I figured it would be best to split my posts in some sort of way, so this covers till Friday. The second half of the week at work was pretty chaotic. The power went out for a little and the backup generators didn’t turn on. Since the factory runs 24×7 this is very bad. Also, a number of systems broke with the power going out. So.. everyone was busy getting the factory back up and all of our systems back. Let me rephrase that, everyone EXCEPT for me was frantically running around. This made life difficult for me, because noone was around / able to answer any questions I had about my projects.
All of my projects are wrapping up. It is almost perfect timing- I finished another app on Thursday, and put finishing touches on a few of my other projects. I’m at the point where I basically have to just show other people in my department how to use / fix my programs and show them how the programs work. I’ll need to write a lot of documentation next week but it won’t be bad. Too bad so many people are leaving! There was a going away lunch on Thursday.. 5 people were leaving Friday!
Friday was my floating holiday. All interns earn vacation time, and also have a floating holiday. You can cash out the vacation time, but you either use or lose your floating holiday. So, I decided to take it on friday!
I was able to sleep in (joy!) and then met up with friends from UR (Liz and Ben) in Boston. The plan was to meet Liz at her house, then take the T into Boston and meet Ben in the commons. Of course, this plan went horribly wrong.
I got to Liz’s house at 1:15 (I was not expecting traffic to be bad) and we were supposed to meet Ben at 1:30. Liz had said that it takes 30 minutes to get into Boston so thats what I planned on.. however that was not taking the T. (I wanted to avoid driving into Boston on a weekday) Not only did the T take much longer, but we got kindof lost along the way.. apparently Liz does not know the area that well- she doesn’t drive :(. So, we finally got into Boston at about 3PM oops! Using the cellular telephone, we decided to just meet Ben at the science center but we ran into him when we were transfering trains.
Finally we got to the Science Center and went to Bodyworlds2. I couldn’t take pictures in the exhibit but it was amazing. The guy, GUNTHER is obviously pretty messed up in the head, and I would not want to be left alone with him, but his exhibits are pretty interesting. There are a few various types of exhibits:
- The full bodys. They are moved into clever poses and are described to the viewers. They can get pretty freaky but are also pretty interesting. They are what you see on most advertisements for the exhibit.
- Systems of the body. These are all extracted for your viewing pleasure in glass cabinents that you can walk around. They get interesting when normal parts are shown next to parts with various diseases. (normal lung vs smoker lung vs coal lung was the most interesting in my IMHO)
- Cross sections. These are as if someone took a 5mm shaving of your body and preserved it. There are cross sections of various areas and then whole body cross sections. One was even split apart like a deck of cards.
Anyways you should see this exhibit if you can. Once in a lifetime experience. However I do not plan on donating my body to a madman like him any time soon. Also I refuse to touch some of the bodys like I saw various doctors doing (they just point and touch when describing various things eew).
After seeing the freakfest, we went around the rest of the science center. The Cleveland science center is pretty good but I have to say this one is better. Unfortunately, we didn’t have much time to see exhibits because we had to go eat.
Liz left us to eat with her parents so Ben and I went to harvard square. We ate at Bartley’s which I would informed “serve me the the best burger I had all summer.” They only take cash (they say “real food, real money”), and don’t have a bathroom, and are always crowded but it is worth it. The burgers were great. They are all named after famous people, and all supposedly taste delish. I had a burger (forget which kind sorry) and some sort of rasberry lime thingy. The place is always crowded and seats you at random talbes with other people (my table). Also the walls are lined with tons of random stuff.
After food, left Ben and re-met up with Liz and her parents for Shakespeare On the Commons . We watched the first half of Boston’s version of The Taming of the Shrew (it was set in North End- Boston’s little italy). By intermission we were bored and cold (it was freezing for the past few days). The play was intersting at first though.. its pretty cool to have a ton of people gather for a free play!
Liz’s family gave me a ride back to my car and I headed over to Dan’s house. We played some cards and Guitar Hero. (Zi’s last day was Friday)
Saturday was cape cod.. tons of AMAZING pictures. But before that, look at all fo the pictures from TODAY!
Amelie
