I'm heading to Alaska this Friday, for about 6 weeks. I hope to be posting here once and a while but I wouldn't count on it as I probably won't be near a computer very often. Rachel and I are going to be taking a ferry from Dutch Harbour to Homer, then biking to Denali and over to Haines to grab another ferry and head down BC some. Pictures will be posted here or here.

in someone else's pool? Ohhh kids these days.

Subsidising any sort of agrarian activity goes against the main principles of how economies work. Items cost as much as people are willing to pay for them, which is related to how much people need the item and how much of the item is available. Currently corn prices near record highs but our government is still pouring money into the farms, paying them to produce corn. It makes no sense to subsidise corn, when there are several other crops that could be effectively grown that would be of higher demand. Large corporation get almost all of the money that we pay for corn, basically meaning that a portion of your tax dollars go to paying these large corporations to grow corn, which they would probably be doing anyways. These subsidies have invaded our lives, with high fructose corn syrup being put in everything because its cheaper(thanks to our tax dollars) than regular sugar, which tastes better. Don't even get me started on using corn for ethanol, potentially one of the worst ideas ever...

Being a good consumer like I am I just bought the latest Spoon CD, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga and was very excited to listen to it as I already liked a few songs on it, particularly You Got Yr. Cheery Bomb and Underdog. I put the CD in my computer at work and pressed play. I waited expectantly for a few seconds and finally some choppy audio from the start of Don't Make Me A Target played. Then it went silent. Checked for scratches, nothing.  I thought it might be was the matlab running in the background, but it was only taking up 50% of my CPU. I then tried to import it to my computer. First with iTunes, which hung about 2/3s of the way through the first song. I then tried 4 other programs with no success. At this point I was getting pretty mad as I just paid money for this CD and I can't even import it into iTunes or listen to it on my computer. At John's suggestion I decided to try playing with Nero. I made a copy of the CD with Nero, which took forever, I think beceause Nero was having problems reading the CD. Finally it burned a copy after over an hour of reading the CD. This new CD plays in my computer and is importing to iTunes as I type this.

Everything Hits at Once by Spoon is one of my favorite songs. It has a great beat and more importants a theme that I can fully understand. When things go bad, they all go bad quickly. This morning is definitely an example of that. First my graphics card on my new PC died. Then upon arriving to work I found that our server had reset connections to several of the computers I was using to process the last bits of data I need to get before I submit my paper(before I leave of AK so basically 14 days or less). Then about 10 other small things in lab were either broken or needed me to do something. Please keep in mind that this is not complaining, I would call someone if I wanted to do that, this is simply exemplifying why I have had Everything Hits at Once playing almost all day at work. If you haven't heard it go to youtube and put it on. Sometimes I think days like today are a good reality check for me, as I am generally very laid back and am agnostic about how daily events turn out.

I never traveled much except to Flordia and the occasional family trip until my sophmore year of college. That fall I biked from my home in NH to Indianapolis. Since then I have been traveling as much as my school/work schedule allows. I didn't realize how strong my urge to travel was until I looked at my schedule for this summer. Every weekend I am going somewhere, most trips are short, either to Maine, NH or VT. The thing that really supprised me is that I only have 8 weeks between finishing work in Boston and heading back to classes. Of those 8 weeks I will be spending 6 of them in Alaska biking around and 1 of them hiking in Northern NH/Canada. Alot of my friends and family tell me that I need to take time off and rest but I alwasy disagre, coming up with some reason why I need to go on a particular trip, which ends up happening for ever trip! There is only one word to describe this: wanderlust. I can't wait to move up to NH this fall where I can go exploring in the woods without having to drive 2 hours to do it. Hopefully that will help me transition into graduate school by reducing the amount of time my adventures take.

It makes me angry when politicians waste our money. It really makes me angry when they try to waste our money looking into so called "national scandals". Yeah, I like watching pro sports once and a while but if a few baseball players used to dope or if the pats made a few videos should not be the primary concern of our sentators. Mr. Specter, you have spent too much of your time in office worrying about sports. Get over it. Fix the other problems we have. Let the heads of these respective sports do their jobs or give WADA more money.

"The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weakness, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish."
Seeing no need for organized religion but potentially believing in a divine being. I would really like to get the full-text from that letter.

Having owned a lot of different cold-weather active-wear gloves over my lifetime I decided that I needed to put my review of the Torsion glove up since they are the best ones I have used. Here is what I sent to Mountain Hardware.

Date: Sat, May 10, 2008 at 10:56 PM
Subject: Fundraising cookbook for Ryan Shay and Jenny Crain now available
To: undisclosed-recipients

If I can still walk by the time I am this guys age I will be happy: http://abcnews.go.com/International/Story?id=4385601&page=1
I can't only hope!

This weekend is bound to be lots of fun but I am realizing that I probably need a bigger car to hold all of it. First off I am heading up to Bowdoin. Don't need much there, just some clothes. After that I am planning on heading back to NH to drop some stuff off at my parents house that I no longer need in Boston then go for a longer spin on my new Motobecane Fantom CX bike, so fun!

Its been a while since I have posted anything up here that actually relates to my life. After going interviewing at a few places I decided to go to Dartmouth this fall in the Neuroscience track of the PEMM program. Although it would have been fun to go to school out west there are several professors at Dartmouth that I would like to work with and everything just clicked like it did when I first walked onto Bowdoin's campus several years ago.

When asked what one thing he would want to do for the economy: "Oh, gosh, it would be more than one. It would be to speed up the excess inventory of houses so that the housing market would get back on its legs. But I'd also like to see that price of gasoline drop a significant chunk."

Surprising and great:
http://dothetest.co.uk/