IAP Its Amazing Pterodactyl

IAP It’s Amazing Pterodactyl Oh hi there. Im back on campus now for IAP (Independent Activities Period, but I think Its Awesome Pterodactyl is much more descriptive), which traditionally is when all the students return to see all their beloved green covered in snow, and those from equatorial climates suffer at the horrifying discovery of what windchill is. This year however, is a bit different. Theres no snow to be seen, and temps are relatively warmer than usual. Not bad for campus, but unfortunate for those of us hoping to skitheres not really snow anywhere in North America. But some fluke warm winter weather wont prevent the Outdoors Club (MITOC) from having its annual Winter School. Winter School is a series of lectures and trips designed to help introduce people to the fun they can have in the snow. They go through everything you need to know if you havent been out in the snow before, including layering, eating, drinking, and the technical aspects of many different wintersports, such as: Hiking, Ice Climbing (yay!), Backcountry Skiing (yay!), Snowshoeing, Camping, and Mountaineering (yay!). Lectures are during the week and trips are over the weekend, where you can visit one of MITOCs two New Hampshire cabins. Given that 90% of the gifts I received for Christmas was outdoor gear, it should be no surprise that Im thrilled to be back just in time to get my feet wet (erronly metaphorically) with Winter School. Its always fun to meet other people as excited to intentionally put themselves in situations that are other peoples nightmares. Im particularly exc ited about the Ice Climbing trip, because Ice Climbing is ridiculous. Not all of IAP has to be crampons and ice axes though, theres still ample down time for doing things with your friends. Ive been working with some friends on our startup project (another blog entry, but theres some stuff were not done with that I really want to add), and building this monster of a machine: This is my workstation PC I built over Black Friday (crazy deals). I know some of you are spec groomers, so here we go: CPU: intel i5 2500K (OCd to 3.8Ghz) CPU COOLER: Hyper212+ MOBO: GA-Z68X-UD3H-B3 RAM: 16Gb PSU: Corsair TX650W GPU: Gigabyte HD 6950 (reflashed to 6970, and OCd to 900Mhz) HD: Seagate 3Tb 7200rpm Barracuda CASE: CoolerMaster HAF 932 Advanced (its worth noting that there are now 10 fans in this machine trying to keep it cool.) Ive named this computer Galactica because when I first started it, it had no network capabilities (Windows didnt like the drivers). That and because its frackin huge and I love me some BSG. My favorite part of building commputers though, is the wiring: Its not my finest work, and Im sure Ill redo it again in the future, but it works for now. You might think Im crazy for liking cable management so much, but there are dozens of us. So what do I do with such a behemoth of a machine? Well, this is my workstation computer, so I normally crank through SolidWorks stuff, MATLAB, programmingthat sort of thing. But here lately, Ive been using it to.well. If you dont know what this is from, then I envy the amount of time you havent sunk into it. This is Skyrim. The most life-consuming of games. And its very pretty. One more: (as an aside, I really like the dwarves, because I think of them as ancient engineers. Building robots and mechanical things, living underground away from the light. The similarities are uncanny.) Yes, Im using my powerful work computer to play games. Thats what IAP is for.