Rich makes a friend

Reunions!

This weekend is Princeton Reunions weekend. This is how Princeton builds its financial support and sense of school spirit. (Lots of spirit.) They section the campus off into different areas for each reunion group (5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, and beyond). Big tents are erected and the alcohol flows freely (as do the donations to the school.) Mike and Jeffrey are here for the day to catch some fun and fireworks.

Dr. Craver

As of 10:45 ET on Thursday, May 27th, 2004, Scott A. Craver is hereby bestowed his PhD. Welcome, Dr. Craver.

And the totals

For Scott, the totals are...

Grow a Full Beard 1
Goatee 3
Shave It Off 16
Handlebar Moustache 1
Shave it or grow a moustache 1
Beard Wig 1

"Gawd towd me to tell you that every time I don't get my doctowet a kitty cat dies. Please downt kill a kitty cat"

So, we'll see tomorrow morning, Thurs. May 27th at 9:30 am ET in the Engineering Quad, Rm B205, if Scott's still bearded or not. Come for his Defense, if you can!

Should Scott Keep the Goatee or Not?

Scott's defending his dissertation on Thursday. Should he shave or keep the goatee? Please vote in the comments.

No Facial Hair:

vs

Goatee:

Update:
Here's how he looked with a beard. Scott decided it looked too sparse and made it into a goatee.

Cicada Symphony

We're back in New Jersey now. Thanks again to Julie for letting us stay at her place on Saturday night. Saturday in the city was great fun, and it was nice to be back in my old neighborhood. Rich and I met up with Julie, Paulette, Mitch, and Mary for dinner and margaritas at La Fiesta Mexicana. Afterwards, we went out for a few drinks and met up with Corey and Rob. It was really great to see everyone over the entire visit.

Sunday, Rich and I caught the El up to Evanston to visit the relatives and also the Connecticut Sharps who were also in town. I managed to meet up with my Evanston friends where we spent the afternoon arguing over politics and religion. It was me and Mukie (D) vs. Tim, Ryan, Dave, and sometimes Paul (R). We all agreed that each side was moving too much to the extreme and not working hard enough to maintain a moderate viewpoint.

Now that I'm back in Princeton, the cicadas are making themselves known even more with the loud drone of their mating calls. After a while, it fades from attention as white noise, but it's there. Good luck to them.

Greektown!

I'm back in Chicago now for my brother's graduation from Taylor University. We hit town last night with dinner in Greektown. Unfortunately, we didn't realize it was going to be pouring rain, on and off, throughout the weekend. Much thanks to Efstratios who let us crash at his place last night. We stayed in Evanston so that Rich could go get his hair cut at Noyes St. Barber Shop this morning.

Biggest shopping find: At Marshall Fields, I got a skirt for $4.50 marked down from $89. I'm very proud.

Poster away!

I've gotten my first poster accepted at the Gordon Research Conference on Science and Technology Policy. Yay! It's on Voting Machine Security and Standards. I have to tweak my abstract some and actually make a poster, but I'm looking forward to it. Now, I just need raise funds (hopefully through Rutgers) to pay for it. Conferences are expensive, especially when they are in mountain resorts.

Up all Night

I pulled another all-nighter last night. I spent an hour looking for Scott around Princeton because I told him that I'd proof-read his dissertation. I finally found him at his apartment and we went over to the Graduate College where I stayed up reading it. It's a good dissertation. I'd recommend it. I read the 130 pages in about 6 hours. Pretty slow going for me, I was trying to read carefully. Hooray for watermarking and steganography.

National Academies

Today, I headed up to Rutgers to meet with a professor at the Bloustein School of Public Policy to ask about the National Academies Science and Technologoy Policy Internship Program. I'll be applying for this internship, and I hope to get one. I'm interested in Information Technology policy and will be looking at Public Policy programs for the Fall of 2005.

Since I was up in the New Brunswick area, I treated myself to Ethiopian food for lunch at Makeda's. They have a lunch special for $7.99 where you can choose a combo of items for your meal. Good deal!

Happy Birthday Dave-Laz!

At some point in time, I got really bad at remembering things. I used to be on top of everything, people's birthdays, phone numbers, homework assignments, but now, not so much. William blaimed the internet for making me so easily distracted. With this here blog, at least I'll remember when people's birthday were because I've started a trend to note them.

The times, they are a changing...

I forgot. Happy Massachusettes Day!

Watch where you step

It's Cicada season! They are all over the sidewalks, the trees, and just about everywhere outside. I haven't looked closely enough to look at their beady red eyes though. Unfortunately for me, I typically wear sandals which does not provide me with enough coverage for my feet to avoid all the cicadas and cicada goop outside.

Weekend away

Annapolis is a pretty nice town. The weekend at St. John's College was a hot and sunny one. Michael won two prizes: the Alumni Athletics jacket, and another for his electron microscope project. Michael kept the athletics program going for St. Johns. Michael is to St. John's (in status) what Damian Anderson or Zack Kustock was to Northwestern. Pretty amazing when you think about it.

Today was the first day that I've been able to sleep in for a long, long time. Not being sleep deprived is so interesting. I got to walk around Princeton, running errands and enjoying the non-humid and sunny day. It reminded me of weekends in Chicago where I didn't have anything to worry about. It was nice.

Off to Annapolis this weekend for Rich's cousin Michael's college graduation. Rich is happy because he'll get to see the Pennslyvania relatives this weekend and Melissa. We'll be in Chicago next weekend to visit the Evanston branch (and to see my brother's graduation) which just happens to be the time when the Connecticut branch is visiting. Family is fun!

Last Day and Mean Girls

Today was my last day working at the State of New Jersey's Divison of Elections. To celebrate, for lunch, I headed over to Rutgers Day in Trenton, where I met up with people from Eagleton for the noontime lunch.

I headed out of the office around 2 pm and met up with Cynthia and Katy to go see Mean Girls. I thought the movie was great! Tina Fey wrote the screenplay, and it was set in the Evanston area of Illinois. Ana Gasteyer, who plays the main character's mom, is an Northwestern University alum. In the movie, the reason they move back to the United States is because her character starts a tenure track position at Northwestern. Go Cats!

Other Evanston/North Shore related tidbits... The girls in the movie to go Old Orchard Shopping Center. (The mall they show in the movie is an indoor mall. Old Orchard is outdoors.) There are mentions of the Walker Bro. Pancake House. This is the best breakfast place I've ever been too. I'm going back on Friday, May 21st in the morning, if anyone's interested.

Best of all, the movie makes a lot of mention of math. Rich, Katy, and Sandrine coach the Princeton Charter school MathCounts team. In the movie, Kadi has to compete on the Mathletes team, coached by Tina Fey. Calculus is fun!

Go see this movie!

First Year BBQ

To celebrate being done, we had a BBQ for myself and the PACM first years still in town. (We've been grilling a lot. The Weber grill we have (in blue) is great!) It was a good time and we played the memory game, which is always interesting.

I'm backdating this post. After we watched the Bachelor, Rich and Xcott watched the Life of Brian. I am told that I fell asleep and had to be forcibly put to bed.

1st year down!

As of 6:30 am, I have finished my last paper and thus, my first year of grad school! Only 3 more classes to go before I'm doing with my MLIS degree. Then, who knows what I'm going to do?

Major thanks goes out to Xcott for staying up all night with me in the Friend Center Mac computer cluster. Hooray for proofreading!

I have to go to work in an hour. Last all-nighter of the 2003-2004 school year.

Happy 24th, Ben!

Ben's in Switzerland playing the tuba. Happy Birthday, Ben!

Eagleton Celebration

Tonight was our "graduation" ceremony from Eagleton. We celebrated by having a reception and Governor Christine Todd Whitman as our speaker. The food was great and all the speeches were equally entertaining. Gov. Whitman is a great speaker.

It's sad to have my Eagleton fellowship come to an end. I really like the people I've met and the friends I've made. Were planning on extending the ESC into the summer. Fun! They even gave us fancy Eagleton portfolios.

Rich, Xcott, and Cynthia came along to the ceremony. I think they were very impressed with the mansion and the food that Michael made. Woo hoo!

Hooray Katy

Katy's passed her prelim! All PACM first years have to pass an oral examination at the end of their first year. They pick 3 topics and 3 teachers and those people quiz them for an hour on the mathematics of it all. It's stressful, to say the least. All the PACM first years passed on the first try this year! Hooray!

For you librarians out there...

I found this particularly funny.

Club Xcott - Shirts for everyone!

Welcome to Club Xcott. Here, you will find a myriad of unique T-shirts.

Here are some of my favorite:
Republicans for Voldemort
Monkeys are Good People
Jesus Helps Me Trick People
Less Shush More Lush

For cool librarian Ts, look to LibrarianGear.com!

Speaking of cool shirts, Katy's brother Ethan's friend is selling maroon T-shirts with Kaku, the Blase Snowman. They're only $10 which is such a deal if you look at those other T-shirt websites where they sell their wares for ~$20 a shirt. Let me know if you want one and I'll set it up.

Engineering Quad (E-Quad)

1 paper down and 3 more to go! Last night, I made the decision to stay in the Princeton computer lab all night to finish my Eagleton Paper. My usual haunt is the Friend Center computer cluster where they have huge flat screen monitors and Herman Miller Aeron computer chairs.

I finished my draft around 5:10 am and decided to catch a few hours sleep. Since I had no way of getting home, I went to the E-Quad (the engineering building) to take a nap on the couches in the Graduate Student Lounge. Luckily, I remember the code to get into the room. I settled into a couch. When I woke up 2 hours, later, there were 2 other people on the other sides of the couch (an L shaped sectional couch) and another guy on a chair nearby. Apparently, the undergrads had a big project that was due that day and they'd decided to catch a few ZZZs too.

Last week of the semester

There won't be many posts this week. It's the last week of the semester, and I have 4 papers due. Database, Voting Security, Eagleton, and Independent Study.

On a happy note, I got all the files from my old account on the old harraton.com. I restored everyone's email last night. You should have all your old sent, saved, trashed, received email! Yay! I'm going to learn from my mistake and start doing weekly backups.

Regina's Birthday, Round Two

I hit New York City again on Sunday to celebrate Regina's Birthday with dinner at the Three of Cups, an Italian restaurant. Beforehand, I met up with Jeffrey to feed my obsession with finding a new messenger bag/backpack replacement. My Jansport backpack from high school is falling apart. We went to Spice for lunch (Mike missed it). You can't beat the $6 lunch specials they have. You get to choose an appetizer and a main course. Afterwards we continued to look for bags and then to Saints Alp Teahouse for bubble tea. I really like bubble tea, and I can't find anywhere in Princeton where I am satisfied with the quality of bubble tea that I get.

I'm also having a weird problem with comments. People comment, but then for me I can't see them unless I click "Check master comments." I'm hoping it'll go away because I don't want to have to deal with really troubleshooting it at the moment.

Back from Binghamton

F. Xcott will be Professor Xcott this coming Fall. He's gotten an offer from Binghamton University for an Assistant Professorship, tenure-track. Congratulations, F. Xcott! The F is for Fabulous.

We went up to Binghamton this weekend to check out the town and the surrounding area to find Xcott a place to live. Luckily, I chatted up Jim, the hotel attendent at the Holiday Inn, and he gave us the skinny on where to get listings for apartments and what areas of town to live in. We were advised that the west side of Binghamton was a good area, while the south side was a bit "ghetto." Why is it that the South Side of most places gets such a bad rap?

I can't believe how cheap it is to get a place up there. You can rent a 3 bedroom HOUSE, with it's own washer and dryer, for ~$550 a month. $550! Can you believe that? I was paying that much to share an apartment with 2 other people above a bar in Chicago.

Binghamton is notable because of it has the biggest carousel collection in the world. A local benefacted donated 6 carousels and mandated that they always be free to the public. Never ones to pass up free entertainment, we stopped by Ross Park to ride on a famed carousel (they are conveniently noted on the hotel map). Unfortunately, they don't start operating until after Memorial Day. Luckily the park made up for it with its tire swing.