[
good
weblogs
]
2001-08-28
I came upon this excellent weblog:
via Hack the Planet the other day, and I was just... sucked in. Sometimes that happens. First of all, there are just tons of gems of wisdom and insight embedded within, plus the thing is formatted in such an odd way that really works well. Paragraphs are all five lines long, and every line ends with the end of a sentence. Sounds bizarre, but it took me awhile to even notice, it seems so natural. Entries are sometimes webloggish (and/or journalish), and sometimes fiction written about
a fascinating collection of characters the author has dreamed up.
There are too many great things to quote, so I'll just spew forth some of the ones that stood out to me at the moment:
Say I think of three gimmicks A, B, and C. Now what?
By themselves they seem too random to be meaningful.
Alone none of them make a story, even in a sequence.
But, then you let them find some organic interrelation.
With the right fit, they suddenly highlight each other.
Three flat ideas can turn into a gnarly web in 3D space.
...
Basically, originality is almost completely a total crock.
Even the patterns in content reorganization are the same.
Novelty is about the subtle things in idea rearrangements.
...Anything semantically complex must work with old ideas.
I mean, jeez, there is nothing new under the sun, right?
Personally, what I like most is surprise with consistency.
Following rules and finding strange places is very fun.
Go, and find your own treasures there. (Or not, if it doesn't suit you. Whatever.)
[
beauty
mammalog
]
2001-08-28
Two pix for you:
First, we have Elena on her Daddy's lap after a bath:
And my plumeria featuring several lovely blooms at once:
Enjoy.
[
rants
]
2001-08-28
Note to self:
Do *NOT* go swimming in a chlorinated pool with your silver sun pendant on.
The darn thing is all tarnished now. Sigh. I'd scan it now so you could see what I'm referring to, but my scanner doesn't work anymore. Argh! I might work on it later this week...
[
design
]
2001-08-28
A Pringles can makes a good antenna:
Well, that is if you follow
all the proper assembly steps. I never would have imagined, but this is very, very cool.
[via Hack the Planet]
[
good
the net
]
2001-08-28
Webcam catches burglar!
Daniel had the most extraordinary thing happen to him the other day. He was in North Carolina working, and he connected to his machine back home in New Jersey to get a file. He noticed that the mouse was moving on the screen even though he wasn't moving the mouse on his end.
Suspicious, he brought up a window with his webcam, and he saw some guy he'd never seen before. Sitting at Daniel's computer, messing around.
So, Daniel called the cops, and they went over to investigate. Sure enough, they found the guy still in the room with the computer. Daniel saw at least one image of the surprised burglar and the cops (though in the adrenaline rush, he forgot to *save* any pix. Tsk tsk.) The miscreant was arrested and carted off.
Pretty amazing, eh? Good thing he noticed in time, or the guy might have waltzed away with his whole computer...
[
humor
]
2001-08-28
This is 1337:
Daniel sent me this
link to Google's preferences page viewed with the language option set to "hacker". As he says, they are *so* cool. :)
[
good
]
2001-08-28
Go ogle:
That is, go and ogle at Google's headquarters in Mountain View, California. It's neato! I got a guided tour a few weeks ago, given by my sister's husband Kulpreet, who works there as a lawyer. Well, okay, it was mostly a chance for he and my sister to show off their daughter Isabella to his coworkers, and I got to tag along. :)
First stop, the lobby: I spied something upwards of fourteen lava lamps, plus a bunch of those big exercise balls (including the kind that look like a peanut, with two balls smushed together). There was also a big grand piano disklavier (sp?), which can record and play back piano performances. Plus of course they had the display of some of the currently running searches projected on the wall, which was hypnotic to watch. (note: as a rough guess, 25% or so were Japanese or some similar Asian-looking alphabet).
Next we saw the snack room. Drool, drool! At least twelve different kinds of breakfast cereal, not one but two breadmakers, coffee of all kinds in little single-serving brew cartridges, healthy earthy-crunchy snacks, traditional chips & munchies, etc. If I worked there, I'd gain twenty pounds in the first month, easily.
They had a pool table, and a ping-pong table in a conference room. More exercise balls were scattered here and there among the cubes and offices, including a huuuuuge red one that was, I swear, at least a meter and a half across. Holy cow, I didn't know they made them that big! It took up the whole cube it occupied.
We looked at Kulpreet's office, which was nice (pretty standard), then we headed for a long wall featuring two huge swaths of white butcher paper covered with graphs done in crayon. These graphs depicted the number of results pages furnished on a daily basis since the company began, with various milestones annotated (one million, twenty million, etc). It was amazing to take it all in. The graph was saw-toothed due to the fact that on weekends there were fewer searches done than during the week. It showed huge jumps here and there, for instance when Google started powering Yahoo's searches.
We then wandered downstairs to the cafeteria. Just outside, a bulletin board paid tribute to employees' children and pets, featuring all sorts of cute pix.
The cafeteria wasn't all that big, but it was very cool. Big long tables made it easy for people from different departments to mingle and such. I went through the line and served myself some excellent manicotti (the vegetarian dish for the day), potato salad, regular salad with balsamic vinaigrette, rolls with butter, tomato soup with rice, and some cranberry-related Snapple beverage. Alas, they were out of Ben & Jerry's ice cream bars that day.
Kulpreet told me that they always have a vegetarian and non-vegetarian entree, and all the ingredients they buy are organic. I didn't meet the head chef, but the one cook I chatted with was incredibly friendly and nice, and the music they played in the room lent a fun, relaxing atmosphere. It was, like the rest of the place, extremely cool. Kulpreet said that they also have a dinner service, and that many of the employees take advantage of it. What a great way to get people to work late - feed them! (and really great food, too). If you think about it, it makes tons of sense to offer such great food. It's a great selling point when recruiting people, and it saves folks a huge amount of time when compared with going out and getting lunch elsewhere. It doesn't take much to add up significantly over time.
All in all, it looked like a great place to work. I'm jealous of people who get to work there, actually. Alas.
I don't know how typical it was of other dotcoms (having never seen one myself), but I thought it was neat to see one that's not only still alive, but has a solid future based on an existing mastery of their market.
[
my site
]
2001-08-28
Time for flooding:
Yes, that's right, I am finally writing again after umpteen days of relative quietude, much as the Texas sky has recently spilled torrents of water onto this overheated landscape. I think something weird has been up with my medications - I end up in a brain state in which words are trapped inside me. :(
I know that sounds odd. Let me explain a bit: I think to myself "gee, I want to say that or write that, it's a good/interesting thought", but there just isn't enough energy available to actually get it *out* of me. Strange. And annoying.
But after a slump towards the end of last week, I'm feeling decidedly better now. I think part of that has been spending more time on my own. I had been hanging out a bit too much at Anthony's house, and there just isn't much for me to do there. Watching tv isn't even much of a decent option since he only gets a very few cable channels, anyway.
So... I'm going to try to do a braindump of a bunch of stuff I've been holding onto in my head for weeks. Let's see how it goes (and of course, this will probably appear at the end of the list instead of at the beginning, as read from the top. Oh well).
[
mammalog
random thoughts
]
2001-08-22
Sigh.
I'm getting desperate. I applied at Target today. Oh well.
It was good seeing Elena last night, though. She's advanced like crazy in just two weeks, just as I suspected she would. She's now fully conversational.
She's incredibly advanced, imho. She's 2-1/3 yrs old, yet acts like a 3-yr-old. At least.
In the airport, she showed me her squeaky fuzzy duck. To show me how it squeaked, she dropped it on the ground and began to squat down upon it in the general region of the squeaker. I had to stop her and encourage her to follow her dad, for we had a long walk out to my car.
At the house, she bade me lie down and laid a handkerchief on the floor as my pillow, then laid one down next to it for herself. Then she put a blanket on me and lied down next to me, and said "pat my back, Mommy". It was utterly sweet. Of course, three seconds later she had to move everything again. And again. And again. I was placid, following her commands, because I was so much just enjoying being with her, having been starved for two weeks.
For her bath, she demanded to have her pool noodle in with her. This was a first (at least for baths she's taken with me around).
Another fun bit was when she rode her trike around the house and crashed it. First of all, she didn't mind in the slightest. She was thrown clear of it and got up excitedly, saying "I crashed!" and giggling. Then she sat astride the thing in its upended state and started spinning the free wheel around. Just because. So I came over and joined her, and we had a raucous good time at it, going s-l-o-w-l-y, then fastfastfast.
And so yesterday, I fell in love with her all over again. Which is as it should be.
[
mental
rants
]
2001-08-21
Denied. Not Eligible.
This is what the mental health division of my HMO said to the hospital when presented with my claim. Uh, fuck. This I found out yesterday.
So today I have to call the mental health division and ask them why the heck they denied it after pre-approving it before I was admitted. Jerkfaces! Argh! There oughtta be a law!
I'm just afraid I'm going to get royally screwed on this, and have to eat the bill, which is over $5,000.00.
Sigh. Oh well, maybe I'll just be in debt forever or something.
And what did five grand buy me, anyway? Six days of:
- a dorm-like room with a bed and bathroom, and use of a collective shower
- psychiatric medications (zyprexa and risperdal)
- getting my vital signs checked a couple times a day
- watching tv, doing puzzles, and reading
- three meals a day
- a couple group sessions per day where we went around in a circle with everyone stating how they were doing and their current goals
- a few minutes (10-15) with a psychiatrist about every two days
It hardly seems worth it. I would rather have gone to Hawaii or something instead.
[
atheism
]
2001-08-21
Mark Twain had some powerfully negative thoughts...
about god & whatnot, which he wrote about but didn't publicize much (since he realized how badly his opinions would be received).
The end of the article I linked to sort of gives a new perspective on the Twain quote I've got there at the top of my weblog. Hmmm.
[
my site
]
2001-08-21
One Whole Megabyte! Daniel tells me that the database for my weblog has finally reached 1 Meg. Yippee! I guess it's a sort of milestone...
[
humor
]
2001-08-21
I should have mentioned this before...
Daniel made it to the front page of
Sanrio's website [in August 2001]! Awhile ago,
he made an appliqued quilt of one of their characters, Badtz-Maru. They noticed, and asked to do
a story on it. Very, very cool. The most priceless part is the picture of Badtz-Maru holding up a Daniel quilt, heh heh:
[
mammalog
]
2001-08-20
Elena gets back tomorrow:
and I miss her like the dickens (it's been two weeks). I hope she hasn't forgotten about me. Sigh. She will probably have advanced tremendously in the language department, I'm sure.
Here's a pic of her before she left.
[
beauty
good
]
2001-08-20
Hip hip hooray! It finally bloomed!
That is, my little plumeria tree finally infloresced, after several months' long wait. I was worried that it would bloom while I was in California visiting my sister, and that I'd miss it, but I was truly fortunate instead.
When I got back from my trip, it had two blossoms all ready to unfurl. They took a couple of days to carefully open. It was a bit like Christmas since I had no idea what color they'd be. It turns out they're white with yellow on the front, and the petals have a pale pink stripe along the back edge.
So,
behold the first two blossoms in their glory.
Even before they opened fully, I could smell their scent - a delicious lemony-peachy fragrance that makes roses seem ordinary.
About five more are ready to open soon, and I'll take more pictures as they unfold.
I'm just so, so happy that this is happening. Plumerias are my absolute favorite when it comes to flowers, and I've wanted to have one ever since I left Hawaii (in 1995). :)
[
family
]
2001-08-16
Back from the wilds of California!
... and I had a great trip visiting my sister, her husband, and their lovely little daughter, Isabella (known mostly as Bella).
I spent a lot of time sitting on the couch reading, and I managed to finish three mystery books by Janwillem van de Wetering. No small feat! I also watched the entire second season of Sex and the City, nine hours' worth of episodes that they had rented on DVD.
Plus of course I did a little bit of babysitting, which went well. Little Miss Bella only screamed bloody murder during a small part of the session, at which point I was inspired to make up her bottle of formula a little early, as my sister had told me I might need to do. This calmed her so well that she fell asleep once she had drunk about half of it. Yea for Auntie Beth!
Other fun things we did included: going to a barbecue at the home of one of Kulpreet's coworkers, going to the Exploratorium (something I've been wanting to do for, oh, over fifteen years), and visiting the offices of Google. It was all very cool and I'll write more about it later. Right now I'm just doing the brief overview thing.
I hope people didn't worry too much about me while I was gone...
[
random thoughts
]
2001-08-06
I'm not dead!
Just real busy. :) I'm gearing up for my trip to visit my sister the day after tomorrow, so I've got packing & whatnot to do.
Today, Anthony and I went to Barton Springs, the big natural-spring pool in Austin. It was my first time, actually. Anyway, the water was frigid, but it felt good to have some relief from the abominable heat. It cooled me down so much that I could actually spend several minutes *in a row* in the sun without being uncomfortable afterwards.
Other than that, I've been hanging out, and I went to a really shitty job interview for a job that I will be glad not to get.
On my birthday, I was treated to a lovely dinner :). Now I'm in the home stretch of my twenties (29), so I'd better enjoy it while it lasts...
[
random thoughts
]
2001-08-01
I need a category:
for job searching. Today I did something amazing: I turned in *eight* applications for state jobs (at four different places), and I'm going to send two more through the mail.
Woohoo!
Things are going really well, actually. I feel better lately. Maybe this is the change from prozac to effexor, I don't know. All I know is that I'm going to enjoy it while it lasts, and have a good visit with my sister starting next Wednesday.
And oh yeah, my birthday is this Friday.
So... tomorrow I have to take clerical tests at the Department of Public Safety in the morning, then... I dunno, work out or something.
I seem to have broken my addiction to daytime tv, which is a Good Thing. Basically, I found something much better to take its place. :) But it's good, trust me. At any rate, it's making things easier to actually get stuff accomplished on my job search, such as it is.
Eek, I've got to get going to transfer some videotape before I go see Elena, I think she'll really enjoy seeing herself on the video. Later!
