Goodbye Boston

Tomorrow morning, I start my drive to Seattle. I have several significant stops (Pittsburgh, Indianapolis, Denver) on the way, but regardless the official cross country journey starts tomorrow. I haven't quite figured out the name of this venture, but I guess I'll have a little bit of car time to think about it.

Pictures to come... hopefully one from every State along the way!

According to Google Directions:

Setting the Stage

They were starting to build the stage for this year's graduation. Every year, they construct a stage in front of the famous dome for an outdoor graduation ceremony. Last year, during my first days on campus, I caught a glimpse of the finished stage and thought it looked like a really nice location for the ceremony... I suppose I'll be there in one year, but believe me, I'm NOT counting down the days in anticipation.

Ice Cream!

Nice weather + Tuesday Lunchtime = Ice Cream Social

There was a Sloan-wide ice cream social on a beautiful tuesday during the last week of classes to celebrate all 2010 graduates. As you can see, a lovely day and a great change of pace. Afternoon classes started out quite lively with the sugar buzz but soon quieted way down with the sugar induced coma.

Triathlon

I participated in a pseudo-LGO tradition, the Season Opener for the local summer triathlon series. It's the only triathlon during the school year, thus why it was chosen. However, I should have known better than to make my first triathlon a "season opener".

First off, for those who are not familiar, the triathlon consists of swimming, then running, then biking. This particular race is considered a "spring triathlon" because it is about as short as they get. 400 yard swim, 10 mile bike, 5k run. I have the latter two events rather covered... swimming, not so much. I started the semester strong by getting in the MIT pool at least once if not twice a week. Then Spring Break hit, and I haven't been back in the pool.

Back to the "season opener". The water is expected to be very cold! So we prepared by renting wetsuits. But come race day, that wasn't enough. There were 40mph 45 degree winds sweeping across the moist beach under our barefoot feet. The open water has significant waves and even white caps! The first few "waves" or heats of swimmers headed out, but so many people needed to be rescued, the rescue boat sank from all the bodies. At that point, they called off the swim... thank goodness! I was freezing and not prepared to battle the waves of the open water.

We turned around and ran back to our changing area and I jumped on my bike! I guess my lack of preparation paid off? We'll just say it was so cold on that beach, that my feet did not regain full feeling until the 3rd mile of the run (approximate 45 minutes after departing the beach).

While I'm not a true triathlete (yet!), I think it better this way.

As usual, some pictures.

Me in my wetsuit! I look like scuba steve. I have no idea where the goggles I'm wearing came from, I just found them in my closet in Indianapolis one day.

Christie and I! Note the famous Dr. Pepper pants that I'm wearing! They show up at all of these events.
Iliana after the race!

Summer is HERE!

The semester is over. My first and last day of finals was yesterday with a double header, Strategic Management in the morning with Finance II in the afternoon. Now, I have a few days to pack and enjoy some free time before I start my cross country drive to Seattle!

Purdue Graduation

I realize that I'm rather behind on my blog and while I would like to keep things sequential, I want to go ahead a post some pictures from the weekend. We'll get back to the sequential events after this.

I was fortunate this past weekend to have the opportunity to fly back to Indiana for my sisters graduation. She officially completed 6 years of pharmacy school at Purdue University to graduate with a Doctor of Pharmacy degree. You may now call her Dr. Laura. She even received one of those fancy graduation hood!

The weather was beautiful as we enjoyed the afternoon on campus taking pictures and attending the pharmacy reception.

We then headed to famous Elliot Hall of Music where we joined 6000 other graduates and attendees for the first of 4 graduation ceremonies over the weekend. One of my favorite parts of the ceremony is the lighting and projector work (perhaps its the AV nerd in me). As you can see, there is a HUGE video screen serving as the backdrop for graduation. There are also two more "image magnification" video screens on either side of the stage to help everyone in the back row see what is going on.

Then Varsity Glee Club and commencement band also help with the production!
Here's a picture of Laura shaking hands with the president of Purdue. I snapped this picture of one of the video screens, otherwise this angle would have been impossible.
The Purdue Drum as a backdrop!
Here's my best picture of the night, a great shot of the Engineering Mall Fountain (also feature in my previous post). The fountain is usually off at night. During 4 years at Purdue, I don't think I ever saw the lights on with the fountain going, making this picture even more valuable to me!
On our way to the car to drive back home, we stopped at the Electrical Engineering building to see a picture of our Dad from his Purdue days in 1972. My freshman year, I walked by his picture 3 times a week, so it was fun to walk by it again!

Congratulations Dr. Laura! We're proud of you!

Final Presentations

On May 8th (yes a Saturday, luckily it was a rainy Saturday), I completed my last project for the semester with a 30min presentation our of work. The day was quite long, since all 9 groups presented for 30min, but it was cool to see their work.

The class was PDD (Product Design and Development). It's a multidisciplinary class with undergrads, MBAs, LGO's, and RISD (Rhode Island School of Design) students who come together to design and develop a project. I have my opinions of the class itself, but the presentations were neat to see. I actually stayed awake caffeine free for 7 hours after my most sleep deprived week of the semester if that's any indication into the quality of the work.

Here's a few pictures from the day.

Campus Exploration

With the semester almost over and the weather turning rather nice, I've been exploring campus a bit more. I discovered the artwork floor in one section of the main building cluster. On the right of this first picture, you can see the exterior of the original building. Since initial constructions, an addition building has been added to the court yard with an atrium connection to the original. At some point, the artwork floor was added. While I'm not sure what it really means or represents, it sure adds a lot of primary color to an otherwise beige and silver space.

Spring

Spring is quickly arriving in Boston area, followed by a quick taste of summer. As you can see, the grass is getting much greening in Killian Court as compared to a previous post. The few days where temperatures in the 80's came a quite a shock but in New England fashion, the weather cooled down quickly to a more comfortable pedestrian level of 60-70 degrees making my desire to sit in class much lower.

Admit Weekend

I have some catching up to do on my blog and studying for finals that I would like to avoid. Sometimes things just line up.

A few weeks back was Admit weekend. This is the weekend when prospective Sloanies invade campus to check things out and frequently make that final decision... do I really want to go to this school? It's much like the LGO Open House, but with many more attendees.

I went to one of the evening events at Characters Bar and Grill in Kendall square. While typically a quiet place serving mostly as a hotel bar, on this particular night it was quite lively. The Sloanies took over with a social event headlined by the student band, The Rolling Sloans.

They did a great job of entertaining the crowd with an incredible variety of music with, according to rumors, very little practice.

Rock the Case Comp

Sing the title of this blog to the tune of "Rock the Casbah"... in your head... or not.

Regardless, that's exactly what some of the LGO ladies did! Check it out!

Night Time Roof Pictures

I climbed up on the roof the other night with my camera and little tripod in tow to take some night time shots in celebration of the revival of my camera. You may have notice some consistent dust and dirt spots in some of my previous pictures. With a bit of Googling and a vacuum cleaner, the problem was mostly resolved!

Anyways... here's what I found.

The church across the street, the Prudential Tower, and the moon!

The church across the street.
A view of Central Square from my apartment... a very trained eye can see 3 more churches other than the one pictured perviously. Good luck!
Cambridge city hall... barely. This picture required a 30 second exposure and it's still dark!