Whoa, why am I going to bed so early?

Because I have the cold from hell

Woot! Currently I have 29086 miles!

Just another 20914 more miles until I become Platinum for next year!

Here are some simple possibilities of round trips I could take to earn this:

JFK SEA
0 16
1 12
2 8
3 5
4 1

Well I’ll probably go to NY at least once between now and the end of the year. 12 round trips to Redmond? Yipes.

Is going to Zurich in my future? Hrm.

Well today was my first full day back in Mountain View having been in Baltimore for the weekend for the 5th year reunion.

Unfortunately somewhere along the way I seemed to have caught a cold. Argh. Now I have a sore throat and the sniffles.

Back to the business of Baltimore though, the city sure has cleaned up a bunch (read: gentrified) since I was last there. Property prices have risen dramatically and a friend of a friend who graduated the same year now has 4 properties. WOW.

I’m incredibly glad that I didn’t go to Columbia or NYU or something, and live near my parents. They probably would’ve made me gone home every weekend or even live at home!

While I didn’t always enjoy my 4 years at Hopkins (to put it mildly), the 4 years in Baltimore was definitely an incredible growth experience. Though I was from NY, and spent summers working in the not so nice areas (hello 39th and 8th) Baltimore was still pretty scary at times. But it certainly had its own flavor and its own set of uniqueness. Like other East Coast cities, it has its own feel - not just strip malls that homogenize other cities.

And unlike the Bay Area or LA, diversity in Baltimore doesn’t just mean ‘has different kinds of Asians’.

That said, this claim still a bit of a stretch:

Right. That’s like Californians thinking that California is the center of the world… when in reality everyone knows that it is NY.

And finally, $130k+ and 4 years of toil, I think I earned the right for this picture:

Those who went to Hopkins should get the significance.

The Johns Hopkins University undergrads have a reputation for being anti-social, grade grubbing, pre-med types with no sense of community or social life. That they are all workaholics because of the C+ curve and that many are simply “broken”.

Well here are some pictures from “The Beach” - one of the main social gathering places at Hopkins. Finals are in about a week, so school is definitely still in session. Check these out and judge for yourself.

This is a picture from Saturday afternoon:

There are about ~4000 undergrads at JHU - so where is everyone? Were they all too tired from partying on Friday?

Well, here is a picture of the same social spot on Friday afternoon:

Hint: Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday isn’t much better.

It’s the ubiquitous man on the corner.

Welcome back to Baltimore.

Wow! I don?t usually gush about things, but I must write a positive review of SeaTac.

Yes! Me! Writing positive things about Seattle Tacoma Airport!

Usually I?m corralled into Terminals C and D, which are crowded, noisy, cluttered halls of vacation travelers, horrible food choices, and angry people due to perpetually delayed/cancelled Alaska Air flights.

Tonight I finally ventured out to Terminal A, which, fwiw, is practically in Tacoma.

WOW. Since the last time I walked past Terminal C, a lot sure has changed. Now there?s a food court, a bunch of nice stores? it?s an amazing transformation! So that?s what they?ve been doing with all that construction all that time.

Congrats SeaTac! Nice going! Japanese food, real Pizza ? oh hell yeah this beats the nasty stuff in C and D!

Wow!

Why oh why did I eat that meatball sub at SJC? Argh.

In a few hours, I’ll be going to Baltimore to visit JHU for the 5th year reunion.

I choose a slightly different route to get to Baltimore: San Jose->Seattle->Dallas/Fort Worth->Baltimore.

Why this insanity?

Let’s just say $0.0583748 per mile.

Not ideal (that would be 4 cents per mile), but not horrible either since this is some place I was going to go anyway.

One of my favorite applications on the Mac is
GraphicConverter.

Oh wow
I absolutely love this app and have an entire workflow for putting pictures I’ve
just taken onto the web using it.

Is there a Windows equivalent to this application? Here are the key features
that I need:

• Be able to view a folder of images using thumbnails (gallery)
• … and in that view rename all the files using the exif data on when
  the photo was taken using the format YYYYMMDD_HHMMSS.jpg
• … and in that view shift the exif data on when the photo was taken -
  forwards and backwards (in case multiple cameras are involved)
• Batch process a group of pictures so that they are autolevel/autocolor
• Batch process a group of pictures so that they are automatically rotated
  correctly
• Batch process a group of pictures so that they are resized to arbitrary
  maximum dimensions
• … using an algorithm that doesn’t look awful.

Any suggestions for an app that can do this job? Thanks!