got a few extra bucks for christmas?

<PSA>
After days of trying to ignore the media frenzy surrounding the Asian tsunami, the scope of the relief need finally sunk in. The $6 left over on my gift certificate to my least favorite record store could feed 150 kids over there right now. (That is, if gift certificates at crappy stores were redeemable for cash, but that's beside the point.) If you've got a little extra Christmas gift cash or maybe you forgot someone on your list, if you haven't already, think about donating to something like Mercy Corps--these guys are one of the most efficient relief organizations out there.
</PSA>

dashing through the snow

As I watch the dawn break over the empty rolling hills of eastern Pennsylvania, Christmas carols in some undecipherable language wafting from the radio--no, the CD player: it's that damn Polish CD--I come to reflect on my discoveries of the past 12 hours or so:

I actually found a use for their Jeep's 4-wheel drive! This Ohio service plaza apaprently never got plowed, so the car was stuck in about 9 inches of lovely gray mush. A little 4x4 lovin' is all it took.

The nice thing about the radio on Christmas Eve is that a bunch of stations decided to forgo commercials for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

These stations, however, did not give up bragging about their 48 hours of music. You'd think they'd send their DJs home so they could annoy their families, but no. (Though apparently some stations prerecord their DJ chatter a week in advance. Those DJs can then do the nifty cocktail party trick of "predicting" what songs will come on the radio next and what they'll say.)

48 hours of solid Christmas music is a lot.

My winter coat makes decent soundproofing material in a pinch.

Why you should have a real Christmas tree

Perhaps a thinly veiled, shameless plug from the Christmas tree lobby. But still...

brrr...

As the snow that melted today freezes again, I realize it's been a while.

Friday, after surviving the Week of Hell, I got to celebrate. Yay for Friday Night Waltz! and When Harry Met Sally, which was much better than I thought. Yes, it's true: Dave is Harry. All in all it was a most wonderful evening.

I always knew this day would come. Well, OK, maybe not always. But at least since October... I'm even more freaked out by this though.

It's bloody cold here... and my parents seem to like it that way inside too. So they've essentially decided I'm going to have to heat my room with a space heater by myself. So we went to Meijer and Mom got me a nice little oscillating thermostat- controlled space heater, complete with a timer so I can leave it on when I go to bed. Fine. All well and good. This works for a little while. But it's so advanced it crashes, and I have to reboot it. Yes, the manual even suggests unplugging the stupid thing for 10 minutes to let it "reset". And apparently this is normal behavior, because we already brought one back to exchange it. Oh well. Guess with "programmable" comes "buggy"...

we'll soon be done

to the tune of: Catch The Wind by The Irish Descendants

I'm told I have a problem: a sort of addiction to sleeping in my clothes. So judge for yourself, based on my last week:

Thursday: stayed up all morning to finish the last cs229 problem set, only to go to lecture and fall asleep in the third row.

Friday: Tried to do the same thing again to finish the ling program but bombed out around 4 AM. At least they drop the lowest project score...

Saturday: Got 10 hours of much-needed sleep before rehearsal and starting on our cs229 project

Monday: stayed up all morning to finish the project, catching a quick nap while Kendra was sleeping. (Kat says this counts as "social" clothes-sleeping-in, which is somehow better. Like social alcoholism.)

Tuesday: planned to take a quick nap before finishing our cs376 presentation. "Quick" became seven hours, and I woke up at 3 AM with a sharp pain in my leg. I realized I was sleeping on my keys. But I never sleep on my keys. So I must have been taking a na---oh, crap. But I sprang awake and finished the presentation.

Speaking of which, the poster session and the presentation went well, even though PowerPoint chose the precise moment we were presenting to stop running. That was embarrassing.

Special thanks to all the women who contributed to the RSFZ Sugar Fund, keeping us wired with an array of cookies, cakes, and pies.

Ooh, and we submitted our abstract to CHI. The full paper is coming next week. If it gets accepted we could win a trip to scenic Portland...

Once again, Erika comes through with procrastinatory links: the strangely amusing Cheapass Cereal Hall of Fame and the classic future Googlebot.

And all by myself: Dude! Americans have long (well, the last four years at least) been posing as Canadians overseas to avoid drawing their ire, but now this kit promises to help, complete with a guidebook entitled, "How to Speak Canadian, Eh?"

Boys are struggling academically

Yahoo! News - Pay closer attention: Boys are struggling academically

It's nice to see media coverage of this phenomenon, which I did some research on four years ago. So much attention has gone to girls' academic problems that boys have been more or less ignored.

get ready to scream...

to the tune of: Man Of La Mancha (I Don Quixote) by Linda Eder

I discovered last week that Kat, despite valiant tries, can't knock me off my feet (though it was fun watching her try...). Good to know...

I think everyone's conspiring against me to declare CS just as I'm on the verge of finishing the undergrad picture board. Grr... people are even coming up to me as I'm updating the board (outside of office hours). But one way or another, it's going to happen. Soon. And by the way, (CS/sym sys people) should you find yourself in Gates with a few minutes to spare, go see if you recognize Nicolette Etnalrap...

Ahh, Thanksgiving. Gotta love a holiday devoted to gluttony...oh, and giving thanks, I guess. So much turkey, pumpkin, and cranberry. Ooh... Sadly, no one outside the Zone knew the joys of my misshapen but still good pumpkin cake.

Portable ashtrays. They're so handy. I always think that when I'm searching for a place to get rid of my cigarette butt. Thus spake this fine specimen of Engrish anti-smoking signs, which also bear fine slogans like My cigarettes smell good. Other people's smell bad. (There are actually 4 pages of these--if you're trying to procrastnate click the numbers at the top.) My favorite? Inahled. Burned. Thrown away. If it were anything but a cigarette, it would surely be crying. I love the little Ikea-style diagrams to go with these. Courtesy of Erika.

Something else you can do to procrastinate: Make love, not spam. If, by love, you mean bombarding spammers' web servers with traffic to make them pay for all the spam they've been sending you. Seems only fair...and the screen saver makes it look like you're launching a nuclear war.

And finally, from Cheng: There is such a thing as going too far when buying toys for kids. Who needs a bike?

oh well

to the tune of: Weak And Powerless by A Perfect Circle

According to a study from Cal, e-voting may have given Bush a few extra votes in Florida. Like maybe 130,000. And, they claim, they're "99.9% sure that these effects are not attributable to chance."

Big Game -- Cal
Cal -- beat
beat -- beatings
beatings -- violence
violence -- Detroit
Detroit -- Pistons
Pistons -- this (wmv video)

Ahh, it's good to see that Detroiters still know how to riot.

Big Game Week was really a good try by everyone. As if to compensate for our football team's impotence against Cal, people started mutilating defenseless teddy bears and carrying them around. The Daily said they were supposedly hanging in nooses all over campus but I didn't see any. Maybe because I'm not hanging around freshman dorms so much. Maybe I should be a sketchier grad student.

Speaking of nice tries, in my capacity as Viennese Ball performer I was hoping to introduce scores of Mirrielees people to swing dance. But they were hoping to stay in their rooms. We got five people, all of them experienced with swing. And no guys. So...we taught role reversal. It was still fun, but not quite the alluring "hey, maybe I'll go to Viennese and do more of this swing dance stuff..." I was hoping for...

Aaaaaaaa! Milestones Tuesday! Back to Gates I go... under 30 mph winds no less... Methinks no biking for me... (Update: OK, so maybe it wasn't so windy after all. But it sounded apocalyptic when my little weather applet popped up an ominous-looking Wind Advisory...)

past the midterm gauntlet

to the tune of: Nara by E.S. Posthumus

It's funny how bronchitis works. Monday morning I felt like crap and so made a doctor's appointment. All day Monday during work it was kinda hiding: I wasn't coughing at all. But then I got to Vaden, talked normally to the receptionist and the nurse. The minute the doctor walked in though, I sounded pathetic, as if on cue my body realized, Hey, she's the one who can give us antibiotics! Let's put on a good show now... But 5-day Zithromax...now that takes me back to my high school days...

We got Viennese partners this week; I have a great waltz partner who's fun to dance with. Alas, I'm an alternate for the polka. But I'd rather do the waltz--it'll be so melodramatic.

The cs229 midterm was a good old-fashioned ass-whoopin' for everyone. Before the test, Professor Ng tried to pass the blame off to his girlfriend: he told us before the exam that he asked her how hard he should make the test, and she told him she thought we'd be insulted if our exam was too easy. But we shouldn't trust her because she's not a college professor. And, Dave says, because she's dating Andrew Ng.

This was a week of comfort food. Monday night I made a traditional New England (vegetable) chowder; Wednesday Dave made pork stew. And for the piece de resistance, after our painful midterm I introduced everyone to the great Northern tradition of hot cider and donuts. (Aside: Fresh cider is not easy to find around here...we had to go to three different Safeways. Egg nog, on the other hand, is already well stocked.)

Ragtime Ball was uber crowded, but plenty of fun. There's something great about hustling to a big band playing "I Will Survive". Apparently all the social dance groups have now turned into hip hop dance groups. Including Swingtime, whose "Hey Ya!" Dave was defending as a West Coast swing up until last night...

From Christine's blog: check this out. Now ask yourself, could the money used to make Britney Spears' Toxic been better spent?

sunrise, sunset

to the tune of: The Uruk-Hai by Howard Shore

Best sobriety test effver.
Why am I not surprised?

I just ran into Dave. No, I mean really ran into Dave. I was cautiously biking around the sidewalk in front of Stern cause this girl was walking along minding her own business. All of a sudden this guy comes barreling around the corner like he was late for something (rehearsal). They say your reaction time goes down with you're drunk--maybe it goes down when you're sleep deprived too. Because all I could do is saw, "whoa!" as if the driver of my bike could slam on the brakes or something. Only problem was this girl was there so I couldn't really plow into her. So, being the noble gentlemen that we were, we ran straight into each other in my first ever bike collision. It was exciting. Then I realized it was Dave and we chatted for a while. Good times on bikes.

On Tuesday Kat and I came out of class and saw the makings of a beautiful sunset. We decided we needed a higher vantage point, so we headed back to Blackwelder and caught these ïmpressive shots. And my camera is still on Daylight Savings Time it seems.

It's been an insane week, culminating in me getting the plague. Or a cold. I'm not sure which. But I haven't been sleeping much. Like maybe two hours a night for a couple of nights. So I figured I'd sleep in today. My body just said, "Screw you and your sleep!" and I woke up seven hours later. So much for that I guess...

Beer battered turkey: better than it sounds.

But a new week brings Ragtime Ball! and the Game!

the bewitching is upon us

to the tune of: Show Me The River by EastMountainSouth

Yes, this counter keeps flip-flopping more than either candidate (Kerry was winning on Thursday, Bush on Wednesday). But if you're one of those compulsive types that wants to predict the unpredictable, this is great. Note that tis doesn't take into account new voter registration, absentee ballots, or the ensuing court challenges and recounts.) Perhaps most disturbing is the claim that Michigan now favors Bush by 2%. I really wish I could vote absentee there... My grandpa says he's voting for Bush because--I kid you not--"you don't wanna change horses in midstream". Now he never saw Wag the Dog, and I'm betting he wasn't around for the Lincoln campaign (which actually coined the slogan). The scary thing is those are his words.

Most random thing cooked in the Zone kitchen to date: jeans. Sunday we boiled Kathy's jeans. Why, you ask? To get them to shrink (of course). Which was only semi-successful. But helped inaugurate our new giant and non-flaky pots.

To those who claim the leaves never change color in California: check out these pics. I think I missed peak time by a few days or so. But I bet the leaves are already gone in Michigan. Oh, and by the way, it's still in the 60s and sunny while it looks like this (ok, well today at least).

What did I do Wednesday night? Nope, didn't watch the World Series. Didn't go to Mono on the Quad. No, I stayed in to work on a problem set... but I did catch the end of the eclipse, which I assure you was cooler in person.

My Stanford career is now complete: I saw Zimbardo talk about his Stanford Prison Experiment. Oh, and Abu Ghraib, and the politics of fear. But mostly about his experiment.

Today's happiness: Waltz lifts! With women who know what they're doing they look almost acrobatic. Oh, and cherry crepes. So now I'm full of sugar and have been hopping around since 9 am. Time to go to work...

clips to procrastinate by

A trio, if you will:

First, a look at how easy touch screen voting is.
Then, what campaign ads might look like if they were on TV at 2 am...

And finally, every pop star's worst nightmare. Listen carefully to the audio and compare it to what you see...

glug glug

to the tune of: Opening Polka (5% slower) by Viennese Ball 2005

And thus ends the Week of Suck. Over the past three days I've averaged three hours of sleep a night. Yet the freaky thing is my body seems to have adapted to the sleep dep: I didn't yawn once during rehearsal this morning. And I learned Viennese redowa, a really fun way to wake up in my opinion; it made it all worth it.

How I'm supposed to do two research projects on top of this I don't know. But it seemed oddly fitting that right there waiting for me where I turned in problem set 1 (picture a 12-page paper, mostly in Greek) two days late were a stack of pset 2s.

Wal-Mart is a vicious place. The aisles were maddeningly congested as usual today with people ogling the Halloween displays they insist on putting in the narrow passageways so we thought we'd be part of the solution instead of the problem and park the cart somewhere out of the way. But someone stole our cart while we weren't looking. Which is pretty common, since all carts look alike and any cart will do. But ours had stuff in it. So someone reached in and stacked several armloads of our stuff on the floor and took our cart. Which was probably easier than fighting through the crowd to get a cart. But still...

Mmm...homemade chocolate chip milkshake... Ahh, it's nice to have a working blender.

Alumni everywhere! The campus has once again sprouted impressively elaborate tents everywhere. They've really taken over. Like they own the place or something. OK, well maybe some of them kinda did donate good chunks of it.

Hmm. I probably shouldn't be blogging right now, should I? Maybe I should be sleeping.

joyful joyful

to the tune of: If Moon was Cookie by Sesame Street

A string of joys this autumn week, both large and small:

I got into Opening! I must say, I was definitely surprised; there were a lot of really talented follows that didn't get in. But it was easier for the guys and so here I am. Auditions included a sadistic "smooth polka" to Cotton Eye Joe, which is anything but Viennese. But it's been fun, despite the 9 AM Saturday rehearsals. Last night the Committee (funny how unglamorous that name sounds) packed Max's and then stormed Jammix.

Jammix itself was tons o' fun, albeit swarming with awkward Social Iers. This made the cross-step mixer one of the more harrowing. But watching people who'd been dancing for three weeks enjoying themselves made it worth it. So I was planning to leave halfway through, but that didn't exactly happen...

After three weeks of harrassing five different departments at AT&T Wireless, I finally got a new phone. For free! One that works quite well and has lots of toy gadget features to play with (infra-red anyone?) But apparently AT&T wanted to be sure they got it right, so they sent me two (identical) phones, just in case. I wonder how long it will take them to notice, though I have the sinking suspicion I'll find a $160 charge on my next bill... Had I not just sweet-talked them into giving me 100 extra free minutes and a free phone I would feel no remorse at all about pawning it off on su.market. I've already determined that this phone has no non-obnoxious ring tones though, which will be OK as soon as I figure out how to make my own ringtones....

Speaking of free, I scored six free meals out of engineering-related organizations this week. Mmm...free...

Having a professor come out of a meeting in his office to flag you down as you're walking by is a cool feeling. Having two professors actually seem excited about the research you're doing with them is even cooler. Now getting them to agree? still working on that one...

Talking to people who live where it's raining and 44 degrees makes you appreciate the beauty and subtlety of our autumn. Rather than having the trees all conspire to drop their leaves the same weekend, the leaves are turning slowly and just starting to fall. And rather than being cold and rainy, it's still been pleasantly sunny.

what the deuce is that sound?

to the tune of: DNA Bourrées by Hillbillies From Mars

So after getting up at 8 am (aren't all you real-worlders proud of me?) I was heading to the shower when this bizarre loud screeching began shaking the walls, as if aliens were invading Guy's room. In the morning haze it took me a full 30 seconds to realize this was in fact the new Bjork CD.

It occurred to me that it perhaps it was fair, since we were all kinda loud last night while Guy's door was closed, so maybe we were keeping him up. But once the logical part of my brain started working again I realized that wasn't like Guy at all. Of course, I was in the shower so there wasn't much I could do about it. But as I got out I realized: not even he could stand listening to Bjork that loud for that long.

Now fully awake, I went in to Guy's room to find it empty, and that he had left his stereo alarm set. For 8:30. Apparently with the volume cranked up all the way. Maybe he was really jammin' to Bjork at full blast while no one was home.

But that CD still seems unsettling and eerie even in the middle of the day...

another bizarre dream

which I must record lest I forget...

This random female Stanford law student I didn't know is e-mailing me, saying she's from Michigan too and wants to meet. I think this is really cool. This part of the dream actually came first, so I was impressed that my mind managed to pick up the thread again.

For some reason I had realized my true lifelong dream and become a car salesman in Michigan. I got an e-mail from a woman I was supposed to go do a test drive for, which meant driving to Sterling Heights to get to the car lot. For some reason I didn't get directions beforehand, and ended up going in the opposite direction and end up driving around downtown Plymouth. Naturally I don't realize this until I see Robin jogging along the street who somehow now knew her way around Detroit and told me how to get back on the highway to get there. I'm trying to call this woman to apologize for being what'll be an hour late but not getting any response...

In the meantime, one of my friends is apologizing to two of my other dance novice friends for beign critical of their dancing.

Now one of my female friends is coming forward to admit writing the e-mail from the "law student" and apologizing profusely. I just feel really bad for her and find myself hugging her. And then just when I was about to find out why, my phone rang and I woke up.

I was impressed. A dream with subplots. And a theme. Perhaps I should be more disturbed but I think this is cool... If you can guess who these people are or relate these subplots to my real life (in private) you get a cookie.

America has sunken to a sad state when morning DJs are making jokes about nuking North Korea as if it's the funniest thing ever...

Note the time of this entry. Stupid 9 am meeting...

campaign tip

to the tune of: Light Up My Room by Barenaked Ladies

If you're going to cite a Website and ask people to go there, you might want to look at that webpage first.

Dick Cheney said this during last night's VP debate:

Well, the reason they keep mentioning Halliburton is because they're trying to throw up a smokescreen. They know that if you go, for example, to factcheck.com (sic), an independent Web site sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania, you can get the specific details with respect to Halliburton.

Just for kicks, take his suggestion and go to factcheck.com. Somehow not quite what Cheney envisioned.

What he meant to say, probably, was factcheck.org, an independent analysis site run by the Annenberg Foundation. Only trouble is, they're not exactly backing him up either:

Cheney got our domain name wrong -- calling us "FactCheck.com" -- and wrongly implied that we had rebutted allegations Edwards was making about what Cheney had done as chief executive officer of Halliburton.

In fact, we did post an article pointing out that Cheney hasn't profited personally while in office from Halliburton's Iraq contracts, as falsely implied by a Kerry TV ad. But Edwards was talking about Cheney's responsibility for earlier Halliburton troubles. And in fact, Edwards was mostly right.

Oops...now if he had only created the Internet, maybe he wouldn't have this problem.

Ahh, Japan. Apparently it's customary for women to flush the toilet several times while they're using it to cover up any audible evidence that they're actually using it. So the solution, in true Japanese fashion, is to invent an electronic gadget to play flushing sounds. This Oto-Hime (Sound Princess) isn't exactly news (since it's been out for 16 years) but I guess it was a slow news day in Japan...

oh for old time's sake

to the tune of: Running Away by Hoobastank

Last time I posted this was over a year ago. But if a ten-question Web quiz is an accurate judge of personality, I haven't changed a bit...

Which Naruto Character are You?
quiz by orangeday.net

And if you thought dating was bad at Stanford, check out what it's driven women to in Japan: the new Boyfriend's Arm Pillow. I'm not sure what the most disturbing part of this story is:

• That it comes with a shirt-shaped pillow cover
  
• That there are other versions, more muscular or skinnier, to simulate the ideal boyfriend's arm
  
• That the company is considering a version for men, to be shaped like a woman's lap, complete with a "skirt" cover
  

Friday Night Waltz was soo much fun; it'd been a long time since I'd waltzed. And I followed rotary and lindy with varying degrees of success. I'm going to have to absorb following through osmosis it seems, since enough leads wussed out of Social Dance 2 that I've been flip-flopping lead and follow from day to day. But by far the coolest dance: Richard Powers' Harry Potter Waltz.

Incidentally I had a weird dream last night that a good friend showed up at the end of FNW for the first time in months, much to everyone's surprise. Everyone was thrilled to see her. And it surprised me for some reason that everyone else was surprised. But...that's all I remember. It was the kind of fleeting dream that made me question my recollection of events in the haze of the next morning, as if the dream were so realistic it might have been a memory. Freaky...

Today's discovery: Cheddar pasta shells with hazelnut. Not intentionally mind you. But as the shells were cooling in the sink I had a genuine got milk? moment, and hazelnut creamer was the closest thing we had. All I can say is, don't knock it till you've tried it. It was a little sweet, but surprisingly good.

aki ni nattara tsukimi

to the tune of: Forget December by Something Corporate

The first week of the quarter isn't even half over and it's already looking...intense. Observe:

Sunday: My first office hours, during which I sat around outside for half the time and everyone conspired to show up in the last half hour. But... I got to go see Rent with the SCTI people. It was a fun show, even if it wasn't quite Andrew Lloyd Webber or Rogers & Hammerstein. Maybe I'm a traditionalist. But the rock music allowed for some powerful vocals. Plus there was plenty of random fun: perhaps inspired by The Vagina Monologues, at one point an actress implored the audience to moo loudly...

Monday: Such a loong day. Left my lunch at home, but fortunately Dave was going into Gates later that day and could bring it by my office. I had planned (and announced) not to have office hours from 12-1 so I could regroup (as much as one can regroup by himself), and...eat. But my officemate still had office hours through the hour, so he left the door open. Naturally someone was still talking to me at noon, which meant someone else came in after him, and someone else came after her and saw me still talking, and so on until it was 12:50 before people left me alone for a lunch break.

Which was nice, except I had no lunch, since Dave neglected to bring it in. Can't fault the man too much, seeing as how I made the same mistake that morning. But I was still expecting him to bring it at 1 so I didn't rush out to buy any food. Which, it turned out, was a mistake, since I didn't have a free minute again till 2:45 to duck out and grab lunch.

Office hours finally ended and I finally got out of Gates at 5, to go back and get ready for my RCC housecalls. There was a burrito dinner in The Hood (so named because <sarcasm>our apartment is clearly in the most ghetto part of Stanford housing</sarcasm>). Of course, grad students are drawn to free food like flies to a bug zapper, only without the subsequent bzzt!, so a bunch of them crashed our party and rendered my burrito meatless.

No matter, since I had three hours of inoculation ahead of me in housecalls. I had one apartment where I was fluttering between three rooms of residents who never heeded our warnings to update their computers. But... I came home and busted out the 6-lb box of cookie dough for some warm chocolate chip cookies. Mmmm...cookies... so all was good.

Tuesday: Straggled into cs229 with the rest of my apartment, and didn't notice a magnitude 6.0 earthquake in the middle of class. cs376 handed out a 1 1/2" thick binder as a course reader. And actually checks that you did the reading. By 1 o'clock I've committed myself to two research projects already. Not a good sign...

Went on a (course) shopping spree all day long, with a short break to go fight with the registrar about my grad status so I could get my tuition covered. It was sad: I was told I had to make an appointment with the Great and Wonderful Czar of Graduate Status, but as we looked at her schedule and mine couldn't find a time we could meet within the next two weeks.

With this Full Moon not being on the Quad, this left the evening for the observance of the Japanese tsukimi (moon viewing) at Christine's place. We didn't exactly view the moon, but I saw it on the way out and, hey, it looked cool. Cooler than this picture shows...

zesty!

to the tune of: Panini Puakea by Israel Kamakawiwo'ole

Yes, zesty is now apparently being used to describe Stanford:

Stanford gets mountains of applications from students competing to benefit from its unique blend of "world class" academics, "zesty spirit," "laid-back lifestyle," and "beautiful weather."

--Princeton Review

I can't help but be proud. I'd like to be able to say I'm responsible. But I probably can't take credit. People are just realizing what an incredibly versatile word zest is. And moreover, a fun word. One I should really use more often.

Oh crap, classes start tomorrow. I should probably pick some classes, eh? (Note: Threats will not move me to change my course list.)

stood up?!

to the tune of: Oboe Concerto in D minor - Adagio by Alessandro Marcello

Exhibit A: An angry e-mail from a resident:

So I am a little crushed right now--I waited around the place for the last hour or so and you never showed--I feel like I was just stood up by my RCC just now.

What a bastard, you're probably thinking. My poor resident was just pacing around waiting for her Internet access and I callously didn't show up. But I did--and I can cite witnesses Candace and Salome, whom I had to abandon and delay visiting, respectively, so I could go look up her phone number and call her (to find it was disconnected), traipse to her building, knock on a door, and find no one home.

Turns out she also listed the wrong apartment in her Rescomp connect request. Perhaps the Rains Renumbering Squad has struck again, but I'm not sure what possessed her to type in the wrong apartment number. I may just have to resign myself to knocking on every door in a building each time I make a housecall. Nope, this was her fault.

But whatever, I ended up dragging Salome and Candace back to the Zone, introducing Salome to Naruto and having Candace proceed to kick royal Halo butt. Hasn't played Halo in a year my foot! Oh, and I scored a forbidden snapshot of Salome, thanks to my stealthy camera phone. Muaahahaaa...

Lots of introductions this weekend: Ben, Guy, Kathy, and Kelsey to the grand game of euchre; Guy to Spoons; Yune to gyoza with beer, and Scrabble. Good times all around. Seeing Jason's lavishly furnished apartment makes me think the Real World may not be so bad after all. How does he sleep at night, working for the Evil Empire, which he doesn't even trust? On quite a comfy bed, I can say.

Courtesy of Kathy: Jon Stewart dukes it out with Bill O'Reilly. Beware of any talk show host who boasts of a "no spin zone"--every host has their own biases. Observe this snippet:

STEWART: Do you really believe France is, in any way, worthy of a boycott?
O'REILLY: I do. I think France has really hurt the USA, to be...
STEWART: Really?
O'REILLY: Yes, I do.
STEWART: More than like Saudi Arabia? You would advocate a boycott...
O'REILLY: No, I'm not going to say more than Saudi Arabia. But I'm saying we do a lot...
STEWART: So why not boycott them?
O'REILLY: France is supposed to be our friend. Saudi Arabia is...
STEWART: Since when? Since the revolution they haven't been our friend.
O'REILLY: [changes the subject]

Really what Bill wanted to do is moan about how John Kerry went on The Daily Show (and later Letterman) but not The O'Reilly Factor. Tricky bastard, thinking more potential Kerry voters would watch Stewart and Letterman than Fox News...

Is it really that uncultured to not like opera? Or to split infinitives? Just for that, I'm going to play an oboe concerto right now...

mmm...fudge

to the tune of: As I Lay Me Down by Sophie B. Hawkins

Curiously, the pound and a half of fudge I brought back from Mackinac Island has survived now five days with four guys and a handful of visitors eating it, not to mention 92-degree heat. This seems to defeat the immutable Law of Junk Food:

The more sugar food contains, the faster it disappears.

However, this makes sense if we examine the First Law of The RWFZ Kitchen:

The more work required to eat a food item, the less likely it is to be consumed as a snack.
Corollary: Anything requiring cutting is more work than a bag of tortilla chips.

This may explain why we finally noticed the watermelon that has been sitting in our kitchen for the past month and gone completely untouched over several hot weeks of summer that would, one would think, call for a watermelon.

if you seek a pleasant peninsula...

...look about you. --State Motto
Yes, I'm back in Michigan for the week.

When I checked in for my 8:20 AM Wednesday flight, I knew somehow I wouldn't be sleeping Tuesday night. Tuesday night none of us really felt like dancing in the 80-degree heat. So after the lesson, we trekked back to the Zone for pizza, ice cream and...more Buffy. Naturally the night ended up with Brad, Kat, Laura and me staying up till the sunrise (again).

I was thinking I would sleep on the plane. But the demon kids in front of me thought differently. These twins were cute little 5-year-old girls. But they were evil. When seatbelts prevented them from conspiring (loudly) between rows (thankfully they weren't sitting together), the one in front got her jollies by slamming herself against the back of the chair in front of me, which she proceeded to do off and on for the entire flight. Somehow I managed to fall asleep anyway, and awoke to find she had knocked apple juice onto my brand new messenger bag. Ah well. It was inevitable I suppose. Just as we were landing and we all had hope of getting off the plane, they detained us on the runway, as is the custom in Detroit, while this girl started doing situps into the back of her chair. After ten, she grinned at her mom, proudly declaring she had just counted to ten. Her mom looked down and said, "Good job. Why don't you count to a hundred?"

well, i tried

I made the offer. But it was rejected. My body apparently now refuses to get more than 7 hours of sleep a night. This is both exciting and disturbing at the same time. For in the summer, the perennial season of sloth, I would have no reason not to be sleeping a ton, right? Well...

Friday night was a delightful Friday Night Waltz. It started with my first foray into dance classes as a follow. Role reversal is an uphill battle for guys it seems. Most of the guys I danced with looked at me as if I were going to give them cooties. (Gay cooties, of course, since most dancers had long since gotten over cooties from the opposite sex.) But it still had its moments, like when Joan Walton saw Laura leading and me following and rushed over to correct us and we got to correct her instead. (Disclaimer: Joan's a sweet lady, and we all love her. Kat especially.)

Rose, Kat, and I invented some sort of salsa threesome in a corner that ended up being a cross between samba and limbo. I had a lovely "American" waltz with Kathleen (also known as Corset Lady), singing Joseph's "Close Every Door" to the music. Laura was willing to brave a 205 bpm waltz with me, and Louisa endured a dizzying zweifacher.

As is often tradition after five hours of sweaty, un-air-conditioned dancing, we ran to Safeway to procure ice cream and bring it back to the Zone. We were all prepared to bid each other good night and go to bed at a respectable hour when Kat and Laura announced they were going to go break into the psych building to watch The Princess Bride. Now you can't just let two lovely ladies risk life and limb in the surely haunted psych building to watch a movie when you have a perfectly good 25" TV in the living room--and comfy couches. So Rose fled in disgust, Guy went to bed wondering what sort of crack was in the ice cream, and Ben, Laura, Kat and I watched the movie.

Somehow it got to 6 AM. The sun was about to come up. We decided, if we were up, we might as well take advantage of it. So we set out sights on the Blackwelder high-rise in EV. Alas, the door was locked, but sure enough, some crazy grad student would soon come come out to go for an early Saturday morning jog, so we made it in and went up to the twelfth floor...and then the roof. It was definitely breathtaking, the early-morning light falling on the campus while its sane inhabitants remained in peaceful slumber.

Kinda makes me want to go to bed now...

fear me

to the tune of: Centerfold by The J. Geils Band

for I now have ultimate power: the power to bestow Internet access. And, presumably, to take it away. Yes, I am now officially an RCC. With a key and everything. I opened the central Rains networking closet today and got this bizarre rush. If I get punchy I suppose I can arbitrarily turn off people's power and cable TV too.

This also gives me my ninth Stanford e-mail address (and my fifth lifelong address). I'm not quite sure what I need nine e-mail addresses for but dammit I have them.

Speaking of Rescomp, victory has been snatched from the jaws of defeat: we no longer have to move to the other side of Rains. It started with an innocent enough conversation with this RCC I didn't recognize. [The button just came off my shirt. Sad. I like all kinds of buttons, even the kind on shirts.] She introduced herself, then informed me I was her RCC. [New Utada (not Hikaru)lyrics: "You're easy breezy, and I'm Japaneezy!" A new low, but this I gotta see...from a former Columbia student no less...] Oh, where was I? Right. This was suspicious because this meant she'd be walking across Rains for her residents, something I proposed months ago and was told was verboten. Yeah, we got that changed. I guess it wasn't that entertaining a story. But the random subplots kinda liven it up a bit I suppose.

[OK, this new Utada video is really weird I gotta say. It's Utada strutting around a California pool and hitting on white guys. And really Engrish lyrics. IM me if you want to see it. All I gotta say is it's going to make a lot of men with Asian fetishes very happy.]

So the upshot of this is now we can finally start decorating the apartment. Suggestions anyone? I'm thinking my Procrastination poster goes right above the Pyramid o' Procrastination.

This week:

• Learned to west-coast swing, which wasn't as hard as I thought. Still may be a victim of sexual discrimination if I go next week and they insist on charging men 50% more. (Is that legal?)
  
• Got sucked into another TV series. Enough people talk wistfully about the last Buffy episode (mostly women, curiously) that I had to see what the fuss was about. Thankfully she's not the blond bimbo from the original movie.
  
• Somehow got talked into seeing Vanity Fair. Really its only saving grace is that stuffy British people are sometimes good for a laugh...though usually not at what are supposed to be comic moments in the film.
  
• Formulated a Unified Theory of Hustle Club Music. At last, the methods by which the hustle club picks its particular subset of music are revealed:
  
  • Club two-step music is sappy. (Enrique Iglesias, "Hero")
    
  • West Coast swing music is skanky. (Justin Timberlake, That Song from The Super Bowl Wardrobe Malfunction)
    
  
  
• Yes, it's true. This new West Coast swing fascination has led me to download Britney Spears' "Toxic" and Christina Aguilera's "Come on Over". In the interests of dance, of course. I still feel dirty somehow.
  

Random coolness of the day: AudioScrobbler. You download a plugin for your favorite player and it keeps track of what kind of music you like, then makes amazon-style recommendations based on what other people like you seem to listen to. For some reason it thinks I'd really enjoy listening to such classics as "Happy Birthday" and "Old MacDonald". But some of its predictions are pretty reasonable.

I propose an experiment: All of you join AudioScrobbler and let's see who's my nearest musical "neighbor" (with similar tastes). I've been throwing them off by listening to the 600 or so dance songs I just downloaded, not to mention Ben's and Dave's stashes I liberated.

surpri-er, whatever

to the tune of: Night and Day by The Real Group

It was doomed from the start. From before it began, some would say. But alas, despite the best efforts we could muster, we just had really bad luck surprising Dave for his birthday. Ingredients for poor planning: uncertainty about where we were going to be living come the weekend, a CURIS poster session keeping us at Gates till late hours, and RCC training keeping me away from the phone and AIM most of the day.

The plan in the end was simple. Dave's friends would head to Fu Lam Man on the Castro (Kat's suggestion) and wait for us there. Aria, Ben, and I would take Dave out to dinner. We'd just happen to pick the same restaurant. Hilarity would ensue.

People were late in showing up so we gathered them at Willis Lounge. I went out to "get the mail" and usher them off to their cars in the parking lot. What I didn't know was that Aria had brought Dave outside, where he could plainly see a crowd of people behind me sneaking off to the side of the building. This was warning sign number 1.

As we headed off to Mountain View, my cell phone, which normally rings once or twice a day, was going off every few minutes. Apparently this place was not that easy to find. Of course, Dave was sitting in the car so I couldn't well direct people to our destination. The best I could manage was vague codespeak about results averaging "around 240, maybe even up to 260" and a conversation about finding a paper on my desk that convinced Cheng I was drunk. Amazingly, the more these calls persisted the more Dave started to believe my lab partner was really working on a Friday night.

Finally, as we're walking down Castro looking for the restaurant, Robin pulls up next to us and honks her horn. Covert was clearly not the word of the day. But we finally had a nice dinner with the birthday dude, which he seemed to appreciate.

We took him to see Hero, quite possibly the most artistic piece of Communist propaganda I'd ever seen. It really showed just what a Western lens we view film through. Things like character development, motivation, realism...we feel gypped out of our $10 when an American movie fails to deliver on them. Yet that wasn't at all what this movie was about. This was one of the rare films you feel like the director was using the screen as a canvas, on which to express artwork that has its own true intrinsic beauty, apart from any real meaning. Of course, it's not hard to apply meaning to the work--about how it subjugates the individual for society, how it glorifies China, whatever. But to get bogged down in that, or in the unlikabilty of the characters, really misses the aesthetic beauty of the film.

Wow, I should have been a fuzzie.

time for a new stylesheet

So after seeing Yune's lovely facelift I must admit to a bit of stylesheet envy. No, inspiration...that's the word. And then when Blogger started plopping its bar right across the top of my masthead (which, admittedly, is nicer than the big banner ads) I had no choice. Necessity is the mother of--oh whatever.

I call this iteration 0, the ripped-off-of-Blogger version. It's a work in progress but what do you think so far?

I'm also trying to decide whether to keep the pop-up comments or switch to the Movable Type style you can see here or here. Which do you people prefer?

what? sleep?

to the tune of: Austin by Blake Shelton

Over the past week, I:

• Saw Paul Wolfowitz as I was eating lunch outside. I was kinda disappointed that he wasn't wildly gesticulating and loudly talking about plans to invade any other countries. Rumor has it his son's living at XOX, in a curious twist of irony.
  
• Walked into the lab to find an NBC reporter interviewing my lab partner. Apparently they ran a story on how even after the Google IPO, yes, the Stanford AI lab is still doing research, as if Google were the end of good ideas to come out of Stanford. Yes, random stock footage of people in front of computers and the Segbot rolling down the street will make sure that secret never gets out.
  
• Took a scenic but unplanned tour of downtown Fremont, trying to find Erin's place.
  
• Discovered Roble Parlor is too small for real traveling dance.
  
• Stayed up all night with dancers and went to iHop for breakfast. My lifelong dream of having a banana split (pancake) for breakfast has been fulfilled. Alas, I fail to see what's so international about IHOP.
  
• Staged what may be the final barbecue at the Rains Work-Free Zone, before Rains may or may not make us move this weekend.
  

<rant>
Currently on my hitlist:

• Rains office: For being extremely coy about where and when we are moving, even inventing imaginary e-mails to justify their shiftiness. And why must we move? Because of...
  
• Rescomp: For ignoring my month-old e-mail about how I have to miss RCC training and assuming I have nothing better to do with my summer but hear about why Stanford students shouldn't download porn.
  
• Northwest Airlines: For not letting us change a credit card-frequent flier mile-purchased plane reservation made by my dad when he could no longer stand waiting for me to confirm at 5 AM. (I was kind of asleep at the time. I wake up to see messages at 4:30, 5:30, and 7:30.) The flight leaves at 8:30 AM...which, despite being the beginning of the day for most denizens of The Real World, is rather difficult to make it to on mass transit, since the Marguerite doesn't start running till 6:30. This calls for the unthinkable. Does anyone have any airline shuttle recommendations?
  
• NBC 11, for not broadcasting strong enough to be picked up without cable. Besides the Olympics, this means I didn't get to see my five seconds of glory. Oh well.
  

</rant>

sheet, i haven't been to work since Wednesday...

to the tune of: The Dangling Conversation by Simon and Garfunkel

not that I haven't been working, mind you. But the beauty of remote login is that I've been telecommuting the last couple days of the week. It's so nice sitting on the couch instead of listening to hacksaws and drills all day... but it can't last forever I guess. Alas...

Friday night was supposed to be karaoke in Kathy's honor. But after a surprise hospital visit, it turned into Coldstone in Kathy's honor instead. All's well that ends well, really. But trying to coordinate three cars of people I felt like...yes, like the director of a counter-terrorism unit in 24. Oh I've been watching too much of that show.

Saturday night we trekked all the way off to Oakland to Gaskell's Ball, an evening of "semi-formal" dance at someplace called the Scottish Rite Temple. There's something creepy about going to someplace calling itself a temple outside a religious context. It's quite an imposing building, and walking inside you get the sense that exclusive secret societies meet there. Like Skull and Bones. Or the Stonecutters.

As if to continue freaking me out, the Ball opened with everyone singing "Rule on, Britannia". I kept waiting for the giant British flag to drop down from the rafters, but instead, we all proceeded to march around in this pretentious British march. Which was fun but long. All in all it was a fine evening, with many polkas and schottisches, and a bunch of pompous set mixers. My favorite was the gallop, which was essentially bumper car galloping. So much fun...

The costumes were great too: there were men in top hats and officer's regalia (even a Royal Mountie), and women in period dresses. Hoop dresses remain a pet peeve because the women who wear them require about a meter of turning radius on the floor, and really careful stepping should you be dancing with one.

Today we went to the beach. Nick is holding photos hostage. Peer pressure will get him to send them.

Should I do an honor's thesis? The 23 units of honors-related incompletes in our apartment are perhaps a warning sign.

please continue to hold

to the tune of: Forbidden Forest by George Winston

Let me just say that the rumors about outsourced Indian tech support are true. I spent an hour on the phone with a certain wireless networking company trying to secure our new access point. The poor woman was clearly just reading off a script, and wanted to give up early and have me bring the thing back to Fry's. (Which I didn't want to do again...let's just say we were lucky the guy there was a big Naruto fan.) But whatever, we have wireless. And the angels rejoiced.

By popular (or maybe just imagined) demand, the photos of The Game and recent birthdays are online...

Tuesday I made it all the way to Redwood City on public transit to get to Swing Central, venturing to the nearby VTA stop in the mythical land of Off-Campus. The College Avenue neighborhood is a quiet little area. But instead of seeing college students sitting outside drinking, as you walk down these tree-lined streets you see a middle-aged man weeding in white khakis clearly not meant for gardening, a smiling father walking a dog as his children mow the lawn and tend the flowers, a pair of older (but not quite "elderly") women power-walking down the street. It resembles the tree-lined streets just off campus in Ann Arbor, but the houses are nicer. They're impressive yet still diminutive.

No, I'm not watching the Perseids tonight, because I have to get up for work in the morning. Ah well.

beyond tired

to the tune of: Endless Column by Blue Man Group

It's funny how after staying up for 24 straight hours you really don't care about sleep. Of course, had you cared that much to begin with you'd have trotted straight off to bed before your transport turned into a pumpkin.

Yes, we just got back from The Game, that beloved Stanford tradition of all-night clue-cracking road rallying madness. Despite the fact that this Game's clues were a bit amateurish in design, we still had fun. I discovered some lesser-frequented but still famous landmarks like the South San Francisco hillside sign and the ridiculously large bust of Junipero Serra. There's something oddly fun about traipsing across hilly brush or climbing around rocky crags by the shore in darkness and fog. Other highlights:

Aria and Guy having a random stranger urinating on a trash can threaten to "smash their fa****y a**es"

Nearly rear-ending a car that had parked on the side of a windy hill in pitch blackness and thick fog for the romantic effect of a completely obscured makeout spot

Discovering that Chinese "chicken flavored biscuits", like many "chicken-flavored" foods, are to be avoided

Freaking out the bored Pixar security guard at 4 AM

When it came time for the penultimate clue, we realized that none of us knew where exactly El Palo Alto, the literal "big stick" was. We knew the general area and so we figured that Palo Altans who lived within walking distance of it should at least know where their town's famous namesake tree is. But no, we asked three separate women where it was and got these responses:

Woman 1: Hmm, I don't know, I just moved here. I think it's over there [points in opposite direction of El Palo Alto[

Woman 2: Well, it's not really a park. You sure you want to go there?

Woman 3: You don't know where it is?

Maybe we just looked like rowdy hooligans ready to burn down The Big Stick...

As much as my mind doesn't want to admit it, it may be time for a nap before I collapse.

what? update?

to the tune of: The Flight of the Bumble Bee: Rimsky-Korsakov, arr. Rachmaninov by Sergei Rachmaninoff

The week's discoveries:

Eight hours of sitting on one's arse can be incredibly tiring. Tuesday night I was planning to go to Swing Central but ended up collapsing for a "short nap" that ended up taking an hour and a half. Oh how many times Safeway's 24-hourness has saved my butt... letting us get stuff for Kelsey's birthday party.

Keg + refrigerator = keggerator. Yes, I saw this product of Stanford engineering grad students ingenuity at a party elsewhere in Rains: a big fridge that looked perfectly ordinary, save for the tap sticking out the side.

Leads dancing hustle are great "big pillars of testosterone". This came after this great conversation between the hustle instructor and one of the dancers:

Instructor: Look at that picture up there. [everyone looks at the picture] The lady is the picture. The man is the frame.
Kat: Wait, where's the lady? [the painting contains no women]
Instructor: You're missing the point.

A big complex menu can serve as a diversion for a sneak attack visible in broad daylight through big floor-to-ceiling windows, like those in the Beckman cafe where we still somehow managed to surprise Kelsey for her birthday.

Every woman Dave knows "is a potential mate". Whether they know it or not. Whether they want to be considered a potential mate or not. Dave is apparently also the self-proclaimed least gay man alive.

Playing Mafia with three loud opinionated people is going to give you a headache and take a loooong time.

In the Rains laundry room, if you have no quarters, no one can hear you curse. I had never come to appreciate working change machines or my flatmates' stashes of quarters until today.

There is such a thing as cream sherry, apparently. And it makes some fine shrimp pasta sauce.

events happen in real time

to the tune of: Nice Work If You Can Get It by Ella Fitzgerald

One of the nice things about being trained in the art of sleep deprivation, better known by its euphemism computer science, is that you can do things like stay up till 5 AM watching 24 without even blinking. Need I say that Aria and Guy, both non-CS majors, were the first to crack and want to go to bed. And we were just four short hours away from finishing the first season...

I'm finally starting to get over the intimidation factor of the hustle club. I may not be picking up any women there like certain other men but at least I'm not petrified to dance with non-Stanford people. I'm probably still boring follows out of their minds recycling the same few variations over and over again, but it's still so much fun (for me at least).

Friday night was a scary sight indeed: CS geeks outside, under the sun, getting exercise. Yes, Friday Ultimate is a department tradition, and if you happen by the Oval you can see the hardcore grad students playing. Aria and I lasted a scant half an hour before getting completely exhausted (and hungry).

Saturday Guy, Rose, and I went to Macy's for a clearance sale. I felt so dirty. Shopping. At Macy's. Shopping is evil, but Macy's doubly so. The men's store assaults you with overpriced designer clothes; the women's with way too much pink. The $60,000 of plasma screens lined up to show the same psychedlic screen saver in the entrance just screams bargains ahead. But just for us cheap young folk they put on some Britney Spears music that decidedly didn't mix with the classy decor. I never knew how many tacky shirts they carried--and now needed to get out on clearance. Still though, I got some really good deals. Scary...I'm starting to think like a real-world shopper...

Saturday night: contra dancing! We talked Ben into it five minutes before we left. Much harder than it looks, but still if you accept that you just might not know what's going on half the time, so much fun.

just think about going forward...

to the tune of: The Right Kind of Wrong by Leann Rimes

I am so mobile.

This morning, I went to pick up my bike from the Bike Shop. No matter how many times that bike tries to kill me, picking it up repaired is like putting on a new razor blade: so smooth, but you still know it'll make you bleed if you're not careful.

The world seems so much brighter when your tires are fully inflated. Still don't have all 21 gears working again, but it's better than one. And... they fixed my bike seat while they were at it. So while it may still make me numb, at least it won't flip up and hit me in the 'nads while I'm crossing Campus.

The only thing smoother than a working bike is a working Segway. Yes, I finally got to ride the elusive Robotics Lab Segway today. It was soo cool. But not at all as intuitive as Dean Kamen claimed: it does take more than just "thinking" about moving. And this thing turns quickly. But whizzing down the street at a blazing 12 mph is fun, I must say. Perhaps not $5,000 worth of fun, but still fun.

I think I'm going to have to start using a pseudonym at places like Jamba Juice. Hilarity ensues when multiple Mikes arrive at the same time. Though next time I'm with a group of guys we'll have to try taking that to its ludicrous conclusion.

i am too white

to the tune of: Tuxedo Junction by The Glenn Miller Orchestra

...as the red shoulders and back would attest. Funny how you start to notice it sitting still in a chair at work. And, it occurs to me, it might be a problem for swingouts at Swing Central tomorrow night... let's just hope it clears up by then.

The weekend was such a blast though... Friday night a bunch of SCTIers met up for a birthday party at Orme's house in the clouds in SF. Literally. The fog got really dense so we couldn't read the street signs on the way up. Vince got lost on the way, even though he was the one who gave us directions in the first place... go figure. Ohh...so long since I'd had Yebisu. The night ended with South Park and more Naruto Ninja Gekito Taisen, which really needs a shorter name, like, say, "Smash".

Saturday we went on some mad fountain hopping, indocrinating Todd's girlfriend in the tradition by tossing her into the one at Old Union. Making a whirlpool in the fountains is soo much fun... It was warm, it was sunny... and I got burnt. But it was worth it--not only for the joy of the hopping but to see the looks on the tourists' faces as they saw a horde of esteemed Stanford students jumping into fountains brandishing water guns...

Today's trivia: The fountain in front of MemAud with the killer jets is called Tanner Fountain.

and it seems like just freshman year he was, well, just a freshman...

to the tune of: Mr. Pinstripe Suit by Big Bad Voodoo Daddy

It's a weird shock reading about a former FroSoCo resident and Stanford student turning himself in on murder charges.

My favorite quote from this:

"There was concern he was going to be heading out your way, because he went to Stanford, had an apartment, his own personal vehicle was out there," Turner said. "Toledo is along I-80, which is the most logical route one would take from the Cleveland area to the West Coast. He didn't get as far as we thought, but he was headed in that direction."

So there you have it. The only reason a fugitive would go to Toledo is to pass through on the way to his alma mater, wo thousand miles away in a stolen car, so he could get his own car. That's some fine police work there. (Thanks to Jason, Nick, and Google News for the links...)

It was inevitable the day I moved in with Dave, perhaps. But today I went to a hustle club for the first time. It was so much fun. Except I discovered that I really didn't know how to hustle nearly half as well as I thought I did. Which was pretty scary. I think the reason it doesn't bother experienced follows like Kelsey is that follows learn a lot from dancing with advanced leads. People like them have no problem dancing something they've never done before because each lead they dance with teaches them a few variations. But if you're leading, you have to come up with all these variations. And very few follows actually teach you anything. Most of them just get this bored look on their faces from seeing your repertoire exhausted so quickly. Which is why I spent much of my evening with more patient partners experimenting and making stuff up. Which is still fun...

what, that was a week ago?

to the tune of: Special Cases by Massive Attack

yeah, that probably means it's time for another update. Our day off last week found us getting completely lost on this hill looking for Los Trancos, despite our nice printed directions. Streets and Trips, it seems, is far better at finding the nearest Safeway than the entrance to a nature preserve. But it was still a nice, if somewhat short, hike.

Friday night more white people than I'd ever gone with packed into a karaoke room and lasted two hours. A far cry from the marathon all-night sessions we used to do in Japan, but a respectable performance, in which Todd, Jim, Jen, Kathy, and I formed our own boy band to croon through the Backstreet Boys and 'N Sync stuff that made such better jokes than real songs. It was weird though, the first time I'd been to a karaoke bar without doing any Japanese or Chinese songs...

But fear not, I got my Japanese in for the weekend playing Naruto Ninja Gekito Taisen (Fierce Ninja Battle, loosely). Which was way more fun than I expected. The whole game is nicely cel-shaded, so it looks more like a well-drawn anime than a video game. Think Street Fighter, but with more animated ninjas who can each bust out special moves if timed right: Sakura lets out the raging "inner Sakura", Haku surrounds his enemy with mirrors and shoots them with lasers; you get the idea. And all the while they trash talk in Japanese. So entertaining to watch...a four-person match turns into the Weakest Link. Oh, and Tim turned 23.

We have so many baked beans leftover from our right proper southern cookout it really isn't funny. But, I must say I don't mind the leftover chicken and creamed corn at all. Soo good... real live Southerners Kathy, Kelsey, and Michael came up with some fine impromptu recipes.

I can't stop myself. Today I bought a wireless router and a new hard drive (for storing all those perfectly legal, er, backup copies of movies and music. Yeah, I just need to back up my flatmates' music collections, you know, just in case something happens to their computers...

the british are attacking!

to the tune of: Words Weren't Made for Cowards by Happy Rhodes

Three day weekends are the American way. Really I don't know why we got Monday off but no complaints from me. It's been a nice relaxing (and looong) weekend.

Saturday began the way Saturday morning ought to: sleeping in till (almost) noon. Then it somehow degenerated into Dave sitting around playing video games. Which was problematic, since we needed to do major shopping that afternoon. Power shopping was derailed when we started drooling over things in Home Depot. I've always had this problem with electronics stores, and Safeway runs have taken forever for as long as I've been in college, but this was the first time this happened to me in a friggin' Home Depot...

Saturday night Dave and I ended up at Cheng's apartment and I got the sneaking suspicion that within three years the apartments of everyone I knew would be entirely furnished by Ikea. And then it happened. What may be the beginning of my downfall: my first game of Halo. I sucked, mind you. But after playing for an hour, I sucked a little less. It's insidious. Like maybe if I play it again I'll be a little better. The promise of improvement is an interesting narcotic. Perhaps it's too late--I've already become hooked on the gateway drug of Mario Kart. But I like to think that so long as I don't get any good at Halo I'll remain safe from the evil powers of the Pyramid o' Procrastination.

Sunday morning started off just as it ought: with crepes and the New York Times crossword, courtesy of Helen's parents. We seemed like such a typical family gathered 'round the table. I made it to two 4th barbecues, and won a $10 gift certificate that expires tomorrow. (Or does it?)

Then Ben and I went to SF to meet up with Guy and Helen for the fireworks. As could be expected of SF, there was fog. But that gave the show an eerie surreal feeling, like maybe the British really were firing rockets at the boats in the bay. Or maybe aliens were landing. (More of the seige of the Bay)

We met up with Aria later, and finding Starbucks closed decided to form an impromptu band on the street corner, complete with his guitar and Ben's vocal percussion. No tips, but lots of curiosity about whether the Starbucks was open.

what the devil is up with this music?

to the tune of: Once Upon A December by Anastasia

There's nothing quite like the feeling you get waltzing with a woman who closes her eyes. Entrusting her safety entirely to you, she wants to get lost in the moment and feel the motion and the music. Of course, one way of looking at this is she doesn't want to gaze into your eyes, which is also a fun way to waltz. But it's far better than the ones that get a petrified look on their faces and spend the whole time darting their heads back and forth, as if she really doesn't trust you. Don't get me wrong--it's perfectly natural for follows to contribute to navigation. And understandably, after being crashed into a wall or something by a hapless lead you might have a legitimate right to be suspicious. But really now...

That waltz, plus a few entertaining swings, waltzes, and cha chas with friends (and a couple games of waltz tag) were the highlights of Friday night. The DJing was pretty bad, the music was often awful, and there was this drill sargeant-type who felt the need to bark out each dance and orders for the cross-step mixer. Between him and the dance lesson at the beginning it felt much like a high school gym class. But I still had fun.

This week, for the first time in my Stanford career, I actually went to Green and checked out a book. I had to fight through a gaggle of bathing suit-clad middle school girls emerging from The Ring with big grins on their face. I didn't really have the heart to tell them about Stanford fountains... The book? Harry Potter. Yes, I know. I had to see what the fuss was about and judge for myself. Kathy was impressed, asking me each time she saw me online whether I'd finished it yet. (The answer, sadly enough, is no, because activities with other people--which somehow keeps meaning "video games in the living room"--trump solitary reading.) Yune was not pleased.

This week I got to unlock--and lock--the Robot Learning Lab. With my key. Very exciting. Not quite as prestigious as the offices my friends scored. But then they don't get the pleasing sounds of a hacksaw to code by. I have to climb over various robot innards to get to my desk, and have grad students reaching over me to retrieve parts every hour or so. But... I finally have a place to work, and beggars can't be choosers, eh? I may need to acquire an iPod (or a cheap iPod knockoff) to maintain my sanity at work...

fear me

to the tune of: Away From the Sun by 3 Doors Down

...for I have now a Gates key. (Cue choir of angels.) Yes, a scant week after starting work in the AI lab I now not only have a desk and computer but a key so I can get back in after lunching on the AT&T Terrace. (For those who've never been to Gates, everything is named after a company. Bill didn't give us that much...) But yes, I now have one of those nifty "intelli-keys" that were high tech ten years ago but look like they could be cell phones now. I spent ten minutes just going around to all the entrances and putting in my key. It was a watershed moment, hearing that beep that says, "You are special enough to be granted access". So now I can go to Gates whenever I want. I don't know whether this is a good thing per se... My ex-girlfriend maintained that the more keys you have, the more important you were, but Dr. Touster countered, "It seems like if you're important enough, you can always get someone to let you in. 'Jeeves, open the door for me.'"

Luckily three of my teammates had Gates keys for the SRC campus Game Saturday night. Actually, had they not had keys we would just have walked around to the other side. We ended up visiting Gates often for its 24-hour cluster to decipher Game clues, including at its most ludicrous a list of butterfly species and an excerpt from one of Nabokov's books. Apparently, we were meant to look up each of these species to see which was named for or by Nabokov, then generate letters using a cipher from the passage, then unscramble them to find we were just supposed to go to the butterfly greenhouse. We made the mistake of trying to figure this out on our own and it cost us. But it was fun up until then... and even afterward when we were too tired to care. I maintain Games should not have a guessing penalty...

Our first official barbeque at the Zone was a resounding success. We proved our dominion over fire. There's something satisfying about watching flames you created for some reason... And we fashioned an ad hoc karaoke machine by hooking my computer up to the TV and playing MP3s while Googling the lyrics...

Today's philosophical question: why is it women get so much more worked up about toilet seat position than men? It is just as much work and equally icky (but still trivial) to raise a toilet seat as to lower it, so why should men be expected to leave the seat down all the time? Particularly on a toilet whose primary users are men, it seems more efficient to leave the seat up. I've never heard men actually complain about this, mind you, only women. It seems like today's empowered women should be capable of expending the half-second effort to adjust the toilet seat as needed. My challenge to female readers: leave a good reason why not. (Or agree, that works too.)

I still haven't managed to get music playing on my work computer thanks to Linux sound card weirdness so I brought an MP3 CD to jam to as I code. I need music to code by, else I go mad listening to the robots' fans and laser scanners running constantly. I decided to try listening to it as I biked back, which was kinda sublime. I suppose this is what owning an iPod would be like. It was all I could do to avoid belting out Beautiful Day as I was rolling down Escondido in the sunshine. But I think I prefer the natural soundtrack of birds, fountains, and cars.

the first week

to the tune of: Your Name Never Gone by Chemistry

oh yes, it's the weekend. Which means it's time for some long-overdue updating. Firstly, new Commencement pics are finally up, featuring the Wacky Walk and other such lapses in the academic decorum an occasion such as Commencement demands. I can't imagine serious processionals on the East Coast, like the one my high school did. (Random fact: today I noticed some other Novi HS alum added herself to the orkut community. That makes five--count 'em, five of us...)

I suppose it's worth mentioning how I spent that day. Lots of fountain hopping, since it turns out black robes aren't so good in the heat. Our Wacky Walk was dance, naturally; we staked out a circle on the field and just started dancing. Needless to say the robes started coming off immediately. Before long we were a landmark, and grads on cell phones were telling parents they were next to us.

I could have gone to the CS ceremony, but then 2.5 hours in the heat (no shade) in black didn't sound fun. So I went to the much shorter English ceremony to watch a few friends graduate and proceeded to mooch food off the English, Asian Studies, and CS department luncheons in turn. Ah, yes, thinking like a grad student already...

The move Monday was exhausting and hectic, and definitely took much longer than expected. But we had two cars and six people so it could have been much worse. We didn't quite make it out by the, ah, deadlines, but we still managed to get all our stuff here somehow. And at the end of the day, we were rewarded with this awesome sunset.

We made this cool time-lapse animation (350K) of our living room that night.

And now we have a grill...mmm... grilling... anyone have any ideas for cookouts?

when it rains, it pours

So I was supposed to have Commencement pics up by now. But I don't. I do have all but one box unpacked in my room and now, thanks to Becky's RCC-ness, my hostname is back so the old photos are back up.

And here I am listening to O Holy Night as a cha cha. How, you ask?

The week was spent unpacking and making dull Safeway-Walmart runs. Unpacking took a hit once Dave's Pyramid o' Procrastination was set up, featuring a VCR, XBox, Nintendo, and GameCube. Already Rose has beaten Mario 3 in four straight hours, and Ben has demonstrated his Mario prowess by showing us how to exploit a bunch of bugs ("features"?) in the original Super Mario Brothers, including the famous World -1.

I spent the whole weekend waltzing. Even though half of it was with old people who were afraid/unable to move there were enough good waltzes to make it worth it. Few things are sweeter than a blissful waltz with a woman who closes her eyes to savor the experience, entrusting her safety entirely to you.

And...and... the dance at the end featured Brave Combo, known to Orchard people as the force behind "Someone Stole the Kishka", but also the Jeopardy! Schottische, and as I discovered tonight, the O Holy Night cha cha. Sweet!

Time for work... grrr...

i never thought i'd hear myself say this...

...but the Pistons may actually win the NBA championship tonight. I normally don't care about such things. But this game could be a proud moment for Detroit, thanks to a bet placed between Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm and our beloved California Governor What's-His-Face. As follows:

If the Pistons win, Schwarzenegger must eat:	If the Lakers win, Granholm must eat:
a pasty (pastry with meat, potatoes, and veggies) chocolate-covered cherries a Vernor's (ginger ale)	an In-N-Out burger asparagus strawberries and ice cream Napa wine
...wearing a Pistons jersey	...wearing a Lakers jersey

Truly I'm a winner either way... (The bet does not include a visit from Brad Pitt.)

Of course what proud moment for Detroit would be complete without a riot to celebrate? The last time the Pistons won the championship, eight people died in the ensuing post-game party. So this may be the best headline yet: Detroit Bracing for Pistons Championship Celebration.

Commencement was surreal. White plastic chairs sprouted up across campus like poppies and hordes of parents descended while I wandered about, in Nick's words a "Commencement orphan". More details and photos later...

an anticlimax

to the tune of: Ain't No Good by Cake

So it's come to this: Direct pleas for soap in our bathrooms. Once again, I'm glad we're going to have our own bathroom in the Rains Work-Free Zone. Two of them, in fact.

At last, at long last, I am done with this quarter. Revelations of the finals week gauntlet:

Few things are more beaufitul than finals where you have all the questions and answers beforehand. Of course some people actually still forgot.

Pen on CS finals: just say no. Let's just say it's not good for grader sympathy.

Frogger: a fun game, but a distracting thing to grade.

Senior Dinner [pics] was somewhat of a letdown. We spent most of our time waiting in line to get in and the food wasn't stellar. But it was still cool seeing all those random seniors again. I met up with a chunk of SCTI and ended up playing Taboo with them, taking as many beers from the Alumni Association as we could carry. Somehow, certain people found a way to make Taboo a drinking game...

And now here I am, finally done grading and procrastinating packing. This has already resulted in Simpsons, movie watching, and photo-editing, and now blogging.

Speaking of which, I promised this a while ago, and here it is: Me in makeup for Los Decanos [pics]. The theory was that they could somehow make me look Latino, since a white guy doing Brazilian or Afro-Peruvian dances just isn't plausible. And the results, as you can see... are mixed...

Thanks to everyone who rated videos in the captology contest--our video on surveillance won first place! I sure hope I get an A in that class...

one word for you: plastics

to the tune of: Battle Rocks by Ajax

There's something about walking down the street on a windy night in a black robe with a plastic bag. Something that screams trick or treat!. As Ben noted, you feel very wizard-like, especially when the wind kicks up mysteriously. [Photos of The Graduate Flicks]

In other passage-of-time-related news, Guy narrowly escaped a 21st birthday shower by wearing nice pants. A cheap excuse I say...

your finals week procrastination guide

to the tune of: Caribbean Blue by Enya

Things to do that aren't studying:

10 minutes: Watch and rate some fun videos created by our cs377a class. No huge survey with a zillion questions lurking behind. And most of the videos are fun to watch. You'll be convinced computers are made for mind control. We're hoping one of our two entries wins the contest...not that that should skew your ratings of course...

2 minutes: If you haven't seen it already, find out how CyberDiet (wmv) will change your life. Any Website with a "meditation room" is cool in my book...

3 minutes: Your computer is watching you. (QuickTime 6) Spying on you. The age-old battle between the bored intern and the boss who actually expects him to work...

10 minutes: Your computer's probably not doing anything right now. Not this instant. Even while your sitting at your computer furiously writing a paper or doing "research", it's still mostly idle, just waiting for your keystrokes. A huge amount of power goes to waste. But you can donate that time to Folding@home to help a research lab here understand various diseases by simulating protein folding. Just download the little client (Windows, Mac, even Linux) and enter team 11364. Then you can kill time watching our team stats, generated by someone with too much time on their hands. But what better motivator than to help beat teams with names like Team Ogre, Newtown High School, or Super Poop Heads?

Posted on su.market:

FS : harcore fan $5.00
Metal cage. Solid. not one of those cheap-ass plastic things. Didn't purchase from target. This thing can blow some serious air. It may not win any fashion awards but thins thing rocks. Does not rotate or any of that crap. No gimmicky BS. Just hardcore fan action. Also has given me good luck.

How can you refuse that?

LMoTQ was quite overhyped. So little debauchery. Survey: should we return as sketchy grad students to prey on the freshmen? (or the seniors, I guess)

the twilight zone

If...

your professor starts off a 300-level CS class by riding a bike backwards...

you get a can of Play-Doh in said class...

you get a job offer at a barbecue without even applying...

you work with Adobe professionals entranced by a simple slideshow...

you find yourself taking the Marguerite...

you toil over a presentation involving squirrels, a bloody Nick Parlante, and the words "pain points"...

people keep looking for "your office"...

your parents finally sell the house they've been trying to get rid of for a year...

a CS final next week is the least of your problems...

...you may have entered my surreal world.

a three-day weekend demands procrastination

to the tune of: Fallen Embers by Enya

And you'll find it here. History's always been good at providing a few laughs, but few are more amusing than its predictions for the future. Yes, flying cars, Moon men, flying saucers, electric death rays, nuclear-powered cars, and radio roller skates were all honestly envisioned by people in the last century as commonplace by 2000. While on the subject of radio, did you know that one day radio waves will eliminate the need to sleep, eat, or learn? Wow, people were stupid back then. Not at all like people now. We're much smarter, surely.

A shining example of smart modern-day people in full control of their machines. (Thanks to Dave for the link.)

Ben and Christine rocked tonight's Harmonics concert. That is all.

I feel like it's time to start a pool on when Housing will finally get their Web form back up. Originally scheduled for Wednesday, it's since slipped to Thursday, then Friday, and now "the evening of Sunday". The current plan leaves less than 48 hours to respond to summer housing assignments. Better than Rescomp I suppose.

The real reason for the delay? My theory: Housing and Dining has been placed under the jurisdiction of the Stanford Post Office.

and I thought _I_ watched too much Simpsons...

to the tune of: I'm A Survivor by Reba McEntire

...someone's compiled a complete map of Springfield, right down to the location of the "Ayn Rand School for Tots", "Stoner's Pot Palace", and the "Veterans of Popular Wars". Someone with waay too much time on their hands, clearly. But haven't you always wanted to know where the Springfield Republican Party met?

The Rains Work-Free Zone is all but officially established for the summer and next year. The Rains staff I talked to about roommate assignments was evasive, possibly because I caught her fleeing from the official office hours to a "meeting". But in theory the Final Four should be in the same apartment. But as anyone who's tried to deal with Housing lately knows, they ain't exactly organized...

Do not, no matter how much I say I want to, let me organize T-shirts for 250 people again. Not that there's much chance I would ever do this again, but just in case I get so deluded again, remind me of this solemn oath: I swear never to do this again. I don't know whether it's the people who just can't follow directions, don't read their e-mail (yes, even CS people), or the ones who think I just have my own personal suite with a T-shirt room, open 24 hours a day, or the ones who think I have nothing better to do. But at least we can have as much departmental dignity as the ChemEs with our very own T-shirt to show for it...

a facebook testimonial

to the tune of: Poema 15 by Atacama

At last, a real-life testimonial for thefacebook.com: Friday night while walking home from the nifty Stanford Film Festival (and I say walking because my bike is evil), I happened to notice a backpack lying on the ground outside Terman. A little digging revealed the owner's name, but he was nowhere in sight. So I trudged off to the Terman cluster to look him up. No phone number listed with Stanford. Not logged in anywhere. Standard stalking techniques failed. So I check thefacebook, and sure enough, he's there. Still no phone number. But I have his dorm room. So I call Ben, who lives on the same floor, only to find he's not around, or on AIM, nor is his phone number in the dorm list. But... his facebook profile also mentions he works at 5-SURE. So I call them, wondering if he were working that night. No dice...but a concerned co-worker gives me his cell phone number. Score! He was surprised that I found it...but grateful nonetheless. All thanks to thefacebook.com (big fake toothy grin).

Saturday night was Senior Formal at SFMoMA. It was fun, but really crowded. Revelations of the night:

Maxfield's has excellent salmon. Don't let the fact that someone else in your party just ordered it stop you...

Godiva closes half an hour earlier than they say on the phone. It must be some conspiracy to prevent having to deal with customers at night.

San Franciscans don't like highways. At least they don't like making it easy to find them. Or to get on them. Especially in the direction you want to go.

I can create modern art. If, by "modern art", you mean a blue canvas with the word NOISE printed on it. (The word evil painted in blood, though, I won't do.)

The first floor of MoMA is waay too small for 1400 people.

Photos from Senior Formal

Sunday was our secret initiation ceremony for Tau Beta Pi. They were very adamant about people not showing up late or leaving early or letting anyone see into the initiation room, and I am "honor-bound" not to divulge what went on there, under penalty of death. TBP has operatives everywhere. I can only say it involved hot coals and pain sticks.

Monday featured three no-shows for 106 IGs, which I ought not to complain about since this let me finish my homework due that day (oops...).

Mad props to Louisa for taking us on a 3:30 AM Safeway run for rubbing alcohol. It's the perfect antidote for a PowerBook that's had too much coffee to drink.