Alierak
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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Alierak" journal:[<< Previous 20 entries]
08:40 am
[Link] | Stopped to take some pics in the middle of my 50-mile commute:

Current Mood: chipper Tags: photos
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05:31 pm
[Link] | You may have noticed it's been a while since I posted anything here. There's a reason for that. In February I got busy participating in the Livejournal XSS Contest, where I learned a few javascript / CSS tricks and won three permanent accounts for my trouble. I keep wondering if I should finish writing up that experience, and how much detail to go into, so I've put off posting about anything else.
It bugs me that winners of the contest aren't publicly announced or credited, so it's not much of a contest. It also bugs me that I submitted four additional XSS vulnerabilities, three of which were never acknowledged and none of which have been fixed afaik. I don't think I ever received a fourth permanent account, either, and theoretically I might be due a total of seven. To "submit" a vulnerability, you send private email to Brad. Yeah. I suspect he puts them in the security queue in RT, but there's no way to check. Meanwhile permanent accounts have been losing value through LJ changes such as introducing ads, giving away paid features to ad-sponsored users, etc. So anyway, my trust in LJ hasn't been at its highest levels.
But given that my friend xb95 is going to be starting to work on LJ again, I figure it's probably all going to be okay. Now, what should I do with that half-formed post about my experience with the LJ XSS contest? Is four months enough to resort to public full disclosure, and do I dare toy with the ToS?
Poll #772865 LJ XSS disclosure
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 12How should alierak describe LJ XSS vulnerabilities that have been fixed? To whom should alierak describe LJ XSS vulnerabilities that have been fixed? How should alierak describe LJ XSS vulnerabilities that have not been fixed? To whom should alierak describe LJ XSS vulnerabilities that have not been fixed?
(Yup, this poll was brought to you by my upgraded account)
Tags: lj, toys
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06:20 pm
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my weight-loss diet I've been meaning to finish this up and post it for a good while now. Despite the subject and time of year, this isn't a New Year's resolution post. I started my weight-loss diet in October and have pretty much reached the point where I can declare it a success and write about it in case it will help anyone else out there.
Why I started a diet:
Now that I'm doing it, of course, I can come up with all kinds of good reasons to stick with it, not the least of which is that I want to be sufficiently in shape to keep up with Will while he's crawling around the house. I want never to have to contemplate buying any larger size jeans. As a father, I want to be there for my son when he's my age and to set a good example for him. Et cetera. But apparently no reason of this type was enough to get me started.
Things changed sometime in mid-October when I stepped on my parents' digital scale to weigh first myself, and then myself + Will in order to get a reasonable estimate of his weight. I was shocked to see the scale read 213 before I even picked him up. I'd thought of myself as significantly overweight at 200 for the last year or so, remembered being uncomfortable at 180 when I gained 30 pounds back in college, but 213? Yikes! I must've been gaining a pound a week since we moved in August. That scale reading immediately scared me into eating less, and put me in the right frame of mind to start a diet for real.
Then, I ran across this Boing Boing post and started to read and follow The Hacker's Diet right away. With a name like that, how could it fail to get my attention? I'd never really dieted before, but what the heck. The guy went to all the trouble to write the book and put it on the web. It couldn't hurt to give it a read.
( How it works )
Results:
In the time since I bought the scale, I've definitely lost over 20 pounds (max reading = 196.5, most recent reading = 174.0). Extrapolating to the start of the diet, I must've started out around 205 or so and lost about 30 (my scale doesn't agree with my parents' scale due to the different time of day, amount of clothing, etc.). I've gone from tight 40-waist jeans to comfortable in a 36, and I fit into large t-shirts again as opposed to only XL. I'm breathing more easily and have lots more energy, partly due to exercising. The most unexpected effect is that I have my singing voice back! When I was eating more, and eating more fat, I often had the unpleasant sensation of gunk in my throat. (Though, as I'm finally about to post this, I'm eating 1800 calories a day and sometimes feeling the gunk).
Anyway, here are some nifty graphs. Note the calorie numbers for today are off because I haven't had dinner yet.
Current Mood: pleased Tags: books, food, health
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02:19 pm
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end-of-spam reached Ok, everyone can now feel free to continue signing up rmg@mit.edu for all those spam lists. The account no longer exists. The password for the nonexistent account, should you require it, is "a3nadotdie", a brief commentary on the account's status as cruft and a slight play on the hostname below.
% ssh athena.dialup.mit.edu Received disconnect from 18.7.16.68: 15: You are not allowed to log in here: Unknown username
Does that strike anyone else as a bit of a security hole? I mean, giving away the validity of a username?
See also earthdragon's post.
Current Mood: amused Tags: mit
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12:31 pm
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not a bad Friday the 13th Let's see, I got stuck on one of the newer green line B trains for a while because the doors wouldn't shut / sensors failed to detect manual closing of the doors / train wouldn't move when it thought doors were open / driver had to reboot the train a couple times. After she was done yelling at her boss on the radio, at least, we got to blow through half the stops, but yesterday morning's bank errand ended up taking a total of about three hours. Meanwhile I forgot to call yakshaver and tell him I'd be late or get him to rescue me from the evil train.
Cow-orkers (ok, siderea) decided to deploy the new corporate website because "everything's been going so well today!", so I said to keep it away from me. They didn't; I pointed out that the deployment was going to break a bunch of unrelated sites. But hey, free champagne.
Later yakshaver and I went over to his place for hamburgers, and for the first time I got to play actual poker with real chips and cards against human opponents (incl. his housemate Dan who was a fellow Random back at MIT). Turns out I don't suck very much. We didn't play for money, just heaps of poker chips so it was all in good fun. I hadn't played with rebuys before (after you get knocked out, you grab a new stack of chips from the bank), and that made it harder to dominate the table. A player with a dwindling chip stack gets knocked out, and suddenly they've got significant leverage again. But I think I kept the lead the whole time.
I think if I'm going to play much real-world poker, I've got to learn to control my heart rate. On the first hand dealt, I ended up with a full house and was sure I'd give it away with the adrenaline rush.
Woot. It's raining out, and we're about to try to go see the Star Wars exhibit at the museum of science. Tomorrow it'll be colder and snowy, and maybe I'll want to do some outdoor tourism involving the freedom trail.
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06:27 pm
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travel plans I'm flying to Boston in a few days to give some cluedumps at work. In case anyone there cares, I'll be flying up on the 10th and back on the 18th.
Current Mood: good Tags: travel, work
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11:33 pm
[Link] | esr writes:
If you are writing C, do feel free to use the full ANSI features -- including function prototypes, which will help you spot cross-module inconsistancies. on the same page, esr also writes:
Run a spell-checker on them. If you look like you can't spell and don't care, people will assume your code is sloppy and careless too. Mm hmm.
Tags: odd
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08:55 am
[Link] |
Sounds about right to me... This pretty much agrees with where I grew up and where I've lived for the past decade...
Your Linguistic Profile:
| 60% General American English | 20% Dixie | 20% Yankee | 0% Midwestern | 0% Upper Midwestern |
(via bluedaisy)
Tags: meme
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09:14 pm
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weird coincidence Oh, yeah, forgot to post about this. After I went out and took my "long exposure" photochallenge shot (here), I was googling for info on the kinetic sculpture at Porter Square. Obviously the first hit was the MBTA website which had the info I wanted. But the second hit was some random guy's photo gallery, where I decided to look around. The guy lived off Somerville Ave at some point, between my apartment and the T station. Nothing out of the ordinary there, people who live near the sculpture take the occasional picture of it.
But imagine my surprise when, browsing his gallery, I found a picture of kareila and myself, taken in Portland, OR...
Tags: odd, photos
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03:10 am
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ok, I have a paper topic now... ... but I'm no less frustrated.
During the first days of his reign and for some time after, won't he smile in welcome at anyone he meets, saying that he's no tyrant, making all sorts of promises both in public and in private, freeing the people from debt, redistributing the land to them and to his followers, and pretending to be gracious and gentle to all?
He'd have to.
But I suppose that, when he has dealt with his exiled enemies by making peace with some and destroying others, so that all is quiet on that front, the first thing he does is to stir up a war, so that the people will continue to feel the need of a leader.
Probably so.
But also so that they'll become poor through having to pay war taxes, for that way they'll have to concern themselves with their daily needs and be less likely to plot against him.
Clearly.
Besides, if he suspects some people of having thoughts of freedom and not favoring his rule, can't he find a pretext for putting them at the mercy of the enemy in order to destroy them? And for all these reasons, isn't it necessary for a tyrant to be always stirring up war?
It is.
And because of this, isn't he all the more readily hated by the citizens?
Plato, on the natural and inevitable transition from democracy to tyranny in a city-state (Republic VIII 566d - 567b, dialogue between Socrates and Glaucon). He was describing a leader who "stirs up civil wars against the rich", on the theory that in a democracy the class of power-hungry idlers are likely to end up looting from the rich (organized wealth-seekers) in order to control everything. Power-hungry idlers are blindly followed by the class of indifferent idlers and attain majority support by using the resources of the rich to appeal to (and deceive) the working class. This doesn't quite map onto modern society, but it sure does have a familiar ring to it.
But of course, Plato didn't like democracy either. His ideal society is one where people are trained and assigned into roles early in life according to demonstrated aptitude, either philosopher-kings, auxiliary bureaucrats or guardians, or workers, and they attain happiness by doing what they're best suited for. It's supposed to have the justice knob turned way up. I think it suffers because it has the freedom knob turned way down. There is censorship and selective breeding. There is no voting.
And what about the [democratic] city's tolerance? Isn't it so completely lacking in small-mindedness that it utterly despises the things we took so seriously when we were founding our city, namely, that unless someone had transcendent natural gifts, he'd never become good unless he played the right games and followed a fine way of life from early childhood? Isn't it magnificent the way it tramples all this underfoot, by giving no thought to what someone was doing before he entered public life and by honoring him if only he tells them that he wishes the majority well?
Yes, it's altogether splendid! (558b)
Yes, splendid! Popularly elected leaders are inept nobodies whose only skill is demagoguery and who will probably gravitate toward tyranny. Yay! Splat.
Current Mood: cold Current Music: Paula Cole - Mississippi Tags: mit, politics
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11:30 am
[Link] | Anyone else notice that the red states are all the ones least affected by the threat of international terrorism?
Current Mood: aggravated Tags: politics
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06:00 pm
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voting and stuff Ok, so I don't remember where to go vote tomorrow, having not lived in Somerville very long, and I also wanted to see a sample ballot, right? Well, Sec. Galvin sends out little pamphlets called "Information for Voters" that are practically devoid of information, and I had one on my desk. I flipped through it and found no list of polling places or candidates, but a URL: www.wheredoivotema.com/bal/myelectioninfo.php. Too bad its nameservers are completely unresponsive.
Anyway, if you're like me and want to see sample ballots and such at this hour, check your town's website. Over here, the city of Somerville has an excellent website with all the necessary info. There's also the state elections site and probably some phone numbers you can call.
In other news, I turned in a 20-page paper today for the phase two writing requirement, which will hopefully not lead to lack of graduation. Eee. I was like, at the last minute, looking for a stapler with actual staples in it and stuff. I ended up wandering into John Wroclawski's office to borrow his stapler after I heard the characteristic sound of successful stapling coming from that direction... Then I was like, gee, I'd better head straight for the basement to turn this in, so I just hit B on the elevator instead of wandering around to the stairs as usual. Except it seems like the Stata Center has two completely disconnected basements, and the one I was in didn't contain the writing office. Instead it seemed to contain spanish-speaking food preparation people who were trying to point me to some closed-off stairs. But anyway, after running around a bit I did get the paper turned in, though as usual the person who's supposed to deal with it wasn't there. I have no idea what's supposed to happen to the paper, but I left my contact info all over the cover letter so hopefully I will find out.
This was also the last regular class meeting of 6.170 -- with a couple of exceptions, we're just supposed to be meeting in small groups and working on the final project for the next month. The project is an RSS reader, exactly as I predicted. This won't be a total breeze, because they will change the requirements halfway through, but it's going to be a fun way to finish up at MIT. I have a team of random people to work with and that's just fine with me. Oddly, this now means the only thing I have on Tuesdays and Thursdays for a while is the squash class. That means I don't have to take my laptop with me to gym class since I can leave it at home instead. Yay.
Oh, and while I was browsing around for info on my incumbent state rep, I came upon an interesting issue for Camberville that I hadn't known about: MBTA proposal to sell development rights for the airspace above the Porter Square commuter rail station. I.E, housing and/or commercial space directly over the train tracks in front of our apartment. That area is a wonderful specimen of urban decay, so I guess I'd better go photograph it while it lasts. They actually had a developer lined up to work on it this year, but the developer backed out when Lesley University wasn't going along with them.
Current Mood: relieved Tags: mit, politics
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10:53 am
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swim test. check. MIT requires you to either pass a swim test or take a swim class to graduate. I hadn't done either, and I didn't really want to be taking a swim class in the colder half of the term. I'd always thought of myself as a non-swimmer. I've still not really learned how to deal with my head being underwater, so I was not optimistic about the swim test.
I went and did it anyway though. I swam around in the shallow pool for a while beforehand to see if I could maybe try to breathe and swim with my face in the water, but it wasn't working. I decided to give up on that and just take the swim test anyway.
So, you jump in feet first in 10' of water (I'd never done that before, nobody told me the impact would rip my hand away from my nose...) and then swim four 25-meter lengths without stopping or hanging on the lane ropes. Only the last 25m can be backstroke, and boy was I glad when I got to that one. I'd just done something like 75m of front crawl with my head up, which I'm told is fairly inefficient.
My legs really paid for it, and I was breathing really hard, but I got it done. I went outside and barfed afterwards, then biked home. Slowly. Bleh. Cross that off the list of stupid-ass things that could keep me from graduating.
Current Mood: relieved Tags: mit
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10:29 pm
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weird typo Reading along in the Meno for Ancient Philosophy, I tripped on this word in the last line of a page:
perlexity
Yeah, yeah, it was supposed to be perplexity. But I was momentarily perlexed, er, perplexed when I tried to parse it. When reading philosophy you always have to try to apply the principle of generosity: assume the author meant something worthwhile and do your best to figure out what that was. So I tried to take the word apart: "perl" + "exit" + "y", no, they wouldn't have had things that exited like perl back then... "per" + "lex" + "ity", no, they wouldn't have had universal law or dictionaries either... um. And definitely not parsers.
But it sounds like an ictionary post -- perlexity (n). 1. a tendency to give up when presented with undocumented Perl code. 2. confusion or an inability to parse when there is more than one way to do it.
Yeah. so. back to reading now.
Current Music: Ridiculous Thoughts - The Cranberries Tags: mit, odd
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09:05 pm
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spanish rice overkill So, I find that when one's wife is pregnant and one does all the cooking, one tends to want to overfeed, overnurture, overeat, or something to compensate. Here's what happened when I set out to make a little spanish rice and realized it was going to get out of hand if I kept on adding stuff that sounded good (but I did it anyway):
( recipe )
So anyway, on a night when I need to do homework, those leftovers are looking pretty good. I am officially back in school, getting all the bureaucratic requirements and deadlines met without too much trouble. I had one really bad day when I had to make the actual decision of whether to agree to pay tuition without yet knowing whether I'd be allowed to do what I wanted to do. But other than that, things are looking so good my advisor asked if I wanted to recommend any lottery numbers.
What I've ended up taking: 6.170 -- Software Engineering Lab 24.200 -- Ancient Philosophy 6.199 -- Advanced Undergraduate Project
I'm going to be able to use the AUP proposal to meet the phase two writing requirement, provided it's one heck of a proposal and doesn't need a ton of revision (been there, done that, see application essay). I have yet to deal with P.E., which is on my list for tomorrow. And I have Fridays completely free for work.
Anyway, enough LJ for a while.
Current Mood: ecstatic Tags: baby, food, mit
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12:47 pm
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CFMX6.1, cfchart, and java awt graphics I'm posting this so it gets into google. I don't really want anyone else to waste as much time as I just did trying to google for answers and then have to solve it themselves anyway. The key phrases here have maybe a dozen hits each, none of which helped in any measurable way.
On my webservers, I run Macromedia ColdFusion MX Server 6.1, using the included JRun, using the included Java 2 1.4.2 runtime.
I've got some java servlets on older webservers that I need to move to the CFMX server, and I figure it would be nice to use JRun's ServletInvoker instead of setting up some completely different java servlet engine for them. The servlets produce graphics output using AWT (java's abstract windowing toolkit), which has traditionally required a connection to some type of display even if you just want to create images in memory and then encode them as gifs or jpegs or whatever. For Windows servers, this is fine, you rarely run them without a graphics card and KVM of some sort. On Unix, you can use your X11 display. Unix boxes are more often set up headless, though, using serial consoles and sometimes lacking graphics hardware altogether, so the traditional workarounds include running Xvfb (the virtual framebuffer X server), or PJA (Pure Java AWT, which I'm told still requires the X11 libraries to be on the system).
These workarounds mainly ought to apply to older JVMs, since 1.4.2 introduces headless support. But according to this Macromedia technote, if you actually set java.awt.headless=true, it will break ColdFusion's own cfchart graphing software, which we are actually hoping to use. I can confirm that it does break, cfchart will throw java.awt.HeadlessException when subsequently invoked. But it also doesn't allow the other graphics servlets to work; it turns out that java's headless mode means you can do some things, but you can't use any awt classes or methods that would "require" a keyboard, mouse, or display and BufferedImage.createGraphics is one of those. So creating a Frame is off limits in headless mode, as is creating a Graphics or Graphics2D, even just to draw in a BufferedImage. Argh. Some of the servlets that do these things are closed-source, or so crufty that we can't justify changing them to avoid the problem. D'oh.
OK, fine, so I'll install Xvfb just like I've done in the past, and any awt methods that need the display can just connect to it, right? Well, not so fast. CFMX has already anticipated the lack of X display and configured itself to run with java.awt.graphicsenv=com.gp.java2d.ExHeadlessGraphicsEnvironment, which throws exceptions whenever you try to use awt graphics methods: "java.lang.RuntimeException: This graphics environment can be used only in the software emulation mode." This is pretty much what the technote said: you can set either headless mode or this special graphics environment setting, so you can either have cfchart working, or you can have your servlets working (and ours didn't). Bah.
Well, I found some google traces of "ExGraphicsEnvironment" instead of "ExHeadlessGraphicsEnvironment", apparently related to older JVMs or versions of CFMX; that sounded like it might be able to work with the X11 display. But it didn't work out; changing the setting in jvm.config broke cfchart as well as the servlets, causing SIGSEGV in a backend thread and producing the following cryptic error: "java.lang.Error: no font properties file found." Uhm, but I was sure I hadn't deleted the font.properties files in the ColdFusion runtime dir... strace didn't show the process even trying to look for a font.properties file. So I gave up for the day.
Today's answer to the above junk: don't specify any java.awt.xxx options in ColdFusion's runtime/bin/jvm.config, and do run Xvfb. Be sure the DISPLAY environment variable is set correctly when invoking the coldfusion startup script, or else modify the script to set and export DISPLAY for itself. Both cfchart and the servlets are happy now. So I submitted terse feedback on the bad technote within their 300-character limit, and I'm posting this little narrative.
But the solution I stumbled onto makes me suspect that PJA might work even more cleanly. It seems cfchart doesn't suffer from having java.awt.graphicsenv set to the default native X11 display, so it also shouldn't mind if you set it to some other full-featured graphics environment, right? Maybe next time I'll try it; if anyone else does, please leave a comment.
Tags: work
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07:21 pm
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whatever works Finally. At last. Ha. I'm so glad that's done. I still want to beat the living crap out of something though.
This has been resolved, and you are encouraged to register for the Fall Term. Welcome back! You will be registering as a graduate student, since you are coming back for the final year of your MENG program.
Uhm, er, I wasn't going back for the master's, really, but whatever it takes to untangle the bureaucracy there. And if I happen to satisfy the bachelor's degree requirements and then decide I've had enough, they shouldn't be able to do anything about it except... d'oh... put up more red tape and hurdles.
I'm not going into a lot of detail right now, but suffice it to say that MIT has more independent units of bureaucracy than I remembered, and they all did a bit of finger-pointing and buck-passing before I found someone at the top who wasn't on vacation.
But anyway, I'm still going to think about going for spring term instead of fall because of the scheduling conflicts / lack of writing class this term. Now to cajole an unsuspecting professor into being my advisor through this mess, and looking into getting the late reg. fee waived due to circumstances.
Current Mood: determined Tags: mit
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09:53 pm
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Mmmmm... Thanks to blackfelicula for the black bean chili recipe. I fiddled with it a little to make meat chili suitable for kareila.
Start with 1/2 lb ground beef over high heat. Add 1 tsp taco seasoning (storebought, or keep a bag of mixed spices around like I do -- I'll figure out my recipe if anyone's curious) as the meat cooks. When nearly browned, lower to medium heat and continue with Maureen's recipe, skipping the oil.
I also used two 15.5 oz cans of black beans, because that happened to be the size available in my favorite (Goya) brand.
The result is really more normal chili and less black bean than Maureen's. I also skip the rice and add some grated cheddar to serve.
So, like I said, "Mmmmm..."
Current Mood: Mmmmm... Tags: food
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12:04 pm
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yay dsl! it's good to be back on the broadbandwagon.
Tags: home, toys
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09:18 pm
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Wow. Today was awesome.
Today really sucked.
The awesomeness: I finished typing my MIT application essay around 2am and showed it to some friends (no thanks to the jackass DoSing LJ). I thought it might need some editing in the morning, so I read over it when I woke up. I was too nervous to eat breakfast and just sipped water. But reading my own words was bringing tears to my eyes. I began to realize that this essay was far too powerful for any little imperfection to make a damn bit of difference. There were already a couple of comments to that effect at the bottom. I knew I wasn't going to be doing any editing and started to write thank-yous back to my "reviewers".
The suckage: Alex poked his head in and reminded me of a really important meeting this morning, which I decided I was going to have to miss. LJ wasn't taking comments this morning so the thank-yous didn't go thru. I knew I had one other thing to do before turning in my MIT application today, choose a new advisor, and I was going to have to find time for that.
The awesomeness: Somewhere in there, I completely forgot to stress out over anything. Not quite in an "Office Space" trance, but somewhere beyond laid-back. I wrote "will specify ASAP" in the blank for new advisor name, grabbed my stuff, and headed to the meeting at work 20 minutes late. On the way I was rerunning parts of the essay in my head and had tears running down my face and a silly grin. I may have freaked out a couple of pedestrians or other drivers. I didn't even worry about walking into the meeting late.
The suckage: The meeting sucked. The numbers sucked. The potential consequences of the numbers sucked. I can't give any details, but I am specifically authorized to say that work sucked today.
The awesomeness: After that, I schlepped my essay into Word to print it as a letter-like thing. Not that using Word is awesome, but it at least didn't do anything to ruin my day. At first it tried to put the page-numbered footer so low on the page that it the bottoms of the numbers were cut off, but I gave it a stern talking-to and got the page layout fixed. I was just not in a huge hurry, made myself a copy of the application form, and wandered out towards the T station.
The suckage: T under construction. Trains were being lame today. Way too much waiting. Hot, humid, and crowded. Okay, so not really very sucky. This alternation thing is about to quit working for me.
The awesomeness: I went to see Anne Hunter, the EECS administrator who's been sponsoring my Athena account and generally rooting for me all these years. I have never felt more at home in her office. I mentioned the advisor-choosing thing to her, since she's the meta-advisor who would know which profs I should be considering. I recognized a couple of names on her list, and will probably pick one of them, but meanwhile she's cool with the will-specify-later thing.
She asked to see my application before I turned it in, and started reading the essay. I was not the least bit nervous and picked up a toy from her desk to play with while she read. She asked a couple of questions, but was probably as close to speechless and stunned as I've ever seen her. She pulled up my records, pointed to the F in the last term, and said, "your first assignment is to petition to get this removed." So I did. She's helped so many students petition the institute for so many things that she drafts petitions by habit, basically telling you what you need to say. Halfway through this exercise, she added, "but a writer like you probably doesn't need my help." I smiled and copied her draft onto the form.
So, petition done. Application turned in. Other application-related stuff has to be in by August 1, so I'll take care of it in due time. I am so relieved now. Tomorrow is New Apartment Day.
Current Mood: indescribable Tags: mit
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