Sunday, October 19, 2003
Still recovering from trip back from fall break. Mom took a detour through Chapel Hill so I could have lunch with Kris, one of my high school friends. So we're on our way to the Greensboro airport, an hour away, when we hear a sudden clicking noise and turns out we have a flat tire. Luckily mom pulled over in time since the tread was starting to peel off. She doesn't have a cell phone or AAA, it was raining hard, and cars were going 80 mph.
Finally some guy with a pickup truck full of tires pulled over. He couldn't sell us a tire, but he lent me his cell phone to call Kris and then tried to find the jack and spare tire, which seemed to be hidden in odd places. Finally he found them and changed the tire, and was just about to take off when we finally see Kris' car. Only it didn't stop, it pulled over, still going fast and hit the side of the rail. Luckily Kris was OK, but it was a little scary and his car door wouldn't open all the way after that. He volunteered to take me to the airport and Mom went on back to Laurinburg (2 hrs away).
Ended up missing my 6 pm flight since I got there at 5:55 so paid $25 to get on the next one at 7:25 which ended up being at 8:30 because of weather delays. So I didn't get back to Tech until after 11. My mom called almost as soon as I got in and was crying because after seeing Kris' mini-accident and knowing he would be speeding to get there, she was convinced I had died in an accident on the highway. So I guess we're both getting cell phones soon probably...
I finally got to see "Finding Nemo" at the student center last night.
Probably the first movie I've seen where a mom and 399 of her unborn kids get massacred within the first 5 minutes. and of course the fish are experts on complicated dental procedures. There was a lot for film buffs that I don't think kids would have gotten at all like the tribute to Jack Nicholson in "the Shining" and the music from Psycho(though I haven't seen that). It was a good movie--I laughed, almost cried. Would have been nice to have gone there with someone to share it with.
Also saw "Real Woman Have Curves" but really hated it. Bratty kid talks back to a completely b****y and unreasonable mom and loses her virginity for the heck of it. The teacher ends up being the sympathetic character but seems kind of stupid. Is he really going to tell an at-risk kid to apply just to Columbia? Hello--everyone has to have a back-up school and there are plenty of great schools in California--ever hear of Stanford or Pomona? But people are calling it an authentic portayal of Latino life. Guess I'm just not a good Chicana.
Went to several conferences this week in Atlanta, neither of which was really publicized on Tech campus. One I was registered for was Tapia Conference on Diversity in Computing. A mix of advocacy and technical talks with a lot of focus on getting more minorities to get their Ph.D. I met a lot of people, enough to start a person whose work I admire list so hopefully I can work on a career board of directors. For example, Rebecca Mercuri, the expert on electronic voting systems, who's been at Bryn Mawr, was there and scared a lot of people with all the dire election fraud potential. We ended up bashing Bryn Mawr--even though they've been getting tons of publicity because of her work, they don't consider it academic enough to count. They still don't have enough respect for computer science since it's too applied and apparently said that they could never do engineering since woman were not capable of doing it. Made me feel a little vindicated--sounds like they're going downhill with the loss of endowment and ignorant people running the place so it wasn't exactly a progressive place after all.
When I came back all inspired about academia, I immediately started looking at some programs and students who might share the same interests. I came across an organization on someone's CV--Society for Social Studies of Science or something and it turns out they were having their conference at the same time in Atlanta, right in Midtown. Looking at the hotel, I saw Mimi Ito, the researcher who was the inspiration for my research in Japan. I tried calling her, but no answer so I took the stingerette to the hotel and tried calling her from there. She was already in bed and was leaving the next day but said maybe we could take Marta back together or meet at the airport since I was going there. So I hung out in the lobby, got to meet a few grad students who invited me to their talks, including people from MIT's Science and Technology Studies program. So next morning I went to a few of those talks, one very inspired, the other with someone reading directly from her report. Meanwhile, Mimi had checked out already and I wasn't sure if she had left already. I finally found her in the food area chatting with an old friend and we arranged to take the Marta together. She gave me a lot of advice, telling me about different grad programs and options. So it was great!!!
Finally some guy with a pickup truck full of tires pulled over. He couldn't sell us a tire, but he lent me his cell phone to call Kris and then tried to find the jack and spare tire, which seemed to be hidden in odd places. Finally he found them and changed the tire, and was just about to take off when we finally see Kris' car. Only it didn't stop, it pulled over, still going fast and hit the side of the rail. Luckily Kris was OK, but it was a little scary and his car door wouldn't open all the way after that. He volunteered to take me to the airport and Mom went on back to Laurinburg (2 hrs away).
Ended up missing my 6 pm flight since I got there at 5:55 so paid $25 to get on the next one at 7:25 which ended up being at 8:30 because of weather delays. So I didn't get back to Tech until after 11. My mom called almost as soon as I got in and was crying because after seeing Kris' mini-accident and knowing he would be speeding to get there, she was convinced I had died in an accident on the highway. So I guess we're both getting cell phones soon probably...
I finally got to see "Finding Nemo" at the student center last night.
Probably the first movie I've seen where a mom and 399 of her unborn kids get massacred within the first 5 minutes. and of course the fish are experts on complicated dental procedures. There was a lot for film buffs that I don't think kids would have gotten at all like the tribute to Jack Nicholson in "the Shining" and the music from Psycho(though I haven't seen that). It was a good movie--I laughed, almost cried. Would have been nice to have gone there with someone to share it with.
Also saw "Real Woman Have Curves" but really hated it. Bratty kid talks back to a completely b****y and unreasonable mom and loses her virginity for the heck of it. The teacher ends up being the sympathetic character but seems kind of stupid. Is he really going to tell an at-risk kid to apply just to Columbia? Hello--everyone has to have a back-up school and there are plenty of great schools in California--ever hear of Stanford or Pomona? But people are calling it an authentic portayal of Latino life. Guess I'm just not a good Chicana.
Went to several conferences this week in Atlanta, neither of which was really publicized on Tech campus. One I was registered for was Tapia Conference on Diversity in Computing. A mix of advocacy and technical talks with a lot of focus on getting more minorities to get their Ph.D. I met a lot of people, enough to start a person whose work I admire list so hopefully I can work on a career board of directors. For example, Rebecca Mercuri, the expert on electronic voting systems, who's been at Bryn Mawr, was there and scared a lot of people with all the dire election fraud potential. We ended up bashing Bryn Mawr--even though they've been getting tons of publicity because of her work, they don't consider it academic enough to count. They still don't have enough respect for computer science since it's too applied and apparently said that they could never do engineering since woman were not capable of doing it. Made me feel a little vindicated--sounds like they're going downhill with the loss of endowment and ignorant people running the place so it wasn't exactly a progressive place after all.
When I came back all inspired about academia, I immediately started looking at some programs and students who might share the same interests. I came across an organization on someone's CV--Society for Social Studies of Science or something and it turns out they were having their conference at the same time in Atlanta, right in Midtown. Looking at the hotel, I saw Mimi Ito, the researcher who was the inspiration for my research in Japan. I tried calling her, but no answer so I took the stingerette to the hotel and tried calling her from there. She was already in bed and was leaving the next day but said maybe we could take Marta back together or meet at the airport since I was going there. So I hung out in the lobby, got to meet a few grad students who invited me to their talks, including people from MIT's Science and Technology Studies program. So next morning I went to a few of those talks, one very inspired, the other with someone reading directly from her report. Meanwhile, Mimi had checked out already and I wasn't sure if she had left already. I finally found her in the food area chatting with an old friend and we arranged to take the Marta together. She gave me a lot of advice, telling me about different grad programs and options. So it was great!!!
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