zozoblog, or, how i learned to stop worrying and love the real world

"Today's discomfort index will be 87.2."

2009-08-19T05:37:00.000-07:00

...so said the weather forecast on TV this morning. And they weren't kidding: the first thing I noticed stepping outside was the heat. The second thing I noticed were the cicadas: they're out in full force, an almost deafening sound that makes you feel like you could be attacked by a swarm of locusts at any minute.

Against my better judgment, I hiked up (part of) Bomunsan, a local mountain. I got a decent view of the city but was wiped out afterwards. So I wandered the streets looking for someplace to eat that looked (a) air conditioned and (b) big enough to have an English menu. I eventually wound up in a barbecue place that was really tasty.

Apparently I'm failing to communicate the Korean line for Do you speak English? While I guess it's not strictly necessary, as I'd find out quickly enough by throwing English at people, but I wanted to learn the Korean phrase for this so I don't come across as assuming that everyone speaks English. As it turns out, all I'm getting across is that I don't speak Korean. This phrase has been met with confused looks every time I say it...I suspect I'm not pronouncing English correctly.

My linguistic (mis)adventures continued when I ducked out of the heat midday into a supermarket. A couple of friends requested specific items from Korea: kim chi-flavored seaweed, and barley tea. This turned out to be harder than I thought. The place was unnerving enough with store workers at every turn shouting out some sale. But I eventually found the seaweed. I was hoping at least one of them would have some little kim chi icon. No dice. I even memorized the Korean characters for kim chi, but couldn't find them on any of the bags there. The barley tea it turned out was conveniently labeled in English, but the only English words on these packages were self-evident ones devoid of meaning, like flavor and quality.

So I asked someone in my fractured Korean. The problem was I didn't know the word for seaweed. So as much as I pointed to the seaweed, she thought I was just confused and took me over to the kim chi. It turns out that the word for seaweed is kim. And somehow I couldn't quite get beyond "kim chi type kim".

Other discoveries: yes, the video game channel is real. But there's also televised Go. Even more agonizingly slow to watch than to watch someone planning their Starcraft moves.

Tomorrow will be just as hot. And I'll be in a suit. But (hopefully) in well-air-conditioned buildings...

"I pray to God for an affordable car"

2009-08-18T15:13:00.000-07:00

Lately I've been growing increasingly cavalier about packing for domestic travel. When visiting my parents, I could always count on them to have an extra bar of soap; even the most podunk of Southern rural towns has a Wal-Mart to get forgotten items. So it was somewhat impressive that I should get everything packed up at the last minute on Sunday, given that I only discovered at 9 PM that I needed to bring a suit. I swear, next time I'll plan ahead.

The flight was amazing. From the moment you sit in the terminal and listen to the Singapore Airlines agents making uber-polite announcements, the United agents next door sound like heartless bastards. I had twelve hours of being pampered, and got kim chee fried rice on the plane. All of which makes American airlines even harder to go back to.

Getting off the plane we all shuffled into health inspection, everyone trying their hardest not to cough. H1N1 paranoia is high here; masked inspectors took everyone's temperatures (though calmly in the terminal, not in hazmat suits on the plane like that one YouTube video shows). I've already been given three pamphlets about the warning signs of the flu.

In the terminal at Incheon, I saw four car commercials, conveniently subtitled in English. Hyundai and Kia apparently own this place. The most amusing showed a series of scenes where people say things like, "I pray to God for a minivan I can afford", and of course the punchline, "Thanks to Hyundai, you don't have to pray any more!" Something about claiming your company is answering people's prayers seems just a little sacrilegious.

So far, my feeble attempts at speaking Korean seem to have gone unappreciated by the locals. Maybe the airport staff are just more jaded, but no one seems impressed by my impressive vocabulary of "hello" and "thank you". Fortunately the conference staff has had student volunteers to meet me at the airport and at the bus stop.

But now I'm here in Daejeon, in a nice hotel with a great view of the city, and I'm intent to go roam around for a day, armed only with a phrasebook and a collection of tourist maps. I hear there's a free "foot spa" down the street. Rock on.

Two thousand five hundred ninety two

2008-01-07T19:52:00.000-08:00

This infographic from the New York Times is a beautifully rich visualization of something that often gets reduced to a single statistic: the number of soldiers and security officers who died last year in Iraq violence. The stark small multiple of little people--one for every casualty--calls out the thousands of individual tragedies and shows how each died: some in firefights, some in bombings, still others by torture. The other thing that grabs you is how many of these deaths aren't even Americans--the American media tends to focus only on the 901 U.S. troops who died last year. Iraqi soldiers and police officers seem to be bearing quite a burden themselves.

Whether or not you believe the Iraqi war serves some greater good, it's hard to look at this and not be in awe at the sheer scale.

Google Reader's gaffe: you can't fake a social graph

2008-01-02T16:18:00.000-08:00

Over the holiday break, Google snuck in a little "tweak" to ther RSS reader, Google Reader. The idea was simple: why not make it easy to share your favorite posts with a single click? Before, there was a little Share button that posted items to a public feed with a hidden URL. Only people you gave the URL to could see these items. But what if you could share things with your friends automatically?

Problem: who exactly are your friends? Google let Facebook eat its lunch in the social networking space, but it does have zillions of Gmail and Google Talk users. Any Gmail user you send email to gets added to your Google Talk contact list. Not all of them are actually friends. So a number of users were a bit miffed to discover their shares suddenly broadcast to all these people. People wear lots of different hats, and just like teenagers don't necessarily share their LiveJournals with their parents, you might not want to share every amusing Digg post with your grandma.

To be clear, Google doesn't appear to share Reader items with people who don't have Gmail or GTalk accounts. (It still does share things with people I know I've never chatted with.) And Google has now offered a workaround to restrict sharing, and there's a setting to remove people from this service. And to be fair, I've discovered a few interesting tidbits from my friends. But the interesting lesson here is how communication doesn't necessarily imply friendship.

Since their social network Orkut doesn't get much use (outside of Brazil at least), Google's trying to infer a social graph with their communications services. They're certainly not the first--people have tried using email to deduce social networks for ages. But email is a poor proxy for friendship.

To see why, if you've been using Facebook and Gmail for a while, try this simple experiment: Go to Facebook's Friend Finder and give it your Gmail account and password. (You trust them, don't you?) Be sure to uncheck the box "Select All Friends", then scroll through the list. Everyone you've ever emailed with Gmail who has a Facebook account is in this list. How many of them are really your friends? For me, only about 40% of the Facebook users I've emailed are actually friends--the rest are random cc's caught up in a "reply all", university staff, recruiters for jobs I no longer want, etc.

The answer, of course, just like with Facebook Beacon, is opt-in: out of all the people you've ever emailed, you might want to share things with some of them. Or perhaps framed another way: out of all the people you've ever emailed, only some of them are friends.

How many of your Gmail "friends" are Facebook friends?

Helpful hint: when suing Google for $5 billion...

2007-09-20T21:09:00.000-07:00

for alleged "crimes against humanity" by knowingly choosing to name themselves with an anagram of some of your social security number upside down, putting you at risk of a "terrorist attack"...

...it's generally not necessary to include in your (public record) court filing your driver's license, bank account number, and debit card records.

The details of Google's brilliant nefarious scheme are on page 18 of this pdf (with some help from the Philadelphia 76'ers).

You can't make this stuff up.

Some quetchup with your spam?

2007-09-01T19:41:00.000-07:00

In the past few days I've gotten a couple invites to some sort of new social network called Quetchup, even some from people I didn't even recognize. Let's call this Odd Thing #1. But I'm a sucker for social networks (it is, after all, my job to study them) so I went ahead and clicked a link to "join Rowyn and his friends today". Never mind that Rowyn is, in fact, a woman. Odd Thing #2.

Signing up is a three-step process. On the first step, they ask you to choose a screen name, along with your first and last name. Don't worry, though, your first and last name "will not be visible" and "will be kept strictly confidential". (So what exactly do they need them for?) Odd Thing #3. Call me a Facebook (or Friendster) snob, but this is one of the most infuriating things about MySpace: not being able to find people you know in real life because people hide behind cutesy screen names. They also wouldn't let me sign up until I told them how I heard about Quetchup, which was a little odd since I just clicked through a mammoth URL purportedly from Rowyn. Odd Thing #4.

But the piece de resistance here, and the reason I caution anyone who wants to try out this site, is that Step 2 of the process demands your login for one of the Webmail services, and informs you that by providing this you give consent for them to invite everyone in your address book. Odd thing #5. Since Gmail adds every single person you ever replied to to your address book, this ain't so hot. This scores Quetchup a special place in the circle of hell previously reserved for Plaxo and Facebook apps that automatically "notify" your friends. I supplied an old hotmail account that surely didn't have anyone to spam.

And finally, when it was all said and done, I wasn't even Rowyn's friend. Odd Thing #6. I went through all that to sign up, and she still had to explicitly approve me as a friend. (Perhaps this is because she didn't explicitly ask Quetchup to spam me in the first place.)

And even when I did become her friend, I couldn't see her name. So now I have an account on a social network with one friend. I'm afraid to let it scan a list of people I've emailed to see who else is on the site because it'll spam them all. I can't search for anyone by name because names are "confidential". It's like MySpace without the personality.

Which is too bad because they have some interesting ideas ported over from Friendster, like letting you see your second-degree friends (friends of friends), who may well be your actual friends in real life. Facebook still has yet to do this, even though people who many of your friends know on the site may actually know you in real life. And no app developer can do this either, since it's against the Facebook developer terms of service.

Not just gimpy. Disabled

2007-08-24T21:55:00.001-07:00

Yup. It's official. Yesterday I went to the DMV. One hour and $6 later, I had an official disabled parking permit. I felt weird joining the ranks with the elderly lady with a walker in front of me, but then a pain in my ankle had me sitting right beside her.

This tendinitis/bursitis/plantar fascitis (yes, apparently I have all three) hasn't gotten much better over the last month. It's like playing whac-a-mole with different tendons and ligaments. This doctor's strategy seems to be a carrot-and-stick approach: be nice to it with orthotics, a cane, and minimizing walking (hence the permit), while simultaneously tormenting it with physical therapy and cortisone shots.

At least with the cane I look the part of the disabled person, though fortunately not the old man. I found a nice black cane, which I'm told makes me look "dapper". (So far I've worn a suit with it three times and a top hat once.) It also makes a huge difference in how people treat you. People surrender their seats on trains (it helps that I look like the dude with the cane in the icon on the window). People try extra hard not to run you over. Even TSA screeners treat you gingerly at security (though I get my own personal wanding every time I go through, thanks to the metal in my boot).

As amusing as this has been, it's getting old. I've found people are much happier with the barfight story than the real one. But I miss dancing, hiking, and standing up for longer than two minutes at a time.

It has given me an interesting perspective on mobility, and how much it impacts your life. It affects how you spend your time and who you spend it with. It's such a simple thing to be empowered by, something I'd taken for granted (and being in my 20s probably justly so). But lots of people live with these infirmities, and have them much worse than I do. I heard an interview on NPR about how people experiencing hearing loss tend to withdraw from their social circles, because they feel they can't share the same experiences as easily.

It's easy to fall into the trap of retreating into a disability and giving up. One grandfather did just that after his hip replacement; he decided it was far easier to sit in his chair and be lazy than work at trying to regain his strength. The other decided that having only a quarter of his heart working wasn't going to stop him, and poured himself into researching vitamins, drugs, and exercises, fighting for every last day; ultimately this probably gave him an extra year or two to live.

So while this gimpiness is annoying as all hell (how annoying is hell? pretty friggin' annoying), it is only temporary. I need to be more like the latter grandfather, doing everything I can think of to bring closer my triumphant return to the world of the standing.

Yeah, but you should see the other guy.

2007-06-15T17:31:00.000-07:00

I'm spending the weekend on the couch under strict doctor's orders not to put any weight on my foot. Why, you ask?

It was a brutal bar fight with a man who insulted my family's honor. Next thing you know, we're brawling. He sprained my ankle with a kick from his steel-toed boots, but I at least broke his nose.

It was a shark attack off the California coast. I was swimming along minding my own business when a shark approached. I tried to swim away but it caught up and took a bite out of my foot. I struggled and managed to wrestle it away with a deft blow to its slippery snout, but I still needed twelve stitches.

It was a dance from hell with a woman who never figured out you're not supposed to waltz in stilettos. I'm not one to turn down a lady for a dance, even though she was obviously a beginner. Something possessed me to try a left waltz with her, and as we were changing directions, she stepped on my foot. Hard. With her heel.

Actually, it was much less exciting a story. Back in December when I went to NYC for New Year's to visit Cheng and Rose. Being New York, we walked everywhere, even places we could've taken the subway. Now, I've spent days walking all over cities like San Francisco, Bangkok, and Tokyo. So I didn't think this would be a big deal. But apparently I aggravated some old injury, because by the end I had a sharp pain in my ankle and was limping around. I was all set to brave the subways to the airport like a true New Yorker, but by then I was willing to pay whatever fare a cabbie could dream up.

So far, my doctors have determined that there's damage to the ligaments in my foot (bursitis and maybe tendinitis as well). So I started doing physical therapy. Once or twice a week I'd go in in the morning to see a series of therapists, who invariably spoke only Chinese. Which is just fine when you need to communicate something like "Ow!" but not so much for things like "It hurts here when I put weight on it" or "the voltage is too high, turn it down please!" (Yes, this apparently involves shock therapy too.)

The original plan was to have me back on my feet in time for Viennese Ball. And indeed, I was able to semi-gracefully dance the opening waltz, if not the pivot- and redowa-laden polka. Gradually I grew more adventurous, doing a little more swing and light polka. But I couldn't stay on my feet for more than a couple songs at a time.

Now it's been almost six months, and though I'm not in pain all the time, it still hurts more often than it...should after six months. I finally went to go see a podiatrist, who recommended cortisone. By this point, my doctor has decided this has been going on long enough too. So today I got a pleasant injection of lidocaine and cortisone. And this weekend I'm on the couch. With any luck I'll be back in action in time for Waltz Weekend and our trip to Crater Lake next month.

So beware of drunk guys in bars, sharks, stiletto-clad dancers, and... the streets of New York.

Who said Barack Obama was my friend?

2007-04-10T22:34:00.000-07:00

So after seeing my coworker's massively stocked RSS reader, I decided to give the updated Google Reader a try. It's much better than their first prototype, which was trying so desperately to be AJAXy it was underwhelming and painful. But that was two years ago, and what with Web 2.0 and "feeds" being all the rage, I decided it'd be a great way to condense all the mindless clicking to check on people's blogs into one place. The beautiful thing about Reader is that you can just scan through dozens of posts (if they're short) with your scroll wheel in no time.

The sucky thing is that I've discovered that for every truly awesome story on Digg's front page, there's a whole bunch of useless Apple fanboy posts or choice articles about things like the pee shiver, some geek with a Firefox ATM card, and misleadingly labeled rant about why there are 2 pi in a circle. Since adding digg's feed to my Reader, I haven't yet been able to get below 100 unread articles. Like some demon Whac-a-Mole, it keeps sprouting stories I don't care about, burying the "important" feeds.

I discovered a bunch of my friends are now syndicating their blogs as Facebook notes, which is pretty convenient. I can just grab the master feed of friends' notes and add it to my Google Reader. Done. Since I ~~don't~~ try not to visit Facebook every day, it's a nice way to keep on top of their blogs. Each person posts, on average, once a day. Very easy.

Then I decided, in a fit of optimistic democratic engagement, to "support" Barack Obama on Facebook. Like many candidates, his campaign manager posted a profile there showing his softer side (how many people can claim a musical palate ranging from Bach to Miles Davis to the Fugees?). The idea is people can express their support for a candidate, which shows up in their friends' Facebook stalker feeds (which are not, incidentally, available as RSS), which encourages other people to support him/her, and it spreads like a virus. Which is all well and good for Obama--he's managed to almost beat Hillary at fundraising by getting a stunning 100,000 individual donors.

The problem, though, is Facebook decided he was my friend. And as such, I now get "his" notes all over my friends feed. At least twice a day now. They're not even interesting notes either--I know he's not really logging into Facebook and posting them, it's syndicated from some blog maintained by one of his campaign managers.

I like this guy. I want him to be President. Barring any dramatic revelations 'tween now and the primary he's got my vote. But I don't want to hear about the 35-year-old legal assistant from Houston, Texas who decided to vote for Obama. I don't care.

RSS could be the next frontier for spam. Just wait.

I'll be home for Christmas...I hope

2006-12-27T22:51:00.000-08:00

The funny thing was, as I was packing to make my annual trip eastward, I had just been thinking about how lucky I'd been with air travel. How people were getting stranded by snowstorms in Detroit and missed the first day of winter quarter, or more recently how people were camping out in the Denver airport just a few days ago, but not me. I had even booked a flight from San Jose to Detroit with just a stop in Phoenix--cheaper than flying direct but I wouldn't have to change planes. MyForecast didn't predict any airport delays in any of the airports, so I went to bed the night before thinking I'd have smooth sailing. After all, Denver might just be asking for snow out there in the mountains, but when is there ever a snowstorm in Phoenix?

Dec 23, 9:30 AM. My first sign something was wrong was that the FAA's delays page showed a 90 minute delay out of Phoenix due to fog. Fog? WTF mate? But no matter, I thought; my flight doesn't leave till noon, so I'm sure this will clear up in time.

10:30 AM. I arrive at SJC the preordained 90 minutes before my flight to find a huge line at the America West counter, which I chalked up to being the day before Christmas Eve. I ran into Andy from Stanford, who it turns out is also on my flight to Phoenix, then connecting to Philly. The line doesn't move.

10:45 AM. After not getting anywhere, an America West agent comes out and asks everyone checking into our flight to come outside and check in with the skycap, because everyone inside is trying to rebook after the earlier flight to Phoenix got canceled.

11:00 AM. After not moving anywhere through the line outside, someone else informs us that our flight to Phoenix was being delayed, and would we please go back inside to see if we can reschedule our connections. There's no information on the flight board, and we have no idea what's going on.

11:30 AM. Again, not having really advanced far in the line, another agent comes out to tell us that our flight probably won't leave until 1:30 so it won't get to Phoenix until 4:45 [an hour and a half late], so anyone with connections before then a) probably won't make it, b) needs to rebook, and c) may well not get a flight out before Christmas because every single airline seat is apparently booked. Then she asked people who can still go to Phoenix to step to the front of the line and check in. Luckily, the plane to Phoenix was proceeding directly to Detroit, so it didn't matter how late it got there. Andy's still screwed, and I bid him a sympathetic 'good luck' and farewell. So I made my way to the front of the line.

11:40 AM. Now she announces that America West for some reason is changing planes and the Phoenix flight is not going to Detroit any more. Now I'm in the same boat as most everyone else in the terminal, who aren't happy. People are whipping out their laptops to check airline sites, and calling loved ones to tell them they're not going to make it. I finally make my way to the counter.

11:50 PM. My agent (who's in a considerably better mood than the last agent, all things considered) tries booking me on other airlines, and even considers shuttling me to Oakland to catch another flight. She even calls Southwest to see if they have open seats. Nearby, a stone-faced agent is telling someone he can't even fly standby on any of their flights because "the system can't handle it".

12:00 PM. The best she can do is let me onto the Phoenix flight, put me up in a hotel in Phoenix, then send me to Vegas the next night, then to Detroit, finally arriving at 6 AM Christmas morning. Sensing that this was my only hope of getting off the West Coast before Christmas, I agreed and thanked her for her help. Since I had more than 3 ounces of liquid as a Christmas gift for someone I checked my bag. She warned me that although my flight was planning to leave at 1:30, they'll "try" to leave earlier, so I should get to the gate as soon as possible. Sure enough, my boarding pass had that great mark of the beast SSSS: "selected for secondary security screening". I call my parents to let them know I won't be home that night after all.

12:20 PM. Making all haste to go directly to security without passing Go (or the food court, natch), I get up to the front of the line. Whereupon the TSA dude pulls me aside and asks me to wait for a screener, in line behind some other unfortunate chap (bless that "random" screening). Fearing that my flight might actually be thinking about taking off I try to plead for a little alacrity but to no avail. (Bam! a GRE word I still remember!)

1 PM. I rush to the gate, finding a long line of passengers, and...that my flight's been delayed till 3. Excellent. But I discover a text message from Dad: he found a flight for me from Phoenix the next morning on Southwest, amazingly enough.

2 PM. Andy shows up at the gate, with a similar new itinerary and hotel voucher. Meanwhile a crowd of increasingly irate would-be passengers begins to form for the next Phoenix flight, originally scheduled for 3:30.

3 PM. No plane. The gate staff has taken down any hint of when our flight might actually depart, signaling they have no clue either.

4 PM. We finally begin boarding our flight, only four hours late. At least she bumped me up to first class, figuring it was the least she could do. The guy next to me didn't pay for a first-class ticket either--he was supposed to fly out of SFO but his flight was oversold, so they shuttled him down to San Jose and told him he'd fly out at noon. If he'd only known...

4:15 PM. We leave the gate--with about 40 empty seats. Finally about to get underway, the captain explains, "I don't know what they told you," (always a great way to start..), but that our plane was headed to Phoenix that morning but diverted to Vegas because of the fog, then had to go to Phoenix to drop off the passengers when the fog lifted and that's why they were so late. Right.

7:15 PM. As we're taxiing to the gate, the pilot announces that this plane is continuing on to (surprise!) Detroit. That would've been nice to know too. I consider rushing to baggage claim and fighting my way back on the plane but decide that my parents probably wouldn't be too thrilled about picking me up in Detroit at 3 AM.

At least they put Andy, me, and a whole boatload of other America West refugees up in a nice hotel with free computers for Internet access and boarding pass printing, free breakfast, and free hourly shuttles to the airport. And a decent sushi restaurant across the street.

So I did make it back on Christmas Eve, about 2 PM--only 18 hours later than scheduled. And I was one of the lucky ones. Plenty of people either gave up in San Jose or were still waiting for flights in Phoenix, to say nothing of the poor saps still marooned in Denver. So here's what I learned:

Don't trust America West or their parent USAir. Granted, this thing wasn't entirely their fault. But they still should've been more upfront on what was happening and been able to do faster rebooking. Once I found myself arriving early for a connection in Chicago and wandered over to a United counter--in the terminal, no less--and within five minutes was holding a rebooked ticket for a flight that left an hour earlier. America West has roughly six people serving all of San Jose, and rebooking with them is a painful process that can't be done over the phone and involves handwritten paper coupons and chanting mysterious voodoo hexes.
Don't check your luggage and ask to fly standby. A whole bunch of people could've made it to Phoenix and even beyond, because the delays caused a ripple of no-shows throughout the country. Just because a flight looks full right now doesn't mean it will be three hours from now.
Have someone try Southwest. Their flights don't show up in most ticket agents' systems cause they're just rebels that play by their own rules.

Ages 3 and up

2005-11-30T09:36:00.000-08:00

"Keeps the kids entertained during Passover." Yes, you can actually buy a plush collection of all 10 plagues, complete with a little bag labeled "Plagues". Because you never know when you'll want to hurl "an icky boil on a piece of flesh" or a black locust at your friends.

Is it just me or is this a fairly disturbing thing to give to a kid? More disturbing than Latke Larry, that's for sure...

Link from Erika.

hisashiburi ne

2005-11-11T20:27:00.000-08:00

Yes, it's been a while. So what's new, you might ask?
Well, the biggest (and heaviest, and most expensive) thing would be my (semi-)new CAR. Yes, after five years of carlessness, I've turned my back on my quasi-hippie who-needs-a-car-this-is-the-Bay-Area vow and bought a car off su.market. I've also committed what in Detroit would be a cardinal sin and bought a Japanese car. But that's OK. I'm just so thrilled to own a car that doesn't remember the first Gulf War and has such modern amenities as intermittent windshield wipers and power door locks. And... it can even do 0-60 in under 30 seconds, which is always a plus.

Also new, but weighing in at much less than two tons, are our new roommates from France. It's a tad weird having half your apartment speak a different language but I guess you get used to it. But yes, the Zone is no longer exclusively a den of CS geeks, which is sad in a way.

Almost as new, and weighing even less than two grown men, is my shiny new computer. Dave and I built our first machines over the summer in a true episode of geek bonding. As we sat there trying to figure out how to pop the faceplates off our new DVD drives, lesson learned: it never hurts to RTFM. Especially when the alternative is brute force... But as a result my old computer has been relegated to media server duty, and so the old photos are down for now.

In other news, I now have a newfound respect for the Roseville Police Department. You might remember my protracted four-month ordeal trying to repair my notebook. In August, portablecomputer.com went dark, but I was able to get the owner of portablecomputer.com on the phone. He claimed to have fixed my computer and that it was ready to ship, only he couldn't because of "server trouble". I tried to explain to him that he didn't need a server to drive to FedEx and ship my bloody computer back, and he promised to do so. Then he canceled his phone service and cell phone. Turned out that his "server trouble" was that the police actually raided his house and confiscated his server--along with 163 notebooks he had promised to repair. So now they're shipping it back to me, hopefully in some salvageable state, and maybe someday I might get my money back...once the DA files charges, and if he has money. We'll see.

Japanese TV is so cruel...

2005-11-09T23:56:00.000-08:00

Wow. That's Morning Musume, Japan's version of the Spice Girls, who have their own weekly TV show. Apparently they have so little going on that they can face off with a giant lizard. (Maybe they're masochists--they also faced off with Bob Sapp.)

Speaking of which, they apparently like to sneak up on people and force them to speak English, like this choice clip:

Girl 1: Where is the restroom?

Girl 2: I go to elevator.

Girl 1 starts pantomiming either that she's about to puke or that she really needs to pee.

The great thing about this is it reminds me of my first day of Japanese class in sixth grade, when our teacher was teaching us how to ask if we could go to the bathroom:

It's toire wa ii desu ka, which literally means, "Toilet: is it OK?" But that's hard to learn so for the first week just toire will be enough. Or for the first day you can just do this: (points to sign reading "toire wa ii desuka" and jumps up and down holding her gut)

Fortunately, we did have one kid who did exactly that the first day.

latenight playtime

2005-08-09T20:54:00.000-07:00

Last weekend was the first Friday Night Waltz DJ'd by Richard Powers in a while. It was soo crowded and so hot. But it was fun...and ended with us testing the kitchen's patience at the Cheesecake Factory till 1:30 AM...

Saturday night was The Game, sort of. It was on campus, and my first bike-powered Game. Which basically meant they could send us from Mirrielees to the modulars all the way on the west side back to the tennis stadium on the east side to the Mausoleum to the north to the Faculty Club to the south...it was exhausting. But we emerged victorious nevertheless.

Best clue ever: A CD labeled "Tunes 4 U", with 45 minutes of music on it. Each song has some random length of silence at the end, which you can find out by ripping the tracks and opening with an audio editor. Then you can take the seconds of silence and the seconds of each track...

...or you could listen to this suspicious quiet part in the middle of track 4, which contained a drumbeat that was spelling out GPS coordinates in binary.

...or you could listen to the song itself on track 4, which is "Bare Necessities" from The Jungle Book:

Don't pick the prickly pear by the paw
When you pick a pear
Try to use the claw
But you don't need to use the claw
When you pick a pear of the big pawpaw
Have I given you a clue?

And then the music fades out abruptly and mysteriously. Anyone know where on campus this was?

Worst clue ever: Ten bags of mini candy bars, meant to be arranged by the year they were first released, then interpreted as Morse code by their manufacturers (Mars or Nestle), yielding "370.21.O35". Now, being techies, we all thought this meant building 370's lecture hall, seat O35, and some useless 21. Maybe it's readily obvious to anyone who actually gets books out of the library that this is a call number. (Is it? My informal study of one fuzzie seems to say so.) But it turns out that if you go look this book up in Socrates you get:

The wilderness and the laurel tree; a guide for teachers and parents on the observation of children.

Holding in EDUCATION.

You might think that you're meant to go to the Education library, where the book resides, or perhaps Bing Nursery, where children are observed. Nope. Turns out there's a modular called Laurel that's waaay over here, nestled among other obscure, identical-looking modulars named Oak, Poplar, and Acacia in a "wilderness" of trailers.

No wonder that clue took us an hour and a half to get...

summer = lazy

2005-08-04T00:51:00.000-07:00

to the tune of: Lay Me Down by Crosby Nash

Oh it's so tempting. The Marguerite now has a bus that stops right outside our complex and goes straight to Gates in six minutes flat. I never thought I'd hear myself say this, but that's pretty sweet. Though I'll still get the exercise and bike into work, plowing over errant teenage campers on my way if need be. But on rainy days I can definitely see it coming in handy.

Or another thing it's useful for is going to the UPS store. Not that I do that that often, but I've been dealing with UPS a lot lately. See, I finally got my notebook back after it broke and I sent it in for repairs. Which originally "should only take a few days", but that turned into weeks, and then into...four months? I spent much of the past two weeks calling the place daily to nag them about it when they finally realized it was repaired and sitting in a box on a shelf somewhere ready to go, as it had been for nearly a week. Grr...

So then it takes a few tries for UPS to deliver it because we're all at work during the day and they shipped it home instead of to my office like I asked. But I finally got it, turned it on and...it booted! Once. Then it didn't start the next ten times. Uh oh. So I finally got it working long enough to back up the only important data on it...only now the screen flickers and turns off randomly. Excellent.

So now I have a firm deadline from this company, by when they'll have either fixed it or refunded my money. And all the data I care about on CD. Come to think of it, back up any of your important stuff now. It occurred to me since then that I have almost 3 GB of photos that exist only on my hard drive, which I'd be really sad to lose. (Well maybe I don't need all 5000 of them, but still...)

With the notebook (semi-)safely in the hands of the repair place, I've turned my attention to building a sweet desktop. It's exciting to watch the pieces come together as they inch their way across the country from warehousese in LA and Pennsylvania...no it's not! I want the pieces now! Now!

In other news, exciting discovery of the night: duck pizza! Surprisingly good...

a dry gulch

2005-07-16T14:55:00.000-07:00

Last Thursday night I went with Laura and Andrew to a Rascal Flatts concert in Concord. It was a great show, and quite an experience. I'd been to country music concerts in Michigan before (in particular at the State Fair), and this was a tad different. First, rather than the redneck crowd who'd come to the State Fair to watch the tractor pull, these folks were I guess what you'd call fashionable rednecks. Never have I seen so many pink cowboy (cowgirl?) hats. I'm sorry, you just don't see that in the South. (Though you don't see too many Google shirts there either.) Opening act Blake Shelton teased the crowd:

They told me you Californians might not really appreciate country music. I dunno. Are y'all hardworkin'? Beer-drinkin'? In-breedin'? Oops, maybe not in-breedin'.

Yes, this was a California country concert, a fact Rascal Flatts made a point of reminding us no fewer than 24 times. And only in California would the putrid odor of pot waft across a country concert... And there were tons of teenage girls there, four of whom could not stop screaming every thirty seconds. You'd think their throats would get hoarse but no. They could've been getting stabbed and it'd sound much the same I imagine.

But Friday night we headed out "where the grass and the dirt and the gravel all meet": camping at Arroyo Seco with Guy, Helen, Dan, Laura, Andrew, and Nick. Google proved sadly impotent at locating this campsite, and the written directions we got were simple but they made me skeptical. Somehow even after having been let down by MSN Maps so many times, I still feel more comfortable having independent verification of where this place is, like a map. Especially because the exit listed in the directions didn't exist. So we didn't realize we'd gone past it until we got to a city that looked decidedly unlike the Ventana Wilderness. (Once again, a problem that would be solved if only California would number its bloody exits.) Fortunately Dan had old-fashioned paper maps in the car and we eventually found our way. But, despite our best efforts, not before dark.

fire in the sky

2005-07-11T19:20:00.000-07:00

to the tune of: King of Swing by Big Bad Voodoo Daddy

Hey, the summer's not supposed to go by so quickly! July opened with a Friday Night Waltz where Joan Walton played enough John Philips Sousa marches to make me wonder if 76 trombones were about to stomp onto the dance floor, followed by the traditional post-waltz ice cream binge.

The little Altima I've been courting, it turns out, has major alignment problems, since its driver never seemed to think it was a problem that her car is predisposed to veering off the road. But nothing $140 can't fix... now I just need to convince the owner that she should help pay for it since she's been negligent in maintaining it. I think buying a car will be just the thing to knock me into the kind of poverty most other grad students find themselves in. But if I'm going to deal with this RCC job I better get some perks out of it... (free Internet just doesn't quite cut it)

Sunday Kat and I went to a party at a gorgeous purple house in Mountain View. I was a little concerned it would turn out to be gaudy Yahoo! purple or fairytale pastel purple, but somehow it was a happy medium. I never thought there was a tactful shade of purple you could paint a house, but that was it. You'd never tell from the front yard, since middle-class MV homes are crammed together pretty tightly along the street, but they had a huge backyard with a sweet garden, where they were growing their own lettuce, herbs, fruits, and berries. I'd always assumed I'd just end up living in a ho-hum apartment somewhere in Silicon Valley suburbia, but living in a place like that with a few roommates who'd be willing to chip in to do housework and such would be pretty cool. Naturally, with Valley geeks in residence, they'd installed a projector in their living room (giving them a 91" screen, Deb kept telling everyone) and a home media server to stream TV shows and music all across the house. I'm not sure whether that or the garden is cooler, but something tells me most apartments wouldn't be too keen on letting you dig up their grass OR bolt things to the ceiling.

We bailed on the party early to get ready for our expedition to see Big Bad Voodoo Daddy at Frost. Of course, only half our party was actually ready to leave on time, but we headed over, picnic dinner in tow, to stand in line for half an hour for what ended up being damn good chair seats. But it was well-worth the wait--the concert was awesome. I've never been up so close to any (relatively) famous band. BBVD started playing in the middle of the crowd and marched up the aisle to the stage. We made our way to the mosh pit for some mosh--...er ,swing dancing! We eventually got a spotlight circle going where Swingtime folk showed off and the rest of us stepped in tentatively for a few bars. Afterward we had great seats for fireworks, apparently being set off by Candace and the Registrar.

On the 4th, we had a barbecue that went pretty well, despite its organizer bailing on it at the last minute. But we figured out how to grill stuff, the boys becoming men as it were. Then we ran around campus trying to sneak a peek at the dual fireworks shows in Redwood City and Mountain View from Mirrielees.

stay hungry, stay foolish

2005-06-26T15:49:00.000-07:00

to the tune of: Better off Alone by Alice Deejay

Commencement Weekend #2 was still fun, even if I didn't get any diplomas out of it. I went to the Night Before Party, which I missed last year, and got to see Ben's final Harmonics performance (well, until the alumni song at spring show next year) and Dave and Meg's swing solo. Then came karaoke. There's a reason why the folks who invented karaoke have private booths for small groups of singers instead of a large performance hall. We had to sit through performances by people we didn't know that alternated between incredible (the Harmonics stacked a few singers on deck...not fair!) and truly saddening (sorry, three teenage girls do not do Garth Brooks justice). But we got in a fun group performance of Greased Lightning and a stirring rendition of Oklahoma!, a tribute to Dave and Joe Fairbanks' home state.

The actual Commencement Day was much cooler than last year, thankfully. Wacky Dance didn't seem to work as well as last year, but it was still a great time for photo-ops. Steve Jobs gave a pretty good Commencement address, thankfully not rubbing in too much the fact that he never graduated from college and still has more money than all of us put together. Maybe his best line was:

...you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

I spent the next week saying goodbyes and helping people moved. Then my family flew out to meet me on what turned out to be the only rainy weekend this month. Aside from getting rear-ended in SF by a careless teenager who was busy flirting with her boyfriend, we had a great time touring Sonoma wineries. I did my first wine tasting--maybe I just don't know anything about wine or maybe I was just stuffed up from the cold I had, but I had a hard time telling the difference between, say, a 2002 Cabernet Sauvignon and a 2003 Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon.

It's amazing how many "microclimates" the Bay Area has: while we were getting rained on in Sonoma, it was apparently clear and sunny in San Jose. But fortunately that meant that the clouds on Saturday stayed north of the Golden Gate Bridge (maybe to avoid paying the toll), which meant that for once it was sunny in San Francisco! I never thought this possible, but indeed we were able to get great views of the Bridge in Golden Gate Park. (Note: Let me know if you have trouble with that link and what browser you're using... some rogue browser seems to like turning %20s into +s for some reason.) The Palace of Fine Arts also looks much cooler in bright daylight.

This week is going to be exciting: Kat comes back from Paris, Irish dancing in Berkeley, Friday Night Waltz, a Big Bad Voodoo Daddy concert, and a Fourth of July barbecue are all in the works.

holy crap, i think he updated

2005-06-22T00:54:00.000-07:00

to the tune of: Drumbone by Blue Man Group

Whoa. OK, so it's been a month. In my defense, it's been a busy month. And I've got the pictures to prove it...

The last month flew by. Ben's last Harmonics spring show, Dave's Swingtime spring show, and Becky and Kendra's first Decadance spring show all were awesome. Ben was a scorned mime; Dave danced to Dragostea Din Tei.

In the midst of finals I thought it was a good idea to begin my quest for a new car. So far it's been foiled at every turn: every car out there either is really old, has too many miles, is ridiculously expensive, or gets snapped up by someone immediately. You snooze, you lose on su.market. One guy had me wait around at the econ building for half an hour before eventually telling me he sold the car to someone else while I was there. Like vultures these people are. But...I have a date with a '97 Altima tonight so it'll be OK.

Guy and Stewart both had the misfortune of having birthdays during finals week. Helen really wanted to surprise Guy, and was really excited about blindfolding him for some reason. So we hatched a plan for after finals: we'd abduct Guy, put him in the car, and start driving. Instead of pulling up at a restaurant, he'd emerge at a beach near Santa Cruz. And that's what we did. Well, almost. Since Dave's convertible didn't have enough room for us all I wound up in Stewart's car. We were supposed to go ahead and set things up for when Guy got there. And Dave was supposed to get the food ahead of time so I could put it in Stewart's SUV. Turns out on the big day Dave found out he had to work and help Kate move out, so he couldn't get to Safeway early. So Stewart's car makes a rendezvous with him at Safeway to pick up the food and we set off, thinking Dave was going to head back home to abduct Guy, and they'd give us a 15 minute head start but still arrive by sundown. But an hour later when we got to Santa Cruz we found out they hadn't left yet. Turns out he got suckered into more moving, while Helen was desperately trying to distract Guy from thinking about dinner by making him help her with her paper.

Dave returned home and they're all set to blindfold Guy when Helen slammed Ben's finger in a door. So they took time out trying to ice his finger and keep the swelling down. Eventually they did blindfold Guy and put him in the car and take off--going the wrong way on 280. They almost got to Half Moon Bay before they realized what was going on and turned around. Helen was talking about bringing her notebook to work on her paper when someone blurted out, "How are you going to write your paper on the beach?", giving Guy a big hint. Then Dave's car started making strange noises so they pulled over to investigate. Then they needed to stop for gas and Guy needed to use the restroom. But Helen insisted on leaving the blindfold on, so she and Ben had to guide Guy to the bathroom. Of course, Ben had a Safeway bag of ice on his right hand, which looked somewhat suspicious placed against the small of a blindfolded man's back. So they were drawing weird looks and when the attendant started making a phone call they decided to get out quickly. Dave called and told me they were in Scotts Valley, giving Guy another clue. By the time they arrived, the sun had gone down and we had made camp. But we still grilled some burgers on our campfire and a good time was had by all.

By the way, this is why you don't want to be the last one up when it's time to take down the tents. Ben awoke to find his tent collapsed on him.

things that are sweet

2005-05-17T19:09:00.000-07:00

to the tune of: The Tower by Vienna Teng

Exhibit A: A most excellent strawberry chocolate mousse cake prepared by Kathy and Helen for my birthday. With homemade whipped cream and everything. Oh so good. And without any baking (but with much licking of spatulas and mixers).

Exhibit B: Dave's mom made us spaghetti on Mother's Day. We insisted that we should be the ones cooking for her, but she insisted even more, and well, there's no arguing with a determined Southern mother on Mother's Day.

Exhibit C: A whipped cream pie. It's pretty sweet. Just makes you want to stick your whole face in it. Or have it all come flying at your face, as it were. So I spent a week trying to cajole lecturers and TAs to take a pie in the face at the CS Spring Party. And one of them insisted that I do it too. So why not? Who could possibly want to pie their dear Course Advisor?

Well, a lot of people, apparently. I tied with one of the lecturers for cs106a in money raised. All together though, we raised $157 for Camp Amelia, so I'd say it was worth it. Fun fact: whipped cream left in your hair or on your clothes starts to smell.

Exhibit D: Big Dance! Kevin and I won the helium balloon cross-step waltz race, proving that you don't need a woman to waltz. I scored a free ticket to Friday Night Waltz and a "female" hair appointment (since I was following). So any ladies need a haircut or whatever else they do for you with $25 of your money?

And...we saw Vienna Teng perform! The crappy acoustics of Roble didn't do her justice, so people kept dancing back and forth in front of her piano to hear her sing.

People still give me weird looks when I tell them about dancing all night, but I wasn't alone: 211 others made it through all nine hours.

Where's Waldo?

And afterward, more sweet crepes at Laura's apartment...followed by the sweetest thing of all: a few hours' sleep.

nice try

2005-05-12T12:17:00.000-07:00

to the tune of: Ordinary Day by Vanessa Carlton

There's something empowering about closing an account. Like dumping an abusive girlfriend or dropping an abusive class. I called Chase and got some lady speaking broken English in a very thick Chinese accent, who immediately transferred me to an "account supervisor". Apparently threatening to close your account means you merit people who actually speak English. This supervisor tried all these tactics to get me to stay:

Offering to block all those damn Payment Protector sales calls and e-mails. Finally!
Wishing me a happy belated birthday. My personal favorite, since my birthday was a month ago.
Offering to lower my APR. Aw, that's sweet of them. Make it easier for me to carry a balance. NO!
Lecturing me on how important it is to pay my bills. Um, what the hell? So I missed a couple payments and I'm ditching them for a card that, among other things, sends me reminders when I haven't paid the bill.

Nope. Not even tempted. It's over.

Would you throw a pie at a lecturer for charity? How about a course advisor? It's been suggested that I put my, er, whipped cream where my mouth is and put myself on the block just like the lecturers. And sure, I'd do it, but would anyone actually have reason to throw a pie at me? It's not like I gave them a rough midterm or something...

so it's come to this...

2005-05-08T14:21:00.000-07:00

to the tune of: Cruel Spell by Big Bad Voodoo Daddy

We figured this would motivate us to, um, actually graduate. Or at least think about it. And it has succeeded in getting all of us to at least count how many units we need. Of course, working for the CS student services manager, I can't really hide the fact that I haven't turned in my program sheet from, um, last year?

notebookless...

2005-05-02T00:33:00.000-07:00

to the tune of: Snow on the Sahara by Stanford Harmonics

You're sitting in a boring morning lecture. You're struggling to stay awake as the professor rambles on and on through some esoteric phenomenon that he--and only he--thinks is incredibly interesting. And all around you you hear the soft tappity tap tap of neighbors' fingers on their notebooks. Why is the temptation so irresistible to read over their shoulders? You know it's just going to be mundane e-mail, IM, or coding, but there might be an interesting article on someone's screen. But then you catch yourself spying on other people and feel guilty so you avert your eyes to stare feebly at the Daily you hold on your lap, hopefully out of the prof's line-of-sight.

Trouble is, you've already read everything on the front page that you care to (and even a couple articles you couldn't care less about). And now you can't find a way to open the paper discreetly enough without making painfully loud crinkling noises or giving yourself away to the prof.

It's sad, but I need my notebook to keep me sane in such classes. I think I actually pay better attention when I have something else to do to keep me awake.

I came to the sad realization that I may never fill up my Gmail account after all. When they first made their claim "never delete e-mail again!" I was getting around 200 MB of spam a month--so I thought I could test their claim by the time I graduated surely. Then they started deleting spam... No fair! Now it'll take me over a year to even get to 1 GB... and they're adding storage faster than I can fill it. Maybe I need to go rejoin all those mailing lists. Then again, maybe not.

Housing has been unnecessarily suspenseful. The Zone next year will have one Harmonic and one man whose name starts with D. But they'll be the same person. Ben's graduating and Dave waited until 2 hours before the draw deadline to decide to move out with him. Now we have to see if we can get Brendan in, even though SymSys refuses to tell him whether he's been accepted into grad school, and Housing refuses to let him apply. Whee...

i am so old...

2005-04-25T23:08:00.000-07:00

to the tune of: Conventioneers by Barenaked Ladies

Last Sunday night I got a call at 11 PM from a mysterious deep-voiced gentleman.

"Is this Michael J. Brzozowski?"

Lucky me. I must've won the Publisher's Clearinghouse sweepstakes. Funny, I don't remember entering that. That middle initial is serious business though. Only credit card companies know that... and Stanford people. But what am I going to say? Guy already told Deep Voice I was home.

"Yes."
"I have top-secret information for you. Go to the Marguerite stop at Campus and Bowdoin." (click)

Go to a bus stop in the dark at 11 PM based solely on a phone call? Sure, why not? So I set off, my flatmates accompanying me for protection. The street corner was devoid of sketchy people in trenchcoats (and Marguerites) so we kinda stood around until Ben noticed a slip of paper taped to the bus stop sign. It was a game clue. Excellent! And so it began.

Twenty or thirty minutes later, the clues led us back home, where a throng of people had crammed themselves into my very messy room and were about to run out of oxygen when I opened the door. Surprise! Thanks everyone!

blue light special

2005-04-16T01:50:00.000-07:00

to the tune of: Strawberry Wine by Deana Carter

So maybe the celebration was premature. My desktop started overheating again, and I discovered the CPU fan was dying. Bless my little Athlon that it gracefully cuts power instead of melting down. But I conned Kendra into taking me to Fry's and got a new fan and an even more powerful power supply. So powerful it emits a soothing blue glow out the back. Well, actually, that's the LEDs put in there for that purpose. It looks kinda cool...if you're behind the computer. From the front it almost looks eerily possessed, or maybe as if it were about to jump to warp speed or something.

Lesson learned: in a pinch, a little masking tape can stand in for screws. Let's just say it's best not to shake zozobox.

Of course, now that I have zozobox working happily, zozobook died. Won't even turn on. I'm fearing some sort of display failure and just hope the LCD doesn't need to be replaced (read: bye bye tax refund). Anyone know of any non-exorbitantly priced places that fix Sony notebooks?

Get perpendicular! Just look at all those bits boogie-ing. If you've ever seen Schoolhouse Rock, you'll appreciate this even more. If you've never seen bits disco'ing (and who hasn't these days?) even better.

It's been a long week, with a couple all-nighters. But at least it's been really nice outside...

But we did managed to get a paper published, "Evaluating Multicast Applications Using Wearable Algorithms". Don't worry, no knowledge of multicast applications or wearable algorithms is necessary to appreciate this paper.

the box is back

2005-03-25T13:53:00.000-08:00

Reports of zozobox's death have been greatly exaggerated. I endured a ride in the backseat of Dave's car (behind Dave, who needs all the legroom he can get), and a protracted urinal discussion at Fry's over the best place to buy The Incredibles, but the new power supply is in, and all the pics are back online.

silence

2005-03-24T11:17:00.000-08:00

is the sound in my room without the hum of zozobox's fan. Sadness. Looks like the power supply blew on zozobox, and I haven't put the new one in yet so all of the links and media below hosted on zozo.stanford.edu will be offline until further notice. Well, the pictures will magically start working again, which means it's come back up. Whenever that happens.

Wooooo spring break!

::blows off dust::

2005-03-22T17:54:00.000-08:00

to the tune of: Surely Justice by Daryll-Ann

Oh right, I haven't updated in over a month. Well, let's see. What's happened since then?

There was this dance, Viennese Ball. I had a great time, a lovely date (at left), and our performance (with my excellent partner, at right) went better than ever! (Photos) I also have a (Jason-centric) video of the performance filmed by Jason's parents, featuring, among other things, Bravman's fiancee.

There was the ever-enduring struggle looking for jobs for the summer. I really think recruiters live in some sort of alternate universe where we college students are just sitting around on our thumbs with nothing better to do but apply for a job with them. Consider the following experiences (if you don't know who these companies are, IM me):

One company I'd never even heard of wanted me to drop everything in midterms week to go take an off-campus proficiency test before they'd even interview me.
Another took my resume at a job fair and online, assured me they'd contact me, and then told me that they really thought I was qualified to be a "vector arithmetic intern", which turns out to involve rewriting low-level system code to use vectors so it runs faster on this company's processor. Which is funny, because I can't even vectorize Matlab code, and nothing on my resume even remotely implies I'd be qualified or even interested in this job. My guess is no one else wanted this job either, and so they started asking random people they didn't want to take seriously to interview for this position instead. I e-mailed them, politely asking why they thought I was qualified, and got no response.
Another made me sit outside and wait for half an hour while the previous interview ran over because the interviewer didn't think it necessary to bring a watch. Or my resume, as it turned out.
Another kept e-mailing me to set up a technical interview, and I kept e-mailing them times I was available, which they ignored and assigned me to slots that I couldn't make. I never did schedule a tech interview with them because they kept screwing with the date.
Another scheduled an onsite interview for me. But they forgot to tell the people who were interviewing me that. So I find myself nervously waiting in the lobby, watching other applicants come in and head off to interviews, and the recruiter I'd talked to was about to send me home when one of them popped out and saved the day at the last minute.
A call from a recruiter telling Helen I should be at my computer at a certain time, without leaving so much as an e-mail address for me to complain if that time shouldn't work for me. You don't call them, they call you.

In the end though, I aborted the job search once I got a research gig for the summer and decided it was the best way to prepare for a possible Ph.D application. But not before I got a second round interview and a job offer. It's such a great ego-booster: External validation that I have marketable skills.

It was nice being able to sleep in Saturday mornings. Of course, this could only last so long, as a certain class induced several all-night coding sessions, though thankfully within the safe confines of the Sleep-Free Zone instead of Sweet Hall, the second floor of which I vow never to set foot on again. We discovered that operating system source code is far more interesting when read in a foreign accent, and we cycled through a variety of them. We cracked ourselves up. And made others question our sanity, perhaps.

We finally made up for our sadly bungled attempt to surprise Dave last August for his birthday by getting him when he least suspected it: his half-birthday. A complete success, and oh was he surprised...

In a cruel twist of fate, it was ridiculously nice outside during Dead Week when we should be studying and is flooding streets now that we have time on spring break. But whatever. But biking around in shorts as the plum blossoms bloom outside our apartment while people at certain other schools were slogging through snowstorms on their way to class, I could hardly complain.

sex, love, and...waltz?

2005-02-07T17:57:00.000-08:00

to the tune of: Windmills by UO On The Rocks

Oh it's been a busy week.

So it turns out that yes, Cingular did cut off my service for about 12 hours, and no, I wasn't pleased. Even after talking to the cut off your toes-style collection agency, and even after paying them everything I owed them. And they could make no promises that they wouldn't do it again. So once again, anyone who has a choice don't sign up with Cingular.

Friday was a rapid-fire succession of midterm, dance, lunch, trip to Palo Alto with Kat, dance lesson, performance, and Friday Night Waltz. Expensive tuxes are so complex. Now granted, I have no idea how most ball gowns work, but I doubt they have as many detachable (and losable) parts and adjustable parts. And they don't have as many layers I suspect. But after our performance Jason and I decided to go to Friday Night Waltz fashionably late. Very fashionably. And very late. It's amazing how many more people want to dance with you when you're wearing a tux than blue jeans. We did get a few weird stares, the best of which came from the guy in a suit who used to be the best-dressed man there until we showed up and stole his thunder.

Lesson learned: Tails are cool, but jacket is hot. We'll see how long the jacket stays on Friday night. With the last dress rehearsal over, the reality sinks in: Aaaaah, Viennese is Friday!

I got this amusing questionnaire from soc lecture on Wednesday. My favorite? Why do you insist on flaunting your heterosexuality? Can't you just be who you are and keep it quiet?

Random culinary discovery (hold your judgment until you try it): Goldfish on pizza. Hey, it's just like adding cheddar cheese...

And now it's time to finish our 140 project over the next 18 hours. Whee...

zozo the deadbeat

2005-01-27T00:53:00.000-08:00

to the tune of: Radetzky March by Strauss

It seems I've been delinquent. Delinquent in updating this blog. And delinquent in paying my wireless bill, which has currently swelled to over $247.

Why, you ask? Because they're still overcharging me for a phone I never ordered, and they haven't been too interested in rectifying this problem since I called them back in October. But apparently someone must have noticed because I've been turned over to a cut off your toes-style collections agency.

I was standing outside Gates talking to Kendra and my research advisor when my phone rang. The shadowy caller blocked caller ID so I thought it was someone calling from a dorm. But no, when I answered the phone I was talking to a husky-sounding man who sounded like he could come hunt me down and break my kneecaps. They get their most intimidating-sounding people to hound people to pay their bills I guess. Turns out this was in fact a Cingular customer service rep.

To make a long and not particularly interesting story involving another hour of phone time short, I may or may not have phone service come tomorrow. Cingular remains on my hit list.

In other news, I shamelessly plug, as heckled at Flicks and derided in a Daily column: Viennese Ball!. Free dance lessons start Saturday if you don't know how to dance but still want to experience "one night of strappy blackness". 2.5 weeks left and the entire Opening is finally choreographed, including tonight's little workshop on walking and bowing.

If I ever donate to the Stanford Fund (oh no, that's The Stanford Fund with a capital 'T'), I'm going to be sure to make it contingent on students not having to write any of those bloody letters. Speaking of which, and delinquency, I need to go start them now...

ahhh, i'm back..

2005-01-03T20:19:00.000-08:00

Over break I learned my parents' list of Subtle Ways to Wake Mike Up:

Burst into the room to check your e-mail

Ring the doorbell

Call the house

Vacuum the whole downstairs

Use a leaf blower outside

But I'm back in the Bay now, on Caltrain after a harrowing race to the AirTrain, and then BART. Someone actually published a study on how awful BART ticket machines are and how hard they are to figure out. I never really appreciated that until now. (You would think they would have done something about it after achieving such notoriety. You would be wrong.) They demands money without telling you how much or what for; you're supposed to look that up on a chart first. But it doesn't like just any dollar bill...oh no, it's quite selective. Naturally you can't use a credit card to buy less than $20 of BARTness, or if you can I couldn't figure out how to do it in the 10 seconds I thought I had. Finally I found $2 and just resigned myself to get gypped out of 50 cents. I still don't really have time to read so I push the button next to the thing that looks like a ticket. Nope, the most alluring option is an expensive BART Plus ticket, which I didn't care to figure out what was. Finally I get my stupid ticket, charge through the gate, and just make it onto the train, only to sit there at the station for 5 minutes anticlimactically, as if BART were laughing at me.

Lesson learned: It takes exactly 22 minutes to get from row 19 of a Northwest flight full of people in no particular hurry to get off to a BART train, including a bathroom stop. All in all, not bad.

Another discovery: Life Aquatic: Weird movie. Funny at times. But way more of Bill Murray in a Speedo than I needed.

And a massage is the perfect antidote to six hours of Northwest.

10...9...oh dick, we love you...7...6...dick, wish you were here...4...3...did we mention dick's not here?...1...happy new year!

2005-01-01T01:02:00.000-08:00

Yes, happy new year everyone! I was ready to shoot Regis and getting a little sick of the Dick Clark lovefest but, yup, that ball dropped right on schedule. There's something great about having Colin Powell be in charge of pushing The Button, cause he tries so hard to do the same thing in his day job...

It's green again! All the snow is gone, washed away in a freak rainstorm and warm day. "How long until it gets cold again?" Dad had to ask while we were walking the dog. Sure enough, it plummeted 30 degrees within 12 hours. Nice going, Dad. Although tonight's ice will be gone come Sunday. Michigan weather is fickle.

All in all it's been a quiet break. Got a nice dose of euchre...if I didn't get so rusty throughout the year I probably wouldn't suck so much now. And I got my snow and kielbasa for the year. And more than enough family politics.

Someday soon I'm gonna have to stop staying up till 5 AM. But not today...

got a few extra bucks for christmas?

2004-12-31T01:13:00.000-08:00

<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

2004-12-24T07:30:00.000-08:00

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

2004-12-23T15:09:00.000-08:00

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

brrr...

2004-12-15T20:11:00.000-08:00

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

2004-12-08T13:06:00.000-08:00

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

2004-12-04T14:07:00.000-08:00

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...

2004-11-28T21:00:00.000-08:00

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

2004-11-20T20:14:00.000-08:00

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

2004-11-13T14:06:00.000-08:00

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

2004-11-07T22:43:00.000-08:00

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

2004-10-30T14:25:00.000-07:00

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

2004-10-25T02:47:00.000-07:00

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

2004-10-24T02:00:00.000-07:00

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

2004-10-16T13:35:00.000-07:00

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?

2004-10-09T01:02:00.000-07:00

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

2004-10-08T08:27:00.000-07:00

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

2004-10-06T17:02:00.000-07:00

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

2004-10-02T20:55:00.000-07:00

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

2004-09-29T03:17:00.000-07:00

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!

2004-09-26T02:52:00.000-07:00

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?!

2004-09-21T04:20:00.000-07:00

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

2004-09-19T04:55:00.000-07:00

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...

2004-09-09T20:12:00.000-07:00

...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

2004-09-07T06:08:00.000-07:00

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

2004-09-03T02:56:00.000-07:00

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

2004-08-31T03:31:00.000-07:00

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

2004-08-24T02:13:00.000-07:00

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?

2004-08-24T01:13:00.000-07:00

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...

2004-08-16T01:58:00.000-07:00

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

2004-08-12T01:33:00.000-07:00

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

2004-08-07T12:35:00.000-07:00

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?

2004-08-01T02:44:00.000-07:00

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:

[everyone looks at the picture]

Kat:

[the painting contains no women]

Instructor:

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

2004-07-25T17:04:00.000-07:00

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...

2004-07-20T19:04:00.000-07:00

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

2004-07-19T21:38:00.000-07:00

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...

2004-07-16T01:07:00.000-07:00

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?

2004-07-13T02:05:00.000-07:00

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!

2004-07-07T01:15:00.000-07:00

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?

2004-07-03T11:53:00.000-07:00

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

2004-06-29T01:24:00.000-07:00

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

2004-06-26T14:43:00.000-07:00

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

2004-06-21T08:48:00.000-07:00

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...

2004-06-15T14:51:00.000-07:00

...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

2004-06-11T03:27:00.000-07:00

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

2004-06-07T01:16:00.000-07:00

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

2004-06-03T11:11:00.000-07:00

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

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

2004-06-02T01:11:00.000-07:00

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

2004-05-29T00:53:00.000-07:00

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...

2004-05-27T17:38:00.000-07:00

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

2004-05-25T23:10:00.000-07:00

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.

2004-05-21T11:37:00.000-07:00

to the tune of: Anna Rose by Vienna Teng

Last night we went to see Shrek 2, which was so awesome. It spoofed everything from The Wizard of Oz to Lord of the Rings (and did so multiple times...). And there's nothing quite like Antonio Banderas' cover of Livin' La Vida Loca...

So sad:

The rest of the article

Speaking of sad, Erin sent me this video, where you can watch the heroic slaying of a sleeping mountain lion. In true Palo Alto fashion though, a small memorial was erected for the lion and the shooting's sparked a public outrage. One almost as big as that over our post office...

roar

2004-05-19T02:33:00.000-07:00

to the tune of: Mobile by Avril Lavigne

By far the best quote about the recent mountain lion scare appeared on the front page of the Mercury News and came from a frightened Palo Alto mother: "I have two small children, who'd make a pretty tasty treat for a mountain lion." I kid you not. And I was really hoping the mountain lion would win the ASSU special re-election...

By now you've no doubt discovered the work of great poet D.H. Rumsfeld. But did you know you can now buy the album? Yes, someone took our Defense Secretary's press-release poetry and got an opera singer to record it to music. The result is oddly hypnotic. Bizarre. But strangely sublime. And somehow better than the book.

i almost forgot...

2004-05-17T00:26:00.000-07:00

to the tune of: All Of You by Vertical Horizon

see if you recognize anyone, or any certain schools, on Wheel of Fortune tonight and tomorrow night... (Stanford channel 27, 7:30). If I can wrest control of the TiVo for two minutes I'll try to tape it, but there's usually someone with less to do glued to the couch in the lounge.

And, wanna buy a P-P-P-Powerbook? An amusing tale of one guy with enough time on his hands to fight back against an e-mail scammer.

save the piñatas

2004-05-16T13:01:00.000-07:00

to the tune of: Concerto For Piano And Orchestra No. by Beethoven

Each year, thousands of piñatas are brutally beaten. Unless another outlet can be found for our aggression, these docile creatures may disappear completely. So save the piñatas today. (Many thanks to Ben for finding it.)

The webserver's back up, along with my pictures. Sorry, I blame it on the experimental machine learning software I'm testing, which forced more reboots than I've done all year. But now it's happily churning away at my inbox, learning all it can about the tons of e-mail I get every day.

rockin around the clock

2004-05-15T17:07:00.000-07:00

to the tune of: I Won't Dance by Frank Sinatra

Ahh, such a week. A busy week, but a rewarding week.

I got the CS Undergrad Course Advisor position! So now I have a way to pay for tuition and housing next year, which is always nice. I guess Stanford will hire me even when no one else will. Which will work out just fine for now, but might be troubling later on.

Wednesday was Grandpa's birthday. Dad told me this at some point and I diligently entered it in my calendar, so even though it was a surprise to me, Outlook remembered effortlessly. So I called to wish him a happy birthday, only to discover Mom thought it was Tuesday. Turns out they managed to convince him his birthday was then too--they made him a nice dinner and celebrated. So when his own brother called on Wednesday they got into an argument over when his birthday actually was. I'll never forget when my birthday is--the same day as, uh, the 1906 SF earthquake?

But of course, the highlight of the week was Big Dance. I did it--nine straight hours. This included:

Discovering that, yes, a face mask does somewhat obscure your field of vision.

A couple of wonderful waltzes. And redowa!

A hyper-speed polka contest I still maintain we would have won were it not for a little wardrobe malfunction.

Contra and line dancing at 2 AM: no one knows what's going on, but no one really cares...

The "lullaby suite" at 4 AM: Richard's evil attempt to put us to sleep

The chicken dance: Fun as a kid but dangerous in a room with 200 adults

Speed polkaing all the way through the Hampster Dance remix with Kelsey--without falling back on a promenade.

Photos of Big Dance

My feet were left sore but content.

Vem Magalenha rojão...

2004-05-08T13:51:00.000-07:00

to the tune of: Naruto's Daily Life by Toshiro Masuda

Sadness... I spent much of Social 3 on Thursday sitting out because certain (cough, cough) women follows didn't show up for class. With three men too many I thought it better to let the ones who actually registered for the class dance.

The week has been a string of rehearsals for Spring Migration tonight in MemAud. The lights wash out everyone's faces, and I've come to accept theatrical makeup as a necessary evil of being onstage. You just outline a few facial features so that expressions show up. But we've gone one step further in deciding that I am apparently too white to be doing an Afro-Peruvian dance. So I get special treatment to "darken me up". Not just the face but also my neck and if Marco has his way, my arms too.

Of course, the First Rule of Stage Makeup is that makeup, once applied, will come off far more easily on one's costume than on a wet washcloth. And eyeliner? that vile stuff never goes away...

so bizarre

2004-05-05T11:59:00.000-07:00

to the tune of: Pinch Me by Barenaked Ladies

This creation by a former co-star of mine is pretty disturbing. Funny, but disturbing. You may never look at a Stanford Dining employee the same way...

Post Office Door Update: Now front-page news in the Daily. Particularly amusing is the theory that "it’s the cause of a general decline in morale on campus"...

Key observation of the day: Stained-glass windows are really hard to photograph. But MemChu in the afternoon: still beautiful. The solution: don't shoot the windows...

what, me work?

2004-05-02T21:13:00.000-07:00

to the tune of: Wherever You Will Go by The Calling

Our government in action:

Yes, the door at the Post Office has now been "out of order" for weeks now. It's been gathering its own sort of cult following that one day I deemed worthy of recording for posterity.

At around midnight I got a random IM invitation to karaoke. IGs in the morning? Bah! I was...practicing my Japanese, yeah, that's it...

Enlightenment is for historical eras and Buddha. Not for Jamba Juice smoothies. Remember that. They go in the same category with diet Snapple--so much healthier than those regular, ah, fruit smoothies... but so much less tasty.

Really, how many times a day can one man smoke pot? The guy down the hall filled the floor with that peculiarly nauseating scent twice in the span of 3 hours Friday night, and is at it again right now. I have this ideal vision of Rains as a place where I don't have to share a bathroom with any potheads (of which there's an 80% chance) or have pot blowin' in the wind to my window (of which I have no idea).

Speaking of Rains (and not of pot), I shall be RCCing there after all. Theoretically we should be able to reunite my draw group in a Rains 4-bedroom apartment for a fun-filled summer and chill fifth year. Apparently enough people on the alternates list failed to respond within their convenient three-hour windows (or were frightened away by the recent spate of viruses) that they came crawling back to me. I suppose I should feel honored. Instead I just feel gullible.

iTunes 4.5: Just Say No

2004-04-29T19:27:00.000-07:00

to the tune of: Friends In Low Places by Garth Brooks

I must say, Apple's getting sleazier by the day.

The new iTunes 4.5 trumpets exciting features like playlists you can re-arrange while playing (like the ones in WinAmp years ago) and lossless encoding (like Windows Media 9). Tempting eh?

The real reason Apple is releasing an upgrade is to break all the cracks in its copy protection. MyTunes and getTunes no longer work, nor does FairPlay. Although someone's already cracked the new security, it may take a while for someone to release a Windows version.

But worse, the new version is completely incompatible with older iTunes 4.x. If you upgrade, you won't be able to listen to anyone's iTunes 4 libraries. But if you don't you won't be able to hear 4.5 music collections. And the only compelling reason to use iTunes goes poof in a cloud of brushed metal smoke. So sleazy. Apple's getting good at this coercion thing. Even Microsoft makes its stuff backward-compatible...

Lemme know if you find a replacement for MyTunes that works with 4.5.

this job offer will self-destruct in 5...

2004-04-24T19:46:00.000-07:00

to the tune of: Nancy's Waltz by Natalie MacMaster

It's like The Man of Stanford is plotting against me.

Tuesday I got a friendly e-mail from the registrar informing me I was being switched to grad tuition, and that "it might be a good idea to check" how I'd pay the extra $2K they slapped on my bill. The Registrar's office was befuddled, and no one could explain why this happened.

Wednesday at 1 PM I was awarded an RCC job in Rains. Which is exactly what I wanted. Problem is that at 6 PM the offer was withdrawn because I wasn't at my computer to accept it. Before I realized what had happened, they had offered the position to someone else. The irony here is that the ResComp people I called and e-mailed took nearly 10 hours to get back to me. But they don't really care; as far as they're concerned, they have someone to fill that job, and it doesn't matter whom.

Friday I went to go start the grad housing draw process, made necessary by not having a staff position. I had just filled out this massive form, including eight housing preferences and a handful of probing questions about what sort of roommate I wanted that took a good 20 minutes to deliberate over (and a draw group name/password that took another 20 minutes) only to have the housing site go down on me and lose everything I had entered. Sigh...

But I don't care, 'cause I feel grr-EEEAT!

Pics from my surprise birthday party.

i'm only 0x16...

2004-04-19T01:44:00.000-07:00

to the tune of: Hope On Fire by Vienna Teng

22 is old. Older than dirt. Older than some things older than dirt, since according to Nick, dirt is 19 1/2. And what a birthday it's been:

Morning interactive grading: 1 for 2. Even with the reminder e-mail, I still had one sectionee forget. This does not bode well for the quarter.

After missing two calls during my one successful IG, and AT&T playing a cruel trick on me (who'd have thought I had to reboot my cell phone to make a call), I ended up with an interesting three-way call with my parents and little brother. Something about three-way calling just seems opposed to the two-way dialogues typical of social conversation. But one resulting phenomenon: I got three different weather reports; they were each proud to report that Detroit was experiencing a freak heat wave in the 80s. Given that this month it's usually been about, oh, 10 degrees warmer here, this was a Big Deal to them.

I started off with a Wheel of Fortune taping in SF with TBP. It was a lot of fun... We got there and discovered we had VIP tickets, which means we were the part of the audience that actually got taped. Along with a disturbing number of Santa Clara students and people from Cal. For good measure, Cal brought their whole band and their cheerleaders. We clapped our hands sore, Ryan Bickerstaff of FroSoCo fame won some money, and some Stanford frosh won a car and $20K. They actually have people whose job it is to walk the aisles and indicate to people when they should clap and to shush them when everyone in the audience knows the answer to the puzzles.

The second show featured this guy from San Jose State who must have been trying to become the next William Hung. He definitely had energy, screaming at Pat that he wanted to buy vowels every chance he got (and even some chances he didn't get) and gesturing wildly each time he guessed wrong or lost a turn. He also thought he could will the wheel away from Bankrupt spaces by screaming at it. (Aside: Why would you ever buy vowels unless you can't think of any consonants to guess?) But he was a somewhat lovable guy, and so when after racking up $13K and (through buying out their stock of vowels) getting the puzzle down to "DON'T BREATHE A _ORD OF THIS TO AN_ONE" he spun again, and guessed...L? Granted, he spoke English with a Chinese accent so maybe his grasp of spelling wasn't the best, but still...

Later tonight I got back and had just about forgotten about my birthday when I was heading out the door to a group meeting when Guy stopped me, saying, "Something might happen..." It turned out some of my friends had been plotting a surprise party at 9, the exact time I was going to meet with my group. And it was a nice surprise, certainly. And unexpected. But all was good; I shifted the meeting forward and did my best to feign surprise even though everyone knew already. Surprise parties rarely turn out to be complete surprises in my experience, but knowing people were planning a party for 15 minutes is just as good I think. I felt kinda bad for making them ruin the surprise but they had no way to know, and they'd been secretive enough beforehand so neither did I. Still, it is truly the thought that counts, and it was much appreciated.

Questing for: An English translation of Vienna Teng's Green Island Lullaby.
Taking nominations for: A superhero to dress as for Big Dance next month.

that might hurt their draw numbers...

2004-04-17T16:03:00.000-07:00

to the tune of: Boogie by Big Bad Voodoo Daddy

Jason just sent me some stunning pictures of today's fire at CroMem. No details yet on how the fire started but everyone seems OK.

Not that I really wanted to live there anyway...

yet another reason not to upgrade your AIM

2004-04-16T22:58:00.000-07:00

to the tune of: Deora Ar Mo Chroi by Enya

So I'm minding my own business and suddenly I get this popup inviting me to download this Viewpoint Toolbar. Which is funny, since I never installed any Viewpoint software. A little bit of research revealed AIM decided to install this without my consent. It turns out to be some form of spyware which thinks it's entitled to be on my computer but provides me no real benefit. Curious, since it wants to direct me to use Yahoo!'s search engine. Though I don't know what sinister purpose this serves yet, I generally dislike things randomly popping up and asking me to download things I don't need. Of course, I probably wouldn't have noticed it had it not conveniently announced its presence, but still. You can theoretically remove it through Add/Remove Programs. Stupid AIM.

On a less rantful note, the future of nicological technology is here. Are you sick of being told when and where you can light up? Well now, there's a solution...

ahhh...

2004-04-16T03:44:00.000-07:00

to the tune of: Whadaya Want by Casey MacGill

Today: Bohemian! National! Polka! This was the first time I actually danced the whole thing without screwing up.

Next time you're at In-N-Out, the secret password is: "animal style French fries". Trust me.

mmixed it up

2004-04-12T11:00:00.000-07:00

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

Ahh, Jammix. Unfortunately, I wasn't feeling well when the birthday dance came around and missed out on that, which is sad cause it was cross-step and hustle, two of my favorites. But at the end we practiced the music set Richard had picked for the Wacky Walk. Perhaps polkaing, swinging, and hustling for 20 straight minutes in the blazing June sun in a black robe might not be the smartest thing to do. But I'm still going to do it. Without anyone I know in the stands to see me make a fool of myself, what have I got to lose?

Yesterday I went to Karen's baptism. It's frightening how many churches there are in Palo Alto--and they're all right next to each other. And many of them are pretty segregated too. This one was a Korean church, which meant bilingual testimonials. Which was cool and all, but I kept hearing words that sounded suspiciously like Japanese and trying to find them in the English translations.

Random Easter observation: It seems like Christians spend way more time talking about how Christ died than how He lived.

Note to self: Bring flowers to any future baptisms.

2004-04-09T01:17:00.000-07:00

to the tune of: Fly Me To The Moon by Frank Sinatra

Recent happenings:

Getting a sweet CS 106A section where people actually participate. It's amazing how much a difference it makes not to be right after lunch. Curiously, not a single person majoring in or considering CS. Our department is in a contraction phase right now, and since the Daily said it, it must be true.

Actually getting up early enough to go sit outside a prof's office and have him show up 15 minutes late for a 9 AM meeting.

Agreeing to learn all of CS 229 in three weeks.

Reverse redowa! It actually worked for the first time today!

Freaky "gypsy variation" in cross-step waltz. Yup, we're so damn advanced, we can not only waltz with one hand tied behind our backs, but no hands at all...

Dunking newly 21-year-old Jim in the shower. He made the mistake of admitting he wanted to be doused with water, so being the great friends we are, we obliged.

Balloon fencing with Kathy. Lesson: balloons are not the most sturdy swords. And weird wrestling/martial arts/samba fights with Robin.

Deciding computer whisperer was probably not the best qualification to list on my RCC application.
On a sadder note, I fear something that was very special to me may be lost. I still don't understand how or why. But it saddens me because of all the memories we shared. I only hope I find it again, my pair of dance shoes...

this weekend...

2004-04-06T01:11:00.000-07:00

to the tune of: Alive by Raiko

The Fellowship of the Rabbit, forged two years ago in the darkness of CS108, fractured and broke up.

A parallax in a good friend became apparent.

It hurts when someone you care about blocks you out of their life deliberately.

The rest of this post (warning: may include some whining)

this week i learned...

2004-04-05T00:45:00.000-07:00

There are a frightening number of ethnic fraternities and sororities.

South Stacks: creepy.

Some sororities are just like Girls Gone Wild.

Lying in grass on a high pollen day: bad for allergies.

Women, listen carefully: I am oblivious. To many things that may be perfectly obvious to you. Insinuations, hints, your inner thoughts... yes. Plainly spell out things you must.