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Life@MIT September 28, 2008

Posted by Da in Personal.
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5 comments

I have promised a few people in emails that I will write about my life at MIT, and here it comes. I will mainly write about the living part, including dining, residence, and transportation. Things about my study and research will be discussed in a separate post later.

Dining

So far I mainly cook for myself. I usually cook a big meal (with a few dishes and rice) on weekend so I can have a few days’ supply during the weekdays. Then on Thursday, our group meeting will provide lunch. Moreover, at MIT, there are various kinds interesting activities that provide food (seminars, talks, etc.), so I can easily fill some blanks  (but I would never go to an event just for the sake of food). Finally, if there indeed is a blank, I will simply eat out, which happens once or twice a week.

Residence

I live in Edgerton House, a graduate residence located in the northwest part of MIT campus. It takes about 8 minutes to walk from my residence to my office, so it is quite convenient. If I want, I can go back to dorm and take a nap at noon.

What I got is a 3-bedroom apartment, together with two other graduate students. We get our own room, but share the kitchen and two bathrooms. The apartment is unfurnished (comes with a stove and fridge only), so it took me a while to settle down (getting furnitures, assembling them, cleaning up, arranging stuff, etc.). But in the end all work out nicely, and I am comfortably living there.

Transportation

In campus, I walk all the time so far, as it is a good exercise. In the winter, I may take our campus shuttle from dorm to office, if there is heavy snow.

Outside campus, I take the subway/buses most of the time. Boston is a small city with good public transportation. So by taking the “T”, you can get to anywhere you want with a little bit walking.

Fitness

I am trying to pick up working out at graduate school, and MIT offers excellent environment and facility for that. There are two gyms, with one right located in Stata Center, which takes me 4 minutes to get to. So it is very convenient for me to go walk out in the afternoon, or go swim a while to make me feel refreshed. I will try to keep exercising everyday, either by swmming or working out.

Fun

There are many fun things to do on and around campus, as Boston is a lively city. This part is not very MIT specific so I wouldn’t elaborate further. But the most fun thing is to hang out with my girlfriend, of course!

Wall Street Crisis September 17, 2008

Posted by Da in Finance.
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2 comments

Two big investment banks, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch, disappear over a single weekend. Together with Bear Sterns, these two once prestigous companies are history now. (There may be more to come…)

These companies, arguably, attract the brightest people in the world, mainly by their extraordinary pay. Still, they collapse in the end and their stock become pieces of crap… Why? I think Prof. Ho has a concise but insightful comment here:

Wall Street Crisis

As he points out, basically, it is all about greed. And as some others point out, people there may not care about whether their company fails in the end or not—getting stellar bonuses in the good years is more important… This is a very interesting mechanism. If it does not gets corrected, and risk management is not totally separated from trading, these kinds of collapses will repeat again and again…

Recent Activities September 4, 2008

Posted by Da in Personal.
2 comments

Recently I have moved from Toronto to Boston (more precisely, Cambridge), as I started my graduate student life at MIT. I have also visited New York City with my parents before school starts. Below is a brief summary:

  • Aug 17: drove from Toronto to Boston, with my parents. Actually it was the first time for my to drive on highway, but it wasn’t as hard as I expected. I found myself quite comfortable with the car running at 110km/hr.
  • Aug 18: brief tour around Boston with my parents. We walked along Newbury St., visited Prudential Center and took the Duck Tour
  • Aug 19: drove to NYC with my parents. We arrived in the afternoon and stayed at a Howard Johnson Inn in Queens. We visited American Museum of Natural History and walked around Times Square and Broadway. We had dinner with my friend George, in a nice restaurant that is not far from Morgan Stanley’s midtown office, where he worked.
  • Aug 20: We drove across lower Manhattan to the second place we would stay at, a Ramada in Jersey City. Then we took PATH to the WTC station, glanced at the site, and went to midtown for Guggenheim Museum and Metropolitan Museum of Arts. The first one is unique, and the second one is HUGE! Then we went to the UN Headquarter. Afterwards, we went up the Empire State Building to enjoy the nightview of NYC there. Oh, one more thing, we tasted Pinkberry before that.
  • Aug 21: We took PATH to WTC again, walked to Battery Park, then took the ferry to Liberty Island to visit Statue of Liberty. After that, we had a walk around the Wall St. area, and then headed back to our hotel and departed NYC.
  • Aug 22: Drove to IKEA and Walmart, which are 30 miles south to the Boston downtown. I bought all kinds of stuff for my dorm, which is unfurnished.
  • Aug 23: Move in work. Some more shopping. Some organization of the dorm.
  • Aug 24: A little bit shopping and more organization work.
  • Aug 25 – Sep 1: MIT Orientation. A fun week. We got lots of good free food, and had many fun activities, such as Boston Scavenger Hunt, Edicott House Retreat, etc.. It was also great to get to know more people around.
  • Sep 2: Registration day. I had a very nice meeting with Prof. Alan Oppenheim, who is my graduate counselor. Besides giving me helpful course selection advices, he told me that when thinking about research topics, don’t restrict one to new future like “next generation cell-phone” or something like that, but rather think in the long term. Looking back 20 years, many things at that time seem very stupid, and many modern technologies were virtually non-existent at that time. It is quite likely that we get the same feeling if we look back again 20 years later…
  • Sep 3: My first class at MIT
  • Sep 4: Life goes on…. I hope it will be fun :)

How to Prolong Laptop Battery Life September 2, 2008

Posted by Da in Misc.
2 comments

I recently observed the death of a DELL laptop’s battery. Fearing the same may happen to my laptop, I did a little bit research and record them here. (Most of the content below are adapted from wikipedia)

Basically, nowadays most (if not all) laptops use Li-ion batteries, which does NOT have the memory effect, but discharges itself at a rate of 5% per month, and it seems that this would result a permanent loss of capacity. So to slow down (and not to speed up) this self-discharging effect, we need to:

1. recharge the battery early, unless it won’t be used for a long time. (avoid frequent full recharges)

2. keep the battery cool. The higher the temperature, the faster they self-discharges

3. do not store batteries for long periods plugged into or attached to any power source. This includes AC adapters and laptop docking stations that are plugged in.

For more information, please see the article about Li-ion Battery at Wikipedia and its references. DELL provides an FAQ here too.