Review book whore...

It's that time of the year--the time when second years all across America are sitting for their first Licensing exam... the stress is palpable, and when it's over, one of the most cathartic activities is to dispose of your review books--mostly to eager and pre-maturely nervous first years who will be sitting for the exam next year and are looking for steals on board prep material (which can be shockingly expensive)...

anyway, the long and short of it is that I am a total review book whore, and in the last couple months, I think I've accumulated nearly thirty review texts... That's three-zero... i think it's a shocking number...

it's almost evolved to a sport for me, where some recently relieved-of-their-burden second year sends out an email to our class list, and we all hungrily pounce on the texts before someone else can snatch them up... it's probably the fiercest competition our class has had relative to anything ever...

and i'm probably the worst offender in the class... i love getting these books--I love it... god knows if I'll ever use them, but having them is reassuring to me... if all that passing the boards involved was building a fort out of text books, i would be a total shoe-in for a snappy mark... but the problem is that i've got to get that stuff in my head--if only i could develop and similarly rewarding sensation for actually reading these tomes...

anyway, if any of my classmates are reading this, let me apologize... i'm sorry, but i can't help myself... it's totally compulsive...

and the real kicker to all of this is that our school library has every review book you could possibly want on their shelves... i think this is some sort of ailment...

well... hmm....

cheers,

Theo incognito... again...

looks like Mr. Epstein is up to his old antics again...

thanks to fellow Pearl Jam fan and Yankee superfan, Dr. C, for pointing us to this article...

Watch out, beantown! I'll be back on Thursday for some of the regular 'ol antics...

cheers,

MIT in the Press... ; )

From Slate's Interview/Q&A w/ Mr. Trudeau:

The Straw Poll about Alex's college future was supposed to end at midnight, Monday 5-21. So what happened? Where's she going to school?
-- G.J., Portland, OR


Interesting question. Pull up a chair.

The previous Straw Poll invited readers to choose among three academic futures for Alex Doonesbury: Should she go to Rennselaer, Cornell, or MIT? Voting was brisk. Wait, let us rephrase that: Voting was insane, rampant, ingenious, and impressively ruthless. An MIT student put up "Doonesbury Voting Hack", a web site (adorned with art borrowed from the Town Hall) which enabled would-be-ballot-stuffers to spew out over a million votes in a single night. "We're all running cgi hack scripts" lol'd one MIT blogger, "I've voted 3 or 4 thousand times!" Fortunately the prophylactic measures swiftly implemented by the DTH's crack tech crew kept most of the votes from making it into the poll.

The idea of outing the main culprit was briefly considered (a 5'8", 115-lb. freshman from New York -- it's amazing what you can find out about a person online), but as he left a clear trail and probably didn't expect the hack to be as successful as it was, it seemed enough to deny the MIT network access to our servers. Besides, we had to take his thoughtfulness into account: "Please," he cautioned on the updated version of his hack site, "only keep one instance of the program running at a time so we don't kill the server again."

Meanwhile Rennselaer had also stepped up to the plate -- or rather made their own attempt to move it. As campus blog entries indicate, token reservations were overcome ("It would be entirely unethical of me to stuff a ballot box, or suggest any others use the same, with command lines such as...") and a curl was disseminated, intended to accomplish pretty what the MIT script had done using Flash. The Rensselaer effort was less successful -- still, several hundred thousand votes bounced off our servers. By the time a handful of indy hackers made their run at the Straw Poll, the ballot box was adequately unstuffable.

Cornell blogage shows that students there were watching the fray ("Me thinks the site is being bombarded by a script war between Troy and Cambridge..."), but a higher, or more urgent, course was taken. ("We're at a disadvantage, because we've got finals now and presumably no one has the free time to write a Cornell spamming script.") The Cornell alumni office had early-on taken an above-board interest, alerting alums to the situation and urging them to vote, but this effort did not bring Cornellians to the poll in numbers sufficient for Big Red to catch up. "We're obviously not trying hard enough to cheat," lamented a dismayed blogger. However, students and alums managed to post many passionate, articulate, humorous, and convincing posts on our Blowback page, all making the case that Alex should head to Ithaca. In acknowledgement of this impressive and moving effort, the Doonesbury Town Hall is pleased to award Cornell the Doonesbury Straw Poll Congeniality Award.

As for the question at hand -- Where will Alex go to school? -- the will, chutzpah, and bodacious craft of the voting public will be respected. A careful check of the applicable rulebook indicates that queering the results was not specifically prohibited. And by tradition, engineers, hackers and techfolk will assume that in a problem-solving situation of this nature, there is no box out of which they are not expected to climb. The Doonesbury Town Hall thanks all those who took the time and trouble to vote, even those who voted only once.

Ms. Doonesbury will be attending MIT.

the latest dance craze...

I'm not sure I can strongly recommend this, but if you've got six minutes and you're not sure what to do with them... and maybe you like dance? and are a pretty easy guffaw...

well, it doesn't live up to its bill as the "funniest six minutes you've ever seen"...

anyway, take it as you will....

cheers,

Red Sox Magic 8-Ball...

Ask all of your Red Sox Nation related questions of this online magic 8-ball...

thanks jRob...

Cheers,

what we all strive to be...

from allison...

what we all strive to be... her quote...

cheers,

Never too old...

for a wild spring break...

Here's Petrice and I going bezerk one night:



in fairness to Petrice, I'm pretty sure this photo is entirely staged...

funny story about this night--we were going out to a local bar (actually, the holiday inn) to go kareokeing, and somehow, i got left behind. How you ask? As we were loading up the two cars, I went back into the house to make sure that it was locked up properly, and when I came back out front, no cars. Everyone had gone...

I figured it would be a few minutes before anyone realized that I was gone, so i sat down on the couch to watch TV...

An hour later, Petrice, Tom, and Ashlee stumbled through the door looking for me... imagine that, a whole hour... and a rash of funny photos ensued... including the one shown above... (don't worry, world, petrice's honor is intact)

Anyway, i still think it's pretty funny... I was mad about the whole thing until i showed up to the Holiday Inn to find the evening in chaos. I think I was better off on the couch...

Cheers,

No exit strategy?

For the knicks fans, for the BBall fans, for the Yorkers, for anyone who enjoys political satire...

enjoy the parallels...

cheers,

MIT in Doonesbury...

Hmm... suspect work by our faculty in the cartoon world...

Not that I could answer the question...

What's a current source?

cheers,

Wes Andersen AmEx Ad...

As a big fan of Wes Andersen's films (Life Aquatic, Royal Tannenbaums, Rushmore, Bottle Rocket), I wasn't at all surprised at how much i enjoyed his new AmEx "My Life" ad...

Classic Andersen...

Enjoy!

Cheers,

Babies make everything better...

well, except road trips...

in response to multiple requests to photos, here are a few shots of me hanging around with the Gutierrez children at various baby showers...

that's right, baby showers...























not that much to do here... baby showers are a popular friday night option...

these two are just so cute... and so well behaved... what a pleasure...

anyway, things are well here--hoping they're well there with you, wherever there may be...

cheers,

Smell ya' later...

Imagine if all of your life, you couldn't smell anything...

and then all of the sudden you could...

check out this relative of a friend's blog...

cheers,

A farewell to Flutie...

A real hero is leaving his arena today, as Doug Flutie announced his retirement today, deciding against returning to the Patriots to back up Brady for another season...

those of us who lived in the Commonwealth Annex used to celebrate him, as well as raise awareness of and funds for research of autism via consuming his very special cereal product, Flutie Flakes, shown below: (enjoy the wikipedia link as well...)



We'll always remember the drop kick, Doug... May retirement treat you well...

Cheers,

if you've been pained by my telling...

of the aristocrats, here's the alternate version i've been telling--from the horse's mouth...

Warning: Not for the sensitive ear--highly graphic content...

enjoy!

also pointed to by JRob...

(oh, and if you'd like to borrow the DVD of the film, I'm newly a proud owner of the feature length film...)

cheers,

Read this, watch this...

a hilarious case of wrong place, wrong time... and journalistic oversight...

feel the shock of the cab driver as he's introduced...

pointed to by JRob...

cheers,

"The physician who treats himself has a fool for a patient..."

i've been tossing that phrase around for a little while now, and i stumbled across this little piece... i think it's really true in a lot of ways...

cheers,

what could be more penguin like...

than a tuxedo...

which i bought online last night...

everybody needs a tuxedo? right?

I'm trying to rationalize this...

anyway, i'm the proud owner of a new tux...

so...

cheers,

No comment...

I don't even know what to say about this thing, but i stumble across it, and it's the weirdest thing i've ever seen on amazon.com...

i'm not even sure if it's real or fake... but i know it's strange and worth a look either way...

if you've got the time, read the reviews... high comedy...

cheers,

Colbert at the WHPC dinner...

i couldn't find this anywhere until slate pointed to it, so if you haven't seen it yet, colbert was quite good... but better is the audience--just aghast... good stuff...

cheers,

big papi...

I could listen to David Ortiz be interviewed about anything ad naseum... the guy is just mesmerizing...

great game tonight--baseball really feels back--miss those playoff like atmospheres... even 1500 miles away...

goooo soooooxxxxxx!!!

cheers,