Giving Back To The Community.


Posted Jul 12, 03:40 pm in , by Patrick Gage Kelley, comments closed.

Yelp.

I don’t mean Pittsburgh. Though maybe in some very indirect way I am benefiting the Pittsburgh community by reviewing its fine dining (and other) establishments. (Like maybe as a city becomes more popular on Yelp, the internet elite will flock here, naming it a technologically savvy mecca for the young thus infusing the city with fresh new yuppie-hipster blood) I have used Yelp for quite a while, probably a few years, to help me find places to go, especially while traveling. On the roadtrip last summer Yelp decided most of our food choices and even occasionally how we should spend our evenings.

Two weeks ago while I was in Houston visiting Amy and for Kelli’s wedding I actually broke down and (finally!) created myself a Yelp account. I then proceeded to review a number of the places Amy & I liked on the road trip, as well as a bunch of the places I commonly eat around Pittsburgh.

So, head over to http://pgage.yelp.com and read about what I like to eat, or even better become an active web citizen and sign up for your own account. I am sure you have opinions about food; and what better way is there to force your own tastes onto others than by participating in content creation on the internet.

John McCain Gives Somewhat Important Talk, I Am Told.


Posted Apr 15, 11:48 pm in , by Patrick Gage Kelley, comments closed.

John McCain CMU.

Today John McCain gave what I am told is a very important speech laying out his full economic policy with details that I guess up until this point he neglected to mention. At least the New York Times and a bunch of other media outlets seem to think so.

Interestingly this talk was at Carnegie Mellon, which means I was sitting in the third row (see picture taken by my iPhone – it was a mistake not to take a real camera) and I got pretty bored. It might be that I just can’t bring myself to care much about politics at the national level. It might be that as he spoke I could read ahead of him on the teleprompter.

It is likely the best part of the experience was being able to represent the Graduate Student Assembly at the greeting before he went on stage. He came in quickly, shook all our hands and seemed ready to move on before President Cohon slowed him down and brought him back around to introduce each of us. He seemed very lively, very human, and very much ready to get out there and speak. Also his mannerisms seem very similar to a certain president who is currently holding office, which I found a bit jarring.

Soon (once I get a copy of it) I will post the picture of the students posing with him from whoever all those people were with the cameras, but for now I can hold on, excited for an even more spectacular person who will be speaking at Carnegie Mellon: Al Gore (at commencement, May 18th).

Emergency!


Posted Apr 10, 09:06 pm in , by Patrick Gage Kelley, comments closed.

Emergency Clearance!

Let us now take an easy definition for Emergency like say: a sudden, urgent, usually unexpected occurrence or occasion requiring immediate action. Good. Now, it turns out the Art Store on Craig Street has suddenly started a clearance sale and urgently wants all of us to immediately come buy their products which may be (up to) 75% off!

Walking past the other day a mutual acquaintance of you, fair reader, and myself, asked: Are they going out of business? To which my answer was – no no, they have had giant signs up since the day I arrived in Pittsburgh (two years ago), however things have only become an emergency as of the last few weeks. How unexpected.

April Weather Is Already Better.


Posted Apr 8, 11:20 pm in , by Patrick Gage Kelley, comments closed.

Kristen & I Having Our First Outdoor Dining Of The Semester.

I have never wanted the nice weather to come back this much. I don’t know what happened to me, if it was the warmth from traveling last summer, especially just spending so much time out in the sun in the badlands and cheyenne and albuquerque, and white sands, or if this winter was particularly cold but I find myself really feeling deprived of the light of our local star.

Pittsburgh is just starting to get nice out though and so Kristen and I had our first outdoor dinner of the spring/summer tonight at Murray Avenue Grill and it was real great. I am excited for summer, warmth, sun.

Halloween Is The Last Day Of The Month.


Posted Oct 31, 10:48 pm in , by Patrick Gage Kelley, comments closed.

Though for me it was really last Friday when I dressed as patrick wolf. For those of you are not aware, he is a British musician who I really like.

patrick wolf and me as him(p. wolf on left, p. gage on right; his photo by Chiara, mine by Danny)

Anyway I think the costume went pretty well even though my hair was not as red as it should have been, and I was dressed in a style that might have been a mixture of his more angry/goth second album and flashier crazy-pop third album.

As this is the first time I have really gone about making a real Halloween costume I am pretty happy with it, and I will just have to outdo it next year–maybe the goal will to be pick someone that five percent of the party will recognize. More pictures from said party are here – by Danny

patrick wolf in the feather coat

But either way the main purposes was served and I can feel like I sold myself out to advertise for him, since I really like his music and you should all go watch and listen.

(It is actually only the last day of October)

Friends Locate Pittsburgh On A Map.


Posted Oct 23, 02:11 am in , by Patrick Gage Kelley, comments closed.

This weekend a convergence occurred: my friend Kevin, Elliot’s sister Jenna and Marissa’s friends Teena, Neena, Jeanie, and Dan also appeared in Pittsburgh. So we played many games (not pictured), ate many not-really-amazing cookies (not pictured), watched very little of The Birds (not pictured), and all separately went shopping at Southside Works (not pictured). the people in the limo

Finally we located a limo (and some cameras) amongst the hills and drove it to the not-so-abandoned firehouse (though there were no firefighters) where we danced until my legs were very sore. Some pictures were taken, mostly not by me, put I posted them here on flickr

some autumn architecture


Posted Sep 23, 09:45 pm in , by Patrick Gage Kelley, received one comment, comments closed.

Elliot, Jess Co, Phluff, & I went to Fallingwater & Kentuck Knob this Saturday. Jess & Phluff were in town because Jess’s site for studio this year is in Pittsburgh, so they came up and visited the Warhol and took their measurements. Then we met up and hung out Friday night, before they woke me up way too early Saturday morning to go out to see some architecture.my favorite.

Fallingwater & Kentuck Knob were both designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, both in the later part of his career. Fallingwater really brought him back into the public eye, and although I expected it to be a lot of hype over not that impressive of a house … I was wrong.

Which is good.

I have visited a number of FLW’s homes in my day (including both Taliesins, which win–at least in sheer scope), and this one was quite impressive. It is small, but feels spacious, and it really did pull off his connecting the house with the site (better than most I have seen, because honestly a one story house with low ceilings doesn’t actually make me feel like I am on the prairie).

Anyway, Fallingwater was well worth it, even though both our tour guides left something to be desired. The first pointed at a clearly five sided light fixture and was like … he likes to use triangles; the second had her work cut out for her as Kentuck Knob is really a pretty boring house. They said FLW only visited the house once (while they were laying the foundation) and after seeing it, I don’t want to go back either–though the dining room is quite nice.

If you can’t make it out to Fallingwater, you can watch this video, as a bit of a substitute, though it is better if you are near Pittsburgh and can just head out that way.

To see a bunch of pictures click the photo up top.

While I am here...


Posted Sep 8, 09:53 pm in , by Patrick Gage Kelley, comments closed.

I am clearly far behind with the internet, but this semester is looking mostly together, so a few things. I have some posts coming up which are half written, which is really a new thing for me.

my new apt in squirrel hill

I have a new apartment, which is pretty nice and someday I will have unpacked. For now, I am just trying to make it habitable for my upcoming spree of visitors. That is it above, or the living room at least. I am also still acclimating to living alone, I think I really like it, but I don’t think I have the experience totally figured out.

Today I learned Madeleine L’Engle died, which is pretty sad, though she did live a long and wonderful life, for that I am proud of her. Now I have even more reason to read through the entire Time Quartet, which I had been meaning to do anyway (brought it back with me last time I was home, post road-trip).

Also still decompressing from the road-trip, I have gone through about a third of the photos so far, so that I can print them all out and put together something here on the internets, with other stuff as well.

Semester has started, looks like I have some good classes, and hopefully some good research coming up? Also expect some sort of all info-vis all the time page on the horizon.

License Plate Thief


Posted Oct 24, 03:15 am in , by Patrick Gage Kelley, received 3 comments, comments closed.

When I got home today, Nora told me that her license plate had been stolen sometime overnight, and she had been on the phone with the police all day reporting it. Though they didn’t think it was for criminal purposes, just kids stealing stuff, as hers was odd, being an Arizona license plate in Pennsylvania.

And this was strange (who steals license plates?) but it didn’t matter. Then when I was walking back from Coffee Tree Roasters this evening, just like a three minute walk from there back to the apartment, as I cross Maryland Ave. There is tan-ish car double parked in the road, and there is this guy fiddling with the car behind it’s license plate, like he is looking at it intently.

And I realize he has a screwdriver in his hand, and he is unscrewing a Texas license plate on the back of this little blue car. And I just stop in the middle of the road, and look at him, and as soon as he sees I have stopped he runs back to his car, which is on with the door open, and drives away.

At which point I am stunned and not sure what to do, I didn’t get the license of the car he was driving (though if I were a plate thief, when I was doing my thievery I would certainly not use my own plate during those times, I would use one of my spares), and I can’t really call the police and be like, sketchy guy, drove away, because what are they going to do.

Not to mention this guy was older, like 35-40, balding a little maybe, with a short haircut, tan jacket, slightly over-weight, maybe 5’11” and 180lbs. so I can’t just stop him.

So I get back to my apartment (another like sixty feet) and am all, “Nora, Nora! Sketchy guy!” At which we decide to venture back out and down to the corner, to see if he has come back for his prize. When we went down and inspected there was only one remaining screw left in the Texas-plate-car’s attachment bracket thing. So he almost got it!

There is no doubt in my mind that it will be gone tonight, or at least tomorrow night. Though I don’t know what kind of thief steal things at ten to midnight, I mean, it is a populated area, a two minute walk to a Banana Republic, and with three coffee shops nearby, there are bound to be people wandering.

Proof Pittsburgh Is Friendly.


Posted Oct 6, 07:47 pm in , by Patrick Gage Kelley, received one comment, comments closed.

So I was getting off the bus, with some random pittsburgh people, on my way home from school today. And as we were walking towards our houses, up the street we see this dog walk out into the middle of the road, entirely by himself, and so me and this girl, twenty-four years old-ish, professional looking, attractive, iPod protected from the environment, stop, and are like, “Dog, why are you by yourself?”

And we are all like oh he has lots of tags, so that is good. But we look and the dog’s name is Winston, and the owners live in Clarksville, Maryland. Which we decide is no good, because we are in Pittsburgh, and thus the dog is quite far from home. So we call the number on the main tag, and she tells me no one answers, and that there was a strange message. She leaves her name, and my phone number (she has called using my phone, as hers was in her apartment).

So we decide this is bad, and we are stumped.

At which point she decides to go upstairs, and get her phone, and a leash, so she does that and I am sitting with the dog, on the corner of Maryland and Howe. Winston, who looks super scared and then just sort of starts like quiet barking, in all directions

And then these two people, a couple, park their van right nearby, and are looking at me and the Winston (still barking), and are like “cute dog”. To which I respond, “Yes, he is. Have you ever seen him before so I can give him back to his owners?”

And they think this is disastrous, poor little Winston, outside in the cold streets of Pittsburgh! They decide we should call more numbers, since this dog conveniently has five tags (he must either get lost a lot, or have very over-protective owners). So the boy (the thirty year old boy, with gray stubble starting to come through in his trendy beard) calls the vet tag, but they are closed.

Then my original partner in dog rescue returns, with her phone, but without a leash. She did bring a belt, which I think was a pretty good effort, but the other woman decides she can get a leash, and so she runs up into her building and brings down a leash.

While she is doing this (conveniently we all seem to live within a block of here), I decide it is time to let Winston show us where he lives, so very slowly we cross the street and he discovers a napkin, which he decides smells pretty good – good enough to stop barking. Maybe he just needed the walk.

We realize though that there is a van with Maryland plates a few cars away from where we are, but parking is pretty busy, so it could have been like any of the nearby houses.

By now the woman with the leash has returned, and so now we can really let Winston pick up speed, and me and the guy let him walk, and he walks right up on the porch of one of the houses.

We decide we have nothing to lose and so we ring the bell.

After maybe twenty second a woman appears, and opens her inner door, looks at us, looks at Winston, then back at us, and smiling says, “Hello?”

She looks about fifty-seven years old, and is wearing this really atrocious white blouse, and a shin length black skirt with white polka dots, that looks pretty seriously early seventies in creation.

“We found this dog…”
“Okay…”, with this creepy little half laugh.
”...and we were wondering if you have ever seen him before, or know where he could live?”

At which point she pauses for a few seconds, and then lets us in on the secret, “Oh, he is our dog”.

I am super confused because she doesn’t really look thrilled or anything, still hasn’t opened the outer door to let the dog in, and is just sort of waiting there, like this is all a strange joke.

And then she says, “He is visiting, he must have got out of the yard. Thank you.” We decide that this must be good enough, she lets the dog in, and we leave, as we walk away noticing there are maybe ten people in her living room, all looking with excitement at the event taking place on her porch.

I am not sure exactly what happened in the conversation, but it is probably something more normal, like it was one of her guests, and so she wasn’t really that attachd to it – they were making Winston stay out in the yard – and she was confused because she hadn’t realized that he was lost, and he was only a few houses away from home. Though wandering in the middle of the road, which is not a good place for a small animal to be. But he got home safe, and that counts.

So then the four of us decided that we performed some awesome community teamwork and I came home to my apartment, newly with heat, enthused with the feeling of good karma.

Cathedral of Learning


Posted Oct 6, 01:22 am in , by Patrick Gage Kelley, comments closed.

cathedral memorial split with tree

I love this quasi-goth.

Walking Pittsburgh II


Posted Sep 18, 02:15 am in , by Patrick Gage Kelley, comments closed.

flower construction

Walking Pittsburgh I


Posted Sep 12, 01:15 am in , by Patrick Gage Kelley, comments closed.

building and street lights

That sign says d. r. hamburg associates – ARCHITECTS. But now the building is up for leasing and is falling apart and being eaten by the landscape.

And I pass it and it looks like the past.

Wednesday Update


Posted Sep 6, 01:13 am in , by Patrick Gage Kelley, comments closed.

Bjork kissing Matthew Barney

Well, let’s see.

Classes started today. I had one, next week my other one starts, that is going well, I enjoy the assignment I was given. As for research stuff, it is alright, it has been a slow beginning, but my interest level is possibly not as high as it should be in the current tasks I have been told to complete.

Things socially have been good, the weekend was fun, went to he Andy Warhol Museum, some friends of Joseph cooked me dinner, I saw Little Miss Sunshine (which was only alright – my expectations were too high), I wandered around some, cleaned my room, and read.

Speaking of reading, what was once Booknest, and now is nameless until someone comes up with something decent (BookFruit, ReadersInk, InkTrail, BookLeft, Bookdoku, SnakesOnABook, BookRecollections, ...) I was really frustrated with WordPress which I swear gets worse with each new version and so I recoded the whole thing from scratch (see I am nearly a CS major), and that will be online, as soon as we have a name for it. Written in fresh Ruby on Rails.

Also, I was at the Carnegie Library (Sq.Hill) today and I saw a flyer which totally made my day. Because it turns out they are showing Drawing Restraint 9 at this little theater which you may have to be a member(?) to go see. Which means I am now trying to convince all my new friends that they really do want to go see Bjork, Matthew Barney, and a large mound of vaseline. Yes, that is right. And there is no dialogue. And Bjork made the soundtrack. I know what you are thinking, it is going to be awesome. And it is.

Oh, You Social Butterfly


Posted Aug 24, 05:55 pm in , by Patrick Gage Kelley, comments closed.

Dinner Party table and set up

No really, I am not, it just seems that way as of late.

After I returned from PA, Nora and I went ahead with our intended plan of hosting a dinner party on Monday. We had six people over (eight including the two of us) and Nora cooked stirfry while I mostly prepared things, cleaned the apartment, and purchased more chairs so we could actually seat eight people. We really should have purchased more flatware, we have exactly eight dinner forks, exactly eight plates. We do have more than eight glasses, but we cut it close on nearly everything else.

Then Tuesday I had another reseach meeting, this one for the TRUST group. Here we are mostly working on helping users make decisions concerning personal information and privacy. More about that soon, once I have a more defined role.

After the meeting, I went out to dinner with Joseph (down at The Thai Place because My Thai is closed on Tuesdays?!) which was nice, and then we played the games that he so kindly brought over. Which mainly consisted of some freestyle Boggle, and very alliance heavy game of Monopoly, and some instructional Set – Oh, how much I missed Set.

So basically, since Wednesday – last night, was the party, we have people over all the time. We are like really amazing hosts, and everyone loves spending time around us. That or possibly the fact that no one has really started classes, or has any research going, or knows anyone else in Pittsburgh.

A Meeting, A Cruise, A Movie


Posted Aug 19, 01:28 am in , by Patrick Gage Kelley, comments closed.

Pittsburgh pieced panorama

Thursday was my first research meeting for one of my new research projects. I even picked up my first task, managing the group effort to use two cellphones + GPS trackers to stumble the city streets of Pittsburgh. I will probably get started with that on Monday. The meeting was good, I got to meet a bunch of the students working on the project with me and I am slowly getting caught up to where they are (I have a grant proposal in my e-mail to read)

Then after that fun; Nora, David, Ashley and I drove down to Pittsburgh Gateway Clipper Fleet to take a two hour river tour. The pictures (or click picture above) are here: Pittsburgh River Cruise. So that was a pretty fun time had by all. Then after that we went out to a bar/restaurant right on Walnut (like six minutes from where I live – walking) and had two vegiterean pizzas and more talking, at which point half or so of us came back to my apartment for the mini-tour, and we sat around talking about things like banking, Nora’s real name, and conveneintly Kerri called during all that, so she got to talk to Aaron and Nora.

Then, today, Friday, Dan and I went out to IKEA, got some stuff we had missed on other visits, came back and went to the GSA barbeque which was pretty awful, and then all of us: Dan, Ben, Nora, Marissa, Mary, Nicole, David, Ashley, Michael, Elie, the kid Elie brought, Matt, Bryant, Aaron, Joseph, Ryan, Nick, and maybe a few others(?) went down to the Waterfront to see, Snakes on a Plane!

Now honestly, while many of you may have doubts about a movie that is both called and about, Snakes on a Plane, it is actually not bad. I didn’t hate it. At all. So you can go see it and it is just an action movie, that might be a little scary, and very fast paced, but isn’t a bad way to spend two hours. So enjoy it.

The apartment is now almost entirely done being painted, all that is left is a second coat on Nora’s wall. Final pictures of the other rooms are temporarily here until I make something nicer: Apartment!

Went out to dinner with Ben, Dan, Kevin, Marissa, and Nora tonight at this place called Buffalo Blues on S. Highland, it was good and nearby, so we checked it out.

Tomorrow I have my first research meeting, thus my first real responsibility as a grad student, so we will see how that goes. I think later in the evening a bunch of us will be taking a tour on a river boat… or something like that, gotta charge the camera batteries.

Pittsburgh Living


Posted Aug 16, 02:44 am in , by Patrick Gage Kelley, comments closed.

the painting of the apartment

Yikes, the days have gone so fast since I got here, that I will attempt to highlight some of the details. After getting all the furniture from IKEA by using landlord Marty’s van, we were able to have a fully furnished apartment within two days of living here, which is pretty amazing.

I was later able to secure the necessary parts to complete my desk, even though, as of right now, my room still has not been completely perfectly arranged, and I am not sure yet where I am putting everything.

On Thursday I was invited over to a fellow graduate student, Ian’s house for dinner. He had a nice house in southern squirrel hill, and a cute cat, Gandalf. That was fun and educational, I learned quite a bit about graduate school at CMU, the CS dept, different requirements, and classes, and the like.

Then some wonderful visits which included a mass repainting of my apartment. Amy and I were able to redo the entire living room in the blue seen above which matches our “dining room” chairs perfectly. This is very happy. Then, (picture in next post) I was able to with a large quantity of painter’s tape stripe my wall in colors that remind me most of Sprite. The results make me very happy.

Amy left Sunday, and then I met Cory for dinner down in Washington, PA, on his drive back from Philadelphia to switch cars. We ate and talked for nearly two hours, and that was a nice reminder of one of the things I will miss from RIT. Then it was back up the apartment to clean before Nora got back.

I picked her up at the airport Monday and we came back and got groceries and various other supplies before sitting down to enjoy our apartment. We also went out to Casbah, a local restaurant which is very much organic and into local food producers and we had a pretty fantastic meal, before crashing pretty early, after an enjoyable and exhausting week and a half of apartment creation, travel, exploration, and liquid free plane rides.

So I am here in Pittsburgh on my “first try”. I will be shopping all day today for furniture, dropping stuff off at the apt., signing the lease, and getting ready to hopefully leave tomorrow, so I can come back on Thursday for real.

Apartments Are For Hunting III


Posted Jul 1, 01:02 am in , by Patrick Gage Kelley, comments closed.

my new home

If you click that picture above, you can see a gallery of all the pictures I took when Nora and I went back to choice number one from yesterday. Marty called this morning – woke Nora up at eight – and told us if we wanted the apartment we could have it, and we wanted it.

So here are the pictures, all the furnishings will be gone and the girls that live there will be out by August 1st, when we move in. It is in great condition and I love the neighborhood (I mean how many people can really live within three minutes walking of an Apple store – not that that played any role in the choosing!)

More soon. For now, welcome to July.

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