mongooseblog

No word yet from the University about my payroll status. Urrrrrrrrgh. ME WANT MONEY BAD. (and there are various other parties that want money from me, too.) I would also like to ride the buses for free, dammit.

So, while I’m waiting for that to get settled, and also waiting for the computer swap to take place (mmm…navigator data), I’m looking at spiral sequences, which involve using spiral trajectories to sample k-space (ooooh….ahhhhh). Since Philip is going to be leaving us for the University of Michigan by the end of August, Dr. Wang wants to see if I can take over his work. Heh heh heh… let’s see. So I need to brush up on my MR fundamentals first…then maybe I’ll have some competence in the matter–and maybe I’ll actually be able to understand what’s going on!

It’s like senior year never happened–I’m not sure if I learned anything at all. (Apart from learning how to violate flies, the mating habits of the stickleback fish, and oh yes, advanced computer architecture.)

Caught the Pirates-Cardinals game on Saturday, rather spur-of-the-moment. Dr. Wang called me up around 6 and said, .Anthony! Do you want to catch a Pirates game?. And I said, .Sure!.

After a wrong turn that pretty much doubled my travel time, I made it to PNC Park. I.m not sure when exactly Three Rivers Stadium was torn down and PNC Park and Heinz Field (the home of the Pittsburgh Steelers) were built, but PNC Park at least seems like a hardy and serviceable ballpark. It has all the modern touches.a Jumbotron out in left field, fireworks set off whenever the Pirates hit a home run, and even an Outback Steakhouse (open daily).

Being at a ballgame for the first time since when Sachin and I went to a Mets-Cubs game at Shea Statdium made me nostalgic for good ol. Wrigley Field, the Friendly Confines, with its ivy-covered outfield wall and the old-style manually operated scoreboard in center field, a throwback to a simpler time. In fact, I think Wrigley is probably the best demonstration that one can have a great ballpark without resorting to flashy technology. But nothing compares to the bleacher culture at Wrigley, which for me makes going to a ballgame even more exciting. Every kind of person can be found in the bleachers.from serious baseball fanatics to drunk frat boys who are only there because, well, they.re drunk. I miss .LEFT FIELD SUCKS. and the bleacher homage to the Cubbies. right fielder, whether it be Andre Dawson or Sammy Sosa. And, well, where else (in any ballpark) can you catch a home run?

We sat out in the far third of the left field seats, which were still very decent seats. Every so often during the game, I would stop and explain baseball a little further to Dr. Wang, who had only been to a couple of ballgames all his life. As for the game itself, the Pirates jumped out to an early 5-0 lead in their half of the first inning, and the Cardinals never came close, at least while I was there (I left after the seventh inning stretch). The score when I left was 12 to 4 in favor of the Pirates.

Sitting around us were a handful of either recent immigrants or permanent residents.in any case, they were non-natives.who were probably attending their first baseball game. (I believe that the tickets we got were part of a block of tickets picked up by the CMU Robotics Institute or somesuch). So I would also explain some nuance of the game to them whenever they had a question. Probably the kicker (funny how we take a lot of things for granted) was during the seventh inning stretch, when one woman remarked, .What, does everyone know the words to this song?. (referring, of course, to .Take Me Out to the Ballgame..) It.s just one of those things that you grow up with, guess.

This brings up something I was wondering. What do you believe to be the correct lyrics to the song? I.m aware that the Wrigley Field version, a.k.a. the Harry Caray version, is a little bastardized, but I still sing it that way anyway, regardless of where I am. This is what I sing:

Two words are changed in this version, from what I understand: .take me out to the crowd,. and .Í don.t care if I ever get back.. The correct lyrics are, I believe, .take me out with the crowd,. and .I don.t care if I never get back.. In any case, the Jumbotron at PNC Park displays the words so even those who don.t know the lyrics can sing along, and while they showed .take me out with the crowd,. they showed .I don.t care if I ever get back.. So it just made me wonder whether I was right and they.re a little fuxored, or whether my memory was going in my old age. I.ll be doing some web surfing to find out the answers to my question, but you can also feel free to share your baseball-going experiences in the meantime.

In any case, on my way home I once again took a wrong turn that set me back maybe fifteen or twenty minutes, but I made it back all right. (I miss the grid system!)

In other news, it.s entirely possible that my next destination after Pittsburgh will be Chicago.Northwestern University to be specific. The updates will, of course, be plentiful as news happens.

Since I’m only living at my current place temporarily (until the end of the month), I don’t have any utilities hooked up except for electricity, which the guy whose apartment it is I’m staying at was gracious enough to leave hooked up and paid for. So that means that the only “World-Wide Internet” (thank you Prof. Ungar) access I have is at work.

That means that I can’t sate my 24-hour must-be-online obsession, among other things. But it does mean that coming to work every morning is full of potential surprises, as who knows what email goodies await me?

Spam, spam, and more spam. Sometimes there’s maybe one or two important emails waiting for me, but by and large it’s just spam. At least 10 pieces waiting for me, all at my imsa.edu account, which has pretty much been rendered USELESS! To quote Invader Zim: “Assessment: PATHETIC!”

The Simpsons and Philosophy

I picked up The Simpsons and Philosophy: The D’oh! of Homer from a local bookstore the other day. It’s a collection of articles written by philosophy academics using The Simpsons as a springboard for discussion into various sundry topics, such as Aristotelian virtue, Nietzschean ideals, American anti-intellectualism, politics and the nuclear family, etc. etc. So far, it’s been a good read. At the very least, it’s a welcome change of pace from the mostly technical literature I’ve been reading the past few years. And while it’s arguably aimed towards the masses, I feel like it’s bumping up my intellectual sphere a few notches.(Can you say “eudaimonia”?)

As the urge strikes me (and time allows), I’ll probably share some of the more interesting tidbits here.