Five(!) robots

A pirate ship out of water bottles

and, most recently, a working metal lathe

But there are certainly downsides. I think this comic does a great job summarizing:

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You may laugh, but you'll laugh for a different reason if you're a student here, because you'll realize just how true it is. Once you transform into an MIT student, you are held to a standard that other people just aren't. Ok, maybe not "held to a standard," but people do look at you in a different light and expect you to be the expert in everything. Trust me, this isn't true, we aren't the experts on everything.

A friend of mine was an editor for the MIT student newspaper, "The Tech." As editor, his name was printed in every paper and he was associated closely with MIT news. It was as an editor that he received a letter in the mail. The letter was from a man who had convinced himself that an underground dam had helped to create giant underground lakes in ancient Egypt . . . at least I think that's what he convinced himself. It wasn't entirely clear. I'll be honest, we all sat around in my suite reading this letter and had a jolly good time laughing at it. It began something like:

This was the second letter he'd sent to MIT regarding this dam. The first letter was all but ignored by its intended recipient (because, let's be honest, you can't take every single e-mail you receive seriously, there are just too many wackos out there) so he sent this second one to President Hockfield, Dean Colombo, two professors, Chancellor Clay, and my friend. Needless to say, he was a bit confused, especially when he kept reading.

Wait. . . seriously? STAR CHARTS!? At that point we were almost obligated to keep reading.

Alright, that just doesn't make any darn sense. (for the full letter, click here)

As funny as it was, my friend was a bit concerned. He didn't want obsessive individuals like this contacting him, which is totally understandable, so he contacted some higher ups at MIT and he has everything all fixed now. Luckily it was an easy fix.

This is just one example of the types of things that happen at MIT. There was an incident over at Bexley (a dorm) when a man called the front desk and demanded to know whether the moon was a planet or not. The letter and the moon incident seem funny, but over time they can get really annoying and sometimes be scary. The world is full of weird people out there, be careful.

So, do you really want to be popular? MIT is an excellent school, it'll definitely set you apart, but be careful, sometimes it's nicer to just blend in and keep a low profile.

See ya!

Right now, we're all getting our prefrosh assigned to us, as you can see below:

1,100 of you are coming and we're going to feed all of you! And, you know, run you into the ground with sleep deprivingly awesome events for an entire weekend.

Good luck, happy travels, see you this weekend! Make sure to swing by Burton-Conner and say hi, I'll likely be involved with most of the events we host but, unfortunately, I wasn't assigned a prefrosh this year. :(

By the way, Mikey just mentioned that some of you are flying in TOMORROW!? The entire room just lit up with concerned grumblings and surprise. I wouldn't expect a whole lot of attention from your host if you get here tomorrow, there are A LOT of exams this week, but we'll be done by Thursday, so no worries.

: )

to

Next, mix in a little of this (slightly nsfw for about 3 seconds)

Now, put Jess and I in charge, give us a couple of months to stir, and what do you get?

Wait and see!

(no spoilers in the comments if you know por favor)

For Some:

For Others:

And Then Some:

Can anybody enlighten me?

How are you prefrosh? Long time no talk, although some of you got to enjoy our sweet dance party a couple of weeks ago (which included a friendly visit from the MIT police before our party's ultimate demise). I write to you for several reasons. The first (and, sadly, primary reason) is that I am poor. That's right, the money I earned over the summer is dwindling rapidly (for a variety of reasons) and blogging is one of the few ways I am able to support my spending habit. I have a theory that bloggers from juniors on up tend to blog more when they need money than when they feel like they should blog. This is just a theory though.

Anywho, I'm running out of money. Why am I running out of money? It all started over Christmas break, when I started spending lots of money because it made me feel good. I have a propensity to see something expensive, want it, and buy it. Now, if I worked for Amazon or Google or something, this would not be a big deal, but when I worked for my dad out on our acreage, there's only so much of this "I want I want I want" spending that can happen before destitution sets in.

My first big purchase was a new camera. Amazon had it on sale for $409.00 and I pulled the trigger. It's a Canon XS and my first DSLR. I've wanted a DSLR for quite some time, but the price was never right. I checked the reviews and the XS turned out to be a sweet camera for a sweet price, so I'm now the proud new owner of a "Real Camera." I know (knew?) absolutely nothing about cameras so I put in the effort of reading through the entire manual for the camera, learning what all the different functions and settings do, and then also read a bunch of photography blogs and websites (dpreview anyone?). I'm very happy with my purchase, but am poorer as a result.

My second big purchase was a pair of snowblades. Go ahead and judge me, all you snowboarders and skiers out there, but I love snowblades and have a great time. They're a nice transition from rollerblading (which is what I'm most comfortable with) and don't require me to lug around poles. That, and they're smaller less expensive. Lucky for me, my cousin had a pair of snowblades that he was no longer desirous of, as well as a pair of ski boots that, while too large for him, fit me perfectly. For $100 the price was right, and I bought both the snowblades and the boots from him. I bought a helmet from some sketchy website that had inexpensive helmets, some ebay brand goggles (I still can't find them on any other website), and some comfy gloves and am now all set for mountain escapades. Those of you who do any winter sport know that, the cost isn't just in the gear, it's also in the travel/lift tickets. I've been skiing three times since being back, each time at ~$75 (plus food at the mountain) which is wiping me out even further. MIT has a Snowriders group that makes it really easy (and affordable) to hit the mountain for a day, transportation included, but it's still not cheap.

Next is Toy Fair in NYC. Last weekend was my third time at Toy Fair and, as always, I had a blast! I met tons of CEOs, saw (and played with) lots of awesome toys, and even bought a 7x7x7 V-cube (better than a Rubik's Cube). Of course, the bus to NYC and back was expensive, as well as the food I ate there, but again, these are the prices to pay for entertainment.

So here I am, with a rapidly dwindling supply of cash. What is an MIT student to do? Work! This means blogging and UROP for me, in addition to some more work for Livescribe (three jobs!? what am i, crazy???). I work for SmartCities in the Media Lab now, helping to design the caster system for the CityCar (seen below)

My semester is crazy this time around, and I don't know how I'm going to pull it off, but I'll certainly try. I'm taking 60 units of classes (a chunk of which is TAing for Toy Design), doing Pistol (Nationals are coming up), am i3 chair (along with Jess Kim, be on the lookout for the Guide to Residences and the i3 DVD this Spring, Jess and I are working to make an awesome video), am doing NextACT (a play put on by Next House during CPW), am Social Chair for Burton-Conner, and have a UROP. I feel like this could backfire, but for now, we'll go with it.

One last thing before I go. This will sound creepy, but I don't want it to. Two friends and I are going skiing/snowboarding during Spring Break at Sugarloaf (which is in Maine). Due to a variety of reasons (none of which, I promise you, are ill intentioned), we are looking for one more female to join our trip. We'll be leaving MIT on March 21st and getting back March 26th. It costs just $300 for 5 nights lodging and 5 days skiing, which is an incredible deal. If you are interested in joining us and live in the greater Boston area or Maine, shoot me an e-mail at ask-snively@mit.edu and we can work out details. It should be an awesome trip and it's a deal you really can't beat. For more details, check out our trip on Snowriders:

http://snowriders.mit.edu/details_ride.php?id=325

You: Hey
Stranger: ASL
You: 19/M/Cambridge
You: ASL?
Stranger: Lemur
You: wtf, bye
*disconnect*

You: I like turtles
*disconnect*

You: I want your body.
Stranger: Yeah baby!
*disconnect*

Today (more specifically tonight), something really awesome/sketchy/creeptastic happened. A dozen or so of us were sitting in our floor lounge, playing with Omegle on our 60" HDTV and server, when we decided to tell the random stranger that they were talking to a room full of MIT students. As it turns out, they had a friend that was just accepted to MIT EA. I'm not sure how much info I want to give away on the internet about this particular subject, but . . .

HI ALEX/PRISCILLA FROM THAT ONE BIG STATE THAT WAS TALKING TO HER FRIEND ON THE PHONE WHILE HER FRIEND WAS ON OMEGLE!!!

Friend or poke me on facebook so we can sketch on you more.

Cheers!

-Conner 2

This, however, is too important. I've been building a robot for a class this month and it's now alive and moving! We cut him from acrylic, slapped three motors and some omniwheels on him, and gave him a battery + eeePc. He's just now learning to drive and move (which is exciting!) but even more exciting is the fact that we trained him to tweet whatever he's doing. So, if you'd like, you can follow our robot as he becomes sentient and grows up into a red-ball-nomming beasty.

http://twitter.com/c2bot

Definitely be tuned in to the feed on Jan 29th for the final competition, he'll tell you what he's doing the entire time!

Cheers.

For our final (9th) lab of the semester, we were assigned a lab station with a particular setup. One station had an anechoic chamber with some microphones and a tweeter with some tanks of various gases, another station had some DC motors with a force gauge and a prony brake setup, another has a beam that is wired up to record its response to an impulse with various levels of damping, etc. The lab setup my partner Pall and I were assigned? Force Gauge. Excellent.

The lab that most people do with the force gauge involves measuring the strength of your bicep and correlating it with EKG and all sorts of other stuff. For lab 9, each team of two people was given a setup and allowed to come up with their own experiment. Pall and I are convinced we had the best setup for this. We decided to measure the impulse of a head when it was snapped up from a sleeping position (not much unlike lecture). We grabbed a strap from the collapsible litter group in 2.009 (that didn't make any sense to you, that's ok) and rigged it up to the force sensor. Then, it was time to do science.

In the end, these were the results:

Come to MIT, you get to do this.