Category: People

Dear gentle reader: this blog has been operating continuously since I was a teenager. The writing below is at least a decade old. In that time every molecule of my body has been replaced, along with many foolish ideas and flighty beliefs. I want to keep some of those things public out of an honesty and humility I owe the world. I trust you to carry that context with you.

October 1, 2003 /

“Also, in an attempt to re-energize myself, I sort of scotch-taped a quart of milk to my face.”

Sometimes I think the reason the faces in AZWP are so expressive is because they are all Stephen’s real face.

October 1, 2003 /

“Coleman said he remained worried about the ‘heavy-handedness’ of the lawsuits, which carried fines of up to $150,000 for each song shared from their hard drives. When asked whether the fines were excessive, Bainwol said they got consumers’ attention and established a deterrent. ‘Public floggings would get attention, too, but we don’t do that,’ Coleman responded.”

Well played, Senator Coleman. Well played.

Meanwhile, over at Music That Is Free And Also Fricking Rocks, Amanda informs me that Jon has put new songs up on his IUMA page. (I have to find this out from Amanda because someone else never updates his blog. But I digress.) And! They fricking rock! “Later” and particularly “Gun” remind me of the reformed-ELO-fan sound of 56 Kilobit Sentinel, and the lo-fi / high harmony contrast in “Letting Go” might be my favorite moment in a Jon song yet. Plus the outro rocks like Silverchair.

September 28, 2003 /

Audrey and Drew. It’s all their fault. If not for their meddling influences, I could have gone to the craft store with Maria and (Illinoisan entomologist) Annie and spent a mere $20 on new Microns. Ta da! The end!

Except the aforementioned two have talked lots about inking with metal-nib pens and brushes, respectively, and I saw some of that stuff at Michael’s and got all excited and WHOOPS there goes all the money I had next month.

I’m calling it an “investment.” That makes it okay to shave a little bit off the future-budget for, oh, as long as I’m alive.

Anyway, at least I’ll be trying new art stuff. Expect to see shaky new black-and-white things in the Chalkboard as I get my… ink-legs. I guess.

Now: Kruskal’s algorithm!

September 15, 2003 /

There’s a bit of rough going, as you might have noticed, as I try to install my journal software on the new server. It’ll be back, honest idjit. Meanwhile, things I’ve been meaning to talk about:

Sumana has not only been published in Salon, she’s also turned 22 (Sumana is younger than me. I can’t stand it) and written what is possibly the definitive blog entry on spam.
Lisa is back at school, next to Flora, having fun without me and taking my single favorite picture of a door ever.
My roommate Maria is taking about eighteen exams today, over there in dag blasted medical school. Wish her luck! I’m not really worried about her, since (as I recently discovered) she has a photographic memory. Never try to win an argument with someone who has a photographic memory. Or rather, try as you will, but get ready to lose a lot.
The new work-school-rest-school-work schedule is working out very well–it’s a lot of effort, but I’m never as tired as I was this summer, partly because the breakup in my week keeps me refreshed and life interesting. I’m also doing a lot at work. Putting up dummy pages for my journal, for instance. No, I’m not doing anything actually work-related.

That’s most of it. With any luck, the journal will be back this week, but I wouldn’t wager any real estate on it. Meanwhile, if I have any updates of lesser importance, I’ll post in the (again) spanking new forums. Take care. Wear a jacket.

September 4, 2003 /

Maria’s been making fun of me for this, which makes me want to discount it just on principle, but the fact is I’ve been a cookie fiend lately. I’ve produced, what, four batches? In a little over two weeks? (Where one batch is approximately thirty-two cookies?) We keep having to make trips to the store for more butter and morsels.

No, I haven’t eaten them all myself–it’s been Everybody From Centre Visits Me One Last Time Week, so I’ve been practically forcing them into a lot of mouths. I am a mother, after all; one of my primal instincts is to feed.

I’ve still eaten a lot, and it’s starting to show, but man they just keep turning out really good! It’s only the recipe from the back of the Toll House bag, but then it’s the chocolate chip cookie. Besides metadesserting, how much can you improve on the basic design?

September 3, 2003 /

Fun With Iteration

Jon once proposed that Will Smith produce a franchise of songs in the same vein as “Miami,” ranking each city in order of preference:

“Miami, my second home!”

“Los Angeles, my third home!”

“Dublin, my… 467th home.”

More Fun With Iteration

This morning, TARCing in ten minutes late to my advisor appointment, I managed to correctly get his office extension by picking a known number down the hall and trying each subsequent number.

This actually took place about 24 hours ago.

August 30, 2003 /

2212 hrs and Emma Hayes has tricked me into showing up at a party at her house, filled with cool hip extremely professional twentysomethings I don’t know. Emma Hayes herself is predictably not here, so I’ve vaguely procured a 7-Up from her roommate Dawn. I am lucky to have met Dawn once in a parking lot, and to have her mercifully remember me.

Here I am sitting on the front porch of a freshly warmed house, trying to look writerly with my pocket Moleskine. Perhaps, I think, this will politely make it less obvious that I have no idea what I’m doing.

Adventure!

Sumana is not actually the big sister I never had, and would probably be a little weirded out if I claimed she was, but she DID display a frighteningly big sisterish sixth sense in calling about half an hour after I wrote that down. This was wonderful; it gave me a good excuse to laugh for twenty minutes, recharged my ability to talk to humans, and gave evidence that I have a life outside of showing up at parties filled with people I don’t know.

Emma finally did show up at what, 2320 hrs? And it was great to see her, and I got to know some of the people at the party. By the time I hitched home (around 0300) I had actually had a good time. None of this outweighs the first panicky hour I spent retreating into introversion, though, really. There’s a reason for the fact that, in college, I only went to parties in my own apartment.

August 28, 2003 /

I didn’t write anything Wednesday, because Wednesday was Secret Project Day and I’m sorry but you’re just not cleared. Talk to Ian–I’m sure he’ll have something for you eventually.

Today was my second day of classes. This morning, I hadn’t quite done the reading for my first class (Artificial Intelligence). I hurriedly flipped through it on the bus, worrying that I’d be behind already in my first week.

Then I got to class, which turned out to be about… truth tables. The fourth time I’ve learned truth tables. I know, they’re important, first principles, et cetera, but four times in four different classes? They should just have a one-day truth table seminar for everyone who declares a major related to math or philosophy and have done with it. I demand an end to redundancy! I demand an end to redundancy!

During my last class (Object-Oriented Information Technology), it started raining really hard. Like, New England hard. I had to walk several blocks to and from the bus stop; by the time I got home I was actually soaked directly through my underpants. At one point, the wind was at my back, and that and the rain were so hard and horizontal that I appeared to be going backwards through hyperspace.

August 26, 2003 /

The day went very well, actually. Object-Oriented Software Development is going to be hard and a lot of fun; AI and Algorithms are going to be hard and… well, basically just hard. I managed to buy my books and a lunch and backpack. Oh! That’s a great excuse for a gimmick, because I was actually buying said backpack for Maria, and I had biked to class and had only one way to carry it. That’s right: for a few hours, mine was a metabackpack.

That biking was the first time I’ve ever actually done a real bike workout, and it was pretty cool. (It’s also longer than I thought; now that I’ve scouted the route, I think I’ll mostly TARC it.) At times I felt like an escapee of TRON, whizzing through lightfields with limitless dexterity. At others, such as when I ran into a chain link fence within five minutes of leaving my apartment, I did not. And at still others, I tried to stop, ha ha, whilst riding with a misaligned brake pad and fifty pounds of new textbooks. The other thing I learned today is “inertia.”

Also! I returned Sumana’s call and ended up talking to Leonard, who was gentle and solar-powered, the way I imagine dimetrodons. I babbled a lot, at one point, I think, engaging in extended discourse on the subject of avocados.

Yeah. I lived through one day, and tomorrow it’s already my weekly Hump Day Vacation, wherein I do nothing but hang out with Ian and get excited about secret projects. Also, try to find a longer CAT5 cable so I can get Yellow Puppy out on the interweb. Ph34r! My… vastly underpowered new computer!

August 26, 2003 /

Sumana recommended weeks ago that I read “In the Beginning was the Command Line,” a very long essay by Neal Stephenson about operating systems and Disney World and nuclear weapons. I’d heard of it before, and I like Stephenson a lot, although his direct-address form is so clear and dry that I spend a lot of time wondering if he’s making fun of me.

Anyway, today I got bored at work, and I read it (213k of plain text; I was very bored), and it got me all excited and I went home and dug out my reject iMac and now, a few hours of downloading later, I’m watching it brainwash itself with Yellow Dog Linux. This is way too easy. I want it to hit a snag now, so I won’t be won over.

You hear me? I won’t be won over!

I don’t know why I have such a grudge against Linux. Maybe it’s because my first experience with it was being thrown into the cold water of a bad implementation of Debian–a hacker’s imp, done by my hacker of a first professor, running chill and unfriendly in the basement that was the old Centre CS lab. (The new lab was still in the basement, it just ran Red Hat instead. I was shocked to realize Linux could do 24-bit color.)

Or maybe it’s just because I’ve been using Windows for such a long time, and I hate admitting I was wrong. Bleagh. Oh well.

The install’s 18% done, and I think I’m going to crash soon and let it run while I sleep. In the morning I should just about have a Linux box, as is only fitting for my first day of CS grad school.

The only problem now, really, is figuring out what I’m going to use it for. I’ve got my desktop publishing and image processing pretty well taken care of on this old warhorse (my PII), so I didn’t install any of that, but do I try to set up a friendly ftp server? Learn to write Xwindows apps? Run a MUD? Suggestions are welcome.

Pork-barrel entry-end tagalongs: I baked my first batch of chocolate chip cookies from scratch this evening, waiting for Yellow Dog to download. And they’re GOOD! I’ve been strutting around all night thanks to that. Also, The Devil’s Dictionary does in fact have an RSS feed, and its author, a Mr. Kn____, is apparently some kind of referral-log ninja. And I owe Maria big for letting me download and burn like a gig and a half of computer-geek stuff on her shiny new laptop, since my CD burner is still dead. Thanks, Maria! Get a blog!