Saturday, November 26, 2005

10:20 AM - As if one roadtrip wasn't enough...

A Fenny update

Some of you may remember Fenny from our roadtrip earlier this year. After returning to San Francisco, she decided to go to New Orleans where she's volunteering with an organization that's helping with the overwhelming amount that needs done there. Fenny has set up a LiveJournal where she tells the story much better than I do, so please go take a look, or add her to your LiveJournal friendlist so you can see her updates.

Thursday, November 24, 2005

5:05 AM - thaw me out in the spring. that would be... August?

things to be thankful for

Happy Thanksgiving! It's.... snowing. I wish I had a digital camera; I'd snap a pic.

So here's the good news: I have a job. These guys seem awesome.

My original Thanksgiving plans fell through, but Elsie and Serenity and Bill invited me to celebrate Thanksgiving with their family. I thought it was going to be a nice opportunity to socialize without stretching or working up a sweat, but I forgot who I was dealing with. We're doing a 5k run this morning. In the snow. Figures. heh. It's going to be a really fun day, and a new set of people get to experience my stuffed squashes. (Here's a secret: I only have one Thanksgiving recipe.)

When I was running the marathon, my sweat would crystallize into salt on my skin. I'm hoping that in Vermont, I don't get ice crystals.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!! Have a fantastic day.

Monday, November 21, 2005

10:51 AM - music and nerds! yummy.

Wow, another technology post

Cyclona recently directed me to Pandora, a fantastic little website that helps you find new music that you like. You start by typing in a song or artist that you like, then Pandora creates a streaming radio station that selects songs that the software guesses you will like. Each song is labeled with several descriptive tags, and the software chooses songs with similar tags to the songs you like. You can also give each song a thumbs up or a thumbs down, which helps the software hone in on your original intention and exclude the irritating misses. It's really fun for me, because I don't know a lot of musical artists so it's helping me expand my horizons. I'm using it as an extension to the road trip mix CD's from earlier this summer. You can also have different "stations" that explore different moods or styles of music, etc.

I have a few major problems with Pandora. The first is that its database needs to be much, much bigger. It doesn't have Joe Hisaishi (composer for the Hayao Miyazaki film, Spirited Away) or Vienna Teng's "Lullaby for a Stormy Night," or Timothy Daniel, who performed at my benefit last year. Second, the software doesn't have a soul. It can't differentiate why "Beautiful" by Christina Aguilera touches me so deeply and why some random Mariah Carey song doesn't have the same effect. ("Beautiful" was actually written by lesbian artist Linda Perry as her comeback song, and she gave it to Christina after some hesitation. The message is very affirming and the vocals are very simple and powerful. I keep thinking I shouldn't be a Christina Aguilera fan, but I really like her.) My other problem with Pandora is that you can't give any more feedback than "Yes" or "No". I want to be able to say, "It's too fast!" or, "I just don't like Mariah Carey..." or even just give stars like they have in iTunes.

Part of my problem is that I have trouble listening to music without thinking of its circus performance potential. I'm giving lots of thumbs downs to songs that might be reasonable as background music if I wasn't thinking about it so hard. Also, Pandora only lets you skip a certain number of tracks per hour, which is impeding my urge to splatter the screen with No's.

I've also been having fun with a cute little Flash game.

Thursday, November 17, 2005

9:31 AM - I like it better when people agree with me.

Person of the Moment

Go, Murtha! A top Democrat in the House, well-respected as a Vietnam vet and a leader on the House Defense Committee, is calling for an immediate withdrawal from Iraq. I'd been secretly hoping for that in my head, and it's nice to see someone important talking about it. No matter how we got to this point, if we are placing people in danger and it's not really serving to defend our country, then what justification do we have, right at this moment, for not bringing them home safely? Immediately?

On the other hand, I also wonder what our country's responsibilities are in Iraq. Now that we've started it, it's a big ugly mess. Crikey.

Tuesday, November 15, 2005

9:42 PM - how can you misinterpret 100%? yeesh.

the things we obsess about, part 2

Some of you may have noticed that my journal was only displaying the most recent entry on each page. I didn't notice it because it wasn't happening in the browser I used, so I assumed it would get better, or something.

In any case, it's all fixed now, and I also fixed related errors on the links and projects pages. If anyone sees something like that and it doesn't look quite right, please let me know! Browsers are.... weird.

Monday, November 14, 2005

3:47 PM - people who need glasses don't have this problem

the things we obsess about

As probably none of you know, I'm a stickler for print quality. Inkjets and Bubblejets make me want to gouge my eyes out because of the imperfections in the print quality. The letters bleed all over the place. Supposedly this problem can be thwarted by higher-quality paper, but in my experience the ink is still sloppy. For the past several years I've been hesitant to get a printer for exactly that reason, and I simply did my printing on the laser at work.

Since I can't use that laser at my old work any more, printing has been super inconvenient. I can print one page at a time at the public library, or I can grit my teeth and buy a printer. Since I'm hoping to be printing out resumes and letters, I decided to take the plunge. It was also helped along by a local ad for the Brother HL-2040, a small laser printer that was selling for $90 after rebate. I drove to New Hampshire (no sales tax!) and went shopping.

When I finally got help printing a test page, I found that the print quality on the Brother HL-2040 is lacking. Some people complained that it curls the pages, but my problem was that it seems to make little jagged problems, even on supposedly straight lines. A lot of the personal lasers were Windows only, but I made the mistake of printing a test page on the Mac-compatible Lexmark E232, which was priced at $179. The print quality was quite nice, and I was torn between what I was willing to pay and my superiority complex about print quality.

Several minor miracles happened all at the same time. First, the salesperson who was helping me noticed that the $179 was for the E238, not the E232. We learned that this was the last E232 left in the store, and its price was $149, and she could give me a 5% discount for taking a floor model. Much hand-wringing and decision-making ensued. In the end I decided to take it, and the extra $50 was worth having a laser printer that actually prints at laser quality. When the (extremely helpful, friendly, and patient!) salesperson finally rung me up, the store's computer simply would not let me buy the printer without an instant $50 price reduction. Then she gave me the 5% discount. And did I mention there is no sales tax in New Hampshire? Bottom line: I magically got the higher-quality Lexmark for the price I was willing to pay for the low-end Brother.

All of my computer parts are named after characters from Homer's Odyssey; this printer's new name is Euryclea. And she's connected to my wireless network, so I can fulfill all of my printing needs from the comfort and safety of my warm bed.

In the end, I am a nerd, but I have a very sharp-looking printed resume.

The irony is that even though I have excellent close-up vision, my distance vision is starting to have problems. It freaks me out a little bit. I probably need an eye exam.

Thursday, November 10, 2005

3:34 PM - omg! Tony's writing about Psycho le Cému! It really is the end of the world.

vinyl costumes thwart the impending apocalypse

So I've been having a bad day, or a bad couple of days, and I tried to shake myself out of it by watching some Psycho le Cému videos that AJ gave me. It kinda worked. Now I just have an overwhelming urge to dress up in vinyl outfits in bubble gum colors and go to anime conventions. So... I guess that's feeling better, right? Besides, it's not really cross-dressing if I'm dressing up as a boy who's dressing up as a girl. Really.

I was looking for info about the band and I turned to Wikipedia, where I like to go for non-biased information about things I don't know anything about. I wanted to share a quote from their PLC article:

Lida writes most of the band's material and is their lead guitarist. His trademark is bright orange hair. Lida is also known for his total hotness and lack of ability to hold back his amazing talent.

So much for non-biased.

For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, I'm linking AJ's page which has a few of her PLC costumes and gives a bit more information.

I'm mostly feeling bad because I am strangely reluctant to get a job. I want a job, in that I want an activity where I meet more people here and I want to support myself financially. I don't want a job in that my last one was a bit of a nightmare and I'm having a hard time convincing myself that any job can possibly be anything but the same. So.... I'm working on it. I'd love advice.

Tomorrow I'm going to Boston to see some old college friends and watch the Cornell vs. Harvard hockey game. There are supposed to be all kinds of fun cheers that Cornell people do at hockey games, but I don't remember them. I am not sure if I am even supposed to do them if the game is at Harvard.

What makes the grass grow? Blood! Blood! Blood! ... not... um... that there's any grass involved in hockey. I guess this is why Tony's not usually allowed around sports.