Photos for Part 1 of my spring vacation

You want more photos? I got more photos! However, I should note that we were at Cornell at the least pretty time of year ( The best time is the Fall! ). None of the trees have leaves yet, and there isn't any pretty snow on the ground.

Corn Nuggets!!!


Peter and me at the burger joint in Collegetown.


Example of the prison-style anti-suicide fences that were placed on all the bridges.


The fence obscures nice views like this one ( We stuck the camera lens through a gap in the fence to get this shot ).


Ho Plaza


They didn't bother to put a fence on this little bridge.


The boys outside the A.D. White Library.


The inside of the A.D. White Library.


"The Fishbowl" at Uris Library. I did a lot of studying in this room back in the day. The room was pretty much empty on this day because it was the Sunday at the end of Spring Break.


Ezra Cornell


Andrew Dickson White.
See those red and white footprints? They lead from the Ezra Cornell statue to the Andrew Dickson White statue. The statues sit about 200 feet from each other on the Arts Quad ( Where most of the original academic buildings sit on campus ). There is a legend that if a virgin every walks between the statues when the clock strikes midnight, the statues will get up and switch places. Of course, this has never happened. ;)

The boys had all sorts of fun running from one statue to the other along the footprints. I think they did this about 7 or 8 times.


Our hotel room.


Peter looking out the window of our hotel room.


Michael having fun with science!


Another prison fence on a bridge.


The view from the bridge. There's no fence on the little bridge in this photo, but by the next day, they had closed that bridge down for the rest of the semester.


Michael and me walking towards Ruth's old dorm ( Balch Hall ).


Waterfall at dusk. This was taken from the little bridge I mentioned two photos earlier.


Obligatory shot of McGraw Tower.


Peter going to town on some ice cream at Okenshields.


Michael was really full after eating a MASSIVE amount of food, but ...


... there's always room for ice cream!


Prison fences on the suspension bridge.


View from the suspension bridge.


Ho Plaza at night ( Actually this was taken at about 5 in the morning. Ruth woke up early on Tuesday, couldn't get back to sleep, and decided to go outside and take some photos ).


Ho Plaza early in the morning on Tuesday.


McGraw Tower on Tuesday morning.


Another McGraw Tower shot.


Michael and me in a Physics lecture hall, just after class ended. The lecture notes ( about inducing currents ) were still projected on the screen. I was answering Michael's questions about magnetism.

OK, now I'm going to cheat a little bit. The photos below were not taken on our recent Cornell trip. They were taken in June of 2004, when we visited Cornell for Ruth's 10th reunion. I just wanted to post a few shots to show what Cornell looks like when the trees have leaves and the sky isn't always overcast.


Michael and me at Ho Plaza.


McGraw Tower in nice light.


View of the Arts Quad from the top of McGraw Tower ( The big white tents and the vans were there for reunion events ).


Baby Michael having fun at Cornell.



A Cornell gorge with green trees.


Sunset on North Campus.

Rich

What I did on my Spring vacation ( part 1 )

I've got a lot to say about my vacation. I think I'll break the stories down into several blog posts, partly because there is so much to tell, and partly because my laptop keeps shutting down because of an issue with the heat sink ( Perhaps I'll write about that later - I really need to get myself a soddening iron. ).

I'm going to start by telling you about the Cornell part of the trip, because I really want to talk about something Cornell-related today. Today's a bit of an anniversary for me. 19 years ago today ( April 6th, 1991 ), the following happened at Cornell ...

So yeah, it's been 19 years since Ruth and I started dating. When we visited Conrell last week ( We got there at about 11:30 AM on March 28th, and left at about 1 PM on March 30th ), we came across a lot of places that gave me fond memories of our time together at Cornell.

Sage Hall: Neither Ruth nor I every took a class in this building, but back when we were at Cornell, there was a nice dining hall in the basement of the building. Ruth and I met at that dining hall for lunch about twice a week during the month leading up to April 6th, 1991. At the time, Ruth had made it clear that we could only be friends. However, something that happened during those lunches must have won her over. I'll always look upon the building fondly as the place where I won Ruth's heart. Unfortunately, the dining hall no longer exists, but just seeing that building gave me a warm feeling inside.

Cafe Decadence ( Cafe Pacifica ): On April 5th, 1991, Ruth called me up and invited me to have dessert/coffee with her at a little dessert place called Cafe Decadence. I'm not sure if it officially counts as our first date, because she brought her friend Amy along. It may have been more of a tryout than a date, but considering what happened the next day, I guess you could say the tryout went pretty well. In any case, I was hoping Cafe Decadence was still there, and it almost was. The place has been renamed "Cafe Pacifica", and it seems to focus more on bubble tea ( those drinks with all the tapioca "bubbles" in them ) than coffee. However, the layout is roughly the same, and they still have an assortment of desserts. We didn't really have time to re-enact our first date ( impossible with the kids anyway ), but it was nice to see that the place was still there.

Large random rock near the Low Rise dorms: Ruth and I sat on this rock when she told me she wanted to go out with me. The rock was just a natural-looking rock back in the day, but now it's painted all red, white, and blue ( It looks like it was painted to celebrate Obama's victory ).

Balch Hall Archway:

Balch Hall is an all woman's dorm at Cornell. Ruth lived at Balch Hall during her Freshmen and Sophomore year ( we started dating her Freshmen year ). If a guy wanted to visit his girlfriend at Balch Hall, he needed to call her on the outdoor phone above ( pre-cellphone days! :O ) , and wait for her to come and open the door. I can't tell you how many times I happily waited under that archway for Ruth. Just seeing that phone keypad again brought back so many good memories.

Balch Hall is also significant because it's where Ruth and I had our first kiss. :)

Random path in the woods on North Campus: This path led to a little bench near a foot bridge. Kinda secluded - nice place to smooch. :)

2nd floor landing on stairwell at Robert Purcell Union: I can't really say what happened here, but it was nice. ;)

In other Cornell news not related to my 19th date-versary ...

1) We left our house at the crack of dawn on Sunday, March 28th, because we wanted to have Sunday brunch at a dining hall called Okenshields. We used to love to eat the made-to-order omelets, and I especially loved to eat tremendous quantities of chilled shrimp. Unfortunately, Okenshields in no longer open on Sundays. :(

Instead, we headed to Collegetown ( area immediately south of campus where most upperclassmen live ), to see if any of the restaurants we used to like were still there. Unfortunately, none of them were in business anymore ( the restaurant business is tough ), but we did find a burger place that served Corn Nuggets ( remember those, EZ! ). Corn Nuggets are little globs of creamed corn, dipped in batter and fried. YUMMY!!!!!!!!

2) We ate the rest of our meals on campus. The layouts of most of the dining halls have changed quite a bit ( Though Okenshields has basically the same seating arrangement ), but the food was still great and plentiful. The food was also a really great deal. At every place we went, they let our kids eat for free. Each meal was all-you-could-eat, and Michael took full advantage of this. He's a little under 60 pounds, but at each meal he ate about twice as much as an average 100-pound college girl would.

3) I sat in the back during a Physics lecture for about 10 minutes. That was pretty cool. There's still a part of me that wishes I had followed my heart and tried to do a Physics PhD, rather than being practical and doing Engineering ( Especially since my software development job has nothing to do with Mechanical Engineering ).

4) The area in front of Willard Straight Hall was renovated about 10 years ago with money donated by a family with the last name "Ho". The area is beautiful and is now called "Ho Plaza". It's nice that they honored the family that gave the money, but "Ho Plaza" sounds like the name of a red-light district. Can't you just picture a bunch of sailors on shore leave saying, "Let's head down to Ho Plaza to get some action!".

5) Cornell is known for it's beautiful gorges. It was always inspiring to look down at the gorges when crossing the many bridges at Cornell. Unfortunately, a large number of Cornell students have committed suicide ( 6 during the academic year, and 3 in month before Spring break (Ruth and I arrived at Cornell on the same weekend students were returning from Spring Break ) ) by jumping off the bridges. During Spring Break, the Cornell administration responded by erecting ugly "temporary" fences ( they look like the fences that you would put around a prison ) along all of the bridges. It really looks awful, and most of the students are not happy about it. Not only are the students reminded of the suicides each time they walk over a bridge, but now there view of the beautiful inspiring landscape is obscured. I know the Cornell administration means well, but I hope they come to their senses soon and take the fences down.

Well, I've got a lot more to say, but it's getting late ( 11:30 PM ). Stayed tuned for Part 2 of "What I did on my spring vacation".

Rich

Enjoy this

Wow. I'm just finishing off a week of vacation. I had a lot of adventures this week. I have a lot of photos I may or may not post, and a lot of stories to tell. However, I'm still too busy enjoying my vacation with my family to write a blog post yet. Until then, enjoy this video I just found on YouTube.

Edit: As long as I'm going to waste a post by being lazy and just posting YouTube links, I might as well post this enjoyable video as well:



Rich

Time to dig up another old story

I'm kinda psyched.

In about a week, Ruth and I ( along with the kids, of course! ) will be taking a trip to our Alma Mater, Cornell University. It's been a while since I've been back, and I kinda miss the place.

Well, actually, it hasn't been *that* long. We did visit Cornell back in June of 2004 for Ruth's 10-year reunion. However, while it was a fun trip ( It was probably the first road trip we took Michael on ), we didn't get much of the college experience. Classes were no longer in session at that point and most of the dining halls were closed when we were there. This meant that we didn't get to relive the experience of eating dining hall food ( Unlike most universities, eating the dining hall food at Cornell was a good experience. Cornell was consistently rated as having some of the best dining hall food in the USA. I think this is mostly due to the fact that Cornell has a top-ranked school of hotel administration ( Managing dining facilities for a hotel is a big part of hotel administration, and I believe there is some connection between the Hotel School and Cornell Dining ) as well as a School of Agriculture, which I believe supplies some of the fresh ingredients used in the dining halls ( For example, there was one dining hall that served ice cream made from milk from on-campus dairy farms ). ), and we didn't get to peek in on classes in session. We also spent a lot of time going to pre-planned reunion events. The events were nice enough, but they didn't really bring back memories ( good or bad ) of our time at Cornell. Plus, the food at these reunion events was consistently awful. We spent quite a bit a money to be official participants at reunion weekend, so needless to say, we were a little disappointed. I'm not saying we weren't glad we went, but we left wishing we could have experienced more.

Well, we'll finally get our chance to do more in about a week. We'll be at Cornell while classes are in session. I think Michael is going to be excited to see all the big lecture halls ( I'd love to sneak him into a Math, Physics, Astronomy, or Chemistry class, but I have a feeling somebody would notice that a really old guy and a really young guy were in the lecture hall. ). We are definitely going to eat most ( if not all ) of our meals at the campus dining halls. We'll only be at our hotel for two nights, but that should give us plenty of time to tour the campus because our hotel is right in the middle of the campus. I'm kinda excited that we'll be staying at The Statler Hotel. The hotel ( and the Cornell School of Hotel Administration ) is one of the things that make Cornell unique. It was pretty common for science and engineering majors like myself to make fun of "Hotelies" back in our Cornell days ( After all, while we Engineers were toting around Math and Physics textbooks, we would see Hotel students toting around books with titles like "Meat" and "Poultry" on the front cover. ), but Cornell's Hotel school is ranked #4 in the world and #1 in the USA. Cornell does have a very strong Engineering School, but it's certainly not ranked as high as #4 in the world, so in a way, I guess the Hotel students went to a more prestigious school than me. In any case, if you've ever been to a nice hotel in the USA, I bet there's a pretty good chance that the manager of that hotel was a Cornell grad ( and carried around a book with "MEAT" written in 3 inch letters on the cover. I swear, this textbook didn't say something like "Introduction to the Culinary Arts" or "Introduction to Restaurants Management" or even "The Science of Meat". It just said "MEAT". This still cracks me up more than 20 years later. I know the person who I saw carrying that book is probably managing a big Hilton hotel today and is making huge buckets of money, but I still can't help making fun of this. ).

So, it will be good to go back again - for real. I guess the last time Ruth and I went back and actually visited a bunch of our old haunts was October of 1994. That was Homecoming weekend - the first homecoming after Ruth graduated. It was also notable in a way that could lead to an amusing story. It was notable because Homecoming 1994 was the last time in my life I actually got drunk.

Now, I'm not trying to claim that I've never touched alcohol since then, but if somebody forced me to give them a yes or no answer to the question "Do you drink?", I think I'd have to answer "No". I think that for all practical purposes, "No" would be the most accurate answer. Why do I believe that? Well, let me put it this way: In my adult life, I've been to about 30 different weddings that have an open ( free ) bar, and I've ordered about 3 alcoholic drinks combined from all those 30 open bars ( All 3 of which were a single glass of white wine, because I was curious about how the wine tasted. ). If I can turn down free alcohol in a world were lots of people seem to view open bars as a license to get smashed, I think I'm allowed to say "I don't drink.".

However, back in 1994. I still didn't mind having a few beers with the guys. Well, I wasn't the type of guy who would go out with the guys often, but every few months I would get together with my college buddies after work, and we would have a few beers - not too many beers ( I was still living at home, after all ), but I certainly didn't shy away from alcohol back then.

So, all that being said, it wasn't that surprising that my college buddies and I ( a whole bunch of us decided to attend Homecoming Weekend together that year ) found ourselves in a local Cornell bar one night that weekend. Ruth was either with her friends or with her cousin ( who was a grad student at Cornell at the time ), but I don't think she ( or any of my buddy's girlfriends ) were in the bar that night. I think my buddies and I wanted to reserve that night for male-bonding. Male-bonding is an underrated thing, and for better or worse, a lot of guys can't do the whole male-bonding thing without alcohol.

So yeah, there was quite a bit of bonding going on that night. So much so that we got a little bit silly. Well, I guess I can't speak for everyone, but I got a little bit silly. The bar was only a few blocks from the apartment where a bunch of us lived our last two years at Cornell . After we left the bar, I got this crazy idea that we should all visit our old apartment right then and there. Never mind that it was past midnight and that other people were certainly living in "our" apartment by then. I thought we needed to visit our old apartment, and all the other guys agreed.

Plus, I needed to pee.

I needed to pee really bad.

I needed to pee, and for some reason I thought the best place to pee would be my old apartment.

So, we all stumbled over to our old apartment building, and I got on the intercom with the current residents of our old place. It turned out that there were women living in the apartment ( The apartments had usually held about 6 people ( almost always college students ) with a bunch of bedrooms and a common bathroom, kitchen and living room. ), and I somehow convinced these women to let us come upstairs.

I didn't really give it a lot of thought at the time, but looking back I've got to say ....

What the hell were these women thinking?

Now, I'm not a college girl, I've never been a college girl, and I'll never be a college girl. However, if I was college girl, and some random drunk dude buzzed our intercom and asked if he and his friends could come up to our apartment, I would tell that guy to go to hell.

I mean, wouldn't any sensible college girl tell the guy to go to hell? Why on earth would you want to let some random drunk guys come up to your apartment after midnight?

I dunno - it just boggles my mind.

OK, putting aside the fact that these girls shouldn't have even considered letting us into their apartment, they did let us in, and we got to see the old place. Let me make it clear that we were completely harmless. As far as I knew, none of us had any ulterior motives - well except for me - I still needed to pee. I fact, I don't think I was in the old apartment for more than 5 seconds when asked if I could use the bathroom. In retrospect, this was an extremely RUDE thing for me to be asking. These people had just let my drunk ass into their apartment, and now I'm asking them if I could use their bathroom? I'm a bit embarrassed when I think about it now, but in my defense, I did ask nicely. I believe I told them that using their bathroom would be a "nostalgic journey" for me. Yes, "nostalgic journey". Well, I guess they didn't want to deny me my nostalgia ( Either that, or they decided to just let the crazy drunk dude do whatever he wanted, as long as that meant he would be leaving soon ), because they did let me use their bathroom.

After my little bathroom excursion, we all headed out of the apartment ( but not before I profusely thanked the girls for letting my take my "nostalgic journey" ). That was pretty much the end of the "excitement" for the night.

After that, we all called it a night and headed to wherever each of us was going to spend the night ( Note: We were all staying someplace within walking distance. No cars were involved, so we were all safe in that regard. ). I was staying with Ruth in her cousin's apartment. We had a futon to sleep on, but I didn't really sleep well that night. By the time I got back to the apartment, my body was rebelling against all the poison I had put in it. I felt rather nauseous, and spent the next 2 hours just sitting awake trying to fight the feeling of nausea. The last thing I wanted to do was make a mess of any sort in Ruth's cousin's apartment. Unfortunately, it was only a matter if time before I was holding my head over a toilet bowl. I didn't wind up making a mess ( by the time I gave in to my nausea , I had sobered up quite a bit, and I actually scrubbed the inside of the toilet bowl so it looked as good as new after my little mishap ), but I was rather embarrassed by the whole experience. It was at that moment that I decided that I never wanted to get drunk again. Sure, it was sometimes fun to drink with your buddies, but I decided that it wasn't enough fun to make the potential aftermath worth it. To be honest, I was kinda bored with drinking by then. Drinking was certainly a novelty the first few times I tried it in college, but by the time I got to the age of 24, the novelty had worn off.

So anyway, I don't have much to say other than that. It's 1:31 AM, and I really should get to bed. I'll just close by saying GO BIG RED! Cornell won its first ever NCAA basketball tournament game on Friday, and later today ( Sunday ) they'll be playing in the 2nd round of the tournament. I'm not expecting them to go far in the tournament, but it will be fun to watch while it lasts.

Rich

Edit: March 21st: Cornell 87, Wisconsin 69

WooooHooooo!!!!!

Cornell becomes the first Ivy League team since 1979 to advance to the the Sweet 16!

Grandpa Easside

I almost forgot it was St. Patrick's Day today - that is until I got on the train on the way home from work and found it was full of loaded Irish people wearing green. Yeah, ya gotta love the Irish, and as Homer Simpson once said about St. Patrick's Day "It's the most important drinking day of the year!".

Once I realized that it was indeed March 17th, it got me thinking about my Irish American Great Grandfather. He was born on St. Patrick's Day in 1894. That's him in the photo below. The little guy next to him is me.

He died in 1973, not long after this photo was taken. I only knew him until I was three, but I still have vivid memories of him. Well, maybe I don't remember every detail about him, but I certainly remember the the song he used to sing to me. I actually used to call him "Grandpa Easside", because he always sang the following song to me ....

East Side, West Side, all around the town
The tots sang "ring-around-rosie," "London Bridge is falling down"
Boys and girls together, me and Mamie O'Rourke
Tripped the light fantastic on the sidewalks of New York

So, Happy St. Patrick's Day, Grandpa Easside! I may only be 1/8 Irish, but I'm an Irishman today.

... and considering I'm Irish today, I'm going to take the liberty of telling an old Irish joke.

What's the difference between an Irish wedding and an Irish funeral?

One less drunk.

Don't worry, Grandpa Easside wouldn't be offended by the joke above. His son used to tell jokes like that all the time. If there's one thing you can say about Irish folks, it's that they don't take themselves too seriously ( maybe it's all the pints of Guinness, but it's true ).

Rich

World's Greatest Invention!

The Wright Brothers.

Samuel Morse

Alexander Graham Bell

Guglielmo Marconi

James Watt

Nicola Tesla

Thomas Edison

Amateurs!

The World Greatest Inventor is the guy who invented this ...

It's called a Bag-a-Nut. If you click on the link to the left, you can watch a video made by the guy who invented it ( James Dudley ( May he rest in peace. ) ). It was original designed to pick up nuts, but the website said it could also be used to pick up sugargum balls ( "spikey balls" ). These "spikey balls" are the things I complained about in this post and in the "C" section of this post. Each late Winter and early Spring, I break my back using a rake and a large dustbin to get all these sticky balls off my backyard lawn and into collection bags. This, year I finally decided to try something different. I did a little research online and ordered the Bag-a-Nut. I put the Bag-a-Nut together on Sunday, and then took it out for a test drive.

To my surprise, it actually worked! It worked much better than I could have ever imagined. You can see how happy I was by looking at the photos below.

The photo below will give you an idea of what I'm up against each year. These little spikey balls tend to stick to the ground, so I used to have to rake the same spot about 10 times to even get half of the spikey balls to move. Now, I can pick up almost all the spikey balls in a given spot, just by rolling the Bag-a-Nut over the area once. If click on the photo below and look closely, you'll see a whole bunch little brown things ( the spikey balls ) on the ground. You'll notice that that there is a much higher density of the balls on the right side of the photo ( there are a lot of trees on that side of the yard ), but you'll also notice a section of turf ( running from the foreground of the photo to the background ) just to the right of center where you can barely see any spikey balls at all. That piece of turf without the spikey balls is the result of the Bag-a-Nut machine. I rolled the Bag-a-Nut over the area just once, and it picked up almost all the spikey balls along the path. This is going to make my life SOOOOOO much easier each March.

Yeah, I know this is an odd thing to get excited about, but we suburban Dads are serious about our yard work. WOOOOOOOHOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Rich

Xenon tetrafluoride

OK, let me start by apologizing in advance for not be modest.

I'm about to brag about my son ( again ).

But hey, I like to document my kids accomplishments, and if you can't be proud of your kids, what can you be proud about?

On Sunday, my six year old son Michael started to talk to me about the element Xexon. This didn't really surprise me at all. He was introduced to Chemistry via YouTube almost 2 years ago ( via the Tom Lehrer Elements Song, which I think he found via links on the Silent E Tom Lehrer Song which Michael and I once sang together. ), and he has since memorized most of the Periodic Table ( Perhaps all of it - every time I give him an atomic number he seems to be able to name the associated element ).

He told me that Xexon was a noble gas. I asked him what a noble gas was, and he gave me the appropriate definition. He then told me he was going to make a compound using a Xenon atom and 4 Fluorine atoms. It was at this point that I thought to myself "Gee - I guess he really doesn't understand noble gases. After all, everybody knows you can't make compounds with noble gases. That's why those elements are considered 'noble' - they don't mix with other elements.". So, I look at Michael and say "Are you sure you can make a compound with Xexon and Flourine?". At this point, my wife ( who was a Chemistry major in college ) chimes in and says "Actually, you can make a compound with Xexon and 4 Fluorines - it's called Xexon tetrafluoride." *

So, the bottom line is this:

My 6-year old son now knows more about Chemisrty than me. :)

( * I should also note that Michael did not learn about Xexon tetrafluoride from my wife. He said he learned it from some chemistry web site he found on his own. Let me tell you, Google is a really wonderful thing. It's going to revolutionize the way our kids get educated. )

Rich