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May 31st, 2009

06:22 pm - Okay then Tomorrow, I turn 10000 days old. This is kind of like the odometer post. My S key works (new keyboard), I have a new digital camera, I am in the process of buying a new iPod, and on Wednesday I go to France for 4ish days. I will attend Nasal 2009 and hang out with Doug. Bye-bye, money. Current Location: bed Current Mood: pensive Current Music: CSN - Deja Vu Tags: aging, birthday, doug, laptop, nas, photos, travel

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May 3rd, 2009

09:35 am - Brief updates Whoops, two months without an entry. In March, I: -participated in Grad Recruiting Weekend -wore a necktie every day for a week or so -drove to & from the airport a lot -saw Watchmen -saw Benjamin Button -went to Ithaca, then Corning -started a travel journal (in a real notebook), which I have a hard time keeping up with, what with long/late nights & then the getting-back thing -grew facial hair -ran a bunch of subjects in what's basically my first dissertation experiment. Bad: I failed at spelling "dissertation" my first time through that sentence. The data's coming along, and we've laid out a good series to follow this. TOOT TOOT! Word learning! science! Math! -attended Maple Weekend In April, I: -had dinner with Matt Goldrick, who is the first person I ever worked with in the field -renewed my lease (maybe now I'll unpack?) -watched a little girl meet a chicken -ran, or tried to run, a bunch of subjects in one week. No-shows abounded. Kids these days. -went to Corning for a night -attended a seder -went to Baltimore briefly for Homecoming/Reunion. I barely got to see any of you reader-types, which was my fault: I went to DC for a night to see DKlein. In the morning, I had brunch with photofigment, ithinksobrain, radlab0, and schmitty. I haven't seen the last two in yeaaaars. It's lovely how the world works out, though. I also managed to have sushi with two Iraq War veterans and a pastry chef. Hmm... -presented results of the dissertation-whatnot-sofar in anlab meeting. One faculty member walked out halfway through. I'm not taking it personally. -saw the This American Life live simulcast with magpiesd -participated in the city'z Cleansweep of the southwest quadrant of the city with magpiesd, jisalynn, and Kevin. In vacant lots and abandoned property, we found bald tires, a denim jacket, spices, empty tiny ziploc baggies, syringe plungers, and other delightful urban treasures. -lost in lizzybeth529's annual Rock Paper scissors competition I don't like that the tag auto-completion thinger on LJ.com sometimes leads to premature posting. I have a lot to do today, including some housework, some schoolwork (for the final project in Field Methods, which I'M NOT EVEN TAKING FOR CREDIT), and some cooking of semolina pudding (suji halva). I've never made it before. Wish me luck. Also, the Buick's alternator is wonked out. Or maybe it's the starter. Boo hiss. Obligatory "can't believe it's May/end of semester/year" comment here. No, really. Current Location: bed Tags: baltimore, corning, dissertation, grad school, ithaca, movies, netflix, research, talks, travel

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March 3rd, 2009

10:18 am - Hi. Checking in here... DKlein visited this weekend. It was great. We ate and drank our way through town: Lux, T&M, garbage plates from Mark's on Monroe, Boulder coffee, empanadas from Juan & Maria, other Public Market delights, Rohrbach brewery, and an unintentionally Hopkins-only lunch at Dinosaur. On Sunday we visited the southwedge diner, Goodwill, and Pittsford Barnes. The visit ended in a surprise trip to Buffalo so that he could get home before the snow hit. His flight out of Rochester was delayed over 6 hours, but because it was into BWI, he wouldn't have been able to get home to DC that night. This way, he DID get home that night. Delightful weekend, and you can naturally view too many photos on flickr I'm sitting in on an undergrad ling course. It's called, alternatingly, "senior seminar" and "field methods". The term "seminar" would be a misnomer because we're not reading anything. The term "senior" isn't right, because there are juniors in it. And I'm one of two grad students (the other being Ben-the-officemate/MA-student). Scott is teaching. The notion is to get us used to how fieldwork is done, but in the comfort of a classroom with weekly access to a consultant. The language this year is Bengali, which my dad's family speaks (though they also all speak English, luckily for me). I don't really know any Bengali except for a few useless words ("gravy", "yogurt", "naughty boy"), so I'm gaining linguistic knowledge as well as linguistics knowledge, never having taken a class along these lines before. Last night, I wore an eye patch at the grant mini-course because my right eye was cranky. It'd been cranky all day, but I took the contact out around 5:30, which didn't help at all. There I was with one irritated eye that was handicapped. It seemed prudent to deprive it, and parts of my brain, of input. No, it didn't seem to help, but I felt like a badass. A really full night of sleep might have helped, but it still looks red. I will wear glasses today. Current reading: Made to Stick and too many New Yorkers. Only cooking adventure of late: pulled pork from a week back. No pix. suomifrikki boiled the remains of it into a mustard-pork soup, which I'm intrigued by. (Can I swing by for some tonight?) Happy birthday to silberzauber and drucat! Current Location: Home Current Music: Dan Hicks & His Hot Licks - Waiting For The 103 Tags: bengali, books, class, dave, eating, flickr, food, linguistics, photos, reading, rochester, weekend

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February 24th, 2009

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February 6th, 2009

09:01 am - Little things I went snowboarding a few weeks back. It was fun, but I don't know if I'll go again this season or ever try to get that good. Carrie and I, each of whom had been once before but didn't feel comfortable, took a lesson with some strangers at our level. I was on the lift with one of them, a guy named Steve. He told me he's a jet pilot who wanted to be able to say at the bar that he snowboards. Really? Women who go to pilot bars have such high standards? Jerks. After the snowboarding, I needed a massage real bad. jisalynn had gotten me a GC for one. Thanks, dude! For the super bowl, I made macaroni and cheese, which was an overcooked disaster. The pasta never doubled in size. It disintegrated. I also, more successfully, made a bacon explosion. It turned out beautifully. T9 has given me some funny results that I want to remember, so I'm posting them here. When I type in "plates", the first hit is "slaves". When I type in "earmuffs", I get "darntees". What's a darntee? Recently watched Wordplay and Word Wars, the crossword and scrabble documentaries, respectively, and in that order. American subcultures at their finest, I guess? Current Location: bed Current Music: Elbow - Grounds for Divorce Tags: cell phone, cooking, flickr, meat, movies, photos, t9, texting, words

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January 20th, 2009

09:39 pm - Recently It's been a while, Wildcats. Many changes have taken place. I celebrated Christmas with my family. I got 3 hours of sleep, between 1:30am-4:30am, going into Christmas Day. We did the late night church thing (side note: do they only offer the white grape juice at regular services now?) (side side note: I grew up in a church with pre-cubed bread and grape juice for Communion). I got up at 4:20 to do my customary delivering of presents to needy children in Elmira, which may or may not make up for my 364 days of sin. When I got home from it, I could not sleep. This made me very cranky from about 3pm-11pm. But I got presents. Yay! And the family liked theirs. Yay! And my brother's girlfriend seemed to enjoy us at Christmastime. Yay! Mind you, I finished wrapping presents at 11:45am. We finished unwrapping around 4:30pm. Note that, yeah, I was cranky while unwrapping. This happens. I get impatient. I celebrated New Year's in Rochester with suomifrikki, jisalynn, saraF, Davis, suz, Kel, and others. It was a nice evening. Not a Blowout Crazy Party, but a very nice evening with friends. I've been drinking a lot of Tang, which started between Christmas and NYE with a ragin' cold. Man, good stuff. I celebrated my 27th birthday. Thanks to all of you who participated in some way in making it fun, whether via facebook or in person. My body is taking this aging thing pretty seriously. It's time again for me to try being healthy! Part of this is a couch to 5K program. It assumes a certain kind of couch. A couch that involves a fair amount of fitness. That is not my couch. I'm on my 3rd try through the first week. Helpful in this quest is a set of podcasts that go along with each week. I owe the creator a thank-you. I'm also re-trying the Hundred Pushups challenge. And I'm playing on an intramural volleyball team. The other night, I really wanted beef jerky. The Hess station on campus does not sell bags of jerky. Only one-off pieces in little shrinkwrap things. You know what I mean. I inquired. "We're not authorized to sell the bags, because of the area. Too much of the merchandise walks out the door. But if you go down to the store at 12 Corners, they sell bags there." The big bags of jerky get shoplifted? More so, or at greater cost, than the small ones? Nevermind that there are bags of jerky within 2 blocks of this gas station at similar establishments. It's a crazy, mixed-up world. People like to hear about what food I've made. The other day I made a crappy bread pudding out of old, frozen challah. Yesterday, I made a yellow cake from a box with a homemade chocolate frosting/ganache. I also put together a chicken spaghetti casserole which is not amazing but quite filling. My officemate Kim bought me a rice cooker for my birthday. Toot toot! We have a new President. I watched it in a department conference room and ate gummi bears. This weekend, I'll play lasertag and go snowboarding. If anybody local wants in on lasertag and hasn't gotten the memo/signed up, blame Bjorn but contact me. (or him). Now time for more Tang and laundry. Current Location: green couch Tags: aging, birthday, cooking, food, health, history, politics, running

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January 11th, 2009

01:14 am - To-read piles To-read piles Originally uploaded by Knile I have a bit of reading that I want to do. You'll note some common themes. And some odd ones. This includes nearly every book I received for Christmas this year - save for The Professor and The Madman, and some puzzle books. Others in the pile have been in various states of attempting-to-be-read since 2003, no joke. No, my_sihaya, I have not yet made it through the names book. Tags: books, christmas, flickr, photos, reading

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January 3rd, 2009

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December 21st, 2008

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December 19th, 2008

02:40 pm - 5 & 6 #5 Yesterday: the re-surfacing of my parking lot/driveway. There is a big gravelly area shared by a number of houses. It's unclear to which of them it particularly belongs, but it leads to the patch of grass I park on. It is horrendously uneven, with huge puddles often forming. I cannot quite describe it. The good part about cold precipitation: it forms a new layer, that gets evened out. sure, it's icy, but at least my car doesn't bottom out... #6 Today: My passenger side wiper died yesterday. Partially my fault. I got it fixed for free this morning at D & B Auto Service after a quick phone call, then about two minutes' worth of Bruce's time, who waved me off before I could even offer to pay. "Merry Christmas!" he said. Wooh! Other good things in the past day.5: -coffee with julescm -a much-needed haircut -pub crawl with suomifrikki, her sister, an Irish veterinarian, and KevinD -made $10 by selling stuff on craigslist (a coax cable crimper & stripper) -great breakfast at Boulder -potentially going back to bed at 3PM Current Location: living room floor Current Music: Rnews Tags: apartment, buick, car, craigslist, eightoneight, meme, south wedge, travel, weather

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December 18th, 2008

01:54 am - Eight on Eight #4 #4 : Drinking a Juicy Juice juice box while watching Leno from the living room floor. Current Mood: tired Tags: eightoneight, juice, meme, tv

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December 17th, 2008

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08:44 am - Eight On Eight, Late #3: seeing strangers be randomly happy on the bus. This has been a series of events. I can only hope it continues. Monday morning, I was up early and got on the 7:20 bus. I was talking to wonderjess about Christmas shopping, telling her that I hope to buy a present for my friends' toddler daughter, and we'll see how well that turns out. An older guy up the aisle, maybe late 30s, whom I didn't recognize[1], just started laughing uncontrollably at that. I don't know if it's what I said or how I said it, but he thought it was fantastic. (It was clear that it was at me, as he looked over a few times.) Monday afternoon, while we were all listening to Toni Braxton, a lady passenger who's a UR employee was chatting with the bus driver about his taste in music, CD burning, the holidays, and so on. I looked around the bus and noticed the girl across the aisle just smiling away, intently eavesdropping as well. Yesterday morning, I got on the bus and talked to antinats and hubcap_annie and their beaux. We talked about how the previous day had been payday. I revealed that when I looked at my bank account, my first thought was "Crap! That's all going to rent!" but later remembered that it's the middle of the month, not the end, so that money is mine to spend how I want. A ginger girl across the aisle laughed, less subtly than the Monday morning guy, but delighting in my budget style. [1] - You know how you get to recognize the people on your normal buses? Older Guy With Glasses And something To Read, Librarian Type Lady With iPod, Girl Who Gets Off At Hamilton, etc? I didn't have a name for him. Current Location: Living room floor Current Mood: sore Tags: bus, eightoneight, jess, katie, meme, natalie

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December 15th, 2008

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December 14th, 2008

11:30 pm - Another meme Yeah, I owe the story of The Great Lockout II of 2008, but I've been funning all weekend. neverdreamofme tagged me in this thing: ...The Eight on Eight... The rules are that for 8 days you have to post something that made you happy that day. Tag 8 people to do the same. I won't tag anybody but... #1: Family dinner chez Orbaker. Three of my former roommates from grad school (who've all moved out of town) have been in town of late. Meg was here for just the weekend. Doug & Crimmins have been here since mid-November, she rotating through Rochester General Hospital and he doing his research, but in Rochester. Both of them have been living at his parents' house. His mom loves to cook, especially for his friends, and so we all got together tonight. Sue. Roasted. A. Turkey. (Bonus roommate interaction: While at the Orbakers', Andrew, my roommate from 2000-01, aka freshman year of college, called me to catch up. It's been 7 months since we last caught up. He was driving from PA to Fort Bragg. I will call him this week, because I get the feeling he's going back to Iraq at the end of it.) Current Location: bed Tags: crimmins, doug, eating, eightoneight, food, meme

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December 13th, 2008

01:25 am - FYI ridetheworld posted this, and I feel like it's handy for some of you. 1. First Name: Neil. Not actually spelled Knile. 2. Age: 26, going on 30. 3. Location: Rochester, NY. AKA RoNY, 14620, southwedge. 4. Occupation: Full-time graduate student. My business card reads "PhD candidate". 5. Partner: Nope. 6. Kids: None. 7. Brothers/Sisters: Jay (3 years+3 weeks older) is in Chicago, finishing up a postdoc at Argonne National Lab. Next = TBA/D. He does computational biophysics. Yeah. Exactly. 8. Pets: Pining for a puppy. REAL HARD. Recent idea: Raise a guide dog. Pros: always puppies, no long-term commitment, get to help those in need. Cons: Don't get one dog forever & ever. 9. List the 3-5 biggest things going on in your life: -Running dissertation pilot experiment. I might graduate & get a roast, which will be long & hilarious/stupid. -I live alone for the first time ever. It's fun and weird and great and lonely and perfect. -I need to figure out what to do, professionally, after I graduate. Yeah. -I want to experiment more with cooking/baking, but feel limited by my skills, pantry, budget, and kitchen. 10. Where and for what did you go to school for? BA at Johns Hopkins in cognitive science. Now in a PhD program at the University of Rochester's Brain & Cognitive sciences department. ETG: 2010. 11. Parents? still married, still rockin' at their jobs that they've been at for more or less 30 years. House in C-town (30 years and counting!)+ the new house in Ithaca, which'll eventually be the retirement house. My dad's use of AIM is hilarious. Current Location: Futon, living room, 14620 Current Music: Refrigerator Tags: family, future, grad school, hopkins, life, lj, me, meme, parents

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December 10th, 2008

07:25 pm - When I was your age I want to make more entries that are memories from when I was younger, because I fear I'll lose them in my head as I age. Here are a bunch. (Here is a bunch?) When I was between, oh, about 7-10, I had a really nosy phase. Any time an adult finished a phone call that they'd received, I'd ask who it was. It doesn't matter if it was my teacher. I still was curious. These days I still have these urges. In college, I did some tech work for a musical called Dumpy The Donut Man, by Brandom R Nielsen. He had written it in high school. It was a work of a madman/genius. The review in the JHU News-Letter has been lost to time, pparently. You can hear two of the songs online. I often sing "You're A slut(Juliette, That Is)" but changing the lyrics as necessary, usually keeping the meter and the lyric ".. and a bad one, at that." Brandom also hosted a semestural film festival. These started before my time in college, and every semester got longer. By the time I/he graduated, they were on the order of 48 hours long. Friggin' epic. He always put up a web page of those who had confirmed that they would attend, with a picture to represent them. I was Luke Skywalker at least once. Also, for two years of college, I had a waterbed. I will never repeat that. Too leaky and bad for my back. Two characters from Hopkins who need to be remembered, inspired by this thread: Mama Vice, who was a security guard in Wolman late at night often on weekends. sweetest woman ever, called everybody "baby". I don't think she learned names. she read a lot about the Bible, being a devout Jehovah's Witness. The other individual was Pablo, who sold Domino's Pizza at the southeast corner of 34th and Charles. (Wolman Hall was once the home to F. Scott Fitzgerald.) Pablo disappeared right after 9/11. Apparently, he joined the National Guard or the Reserves and was deployed to Afghanistan or downtown, depending on when you heard the story from whom. He frequently told you to "Maintain", which I think is good advice, most of the time. I wanted to make a t-shirt that said "PABLO SEZ MAINTAIN", a la Frankie Say Relax. At CTY in 1996, there was a really hilarious talent show skit called The Fan Man. It was a guy reading Green Eggs & Ham into a standard stand fan, with the obvious result. I don't know why I liked it so much. Rhymingly, that year saw the great project of Can Man. Being a really awkward 14-year-old nerd, I often opted to watch the Star Wars trilogy instead of attending dances. At movies screened that session, and other mass events, a young man named Art would often be in the audience. His friends shouted "ART" much the same way that "DONGTAR" was shouted at Hopkins events, back in the late 90s. (Was DONG-TAR the phone number? If so, I'll add that to my & ACA's running list of houses known for what nonsense their phone numbers spell.) Next year, I want to do a project like this by Jessamyn. I sleep enough random places. (speaking of which, I'll write up a piece about my weekend in another entry.) Current Location: Couch Current Mood: cold Current Music: Jeopardy! Tags: 2009, aging, childhood, college, cty, flickr, hopkins, memories, photos, star wars

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December 2nd, 2008

11:29 am - Snapshots I went to Wegmans last night with suomifrikki. First time in a month of doing real grocery shopping. I think I mostly could've held out a bit longer, but I was antsy for more Pam. We spent a long time looking for the "international foods" section. So long that we wrote a blues song about it. Then I forgot to get brown rice, among other things. At the bus stop this morning, 3 women in a car with Ontario plates pulled up. The one in the back smoked a cigarette while asking guy-from-bus-stop (Peter? Brian? One of the Family Guy characters. He gave me a ride to school once.) how to get to the Waterloo outlets. When told that was 45 minutes away, she asked about Greece Ridge Mall. When told that was on the other side of town, she asked about the closest. He directed her to Marketplace. She asked if that mall was any good? What was the best? "Eastview", he told her. As he told her this, the bus pulled up and her driver pulled away. I don't think she was satisfied. On the bus, a lot of people were reading big ol' hardcover books. A selection: Coming of Age in Second Life, Twilight Watch (which I originally thought was Twilight, then the Eastman-student-type reader moved his hand), Haunted Media: Electronic Presence from Telegraphy to Television, and The Mahabharata. The individual snoozing in the seat behind me was reading official looking documents about how to be sure to get a fair trial. Current Location: Office Current Music: Wakey!Wakey! - Crazy (Gnarls Barkley cover) Tags: books, bus, canada, capitalism, driving, greed, reading, shopping, travel, wegmans

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November 27th, 2008

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November 23rd, 2008

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