omar eduardo’s blog

This past few weeks have been more eventful than my entire life, and I’m not talking about the Olympics anymore. I’ll start with some good highlights. 

- I moved to a friend’s place temporarily until I finally move to my new apartment.  
- I found someone to take care of my cat for this period of time.
- I got my taekwondo promotion to black stripe, which is the assistant instructor rank in our club.
- I’ve been sleeping on a futon mattress on amazing tatami mats. That is simply amazing. 
- I got some of my furniture for my new apartment. Look at the pretty things I got [all at Ikea]:

The last two things (bed frame and bedside table) are things I’m planning on getting next time, actually. Have not yet been purchased. 

Of course, there are some not so great things that have happened this summer:

- I have to go to Ikea to change one of the things I got, cause the box I picked up was for the wrong color of the product I wanted. 
- My cat’s food got infested with ants at my friend’s place, which is just sad. I got some ant bait and raid which is solving the problem.
- And the thing that really really infuriates me, AT&T is charging me $704.20 for a month in which I was supposed to be charged $93.03 including activation fee. They are retarded to some extent and can’t simply understand that my account was transferred from Massachusetts to Puerto Rico, and they were supposed to cancel the first account immediately and prorate the charges on both accounts. They’re also doing the most stupid thing I’ve ever seen, they are charging me for an unlimited data plan, the one I asked for, but are still charging me for data use as PAY-PER-USE. They are doing the same thing for the text messages…

But nonetheless, I’ve been in contact with the AT&T people and they are ‘working’ on solving the problem. Apparently it takes forever to do so. 

Just to ease my soul I decided to meditate and write a report I have to turn in this Friday with respect to my summer progress in lab. Hopefully after taking a nap soon I’ll get an e-mail from AT&T’s customer service saying:

“Dear Mr. Fernández,
We realize we were just being stupid, so here, your account has been credited $611.17 and an extra $100M we give you for the stress we caused you. This stress probably took a few years out of your lifespan. We really appreciate your business here at AT&T and hope you have an excellent day!
Sincerely,
Person working for the retarded company” 

We’ll see how that goes,

-Omar

Although I can only sit to watch TV for a limited amount of time (unless it’s something completely amazing, or a movie), I must say that I’m infatuated by the Olympics. The opening ceremony for the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing was simply breathtaking, a surreal spectacle that I watched twice and still couldn’t believe it. The entire thing was a masterpiece. Of course, it would have been better to watch it without NBC’s English commentaries, which actually made things worst, or with the couple of times in which they decided to focus on Bush rather than the actual event. But ignoring those instances, the event was just majestic. The fireworks, the tai chi demonstration, the huge screen projecting beautiful imagery, the art, the performances, the costumes, and, of course, Sarah Brightman and Liu Huan’s “You and Me” performance… everything was spectacular. Each part was so well executed and planned that I had to remind myself that no, it wasn’t a movie, and yes, this happened on Earth. I felt like a kid again, and a very excited one. 

Now I’m looking forward to the Taekwondo events. The Puerto Rico team has 2 taekwondoists in their team of 22, so I definitely wouldn’t want to miss those matches. I’m also packing everything and cleaning up to move to my friend’s place for two weeks, and then to my new apartment! It’s an eventful end of the summer.

-Omar

It’s 64 degrees outside, a few days ago it was in the 80s. The result of this temperature drop, I got a cold during the summer. Exciting, huh?  So today I’m in my room trying to get over it. It feels like I’m way too familiar with this routine. Get a cold, drink some meds, stay in all day, try not to die. With the frequency this happened to me last term, I may soon be recognized as an expert (or at least in the ‘advanced level’) at getting colds for no reason. My body doesn’t get used to non-tropical weather. 

The good thing is that I get to rest and play with my new toys. I got my bose headset this week and I also borrowed some photography equipment yesterday. I’m in my room using all of these things and trying to ignore the fact that I feel like I was beaten up in the north pole. It’s kind of cold up there (or so I’ve heard). 

The good news are that I’m almost done with one of my jobs this summer, and I’m moving in to my new apartment next month. Also, my birthday is coming up, which is really nothing exciting since there’s no point in turning 19, but it’s still kind of exciting. Who knows, maybe in the real world Hogwarts accepts their students once they turn 19 instead of 11 and I can just transfer there next week. If you stop seeing me in the fall, you can safely assume I’m hanging out with wizards.

Actually, I need to confess that I’m pretty sure my mom is not a muggle. Not with the skills she has shown. She’s been able to disappear money, thousands of dollars, by swiping a card with a magnetic stripe. She also guesses exactly what I’m thinking and what I’m about to do, and I even witnessed how she made her hair, and my aunts and grandma’s hair, look straight a few times. That, my friends, is magic. Also, since I was about 3-4 years old my mom started telling me and my brother stories about witches that she had seen as a young girl while living at my grandma’s. Apparently, she even saw two witches fight at night during a thunderstorm, each one of them was at the top of a different hill casting spells against each other. The one dressed in white, the good one, always won over the one dressed in black. 

I still look outside every time there’s a thunderstorm and I’m around hills.

So, I’m in my room getting over my cold while pondering the idea of moving to Hogwarts instead of East Cambridge, MA in the fall. Meanwhile, just in case things don’t work out too well, I’m trying to decide what colors I want to paint the walls of my new room and I’m also trying to get to Ikea soon to buy furniture. I might get tatami mats for the floor and no bed (just a futon mattress). 

Exciting times ahead. 

-Omar

Bella, photo taken an hour ago

Just wanted to share a dooce entry that made me happy this morning.

love it.

[title inspired by bobby's post]

As of yesterday night, I finalized the details of my housing situation for the fall. I’ll be moving off-campus, to an apartment that is a 15 minutes walk from the MIT campus, and a 5 minutes walk from the mall. One good thing is that in snowy days I can take the mall shuttle to school which goes straight to Kendall Sq. Hopefully I wont be tempted to spend more time in the mall than in school. 

The main reason why I chose to move off-campus vs. the convenience of living two steps away from class, was not living two steps away from class. I feel like having my own place, outside of campus, will really mark a distinction between being at home vs. being at school. This doesn’t mean that I won’t do work when I’m home, I’ll have to, but it will give me a physical separation from the ugly MIT campus. This is a separation that I need to keep myself mentally sane. 

Living in a dorm means that you have no control of what happens outside of your door. If someone decides to have a party the night you have a migraine, you’re screwed. If someone decides that cleaning up their own vomit is too much work, you’ll face it and smell it in the morning, and probably for a few mornings after that. Also, I like being able to sit on a clean toilet. 

Something that I’m really excited about is decorating my place. Sharing an apartment with only one other person means that I’ll have much more freedom and flexibility in choosing the layout of the common areas. Although I’m mostly interested in my room. I’ve been thinking of different ways to decorate my room. I was thinking, maybe I could just have my futon mattress on the floor, and have not so tall furniture. I was even thinking I could have something similar to what my friend Suzanne has in her living room. 

Her living room is really nice. It has a tatami mat area which is extremely useful, comfortable and fun. That’s where we have had dinners in the afternoons and I’ve loved eating and then just laying there until the food coma is over. I’ve also witnessed the space being used for other activities such as working out, dancing, and sleeping. I’m a huge fan of that last one. Around the tatami mats there are storage areas, a table, and open space to walk in/out of the mats. 

Here are a few pictures from things/ideas I’ve liked, 5 out of 6 are Ikea’s! I’ll put more up later. 

To compliment my iPhone. 

Bose Mobile On-ear Headset

The noise-isolation makes it easier to ignore people without having to raise the music volume. Love it.

There are times in which all you want to do is lay down and relax all day. Today was one of those. I woke up in the morning, brushed my teeth and used my computer for a while. Later I watched episodes of Sex And The City until I exhausted all my resources (i.e. finished the last season). While watching one of the episodes I realized that I was really hungry, so I made a bowl of noodles that had sufficient sodium to satisfy my daily sodium needs for over a day. All because I didn’t want to get out of my dorm to get food. 

In between SATC episodes, and checking my e-mail, I also read a book I bought recently. It’s a self-help book that made me happy for the rest of my life. Now I’m happy. If you look at me, you’ll only think about happiness. Make a web search for “omar”, it will prompt: “Did you mean happiness?“.

Other than being happy, eat sodium, watch SATC, and learning some Japanese… I did one thing. To think ahead about days like today, in which I don’t want to do anything, and think about how to make them more enjoyable. The answer was, to have a nicer room, of course. So I got back online and looked at gorgeous furniture and room designs. I spent a few hours at Amazon.com and Ikea.com looking through furniture and thinking about how to make my room the place were I want to live. There are certain key issues I have: size and shape. I really need to see how to make a dorm room nice and comfortable. 

But at least my room next term is going to be bigger, so that will make things slightly better. I don’t know what I’ll do about the carpet, since I don’t really love it all that much, and I definitely have to paint the walls. Living in a white room makes me feel foreign to the room. So I’m trying to think about the right colors. The bigger problem is, I then got distracted with YouTube videos and ended up watching Lewis Black, rather than think more about useful things. 

Here’s the coolest video I’ve seen today:

Titanic Inspires All of Us

Since I’m doing laundry, I decided to make a list about the things I love and use quite frequently. Who knows, you might like some of these.

Disclaimer: I’m mainly a Mac user with a PC laptop dual-booting Linux and Windows XP. The total amount of time I spend using my laptop on an average week is close to 0 minutes unless I’m traveling.

‘Geeky’

• iMac - Excellent computer with a magnificent Operating System (Mac OS X Leopard)
• iPhone 3G - I’m in love. As a friend put it: “… it really changed my life.”
• Lifehacker.com- Updates way too frequently, but it has quality content.

Social Networks (with some other stuff)

• Last.fm (music) - the current beta version is pretty awesome, I discover pretty neat music through the ‘neighbor stations’
• Facebook(real social network) - The only social network that I keep up with. Although MySpace is removing a lot of the ‘clutter’ it has, I find that Facebook is the only social network with a rather clean user interface.
• Flickr (photography) - Although I hate the new limitations of limited accounts, a PRO account is only $24.95 a year and has amazing benefits. Unlimited photo uploads? I love you.
• Twitter - simple and sweet.

Search Engines

• Scour.com (yes, that is indeed a referral link) - Although in Beta and doesn’t support searches with ’special characters’ such as… whatever is not commonly used in English, it’s still a pretty good search engine with relevant results and it pays you for searching (in the long run). Don’t use the image search though, it has no ‘filter’.
• Google.com (I can’t really get over it)

Financial Tools

• Mint.com - I’m still surprised this is free. I love it.

Movie Ratings

• Metacritic
• Rotten Tomatoes

Online Stores

• Amazon- I love it, and Amazon Prime is fantastic.

E-mail service

• Gmail - is simply my favorite.

Blogs (not friend’s blogs)

• Dooce
• Post Secret
• The Sartorialist

Other ways I spend time online

• YouTube

Software
Torrent Download

• Azureus

Media (Imaging, music, website creation, etc.)

• iPhoto ‘08 - simple to use and pretty much everything the average user needs.
• Photoshop - for more complex pimples.
• iTunes - What can I say? I used it even before I had an iPod/iPhone/etc. It’s just great at organizing music/video libraries, and it’s free.
• iWeb
• VLC - the simplest, yet most powerful video player I’ve used. It plays pretty much anything.

Organizing Life and Staying in touch with friends

• Apple Address Book
• Apple Mail
• iCal
• iChat, Skype - both are excellent for instant messaging and video conference.
• Google Calendar - love love love.

Media

• Microsoft Office (one of the few good products from such company)
• Google Documents

Web Browsers (Please do not use Internet Explorer, it has side effects such as… stupidity)

• Safari
• Firefox

I just found out about Scour, a search engine that combines the search results from Google, Yahoo, and MSN, and lets you rank the results with a thumbs up/down system. While you just search and get your results, you also accumulate points that can be used later on to get rewards such as… money. If you refer friends you get a bonus of 25% of their points as well. Pretty neat, huh? 

I wish Google would give me some sort of rewards for the searches I’ve made in the past few years.