Heh. It is difficult to say what "soon" might mean. I did get some e-mail from Amazon saying the price on Wolfram's book has gone up, so that might indicate some kind of imminent publication. However, I've had it on pre-order since this time last year, and every three months it has been pushed back another three. And this is on top of the fact that he meant to have it out in the early 90s. I hope it lives up to the wait.

> It seems awfully weird to still be living in on-campus housing as a grad student, but eh.

As a grad student living in on-campus housing, I can tell you that yes, it is extremely weird. It works for me because I have very spartan needs, and I am really lazy, but I can't imagine most people wanting to do it. I should get some sort of straw mat to sleep on. Around 90% of my floor is not American, I'd wager, so that tells you something. But I have a room to myself, there's a kitchen down the hall, so I can cook my own meals, and a good shower, which is all I really need.

I think that it is really bizarre that they drove all the way to Philly for the obligatory "night on the town". It sounds like quite a distance, too. Everywhere I went, there were nice restaurants within walking distance that we went to. I saw a play when visiting Yale, which was right next to the restaurant. I suppose Yale has the cultural advantage of a pretty big fine arts program, so it single handedly provides all the plays and concerts you might ever desire. The Penn State evening activity was a Penn State basketball game. I opted to sit in my room instead, which was nice, because I was extremely exhausted for some reason.

Right, they touted the advantage of Princeton being within an hour or so from NYC, or Philly, where all the happenin' things are happenin' which, dually, is implicitly the disadvantage that all the happenin' things are an hour away.

Yale has that factor, too. Only 90 minutes from NYC! And also 3 or so hours from Boston, which isn't too bad. The advantage of this placement is that we are right between NJ and the Boston area, making both the NJPLS and the NEPLS convenient most of the time, if you don't mind leaving kind of early in the morning.

...whereas in my mind, Princeton is like 30 minutes from the only DDR 6th Mix machine on the East coast, 25 minutes from a place with Para Para Paradise and DDR 5th Mix, 40 minutes from my favorite steakhouse on the east coast... oh, yeah, and an hour from NYC and an hour from Philly. Well, that has some benefits to it though. I mean, I rarely go to NYC from Philly because it's two hours, but might do it more if it was one hour. However, this is distinctly worse than, say, White Plains, NY (where we'd live if Eli went to work at IBM Research), which only has the advantage of being an hour from NYC.

I got a kick out of the fact that you described Chicken Parm as canonical.

This is because, ceteris paribus, I will almost always order Chicken Parmigiana at an italian restaurant I have never been to before, and with some frequency at ones I have. Joe Mama's is an exception to this, for some reason or another. I think maybe they didn't offer any. But their meatball sub and penne with sausage are good, so I forgive them.