pretty day. Makes me love being alive, even with a hangover. (Undergrads can DRINK.)

(EDIT: Now that I'm an east coast kid, I use driven in senses other than the pejorative... What does that say about who I've become?)

So now that I've set the stage a little bit here, let me delve into the issue that brings me to post from work. I'm working this summer--my summer without an extended summer vacation--and have been charged with making a summer to-do list here at AU. I'm employed full-time and will be teaching five hours per week... which leaves 30 hours per week to do other things.

So, for everyone, what was the single thing that most improved your learning while at Carleton? (Sorry, it has to be a thing, not a person)

Now alienate most of my audience, scientists, what does your department have that you think my department needs? (I have a machine shop, I have unlimited internet hosting capabilities, I have a decent budget... but probably not enough to buy a set of PS3s and make a supercomputer. Sadly)

Now to alienate Will (are there any other non-physics scientists who read this blag?), Physicists, what do you think I should make? So far I've got a Bell-inequality lab, the bike thing I posted on facebook and an electromagnetic can crusher... I'm thinking E&M stuffs but am of course open to other fields. Maybe something RC that involves some servo motors?

If you have any ideas to help me on this quest, please let me know. I'll post video of my can crusher when it's done. And DAMN it's going to be cool. (Preview: it tears apart a can by discharging a fuck-ton of electricity through it, no contact needed between the can and the machine.)

Rants and Raves

Well, I'd like to go on record about a couple of things.

Rants:

-Streaming TV's advertisement creep

-Being stood up

Raves:

-Online dating

-Spring

Jolly (Roger) Times in NY

About time I got around to this...about damn time...

You guys probably already knew this, but over spring break Toto and I went road trippin' to NYC and Washington D.C.

I'm not going to write a whole lot about it because I've forgotten most of the relevant details, but we've got some pictures and a new tradition (probably, we'll see). Think Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants but less utterly lame and with A LOT more piracy.



Yup, that's me rocking the Stadium-110 Jolly Roger on the Brooklyn bridge in front of all of Manhattan and apparently feeling incredibly fucking sublime about the whole damn thing!

Nonberg, don't worry, you'll get your flag back...eventually...probably.



Toro!





As you've already inferred, NY was a lot of fun.

It was interesting driving in from New Jersey, which--near New York--was a massive industrial park/shit-hole. Then we payed something exorbitant like $8 to go through a tunnel and wound up right in the middle of Manhattan.

I found it pretty impressive how many people there are constantly streaming all over Manhattan no matter what the time of day or night.

We made it to all five boroughs (Queens for all of a 5 minute walk from Brooklyn to Manhattan), and saw lots of different neighborhoods (Dominican, Puerto Rican, Hasidic Jew, et alibi). We had a lot of good food. Good times all around.

This wins the prize for the best-intentioned-yet-most-poorly-executed street naming ever:



This little church has no business being in Manhattan between these giant skyscrapers:



No more than this turkey has no business hanging around outside the coast guard office there:



Finally, Grand Central Station is pretty sweet for several reasons. 1) This small dome-ceilinged part of the passageway around the main atrium (Toto will have to help me out with exactly where it is):



You can stand at one corner, and have someone else stand across the diagonal, then put your face a few inches from the wall as if you are being punished, and speak into the wall at normal volume. The person across from you will be able to hear you as if you are talking right next to them. Very cool.

And 2) sweet pictures like these:



There was lots more cool stuff, but after a few days we headed down to D.C. where we saw Elliot, Liz, Freho, Jen, and Barb which was equally awesome. Also, Ben's Chili Bowl; delicious. Maybe the best drunk food anywhere.

If you end up with a pirate flag sometime in the future, you know what to do.