Map of New England Trip

Map of New England Trip

Originally uploaded by coryhoffman.

Hi folks.  I went on a semi-self-guided trip of New England.  I started out in Rochester, drove to Manchester, New Hampshire to visit my cousin, went to Boston with him, went to New London, CT to visit TJ, went to Cape Cod and the like, and came back home.  I took about 100 pictures and instead of trying to figure out which one to post, I just gave you a map of my trip: about 1,700 miles of driving.  If you click on the map, you will get more pictures of my trip. 

I had a good time and got to see good people.  I did lots of things.  Like what?  Well, went out for eats with friends, got my new RIT ID card, went and saw downtown Boston and Manchester, went to an aquarium, went to beaches and parks, went to Cape Cod, etc. etc.  Now that I’m back, not a whole lot to do.  I could clean and organize and get ready to go to Cincinnati.  I could not do that too.  It was my last vacation before “The Real World” where I will not get vacation.  Many hours changed to a building pounding the pavement.  No more random whatever I pleases.  Oh, it could be a lonely time for me out in the wilderness of Ohio/Kentucky, but you could ease that if you visited.  I have a place of my own.

OK, enough, just look at my pictures.

Trip to DC

DC Metro

Originally uploaded by coryhoffman.

Can you believe that I have never in my whole life taken public transportation until yesterday?  Not a bus, a subway, taxi or otherwise.  I have flown on a plane so I guess that counts as using public transportation, but not in the get around a major metropolis sense.  I went to Washington D.C. yesterday to visit Joi and Fritz.  It was a very good trip.

The photo is a picture of a DC Metro station – I was a dorky tourist.  Fritz may have been a little embarassed of me for taking pictures of such silly things as the machine that gives you your Metro fair card, entrances to the metro, exits to the metro, metro maps, etc.  I didn't get to downtown DC until the evening so my pictures are all dark.  If you click the photo above you'll be taken to my other DC pictures.  Now what I need from everyone is for you to e-mail me and congratulate me on taking such fabulous pictures at night-time with a 4+ year old digital camera.

If you haven't visited DC at night (the Mall specifically), I strongly recommend it.  There are no crowds, you can walk freely from site to site, and the look of the place is totally different.  It's quite surreal standing at the back of the White House at 9:30 on a Wednesday night or to lay on a marble seat and look up at the Washington Monument at 10 on a random Wednesday night.  You should all do it sometime and maybe you'll be lucky enough to get a tour guide like Fritz who tells you about all the recent crime happening in the dark park you're walking through.

Glove Box Render

Glove Box Render

Originally uploaded by coryhoffman.

Remember my first post? Well that had a picture of the glove box handle assembly from my 2004 Honda Element. I’m currently in a course called Engineering Design Graphics where you basically learn how to use Pro/Engineer. It’s a very powerful software package that allows you to model, analyze, and manipulate 3-D objects. My midterm/final project was, of course, my glove box handle assembly. The idea was to model a real part of at least 6 components and then create a drawing package for the final exam. What you’re seeing in the above photograph is my 3-D model of the glove box handle assembly. The handle and latch are transparent so that you can see some of the internal structure. I think it came out very well and after hours in the computer lab, I have a newfound respect for design engineers – especially the ones who design gloveboxes (or random stuff compartments since nobody keeps their gloves there).

I have a video too of my project, but I can’t post it here, sorry. It’s pretty cool though.

A boating sunset picture

DSCF0051

Originally uploaded by coryhoffman.

So Friday night, I get invited to go boating out on Lake Ontario in a powerboat (Yamaha). This boat, it doesn’t have propellers, instead two motorcycle engines attached to impellers that basically shoot jets of water out the back; the boat handles extremely well. After getting on ‘Tax Evasion’ and bubbling out through the bay, Sinbad guns it and before you know it you’re doing 45 mph on the water. Now, that doesn’t seem all too fast, but when it’s actually happening you feel as though you’re doing 100+ in a car. Imagine that you feel like you’re doing 100 mph in a car and then that car turns around in a circle the size of a trashcan lid. After a good twist on the wheel that’s what happened and who knew a boat could do that! It’s quite a rush.

Literally, it was a 3 hour tour and a pretty fun outing: parking (?) your boat next to a restaurant and grabbing a bite to eat, then heading out again up the river. It was interesting to be sure and causes you to look up boat prices on google. So if you’re ever invited to go out on a boat, I highly recommend it.

Me in RIT Taxi

Me in RIT Taxi

Originally uploaded by coryhoffman.

Did you know that RIT has its own Checker Cab? This 1971 delight is property of the institute and is used occasionally by the President to pick up guests of RIT at the airport or in parades, like the one SG put on this weekend. I had the great opportunity to drive it during the parade. The car is quite nice to drive; the horn sounds good, the brakes work, and the doors close. If you had a stiff breeze at your back and were going down hill, you could probably get this bad boy to do highway speeds if you weren’t bothered by the severe vibration.

The parade was a good time. There was a firetruck, the SAE Formula car, Mini Baja, and a couple other random acts such as Jonathan Burman or “Megagod.” That was an interesting sight – a guy in a lab coat with white/black face paint, white wig, riding a bicycle. And he didn’t just ride the bicycle during the parade, he rode it for at least four hours. Two hours before the parade and two hours after, in circles.

That’s about it for this subject, I should put up some pictures of my Friday night out on a boat, but I still haven’t gotten over the feeling of capsizing so those pictures might take a while.

I am trying something new.

Glove Box Latch 2

Originally uploaded by coryhoffman.

So I wanted to see if I could start working on an online journal that would catalog all the different things I do since I’ll be traveling a lot over the next two years. This way, people can see what I’m up to! This first post is just a test and I think I’ve tried to add a picture to see if that works.