Tim Peterson's Blog

On Wednesday I had my next-to-last bit of schoolwork to do for the fall quarter. I just had to finish writing something and submit it, and I’d be done with the class. Of course, writing doesn’t always excite me, even if it does turn out well enough in the end. So I ended up taking all afternoon to finish it, sprinkling other things in between bouts of typing. Eventually I got tired of just sitting around, so I decided to take a walk and see what interesting places I could find where I hadn’t been before in RIT’s academic buildings. I went through buildings 17 and 9, explored the upper floors of 7A and 7B, then crossed to building 1. I tried going higher up in the administration tower than I’d been before, which took a few minutes to figure out. In the lobby area I noticed that inside one of the triangular brick corners there was a little room with its door propped open and a chair inside. I didn’t look inside, but made a mental note to check on it later. Then I headed back through the new part of building 9, which I explored in a previous post. When I got back, I pulled up the building floor plans on the web site. There I pondered the arrangement of building 1, where there are a few single-flight staircases and a couple more that skip a floor, each going through those triangular areas. Sure enough, I also found that little room, though I found no evidence of its purpose. I also looked at the SAU, and noticed that in the basement there’s a long empty hallway that doesn’t go very many places. I checked it out in person on Friday, but alas, it was locked and full of tables.

I’m sure that was a boring paragraph, but it was fun for me, at least.

Cher: You sound so much like a little kid, at times…
Tim: It’s fun to have fun once in a while.
Tim: I refuse to kill off my inner child.

Having finished my last bit of schoolwork on Thursday, I was free of any responsibilities today. I decided to take my old textbooks from this quarter and last spring to the bookstore’s buyback place. I wasn’t in a hurry, so I decided to take a different route to school, namely… one I’d never been on before that I made up as I went along. I tried to avoid roads I’d been on before, to maximize the amusement and rate of information intake. It was fun to see what else was out there in the more country areas. There were plenty of farms and fewer houses than around home or toward the city. At one point I pondered whether to turn or not, but spied a big hill in the distance and decided to keep going. It was indeed a big hill, at least by local standards. It’s always fun when you can’t see what’s on the other side until you get to the top and then go flying down. This reminds me of last winter just after Christmas when we visited a few places on our way back from seeing my Ithaca grandparents. We took the cross-country route, which included lots of hilly roads for my mom’s enjoyment. Anyway, I found my way to Scottsville road, went south until I found the bridge across the river, and then came back north to arrive at RIT from the opposite direction from the usual.

In the absence of anything coherent to write, I shall draw on some random bits of journalings to compose this random post.

In September for Biodiversity and Society class we went to the RIT Bird Observatory to see some bird banding. They have three sets of mist nets to catch birds in, and then they bring them back, measure them, and band them. I took a few pictures. Afterwards I looked up their web site. They have some pictures of how to distinguish older and younger birds of different species. In one of them I noticed that the fingernail of the person holding the bird had a lot of parallel ridges, more (or more pronounced) than I have on my own. Immediately the word “striated” popped into my head. I couldn’t place the meaning, so I looked it up. It turns out that that’s exactly the word for that type of formation. Somehow I unconsciously knew the proper word without knowing I knew it!

October 4th was the 50th anniversary of the launch of Sputnik 1 , so the Imaging Science department had a Sputnik party. Unfortunately, it was at 3, right in the middle of class, but we got done about ten after so I could go over there. I missed the majority of it, but I did catch some of Roger Easton talking about his personal memories of Vanguard , the US response to Sputnik. It seems his father , in addition to being the inventor of GPS , was directly involved in the Vanguard project. On December 6, 1957, they tried to launch the TV3 satellite into orbit. The first stage guidance system failed 2 seconds after liftoff, and it crashed to the ground and exploded . However, the satellite itself fell clear of the explosion and continued functioning, though too badly damaged to be reused. Roger said that the next morning he woke up and his dad said, “Go look in the kitchen.” There in a cardboard box was the TV3 satellite itself. It now resides in the Smithsonian.

I think I multitask too well. I drove from RIT to the library yesterday, and on the way back I decided to avoid some of the traffic on Jefferson by taking some residential roads leading from 15A to Hylan. Just as I turned in there, Bible Story by Scott Krippayne came on the radio, so I started singing along. Shortly thereafter I got engrossed in checking the map to make sure I knew where I was going. Several minutes later when I was back on bigger roads I put down the map and discovered that I was still singing. Apparently I was too busy driving and checking the map to pay any attention to what my mouth was doing, so it kept right on going since I knew the song so well. I’ve done that plenty of times before; I just noticed it rather vividly today. The trouble is, I don’t think that’s a good thing. I think I do that in church sometimes too; letting my mind wander while still singing along. If I’m not paying attention, is it still worship? I don’t want to sing for the wrong reason…

I see it’s been a long time since I last wrote anything here. I think I was waiting for an opportunity to write about Basileia (InterVarsity’s spring retreat) in May, and Justin and Melissa’s wedding in Canada in July, but I never got around to it. I did write this for the ToO thread , though:

The second of my two flights arrived at one of the gates for international arriving flights, which feeds right into the customs area. On the plane they had handed out cards to fill out your information and what items you were bringing into the country, which the people at the desks took and wrote on as they asked a few questions. Apparently the US doesn’t communicate too well with Canada. The guy said that they shouldn’t have even let me on the plane without my birth certificate, but I explained that I didn’t have it because I had to send it in with my passport application. They hadn’t seemed to have heard that under the new rules I only need the evidence of application to get back into the US (which I had).

The next stop was immigration, where the fun began. They check your ID and ask a bunch of questions to find out why you’re entering the country and how long you’re staying, in order to decide whether you’re actually allowed to be there. I gave them my flight plan, Melissa’s address (I didn’t have the phone number), and so on. Then she asked, “Have you ever been convicted of a crime?” I said no, and she turned to her computer to confirm it. After a minute she called her supervisor and talked to him for a few minutes out of earshot. Then she informed me that a Tim Peterson had on his record a robbery in Windsor, Ontario!

The birth date was the same, except that he was one year younger than me. Unfortunately, her computer didn’t give any physical details like hair color, eye color, etc., and it wouldn’t show a picture. (Apparently it should be able to, as her computer in the marine immigration office was able to do it.) She said she was pretty sure I was a different guy, but she had to check anyway. She got her supervisor again and had him go off to check my social security number. Unfortunately, he took approximately forever to do it. She sat around, I stood around, and we talked a little. Eventually another officer came by and started talking to her. They discussed various plans they had with co-workers, and we joked around and such for the next 15 minutes. I had mentioned earlier that Googling my name produced a number of different people with my name, and just for fun she did it herself. I’m apparently a lawyer, a poet, a singer, and a senator, among others. At some point I mentioned that I was actually the best man in the wedding, and that Melissa’s father was a pastor. They were even more guilt-ridden at that. “You better let me in!” I chided.

“So, what are you keeping this gentleman around for?” he had asked. She explained, of course, and eventually he went off to find the supervisor and see why it was taking so long. He eventually came back with the papers, and they sent me on my way. I picked up my suitcase, and exited the strategically-frosted glass doors to the public area. At this point, it had been at least an hour since the plane landed, and it was after 10. As I exited, I quickly spotted Melissa, who just as quickly spotted me. She, of course, asked what had taken so long. It had been so long that she eventually found someone official to ask about my whereabouts, not knowing if I was still in there or if I had perhaps not even gotten on the plane. The officer, presumably following protocol, made her describe me to him. (I had never met her before, so providing a description of me was slightly more difficult than ordinary.) “Um, dark curly hair, a little hair on his face… and he’s 6 foot 5.” “Oh, yeah, we’ve got him,” he immediately replied. “It’s an identity problem” is all they would tell her, though. (On my way out, he mentioned, “I talked to your… girlfriend? who’s waiting out there.” “I’m in her wedding,” I explained, “but I’m not… that.”)

My adventures as the “Border Bandit” (Melissa’s sister’s phrase) became the running joke of my stay there. My questionable past was brought up by everybody at various times, it seemed. Alas, “my reputation precedes me,” I once commented. Justin corrected me: “No, someone else’s reputation precedes you.”

That was an eventful start to my trip.

Maybe I’ll write more later; ask me if you want to hear about it.