Road Tripping: The Frozen Apple

Once again, I remained in Ithaca over Thanksgiving break to enjoy its beautiful weather. I was fed plenty of Thanksgiving food on Thursday, on Friday I didn't leave my dorm, and on Saturday I went to New York City with the band for the Cornell-Penn State hockey game at Madison Square Garden. The game is called the Frozen Apple, I guess because it’s in New York City and it’s cold?

Anyway, we left at a decent hour instead of 5 in the morning like the time we took a day trip to Maryland. We stopped for lunch at the exact same place we stopped last year, watched two and a half straight hours of season two of Community, and got to Madison Square Garden (MSG) with plenty of time to spare before we were expected inside to play pre-game sets. We were allowed to roam the streets of New York City for a couple hours; I ended up with a group of people who walked over to the public library, then got dinner before returning to MSG.

Back at MSG, we got our instruments and tickets and headed inside. After riding over half a dozen escalators we reached the bridge level where we waited for awhile before walking out into the stadium playing Davy. Then we played a couple of sets and went to hunt down our seats where we would get to watch Cornell take on Penn State.

Less than half of the Cornell fans.
In contrast, the Penn State fans didn't even fill two sections.

As for the game itself, it was great, in large part because Cornell ended up winning. The first period, Cornell could barely get the puck out of their own half, and it was just a matter of time before one of the Penn State players jammed the puck into the back of the net. Then in the second period, Cornell finally started getting shots, and during one of their forays into the Penn State half, one of the Cornell players took a shot from distance that somehow got past the goalie.

From there, Cornell looked a lot better right up until the game-winning goal (which was assisted by Cornell’s goalie, who also scored a goal in his first start last season). Following that, the game shifted back toward Penn State, but when they couldn't score again with a couple minutes remaining, they pulled their goalie, leading to the third Cornell goal on the empty net. So we walked away from MSG with a 3-1 win and boarded the bus for the four hour ride back to Cornell, which featured bad movies, neck pain, and a return to everything ChemE, namely, lack of sleep and brainache (it’s kind of like headache, but is caused mainly by ChemE problem sets). All. The. Fun.

Tales from the Trenches

Disclaimer: I am not making fun of any of the people in these stories, except for myself. There is exaggeration and dramatization involved and my purpose is to tell some mildly amusing stories about life at Cornell.

They Think It’s Summer:
Last “spring” at the end of March or so when it was finally getting warm I was working a shift for Cornell Productions. We were setting up the sound system when we discovered that one of our adapters didn't work. I was sent back to the office to find another adapter. Since I had just been hauling sound equipment up stairs, I didn't bother to put on a jacket and I was wearing shorts because it was over 40°F. As I was on my way to the office, I passed a family who was visiting Cornell (in jeans and jackets). The father was commenting about how the Cornell students seemed to think the weather was warmer than it actually was just as I walked by (in shorts and a t-shirt), prompting him to exclaim, “See, they all think it’s summer!”

Veterans of the Dining Hall Lunch Line:
My house on West Campus got tickets to Thanksgiving lunch up at one of the North Campus dining halls. Since it was free, I decided to sign up to go. By the time we got there, there were long lines for the food, which was set up buffet style like most dining hall meals. It was the slowest non-specialty-station line I have ever been in. I stood behind a girl who was so absorbed in her phone that right after her friend offered her a tray, she nodded and left the line . . . to go get a tray. I stood in front of a woman who muttered under her breath for five straight minutes about how the line was forming in the wrong place before asking people to move. Then she continually walked into me with her purse. As I approached the front of the line, it became clear that the majority of the people in line were new recruits to the dining hall lunch line. There were children who needed to be asked three time whether or not they would like stuffing, and adults who did not know just the right amount of force to use to get the mashed potatoes to un-adhere to the spoon, and others who cared about their corn and gravy touching. Corn and gravy is nothing. Broccoli and syrup, on the other hand, is a little less than great. I stormed through the line, then settled down to eat my rice mixed with corn stuck to the candied sweet potatoes.

You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet:
It appeared on the “Overheard at Cornell” Facebook page during the last week of classes that a parent on a tour was heard telling her son, “See, it isn't that cold.” The weather this past fall was as freakish as usual, and the day they were touring Cornell, it was 60 degrees and sunny at the end of November. (Yes, I obviously wore shorts to class.) The next day, it dropped back down to high 30s. The day after that, it snowed. Then it snowed again, and finally everything froze.

10, 15, 32, Which Bus is Right for You?:
Finally, a story that features none other than . . . myself. It is indeed a story about the bus, as you may have guessed from the title. A friend and I needed to go to Wegmans before Thanksgiving break to get food. We were going to go in the afternoon, but another friend wanted to come and he couldn't leave until after 6 pm. I checked the bus schedule and we’d still have enough time if we left after 6, so we all decided to take the bus from West Campus at 6:09 pm. At 6:15, the bus pulls up. We get on and get to the Commons at 6:30. Eleven minutes after the bus that we were supposed to transfer to left. I had thought that there would be more than enough time to transfer, but apparently Trip Planner had us getting to the Commons at 6:18 and catching the next bus at 6:19. The next time that bus would be coming around was in, oh, fifty minutes or so. We decide to walk the rest of the way to Wegmans. By the time we get to Wegmans, it’s about 6:50, so there’s no way we’re going to catch the 7:30 bus. We hang around until 8:30 and catch the last bus of the day back to the Commons, where we have to decide if we want to stay on the bus or see if we can catch another bus going back to Cornell that will drop us off closer to where we live. Never mind. The other bus has stopped running for the night. Staying on the bus it is. When we get back to campus, we have to go down the slope and cross the entirety of West Campus where we split up to go to our respective apartments/dorms. And that is the story of how I went to Wegmans on the bus on a Tuesday night.

2014 Life of an Engineer Book Awards

I ended up reading 51 books in 2014 (and rereading 4 more), which totaled over 17,000 pages according to Goodreads. I finished at least one book in every month of the year except February and read the most books in August. For the second year in a row, I didn't read any truly awful books, mainly because I wasn't taking any more writing seminars and didn't have a horrible summer reading book assigned. As always, though, there were some books that were better than others. I decided to give out some book awards completely made up by me.

The What Am I Reading? award
The Colour of Magic (and The Light Fantastic) by Terry Pratchett. The best way to describe what I’ve read of the Discworld series so far is a fantasy version of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. While there’s no Vogon poetry or a restaurant at the end of the universe, Discworld takes places on a rotating disk carried on the backs of elephants on the giant turtle the Great A’Tuin and includes imaginary dragons and the Luggage. So yeah, it’s weird . . . but good. Really.

The That’s Worse Than Vogon Poetry award
Flora and Ulysses by Kate DiCamillo. In this Newbery Medal winning children’s book, Flora’s mother vacuums up a squirrel (Ulysses) that survives and writes poetry and thinks about food a lot. I’m willing to suspend belief about a lot of things (see above) but the squirrel poetry was kind of contrived (and not very good). I also didn't particularly care for any of the characters and the storyline wasn't very developed or engaging. Granted, I’m about a decade older than the target readers, but I remember other books (The Tale of Despereaux and Because of Winn Dixie) by the author as being better.

The I Actually Can’t Pronounce Any of These Names award
The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien. Turns out the history of Middle Earth was pretty complicated. I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone who’s not a Tolkien fan but there’s a lot of backstory and I found it interesting, even if it took me three tries to get through it.

The “Houston, we have a problem” award
2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke. For a storyline frequently found on “The 10 Most Confusing Movies” list, I didn't think the book was that strange (again, see above). Until I reached the end. Besides the brief foray into “What Am I Reading?” territory, most of the science and story made sense. Apollo 13 got home on the computing power of a pocket calculator. Discovery in 2001 gets in trouble because their computer is artificially intelligent. Computers: friend or foe?

The Stavromula Beta award
American Gods by Neil Gaiman. You might only get this award if you've read both American Gods and The Hitchhiker’s Guide, but I thought American Gods was pretty good. It’s about the fight between old and new mythological beings and was a bit hard to get into but the characters were well done.

Most disappointing book:
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks. I really liked Musicophilia, another of Oliver Sacks’ books, but this one just wasn't as engaging.

Best book of the year:
Dune by Frank Herbert. Everyone has this book on the “Must read” list of science fiction, so I checked it out of the Cornell library over Thanksgiving break. When I started, I didn't think the plot was that great, and there were a bunch of characters wandering in and out. Then I kept reading, and the plot kept developing, and I thought “I want to know what happens next.” The characters turned out to be more complex than they seemed originally (though maybe ironically, the main character is the one I found to be the least well written), and the plot was detailed without dragging on and on. Definitely a science fiction must read.

Everything else I read:
Mere Christianity and The Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis
The Emerald Mile, Kevin Fedarko
Along for the Ride, Sarah Dessen
Giant George, Dave Nassar
The Boys of October, Doug Hornig
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, J.K. Rowling
Dealing With Dragons, Patricia C Wrede
Friction, E.R. Frank
The Garden of Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
Rama Revealed, Arthur C. Clarke
Ranger's Apprentice: The Royal Ranger, John Flanagan
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J.K. Rowling
The Fabric of the Cosmos, Brian Greene
Roads, Larry McMurtry
Loop Year, John Sheirer
The Lost World, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Pirate Cinema, Cory Doctorow
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
2010: Odyssey Two, Arthur C. Clarke
The Secret History, Donna Tartt
The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, Michael Chabon
Our Town, Thornton Wilder
Lucky Jim, Kingsley Amis
Animal Farm, George Orwell
2061: Odyssey Three, Arthur C. Clarke
Schroder, Amity Gaige
My Name Is Not Easy, Debby Dahl Edwardson
Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
3001: The Final Odyssey, Arthur C. Clarke
Dragon and Thief, Timothy Zahn
Earth Unaware, Orson Scott Card
The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
Should I Go to Grad School?, Jessica Loudis
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, J.K. Rowling
Eleanor and Park, Rainbow Rowell
The War of Art, Steven Pressfield
Flyboys, James Bradley
The Perfect Storm, Sebastian Junger
A Tale of Two Cities: The 2004 Yankees-Red Sox Rivalry and the War for the Pennant, Tony Massarotti
Denali's Howl, Andy Hall
Smith of Wootton Major and Farmer Giles of Ham, J.R.R. Tolkien
Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, J.K. Rowling

Backlog

Contrary to the infrequency of my posting, I actually have several posts written but unpublished. They include a list of all the books I read in 2014, short stories from the past few semesters, and a trip report from the pep band’s trip to MSG over Thanksgiving. Yes, Thanksgiving.

To make up for lack of an actual post, enjoy these pictures:

Acadia National Park, July 2013

View from the top of the Empire State Building, July 2012

Taughannock Falls, September 2014

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

Note: All but this note and the next paragraph contain spoilers, so if you haven’t read the book and want to find out what happens in the movie yourself or if you’re a Tolkien purist and don’t want to hear how Peter Jackson massacred J.R.R. Tolkien’s masterpiece, don’t read anything except the next paragraph.

To get it out of the way, I’m first going to say that I really liked this movie and the trilogy as a whole. Not as much as The Lord of the Rings, but I would voluntarily rewatch any and all of the three Hobbit movies. It is worth noting that I've read both The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit (as well as The Silmarillion, The Children of Húrin, and Smith of Wootton Major and Farmer Giles of Ham, which has nothing to do with Middle Earth, but was surprisingly entertaining).

Because it’s all in the book, I didn't have initially have the complaints that people had about the ending of the movie lacking any sort of closure. Then I thought about it and while the ending still isn't my biggest problem, it is true that only two characters have the movie definitively state where they go after the battle. Thranduil and the elves presumably go back to Mirkwood and Gandalf does whatever Gandalf does, but that still leaves the treasure that Bilbo and the dwarves spent two movies trying to get, not to mention the dwarves and the entire remaining population of Laketown. It’s only known that Bilbo goes home to the Shire and Legolas goes to find Aragorn. And Legolas isn't actually in (the book) The Hobbit, though he could technically have been hanging around when the dwarves came to visit his father in Mirkwood.

Unlike, say, Tauriel, who is mentioned exactly zero times in all of Tolkien’s work, maybe because her character was made up? Regrettably, because without her, The Hobbit really doesn't have any major female characters*, I didn't end up liking her role in the plot. At first, I was willing to look past the elf-dwarf romance. And then Ravenhill happened. Kili was doing fine until Tauriel arrives and starts yelling around for him, at which point they both run around yelling for each other until Bolg shows up and kills Kili. Kili and Fili do both die in the book, but they’re protecting Thorin, not running around to find the elf they’re inexplicably in love with. So when all was said and done, I would have preferred less (read: no) time spent on the elf-dwarf romance, which might have allowed a more developed ending and maybe some actual lines for the dwarves. It would have been an improvement over Tauriel’s “Why does it hurt so much?” Sorry Legolas, guess she never loved you after all.

*Galadriel makes an appearance and the women of Laketown have a scene where they prepare to join the men in a last stand. This is pretty consistent with what would be expected in Middle Earth – the (human) men go and fight while the women stay back, dwarf women are never seen, and it’s technically not specified whether Thranduil’s elf army is completely male.

My main problem with the third movie is the same as it was for the first two. One word, Peter Jackson: gravity. Maybe the mountain goats the dwarves ride to Ravenhill can spring up near vertical faces, and maybe the giant bat can carry a fully grown elf (though I refuse to believe the bat was steered by a knife plunged into its brain), but that scene with Legolas leaping up a crumbling bridge? No. Just, no. And really, there can be epic fights without the participants falling twenty feet every thirty seconds.

Ignoring the lack of an ending, unrealistic romances, and the apparent disregard to physics, the conflict between the elves, men, and dwarves was done well, and overall I liked the forty-five minute long battle scene. Like I said at the beginning, I’d watch the movies again, and enjoy them.

Definitions

n. what it took for me to pass all my classes this semester

n. what I need with every meal to to convince myself chemical engineering isn't that bad a volatile, colorless liquid with the chemical formula CH₃CH₂OH that is a skin and eye irritant and hazardous if inhaled or ingested

[Fun fact from orgo lab lecture: if you buy alcohol that’s higher than 190 proof, the water has been removed using chemicals such as benzene, which is carcinogenic. It is physically impossible for traditional distillation to reach a mixture of greater than 95% ethanol and less than 5% water because at that point, the mixture boils at a constant temperature and both the ethanol and water will boil off together. Foiled by the azeotrope.]

[Pen]

n. representative of the Free Things I will fill out surveys for. For the past two years, I’ve filled out the house survey for a t-shirt. Last semester I filled out a survey about hunger and self-entitlement for an orange pen. Yes, a pen.

[Writer’s block]

Here it is.

[Tired]

adj. description of my general state of being

Ex. I am more tired than these bicycles.

I am less tired than this truck.

Semester in Review [Fall 2014]

Sailing – I continued taking PE classes for fun, and I liked the exposure to sailing, which I've wanted to try, but sailing is extremely weather dependent and my class happened to get awful weather. It took a month of classes before we finally got out on the water. We sailed small boats (420s, I think, or something very similar), though we went out in larger boats a couple times when the winds were too high. The class was good, but it felt rushed whenever we did manage to go out in the small boats, maybe because we had so much bad weather. I would have liked to have more time just getting used to the boat and sailing in general.

Creative Writing – Not only did this class qualify as a liberal studies class, but it was also 2000-level, and my passing grade means that I have just two liberal studies classes left to complete. As a side benefit, I was hoping that being forced to produce a certain number of pages would inspire me to keep writing, but . . . nope. We split our time between workshopping peoples’ writing and discussing assigned readings. Overall, this ranks as one of the better liberal studies classes I've taken.

Organic Chemistry – So that I could jam creative writing into the middle of my schedule (so that I had seven hours of class and pep band rehearsal on Mondays – bad idea; I wouldn't do it again if I had other options), I took an organic chemistry class that met at 8 am and attempted to cover two semesters of material in one semester. I liked the topics we covered – nomenclature, stereochemistry, transformation of functional groups, mechanisms, synthesis, but there was just too much material. I didn't particularly agree with the professor’s teaching style and with four other academic classes, I couldn't spend the amount of time it would have taken to do really well (i.e. better than I did) in the class.

Organic Chemistry Lab – In addition to learning about orgo, I actually had to do it. My lab technique can be described as questionable at best, and it’s definitely not at its best under a time constraint. Fortunately, the only time orgo lab grades on yield and purity is during the practical, so as long as you do halfway decent on the practical, your lab reports and final can earn you a high grade. Besides being the source of dozens of stories about lab mishaps, I enjoyed this class.

Heat and Mass Transfer/(ChemE) Thermodynamics – Generally, I liked both of the ChemE classes I took over the past semester, but there was more than a little frustration at times. Lectures were good; recitations, problem sets, exams, and office hours tended to vary. A lot.

Up next semester: lots more ChemE classes, a liberal studies class, another PE class for fun, plus pep band, work, and that other stuff on the side like sleeping and eating.