Vivek's Blog

My world, My views

Posts Tagged MIT

Checking In

Nov 27

Posted by Vivek in Education, Gaming, General | 1 Comment

It’s been a while. Things have happened. Some were good, some were bad.

Managed an above average grade on my second Thermodynamics exam, which was a good sanity check after a below-average grade on the first one, but I’m not in the clear just yet. Need an above average score on the final to lock in that elusive B. Doing okay in my other class – just need to not screw up the final.

On the research side, things have been moving along at a canter. We created and characterized our first batch of samples and are currently trying to figure out the best fabrication approach to take in order to achieve better results with our second batch. I also did a literature survey recently and will be presenting to my subgroup on Dec 1. I’ve been through lots of training sessions and there’s more to come yet. On the whole though, I love being at MIT. Classes are brutal, but being constantly surrounded by smart people is great. I wish I could get to research directly without having to take classes, but it is what it is. Just need to survive. Getting used to being average took some time.

I won’t be going home this winter – first time in 5 years. I have to take a week-long microfabrication training course in January, so I decided to hang around for the entire break. However, I will be heading down to New York for the Christmas weekend and could possibly also make another trip to visit my cousin (and my nephew!) in West Virginia.

Since I got done with midterms recently, I’ve had time to indulge in video gaming. Picked up Left 4 Dead 2 after being persuaded by a friend and it is awesome. Really expands upon the original in several ways and makes the original look boring in comparison. Also picked up Batman: Arkham Asylum, Braid, and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. courtesy of crazy Steam sales. Yes, the very Steam I’ve ranted about in the past. I have been converted. While I still like getting something tangible for my money (i.e., physical media), Steam is a great distribution platform and something that’s improving to the point of being as good as Xbox Live (although it still lacks several features compared to Live). Two games I’m eagerly anticipating are Bioshock 2 and Mass Effect 2, both releasing next year. Now that I know ME2 will run on my laptop, I’m going to get myself the Collector’s Edition. It will hit retail January 26, and I should have a week to blaze through it before the spring semester starts.

Well, that’s about it for now.

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The Life of an MIT Grad Student

Sep 9

Posted by Vivek in Education, General | 5 Comments

This post has been simmering in the back of my head for a while now. However, a multitude of orientation events and more generally, “getting settled” has taken priority. There’s also the small matter of finding a research group and a project that I like before all the good ones get taken. But that can process in the background. Let’s get on with the blogging.

So, after a largely comfortable (albeit hot) three months at home, I arrived in Boston/Cambridge on August 27 and immediately got to work taking care of administrative nonsense and settling in. I have a nice room with enough space to store all my belongings and still have room for a few people to sleep on the floor, shall the need ever arise. My dorm has a small gym, a games room, and a decent DVD library for residents to utilize. Our incoming class is pretty large (60 or so new students in the department) so I’ve been meeting a lot of people. I haven’t had much opportunity to explore Boston yet, but I have five years to rectify that.

My stored items showed up on Saturday and I’m oh so thankful that I have my speakers back. After spending a week using only my laptop speakers, I had forgotten what bass (not necessarily the instrument) sounded like. At the same time, it sounded too deep for my liking initially so I had to turn it down! Speaking of music, this will be a busy month for me. Porcupine Tree, Alice in Chains, and Pearl Jam are releasing new albums and I have a ticket to see PT live on the 27th. You can rest assured that a review of their new album is forthcoming, as is the concert review. I won’t be doing a review, but I saw District 9 recently and loved it. If you like sci-fi, do yourself a favor and watch this movie. It does get a bit nasty, so I wouldn’t recommend it for the squeamish.

I had my first class today. Now that I have an MIT ID, have registered for classes, and started attending them, I finally consider myself an MITian. I’m happy to be here and I keep reminding myself that I can’t slack off at all. People are nice, but most professors are notoriously difficult to get hold of, which explains why I haven’t picked a research group to join yet.

Some people have asked me to put up pictures of MIT and the surrounding area. I do have some pictures but I’ll take some more before uploading everything in one go, so please be patient. In other news, I dumped Firefox 3.5 for Opera 10. The other day, Fx was hoarding 1GB of RAM which convinced me to finally make the switch – Opera is speedy, stable, and sexy. I dislike how some websites won’t work with Opera, but the “Identify as/Mask as” option seems to work pretty reliably.

P.S.: That title really doesn’t make a lot of sense in the context of what’s in the blog post. Meh.

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