Archive for January, 2008

Work updates

January 29, 2008

I don’t talk about work much on here (well, less than I talk about anything else), but I figure there’s something other people might finally be interested in – a rapping review of VistaPrint:

http://www.45n5.com/permalink/business-card-rapper-vistaprint-review.html

He’s really bad, but I’m still impressed that we inspired this…

In other news, I signed my first patent application today!  It was actually submitted yesterday, but they said it would be ok if everyone signed it today.  My co-inventors are my manager Jay, and coworker Terence, but the patent is listed as Daugherty et al.  There will be another one in a few weeks, on the second half of the work I did (even though we ended up not using it for our own site).  Patent applications aren’t publicly available for two years, though, so I think I shouldn’t go into too much detail here, in case it’s covered in my NDA.

Posted in career | 3 Comments »

小吃

January 13, 2008

Mmm, dim sum is so good. Yesterday, I tried to get a bunch of friends to agree to go to dim sum this morning. It sort of worked. None of the people from work came (maybe it was the company party yesterday? But seriously, I was up at 8:30 and had to wait so long before going out…), but I still got to see Sally, Jaime, and 영희. We went to China Pearl again, and as usual, I tried to order for us in Chinese. It was tough, because I haven’t been practicing much lately – Chinese class doesn’t start again until February. So, I think I was out of practice listening to people speak.

Actually, the hardest part of going to dim sum with this particular group of friends is that the servers always speak to Sally first, and when she’s on the other side of the table, I probably couldn’t hear what they were saying, even if it was English.

Erin likes eating dim sum with me for two reasons: 1. Apparently hearing me speak Chinese is funny. 2. MIT people have interesting conversations. Today we couldn’t help spilling the tea quite a few times, so we talked about how to improve the conventional teapot. I was initially in favor of a mechanical redesign, but by the end of the meal, Sally had convinced me that new, hydrophobic materials were the answer to our dilemma…

Posted in mit, personal | 3 Comments »

Global Warming Board Game

January 7, 2008

So this IAP, there’s a session about creating an educational board game about global warming.  I don’t really know what that means, and I probably won’t be able to find out, because the sessions are 2-5 during the day; right when I work.  Nevertheless, I love board games and couldn’t help but start to think about how to turn the game-theory aspects of the global warming problem into a fun board game (because if I’m not in the class, why worry about educational when it could be just fun?). Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in mit, personal | Leave a Comment »
Tags:

Dancing for Engineers

January 6, 2008

Now here’s a topic I’ve been thinking about for a while. I started going to salsa dancing lessons fairly regularly this fall, but am having a hard time remembering the long sequences of complex moves that I learn in the MIT lessons (which are great, by the way). Even when I can remember them, it’s hard to do them on the dance floor with a girl who doesn’t also know what is coming, while staying on the beat, etc. etc. So, at some point this fall, I thought to myself that there must be a better way to learn enough sequences of moves not to bore a good follower to tears. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in dancing, music, my software, personal, tech | 1 Comment »
Tags:

Wow, another post!

January 6, 2008

So, I’ve been thinking about this blog since New Year’s – Nicola told me that I need to write down my travel horror stories for everyone to read…  However, the story is so long that I’ve been putting it off (and I’m going to continue to put it off for a while more; right now it’s way too late).

Now that I’m here, though, I noticed that I really haven’t written in an incredibly long time; I thought I wrote more than that.  Anyway, I guess history proves that I can’t promise anything on here – so, no promises of posts, etc.  You get what you get.

I have had a few thoughts of things I could write about, though, so I think I’ll write another short post tonight before I go to sleep (I hate mixing topics, so I’m not going to put it in this one).

Posted in personal | Leave a Comment »