WOW. The winter wallop is here. My windows, which are below grade, are almost entirely covered with snow. In the past ~12 hours we’ve had over 20 inches of snow dumped on us, and it’s still coming! Hopefully Kate and I have enough food in the house to survive for a few days because we aren’t going anywhere…

Last night, we braved the early part of the blizzard to see “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou“. Anyone else seen this movie? It has all the elements of a Wes Anderson film – down and out lead character, quirky characters, unique sets (the cut-away of the Bellafonte is pretty cool), long-camera shots,little to no plot, etc… But in this one, the characters aren’t quite as loveable (Owen Wilson’s souther accent gets a little old), and the story just isn’t as engaging. I have to admit, it just wasn’t as fun as his other movies. Maybe my expectationts were too high… Curious to hear if anyone else has seen it…

Hey all. While I haven’t had time to write up anything about my time in Brazil, I have put some pictures up on my webpage: www.ben-schrag.com/brasil/. I’ll get a more comprehensive account up in the next week sometime.

Robin and I have resolved to watch Super Size Me once a week. It’s the Super Size Me diet, or rather deterrent to eating fast food.

If anyone is interested, my friends and I started a guild in World of Warcraft. It’s called Harsh Winter and we play on the Silver Hand server as Horde. We even have a discussion board!

http://www.transbuddha.com/alphamonkey/html/trevor.html

http://www.chrismahanukwanzakah.com/

I don’t know how things are going where you are, but around here lately, it’s been babies, babies, babies. Filghts from Logan are probably getting delayed with all of the stork traffic… Kate and I just spent a nice Thanksgiving in Duluth with my family, and got to spend a little quality time with my 4 month old nephew, Bergen. Over the past ~ 3 months, this kid has exploded from tiny peanut to massive baby. He’s cute as all heck. See:

After getting back, we had dinner with Kate’s siter and brother in law who annoucned that they are expecting! Last week, a family friend had a baby. Sunday night, my advisor/boss’s wife gave birth to their second child. Plus, two residents gave birth in the past few months, with two more staff members in my department expecting any week now. What?

Who’s next?

Hello fellow bloggers. I apologize for my lengthy absence. We’ve had a busy month, but mostly I didn’t have much I felt was blog-w0rthy in the aftermath of stupid John Kerry going down to defeat like Word Booty against the Reed Basketball Team.

So the company recently went to represent at the 2004 ISTFA in nearby Worcester, MA. It’s fun to go out and press the flesh, which is basically the point of bringing our microscope out there. This year the conference was held in the Worcester Centrum, a recognized name for anyone who watched much WWF growing up. And I shit you not, during our conference there was, yes that’s right, a MOTOCROSS going on in the other part of the venue. Guess who got more attendees? I was hoping to run into…
The Iron Sheik and Nikolai Volkoff!

But sadly no… So anyway now we are in the process of finishing up the new functionality of our product and writing literature, as well as an update of the website (not started yet). I’m also writing up a grant proposal to the NSF, which is always draining.

One interesting bit of news is that I’ll be in BRAZIL for the winter break! My first time there, so Yeung and I will be travelling all over the place as she shows me all the places she’s lived and studied since she was six. I’m hoping to avoid having to wear those Speedos all the Brazilians are so fond of. Not that I’m ashamed, I mean, it’s just…. So that will be sixteen days of fun from the 26th to January 11th. I am still waiting on my visa, which costs me $110 just because the US decided to put the same fee on Brazilians visiting here after 9/11, so Brazil reciprocated. That’s pretty weak on our part. I’ll make sure not to flip off anyone; I hear Brazil hates that.

Otherwise I’ve been playing basketball and City of Heroes, which Mark has already discussed. I’m trying to avoid getting WoW and I think I will be successful in staving it off, at least until after I return.

Melmack, I will be in Boston crazy early next Sunday. I might be too tired to think straight, but just wanted to let you know in case you wanted to get breakfast or something.

Looks like the fellowship of the bowl has come upon hard times. It’s members scattered across the breath of this land while the darkness of Bush gains ascendance over the heart of this nation. In Oregonia, where the forces of Light still hold sway, one of the companions fills his simple days with sports, food, and leisure.

Mostly I’ve been coaching basketball and volleyball. I’m involved with one or the other 6 to 7 days a week. When I’m not doing prep work for my sports, I mostly spend my free time working on the house, cooking, reading and watching movies. I went to town with my new library card. You can keep DVDs for three weeks! I’ve got close to a gross of em sitting on the movie rack. Most recently, I’ve gotten into books on tape. It makes doing your chores soooo much nicer.

The Reed Basketball team is 1 and 5 right now but we’re much better than when we started. The group is an interesting mixture. 7 freshman and 4 seniors…none of which were starters.

The Reed Co-ed Volleyball team is doing considerably better. We’re playing in the city league. With the playoffs approaching, we pulled out from the middle of the pack to take the number two spot in our division.

Sadly the thing with Claire didn’t work out very well but thanks for all your help and input….really…thanks.

I hope you all have a nice thanksgiving. My housemate Mitch, invited me to thanksgiving at his ranch in Southern Oregon. We’re going to make a caramelized pecan cheesecake….with the pecans warm! I enthusiastically endorsed Mark and Robin’s thanksgiving duck idea but sadly it fell on traditionalist ears. Any other interesting food ideas for thanksgiving?

Hey, I do check out this site once in a while. Congrats Robin on your new job! hey Mark, is there any way to monitor who’s been logging on? i don’t see why gwu hasn’t been writing..he’s got all the time in the world and now he’s also got a cable connection.
ya, i wouldn’t say that this year’s election was all that fair. just google ‘ohio elections’ or something like that and i’m sure you’ll find tons of evidence saying other wise. remember..its the people who count the votes not the people who vote that have the power..haha.

OMFG, this is an awesome game! If you know me then you may know that I am super wary of MMORPGs. It goes back to my Reed days when I knew some Reedies who dropped out due to their excessive MUD playing. I felt like I might fall into that same trap (and if you ask Robin, I may finally have). I’ve played a few MMOGs, but never played any for longer than a month or two. They just don’t hold my interest that long because they tend to be either extremely repetitive and tedious after a while or extremely pointless, as in the world never changes and the fight never ends.

Somehow Blizzard got it right, though I should say that I’ve only played World of Warcraft for a week. (I’ve been doing the open beta.) It *feels* like a single-player RPG since all the quests are hard-coded and designed really well. I mean you still have the animal farming quests, but the quests aren’t randomly generated. Additionally, all the quests give much more XP and monetary rewards than if you just went out and killed a bunch of stuff. The quests really drive the game and it makes me feel like I’m actually doing something and the world is changing.

I do have to say, also, that a lot of why I like the game so much is that I’ve been playing with a group of 4 others who are all on a voice chat program. Our party dynamics and communication is top-notch and it is very fun creating characters to complement each other. This is the same group who were playing BG2 with me, but that game fell by the wayside…

I’ll put up some screenshots and a review if I have time… I keep saying that…