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July 30, 2007

The Joy of (New) Mac

[On location in Cumberland, Wisconsin]

I realize I've had a distinct lack of bloggish activity on here lately, but I've been crazy-busy. I had wanted to get a post in before I left for home in Wisconsin, but that obviously didn't happen. There's a lot to cover, so here it goes.

First off, my new Macbook is here!! It arrived last Thursday, so on Friday night & Saturday morning I worked to get it all up-to-date with my data from my PowerBook and new versions of quite a few programs. So with all that I've now made the operational switch to my new Macbook! Hooray for new toys! I've noticed that my new machine is quite a bit faster, especially with iPhoto, which was getting dreadfully slow on my old machine with my 13,000+ pictures. And my new Macbook also has a built-in video camera, so I can video-chat with up to four people simultaneously in iChat. I think I'll be using the video chat feature a fair bit for sure! And then I still need to find a really short Phillips #0 screwdriver in order to switch out my computer's current memory with the new 2GB RAM that I bought (neither Radio Shack nor Office Depot nor Wal-Mart nor Lowe's has anything that'd work for me -- I drove around and checked them all Wednesday evening). And I still have to take my printer and my iPod out of their respective boxes and get them set up. I just haven't had time lately, believe it or not. So that might be a project for home, at least for the iPod. And I've gotta send in those darn mail-in rebates too, so I can get $300 back.

Chris & Amber came up for the weekend to visit. So partly because of that Caren organized a trip on Saturday morning to one of everyone's favorite places to eat in State College, Waffle Shop. And despite having a 12-person group, we all got our food within 10 or 12 minutes of ordering, so Waffle Shop maintained their reputation of excellent, fast service. It was so much food though... Then in the evening all the girls went out to a few bars for Anke's bachelorette party, while a few of us guys got together at Walter's place for Dave's bachelor party. We basically just hung out and whatnot, having some alcohol while playing Scattegories and then Hot Death Uno, it was a really fun night, though Vic & Chris got a bit frustrated at times how long a hand could last, hehe. Dave & Anke left on Monday for Germany, and they're gonna get married in Hamburg (where Anke's from) this weekend if I recall correctly. Congrats!

I finalized my thesis late last week, and bought three 500-page boxes of 100% cotton paper from Office Depot for it. Why did I need 1500 pages of expensive, nice paper? Well, because I needed to print out ten copies of my 143-pg thesis. Copies on nice paper for Joel, Sue, Dr Wyngaard, Dr Stauffer, Meteo, ARL, Thesis Office, myself and my parents, with an unbound copy on plain paper going to Meteo as well. What a pleasant way to spend an entire Sunday afternoon, ugh... But I had printer demons show up only during the first couple I printed out, and I was able to get them all done. I turned one copy into the Thesis Office on Monday (along with a $17 fee), and then on Wednesday I took six of the nice copies to ARL to get bound for free (charged to the grant I'm on), and then the other two (for me and my parents) I took to the HUB print shop to get nicer binding for "not free" (blue cover with white lettering and a PSU logo, instead of black with gold lettering and no logo). It's so nice to be done with my thesis finally! I haven't totaled up quite yet how much I spent on paper, binding, etc. to get it done, but it's not insignificant.

Caren's birthday was on Tuesday, but before Anke & Dave left for Germany, they stopped by Walker to deliver a cool Transformers cake for Caren, complete with an actual Optimus Prime transformer on top, haha.

We had two games this week for IM softball. On Monday we played another pretty bad team and won 14-3, with their runs scoring all in the top of the 1st off an error by Walter and some atrocious calls by the umpires (literally, they didn't know the rules, including what the foul line was or that a runner is out if he's struck by a batted ball before a fielder touches it, sigh). I batted 2-for-3 with a run scored, with a groundout to the pitcher and then singles up middle and through a hole at shortstop.

Then on Wednesday we had our toughest game of the year so far, although that's not saying much. We fell behind 5-0 after 3 innings, with all our hits right at their fielders (in the 1st I had my best-struck ball of the season, a fly to deep left, but the fielder managed to turn around and catch it on the run, and in the 3rd I struck out, eww), but then our bats got started, and we had a 5-run 5th inning to take a 7-5 lead (I had an RBI tapper right in front of the plate and later scored a run). In the 6th I had a 2-out RBI single to deep shortstop to put us up 8-6. Then in the 7th Nat hit his second home run of the game, a solo shot to give us back the lead 9-8. Talk about drama! But then in the bottom of the 7th, their first batter lined out to short, but then they got two singles to put runners on 1st and 2nd with one out, and then they had a walk-off two-run double to right-center, so we lost 10-9. Sigh. Talk about an IM heartbreaker. But even though we lost, it was still tons of fun to be in a close game like that for a change.

The moving season has begun. Of the four PSCGers, I've only been able to help Anna, unfortunately. When Steve & Liz moved out, I was at the GMU conference. Anna moved last Wednesday, and a whole bunch of people showed up to help. Matt & Joanna loaded their truck on Tuesday afternoon, and I was fully intending to help out for at least half an hour before leaving for Baltimore or whatever, but I got sidetracked by some friendly JWs from New York who were walkin around town. I wound up talking to them for over half an hour, except I didn't even know they were Jehovah's Witnesses until about 20 minutes into the conversation -- I just thought originally that they had a little funny theology on a couple things. I was just interested in talking to them and hearing more about what they had to say, so I could learn more about their positions on stuff, because I really didn't know very much of what they believed. Then they gave me a little booklet too, which was very... interesting. They certainly believe some off the wall stuff, though they have elements of other issues right. It's a curious mix, really. But anyway, I wasn't able to help Ed & Ellen move this Friday either, because I was in Cleveland for a baseball game. And then I won't be able to help Daniel & Katie move next week because I'll be in Wisconsin, but they have Air Force movers packing everything up for them anyway for their move to Shreveport.

On Tuesday afternoon, I went with (South African) Daniel, Ryan & Sarah down to Baltimore for the Orioles-Devil Rays baseball game. I originally had hoped to go to Toronto for the Blue Jays-Twins game that night, but gave up on that idea because I didn't think I could really afford to take two whole days off right before going away for two weeks. But anyway, Ryan really wanted to go to this game because it was the Hall of Fame sendoff for Cal Ripken Jr, and the second Cal Ripken Jr bobblehead night of the season. (The 2632 is on the Warehouse behind right field because Ripken played in 2632 consecutive baseball games at one point in his career, with the old record being 2130 games.) And we even got there early enough that each of us got one; for me, it was my first-ever bobblehead. The ceremony was cool too, and it was fun to see the stadium so full, and the fans go wild when all these all-time Orioles greats were introduced on the field or gave video messages to Cal. When the mayor of Baltimore was introduced to come to the stage to make some sort of proclamation, it was pretty humorous because she was soundly booed by the vast majority of the fans in attendance. I have no idea who she is or what she's done, but it was apparent that she's not well-liked! As for the game itself, it was a good one, with the O's scoring a few runs in the late innings to win 3-0. It was my second game ever at Oriole Park at Camden Yards (and my first-ever major league game that didn't involve the Twins), and I absolutely love that stadium, it's gorgeous. And it has some fantastic ballpark fare too, Boog's BBQ, but Daniel & I also wound up with the worst-ever service at another food stand (it wasn't a very long line, but it took us some pregame plus two full innings for us to get an order of fries). It was still a really fun night, I'm glad I went. We rolled back into State College a bit after 1:30am, so I was kinda tired at Walker on Wednesday!

Walker A/C update: It was on for an entire week before breaking again for a day back on Tuesday afternoon/Wednesday morning. But unless it broke again on Friday, it's been working since Wednesday midday.

With Arts Fest in the rear-view mirror, that means it's time for Wingfest! Both of the last two Thursdays I've gone out to Tussey Mountain with some meteo friends to enjoy a bunch of tasty wings. The admission this year is the same as it was last year ($5, with a free beverage), but this year wings are only 3/$1 instead of 4/$1. Also, there's no voting this year, they've made it purely a "festival," which is kind of a bummer. Also, they've only had three vendors both of these two weeks, and both Prospectors and Quaker Steak & Lube have been there both weeks too, whereas last year there were four new vendors each week. So while it's still fun and tasty to attend, it's lost some of the allure from last year. That, and it's rained on us both of the last two weeks, putting a bit of a damper on things.

Ever since Daniel got his orders earlier this summer that he's to move to Shreveport, Louisiana, on August 1st, I haven't been looking forward to this part of summer and having to say goodbye to Daniel & Katie. It's never fun to say goodbye, that's for sure, especially to good friends. It'll definitely be different when I get back to Penn State and they're not around, I'm really gonna miss them...

I was agonizing on Friday morning over whether or not to try to go to the Indians-Twins game over in Cleveland with Kerrie and [South African] Daniel, because we hadn't purchased our tickets yet and the weather forecast was looking really iffy for rain around gametime. So my decision was between going to Cleveland and hoping the game was still on, not going to the game but still heading west a bit and staying at a motel, or sticking around for another evening, going to trivia and whatnot (to get one more chance to hang out with Daniel & Katie), and then getting up super-early on Saturday and trying to drive the whole 950 miles back to Cumberland in one day (ugh...). So it was a really crazy morning, perseverating over that decision, packing all my stuff, taking care of other things that needed to be done before I left, and generally having the feeling of a chicken running around with my head cut off. But finally around noon I decided to go to the game, and we left at about 1:30.

Anyway, we got to Cleveland about four hours later, and finding a cheap parking spot was really painless. Jacobs Field is a really cool park too, and even has lots of picnic tables in the concourses for everyone, not just the people with super-expensive VIP tickets. And the concessions employees were very pleasant and polite too, much more so than in New York or Baltimore -- I really felt like I was back in the Midwest, haha. Our seats were pretty good too, along the first base line in the upper deck, looking out to the giant left-field scoreboard and the skyline of downtown Cleveland just beyond the left and center field walls. There was even a really cool fireworks display after the game too out in left field, and our seats were looking straight out at it. As for the game itself though, the Twins fell behind 10-0 (Boof kinda blew up), before finally making it almost "respectable" at 10-4. Before the Twins finally scored in the 7th, I had yet to see the Twins score in a game in person this year (they lost to the Yankees 8-0 in the other game I went to), so I was glad to see them get rid of that annoying goose egg. But it was still a really fun time we had in Cleveland, I'm glad I went. As for ranking the five MLB stadiums I've been to so far, I'll leave that for a future post.

We stayed overnight at a motel near Cleveland, and then it was off to Cumberland a bit before 9am. The drive was fairly uneventful, if long, except I was reminded once again of just how much I hate Chicago traffic. About 13.5 hours and 750 miles later, I was finally home. Home sweet Wisconsin! It'll sure be nice to be home for a week and a half or so.

Congrats on making it to the end of this unnecessarily-long post. I hope there were enough pictures to keep y'all entertained. :-P

Posted by Jared at 12:26 AM | Comments (0)

July 17, 2007

Icarus' First Photo-shoot

The Penn State intramural softball schedulemakers have put me in quite a pickle for the next few weeks. My games for church league softball are every week on Mondays at 6:30 through mid-August, but four of our five IM games were slotted for Mondays at 7:00pm. Argh. So I had to make a choice, and this week I chose Mid-Life Crisis, the meteo grads/staff team, because otherwise we wouldn't have had even a full team, due to some of our roster being out of town or otherwise unavailable for the game. It was a good start to the season for team meteo, as we beat a team of summer session freshmen 16-4 in 5 innings (you won't see a greater age difference on an IM field, probably). Walter's pitching was superb, inducing many pop-ups, and we would've shut them out if it weren't for a few overthrows here and there. Our offensive power game was in full swing too, with Brett and Nat hitting some bombs in the heart of our order. I didn't contribute a ton, playing left field (only had one ball kinda come my way and it dropped in right before I could get to it) and going 1-for-4 at the plate (lineout to left, fielder's choice grounder to short, groundout to the pitcher, and an infield single to 3rd) with two runs scored. The other team was a pretty inexperienced bunch; for example, on my tapper to the pitcher, there was nobody out and runners on 1st and 2nd, so he should've thrown either to 3rd or 2nd to force one of the lead runners, but instead he threw me out at 1st. Dumb play, but thank you. Daniel knocked in both of the lead runners on the next play, if I recall correctly.

After the game a few of us stuck around for a little extra batting practice, during which time I managed to sprain my left thumb (glove hand) while fielding a ground ball. So that's been a bit tender and sore ever since. Early today it hurt enough that I was wondering if there was a hairline fracture (a year ago I suffered a non-displaced hairline fracture on my left pinky while trying to catch a football), but as today went on it started to feel a bit better. You never really realize how often you use your left thumb for everyday tasks until it hurts too much to use it for much of anything. I'm hoping it'll be fine soon, because I have to play piano in church this Sunday...

Sprain and all, it'd appear that I made the right choice for which softball game to attend, because the church team had 17 or 18 players this week, and got crushed by St Paul's Methodist 33-2. Ouch. I think Ryan said tonight that one of their players had *five* ground-rule triples. Somehow I doubt I would've made a difference in the outcome. :-) Last week they only lost by 1 run to Faith Baptist, though, after making a valiant comeback.

Tonight my church had a big life group picnic out at Spring Creek Park, which I'd never been to yet. It's a really nice place, actually, and even has real water, which makes it a seeming rarity in central PA (or anywhere in Pennsylvania, for that matter). After the meal they had everyone play in a series of team games, including an M&M relay (six people per team, each person eats all the M&Ms of one color (more than one bag's worth) from a big container-full before handing off to the next person -- my team won!), a boat race (each three-person team was given ten minutes to construct a "sea-worthy" boat out of random stuff, like foam, straws, popsicle sticks, etc., and then float it down 50-100 yards of Spring Creek -- the boat that Ben, Chris & I built started out well, but listed and was the first to sink when it got rammed by another boat, haha), and a cherry pit spitting contest (stand behind a line, aim for them to land on a plate a few feet in front of you -- we tied for first in that). It was a fun time hanging out with everyone outside of church.

Caren just adopted/bought a kitten today! She's named him Icarus, and tonight she invited a few people over to admire and play with the kitten, who was so excited and playing so hard that he was panting, haha. At first he was only interested in the toy with a bell, and then when Caren put a collar on him with a bell, he really didn't know what to do because the jingles kept following him. :-) But eventually he started to figure out that there were indeed fun non-bell toys, and that the little treats actually were edible, hehe. Caren's really proud of him, and he's a really cute kitten!

CREM update: Last Friday, maintenance came and replaced the water- and urine-stained ceiling tiles in our bathroom. Only took them 12 days to get to it after our initial complaint, and it would've been longer if Petters hadn't gone in there the day before to complain to them again.

Walker A/C update: The A/C miraculously came on yesterday morning around 10:30am, and surprisingly stayed on all day. It was even still on this morning, but then crapped out sometime around midday again. So if you add together all the hours this month that the A/C has actually been working in Walker Building, you'd get an aggregate total of about three days. And July 17th is just about in the books. This is really frustrating. Not that I'm ever eager to go to Walker, but I'm really not looking forward to tomorrow in the office...

I forgot to mention in my last post that I saw "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" in the theater on Friday with Kerrie, Caren, Walter, Anke, Dave, Ben & Margaret. I still haven't read any of the books, and only saw the fourth movie, but I was still interested in seeing this, the fifth flick. So while I didn't know any of the story in advance, and only kinda knew a little of the story from the last movie, I was mostly able to follow what was going on, except for a couple insider-type references. And I thought it was a pretty decent movie overall, but just not quite as good as the fourth one. I'd give it three and a half stars out of five. Walter panned it, but that was just because he'd read the book *right* before going to see it, so all the book's intricate details were fresh in his mind (and it was the first time he'd seen one of the movies *after* reading the book). Of course a two-hour movie's not gonna capture an entire 700-page book! That's the whole problem with books-turned-movies, because they can only capture the "Cliff's notes" version of the high points. One of the few movies that I thought did a pretty decent job at capturing the book was "Lord of the Rings," and even that had its issues with book fidelity (Faramir taking Frodo, Sam & Gollum to Osgiliath, anyone?). But anyway, I'd still recommend the new "Harry Potter" film to people, it's an entertaining film even though it has very little humor in it. It's a good deal darker than the fourth movie, but that's because the story itself is darker; I'm told it's darker yet in the sixth book, and will probably be pretty dark for at least a good portion of the seventh and final book, which is being released this weekend. Maybe someday I'll get around to reading the books, but right now I've got a lot else on my plate to worry about...

...Like my iPod and RAM, which just arrived today. :-) The printer and iPod case should arrive tomorrow, and the laptop should get here on Thursday, probably. Woohoo! I still haven't taken the iPod out of the box, because I've been busy doing other stuff all day. While everyone else is off reading "Harry Potter" this weekend, I'll be playing with my new toys!

Posted by Jared at 11:54 PM | Comments (1)

July 15, 2007

Avoiding Downtown, Sort of

I'm really glad the GMU conference is done now. It was fun listening to the occasional good/interesting presentation, but unfortunately those were somewhat few and far between. That was especially true on the last day, when so many of the talks seemed to be more about CFD (computational fluid dynamics) than anything else, which is just a bit too technical and irrelevant to my research to hold my attention early in the morning (or late in the afternoon) on the third day of a conference. I think most of our brains basically got full sometime on the third day too, so we were more than glad to pack up and head back to State College!

Of course, the A/C was still broken in Walker, so I didn't go in at all on Friday. It did get fixed around midday though. Supposedly. So I was hoping to work on some thesis corrections on Saturday in my air conditioned office, but when I got there I discovered the A/C was off. Again. But it's usually off on weekends, so I don't know if it's broken (again) or just turned off. Guess I'll find out in the morning...

[UPDATE 16 July 2007 at 8:02am: Just got an email from Rhonda (one of the department secretaries), and the A/C is indeed broken *again*. OPP doesn't know how long it'll take to fix it, even temporarily. So apart from two three- or four-hour stints, the A/C has been broken since July 2nd, ARGH!]

This was the one weekend a year tailor-made to avoid downtown State College - the annual Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts. Every year Arts Fest draws hundreds of exhibitors/vendors showing off and selling their work, from various brooms to jewelry to bowls to photos and paintings and all sorts of random knick-knacks. Arts Fest also draws tens of thousands of visitors to State College, making downtown an absolute zoo. I hadn't planned on going at all, but I did take a gander at some of the booths on my to Walker on Saturday, and then I walked around a bit more in the early evening with Daniel, Katie & Kerrie too. Even though it's really crowded and difficult to get around State College for a few days because of it, it still is fun to take a couple hours wandering around and admiring everyone's fine work that's being sold for really high prices, while of course marveling at how on earth some things can possibly be bought by anyone because they're so... unique, shall we say. It's also fun to look at all the photography booths and get ideas for types of photographs, frames and mattes I can do for my stuff. Wasn't getting a bunch of prints and frames/mattes supposed to be on my summer to-do list (along with a lot else that hasn't gotten done yet)? Hmmm...

I got my destroyed by Ben on the tennis courts yet again today, 6-1, 6-0, 6-0, 6-0. Ouch. But as Ben said, the scores weren't indicative of how close a bunch of the games were -- there were at least five other games, I believe, in which I was up 40-15 before crumbling. And my serve was pretty good in the first set before it totally disappeared in the 2nd and 3rd sets, to my great frustration. Things were looking up when I tied Ben at 1-1 in the first set, but little did I know that'd be the only game I'd win all afternoon, as he rattled off the next 19 games. Sigh. Maybe next time I'll put a crooked number up in a set, I've gotta keep trying!

After a lot of thinking and talking about it, I finally ordered a new computer yesterday! My 15" Apple PowerBook G4 laptop still works great and everything, but since it's three-plus years old and whatnot, I figured there'd be no better time to sell it, get decent value back, and supply around half of the cost of upgrading. So what did I get? A white 13" Apple Macbook laptop, with a 2.16 GHz dual-core Intel Core 2 Duo processor and a 160 GB internal hard drive. It also came with 2x512 MB of RAM, but to upgrade to the maximum of 2x1 GB of RAM from Apple, it would've cost over $150. I thought that was a tad expensive, so I did some looking, and found some compatible RAM from Crucial for $106. Not bad. But wondering if I could do even better than that, I did some more looking, and found the same Crucial RAM at NewEgg for $96, but after mail-in rebates, it'll only set me back $56! A hundred dollar savings over Apple's prices ain't bad, that's for sure! So then since I'm a student buying a new Mac this summer, I also got a $100 mail-in rebate for a printer, and a $199 mail-in rebate for an iPod, so I got a Canon photo/document printer for free, and a 30 GB video iPod for just $50! Not a bad haul, I'd say! I can't wait for all my new toys to come! Once I get everything working on my Macbook then I'll put my PowerBook up for sale on eBay to see how much I can get for it.

Posted by Jared at 11:47 PM | Comments (0)

July 11, 2007

GMU Redux

[On location in Fairfax, Virginia]

I have to say that all the presentations by or involving Penn Staters have certainly raised the bar on the average quality of the presentations here at the 11th Annual George Mason University Conference on Atmospheric Transport & Dispersion Modeling. It might sound like I'm bragging by saying that, but it's the plain truth that all the PSU presentations have been among the best talks at the entire conference thus far. While the presentations have been overall better than they were last year when Walter & I came down, they're still mostly subpar. But what else can be expected from an academic conference? The conference started yesterday, and Kerrie spoke at 9:00am, Sue did hers at 9:45am, I went at 11:00am, and Walter presented at 1:30pm. And then today Anke gave her talk at 11:15am (I would've given a link to everyone's presentations on the GMU website, but a username/password is required to access them (lame!!), and I'm not sure if it's okay for me to give that out here on my blog...). So now we're all done and can relax! Everyone's talks went really well. Afterwards I had two people come up to me from the Air Force Weather Agency and the National Ground Intelligence Center and ask me for a copy of my thesis, and mention possibilities for data/projects I could use for my Ph.D. research. I don't know if those options will turn out to be better than what Joel, Sue, Dave & I brainstormed last week though, but it's all still cool stuff to be thinking about.

We're 3-for-3 so far on dinner choices down here in Fairfax, they've all been awesome for food. On Monday night after we got checked into our hotel we went to PJ Skidoo's, an awesome steak/ribs/pasta place that Walter & I discovered last year. I got a full rack of ribs, and let me tell ya, that was the biggest rack I've ever seen at a restaurant! Last night we went to Court Side Thai (more on that shortly), and tonight we went to Dolce Vita, an excellent Italian place. So much food... :-) Thank goodness for per diem though!

Last night we (sans Andrew & Jon, who took the metro into DC to visit other people) met up at Court Side Thai (yes, even Walter came to a Thai restaurant and found something he liked!) with my friend Betsy from Gustavus (who just recently got a job as a digital serials librarian at George Washington University here in DC) and her friend Sean. It was all kinda planned on the fly, so Betsy & Sean got there earlier than I'd expected, basically right when we got back to the hotel from the conference. So I rounded everyone together but had to drop Andrew & Jon off at the Vienna train station first. Because of all that, by the time we got to the restaurant, Betsy & Sean had been there for about an hour. Before we left for the train station we called Sue & Brian and told them to meet us at the Thai restaurant in 20 minutes, which is whenabouts we'd be getting there. So after we've been at the restaurant for 15-20 minutes, we really start to wonder where they are. We gave them a call, and they were waiting at another Thai restaurant a block or two away, haha. Apparently neither of us communicated *which* Thai restaurant we were going to, we just assumed the other knew which one we were talking about (mostly because we didn't know there was more than one!). :-) But all was well, and we had a wonderful dinner. It was good to see Betsy again too and catch up with her a bit, even though Betsy let it slip to Kerrie, Anke & Walter that I once upon a time had played the card game Magic with my roommates at Gustavus. Sigh. Kerrie & Anke loved that tidbit entirely too much. :-) But anyway, just as we got our food, Sean saw his boss getting takeout at the restaurant, so his boss came over and introduced himself to everyone (it was an interesting chain for him to follow, from Betsy, Sean's friend, to me, Betsy's friend from college in Minnesota, to everyone else, my friends and colleagues from Penn State -- three or four degrees of separation right there!), and then proceeded to buy us all a glass of wine! (It was really good white wine, too!) That was so nice of him, and of course really unexpected for us. Sean said he's a generous guy though, and likes to do things like that, so that's cool. I told him he should definitely make sure he keeps that job, haha! Anyways, I'd say the whole evening worked out just fine, considering all the extra hassle early on. :-)

Well, we've got one more day of presentations to listen to, and then we'll be driving back to Penn State tomorrow evening. Just in time to get back to the broken A/C of Walker Building for a day of work on Friday, ugh. Come to think of it, I'm gonna try to work on thesis corrections from home on Friday, I've decided. I'm not going in there unless absolutely necessary!

Posted by Jared at 10:02 PM | Comments (0)

July 08, 2007

Yankee Stadium and the 4th of July

My trip to Yankee Stadium on Tuesday was really awesome! I went to the game with Jacob, Daniel, Kerrie, Caren & Nat, and it was a fantastic time! We met up with Caren at a mall parking lot north of the city that had a free park-and-ride. From there we took a bus across the Tappan Zee Bridge to White Plains, hopped on a train down to 125th St in Harlem, then took the "4" line subway to Yankee Stadium. It was all quite painless really, and we got to our seats at about 6:30, so we had plenty of time to grab an italian sausage for $7.50 and a 20-oz. Coke for $4.50 (what a ripoff, but not unexpected prices at a ballpark in New York City). Anyway, our seats were in the last row of the right-field bleachers, and I thought they were actually pretty good seats. And the weather was perfect too, mostly clear with temps in the mid-70s at game time. A gorgeous day for a ballgame!

One of the first things we discovered is that the bleacher seats have a code of conduct, since one of the many cops there went around informing everyone of the rules before the game. First, saying the word "suck" (as in "you suck!") will get you ejected. Second, pointing at someone during the song "YMCA" after the 6th inning will get you ejected. (We didn't understand that one at the time. After we got back to State College, Jeff Grabon informed us that the reason for that is Yankee fans had a habit of pointing at fans wearing opposing jerseys (such as himself in a Red Sox jersey) and chanting "Whyyyy Are You Gay?" instead of "YMCA," so when George Steinbrenner got wind of that, he wasn't enthralled with that sort of behavior in his stadium.) Third, any form of profanity will get you ejected. Fourth, booing can get you ejected. Fifth, standing on the bleachers can get you ejected. Sixth, alcohol is not allowed (darn, I can't buy that $10 bottle of beer!).

We found out very quickly that the cops meant it when they said they'd eject you for violating the code of conduct. In fact, we didn't even have to wait for the start of the game to find out! You see, Jacob & I were wearing our Twins gear and were getting heckled a fair bit, as would be expected. But then a group of high schoolers of college kids came walking up the aisle to their seats at the left end of our bleacher. When they saw us, they started chanting "asshole! asshole!" and they were eventually joined in by a couple people at the right end of our bleacher. I of course was egging them on, kinda popping my jersey and whatnot, but the cop was not amused, and after this had been going on for about ten seconds, promptly kicked out the group of students that started the chant. Nothing happened to me because I wasn't doing anything crude or obscene or whatever, but we all thought the whole episode was quite amusing. :-) We still took a lot of good-natured heckling (such as "Torii/Morneau/Santana are gonna look really good in Yankee pinstripes in a couple years!"), including from one student a few rows in front of us, who made a special point of turning around and jawing at me every single time something good happened for the Yankees. Apparently there was a cop who noticed this and was watching us like a hawk to see if one of us would escalate it in some way, but I wasn't that stupid. I'd either ignore the kid or have some sort of comeback to egg him on a bit. It was a fun little game. :-)

As for the game itself, not much went right for the Twins. Trailing 1-0 in the 4th inning, the Twins loaded the bases with one out, but then Torii Hunter hit into an inning-ending double play. In the bottom half of the inning, the Yankees came through for another two runs to make it 3-0. At that point I pretty much felt like the Twins were done, because they had Wang (the Yankees starting pitcher) on the ropes, let him off the hook, and then let the Yankees seize all the momentum by scoring. It was a huge swing. And then the wheels officially came off in the 6th inning, when New York scored another five runs to go up 8-0, which was the final margin. While the on-field result left much to be desired, I was still glad I got to see Yankee Stadium buzzing (who wants to go to any stadium when it feels like a morgue?) and a fair bit of offensive excitement, including a home run (just for the wrong team). All things considered, this was the most fun atmosphere I've ever experienced at a baseball game. After the game I spent a few minutes down at the railing looking all around, just taking in the experience of being in historic Yankee Stadium. I can't believe they're building a new ballpark across the street (due open 2009), this one's just fine, and it's a baseball landmark!

As flawlessly as our experience with public transit was on the way to the game, it was the opposite after the game. First, I got turned around and didn't think we needed to take the subway back toward Manhattan from Yankee Stadium, so we wound up going two stations the wrong direction before realizing our mistake. So we hopped on a subway going back the other way, and after packing out the car at Yankee Stadium again, Jacob & I could barely see Nat, and couldn't see Caren, Kerrie or Daniel at all. A couple stops later, I looked up at the marquee in the train, and it said "125th St." Thinking this was our stop, I grabbed Jacob and we pushed our way out the doors just before they closed. We instantly realized that nobody followed us out, and quickly realized why: signs saying "138th St" adorned all the walls of the station. We'd gotten off at the wrong stop! (As it turns out, I'd missed the marquee message immediately prior to "125th St," which read "The next stop is.") So we waited 15 minutes in this stuffy and absolutely dead station (there was only a cop, an engineer, and maybe one other person in the entire station) before another subway came to take us to 125th. When the doors opened at 125th, directly in front of us was a bench on which Nat, Daniel, Kerrie & Caren were sitting and applauding us for finally arriving -- talk about perfect timing/positioning! So we all had a good laugh about that, and then had to wait a bit for the train to White Plains. That came 10 minutes early (so we were unsure it was the right train), and got us to White Plains a full 10 minutes before the next Tappan Zee Express bus was scheduled to come. But that time came and went, as did an additional 40 minutes or so, before the bus finally came (either 40 minutes late or 15 minutes early, depending on your perspective). All told, it took us three hours to get back to our cars at the mall after leaving the stadium, it was 1:30am! Then Kerrie went to stay at Caren's place just north of the mall, while the rest of us drove down to Nat's place just over an hour south of there in Jersey; it was almost 3am when we got to his house, we were so tired. We were grateful for a free place to stay the night, and Nat's dad even made us a really nice brunch in the morning! We got back to State College about 4pm on the 4th.

The weather was kinda drippy and I was pretty tired, so I didn't go out to any of the four July 4th cookouts I'd been invited too, oh well. I did make my way down to the Central PA 4th Fest fireworks with Jon, Daniel, Kerrie, Jacob & Anke, though. We found a spot on the College Ave side of the baseball stadium, about 50 yards from the line which we couldn't go past. That meant that we were able to see all the low fireworks that were blocked by the stadium from our vantage point last year. And even though there a few sprinkles during the fireworks, it was an awesome show! Last year's was great, but I thought this year's display was clearly better than last year, definitely making the State College fireworks worth their national top 10 ranking. The choreography to the music was very well-timed, and I took three kinda lengthy videos during "Rhapsody in Blue," "1812 Overture" and whatever was playing during the Grand Finale. Large portions of the 45-minute display would be like a grand finale at any other town's display, but they were just part of the normal show here. And then the Grand Finale was truly spectacular! I'll mention it in a future post when I get around to uploading my videos of the fireworks to my website.

This afternoon I failed yet again to win multiple games in a set from Ben in tennis, falling to him 6-0, 6-1, 6-0. In my defense, I was feeling really crappy the first couple sets in particular. My tummy wasn't too happy with me playing tennis in 90-degree heat, but I think that was actually more of a function of the huge lunch I had at Green Bowl after church with Ryan, Sarah, Chris & Ryan's friend from Boston. That might not have been the smartest thing I've ever done. Note to self: don't eat a huge meal right before playing tennis when it's really hot and/or humid out.

Back on Monday I played my first full game of the year for church softball, against Oakwood Presbyterian at Boalsburg. I caught the three fly balls I had a chance at in left field (all differing levels of adventurousness), though I did also let a couple balls get past me somehow, which really frustrated me. I didn't do much better at the plate though, going 1-for-3 (popout to short right, single to center, flyout to right), but our whole offense was a bit too anemic once again to overcome our too-many errors, as we lost 17-5. Sigh. I'll have to miss the game this week against Faith Baptist, because I'll be heading down to DC for the GMU AT&D Modeling Conference.

Another reason to be excited about going to the GMU conference next week, even though it's gonna be in the 90s, is that the air conditioning system in Walker Building has been broken since Tuesday, except for a three-hour window on Friday from noon-3pm when it broke again. It's been absolutely unbearable in Walker. On Friday afternoon when I left, my office was back up to 81 degrees, and offices on the other side of the building were over 90 degrees. That's completely unacceptable, and nobody can get any work done when it's that hot (it's even warmer on the floors above us). Computers and other equipment start malfunctioning too, so it's just not a good situation. I wouldn't be surprised next week if Chuck tells everyone to shut off their computers and stay home if the A/C can't be fixed. You know it's bad when, in summer on a hot and/or humid day, you have to open the window or walk outside to cool off. I was just in there tonight to help Kerrie with some last-minute SCIPUFF/HPAC stuff before the GMU conference, and the A/C is still broken. It's now up to 84 degrees in my office. If I wouldn't have shut my computer off in there this afternoon it'd be whirring loudly just like all the other computers are that are still on. I'll only be in for a token appearance tomorrow, especially since I still have to pack and run a couple errands.

[UPDATE 9 July 2007 at 10:22am: Rhonda just sent out an email to the department informing us that OPP has said the A/C will be down for the rest of the week. Absolutely ridiculous.]

Anyway, if I get around to it I'll try to post once from GMU. It should be a fun time, with Walter, Kerrie, Anke, Andrew & Jon (ARL student I don't know) going, plus Sue & Dave's new employee Brian G. Walter, Kerrie & I all speak Tuesday (I go at 11am), and Anke speaks Wednesday, while Andrew & Jon are giving posters (which I did last year at GMU). It'll be my first-ever conference talk, I hope it goes fine!

Posted by Jared at 11:59 PM | Comments (4)

July 01, 2007

Happy Canada Day

Okay, so the good news is that some random stumbling drunk *didn't* find his way into our apartment and spray urine ALL OVER our bathroom (and I do mean all over -- pretty gross, I know), like I had originally thought at 1:30am Friday night when I got home. The bad news? It was the toilet in the apartment directly above us that overflowed and caused all that to leak through our ceiling. How did I come to this realization? I witnessed a sudden streaming of water and urine coming through our bathroom ceiling this afternoon, causing pretty much an identical mess to what I came home to on Friday night. Therefore, I feel safe in discarding my stumbling-drunk-intruder theory, since I was pretty sure I had locked the apartment when I left for trivia on Friday night anyway (after all, I don't recall ever *not* locking the apartment when I've been the last one to leave). So anyway, I called CREM (Continental Real Estate Management, our landlord) maintenance and they came out pretty quick, but the guy said I had to clean the mess up -- *again* -- (which wasn't caused by me), and that there was nothing that could be done to prevent it happening again. I find that very, very odd and shady. To me it seems that as long as it is not due to the negligence of a tenant, the landlord should be responsible for disinfecting/cleaning it up and fixing the problem (maybe it's a broken pipe or the upstairs toilet has something physically wrong with it??). I mean, it's a health hazard, for crying out loud! Yet our lease would seem to indicate otherwise. Here's the potentially pertinent item from our lease's "Rules & Regulations":

"40. Landlord or Agent shall not be liable for loss or damage to property of tenant caused by moths, termites, or other vermin, or by rain, snow or water, or stream that may leak into or flow from any part of said premises through any defects in the roof or plumbing, or from other sources."

I wonder if they'd try to say that sewage coming through the ceiling falls under the "penumbra" (a little SCOTUS humor there) of the term "water." But seriously, if a landlord isn't responsible for the condition of the plumbing in their building, who is?? I'm going to stop by the CREM office tomorrow and let them know I'm not particularly happy about this situation, and see if there is any recourse we can take. I mean, sure, in the first nearly 11 months that we've lived here we never had anything remotely like this happen, but now it's happened twice in the last three days. Very not cool. At the very least they should replace the water-damaged & urine-stained ceiling tiles soon, and not wait until we move out (which is a minimum of over a year away still). If CREM is unresponsive to our situation, I wonder if this story would raise any eyebrows at the State Dept. of Health...

On a far more pleasant subject, I got my Cootie Brown fix this weekend! Twice, no less. First, a bunch of us went to Bar Bleu after trivia on Friday night to check them out. And then (South African) Daniel & I went to hear them on Saturday evening at the Heister Street Stage at the Summer's Best Music Fest downtown here in State College. They were missing their saxophonist, but I thought they still sounded great! Unfortunately it was their only gig in State College all summer long, so who knows how long it'll be before I get to hear them live again. You really should work on gettin more shows in State College, Jacob! ;-)

I also watched my first rugby game on Saturday. Before Daniel & I went to the Cootie Brown show downtown, we went to Bill Pickle's to watch the match between the Wallabies (Australia) and the All Blacks (New Zealand). As usual, they didn't have the Setanta Sports announcers on at Pickle's, so it was a bit tough sometimes to figure out exactly what was going on for Nat & myself. Daniel was able to explain some of it, but there have apparently been a few new rules to go in place since he last saw a rugby game two years ago, and while he knows all the terminology and rules in Afrikaans, he's somewhat unfamiliar with some of the rules/terms in English. But it was still fun and I really enjoyed watching it. In the end the Wallabies came from behind to shock the All Blacks 21-15. Which side was I going for? Probably the All Blacks (I own a jersey of theirs, after all), though if I ever move to Australia I might have to "see the light" and change sides that I support, hehe. ;-) I'll definitely be back to catch more rugby, both rugby union and rugby league (for an explanation of the differences between the two, click here). In a future post I'll talk a bit more about one of the coolest traditions in all of sport: the Haka, as performed by the All Blacks immediately prior to every international match they play. There isn't a fight song or anything similar the world over that can top it!

Several people from Penn State Christian Grads are graduating and moving on this summer. Since several of them are moving away sometime this month, we decided it was high time to have a bit of a farewell party for them. So we got a bunch of ice cream, sprinkles, chocolate syrup and whatnot and had a fun little party before Bible study. Steve & Elizabeth even brought some "Canada cake" (complete with white frosting and a maple leaf made from red sprinkles, haha) to celebrate Canada Day, since Steve is Canadian and all. Well, I guess it's fine for America, Jr. to have their big day a few days before we in the USA have ours. Save the best for last, right? ;-) But it was a fun time, and we'll all be really sad to see them go. But such is the nature of being around a university, I guess. People just come and go (including me).

I don't know if I'll put up another post before then, so Happy Independence Day, everyone! And in less than 48 hours I'll be watching my first-ever game in Yankee Stadium, I can't wait! Go Twins!

Posted by Jared at 11:58 PM | Comments (4)