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sweetmintmojo's LiveJournal:
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| Tuesday, April 28th, 2009 | | 9:15 pm |
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| Thursday, April 16th, 2009 | | 11:24 pm |
ARghgelelhgh
Sad little MIT student no get sleep. Has lab. Will write lab. Will do uncertainty analysis for laser interferometer. Will try to remember what we actually did in that lab other than that once we were done taking measurements we rickrolled the whole lab via laser interferometer. May not get extra credit for 'Never Gonna Give You Up'. Harhfdsjksduhsdfkjsdf. I also really hope that downloading a 60 day trial for Microsoft Word because one's laptop is in for repair and one is now borrowing one's Microsoft Word-less roommate's laptop will work. Because otherwise I will be far away from home in a computer cluster all night because my stupid professor is addicted to the Word equation formatting. :( Current Mood:  tired |
| Tuesday, March 24th, 2009 | | 12:36 am |
Greetings from 5am in Back Bay/12:10am in Orlando
Hello everyone. How are you all? Today is the last day before spring break. Hence why it is feck-o'clock in the morning and I am sitting on my beautiful view-of-Fenway-Park Boston-townhouse bedroom floor with a giant can of Monster energy drink and the remains of my thermodynamics homework. It has reached the point in the morning where, while I am perfectly able to solve the governing equation of temperature distribution for a finite fin using appropriate adiabatic boundary conditions, I cannot finish my problem set because I am unable to do simple algebra. Fail. So, y'know, it goes. In four hours I'm scheduled to sleepily give an in-class presentation. After that... end of messageSo, that was the half-lj post I wrote early friday morning before accidentally passing out on my homework, frantically finishing it, then only handing in half of it because I left three sheets of paper at home. But who cares? Right now, I am in Florida(!!!). As an explanation to people that I may have forgotten to tell how/why I'm in sunny FL for spring break; my roommate's parents decided that for his 21st they'd take him and a friend on vacation for a week. And since I am pretty much Kel's plus-one for everything (rooming, studying, events at which he has to pretend to be straight etc), I get a handy mostly-free trip to Orlando. I am so glad to leave Boston for a week. Here it is overcast but deliciously warm, unlike the blindingly bright, cold Northeast. I also get to wander around all day doing touristy things that mostly involve sea creatures, which is perfectly grand with me. SeaWorld, however, have gone a bit too Disney for my taste. Do I want to see whales with acrobats + theme songs + cheesy slogans about peace, love and understanding? No, I would just like to see whales, thank you very much. I mean, Seaworld spend a lot of money on conservation and research, so fair play to them. But as a kid weaned on bloodthirsty Attenborough nature programs (y'know, where the penguins eat the fish and the seals eat the penguins and the orcas eat the seals and Sir David tells us all how extraordinary it is), I find it a little sad that people feel they have to make the natural world seem fluffy and wholesome to get people to care about it. But meh, that's just my personal gripe. Can the MIT girl enjoy a theme park without overthinking it? Hell no! But tomorrow we're going to the everglades. On a boat! Seeing turtles and manatees! :) I think I may be fairly happy right now. Happy Spring Break (or essay time...whichever...) to you all. ( <3 ) Current Mood:  happyCurrent Music: the sound of silence :) |
| Friday, February 6th, 2009 | | 5:34 pm |
One of the More Bizarre Things To Have Happened This Week
*Lab starts* Grace: Professor, why does the oscilloscope start flatlining when I change the pulse frequency to 200? Professor: Well...*explanation* *more lab* Professor: Can you tell me why the voltage iterations are so large here? Grace: Because it's a digitally converted signal? Um...? *further babbling* *more lab. lab ends. Grace begins to pack up her oscilloscopes and leave* Professor: Before you go - you're from Glasgow, aren't you? Grace: Yeeess. How so, Professor? Professor: Well, I lived there for seven years when I was growing up. What part of Glasgow? Grace: Bzuh? Well, Partick originally... Professor: Me too! I lived beside the West of Scotland Cricket pitch! I am a rabid fan of Partick Thistle! *Cue ten minute discussion of Scottish football* That was moderately surreal. The one thing I am left wondering is how he survived seven years in a Glasweigan primary school with the last name "Peacock". Current Mood:  bzuh?Current Music: R.E.M. |
| Friday, January 30th, 2009 | | 5:29 pm |
Obamaman, Murals, Illness
I know this is old news by now, but the inauguration was awesome. Watched it in the MIT main lecture hall with the rest of the college - students, professors, janitors, the deans, all mushed in together watch History Being Made (TM). Everyone went around grinning for the rest of the day. Also, unsurprisingly, the biggest cheer in the lecture hall was for the part of the speech about "putting science back in its rightful place".  Also, been painting a mural on my old hall - sort of a Banksy-esque paradise-through-brick-wall kinda thing. Almost finished...though my plans to get it done before classes start have pretty much failed.  I have been a little ill with the Cold of D00m that has been plaguing MIT campus in general and both Fenway House and the cast of Julius Caesar in particular. Thankfully, I'm recovering pretty well thanks to a mix of Tylenol, echinacea tea, ginger, lemon and honey. I swear, it is like a miracle drink. My friend Noel was not so lucky - he has various problems with his immune system, so when he caught said Cold of D00m he collapsed and we had to call an ambulance on him. Six hours of swabs, blood tests and spinal taps proved that he only had a cold and not the flu/meningitis/HIV/the black plague etc, which was good news for the rest of us, I suppose, but not much fun for poor Noel. I'm finally moved into my new room! Pictures will follow soonish, once I unpack my camera cable. Current Mood: recoveringCurrent Music: me, mumbling Caesar lines to myself like a crazy person |
| Monday, January 19th, 2009 | | 8:53 pm |
Hello everyone, I am alive!
Hello hello hello. MIT seems to have continued to be MIT since I left. Classes have not started yet (my two-week machining class starts tomorrow at 9am, but proper subjects lie far, far away at the beginning of February), but the rest of the mad, peculiar status quo seems to have been retained. 1. This weekend was...Mystery Hunt weekend! Mystery Hunt is basically a big, complicated puzzle hunt that pretty much the entire MIT campus participates in. It involves solving various puzzles that involve the typical word games/cryptic symbols/lists of names or dates or photos or 1970s Broadway Musicals that are linked in obscure ways, and also ones that involve cooking/dressing up as various things/giant scavenger hunts around Boston etc. There are about 50 MIT teams, some living-group affiliated, some not. I was hunting (unofficially) with the team from Random Hall, basically on a whim after my friend Josh asked me jokingly if I was on their time and I decided to answer 'YES'. ( Mystery Hunty Hunt Hunt )2. Also - it is snowing! In a wonderfully pretty way. Being from a place where precipitation is rather crystally challenges, I was obviously very ( snap happy )3. Gig season has started, yay! Yay for using my reduced rent and food money to, er, pay for $8 tickets to reasonably unknown bands at the Middle East. This week me and the gig crew went to see The Rosebuds, a sort of folkier version of the Subways. They were pretty good, and from them I must post one ubiquitous ( crappy gig picture )4. I continue to have friends that put up with me, bless 'em, and until classes start we are actually able to *gasp* see each other. Here, before the Rosebuds, ( we go to Toscaninis ) Current Mood:  bouncyCurrent Music: the sweet sounds of Turchwad. "That's gorgeous..." "It's a poodle!" |
| Sunday, January 4th, 2009 | | 8:41 am |
On New Year's Resolutions
The result of me trying to make some resolutions for this year. 1. ... 2. Um. Go to the gym? 3. Wait, I already do that. As much as I have time to, anyway. Any more and I'd start cutting into sleep hours. 4. Surely there must be something gapingly wrong with my life? 5. No? 6. Hold on, am I, like, content?? 7. Shit. 8. Learn Python! At last, something! 9. Anything else deadly practical I can add to this? 10. Get better at firepoi, get better at machining, read more, learn another (human) language... 11. Actually, that's silly. I'll get better at the first two anyway, since I already do them twice a week, and the last two I won't have time for. 12. That leaves me with one. 13. Fine by me. Python it is. Happy 2009! Current Mood: chipper |
| Sunday, November 9th, 2008 | | 6:35 pm |
Four Day Weekend!
:) Turns out that this may not go the way of most four-day weekends, where I intend to catch up on a lot of work/have a break but fail at both and end up neither productive nor rested. This time I am ignoring all the distractions from the creepily boundless energy of some other MIT students (brought to you by Red Bull GmbH), and am finishing my psets in an unpanicked manner. Also reading Neil Gaiman's new book. In my room with a cozy bed, tea, The Graveyard Book and Morrison's equation. Sounds good to me... Current Mood: contentCurrent Music: Why? - Pick Fights |
| Friday, October 17th, 2008 | | 10:49 am |
Notes and Observations
1. Naval architecture is awesome. Keel haul modelling with imaginary numbers, w00t. I may consider taking the full elective subject later, rather than the super-theoretical science-ey stuff I was thinking of taking before. 2. Being the TD of a show is made much less horrible when the set designer and producer are your best friends. Brianna and Kel, actually, are collectively getting me through this year in general. If I come back alive for Christmas, thank them. :) 3. Good scenic painting is a wonderful, wonderful thing. 4. SQA Higher History - I owe you so much. This week I was the only one in the class to get 100% in my PoliSci test due entirely to, I think, my practised and skillful use of the word 'ramifications' and the mantra that when in doubt, compare everything to Bismark. 5. My hair is blue and green like a pixie. Which is the idea, really. It looks AMAZING. I will send pictures. Sadly, I have 'blonde Grace' and 'pixie Grace' photos, but none of the intermediate white-and-blue stage where I looked like the offspring of an anime character and a saltire. It was hot. 6. Who Killed Amanda Palmer is so good. So, so good. I have still not tired of it, even though I've been playing 'Blake Says' as I wake up every morning for the last week and a half. 7. Yeah. Still alive. Current Mood: chipperCurrent Music: blake says angels grow when you plant angel-dust |
| Monday, October 6th, 2008 | | 4:38 pm |
So you don't wanna hear about my good day...?
It's getting cold. The Dresden Dolls have broken up. The dollar:pound exchange rate is now 1:1.73. I barely slept 4 hours last night. By a curious turn of events, I am now not failing hydro, but did almost fail my last dynamics problem set. I put this down to the fact that whoever graded it sucks, and is probably junior who is just as busy as me. On the other hand, I am now (almost) platinum blonde, my stage set is looking beautiful and as stated before - dude! I'm doing well in hydro! For anyone who has never done a potential/streamline problem with water waves, this is a big deal. What this indicates, it seems, is that I will fail as a mechanical engineer and spent my life doing computational oceanography in a basement somewhere in Australia. Yay. More tea. More tea. Current Mood: drainedCurrent Music: "I'd like to do more than survive, I'd like to rub it in your face..." |
| Sunday, October 5th, 2008 | | 2:47 am |
On Being The Stingiest Set Designer/TD Ever
Components of Midsummer set so far that have been obtained free of charge: - 19 2''x4''x8' planks of wood, East Campus courtyard, left over from building rollercoaster - 1 4' tall, 10'' diameter cardboard-form tube, found lying on Newbury St. - lots of foam, left over from remains of last show - stone-texture paint - made of leftover basecoat, pvc glue, sand from the EC volleyball court and wood shavings from the hobby shop floor - one jungle - made of old scrim being thrown out by the theatre department, old chintzy tablecloths, paint, and a spare hangman's rope from the props warehouse - realistic roman statues - two plaster cast faces me and the LD made in costume class our first term Half-built already, ladies and gentlemen, and we still haven't broken $100. Also I think we may be the first set team in the history of MIT theatre universe to actually start EARLY. *is proud* Current Mood:  accomplishedCurrent Music: sam sparro |
| Wednesday, October 1st, 2008 | | 7:52 pm |
Still Alive
Things that amused me this week: 1. Food shopping today I managed to cram several dozen pounds of vegetables, gnocci pasta and seafood and stay under my weekly budget so much so that I had enough to buy my expensive luxury items...Heinz baked beans and digestive biscuits from the imported food aisle. 2. Both me and my hydrodynamics professor were confused as to why my email to her had gone to her spam box along with all the Russian viagra ads until I read it over again and found the sentence: "In Problem 5 part a), when the cylindrical member moves through the z-axis, how much thrust is contributed by the added mass?". Hmmm. Current Mood: busyCurrent Music: more amanda palmer |
| Thursday, September 18th, 2008 | | 6:40 pm |
Big Business and free Coffee Mugs
MIT careers fair today. I toddled along mildly smartly dressed and without a resume thinking "hmm, maybe I shall wander around and possibly get a free Firefox coffee mug", but ended up actually getting deep in conversation about job prospects with a bunch of companies. The recruitment woman at Shell jumped to attention when I said I was an ocean engineer, started making jokes about "course 13 pride" (although OE is no longer a course number in it's own right, the <25 students who take still insist on not calling themselves mechanical engineers. It's kind of like...well, Scotland, really) and started plying me with recruitment leaflets. Also, I have decided that I want to work for Schlumberger SO BAD. I realize that this makes me a corporate mulit-national whore of the largest proportions, but I DO NOT CARE. I WANT THIS JOB. Their field-engineer training thing is basically like 3 years of getting a master's degree, except you spend your time in the field all over the world. Then after you're trained you get put automatically in charge of your own field team, working on million dollar projects...it sounds awesome. It is slightly telling that I've been at MIT too long that when the recruitment guy said "So it says on the brochure x hours a week, but to warn you, in reality you may be working on something for 36 hours straight. In a tent. Somewhere in Africa. With $100k of cement piping and a notebook," rather than being horrified I went "That sounds amazing! Do we get Mountain Dew somewhere in Africa?". I'm currently comforting myself by flicking through the Schlumberger booklet to remind myself that this is the reason I am sitting in the Student Centre bashing my head off that problem with a 7-pin truss where my compressions and tensions never match up. It's all worth it...or something... And I did get a free coffee mug, too. Current Mood:  wistfulCurrent Music: who killed amanda palmer? |
| Saturday, September 13th, 2008 | | 6:20 pm |
New MIT Resolutions
This term.... 1. I will sleep in my own bed for continuous, nocturnal periods of time. Not on the sofa in the theatre office at whatever time I collapse onto my homework. 2. I will not subsist off LaVerde's cookies, no matter how deceptively healthy the raisin-bran ones are. 3. The above resolutions are null and void only during prod week. 4. Tb = d(Hb)/dt + mV x Vb. Also e^i(pi) = 1. Don't question it. 5. When a group of people run past my door shouting "Come with us! We're off to gatecrash the Harvard freshman photo/pick up a giant metal fish that just came up on reuse/have a fire-spinning party in the courtyard!", I will remember that my 2.003 problem set could possibly maybe be more important. Especially if those people are freshmen. 6. Matlab is my friend. No really. 7. I will not kidnap the East Campus community drills for the three months I spend thinking about building my shelves. 8. My bowler hat is really awesome. Have you seen it? 9. Eigenfish! 10. I will come out alive at the other side...right? Yeah? Kay... Current Mood: workingCurrent Music: kate nash |
| Saturday, August 30th, 2008 | | 5:42 pm |
I am no longer trying to be witty
I now realise that a few people read this to see what I'm doing/whether I'm still alive, so for the next while it will be full of common or garden "these are some things wot I done" format. Classes have not started yet. This does not mean everything is not still hectic... I spent my first week working for the Ocean Engineering department, running their orientation program to recruit new freshman (as I was recruited many months ago). We took them to various places like the New England aquarium and a recreation 18thC shipping port in Conneticut where we met various professional tall-ship sailors. One of them was telling me how a few research vessels still ran off New England and could need oceanographers, leaving me fantasising about my future career... The freshman had to build robots, but being intelligent MIT types, they were very capable of doing it on their own. This left us, the mentors, free to create our own masterpiece: a floating armchair with propellers underneath, wired up to a control box so we could drive ourself around the MIT swimming pool in it :). I will have pictures. After that week finished it was dorm rush, where we try to get all the freshmen to live in our dorms. Right now it's fraternity/ILG rush week, where strange student cults named after greek letters indocrinate young freshmen "pledges" and hit them with paddles by way of team-building exercises. At the edges of this there are the six MIT-affiliated independing living groups, who are not crazy 'brotherhoods', just places where people live. Our job is to band together to save the freshmen from the frats and let them live with us instead. It's a difficult task. Also, I somehow ended up working light board for a production of 'Into the Woods'. It was a favour for the producer, who is a good friend of mine, but it's fun anyhow as it's a really good show. The set is gorgeous. The light cues are also really bleedin complicated. Oh, and I got a job as a tutor! W00t! This means I'm dropping one class, Special Relativity, but I figured that getting paid to review Linear Differential Equations (which I really need to know...) is better than snowing myself under with a subject I don't actually need to do to graduate. And I'll still be taking 3 technical + 1 humanities classes, which is the recommended maximum unless one is a Genius Prodigy or Crazy. What else? I'm joint Technical Director and joint Set Designer for a production of Midsummer Night's Dream. It should be really really fun - the director is awesome and his idea for the set is exactly the same as ours. Also, the rest of the prod staff are all my close friends (Anna is Lighting Designer, Kel is producer, Brianna is my other half in both jobs). So yay. Fun all round. I must stop now, as the other 0.5TD is coming to discuss our pretty pretty set. Love Grace Current Music: ne me quitte pas - regina spektor |
| Wednesday, April 30th, 2008 | | 2:12 am |
Stereotypical MIT Discussion
At 2:11 in the morning, after crawling in from the cold after a fire alarm evacuation, we somehow ended up modeling Marxism as a damped harmonic oscillator that goes through one period of oscillation before going to equilibrium (Communist ideology on y-axis, time on x-axis). Communism in practice, though, only goes oscillates through pi/2 before coming to equilibrium. Think we may have to add further exponential decay for very large t, but not sure best way to do this. Perhaps something involving unit step function. I should really go to bed. Current Mood:  geekyCurrent Music: the kooks, so I'm homesick, alright? |
| Tuesday, April 15th, 2008 | | 1:53 am |
Choices
1. 2A + 12 ('Flexible' mechanical engineering with environmental science) - because I want to 'save the world' or similar. 2. 2OE (Ocean engineering) - because there is nothing I'd love more than to spend the rest of my life throwing robots off of boats. 3. 16 (Aero/Astro) - because it's what I came to MIT to do, and because jet engines are cool. Comparatively few choices, yet still so many. Knowledgeable people keep telling me to just do what I really want to do and it'll work out okay. I'm trying to do that, but there's so many other complications - knowing what it actually is I want to do, worrying about what jobs I can get, knowing that sometimes I do things just because they're meant to be difficult and forget that any degree I get from MIT is going to be very challenging. Never mind that I can barely do my 18.03 p-set right now, I still find myself leaning away from 2OE because its curriculum is apparently 'easier' than the dreaded sophomore year course 16 class. But it is MIT after all. And throwing robots off boats is sounding like something I'd be perfectly happy doing... Current Mood: listlessCurrent Music: pandora on 'dresden dolls' setting |
| Sunday, April 13th, 2008 | | 6:53 am |
On realizing what makes it all worthwhile...
Moments like that are what it's all about. Looking up and wondering how you ever doubted that all the stress and pain and hard work would amount to something that would make you forget it. And, against your better judgment, want to do it again. You also realize that although you miss knowing where your home is, where you are and who you're with are both pretty damn amazing. So enjoy it. :) Current Mood: happyCurrent Music: Piazza New York Catcher - Belle & Sebastien |
| Tuesday, February 19th, 2008 | | 4:42 pm |
On Philosophy
I'm really starting to like Spinoza. Current Mood:  determined |
| Thursday, February 14th, 2008 | | 4:34 pm |
Grace Loves Nerdgasms
While sitting in my otherwise rather dull "Fundamentals of Engineering Design" lecture today, I suddenly had one of those awesome moments when an idea smacks you in the face with full force. Me: ITARU!! OMG!!! So we have to build a semi-amphibious vehicle, right? That goes down a ramp into the water? We can build a SPHERE. That ROLLS! Itaru:...? Me: Okay, so it's weighted at the bottom so it buoys itself up, and we can have two inwardly directed motors at each of four corners so it can spin and thrust in a particular direction, all mounted inside the robot and and...it will be BADASS!!! Itaru: Awesome! But remember, we can only have three motors and one servo. Me: Hmm..... Itaru: GRACE!! OMG!!! We can build a strip around the middle that is rotated by the servo, and a motor mounted on it that uses a propeller to suck up water and thrust it out at whatever angle we turn the servo to!! This is BADASS!!! This must be made!!! Me&Itaru: *NERDGASM* .... Me: So...this is going to be a bitch to machine. Current Mood: EXPLOSION OF NERD!!Current Music: Of Montreal |
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