:: My Divided Soul ::

As of Wednesday night, I am now a Palo Alto, CA resident. I flew out so I can start my internship at Intel on Monday. The trip itself was pretty uneventful, thankfully. I find travel–particularly to a new and unknown place in which I will be living–extremely stressful. My single-serving friend for the flight from Philadelphia to San Francisco was Andrzej, who works for an environmental conservation group and also places some cool folk/world/rock/country music. We chatted on the plane about our work and about music. Turns out he’d like to jam with a drummer, so I’m hoping I might be able to feed the drumming bug a bit out here, as I do not have my drumset with me.

I’m living near downtown Palo Alto with Polly, who I first met at Cornell (and who does not have a web page to which I can link…you need to work on that, Polly). This puts me in walking distance of many fine places to eat and shop, although about 14 miles from work.

Normally, this would not be a big deal as I have always had a car to get me places. I decided, however, that I would spend this summer without a car. I could have drove my car out here, although I’m not sure I want to try to get my car across the country and back. I certainly do someday want to drive across this great land, but I want to take the full two or three weeks one should really spend doing it. My other option would have been to rent a car; but, the $2300 it would have cost for the summer was not that appealing.

The train makes getting to work relatively easy, as I’m less than a mile from the train station. Intel also offers a shuttle from the train station on the other side to their campus. However, I am strongly considering the possibility of a bicycle to manage that last 3.4 miles. It would be good exercise and provide the more flexibility than the Intel shuttle.

Getting items for day-to-day living, however, has proven to be interesting. I did not want to spend much time sleeping on the floor, so I needed to acquire a mattress. I went to the Ikea about two miles away to do some shopping. I was hoping to get a mattress, small desk, and chair and have them delivered the next day. As I was standing there looking at mattresses, I realized something: I could get the mattress, small desk, and chair and have them all delivered for $79. This would require spending $79 on the delivery of furniture that barely cost that and also require sleeping on the floor for another night. Instead, it made much more sense for me to carry the mattress home so that I could have it the same night and then just get the desk and chair when Polly, who has a car, gets back from Europe. So I walked for two miles carrying a thin twin mattress rolled up into an 18-inch cylinder. It is nice to put my semester of work in the gym to good use. I’m sure that I was quite an amusing thing to see for those driving by.

Getting groceries also proved to be an exercise in carrying. I could have gone to the Whole Foods Market down the street, but they are all…organic….and….expensive…or so I assume. Instead, I went to the Safeway about two miles down the road and carried six bags of groceries back. I think my second shopping trip will be to the Whole Foods Market.

So to summarize my first day in Palo Alto: eight miles of walking, two of which were with a mattress, two of which were with groceries. Overall, I would call it a productive day. In general, I’m finding Palo Alto to be a very nice place. The weather is simply beautiful. As I understand it, the temperature stays in the 70s for most of the summer with the humidity pretty low. It is raining right now, but that’s probably not a bad thing, as it helps to keep the green plants alive and well. And there certainly are a lot of green plants.

The people here are also very friendly. I met a few people on the shuttle bus from the airport to here and they were quite chatty, as were the people at the checkout counters at Ikea and Safeway. People also smile and say “hi” when walking down the street, even more so than in Ithaca. My new neighbors, Scott and Lana, introduced themselves my first evening here. Overall, my first impressions of the area are very positive. You can see some pictures around Palo Alto that I took my first couple of days here. I’ll add to this album as I take more.

I’ve only met a couple people out here so far. Mr. “I Know Every Person Ever Born” has already informed me that several of his friends are out here, including Justin, Nitu, and Martin. The first two I knew when I was at Cornell. Martin was gracious enough to invite me to the Stanford CS department TGIF, so I got to meet several grad students in that department. I also took the time to steal all of Stanford’s computer science secrets and will be taking them back with me to Cornell.

Yesterday, rather than go completely stir crazy, I decided to take the train to San Francisco and walk around. It is one awesome city that I plan to explore much more during my time here. You can see pictures from my walking around, where there is much more commentary on my day.

So far, the trip out west has treated me very well. I’m eager to start work on Monday and actually do something.

My sister was graduated from Penn State this weekend. I am extremely proud of Hannah and everything she has done. She received two B.A.s, one with honors in Journalism and another in Political Science. Both were with highest distinction (that means her GPA was really, really good). Now, she is off to Philadelphia to intern at the Inquirer. You better believe you will see my sister in a good position at a very good paper in the near future. Until then, you can see pictures of graduation festivities. Congratulations, Hannah!

I signed into my Orbitz account this morning to check the mileage on the flights I am taking to and from California this summer. I check on my flights for the family reunion and I see the following:

Anyone notice a problem with this particular flight schedule? Apparently, United is extremely optimistic and thinks the flight from DC to Chicago to be quite early; or, the airline expects me to master time travel. I, however, am a bit weary of such things being possible and think a -35 minute layover is not enough.

This is, of course, not the flight I booked. Apparently, United changed my flight without informing me. I called Orbitz and they corrected the problem very quickly, putting me on a direct flight from DC back to San Francisco. So a thank you to the kind people there who made the change and were extremely polite and friendly in the process.

In fact I have not abandoned my camera, even if it has been since Christmas that I have posted pictures. You can now see all the happenings of Slope Day 2006. Take a little end of classes, add in some music, a dash of alcohol, and a lot of friends and you have Slope Day.

A few different things are in my mind, so I thought I’d just talk about all of them. First of all, it is going to be one busy summer. I’m headed off to California in two weeks for my internship at Intel. Big thanks to Polly for offering to share a place this summer and then finding said place. This summer is also going to include three trips to Europe to present four conference papers. Dexter and I have been very fortunate with paper acceptance this semester, with two papers we wrote together accepted, one to MPC in Estonia and one to RelMiCS in Manchester, UK. I have a second paper in RelMiCS, as well as one in MKM in Wokingham, UK (this would be the conference Terese and I had a paper in last year). I have to say that it is a great feeling going four for four on papers this semester after having some droughts in previous years.

Secondly, and completely unrelated to my summer, is the fact that I bought some new CDs yesterday. The primary of these purchases was Tool’s new one called 10,000 Days. This album wins for greatest packaging ever. First of all, the work is all done by Alex Grey, my favorite artist. All of you in New York City (Chethan, I’m looking in your direction) need to go see his Chapel of Sacred Mirrors. The artwork itself is not what separates this albums from others. No, the awesome thing is that this album artwork contains pairs of images that, when viewed with the attached stereoscopic glasses, appear 3D. Truly mind-blowing. The music itself is also growing on me very quickly.

I also picked up the latest Pearl Jam album. It has been heralded as the return of Pearl Jam to their roots, however, the album has not really struck me as that special yet. The last CD I got was Move Along by The All-American Rejects. I have been enjoying this album immensely. Shit, am I in danger of becoming emo kid? My hope is that this is not the case.

Finally, why is it that no one at Cornell or in Ithaca who wears a Penn State shirt actually went to Penn State? Whenever I see such a shirt, I like to ask its wearer if he attended the school. So far, no one I have asked actually has gone to the school. The most popular response is “no, I just like the football team.” The most legitimate response came from Meredith, who is from the central PA area and has a family member who teaches at Penn State. The amusing thing is that when I tell those with Penn State attire that I actually did go to school there, I can see that some of them suddenly feel like a fraud for wearing the shirt.

Perhaps the solution to this problem is for me to wear a Penn State shirt (I think I have one around here somewhere) and let people who went to the school come up and ask me if I went there. I can respond, “yes, I did my undergraduate work there.” Then we can reminisce about good ol’ PSU and take comfort in knowing that someone else who wears blue and white knows that Penn State is more than the football stadium.