Brotherhood 2.0 Was Absolutely Amazing

Back in September, when I went down to the girls’ place for one of the first times, they (Yolanda, Mare, Amber, and Leslie) told me they had something awesome for me to see. The awesomeness was, indeed, awesome – it was Hank Green’s performance of Accio Deathly Hallows. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvvFiZyEyTA) It was definitely one of the coolest songs I had ever heard, and I eventually realized that it was a part of this project called Brotherhood 2.0.

Brotherhood 2.0 was a project that John and Hank Green (two brothers) who decided that they were tired of their communication relying only on textual communication (emails, IMs, and text messages), and so they wanted to go 365 days with no textual communication. This year of textless communication required that every other non-holiday weekday (alternating), a brother must upload a video to their Youtube account (www.youtube.com/vlogbrothers) by midnight. If a video was not up by midnight of a brother’s day, or if a brother textually communicated with the other, or if a video was more than 4 minutes long, then he’d be punished. Punishments were suggested by the nerdfighters (viewers of Brotherhood2.0) and selected by the other brother. Another thing to know about Brotherhood 2.0 is that there were several projects throughout the year, which all turned out to be awesome.

Now that the 365 days are over, videos do not happen every weekday any more (sadly), but each brother has to vlog at least once each week. Also, there is now a much bigger and more active community community at http://nerdfighters.ning.com/. So, you should get addicted to it now! And in order to get addicted and to understand all the references you should watch the 77 videos that I have linked to in the attached word document! Enjoy!!

77 Must-See Brotherhood 2.0 Videos

(PS – I realize that 5 hours of Youtube videos might be a bit much, so I’m going to narrow the 77 down to a more manageable amount at some point before the end of the semester. If you’re lazy or think you have something better to do, I suppose you can just wait for the smaller version..)

First Post!

Hey!  This is my first post at dannyiachini.wordpress.com … I’m trying out the service because Mare wanted to see what it was like and needed help, and that’s just the kind of guy I am.  So here it is, this is a regular old post!  Tada!

<3!

Hope everyone’s lives are well

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Fall 2007 Semester in Review

The Fall 2007 semester went by really quickly and not too terribly class-wise. It was another 15-credit semester (I’m pretty sure my last one with that many!) and I had a mixed-bag of classes and professors.

CSE 428 – Programming Languages Concepts
-John Hannan
This class was my kind of class – learning lots of different programming languages and concepts related to them. I learned Scheme, Standard ML, Prolog, and Ruby, all in one semester. Although the midterms were crazy (the first midterm in any class is the hardest – figuring out what the format is like and what the professor likes to ask), I practically perfected each of my homework assignments, got a decent amount of extra credit from a pop bonus quiz, and did decently on the final to merit me an A in the class.

ECON 304 – Intermediate Macroeconomics
-Misty Stone
I prefer microeconomics over macroeconomics any day of the week. This course was taught so incredibly slowly and rather poorly. I’m pretty sure Misty was straight out of grad school and was very clearly nervous a lot of the time, but I’m hoping that with some more experience she can learn how to better teach the class. All I really took from the class are the IS-LM Model and the AD-AS Model. Everything else in the rest of the semester was just a buildup for these two models. I did shakily on the quizzes and a couple of the homeworks, but ended up with a high A.

ECON 402 – Game Theory
-Vijay Krishna
The first four classes, I absolutely loved the material in this class. There were some really interesting topics discussed and fun games played or demonstrated in class. I even called Michael asking if he knew if I could do any Game Theory work after this class. But then it got bad. The homeworks started then, and they were very far from the material taught in class. I understood everything in class – I was the kid that knew the answer to every question and was bored out of my mind when the first 20 minutes of every class were a review of the previous day’s lecture. But the homeworks destroyed me, and because of that, I received my obligatory A-.

ENGL 202C – Technical Writing
-Jim Ausherman
Jim Ausherman is the man. If you can take this class with him – do so. It’s not necessarily an “easy A,” but if you do the work that he asks of you, and you care about what you’re writing, you will do well in the class. I think we stayed the full hour and fifteen minutes three times the entire semester. I was back in my dorm less than half an hour after the class started two times. He tells you exactly what you need to know to do well on the assignments, and as long as you do what he says, you will do well. He’s a great guy, good professor, and makes a mandatory class much more bearable.

STAT 319 – Probability++? (I have no idea what it was called..)
-:“Michael” Yiyun Zhang
It was Stat. I don’t see how it’s useful to me or why I would possibly need to know it, but I took it because it’s mandatory. Michael was a great guy, knew his stuff, and made the class not too bad. The homeworks weren’t too bad, the exams allow cheat sheets,

The Job Interview

The very next day (continued from “The Car Chase”), I had a flight from Pittsburgh International to Dulles.  The reason for this trip was for a job interview with Argon ST, a defense-contractor located in Fairfax, Virginia.  This was the third time I had been on an airplane in my life and definitely the first time I had flown on my own.  I got the airport two and a half hours in advance because I was paranoid about the holiday traffic (of which there really wasn’t much).  I got put on the waitlist for the earlier flight (to save myself two hours), and once I got through security and to the gate, I had five minutes to spare before the early flight!

Once I landed, I had no idea what I was doing.  I had never been to Dulles, but I figured I’d follow the crowds and then the signs to the baggage claim, and there I found signs for a taxi.  I told the guy at the desk that I had no clue what I was doing (I had never been in a taxi before…), but he assured me that it would be very easy.  I hop in the cab, and tell the guy “Hyatt Fair Lakes” and after an awkward 25 minute ride where all I could do was watch the counter go up and look outside, having no clue where I was or where I was heading, I made it to the doorstep of the hotel.

I was on the eleventh floor.  It was a sweet room – it had king size bed, living room area, cheese, crackers, and juice waiting for me, and an iHome (I thought that was a really interesting and neat touch).  The internet wasn’t free (or at least, I couldn’t figure out how to do it freely), I wasn’t feeling adventurous (I’m not Adventurous Alex or anything…), and I didn’t have anything better to do, so I was in bed before 9:30.  I woke up nervously early to prepare myself and to give myself ample time to find the place.  It was less than a tenth of a mile away.

The interviews went well – there were some really nice people who asked me all kinds of stuff about myself and told me lots about the company and what they do.  The “Highest Wrung” problem was given to me (I remembered we had talked about it in my Data Structures and Algorithms course, but that didn’t really help, seeing as I forgot the solution), I had lunch with a previous co-op who is now full time (I love Olive Garden.), and caught a taxi back to Dulles.  I didn’t get to catch an earlier flight this time around, but it was still a quick trip and I made it home safely.  I apparently did decently enough at the interview because they liked me enough to offer me an internship!  So, yeah! It was a fun trip and I found out that I’m not as terrible at interviews as I thought I might be.

The Car Chase

Thanksgiving break began the Saturday before Thanksgiving for me and Meloy as we embarked on our journey home. His parents picked us up in State College to bring us home for the break. On the ride home, Meloy and I watched some Pushing Daisies and the Office before my laptop battery died (it was nice to figure out how long battery is good for! It’s officially less than 1.5 hours.). The trip went quickly with that hour and a half distraction, and after that I got some reading done.

Once we got home, I rushed to grab all my stuff to take inside (I mean, I hadn’t seen mom since she dropped me off in August). They headed out, and I took a quick tour of the house (in case you didn’t know – we moved back to the Cranberry house. Grandma decided she wanted to live with us after all) before settling down on the couch. I turned on the Nittany Lions game (vs. Michigan State, if I remember correctly), and exclaimed, “This high def picture is so much better than watching computer on my – [insert bad word].” It was at that moment that I remembered that my dead laptop was sitting on top of Meloy’s stuff in his trunk. I attempted to call him, only to remember that his battery died that morning, and I realized that I didn’t have either of his parents’ numbers.

Knowing that they were going to the Cranberry Target for a little bit, I jumped in the driver’s seat of the minivan (mom and Mike decided to come with me for some reason) and headed out. I got to Target, and saw their car on the outskirts of the parking lot immediately after I turned in the opposite direction. I went down to the end of that row and up the next to park next to them, but their car was started, and they headed for the exit. I flashed my lights and honked at them from the Target parking lot all the way to the ramp to get onto 79 and the turnpike. They didn’t hear me.

After catching up to them on the turnpike (they have EZ-Pass, so they got a head start), I pulled up beside them and they didn’t see any of us waving out hands frantically at them. After following them all the way to their house, they were genuinely surprised to see me when I walked behind their car in their driveway. It was the most intense car chase I had ever been in.

Grandma Made a Funny

Tonight at dinner, we were discussing pets and whatnot, and mom had mentioned possibly having to send Spyro to the basement for a weekend.  Grandma (who lives in the basement) looked appalled and exclaimed, “If Spyro’s going to be in my basement, you have to take him to the barbershop first!”  Mom then questioned, “I wonder what Spyro would look like without hair…?”  To which Grandma responded, “I think he’d probably look like a naked fat man.”

We all laughed hysterically for 5 minutes (it was the hardest I had ever seen my grandmother laugh in my entire life).  And just in case you didn’t know — Spyro is a 125 pound rottweiler/other-type mix.  He’s one large dog.

I hope you’re all having great new year!