There is no shame in owning that album.

Well the other night I fell asleep after a night of drinking listening to Closing Time by Tom Waits.

Normally though, it feels more like my natural state. I grew up an only child and most of my friends lived far away so I would only see them after school once or twice a week. Entertaining myself was a necessity.

I went through a bad stretch a few weeks back where I didn't see any of my roommates (who are my best friends) for 10 days at all. Not even a passing hello. I would get up earlier and come back after they all went to bed. That put things in perspective, but only after my friend that I work with told me that I was being an idiot and that I should just go home already.

I'm with you on the beach house.

Some SciFi choices:

Babylon 5 - Hasn't aged the best, since it was one of the first shows to use CGI regularly, and it shows. They also lost the film in a fire so they can't remaster it. It has some of the best character development I've seen on TV though.

Stargate - 17 seasons across 3 series is not an easy feat. Again, takes a little work to get into. Acting in the first season is stale. Once it gets going though, you can't stop.

And of course there's Star Trek, but what no one tells you is that Deep Space 9 is the best one.

I saw them live two years ago!

They threw in a cover of Just a Friend by Biz Markie, which I thought was hilarious.

I'm seeing the same

|I can confirm that Mark Kozalek comes off as an exceedingly negative person.

He would agree with you.

I don't know what it is, but his music is incredibly powerful. Benji is downright haunting.

|He's such an incredible asshole, but so funny and so talented.

Yeah he is, but so are a lot of artists.

This cover of Ryan Adams's cover is pretty sweet, too.

9v supply it must have been running on in his backpack could have started a fire with a short.

I'm not really up on this story, but a 9V battery won't even shock you unless you really tried to make it.

Now I have the P4 theme stuck in my head.

Yeah, hit me up

Dune, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, and Ubik are some of my favorite novels.

My friend just sent me this interesting micro-analysis of Dune that might interest some. Might be seen as spoilery though.

Because of this song, for many years I thought Tom Petty was British. My kid logic reasoned that he wouldn't be qualifying the girls as American if he was from the US.

They're pretty sweet

| showing that Philadelphia is one of the places to be if you're going to write sad, powerful music.

As a resident, that sounds about right.

Definitely Die Hard. It is so well done. Pure enjoyment and entertainment. The quintessential Christmas film.

100 Level history classes are interesting and super easy

As an engineer, I really liked the probability class I had to take. That was in part because the professor was awesome though, so your milage may vary.

How's your computer programming? I know a lot of MechE's try to get by without really learning it, but it's only an advantage. Also, once you get into industry, you might pivot into a role that needs programming, and having some further background will be beneficial. I have a MechE friend that happened to.

I also took a Science Fiction Literature class I enjoyed a lot. A lot of it turned out to be Western History as framed by the science fiction authors of the era, which was very interesting.

And it's so weird, because, at least as an EE, they teach it to us starting as sophomores, but in a very applied manner.

Then I took controls and realized that I had been doing this all along. We just weren't told the names or given the generality.

I hope they do a US tour. I want to see them before they get too old. I hear they still put on an awesome show.