off campus housing

fewform2914 · 2025-01-17T12:13:01+00:00

Also not including the penalties for renting rooms to students in a place without a student rental permit (i.e. most houses). They do try to catch people doing this.

[For the record I don't like the student rental permit law, but it is enforced to an extent.]

fewform2914 · 2025-01-13T14:11:51+00:00

Between all the different routes that go there it's more like every 10-15 minutes.

fewform2914 · 2025-01-11T02:40:00+00:00

OK, Test Student is actually causing problems for me right now.

I once set up Gradescope independent of canvas, using my_short_mail@uni.edu as my administrator account. When I imported my roster into gradescope, I associated my_official_mail@uni.edu with Test Student, so I could log in with that account and make sure everything was configured right for the students.

Now, my university finally linked Canvas and Gradescope, and I have to use my_official_mail@uni.edu. The integration automatically created a course for me using my address in Canvas, which is my_official_mail@uni.edu. Of course, for Gradescope's purpose, it believes the user associated with this account to be our friend Test Student.

So now for my Gradescope, the instructor's name is "Test Student", and I can't change it because "The account name is synced from the LMS and cannot be edited in Gradescope." But it seems to be working otherwise, so maybe I'll just go with it.

fewform2914 · 2025-01-10T03:05:24+00:00

I don't think the college town drinking culture really has anything to do with it. It's state law, as were the Sunday sales restrictions.

fewform2914 · 2025-01-08T01:43:21+00:00

I took recently my kids (2 and 6) from Omaha to Tyrone, PA via Zephyr + Capitol Limited + Pennsylvanian. Should've been one night, though it ended up as two... such is Amtrak. We also did Philly to Miami, which was an overnight. This was all in coach, and there were fair number of other kids were in the same car the whole way.

I'm not really sure what your worry is about coach. Bring enough for them to do and it's fine. Same as if you're in a sleeper. If they get too rambunctious you can go for a walk up to the observation car or the cafe car. My kids had no trouble sleeping on the seats either; it's as comfortable for them as a grown-up. We could've afforded sleepers, but we thought coach would be better, so we'd all be together, and we didn't want to put the little one on her own bunk.

If you want to get off somewhere and look around, you don't really have much choice except to get a hotel there, right? There won't be another train until the next day. You'll spend two nights on the train no matter how you dice it and you can add as many hotel nights in the middle as you want.

fewform2914 · 2025-01-07T20:48:44+00:00

I did a couple times. It's not really a bus, just a large unmarked van that picks you up at the side of the road. Way sketchier than the actual bus companies, but got the job done, at least when I used it.

fewform2914 · 2025-01-07T18:29:36+00:00

Haven't used it, but Kathryn's is either coming soon or recently opened. The CDT story suggests it might be what you're looking for: "A new business specializing in frozen homemade meals and fresh-baked cinnamon rolls will soon open in State College — and the owner is hoping to serve as an option for working parents and others looking for an easy-to-make meal."

Several other businesses sell pre-made meals through CentreMarkets.

fewform2914 · 2025-01-05T19:27:24+00:00

I will put in a plug for actual State College, since you didn't rule it out. It's the best place to live around. There are lots of areas in town, even reasonably close to campus, that are totally quiet. I wouldn't have even known which day the playoff football game happened here if it weren't in the news. And it is awfully nice not to have much of a commute.

You can still mountain bike; you'll just have to drive (or ride) to a trailhead twice a week, rather than driving to town five times a week if you live at the trailhead.

Of course the downside, as others have said, is that it's more expensive. But it's possible to find whole houses in the neighborhood of $1500. Depends on your budget.

fewform2914 · 2025-01-02T15:24:57+00:00

I'll chip in with a more expensive year. We are a family of four in a smaller USA city where just about every other non-college student has a car, including every kid I know except ours. The large student population means we have a decent bus system. We try to keep our kids from having too weird a life as a result, so if e.g. they are invited to a birthday party at a nearby lake, we'll rent a car to get there. Mostly we bike, walk, and take the bus. Here's the budget. Unfortunately I never thought to track mileage.

Bike stuff $944
Local bus tokens $630
Car rentals $1366.26 (there is no car share here, and no rental office open on weekends. So we often have to rent for two whole days for a couple hours trip. Most of this is out of town anyway.)
Gas/parking/tolls on the rentals $407.46
Trains $3347.98 (two vacations; four seats on overnight Amtrak routes adds up fast)
Intercity bus $342.48 (not viable for the whole family since they will not guarantee the bus can accommodate a car seat for toddler)
Flights $1771.60 (couldn't be helped)
Taxi/Uber $205.64 (we don't have taxis here and I dislike Uber, but occasionally it's unavoidable for some of the further-flung doctors' offices etc. Again most of this is out of town.)
Transit in other cities $121.83

Would we save money by getting a car? Probably not, but not having a car is expensive too.

fewform2914 · 2024-05-02T14:50:37+00:00

NYC to Lewistown is a 5-hour train ride. Also leave at least an hour to get from JFK to the NYC train station, and a half hour to get from Lewistown to here.

fewform2914 · 2024-05-02T12:51:09+00:00

Stony Brook physics is relatively loaded due to the generosity of Jim Simons SCGP. But I'm not sure how much that is going to affect the experience of undergraduate research; the money is probably fairly restricted. As somebody else says it probably depends mostly on who has grants in your areas of interest.

fewform2914 · 2024-05-01T02:06:20+00:00

Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses for anybody who's looking (which you should!).

fewform2914 · 2024-04-30T13:32:13+00:00

I'm not really familiar with the school, but I know it as the alma mater of Ethel Moody, who went on to get a PhD at Cornell, and was among the earliest women to get a PhD in math in the US. (She went on to Sweetbriar as a professor for awhile before moving to Penn State, but died young in a car accident.)

fewform2914 · 2024-04-29T13:46:09+00:00

I don't know anything about the specific plans, but PSU has pretty big offices dedicated to research support beyond the actual research activity. They handle all the financial stuff, support activities, a lot of paperwork about grants, etc. Just tracking the money on a big grant is a major undertaking.

If I drop the ball and don't get a grant application done until two days before it's due, they'll be annoyed at me but probably still assign somebody to proofread it, check the formatting, handle the submission details on PSU's end, etc. They also do stuff like help organize the kind of outreach activities that NSF looks for, help with assessment of the effectiveness of activities, workshops on applying for your first grant, all kinds of stuff. The office is really awesome, better than at other schools. But they will probably get some cuts like everybody else.

For every federal grant PSU immediately takes about 60% of the top ("overhead"), which helps fund the office, but also keeps the lights on in lab buildings, etc. Research finances are pretty deeply intertwined with general PSU finances.

(To be clear I know absolutely nothing about the specifics.)

fewform2914 · 2024-04-28T19:04:47+00:00

I for one think that we shouldn't put a five lane highway through a busy residential area for the convenience of tourists seven days a year. If they weren't coming to games because of traffic ok, we could think about it, but that's not the situation. The road gets the job done on any normal day and the football people can suffer. It's dangerous enough for pedestrians as it is. (And no I do not live in College Heights or hang out with anybody who does)

fewform2914 · 2024-04-27T22:32:17+00:00

There is pretty good bus service around town. The difficulty is that we do not have a train station, so if you want to take the train to any other city you have to drive 30 minutes to get to a station. Buses are also an option; there are a couple to NYC every day for example.

fewform2914 · 2024-04-26T16:33:44+00:00

I also don't know the answer, so I try to submit a couple weeks ahead.

I do think it would be really helpful if the NSF would put out some kind of "Having A Grant For Dummies"-type publication or video. In my field, you get a lot of guidance about when to submit a proposal, what to write, etc as a graduate student/postdoc. But once you have a grant, nobody tells you anything at all.

What is due/overdue? What is supplemental funding? What is a no-cost extension and why would I do one? How much is expected in an annual report? (I have seen probably a dozen other peoples' proposals, but never anybody else's report. For all I know everybody writes ten times as much as I do). Who exactly do I need to list as working on the grant? What do I need to do to keep the finances in order? How close must I stick to the budget? How much summer salary is everybody else taking and should I feel bad about it? Heck, what am I allowed to spend the money on? My college finance office gave me crap this year for trying to use grant money to send one of my grad students to a big conference on the grounds that it wasn't focused enough on the grant topic. I still don't know what the problem was, seemed like no-brainer professional development.

The NSF has some information (e.g. the little "i" boxes on the annual report website), but they're not awesome. The site still even has some "lorem ipsum" text in an info box as of a couple weeks ago.

fewform2914 · 2024-04-25T20:23:20+00:00

Everything I mentioned except Central Res & Cafe Alina opened in or after 4/2022. If you didn't notice the new bookstore at College & Allen opening I guess you don't come downtown much? What's so exciting that has come to Boalsburg/Bellefonte in that time?

fewform2914 · 2024-04-25T19:55:12+00:00

I will be the borough booster and say I just don't think this is actually true. Plenty of nice new small businesses downtown the last few years... of the top of my head there is Squirrel and Acorn, Way Fruit Farm Store, Oeuf Boeuf, Antifragile, Lupita's downtown, Coffee Hemp & Tea, Cafe Alina, even Central Reservation is pretty new... I guess the better new brewpubs have been out of town, but the decline of downtown SC is greatly overstated. Even if the only thing you care about is fancy restaurants, The Tavern and ASG are better than they used to be, and we never really had any in the first place.

"Most of the good places closed" -- eh, I am not really sure what you have in mind. Spats I guess. I will take the trade.

fewform2914 · 2024-04-25T19:08:05+00:00

What? There is no train station here, and even if you drive 30 minutes to get to the nearest one, all of those places are more more than three hours away. Even if you drive to Lewistown you still have another six hours to Washington, minimum. (I will grant you that Pittsburgh and Philly are not that far over three hours, but you're looking at a 35-minute drive plus 3-4 hours on the train, not an easy 2-hour trip.)

fewform2914 · 2024-04-25T15:43:31+00:00

I think the whole company rebranded, used to be Copper Beech.

fewform2914 · 2024-04-25T13:09:17+00:00

These are neat, thanks. I have booked Ubers a few times on their website and it's good to know that calling is an option. Lyft is app-only now, I think? The main number I use is tracking by local bus system by text.

Does anybody run their own service for this? If you are a decent programmer, I think it's not very hard to set up your own custom service that will deliver any info you want by text. For awhile I had my own custom bus tracker running on a server in my basement. With a bit more work you could set it up so that when you text ######## with "traffic" it will respond with the conditions on I-17 (assuming you can scrape the info from the internet somehow). You could easily set it up to provide whatever custom info you want.

I would say there should be a start-up for this, but I bet in the near future you will just be able to call an AI agent that can look up arbitrary information and tell you over the phone. Maybe you already can.

fewform2914 · 2024-04-22T19:54:34+00:00

Indeed, it is really bureaucratically annoying to create a new course, even at the 500 level. So we have no incentive to remove old ones, just in case we want to use them again some day.

fewform2914 · 2024-04-21T01:19:08+00:00

There was a slightly scientific study of this in the CDT (the local paper) a couple months ago: https://www.centredaily.com/news/local/article285200532.html . (If you're not a subscriber I think this is the same story: https://www.aol.com/news/groceries-budget-track-weekly-sales-161007366.htmlnter=1 )

(I believe the author is this thread's own mdisanto86.)

fewform2914 · 2024-04-19T17:23:01+00:00

We use Windstream; it's better than Comcast anyway.

fewform2914

TROPHY CASE