Author Archives: pk

About pk

I am currently a PhD student in Industrial and Systems Engineering studying Optimization. Previously I was a student at the University of Wisconsin - Madison studying Applied Math, Engineering and Physics. Web design started for me in 7th grade, and ever since then I have enjoyed learning and expanding my skills. There are numerous projects I am currently working on, so please visit them and check them out.

Summer reading list: Vonnegut, Man’s Search for Meaning, Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

By Vonnegut I’ll be reading (or have read):

A Man Without a Country
Bluebeard
Breakfast of Champions

In addition I will also be reading:

Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
and finally One Person / Multiple Careers by Marci Alboher

Combined with research activities, grading and teaching, traveling, cooking etc… it should be a well rounded summer.

What I’ve been listening to… Immuziknation, The Blow, Radiohead and others

Immuzikation – Fish Tacos (Immuzikation ExtraTartarBlend) mash-up out of Athens, GA
The Blow – Parantheses song from the above mash-up
Petra Haden and Bill Frisell Petra played with the Decemberists on Picaresque
Faded Paper Figures – Logos One of the guys from Faded Paper Figures composed a sweet song for a TV commercial… unfortunately the commercial song was only as long as the commercial. Luckily, this song is longer.
Radiohead – Weird Fishes / Arpeggi Some good stuff off of In Rainbows
Weezer – The Greatest Man That Ever Lived (Variations on a Shaker Hymn) This is just here because hey, I forgot Weezer existed.

Kudos to hypemachine

What this blog is, has been, and will be.

I’ve had this blog a number of years. Numerous people have visited over the years, through high school, college and into graduate school. Teachers, friends, family, co-workers, random people looking for bacon waffles and bul-gogi recipes, and thousands of web crawlers and spam-bots have all scoured the pages of here and hopefully have found what they were looking for.

There’s never been a clear vision. The name was a mash-up of my initials of course and the post-fix that was popular at the time, -tech.  I really just wanted a cool place to mess around on the internet and call it my own. It followed an awesome site with a similar lack in vision, The Orange Couch (see pyktech history for further details).

Since 2002, a lot has happened. WTF has not lost popularity. I post infrequently, in spurts and not at all depending on the year. w00t has gained popularity. Facebook has taken over the social organization elements,  of the web (amongst others).  Friends are getting married, and my bro’s married. I’ve gained 30 lbs and probably grown ~2 inches (in height…). My dog Duke has grayed and become a four-legged-senior. Friends are graduating from college. My parents moved out of the house that I grew up in. I’ve met a lot of people, and have glimpsed the “real world” that awaits people post-high school and post-college.

Welp, thanks for the visits. Like I said years ago, I’ll keep this site up as long as I can pay the $40/year it costs to host this and all the other domains I own. My goal for this summer is to create some engaging content. Web applications have been driven into the ground as of late, with at least 3 versions of any web app you can think of, so I’m not planning on developing anything anytime soon.

In the meantime… keep reading. I’ll keep posting (at the very least, several times per year). Also, I’ll cut the cheese(iness) from here on out. Pun intended.

peace.

Unbeatable Food Combinations (aka, UFC)

burger and shake

Cheeseburgers and shakes. Vanilla preferred. Chocolate also works. Strawberry is not my fave. Oreo shakes are too sugary. Other flavors are too complicated. Bacon burgers are great. Spicy-honey-mustard bacon burgers from Dotty’s Dumpling Dowry in Madison, WI are particularly great. Note that Fuddrucker’s Shakes are particularly bad.

Waffles and bacon. Real 100% Maple Syrup preferred due to its killer sugar density. Scrambled eggs can be substituted bacon (or complement…). Sausage is also a substitute good, but not a complementary good. Unfortunately I eat sausage too fast, hence my marginal preference for bacon. I have not found a good generic brand of bacon–Hormel is quite consistent. “Belgian” style waffles are preferred due to excellent deep-pit-maximal syrup absorption. Pancakes just don’t do it for me unless the cake exterior is cooked as a syrup-sponge vs. a syrup-repellent.

I’ll continue Unbeatable Food Combinations as the summer progresses.

Haven’t updated in awhile… Here are some events I’m hittin’ up in the next two months

After an extended weekend in Madison and Chicago, I’m back to the ATL. The weather is warm, so that rocks, and so do these events I’m checking out in the next couple of months–

Girl Talk in Athens, GA at the Georgia Theatre

Radiohead in Atlanta at Lakewood Amphitheatre

Avenue Q on Thursday (March 27) at the Fox Theatre here in Midtown, Atlanta.

All should be awesome. I’ll update with more events as the summer progresses.

Bands to see in Atlanta during October/November

Concerts to see in Atlanta during October and November and my judgmental opinion (regards to Jambase)-

  • Oct 27, Stars @ Variety Playhouse. For those interested… too candy-cane poppy for me.
  • Oct 12, Caribou @ The Earl. Not really my style, but a decent show. I give up on most slow/mellow bands being any fun to see in concert–save a few like Sigur Ros, who I have yet to see.
  • Oct 12-14, The Echo Project… too many bands to list. Expensive. But the Flaming Lips! Do you have unlimited cash? Go check it out. I’ll save my moola for Bonnaroo.
  • Oct 14, Rodrigo Y Gabriela @ Rivertown Music and Arts Festival. Definite possibility.
  • Oct 30/31, Smashing Pumpkins & Explosions in the Sky @ Fox Theatre. What?! Smashing Pumpkins are back? Who cares, Explosions in the Sky would be good. Shout outs to the gerg here.
  • Nov 6, Mum & Tom Brosseau @ Coca-Cola Roxy Theatre. Concert worthy? Meh, Tom Brosseau is boring. Mum is sweet, however.
  • Nov 18, The Hold Steady, Art Brut & 1990s @ Variety Playhouse. High potential for a great show here.
  • Nov 21, Prefuse 73 @ Drunken Unicorn. This show will be great. Unfortunately Prefuse is more mix-worthy than concert-worthy, and I’ve seen them before. Otherwise would be a surefire “will see.”
  • Nov 24, George Clinton & Pfunk @ Atlanta Civic Center. Funk rocks. If it’s cheap I’d go since I have yet to see the “The King of Interplanetary Funksmanship” as wikipedia proclaims.

So I like good tea. And rarely bad tea.

I’m a tea man.

Tea rocks but has the worst name ever. It should be renamed to “rad” to reflect it’s true nature yet keep its same succinctness. You could then have bad rad, which rocks (in name) and sucks (in taste) at the same time.

I would then be a rad man. And if in the extreme future I had kids and had bad rad then I’d be a bad rad dad. Booyah.

I also recommend trying out a tea tasting sometime if you can. Hibiscus tea (rad) tastes crazy. It tastes like a flower. This should not be surprising in retrospect.

Dried Hibiscus flower + tea