End of the semester

This week, a homework assignment, take-home quiz, and a paper were due. I haven't finished the paper and will need to take an extra week on it. All in all I have this paper, my voting paper, and my database design left to do, and I will be done with my first year of grad school. Time sure flies!

Tonight was one of my last fancy dinners as an Eagleton Fellow. It was an Visiting Associate's Dinner, but light on the Visiting Associates. We had salad, carrots, mashed potatoes, mushroom with ricotta in phyllo, pork chops, and breaded shrimp and scallops. I'm going to miss all the lunches and dinners that Eagleton treated us to.

A shout out to Henning and Xcott who came to Trenton this morning to participate in a usability study on the New Jersey State Website. Now you know where to go to File a Consumer Complaint. I, myself, have learned a lot about what to expect from government websites.

My Brother is Amazing

So, my brother is one of 3 recipients of the American Symphony Orchestra League Orchestra Management Fellowship. The 2 other fellows have advanced degrees, 1 has 3 Masters degrees, and the other has a PhD in Molecular Biology from Northwestern (Go Cats!). Jeff is just graduating from Taylor for his undergraduate degrees, and is probably a good several years younger than these other guys. Good Job, Jeff!

Here's a newspaper article about it, if you want more info.

Crisp Pizza Pizzazz

Sunday, we wished Wendy and Andrew farewell after breakfast. Thanks again everyone for making the weekend so much fun!

Rich, Xcott, Cynthia, and I grilled pizza for dinner. Xcott is a big fan of grilling pizza. (It really works!) He owes us a homemade Chicago Deep-Dish pizza after he finishes his PhD. Rich made a double-decker chocolate cake from the back of the Hersey's Cocoa Powder can. Talk about dense. We're not letting him do that again.

Operation 11111 Accomplished

Happy Birthday, Xcott!

Operation 11111: Xcott's Surprise Birthday. For Xcott's birthday, I organized a day of birthday suprise for him on Saturday, April 24th. It all began when I asked him if I could have a surprise birthday party for him a few weeks back. He said "No." I said that I wanted to meet his brother and his friend Wendy, and they he should have them come up to Princeton to visit sometime. He responded "Nah, that's too much of a hassle for them." I had the brilliant idea that I would contact all of them and have them come up for Xcott's birthday!

I started off by calling Xtradios. Even though he's in the Midwest, he'd be able to point me in the right direction and give me the contact information for Andrew-Unit and others. Xtradios was very accommodating and did give me people's email addresses and phone numbers. I contacted A-U, and he forwarded me Wendy's contact information. I even called Xcott's mom to get his brother Chopper's phone number. Xcott had borrowed my phone for a roadtrip and saved the phone numbers of a friend who he was visiting on the way back to Illinois, and I even called her. Thus, all planning and scheming began.

My original vision was having all these people in a big room at a restaurant for dinner on Saturday, April 24th, the day before Xcott's birthday. They'd then be able to stay the night and hang out at the D-Bar. Due to various scheduling requirements, my plan had to be changed. Chopper and Sara were able to make it for the afternoon, but had to leave by evening to get back to attend the March for Women's Lives. The other people would be able to make it in for dinner. Everything really came together once I got an email back from Scott, Xcott's Princeton roommate of 4.5 years saying that him and Clarissa would be able to make it.

To throw Xcott off, we planned to have a birthday dinner on Sunday, April 25th, his actual birthday. He told me that he wanted to have dinner at Triumph, and I concurred. I sent out email to all the Princeton people and him about "fake" dinner on Sunday. I then sent out another message about the REAL plans for Saturday night. I emailed all the out-of-towners to let them know when to show up and where we'd be eating.

Rich and I planned on asking Xcott to lunch on Saturday, so that this entire mission could be accomplish. Xcott readily agreed for lunch. I tried to keep up the ruse by talking about other plans I had during the day, and tried to keep him distracted by talk of Regina's birthday.

The Day Of:
- Chopper and Sarah arrived early, at 11:30. Rich was dispatched to meet them in a Princeton parking lot. I picked Xcott up and we went to Teresa's Cafe. We went in and sat at the bar. I ordered Xcott a beer. I noticed Rich, Chopper, and Sarah in the window of the restaurant. As Rich walks in, I note to Xcott, "Look, Rich is here." After a short delay, Chopper walks in, followed by Sarah. Xcott stares, face lit up in complete surprise, and makes a loud exclaimation nose. As he turns red, he makes confused "What are you doing here, noises." Surprise! Chopper has gotten Xcott back for surprise him in Ohio for his birthday last month.

We have lunch and then walk around campus and the Princeton Street Fair. Unfortunately, Chopper and Sarah have to leave in the afternoon to go see some other people and get back to D.C. So, Xcott and I decide it's time to practice some Irish music. We find a spot outside by the Prospect Gardens. It's a secluded area right off the main path with some benches. We're able to sit there and practice with only a little oggling by the passersby. At this time, Rich, Cynthia, and Ed are meeting Scott and Clarissa, Wendy, and Andrew in the parking lot.

Since we're outside, I'm worried that Xcott will spot everyone as they walk up to us. Luckily, an undergrad stops by to ask Xcott about his concertina, effectively distracting him. As everyone starts up the pathway, Xcott spots Cynthia, and starts to concentrate on thinking "Is that Cynthia?" As they walk into our area behind the bushes, Xcott starts taking in the sight of his friends. He has to put his concertina down. The shock and confusion turn him red and make him shaky. He's never seen all of these people in the same place at the same time. Andrew and Wendy are from NIU while Scott, Clarissa, Cynthia, Ed, and Rich are from Princeton. It takes him a while to really get over the surprise. (Hooray, it was a surprise! I was so worried that he knew.)

With everyone assembled, we head off to dinner to meet up with Katy. I inform Xcott that the dinner planned on Sunday was all a ruse. We have a delightful time, capped off with cakes that Andrew has brought from his favorite bakery in Virgina.

Afterwards, we head back to my apartment. Xcott opens his present, and some guests oggle Rich's DVR (TiVo) system. We head to the D-Bar once we are done watching an episode of the Bachelor. We have some drinks and sing Xcott a Happy Birthday, once again. Scott and Clarissa leave to go back to visit his parents, and Wendy and Andrew stay with us.

Mission accomplished. Best (and only) surprise birthday I've pulled off to date.

Happy Birthday, Regina!

We went into New York tonight to celebrate Regina's birthday. Hooray! We met up with Jeffrey for dinner at a greek restaurant in the vicinity of the Loews Lincoln Center. (I still miss Greektown Chicago.) Afterwards, we met up with Mike, Regina, and Marita to watch Ella Enchanted a Cinderella story about a girl who is cursed with the gift of obedience. Regina's first choice had been Scooby Doo 2, but it wasn't playing late enough for us to go (the last showtime was around 5 pm). Then, we picked up some dessert at Cafe Mozart, where we did not have the people sing to Regina and put her in a white "Mozart" wig.

Gmail

A bright spot to this week. I get home today from a career workshop for the Princeton/Trenton SLA and Andrew's sent me an IM saying that I should log into Blogger and see if I get lucky and qualify to get a Gmail account. And, I did! Yay! Now, I have a new email account! You can send mail here to harraton at gmail. Lots of storage! I hope Gmail will stay in business despite the privacy concerns/lawsuits.While I could have used my name, I went with my handle instead.

Glexicon Forums

Hey there, if you want to keep track of all the exciting events/complaining going on regarding harraton.com going online again, check out the forums. Harraton is a VPS account.

E-mail forwarding works

E-mail forwarding is up and running. Email sent to your [user]@harraton.com email address is being sent to your [user]@hotmail.com address. Anyone who sent you email yesterday got a "Mail Delivery Failed" of some sort message sent back to them. Hopefully, they'll know to send you the message again.

harraton.com is down

As you noticed, harraton.com was done. It's still down. All your email *should* be forwarded to your hotmail accounts. I'm not sure if this is working yet. Brian, I made you a hotmail account, did you get my voicemail?

I was using Eryxma as a hosting provider. They went out of business and disappeared this weekend. Some other company is migrating all that data onto their servers. Check out Glexicon.com if you want to keep track of their progress. I'm on a VPS plan, and they haven't posted any information about what to do with those yet. So, I'll keep you posted as soon as I know what's going on. They say they have backed up all of the data on these accounts, but we'll see what happens once it actually happens.

So, for right now, if you want to reach me, email me. Thank goodness for educational institution provided accounts.

BBQ Season opener

On Friday, Cynthia had her post defense party, featuring the the Dargan and the Jersey Sprawl. I hadn't played the mandolin in a week, and Scott, Lauren, and I decided that it's a good idea to actually practice more before gigs. Lots of people came to Cynthia's party, and she had lots of great food. Rich made two Chocolate Raspberry Pudding Cakes which were very well received.

Saturday was the day of Kill Bill. Some of Scott's friends were planning on seeing Volume 2 on Saturday night, so we decided to rent Volume 1, watch it, and then go see Volume 2. Good idea since we hadn't seen Volume 1 earlier. I liked Kill Bill much more than I expected too. After reading reviews about how violent it was, I expected to hate it. (I'm not a big fan of gratuitious violence.) The violence in Kill Bill was so comic book like/satirical that it didn't bother me at all. Volume 2 was a nice finish to the story.

And, now to the subject line. Today was the LISSA Spring BBQ. Rich and I spent the day getting food and then grilling at the BBQ. This entire weekend has been beautiful out. Nice temperature, no humidity yet. I hope it keeps up. We're going to start breaking out our BBQ and pitchers of margaritas.

Dr. Cynthia!

Today, Cynthia is a Doctor. A gen-u-ine PhD in the Program for Applied and Computational Mathematics! Congratulations! You and AdaBoost did it!

Draft done

I've been swamped the last few days working on homework assignments and papers. I finally stayed up all night and finished my draft of the voting paper. Woo hoo! I knew I was over the hump once I heard the birds start chirping. Julie, Jeffrey, Brian, and Emily are in Las Vegas right now enjoying nice weather in the 70s. I was one of the original proponents of the trip. It was supposed to be for Brian and Jeffrey's birthdays, but we figured out March wouldn't work for people due to class, tests, campaigns, and field trips to DC. We moved the trip to April, but I ended up having class for Eagleton almost every Friday in April. It's probably good I didn't go this week/weekend anyway seeing as I had this paper to do, and now that I'm done with that, I need to work on a presentation, 2 papers, a library review, a quiz, and a database design all due in the next week weeks. April's not going to be fun.

Streaming Music

I like it when bands provide their music for you to listen online. Researchers have found that these bands, instead of losing money of letting you listen to your music for "free," have captitalized on the free promotion of their bands. Wilco just put up the music for their forthcoming album "A Ghost is Born" online. (It's excellent!) Aimee Man also lets you listen to "Lost in Space" off her website. And, who can forget They Might Be Giants, one of the first to release an album solely on MP3.

I finally got a haircut. I haven't had a haircut since August when I was in Ennis, Ireland. It took me a while to pick a place around here because they are all so overpriced. Well, you have either SuperCuts or Salon SuperExpensive. I picked an almost moderately priced place called Cosmo Bleu on Nassau. (You can guess why I picked that one.) While they cut my hair (just plain straight across) and used a blowdrier, they didn't style it or try to make it look pretty. I'm use to Robyn styling my hair at Armando's in Lansing IL. I don't have any ideas about what my hair should look like, and I rely on a stylist knowing what looks good and then just cutting it. While I don't style my hair normally, I'm used to having my stylist do it when I get it cut. I always assumed it was part of the package. I guess things in Princeton are just overpriced and underdone. Disappointing.

Big Day, Bad Karaoke

Today was a good day. Rich got his first journal article submitted to the Journal of Chemical Physics. He invented a mathy thing called CHAMP that models quantum pathways. Something about lasers and molecules...

Xcott also got happy email. Fanmail actually. You too can send Xcott fanmail. He's like the rockstar of digital watermarking.

I'm playing on an Intermural soccer team for the Princeton Graduate College. We won! I'm not very good at soccer. Noone kicks the ball to me when I'm playing midfield.

To celebrate the day, we went to the D-Bar. It was Karaoke night. BAD Karaoke night. Painful even. It's ok if you can't sing, just put some heart into it!

Defense

Cynthia's defense is next week. To get your PhD, you write a dissertation and then you defend it. You get a panel of professors and you invite your family and friends and you give your research as a talk (usually a PowerPoint presentation). Then, people ask you questions. The panel meets and then decides if you've passed or not. In PACM, if you've gotten to the point where you're giving a defense, you're going to pass. She's going to have a party next Friday to celebrate. The Sprawl is playing, but not doing Fox on the Run. Coincidence? I think not... Speaking of, I found out that Barenakes Ladies did a cover of Fox on the Run. Cool.

Next weekend is when a bunch of my college friends are going to Las Vegas, and I'm missing out. It's my own fault, April is just too busy for me and I have too many classes/tests/papers due. Oh well. I hope you guys have fun!

Lost and Found

I lost my engagement ring yesterday. I was sitting in the computer lab in the afternoon, twirling my rings, and I suddenly realized, I lost my engagement ring. I instantly knew that it must have fallen off when I was riding my bike. I distinctly remembered twirling around both rings that morning at the computer lab before lunch. Needless to say, the rest of the day/night was not fun. We spent the afternoon walking around in the rain kicking at the grass and piles of dirt to try to find my ring. Scott, Cynthia, and Ed G. were nice and spent some time searching too. I eventually made big "LOST RING, Cash Reward" signs to post around everywhere I'd walked around at Princeton. Unfortunately, the ring wasn't covered by our new Renters' Insurance policy. Not fun. We decided to go play with the Sprawl that evening anyway. I wasn't letting something like losing my ring get in the way of leading a normal life.

This morning, after showering, I looked down, and there it was. Neslted in the bathroom rug was my sapphire ring with two small diamonds. I have no clue how it got there. I'd been in the bathroom the night before. My best guess is that I'd dropped the ring down my bra and it fell out onto the bathroom rug when I was undressing for my shower. Good thing I don't undress myself in odd places or I would've never have found it. Phew!

Australia in '05

I've been saving up my United Airlines Frequent Flyer Miles for a long time. I now need only about 6,500 miles to go to get a free ticket to go to Australia. I'll be going in August of 2005 to visit Andrew who is there for grad school. (He was smart, he gets to travel and get a Masters of BioMedical Engineering.) Who wants to go with me? We'll hit New Zealand for a week too since I'll be in the area.

Katy's brother was here this week to visit. He's cool. He lives in San Francisco and works for Apple. We spent an evening playing Settlers of Catan. Scott won. The scoreboard is now updated to Scott (2), Janice (1), Katy (0), and Rich (0).

Last night, I stopped by the session in Highland Park to get a ride home. I instigated the group into forcing Scott to sing Dirty Old Town. He gave me a good glaring look at "I'm going to make me a good sharp axe."