MarcFriedenberg.com

Grammatically speaking, the most infuriating show title on television is CNN’s “Live From.”

I’ve been in a really good mood lately. Everything at school is going well, and I’ve been having a blast with the roommates and my friends in IST. Thursday-Sunday this week will feature, at minimum, a concert, poker, a basketball game, skiing, and at least a few hours of Mario Superstar Baseball.

I love this place.

• I have EZPass now. One day this loss of liberty will haunt me.
• I need to update the 404 for my pages.
• Getting only a few hours of sleep last night was a great way to knock me on my ass. I slept way too much last week.
• I love Penn State. Being at another school is going to be very, very weird.
• I can’t believe I don’t have a copy of FibroXact, the program I wrote in summer 2003. Since the article came out, a few doctors around the world have asked for it, and I can’t give it to them.
• Thesis: so far, so good.
• I really like GMail’s new integrated chat feature. I’ve never seen anything like the “pop out/pop in” interface they have on a Web page, and searching email and chat together makes perfect sense. And it’s faster than Spotlight.
• I’ve read a number of good books lately, Dave Barry’s Money Secrets and The Search (John Battelle) chief among them.
• I harbor an intense dislike for both Motorola and Verizon Wireless. UPDATE: After reading the former’s response to my customer feedback, I dislike them even more.
• I wanted to eat the wafer, but they wouldn’t let me.

From the AP:

President Bush’s budget would cut money for education, the second straight time has he has sought less school spending after a first term of steady increases.

The Education Department would get $54.4 billion for discretionary spending in the fiscal year starting Oct. 1. That would amount to a cut of $3.7 billion, or 6.4 percent, from this year.

When I first read this, I immediately thought of the hypocrisy of announcing major new education initiatives during the State of the Union and cutting education funding six days later. Then I realized that money probably isn’t the answer. I have neither the time nor the expertise in the art and science of education to really back this up in any empirical way, but it seems to me that schools with all the greatest technology and facilities aren’t necessarily any better than those without them. Certainly some minimal budgetary foundation is needed so that qualified teachers are attracted to historically sub-par schools. Before I start to sound like a Communist, I’ll sign off by saying that money isn’t the answer. Or drugs, for that matter. Don’t do drugs.

“Alosio et al. (2005) point out the difficulty in integrating the vast amount of geospatial data available today to users in public and private organizations.”

More to come…

Spring 06 has been good times. The RAship is fun, educational, and lucrative. I’m working on my literature review for my thesis, and the outline of the whole thing is crystallizing. The few classes that I have are pretty good, and most importantly aren’t distracting me too much. Skiing has been great; I like feeling inept; it is a refreshing contrast to my typical detached arrogance. I’ll be walking for graduation this semester, but I won’t technically receive my diploma until the summer. Curse you, ridiculous thesis deadlines. Summer should be great, too. Looks like it’ll be an informal research season, with a few job opportunities both in State College and back home. I want to relax as much as possible before embarking on the next three year endeavour.

I’m leaving later today to visit Becky at DeSales. Friday is our anniversary and my birthday, so we wanted to be together for that. The premiere athletic event on Sunday is, of course, the 10K race in Allentown I’ll be running with my dad. I’ve been training fairly regularly for that so I’m not too worried about the distance or the conditions.

I spent a few hours this week on Facebook specifying how I know everybody who is on my Friends list. It was surprisingly difficult to remember exactly how I know certain people; I spent a lot of time figuring out who I met in middle school and who in high school. Does that mean I’m getting old?