The Weekend Update

This past weekend was 3 days long courtesy of this wierd holiday that only SoCal schools recognize called "Cesar Chavez Day," and I either used the holiday really well or really poorly. I got almost no work done, despite the midterm I had on monday, and instead partied really really hard through the weekend and went snowboarding twice.

Brief follow-up on the Germany party. Suites around the world was a ton of fun, but was also pretty frustrating. Our budget was cut significantly, and the "more money than in previous years" became $75-85 for beer. I bought 6 5L kegs of 3 different german beers, and a ton of sausages and german cookies for snacks. The beers, it turned out, all had very foamy heads, meaning we had to have comitted pourers all night serving the beer. As soon as the other parties closed down, EVERYONE flooded into Germany. There were probly around 120 people packed into the tiny place I live in, so consequently the whole Discotheque theme failed because there wasn't enough room for anyone to dance. The beer only lasted 40 minutes, and the fact that someone jacked a whole keg from one of the fridges didn't help. Pretty much as soon as the beer got out, the entire party emptied to go see what was going on at the other party (mount olympus, who ran out of beer immediately after, or maybe were already out). Since everyone bailed on the party, I decided to shut it down for good: I locked the door, and left my suite empty. After the party I got trashed wandering around to different parties....well, I was kinda trashed already but I had a fun night.

Day after that (friday), I drove to Bear on my own and had a day of lone snowboarding, which was great and exactly what I needed to unwind throuhg some lingering frustrations from the night before. That evening, I got back to school, had a sausage barbecue with some friends (hey, we were all too busy serving beer to make most of the sausages), then got trashed playing beer pong.

Saturday I decided to just take it easy, so I mostly chilled on the mounds with some friends. My friend Laura and I decided to work on a mural together and are currently finalizing the design. That night I watched science of sleep which was fantastic and everyone should just drop what they're doing and go watch it now. Sunday I woke up early and took one of my roommates to Bear where we spent the day, then I went to work in the evening. It was a good weekend: I probably had more fun in the past 3 days then I did over the entire spring break.

Before I peace, let me share a few cool things I discovered over the past few days:

http://www.olpcnews.com - One Laptop Per Child. This company Quanta is working with an MIT techie to design and implement in mass production a laptop that costs only $100. The plan is to sell it for 200 in developed markets with the consumers understanding that they are buying a second laptop for a child in the Third World. Their current prototype only costs $150.

http://www.geekologie.com - Hard to describe...this website basically has a bunch of stuff on it that you'd think was especially cool if you were a nerd. Last I checked, they had a 1million dolalr laptop, high speed photography of a bullet, a foldable chair made out of ( i think) cardboard that you can twist into various cool designs, and a deep frier with a fish living in a water phase below the hot oil. Just cool, random stuff.

http://palmsout.blogspot.com - Palms Out Sounds, a music blog. Before my friend introduced me to this blog, I never really followed a blog. I feel like I defintiely would not mind keeping up with this one. Every wednesday they compile an album of songs sampled by a particular artist, every sunday they publish an album of remixes....all around an excellent find, especially if you are into hip hop.

And last but not least, there's a whole series of videos of this guy on Youtube. Yes, BlendTec is a real company, this is a real blender, and this is a real viral ad campaign. But, will it blend?