Graduation and leaving Indiana

So my Grandma always asks me to send her pictures about what I've been up to, so I'm hoping that I can just post them here and direct her and that whole process will become automated. The first thing she asked me for was a few graduation pictures. Not that I took many, but I will warn you now, I was definitely the most dressed up person at commencement, and I definitely wasn't wearing the same clothes I went to the bars in the previous night. Commencement was certainly a fun ceremony, which I won't soon forget. President Cordova was a good speaker, and all the hoopla and ridiculously extravagant garb was worn. I didn't really feel the need to walk all over campus and take pictures with every landmark for some reason, like most kids do, so I don't really have that extensive of a collection of graduation pictures. What I did decide that I'm going to miss, however, is things from home like Buffalouies and Dunkin Donuts. The whole Dunkin Donuts problem was solved when I typed my new area code into their store finder and, much to my relief, I'm surrounded on every side by my favorite cup of coffee. Look at the bottom left of that screen capture -- 27 locations in the area, five in my new town alone! With Buffalouies though, I wasn't quite as lucky. With only three locations left (the one in Portage closed down!) and more wing places moving into our area every year, I don't know how many more times I'll be able to eat there before it goes out of business. So, in customary Chris Lee and Rich Yueh fashion, let me present you with the before and after shots of my last visit to Buffalouies. Notice the graveyard in the back. I'm gonna miss that place.
















On another note, grandma also asked me for pictures of the cats. I was lucky the other day and stumbled in on them all taking a nap together, so I was able to finish this assignment in one swift push of the button. The nice thing about this picture, is that it actually catches the cats in their natural poses too. Violet is giving her default "leave me the heck alone" stare, Gracie is sleeping, and Maybelle is waking up and stretching so she can come over and greet you. I'll certainly miss automating the playing process with Maybelle.














I really enjoy this medium of writing if you can't tell, it leaves opportunities to seamlessly interweave pictures and little tidbits about what you're doing with your life and make them easily accessible to the world. Heck, people don't even have to make it their homepage to make sure I haven't updated it everyday, just subscribe to the RSS feed and you're good. I love being such a young part of the future of computing. Blogging was a word hardly understood by anyone a few years ago, now it's probably got an entry in the dictionary (don't quote me on that quite yet, those books that are still actually printed are slow sometimes.)














One thing that definitely impressed me about the commencement ceremony, which I forgot about until I posted the diploma picture, was that they actually had our individual diplomas ready as we walked across the stage. I went back to my seat holding it -- no need to wait for it in the mail or pick it up later. My high school couldn't even pull that it off, and our graduating class was hardly 400 students. Impressive Purdue, impressive.

Finally, I guess i'll leave you with a picture of the Chile Verde I mentioned last time. I thought it came out pretty good, and it almost looks like what it's supposed to, or as Kathryn would say "a bowl of green goo."

Getting this started.

Since i'm moving away in less than 3 weeks, I decided that blogging would probably be the easiest way to keep my friends and parents informed as far as what I'm up to. I've never been to much of a diary keeper or writer, but maybe since blogs are so close to the computer I'll be able to keep up with it.

The latest escapade in my life has been car shopping. I'm pretty much hooked on the Mazda3 after test driving it and am in the process of trying to pick colors and options. The Nissan Sentra was my second favorite out of everything I drove, but once I found out I can knock $2500 off the price of a Mazda I was sold. The Mazdaspeed3 is such a hot/tempting car, but I suppose I'll keep my head on straight and put mileage higher on the priority list than horsepower (for now) -- so I think i'm going with the S model in the dark grey. It'll probably look like the ride below, but with a spoiler. My mom said it doesn't quite look right without the spoiler, and who am I to argue with my mom.

The next thing on my agenda lately has been insurance shopping. I plan on buying it about 10 days before I leave, so that I'm on my parents insurance "grace period" when I drive out to CT, but after that point insurance is going to be up to me. Getting old is pretty nuts, I never thought I'd be saying I'm "insurance shopping." FYI, Geico is ridiculously cheap. They were the only company besides Liberty Mutual that offered me any amount under $1000 for 6 months -- even with the higher coverage levels. I'll probably end up supporting Warren Buffet and the Gecko/Cavemen after all, god knows they spend enough money on advertising to warrant it.

In non-real-life (I suppose), I spent most of the last few weeks cooking and trying to pick up Ruby. Ruby really is a fascinating language -- it's syntactically nothing like anything else I've worked with. You really have to start thinking out of the box to even guess what the correct syntax to do anything would be. I suppose that goes to show that when the Japanese set out to do something it's always going to be completely off the wall. The learning curve is feeling pretty high, but I suppose I have to learn a scripting language sooner or later. I might as well go with the one that fascinates me the most.

As far as cooking goes, I finished off the last of my Chile Verde today. That's definitely a dish I'm going to want to perfect over time, it was one of my absolute favorites when I had it during spring break in LA. I think I added a bit too much cilantro and I want to play around with the different chiles you can put in it. I tried Anaheims, which definitely had a bite to them. I'm probably going to try pablano's next time just to see what they have to bring to the table. When I was reading about all the different types of chiles around Google I kept hearing about a hatch version from New Mexico. Knowing how much I love hot things it's probably only a matter of time before I order a bushel and go to town putting them in everything...