And here we are, two months later. Spring has been eager to get a few words in now that winter seems to have run its course. The past week has mostly been absolutely beautiful. Beautiful enough that I have once again mounted that trusty steel steed, urged my buttocks not to clench too hard at the memory of those long days last summer, and pedaled my way to and from work several times, and sometimes simply for fun. Today was the longest by far in one go, probably doing better than 25 miles along the lakefront.
As I type this, my legs are reminding me that while the memory of the seat is all too fresh in that asinine physical memory, the details are a bit more fuzzy when it comes to extended bouts of pedaling. This of course is in conjunction with the occasional protests from my fingers and forearms, proclaiming that they, too, have been abused beyond their function. "Why?" they ask, "What would drive you to knowingly support your entire body weight by grasping small protrusions on a rather abrasive wall? We thought you'd come to your senses when you stopped that foolishness nearly a year ago!" Alas, the lure of climbing was too strong. Alas, I pay.
In other news, I just spend Friday and Saturday in Madison, WI staying with Andrea and Brandon and seeing Mitch, Amber, AND Nate! Thus the climbing. It's been very nice having Goshen friends around here in Chicago to hang out with, but it was still great to hang out with them again. I'm afraid there are no pictures of the weekend, but it mostly would've involved sitting on couches (apart from when they toured the vet school while I stretched out on the bathroom floor occasionally sitting up to regurgitate whatever my stomach could find in itself along with a few swear words; but then I took a nap and got all better before they came back). It was also nice to get out of the city for the first time since I came here three whole months ago. City life isn't bad - I'm not suffocating or anything, but it was a good change of scenery.
Work continues to get more and more interesting as I delve further into the world of being a lab rat. Sometimes it consists of staring at a computer program until it finally gives up and shares its secrets with me, but sometimes it just means giving the monkey some peanuts. And maybe craisins, too.
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Settling In
It's official: as of this afternoon, I have lived in Chicago for 3 entire weeks. Oh. That's not actually very long. I suppose it's time for a couple pictures of the apartment. So, here they are - my bedroom and the kitchen (where I spend most of my at-home time)
So, yeah. Not very big, but it works. I get along pretty well with my roommates. One is a real estate manager currently in grad school for urban planning, and the other finished his masters in trombone performance last year and now splits his time between working at Starbucks and performing in a few local orchestras.
Work: it's good. Actual interactions with the monkeys only began this past week, and that's only at the most basic level; it'll take a while to get to the point where I'm training them and whatnot. In the meantime though, as one of the more "experienced" machinists in the group, I spend more time on mechanical projects (it doesn't take much to be the power-tool-person in academia, at least outside the realm of mechanical engineering).
The main project I'm assigned to deals with trying to track the eye movements of a monkey as it completes a "task" (moving a cursor on the screen into a box using a joystick of sorts), and then integrating that information into the data collected from the brain's signals that control the hand/arm movement. The idea is that we will be able to use the data of how the eyes are moving as a predictor/indicator of what the hand and arm will do next. Right now we're still just trying to get the eye tracking system working with minimal cost and time. It's not a trivial proposition. Our current plan of attack involves a camera that is designed to follow eye movement combined with a head-tracking system that will rotate the camera in order to keep the pupil in the frame. Let's just say that I am very glad that someone else is doing the programming to get all of the different components working together. Outside of that, I'm giving myself a crash course in Adobe Dreamweaver so I can take charge of the lab website, and likely I will soon jump into some basic programming (mostly in C, though there's also some C++ and C#). Good thing I took all those programming classes at Goshen. Oh. Shoot. I didn't.
Still getting used to the fact that I live in Chicago, as well as the culture that goes along with the 3rd largest city in the country. It's not a negative adjustment, but it's certainly an adjustment.
I'll see about getting a couple pictures from work up; I'll have to ask my boss about the rules for taking pictures of monkeys to share (we have to be careful because of PETA et al). I enjoy all my coworkers; there are maybe 8 or 9 of us total plus my boss and another prof, including grad students and other technicians.
Monday, December 21, 2009
Oh, Apartment, to Find Thee Soon and Well...
Not enough sleep over the past two nights and not much coming tonight, either. I am sitting on the couch in my cousin Cameron's apartment in Albany Park in northern Chicago. Got in a few hours ago and have already viewed one apartment just a few miles from here in Lakeview about a mile off the lake, if I decide to go there it will be with two other guys - one grad student and one who just got his master's. Seemed like good guys; I guess we'll see how the other people I'm meeting with turn out. It's too expensive to get a studio/any apartment alone.
Oh well. I'm ready to move. And work might start as early as January 4th. And then I'll get to work with monkeys and build things and learn stuff and be around people my age and even some friends from college and I'M MOVING SOON!!!! Wow this is happening fast. It's very exciting; so exciting I'm not really nervous at all yet. That will probably come later. Maybe.
Well, it's after midnight and I need to get up early to move my car (weird parking zones near schools; have to move it before 7:00am). After spending about 15 hours on the road between today and yesterday, I'm ready to not have to do that a whole lot more. It was completely worth driving out to Pittsburgh yesterday and back today to be at Kaleem's wedding, but so much traveling is quite wearing. Abrasive to the brain, one might say. And with that, good night.
Oh well. I'm ready to move. And work might start as early as January 4th. And then I'll get to work with monkeys and build things and learn stuff and be around people my age and even some friends from college and I'M MOVING SOON!!!! Wow this is happening fast. It's very exciting; so exciting I'm not really nervous at all yet. That will probably come later. Maybe.
Well, it's after midnight and I need to get up early to move my car (weird parking zones near schools; have to move it before 7:00am). After spending about 15 hours on the road between today and yesterday, I'm ready to not have to do that a whole lot more. It was completely worth driving out to Pittsburgh yesterday and back today to be at Kaleem's wedding, but so much traveling is quite wearing. Abrasive to the brain, one might say. And with that, good night.
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Einstein.
Here I sit in the basement of my grandparents' house in NW Indiana. One week ago I spent the week here and got two deer (both female). Now I'm back for the weekend, finishing unfinished business with the hide of the second deer. As part of killing free time, I browsed my grandpa's collection of books and came across a collection of essays published in 1950 by Albert Einstein - essays that cover everything from religion, morality, education, and a few that discuss science.
I'm not very far in, but already I'm somewhat surprised. As undoubtedly one of the greatest thinkers of recent history if not all time, his priorities and interests and personal angle seem much more obvious and self-assured than I would have expected. He does not present much argument proving his basis of assumptions is right - he completely passes that up saying ideas of that sort are not points in need of proof so much as a fact of existence, much like the laws of nature. He does clearly define what that basis is, but he so arrogantly lays down his presuppositions that the rest of his points are hardly worth arguing against if you do not share his same worldview. That is not to say he does not make good points, but he certainly goes in different directions than I would based on a number of presented facts.
I suppose the assumptions he uses are not the meat of what he is trying to communicate in the essays, but he still presents a relatively unilateral worldview, measuring plenty of depth but rather lacking in width. Maybe I was expecting too much going in, having heard a few quotes from his writings and knowing his reputation as both a physicist and a philosopher.
I'm not very far in, but already I'm somewhat surprised. As undoubtedly one of the greatest thinkers of recent history if not all time, his priorities and interests and personal angle seem much more obvious and self-assured than I would have expected. He does not present much argument proving his basis of assumptions is right - he completely passes that up saying ideas of that sort are not points in need of proof so much as a fact of existence, much like the laws of nature. He does clearly define what that basis is, but he so arrogantly lays down his presuppositions that the rest of his points are hardly worth arguing against if you do not share his same worldview. That is not to say he does not make good points, but he certainly goes in different directions than I would based on a number of presented facts.
I suppose the assumptions he uses are not the meat of what he is trying to communicate in the essays, but he still presents a relatively unilateral worldview, measuring plenty of depth but rather lacking in width. Maybe I was expecting too much going in, having heard a few quotes from his writings and knowing his reputation as both a physicist and a philosopher.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Hallowe'en Cometh
Mid-week. For some reason I just caught myself feeling like this was a Saturday. That would be less understandable if my daily schedule consisted of more than a rotation between staring at various screens in the house. Saturday is Hallowe'en, though. And it looks like I'll be in Madison, WI for the weekend. That'll be a nice change of pace from the past couple weeks.
From my most recent read - Bill Bryson's "Neither Here Nor There" (reflecting at the end of a couple months of traveling Europe alone):
"...tired of existing in a world of strangers... tired above all of my own dull company. How many times in recent days had I sat trapped on buses or trains listening to my idly prattling mind and wished that I could just get up and walk out on myself?
At the same time, I had a quite irrational urge to keep going. There is something about the momentum of travelling that makes you want to keep moving, to never stop."
So, most of the book is much lighter than that. It's a dangerous book to read; it makes it very easy to catch the travel bug. And worst of all, whether Bryson loved or hated a particular place, the way he describes it makes you want to see it - to go there and experience the same minor horrors associated with traveling that he faced. Mostly it makes me want a job where I get plenty of vacation time (and what I'm doing now doesn't count as a job with excess vacation - it's only vacation time if you earn money on either side of it and know when it'll be over).
Anyhow, quick update on the job search: unless it takes another two months to find a job, the position I'd applied for in Chicago is likely out of the question - funding was delayed until the end of the year. I'm still waiting to hear about the job in Knoxville at the lab, but apart from that I'm ever so slowly finding jobs here and there to apply for in whatever parts of the country seem interesting for whatever reason. But whatever happens, the GRE general test is out of the way, I'll see a couple friends this weekend, deer season opens in a couple weeks, and I have some very tasty no-bake cookies in the kitchen downstairs.
Huh. And for some reason I just realized that the distance formula you learn in geometry or algebra or whatever is just the square root of the Pythagorean theorem.
From my most recent read - Bill Bryson's "Neither Here Nor There" (reflecting at the end of a couple months of traveling Europe alone):
"...tired of existing in a world of strangers... tired above all of my own dull company. How many times in recent days had I sat trapped on buses or trains listening to my idly prattling mind and wished that I could just get up and walk out on myself?
At the same time, I had a quite irrational urge to keep going. There is something about the momentum of travelling that makes you want to keep moving, to never stop."
So, most of the book is much lighter than that. It's a dangerous book to read; it makes it very easy to catch the travel bug. And worst of all, whether Bryson loved or hated a particular place, the way he describes it makes you want to see it - to go there and experience the same minor horrors associated with traveling that he faced. Mostly it makes me want a job where I get plenty of vacation time (and what I'm doing now doesn't count as a job with excess vacation - it's only vacation time if you earn money on either side of it and know when it'll be over).
Anyhow, quick update on the job search: unless it takes another two months to find a job, the position I'd applied for in Chicago is likely out of the question - funding was delayed until the end of the year. I'm still waiting to hear about the job in Knoxville at the lab, but apart from that I'm ever so slowly finding jobs here and there to apply for in whatever parts of the country seem interesting for whatever reason. But whatever happens, the GRE general test is out of the way, I'll see a couple friends this weekend, deer season opens in a couple weeks, and I have some very tasty no-bake cookies in the kitchen downstairs.
Huh. And for some reason I just realized that the distance formula you learn in geometry or algebra or whatever is just the square root of the Pythagorean theorem.
Monday, October 12, 2009
El Otoño
After a week of fishing around Michigan City, I can say one thing for certain: fall has arrived. It has arrived in all its splendidly colored, crisp-aired, wet glory. In northern Indiana, I was able to watch it arrive by steps through last week, starting the week with most everything being green and the weather only being cool in the mornings and finishing the week with temperatures solidly in the 40's through the entire day, leaves hitting yellows with tinges of orange and red, and clouds filling the sky for days at a time. Thank you, Lake Michigan. Those clouds really are a gift to the area through the entire winter. Well...
As for the fishing, I definitely did not break tradition from my previous two years and brought home one solid fish (coho salmon, 10-12 lbs or so). On the flip side, nothing helps you appreciate climate control and insulation like 4 days standing in 40-degree weather with not-quite-enough clothing for 5 or 6 (or 12) hours straight. Winter boots and coat are coming next time. I think the rain was my favorite part of the week ...well, favorite *half* of the week.
Even camping in one spot for several days straight took me back to the time on the road during the summer. There are some things that quite simply are quintessentially camp-ish... squatting as you do dishes on the ground next to the knee-height campsite faucet, never spending any real period of time indoors, having only 1 pair of shoes that you use during "activities" and 1 pair of sandals for the rest of the time/comfort around the campsite, minimal clothing options, going to bed soon after dark and getting up with or before the sun, caring very little about what time it is or how much time has passed, limited food options, having to walk some real distance just to pee and fill the water bottle, lowered sensitivity to dirt being on you and everything else, seeing a wooden picnic table as an acceptable hygenic surface on which to prepare food, having a sore back and neck, worrying less about locking things up, being more social with random people in the vicinity, carrying multiple pocket knives (need one to carry, and then one for each bag/tackle box you have with you), and no q-tips. Okay, that was a longer list than I expected. But those are just some of the things that really let you know you're camping. And then you know you're camping in the fall when you spend spare time in the evenings not just in your tent but in your sleeping bag, because it's the only item you have the truly has enough insulation for those temperatures.
As for the fishing, I definitely did not break tradition from my previous two years and brought home one solid fish (coho salmon, 10-12 lbs or so). On the flip side, nothing helps you appreciate climate control and insulation like 4 days standing in 40-degree weather with not-quite-enough clothing for 5 or 6 (or 12) hours straight. Winter boots and coat are coming next time. I think the rain was my favorite part of the week ...well, favorite *half* of the week.
Even camping in one spot for several days straight took me back to the time on the road during the summer. There are some things that quite simply are quintessentially camp-ish... squatting as you do dishes on the ground next to the knee-height campsite faucet, never spending any real period of time indoors, having only 1 pair of shoes that you use during "activities" and 1 pair of sandals for the rest of the time/comfort around the campsite, minimal clothing options, going to bed soon after dark and getting up with or before the sun, caring very little about what time it is or how much time has passed, limited food options, having to walk some real distance just to pee and fill the water bottle, lowered sensitivity to dirt being on you and everything else, seeing a wooden picnic table as an acceptable hygenic surface on which to prepare food, having a sore back and neck, worrying less about locking things up, being more social with random people in the vicinity, carrying multiple pocket knives (need one to carry, and then one for each bag/tackle box you have with you), and no q-tips. Okay, that was a longer list than I expected. But those are just some of the things that really let you know you're camping. And then you know you're camping in the fall when you spend spare time in the evenings not just in your tent but in your sleeping bag, because it's the only item you have the truly has enough insulation for those temperatures.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Looking back...
So, I still occasionally write in the journal I kept this summer. Here's an excerpt from during the MCC ride in the beginning of August that caught my eye as I flipped through the notebook to find a new page to start writing on the other day (this was one of those times where I was "picking at my existential scabs", as Jon Krakauer puts it). But first, a little context: the ride started on the previous Sunday (so this was just the third day), and at this point it was dark, most people were in bed (their tents), and I was lying in my tent, writing this by the light of my headlamp. Don't worry, none of this is pushing on depression or anything like that, just struggling with the frustration of feeling somehow too involved in the stories portrayed by some of the books I read. Here we go [only slightly abridged/edited]:
----------------------------------
8-4-09 9:55pm Tues
Should sleep. Feel tired. Started reading "Through Painted Deserts." I'm sure it has some good thoughts, but it doesn't feel helpful reading books like this or "Into the Wild" - they frame life in a way that is much more poetic than I experience it. I do believe that people can go through life thinking those thoughts in the moment, not just retrospectively, but whenever I try to, all I end up feeling is, I don't know, unfulfilled? It makes me want to live a life bigger than life *is* - to experience life as I was not meant to experience it.
It fills me with a sadness that I have scaled the heights of mediocrity, but for some reason can only know what it's like to go further vicariously - appreciating the work accomplished by "kindred spirits." Spirits that were able to Go The Distance.
But it's not really that, is it? It's more of a wistfulness that comes, a contemplative wistfulness that brings with it sorrow over whatever is wrong in whatever small part of the world that is under scrutiny. It heralds an empathic wish to conform to that particular brand of extraordinary, and the let-down with the knowledge that I can never reach the heights of whatever great person because I am not that person - that I do not *wish* to pursue their dream. That means I must define my *own* heights, my *own* goals, my *own* greatness to be attained. I must define my own self as an absolute entity - no longer relative to or distinct from those I know.
Much can be said for choosing heroes and attempting emulation. I want to be someone that those who are dear to me can be proud of. I *need* to be someone that *I* can be proud of.
*That* needs to be my challenge - my goal. To identify, get to know, and live for myself. Not to live for myself in terms of a selfish life, but as in a life that I can be comfortable with as an independent individual with nothing to prove, nobody to impress, and no need to worry if someone likes me enough, over whether I am the friend I can best be and need to be, and over my self-victimized state, bemoaning my short-comings and throwing "Why me?" at God and whoever else will listen.
I don't even know. This is mildly depressing and is far too much to tackle now. I don't know how or when I'll be able to, but this is not the time. I need a few more days on the train. Or solo biking. Or solo hiking. Solo. Alone. *Solo yo*.
10:20. Good night.
----------------------------------
And then the next morning in another entry (I took a rest day on the 4th day of the MCC ride), I had a few quotes written down from "Through Painted Deserts," and one of my favorites (and certainly most relevant to this entry) is from p. 244:
"...life is not a story about me, but is being told to me, and I can be glad of that."
Thank you, Donald Miller.
I started the summer with a 100 page (college ruled, of course) composition book. It's dark blue and has some fuschia and yellow and blue paisley-ish designs on the covers. I filled probably close to 80 of the pages by the time I finished my biking - some reflection like what I have above (not much, though). A lot of it is description, record of events, or just plain stream-of-consciousness rambling. There's even a recipe or two I picked up along the way. Though it's not full now, it probably will be by the end of the year. It will be the first journal I've ever filled. I'm not much of a journaler. I wouldn't have been this summer, either, if I hadn't had so much time to kill in city parks through Kansas and on the train and other random places like that. I probably won't keep it up like this. Already I'm not writing every week, let alone every day. Funny how things like that change so quickly (even though I still have loads of free time during the job search).
----------------------------------
8-4-09 9:55pm Tues
Should sleep. Feel tired. Started reading "Through Painted Deserts." I'm sure it has some good thoughts, but it doesn't feel helpful reading books like this or "Into the Wild" - they frame life in a way that is much more poetic than I experience it. I do believe that people can go through life thinking those thoughts in the moment, not just retrospectively, but whenever I try to, all I end up feeling is, I don't know, unfulfilled? It makes me want to live a life bigger than life *is* - to experience life as I was not meant to experience it.
It fills me with a sadness that I have scaled the heights of mediocrity, but for some reason can only know what it's like to go further vicariously - appreciating the work accomplished by "kindred spirits." Spirits that were able to Go The Distance.
But it's not really that, is it? It's more of a wistfulness that comes, a contemplative wistfulness that brings with it sorrow over whatever is wrong in whatever small part of the world that is under scrutiny. It heralds an empathic wish to conform to that particular brand of extraordinary, and the let-down with the knowledge that I can never reach the heights of whatever great person because I am not that person - that I do not *wish* to pursue their dream. That means I must define my *own* heights, my *own* goals, my *own* greatness to be attained. I must define my own self as an absolute entity - no longer relative to or distinct from those I know.
Much can be said for choosing heroes and attempting emulation. I want to be someone that those who are dear to me can be proud of. I *need* to be someone that *I* can be proud of.
*That* needs to be my challenge - my goal. To identify, get to know, and live for myself. Not to live for myself in terms of a selfish life, but as in a life that I can be comfortable with as an independent individual with nothing to prove, nobody to impress, and no need to worry if someone likes me enough, over whether I am the friend I can best be and need to be, and over my self-victimized state, bemoaning my short-comings and throwing "Why me?" at God and whoever else will listen.
I don't even know. This is mildly depressing and is far too much to tackle now. I don't know how or when I'll be able to, but this is not the time. I need a few more days on the train. Or solo biking. Or solo hiking. Solo. Alone. *Solo yo*.
10:20. Good night.
----------------------------------
And then the next morning in another entry (I took a rest day on the 4th day of the MCC ride), I had a few quotes written down from "Through Painted Deserts," and one of my favorites (and certainly most relevant to this entry) is from p. 244:
"...life is not a story about me, but is being told to me, and I can be glad of that."
Thank you, Donald Miller.
I started the summer with a 100 page (college ruled, of course) composition book. It's dark blue and has some fuschia and yellow and blue paisley-ish designs on the covers. I filled probably close to 80 of the pages by the time I finished my biking - some reflection like what I have above (not much, though). A lot of it is description, record of events, or just plain stream-of-consciousness rambling. There's even a recipe or two I picked up along the way. Though it's not full now, it probably will be by the end of the year. It will be the first journal I've ever filled. I'm not much of a journaler. I wouldn't have been this summer, either, if I hadn't had so much time to kill in city parks through Kansas and on the train and other random places like that. I probably won't keep it up like this. Already I'm not writing every week, let alone every day. Funny how things like that change so quickly (even though I still have loads of free time during the job search).
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)