Really, I wasn’t kidding when I said that it had begun!

Posted by Steve Hanna on October 21st, 2007 filed in Random Tags: birthday, disneyland, fixie, rabbit, research, riot grrl, school

After Leo berated me for not updating in a while, I decided to take a break and update this glorious internet website which is STILL second on google when searching for “Steve Hanna”. I don’t get it, the article that is first doesn’t have backlinks and the pagerank of the hosting site isn’t even that high…sigh.

This past few weeks have been very eventful and was quite possibly the most extended birthday celebration that I have ever had. The week before my birthday, John, his friend Vonni and her boyfriend Randy all went to Disneyland! We had a really excellent time and I had a newfound appreciation for the world of Disney. I had been to Disneyworld previously when I was in the 6th grade. I think that I couldn’t appreciate it as much at that time because I was in this stage where I wanted to be grown up and I felt that Disney and all associated theme parks would somehow ruin the facade of the week that preteens are so accustomed to wearing. This time around, I found it to be a truly great experience, and after being at the park for about 10 hours, we did what children cannot, and headed to a bar in Downtown Disney. This of course made the show that we saw when we went back into the park even better. On the final day of our trip, John and I talked about our project and got some R&R by the pool. This entire weekend was referred to as the “Disneyland Conference”.

The next week, I only had two classes, on Monday and Tuesday (Tuesday the 9th being my birthday), which made the outlook of the week seem even better. I met Mike
for dinner before going out drinking with old and new friends at The Albatross. I think everyone had a pretty good time, but due to the fact it was a Tuesday, the bar was empty besides our crowd and as we went to leave, it started poring like crazy. The rainy season has begun.

On Thursday I headed back to UIUC to visit. It happened exactly as I thought it would, good conversations, nostalgic feelings, and excessive drinking (especially by me, see below). Despite the horrible experiences I had to and from the airports my trip was really eventful and I cannot wait to return. I also had the pleasure of seeing Randall Monroe of XKCD speak at conference, he did not disappoint. You can watch a video of the presentation linked here.

Over the past week, I decided that I wasn’t content with just having a bike. Sometimes, the excessive planning to get things done really bogs me down. I have to consider all sorts of things in advance and I am restricted to the radius I am willing to ride my bike and the BART and other public transportation. After discussing it with my parents, I decided to get a new car. Here’s a hint, this character created by Lewis Carroll was late for a very important date; this also describes the model and color of my new car! Yes, yes, I got a 2008 VW Rabbit and I am completely in love with it. For being such a small car, it has a large potential for storage when doing outdoorsy things and it packs quite the punch: 170hp/177fpt. Now, I can see all of my friends in the Bay Area without encumbering the delay that is guaranteed on Caltrain and the BART. I got to repay Parisa yesterday for her constant trips to Berkeley over the summer by driving to Mountain View and climbing at Planet Granite. Also, now I can visit Steve C. and Emily in the North Bay!

Well, I should get back to work, I am up to my elbows in the STL and Windows API as I work on my class projects. Let’s not forget that NSF is due next week and I still have quite a bit of work to do. As always, here is the pictures section. A few goodies placed below.

Also, I really like Le Tigre and associated riot grrrl music. What could possibly be hotter than energy charged, angry, girl punk rock with feminist and political themes? The answer is NOTHING.