Life in Chicago

Thought I would write an entry for my first week in Chicago.

Arrived on Sunday, after a 5 hour delay at JFK due to stormy weather in Chicago – ominous, eh? Not all was lost however, as I got mints in a NES controller tin case, courtesy of Nintendo at JetBlue’s terminal 5.

So far I’ve been deep into work in Chicago, learning about investment trading and such. My online calculus course started too, but unfortunately haven’t been able to dedicate too much time to it. Even more unfortunate is the fact that the professor expects “24-26 hours” of work from students per week. That’s quite a few hours.

Living with my brother without having to pay rent is pretty sweet though. In return I clean =). Anyway, I’m gonna stop boring you and show some sweet pics:

Chicago

At least her credit card is safe.

http://notalwaysright.com/a-mothers-love-is-priceless-for-everything-else-theres-credit-cards/11640

(RetailDayton, OH, USA)

(A little girl walks up to me and my coworker. She is crying.)

Me: “Oh, honey. What’s wrong?”

Girl: “I can’t find my mom.”

Me: “Well, I can page over the speaker for her. What’s her name?”

(She gives me the name. My coworker gets a description of her mother as I page. When it’s a lost child, all we say is ‘We have something of yours’ for safety reasons. This is to make sure the child does go with their actual parent.)

Girl: “I think she left.”

Coworker: “No, she didn’t. She’s probably looking for you.”

Girl: “She said she was going to leave me if I didn’t keep up.”

Me: “She didn’t mean it. Don’t worry, she’ll be here.”

(We get the girl to talk about her school and dog to keep her mind off how scared she is. It is the longest we have waited for a parent to come. Her mother finally gets there, and stops as soon as she sees her daughter.)

Mother: “Oh, you! I thought I lost my credit card. Well, come on already! You’ve slowed me down enough.”

(The girl quietly walks over to her mother.)

Mother, to me: “Next time, just say it’s my daughter so I know not to rush!”

 

Tiger Mom Lecture at Stuyvesant

I don’t know why I was surprised when I saw it: Amy Chua (Tiger Mom) will be giving a lecture at my old high school. I have a feeling there wont be too much support from the students despite the fact that many of them had the same kind of parenting she encourages. However I may be mistaken. berryjam.ru

Unfortunately tickets are $45 so I definitely wont find out.

http://www.shsaa.org/index.php?option=com_eventlist&func=details&did=165

Stuy ambitions

From this month’s Stuyvesant High School Alumni newsletter:

Among the additional allocation requests we would like to have the resources to fill this spring are:

  • Physics: Purchase equipment for ion/plasma thruster

I hope they’re making spaceships. Also, I regret never making a spaceship at Stuy.

Sample SMTP interaction

this is what happens every time you send an email, between the receiving server and the transmitting client – it’s kinda cute

the contents of the email are after server says “354 Enter mail…”

Server: 220 hamburger.edu
Client: HELO crepes.fr
S: 250 Hello crepes.fr, pleased to meet you
C: MAIL FROM:
S: 250 alice@crepes.fr… Sender ok
C: RCPT TO:
S: 250 bob@hamburger.edu … Recipient ok
C: DATA
S: 354 Enter mail, end with “.” on a line by itself
C: Do you like ketchup?
C: How about pickles?
C: .
S: 250 Message accepted for delivery
C: QUIT
S: 221 hamburger.edu closing connection