I've wanted to write a journal entry about every day the past week, but I've been so busy and there has been so much to say I haven't. Let's see how long it takes to get it all in here.

Booth

There was a lot of hard work put in. People were working around the clock. It was great being booth chair when instead of me having to go bug people to help, I had people who wanted to help me and nothing to give them. Every time we carried over a new big piece, like Mt. Sinai or the waterfall walls, it felt really cool. I think I learned a lot about management. Initially, I felt bad that I was asking people to work and do stuff and I wasn't doing anything myself. Later I realized that management and keeping the big picture in mind is worthwhile, and if 1 less person is working on it, but they are making sure it all gets done, then that is worth it.

On Monday it rained. The booth leaked and we were worried about electrics. I think it was a real set back. Out of tragedy was born the squigibro. A Squigibro is a combination broom and squigie. We bought hte squigies a while ago but they didn't have a handle and I couldn't find an empty handle so I screwed it onto a small broom.

Everything was coming along great. Wednesday night Noah and I met and made the master list of all things that still had to be completed. I stayed up all night and managed the list and the people to do it. I got the waterfalls working. In the morning I took a break to go to Schatz for breakfast, continuing a tradition I started last year. We were getting done very fast. At the end we were just touching up. I've never seen us build a booth with this much detail, on time, or even period. The only exception was the game.

While the game has seemed to work, it hadn't been fully tested yet. For that I needed the scaffolding it would sit on. Someone had the job of building the pyramid/scaffolding for the game. He built it as one unit. It took most of a week for him to do. Although I was bugging him for it all week so that I could test, it wasn't ready until 30 mins before midway closed. I was very upset. I was just getting everything to finish up at midway. Construction had gone great. Now I was being expected to make the game work in an extremely short amount of time under great pressure. I couldn't handle it. I snapped. I yelled and people and gave up. I told them that they could fucking make it work. I really couldn't make it work in that time frame. Besides the difficulty settings, I had to handle another big issue. The old forward stops had the problem that frogs would get caught in them and that guy couldn't go up a second time without falling. The person assembling the game decided to take them off and not test. The problem was that even if it was ok that if they were too far forward then they would just rest on the string, the tensioning of the string would pull them back down. Also, I couldn't find a laptop to be able to do the programming on that short notice. I stormed off and went to work and cried and slept. I basically missed the first night of carnival. It was a big dissapointment for me because I usually own the first night. That night they brought the game home so that I could fix it. I didn't really think it was fair that I had to do this while everyone else had fun or slept. But 2am to 5:30am I spent alone in the office with the game, slowly and calmly fixing all the problems and testing. It worked great. It was a lot of fun. That was what I really had needed several days before I got it. Friday morning, with the old forward stops replaced, new anti-stick protection installed, all calibrated, and parameters set, it worked great. Yes it did break some by the end of the day, and even after fixing on Saturday morning it did break later, but it ran well for a while. I will still never forgive a certain person for ruining at least part of my last carnival.

Overall I think people liked our booth. It was definately the best booth in some sense that I have built. The others looked pretty crappy except for Easter Island, which while well done, was just too simple. In Exodus we had 6 completely different, well done environments. The soundtrack was good ("and also very much cattle"). The detail in the marketplace was what we've wanted to do for some time and finally got right. Our waterfall was cool, even though it flooded midway all the way to PhiKap's booth. One thing I learned, when doing water, always use things meant to hold water. Why did I build troughs when I could have just bought gutters?

We didn't place. I really don't know why. There were 5 really great booths this year so I shouldn't have been too dissapointed but I was. I really thought we could place. I really wanted to be the booth chair that did it for us. We've only placed once before and not within the last 5 years. I wanted to be the one to be able to go up there and get the trophy and say that it was for Harry and Dave and Nate, the 3 guys who led me up through the ranks of booth but didn't get a trophy for their excellent efforts. I wanted it to be not just a booth I worked on that won, but my booth, when I was chair. Now, even if I'm around to see or even work on a winning booth, I won't even officially be part of the organization, let alone chair. This was the first year since 1982 that PhiKap didn't place. Knowing that really bothers me. The same people place every year and it seems like it is ok to the world that it is never us. We try really hard and do a great job. We do some things better than anyone else but that doesn't seem to matter. Money and craftsmanship seem to be all that matters. We didn't even come in 4th or 5th. We came in 6th. I haven't seen the individual judging breakdowns, and I'm not quite sure how judging really works but I know that there is something wrong with it. I intend to do anything withing my power to fix that for next year.

The big decision

Meanwhile, midway through build week, when all I was doing was booth with brief breaks to eat, sleep, or check my email, I got one email that changed everything. I found out that I was accepted into the MIT Media Lab off the waitlist. The group I would be working with is a new one, under Professor Pattie Maes. We would be building room-sized systems where people could interact with natural body motions.

Now I have one of the hardest decisions to make. I've talked with lots of people and thought of many decision making strategies. At first I contemplated the academic merits of the 2 programs. I think that the ETC is more focused on what I want to do. It think it will better prepare me for a job in the field I want to be in as well as help me figure out what that is. I think I would benefit a lot from the social coaching that goes on the ETC, that I might not get at MIT. I may benefit less from the exposure to working with artists, since I do that a lot now. With MIT I think I would benefit from the change of environment. That is to say, change of working environment. I'd get to work with new people on very new things.

The differences there are slight. Academically, I think I would do well with either. I think I would enjoy either. I think either would prepare me well enough to get a good job. All else being equal I would probably choose the ETC. There are two other main considerations. The first is the personal reasons. When I thought that my only choice was ETC, I was very happy. I had started planning out my life. I was going to live with Nate and Adam and Toon, since they all were going to school in Pittsburgh still. I'd still eat on the AEPi mealplan because it would be easy and I would eat well. I could still be a BVW TA and I was really looking forward to another opportunity to do that. I would get to see Lauren and Nell, who were away this semester. I would be able to get closer with people that I haven't had time to get to know as well as I would have liked up til now. I would get to build booth as a CMU student which would actually be allowed. Not only that but it wouldn't just be the alumni's build week, it would be the whole thing. Even starting from the theme selection meeting in the fall. I would be able to chill during orientation and help freshmen move in, something I love doing. I could hang out at AEPi in my spare time and on the porch when the weather is nice. I'd have access to the shared resources of AEPi and Stage3 and everyone else I know for doing my projects. I could still work for Stage3 and build Alice and work on Sutherland, my favorite computer. I could continue working with Illah in robotics and doing tech events too. I'm really used to this place and I love it here. I don't want to give it up yet. I'd become attached the the idea of getting to continue and now it is really hard to think about seperating. I want these year to ween myself off of it, and I really think I would. The other major difference is the cost. ETC would charge me $26,000 a year. The Media Lab would pay me, $20,000 a year. that's a big difference, especially over 2 years. Are all those things I'm going to have a really hard time giving up worth $90,000? I doubt it. That is why I'm probably going to end up at the Media Lab. It is hard to commit to it, though. There are all these tricks to figure out what you would regret more or which you really want to do, so you can pick that. I don't think that helps me though. I know which I want to do, but for once I think that the objective concerns outweight what I want. I know I'd probably be happy enough with either, at least after a time, and staying here just because I know it is what I want and what would make me happier just doesn't make sense.