Purely Random

I’m a big fan of tea. I’m sure that’s at least partially inspired by my mother, who so frequently has a hot cup of tea in front of her that my first words were, “hot tea!” So, of course, when I came into contact with Wick’s and Beans at some point last year, I was both intruiged and excited. In fact, I was so excited that it couldn’t be completely explained by some maternally-inspired appreciation of tea. I think it has much more to do with my love of small storefronts run by a connoisseur. This brings me to Margaret’s Fine Imports, which is nothing more than a bigger, better Wick’s and Beans in a new location. (more…)

I currently own two different private web sites that I own and operate. They’re both basically blogs, but I never seem to post new content. One is intended as a more professional summary of my research and essays on that topic; the other, which you are currently reading, is a dumping ground for whatever I want to post. Not a day goes by when I don’t have a huge number of ideas about what types of content I should post, but none of it ever gets posted. I plan on posting it a the time, but nothing actually comes of it. I write notes to myself summarizing the content and sometimes write out the whole thing. But still, nothing ever makes it to the site. Why? (more…)

Quite literally, this post is made possible by the “fruits” of Pittsburgh’s very own farmers market (only on Saturday mornings in the strip). I didn’t realize such an opportunity existed before I started working in the strip, but there are signs plasters all over the parking lot of the Firehouse Lounge. I basically had to give it a go. This week actually wasn’t my first time, but it was my most successful time. I’d love to get there early—because I have a feeling all the sellers do the same, but it seems like I’m always late (for my tastes). Even so, I managed to get out there by about 10:30am, which was good enough. I almost want to start writing about all my trips to the farmers market and do kind of a “market report” a la KCRW’s Good Food program. But alas, I don’t find time to post nearly enough. (more…)

I’m about a month away from a major change in my life: I recently signed an employment contract. I’ve been thinking about leaving grad school for a long time now, and a lot of my friends have been aware that this was coming. Now it’s official. The company I will be starting at is a startup founded by a faculty member of the School of Computer Science at CMU, and it’s called Pittsburgh Pattern Recognition—or just PittPatt, for short.

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I made some chocolate chip cookies for Sally this Valentine’s Day. In particular I made one of them in the shape of a heart and served it with some ice cream and hot fudge. The recipe I used is one I have been perfecting over the past few years, so I was hopefull that they would meet her standards. Unfortunately, she didn’t like them as much as the chocolate chip cookies recipe off the back of a bag of chocolate chips. I couldn’t figure out what it was that made her not like my cookies, until now…

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