Chicago

I have arrived in Chicago. I already screwed up big time by not getting a receipt for my cab ride from the airport, which cost $54, after tip. I am hoping they will be lenient with me, but I really f'd this one up.

Unfortunately, I am not being hosted by any graduate student. Instead, they have put me up at the I-House, along with four other prospectives. We each have our own rooms, and I have not as yet met any of the others. My room is sort of like a coffin, only a little bigger. It has no internet access, so my laptop is unfortunately not going to be particularly useful. However, I am currently writing from one of the computers in the computer lab. Since these computers have SSH installed on them, they are fairly useful (although they'd be more useful if they had Exceed as well).

As my graduate student friend from the Berkeley astro department (Nate) says, not being hosted by a student is a "big black mark". I can think of only two reasons why it would not happen. Either a) the current grad students have no desire to host prospectives, which could be due to a variety of reasons, none of which are positive; or b) the department did not offer the grad students the opportunity to host us. However, I'm pretty sure I was asked by the department if I wanted to stay with a grad student or be put up somewhere, which would tend to rule out option b.

Argh, I'm pissed about not getting that receipt.

AZ Impressions

Impressions from my visit to Arizona are up. Around 2500 words!

Vignettes

I have done a large number of things since my last post, and I'd like to head for bed asap, so I'll try to be quick.

Sunday I saw the Cal baseball team get slaughtered 14-3 by Oregon State. It wasn't exactly a pleasant game, with Cal doing virtually nothing all day offensively, making a few errors on defense, and pitching quite poorly overall. Still, Tiffany and I stayed for the whole game.

After the game, we headed over to the track. I ran a mile (well, 1600 meters) in 7:10. This means I lost my bet with Tiffany that I could not beat 7:30 without any training. I was out of breath afterwards, but I wasn't on the brink of death or anything, so I could probably break 7:00 without too much difficulty.

Today I worked a long, mostly frustrating day. One of those days where things just don't seem to fit, no matter how hard you think about them.

After work, I finished The Cunning Man, by Robertson Davies. It was a really good book, and in fact deserves more than a single vignette. Hopefully I will give it that in the upcoming days.

Just a couple hours ago, the astro department IM softball team emerged victorious from a game that began as a tight defensive battle but eventually turned into an offensive slugfest. The final score was 20-10, but that was thanks to a 12 run bottom of the fifth inning, prompting the mercy rule to take effect. Yes, heading into that inning, we were down by two runs, so the game was much closer than the score would indicate.

I leave Wednesday morning for the University of Chicago. I anticipate having my impressions of Arizona up before then.

In the meantime, check out two new picture galleries, one of my visit home to San Jose on March 20 and the other of the Arizona visit.

The Picture Becomes Clearer

Now that I am back from Arizona, I have a much clearer idea of where I want to go to grad school. I have basically decided against Hawaii, so I should give Gareth (the professor who was the liason for the prospectives) a call and let him know tomorrow. I have also found (see comments for March 22) out that Santa Cruz has no intention of offering me funding, so I would have to find outside funding to go there. Since I did not get the NSFGRFP, Santa Cruz is rather easily removed from the picture. (Actually, I'm still pondering visiting them, because they're so close and I've heard it's a good idea to make contacts in the Astronomical community.) I'm still on the waiting list at Washington, but the fact that their department is so small, in combination with the fact that they do not really do any instrumentation makes me think I would be happier at Colorado or Arizona anyway.

So that leaves Colorado, Arizona, and Chicago as the darkhorse. I visit Chicago next weekend. So I'll have to think about things the week after the Chicago visit, and then come to a decision by April 15th. I anticipate making up my mind before that deadline, but it's hard to say.

Arizona

Today I leave for Tucson, Arizona, to visit the Astronomy department grad school there. I'm looking forward to hanging out with Eric Nielsen (and particularly to disrupting his studies tonight for a midterm tomorrow!)---a friend of mine from my "long-removed" undergraduate days---and seeing the department in general. I think it will be a good visit.

I also received a notification today saying I was rejected by the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship committee. It would have been nice to receive outside funding for my life as a graduate student because then I would have had financial flexibility in terms of what advisor to work with. Now, however, I will have to work with someone who has enough money to pay me, which can often have restrictive implications.

The Waiting List

So I just got an email from some guy in graduate studies at UC Santa Cruz, offering me admission to the PhD program in Astronomy and Astrophysics. Kind of a strange email, actually. They said they couldn't offer me any money, but they did say they were looking forward to meeting me at the graduate orientation. The graduate orientation in September. Uh, right guys.

Anyway, there is something about being on the waiting list at a school that I just don't like. It's sort of an attitude like, 'why should I want to go to your school if you didn't think I was good enough to make the first cut, and the only reason you let me in was because people you wanted more chose to go elsewhere?' A good part of me feels this is bullshit. However, a number of other students echo similar sentiments as this. It's like, you spend so much time thinking about whether you would like to go to Colorado or Arizona, and then all of a sudden Santa Cruz says, 'Hey, what about us?' Well, at least visiting them should be easy.

Er

To complete the title of the last post, here are pictures of Tucker from my trip home on March 7th-8th.

Hawaii + Tucker Pictures

Pictures from my visit to the astronomy grad school at the University of Hawaii are up. Check them out here. Most of the pictures are either of or from Mauna Kea.

Weekend In San Jose

Tiffany and I spent the weekend in San Jose. Besides picking up a few important things like a hilarious Steve Martin CD, Nighthawks at the Diner (by Tom Waits), and tax papers, I came home because Tiffany was going to be in San Jose as part of an effort to increase recycling of plastic water bottles following races. On Saturday, she set up recycling bins at races in Oakland and Santa Cruz, did a little running in Santa Cruz, then drove to San Jose to spend the night at my house. Then on Sunday morning, she took her recycling bins to a race around downtown San Jose. Apparently, things went well (she even got free entry in the race along with a nice t-shirt).

Tonight we drove back to Berkeley, and during the course of the ride, my running abilities came up. Somehow, Tiffany has an inflated impression of my capabilities. She believes I can run a mile in under 7:30. I believe I will have a very hard time getting in under 8:00. So, we agreed to test this on the university's track. I'm not sure when we'll actually get around to this, but I'm looking forward to proving just how slow I really am.

Like The USPS

We deliver.

Notes from Hawaii can be found here.

Promise

A note by note account of my trip to Hawaii will be up tomorrow. I probably won't have time to upload pictures for awhile though...

Back

Well I still would choose Colorado over Hawaii. Seeing the telescopes on Mauna Kea did little to change my opinion. I was happy when I saw Hale Pohaku again (brining back great memories), but unfortunately there was not enough time to hike around. I wasn't particularly motivated because it was so cloudy up there that you couldn't see anything too far away. I took about something like 100 pictures, and I'll try to get them up sometime soon.

Surprise Surprise

Not very shockingly, I have little in the way of spare time here in Hawaii. Suffice to say, at this point, that I would choose Colorado over Hawaii if I had to choose now. Tomorrow we go to Mauna Kea to see the nice big telescopes over there. Apparently, we will be eating lunch at Hale Pohaku. The potential of once again hiking around in that area---and in particular, re-visiting this archealogical find---has me very nearly more excited than seeing the telescopes on the top of the mountain again.

Packed Up for Hawaii

I debated long and hard over whether to bring Baseball Prospectus 2004 with me on the trip to Hawaii, but in the end there just isn't enough room in my backpack.

A couple of people have brought up points against the "Hawaii is isolated" argument. I will attempt to address these sometime while I'm in Hawaii.

Hmm

I'm about to head off to my old co-op, Stebbins Hall, to potentially join a water balloon fight. As the weather in the bay area has been exceptionally nice this week, I think it should be a lot of fun.

Tomorrow I leave for Hawaii. Looking at the list of faculty at Hawaii, it appears there is more research going on there that I'd be interested in (compared to Colorado), but Hawaii is so isolated that I'm just not sure if I could be happy there. This visit should help me find out if the research is actually stuff I'd be interested in and also how isolated it is.

Like A Snake

I am now shedding dead, sunburnt skin like there's no tomorrow. It's quite a sight to see, really.

Last night, I had the pleasure of sitting in a semi-enclosed area surrounded by 10-15 people smoking cigarettes. I have always thought that smoking is a more disgusting trait than drinking, but then again, before I started drinking, I thought that drinking was disgusting. If you're someone who doesn't like the smell of alcohol, having a conversation with someone who is drinking can be nauseating. Nevertheless, I still believe that smoking is more disgusting. After I came back home last night, my clothes reeked of cigarette smoke. And that was just from sitting in the vicinity of other smokers. Imagine if I had been the one smoking! It'd take days just for my breath to recover. Smoking is simply more invasive.

And now for something... completely different.

Can’t buy me love, love,
Can’t buy me love.
I’ll buy you a diamond ring my friend,
If it makes you feel alright,
I’ll buy you anything my friend,
If it makes you feel alright,
For I don’t care too much for money,
For money can’t buy me love.
I’ll give you all I’ve got to give,
If you say you love me too,
I may not have a lot to give,
But what I’ve got I’ll give to you,
For I don’t care to much for money.
For money can’t buy me love.

Lent

Lent has always been an interesting idea to me. My Dad, who is a sort of non-practicing Catholic, has given up caffeine in honor of Lent for quite a long time. For him, it is a very difficult thing to do because it means he can't have coffee, chocolate, or anything else with caffeine. However, it's also a very healthy thing for him to do because having too much caffeine is bad for him. I suppose it's bad for most people, but I believe it's worse for him. I think the real challenge behind Lent is to find something that is both difficult for one to give up, but also whose lack thereof provides some deeper benefits (such as greater health).

When I was a kid, I used to give up things like candy for lent. Back then, that was a hard thing for me to do that also provided strong health benefits. At some point in my life, I ceased to observe Lent, for no particular reason I guess. However, I still think about what sort of things would be hard to give up that also might make me happier, healthier, or some other such thing. And it's hard for me to think of something. I could give up fantasy baseball, but that would be almost laughable, because the time period of Lent is exactly when I spend the most amount of time on fantasy baseball. I could give up TV, except that I really don't watch much TV, so it wouldn't be a real challenge. I suppose it would have to be computer games, because I still sometimes waste too much time on them, and after I do so I rarely feel like I have improved my life in any way, shape, or form. Perhaps in the future, I may do so...

Belated Happy Birthday

I did not get the chance to make a post yesterday (the 8th) so I'll just have to say a belated happy birthday to my sister, Jeffra, today. Happy Birthday Jeffra!

In other news, a number of things have happened recently. The astronomy department finally lost, although it was a close game. We lost to the physics team 10-8 even though we were missing one of our best hitters and fielders. I played a solid game at shortstop in his place, but I couldn't hit for crap last night, so in the end I wasn't too happy with myself.

Also, I purchased some dental floss, so now I can hang the Millenium Falcon up on a hook in our ceiling. It oughtta be good.

I am leaning more towards getting another fantasy baseball team. I signed up for an auto-pick team with yahoo, and my team was really screwy. I mean, I picked up Octavio Dotel in the 7th round. Sheesh. My roommate just had a live draft today, and it only took him 1.5 hours, so I am definitely thinking about doing it.

I played golf yesterday with my Dad. Five hours in the sun without sunscreen means my face, neck, and forearms are completely red. It's uncomfortable, but it's already better today than yesterday. Hopefully in a week or so I'll be back to normal. As for the actual golf, I shot a 93 (48-45), which was just fine by me, particularly given that I was having what could be generously termed a mediocre front nine.

Happy Birthday Tiffany

Today is Tiffany's birthday. So far, the plan is to play frisbee golf around campus, probably at night. However, a lot of our friends can only do stuff during the day, so it's hard to say.

Hear Me Baby, Hold Together

I finished a 3D jigsaw puzzle that I've been working on for the past few weeks. It's the Millenium Falcon, and it actually looks pretty good. I got the puzzle a few years ago for Christmas, and didn't have time/interest until now to do it. But I got it done, with help from Tiffany. The only problem with it is that I'm missing a few pieces, so I had to perform a little plastic-foam surgery to supply the necessary support and fill in a gap or two. I'm planning on hanging it from a hook in our living room, as soon as get material to do so (probably dental tape, for lack of anything better). Here's a picture.

Impressions from Colorado

I typed up my impressions from Colorado that I made in my notebook during my visit. You can view them in their amazing original form here.

In other news, hell has frozen over as the astronomy department intramural softball team is now 2-0 and leading their league. Not only do they have a half game lead on the rest of the competition, but they sport the best run differential in the league as well. In the end, however, I simply don't know whether to think this is a positive or a negative. After all, our team name is identical to that of Berkeley's hated rival, The Stanford Cardinal. And our captain encourages people to wear red at the games. I mean shit man.