Kristi and I joined forces as team “puppy nappers” for yesterday’s scavenger hunt race around Boston. I think we ended up somwhere in the middle of the pack after a couple of hours running around Boston’s south end, Harvard Square, and searching for a clown in the Public garden. It was a good (if tiring) time.

I was disappointed at the beginning of the day when they announced that the race had raised $350 for a local AIDS group that had provided volunteers. The race had 250 teams at $86 a team, so that’s $21,500 in revenue. While not run as a fundraiser, that’s a pretty poor showing. That aside, this thing is a huge cash cow. There’s a whole raft of sponsors that surely covered all the prizes and gift bags and then some so their only expenses are salary. It was hard to say who was an employee vs. a volunteer, but the number is probably no more than 6, more likely 4 or so. Not a bad gig if you can get it, as they say.

There’s also a follow up interview with the author.

A recent NYT op-ed mentions this article too.

So now I’m taking Intro to Machine Learning, Intro to computational biology and a seminar on Brain-Computer interaction. I’m also tagging along with one of my advisor’s research groups which will hopefully afford me the opportunity to carve off some work to get started on my Master’s degree project.

In my (ever declining) free time, I’ve also been doing some Ruby on Rails work for a small company in Cambridge as a contractor.

Once the judge arrived, things moved quickly- first we all said the oath together, then the judge made a nice speech. Due to the hokey stories and the fact that I wasn’t running away from religous persecution or civil strife, I expected to view things through my usual detached, ironic perspective, but once things got going, I found it quite moving.

After the judge was done speaking, a grade school daughter of one of the fresh citizens led us in the pledge of allegiance and that was it. We filed out a row at a time to collect our certificates of naturalization and that was that.

Here’s me before the ceremony, permanent resident card in hand:

And afterwards, government-issue mini flag in hand:

Big difference eh?

I can’t believe that we, as a country can’t solve this problem and make it easier for individuals to obtain insurance. By insuring everyone, even the young and relatively healthy, the risk is spread around enough that it is overall more affordable for everyone. Surely having portable insurance would allow people to start their own businesses or just take extended time off to do something different, which would have to be a boost to the economy. It seems like the anti-health care forces would have us believe that any insurance changes would be bad for small business, but I can’t believe that is truly the case if we do it right.

Theres a revamped trip planner integrated with google maps, with “suggest” for landmarks when you type (which doesn’t work quite right yet..)

My favorite, and the most impressive is the new My MBTA feature which allows one to save planned routes and sign up for customized alerts. (but I’m not sure if they email them). There’s a hidden, unlinked tool (with the old look) called VIP Alerts that seems to let one do email and sms alerts.

UPDATE: It looks like the MBTA didn’t like people using the t-alert system before it was public so they took it down.

There’s another tool that isn’t linked up yet (it’s commented out in the source, I wonder why?) is system schedules for your ipod.

This is on my mind as I finish off a class (man machine system design) where I really haven’t learned much and the assignments are so long that the professor has to be a sadist of some kind, as I try to figure out what I’ll take next semester (the evening class pickings are lame) and why I’m getting a master’s degree in computer science the first place.

I did have fun reffing the game after ours though – I called a tight strike zone because I’d rather see lots of kicking than a pitchers-duel any day of the week. The teams certainly came through for me. One of the teams scored 11 runs one inning. Fun to watch.

Last night none of that mattered though (nor did missing half our team); we cruised to a convincing 6-1 victory over the number one seeded Stewie’s sexy party. Things looked good right away with a four runs in the first inning, and we never surrendered that lead thanks to some great defensive plays by Tom and Ander.