Ryan's Blog

One of the things I miss most about Chile is the ability to walk and take public transportation almost anywhere. In one of those ironic twists, I realized shortly after I got back to my car that I didn't want it. (466 words)

A number of people have asked me how I got from a place like Notre Dame to a place like Berkeley. The answer is simple. (145 words)

The Batmobile, Batman's armor, and his other gadgets may be from a time in the future, but his Skyhook liftoff is over 40 years old. (420 words)

I have always liked Absolut vodka advertisements. Last week I was traveling in Southern Utah and I saw something that sparked my memory. (288 words)

It struck me as a funny juxtaposition between Small Town America and Big City, U.S.A. (81 words)

I just started studying to take the GRE later this year. For the last two years my preparation has consisted of sytematically eliminating my English vocabulary and replacing it with Spanish. I can't count the number of times lately that I've had an English word on the tip of my tongue only to find out that it isn't, in fact, English. So I'm a little preocupado. (265 words)

Once you put something on the Internet, you really can't predict who will see it or what will happen to it. (643 words)

Thanksgiving is behind us, Advent wreaths are lit, and Christmas is around the corner. For many people that means shopping and selecting gifts. (255 words)

Spelling my last name has always been somewhat problematic, not so much for me, but for other people. (265 words)

NASA can't find the original tape of men walking on the moon. That doesn't surprise some people. (238 words)

In papers, in word counts, in total pages written. Or at least I used to. (474 words)

I'm offering this photo as my online celebration of March 17 this year. _Sláinte!_ (113 words)

I have come to the stunning conclusion that the U.S. Postal Service is changing its postmarks. Who would have guessed that, despite being 3000 miles away, I would have my finger on the pulse of such important changes in the U.S.? (196 words)

Cliche lovers say you should stop and smell the roses. I'm on board with that. (80 words)

An article in Time magazine reports on military blogs that let you read stories from soldiers on the ground in Iraq. (208 words)

A week ago I realized I have the exact opposite problem in South America that I had in college: I have time to read, but no books. (264 words)

It was hard to surpress a smile when I saw, on the front page, "Irish rip Pitt 42-21." (89 words)

I got a taste of things to come this week when I got an email from my friend Chris. He had just ordered a new Mighty Mouse. What surprised me was not that Chris ordered one, but that I didn't have any idea what he was talking about. (364 words)

Since I got my new car slightly over a year ago, I have been tracking my fuel usage pretty closely. Every time I filled my tank, I would record the miles traveled and gallons used. When I had nothing better... (423 words)

This morning I rolled over and read my alarm clock clearly. Normally I can't do that. But this morning I woke up and read the clock clearly because I have 20/20 vision. (356 words)

In the past week I have joined the sudoku craze. Sudoku is a puzzle, something like a numeric crossword. Earlier this year, sudoku became popular in the U.K. Now it's hitting the U.S. (244 words)

I'm considering having LASIK eye surgery towards the end of the summer. The only real remaining obstacle to having the procedure done is to make sure the timing will work out. Many of my readers (well, both of them) may be interested in my reasoning for having corrective eye surgery, so I put together a little guide. (196 words)

I went to visit Elizabeth in Minnesota last week. The last time I went in 2003, I saw roughly 13 lakes. ("Roughly," because I saw Lake Superior, which is so big that I thought it should count as 2 lakes.)... (309 words)

Summertime boredom has set in. Michael is still in school. Erin is taking organic chemistry and working at the hospital. That leaves me home alone from the time I drop off Michael at the bus stop until about 5:00pm. Sure,... (193 words)

My mom booked my ticket back to Notre Dame and specifically requested the window seat on the left side of the plane for my connection through Cincinnati. From this seat, you can look out your window as you approach Notre Dame and see the campus. I took a couple of exciting aerial pictures during the airport approach. (157 words)

Today, like most weekdays, I woke up to go to class. But unlike most days, today felt melancholy. As of 12:15pm, when I left Evolutionary Medicine with Prof. McKenna's, I'm done with class. (246 words)

I got a great card recently that I thought I would share. Here's the front: And the back: Isn't that a great line?... (23 words)

Dad, Erin, and I went skiing today up at Snowbasin. The conditions were almost perfect. It snowed yesterday, so most of the day we had knee-deep, untracked powder. Once in awhile, you'd find yourself almost waist-deep in snow. The... (116 words)

The end of the semester has been packed with activities. (179 words)

The short answer is no. (219 words)

Rather than just talk about how tired I've been this week at school, I thought I'd give a little demonstration. (188 words)

I'm not sure how many sheets of paper are in a tree, but I took down about 20 pages this week. (241 words)

I thought my site was safe from spam because it is relatively obscure, but it turns out not. I was recently alerted that 120 comments had been posted to my blog. This is an unusual feat because there are only... (122 words)

This past weekend started the wonderful procrastinatory tradition at Notre Dame of home football weekends. (158 words)

In less than a week I'll be making the long drive from Ogden back to Notre Dame. The return to school raises the inevitable question, "So...what did you do with your summer vacation?" Good question. Here is a quick run... (209 words)

Through a series of fortunate events, I am now the excited owner of a new diesel VW Jetta. It's Galactic Blue with a gray interior. I took possession of it with 14.5 miles on the odometer. Thanks to the... (122 words)

To answer the question raised in the subject: not in thy weather, for sure. (188 words)

After a tough midterms week, Saturday has finally arrived and I'm about to head out for break. For the next week I'll be in the Coachella Valley in California as part of a learning seminar on Hispanic spirituality. During the... (140 words)

One of my friends showed me an absolutely appalling and hilarious book today. It's The Book of Bunny Suicides: Little Fluffy Rabbits Who Just Don't Want To Live Anymore. I don't want to generalize, but I will. The women that... (91 words)

On that note, if you have aspirations of world domination (and really, who doesn't?), then I have found the website for you. (95 words)

An editorial I wrote to The Observer, ND's campus newspaper appeared in last Thursday's issue. You can read it online here... (21 words)

Those at Notre Dame and any other place where you find crazy squirrels would appreciate the opinion piece in this week's edition of The Onion: "I Have To Admit: I Love The Nuts," written by Danny the Squirrel. (122 words)

Since I decided to take Thursday and Friday off before I leave for Europe on Saturday, today was my last day at Riester~Robb. You really couldn't ask for a much better end to a summer job. (165 words)

Camping was the most memorable for reasons that I can sum up in one sentence: you have never camped until you have camped on an uninhabited island with a gas-powered weed whacker. (4 words)

Later this morning I'm boarding a jet plane bound for Minnesota. While there, I plan to do 45 minutes worth of work. I'm spreading that across 6 days, though, so it hopefully won't be too taxing. To cut through the... (69 words)

I don't golf. That said, for some crazy reason I decided to fill in for someone who can't make it to the company golf tournament tomorrow. (184 words)

After a couple weeks of on-and-off tweaking, I put the latest revision of my site online. It's a mishmash of HTML, CSS, and a tiny bit of PHP. Basically, it's a site held together with liberal application of duct tape.... (221 words)

My dad is moving to a new house, so I spent a couple hours this evening shifting books from his shelf to dozens of boxes. While I packed, I came to one conclusion: there's just too many. (323 words)

Right now I'm brainstorming how I can track my travel online with this system. Ideally, it would involve satellite telephones, GPS locators, and digital photography. Ultimately, it will probably involve text. We'll see. (182 words)

Today I finally went live with my new blogging system, provided by the folks at MovableType. Blogger is old news. It was getting difficult to use without paying for their service because I don't have convenient access to an SFTP server. But enough of that. Here's some real info... (169 words)

Some people say, "Live life with no regrets!" That's crap. Right now I regret a couple of things. Foremost, I regret nicking my nose with a razor. It's not painful, but it is a bit of a nuisance to have... (178 words)

It's been a wild ride, but I'm done. Today had its victories and defeats. (304 words)

In all likelyhood the next time I write will be 53 economics questions and 6 pages of philosophical writing later. And then I'm done. Halfway. (277 words)

Chris helped me break my Lenten video gaming fast by playing several hands on Yahoo! Spades. (311 words)

What I am about to relate (quickly) to you is a series of events that is sure to go down as legend. (279 words)

Unfortunately, weather.com's predictions came true. Last week: high 70s. Today: the ground is covered in snow. It is 30 degrees outside. There's really not much more to say beyond that. Welcome to the South Bend spring.... (36 words)

South Bend put on a beautiful spring performance with temperatures in the upper 70s. Unfortunately, we'll be back down in the 40s and 50s before too long according to weather.com, but it was very nice today. The economics test went... (144 words)

This is the first post in awhile so let me summarize: Spring Break: Went to Alabama. Weekend after spring break: Went to Michigan. This weekend: Two tests and paper due this week. I'll have logged about 7 hours of study... (53 words)

One of the frequently cited problems with blogs is the lack of privacy. In fact, my friend Amanda even mentioned that just by reading this she feels like she's stalking me. Sure, plenty of people say, "Yeah, that's cool Ryan,... (132 words)

I classifiy this weekend under the title "Eliminate Residual Stress From Previous Week." (208 words)

After four days of preparation, I am ready for my economics mideterm tomorrow. Unfortunately, my philosophy midterm tomorrow is going to be a little harder. It's a take-home test, though, so hopefully that will give me some extra time to... (127 words)

The white chocolate raspberry cheesecake at the Olive Garden was a transcendent experience (it was unanimous). (163 words)

My roommate Chris and I have formed Z.A — Zoolander Anonymous — with the stated goal of gaining control over our unfortunate tendancies of using Zoolander phrases too much, appling Zoolander inflections to our speech, and flashing Blue Steel and Magnun far too frequently. Now that we have accountability partners, we should make some progress. (464 words)

Oh my. This afternoon I just finished an 18-hour block of time where 12 of those 18 were devoted to writing my philosophy paper. I shut down the Como study lounge and crawled into bed at 5:40 this morning. Then... (113 words)

It seems I forgot how long it takes me to read Descartes: about 5 pages an hour. (181 words)

I went to a luncheon with Joe Garden, a writer from The Onion today. In his words: "I hope my sheer charisma is enough to carry me through this speech, because, as I mentioned, I only got 2 hours of sleep last night." (180 words)

Sewing isn't easy. If you don't believe me, you can ask Chris and Kate; we made--or tried to make--teddy bears tonight at Crafting Corner. Kate's turned out like a rat and Chris's and mine...well, didn't turn out. Who knew that... (91 words)

So this is day one of my blog. For those of you outside the know, a blog is a weblog (those engineering types are so clever). And it's basically an online journal. Enough technobabble: this is your way to access... (198 words)