2008-10-06T15:45:57Z Eric M Hielscher Copyright 2008, Eric M Hielscher SPHPBLOG http://www.ehielscher.org/blog/index.php?entry=entry081002-130859 2008-10-02T00:00:00Z 2008-10-02T00:00:00Z
Friday afternoon (the 19th) I met Lisa at Grand Central at around 3:15. She'd told me that I'd get bonus points - for what I'm not sure - if I got her an americano from Joe's, so I did after reading some signs to find where it was. This made me almost late for our train. There were only two people in front of me in line, but then the guy in front of me ordered 6 different types of espresso drinks so it took way longer than planned. In any case, we caught the train to her place and then packed up and headed out in her car toward All Tomorrow's Parties, the post-rock festival near the Catskills that Pitchfork said had an über unfuckingbelievable line-up and which Arthur said was "like Woodstock for people with good taste in music." (They're both right, mind.) The main ones about which I was excited were Tortoise, Shellac, and Om, but I also was keen on catching The Meat Puppets, Growing, and Wooden Shjips alongside things like Harmonia. Thurston Moore and My Bloody Valentine are not my cup of tea, though they are many other hipsters'. We missed all of the Meat Puppets set which got over at 6:45, but that wasn't so bad. We thus had a veggie burger each and some sweet potato fries at the outdoor concessions stands, noting 1. that we should really bring our own food the next day and 2. the rule about not bringing in your own booze seemed not really to be enforced at all. The venue was this old hotel/resort which looked like it was frozen in time in the 70s with old carpet, dust everywhere, metal sheets patching holes in the walls, old Torahs in Hebrew on the tables, etc. Very odd.

Tortoise came on at 7:30 I think, and that was amazing. We got right up to the front against the stage on the right (in front of the guitarist of course) and they played Millions Now Living Will Never Die straight through as well as a few others afterward. Just so damn good. After that we went over to the other stage where we found some amusing live comedians, one of whom knocked the way American girls talk (like ouhhh moiyyyy gawwwddd) which is good for a laugh. After a few songs of Thurston Moore later we decided to call it an early night as we were driving back and forth from her place which was something like 90 minutes away.

Saturday the 20th we got up a bit late and then drove to this frisbee golf course which was a little more than halfway toward the festival. The course was great - very well kept, very woody, and 2 tees and 2 baskets per hole to amplify replayability. We but the round short to try and make it to Growing, but again were too late (oh well). That day we saw Om, Wooden Shjips, some of Harmonia, got free ice cream while sitting outside by the big pond, kept making runs back and forth to the car for beers and food, saw Polvo and some more bands I can't remember now, etc. At one point I was sitting on the floor sipping a gin and tonic waiting for Lisa to get back from the bathroom during Les Savy Fav and the singer came out into the audience and sat down right next to me while staring at me and singing. I didn't even realize this at first until I saw everyone around me staring at me. It should have been quite clear to him that I wasn't interested in the music (teh suck), but I guess that's why he picked me. I came him a demon horn symbol and he left.

I actually got pretty toasted on the 4 9.5% alcohol beers I'd brought and then started drinking gin and tonics (their beer selection was awful). At one point I'd run out of cash except for $4 (or so I thought) and ordered a gin and tonic before checking this. I then mid-pour was like "oh wait, stop, I don't have enough" and the woman was all "well how much do you have" and I said "$4" (the drinks were $7, which strangely doesn't feel like I'm getting ripped off since that's what drinks cost in New York anyway) and she said she'd give it to me for that since she'd already poured it. I subsequently found more cash, and paid in full, and then she made fun of me for throwing money away. I feel like it was lose-lose - either I look like a chump for not having enough $, or for giving away $, but I guess she's right that in that situation not giving away the $ is the better deal. Anyway, I had three of those I think, with the last one in hand when Shellac started. We'd found our way up to the stage early only to realize that the guitarist (Steve Albini) would be on the other side, so we quickly moved. I was asked by the woman between me and the stage whether I'd like her to hold my drink for me, and said no, I'm drinking it (wtf?). The next day I was informed by Lisa that I may have been spilling and/or spitting on her, hence the question. Shellac came on and it was really awesome - second only to Tortoise for the weekend. I got quite into it, jumping and yelling, and at one point they stopped the music for a bit and the bassist announced he was taking questions from the audience. I decided the best question to ask was "why does God suck?" and after taking the question from me he promptly said "next question". Later in the set he took more questions, and I raised my hand and tried to say "you didn't answer my question, why does God suck?" but it came out more like "mwaahh gllbkj shdhddhh God suck?" and I even had to repeat myself once. He responded with "you're a fucking idiot" and moved on. Man, that was awesome - the bassist of Shellac called me a fucking idiot! I also got to fulfill Lisa's wish of seeing me intoxicated so it was all around good times.

The next day I woke up rather sick but was able to go back to sleep until 3 and thus only had a medium headache to deal with. We decided to skip Sunday since the only band I really wanted to see was Mogwai and instead we kept it lazy. The festival was so much fun, and the crowd was great and very relaxed. I even got multiple positive comments about my Don Cab shirt, with one guy saying he'd seen Ian Williams at the festival and had asked him about Don Cab, to which he only grumbled. If only I knew what Ian Williams looked like.

I can't really remember having done anything too cool the rest of the week. Just working on school and hanging out in the evenings. On Wednesday evening Lisa and I went over to Lewis and Brandy's for a couple hours and sipped wine (Lisa's hooked on gewürztraminer these days - I even got to ask the guy at the wine store "where do you keep your gewürztraminer in my best German accent). It was a decent time, and we had a rant from me which was all pro-logical empricism which was fun for me at least. Friday we had another party which was supposed to be on the roof like the last one, but the weather wasn't so great. It had been supposed to thunderstorm, but instead was just foggy which was quite nice relatively, but it also meant that not many people came which sort of sucked. A few couchsurfers came, some of Can's friends came, etc., and for some reason when I went downstairs to go the bathroom and man the door buzzer the whole party moved downstairs as well so our flat got pretty dirty. We kicked everyone out at like 3am when Arthur and I got bored. Can got extremely drunk and passed out in his clothes on his bed after puking in the bathroom sink so we took a video of him after I'd unzipped his pants. Lisa left to go to a cafe while I slept in until 3, and then we cleaned up the apartment. I'm thinking of spending 4+ weeks in Europe (and maybe Israel) over my winter break, and Lisa's an obsessive travel planner so we spent some time looking at flights. We then went for coffee at 9th Street Espresso in the LES, stopped at this great bookstore off Tompkins Sq Park that I've been meaning to go into for a while and where I got A.J. Ayer's Probability and Evidence (Ayer is my hero), and then we had dinner at The Organic Grille. Next was the train up to her place where we watched Letters From Iwo Jima which was ok. Sunday we read some at Coffee Labs, shot some frisbee in Rockefeller St. Park, and bought a lot of groceries at Whole Foods en route to my house.

Yesterday when I was biking over the bridge home I heard something fall, but wasn't sure what it was and found nothing missing from my backpack so I just kept going. Only the next morning did I realize it had been a piece of my bike lock, which had fallen off before as you, loyal reader, may remember and thus I felt somewhat silly for not realizing what it was. The big problem was that I was on my way to French class and couldn't really stop at my office to drop off my bike as I was tight for time. I thus swung by a hardware store about which I knew off Lafayette and bought a padlock to use with the chain I still had. I left the bike outside and nervously checked on it while the cashier rung me up, and he quipped that I could have just brought the bike inside had I wanted. That would've been smart. In any case, I got to class with 5 mins to spare. I got my first French exam back today with a 99%. I hope to travel this summer in France or maybe Switzerland (hopefully more on that later) so I can use it.]]> http://www.ehielscher.org/blog/index.php?entry=entry080930-163320 2008-09-30T00:00:00Z 2008-09-30T00:00:00Z
On Saturday of last week I went over to Lewis's for lunch. It was me, him, Brandy, Marie (their French roommate), and an Italian couchsurfer. The lunch was good and social. Afterward it started to rain pretty hard as tropical storm Hanna came through, so we climbed up a rather rickety rusty ladder up the fire escape onto the roof to get drenched by the warm rain (topless of course) and survey the city. Good times. After this Arthur met me at Main Drag where I tried a bunch of pedals and amps. I fell in love with the Fender Super Reverb they have there, though I'm told by basically everyone that the blackfaces are better than the silverfaces (the one there is a '71 or so) but I still think it sounded amazing. The Pro Reverb also sounded pretty good, and was half the price. Oh, and the Les Paul Standard I played on was also fantastic. Now I want those things, but I gotta save up money as I think I'm going to finally finish my master's thesis this semester and so I need cash to fly to Europe over the break. I want to spend like 4 weeks there, and I'm contemplating a flight to Israel, or maybe Sweden, or maybe just a train ride down to a francophone region. We'll see. It took me a while to get my pedalboard rewired, including an embarrassing trip back to Main Drag when I thought the Holy Grail+ I bought wasn't working (it was just a faulty cable elsewhere on the board), but it's done now including all the pedals being velcroed down. I'm not sure about the Digitech Whammy I have - may end up selling that for a dedicated harmonizer, but we'll see. My rig sounds great. Now I just need another amp and guitar...

I'm still loving my French class. It meets every weekday for 75 minutes, and I just wrote a 75 word essay.

I'm going to be changing research advisors, but to whom I don't know yet. I'm rather intrigued by the scientific computing topics in my class, and I'm also rather intrigued about the potential for moving into Warren Weaver Hall (so much nicer than Broadway it's crazy), but gotta see what works out.

This past weekend was sort of action-packed. I called up Sal on Friday night after having spent the day in my office and we met up at the Bedford stop. He's parking his van a few blocks from there, and we thought it would be cool to go jam a bit in his practice room. On the way we ran into this old Polish immigrant guy Bob whom Sal knows from meeting him on the street. Sal told Bob last week about how Sal's bike got stolen in the night, so Bob took him back behind his house where he had like 5 old bikes and sold Sal one cheap and now they're buds. Anyway, Bob was rather intoxicated and wanted to party with us, so we got a six pack and an Odoul's (so Sal could pretend to drink) and opened up the garage in the building which houses the practice rooms and hung out, watching passersby. I got this strange feeling which reminded me of my parents drinking beers in the garage when I was a kid and felt old, even though I was 30 years younger than Bob and 10 younger than Sal. Bob was a riot, talking at me in Polish and Russian and asking whether "you capiche?" afterward, and I egged him on a bit by showing the 10 or so words in each language I know which would send him off ranting in the language again. He also kept asking whether we were German and referring to WWII. After a while, we decided to check out the practice room, and Sal hopped on the drums, I got on the piano (playing some major fifths), and we fired up a microphone/PA for Bob to sing some traditional songs in Polish to a polka beat. It was pretty ridiculous but also really interesting and unique. Bob got a bit choked up toward the end about his family problems which was pretty sad, but hanging out with him was great. He vowed to come back with his wife and daughter so we could all sing together... After we went outside again Bob peed on the back of Sal's van and then started yelling at this other Polish guy across the street and when he went walking toward him it seemed like they were gonna get in a big fight but instead they hugged. The other guy asked who Bob's communist friends were and then they were off. Sal and I walked to my place and then parted ways.

Somehow I slept for 12 hours, split between my bed and the couch in the loft since my flimsy curtain rod had broken and the sun was overbearing. I don't know how that happened but I didn't especially like it. I left the house at around 8 to meet up with Arthur as it was his birthday. We were going to have dinner at Curly's, a vegetarian diner, but it was too packed and we were short for time to catch our movie at 9:30 (Burn After Reading at Union Sq). Thus we decided to order an entire enormous pizza and eat it over at 15th and 2nd in a park. Sal met up with us there bearing figs and then we caught a cab over to the theatre as we were late. When we got there there was this enormous pile of people all chaotically trying to get tickets at these machines which were turning off every 30 seconds. It was a madhouse and we were already late - I foolishly had thought that buying tickets online would save me time, but I still had to pick them up at the machines. Eventually something strange happened where we were given 3 tickets to the 10:30 showing instead by the machine, the security guard caught up with us with the real tickets we were supposed to have, and we all decided that 10:30 was a better idea. Thus we took the new tix over to Grey Dog's where I had a beer and then we walked back, but I guess we didn't come back soon enough as the theatre, which is huge, was totally full, and the only seats in the place were in the front row. Those seats are something that I just don't understand, as you really are looking straight up. It's crazy that they can really charge people for that. Anyway, I got a huge buttery popcorn (somehow you're allowed to put on your own butter at theatres in New York, which is ok with me) and found a position where I could pretty much see what was going on. The move was great and I laughed a lot, though I had to turn away during the scene with the axe. We then went back to Brooklyn and had a drink at the Levee, which I rather didn't like but whatever.

Sunday I spent the day with Tim at NYU working on our scientific computing homework. Then Lisa got back from Europe so she came over and we hung out all evening.

Gotta do some French now...]]> http://www.ehielscher.org/blog/index.php?entry=entry080915-184319 2008-09-15T00:00:00Z 2008-09-15T00:00:00Z
I also feel the need to let off some steam after watching this. Holy crap.

I honestly just can't understand how religion is still around. It's just so absurd. You are born into a Christian country, and bam, you're a Christian. Born into a Hindu country, and bam, you're Hindu. Somehow, the culture into which you're born dictates the everlasting truth of the universe? Organized religion should be seen for what it is: people who are too scared to deal with the scary world and who thus bond together so that they have a safety blanket that can give them answers to questions that make no sense to even ask since they're unanswerable. The main point I want to make here is that allegiance to any particular religion is wholly irrational, and the fact that most people who live in a country where a given religion X is the predominant one adopt religion X as their own only makes it all the more obvious that this is the case. The best argument I ever heard for adopting a particular religion was Josiah's, who said that everyone was bullshitting you, even scientists as they doctored their results in the pursuit of publications and grant money, and he was just so tired of it he wanted someone to tell him what to do and thus made an arbitrary choice and stuck with it. I have no idea, as is usual, whether he meant that or whether it was just one of his witty remarks, but it remains the best argument I have yet heard.

A big part of that safety blanket seems to be differentiating oneself from other groups, a continuation of the whole "my dad could beat up your dad" or "we don't like people from across that ther river cuz they're bad" brand of petty juvenile tribalism that is still so pervasive. It ranges from sports team allegiances to hating people from other countries, people who speak other languages, people with different colors of skin, people with different levels of education, people with different levels of wealth. People seem to have this need to make groups and differentiate themselves from other groups, with a key aspect of this being fear and intolerance of the groups that are different from their own. Fear of the unknown or the different is a flaw. Embracing the unknown is the only way to widen your horizons, to expand your knowledge, to understand more of this beautiful thing that is life. It makes me sad to see people so afraid, as I wonder why they need to be.

Hatred and fear of that which we don't understand is a disease, a disease that is the most egregious blemish of the modern human condition. We have the capability to be rational, reasoned creatures with arguments for why we hold positions. We have the capability to discuss our differences and respect our differences and to resolve conflicts through reasoned debates. It is those who feel threatened by the fact that they are incapable of crafting arguments for their positions that resort to bullying and violence in order to solve their problems. Militarism is an antiquated and barbaric example of this as taken to the extreme and its use as a foreign policy mechanism is absolutely absurd in the 21st century. The death penalty is another example of something which is just so ridiculous and archaic that I feel embarrassed to introduce myself as a citizen of a country where it is still practiced. The single best thing that humans could do in order to advance themselves and engender a peaceful and enlightened and fruitful society would be to do away with the tolerance of heated irrational responses to conflicts and replace them with reasoned, calm, and respectful debates. This would involve having a lack of respect for those who do not do this.

A common response to the WTC attack was "we'd better bomb them before they come back" - something you still hear people say with a straight face. The question which immediately came to my mind was "why would a group of people want to do this?" Revenge is a primitive instinct, something to be done away with. Constructive change is something which has no place for revenge. The answer to my question is complex, and it includes flaws in other groups along the lines I outlined above, but it also includes genuine grievances with how the Global North treats the Global South. A real, long-term solution to the problems which made such an attack attractive must consider these issues and not just be some maverick saying "a few thousand bombs'll lern 'em" - because it will only lern 'em to be more angry, and very rightfully so.

Does anyone who advocates overturning Roe v. Wade really think that will do anything other than make abortion, which is something people from all groups of American society clearly want as they all get them, something which is only accessible to the rich who can afford to go to Canada or Europe to have one done? Is making an ideological statement about a few hundred fetal cells worth the grief that it will cause countless poor women who will have them done illegally in very questionable conditions? Where does this conviction that life begins at this stage come from (other than the obvious lips of your pastor, whose every word you're supposed to believe)?

The policies of the Republicans, as well as the Democrats, who really aren't all that different on key things like economic and foreign policy, are clearly meant to enrich a small group in the short term at the expense of the greater population and at the expense of future generations. I find it fascinating that the social group who is so staunchly against things like environmental protection and for things like military adventures are the ones who are so staunchly for things like anti-abortion, the family, the sanctity of life. Is there no contradiction here, or is the sanctity of life only meant to apply to the next 10 or so years? What about your grandchildren? What about those we're killing in Iraq?

Sigh.]]> http://www.ehielscher.org/blog/index.php?entry=entry080905-215835 2008-09-05T00:00:00Z 2008-09-05T00:00:00Z
I had a few people over the other night including Lewis, Brandy, their Estonian couchsurfer, and Sal, as well as Arthur and Can, for a viewing of Welcome to the Dollhouse (the only Solodz I'd not yet seen) on the projector. It was good fun, we drank the nice bottle of wine that Matt had left me at the party, and I got to use the new loft.

Friday night Lisa came over and we attempted to watch a rented video (a Bunuel) but were foiled by region codes (which are absurd). TPB served as a surrogate. Saturday we went to breakfast on Bedford Ave, then to Central Park, then the Met (where I saw some awesome Bosch-like paintings), and then up to her place to pick up the car en route to frisbee golfing in Westchester. I've now got her hooked on trying to learn. Apparently she gets addicted to new things rather easily. I have to remind myself not to take advantage of this. After that we went over to a town called Pleasantville and had a very good Indian dinner at the only outdoor table. The waiter asked whether how old we were and seemed astonished that we were in fact 27, and then when I went to the bathroom I overheard him discussing this fact with another worker and he saw me and was embarrassed to be caught talking about me. We then went to this art cinema and saw Frozen River which was ok. I love the buttery popcorn about movie theaters more than the movies usually anyway.

This weekend Can built himself a loft in his room on which to store his clothes and books. Let's just say that I wouldn't want to put my bed up there. I'm also a little sad at how much the walls we built got damaged in the process, but it's his room I guess.

My projector rocks.

Today was the first day of class. Both of my classes met: Intensive Elementary French and High Performance Scientific Computing. I'm pretty pumped about learning another language.

Must fix bike.]]> http://www.ehielscher.org/blog/index.php?entry=entry080903-000715 2008-09-03T00:00:00Z 2008-09-03T00:00:00Z http://www.ehielscher.org/blog/index.php?entry=entry080824-231544 2008-08-24T00:00:00Z 2008-08-24T00:00:00Z comic for me at Think.]]> http://www.ehielscher.org/blog/index.php?entry=entry080824-211151 2008-08-24T00:00:00Z 2008-08-24T00:00:00Z
Wednesday I spent the day working while Neal was out in the city doing some geocaching and other things. Around 9 or so his friend Tal came over and we all played a game of Settlers together which was very enjoyable, especially since I won a nailbiter in the end. :) Tal even loves math and knows of bands like Red Sparowes which is cool. In any event, we also spent some time on the roof and they engaged in some Americorps talk to which I couldn't contribute. Neal spent Tuesday night in Sal's bed since Sal has been sleeping in his van but spent Wednesday night in the loft which was fun since I think of the loft as a guest room.

Thursday I ended up sharing a trip to Home Depot with Sal since he wanted to go pick up some wood so as to build a shelf for his CDs and I wanted some wood to extend the loft so as to facilitate better movie watching with the projector. I ended up not being able to resist building right away and dove right in to building it out, waking up Arthur with circular saw noise. We cranked most of it out that night, with the minor frustration being that the 3" drywall screws I'd bought didn't seem to want to go all the way into the wooden beams without pilot holes even though they were supposed to be self-drilling. Arthur stripped a few screws since he thought it ridiculous to drill pilot holes. At around 11 our neighbor came by and asked whether we'd be wrapping it up soon as the noise was coming right through to his apartment, and while he's right that it was rude to be working so late on a weeknight, he regularly blasts techno music really loudly in his apartment as late as 3am and it comes right through into our apartment. I thought about pointing this out next time he does that but Arthur said he'd rather not start a feud. At this point Arthur and I were rather hungry and not in a mood to cook (or eat in the sawdust-filled apartment) so we headed down to Foodswings, this vegan fast food place on Grand St. I ordered a veggie burger and the girl ringing me up, in full naughty nurse garb, proceeded to put in $20,000 instead of $20 as what I'd paid with, so the change came up as $19K and then some. She then proceeded to randomly type in some large dollar amount over and over again and hit the minus key so as to bring the total down to something more manageable instead of just canceling the transaction. This went on for around 2 minutes before she said she'd just bring me my change when my food came up. I then got $9.52 back in change after paying $20 for a meal that rang up as $9.50... seemed rather odd, but I figured that complaining about $1.28 would end up leading to a rather lengthy exchange which wouldn't be worth it so I considered it a tip. Anyway, we had a decent time there and then went back home and I went to bed.

Friday morning Arthur got up to me screwing in the wood screws and drilling pilot holes. He ended up using our power sander to chop off the screw heads that were sticking out of the plywood and sparks went everywhere which was cool. He then declared that his having been using a power tool before drinking any coffee for the day was a very dangerous move to have made, something with which I'm sympathetic, so he ran off to Oslo. When he came back, he declared that he really needed to take a dump, so he ran into the bathroom. I realized when I heard some yelling from there that he'd forgotten that we were out of toilet paper, something we'd both noted a few days before but as of yet hadn't done anything about. I thus had to bring him some napkins, and he thanked me for the save. Friday evening I had dinner with Lisa at Sacred Chow and was able to get the happy hour special even though I'd missed it by 1 minute. Then we went over to this fashionable bar in Soho for a going away gathering for one of her Aussie friends. The bar was definitely not my style, and the one beer I wanted to try was out, but it was still an ok time. The glass on the stairway seemed like it was expressly designed so that guys sitting in the basement bar area could look up girls' skirts as they were coming down the stairs, which is something I pointed out to Lisa as we sat there. We then took the train up to hers for the night.

Saturday I woke up sniffling and sneezing and had a huge headache all day. It didn't really subside until I went to sleep, but I battled through it and tried to work in my office as much as I could after dropping Lisa off in the Bronx in the morning so she could volunteer. That night was the Don Caballero show at the Knitting Factory. I'd been looking forward to it for a while and it didn't disappoint. Lisa and I had dinner streetside at some Italian restaurant in Soho en route from walking down from my office. As much as being fancy isn't the regular way I like to do things, sometimes having a nice gnocchi meal and a glass of wine at a place like that is cool. We ended up getting really good seats at the bar for the two opening acts, both of which were very missable, and she felt obligated to drink something so I got her a lemonade and Ketel One which she found pretty ok even though she doesn't drink. The band has dropped down to a three piece, with a guitarist, a baritone guitarist, and of course Damon Che. They played a couple old ones, including Don Caballero 3 which was amazing to see live, but mostly new stuff which I actually like quite a bit. Arthur came too and we all took the subway back together to my place before christening the projector with a TPB episode. I still have yet to receive my ceiling mount kit, but we can get by pretty well without it.

Today I'm in the office again, as tends to be the case on Sundays for some reason. Got lots of deadlines coming up.]]> http://www.ehielscher.org/blog/index.php?entry=entry080824-195034 2008-08-24T00:00:00Z 2008-08-24T00:00:00Z
Thursday I helped Lewis move into his new place. He's now living very near where he and I tried to get a place last year but were denied the lease, right near the Nassau G stop. The apartment is amazing - it's technically a railroad, but he has the entire third floor which is the top floor as well and it's vary spacious and sunny and could easily fit four people comfortably, all while being very cheap. I'm sure his couchsurfers will be rather pleased with their setup.

Friday night Lisa and I went to see King Crimson at the Nokia Theatre on Times Square. I absolutely despise Times Square with every inch of my being, and whenever I get out of the subway there I instantly cringe at all of the wide eyed people blocking my way and the ugly lights and the lame stores... but that pales in comparison to how much Lisa hates Times Square what with her intense fear of crowds. Anyway, the venue was small and the seats were close and no one was allowed to stand and the sound quality was amazing and I was able to order gin and tonics directly to my seat during the show. Not bad at all. They were set up as a five piece with two drum sets and a single bass stick, and while they played a bit too much of their cheesy 90s early Belew stuff for my taste, they also played lots of cool stuff including Level Five which is likely my favorite Crimson song. For the price the show was very short - only 90 minutes - but oh well. I capped the evening by drinking a beer on the train to Westchester which was very amusing as it seems like such a European thing to be able to do.

Saturday morning Lisa and I went to this park that's apparently hard to find and thus not very crowded. We wandered around in the woods on a trail that was very near the Hudson and provided train sounds and river views from a bench, and I got excited about monarch butterflies. Then we stopped at Kmart briefly and Bed Bath and Beyond for quite a while so that I could get curtains for my windows since in the morning the east-facing windows let in so much sun that I wake up feeling like I'm in an oven. It was ridiculous - I very infrequently go to such suburban big-box stores, and they really are absurd. There was even a separate escalator for your shopping cart to reach the second level of the store! The funniest part was that Lisa hated it even more than I did, as I was kind of making a joke out of it by sagging my shorts down past my butt and tucking my shirt into my underwear. She got in on the action by poking me in the butt with the curtain rod though.

From there we went to the free concert in Central Park where Black Dice and Battles were playing. In the end it was me, Ian, Molly, two of Ian's friends, Lisa, Arthur, and me. Black Dice was kind of boring actually, but Battles was simply amazing. Three guitarists, two of whom were tapping guitar while also playing keyboard with their other hand, lots of looping and effects, Ian Williams, and a Digitech Whammy being used on someone's voice. Pretty damn impressive, and it was free. Saturday night was spent watching TPB on the projector screen. I took off the railings on the loft in the living room and made a ladder out of some of the wood and the screws and I mounted the 8.5 foot wide widescreen projection screen on the far wall. The plan is to build out the loft to the bedroom wall we built so that we can fit a couch between the concrete beams facing the screen. Once that's done I can watch 8 foot Bubbles which will be rather cool.

Today is a work day.]]> http://www.ehielscher.org/blog/index.php?entry=entry080817-153804 2008-08-17T00:00:00Z 2008-08-17T00:00:00Z
I've mostly been working on my research project, and it's coming along. Deadlines loom and it's crunch time. I may skip the Melvins show tomorrow in fact.

Going to a Bruce Hornsby concert tonight, and in case you were wondering, no, my musical tastes haven't changed.

I got my Dell 2400MP projector in the mail yesterday but haven't had a chance to really play with it yet. Not sure where I'm gonna set it up, but it's sure to pimp out the apartment wherever it goes.]]> http://www.ehielscher.org/blog/index.php?entry=entry080812-181739 2008-08-12T00:00:00Z 2008-08-12T00:00:00Z
Last Thursday I got up at 6:30am (not usual for me at all and rather brutal) in order to leave at 7:15 to head toward Penn Station en route to Princeton. Lisa found it odd to be commuting to work with me, though I'm guessing not in a bad way. With a stop for coffee at Oslo it took around 50 minutes to get to Penn so I had plenty of time to make the 8:12 train toward Princeton. I met with Marco, a summer intern, and Marc, a prof, who're working on the same project I am. We teleconferenced with a postdoc in France which was fun, and I spent the day hammering out ideas on the whiteboard. It was very fruitful, and the campus was very pretty though a little quiet so I'm not sure how I'd feel about living there. The constant stuff to do in New York has spoiled me. The commute was horrible though - 2.5 hours door to door.

Friday we threw our housewarming (for Arthur) and wallbuilding (for all of us) party. We had to quickly unpack Arthur's things (no unpacking had been done by Friday afternoon) and set up the place, and I borrowed Lewis's van to go get a keg of Brooklyn Lager (the only drinkable beer in a keg the distributor had - and no, Stella is not drinkable). The place with the kegs was only a few blocks from Lewis's current place, which is only a ten-minute walk from mine, so that was cool. It's just too bad they don't have a wider selection. Anyway, we initially had the keg in the apartment as we were thinking we would have two components of the party - one in the apartment so that we could leave the door open and thus allow the people on the roof to come in and out to use the bathroom. However, as tends to happen, fewer people showed up than I thought and they started showing up rather late, so we decided it was better to just move the beer to the roof and take people down to the place in shifts when the facilities were required. It worked out well, and lots of Lisa's colleagues - about whom I'd heard many stories - came as well as a large couchsurfing contingent which was very cool and turned the party into something pretty neat as opposed to just ok. I personally ended up staying awake until 5am when I decided it was time to bring the keg back down and pass out. Sal's bean dip was a hit.

When I woke up the next day Sal had already cleaned everything up in the apartment which was amazing. Saturday night I was a little out of it, though not too much, so Lisa and I rented a Finnish movie from the great indie rental place Reel Life on Bedford. I spent Sunday with Lisa working first at Grumpy and then at El Beit, her new favorite cafe. Tuesday night Lisa and I saw 28 Days Later for free outdoors at the McCarren Park Pool, and it was the worst movie I'd seen since that one about the Crocodile in Africa that Chelsey and I saw. Yesterday I went to Princeton again, this time catching a later train thankfully. I need to get new headphones for my mp3 player as my small ones broke during my move. I read a short Burroughs book on my first commute there called Ghost of Chance, but this time I tried to make it through some of the Design Patterns book I got from Google last summer (I didn't make it very far). The areas of NJ between NYC and Princeton look terrible - I'd never want to really even go there. The Dell projector I wanted had the instant rebate reinstated so I buckled down and bought it finally which is fun - should be here in a week. Very busy for the rest of August, and I'm likely targeting a conference with a deadline in early October for a publication. Speaking of that, I still haven't heard about my Coding Theory submission and I submitted it over a year ago.

Still setting up the apartment how we want it, and the rental agent keeps showing people our place in an attempt to rent the other lofts since it looks so nice. It's getting a little annoying - sometimes 3+ groups per day - but it's also flattering to see our hard work appreciated.

Life is good.]]> http://www.ehielscher.org/blog/index.php?entry=entry080807-180433 2008-08-07T00:00:00Z 2008-08-07T00:00:00Z
So Friday afternoon I got on the B61 to Queens to the 7 train to the Q72 to LaGuardia, toting just a backpack with a laptop and a few articles of clothing. I got to the terminal an hour early for my AirTran flight to Milwaukee, which was scheduled to arrive at 6:30pm local time, perfect for Nate to pick me up after his workday at Harley and give me a ride back to Madison as I'd be staying with him for the next three nights. Of course the flight ended up delayed. AirTran has two gates at the end of this tiny cramped terminal, and since many flights throughout the day were delayed (there tends to be a natural cascading effect) the place was jam packed with people. About an hour or so after we were to take off, we finally boarded the plane, after having been told that we were waiting for two more crew members from an arriving flight. I assumed they'd meant flight attendants, and continued to think so when they told us after we were all on board and buckled up that we were short 2 crew members still and would be taking off from New York to land in Philadelphia, a 2 hour drive away, to pick some up rather than having the flight canceled. Sounded absurd, and I quipped to the woman from LA sitting next to me that I'd pour coffee if it meant we could make it straight there. It turned out that we were picking up a pilot in Philly, which makes me wonder just how we got to Philly at all, and once we touched down there all the people on board expecting to continue on to LA after Milwaukee were told to deplane and spend the night in Philly. This included, for example, a girl behind me whom I overheard in tears talking on the phone about how she was supposed to catch a flight on a different airline out of LA that night to Kuala Lumpur which was non-refundable... Anyway, half the plane got off, and we finally pushed back after a while and made it there by 9:20pm, nearly 3 hours late. Nate was quite nice and drove to his in-laws' for dinner before coming back and picking me up. I passed a little time waiting for him by browsing through a bookstore in the airport which ended up blowing my mind. I picked up a used copy of Russell's The Impact Of Science On Society and a used copy of a novel by Burroughs for $14 total. They had books in Dutch, an entire section on Churchill, used copies of Kant - it was crazy. I told the guy at the counter how great it was.

The ride back included a detour through the torn up highways of downtown Milwaukee and a Pizza Hut personal pan. Nate is married now (and expecting!) and shares a whole house on E. Mifflin with his wife Tam. They were very generous hosts and put me up for 3 nights in their guest room with a bed far better than my own and granola, yogurt, and coffee to start the mornings on their screened-in huge porch. Good times. It was great to catch up with Nate and we went first to the Wisco and then the Caribou where I drew him a map of New York City and we did cherry bombs. Asleep by 3, awake by 11, only to discover that the wedding (Molly and Paul's) didn't start until 4:30. Nice. This gave me time to go to an Indian buffet with Nate and Tam and read some Russell on the porch. I then changed into nicer looking clothes (including a pair of Nate's shoes as the ones I'd brought were still covered in drywall dust and caulk) and walked toward the capital. I meandered past Pinkus and James Madison Park and my old house on Franklin with waves of nostalgia, and finally spotted Tom Webb outside the Masonic Lodge and couldn't withhold a big smile and handshake. I made my way in, sat with Drew, Devon, Kim, and Neal. The ceremony was over in under 10 minutes, so we got right to the partying which was cool with me. I had a great time, with lots of the "remember when we did this 10 years ago" kind of story going around. The most fun wedding I've been to yet in fact. Congrats Mo and Paul btw.

After the party closed up at 11, everyone was heading over to the Plaza, which happens to be a bar I hate but whatever. Neal bought us each a Capital since we were the first ones there, and when no one else was forthcoming for what seemed forever we went to leave to head out to this house party being thrown by Nate's drummer Terry. When we were going to leave we say Devon, Kim, and Drew all waiting in line to get in so we convinced them to leave with us too. We dropped off Devon and Kim at Ryan's apartment where they were staying and walked toward Terry's on Sherman Ave, stopping at Nate's so I could change. It took way longer than my advertised 20 minutes, and the party was only 8 or so dudes jamming, so I felt a bit bad for Neal and Drew who'd made the long trek. It was cool to see all those people again: Terry, Wes, Matt, Nicky, Randy Grant. Randy's exactly the same as I remember: arguing about the merit of various films, as he "knows everything about film." Heh.

I woke up past 12 the next day which was cool, and just caught Nate and Tam as they went off to look at bicycles since hers had just been stolen. I thus called Ryan and we went off to Heistand for a round of frolf even though I was a bit worried about my elbow. It held up pretty well, and I won the round +6 to +9. I even got two birdies including one on hole 15 with a 400+ foot drive straight to the pole on what's usually a rather hard hole. Nice. I went back to Nate's and then he, Tam, and I had dinner at Qdoba. After this Nate went off to practice as they have a show coming up at what the Slipper Club/Rainbow Room has become - apparently a cool rock club - on Thursday. I thus retired early since Nate was giving me a ride to Milwaukee on his way to work and that meant waking up at around 6am. We talked politics (he and I agree on a lot) the whole way and it was quite fun. I also got to show him over the course of the weekend a bunch of the cool bands I've been listening to like Russian Circles, Japandi, Sleeping People, Giraffes? Giraffes!, etc. and he liked them too so it was fun to share. The only problem with this setup was that my flight wasn't scheduled to leave until 1:30pm, so I had at least like 4.5 hours to wait in the airport. Thank God for research papers and laptops on which to do work. Since I was flying into LaGuardia, the delay of an hour was actually not that bad. It's just strange spending so damn long in an airport.

I decided to take a cab home after Lewis said he'd pick me up and then decided cooking bread was more important and canceled. It only took 15 minutes as opposed to well over an hour, so it was kinda worth it as I really wanted to be home. I hung out a bit with Sal and we got some dinner at the vegetarian burrito place on Bedford before I started doing some more schoolwork. I got a deluge of emails while in the airport and it was decided that I'll be going to Princeton a couple times a week for the next few weeks to work with these dudes on my research. On the one hand that's pretty cool, but the hour and a half train ride isn't so cool when you factor in that it takes almost an hour to get the train station alone.

We're having a house party on Friday to celebrate the new place's completion and Arthur's moving in tomorrow (I'll be helping with that). Come if you read this and are around.]]> http://www.ehielscher.org/blog/index.php?entry=entry080729-200935 2008-07-29T00:00:00Z 2008-07-29T00:00:00Z
Purpose is a concept which is scientifically useless.

Song title of the day, due to Dakota / Dakota:

Don't Pee In My Bed And Tell Me That It's Raining.]]> http://www.ehielscher.org/blog/index.php?entry=entry080729-135320 2008-07-29T00:00:00Z 2008-07-29T00:00:00Z ik spreek ook nederlands" and she was impressed.

Stroke the ego.]]> http://www.ehielscher.org/blog/index.php?entry=entry080723-045031 2008-07-23T00:00:00Z 2008-07-23T00:00:00Z
Thursday I went in to the office for most of the day to actually do some schoolwork. The building process has led me to get very far behind schedule, so my long days are going to continue through the summer. If I can get half as much productive work done on school as I have with the building process though, I'll be in great shape. It's indescribable how much of a fiasco the project was in terms of being overbudget and overtime, but it's done now. Well, we have to put up trim, and maybe build lofts and a ladder for the loft over the living room, but the bedrooms are done. Painted, doors are in, really done. And it feels great. Thursday was mudding, as was Friday (which Lewis helped a little with). We also sanded on Friday, which was messy, but far less annoying than it could have been had we actually really cared about having the walls be perfectly flat. Our concerns were heavily concentrated on the structural integrity and soundproofing fronts, so aesthetics were neglected largely. The only reason we put on 2 coats of primer and 1 coat of white paint was that we thought it would help the walls not rot. Anyway...

Friday I put up another ad on Craigslist about the sublet and got deluged with responses as per usual. One guy was adamant about coming over that day so I warned him about how messy the place was (the dust gets freaking everywhere, especially when you have to sand off 1/2 inch from the door bucks due to them somehow being too narrow for the doors to fit). Turns out he's a freelance math tutor as well as a jazz drummer - seems pretty sweet. We offered him the place, and discovered in the finalization that he'd recently legally changed his name to Sal A. Mander which weirded us out at first (in a wtf kinda way) but I trust the guy's legit and not going to just walk off with all of our belongings once he has the key. Plus he's a drummer which is perfect. He moves in today.

Can, if you're reading this, you owe us like a million dollars. And you also get to do all cleaning in the flat for the entire first year.

At one point Lisa and I were speaking in Dutch while painting, and I threw in Arthur's name just to make him think we might be talking about him - not that we'd ever do such a thing. I do this too, but it seems that whenever people hear a foreign language being spoken they immediately wonder whether it's a secret slam on them when it's far more likely to be just a conversation about the weather or something. Lisa helped so much during the building. She's really one of the nicer, more caring and empathetic people I think I've ever met. Very selfless and honest and understanding. Just felt inspired to say thanks.

Priming and painting really went very fast - we finished sanding on Friday night and put up a first coat of primer in Can's room (which we used to test every new process). Then by then end of the day on Saturday we'd done 2 coats of primer and a coat of paint on every wall. The only hitch was when each of us in turn spilled a bunch of paint all over the floor one after the other in like a 10 minute period of time leaded to much Eric frustration. Sunday we cleaned a bunch and put in the doors as well as returned the drywall scaffold. We originally weren't sure we'd need it for the full first week! but ended up needing it for 4 weeks, and paid enough in rent to have bought a brand new one. Oops. This project was indeed quite the learning experience in many ways. We also were there for a while buying other random stuff like an 8-foot ladder ("for changing light bulbs" - and installing projectors!) as well as like $100 worth of lumber so that Arthur can build a loft over his door in his bedroom. I'm going to wait and see how that goes for him before I make up my mind on whether and how to do one myself.

Yesterday I spent the whole day cleaning (and holy crap was the place nasty) before having dinner with Lewis and Brandy at this place down the street which has a great backyard area, tasty paninis, and 100 types of beers all at reasonable prices. I'll be going there again. We then hung out on my rooftop for a bit before I unpacked all my stuff, built my bed, and played a little guitar at a very late hour. I'm sure my neighbors weren't happy about that, but I couldn't resist. I also got the munchies at like 1:30am, but I was easily able to rectify that by just walking 1.5 blocks to a 24-hour store. I love cities.

Ok, so I'm sizing up my room now. I need to reclaim a little floorspace for my pedalboard. My apartment is really really cool. I'm glad that I did all that work now that it's done. People should come visit.

I fly to Madison on Friday. Well, technically to Milwaukee, but Nate's picking me up.]]> http://www.ehielscher.org/blog/index.php?entry=entry080722-164101 2008-07-22T00:00:00Z 2008-07-22T00:00:00Z
Lots of stories should have been told, but I'm afraid I won't remember them or the details well enough to do them justice. The standout of the time period before I moved was definitely my parents coming for a 4-day 5-night visit in mid-June. They'd never been to New York, so I got to play tour guide. It was really fun, and we packed in lots of stuff: top of Rockefeller, walk through Central Park, visit to the Hungarian Pastry Shop in Harlem, walk over the Brooklyn Bridge, a Polish dinner, a trip to my soon-to-be roof deck where we froze waiting for the sun to go down so that we could see the skyline at night. It was quite the adventure even just finding a cab in Greenpoint to take them back to LaGuardia. They got my bed while I slept on the couch, but once my loft is built out I'll have a real guest "room" with a futon. Thus: more people should visit me. I hear Neal is coming in August which should be fun.

So we're building bedrooms in our new apartment. The story is a common one in New York: an old factory building gets converted into apartments when the neighborhood in which it was built transforms from industrial to prime residential. The style is called a loft, and they usually come as a big empty space with a kitchen and a bathroom and the blessing to build whatever you like. We had quite the fiasco getting into our place, with the original plan being that we get the keys around June 10 or so and thus I was thinking about putting a futon there and having my parents get their own "hotel room" to speak while they were here. It turned out that the wood floors had really severe water damage in a few spots and were really warped, so the agent promised to fix them for us. This meant waiting until around June 27 before it was done, with every day or two being reassured that it was about to happen. This really sucked for many reasons, the biggest being that our old lease was up July 1 and thus we had to move our stuff to the new place then. When we finally got the key and were told it was done, Arthur met me at the Home Depot in Gowanis in southern Brooklyn - me having taken Lewis's van down the BQE during rush hour, and thus arriving nearly two hours after I'd left - to pick up the first of 3 1000-lb loads of drywall, a bunch of metal track and studs, two doors, and a bunch of tools, etc. We showed up at the apartment and found the floor not even started yet. We thus dropped off all our stuff and asked what the hell was up. Again told to wait a day, which we did, and came back to find it half done and all our stuff gone from the apartment. (And let me tell you, hauling 1000 lbs of drywall up to your apartment isn't fun. Nor is doing it three times.) Apparently they'd moved it all to the next door apartment from which the previous tenants had been evicted as the guy wanted to varnish the whole floor again. One more day and it was finally done, and so we were let into the next door apartment to pick up our materials. It was at this point that my jaw dropped to the floor - it was a music studio! Just like I dream about all the time - right in Brooklyn, 6th-floor amazing huge music studio with double-studded walls, raised carpeted floors, drum isolation booth. Really professionally done. We thus looked up the previous tenants (who'd left some music royalty checks lying around) and it turns out one of them was a drummer for Norah Jones or something. Anyway....

So we've been building three 12-foot tall, 12-foot by 6.5-foot bedrooms. It's been way more difficult than any of us thought it would be, with lots of setbacks and delays and costs, but that's really to be expected since none of us knew what we were doing at all. All I did was buy a 150 page drywall book from Amazon. Thus pretty much every day I either sleep in the loft or commute to Lisa's and back since the place is a freaking mess from all the dust and insulation and crap, then spend the whole day working on building or school. I took 10 minutes off from building to look a bit at the fireworks from the rooftop (there were like 400 people up there and a DJ) before going right back to building. Can left for North Africa and Turkey for the summer on like the 7th or something (about which I'm sure he's happy since he doesn't have to build or sleep in the mess anymore!), so we've been one man down since then though Lisa's helping quite a lot which is nice. Some things that have happened: we built the doorways 1/4-inch too small to fit the door frames so we had to buy a power sander to grind the wood down, we had to figure out some way to fit drywall onto the narrow areas in between the windows on the window frames on the far bedroom walls (and I'm quite proud of my solution), drilling into concrete ceilings and structural beams which cut across said ceilings is a royal pain in the ass, metal tracks and studs seem like they are infinitely easier to work with than wood - especially if every line in the apartment is not straight at all, I've taken an absurd number of trips to Home Depot, we've rented a drywall scaffold for so long we could have bought one for cheaper, I've learned the nuisance that is having to move one's automobile back and forth across the street every other day since I've been borrowing Lewis's van this whole time. I've been photo-documenting the whole process, and I'll post the pics sometime soon. I've learned a lot, and I'll love this apartment more than any other since I built it myself.

I can't wait to be done with this as my place is really going to be amazing when it's finished. I'm planning on getting a projector and mounting it above the loft/guest room so we can treat it like a movie theater, and we'll but a couple couches, a stereo, and my server up there. I'd also like to build a loft in my bedroom to reclaim some of my 12 feet of vertical space but I'm quite sick of building at this point so it'll have to wait. I interviewed some people for subletting Can's room and hopefully we'll get someone in there this weekend - there was a cool older guy who does NGO stuff all over the world who came by yesterday.

I look at interior walls in a whole new light now.

Obama has alienated me back to full-fledged jadedness.

I did take a couple hours off to go to a party at Lewis's, at which I spoke Dutch with 2 Dutchies and German for quite a while with a cool German girl.

Lisa bought a car, a brand new Hyundai Accent, and it's fun to drive and while I feel bad about it, makes the commute take less than half the time from hers to mine.

I've started exploring my neighborhood a little bit and I love it. I can't wait to have the time to enjoy it.

So much work to do.]]> http://www.ehielscher.org/blog/index.php?entry=entry080715-181538 2008-07-15T00:00:00Z 2008-07-15T00:00:00Z