Blog Movements
I spent most of Saturday Morning moving things between my two blogs. My favorite part about blogging is reading old entries, and this was a wonderful excuse to do so. Some highlights of merged posts for me include coming out in high school, telling someone via the internet, a random picture, coming out to my parents, and why I’m gay. All posts from my old blog are tagged with the x-posted category.

Reslife Tour
After working on some homework Saturday morning, it was time for a tour of all the upperclassmen housing options RPI has to offer. First up was Warren hall: identical in shape to my current dorm, yet with a completely different configuration inside. Rooms are quite a bit larger than my current double, and they are split in half with a privacy barrier. Each room also has its own bathroom. Warren also apparently has a reputation for gamers, anime fans, and sci-fan fans. Supposedly it’s one of the more social dorms. If I were looking for a double, Warren would probably be on top of my list.

After Warren was Nugent. Nugent features the Ground Zero music club in its basement. As such, its home to a lot of musicians. Nugent had a similar room setup to Nugent (doubles with privacy wall), but the building and its interior look a lot older, 70s style. After Nugent was Sharp. From what I’ve heard, Sharp is one of the hardest halls to get in to, due to a high rate of squatting and high demand. Sharp has the most desirable setup for our group: 6 bedrooms, a bathroom, and a common area per suite! It was also recently renovated.

After finishing the on-campus portion, it was time for the far-from-campus portion. This required an approximatley 20 minute walk down Burdett avenue to the Colonie Apartments. Colonie has three different setups. We got to see Colonie B, which features large (330 sq ft) singles divided into a sleeping room and a living area. Apart from their distance from campus, these looked like highly desirable singles. After Colonie we walked up the hill to the Stackwyck apartments. Each of the 5 buildings contains 12 suite style apartments with 4 bedrooms. I was impressed with the size of the living area, however the size of the individual bedrooms was rather small. I also believe these are rather highly squatted, in fact one entire building is being squatted by a sorority. These are our backup plan if our Polytech aspirations fall through. More on that later.

The tour concluded with a brief look at the RAHPs. While the housing style is similar to Stackwyck, the buildings are not. These are double story units, with each suite occupying two floors. The ground foor features a common area and kitchen, and the second floor has 4 singles. These felt really small, and I’ve only heard bad things about them. Our last resort.

Formula 1
After sleeping and eating, it was time for the opening race of the Formula 1 season, the Australian Grand Prix! The race started off with a bang! Barrichello’s extremely slow start resulted in a clusterfuck as the field approached the first corner. Barrichello, Webber, Kovalainen, and Sutil were damaged. All continued but Kovalainen. Button ran away with it from the poll. There was much quabbling behind him. I’ve never seen a non-wet race so up-in-the-air. Mid-race, Nakajima crashed (FIRE HIM ALREADY). Safety car. Massa ran 3rd most of the race before something died. Raikkonen spun off into a wall, but continued until something else died. With 3 laps to go, the fucking moron Kubica tried to pass Vettel on the outside of a right-left corner. While he was alongside Vettel, he left Vettel nowhere to go. The resulting collision damage all sorts of bodywork and suspension. They both attempted to continue, but both spun out again. This we terminal for Kubica. Vettel continued under the safety car with a completely broken left front, wheel dragging along the ground, until it came to a halt a lap and a half later. The race ended under safety car, with Barrichello taking second thanks to Raikkonen, Massa, Vettel, and Kubica’s fail. Brawn 1-2 on their debut…

CounterStrike
Jeff, Ryan, and I played CounterStrike for the first time this year early Sunday morning. We played on a pub server, some 24/7 de_dust2. Twas good fun. I went rougly 1.1:1, using almost exclusively the FAMAS as CT and Dualies as T.

Rock Band
Sunday evening I played guitar a bit by myself. I tested out some of the newer DLC that I hadn’t played on Guitar before, and filled in some gaps in scores from RB1 songs I’d never played in RB2. Nothing too hard, nice and relaxing.

Hall Band
At some point, I decided that a longer headphone cable would give me more mobility about the room. I attached a couple cables together, and quickly I was able to play guitar from the hall way, and even in Joe’s room! When Peter returned and saw the nonsense, he decided to join in. A couple 3.5mm to RCA adapters and some RCA lesbians later, we had a cable that stretched down the entire length of our hallway. However, since the screen was in my room, the headphone long cable proved pointless. Besides, the wireless on the guitar couldn’t reach anyway. 4 USB extender cables daisy-chained together allowed the wireless receiver to be placed in the hall way. This didn’t solve the screen problem, however. No matter, I can play songs by ear no problem! The song: Blitzkrieg Bop, which mostly consists of GY chords intersperesed with some YB and YO. Unfortunately, I failed when the song did some unexpected stuff with some RB chords…

Of course, I didn’t intend to give up! A small crowd was going, and we discussed methods to get the screen into the hall. Mirrors? No one could find one. What about a couple of zoomed in video cameras? We only had one. What about the video camera connected to a laptop? So crazy, it might just work! And it did. With ~600ms of video lag. Unfortunatley, Rock Band only allows calibration of 300ms of lag, leaving the other 300 ms to screw with us. Oh well, it was worth a shot. Once camera and laptop were positioned properly, I attempted to avenge my fail on Blitzkrieg Bop. And I did! With a paltry 3 stars 88% notes hit! 300ms of video lag is a bit much for anyone! Hungry for more, I attempted to complete That’s What You Get, however that ended badly about 80% of the way through the song. Hoping to prove that it was really hard, I offered my guitar to Kevin. Kevin accepted the challenge, but not before I decided to bring the drums out in the hallway as well!

Now, there were two of us, struggling with 300ms of lag. Since we didn’t have a headphone splitter, I turned up my speakers. This, however, introduced a bunch of audio lag, as I sound travels at 1 ms per foot, the game was callibrated for headphones, and we were ~50 feet away from my speakers around a corner. Thus, our venture on Maps went poorly. I failed on drums at about 30% the first time. Unfazed, I adjusted for the perceived audio lag, and we made it much further: 55%. A song with less drum notes would’ve probably helped things. Due to the advent of quiet hours, and complaints from the RA, we packed everything up, and most of us went to Fathers. Peter took some pictures of the setup, which I’ll link when they become available.

Campus Housing Lottery
Upon return from Fathers, the hall was in an uproar. Lottery numbers had been posted a bit early, and everyone was checking them. Quickly, a whiteboard with everyones names and numbers was produced. Things didn’t look good; our top 3 were #122, #225, and #231 (out of 767). After several more visits from the RA, we moved headquarters to a vacant study room. The mood was fererent. I haven’t seen so much action and excitement of out Crock 3 before. I began spreadsheeting away. Turns out that while our first three numbers were much higher than a statistical average, the remaining 8 numbers fared far better than statistics and probability would predict. Unfortunately, it’s only the top 3 that really matter for us. More spreadsheeting produced the number of occupants of each of the Suite style housing options: Sharp, Polytech, Stackwyck, and RAHP. Estimates of the current number of squatters were produced (from my ass), resulting in the approximate number of open suites available. More spreadshetting, more voodoo math, and more estimates resulted in an approximate total number of rooms available on campus of all varieties. From this, I produced a breakdown of what would happen next Monday, on the room choosing day. The last Polytech apartment would be chosen by number 258. Since our top 3 numbers were below this, I declared our chance of getting 3 polytechs to be “workable”.

Now that a bit of our concern had diminished, we turned to the Roommate problem. 11 people to be split between 3 rooms. First problem: we needed a 12th. No one could think of anyone right away. People will be asked throughout the week if they’d like to join in our coop. Then, the actual roommate choosing. I rigged up a little graphical tool to drag-and-drop people into rooms in Fireworks. Initial configurations were selected by the room “captains”; those with the lowest numbers. Swaps and adjustments were made. People’s futures were converted into pixels and molested by the cursor. I was rather unsatisified with the result, but nothing was declared anywhere near final. The brouhaha wound down, and people we to bed. Afterward, I printed “Create your own housing setup” forms to gather more input from the denizens of Crockett 3.

We’ll see how it goes. I’m quite excited about next year, and the opportunity to live together once again. The thought of Polytech still excites me. Hopefully it’ll become a reality.

Last night, I called Ian. The premise was that I was asking him about housing next year, but the reality was that I just wanted to talk to him.

I started off the conversation with the typical “how have you been” stuff, which elicited nothing more than a fine. So, I launched into my pitch about next year: we’re planning on getting 3 apartments with 4 bedrooms each; trouble is there’s only 11 of us: would you be able to join us? While this was a perfectly legitimate question, I was also asking for more personal reasons: when would I get to see him again? Unfortunately, his answer was negative. He’s unable to return to campus until Spring term 2010 (roughly 9 months from now, which as Orian put it is the equivalent of a pregnancy). Bad on both levels: we don’t have the roommate we need, and I don’t have the Ian I want. At this point, I was finished with my legitimate pitch, and was about to go deeper. “I really miss you” was on the tip of my tongue, but before I could articulate it, Ian said something like “well, thanks for letting me know, was nice talking to you.” It no longer seemed appropriate to have a deeper conversation. I told him to take care, said bye, and hung up.

Dammit, that’s not at all what I had in mind.

But my mind is running its imagination again. What happens when Ian does return? My imagination says he’ll come live/sleep in our apartments; in the common area, or maybe even my room. Seems great to me. I keep thinking of activities and things I want to do, but I’d be uncomfortable doing alone. Like I’ve said before, I really need a sidekick, a partner-in-crime.

In school news, I had my 2nd CompOrg test yesterday. It was mostly on digital logic, and it felt good. I got my first CompOrg test back. I was expecting around 90%, and I received an 85%. That’s adequate. I also received my second Calc II test back. I was expecting a 40% to a 50%. I got an 84%. Sweet, no complaints there! I also took a Calc quiz, which went swimmingly. Things are suddenly looking way up in Calc II.

Upon completion of said quiz, I went to sleep. It was approximately 2:00 PM, as I had stayed up the whole night not studying for CompOrg. I awoke from my slumber at 8:30ish. Damn, Commons and Sage had closed. I dawdled around before heading to the study room for another weekend StarCraft party. I failed pretty hard at StarCraft, losing three times to Will and Ryan. I also broke a set of headphones in anger over one of the losses. A diagram, because I can.

I had decided to canon up, as I figured Will and Ryan were going to be little shits with their Vultures and Spider Mines, and I intended on teching to air once my canon defense was established. I failed to notice that the hill to my west provided easy access to my base. In frustration, I threw my headphones: breaking them.

F1 News!
2:00 AM was time for F1 Qualifying! Its the first race of the year, and I was pumped! Tons of rule changes over the season made qualifying anyone’s game. However, I was most unsatisfied with the result. Brawn GP 1 and 2?? REALLY? McLaren 14th and 15th??? Raikkonen 9th? FUCK. I was pleased with Vettel’s performance, however. Toyota’s time were disqualified, and Hamilton changed a gearbox, so amusingly Sutil will start 16th. New this year, F1 is posting the weights of each car, which indicates how much fuel they have on board. Ferrari, McLaren, and BMW are lighter than Brawn! Imagine that… Should be a good race tomorrow morning–as long as Brawn doesn’t run away with it.

ALMS, my favorite variety of sportscar racing, has been amazing this year, and today’s race at Mosport did not disappoint! During qualifying, Audi turned a lap in excess of 138 mph, making Mosport the fastest sportscar course in America!

I was watching the race in style:

On the left, my new T61p is sporting streams of onboard and overhead cameras. From left to right, top to bottom the views are Highcroft, Fernandez, AGR, De Ferran, Audi, and the Overhead camera. On the right, my old T23 was displaying live Speed coverage streaming from my roommate’s capture card.

The racing was exceptional all the way through. Early Audi dominance gave way to superior LMP2 strategy and pitstops. Though there were a couple nasty cautions (I hope John Faulkner in the #30 Intersport car is alright!), the green flag sections created close racing both for overall, LMP2, and GT2. The end of the race was spectacular, with several cars needing to stop for fuel, and two more running out of fuel! Shame for De Ferran… But, that gave the LMP2 victory to the Highcroft Acura (my preseason pick). The LMP2 points battle is shaping up to be a classic! Also, special congrats to BK for finishing the race! I can’t wait for them to get their coupe!

Congratulations to the Highcroft team!

F1 this weekend was a bit of a parade… and Raikkonen getting knocked out was a bummer. Congrats to Massa, Kubica, Kovalainen, Trulli, Vettel, Glock, and Rosberg for good finishes (notice who I left out?).

Fia GT was racing at Bucharest this weekend, which was a unique course with a great sense of speed. Points were divided between two hour long races. While evil yellow cars won both races, Vitaphone still did nicely, finishing 3rd and 4th in the 1st race and 2nd and 3rd in the 2nd race (due to a mistake by one of the evil yellow cars). Go Maserati! The competitiveness of all the non-Corvette GT1 cars was pretty impressive, and there was a lot of action overall. AF Corse was dethroned in GT2 by CR Scuderia.

(Again, outdated. Got deleted for some reason)

The ALMS field is shaping up, and it actually doesn’t look too bad!

P1:
Audi is back, though most likely with only one car for the majority of the rounds. Peugeot will be at Sebring, and from looking and testing times, they might give Audi a run for their money. Autocon will be back with their crap (though pretty) Creation, and Intersport will return with their aging Lola. Audi should sweep the championship unless they break down (which is unlikely given their pedigree). If we’re lucky, we’ll also get the closed top Lola Aston Martin at Sebring along with the factory Creation car.

My favorite? The Peugeot 908 HDi-FAP, even if its only doing Sebring and Petit.

P2:
Again, the P2 field will be absolutely packed! At least 4 Porsches, 4 Acuras, 1 Radical, and the Lola-Mazda! I expect Penske will take more overall wins this year, though hopefully the revised Acura can give them a run for their money. There’s tlak of a closed-top P2 Lola in europe, and there may be a P2 Zytek at Sebring.

My favorites: The underdog Lola-Mazda (beautiful):

2nd Favorite: The Highcroft Acura (brilliant paint scheme this year!)

GT1:
Rather boring this year. Corvette is back with only one car for most rounds. There is competition in the form of a DBR9, but it was way off the pace at the Sebring test, so don’t expect much. Hopefully the Doran-Lista Maserati will make another appearance. There’s also still rumors of the ACEMCO Saleens being sold to someone here.

Favorite: Well, I hate Corvette, and the DBR9 sucks, so I’ll go with last year’s Maserati

GT2:
The field should be packed this year with a whole bunch of other weird things! Rumors point to 5 ferraris (2 Tafel, 2 Risi/Krohn, and 1 Corsa), 6 Porsches (3 Lizards, 1 Farnbacher, 1 Vici), 3 Ford GTs (UGLY AS SIN), 1 Corvette, 1 Panoz, 1 Viper, and 1 Vantage GT2! Expect Risi to dominate again, but I hope the Aston Martin can give them a run for their money, it’s a pretty car (see below). Also to note is that BMW will be back in 2009, with Rahal running M3s.

Favorite: The Aston Martin. I just hope its fast

So, it should be an exciting season in P2 and GT2, but there’s potential for excitement in P1 and GT1 at the big events, especially with some European competition!

Before each formula 1 race, I’ve been using the site http://www.f1tipping.com to make my race predictions. So far, I’m not doing all that badly… You can look at my profile here:

http://www.f1tipping.com/profiles.php?user=5402

Formula 1 is certainly looking very exciting this year! Mclaren and Ferrari are more or less dead even. I’m still rooting for Kimi Raikkonen, but I hope Lewis Hamilton will continue his streak of podiums.

Massa earned his first win of the season on Sunday, beating out Lewis Hamilton and Kimi Raikkonen. Alonso was an alarming fifth, behind Nick Heidfeld (Who passed him legitimately)

In the back of my heart, I’m also rooting for Super Aguri, the underfunded backmarkers who have shown considerable speed, faster even than the factory Honda team. Anthony Davidson was running as high as 12th before blowing his engine. They’ll score points eventually! Good luck guys!

Back in sports car land, the Audi R10 recieved its first lost ever, against an LMP2 car nonetheless! After qualifying 4th and 6th, the day just got worse for Audi, who struggled for speed through the bends of Long Beach. Congratulations to the Penske Porsches, though its a shame that the Andretti Green Acura had to pit for fuel…

I added a racing category to the blog. It’s not really relevant to Cuttlefish Tech, so I hid it from the front page.

You’d probably never expect it, but I’m a big fan of auto racing. No, not that stupid NASCAR drama, true racing, like Formula 1 and Sports Car racing.

Formula 1

The Formula 1 season begins this weekend in Australia! Here’s some of my top picks for the season.


I’ve always been a big Raikkonen fan, and hopefully this year since he’s with Ferrari he can go for the cup!

I rooted for Massa last year as well, so hopefully he’ll continue to do well.

Last year I was a big Mclaren fan. With Alonso now on board, I have mixed feelings. I hope that Lewis Hamilton will do well for Mclaren, but I also hope that Alonso’s Mclaren breaks down during every race!

American LeMans
Ever since I was introduced to the idea of endurance sports car racing, I’ve been a big fan. I’ve been over to PIR to watch a couple races over the last few years, and I never fail to be impressed. It’s a shame that ALMS isn’t coming back to Portland this year =(.

The American LeMans season kicks off this weekend with the 12 Hours of Sebring, a nice reward for the end of a trimester of hard work!

Audi is going to run away with the LMP1 title, like always…

The LMP2 battle should be fun. I’m rooting for Andretti Green and Highcroft, though the Porsches will probably take the title.

Good luck to the Aston Martins in GT1 for 2007!

And finally, here’s hoping the Panoz teams can pull out at least one win against the Ferraris in GT2.