My Parents thought this one was the best of the whole sideshow:
These are from Sarah’s Camera:
John at the Jama Masijd.
John is tired of riding this autorichshaw 20km back to the hotel.
The walls of Agra Fort
A wedding ceremony at Sriram’s grandmothers house. This is his ready to go live in the mountains because he has had second thoughts play outfit.
Sign seen on the streets of Hyderabad doesn’t make a whole lot of sense:
In June of 2010 my friend Sarah and I took a trip to India (and Amsterdam — see a future post) for my room mate Sriram’s wedding. We went a week early and did some sight seeing in Delhi and Agra in the North before heading to Hyderabad in the south for the wedding.
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For best viewing, use the in a larger map link. Or, see all the pictures included in the gallery below. Hover text provides captions in the gallery, or click through to cycle one per page.
On Saturday August 14, 2010 the long planned Wednesday Night Dinner Ice Cream Marathon occurred from 1pm until 7:30pm. We followed and approximately 7 mile route from Boston’s North End to Harvard Square in Cambridge following this route:
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We stopped at each place marked in green. We skipped over duplicate stores, chains, and stores we didn’t know existed. We carried score cards. Here is the digital representation of mine:
| Location | Time | Flavor | Size | Score (1-10) |
| 1. Gelateria | 1:20pm | Hazelnut / Vanilla | Small | 5 / 8 |
| 2. Sprinkles | 2:00pm | Butter Pecan | Child | 7 |
| 3. Emack & Bolio’s |
2:45pm | Cake Batter1 | One Scoop | 3 |
| 4. Picco’s | 3:25pm | Cinnamon2 | One Size | 93 |
| 5. Bon Bon | 4:25pm | Pineapple Sorbet | One Size | 2 |
| 6. J. P. Licks | 4:55pm | Cake Batter | Not Available4 | 0 |
| 7. Toscanini’s | 5:55pm | Cake Batter | Kiddie | 9 |
| 8. Christina’s | 6:30pm | Corn5 | Small | 4 |
| 9. Lizzy’s | 7:30pm | Vanilla Cookie Dough | Kiddie | 6 |
1Like most flavors at Emack and Bolio’s this cake batter is infused with chocolate. This is not an acceptable thing to do and still call it cake batter, but that is what they do.
2Also bread and water were provided at no cost at Picco’s.
3The flavor of the Cinnamon (and they Honey flavor that I tired) were so intense as to deserve top honors. However, we were unable to finish these flavors due to their intensity.
4J. P. Licks has suddenly, and without warning discontinued the cake batter flavor at all of their locations. This is not acceptable as it was the best cake batter flavor available in the city and my favorite ice cream overall. Until such a time as cake batter is returned to the menu I am forced to boycott J. P. Licks. I did get in line and ask for cake batter, only to be told they they don’t have it, to which I responded, “Ah, never mind then.”
5Bacon flavor was also available and I tried a spoonful of it. Someone got bacon flavor and was unable to finish the salty delicious treat. I had tired corn flavor earlier in the week and thought it quite good, but I was unable to finish my small size of it either.
The clear winner was Picco’s. Picco’s is a sit down pizza restaurant that also hand makes ice cream for their desert menu. They were great sports and sat a table for 13 who intended only to have ice cream. They also provided bread and water at no charge, which was most appreciated. Surprisingly appreciated was the bread! The flavors at Picco’s are intense, rich, and wonderful. I could taste the gainyness of the cinnamon in my ice cream! Everyone agreed this was the best place.
Clear runner up in my book Toscanini’s. Toscanini’s, since inciting me into their store for the first time in years with their ROFLCon inspired “Internet” Flavor (vanilla + grape nerds) has become my favorite ice cream parlor. The fact that J. P. Licks has recently committed seppuku has only help them reach the top. Other excellent recent flavors include Fig Newton, Ginger, and the best remaining cake batter flavor in town! Enough said!
How many people with teen-aged children do they think there are on Ok Cupid?
Certainly there are people with children on the site. Overwhelmingly these children are toddlers from the random sample of profiles I’ve come across. Note, that is not a statistically random sample at all, but still the number can not be that high. Plus, I was logged in; the site knows for sure that I don’t have any children, let alone teen-aged children. Now, acne could be something people using online dating sites in general might worry about, but I think I would use a different angle to target that audience. Maybe this ad was just not tagged correctly and the software is fine, but in any case, showing me that add is a fail.
Shiner Bock is probably my favorite beer, which says a lot considering I am not a huge fan of beer in general. It is not a great beer, but it is easy to drink without cringing, which is a tough test to pass with me. It was the best part about all that traveling to New Mexico. It is a Texas brew, and I was introduced to it when I lived in Austin in the summer of 2006. As Sam Adams is to Boston so Shiner Bock is to Austin, with the exception that Shiner is not brewed in Austin. Of course, most Sam isn’t either so its not a big difference. I mean to say that it is the default beer in Austin, and everywhere has it on tap. The same can be said for the non-chain non-portifino restaurants in Roswell and Alamogordo. On each of my first two trips back from Roswell I brought home a six pack. On my last trip I brought home two six packs in my checked luggage. In all 24 bottles, and only 1 broke in transit. Sadly the pictured bottle is the last one. Shiner Bock is sold in 41 states, but none of them are in New England, so the supply will not be replenished soon. Although, I may spend part of July back out there again, the beer is the only reason to look forward to that, and remember I don’t really like beer.
I didn’t make a post about it at the time, but I never understood why he did this. He pushed his health care package through congress without considering anything else for almost a year, and then, as soon as he got what he wanted (or as close as he could ever get to what he wanted) then he decided to appease his opponents. I could understand it if he tried to appease his opponents by throwing them this bone in order to get some leverage for the health care debate, and maybe that is what actually happened behind closed doors. I doubt it though, because if that was the deal, some embattled senator somewhere would have used that as a reason to support the “unpopular” health care bill. I can’t fathom what made him change his mind about drilling.
Back when the story about Obama being for drilling first broke and during the election, I was not against offshore drilling. What I am against is “drill baby drill” as a solution to our energy crisis. As covered in this long ago post about a talk given by a chief BP scientist that I was at:
Some of that oil is deep under the ocean, and I’m sure that we will someday need it. To get it, we have to pay for it with higher prices. Apparently we also risk what is currently occurring. The point is that we don’t need it now. Luckily the spill did happen, and despite the fact that it made my guy look pretty stupid, and could easily destroy much of the environment and economy right where I grew up, it may propel us in the right direction.
What we do, in fact, need are artificially high energy prices, not all at once, but gradually, forcing us to follow a more sustainable path. It’s awful that this spill had to occur to show the opposition and Obama what a folly it is to drill more now, but if it leads to higher energy prices in the long run maybe some good will have come of it.
I just love that shot of the Lincoln Memorial I posted recently. The snow scape, imposing angle, and most importantly the diffuse sunlight just make it seem so post apocalyptic. Well, if you ask people from D.C. maybe it was. But the sense is ruined by the multitude of people in the shot. So I removed them with the gimp, except for Emma, the fur hooded figure in the far foreground. I think it’s certainly an improvement.
I could have really used content aware fill, but sadly that feature isn’t in the gimp yet (actually looks like maybe it is, but plug-ins are way too much work). Lucky for me snow is very organic and the smudge brush emulates it well enough. It is also pretty good at background plant matter. Anyways, it in fact looks nothing like the Logan’s Run Lincoln Memorial, at least from the movie, but oh well.
I spent much of March and April of 2010 in Roswell, NM for work. I consistently flew there on Delta via Los Angles, which was always a ~14 hour three airport affair. I loved it, and I didn’t miss any connections on any of my trips to Roswell
Los Angles from the Air:
The first time I headed to Roswell was also my first time in L.A. Although, I never left the airport, so that makes counting it a bit strange. I find, that I airports count as going to a state but not a city. Such as, “the last time I was in California was when I flew through LAX to Roswell”, is fair but to replace California with L.A. isn’t. I suppose this is because cities have a character that one needs to explore to say that one has been there. States do too, but it highly varied from area to area, and people don’t expect you to be familiar with every area to say you have been there. One can often get a good sense of whats its like in a state from the airport; not so with a city. Anyways, here’s a shot of the iconic LAX entry way:
We worked at the airport in Roswell. The airport is something of an airplane graveyard, or at least long term, until the economy gets back on track storage yard. There are on the order of 100 planes in various states of disrepair strew about the airfield.
Working in Roswell sucked. But one day we took a half day off from working and went skiing for a full day. From the top of the slopes one can see nearby Sierra Blanca (on the left), the southernmost high peak in the contiguous United States, which means that all higher peaks are farther north. Towards the right, in the basin one can see White Sands.
On the way back from this first trip to Roswell I completed a challenge feat. I was on the ground in all four continental us time zones within one day. I accomplished this feat by flying from Roswell (Mountain) to Los Angles (Pacific) to Minneapolis & St. Paul (Central) and back to Boston (Eastern). It was the only time on any trip to/from Roswell, that I had a layover in the Central time zone, and therefore the only time I completed this feat. Google latitude should offer rewards for this sort of thing ala foursquare.
In February 2010 work sent me to the Shenendoa Valley of Virginia, about 2 hours from Washington D.C. I flew in between the two Snowmageddon storms, and made it out to Bridgwater, VA. before the second storm hit. The storm there dropped only four inches or so, which the local services were totally able to handle. Although, I did make the mistake of letting a friend from Los Angles drive in the snow, and he managed to get pretty suck in a parking spot. It was embarrassing; we didn’t tell the people who helped us out that I life in the north.
After the second storm went through, on Friday February 12th, Lincoln’s Birthday I managed to snag some time in Washington itself. I had never been to the district before. I had lunch with Emma, a CSG girl whom I mentored in college. She is pursuing a computer science degree at George Washington, so I guess I may have had some effect. She is a big fan of going to see the monuments. She claims that is often a drunken Saturday night activity. So we went to see them, with 2-4 feet of snow on the ground.
First we went to the Washington Monument:
On the way there, this is as close as I got to the White House:
Next we went to the Lincoln Memorial, which was not doing anything fancy for his birthday. It looked rather ominous on the snow covered hill, like something out of Logan’s Run, but with more people around. I am just in love with this photo. It is certainly my favorite of all the recently posted ones, even that 15 second exposure of Boston at night.
From there I got an off center shot of the Capitol building.
We then walked back to GWU and parted ways. I later drove much closer to the Capitol building on my way to the Air and Space Museum. I only spent an hour at the museum, which was all I had before my flight, and all I wanted to spend. I only had enough quarters to pay for 15 minutes of parking; damn it was expensive, but I didn’t get a ticket (probably thanks to the huge snow banks). It was really disappointed by it. Although, I hear the good stuff is all out by Dulles, so I will have to try that some time.
I despise the North Point building in Cambridge, near the Museum of Science for its huge white lights. They are the brightest lights in the Boston skyline as viewed from the Cambridge, Somerville, and Arlington areas. The building, is nothing more than fancy apartments and condos, some with great views, but the bright lights atop it ruin the view for so many other areas. If it were a more important building in the city, maybe it would be ok, but I’m not even sure. Anyways, a friend of mine, Brian, until recently lived at North Point. Before he left he had a party and we got to go up on the roof deck. It provided a great view of the city, if only because it by necessity didn’t include those damned north point lights.
A panorama of the skyline:
It gets a little blurry on the right side, sadly I didn’t get a real stable image of that section.
This is possibly the best shot of Boston I’ve ever taken, it is a 15 second, hand steadied exposure of the Zakim Bridge, Financial District, and the MOS: