Recent Life

Just looking at the entries on this page, it's slowly turning into a scratchbook. I guess I'll have to archive it sometime. Sometime.

4/13/00

Long time no update. Few interesting new things. I took a break from writing my thesis and visited Red Rocks in Nevada over spring break with a bunch of friends instead. There we climbed a number of cool routes and I ended up making my final job decision. So after flying tens of thousands of miles, climbing countless vertical feet, and some night cross-country hiking in the desert, I decided to go work for Hewlett Packard in Vancouver, WA for a while. I finally figured that I should put those ME engineering skills to use at least for a while on stuff that actually matters, so I will be troubleshooting inkjet printer production in the near term, and hopefully get my hot little hands on inkjet printer design in the long term. Vancouver is nice, and getting rid of student loans will be even nicer. And having lived at MIT for six years(!) I think I can use a shake-up. Meanwhile some of my friends are for all intents and purposes settling down in this area, so if I ever feel like coming back I am sure Boston will remain a nice friendly city.

I do have a lot of photos, but unfortunately the scanner in the lab is missing and I am busy as heck with thesis, meaning that none of them will make it here before mid-May. At which point jedislayer.mit.edu will disappear, and the web page will migrate to some random commercial server.

In the meantime I have grandiose plans for the summer, and even though the US stock market is desperately trying to throw a wrench into things by falling at the wrong time, I will just ignore such minor annoyances, and have fun anyway. Life outdoors is cheap, and plenty of National Parks out west left to explore.

Thesis may or may not be finished on the soft deadline, but I will do my best to actually walk on June 2nd. And unless I decide to come back, that will be the end of my MIT education. Scary? Nah.

2/22/00

Another busy two months. Traveling a lot lately. Looking for a job I'll most likely fly the equivalent of earth's circumference at the equator. Yikes. Yet despite all this flying the decisions are not any easier. At least they will be informed. I am beginning to form a strong preference towards a particular job, but it is still to early to talk about it. American Pie has been in my head lately, so I looked it up on the web and found some more out about it. I managed to climb a lot of ice in New Hampshire, but lately I have been extremely busy with thesis and lab related work. And of course classes. I've been going to the rock gym regularly, and that is keeping me sane. MIT floorplans that cam in useful one Sunday night. I am planning a trip to Red Rocks for Spring Break, as a break from thesis and as an opportunity to meet up with friends. I'll have Winter School and Dance Troupe (actually, those will make it to Ofoto first - they'll be a lot more effective in dealing with reprints) and Oregon photos up soon (yeah, right...), in the meantime I just have a photo of my sister, parents, and home. And a goose.

11/12/99

Busy two months. Plenty of climbing, few photos, lots of classwork. The search for a job is on, and I can't fully commit my attention to any one thing without losing track of another. Then again, some things are best left alone. Like my portfolio. The (relative) long timers SCNT & CSCO have skyrocketed lately.

9/9/99

I have a new address phone #(617) 225-9557

9/3/99

Finally had time to scan and organize photos. Now I am trying my best to write an app that will actually manage my photos the way I need for the website, hopefully cutting down some work. In the meantime, I am keeping my schedule full by moving (I will be in room 204A starting tomorrow) and taking yet another climbing trip - hey, it's the labor day weekend.

8/30/99

I am back in Cambridge. Trip was uneventful. Really. (grin..)

8/6/99

On the 7th I am off to climb and hike in Wyoming, Montana and Colorado. I will be returning 8/27. If you need to contact me, please leave a message on my answering machine - (617) 225-9596. I will be checking it periodically, and updating the message if circumstances warrant. Alternatively, I can be reached through my parents - (215) 822-7360. Yes, I am going to have fun, and no, I do not feel bad about it.

7/13/99

While taking night photos of blimps circling over Fenway and the river, I noticed a speedboat ... with a skier in tow. On the Charles.

7/12/99

Mike, Yip and I hiked the presidential traverse in the White Mountains of New Hampshire this Saturday. South to north, starting at the Crawford Notch and finishing at the Dolly Copp Campground. 22 or so miles of peaks, clouds, howling wind, horizontal rain, breath-taking views, boulder fields, hot chocolate and capricious Nature.

My roommate just moved out, and I am experiencing a vague roommate withdrawal.

6/25/99

"The greatest moments of my life are apt to fall singularly
flat. We manage to discount all their interest beforehand, and are amazed
to find that the day to which we have looked forward so long -- the day, it
may be, of our marriage or ordination or election to be Lord Mayor -- finds
us curiously unconscious of any sudden transformation and as strongly
inclined to prosaic eating and drinking as usual. At a later period we may
become conscious of this true, and perhaps the satisfactory conquest of this
new pass has given us more pleasure in later years than it did at the
moment."
-- Sir Leslie Stephen.

I led my first 5.10.

6/21/99

As I am updating my address book I notice that a lot of my friends now have addresses that end in .com instead the familiar .edu... Those little things telling me that I ought to get my butt in gear and graduate one of those days.

6/17/99

The label on the bottle of Sprite promised a prize if I found a Yoda under the bottle cap. The cap, not surprisingly, hid the words "TRY AGAIN". This struck me as odd; "Do or do not, there is no try". -Yoda

Other than that... I recently watched a number of my friends graduate, and I'm seeing them slowly moving farther and farther away from MIT. A them moment I am wondering how many of them I will not know ten years from now. Melancholy.... If only to break this spell, I am either climbing or photographing or working on my thesis in most of my waking moments. Maybe I'll actually accomplish something worthwhile in all of those areas.

I did have two conversations today with two friends for whom the MIT experience produced completely opposite results. One is jumping head first into life that MIT trained her for, will soon start a job that she likes, and generally has all the pieces of her future coalescing into a coherent whole. The other is drifting between an unfinished degree, a vague desire to work, and a strong desire to leave this place just for good riddance. I have to admit that I empathize more with the latter than the former. But I do have a desire to be more like the former, and that desire to actually organize my life before I get out of here rather than postponing the inevitable may well be what is driving me at the moment.

On a different note, I did manage to freak out Rachel with my suggestions for her short story. That actually surprised me.

Finally, photography. I have a ton of photos from last month, ranging from a trip to Acadia NP in Maine, to Dance Troupe's most recent performance, MIT graduation, my sister's first Communion, some random climbing, and Cape Cod. Yikes, all this in a month. Summer is looking good.

5/20/99

INS Form N-550 rev. 6-91 issued to Luke Sosnowski - I became a US Citizen.

Sometime in May

Montani Semper Liberi

5/3/99

Further additions to the dance troupe photos from last fall. This batch was on Technique's film, so I did not see it until recently.

4/29/99

18.086 PSet#9.2b : Further solution of this problem is left as an exercise to the grader...

3/19/99

I have gone on a trip to California an will be out touch until the 29th of March. In an emergency, contact my parents at (215) 822-7360. Happy Spring Break.

3/14/99

Climbing's on my mind. Boston Rock Gym has seen a lot of me lately, if only because the good old chapel well still has snow and mud at its base. Ice climbing season seems to be pretty much over, as is ice skating. Through all these distractions I have been working on my thesis, slowly realizing that its the process not the product that matters in this case. And I would like my process to be interesting. Which means it might take a bit longer, but it will make me happier. And I found a camera to take to JT. Life is good.

3/10/99

I'm looking over a four leaf clover
That I over-looked before.
One leaf is sunshine, the second is rain,
Third is the roses that grows in the lane.
No need explaining the one remaining
Is somebody I adore.
I'm looking over a four leaf clover
That I over-looked before!

(Irish folk song)

3/8/99

A compliment left unsaid: tells a thousand words? Strange, but true for this one case.

On a completely unrelated topic...my high opinion of Nikon just suffered a chip as my N70 malfunctioned in the middle of a roll. And I was not even abusing it at the moment :P Now I need to race to have it fixed before I go to Joshua Tree in two weeks.

I pulled a 5.10 at the gym today, just barely, but the happiness was more than barely there. It feels as good as breaking 5 min in the mile.

Just recently, reading what turned out to be a rather disappointing sci-fi novel, I happened upon a quote that I had known for a while but never remembered completely.

He fears his fate too much,
and his desserts are small,
who will not put it to the touch -
to win or lose it all.

Oh, and I led my first ice climb.

2/14/99

I am completely hosed already - and the term has not even really started, go figure - and this web page is already suffering. Oh well, I did scan lots of photos, including a lucky shot from a track meet. Spring break plans are well set for Joshua Tree, and then summer maybe for some really long hike/climb/voyage. So I guess so far so good, event though I do have to pretend that V-day was only a WWII event.

2/7/99

Jedislayer was down a couple days after a defrag program corrupted the NT installation. It's back up and running now, as good as new.

Last weekend I the weather cooperated beautifully, so I have some pictures from a Mt. Lafayette hike and subsequent ice climbing. They will eventually make it here.

1/25/99

Trying to think positively about myself. So let's see... Statistically speaking I am so bright that I should never need a desk lamp... Um... Now I need a good plug about humility...

Just finished another hike in the mountains, yet another one in pouring rain. Before I go again I'll hold out for better weather. Rainy days in the mountains are just too depressing.

I set the picture below as background to all machine I could get my hands on. Strangely, few people seem to mind. Hope lives on.

1/8/99

<<<---Click to enlarge

More photos, more web pages, more trips, and more thesis work. Life goes on...

1/1/99

Pink Floyd day

12/29/98

Hair cut day

12/9/98

Last test of term being over, it looks as if I only need to sweep up. Weather is beginning to look wintery, finally. Chilly, dreary fall days impart such melancholy.

12/6/98

What if instead of trying to break up Microsoft, we charged it a dime for every time windows crashed?

A page for the dance troupe's FEVER , which will soon house a lot of photos

11/22/98

"Andy giveth, Bill taketh away..."

Just finished photographing dance troupe, had a wonderful time and I am now waiting for pictures to be processed. I had a sneak preview of the photos yesterday, and think they look bad. Lukasz disagrees with me. We'll see.

11/19/98

Should I forget a friend to leave behind misery?.. Yikes, that sounds profound.

11/16/98

What a way to waste a weekend... At least I got some work done on my trip page.

11/8/98

2.151 test tomorrow, what the heck am I doing this page for. Watched a sunset from Nahant this afternoon, just because I felt like roaming around. And finally, finally I am casting off that stupor that has been squashing me for since arrival at MIT. Maybe all that soul searching is finally doing some good. Self hate is coming down to acceptable levels.

10/27/98

The beginnings of a page about my summer in California.

10/24/98

MITOC Climbing Class that I helped teach. More pictures also available from Hector.

10/21/98

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more; it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Macbeth, V.v.19-28 (Macbeth)

10/20/98

Hmm... When was the last time I actually did work on thesis???

10/15/98

A squirrel in the midst of mating frenzy collided into me. Interesting what you run into when turning a corner.

10/13/98.

Check out some of this summer's photos from Alaska.

Sometime in September

I returned to MIT beginning of September from my long and fun summer vacation. Since then I begun working in Newman Lab under Prof. Ian Hunter. As of now graduate life treats me quite well, except for the minor problem set here and there. I am rooming with the other Lukasz in Ashdown, the MIT graduate dormitory. In case you are wondering my new address is:

me
305 Memorial Dr. #218B
Cambridge, MA 02139

I've been climbing and enjoying myself quite bit lately, which seems to be doing good to my body and soul. I am not sure if I will give in to my friend's arguments that I should ditch climbing for now and learn how to swing properly, but in either case life will be interesting. Leaving the OC after four years seems silly, but why not? I will be able to climb all the mountains I want after I am out of school, but the opportunity to meet new people will lessen. I have to admit that Lukasz has a point. But why should I give up something I enjoy and that I am good at?

 


Personal Page | Main Page