Spring break and such

The people have spoken it's time to post again (well ok one person spoke but considering the number of people that read this that counts as the people).

So a long time ago my brother and Jess came up to Carp for Spring Break. As I headed off to work each morning they headed off to surfing lessons. While that made the morning drive to work pretty difficult I got over my jealously when they cooked dinner and lunches for me and helped stock my house with some of the stuff that you would have thought I'd have to begin with. And then that Friday I called into work and said something came up and that something was driving up to wine country. And at some point we went out for Shabu Shabu - good stuff! Oh and happy birthday to Eric. It was great having them up here!

Oh yeah there was that whole class thing I was up to. Luckily both of the final project groups I was in were brave enough to do just enough work to hit all the requirements and not go over the top like most groups. Which did end up working out well in the end. Now that class is over I'm appreciating free time more and joined a gym. I've also started putting a bit more effort into figuring out where I want to be. I've been spending some of my weekends down in Glendale hanging out with Eric and Evan which is always fun. We headed to china town for lunch and saw little tokyo. Also drove through downtown LA just to see what's there - didn't feel much need to get out of the car...

Yesterday I went to a SoCal alumni event and ran into Varady. It was good to see him again and getting a free dinner from my fraternity big brother didn't hurt either. The alumni event was pretty uninteresting itself but talking to Eric (yes my fraternity big brother's name is the same as my real little brother's name) was very interesting since he recently went from working for a huge company to a little pre-IPO company.

Eric (back to real brother) reintroduced me to podcasts. I had tried them out a while ago and wasn't very impressed but I guess they've added a few since then. I'm still picking out which ones I like so any suggestions would be appreciated. So far I've tried The Naked Scientists (ok), just subscribed to slate, Science Friday from NPR (good stuff) Al Franken Show (good when they actually put some out), The Onion Radio News (funny but very short). I just started listening to Real Time with Bill Mahr you lose a little since you're listening to a TV show but not much and very funny. I tried out the history podcast but I wouldn't recommend it. Has anyone else noticed that when listening to podcasts on an iPod after each one it pops you back to the top level menu? WTF mate! So I've put together a playlist that grabs all the podcasts but that seems awfully silly - has anyone else come up with a better solution (or am I just doing something wrong?).