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.