birthday fun

so I had quite a nice birthday this year :) friday I woke up in boston, and got to meet the other kde-north-america-gsoc students :) I’d left my sunglasses at home, so of course it was lovely and sunny. we spent most of friday chatting and introducing ourselves; there were snacks, and then expensive hotel food (but good food, and I was hungry… and wanted a nice drink on my birthday… the bill was not so pleasant), and then we went off to see star trek. yes, the imax theatre was in a furniture store. we got there over an hour before the movie started, and a line had already formed.

I spent both friday and saturday night reading, so I was kinda tired in hte mornings. oops. :) still, I made it downstairs in time for breakfast.

at MIT we hacked, and talked, and talked some more… US customs had given me a stern warning about not doing work, even though gsoc hasn’t actually started yet, so I figured I was better off looking at Something Completely Different: scripty, the set of scripts that automate translation-y stuff. I’ve been wanting to look into it for a while now, if only to understand why amarok hasn’t moved to git yet ;) the code is kinda scary and a few people have suggested I just throw it away and write something new. I’m not certain I’ll actually have the time to redo scripty, but it’s worth a shot.

satuday afternoon I heard singing in hte hallway, and found an anime karaoke group :) I went back to kde’s room and tried to persuade them to go, but then I got distracted by my computer and they ended up going to dunkin donuts, and by the time I went back to the karaoke room they were packing up :/ another karaoke fail. :P but I still got to chat with some students, and two of them took me down through the basements to a secret little hacker space :) MIT has twisty passages. much cooler than SFU.

eventually we went out that evening, too late to really see the city – especially since it was pouring rain – but we had delicious indian food, and then delicious ice cream even though we were pretty full already (jeff bought mine as a bday present – yay :) :) and then we reached the bowling alley half an hour before closing – just enough time for one game :) candlepin bowling is a lot harder to score points in. I like the small balls, though – much easier for my little arms ;) which reminds me, now that I have a wii I’ve got to get wii fit or DDR or something so that I can play games that’ll trick me into getting a little exercise ;)

as for sunday, it just kinda… vanished. we had to leave MIT at 3:30, because my flight was at 6:05, and a couple of the other students had flights shortly after that. I do remember having burritos on sunday – boston has the most awesome burritos ever. and they sell horchata too, a yummy drink that I’ve only found in one other place so far – the mexican restaurant in china. I took an extra burrito with me on the plane, and ate it in minneapolis, and it was still pretty awesome despite being cold. :)

I remember trying out my new mouse, too. I bought one in the airport on the way over, because it was 50% off and I’m a little tired of the trackpad, but it’s an ugly brick and the defective usb port on the right-hand side of my laptop won’t work with the mouse, so I have to plug it in on hte left and fully extend the cord, which is kinda silly… and I just keep forgetting it exists :) in fact I could be using it right now… if I can find it…

I really wish I could’ve stayed there longer – one weekend is far too short a time to spend with fun kde people. still, it was nice to get home too. I got in late sunday night, and on monday pete cooked a nice dinner and one of the roommates made cupcakes, and they sang happy birthday n’stuff :) there are some nice things about not living alone. :) and I expect cory and devon are still planning to drag me out and get me horribly drunk…