i am so old...

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

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

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

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::

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?

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

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...