Hello from Chicago!

I don't want to think about it too much, but yikes, I have become a graduate student! I arrived in Chicago last Saturday (9/13) but the dorm I'm living in isn't available until next Sunday, so I'm staying with Minh-Tam for now.

Minh-Tam's wifi has not been set up yet (because Comcast never showed up to set it up...), so I'm currently writing this in the hallway of his apartment, sitting where I have wifi signal from another friend who lives in the same building. I probably look really strange doing this. I don't think I should sit here too long, so for now, here's a picture of Chicago that I took when I arrived.

"Miller's Pub" in the Chicago Midway airport.

There's actually a story behind this picture: when I visited Chicago back in March, I flew in with 5 other friends. Several of us knew Professor Miller from the SMALL REU so one person suggested taking a picture of this restaurant to send to the professor. I was tired from the flight so I said I would remember to get a picture when we were leaving Chicago.

Three days later, our visit to Chicago was over. As I was heading to the airport in the morning, I accidentally left my camera in the taxi, so I didn't get to take this picture back in March. That's why I took this picture now -- better late than never! (The way I got my camera back is a pretty amusing story too, maybe for another time.)

PAX Prime 2014!

(I should have made this post several weeks ago. So despite it being 9/18, I'm going to set the date to 9/2.)

I was lucky enough to be in Seattle when PAX Prime was taking place. I'm not much of a video gamer but it was still fun to see all the upcoming games.

I played a lot of Tetris Attack (and later versions) that weekend. Like in the picture below!

The level is set to 10 (you might be able to see if you look close enough), so after I took this picture, I immediately lost!

The picture is from a room where you can borrow games and play them on the various consoles they have! As we were returning our game, we saw two other people playing Tetris Attack at another station. We naturally paused to watch them play. The player on the left had some garbage blocks.

Player on left: *raises his tower of blocks*
Andrew: "Ohh look! He's setting for something!"
Me: *agrees with Andrew and expects that player to clear the garbage blocks and start some long chain*
Player on the left: *immediately loses*

I bursted out laughing. Luckily the sounds from all the video games from all the stations made it so the player couldn't hear me (I hope?).