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!!! Blogging will cease during the summer temporarily !!!

4/30/26 Thursday

Hello friends! "Oh boy." (-Fritz). The last few days have been quite a "slog" (-Reid Weisman). Working on ARA project and studying for LINAC exam, which went very well due to Maddy's horrid pear V8 energy drink. Also yesterday (which seemed so long ago) I got called fat by all of EA being voted the "Most Likely to Eat More Donuts Than Anyone Else During a School Visit," which is admittedly true. And Vlad came back to campus for one last time before the summer, so that was nice to see him. But THAT was all yesterday (somehow) which felt like last week. This morning felt like yesterday and it was only 12 hours ago... that's right friends I awoke at 11:16am, and you'd might think that's fine but in actuality Dr. Wei Ji of the nuclear engineering department held class today in our normal room. Last day of classes was yesterday. Granted it was to help with the project but that's still the funniest thing ever. And I was late. Speedran shower>brushteeth>out the door>JROWL and made it back for him to help me with my OpenMC code, which is simply magnitudes easier to comprehend than MCNP like it's crazy. Shame that MCNP is what I'll be doing during my internship. Which briiiings me to that sore subject:

Yesterday I got a phone call from the lady at Texas A&M who explained how the housing would work, and she was the nicest lady ever like I love her so much. But sadly, I would have to be the one to find housing in Los Alamos/Santa Fe this summer, although it'll be covered by them of course. As you might imagine this is a stressful situation that I am now in. So, after "ARA class," P and I went to Sage, then bumrushed Maddie at the library where they had many puck cookies to eat. But instead of working on project or finals, there was the new project of needing to find housing for a place to stay in less than 1 month. So I spent much of the time at the library searching through furnishedfindings.com (very helpful) and I made one request to a place. Alright so the funny thing is, apparently this request must have gone to every Santa Fe resident in the city, because five minutes later my inbox started blowing up with messages from the website, with 95% of them saying "Unfortunatetly, that is outside our time frame!" but I'm thinking like why contact me then? Not sure. I did however talk to a guy nearby Santa Fe who actually grew up in Schenectady and went to HVCC, so he was happy to hear I was an RPI student! Furthermore I found a tiny little cabin in an RV park (it's not an RV though) that looks quite nice, so I'm looking into that. After the library I continued my house searching journey at CBIS where I supposedly studied for NumpComp with McKenna but just did the same house stuff, although McKenna made ample progress, so it was half a productive environment. Friendly reminder I awoke at 11:16am. Yuck! This was because I spent the majority of my mandatory awake hours at night learning brand new skills, which I will get into later.

Last part of the day brought me from CBIS to Commons to get a quick bite before heading to Biergarten for some all-ages bar trivia! The 600 Beavers did not place, but I'll tell you we were the people having the most fun in that bar. Adrian, Alexis, Arthur, Bella, James, and I got a couple full sweeps, and I even met my friend from sleepaway camp who went o UAlbany! AND there was another nuclear engineer at that same Albany bar! How about that! It was still a lot of fun to go out and to this, with even an entire question dedicated to Brokeback Mountain. Absolutely incredible. But it's STILL not over:

Turns out tonight was this late-night Breakfast event at Commons, and the nukes and I with meal plans discussed this during class the other day, so we were like yea why not let's go if it's still going on, which it was! There were professors there serving food, including these delicious egg and cheese sandwiches with great buns. The music and the vibes were very nice I must admit. Best of all, they had these homemade Cosmic brownies which were absolutely disgustingly decadent. Like the frosting was just gross, and I couldn't even eat the whole thing. Combined with a tall glass o' milk it was the greatest. During our conversation the gif of Mr. Krabs and Squidward feeling bad for Spongebob came up with Krabs saying "How do we tell him?" So with nothing to do, we decided to recreate this. P wanted a quality gif and was at his whit's end so we had to do this right. And we help from fellow freshman nuke Carter we went to Barton and Barton being Barton they had zero study rooms open, even at 11pm. A tragedy, we walked out downtrodden... but out of the corner of my eye I see the big glass window of BRAY with the tiny study room OPEN!! The four of us enter and it is the perfect set to film this gif. So we start moving furniture and trying to get Carter to hold the camera to frame our faces in the right way. Of course while doing this, MAURA WALKS IN UNPLANNED with her crew buddies and I cannot even possibly explain what was going on. So here is the explanation Maura, if I did not already explain. With the camera angles perfect, we filmed 3 iterations which each person as Spongebob as to send in the proper contexts. As we speak, they are being edited.

Well this is strange: I've been awake for 13 hours now (it's 12:10 right now) and feel like I've lived a lifetime. I can only imagine what it would have been like I awoke at 8am or something and had 3 other hours of content. Now I was going to explain what I've been doing these past few nights while not sleeping, but this blog has gone long enough and I think I'll save that for tomorrow. That said, so long, farewell, and good night or something like that. "Church" (-Skinny Pete).

4/27/26 Monday

Friends, I like totally banged out my entire LINAC lab today. Just an absolute academic machine over here between the EA office, library, and Union. The Union definitely has different vibes at night. The sun goes down, the room becomes darker, and the vibe changes from during prime afternoon time. There's also a different crowd than your typical 1-4pm people. The night-time Union contains maybe the athletes returning from practice, the procrastinators getting their projects done the night before, and group project meetings convening a time all of them can make -- 9pm. There's also always an extremely loud group of people and somehow McKenna and I cycled through like 3 during our stay tonight. Looking forward to the summer where it's like even realer life LINAC lab except it's a 100 MeV PROTON ACCELERATOR like what. Obviously I will not be blogging as much during the summer about my job, but I will keep it interesting nonetheless. I mean it'll be infinite time so maybe I'll Make some big updates or something. I know, lofty goals to set right now when it's so far in the future, except it's not, and in one month I will straight up be in the desert. Listening to a Tear for Eddie right now as Evan does, and I think I'm gonna submit the lab on thermal neutron spectrum (which is crazy how the data lines up with MCNP and Maxwellian theory like what) and continue to a mindless NumpComp tomorrow but a mindful study for the LINAC exam and more NumpComp.

4/26/26 Sunday

Bit of a RPI history for yall that are here: Recently became obcessed with this pair of buildings called "Blaw-Knox." It's located right beside North lot in plain sight, but for some reason it's just so easy to miss and blends right in. Backtrack to when I was doing a Red&White event during alumni weekend and I was talking to this ChemE alum who did some nuclear stuff while they were here. He seemed to be in his 60s so he surely had some wisdom, but when we were talking about how I was interested in isotopes and whatnot, he mentioned that there are two abandoned pools on campus: one in the 87 gym of course, but the other in this random building that used to contain a pool of Cobalt-60. This was curious information to me, as knew nothing of the sort or why we would even have a pool of Co-60 lying around. But most of all, I wanted to be able to play or at least know of some chance students could do research with it. Well fast forward to today at tutoring where I am Google mapsing around campus to find the location of where THIS IMAGE was taken (which by the way please email me if you think you know. It's a poster in 1st floor library. This is coming from seasoned campus vet). Anyway looking through Google maps trying to find a good angle of Academy/CBIS/where this was, I stumbled across this building labelled "Blaw-Knox" right beside North lot, and I went well huh, I feel like I've never acknowledged that building. Well did some sleuthing and found the RPI Archives page on it and it appears that THIS was the building That once contained the Co-60 pool, and A BETATRON (mini electron accelerator)!?! Named after the steel-making company the building was originally used by, this is an incredibly cool lab and I will try to learn any more information about this, but it's simply fascinating. An r/RPI thread confirms these claims, and explains a little more how the material was likely taken to the LINAC after a while. But I can imagine this being a crazy cool spot for lab, and would do anything to bring this back as a new nuclear facility on campus. I am going to ask Danon what he knows about This and report back with any findings cause this is really somethin else and I've never heard anyone talk about it before. The historic image from the 50s is fascinating, so here it is compared to the Google maps street view. I will try to get a good photo recreating that view myself, although it seems to be quite up high, so could be from Ricketts or something. Just imagine having a lab in here. Found this diagram of the floorplan too for Building 1 (behind Building 2 in the photo, closer to J) and it's crazy cool. Contains physics lab, classroom and now admin buildings. According to the archives website is now houses Radiation and Nuclear Safety Office, so I might ask Ginger (nuclear safety officer) what she knows about this building. So you can see how this is the fascination of this evening right?

P.S. Check out new game in Cool links.

4/23/26 Thursday

Another long day today. Cool part was sitting into the nuclear faculty meeting today giving out Alpha Nu Sigma inductions. Going into JEC 5030 and seeing each one of the top dawgs -- Fritz, Danon, Shi, Kang, Emily Liu, and even Tom Haley coming in late, Clint, and everyone else was so cool. You're now in front of everybody you have been taught by in the last 3 years and everyone you WILL be (which I think is just Shi left.) Fritz was once all their students too and here he is among them as an equal. The best part was Dr. Malaviya came in and joined the meeting! It's crazy...he taught DANON PNR, and Danon thought HE was old in like the 80s. So it was so honorable to talk to him and tell him about everything happening this summer with everyone. I'm wondering now who HIS advisor was and to follow that family tree to end up at like Oppenheimer or something kinda like the math genealogy project. Alright I'll update you on that quest when I get to it.

Also today at tutoring we finished 2025!! It was a long and grueling process but it's finally all sorted with Score < Mistakes. I won't spoil what happens when you finish but I have to show the final message. Bit of a spoiler warning but I don't care!! So joyous!! Nump Comp exam tomorrow but it's the MATLAB Laboratry so who KNOWS how that'll go. That's all for now friends. See you at Cracker Barrel tomorrow.

4/21/26 Tuesday

Excuse the short blog posts this week, it's a 4-exam+project kinda week. Exam today, then grinded out 2 back exams in CBIS until I headed to the LINAC, where turns out there was a brand new table! So yea to all the future students reading this, the table that apparently will now be in Fritz's room used to be in the NES lecture room. Upon arriving even the chairs were new, which I sat in while Danon lectured on about the Linac. But you might ask, where did those classic original chairs end up? Well there were three of them just sitting next to the closet outside the lecture room. Two of which had to go to Fritz's room, but the other...was up for grabs. With Danon's permission of course we happily took it from the premisces. It's surprisingly heavy so P carried it outside, but now upon coming home, I realize that I don't really have anywhere to put it. It's pretty bulky and granted is in the photos hanging on the wall of that class from 2008 so who know how long it's been in that room. Safe to say it's not the easiest to handle and currently tonight it's still in my car but I hope to bring it somewhere for a final resting place.

4/19/26 Sunday

I think everything yesterday will be talked about today. First off all I'm done with reggae for this week, but it's been a great time. I think it'll come back on the drive to NM.

4/18/26 Saturday

Today it's Saturday morning. So we have to use this code for ARA in VS code and the TA spent like 40 min trying to get it working on my computer, so I was too nervous to mess around with VS code and change anything. It was only until Gavin showed up for this weekend for pep elections and as a saving grace navigated me to a new VS Code tab! Hooray! So the blog drought was over and I thought it'd be until by ARA project is over which is literally the day after Mat Sci final. Well not much to say this morning. Infinite stuff to do but sadly nothing can happen on Saturdays that is educationally productive. Oh yesterday I saw a "living" "breathing" R2D2! Help me Obi-wan Kenobi, you're our only hope. This at a robotics tournament in the MVP Arena and it was sadly the coolest thing ever.

4/15/26 Wednesday

Feels like it's been a week since Monday or something. Realized that it's grind week this upcoming week it's pretty bad. On the other hand, in my mandatory waking hours I learned how to tell you the day of the week of any day from 2000 to 2099. Test me I'll do my best next time you see me. Today was interesting because upon going to the LINAC early for class, Danon said that there was a problem and we'd have to stand by. By the time class started at noon, he was still in the LINAC and we were buzzing about what was going on. 15 minutes later he explained what happened and had to send us all home because the LINAC literally was not working today. Sooo turns out we could not do our two labs today which many would spin for a good thing; however I genuinely was excited to do this so it was a bummer driving back. It was also going to be the day that P sticks his phone in the neutron beam and we film the experience like a viral YouTube video from 2009. Then I felt like I had to be productive with my extra four hours of day, but ended up playing Pokemon Go for like most of that which was terrible while starting to write the lab that now isn't due for two weeks.

Also last night, Garrett, Josh, Jordan and I discussed a trip to LANL since we all have jobs around the country. Turns out Josh also has to bring his car to New Orleans for his job there in the summer, wheather that get there by shipping or driving with us (which we agreed to stop by NOLA), but he starts the same day as me. Also brining four people + all my stuff in my car miiight be tight for space. But after much deliberation we came up with the idea to ship his car to Los Alamos WITH all my stuff in there, then he drives back to New Orleans and the other two flies from NOLA to NY. However that runs a risk of his car not getting to New Mexico in time (which contains all my belongings), so if that happens Josh gives me his keys and I give him my car to drive back to NOLA, then I take his car and uses that in New Mexico which will have all my stuff when it ships! Alright it was really funny when we thought of this idea. Who knows if it will make it out of the planning phases but still nice to catch up n' stuff. Grrr there is so much work to do. Happily ARA is delayed 1 hour tomorrow on account of G being on traver. Sad to see him go cause the TA is nowhere close to as good of a teacher he is. BTW the Reggae has making these past few days so chill it's crazy. Highly recommend Reggae instrumentals mon.

4/13/26 Monday

High key eventful weekend in the air, like SO much; some things are just not blogged about. Not sleeping Thursday night I started a book called "The World is Flat" but I promise it's not a nutjob book it's moreso metaphorically but not in the emo sense like boring flat it's about globalization and stuff and like how countries' values are becoming incredibly intimately intwined, internationally. The first chapters was about the author visiting a call center in India and how these are very prosperous jobs there as they pay relatively well and are often at night (USA time) so these young employees can attend school during the day. They take accent classes to mask their dialects; most of the time if you call a support line and it sounds like a young American person, it's likely from India simply due to how much cheaper it is there. In fact, it McDonalds experimented with something as insane as the DRIVE THROUGH has someone at an Indian call center instead of in the store who just sends the order to the brick and mortar store thousands of miles away. Like that is wild. So yea, filling my mandatory awake time which has extended till like 2:30am now with this has been fun recently.

4/9/26 Thursday

Time to talk about Quang. Exposing P here, but it warranted believe me. So he as very much into this zombie survival Roblox game called Final Stand 2, often browsing the wiki (much like I might do for Animorphs, I get it) during class, and afking during ARA to farm xp. These matches take four hours long, and are often the late-night activity in his household. Now there is a certain perk you obtain if you make it into the world leaderboard of this game that you can get forever, which P has been on the quest to do, and so to make his way there he provided his account info and hired a man from Thailand named Quang to get his account up to leaderboard status for $50 USD. Now you can see why Maddie and I have been enthralled getting updates in class. Through this past week, P is unable to access his account as Quang is on the grind, and each day he climbs higher and higher. In fact, P made an amendment that if Quang gets to #1 worldwide, he gets an extra $10. Now in Pietro's words, fifty dollars in Thailand gets you a whole lot more Big Macs that in America. So in all honesty, this is a great deal for both parties involves, all while skipping the middleman of evil Roblox corporation. Anyway this is the most entertaining thing ever, and in fact, Quang reached number 1 as of today! But yet another incident occured, where accoridng to P, Quang was BANNED from the Final Stand 2 discord server by insulting the literal DEV of Final Stand 2. Sooo he's a bit of a troublemaker but nonetheless gets the job done. We actually wanted P to FaceTime him or something, and we realzied the funniest part is Quang could be 13 years old and just have no idea he's getting his money from a 40 year old man. Anyway they should start paying me now for how often I end up going to tutoring. It's fun.

4/8/26 Wednesday

You're gonna find this interesting: So this morning I went to this fercus group type thing in Sage Banquet Hall. Allow me to explain: I RSVPd a bit ago about this data study RPI is doing about finding the archetype of the "RPI student." I was skeptical, but willing to see what it was about. Arrived there at 10 and this person who looked like the Minute Cryptic guy greeted us and first explained a little about what archetypes might exist: jocks, nerds, party-goers, you name it. Each one exhibits qualities/personality traits, but people are really combinations of everything. Now I was curious where they were going with this, and what exactly they wanted us 20 or so in the room to do, like are we just doing a survey? Are we being asked what type of people we are? Not quite. Instead our job was to, in groups, fill out a piece paper describing a "group" of types of people on campus, but the goal was to make it as specific to RPI as possible. In this way, they want to have specific clubs, groups, locations, that a certain subset of people embody. Here were to of our examples: 1. A sort of tech hustler - this is the type of person to 3D print random thnigs and sell them, or even loot the tech dumps for spare parts to fix someone's computer. They exhibit some of those altruistic qualities but also a little rebeliousness to get ahead of the game in their marketing skills. You might know some of these people hanging around the Forge or Processes Lab. My personal selection was "The Union Rotter." Although this mostly exists in phases during people's time here, this person leaves their house in the morning and does not get home until 10-midnight. This is because every moment they are not in classes they are in the Union, which is not bad given literally everything is there. The Minute Cryptic guy was surprised to here even a barbershop was there. The Union Rotter also has Panera Sips club of course, and mostly goes there to socialize but also lock in. Very different vibe from the usual college campus library, where here the library is used for a generational lock in, rather than a more social study at a table situation. It's interesting that because EVERYONE is doing work often, the Union fills that niche of work-hangout as sometimes you just always gotta be on the grind. Productivity is something the U.R. also values, which was included in this sheet of course. I myself am guilty of exhibiting qualities of this person, not that there's anything wrong with it! On this paper, we also had to draw a picture of our archetype as to describe this person with what words could not. Going into the personality portion of describing these people, another group brought up an interesting thing, that most of the people here are here to help. He compared it to MIT which is admittedly much more of a competitive school and atmosphere. Being around an atmosphere here where everyone suffers in their work sure, but so often there is someone to help, as nobody comes here to try to get the best GPA out of the class and put others down. Now Obvsiously some people are dead-set on being a 4.0, but it's truly not that deep here. I hope I explained that well and did what that group said justice. I talked to the Minute Cryptic guy afterward since it was still an hour till LINAC, and he explained that this data will be combined with 3 other sessions later in the day, and scanned, compiled, and overall sifted to find the three most common types of people here. So it's kind of a way to tell RPI, hey this is the type of people here, and these are the students that we have and we want. That way, those who fit this archetype would be more inclined to come, or maybe people who are super competitive and want to throw others under the bus to get their 4.0 say, "hey maybe RPI is not for me, I am going to go to MIT and pay 1 trillion dollars." Anyway all of this was just from one hour of an event where I woke up and questioned if I really wanted to go.

LINAC Lab was very short today, and I debated showing Danon my Mii of him but convinved not to. Had to leave early to head to JEC to take a picture with Maniatty and Fritz for the Constellation scholarship (still have to decline their internship....oops) so peep that LinkedIn post from the MANE Department soon (hopefully my face isn't too red from the sunburn Saturday.) After that Wednesday continued as normal except for TBP initiation, where I tried so hard not to laugh. Forgot I can't really blog about this. Dang. Highlight of the day though was being inside this VIP MANE room before the photoshoot for the scholarship and finding this info stock card on Fritz as RPI's new nuclear professor. Had to grab it quick cause he was literally outside the door but I really wanted to show it to the other nukes. Alllright this has gotta be enough. OH I even tried a new nuclear code today, it's sick, but I'll save it for content tomorrow. Good bye friendships!

Also wait till I talk about Quang from Vietnam...

4/7/26 Tuesday

A few days ago we weret talking about doing that thing where every hour of the day you take a photo of yourself and what you're doing, and today would have made me seem like the businest person EVER. Overslept, so if you took a photo at 9am, I'd be sleeping in bed, but if it was at 10am, I'd be in Nump Comp room already. By 11am I'm still there (doing 2025 game), but by 12am I was in the Unoin bugging about this Data assignment. After getting help, we went to the JEC for Concur Office hours at 3pm. Let me tell you they are so willing to help in that little room. It was mostlty to submit requests for the food bought in the Bronx, and they just really want people there it's really nice. Anyway after that, I went to Ricketts for a TBP meeting at by 4pm, then back to EA office to finish the assignment after taking a picture of a sword with Arthur. By 5pm it was dinner time, and shortly after that it was time to head back to the Union for a Phalanx meeting. Then lastly, 7pm brought me BACK to the JEC for SNAG meeting where Deep Fission came in! The guy talked about putting a nuclear reactors in a hole a mile deep in Kansas, and made it sound pretty convincing. Although I gotta say, the guy did dodge a few questions about how they don't refuel and just leaving a hole with waste in the bottom. Nonetheless a lot of people interested in this engineering came, which was lovely to see (Radiant coming in next week who are developing a new type of rxrs, pull up)! By the night's end, say 9pm, the other Nukes and I were back in Sharp to work on LINAC Lab and make Miis of the nuclear professors. I don't know about morally if I'll put them in this website. Mayyybe in the nuclear page, but not the upcoming Miis page. If you want me to make a mii of you, you can be in my upcoming Mii page. Been having a lot of fun doing this lately, and even found that the Nintendo website has a built-in Mii maker which is pretty good (instead of doing it in a browser Tomodachi Life emulator).

4/6/26 Monday

I'm telling you it's just one more day of being in the tenth circle, then smooth sailing. Slept terribly so went to breakfast in fugue state then immediately got got for EA assassin. Very embarassing. Nonetheless spend ARA tossing and turning about what should've been Sunday night (if it wasn't watching Youtube and trying to get the ARA code to work in the first place). Then banged out the entirety of Nump Comp through Data with its in-class assignment and MatSci along with the Activity, then back to library to finish that off. After dinner went to Union to finish ARA after pleading Ji to extend it to tonight. So yea I'm writing this in the Union right now so still gotta print the HW and slip it under Ji's door in the JEC. Of course P wanted to get the tables next to the 3 TVs in the Union basement so he did what he had to do. Safe to say I was not having it. Many people were infatuated and laughing at the five hours of Halo gameplay, so it just stayed there as the good people of the Union continued their work. So yea after a bit the Union worker sitting at the pool desk went over to the little projector screen under the middle TV and turned it off, and didn't even notice the HDMI going to P's laptop?? Nevertheless he unplugged it to our (collective) disappointment. It was a sadder Union basement. When Maddie came back from tutoring P just put it back but I don't really think I felt like getting in trouble though. However it was kind of funny. Now the worker at the pool desk is eyeing our table.... I really think he knows what's up but hopefully doesn't care to come back here..... They should instead keep an eye on who has their pool cues cause like 10 disappeared and it's super sad. Haven't seen all five tables being used since like January which is encrazed. Officially got my second group in the 2025 game too, so BIG progress incoming! Now gotta hope that nothing big happens for the rest of today since the blog is happening a little early....

4/4-5/26 Saturday+Sunday

Saturday we were outside at Lacrosse for pep (and Gavin came back, hooray!), and by GOLLY, I left with a sunburn. Do not know how it's that time of year already, yet I put on sunscreen too like that's not even fair. At least it wasn't as bad as some others' situations... Got Stewart's and it was all better. Sunday was trying to get this ARA code to work here on VS Code, but why does it need PYTHON 2 TO WORK. Like huh?? Spent hours trying to get that work but given up. Like it's porbably a really cool homework once that works, so hopefully Ji extends the due date to tomorrow and we have to slip it under his office door again. Plan is to go to the TA and he'll probably see all this website biz in VS Code again. However got like the entire LINAC Lab done between the Union and La biblioteca, which was very productive. Yet this was interspered by working on the 2025 Game for so long. I tell ya I'm close to finishing, but so much knowledge of culture is required to complete this, I'll have to start enlisting help. If you know a lot of coding languages, cheeses, Tom Hanks movies, or musicals, please let me know; there is much to be done.

Oh yea and I made a LinkedIn post too (which is always the scariest thing ever). You should comment on it so Marty can see too then we'll all be famous.

4/3/26 Friday

Saw that Hail Mary business, and I shall admit it was very entertaining all throughout. Except there were these ladies behind us laughing at like everything which like sure, but since it's so good and needs a critique, I thought it was TOO funny. Like it could be a little serious and I wouldn't mind that. Got home and listened to Reid Wiseman '97 aura farm on his spaceship while watching painting. Also, helped out my buddy Andrew start his own website! It maaaay look better than mine. Just a tad perhaps. Here it is. Nonetheless so glad to inspire development of such a project in others' lives. Maybe you, dear reader, will be inspired as well. Just lemme know.

4/1/26 Wednesday

New blog page color! Decided to change things up for now, but maybe the opaque couche will return some day. So today is the month anniversary of when I had to explain this one gif to Danon during LINAC lab cause it was on P's laptop when I was sitting in front of it. Can't believe I forgot to explain this. Alright so you can see the gif to the right there.

He came up behind me and asked in his Israeli accent "is this some sort of game?" Well no, I explained. Sadly there are just so many layers so this gif which is just unfathomable to a man in his 60s. I think it started in like a proto-meme of Morgan Freeman saying "He's right, you know" in like classic meme format due to him typically playing wise or experienced characters in his movies. Then recently this was changed to just his face accompanied by the word "Truth," then it was combined with the concept of a truth bomb to become a Truth Nuke along with a Soyjak, which when combined with Spongebob, took on the form of that gif which I happily explained the characters in it. THEN this Truth Nule gif was changed to the enemy called Uth from Monster Hunters(?) as it happens to sound like Truth. All that lore is wrapped into this gif which explained to someone who probably lost it at Morgan Freeman is genuinely hilarious.

Other than that, I had a great seder today with friends which was so refreshing after not being Jewish for like 3 years. AMAZING matzah ball soup, salmon and of course that handmade Israel matzah which is somehow even more cardboard then the standard boxed on. Like literally that's what it was 2500 years ago or something. The best part is, Dr. Yaron Danon is out there celebrating his own Passover, a little twinge of humanity to the man who assigned another LINAC lab this week.

3/31/26 Tuesday

Wow today felt like being a professional NY business mogul. I'm writing this from the Amtrak back to Troy, knowing there is still sooooooo much work to do. Didn't even wake up early or anything, and literally just had Panera sammich and chips for brekky. Maddie picked me up then P, then we were off to the Amtrak station. Got there as the line formed, but as the free thinkers we are, we took the stairs down to the train instead of the escalator and got real nice seats. My legs hurt so much right now. Sorry. AAHH the lights just turned off in the train car. Alright time to continue. But yea train ride was fine, and I thought I'd be doing Data analytics hw but I actually spent most of the time trying to write an email to all the Alpha Nu Sigma candidates, and KANG wanted to Webex video call me right then and there but like.... I think it's BM to take a call on a train. Alas I think he had to clarify stuff with me so I put my camera on, all dressed up (which he commented on) but apparently I was talking too loud and a guy behind me tapped me on the shoulder. Look I asked Maddie and P and pretty sure it was a normal volume I definitely learned a lesson. Don't BM.

Anyway we get to Moynihan and luckily being there before I somewhat knew where we were going. P and I grabbed some H&H bagel (P particularly wanting the "Jewish bagels") and then saw my dad who was casually passing through Penn at the time! Soon enough it was time to go, and I must say -- there are very few things cooler than walking through the city with nice looking clothing and a backpack. Like pleeeease try this it's amazing. So we walk to 183 Madison Ave, past the Empire State Building, and end up entering the building and directly to the 18th floor. This other young dude walked in the elevator with us, and also was going to the 18th floor, so we made conversation and he was CEO of a startup presenting! So cool! We sign in, and so begun a whole lot of networking. There were people from all over in this room (with free drinks and food) especially from nuclear startups across Europe and they were very interested in seeing students there. We claimed seats early, so after prelim networking we sat and listened to:
1. Panel of nuclear industrialists
2. Nuclear LAWYERS (had no idea that was a thing)
3. Pitches from 5 different startups in the nuclear industry who were judged by a panel.
After all the startups spoke+questions, these judges went in a secret room to discuss which would be getting this money award from the goats, Nuclear NY. Turns out the winner was our friend from the elevator! Sitting in the seat for that long was a little exausting but luckily there was pizza to be servd afterward. And after that it was networking all the way and let me tell you there were the coolest people there. Like so many in the industry are not just engineers like we're exposed to -- there are the lawyers helping startups, economists behind it, and people talking about supply chain like nothing else mattered. I thought economic was mostly zzz but talking to these people 1 on 1 really stimulated my brain. There were also plenty students from Columbia and NYU to talk to, but sadly none of them NukEs ): . By far my favoirte guy was the dude from NYSERDA who was really keen on helping us in the Capital Region with Nuclear NY. Everything was also so professional I loved it. Like when people cross their legs in suits it's wow they mean business. Another guy was sitting in a stool, one foot on the horizontal beam halfway up the stool, the other foot on the floor and I was like wow he is cool. A man gave me a REALLY bone crushing handshake and I nearly fainted. For one day we were part of high society in the professional NYC world and I'm very excited to do more of this.

Walking out of that building was so refreshing. With a spare Sprite from the event in my backpack, we got back to Penn, Maddie got an acai bowl (which chopsticks worked very well on), and it wouldn't be Moynihan Train Hall unless the track number for the ride home (which I'm on right now) was on the complete other side of the hall. I presume we'll go home safe and sound when we arrive in Albany. Danon shall be very pleased with our recon mission tomorrow at the LINAC. Alllllright this might just be my longest blog post yet but I think it was justified right? Uh oh Maddie's doing homework next to me now. Now I feel unproductive doing this....uggggggg fiiinnnne. Still got like 2 hours left D:

3/30/26 Monday

Did a rare class-skip today with a three-pronged effect of going to MAU with Maura, calling Julie Ezold from Oak Ridge, and going to Ezra's office hours. When such a productive two hours can be had as opposed to going to freshman mat sci I think that calls for a rearrangement of the day's classes.

Anyway I was this certain that Wang would recnognize me in MAU, so I had the Neutron Hat on to make sure my identity was concealed as much as possible. Even if she did it would've been alright. Except I had to call Julie Ezold to talk about coming in for SNAG tomorrow. Sadly I won't be there due to the event that's happening tomorrow, but she was understanding given the nature of the conference. So I only took my laptop and charger from the DCC fishbowl cause I figured that's all I needed, but turns out I forgot my Airpods, and I was not about to disturb Wang again going back all the way around to the back to the top most circle and grab it. Sooo figured I could take the Teams call projecting everyone's voice to the world, but in all fairness that's kind of BM. As such, I emailed her my cell number and said calling that would work better, to which we emailed back "Ok." I'd call BM but I suppose once you've discovered an element you're kind of allowed to do that. Anyway we had a great call, although saddened I wouldn't be at her talk. Anyway after talking to her I had to go to office hours for data analytics cause turns out not being an industrial engineer for 3 years then taking their grad class is NOT free. Got to 5th floor low which just laptop, charger, and phone on my person, and had to wait for someone inside the room already AND some other dude already on line. After a bit they were still in there, but MAU was going to end at 3:20, which I surely was not going to return from office hours in time. Therefore I left my laptop and charger in the hallway next to Ezra's room and walked back to fishbowl to get my stuff. Look I was trying to be discrete but Wang seemed a little irked and I didn't want to get her mad at me since we go waaay back to '24. I quietly shuffled behind half the room to get back to my seat and sloooowly packed up, but waited for my heat to cooldown before I put my jacket on. Then she told me to focus while whispering to Maura! Wang literally HATES ME NOW )): !! Now in no position to get up and just leave class, I really just had to stay put so she wouldn't ask what I'm doing here distracting her students. Soooo I just stayed till the end of class, then quickly said bye and powerfully walked back praying my laptop and charger were safe in the middle of the Low hallway. Happily they were, and Ezra explained some questions although I was definitely being dumb around her. But hey not afraid to admit that getting help makes you smarter. Simply how it works. Asking for help has gotta be a whole skill in itself NOT coping alright bye.

3/29/26 Sunday

MCNP getting heated.

3/28/26 Saturday

Went to rarsal today, but main event was Phalanx tapping ceremony! Family came up including Aunt Brooke with baby, and went to lunch at Sunhee Korean food downtown. We went to the Alumni house for the ceremony, and the gang was there too with Alexis, Arthur, Emma, James, McKenna to come watch (thanks!) I don't know if the whole tapping thing is supposed to be a secret but it was such an odd ritual I will say. Also I'm pretty sure the Provost's speech was not real or something, like I don't know what was going on there. Anyway the food was also so hard to resist considering we were going to WASABI afterward for McKenna birthday!! The starvation all day was well worth, as I mustve eaten like 80 dollars of food. Genuinely don't know how Wasabi stays afloat cause they have got to have smallest profit margins. I'd like to think they break even or are like a non profit, and just do it for the love of the game. They just feed the capital region amazing food because they are nice people. It's cool, everybody has their own rituals when it comes to going to Wasabi. Some say you can have bread intermittenly throughout the day, while others say don't eat at all and only water all day. Post-Wasabi feeling is like such a vibe though. Tomorrow I think is MCNP all day sadly. Gotta clock in the Union for this one. Also wanna say it was so fun seeing the baby today like it was crazy that he is a whole little tiny human and everything is so tiny. To know that EVERYBODY was a baby at one point makes it weird that you see so few in everyday life. Alright see ya tomorrow.

3/27/26 Friday

Great time in Lvov's class today. Also, finally bought tickets to the city to go this NYS Energy Summit with Maddie and P. Getting budget for all our nuclear escapades is really exciting, and I'm happy to see more of this going on! This is gonna be Tuesday, so I'll make sure to explain what happens then! Anyway after this we did some MCNP for ARA, then returned to the Union to see what was going on with the GM debates and stuff. Looks like we were underdressed for the occasion, but it was surely alright. Decently good food, but P literlaly left to play Final Stand 2 with a mentor. He WILL be made fun of for this, unexcusable. We had some time, so Maddie allowed me to explain as much Animorphs lore as my throat could take. P.S. if anyone has some time free, I would love to explain to you. Just ask.

3/26/26 Thursday

It's weird being back on society. All problems have returned again. At least sleep is a little fixed.

3/25/26 Some day between Sunday and Monday?

Awoke at 5:30 to go to Dunkin. This poor singular lady had to handle 15 people entering at this hour and it literally looked like cooking fever balancing orders. I got a nice hot chocolate with hashbrowns, and once we were fed we hopped in cars to continue to our next school. This high school was a little dreary admittedly, but it had an incredible view of the river, which made up for everything. On top of that, the train would pass by the tracks every once in a while which was strangely relaxing. Like could not explain what this room was like being in there for hours upon hours. The teacher here was very chill; we even ended talking about nuclear for a while at the end of the day! But before then, we tended to many, many classes with flucuating number of students. Now I must say: it is one thing doing two school visits in a row -- it is a whole other deal doing the same presentation both days for 12 times total. But somehow, today felt a lot better. Not sure if it was the extra sleep, or maybe the fact that Katya and I were used to it by now, but we were kind of under the consensus that today was just...better. Soon enough, the bulk of the periods were over and we went down to the teacher's lounge for lunch which was an entire custom sandwich bar with chips, cookies, and Koolaid; I could not have asked for better. Finally down to the last two classes, and something happened in that penultimate class that stood out: we were doing the activity and one girl was not really feeling it. She made her craft, then kinda sat with her hood up around on her laptop. So I went over to her and aked if she had any questions about what we were doing, she said no, so I asked if she wanted to talk about anything else like about the presentation or college in general, and she ended up asking about the transition between high school and college. We ended up talking for a good bit, and I ended up asking what she wanted to do in college, and she said that she wasn't sure for the past couple months, but since recent and especially our visit she wanted to be an aerospace engineer!!! This literally melted my heart and I could tell that she knew exactly what she wanted to do and it made me so happy. That led into the last period, where we tore apart the remainder of the crafts to reuse all those pipe cleaners. On the car ride home, sleep was not an option, so I beared showtunes from albums I did not know. And APPARENTLY typing is annoying in the car so I COULDNT WRITE THIS BLOG PIECE UNTIL NOW. It's 12:04am. I thought I'd go to bed earlier but I suppose not. You know you'd think that waking up early makes it easier to go to bed earlier but turns out you just go to bed at the same time as always and wake up tired instead. That can't be fair. Anyway got back from Commons where Jack reminded me to update the blog so here you go, and I found out I have the option to back to the city next Tuesday for a nuclear coference. Updates on that to come. Alright it's now like 5 hours until the 24 hr day has been reached so I'm calling it here. Dewey signing off.

3/24/26 Tuesday?

First FULL day, and it began to feel like some weird time bubble in a day between Sunday and Monday. Awoke 6am to what was admittedly an amazing breakfast in the Bronx hotel. Like I'm talking for yogurts, eggncheese+muffin, apple juice, milk, and home fries. Sadly going to bed at like 1:30 the night before while watching Shark Tank did not help the waking up process, although talking with Sam was nice in our makeshift bedroom. Nonetheless we got to the all-girls Catholic high school in the morning, set up all of our stuff, and started our first period. Now the first presentation is always a little rough, but we took solace in knowing we had mmmm about 11 other times to get it right. At first, tissue engineering almost seemed like a fun topic, but little did I know I would never what to think about printing organs ever again. After a break, we went through four periods in a row, spending the three minutes in between hastily ripping apart the creations made by the previous period. However, the students were more polite than any other high school I'd been to, so it made it a lot easier. After the school day, our group met up with the group at the Boys' school, and we were gifted an amazing tote bag designed by a student featuring RPI and the high school! By 2:30pm we were headed for the cars and exausted, but that was only half the day.

Getting back to the hotel by 3:20pm, there was still much to do in the city. Some of the boys decided to go to the Met (or like the last hour it was open), but Sam and I decided to join Charlotte and Anna to go to Katz's Deli. Although it was 1.5 hours from the Bronx in the Lower east side, this did NOT deter our appetites from a disgustingly thick Kosher deli sandwich. The plan was to take the 6 to 86th street, walk around the park for a bit, then head to Katz's Deli. So we walked to the nearest station and, hungry, sat on the subway for 50 min, but by the time we reached 86th street, we were in no headspace to walk around. It was Katz's deli now. We stayed on until it was time, and finished our hajj upon seeing the sign in the distance. I had never been, and it was a sight to behold. It went so much deeper than expected, and had walls lined with photos of all the famous people that'd been in there. We grabbed a table in the back (because they coerced us into using waiter service) we waaay overindulged. Anna got some latkes for the table, and they were possibly better than Aunt Brooke's at Passover. I am so sorry but they were just incredible. The brisket sandwich I ordered didn't look to large when it came out, and even after devouoring the first half, it was a feasible task. But just halfway through the sevond half it hit -- my stomach was filled with brisket. But you really think I'd be making a blog post about Katz's deli if I DIDN'T finish that sandwich? I ATE ALL THAT BRISKET. After this we sat at the table for an extra 30 minutes just feeling disgusting. Now we forgot to take a celebratory photo before we dug in given our state of mind, so we took this photo AFTER eating and knowing we had an entire journey back ahead of us. Featuring comedian Jim Gaffigan. After a long, long, long, long, long, subway ride home and yet somehow longer walk back to the hotel, Sam and I snuggled up in bed and must've fell asleep around 11:30! WoW!

3/23/26 Monday

Woke up for an entire day of class, ended up in the Bronx.

3/21/26 Saturday

Accepted students day. Tables in JEC in prime location outside elevators with SNAG. Tabled so hard that the Dean and Kurt said the parents loved our tabled the best after they talked to them! But better than this, the Dean came to us after tabling was done about how he wants to grow the nuclear program -- we are the pioneers of growing as the only nuclear engineering program in NYS. He literally offered us budget to grow an ambassador program like EA but for nuclear!! It's really exciting. Sorry to speedrun these. I'm backed up right now here.

3/20/26 Friday

School visit day! Went to a middle school and taught roller coasters for 8 hours. Sadly, once you do roller coasters it's so hard to go back. The presentation is so fun and the activity goes along with it so well. My joke about how loop-de-loops are on the Mount Rushmore of roller coaster s was not appreciated enough. It makes sense. Afterward I stayed in Sage for 1.5 hours and then camped Fritz's office at the LINAC to grab his detector. Turns out he was on call the whole time and when I knocked on his door he was fully mic'd up probably talking to a senator or something.

3/18/26 Wednesday

Today I realized how much of a lifeline Panera napkins are. Through countless hours in the Union, they've served as a source of tissues that are always there for you in ample supply. Alternatively go downstairs to open the napkin dispenser and take a chunk, but there's nothing like the ones from Panera, they just feel kinder to you. Alas, hyper week continues even through stuffy noses, but the comforting cloth of those pieces of paper aid in the process.

Secondly, an update on the penny dinosaur -- Jordan is putting it together and it honesrly doesn't look too bad. Alright if you look it is indeed cobbled together still by hardened wax, glue, and solidified rubber at t his point, but honestly... you have to admit it is vaguely saurian! This is Rensselaer engineering at its finest. I can't imagine how much it smells given the wax is like this scented green wax you're supposed to hear up in a little dish, but it at least it's fragrant and not malodorous. The bare minimum goal is for it to not crumble instantly when it is being used as a paperweight.

Finally, we did ARA work till we closed the Union as per procedure, but since we really wanted some chalk for the 4th floor LOW table (you're welcome for telling you about this study spot) I got my hands on some Hagoromo "Haganamaro" Chalk. But since the LOW/DCC/JEC/JROWL complex is shut off when LOW closes at 11pm, the chalk had to be left at the foot of the LOW entrance to bring it in tomorrow. Please if you're reading it -- don't steal it. I trust you all. It's really good quality chalk though so if you go to Low table please enjoy it.

3/17/26 Tuesday

Realized it's super important to say yes to any random opportunity that comes your way, or you'll probably regret not doing that thing. It's a great way to make the days longer and more filled I guess. Anyway got to see Sebastian today which was very cool to see someone so interested in what they do. I kinda yearn to be that much into my job because that'd be so fulfulling. Oh yea I had another thought. So after 20 seomthing years working as an engineer, I definitely want another complete different job that has NOTHING to do with anything nuclear or engineering. Then at that point, it would be such cool lore to be amongst people and be like "yea I have a master's degree in nuclear engineering." Look I know dream job is listed on this very site as circus ringleader (which apperently is not even a real job anymore since my last circus visit), but I think my future post engineer has got to be an innkeeper. Imagine in the far future I'm like 50 something, lived a whole life in New Mexico or something, then I move to Radiator Springs or something and run an inn. We get travellers from all over the country that come to stop by, and I get to share stories from way back when. It's either this or become an actor late in life. I don't know, but I know when someone famous has a degree in something unexpected it's really cool. Like p erhaps John Tichy from Commander Cody and the Lost Planet Airmen has a PhD in friction physics, yet also a rockstar from the 70s. Or how Ken Jeong is a literal doctor. Or how Jimmy Carter was a nuclear engineer!! What an absolute goat of a post-presidency he had. So many possibilities, makes me excited for what's to come even after all this. It's kinda scary to have your whole life planned out cause that's literally your entire existance, and boom that's it. That's the entire universe from your perspective. Makes the Mat sci exam tomorrow seem even more fake.

3/16/26 Monday

Oh don't mind my just sitting in the Union again. Something interesting has gotta happen soon. But at least I found out P e joys Heathcliff. What a fun surprise! (check out today's comic but going to my links page.

3/15/26 Sunday

I think I answered this in a Google form.

3/14/26 Saturday

Tiring but great day. Ides of March was amazing as well, and Julius was stabbed many a time. Also I just found a really funny joke within wikipedia on this page about cetaceans, like whales and dolphins and the like. (Was doing the Metazooa and was curious). For one of the whales, there is no existant picture, so it changes the message of [citation needed] to something else. You'll have to take a look.

3/13/26 Friday

3/12/26 Thursday

New goal: Somehow Ji has to say the word "shawarma." P, Maddie, and I are debating on how he would say it in his accent, but it somehow has to arise naturally in class without forcing it. Maybe someone has to walk into ARA with some thinly sliced slow-roasted meats, but even then it's not the first word non-native English speakers learn, so who knows how this will happen. But that's a challenge for another day.

Left Mat sci today, and I was talking to this freshman who I didn't really know from class after we crossed paths leaving Walker. We both went through Greene building to ramp skip, but I really had no idea I'd how long I'd have to keep up conversation so before walking out the door on the other side of JEC ramp, I aborted mission and went up the stairs. Ended up in the Archie library, and very much enjoyed my stay. Got really comfortable and in a good Shenzhen flow, until I hit 500 wins. Afterward, headed to Commons where we had to work on this poster for our SNAG speaker Sebastian cause the poster looked so damn bad. We actually cooked so hard on this and for my RPI viewers peep outside tomorrow in campus and you'll see some amazing posters with my tiny email on the bottom. Crashing Maddie's tutoring to print the posters was fun, and saw you, Jack (thank YOU for helping ME with the printing). Anyway, tomorrow I go to the circus?

3/11/26 Wednesday

First LINAC exam today. Crazy stuff, but eating burgers beforehand was a calming experience. Sure, Danon gave us a killer exam, but the real kicker was that after the exam, as I sit down to work on his very own lab report due that day, I get an email from Danon asking me about the ANS treasurer. Crazy he sent me an email while I was taking his exam 10 ft away from him, not to mention needing something from me. Thought that funny. On top of that, the treasurer is P himself, and who knows how he'll react to that. That said he is very nice for supplying us with funds for pizza and conferences for the Nukes here, so I appreciate that.

Was just thinking -- what if the entirety of the way we count days was shifted by one day? Like I remember last year it rained like every Saturday in the spring. But, if we all agreed 2000 years ago that "today" was Sunday the day after we really decided the day was Sunday, we'd be off by 1 day forever. It must have been so stressful to figure out the Gregorian calendar or something, and think about how many things in the future that were planned on Saturday would now be cancelled because they decided that today was the day the week starts, so Saturdays will now be every 7th day, assuming they started on Sunday. That's a lot of pressure on Greg. So whenver something is cancelled due to weather, which I'll assume is independant from day of week, just think about if Charlemagne or something just made the calendar one day later. Mother Earth would go on, and she simply would not care about what day of the week it is: she just does her thing.

3/9/26 Monday

Finally back to school. So much going on, and after all this, ended up going to Walmart this evening to get stuff for SNAG with Maddie. We'll be painting rocks were glowing paint so I think it'll be fun. Also turns out being in Mat Sci is kind of a blessing. You can get so much done in class when you're listening to a professor talk and you don't really have to listen. It's kind of nice. No pressure because it's literally freshman mat sci too. Was nice to see everyone back today too. Returning from Spring break is really the last time you get to say "hey how was your break!?" before the summer. A little sad, really. Stressful day though.

3/7-8/26 Weekend

Oops, I'm writing this on Monday. Clarkson sucks, hockey is over, a million years in a moving vehicle. Glasses weekend.

3/5/26 Thursday

Aaaand we've made it to the end of spring break! Last night fell asleep on the couch watching Seinfeld, as is typical each time coming home. And in an itch to get outta here, I leave tomorrow morning to Troy, then to Potsdam, then back to Troy, then to bed at like 3am. It'll be one of those mornings where you wake up and are like "wow I'm gonna travel so much today and sleep in a completely different bed like 18 hours from now."

Well I mentioned I was working on a project, and is shaping up quite nicely. Jordan and I are making a dinosaur out of pennies! Between this and the previous LINAC lab about doing neutron and photo activation analysis on penny samples, you'd think I never wanna see a penny again (which is actually convenient since the Mint stopped producing them this year), but it's really this project that is just so rediculous. We came up with this idea to give it to Josh in the brief window that our breaks cross paths, although I won't be here so Jordan will give it to him. So from 11-1:30pm we were in the dining room glueing stacks of pennies (which is legally called the "cent"☝️🤓) with Elmer's and wood glue. Elmer's looked much cleaner, but stuck better; Wood glue was messy, but very adhesive. Safe to say I hate using glue now. I took a break to visit Right Coast Taqueria and have some amazing tacos with some pep people, which was a great worlds collide moment; it was cool being on LI and seeing everyone! Afterward, Jordan and I had more work to do. I scooped him up and we worked through the night. We could not figure out how to do the torso of this sauropod-type build, but we cobbled together a comglomerate of hardened wax, glue, and penny as a base and prayed it dried. We got to a point where there were like 5 seperate body parts just drying, and we couldn't really do anything but wait. I also ended getting this construction-grade glue to get a proper face on our sauropod, which hadn't been used since like '09 which was crazy. Some got inside my keyboard so I had to like clean in between the keys which was a disaster. In the end, we played rummy while it all dried, but by the time we got bored it was STILL wet. We had to call it a night and I couldn't keep the parts on account of me leaving tomorrow, so we carefully loaded the commodities into a plastic bag as Jordan laid it flat as I drove him home. We will wait to see the final result when he puts it all together. I really hope it looks like a dinosaur. I thought I even wanted this for myself and not give it away, but in the end I think it'll just be a burden to Josh when he receives this. Like yea, it's a paperweight but it's also a very very fragile paperweight where you'd feel bad when it falls apart on your desk or knock it over, cause then you gotta glue it back and everything. It's no longer in my hands, but I'll update the blog when it's all assembled. I have a sinking feeling this will look like utter garbage and we should've just gone with a turtle but it's too late now. Knew I shoulda made a CAD model first. Please look like a dinosaur.

3/4/26 Wednesday

Unreal day of Spring Break. Sat at Panera for eight hours straight doing the LINAC work I was supposed to get done yesterday. Weridly sounds like an average day at school but also had to deal with my family too on top of that. But yea got a haircut then just decided sit in the side of the wall at the Panera on Jericho then ended up sitting with on the phone with P trying to work through whatever the hell we were doing. Actually unbearable time, and I'm writing this 8 minutes before midnight so ya know I got it done in time anyway. But look, it took us far too long to realize Danon did NOT in fact update the lab manual ro reflect what we actually did, so the delierables were completely messed up! Makes you wonder how people did this work before the world wide web. Like what did people do for this class in 1985 I literally do not know. (Could probably ask Danon) Nonetheless that Panera would be traumatic if it wasn't for the Sips club carrying me through. That said, I like how this Panera allows you to refill your special drinks like the Agave Lemonade at the drink dispenser so you can 1. technically get infinite, but 2. not have 5 tons of ice squished into your cup that you ahve so sift through or dump into the Union water fountain. Still like 4 of those hours were devoted to fathoming and/or goofing, but was probably more productive than actually being the Union. Tomorrow will be a break from this, and I'll finally be able to work on some arts and crafts I've been meaning to do.

After getting home, I did my taxes, which I've been trying to put off doing myself for like 20 years, but it finally caught up to me. Turns out it's actually not that hard and TurboTax makes it really easy. However, not shoutout to TurboTax because they are the type of companies that prevent the government from providing return-free filing, which is basically the government doing your taxes for you. TurboTax gives them buttloads of scratch so they don't offer that and people use TurboTax instead which is kinda evil but whattyagonnado. I felt like a proper citizen doing my duty, and am now completely finished!

Oh! Also LI coin nerds got back, apparently my Lucky Buffalo Nickel is NOT a 3-legged bison. Well good, because I wanted to keep it anyway (not coping). Alright honestly if it was some rare artifact I think it'd be more tempting to sell it to an numismatist (coin nerd). Now I get to have a non-valuable lucky Buffalo Nickel that I can invent a story around. I just need to bring it places so I can develop stories around it I think, then it can be passed down to my kin with some insane lore.

3/3/26 Tuesday

Today I spent the day with Andrew, and we went to school! It was great to hang out of course, talking music and school and politics; We like Big Talk. He showed me all around St. Joe's and it felt so Long Island being in the middle of Hauppauge. It's a nice little campus secluded between highways, as you can see in the photo. The plan was to get a whole lotta LINAC work done, but it turns out you can't just waltz into any old building here. You need an id to scan in, which was kinda unfortunate. This was after we went to Tex's Chicken and Burgers and I was explained all the Death Stranding lore, as the new one is apparently coming out soon. It's really cool world builing, and this is coming from someone who has never played the game, and was just explained what happens in the game. Yanyway, I since the buildings were...inaccessible I ended up sitting in a Dunkin [Donuts] supping a large hot chocolate but I really did not get too much done. After DD, we went to King Kullen's to get a truckload of vegetables. The plan was to go to Dean's dad's apartment and cook up a whole buncha tubers and squashs, which is exactly what we did. I think vegetables are best enjoyed when roasted in an oven and they all crispy, and you douse it in oil and salt and spice and it's just sooo yummy. List of all them: parsnip, yellow squash, zuccini, brussel sprouts, red pepper, onion, shallots, and shai for some fishy.

3/2/26 Monday

Welcome back friendships! For the past three days, I've been travelling around the Northeast attending hockey games from Troy, to Providence, to MA, to New Haven, back to Troy, and back to Long Island within 48 hours. Finally back home, so if you're reading from home, hello! And you're reading from elsewhere, I'll probably see you soon again.

After driving down yesterday, woke up this morning at a crisp 8:36am and very well reseted, thinking wow of course today with nothing to do my body wakes me up beautifully. There actually is LINAC work to do, so I headed to the library with Jordan where I got some stuff done while he worked on my crossword book. After that, we walked over to Bagel Boss then kinda drove around for like two hours and caught up. Let me know if that sounds accurate Jordan or I can reword this. But we came up with a positively tremendous idea involving a friend who is not on spring break yet. When it's done I think it will be grand. But in the process of preparing for this activity, I came into possession of none other than a 1936 Buffalo Nickel. Having a lucky Buffalo Nickel is such a funny concept and I am so thankful to have come across one. I did some prelim research, and apparently these are quite valuable. And turns out, there is a rare variant dubbed the "3 1/2 legged" variant, involving a misprint at the Denver mint from 1935 to 1936 where the bison on the tails side had its leg cut off in the minting process. Only a handfull of these were produced until I guess they noticed the stamping was off centered or something. Now the one I have is pretty oxidized, so it's tough to tell if it's a 3 1/2 legged coin or not. That said, since I love cold emailing I reached out to Long Island Rare Coins & Currency to learn more about these tchotchkes, and I await their response. Hopefully they'll be able to share more about it. I hope this ends up being something I give to my great-grandkids and tell them some crazy story about where this lucky Buffalo Nickel as been and what it's seen, so I think I'll bring it around places from now on. Wait it'd be pretty bad if it's lost though. Hm I'll have to think about this.

2/26/26 Thursday

For all my physics friends out there, I went to Diversitea today at JRowl, and I must say it was quite a nice time. They really make it nice for them. I slipped in with Adrian with McKenna's backpack and to my delight there were cookies o'plenty and of course, tea. In all fairness, I'm kinda a physics major being I like tiny things we can't see. Anyway there was fruit there, and I saw Professor Charles Martin! Not much else to say except I got all my work done for this week, and have a busy spring break ahead, thanks to Dr. Yaron Danon. But first comes the trip to Brown and Yale! Very excited for that.

By the way, ever wonder when the building you're sitting in will disappear? Like eventally it will, right? It could be carefully demolished, or even cataclysmically razed, but eventually it will happen, likely before the sun engulfs the Earth. Some buildings stay for 200 years, but what causes them to stop being used? What about a building so often used it couldn't possible be destoryed without some cataclysmic event. If Grand Central Station were to go down tomorrow, that'd be pretty bad. So like an intergalatic war should be the only thing that would demolish that right? Think of wherever you live -- that building will be destroyed at some point. I'm sitting in Mueller Center right now, and these walls are cinderblocks. No way this structure will be weathered away, or anything. But would it finally fall down when RPI ceases to exist as an institution? It certainly will not last forever. Or maybe your building will be buried under millenia of sediment. A million layers of crust and deposit. Or maybe it'll be abandoned or in disarray like Old New York from Futurama. Literally no way to tell.

2/24/26 Chewsday

Listening to the State of the Union right now. All this talk about the golden age of America but I wish I could listen to livestreams at 2x speed like every other video. I always forget how famous people straight up exist, like the are tons of people who just know one person, but that one person doesn't know ANYTHING about those other people. That is a crazy. I think I'd want to be moderately well-known, but in the sense of like a YouTube channel with a few thousand subscribers. Now I've no idea what this channel would so, but it'd be cool to have a little following, almost like this blog, although I think I probably know whoever is reading this, unless you are some time traveller from the far-future who stumbled upon this page, which in that case please send me an email!

Yesterday at Tipsy Moose the idea floated around of creating an Animorphs-themed page, which I will be looking into. But otherwise, I highly recommend combing through the Animorphs wiki as I can talk about it for ages. Oh also had this idea to use those early 2000s gifs everywhere that nobody knows who made. Lemme see if I can find one wait --

2/23/26 Monday

Absolutely bugging about this homework. Like sometimes work is solvable where like you know there is an answer, but this stuff is on another level, between ARA and Linac Lab. Happily, Vlad came back to campus and got to see him + play a game of pool which was very nice. Not gonna lie, after being in class more than I slept last night that visit motivated me to grind out as much ARA with the other nukes as possible to a point where maybe this is solvable; and look, I even have time to make a blog post today! We ended up going to Tipsy Moose in Troy for dinner afterward, walking into their Monday trivia, learning about certain professions in Guam, and what a real jerk Tom Cruise is (ask me about this). It was my first time at Tipsy Moose, and it is a real good vibe. I asked the waitress and turns out the building was an old Pizza Hut from around the 80s, and you can totally tell from the outside given its roof. It was a good time and a much needed reminder to do random things to break up the tough work.

For those interested, I have relapsed back into Ween, but less brown and more chill songs. Currently milking Loving U Thru it All and my goat You Were the Fool. Sorry about the blog posts being shorter recently; Spring break is almost here, and it will slow down a bit too. But, not before a road trip to Brown and Yale though! I don't even wanna go home to be honest. Being here and independant is kind of nice, especially having zero obligations (except LINAC work). We'll see how well this ages.

2/22/26 Sunday

On this 2-filled day, we all went out to eat, twice. Morning: Diner Time. Review: Good food, they could have leaned into the theme a litte more. James' family is a great vibe. Afternoon: Union doing LINAC Lab. Evening: Margarita City. Review: It's Alexis' 21st brithday! We enjoyed a tasteful restaurant experience, and I ordered just a chocolate lava cake for dinner. Vibes are great, and the staff birthday celebration is super funny. Verdict: McKenna almost freed Garf from the claw. She bought his way to freedom.

2/21/26 Saturday

Just look here.

2/18/26 Wednesday

Been spending this past couple days making my own crosswords and minute cryptics. Some of them come out pretty bad though. Maybe that'll be a new page. Anyway the hype to Freakout is real. It smells like rice right now. I think Adrian is cooking some.

2/16/26 Monday

No school today, and pretty much stayed in the Union. But I am pleased to announce I am back into a Star Wars phase, of which I was last in from 2011 to 2013. After watching the prequels in one day last semester, then the Force Awakens yesterday, I understand this on a whole new level. And yea, the sequels have many problems, but I am approaching the rewatch with an open mind. I think something well done by the sequels is the music -- keeping John Williams made sure not all the original charm was lost, and he definitely implimented some bangers, like Rey's Theme, and Han and Leia reprises and whatnot. As you might expect, genre of the week is Star Wars now.

On a lighter note, I think I'm eating really terribly these past few days. Like no salads could balance this out. The second I entered my house to come home for the winter, my grandma told me how skinny I looked, so it's time to prove her wrong.

2/14/26 Saturday

Somehow another one of those days. Awoke at 7am and went to DCC in the morn for a day of Exploring Engineerings. But I was not the explorer, but rather, the map...? Idk but a buncha kids came to campus and we gave a little presentation on nuclear power plants, and it was really cool. The first group of kids had absolutely crazy loaded questions about storing nuclear waste, and we had to really weave around that one. Another kid asked why heavy isotopes don't fission instantly, so we all sat him down and explain all of quantum physics and potential wells with half lives as probabalistic measures. Alright not really but it would have been funny. In some groups, there were parent chaperones bringing them around, and when I answered that question, this goateed dude in the back was kinda smirking and looking fake-surprished the whole time we presented. So at the end, he came down to me and was like good job guys; turns out he worked in energy for years as was kinda messing with us which was funny. Another lady was with another group and she was staring at her iPad the whole time. I was thinking well what the hell, but it turns out she worked at freaking Naval Nuclear Labs, so I was like welp. I cannot imagine the restraint it must have taken her to not chime in after every slide or part of the activity that we did, but she was a really good sport. The whole day was like an entire EA school visit, but at RPI, and about nuclear, so super cool! Afterward, P brought back some sandwiches from Garafalos to enjoy in the Union, and it tasted like the NMP break room. Takes you back.

After this, it was time to head to Troy Music Hall for the Albany Symphony. It is such a phenomenal building, and had no idea that so many famous people played in this building. If you're in the area, I HIGHLY recommend attending something there. We were dressed primly, and blended into high society that night. I think the average age in the building was 73, but it was well-worth hear some Tschai and a world premier of an upcoming composer's works. We were the standing ovation.

2/13/26 Friday

Do you ever have those days where you wake up and know it's gonna be a looong day ahead of you? Definitely today. Awoke very well rested, knowing what was ahead. Had a moment of respite at Sage breakfast, then it was time for Nump Comp exam. Somehow, Lvov was the most normal he had been all semester; no playing games today. Right after, it was time hit CBIS for an interview (classic spot, HIGHLY recommend. But if you see me there you better scram). After that, had meal in Sage with Maddie, and ranted about said interview, to which it was time to head to the women's game, where we absolutely crushed Harvard 4-1. Baaaad day to be a Harvard fan there. Staying in the Field House, the men's game against Cornell was about to start, and Kyle O'Connor was coming with his band! On top of that, Katie and I got wristbands to go into the Pride Suite(?) for Phalanx and, not gonna lie, felt really cool. Thus began the second half of the day.

Cornell is like 9th in the nation, so walking over to Kyle we both agreed that it would be at least interesting if RPI scored one goal. Boy were we not expecting this. For the first time in months, the Engineers looked AMAZING on the ice. Both teams held their own for the entire first period, until it was time for me to go on the ice! Surprise! I got to see the inside of where the players go, and wow it smelled so bad. Understandable cause they were sweating on the ice there, like wow. Nevertheless, got to wave to the fans at center ice, and yada-yada. Afterward I went to the Cornell band to say hi to Kyle, and it was a fun perspective. Who knew they had some bangers, but I left promptly because I didn't wanna be there when Cornell scored the first goal. So after retuning back to RPI band, I look up, and RPI SCORED FIRST!!! OMGGG!!! It was a frenzy in the Field House, and MANY MANY sad Cornell fans as they took the L. I have no idea what team that was, but they were embarassing Cornell big time. After a super band, and a third period where Cornell scored again, overtime was scary. I nearly vomited and collapsed on Chloe. But then... it was over... we had tied with Cornell. Sure, they won the shootout, but it is rare that a game changed your outlook on life. Truly anything must be possible if that can happen. I almost believe in miracles, and if that team shows up to Freakout, I think we have a chance. Please let that age well.

2/11/26 Wednesday

Woke up at like 7:30 this morning, and felt great. Except it was kind of insulting by my body because LINAC was cancelled today as Danon was on travel, so quite literally had zero obligations. Well that's not true but you get the point. I was so stubborn that even though I felt so refreshed I forced myself to stay in bed until I eventually fell back asleep after like 40 min and awoke at 10:15. Now that is sleeping in. Still had Danon's Geiger on my desk, so I drove to the LINAC anyway to return it, and turns out there's a little doorbell on the door that I never noticed. I rang it and some worker took it from my hands. I never noticed how slowly four hours pass by when you're not in lab; I got to spend the day at the Union doing MCNP, but more importantly Burger Bears!! It was a very pleasant time of the day with Arthur, McKenna, and Alexis in Commons eating some nice borger.

Genre of the week is Fabloo, so got to listen to some nice Tally Hall/Miracle Musical and They Might Be Giants, some classics of past years. Favorite songs right now are Two Wuv / Black Rainbows and The Mesopatamians, respectively. While running MCNP today, Alexis won the Package Game! Photo is included. Also sorry for missing yesterday's blog, I have to use VS Code to run Python now instead of Spyder, and it kinda gets in the way sometimes. Alas. Oh also check the leaderboards on Pitbull Party just had an >12 hr party. Yea.

2/9/26 Monday

So I was trying to get this Python script for ARA to work all day, so after 6 hours of classes I go to JEC to the TA office hours and find the little room and sure enough the TA was in there to help. Of course I was very thankful cause I had no idea what the problem was, but I had the script open in VS Code and everytime I hit run it threw an error. Except VS Code also happens to be the same software I make this website in... so he kinda asked what all these files were and I kinda just had to explain what he was looking at and what the bright blue page that said Blog was. Fun fact, part of the problem was that the entire webagge.vercel.app folder was opened in VS Code which prevented the nuclear code was running so he had to manually close each file and ask "can I delete this one?" to each one. Not sure if I would have preferred at least one other person in the room with me or not. But you know what, he ended up solving the problems after like 40 minutes, so shoutout to TA Jose. It's this core design thing where you move around assemblies and you actually feel so cool working on it. Very engineer.

Anyway, still waiting to hear back from Los Alamos. But I realized that a summer at Three Mile Island (Crane, in case you're reading this Constellation) would also be extremely cool since they are restarting. So the backup plan is honestly not that bad, but sadly being the middle of the New Mexico desert during the summer might just be the coolest thing ever perhaps. Ugh that would be aweomse. Weird to still have no idea how this will pan out, considering this summer is without a doubt a major trajectory in my education then career then where I spend my life. No biggie.

Dang it I'm kinda sleeplocked until the dryer finishes. I swear the dryer in this house takes three hours, pretty sure I put it in at 9 pm and it is currently 11:32 pm. Ooh but then the pajamas will be nice and warm. Alright maybe it's not so bad.

2/7/26 Sunday/Saturday

So you know how 2000s R&B was the genre of the week? Well all that Pitbull came to a climax upon going to Colgate for the hockey game. I guess their team likes Pitbull cause he was like half the warm-up songs. Was was crazy was the song from Pitbull Party came on and I activated like a sleeper agent. Sadly no one else plays PP there so it was like an insane joke with myself, and sometimes you gotta have those.

Also had an interesting thought discussed: when is somebody "in town?" Like if I travel to NYC from Troy, would I tell my friends on the island that I'm "in town?" Perhaps. But if you travel from LI to the city, you are surely leaving town, right? Maybe all this depends on your starting point. So how long should you travel from your starting point before you've "left town?" Doing MCNP all day but then Super Bowl LX with Buff dip! Wow that looks really cool in roman numerals. Go Seahawks.

2/5/26 Thursday

Hi vlog. Actually, wrong. Factally not a vlog. Simply a blog. But I, Evan Koumas, commonly refer to it as a vlog. Today, pretty simple day. Woke up, put on flannel, went to brekkie. Maura arrived at exactly 9:49 am to Sage Dining Hall. I heard she's trying to set the record of cutting it the closest to missing breakfast, but neither here nor there. Then, attended class. Arrived to Panera for lunch. Nothing crazy. Blueberry lemonade and "one of those frozen signature hot chocolates. It's been killing my flex, but so worth. I got it that day they were doing $2 off deal and have gotten it every day since. Skipped the weekend though. It's simply a milkshake though. I hate that [slurpy sound] that occurs when you get to the end of the shake." Not a fan. Pretty yucky. Not as yucky as Union College though. Canonically the yuckiest.

Class of 2026 100 days 'til graduation celebration. Line too long though. I'm also not in that class, but it's cool. Will be me next year. Then I ran MCNP for a while in the Stu-Un while cracking open a nice, ice cold Pepsi from an undisclosed source (certainly not a friend in the class of '26.) Fathomed a non-existent box for LINAC lab with Fritz. Said non-existent box exists in the EVU (Endless Void Universe). New acronym dropping soon. Stay safe, and sleep tight. Hope you've enjoyed the consistent blogging recently.

2/4/26 Wednesday

Lvov is wild. Constantly in shambles, but half of everything he says McKenna and I just look at each other like wtf. So there is an exam on the 13th, which unfortunately coincides with an EA visit. The following is an approximate conversation between us after class after I tell him my situation (note he speaks in a very very thick Russian accent.)

"So could you take the exam at 9am then?"
"No, my EA visit is all day."
"So could you take the exam at 7am then?"
"No, my EA visit is all day, which includes the morning."
"But.... could you take the exam at 5am?"

I was about to say no but I actually had to stop for a second after physically being stunned and think about it. Genuinely I could do this, and would be a reaaaallly funny bit. Worth whatever grade I get honestly. Turns out if that was the case, the exam would have to be taken virtually, which I am not about and feels a little slimy. Like if other people took a virtual exam while I took a real one I wouldn't like that maybe. We genuinely ended up having an email conversation about this idea today and his emails are written exactly in his demeanor: all lowercase, short sentences; it is very sweet. I genuinely appreciate his committment to this bit so no shade or anything. On a completely unrelated note, I had to get up and blow my nose like 8 times during Linac lab today, like that is so embarassing. I mean don't wanna do it in the room but it's kind of BM to do it in the room repeatedly. Anyway missing Borger Wednesday this semester cause of Linac and it's been getting me down, you know. We'll be looking into that.

2/3/26 Tuesday

Sitting here running MCNP in Sharp. We've got two computers going and three files -- LWR fuel pin in water, LWR fuel pin in sodium, and a TRISO fuel. Today I drove P to Albany to take his Plant Operation Selection (POS) Test and he passed! P is gonna be an operator soon (hopefully)! Nothing else much to say.

2/2/26 Monday

Mat Sci with freshman is sooo funny. Yet somehow I've found like the 3 or 4 other upperclassmen in the section and we formed the most overqualified lab group today. Got the whole thing done in like 20 minutes. Anyway the 2000s R&B genre of the week has been popping off. Never realized Desnity's Child had so many bangers. My favorites are Bills, Bills, Bills, So Good, and Lose My Breath with that insane marching cadence throughout, which makes for a nasty beatbox too. It's also Groundhog Day, and I must say I did not feel much of the rodent spirit today. I think we're looking into that. OOh I made my own Minute Cryptic today in ARA. Here it is:

"You'd know why!" after entrance of lively forte (4)

Please email me (link also on homepage) if you think you know the answer. I'll send my answer video if you provide a guess. On another note, I walked home today with a Geiger counter and survey reader from Maddie's car. Praying that I can get them to work before Union after dark (come to SNAG table if cool). One last thought -- if both your nostrils are clear right now, take a moment to appreciate it. One will be clogged again eventually, so enjoy and take 10 seconds right now savor this moment. There you go. It's good to be appreciative of the small things.

1/31/26 Saturday

Day with much content. Craziest part was leaving between hockey games with Jack for a mission to Walmart. Jack since you're reading this, you can be like "yea, I was there" to anyone else who's in the room with you right now. Well I'll relay what happened and you can fact-check to make sure we're all square. So at Pepsgiving Mike D. and I joked it would be funny if one of these games we had an entire rotisserie chicken and just ate it in the stands. I really wanted to commit to this bit, so after waiting for the right day, it was time. The band had a women's then club hockey game to attend with about 1.5 hr between. With the women's game ending at ~5pm, we had to be back in the Field House by 6:30pm -- perfect day for a chicken. So Jack and I left for Walmart, but about halfway there, I realized I forgot my wallet, including my license, which is awfully bad ("hardcore mode"). I told Jack I'd pay him back, and we were almost at Aldi's, our first stop, so we just kept going. Turn out Aldi's had no ROTC, so it was off to Walmart. We arrived and immediately found their pantheon of ROTC. Except it was literally 5:47 so we had a lot of time to kill. That said, we put the ROTC down, and started a lap around Troy Walmart, passing through the rest of grocery, pet products, until we came across the tech department. We stumbled across this kiosk that advertised custom prints on things like plushes, cards, even wrapping paper but like for 40 dollars. We were curious about the cheapest thing on there, and we found you can make a custom magnet for THREE DOLLARS. What a steal. At three dollars and time to kill, I mean you might as well try it out. So I connected my phone and uploaded this image and sure enough it accepted it, but then it told us it would end...at 6:55pm, sending auto texts to Jack's phone like "Make sure not to drive over yet, we'll text you when we're done!😊👍" Welp. We were stuck in Walmart until then. Then we thought about it and surely nobody else was making a magnet right now, and no way it would take an hour to finish. So we continued walking around the store, avoiding loitering and accumulating a box of donuts, a Needo toy on clearance, and an OLIPOP cream soda. Then in just 15 or so we decided to check on the tech center with the magnet, and it turns out it was perfect timing! The guy was putting it in an envelope, he offered to check out the rest of our items at the tech center. Turns out tap did not work at Walmart and after all of that, we could not pay for our items...

The guy unscanned our items after we promised we'd be back and we racked our brains for possible solutions. The Walmart app didnt work, and I legitimately thought about Zelling the cashier then he could pay for it out of his own pocket, I didn't tell Jack that. Nonetheless, we prayed that Sam Trombone who had a car was still at the Field House, so in a no-questions-asked situation I called him to go into my backpack in the Field House and deliver my wallet to Walmart. As the absolute saint he is, Sam Trombone pulled through and shortly afterward, I was reunited with my wallet. The items were scanned again, I paid with my very adult debit card, and we left Walmart with two ROTCs in hand excited to share with the band.

1/28/26 Wednesday

Time to nerd out today: did some cool stuff at the LINAC like neutron detection, except I lowkey did nothing but watch. P held the Cf source way above his head which was really funny when Danon called him over to use his services after he volunteered to do everything last class. He'll be such a great operator. Sadly I couldn't take a photo unless it was cleared by the RSO, but I think I can show you my dosimeter if the bar code is blurred so here you go. A little different than the one from Nine Mile, given it's clipped to your shirt rather than and lanyard, and also you can't take it home to put it in the microwave. Very understandable. During class we all just kinda talked with Danon the whole time, and he mentioned this site called Notebook LM from Google. It's an isolated large language model, and he relayed this story about how when plugged the PNR notes into this LLM, it could generate a PODCAST on a specific chapter between a man and a woman talking. According to him listening to it, the podcast touched on all the main points he wants his PNR students to know, and he just found it funny, not even scary. He said to try it out after class, so indeed I did. I took one of our ARA readings, simply inputted it, and after 5 or so minutes it had an entire 16 minute podcast of disemboided voices talking to each other about resonance integrals and how we solve trillions of unknowns. I recommend giving it a shot simply because a very traditional professor thought this was funny which it honestly is. I liked your responses to the last homework, so please email me about a podcast you make!

1/27/26 Tuesday

Back to reality... But actually not really cause it's still wild outside. Walking to breakfast this morning and there were cars completely covered with only the windshield wipers to imply any semblance of an automobile. Got some work done but later went down to J to check on my car that I left there after Mayor's Cup. Luckily, not as bad as the picture of that car. I found a nearby shovel and started clearing it, but then a Pubsafe officer walked out of J and asked what I was doing (again?!) to which I answered honestly. To my surprise he told me to sit tight and he walked to his car and came back with a snowbrush to help me out! We cleared out my car enough to possibly drive to the LINAC tomorrow, so huge shoutout to Officer Manny for helping me out.

On another note, Zachtronics got back to me about the Shenzhen cards!!! Although his response was just...a little unenthusiastic. I told him I'm a huge fan of the game, the solitaire, and that I'm an RPI student just like he was, but all he emailed back were a couple of Ebay links of cards from a game called Mhing. The thing is, they don't really look exactly like the in-game cards, so I fear creating a custom deck is the only way to go. Although I must say, I truly appreciate getting a response from an alum as successful as he is, and I understood the brevity of the email. His company has a wikipedia page and his email is literally @zachtronics.com, so I feel like he knows what's up. Well our first actual lab in LINAC lab is tomorrow, so I'll update you guys on how that goes tomorrow.

1/26/26 SNOW DAY!!!

Alright so technically not a Snow Day but this is the closest we'll get In-person classes were legally cancelled, so they were forced to be held online which honestly I'll take it. Now Applied Reactor Analysis was straight cancelled, so we'll return on Thursday going three weeks into the semester and had only gone to class twice... Snow is coming down steady today, and the results are crazy. The image from outside does not give it justice -- it is almost apocalyptic. Arthur and I agree, it might just be the most snow from one storm we've seen in our lives. Had this thought the other day: it'd be crazy if all the snow fell at once.

1/25/26 Sunday

Today was Day 1 of the Winter Storm 2026. It's cool when the talk of the town for the past few days is this big storm that's going to happen, then when it actually does happen it is simply bonkers. We were talking about this yesterday, but how did people in like 1900 know if there was going to be a massive blizzard? Simply they did not. Maybe they get letters from their friends in the North where the storm hit first, but that's all they could do, right? Suddenly it started snowing then boom it's a blizzard. I think they'd have no idea when it would stop snowing and it would just stink. Today the snow started atound 11am and even 5 hours in by 4pm it was already nearing a foot. This was just 5 hrs out of the over 24 hour snowfall. Just imagine you're a peasant in the Victorian Era wondering when will this blasted winter end, and you just have no idea.

On another note, played Bridge with some of the Nukes today and it is so much thinking and strategy, nearly cannot fathom. We have the basics down but keeping track of points is by far the hardest part to learn. You get points for each trick over 6, depending on trump suit, but no trump gets you extra but only for first trick over 6, but below the contract it's a greater penalty, and if your team has vulnerable status it's actually a GREATER penalty, and you getter hope it's not doubled, oh but if one of those special game contracts you get more bonus points. I feel like we discovered a brand new really niche rule every game for scoring, and I just think it'd be so funny to get really good at Bridge.

1/24/26 Saturday

Pretty sure this whole day will be documented on another page in the website. There's something about spending an entire day watching very intense hockey. It's a shared experience with only the people in that stadium; I really enjoy those "you had to be there" scenarios a lot." Sometimes it's impossible to understand something from another's POV unless you have had the exact same experiences as that other person; you just have no way of knowing. Anyway definitely just coping right now. Went to Vermont and Mass today too.

1/22/26 Thursday

Rabbit hole of the week: RPI website on the Wayback Machine. Go to my misc links to explore yourself, cause there are so many tiny litte details of early Internet that you simply never get anymore, a literal time capsule of 30 years ago. It's weird 30 years ago feels like a long time, but the Internet was alive and thriving, and websites were popping up everywhere. This whole thing even inspired me to start this site, and it why you're reading this right now. One of these details is that very often you come across directions to get places. If people wanted to meet somewhere, you simply had to know where to go, so websites had directions like taking exits off highways or driving through freeways and taking a left at this or that landmark. Obvsiously it's not weird, but it kind of it to think that these were the college days of people just like us who were literally the same people with the same humor. In fact I guarentee that the college students of 2056 reading this are like "man, I can't believe everyone had Instagram profiles to showcase their whole life that's crazy!" Yet here we are. Anyway, go to my Links page to check this out and explore to your heart's content. Your homework is to email me about anything you find interesting, I will definitely find it cool too! That's it for today, so see you tomorrow.

1/21/26 Wednesday

It feels like last week was a month ago. So much happened in between since last Wednesday that the entirety of break feels like about a week. Anyway, Commons had these homemade Twix bars as an ST (see initialisms) and it was divine. Anyway, always something happening with LINAC lab, and while we there, P made his 2026th Shenzhen.io Solitaire win, and can no longer play until 2027. We also started using this new Monte Carlo called SRIM for ions that looks like it was made the same year as this website looks like it was made. It's public software so I can show it here, and it is simply amazing. Also you can't change the aspect ratio/fullscreen; it's stuck at a charming postage stamp size. But we love nuclear code.

Alright back to Shenzhen. So you remember how the original game was made by an RPI alum and we flipped out? Well during dinner we were curious...could we get our hands on a real life Shenzhen deck? I was certain. To do this, we'd need the actual textures from the game for accuracy, so who else to ask but Zachtronics himself, creator of Shenzhen.io and Infiniminer (original predecessor to Minecraft), and RPI class of '08? So, I contacted him using school email to see what he can do, promising a copy of the deck if I can make it happen, BCCing Bob and Maddie as to include them but not scare off Zachtronics with all this pressure. Probably the first use of BCC this year. That said, can only pray to hear what he makes of this, so stay tuned for Zachtronics updates!

1/20/26 Tuesday

Hey Friendships, I heard about my lack of blogging recently, and first I'd like to apologize. I think I just closed my Visual Studio Code app which is usually in my taskbar to remind my update the blog every day. Well boy do I have quite the story: so yesterday Maddie, P, and I visited Saratoga for the bit, and we first tried the many water springs they've. I don't want to spoil the experience but you'll definitely know which one is the best out of the 6 or so. Interestingly, many of these springs have dissolved iron which give it this disgusting tufa around it. Yuck. Anyway, they also had a little fire going so you could roast some marshmallows on the snowy afternoon and warm your hands. Hmm I think it's time to make another paragraph.

So we get to town and explore the shops including a very quaint bookstore, probably best one I've ever been in terms of vibes. We then come to a crossroads: P enters a cigar store draped with American flags -- probably the most conservative room I've ever witnessed. Maddie and I enter this nutty crystal/astrology shop being the most liberal room ever witnessed. I asked about any rocks with uranium just to test their limits but they didn't seem to like that. In the back there were some real nutty books, and they asked where we were from we just said Troy as to not blow our cover completely. I declined to be "read" whatever that means and we promptly booked it. We ate at Bailey's Cafe, but we were not prepared for our next destination: what seemed to be thrift store was actually a confinement store with clothing cramped so close like a Minecraft base with one block wide hallways and two block tall roof. It is in a basement, and as you enter down from stairs from the street, clothing racks covered everything. When we were the ready to leave, the kind lady thanked us for coming, and asked where we were from. Again, we just say Troy, to which she responds by stating she just read an article saying that's in the top 10 worst places in NY to live. Well alright, thanks lady. She continues going on about how some places are nicer than others, such as Russia. We kinda wanna see where she's going with this so we sorta get her to keep talking until she's on about how Ukraine is not a real country and that Russia will take what's rightfully theirs. All we can do is just nod politely like mm yep mm yep. THEN she gets quiet and says, "you know what, something BIG is gonna happen tomorrow..." "Huh? What are you talking about?" "I'm not saying anything else...but something big..." We all looked at each other like yep, that's our cue, and politely exited, all looking wide-eyed like what the hell did we just witness.

That brings us to today, where we've all been on the lookout for "something big." The annoything is that ANYTHING could happen and she'd be right. There is only half hour left of the day, and if nothing happens, P and I decided we're driving back to Saratoga to ask what the hell she was on about. Then, I'm sure New York State Fire Code would like to have a chat with her. Well seems like a proper length for a blog post. Expect more. Thanks again for the emails, I really do appreciate them. Check out my oxymorons.

1/13/26 Tuesday

Welcome to Spring 26! It's been great to be back for two days, and finally be mentally stimulated again. Every class, even freshman MatSci was the most interesting thing ever compared to most of the last three weeks. Infinite Minecraft and TV must come to an end, and with no more loose ends from the winter break, it's back to grind time.

1/7/26 Wednesday

Whoa... I feel like it's been a while. LOTS have happened so far: watched SO much tv, played SO much Minecraft, and actually painted some things. No but honestly, I don't think anyone else on Earth has watched six hours of Severance into six hours of The Odd Couple in one day all after metagaming the MCCG, pretty sure I got that record on lock.

12/29/25 Monday

Heading to the city today, we had to find a way to fill the void between Christmas and New Years "NYE" Eve. That initialism is so dumb; I mean who says those letter out loud anyway? Should add that on my least favorite word list. Getting ahead of ourselves huh. You really understand museums a lot more going back when you're consious. Seeing all these toddlers at the AMNH made me wonder how many of them really appreciate what they're looking at? Sure the hanging whale and diaramas are amazing, but there was one small thing that oddly stuck out to me this time around: in the African exhibit there was a one-off glass display case housing various artifacts, and one of them was this ivory tusk, carved away intricately to show a snake spiraling around the tusk. Along the snake lay figures of people doing various activities, all carved by hand and preserved for so long. There is no way a snotty 7 year old me would have appreciated that! Yet I figured the value me coming here so long ago was being able to remember the big parts of it, and feel nostalgic coming back all these years later. That said, it was enlightening going back with friends who could also appreciate the exhibits. With the city being super packed around this time, we hopped back on the LIRR and booked it by the evening after taking some great Where's Waldo among the crowds.

12/26/25 Thursday🎄

Winter break Me has gone too far. Apparently he doesn't care about sleep at all, that upon staying up until 3 am, he was like "you know what? no sleep for you." Stayed consious in bed until the birds started chirping into Christmas Eve and I arose an mixture between sleepy and awake, a sleepwalking semi-awake lethargic abomination. Like why's that gotta happen?? Then had to endure Christmanukah going into 40 hours awake (although very yummy food) until finally I was allowed to sleep. Pretty messed up, huh. Anyway Christmas was cool, the Chinese food was great, and watched 12 Angry Men for some reason today (very good film, original of course). Very hard to come across new and exciting thoughts these days, but we'll get back to it.

12/23/25 Tuesday?

Winter break Me has officially taken over, and there are still two weeks left for him to reign. He makes me get up past 10 am, go to sleep past 2 am, and I fear it will only get more extreme the more Minecraft there is to play. He warps my sense of time, where I'm pretty sure last time I did actual work was 3 months ago but it was probably like 1.5 weeks ago. Wait wasn't the Fluids final today?? Poor Mane students still at RPI. Also figured out at least top 3 worst activity these past days: Christmas shopping! Literally went shopping three separate days and bought a singular item each time. It's a lose-lose: if you give a bad gift, they won't use it and you waste money. If they give a bad gift, you pretend you like it and never use it, then feel guilty. Waaaay too much pressure here. My gift? We agree to not exchange gifts. THAT would be what I want.

12/19/25 Friday

Risk all day. If I only I could cash in my cards to fortify Asia, I could have defended the Middle East and maintained the 7 troop bonus. Luckily we kept our cool going through like 20 episodes of Spongebob on Nicktoons in the background.

12/17/25 Wednesday

CRAZIEST thing happened today: was walking down Bleeker to go to Commons for three hours and saw a CHICKEN CROSSING THE ROAD. I kid you not. And no, I do not know why it decided to cross the road, but I think it knew it was going to make my day, so I appreciate it Mrs. Chicken. Drove home with Jack later, yet ended up on the least efficient route after taking the GWB, then Throgs, then missed turns, then apparently a hovering plane, and several other interesting instances that led us to drive through Manhattan. Took over 5 hours but this had to happen so we'd never make this mistake again. Not coping. I promise..... Still crazy about this chicken thing.

12/16/25 Tuesday

Today was the most productive day yet! Woke up and went to Commons until 3pm, then went to CBIS for 5 hours, then went back to Commons, then we came home to see milk at the door! Wierd thing about today: Industry Baby has been the stim song of the day. It holds up and highly recommend giving it a listen. ANYWAY really gotta pack to go home now, Jack and I have quite the journey to LI tomorrow, and before you leave check out my new Word list page (must find it)!

P.S. Working on a comment section for this blog/some user interaction. Surely this statement will age well.

12/15/25 Monday

So SOME people have been talking about how I haven't been updating the blog, so here I am. Today at Commons there was this Heath hot chocolate that everyone agreed was life changing. We now live in a post-hot chocolate world. Welp. Maura just spilled all her root beer onto the table. Oh, wait it's not even all, she is still drinking the remainding root beet from her cup. This is like the sixth time she has spilled soda on technology, actually amazing.

12/11/25 Thursday

Blog #2. Today was the heat transfer final! It was happily pretty sleeper, but the last thing for this semester is sadly the entire URP research paper. U-238 photofission done, 3 more sections to go. Adrian recommended a comments section for this blog which I think would be really funny, so if that can work out I think it'd be necessary. If not, a donation page like the Integral Calculator guy would work. Please, buy me a coffee. Just a struggling nuclear engineer here.

12/10/25 Wednesday

This is my first blog test! The website is coming along swimmingly, and I have my heat transfer final tomorrow. Sitting here at the table instead of studying... After that gotta do my entire URP research paper for radioxenon production uh oh. Hyper Thursday incoming. (Wow what a historic moment this is! Hello to whoever scrolled all the way down!)