Right on the Money

Hey, remember way back when I said Google was evil? Well, that's proving itself to be true again. This time the great innovator is cutting deals with Verizon, essentially giving the finger to any hopeful entrepreneur with the next great idea. You know, like Google.

I'm not alone in thinking that Google is being kind of a dick. They're buying into the corporate viewpoint of making money. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but this feels like a knife in the back coming from a company that has its roots in smalltime internet. Tiering the internet is a horrible idea. Seeing Google partner with Verizon against net neutrality (another company for which I have no warm and fuzzy feelings) is even worse.

When Google comes for your first-born, don't say I didn't warn you.

Growing Old

On Friday I turned 21. 20 years of living in Ohio, although I've been doing it part time for 3 years now. I went to get my license renewed last weekend, and the woman at the BMV asked the standard questions: criminal record, driving impediments, etc. When we got to state of birth, I said I wasn't born in Ohio. Which is true; I was born in Philadelphia. The woman said she'd thought my accent sounded strange. The next question was how long I'd been living in Ohio. Well, 20 years. The woman's response? Must have come from my parents. I let it go. Not worth pointing out that my mom is from Maine, and my dad was born in Akron and grew up in San Diego.

But it did get me thinking. I don't always sound like an Ohioan. Especially since I've been spending 3/4 of the past three years in Maine. I've picked up a few dialectical specialties from Maine: "ayup," for example. When I work at the campus bookstore, I don't talk like a Midwesterner. One of my friends consistently thought I was from New York/New Jersey, which I don't know how to explain; he just thought I seemed like a person from that area. Another friend insists that I'm from Detroit, but that's more of a joke.

Telling people I'm from Cincinnati - which I do because no one remembers Mason - is always an adventure. I get the usual questions about how I found Colby, about being so far away from home. Occasionally I get questions about where Ohio is. New Englanders are nice, but their sense of the geography of the rest of the US is fuzzy at best. After a while, I get tired of these questions. Easier to let people make assumptions about where I'm from.

Huh. This was intended to be a post about being 21. Looks like it turned into something else. I'll save the "holy shit I'm legal" talk for some other time, I guess. Well, here's some music in the meantime.

Blinking in the light

I haven't posted in a while. Too long. So, here's some life updates, and some fun links at the end to keep you engaged.

Right now I'm finishing the second month of my internship at CDC/NIOSH. This is what I've been doing. It's not too bad, and it certainly pays well. In the meantime, I've been reading, playing video games, applying to veterinary schools, taking the GRE, and not sleeping enough. Essentially it's just like school, but without the work.

So I turn 21 in a week...that's pretty weird. The plan is to splurge on nice stuff at Jungle Jim's, and break into the world of legal drinking as a change from the world of college drinking. And then, you know, go back to school and drink cheap beer for another year. At least I'll have my gin to keep me company, right?

WRONG. Colby banned hard alcohol on campus. Whoa. So the line from campus security is that students who are over 21 can have hard alcohol, but they have to keep it on the downlow, and no providing underage students with liquor. I'm waiting for a few weeks before taking the chance. Especially since I live in a substance free dorm where alcohol is expressly forbidden. Ah well.

So that's pretty much it for the life updates. Some quick book reviews. Read Bill Bryson. Read everything he's ever written. When you've finished with that, read The Possessed, and learn all about Russian literature, and a lot else besides. Finally, read The Lonely Polygamist for a fictional take on life in Utah.

I have more, but I'll save them. Now some music.



That's it for now. More frequent updates possibly in the future.

I'm just here for the music

Free Camera Obscura concert at Fountain Square. If you don't go to Fountain Square Friday evenings for the rest of the summer, you're missing out. Just saying.

Fringe: Weird, Like You

I went down to OTR last night for a nice Fringe Kick-Off Party, which featured the Art Academy of Cincinnati along with a couple bands (saw Messerly and Ewing, and if you've never seen an electric ukulele played before, you're missing out). Basically it was as much fun as I've ever had downtown, and it cost all of five bucks. Fringe might be one of my new favorite things about Cincinnati, and all I've seen is the opening act.

Also, Camera Obscura, free concert at Fountain Square on Friday. I'll be there.

Well then...

A couple of months ago I tried making root beer in my dorm room. It's pretty simple: yeast, sugar, water, and extract. Unfortunately, I let it ferment too long, and ended up with a slightly alcoholic mess. At some point I want to try again.

Right now, though, I'll have to settle for IBC. I've made sort of a habit of trying different root beers that I come across, with the most eclectic being "Old Soaker," made in Bar Harbor. There are quite a few tiny breweries in Maine, I've discovered, and some that are not so tiny. It's a big plus that I'll be 21 next year, and able to sample a full range of products, instead of just the root variety.

Update Update Update!

So I'm not sure if anybody is still reading this, but I feel the need to rant, so I'm going to.

Allow me to describe the past couple days in excruciating detail:

Wednesday, 5:30: After a quick dinner, go to pull truck (borrowed) around to where we need it to load set pieces for the play going up Friday night.
Wednesday, 6:00: Realize the truck is not in the parking lot where I was sent to find it. Go to different lot, find truck.
Wednesday, 6:15: Truck does not start; battery is dead. Pop hood, call security, wait for help.
Wednesday, 6:20: Security alerts me that they will not be there for at least a half hour. Start to call around, get friend already at theater to drive back.
Wednesday, 6:30: Jump the truck using cables conveniently stowed in the bed. Drive to theater. Realize the bed cover needs to come off; four sticking bolts later, success. Load oversized fake fireplace, attempt to drive to theater downtown where the play will be performed.
Wednesday, 6:50: Jump truck again, using a different car and different cables. Drive downtown, unload set piece, get in costume. Rehearsal, etc.

Suffice to say the rehearsal did not go too well.

Wednesday, 10:00: Drive back to campus; mercifully, no more troubles starting the truck. Get slightly lost on the way back, but Waterville is tiny enough that finding campus is easy.
Wednesday, 11:00: Finish reattaching bed cover in dark; park truck in the lot it was supposedly in in the first place.
Wednesday, 11:30: Suffer minor breakdown after kicking roommate, roommate's girlfriend, and other friends out of room. Check email on whim, find rejection letter from OSU summer research program. Go over lines, read "Life of Biff" until falling asleep.

Thursday, 8:00: Asleep, skipping work.
Thursday, 9:30-1:30: Class, lab, research, etc. Bacterial conjugation to transfer antibiotic resistance.
Thursday, 2:00: Outside in sun doing crossword. Best part of the day.
Thursday, 3:15: Throwing baseball with friends. Also fun.
Thursday, 4:15: More loading of set pieces, riding downtown. One piece is too big to transport in the truck; swap it out for narrower but just as tall piece.
Thursday, 5:30: Makeup!
Thursday, 6:30: Drive downtown; stop on the way for ice cream. Close second for best part of the day.
Thursday, 6:45-10:15: Rehearse lines while set for play is being built. Walk to pizza parlor (in costume) at 9:00, get take-out for cast. Piece of veggie pizza constitutes dinner.
Thursday, 10:15-12: Final dress rehearsal. Goes well.

Friday, present time: Writing, ranting, bitching. I'm very stressed, and I normally don't get very stressed. I need sleep, and lots of it, and I won't be getting it. I'll be skipping work again, for an extra two hours, but I still have homework, and class, and lab. And then a performance.

Once that's all over with, I can start concentrating on things like student government commitments, and ornithology research projects (feeding habits of hairy and downy woodpeckers, since you asked), and all sorts of other things that I've been ignoring for the past few days. Now I'm going to crawl into bed and not come out until I feel like I can go in public without being mean to everyone I encounter.

Also, consider this my whiniest post EVER. I'm posting this because I wrote it, and because I honestly do feel as stressed as I ever have. But never again, I hope.

More Late Night Ramblings

I made the mistake of drinking coffee at 10 tonight. In consequence, I am now unable to go to sleep. I also have no desire to do work. As a result, I am blogging for the first time in roughly three months.

Which, incidentally, means that it's March, which is a scary fact. Time passes way too quickly for my liking. Winter is almost over, which is nice; we've been getting weirdly lousy weather for the past week (lots of almost-snow that becomes rain), but soon it will be consistently warm again. Unfortunately, with the passing of winter comes the work and the constant busyness.

I am currently in the process of internalizing some 300 Greek terms for a class in Bioscientific Terminology; by the end of the class, I will have to know roughly 2000 Greek and Latin terms. This is slightly intimidating. I am also in the process of memorizing the skeletal and muscular structures of a bird. This is slightly less intimidating and more cool, but it does have a small intimidation factor.

In addition to these classes (Bioscientific Terminology and Ornithology) is Physics; the professor is crazy and the topics are not the easiest ever, which makes for a fun time indeed. Still, it's electricity (we covered capacitors and circuits today), which actually is fun. To me.

The last academic commitment eating my life is the microbiology research I'm doing; this has a very significant cool factor and is less intimidating, at least until I realize that it's a 10-15 hour a week job. At least the time spent working justifies the 5 credits I'm getting for it.

Other commitments remain the same; BMR, SGA, work at the bookstore and radio station, Chorale, acting in Mousetrap (an Agatha Christie play), and so on and so forth. I was going to start attending a wood carving workshop that meets once a week, but so far something has come up each week and I haven't been able to go yet.

But enough of me whining about my life (or lack thereof). I have at least been able to enjoy some pleasure reading, which has mostly consisted of John Irving's newest novel, "Last Night in Twisted River." The writing is simple; the plot is slightly ludicrous; nevertheless, I'm enjoying it. There are several other books vying for my attentions, such as Joshua Ferrell and Ian McEwans' newest.

Intramural sports are over for the time being; my last game of broomball left me with a contusion on my shin that's lasted about a week. Soccer starts soon enough, as does softball.

Plans for the summer are proceeding; I have applications in for research positions at several schools, a foot in the door at my old job with NIOSH, and possibly a research slot here at Colby, although I haven't seriously thought about that one yet. I keep looking at jobs here, which all seem really cool, but I don't think I'm quite qualified yet.

Anyway, I seem to be getting tired, so I'll cut this short. Which is good, since it seems to be a rather boring post.