The No-Longer-Hypothetical List of Exciting Things That Have Happened to me at Cornell, Fall 2013 edition

In case I haven’t said it enough, this fall was really, really busy. Between AAIV, Cornell Productions, pep band, rock climbing, and, oh yeah, actual classes, I didn't have a whole lot of time to sit around staring at the walls. With all the eventfulness came a fair amount of excitement, which leads us into this semester’s list of Exciting Things That Have Happened to me at Cornell.

1. Madison Square Garden: My first time at Madison Square Garden, I not only got to see Cornell’s men’s hockey team play, but I also got to play with the pep band at the game. It was quite an adventure.

2. Unsupervised baking: As the semester wound down, some friends and I managed to get together and do some baking. So far we've made lemon bars and mini apple pies, and I made (not very cheesy) cheese crackers all by myself. The main thing about cooking in college is that you want recipes with as few ingredients as possible. Everything also has to be done by hand with basic tools. Pastry cutter? Don’t have one. I don’t even have salt, but flour has taste by itself, right?

Mini apple pies

3. Mariinsky Orchestra: This was part of the Cornell Concert Series at Bailey Hall, and I was working backstage for Cornell Productions during the concert. They played Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain, Isle of the Dead by Rachmaninoff, and Shostakovich’s Symphony no. 5, and they were very good. Besides putting away the hundreds of chairs and stands, we also helped to load their truck. It takes a lot of wardrobes to clothe an entire orchestra.

4. Small group: Here’s how the story goes. At the end of summer one of my friends emailed me and asked if I’d be interested in being a core member for her small group. To be a core member I “just had to show up.” I said okay, because showing up isn't too hard once you commit your time to it. Sometime in the middle of the semester, my friend asks me if I’d like to prep for small group with her. I said, yeah, sure, because it would be good to see how preparation for small group goes. As we’re going through the passage, she asks me if I’d like to lead that week. Well, then. So much for just showing up. [I did end up saying yes and leading. And it was a good experience.]

5. First ChemE presentation: At the end of Mass and Energy Balances, we didn't have a written final, but we had to make a group presentation about our efforts to reduce the flow rate of carbon into the atmosphere. I was working with my Intro to ChemE group from last year and my current roommate. Apparently it isn't enough for chemical engineers to take all the same classes. We also do homework together, have meals together, and live together. It’s great.

Quite frankly, I can’t narrow down an entire semester to a few events and call them the most exciting things that happened to me in the past four months. I went hiking and saw waterfalls, helped to plan several AAIV events, got to use the very nice sound board the Bear’s Den has while working for Cornell Productions, spent hours yelling at Cornell sports teams, spent more hours hanging upside down at the bouldering wall, stayed up past midnight way too many times arguing with Mathematica or writing essays the morning they were due, trekked a couple hundred miles across campus, complained about anything and everything, and generally had a phenomenal time. And I get to do it all over again next semester.

Monsters University

In one of the few instances where I watched a movie in the same year it was released, I recently saw Monsters University. Personally, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I thought it was funny, and although the second half of the storyline wasn't the most creative, it was still good.

If you haven’t seen the movie yet, I will be talking in some detail about the plot and ending later on, but for now, the premise of the movie is that Mike Wazowski and James P. Sullivan (Sulley) are monsters aspiring to become scarers who meet at Monsters University. The scarers go into the human world to make children scream, which powers the monster world. Of course, Mike and Sulley get into trouble at college, and have to learn to get along with each other if they want to have a shot at becoming scarers.

NOTE: The next two paragraphs contain information about specific events in the movie, so skip to the last paragraph if you don’t want any spoilers. If you do dare to read on, I’ll be writing as though you've already seen the movie.

Starting from the beginning, I liked the story explaining how Mike got to Monsters University. Orientation was amusingly accurate, including the seven hundred different groups trying to get you to join. I’m not going to comment on any of the frat parties, but then again, I’ve never actually been to one. As for the Scare Games, that’s where the storyline started becoming more standard, though it was still enjoyable to see how Mike and Sulley and their team got through the challenges.

The part of the ending that I thought could have been written better was what happened after Sulley confesses to the dean that he cheated in the Scare Games. She tells him that it’s cause for expulsion, and Mike and Sulley do end up having to leave Monsters University, but they immediately go and work in the mailroom at Monsters, Inc. They then manage to work their way up to the scare floor, which was their goal in the first place. While it’s good that they had to work to get what they wanted (imagine that), the short timeframe in the movie made it feel like there wasn’t really a consequence for Sulley cheating. Because cheating is wrong. Don’t try that at home, kids. [Though the scene in the human world right before they get expelled was well done, both animation and script-wise.]

To conclude, I would recommend the movie. I didn't even fall asleep while watching it, unlike during both Iron Man and Iron Man 2, the third Transformers, and Thor, among others. [Just so you know I don’t think all superhero/action movies are terrible, I did not fall asleep during The Avengers, which I thought was pretty good.] I once read or heard that Pixar movies grew up with their original audience, the students currently in college (people around my age). They still make what can be called kids’ movies, but they started out with Toy Story, which was about kids’ toys, when we were young. Around 2005, they released movies about growing up, like Finding Nemo and The Incredibles. And now Andy, from Toy Story, has gone off to college in Toy Story 3 and Mike and Sulley have had their own college experience in Monsters University. Pixar, if you’re reading this, if you could release a movie about getting a job next, that would be great.

I’m Dreaming of a White . . .

Christmas. Yes, I’m filling in the song title with the right holiday this time. I also realized that I used the wrong verb last time. . . . The song is “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas,” not “It’s Beginning to Feel a Lot Like Christmas.” Or Thanksgiving, in my case. Anyway, my mistake.

When I last left Cornell, most of the snow had actually melted due to an entire day of temperatures in the 40s. Before that, however, campus really was white. At least before the snow was trampled and turned brown and grey.

Here are some scenes from around campus:

The sundial on the engineering quad

Ezra Cornell

The slope

Another fact worth noting is that I wrote my first post one day and one year ago. Other than that, the only thing I have left to say is Merry Christmas.

Everything I Needed to Know

I fortunately did not learn on the internet, however, I have occasionally come across useful information/recipes/dating advice.

For one, I got the idea for hot dog corn muffins, which were surprisingly good. By the way, cornbread should, as a rule, be sweet. Just saying. I’ve also turned to the internet to determine what is acceptable to put into a strawberry banana smoothie (basically, strawberries . . . and bananas), and since the recipe had to specify that you should peel the bananas, there may be people more pathetic in the kitchen than I am. On second thought . . .

Then there was the time I was on one of those newfangled internet chat forum things and

Over Thanksgiving I found out that you really shouldn’t refrigerate tomatoes. I had a box of grape tomatoes (that were surprisingly good) that said “Do Not Refrigerate” on the lid. I discovered this the third or fourth time I took the tomatoes out to eat . . . from my fridge. Turns out refrigerating tomatoes breaks down the membranes in the cell walls, making them mushy and powdery.

Moving away from food, the American Dental Association officially says that it’s okay to floss your teeth before or after brushing. However, they note that flossing before brushing may help the fluoride in toothpaste get between teeth.

People seem to disagree about the definition of Morton’s Toe. Some say your second toe just has to be longer than your big toe while others say it’s the lengths of the actual metatarsals that matter. My second toe is, in fact, longer than my big toe on both feet.

The highest scoring soccer game ever was played in 2002 between AS Adema and Stade Olympique L’Emyrne. The final score was 149-0. To protest an earlier refereeing decision, Stade Olympique L’Emyrne scored an own goal every 36 seconds. There were several suspensions and bans handed out for the “unsportsmanlike conduct.”

But first and foremost: If you freeze a banana and throw it in the blender, it comes out tasting like ice cream. This may have been the discovery of the summer.

Road Tripping: Madison Square Garden

I left off after we did the Walk of Waiting for Traffic Lights and the Obstacle Course of Stationary People and made it to Madison Square Garden (MSG). Once we got to MSG, we had to do more waiting, first to get our tickets so we could go up an escalator, then in a hallway outside what turned out to be the Delta Sky 360 Club. We went in to play the Alma Mater, which is probably the only way I’ll ever get into a Sky Club. There is, however, a sky lounge in each of the high rises at Cornell.

After the Alma Mater, we walked over to the rink. The stadium was massive compared to Lynah. We were in the second level of seats behind the Cornell goal. The view wasn't bad, but it was starting to get far enough away that there were a few “where’s the puck?” moments. Of course that happens occasionally at Lynah, even if you’re on the ice . . . funny moment at Lynah from last year: the band was at the rink when it was mostly empty so It must have been during warm ups or the red-white game (when Cornell scrimmages itself). Either way, it was quiet enough so that when things got a little heated we could very clearly hear one of the players scream “where is the ******* puck?” Don’t worry, we told him where it was.

MSG before the game

Back at MSG, we didn't get to play our usual pre-game sets, and not just because Boston University’s band was there. MSG had announcements straight up until they announced the players and played the National Anthem. And then they had ads for BU and Cornell throughout the entire game, which was nice, but honestly, if you were there, I think you knew about both schools in the first place.

The game was a slight disappointment. It was mostly evenly matched until BU scored their first goal. Then Cornell could not get their offence started. Third period saw Cornell losing 3-0. It was not good.

In the end, Cornell came back for two goals, and there were a few times in the final minutes where it looked like they had a shot to tie the game. It turned out they couldn't, but they gave it a try. I still had a fun time and it was pretty cool to see this on the screens when we walked in:

Of course, even without overtime, we left New York City at 11:30, an hour later than we were scheduled to. I slept most of the bus ride back to Ithaca. MSG was a cool experience, but I was excited to be playing in Lynah again. Everyone’s close to the ice, it’s loud in a good way, and (almost) everyone’s a Cornell fan. Also, after navigating the seas of people, I was thrilled to be going back to Cornell in general, because 1) it’s in the middle of nowhere and 2) I get to see the same people (ChemEs) every day.

It’s Beginning to Feel a Lot Like . . .

Thanksgiving. I know, Thanksgiving was two weeks ago, but hey, we should be thankful all year round, right? Also, I’m behind on blogging as usual. Two problem sets, a project, an essay, and two finals in two weeks can do that to a person. [On a tenuously related note, my latest attempt to increase productivity while writing essays – my average speed is just over three words a minute – includes copious amounts of music without words. To get through my history of science essay I went through three or four hours of the Piano Guys and the Vitamin String Quartet, Schumann’s Kinderszenen (played by Horowitz) twice, Strauss’ Alpine Symphony, and the entire soundtrack of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. Note that there are words in the Lord of the Rings soundtrack; however, I don’t understand Elvish.]

Anyway, Thanksgiving break began after class on Wednesday. After a last lunch in the dining hall, I was responsible for feeding myself for the next twelve meals. Food was actually the main concern of the weekend, since we still had shelter, heat, electricity, water, and most importantly internet connection in the dorms. There were a lot of peanut butter and jam sandwiches, some throwing of things into the oven, and a little boiling of water. It turns out cooking takes a lot of time.

I made my sandwiches more fun with one of my two cookie cutters.

And there was this dinner that included all the food groups.

What happens when you only have one bowl-like dish
(look at what the red cup is)

When I wasn't watching water boil, there was always p-chem homework. A friend and I got most of the assignment done between Thursday and Friday afternoon. Even with all that done, it still took another three hours at office hours to finish the problem set up.

Saturday I went with the pep band to Madison Square Garden for Red Hot Hockey. There were only a dozen or so people on the bus ride down, so it was a real party bus silent most of the way into the city. We got to Times Square early and decided to walk to Rockefeller Plaza to see the tree. It was absolute madness. Plus the tree wasn't lit. If I wanted to see an unlit tree I would have gone hiking. The person to tree ratio is much lower as well.

We returned to meet the bus and the rest of the band at the bowling alley where some alumni were having an event and wanted the band to play for them. Apparently there are high class bowling alleys, because that’s what this was. They fed us dinner in the barroom (just the fact that they had a bar should say something) and instead of overdone pizza and a jug of soda there was actual food. Things like sliders and chicken strips, but it was still good. That may also have been because we couldn't actually see what we were eating. Lighting was reminiscent of a film developing room or a highly inappropriate club.

After we played a few songs, we made the trek to Madison Square Garden. Ten blocks at Cornell is a twelve minute walk sprint to get to engineering classes from North Campus. Ten blocks in the middle of New York City during Thanksgiving with fifty instrument-carrying band members is a marathon-length ordeal. You could cartwheel from your dorm up the slope during a snowstorm faster than we were walking. Because besides the crosswalks every fifteen inches, there are people who think it’s a good idea to walk into the middle of a group. And then stop. Some of them even act confused when they get hit by limbs and/or instruments. You didn’t notice the giant instrument carrying herd of Waldo’s in disguise? Really? (Our pep band shirts are red and white striped, but most people were wearing jackets.) And then we finally made it to Madison Square Garden.

Business as Usual

Happy December. Cornell has started to look like this more often:

It’s cold.

In the next three days, I have a 1500 word essay due and two finals (for physical chemistry and linear algebra). I also had a project due yesterday. It was supposed to be study break, but my group ended up working on the project for eight hours on Sunday and two more yesterday. Therefore, I have gotten exactly no studying done.

So it’s business as usual around here. During the semester I had a mass and energy balances problem set due on Tuesday, a linear algebra problem set due Thursday, and a physical chemistry problem set due Friday. My liberal studies class had between thirty to fifty pages of reading a week. As there were no numbers, these readings tended to be dense and massively confusing. I also worked for Cornell Productions about once a week, and had pep band two to three times a week.  I spent most of the semester behind on . . . everything, and I thought I’d finally get a break during finals week, but apparently not. We’ve just replaced problem sets with final assignments that only determine thirty to forty percent of our final grades.

There were two points I wanted to make. 1) The past two weeks are the reason I haven’t gotten to write anything about Thanksgiving. 2) I’m now taking suggestions for a new major.

Any person, any study, right?

Troll in the Heater

My life as an engineer has recently been busy, occasionally frustrating (I’m talking to you, Mathematica), but I can say that it’s never boring. Even so, I've been thinking that certain aspects of the classes I’m taking could use a little more fun.

First up, mass and energy balances. Say you have a heater that increases the temperature of a water stream from 50°C to 75°C. 125 kg of water enters the heater, but 117 kg of water exits. A mass balance (or basic math) tells you that 8 kg of water is missing. Well, at this point you could speculate that there’s a leak in the heater or that water is building up in the system. Or you could decide that neither of those explanations is that plausible and conclude that there must be a troll in the heater drinking the missing water.

Moving on to linear algebra: we learned how computers use 4x4 matrices to perform transformations on coordinates to make them look 3D from a viewer’s perspective. Our example was a falling building (“don’t worry; the building’s only three units high and you’re standing five units away”). Apparently, when viewed on a 2D screen, this building:

should look like this as it falls:

I know, you’re waiting for my first video game to come out, aren't you?

Then in physical chemistry, we’re dealing a lot with operators that do things to functions. For example, we have an operator that takes the derivative of a function and one that multiplies a function by x. So that we know they’re operators, they wear hats like this: . But those are boring hats. I like these better:

There are some special operators called Hermitian operators. They don’t like people and live alone in huts in the middle of nowhere. [Not really. They’re named after the French mathematician Hermite.]

Finally, if a band called Schrodinger’s Cats put out an album called Wanted Dead and Alive, wouldn't you want to listen to it too?

The Mystery of the Penalty Box Door and the Case of the Empty Net

For the pep band, winter is our busiest season because on top of weekly rehearsals, we play at men’s and women’s basketball and men’s and women’s hockey. This leads to stretches where we have games three days in a row, or, like last weekend, four games in five days. [Let’s face it; this is a good thing because otherwise I’d have no good reason for leaving my dorm room.] There was a rare Monday night basketball game against Radford, which exactly no one in the pep band had heard of. Turns out Radford really is a college in Virginia. For whatever reason they were in the area to play Binghamton and Cornell.

As for the game itself, let’s just say it’s not a good thing when you’re glad your team only lost by 15 points. Cornell looked okay right up until anyone had to shoot, at which point they would drop the ball, throw the ball in the general direction of the hoop, or just flat out miss. Let’s hope this was a Monday night anomaly.

The other three games were all men’s hockey games. The first two were typical ECAC games on a Friday and Saturday night. Friday night Cornell played Brown and at first it did not look like things were going to end well. A few minutes into first period, Cornell had a penalty shot called against them. I saw exactly none last year; this is already at least the second of the season. Brown scored. Cornell managed to tie the game before the end of first period, then picked up two more goals in the second period. And then things got crazy.

With less than ten minutes to go, play stops. The refs and players are focused on our penalty box, which usually means that someone’s gotten a penalty. To see if that’s the case, we wait and see if our penalty box door opens, except that the penalty box door is missing completely. As it turns out, it’s not really missing. It’s just shattered into a million pieces all over the ice. After the glass was cleaned up, play continued. Near the end of the game, Brown pulled their goalie so they could have an extra attacking player on the ice. Cornell scored an empty net goal, and then just to cap off the night, scored one more goal shortly after to make the final score 5-1.

Cornell vs. Yale

The next night, Cornell played Yale, who happen to be last year’s NCAA champions. As it turns out, that didn't matter, because we beat them 2-1 in a game in which Cornell’s only penalty was “too many men on the ice.” Which brings us to the last hockey game.

Following the rare Monday night basketball game was an even rarer Tuesday night hockey game. Not only was the game penalty heavy but there were also some lesser heard penalties called. Including “unsportsmanlike conduct” against a Cornell player for boarding a Niagara player way after the play had been whistled dead. Well, if that’s what they want to call it. Then there was “diving” at least twice, something about “contact to the head,” and “playing with a broken stick.” The last is a penalty because broken sticks can be dangerous, so hockey players are supposed to drop their sticks as soon as they break. In the case of the Cornell player whose stick broke, not only did he not drop his stick, but he then also tried to play the puck with his broken stick. Two minutes in the penalty box, no questions about it.

At that point the score was 3-2, so it was close. Cornell had a two goal lead earlier, but they blew that and were only ahead thanks to a late second period goal. Anyway, they managed to kill off the penalty and make it to the final minutes of the game when Niagara pulled their goalie. The normal frenzy ensued, and the puck bounced around awhile before being saved by our goalie, who, by the way, was not our normal goaltender but a freshman making his first start. (Cornell’s usual goalie had played Friday and Saturday and should be playing again on Saturday, plus the game against Niagara wasn't a league game so I guess the coach was giving the freshman some experience.)

So our goalie drops the puck, lines up a shot, and shoots straight through all the players to score an empty net goal. This is only the third time in NCAA history that a goalie has scored. [Here’s the video. It’s kind of blurry, but you can hear the pep band in the background.] All in a day’s night’s work at Lynah.

Double Trouble

I have come to the conclusion that although there are four academic classes listed in my Cornell student account, I’m really just taking the same class four times. [I am aware that the title of this post is “Double Trouble,” however, “Quadruple Trouble” doesn't rhyme, plus my liberal studies class is a little different. Mass and Energy Balances also has slightly different material, but I take it with all the same people as p-chem and linear algebra (to a lesser extent), so all three might as well be the same class.]

For example, we spent a good portion of the beginning of linear algebra talking about linear transformations because any linear transformation can be written as a matrix that’s multiplied by the vector or object to be transformed, and linear algebra is all about matrices. Meanwhile, in p-chem we were introduced to operators. Some operators are linear. Here’s how to tell if a transformation or operator is linear:

From linear algebra:

Definition: A linear transformation from Rⁿ to R^m is any function T(x) with two properties:

                1) T(u+v) = T(u) + T(v)

                2) T(cu) = cT(u)

From p-chem:

Linear operators

                Â[c₁f₁(x) + c₂f₂(x)] = c₁ Âf₁(x) + c₂ Âf₂(x)

Recently in linear algebra, we were thinking of functions as vectors in the context of inner products and related material.

Been there, done that.

Our linear algebra professor also made this note about inner products.

Don't forget the complex conjugate

And then last week we started our day off in physical chemistry learning about quantum spin and were introduced to the symmetrization and antisymmetrization operators. These operators have eigenvalues of 1 and -1 and work with the permutation operator to form the spin portion of the wavefunction for electrons. We went on to Mass and Energy Balances, had lunch, and ended the day in linear algebra, where the following happened:

We were writing quadratic functions as a vector x multiplied by a matrix A which was multiplied by x.  That’s not too difficult, but in order to apply a theorem we’d been working on, A needed to be symmetric.  Magically, if you call this symmetric matrix B and write B as (A+A^T)/2 + (A-A^T)/2, B will be symmetric.

The professor told us that the first matrix (A+A^T)/2 was symmetric, so naturally I made a comment to my friend about how (A-A^T)/2 should be called antisymmetric, in light of what we’d done earlier that morning in p-chem. I was completely kidding, but the next words out of the professor’s mouth were something along the lines of “and the second matrix is antisymmetric.” I’m not sure of his exact phrasing because all the ChemEs in linear algebra were too busy laughing, groaning, and/or crying in despair. ChemE is taking over our lives.

Rise and Shine, It’s Pre-enroll Time

My latest poetry anthology will be coming out next month decade never. Preordering can be done by sending cash or checks to

Pre-enrollment is always a fun time, because somehow, with the hundreds of classes Cornell has to offer, everybody wants the same three courses. Unless you’re an engineer, in which case, you get to enjoy popular classes like Stochastic Hydrology and Unconventional Natural Gas Development from Shale Formations. Meanwhile, in the hotel school: Introduction to Casino Operations.

Last week I made it through pre-enrollment and got almost everything I need to help me toward graduation. To keep moving toward fulfillment of my liberal studies requirements, I’ll be taking Intro to Macroeconomics. There were a couple other classes I was interested in, but none of them fit into my schedule. Macroeconomics it is.

For my biology requirement, I’m currently enrolled in Biomolecular Engineering, which happens to be a ChemE class, taught by a ChemE professor. From what I've heard, this is a pretty interesting class.

I was told how to fill the remainder of my schedule by the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. I’ll be taking Fluids and semester two of physical chemistry. If I never see the Schrodinger Equation again . . .

I’m also supposed to be taking a physical chemistry lab. Supposed to being the key words. There are currently around 170 students enrolled in Honors Physical Chemistry I. Presumably, most of them will be moving on to Honors Physical Chemistry II next semester. Strangely enough, there were only 120 lecture slots open in p-chem II. Even more strangely, there were only 90 slots open in p-chem lab, so I got the lecture, but not the lab. I think there’s a good reason the chemistry department does this. Just so long as I get the lab at some point, because I would like to graduate . . . eventually.

Ignoring the p-chem lab, pre-enroll went well. No one wants to take Fluids with the ChemEs for fun? Well, that’s a shocker.

Are You Gonna Be My Girl?

As strange and unlikely as it may sound, I get asked this question every few weeks. Sometimes twice in a week. My top answers are “Only Time Will Tell,” “Call Me,” and “Hold On, I’m Comin’.” If you’re thinking that my capitalization needs work, good catch. All of the above, including “Are You Gonna Be My Girl?” are songs in our pep band folder. I have never been asked “Are you gonna be my girl?” in real life because I do not live in a bad 80s sitcom, contrary to what my pep band folder may indicate.

Though I would take bad 80s sitcom over most of what’s on TV today, notable exceptions being Jeopardy!, Sherlock, The Legend of Korra, anything involving the Revolution, and the Spanish channel. Just for fun, last year I calculated the average release date for most of the songs in our pep band folder and it came out to be around 1978. The oldest song we have, not including the Alma Mater and “Anchors Aweigh” (which we play when Army comes to Cornell), is “Basin Street Blues,” from 1926. The newest that I found was “Some Nights,” released in 2012 by Fun.

So hockey season is in full swing, meaning that the band will be busy pretty much every weekend from now until post-winter (known in more southern climates as “spring”). This past weekend we had two women’s hockey games and the men’s basketball home opener.

The women’s hockey team beat RPI 3-1 and Union 8-1. I discovered I can put my pep band shirt on over my fleece jacket, which is nice because it’s cold in Lynah when we’re not surrounded by 4000 other people. The crowds were decent for the games, but for women’s hockey the band stands on the opposite side of the rink from the main crowd. The point is, it’s cold.

The RPI game was either a little lacking in offense or the teams were evenly matched, because the score was pretty low as far as women’s hockey goes. The Union game, on the other hand, was a fairly high-scoring affair for Cornell. One of the most exciting goals from the weekend came in the first period of the RPI game. Cornell had a 1-0 lead and as the clock was counting down, one of the Cornell players took a shot. The puck hit the net just as the buzzer sounded. This was closer than the time Cornell scored with one second left in a playoff match to win the game.

By this point, the band had already played Davy (the fight song) and the teams were leaving the ice. The goal, which had been up on the scoreboard, was taken down and the referees went to review the play. Well, then, did the band play Davy for the end of the period or for the goal? Both. Because as it turned out, the puck crossed the line with one tenth of a second left on the clock. We knew it was a goal the whole time. Really.

Women's hockey vs. Northeastern a few weeks ago

Sunday afternoon we went to the men’s basketball home opener against Loyola, and other people actually showed up, unlike that one women’s basketball game. . . .  The team started out well, but throughout the game the score stayed close. Cornell actually went into the final minute of the game down by several points. They made a basket, bringing them within two points. In Cornell’s last play of the game, one of the Cornell players goes up to shoot, and misses . . . but gets fouled. Two free throws. Newman Arena is getting excited. The player makes the first shot, then makes the second. Loyola has time for one desperation shot, which they miss, sending the game into overtime.

Basketball overtime rarely happens, due to the nature of the game, but it happened on Sunday. Cornell stayed with Loyola until the final minute, but in the end, they missed a couple shots, didn't block a couple others, and lost 89-93. Definitely ranks as one of the craziest finishes to a game I've seen. Between basketball overtime, a couple slam dunks, and hockey, it was an exciting weekend for the band.

And I did this to my clarinet mouthpiece:

Fortunately I have a spare.

(If you don't know what a clarinet mouthpiece is supposed to look like, here's my spare.  Specifically, look along the top edge of the mouthpiece. That v-shaped dent in the top picture? That’s where it chipped off completely.)

The College Student’s Guide to Laundry

Before I begin this post, there are a couple things to note: If I’m giving unsolicited advice, it’s probably 1) terrible and 2) not to be taken seriously. If I’m asked to give advice, it may still be terrible, but you can at least take me seriously. This post falls under the first category of advice (that of unsolicited nature).

The first step in doing laundry is deciding whether or not you need to do laundry. This can be determined using several methods. One: the ratio of clothes in your laundry basket/floor to clothes in your closet/dresser is undefined. Two: You have no clean socks. Three: Your cleanest pair of pants has grass stains, mud stains, and an indeterminate food stain.

Once you have determined that you do in fact need to do laundry, move on to the next step. Gather everything that needs to be washed. Take your laundry, detergent, and method of payment to the laundry room. In your laundry room, proceed to throw all your laundry into a washer and add detergent. Sorting is unnecessary because your entire wardrobe consists of jeans* and t-shirts. Pay to start the washer, then choose the one setting that’s been allowed to remain on the washer (dark colors, colors, whites, etc.). Since you didn't sort your laundry, choose colors.

Wait forty minutes, then return to rescue your damp and presumably cleaner clothing. At this point, throw all your laundry into a dryer, pay more money to start the dryer, and choose how warm you would like your clothing at the end of the drying cycle. Your options are hot, very hot, and superheated.

Another forty minutes later, it’s time to remove your clothing from the autoclave dryer. Depending on which heat setting you chose, you may or may not need protective gear to collect your clothing. At this point, you can bring your freshly laundered clothing back to your room, where you have between one and three days to fold everything.

Indicators of laundry success include: articles of clothing coming out of the process the same color as they went in (hey, at least the stains didn't get any worse, and now they’re clean stains), everything smelling better than it did before laundry, and not losing any socks.

*I actually don’t own any jeans, but I still don’t sort my laundry.

Trick or Treat?

Halloween celebrations on the chemical engineering front included, but were by no means limited to a two hour mass and energy balances prelim and the hardest physical chemistry problem set of the semester. I also had an essay to write and there was another problem set due for people taking Networks. All things considered, it was a fun night for the chemical engineers. Except not.

I had actually not procrastinated horribly since I knew that I’d have the prelim and then have to finish two assignments afterwards. I was almost done with the p-chem problem set and I’d started the essay earlier in the day. Yes, I wrote the entire essay the day before it was due . . . don’t tell my TA. As I mentioned recently, however, nothing gets done quickly in Mathematica.

So after a day of classes, giant tree broccoli (I had steamed broccoli at two different dining halls that day and both times the broccoli was the size of my palm.), intermittent essay writing, eigenfunctions, and last minute studying, I arrived at the mass and energy balances prelim with my pencil, calculator, note sheet, colored pens, colored pencils, and ruler. Besides the multiple choice questions, I didn't think it was horrible (I may change my mind when I get the graded prelim back). I spent way too much time arguing with myself about the multiple choice questions, then went to check the rest of the test with about half an hour remaining.

I was going through the third question when for some reason I thought I should check the chemical formula for butane, just to confirm I had it right. I turn to one of the data tables we’d been given and look up butane. C_{­­­­­4­}H­_10­­. I look at my prelim. C­_3­H_­8­. Wait, what? My first thought: unprintable. My second thought: also unprintable. With twenty minutes to go, I had to rebalance my combustion reaction, then change pretty much every single number in the problem.

The icing on the cake is that I finished with a few minutes to spare, checked problem four, and I realized that all my units were wrong. Fortunately, I was working with ratios so the numbers didn't change, but there’s kind of a big different between 10 grams of a drug and 10 kilograms of a drug.

After all that, I got to go back to my dorm and finish my essay and wrangle some operators into commuting*. We were supposed to prove that the commutator between the x and y components (L_x and L_y) of the angular momentum operator was nonzero and equaled -ihL_z. After expanding L­_x and L_­y­, the book, and most internet sources would say something like “and after simplifying, this obviously equals -ihL_z."  Somehow, I don’t think that’s what my professor was going for. I finally found the technique I needed to fully expand the commutator into sixteen separate terms, fourteen of which I promptly crossed out because they equaled zero.

*Operators are rules that act on functions, like take the derivative of a function or multiply a function by three. If you have two operators named  and Ĉ acting on a function f(x), the commutator is the difference between doing Â, then Ĉ on f(x) and doing Ĉ, then  on f(x).

My Thursday night continued well into Friday morning. I think I got to sleep before my brother, but Chicago’s an hour behind Ithaca. Minor detail.

Overall, no treats on Halloween, but I insist that the first question on the mass and energy balances prelim was a trick. I didn't dress up for Halloween, but there was a discussion earlier in the week about me being an operator, because I wear a hat, just like operators. . . . Why yes, I do spend a lot of time with other ChemEs. Other costume ideas included being an equation sheet (for the mass and energy prelim) or a process unit. Hey, if we got the whole class to participate, we could reenact chemical processes. Who wants to be the condenser?

Playoff Soccer

I would really like to title this post PLAYOFF SOCCER!!! but that would probably scare off my three remaining readers. The fact remains, however, that the time has come for the New England Revolution to return to the MLS playoffs for the first time since 2009. Thanks to the MLS Free Stream of the Week, I got to watch the Revolution’s last game of the regular season against the Columbus Crew. This game not only closed out their regular season, but also determined whether or not they would have a postseason.

Going into the final weekend of regular season play, the Revolution, Houston Dynamo, Montreal Impact, Chicago Fire, and Philadelphia Union were all fighting for three playoff spots. Both the Union and Impact lost on Saturday, putting the Revolution, who were playing on Sunday, in a favorable position to make the playoffs. Right before the Revolution played, the Dynamo won their game, meaning that the Revolution had to win to advance to the postseason.

This was the game I got to watch. It was mildly terrifying, but midway through the first half, the Revolution scored. Somehow, they held on to the lead through the second half. Then the amount of stoppage time went up on the scoreboard. Some background as to why the next part is significant: a couple weeks earlier the Revolution were playing the Red Bulls. They were leading 2-1 when a Red Bulls player pushed a Revolution defender into his own goalkeeper, causing the defender to be sent off the field to receive treatment to stop the bleeding. That’s standard procedure – if a player is bleeding, he can’t be on the field playing. What wasn't standard was that the injury occurred during stoppage time, which then ran on to seven additional minutes of play. Seven. Not the usual three or four. Seven minutes. During which the Red Bulls scored an equalizing goal, leaving the Revolution two points farther from a playoff spot.

After that debacle, we come to the end of the Crew game. Knowing that anything less than a win would leave them out of the playoffs, the Revolution were a few short minutes away from claiming a playoff spot. Or so they thought. Stoppage time comes up on the board: eight minutes. Apparently, there was a great reaction from the Revolution bench, but it wasn't on the broadcast. The amount was completely justified by the number of injuries and substitutions, but the potential for disaster was high. Then, approximately seventeen thousand long balls and no goals later, the final whistle sounded, sending the Revolution into the playoffs for the first time in five years.

Tonight, the Revolution take on Sporting Kansas City. They have not scored against Sporting KC in the last 501 minutes the teams have played. Let’s hope they don’t make that 591.

As for me, I played a little playoff soccer of my own for my house team a couple weeks ago. In Cornell intramural soccer, any team that finishes the regular season winning at least half of their games moves on the playoffs. We finished the season undefeated, so we got to take part in some playoff games. Our first game was on a Sunday, our usual playing day, and we won that game. We figured that our next game would be in a little while, but on Tuesday morning I was checking the weather and my email before leaving for class and there’s an email from one of the players on our house team. Upon opening the email, I discover that our next playoff game is not, in fact, in awhile, but that evening.

The most surprising part of this whole endeavor was that not only did we find enough players for the game, but for the first time, there were also enough girls to make substitutions. Honestly, I think the games are too short to really need subs, but it’s the principle of the thing. So both teams get to the field and have enough males and females to play. As the game progresses, it appears that this will be our hardest match yet, and sure enough, the other team scores near the end of the first half.

Sadly, we could not overcome the one goal deficit and ended up losing the game, which knocked us out of the playoffs. It wasn't the fact that we lost that was disappointing. I didn't really care about that, because it’s intramurals. It was the fact that it meant our season was over and we wouldn't get to play anymore. Anyone up for a snow soccer league?

With that, I just have one more thing to say on the subject of soccer: Let’s Go Revolution.

T-shirts and My Desk

More quasi-related items, except not really this time. Both items were involved in my weekend. I wore clothing and I sat at my desk because that’s where my laptop is. Beyond that . . .

Saturday morning I slept in, thanks to another late Thursday night doing Mathematica. I had most of it done before I went to work for Cornell Productions, and when I got back, I thought I just had to type a few lines of code quickly into Mathematica and print everything out. I was wrong. One does not do anything quickly in Mathematica.

Saturday afternoon, a friend and I went to the Cornell-Brown men’s soccer game. We’d been wanting to go to a game and they were giving out free t-shirts (and food) as an incentive to get students there, so we thought it was a good time to go. We got there fairly early, but there was already a line to get in, and by the time we entered the bleachers where they were distributing shirts, they’d run out of smalls. I figure that out of 400 shirts, they ordered about seven smalls.

Sadly, not only did Cornell end up losing the game 1-0, but I also ended up with a slightly too-large t-shirt. That’s the story behind the ill-fitting t-shirt.

The story behind my desk is actually about the front of my desk. It’s backwards. There’s nothing wrong with it besides the fact that the top drawer sticks, but I do have a problem with it. Here it is, specifically cleaned up for this picture:

And why would I like it much better if it looked like this?

I’m left handed. The desk is set up so that the chair and computer go on the left side of the desk. For right handed people, this works just fine because there’s plenty of space to the right of the computer for them to work. Note that the drawers block me from shifting my chair/laptop over to the right and freeing up space to work on my left. So I can either work on top of my keyboard, which leads to unintended consequences like clicking on the “You just won a free trip to Siberia” ads as well as an inability to type or I can write on the right side anyway and practice my contortionist skills. If I dislocate my shoulder, you know why.

Pizza, Liquor, and Slower Traffic Keep Right

If someone knows what connects the items in today’s post title without reading the rest of the post, I will be impressed. Hint: the answer is not some new form of travelling party. Further hint: I did not randomly select three items so that I could imagine my 3.5 followers frantically searching for an answer that would solve not only my question, but also all the mysteries of the universe.

What really does connect pizza, liquor, and a traffic sign? They’re all words you might see while driving around, and the first two are especially welcome when you get thirsty you’re playing the alphabet game. According to Google, this is apparently an actual road trip game, but my brother and I made up our own rules as we played. The basic premise of the game is to find all the letters of the alphabet in order while in the car, usually while on the way to some exotic vacation locale like Vermont. We used road signs, license plates, anything outside the car was fair game unless it was attached to your arm (i.e., holding a book outside the window was not only against the rules, but a good way to risk dismemberment).

We also didn't play the version where the letter has to be the first letter of the word, plus we didn't yell out the letters as we found them. This led to conversations such as “Which letter are you on?” “Which letter are you on?” “I asked you first.” “N.” “WHERE DID YOU FIND A J?” Seriously, though. There are no J’s on road signs. As long as people are hungry, thirsty, and are selling old stuff, you’re all set for Z’s (plaza, pizza) and Q’s (liquor, antiques), and X’s aren't even rare on the highway, but I don’t remember the last time I saw juglandaceous on a road sign. Oh wait. That would be never.

To get an idea of how uncommon the letter J is when travelling, based on a listing of USGS maps, there are 1061 towns in New York. Seventeen of them start with J. Two others contain the letter J. That’s 1.79 percent. X shows up seventeen times, but if you’re on the highway, you don’t need X; even if the next exit is 57 miles away, at least it’ll show up at some point. If you’re not on the highway, you’re probably also not passing through Java, NY, population 2,057 as of the 2010 census, so you’re most likely still stuck at J anyway.

At this point, you may be thinking that I’m awfully worked up about a game I used to play with my brother when I was ten. You’d be right, but it gets better. Not only did we go through the alphabet a good half dozen times on long car rides, but we also made up a complex system of power ups including one that allowed you to skip over letters and one that let you save a letter – so if you happened to see a J but were only on G, when you got to J you could go straight on to K. There were discussions about whether you could only save one letter per alphabet cycle or if you could only have one letter saved at a time (so if you saved a J, after passing J you could then save a Q). Sometimes we played only uppercase or lowercase letters. Sometimes we had both going at the same time. I’m pretty sure we did the alphabet backwards a few times. This was a serious game.

The whole reason I was thinking about the alphabet game was thanks to the six to seven hour bus rides I take between Cornell and home. After trying to write on a bus for a couple hours, you start looking for other forms of entertainment. And so, that’s how I came to remember the alphabet game and yes, I made it through the alphabet a couple times on my way back to Cornell after fall break. That’s how I know there are still no J’s on road signs.

The Beautiful Game

Living in the West Campus house system has, so far, been great. Besides having a dining hall two floors below my room, I've also gained the opportunity to participate in a variety of events ranging from concerts to cookie decorating. Because what I really need is to jam more things into my schedule.

I haven’t been able to attend a lot of events (between AAIV, Cornell Productions, pep band, and p-chem problem sets, I don’t have any free nights) but two things that I have done are soccer and house dinner. House dinner is every Wednesday from 6-7 in all the West Campus dining halls and during that time, only residents of each house can eat at their dining halls. As the food is even better than normal, I make it a point to go to house dinner whenever possible.

A couple weeks ago, they served us salmon as well as cake to celebrate the anniversary of the opening of the house.

Counterclockwise from the roll: salmon, beef with noodles, green beans (in the back), potatoes, and salad

House dinner also merits tablecloths and cloth napkins.  Fancy, I know.

As for the other house activity that I've participated in, that’s where the title of this post comes from. Soccer is known as the beautiful game, and I have now become acquainted with the beauty that is intramural coed soccer. In an effort to keep teams balanced, we play 8 v. 8 with four males and four females on the field for each team. This leads to the three questions of coed intramurals:

1) Is the game still scheduled to be played? [Forfeits and bad weather shortened an already short season for our house team.]
2) Are there enough girls to play?
3) Has the other team showed up?

If the answer to the above three questions is yes, we then get to play 40 minutes of soccer. It takes us a good fifteen to twenty minutes to walk to the field. One way. It’s still completely worth it. I've gotten to play in a couple games, and I've come to realize that I've missed playing soccer. It’s true that coed intramurals are about as uncompetitive as you can get, but that doesn't mean it’s not a lot of fun.

One more note on the beautiful game: the New England Revolution are continuing their playoff push with a home and home series against the Columbus Crew. They’re currently still 7th in the Eastern Conference, but the teams in 4th, 5th, and 6th are all only one point ahead, in part due to a Revolution victory over the Montreal Impact last weekend.

161 Things Every Cornellian Should Do, #94

#94. Go to an acapella concert

Until a couple Fridays ago, I’d seen CU Winds and the CU Symphony Orchestra, visiting jazz groups and orchestras, but I had not been to an acapella concert. (I also haven’t been ice skating at Lynah, but that’s another matter.) What was particularly special about this acapella concert was that it was my first concert as a Cornell student that I was in the audience for. Up until that point, all the groups I’d seen had been from backstage while working for Cornell Productions.

It was definitely a different perspective, and the second time in the span of a week that I was looking at things from another point of view. The first was at the homecoming game, which was the first football game I've ever been to where I didn't have to play in the halftime show. (And more generally, one of the few sports games that I didn't go to with the band.) It was a little weird being there to watch the game and not to play Davy when the team scored or to start chants of “Let’s go red.”

Similarly, sitting in the audience instead of backstage felt kind of strange.  It was an interesting night overall, because I was actually working after the concert to take down the curtains and speakers in preparation for CU Winds later that weekend.  Anyway, vocals don’t travel as well as instrumentals backstage, so I guess this was a good concert to hear from the front of the stage.

As for the concert itself, it was a joint concert between twelve different acapella groups, so there was a decent variety of songs.  One of the groups did “Bad Romance,” and personally, I like the Zheng Lab’s parody “Bad Project” better, but it was done well at the concert.  Near the end, the Hangovers sang “You Got a ‘C’” to “Under the Sea,” which was pretty funny . . . especially in prelim season (which this semester, is every week for me).  [I was having trouble keeping track of which groups performed, let alone what they sang, so normally I wouldn't remember the group and the song, but they were one of the last to perform and I was already backstage waiting for my shift to start.  In contrast, even after not having used it for possibly a year, the other day I managed to come up with the molar mass of calcium. . . . It’s 40.08 grams per mole.]

Overall, the concert was great.  I enjoyed myself, and I didn't even get back to my dorm too late after work.  And while we’re on the topic, here’s one last acapella song: “We Didn't Go To Harvard” by Cayuga’s Waiters.  They were at the concert, but didn’t perform this song.  It never gets old.  (The lyrics at 1:30 fall under the "sad but true" category.)

39/66

39/66 = 13/22 = 0.59090909 . . . = a failing grade = a really weird visual acuity = the worst time signature ever. More to the point of this post, 39 happens to be the number of books in the Old Testament, out of 66 books of the Bible. Which is to say, I have finally finished reading the Old Testament in its entirety. I’m not going to say when exactly I started, but let’s just say I haven’t been following one of those “read the Bible in a year” plans.

I did, however, make it through all the sacrificial laws, genealogies, and major and minor prophets, including Zechariah’s seven lamps with seven pipes to the seven lamps; Daniel’s goats, rams, and horns; and Ezekiel’s eye-rimmed wheels. And now, onward to the New Testament.

And the Band Played On

Last year, homecoming was on a rather cool and drizzly day, so I stayed in my dorm for most of the day and played games on my computer caught up on homework. This year, homecoming was on a cool, windy, and rainy day, so naturally I not only went early to the band room dedication, but also stayed for a full half of the football game.

The new band room (also known as the Fischell Band Center) is a slight upgrade over our previous location. There wasn't anything inherently wrong with the band room we had in the basement of Barton, but, you know, it is kind of nice to have a space that actually has instrument and uniform storage space. Plus the sky ceiling tiles aren't falling down and there aren't any colored fluids dripping from the ceiling. I’m sure that was very safe.

Highlights of the building dedication included: rain right in the middle of the ceremony; a multiple choice quiz with the answers a) Cornell, b) Cornell, c) Cornell, or d) all of the above; and the pep band members sneaking out the side door when we eventually got to play. (The marching band was there for the football game, so there were only a few people there representing the pep band and apparently no one had planned for the pep band being there.)

After the band room was officially dedicated, I hung around, met up with some friends, and checked out the engineering school tailgate. Yes, engineers know how to party.* A few hours later, the game was scheduled to begin. At that point, it was only drizzling a little, so a couple friends and I decided to go anyway.

Note: Stadium lights are on
Further note: It was 3 o'clock in the afternoon
Conclusion: Friday night Saturday afternoon football

Half an hour later, we were losing 10-0 to Bucknell and it was pouring. This is the point in the game where most sane people would have decided that getting pneumonia wasn't worth staying to watch their team lose. This is the point in this post where I point out that I’m a college student who probably lost most of my sanity after the second or third . . . or first . . . week of classes (Mathematica at 1 in the morning, anyone?).

Meaning that I stayed through the halftime show to see the marching band perform. It was completely worth it. Besides, I was multitasking: I was watching the football team play and taking a shower at the same time. You don’t really need soap to get clean, do you?

The marching band played “Hey Jude,” “Carry on Wayward Son,” and the Alma Mater. In the pouring rain. Some of the fans with umbrellas didn't stick it out that long. For the record, I would have stayed for the rest of the game after halftime, but I had to get to a meeting.

And in case you were wondering, Cornell beat Bucknell 45-13.

*No, not really.

Seven Blisters and A Cut

To start this post off, I would like to say that I do not have anywhere close to seven blisters at the moment, nor did I have seven blisters when I got the idea for this post. However, several days after coming up with the title for the post, I went bouldering at Noyes and got no less than four blisters, two on each hand. Yes, that happened.

All of this is an indication that I have returned to rock climbing and other outdoor activities. Adventure is out there. But so is danger. Even with that in mind, a couple weeks ago was not a great week in terms of avoiding personal injury. It started on Saturday during hiking, when I volunteered to help with food prep for lunch. Apparently I cut myself while I was slicing green peppers. It was, however, so minor that 1) there was no blood, and 2) I didn't notice I had a cut on my finger until four or so hours later. That was right after I let a match burn down a little too close to my fingers while we were working on fire building. No harm done, but wouldn't you know it, fire is hot.

A few days later, I went bouldering at Noyes before house dinner (more on that later, because house dinner deserves a post of its own). Besides being completely overhung, the holds on the wall are on the rough side. After traversing the wall a couple times, falling off half a dozen times, and getting a little work done on the Spiderman route, my hands were a little sore, but that’s normal. What wasn't normal were the four blisters that appeared a little later under calluses I already had. Not cool. They healed up really nicely, though, in just a couple days.

To end the week, I peeled some of my skin off when I was peeling a peach for my fruit of the day. Again, no blood, unlike the time I scraped the tip of my knuckle off while peeling an apple to make applesauce in my sixth grade home economics class.

Just to show that even normal, everyday life isn't safe for me, at house dinner two weeks ago, I smashed a fingernail against a plate while I was trying to slice something. How that happened, I don’t even know. But for awhile, I was cut, blistered, and bruised. College is fun!

To end on a more pleasant note for those concerned for my physical safety, here’s a picture of a waterfall at Treman State Park a few miles from Cornell:

[I’m fine, really. My knees aren't even constantly bruised from rock climbing anymore. It’s been over half a year since I last wrote about the perils of climbing, and I've moved on to different forms of injury.]

Double the Fun

As I've mentioned before, this semester I've started blogging for Cornell’s Life on the Hill blogging program, which means that I now have two blogs and two jobs. I do not, however, have twice the number of hours in a day. That’s above my pay grade. Also, I've been told that it would be a good thing for me to get a research position if I’m thinking about going to grad school. We’ll see about that one.

[On a related note, I went to a career fair without 1) any idea of which companies would be there and 2) no resume. As per usual, I am on top of things. In my defense, I only wanted to see what it was like, which was crowded, hot, and kind of noisy. I can’t wait for when I have to start looking for a job. Grad school is starting to sound like a good idea.]

Back to the subject of my blogging: I average a post every three or four days on Life of an Engineer (2-3 posts a week) and am supposed to post twice a week for Life on the Hill. So far, I haven’t been posting the same things on both sites, meaning that I now have to write about twice as much. My life hasn't gotten twice as interesting. So for my next post, I present: “Thoughts on the Paint Chip on my Windowsill,” followed by “The Number of Steps it Takes to Get to Different Locations on Campus.” I’m kidding. Though they did tell me I could post anything on my Cornell blog . . .

I still can’t quite believe I’m being paid to irately rant complain promote all my favorite things about Cornell. Then again, I also still can’t quite believe I’m in college or that Pluto isn't a planet. I mean, how will My Very Excellent Mother Just Serve Us Nine Pizzas? Now it’s My Very Excellent Mother Just Served Us Nine. Nine whats? Next thing you know, they’ll be telling us indigo isn't a color in the rainbow. At which point, they’re just trying to mess with my childhood.

If you couldn't tell, Pluto is my favorite planet. I guess after Earth, since I sort of live there most of the time. But if for whatever reason you really can’t get enough of me here, I also blog at this place. I tend to keep it to Cornell related news over there, though I don’t know who wouldn't want to read my tirades in-depth analysis of the MLS playoff system. (By the way, the Revolution are currently in seventh place in the Eastern Conference. Seventh. I am not happy about that development.)

In other news, pep band has started up again (field hockey won against Georgetown 3-1), I've been hiking and rock climbing a couple times each, I haven’t lost any socks to the Laundry Monster, and I am deeply and passionately in love.

A Word Problem

An engineer can prepare brownies in the following manner:
It takes three minutes to crack and beat eggs and seven more minutes to mix all the ingredients together. Brownies made in a 9x13 pan take 24 minutes to bake while brownies baked in a muffin tin take 20 minutes. However, it only takes one minute to pour brownie mix in a 9x13 pan but four minutes to spoon the mix into a muffin tin. Left alone, baking pans take 10 minutes to cool, but cooling can be sped up by four minutes by placing pans into the freezer. Brownies baked in muffin tins can be removed in a minute, while brownies in the 9x13 pan need five minutes to be cut and removed (muffin removal is done after the pans cool). One 9x13 pan makes 48 brownies.

Mixing ingredients has to be done after beating eggs, but there are two bowls for brownie mix. There is only one 9x13 pan but two twelve-cup muffin tins and two six-cup muffin tins. How long does it take two engineers to bake 144 brownies in the 9x13 pan and 42 brownie-muffins, for a total of 186 brownies?

Answer: much too long, or around two and a half hours, with help from a very kind friend. So my engineering friend sucked me into asked if I would help her put together care packages for AAIV. In the spring and fall, AAIV puts together packages with candy, school supplies, and information about AAIV for people who give us contact information. This is our way of following up on our initial invitation to join or visit AAIV, and I got a nice care package last fall, so I agreed to help.

After a two-hour trip to Wal-Mart involving 20 packages of pens, several supersized bags of candy, and five boxes of brownie mix, we got down to making 200 brownies. Anyone should be able to make brownies from a mix, right? Besides preheating the oven, there’s one instruction: mix together two eggs, ¼ cup of water, 2/3 cups of vegetable oil, and the mix. Well, it’s apparently not that simple. Solving quadratic functions is simple. Balancing chemical reactions is simple. Making brownies from a boxed mix? Not so much. Welcome to Cooking With Engineers.

Yes, we can predict the probability of an electron’s location in a hybrid sp³ orbital in a methane molecule, but no, we cannot follow directions to make brownies from a boxed mix. We are going to do well in the real world.

Eventually, we did reach our goal of just under 200 brownies after much mixing, and spilling, and scraping brownies out of not-very-well-greased-pans (I take responsibility for that one). We did not set the fire alarm off and nobody got burned or sliced a finger open. Success.

The brownie making process before we spilled mix, oil, and egg
all over the counter

One last word problem: How many flights of stairs does it take to go from the third floor to the fourth floor (of the same building)? [Hint: It’s not one.]

Answer: Three. That’s a story for another time.

Scheduling

Even before returning to a world governed by integrals and rate laws, even before my foot had touched the first stretch of sidewalk covered in chalk, Cornell called. Or rather, emailed. A lot. In the week before my arrival on campus, I received approximately 500 Cornell-related emails, plus or minus 480, confidence of around 3%.

Besides classes, I have four other groups to schedule: AAIV, Cornell Productions, Life of the Hill blogging, and pep band. Three out of the four have irregular hours . . . and days. To make things even more fun, I have to schedule things around a Saturday PE class. I can’t wait until prelims start.

But wait; don’t despair. To alleviate all your scheduling woes, get Google calendar today. Use it to record the last time you went to the dentist, remind you to take your vitamins, and keep you from skipping missing a class ever again. Act now, and for the low, low price of $0.00, you can get your very own Google calendar today.

So yes, I currently use Google calendar to keep track of what I have scheduled when. (No, I don’t use it to record dentist visits or tell me to take my vitamins.) I even color code my different schedules (and categorize my emails, and use a ruler to underline my notes in class). Because in college, you don’t have entire afternoons free. You have 2:14-3:03 in the afternoon free, before which you've had classes and a lab, and after which you have a rehearsal, dinner, a club meeting, and then maybe after that you’ll stop by office hours, because, oh yeah, homework.

I won’t say all days are like that (they’re not), but when everyone has days like this once in awhile, if you’re in charge of scheduling, you might as well pick dates by throwing darts at a calendar. That should work about as well as the “please fill out this survey with all the dates/times you’re definitely free, probably free, likely free, might be free, could possibly skip something else to be free, buried under a pile of textbooks, and Gone Fishing.”

To deal with my personal schedule, I start with anything mandatory (classes). Then I add anything that I've committed to (work for Cornell Productions, certain AAIV or pep band events). Then I put on things that have a definite time and day but I’m not positive I’ll be attending. Anything without a date or time that isn't compulsory doesn't go on until I have more details. Unless it’s something that I really want to attend, in which case I will specifically keep my calendar free around possible times for the event. It’s my own personal version of first come, first served. And that is how I avoid “accidentally” skipping make sure I’m where I need to be at all times once in awhile.

The preceding has been a glimpse of my college life and how I remember to go to class. Hey, people strangely found the contents of my refrigerator interesting, so why not this?

What Gaff Tape Doesn’t Stick To

Before classes started, I worked a couple shifts for Cornell Productions, helping to set up sound equipment for orientation events. This, as usual, involved gaffing (taping) down wires in any areas that people would be walking through. During HEC weekend, I gaffed wires to wood, carpet, metal, and tile. We taped across floors, under tables, along moldings, and up doorframes into the ceiling. Throughout all this time, we had no trouble getting the wires to stay, because that’s what gaff tape does: it adheres to pretty much anything.

But not everything. On a Monday morning, I worked the load in shift for an outdoor event. We loaded up the truck, drove to the location, and had to haul all the equipment from the parking lot to the event location, which involved stairs. When moving heavy objects, stairs are an unwelcome sight. Very unwelcome. We managed it, however, and got to work. After all the wires had been laid out, I got the job of gaffing them down. Since we were outside, I ended up taping the wires down over concrete or stone. Guess what? Gaff tape sticks just fine to rock-like materials. Not as well as to carpet or tile, but it did passably well.

The next day, I worked an even earlier shift. Once again, we loaded up the truck, and drove to the location, this time Barton Hall. Barton, besides being the site of most large courses’ finals and the former home of the Big Red Bands, is popular for concerts and receptions because of its size. It also has an indoor track. The significance of this will become apparent.

We moved everything off the truck and into Barton, where we eventually got our instructions for setting up the speakers. We ran wiring across the floor to the outlets along the edge of the room. Then, as we were taping the wires down, I made my discovery: gaff tape does not stick to whatever it is indoor tracks are made of.

Correction: it sticks about as well as cheap dollar store sticky notes stick to anything. Further correction: it sticks if you very forcibly press it down and maybe walk up and down it for awhile, but even then it needs a much higher ratio of tape on floor to tape on wire than most surfaces.

After my shift, which ended before people were waking up, I took the rest of the day off. It will probably be my last day off until fall break.

MLS Relations

Among my other talents, I can name the first thirty-six elements of the periodic table in order, am able to play all twelve major scales on the clarinet, and know all nineteen Major League Soccer (MLS) teams. In case you weren't wondering, skip the rest of this paragraph. In case you were, they are the Vancouver Whitecaps, Seattle Sounders, Portland Timbers, San Jose Earthquakes, Los Angeles Galaxy, Chivas USA, Real Salt Lake, Colorado Rapids, FC Dallas, Houston Dynamo, Sporting Kansas City, Chicago Fire, Columbus Crew, Philadelphia Union, DC United, New York Red Bulls, Toronto FC, Montreal Impact, and New England Revolution. And no, I did not need to go look that up.

With less than ten games and a third of the season to go, the playoffs are starting to become a much discussed topic in MLS circles. Not only is the playoff race closer than it has been for years, but it also changes fans’ relationships with other teams.

[For non-MLS fans – note that I will refer to teams either by their location or by the team name: hence the New England Revolution can be called either New England or the Revolution. This is less applicable to teams whose name essentially is their location, like Toronto FC. This is not applicable for Chivas USA, who are just confusing. Someone tell me what a chivas is. For more MLS/soccer information, read the note at the bottom of the post.]

For a completely hypothetical example: Say a fan’s favorite team, the Colorado Rapids, trade a favorite player to the Whitecaps. This fan starts to follow the Whitecaps to cheer for his favorite player. And then the final leg of the playoff race begins. The Whitecaps hold the fifth and final playoff spot in the conference that the two teams play in, ahead of the Rapids by a mere two points.

That weekend, the Rapids play FC Dallas while the Whitecaps play the Earthquakes. The Rapids fan naturally wants Colorado to win, not only for the three points, but also to keep FC Dallas, who also happen to be in the playoff hunt, from moving any closer toward a playoff spot. However, the Rapids fan temporarily stops cheering for the Whitecaps. Instead, he fervently hopes that the Earthquakes, who are at the bottom of the conference in this imagined situation, upset the Whitecaps. Since the Earthquakes have no chance of making the playoffs, any points they get are points taken from other potential playoff rivals.

The next weekend, the Rapids play the Timbers while the Whitecaps play the Crew, who are from the opposite conference. This has the potential to be even better for the Rapids: if the Crew win, the points they get don’t add to the point total of any team in Colorado’s conference, leaving the Rapids to move up more easily in the standings while also not having any teams below them catch up.

If two teams close in the standings to Colorado play, the Rapids fan hopes they tie. This minimizes the number of points going to same-conference teams. And all of this is indeed playing out live on the MLS website by team fans across the country. All in good fun, right? The Revolution, my favorite team, are still in the playoff hunt at this point, though it’s going to be a close one. If they end up short of points, I’d settle for them finishing over 0.500. This hasn't happened since 2009, before I started following the team, so this would at least be a less depressing end to the season that usual.

Note: MLS teams are divided into two conferences, Eastern and Western. They play a complicated schedule that I won’t get into, but it comes down to all the teams playing each other at least once. When a team wins a game, they get three points. Tying a game gets each team a point, and losing is worth no points. At the end of the season, the five teams in each conference with the most points make the playoffs. At that point, they start the equally complicated system of deciding which teams play each other in the playoffs, all culminating in the MLS cup.