Comments, UROPs, field trips, and OMG HP7!

Comments, UROPs, field trips, and OMG HP7! Responses to comments: Aaron said: Actually, Anna Lucia was killed off because of the negative audience reaction to her. I think if you watched the show from first airing youd notice how she didnt fit in and everyone hated her. Now the sad part was Libby dying, but I hear she had scheduling conflicts with another show. Wings 11 said: Actually, I disliked Libby. Ana Lucia was much more kick-butt. Oh well, Ive never been mainstream ;) Aaron replied: I just thought Anna Lucias butch-factor was really forced feeling. I didnt think she could act well and just thought that the aggressiveness was sort-of how she wanted to be perceived with her infractions and all in real life. Okay, no way, Ana Lucia rocked. And I refuse to respect any other opinion. Kidding! Seriously though, I loved her. Michelle Rodriguez has always played characters like that- like in Resident Evil. Oh man she was awesome in Resident Evil. Anyway, yeah, the other characters on the show might have all hated her, but that doesnt necessarily mean the viewers did. First of all, she killed Shannon, and while I dont condone violence or anything, dude that character was ANNOYING. In any case, she was the only strong female character on the show, because Claire is just all my baby! and Kate is just like I like Jack. No I like Sawyer. No Jack. No Sawyer. Wouldnt it be cool if the writers actually gave me something interesting to do, considering Im an ex-con and all? No? Okay, Ill just go get into some contrived situation that will involve me touching one of them or having to take my clothes off. Yech. While Im still talking about TV (God Ive turned into a TV junkieIll have no brain cells left by next term) I was visitng the admissions office the other day and had a chat with Matt, who said that if I liked Veronica Mars then Id like Buffy, because theres a lot of snark and such things in it. So I ordered the first disc off of Netflix and popped it into the DVD playerand as I was watching I was like well this is interesting or something, yeah yeah, sarcasm, shes okay at it, whatever and not really feeling it, and then there was this mean, catty girl who was being a total drain on the reputation of females everywhere, and then she opened her locker and a dead guy fell out on top of her and I was like sweet, this show rocks. Anonymous said: My boyfriend gave me a dremel for our First-monthly-anniversary. And I love it! Oh my God, you have the coolest boyfriend ever. Mollie said: Wait, wheres the part where you talk about coming to my Super-Awesome Housewarming Party? ;) Ack! How could I forget? Everyones favorite blogger alum Mollie is getting all grown up- she and her fiance moved into their own real-life-non-MIT-run apartment a few weeks ago and invited a bunch of us bloggers over for the housewarming. Aw! The bloggers are like one big, happy family. *sniff* Of course, I was the only one able to go, which meant that I didnt know a single person there, but hey, I thrive onawkward. Anyway, Mollie and Adam now live in a very nice apartment with jungle themed bathrooms or something (the details slip my mind, Mollie can correct me) and its all very cute and awesome and adult and FREAKING WEIRD. Like, just you wait until all your friends start getting engaged and married and moving into real houses/apartments and getting ACTUAL JOBS, youll start hyperventilating on the inside singing the Toys R Us theme in your head about never growing up. Its true. Then, if youre me, youll stick glow-in-the-dark stars on your ceiling just to keep things from getting to o crazy and then when you turn your lights off every night youll think whew, disaster averted with relief. Anyway. Where have I been, you ask? Well, here. Doingactually, quite a lot, considering its the summer. I have a UROP in the BioInstrumentation lab, where Im now the proud owner of a $45 LED (no joke). And, Im happy to report that after a month and a half of all kinds of frustration, my very first experiment of any kind (which was, admittedly, highly un-scientific) was successful! Basically the thing that I wanted to happen, did. I have absolutely no idea how well it worked and no numbers at all to back up my assertion, but its good enough for me to leave for vacation on a high note. (Thats right, vacationIm SO looking forward to it.) Speaking of my UROP, my UROP supervisor, Craig, hasnt been around much at all this summer. I cant hold it against him though, because hes been on American Inventor, the reality TV show. No joke. If any of you have been watching, hes one of the inventors of the hanging bike clamp thing. There are two of them- one comes off as serious and business-like, the other wears a lab coat and frequently jumps around like a crazy person. Ill let you guess which one I work for. =) Anyway- tune in this Wednesday at 9 to ABC to watch and vote for the winner! (Although I have to say, possibly the coolest thing about this whole situation is that when Craig and his partner were surprised with the news that they were the New York finalists, Craig said, Lets do it for enginerds everywhere! and this is SO totally my word. Apparently someone else in the lab also claims it as his own, so I guess we can share. But seriously, Ive been saying that for years now, and I rather liked thinking that I had made it upso, you should use it. Because if it ever became even somewhat mainstream, it would basically triple my coolness factor. Or something) There are two other things Im doing this summer- Im the Burton Conner RA, which is a pretty low-key job, except that occasionally there are small injuries or conflicts between residents wanting to use the TV in the lounge and such, which I have to reside over. Im also attending training sessions for my term-time campus job, which is relevant because we took a field trip to Akami, which basically is this technology company which maintains servers all around the world and does all kinds of stuff involving efficient use of bandwidth and such. Their headquarters is right near MIT, and they estimate that nearly 10% of the Internets traffic makes its way through them. And I was there. And got a private tour of their command center. I know, you are all so jealous right now. So anyway, Im off to the bookstore- Im getting my Harry Potter book at midnight (squee! how excited are you?!), then taking it with me on a week long cruise to the Caribbean. It doesnt get much better than that. While were on the topic, just a couple of pre-release comments. There are a few things I really, really want to happen in the 7th book. These arent spoilers, I have no reason to believe that any of them WILL happen, I just want them to. 1. Me to be right about something. Anything. See, Im really bad at guessing the ending of anything. Even mystery movies with really obvious endings totally surprise me. I loved the movie Inside Man, just because its the only movie in which I made a half-correct guess about the ending. So Im hoping to either figure out some plot twist or another before it happens, or for one of my very few, very lame theories to be correct. I guess this is more on me than JKR, though 2. Neville kicking some Death Eater butt- seriously, Neville rocks. Ive always kind of thought that he was an awesome, powerful wizard whod been tormented by his messed up family life. He started to come into his own in Book 5, but never even performed one successful spell on any of the Death Eaters. This leads me to my wishful thinking that JKR is saving up for a BIG moment, where Neville comes in and saves the day. If this happens, I will probably cheer in happiness, right there in my pool chair in the middle of the cruise boat. 3. A good Slytherin to appear. Why are the Slytherins always rotten people? Even the ones that arent flat out evil are always weak or nasty in some other way. This bothers me, because JKR makes like shes trying to portray all kinds of gray areas- like when Sirius says, The world isnt split into good people and Death Eaters. Youd think shed drive this message home a bit, by having someone from Slytherin whos actually on the side of good. I mean, all that Slytherins are described by is cunning, manipulative wit, resourcefulness, etc. Theres nothing in there that says they have to be rotten human beings. If any Slytherin character turns out to be good, Ill be thrilled. (Ill admit that this wish is mostly driven by the fact that, if I were at Hogwarts, I almost certainly would be sorted into Slytherin) Ill see you in a week! Happy Harry Potter Release Night! Yay! (If you post spoilers in the comments, Ill hex you from all the way in the Bahamas. Im just that good.)