www.BrettDaniel.com

I invited Wendy and Chelsea to the Indianapolis 500 Festival Parade. Wendy told me they were already planning to go with some other interns from the company where they are working this summer, but she invited me along. All of the interns live downtown in a nice little village of apartments paid for by the company. They are within walking distance of White River, the canal, and the center of downtown. I would love to live so close to everything.

We took advantage of the location and the bright, springlike day by walking to Monument Circle. The crowd was already starting to form, but we got there early enough to grab a seat on the wall surrounding the monument. We were high up and could see the half of the circle, the intersection of Market and Pennsylvania, and the entire route along Meridian Street.

The parade itself was interesting to see. Lots of marching bands. I was pleased they put Purdue's right at the front. We did not stay all the way until the end. With maybe 30 minutes left we walked along the parade route to a side road where we bought sandwiches. We concluded the parade had ended when I flood of people surged down the street in front of the restaurant.

I will let the pictures tell the whole story once Purdue's FTP server decides to let me log in.

Here is a question for Miss Manners: if your coworkers invite you to eat lunch at a pizza place, and you ate almost half a pizza for dinner the night before, is it appropriate to take the bag lunch you had prepared that morning and eat it at the restaraunt?

I did that today. My coworkers and I had a good laugh when I walked up to the group holding a plastic bag containing my lunch. The waitress looked at me strangely when I ordered just a glass of water and no food. I left a good tip: infinite percent of what I paid!

I told my parents about the experience this afternoon. Their responses could not have been greater opposites. Dad felt it was perfectly normal. He said one of his coworkers does it all the time. Sue, meanwhile, said, "That could not be more tacky!" I was right in the middle. It felt strange, but I did not feel that it was particularly rude.

What does the internet think? Is it appropriate to bring one's lunch to a restaurant?

As my junior year drew to a close, I told myself, "I am going to make this an interesting summer. I am going to have fun as much as I can." I did squat last summer. There were a few interesting events, but I feel like I floated through most of those three months. Work, lift, surf, sleep. I want this summer to be a little more memorable.

Three weeks in and I am off to a good start. I still have those four staples: working, lifting, surfing, and sleeping, but these last three weeks have had a light sprinkling of interesting events. Charlie came to town a week ago Tuesday. An old friend's parents cooked a gourmet steak dinner for the group of us that welcomed him to town.

On Friday Eric and I went with two of his female engineering friends, Wendy and Chelsea, to The Slippery Noodle downtown. I did not realize how much I missed seeing such good music. The front stage had an old blues man, while the back stage— which I did not realize existed until two hours into the night— had a rock cover band. They finished on Hendrix. It made my evening.

At one point I tried to be smooth and offered to buy drinks for the girls. Wendy wanted a fuzzy navel, but Chelsea said, "surprise me". My smoothness shattered when I brought her a scotch and soda to go along with the one I bought for myself. Alas, she did not drink much of it. I should have gotten her something more colorful.

And that brings me to what I really wanted to mention: I signed up for bartending classes after work today. Classes start June 6 and run during the evening five days a week for three weeks. By the end I will have a state liquor-serving license and can legally work behind a counter if I so choose. Not only will it be an interesting new experience, but it may lead to a useful part time job to help pay bills while I am in grad school. (That is, if I cannot find a part time programming or research job.)

Enrolling was an interesting experience. Before I could ask about the cost or time commitment, the receptionist sat me down at a counter with a form to fill out. In front of me she proudly presented a photo album full of pictures from previous classes and a binder full of letters from former students. I glanced over the menacing form. It had more questions than most bank applications. I did not bother to fill it out and instead asked some questions about the class. What does it cover? How long does it take? When does it meet? She deftly diverted me to the manager seated in a wood paneled office tucked in the back of the building.

He was built like an ex-football player and had the skills of a used car salesman. He went through a binder containing the "curriculum", pointing out the benefits of various "subjects". When I asked about price he blustered a bit about how easy it is to make money in tips, then wrote a number on a sheet of paper and slid it across the desk. I looked at it and my eyes grew wide. It was about $200 above what I had expected. "oooh. That is a bit out of my league right now," I said. I was ready to leave, secure with the knowlege that I had saved some money by not signing up. To my surprise the manager replied, sounding concerned, "Well, Brett, what is in your league right now?" He assumed I was a poor college student wanting to make some extra money. That is partly true, so I played the part and gave him a low figure. He responded by cutting $150 off the cost. Too bad Purdue does not do stuff like that.

And so I signed up. Sue seemed surprised at the decision. Dad seemed excited for me. He worked at a liquor store during his time at Purdue and now I may work as a bartender during mine. Ironic, no?

I am working for a software design and consulting firm this summer. A new (to me) company, new coworkers, and a new language: I am learning ASP.NET. After all the work I have done with PHP, ASP's "web controls" require a complete shift in thinking. This was to be expected. I have learned something new during every one of my internships, and I am glad this summer is no exception. Armed with the requisite 800-page reference book, I jumped headlong into development when I started last Wednesday. I hope to write a post about ASP once I get more familiar with it.

I bought some new buttondown shirts to replace the old oxfords I have worn for at least four years. One had a hole in the elbow, another I accidentally washed with a black pen, and a third seemed to stay perpetually wrinkled no matter how many times I ironed it. Wearing one of those would not have been a good way to make a good impression on my first day of work. I bought three wrinkle-free, cotton blend, fitted dress shirts. If you have never worn a fitted dress shirt, you should. On a trim guy like myself, fitted shirts fall much more naturally and look O so much better than a wider, billowy cut. I still had a terrible time finding decent colors. Designers, please throw all your pastel, neon striped, paisley print, and above all, pink dress shirts in the dumpster behind your building. The men of the world thank you.

My morning commute is about ten minutes longer than the previous summers'. I am still trying to determine the best route. I am thankful I can still avoid the interstate. Each day I have chosen a different path to work and used an old stopwatch to time how long it takes me to get there and back. I have found the most direct route takes the most time due to traffic. I was inches away from putting together a spreadsheet to average times across several days and determine a day's deviation from the mean.

I was pleased to learn that my employer has a deal with the YMCA, reducing the monthly membership cost by about $15. Today I did some analysis to determine the best YMCA at which to work out this summer. Using Google Maps, I plotted the length of the drive from work, to a YMCA, and back home. The Y to the west requires 16.6 miles for the whole trip; the one to the north requires 14.1; and the one to the southeast requires 15.6. It figures. I could not have chosen a worse location to place work in relation to nearby YMCAs. Fortunately, the one to the north has the most direct path and the nicest equipment. This analysis also led me to send Google a feature request asking for directions through a series of waypoints.

The Cobbler

A grocery store near where I live rents out little alcoves at the front of the store to small businesses. One lies empty, but the other contains a small shoe repair shop. It cannot be more than eight feet wide by 15 long. It smells like old leather and melted wax. The shelves lining the walls display all sorts of polishes, laces, and other shoe accessories. Any other free space is piled high with paper bags containing works in progress: boots with no soles, high heels without the heel, scuffed dress shoes, and other strange pieces of leather that I do not recognize. I notice an army green, turn-of-the century buffing wheel in the repair area behind the checkout counter.

I start my summer job tomorrow, so I stopped in to get some black polish to rejuvenate my InternWear™ dress shoes. As I reached for a bottle of liquid polish, the spindly proprietor shook his head in dismay. In a soft, breathy voice he said, "no, no, no. Don't get the liquid. That will ruin your shoes. You need to go with the old-fashioned paste. It will protect the leather and extend the life of your shoes. Down and to your right." I picked up a small tin and looked to him for approval. He nodded. After I paid, he placed the tin carefully in small paper bag, stapled it closed, and handed it to me reverently.

The Framer

A while back I needed to buy some matte board with which to mount some more celica ads. The only place I found that sold large sheets was a small frame shop in a nondescript strip mall. A bell rang as I entered and a small white terrier came sprinting through the store to see who had arrived. A voice called out from the back, "Just a moment, my friend. I will be right with you." The dog watched me diligently as I looked at the pictures leaning in deep stacks against the walls. "How may I help you, my friend?" said the proprietor as he picked carefully between pictures and a queen bed-sized cutting table. I told him I needed some matte board. He retrieved a sheet from the back room. "You are a student, my friend? We get many students buying matte board from us, don't we [dog's name]."

I get asked that all the time. Is it really that obvious?

The dog jumped up on the counter as I paid, then tailed me to the door as I left.

The Comic Book Guy

It became a ritual for me to go to the comic book store whenever I came home from school for weekends or vacation. The same bearded cashier was working every time. He probably has a strange opinion of me.

Michael's former IM screenname incorporated IG-88, an obscure Star Wars droid that appears for a few seconds in The Empire Strikes Back. George Lucas nevertheless made a 12 inch action figure of it. The comic book store had one displayed prominently on the front counter. I of course had my camera with me and decided to take a picture to send Michael.

I had asked the cashier if it was okay for me to take a picture, but he still looked at me strangely. "That'll be ten dollars," he said when I finished.

It took the entire weekend for me to merge one Standard Dorm Unit (SDU) of stuff into my room at home. I have also learned that a 1990 Celica can hold 0.5 SDUs, minus one Standard Loveseat Volume (SLV). My parents took the couch in Dad's SUV which, amazingly, holds exactly one SLV with the back seats down.

The Variable Relocated Mass Law states that mass is not conserved when one moves one's belongings from one location to another. In other words, the amount of mass entering the system before a move is always more than that which exits the system after the move. Case in point: I seem to have lost my TV remote.