Back on campus

This is the first time I've ever visited Penn in the summer (after being accepted to attend, that is). It's a bit different in the summer, the most obvious - at least to me - being that Blarney's is now dominated by local inhabitants of West Philadelphia. During the academic year, you will find almost no locals there - it's one of the popular weekend hangouts for those of age (and those with identification that allegedly attests to their age).

All in all, the vibe is a bit different...I'd probably say it feels more desolate. It's much emptier than before.

On another note, I had dinner at Vic's again (a place I had previously noted in this entry)...we had more rolls this time, but it was still fresh and delicious as ever. I'm not sure if it's as good as Sansei (again, noted here), but the sushi is still fresh and delectable as ever.

Why global warming won't be stopped

Basically, it will come down to the fact that it's too expensive. That's not really an excuse for not solving a problem that will dramatically alter the planet in irreversibly destructive ways, but it's likely to be the excuse that politicians around the world will use to pass the buck off to someone else.

Another short break

I'll be posting lightly, if at all, for the next few days. I'll be visiting my girlfriend, whom I miss dearly, down in Philadelphia until Monday. If I can steal her computer for a few minutes, maybe I'll throw something up.

Scenes from the past

When I was out doing my regular run at the nearby middle school track (where I graduated 8 years ago - it seems like an eternity), I saw a bunch of boys playing Taps (the game where you toss the ball around in the circle, with the caveat that you must catch and throw the ball while in mid-air), trying to impress a group of girls who were watching from a bench.

Ah, those were the days...before impressing girls became a little more of a science and less about shooting blindly in the dark.

This is upsetting

One of the problems with global warming is that without the floating pieces of ice in the ocean, it makes it much harder for polar bears to find spots from which they can hunt from. So it's hard to read a story like this without getting pissed off. There's something inherently wrong about killing a polar bear that swam at least 200 miles to look for food - and all it gets is the receiving end of a rifle.

Good to go

If all goes well, we'll be signing our lease on our apartment tomorrow, with a move-in date only a week before we had originally targeted.

A sign of business well-done...maybe the broker fee is somewhat justifiable after all.

More expensive mass transit

With gas prices going through the roof as of late, there's been an increase in the use of mass transit. One of the main reasons, of course, is that the cost/benefit trade-off is clearly in favor of using buses, trains, and subways as a means of transportation.

However, it's no fun when the prices of mass transit go up, either. An unlimited day pass for New York City's subways has gone up 50 cents since last summer. A round-trip bus ticket between New York and Philadelphia now costs $3 than it did last month. What it comes down to is the urgent need to really find some source of renewable energy source that will alleviate the massive energy crunch that this country (and the world) is heading towards.

Call me Dr. Watson

After all the computers I will have fixed in a month's time or so, I think I deserve it.

(For those who miss the reference, it's the name of a software application. It's also apparently the name of Sherlock Holmes' sidekick, but I never did get into that book series.)

Not always fun

In a previous post, I had mentioned that fixing up new computers was fun. Well, the same doesn't necessarily hold true for effectively refurbishing broken-down older computers. I had to fix a laptop that's a couple years old but had viruses. Reformatting it and installing XP was the easy part, but without any of the original drivers available, it took me a good amount of time to track down and test out the different drivers.

All in all, it's functional, but it has a few annoying quirks that make it a bit suboptimal. I can't do it all.

Excited

I do my best on this blog to stay away from politics (I'm a bit of junkie), so this will be a short one...it appears that Barack Obama is going to clinch the Democratic Party's nomination for the presidency.

There are many reasons I supported him, but it is awesome to see him bring it home tonight. I got a chance to see the man himself 4 years ago in Philadelphia, after he first hit the scene with his speech at the 2004 DNC, but before he became what he is now. That will be a memory for the ages.

The merits of air conditioning

Now that we're basically all but set to go with an apartment in Manhattan, it makes me ponder the importance of air conditioning. The place we're moving into doesn't have it, but it's also a place with high ceilings and is therefore unlikely to need much cooling - heat isn't going to be concentrated in any particular place. Furthermore, I feel that college lent itself to a large moral hazard problem when it cooling (you didn't pay for it, so you used it as much as possible); in the real world, having to pay one's own utility bills may lead to more judicious use.

Anyways, it's just something to consider. I'll probably just bring a Sharper Image fan I have in my room and use that to cool myself. Having a happy medium is good enough for me, which makes me Goldilocks...I guess.

It's been awhile

Not to rip off of Staind's breakout hit (which I recently found out used to be tied with Red Hot Chili Pepper's 'Scar Tissue' and Green Day's 'Boulevard of Broken Dreams' for the longest amount of time atop the Modern Rock chart), but it's been a good time since I've felt as tired as I have the past few days. Aside from apartment-hunting - which becomes an extremely grueling process that leaves you completely spent by day's end - I haven't been getting much sleep to boot, either. It almost makes me feel like I'm back in college, but exhaustion ain't the part of college I want to relive.

A high price for success

Well, we finally have an address to live at for the next year in Manhattan. I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out, considering just how fast and furious these apartments were going.

That being said, it was not cheap. It's not something I particularly want to think about.

Upcoming music releases

One of the first punk rock bands that got me interested in the genre, The Offspring, will finally be coming out with their first full-length album with new material in 4.5 years...I can still remember when I picked their last album (a mixed bag entitled Splinter) as a mere senior in high school. Their new album, entitled Rise and Fall, Rage and Grace, hits stores on June 17th. The first single, 'Hammerhead', is playing on radio and sounds pretty damn good. Below is the YouTube embed of the audio:



Coldplay, one of my favorite bands more because of their music than because of their cringeworthy lyrics, also brings out a new album (with a title that is too long for its own good) the same day. Two singles are out right now; the first, 'Violet Hills', is a nice departure from the typical fare that populated their first 3 LPs. However, the second single (the title track) is a bit too experimental for my tastes. Here's the video for 'Violet Hills', which is hopefully more indicative of what the album will be like.



And, as I forgot to mention in an earlier post, Disturbed's new album is dropping Tuesday. While their new songs are typical disturbed, it's a little more melodic than their older stuff, IMO. Personally, I think the band may be finding it harder to break out of the relatively small box that their genre (a cross between hard rock and nu-metal) allows for. I'd be happy to be proven wrong, though.

Misery

Today's visit to Manhattan was basically an unqualified disaster. Looking for apartments with sleazy real estate brokers is one hell of a soul-killing trip. Not quite bad enough to make one cry, but definitely enough to put one in a deep funk.

Basketball prediction

I'm a fan of the Bulls (largely because I idolized MJ growing up as a kid), so I don't have a personal stake in the NBA Finals. That being said, I'm shocked to see the Lakers and the Celtics in the Finals. Given that one team (the Lakers) was having to deal with a superstar who basically wanted to be traded because he felt the talent around him wasn't good enough (Kobe Bryant), while the other (the Celtics) was among the worst teams in the league last season. I also never thought Kobe would have the maturity to be the #1 guy on a championship team; similarly, I've never thought much of Doc Rivers as a head coach (just take a look at his coaching record before this season)...however, the Celtics probably did well because in spite of him (namely because of acquiring Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen) instead of because of him.

That being said, the Lakers are going to dominate the finals. The Western Conference teams play at such a higher level relative to the Eastern Conference that I don't think it'll be any match. Kobe and company are younger and will run up and down the floor against the Celtics. While it'd be nice to see KG get a ring, it's going to be one for the other thumb for the Zen Master.

Lakers in five.