This will be a quick one! I woke up in Colorado Springs and now I’m in Boulder, waiting for S to finish a business call. This evening we will reach Grand Junction, CO and take in some rest, then tomorrow we’ll make the long trek to Las Vegas. We had previously planned to stay in St. George, UT, but we’re gonna go for the gusto and have some fun in Sin City.
Ok, gotta run. (BTW, happy 150th blog entry to me…)
Josh & Sarthak check out a field of wheat in Kansas
Originally uploaded by josh.ev9.
S and I have been roadtripping it from Bloomington to our current location, Denver, for the last few days. On the first day we made it from Bloomington to St. Louis and then to Kansas City, MO.
Once we made it to Kansas City, S and I scoured the entire city for a Chipotle restaurant…and finally found one. It was somewhat surreal to sit in Chipotle with S as lightening and thunder flashed the streets with light every few minutes. But still, the burritos were good.
Yesterday we drove completely across the great state of Kansas, which turns out to be really really really long and really really really flat and really really really, dare I say it, boring. The above photo gives a glimpse of what we saw throughout the entire state. What a long day.
We’re in Denver now, which has been cool so far. Last night we ate at Maggiano’s, an Italian restaurant that offers a 5 course all-you-can-eat meal. Needless to say, I am still completely stuffed 12 hours later. Today we’ll do some touring and relaxing, and hopefully my stomach will feel light enough to squeeze a run in.
Ok, it’s time to start the day. I’ll try to blog again soon, but no promises…I don’t know when I’ll have internet access again!
Josh touching the arch in St. Louis
Originally uploaded by josh.ev9.
Wow, I owe some blog posts from waaay back. A lot has happened since the last time I posted, but for now, just a picture…maybe more.
Here I am *touching* the Arch in St. Louis. Sarthak and I stopped through here on our road trip from Bloomington to LA. It was good times!
Wow, check me out. I’ve fallen off the horse. Haven’t blogged in a week…that’s the longest I’ve gone since starting, I think. Sorry about that. I probably shouldn’t expect people to read Notta Blog if I don’t do some updates…unless you use some sort of RSS Feed Aggregator, which I highly recommend.
It’s that finals time of year. The year went by so fast. I finished my Cognitive Ergonomics class last Wednesday with a smashing 45 minute presentation. Tomorrow I’ve got a presentation about Technophiles, the group I studied for my Human-Computer Interaction Design II class, then that’ll be the 2nd of 3 classes out of the way. On Tuesday I’ve got a project due in my Prototyping class, which I’d say i’m roughly 20% done with. After turning in the project on Tuesday I’ll proctor an exam, then do some grading, then I’ll call it a school year. Nearly halfway done with my Master’s degree…that’s a bit incomprehensible…
Sarthak‘s coming on Wednesday evening, and I think he should update his blog before doing so 😉 We’ll be driving from Bloomington to LA, which should be fun fun fun, then I’ll head to San Diego where I’ll be living with Puneet, who should also update his blog. I start my internship on the 16th of May, working with Intuit and redesigning TurboTax. More on that in the coming weeks.
This entry is beginning to look more like a book report than anything else…boring. I’ll move on.
I’ve been to Chipotle 3 times in the last 5 days. A brand new one just opened in Bloomington, and I guess I had been missing it more than I thought. I really enjoy Chipotle, but I think I’ll refrain from eating there until I get back to SD. There’s a great place here called Laughing Planet, a local burrito place that puts cool stuff in their burritos. It’s a little more pricey than Chipotle, but it’s nice to support a local business…plus they’ve got many more options as far as what they put in the burritos…sometimes it just feels good to eat some broccoli.
Oh my, I’ve got so much more to say…but I need to stop and sleep. That was just a taste of all the news I have for you all. Life’s been especially interesting lately, and I promise I’ll catch you all up on more details just as soon as I have the time.
I was inspired the other day into a line of thought that has not been able to leave my head. I’ll try to explain what I mean, but I’m still in the process of trying to make sense of it myself. Hopefully writing this entry will help.
I communicate with so many people every day in so many different ways. You do too. We talk, that’s a no brainer. Then there are hand, body, and facial gestures, which are so subconscious that we never notice them happening, and couldn’t stop them if we tried. These are implicit, but there are numerous explicit communication tools as well, telephone, fax machines, instant messaging, and, of course, email. I often rail against email because it takes so much time away from other aspects of my life, but the truth is that I love it. That’s right, I love Email.
Ok, that statement needs some clarification. I love the right kind of email. I love the email that you get from somebody that you know, or somebody that you are getting to know, or somebody that you love, or somebody that loves you. I love juicy Emails, chock full of information. I love reading and rereading and even rerereading a really good email.
It’s always amazing to me how good reading a nice long email can make me feel. I sometimes go back to old correspondences and read through the conversations…many times in hopes of finding some sliver of a detail that I missed before. Even when I come up empty-handed, it still feels nice.
So as not to seem totally self-indulgent, I should note that I love writing emails too. Sometimes I’ll just write and write and write and hope that the other person is actually interested in what I’m saying.
I love sneaking little secrets between the words. It’s like a tiny little inside joke, but giving the receiver a chance to ‘get it.’ Of course, it’s also nice to be able to stick shared secrets between the words as well.
Despite all its other failures I’m here to advocate email, at least for this evening. Here’s an assignment, dear reader: Write a good email to someone you love, or even just like a whole lot, tonight. Be passionate, be secretive, be tricky. But at the same time, don’t think twice about it. Just be yourself. The other person is sure to enjoy the simple gift.
If you’re the lucky receiver of a good email tonight, don’t forget to reread it. Then rereread it. Then read it again tomorrow. You won’t regret it, I promise.
southpark
Originally uploaded by josh.ev9.
Don’t ask how I happened upon this widget, or why I’m wasting precious time there, but it is interesting to say the least. I’ve always kind of liked the South Park tv show, but never found myself clicking all the way up to Comedy Central in order to get my fix. Nonetheless, it was interesting to see myself as a character on the show. You should try it for yourself. Creativity is fun.
It happened today, for the first time in a long time. The feeling is inexplicable. Perfect. Amazing. I cannot realistically portray what I mean, but I’ll try. Have you ever been with a group of people, doing some sort of work, when all of a sudden everything just sort of blurs into slow motion, and all around you is the haze of perfect flow? Everyone is on the same page, all parties are thinking the same thoughts, everybody believes strongly in the cause, and you’re working in sync toward your goal. That happened this evening. It was brief, and my teammates may not have noticed, but *that feeling* was most definitely there for me.
*That feeling* is the reason I have decided to dedicate this portion of my life to Human-Computer Interaction. I do a ton of group work, and during all of this work I’m in search of these perfect little moments. Sometimes I try to steal them, but that never works. That feeling hits when I least expect it. I remember the first time. It was 3rd year of college and I was in a Cognitive Engineering class. I remember sitting in a CogSci lab with my 6 group members staring at a huge Affinity Diagram doing some concept creation for our project, “PictureThis.” We were on fire. It was amazing. Concepts were flowing from this group like I had never seen. One person would suggest a feasible, but boring idea and the next person would add an element that just made it work perfectly. Another person would shout out an idea that was just horribly off base, and the next person would take a piece of that idea and turn it into something that just seemed to fit in our solution. Since that moment I have known that I wanted to delve deeper into the world of HCI.
I am absolutely sure these moments of perfection exist in fields other than HCI, but they have rarely occured to me. When I ran the ropes course at my childhood summer camp, a few situations were simply perfect. I remember driving around in my first car that were perfect, but those were generally alone. In HCI, moments where I have *that feeling* are few, but they are more often than in other fields. Perhaps there is a field where I can come into contact with this feeling of perfection more often…but for now, I am quite happy with my momentary feelings of bliss.
Had my first bad allergy day 🙁 I knew it was soon approaching that time of year and have had random sneezes the last few days, but this afternoon and evening has been horrific. The meds I’m on (clarinex, claritin, and sudafed) are not helping one bit, and I just feel like crap. I forgot how much energy a single allergy attack takes from you. I took a nap this afternoon with the hope that when I woke up it would all be gone, but it was not to be. I’ll go to bed relatively early this evening to help my weary body, but with my luck it’ll all be the same tomorrow.
They definitely call this town Bloomington for a reason: everything blooms at the same time. It’s beautiful, but polleny. I saw the most beautiful tulips yesterday while on my run…a bright red and yellow mix out front of a local church. Tulips are everywhere here, which isn’t the case in the places I’ve lived in California. Tulips are certainly my favorite flower…but I can’t really explain why. I just like them a whole lot. I’ll try to take some pictures of them and give you all a look at them.
Speaking of my run…yesterday was a 14 miler. They’re getting longer and longer. I really feel like I’ve accomplished something after a long run like that, unfortunately it knocks me out for pretty much the whole day. I’m feeling pretty confident about this marathon, which is great news. The 14 miles was definitely do-able, and I think with people cheering me on the whole way I can do another 12.2. I won’t jump to conclusions though, cause that may be dangerous. BTW, I don’t know if I’ve said it before, but everyone is invited to the marathon. Come out and support me and the thousands of other runners, or feel free to just do it from afar. 🙂
Have I told you that I sing to myself in French when I run? Well I do. It’s an old habit that I’ve never kicked. When I’m really tired on a run, I’ll generally start thinking en Francais, and soonafter that the songs start to flow. The grammar is surely off, and the songs are simply American translations, but it’s fun for me. It’s always so surprising how much of my French vocabulary I have retained…I bet it would be much better if I started studying the language a few years earlier. Now it’s all been shoved to the tired running area of my brain instead of the vital language processing areas. Que sera, sera. (What will be, will be.)
In other news, the “Ice Man” is coming out to Bloomington in a few weeks. I’m excited about this for a multitude of reasons. First, hanging with S is always a good time. Second, I’m gonna give him a chance to see the midwest, a place which he prejudges as bad…which is truly not the case. Third, we’re gonna have Indian food, and I’ll get to see if it meets his standards (S was a major influence in my initial Indian food experiences). Fourth, we’re driving across the country together, which will surely be a blast. And fifth, S will learn to drive a manual transmission, a skill that I enjoy teaching. I think S will especially appreciate the structured nature in which I have enumerated the reasons for my excitement at his visit.
Ok, bedtime for me. Gooo night.
Training for the Marathon
Originally uploaded by josh.ev9.
Many thanks are required this evening…after an evening of tabulations, I can announce that I’ve passed my fundraising minimum goal for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s Team In Training. That means I can run the Rock ‘n Roll Marathon on June 5 without owing any money. Great news for a starving student like me. 🙂 Thanks to all those who contributed, as well as all of you who have been cheering me on all the way. I should note that I’m still collecting donations if you’d like to help the LLS. To donate, click here.
Less than 2 months to race day, and I’m completely in awe of the generosity of my friends and family. Thank you all so much. Now it’s up to me to run a race.
Had a big presentation today, err…yesterday. It was supposed to be forty minutes long, but I ran over the hour mark. Good stuff. Lots of questions by the professor and students in the class, and I think I did a good job answering them. At one point it even became comfortable to be up in front of the class. I always get so worked up about presentations. Something about them just makes me extremely nervous. Nerves eventually waned, I just needed to be up there for long enough.
Went on to have a relaxing and interesting evening. Let’s just say my crepe-making skillz can use some work. I needed a night of fun, though…since I’ve been tearing my hair out with work lately. The fun doesn’t stop…I’ve still got more catching up to do tomorrow. Grading + wiki + National Center on Accessibility. Not to mention the fact that I haven’t run in days. 14 miler coming up Saturday. I’ll try to do 5 tomorrow if I manage to wake up.
It’s been a while since I really sat and thought about life. I jot down notes here at Notta Blog, but they’re (semi)coherent and public, which leads to the painting of beautiful pictures. I need a forum for me, myself, and I…if there’s time for that. Perhaps I’ll simply keep notes in my head…