Summer

I realize that this page has not been updated in months. But I finally have enough free time to waste on it.

The school year ended Friday, May 2, my tutoring responsibilities ceased Tuesday, May 6, and I promptly flew to Europe (May 6-17) for a short trip preceding my summer job (which began on Monday, May 19). <--- Always with the precise timeline!

For the summer, I'm working at the Draper Laboratory (and simultaneously fulfilling a Master's degree requirement) in Cambridge -- a gig running through August 29. I'm principally writing about the lab's work in bioengineering/on behalf of NASA.

The only break in my summer schedule: a trip to San Diego (June 16-22) for the annual Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) meeting. This will be my third straight year attending BIO (2006 in Chicago, 2007 in Boston). And unlike the last two events, I have no conference planning tasks to attend to. I'll just be reporting on the proceedings for my buddy Ron May in Chicago.

Since Colin Powell is one of the BIO keynote speakers, I plan on submitting a question for him. I'll ask him about Iraq's vaunted UAV fleet & its offensive capabilities -- "Mr. Powell, which Toys 'R Us was responsible for selling remote control airplanes to Saddam? What about his Super Soaker water gun capabilities -- did they keep you up late at night? Rumor has it that these guns can shoot water beyond 30 feet -- how did weapons inspectors overlook this stockpile?"

I believe Ah-nold will also be at BIO. ** Insert "It's not a tumah!" joke here. Or make a joke about "Predator"/"Jingle All The Way"/"Terminator 2" **

It's a fairly busy week here. I met with my fellow graduate students on Monday night (to discuss our fall web magazine), went to a Red Sox game on Tuesday night, I'm going to the Celtics-Lakers game (my first NBA Finals game) on Thursday, and I leave for NYC on Friday. I'll be catching up with folks back home & will also attend a US-Argentina soccer match on Sunday night w/a fun group. Mike & his sister are going, my friend Matt Zimmerman (who's working for an ABC News investigative unit this summer), even my brother (notoriously reclusive).

I'm still shedding a bad cough, which has stuck with me since Europe. Reg. Europe: I went to Paris (May 7, 8, 9), Rome (May 10, 11), Perugia (May 12), Florence (May 13, 14), and Venice (May 15, 16) ... and flew out of Paris on the 17th, nearly missing my flight home. de Gaulle = the worst airport I've ever been in. Photos from Europe will soon be posted here.

There have been some exciting additions to the camera family (post-Europe unfortunately). I finally got a 70-300 mm lens for my Nikon D40X (the dSLR) -- however, it only operates in manual mode & moving objects tend to blur rather easily. The learning curve has been steeper than I anticipated.

The next addition -- arriving in 7 to 10 days -- will be a new point and shoot unit ... the Olympus SP-570. It is a 10.7 megapixel camera with a jaw dropping 20x optical zoom. For comparison's sake, my existing point and shoot (a Kodak EasyShare, the C875) has a 5x optical zoom -- and even that is not too shabby.

I am anticipating some minor issues with the Olympus camera. For one, it's using an XD card ... and I've been living in an SD world. I'll have to go out and buy XDs. The camera does not have a rechargeable battery (like my Nikon D40X), so I'll have to buy rechargeable AAs for it and a new charger. I've already blown through two Energizer rechargeable units ... the smell of smoke is always an obvious sign that your recharger is toast.