That'll teach me to have applied to grad school three years ago using my real social security number.

I'm trying to find some witty way to correlate this with my recent enjoyment of the song 'Centerfold' (My blood runs cold / my memory has just been sold) but I'm failing miserably.

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I got a really interesting piece of mail the other day, offering a kind of opt-out I hadn't seen before.

Though I've been in Pittsburgh for the last year, I still have my FasTrak transponder to pay my Bay Area bridge tolls, and so they still send me monthly statements, politely informing me that I haven't actually crossed any SF bridges since the last statement. This time though, they wrote to tell me about a new service that I'd be helping build, just by driving around.

511.org, run by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, is a realtime traffic information aggregator, to help drivers estimate how long a given trip will take, accounting for realtime traffic conditions.

The idea isn't new. Seattle has a similar system, that uses inductive loops built in to the highway to measure traffic speeds, and facilitates some nifty gadgets for using that information. The Bay Area currently uses a system of video cameras, along with some very slick computer vision software (nifty video) developed by my former artificial intelligence professor at Berkeley, to video a stretch of highway, count the cars that pass by, and measure their speed. Nevertheless, I'm guessing FasTrak readers are cheap, and allow for unique identification of cars, so you can put up more datapoints quickly and easily (build them into the overpasses, probably) and understand not just how fast traffic is moving at a given point, but know how fast it's moving between those points, since you know how long it takes a particular vehicle to go from point A to point B.

As I was reading this, thinking "nifty!" I noticed the static-proof bag that came along with the letter. At first I assumed it was for sending my current transponder back to trade in for a new one, better equipped to work with their system (a traditional 'opt-in' service). As I read on, understanding that I didn't have to do anything for the system to work, I thought it was for sending my transponder back if I wanted one that wouldn't work with their tracking system, and would only pay tolls (a traditional 'opt-out' system).

Despite their absolute assurance that "no personal information will be collected or stored," and that they will "never know the location of any particular vehicle or person" or "collect information on individual driving patterns" I understand that many people value their privacy too much. After all, nothing in those platitudes prevents the highway patrol from knowing that there are one or more vehicles traveling above the speed limit, and where they are, so they could then be found and identified.

Still, as much as I value the concept of privacy, I personally don't care about whether they can see how fast I'm going, and I'm trusting (as I am with TiVo) that it won't turn out badly.

So what about the anti-static bag? "If you prefer not to participate in this program, but still want the convenience of using FasTrak, place your toll tag in the enclosed Mylar bag after you have passed through the toll plaza; then it cannot be detected by the roadside readers. To function at the toll plazas, the toll tag must be removed from the Mylar bag." Thus it's an 'opt-out' system, but of a physical nature. at least when you're opting out, you know you're actually opting out, and aren't just trusting the service to respect your wishes (unless the bag's a fake, of course).

It's like the Hokey-Pokey. Opt-in, Opt-out, Opt-in, then out. that's what it's all about!

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I just had a phone conversation with someone who was accepted to both the HCII and SIMS programs, just as I was two years ago. He's agonizing over whether to leave Berkeley (where he owns his home) and move with his wife to Pittsburgh for a year, or study at Berkeley SIMS for two years.

I don't envy him his decision. I know how hard a decision it was for me. In fact, the relocatioon factor was probably in no small part responsible for my decision to defer from CMU for a year to work at Yahoo. I remember that a year later, when I again had to choose, this time between Yahoo and CMU, the fact that I'd have to move either way (the 50 mile commute from Berkeley to Sunnyvale was just too much) made the idea of moving to Pittsburgh a little bit easier.

In the end, what made my decision was the Hogwarts factor: HCII is the best place to learn HCI. SIMS excels at information systems, and would teach me perhaps 70% of what I wanted to learn in HCI, but the idea of being limited only by my own bandwidth was just too attractive.

It's really a kind of risk aversion: I worried about spending two years at SIMS and leaving thinking that I could have learned more about my own focus somewhere else. On the other hand, unless the HCII underdelivered, Carnegie Mellon offered me exactly what I was looking for, with people who shared my focus and passion.

Other pennyweights on the scale were the idea of spending a 'year abroad' in the East, to experience something other than 'California seasons' (and last Winter didn't disappoint on that cold front), and getting an advanced degree from a different school than my undergrad. Having TA'ed Marti Hearst's UI prototyping and evaluation class (after taking James Landay's version of the class) I felt that I already experienced the single SIMS class closest to my interest.

In the end, I just needed a big change. 12 years in a city can build up a lot of plaque, expecially when the reason for not leaving is fear of change. This last year is a yo-yo on a string. Ship out, gather experiences, and come back the wiser. All in all, (and I'm a little surprised) the experience has been gratifying in many of the ways I theorised when fretting about the decision to come out here. (By the way, the post I just linked to has become one of my all-time favorites; a real turning point.)

A year ago last January I was living in the middle and now I'm not. I'm headed down a certain path with a few forks to navigate, but I'm moving fast and with definite purpose.

Everything's just moving so fast. How fast? Next month I have two days of interviews with Google, I may be flying to Seattle to talk with Amazon, and there's still Yahoo and eBay to think seriously about.

I've never really had so many parts of my life change at the same time, as they will in August. I don't know when Rachel's leaving (neither does she), be it late May, after I go in August, or any time in between. I'm blessed to have found such a great person to share the second half of my year here with. Every time I carry something up the two flights of stairs to my apartment, I think about having to carry it back down in a few months, or daydream about hiring movers.

I'm starting to yearn for the open road again. The week with Ammy last August, gunning across the top of the country was amazing, and we're deciding between taking the Canadian high road or the deep South on the way back. I'm working on so many projects right now I have scant time to think, let alone dream, but the future is pretty well packed with options. We'll see how it all pans out.

And now I've taken this post down three or four different paths, with little cohesion. Funny how there's an inverse relation between the directedness of my life and the directedness of my writing. Well, I'm sure that's enough for now.

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Visiting Home. The very concept seems to be an oxymoron. To have a home that you have to visit seems at least a little antithetical to the very concept of home. Nevertheless as I'm back in the Bay Area I find that I'm visiting home on many levels beyond the geographic. I find that I'm visiting myself.

One of the most intriguing concepts I encountered in George Lakoff's language class (was it three years ago already?) was that of the self-referential self. "I'm beside myself." "I talk to myself." "I take care of myself."

My... Self. The concept of self as a thing separate from, yet contained in, me. It belongs to me ("My self") it is a part of me ("Me, myself, and I"), and yet it is something that can have a metaphoric relationship both linked to and separate from my own sitting consciousness ("I'm beside myself").

I'm not the first person to extemporize on the dualistic nature of self-referencing, but when it comes up in my daily life, I can't help but share.

I'm not sure what I expected upon returning to the Bay Area. I looked forward to meeting up with friends I haven't seen in six months. I expected the stinging nostalgia of looking at a street I called my own for seven years, within a city and campus my own for eleven, undiminished by the expectation of it.

In a way, I expected to visit my self. The self I left behind.

...

Consider a refrigerator door. Notice the magnetic poetry. Half the words are unattached, floating in a sea of 'am's and 'I's with an occasional 'effusive' and 'turgid.' A portion of the rest are formed into fragments, standing on their own, or the scraps of poems sent to salvage for valuable verbs and adjectives. "sausage boy of love" and "trembling warmth in the deep places" lay about in seeming random, like the fallen pillars of unknown temples overgrown with moss, with only hints of white marble peeking through, belieing bits of their former composition.

Occasionally an entire poem remains intact:

though some were eager
in their fall
from the light
they dream
to shine
yet

The refrigerator canvas gives a snapshot of self: A clear representation of the current thoughts, desires, and meanings. Divining meaning from the not-yet-recycled fragments, the archaeologist-of-self can piece together bits of history, murkier, or at least more detached from the current self, the farther back in time.

This is the tableau I expected. Having left Berkeley at a pinnacle of social happiness and self-confidence, I sought to put my social poetry under glass for a year, put in safekeeping while I go away on a social sabbatical. My great hope was that it would be undisturbed; that I could return to find my life here preserved and waiting for me.

What I have found, so unexpected as to show me just how naive I am in life, is so much more.

As we walk through life, we continually make new friends, and old friends either continue on or drift away, like the poetry on the refrigerator. Life is a journey, and there is scenery we pass by along the way, waystations where we may linger for a time, and travelling companions we may journey with for a time, brief or eternal. The interactions form a pattern with a dimension of time; the tangled skein, the great tapestry.

My surprise on coming home was that I wasn't picking up the threads where I left them. My journey back was both temporal as well as geographic. Threads, departed traveling companions, phrases of verse long since recycled, they're all here. The refrigerator door has gained a dimension where all the poetry ever written upon it is equally accessible. I came home to find a balloonist's perspective, seeing not only my current position in the journey, but also the path I've taken to get here, all equally clear, equally accessible.

In short, I see myself. While "I" is the conscious awareness, travelling piggyback on my brain, watching, feeling, interpreting and acting in the now, my self is the repository of experience. I am the brush, and myself is the canvas. When I left this land I-the-brush could only see my immediate surroundings, my immediate past, painting my immediate future. I come back to see the work I created, the self that I am, formed over more than a decade.

I can walk down one street and feel nostalgia over the place I would eat dinner at least once a week for the year before I left; I turn the corner and wonder at the emotions latent in a cafe I haven't regulared for five years. At this moment I sit in the sixth-floor lounge of Soda Hall, a haunt of three years past, one where nobody would recognize me now, where I can walk in almost a dream state. A place more real in my memory than reality, as if I'm sitting in a holodeck typing these words. Yet there is comfort here. Comfort in knowing that it is a piece of me, pride in being in this place that helped shape me, formed in to the self and the I that I am now. Some odd sort of recursive nostalgic loop only one base-case away from mellow insanity, to be sure.

Beyond the physical environments, my relationships with people are similarly in the forefront. I'm staying with my best friend and platonic soulmate, our ten year anniversary just around the corner, and her roommate and close friend of mine of six years. I've been seeing some friends not seen in six months, others for three years. I'm experiencing passions banked like coals for two years, stirred back to a fire. I've explored regrets from six years past, readdressed and transmuted into a gentle rain that brings out grins more readily than umbrellas.

In short, I feel all of myself, carried with me. In many ways I feel my past and present as one, and I feel that I'm not so much visiting home, as crawling into myself for a time, and it just may be the happiest place on earth.

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Got up when the girls got up this morning. They prepped to go to Dickens Fair, and I made ready for an afternoon shopping with Dawn in San Francisco.

Cousin Sara (and Ingrid and Heather) conspired this Christmas to organize presents, asking each of us to give them a list of five things we want. They compiled the list and send it back out to (all 20 of) us, so we can each pick a few things off of the list, coordinating with the self-appointed elves, so everyone gest what they want, and nobody feels like they have to get something for everyone (flashbacks to second grade valentines...)

I printed out the list and set forth for BART, where I would meet Dawn's train and we'd head into the city, where wind vied with rain, conspiring to create a sense of adventure, or at least dampness. Funny how outdoor bluster can make interiors (and company) shine like warm gold.

Driving back from Fruitvale BART, after seeing Dawn off, I was greeted by the sun, making its first appearance of the day. Grabbing my camcorder, I crossed the street from Karen and Crystal's to Alameda's Kings Beach, where I found today's moment of Zen (quicktime, 1.7 megs). This video completely exemplifies my day.

It's nice to be home...

In a bit I'm off to see Em, Chris, and Kisa. Kisa-kisa-kisa. I've so missed my kitty. I hope she remembers me.

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(If you're looking for the piece on my mom's chorus and the singing holiday cards, click here.)

So this is the last week before finals. Of course, I only have one final exam. The rest of my work is finishing final projects for my courses. On Wednesday our final report is due in HCI Methods class, worth nearly a quarter of my grade, to be followed next Monday by the course final, which will be worth more than a quarter of my grade.

On Thursday I'm presenting my final project for Computer Music, a set of code (written in at least three languages) which takes in a logfile and outputs music. I'll be writing up more about this once the project is done, but it's pretty cool.

Later on Thursday I'm turning in my notebook for Communication design Fundamentals (damn I keep wishing I'd posted a lot of the work I've done in these classes as I went along. Just too busy, and now's no exception, but soon I will have a lot more time...), a notebook showing my creative process for each of the assignments I've done over the course of the semester.

Monday the 9th is the aforementioned Methods final, and the following Tuesday and Thursday are presentations for our interactive programming final projects; in my case that's a Director project along similar lines to the computer music project: visual and aural representation of a logfile for easy cognition, only this time augmenting the sounds with some kinetic typography and realtime controls.

The long and short of it is that I'm insanely busy, but just for the next week and a half. Oh, and I'm coming back to the Bay Area for Winter break on December 12th.

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It was 1991, and I was a freshman living at Clark Kerr, dorms for UC Berkeley. I'd been at college for about 4 months and, as usual, I was eating dinner at Clark Kerr's DC (dining commons). Walking down the stairs from the third floor of Building 3 with friends (Denise, Sean, Carina, Ethan, and Samir, if I recall correctly), I once again noticed the beautiful sunset from the stairwell window, and wondered idly how cool it would be to take a picture of the sun setting over San Francisco every day, as a journal of sorts.

Of course, digital cameras weren't around in 1991, so that didn't happen.

We went to the DC and got our food (always heavy on the starch, as pasta was the only dietary constant (well, and soda, but that shouldn't count)). The five of us walked to the tables, found an empty one. Long tables with chairs on either side, think hogwarts, but with the tables turned 90 degrees, and an aisle down the center. The room used to be a chapel.

We had only been eating for a minute when a well-dressed Asian gentleman of modest stature walked up to our table, stood at the head, and asked if he might join us. After we happily agreed, he pulled up a chair, set down his own dinner tray, and sat at the head of the table.

He asked us in his strong accent how we enjoyed our classes, what we liked and didn't like about the university, and listened to our own conversations. You could tell that he really cared about what we were saying, and I for one was as honest as I could be when telling him what I thought was good about Cal, and what could be better. Having been in college only a few months, it was probably the first time I really sat down and thought about that question.

Having spent far more time listening than talking, he finished his dinner before us. He thanked us kindly, shook our hands, and excused himself. Once he'd left the hall the others looked at each other and shrugged. "What do you think that was about?" Denise and I looked at each other. We realized we were the only ones who knew. I assumed everyone did. "That was Chancellor Tien" I said. Tien had only just the year before become Berkeley's seventh chancellor. Incidentally Clark Kerr, for whom my dorm was named, was the first.

Tien was immensely approachable. While chancellor, he still taught classes and mentored graduate students in mechanical engineering. The students loved him. They loved that he went to every football game, often standing in front of the student section, leading cheers by shaping "C" "A" "L" grandly with his arms. It seemed no coincidence that we made it to #9 in the AP poll that year. Tien's trademark "GOBEYAH!" ("go bears!") was such an inspiration that to this day Karen and I use it as a Cal rally cry.

And so it was with a heavy heart that I heard tonight that Chang-Lin Tien passed away on Tuesday, from complications related to the stroke and brain tumor that had debilitated him for the last year. Chancellor Tien was what every administrator should hope to be; not a lackey to the higher administration (ahem, Regents), but an advocate of the educational process, and the students.

Chancellor Tien's memorial service will be in Zellerbach Hall on Thursday, November 14th, from 3pm to 4pm. I wish I could be there. If you were a Cal student while Tien was chancellor, and valued his presence, I hope that you'll bid him farewell, as I know I will from the opposite coast.

Thank you, Chang-Lin, for your dedication, caring, and overall excellence. Thank you for listening, and wherever you are, I bid you a hearty GOBEYAH!

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We all make our own pockets of space, through sheer force of will.

By one perspective, Pittsburgh, or at least my personal existence in it, is a pocket, grown from a mental void into a small life bounded by dwelling, school, and nascent social structures forming in much the same way as must have happened in the big bang, with particles forming, exploding, reforming; eventually cooling into stable states.

My own 'real-world' pocket, which I feared would be too small for me, has turned comforting. Not so big as to be cavernous, not so cramped as to be claustrophobia-inducing.

But of course that's only one of the pockets I live in.

Fury's grown from a tiny pocket that I and a very small number of other people frequent now and again, to a larger room, anchored by the ley lines of regular visitors. It has conduits to other pockets: when someone leaves a comment it gets pushed into email, in itself a bridge between an ether-formed pocket and the physical. SMS messaging punches straight through to the physical pocket directly (to my literal pocket, if you will.) Geographically removed from most of what I would call my life, I share an individual pocket with each person whom I'm close to.

For Ammy, it exists as an instant messaging window, where semantic meaning is laid bare through conversational text, or flat innuendo that is none the less subtle for the medium, but perhaps too subtle, as a ';)' of acknowledgement can be as coarse as a bursting laugh arising from a whispered comment during a movie.

For my mom, the pocket exists between my ear and my closed eyes. As I talk to her on the cellphone, thee's a part of me that concentrates on making the signal stronger by sheer force of attention and attenuation, while the rest is acutely aware of the narrowness and length of this pocket, shouting across a long, but ultimately thin, cavern.

For each friend there is a different pocket, unique in both texture and timbre. The characteristic they share is the geographic disparity responsible for their existence. Were I local, the person in question would live in real-world pocket, and any other pocket would be of the moment, and not the salient characteristic.

As it is, I'm amazed at the diversity of pockets I've found, made, and maintained in the past six weeks. Be it instant messaging, short email pingpongs, heart-to-heart phone calls, or emails so rare yet beautiful as to be works of art, their very nature calling for a commiserate work of art in response, they are all pockets, and they all hold jewels most valuable. Who could have known that the things I most lamented leaving on the left coast would be my most precious possessions here?

I know: Everyone but me.

Thank you.

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The San Francisco was a great success. It felt so good seeing folks, and everything scheduled out just right!

I liken it to a booster vaccination. The first dose of SF primes your system, but the booster dose a month later innoculates you for a good long while.

Which is good, because I probably won't be back 'till the Holidays, when I'll be there for around 3 weeks!

Oh yes, and taking the redeye home is stupid if you have class that morning, especially when you're in a center seat, forget your earplugs in your checked bag, and didn't even think about an eyemask because you couldn't foresee the bright LCD screen up near the overhead lights giving in-flight entertainment to the 4 people (including the 2 year old right behind me) who aren't trying to get sleep on the flight.

The couch in the HCII offices is comfy, or failing that, horizontal and soft. Mmmm. Home soon. (Heh, 'home.' How'd that happen?)

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That's it. I'm coming home. I'm leaving, on a jet plane...

...but I'll be back here on Tuesday.

USAir, despite filing for bankrupcy, is offering great Labor Day fares, and so I'm leaving right from class (in about an hour) for the airport, and catching a Pittsburgh to San Francisco flight and will be there before midnight.

On the way back, I'll be on the redeye, leaving SFO around 10pm, and getting in to PIT around 6:30am. Damn timezones. Still, looking for the bright side: the 8:30am Tuesday class is the one that it looks like I won't get in to, however much I want to, so I'll have a few hours to sleep before my next Tuesday class at 10:30.

I'm really looking forward to being back, even if it's only for a few days. I see it as a way to touch-base, playing a game of transcontinental peek-a-boo. Having covered my eyes for a month, I get to peek out and make sure my world, friends, and favorite city, are still there, relatively undisturbed and unchanged.

I'll be able to breathe free for a few days, make a trip to my storage space, effectively a store built for me with things I'd like, and I'll pick those that, with 3 weeks experience in Pittsburgh, I most wish I had brought, pack them into a big suitcase which will make the trip home (ack, I called it home!) with me.

It's really all about the friends though.

Only nine hours. I can't wait.

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I know how to pack a car, but I don't know how to pack an apartment. The dichotomy makes a fair amount of sense, I suppose, considering that despite using the same word, 'pack,' the two tasks entail entirely different skill sets and objectives.

To pack an apartment, in order to move to another apartment or, in my case, to simultaneously move to another apartment with the constraint of fitting the new-apartment-bound contents into the backseat and trunk of a Civic; three small boxes to be shipped media-rate, and three computer-boxes (okay, computer, monitor (flat panel, thank all that is good and holy (or, failing that, Apple)), and printer), while at the same time putting a good portion of the remainder into a new storage space of questionable size and location, or at least the remainder which is not one of the several pieces of furniture being held/used by friends for the coming year (65 book-feet worth of Bonde wall bookcases to the girls, four chairs and a good Pier One wood table to join their five twins (err, twin and fellow octuplets?) at Emily's, a 240lb, 36" TV at Ali and Mark's, two floor lamps at Ammy and Rick's, and a multitude of permanent givts to fellow (err, former) neighbors at the Palazzo, and slightly more distant (physically and socioeconomically) neighbors who frequent the People's Park Berkeley Free Box) and all through the sorting and packing process, being swept into the throws of nostalgia and the anxiety of seperating ones-self from one's past enough to part with the lingering physical instantiations of same, is a subtractive affair.

In comparison, packing a car is intelligently stuffing a lot of stuff into a space that is demonstrably smaller than the stuff to be packed.

This, honestly, is a much easier job.

[note: the sentence three before this one should be taken out and shot (with respects to the late Douglas Adams), but if you try to sort out the clauses, parentheticals, and asides, you'll have some small idea of exactly how difficult a task this organizing, sorting, historical divesting, and moving actually is.]

Okay, so this is written after the fact. The above was written in a sparse but comfortable hotel room in Elko (sorry, no elk in elko, as it's in the middle of the desert, but we did see the world's largest polar bear, trapped by an Inuit Indian over half a century ago, and now overseeing the terminator between Elko's 24-hour coffee shop and a curiously muted casino, all sitting in front of the Elko Bus Stop.

In turn, the above paragraph (along with this one) was (is being) written in a room in the Three Bears Inn. It's right around 1am here in the Mountain time zone, just barely inside Montana sandwiched between recently (and quickly) traversed Idaho, and recently (and again to be) visted Yellowstone Park. Ammy has an annual National Parks pass, allowing free access, saving us $20 at the entrance, as well as more untold yuppie foodstamps at the three additional nathonal parks we're scheduled to visit on our continental sojourn.

We've been taking a bunch of great pictures and a few small mpeg movies, but despite unpacking more of the car than I'd anticipated in the search, I'm unable to find the USB cables to connect my camera or camcorder, so the thousand-word pictures will have to wait until the next stop, after a stop into a sufficiently-equpped geek-shop.

Sadly, for all the Wal-Marts, DQs, and McDonalds we see at every turn, CompUSAs and Frys are nonexistant out here. We'll find out tomorrow if Radio Shack has what we need.

Anyhow, for another perspective, be sure to read Ammy's Elko to Yellowstone account!

We're leaving through Yellowstone tomorrow, and plan on getting most of the way to Mt. Rushmore, the Crystal Caverns, and Devil's Tower, which some of you might recall from Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

And of course, Wall Drug is just past Mt. Rushmore, so there's another thing not to be missed!

Oh, care to keep us entertained? Send us an SMS message! (PCS#: 5103341620). We'll get it when we reemerge into a cell-equipped stretch of road, and we can only hope that I'm the one behind the wheel when it comes in!

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Okay, so after much packing, repacking, sorting, lugging, and all the rest, we're just an hour or so from pushing Berkeley into the rearview's horizon. I need to pack up the computer (very last thing!) right now, so until I update from the road, Hasta!

First stop: Elko, Nevada! Wow. I mean, I never thought I'd get the chance to see Elko!

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So I've been a packing maniac for the last four days, along with godsends Karen, Ali, Crystal, and Mark, and more helping friends Pamila, Emily, and Ray. The apartment is almost empty, but I'm running behind schedule nonetheless. the computer's been out of net-touch for a few days, and will be again after I finish this post. My next post should be from the road, but to be sure that you don't miss a beat, check out Ammy's site as well as we go.

The current plan is to put some miles on the road tonight, or first thing in the morning. Cross your fingers!

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So writing to some friends yesterday, I commented about how I only have 14 days left before I leave on the Great American Road Trip, having packed up and stored/brought all my worldly belongings. I mentioned how little I've accomplished thus far to that end, and noted that I had scheduled 'panicing' for four days hence. Well, now 'hence' is just one day old, and I'm already ahead of schedule.

With the panicing, that is.

It occurs to me that I don't know how to pack everything for storage. I take a fair amount of pride in my ability to judge what I will, won't, and might need over the next year, packing light and moving fast, but the actual task of packing things up is more difficult; making decisions on what each item's fate will be (trash/gift/storage/bring) at the same time as not having a system for handling that decision. Great. I'm going to give this thing to that person. It's still in my hand. They're not here. Where do I put it to imbue it with this cognitive decision?

I know it sounds stupid, but it's like I'm playing a tile puzzle without a missing piece. Basically, what I need is a staging area. First and foremost, those firneds of mine who are taking furniture for a year: I should clear that furniture off (pack the books, tapes, papers, and other acounterments) and get the big things out of my house ASAP. Deal with the fact that I won't have a 36" TV to watch for the next few weeks. Heck, I won't have it for the next twelve months anyhow. Pull out the 13" TV I never got around to selling on eBay and put it on a cardboard box. Repeat ad infinitum: Take down the G4 desktop machine and compute from the powerbook.

This is a theme: by making my windows to virtual realms smaller (from desktop to powerbook, big screen TV to mini) I establish my mentality in the physical realm. Where right now I'm sitting at an immense desk, typing on a large screen, I should be taking more notice of the room itself, realizing that of the cinco mil cosas surrounding me, I need to touch every one and inform it (and myself) of its fate.

These things need to be done, and now. If it won't actually take me 13 days, then yay: I'll have time to play at the end, instead of dropping a broom one saturday morning, picking up keys, and racing out the door, a rushed farewell unworthy of me, my apartment, my city, and my life.

Okay, enough of that: It's time to get packin'.

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So on a relative spur of the moment, I'm in Los Angeles right now, shortly after midnight on Monday morning, sitting in my mom's kitchen, hooked to her DSL listening softly to the City of Angels soundtrack as the house sleeps.

I'd planned on visiting family down here next week, from Tuesday through Thursday, but as August 3rd grows closer and closer, I knew that I'd just be anxious about stagnating, unable to do the cleaning, sorting, packing and moving that will comprise the majority of the three weeks that remain in my affair with Berkeley.

Yesterday I gave notice on my apartment. I didn't want to. I didn't want to so badly that I cost myself $25 a day for over a week postponing the inevitable. Now I've given 30 days notice on an apartment I'll be leaving in 20 days. My last hope was talking to Jim the Manager, reminding him that I've lived here for seven years, and checking if it would be okay if I had Pamila housesit for me for the year I'll be gone. It's a grey area in my rental agreement, somewhere between subletting and homewatching. As I'd expected though, Jim's under enormous pressure to have tenant turnover, since after I leave my grandfathered rent control the rent on my apartment will jump from the current $750/mo to around $1500-1600. I don't even know for certain that I would move back in at the end of the year, but it would be a great place to stay while saving for a house downpayment, if my next job were in the East Bay or downtown SF.

It would also mean I wouldn't have to move all my furniture, only that furniture promised to friends for the next year.

I told Jim I would have to move out then, and he suggested that I wait a few days and reconsider whether I really had to go away for a year, as he'd really like to see me stay. I said no, I really do have to go, and he told me again to think on it for a few days.

Of course I'd been thinking about it for the last two years, and everything had been weighed. This was just notification, not negotiation. Upstairs I had a Pittsburgh lease agreement sitting on the coffee table, on top of my more tattered Berkeley rental agreement, as if quitting my job and enrolling in grad school weren't already points of no return.

Walking out of his office at around 9pm, I started wantering the Berkeley campus. After 11 years of having the campus as my backyard, it feels as much a home to me as anyplace ever has. I felt that I could close my eyes and still find my way from anywhere on campus or Southside to anywhere else.

I started thinking about how indoor cats must feel, where their limited environment becomes their universe. They know it so well that it exists as concretely in their sense memory as in their visual and tactile perceptions. I realized that Berkeley is my environment, mirrored in exquisite fidelity in my brain, much as the five shapes of Tetris are etched into the avid player.

Leaving, I'll have a need to create a new map, and quickly, lest I feel unstuck. Driving with Chad through an intricate knotwork of a journey through the neighborhoods surrounding CMU I already have the foundation for my next framework, but I couldn't help but wonder how this glove that is Berkeley, that I've worn for years and broken in to better fit my hand, would feel when it's only a hollow glove of memory.

And so it was ua bit of a welcome shock of perception when I, on Friday, decided to bump up my LA visit to Sunday through Tuesday. Returning to the only place I ever lived longer than my current home, I got to try on an older glove of sense memory. I was acutely aware of the changes since my last visit home. The new flower garden in the backyard, my mom's new car, the changes to my former bedroom (now an office and, soon, (cliché of clichés) an exercise room). Still, the glove fit, with a finger removed here and replaced there (the destruction and rebirth of the Sherman Oaks Galleria).

In short, as I knew in my mind but wasn't completely faithful in my heart, you can go home again.

The first few visits home after starting college were indeed strange, because Los Angeles didn't just represent a different geography to me, but represented a former life, with different ideals, and different patterns of thinking. Going to LA meant, for at least a few days, becoming my former self. As time went on, each successive visit left me with more of myself, looking at the LA perspective, but not from the LA perspective.

So now when I visit home it's a visiting of an old friend, not a consuming shift.

The thought lingering in my mind is: Is the shift less profound because I've made the LA-SF transition several times, or because I've made any transition several times? Returning from Pittsburgh, will I feel the wash of nostalgia of Berkeley my former home, or from Berkeley-Kevin, my former self?

I guess we'll see...

Anyhow, that wasn't what I was going to write about though. I had a very pleasant day. I woke up early, packed my backpack with clothes, powerbook, iPod, and book. I went downstairs to pick up bagels for the girls and a chai for me, then drove to Karen and Crystals, for a ride to the airport. We had a nice Sunday breakfast before a civilized drive to the Oakland airport, an easy security screening, and right onto a quarter-full 9:30am flight to Burbank, where I was met by my mom. Another breakfast (Elevenses), and home (mom-home) to see Susie and the aforementioned flower garden. It's hot in LA today, up near 100.

Today's my grandfather's birthday (err, the 14th). This was the other reason I bumped my flight up. I rarely come down to LA, and I decided that his party was something definitely worth coming down for. I mistakenly thought he was turning 89 (he's turning 88), which made for a great (albeit mistaken) realization that next year, within the span of 17 days, I would be turning 30, my mom 60, and my grandfather 90. I thought a 30/60/90 birthday party would be a grand affair, but as it turns out it would be a 30/60/89 party, unless Grandpa lies and ups his age a year, or mom and I agree in 2004 to halt our own aging process for one cycle.

I guess I'll just have to sate my amusement with the fact that my birthday falls on Independence Day, Grandpa's on Bastille Day, sister Susie's on Labor Day (this year), and of course my Grandma Kitty's (mom's side) Christmas birthday.

Back to my day... The party at Uncle Alan's was very nice and low key. I got to see Craig who I haven't seen since Christmas. Afterwards mom and I went to the store and Costco (where I couldn't resist but buy Warcrack III), then went to see Lilo and Stitch in the theater. I liked it, though it was a very different direction for Disney. Mom thought it was too violent for what it was supposed to be and I completely get that. It's hard to imagine Disney making a film both more violent than Beauty and the Beast, yet more farcical. After going home we watched Kate & Leopold, for a complete switch, and that was cool too. Very enjoyable, despite the inexorable continuity flaws that afflict every time-travel story I've ever read.

Say, did anyone watch the Robin Williams HBO special tonight? Was it any good? Amazingly, I don't know anyone who gets HBO anymore...

Okay, enough rambling from Kevin. Today was mom's day, and tomorrow is dad's. Now it's time for me to sleep, after knocking back another chapter or two of Return of the King.

I hope your Monday treats you well. Dad and I are going to take another crack at flying model planes, 'cause if at first you don't succeed, eventually it's time to try again.

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For you Neil Gaiman fans out there (who happen to be local to Berkeley), he'll be performing a full three-hour reading (two 90-minute acts with intermission) of his new book, Coraline, at the First Congregational Church in Berkeley on Tuesday, July 2nd. $10 for adults, $5 for ages 8 to 16. All admissions come with a $3 discount on the book, should you choose to buy it.

I'm so there. I've seen him read excerpts to standing-room only crowds at Cody's, and he's a great reader of his own works. It looks like this time they're doing it one better, on the very release day of the book. Of course, it doesn't hurt that this church is on my block, just a few hundred feet from my place.

At the moment (and through the Pittsburgh trip) I've been reading stories from Gaiman's Smoke and Mirrors, and I'm absolutely in the mood to walk down the block to hear one of my favorite authors sit down for a few hours and read his new book to me aloud.

I'm going to miss this place.

Update: There are still a few tickets left when I went this morning. You can order them online.

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I'm back!!! Okay, yes there are stories to tell, and yes, most are half written. I'll start posting them tomorrow, and we'll have new content through the whole week. And of course there are pictures too.

PS: Thanks so much for the pages, guys! Some of them were very timely, and all were very well received. I love that you can touch me from across the country (triple-entendre, two of which apply, and a third that doesn't [well, it depends who you are, really. A few, yes.]).

It's good to be home. It does make me sad that this place won't be my home for much longer. But you know what they say about when doors close, doors open. At least I still have the keys to this city, and the door's kept ajar for me.

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I helped my friend Pamila move on Saturday, shuttling stuff from her storage space to her new bedroom in an apartment she shares with two other women. While doing so I was thinking about my own impending purge, store, and move.

A couple weeks I met my fellow incoming CMU grad student Kerry (at her going away party!) and we talked about the journey from SF to PA. She's moving out of her Oakland one-bedroom into a two bedroom place in Shadyside. Since she'll be there for two years, and isn't sure where she'll be going next, she's packing up and moving everything. Professional movers, $1800.

On one hand, I've been telling myeslf that $1800 can pay for a fair amount of IKEA furniture on Pittsburgh, money better spent there than shipping my stuff across the country, when I'll be coming back in a year. Also, 'my stuff' is one of the things I'd like to test-divest, and get a better perspective on what should go and what needs to stay.

On the other hand, storing stuff coses money too, and no small amount. Researching a few months ago, I found that a 10'x10' storage space (Public Storage) in Berkeley costs $250/month. Multiply that by 13 and it's $2750 for the year-plus. Why pay Berkeley storage premiums when I'm not even in Berkeley? Storing my stuff in Vallejo (20 miles north) would drop the price to $140/mo, or $1820.

Plus truck rental fees.
Plus the labor of moving my stuff.

The last time I moved (well, not the time I moved across the hall six years ago, but really moved) I promised myself that it would be the last time I'd move myself. And I had a lot less stuff back then... The stuff I'm running away from. Such a quandry...

The short of it is that I have a two-bedroom-apartment-full of stuff, and I need to decdide where to put it. I know what storage is like, but I know nothing about the apartment I'll be getting in Pittsburgh, 1 bedroom or 2, furnished or bare. I need to find that out before I can make any other decisions. The right answer might be to split it, putting some in a smaller, less expensive storage space, and shipping some via less expensive means. I'm unsure about my ability to pack my car up with everything I'll want and need for a year.

It bears more thinking about, but not until i have all the information I'll need, so I'll just concentrate on the 'purge' portion of my preparations until I know where I'll be living.

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Hearing the sound of a car hitting a person is one of the un-fun things about living above Telegraph Ave.

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So the building started gently shaking and I went to the doorway, after I was sure it wasn't just me. After it was over, I went to the USGS web site and saw that it was centered in Gilroy (about 60 miles south of Berkeley). Given that, I call my friend Crystal, who didn't feel it, and guessed that it was a 5.2 and, in true 'LA Story' fashion, I was exactly right. At least right on the preliminary calculation. We'll see what they say in the morning.

Scary that a 5.2 can kill hundreds and leave thousands homeless when it hits a third-world country. Here it's more like, "Fuck, there was a brownout. Now I have to wait for my TiVo to reboot. I hope it was just recording commercials."

Of course, just because it's over, doesn't necessarily mean it's over.

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Due partially to my desire to not sit around on my ass all weekend, partially by circumstance, I did quite a lot this weekend. Including Friday, I:

• Did laundry - Two loads. Not too exciting.
• Took my car in for a tune up - New front brakes, new front tires, a realignment, regular 30-month service, and a brake caliper adjustment on the left rear wheel.
• Went to the optometrist - A week after the incident I went to my optometrist for a check. He found that healing is progressing well, though it will still be another week before I should try wearing contacts again. Next examination (and my regular full eye exam) is in two weeks. I brought the photo of my eye and he passed around the clinic and asked if he could keep it. I know one of my readers works for a medical images company. I'll have to get in touch with him and see if there's a textbook out there that wants a photo.
• Saw Spider-man on opening night - I really liked the movie. It's a love story, so don't get hung up on the special effects. Personally, I felt if they were too realstic (like The Matrix) it would detract form the message, and I was impressed at how internally consistant the quality and nature of the effects were. And the two leads, Tobey and Kirsten, were great.
• Went dancing at Friday Night Waltz - After the movie in Emeryville, Karen, Crystal, Quinn and I drove down to Palo Alto for Friday Night Waltz, and danced 'till midnight.
• Took first on-water Kiteboarding lesson - Flying a kiteboarding sail is a lot like flying a flexi-foil two-line stunt kite in the same way that riding a motorcycle is like riding a bike: The general principle is the same, the reflexes from one will help you with the other, but it's a completely different scale of power. The lesson went well, and by the end I was actually getting up onto the board and jetting along for bits at a time. Next time on the water should be a breakthrough.
• Went to Heather's bonfire birthday party - With much burning of things and visiting of friends I don't get to see very often.
• Helped Dinah set up her Frankentosh - A Powermac 8500 with a 500Mhz G3 upgrade card and a firewire/USB card. I also helped her out with instructions on how to install OS X on to this computer which was never designed to accomodate it. Keeping fingers crossed...
• Sorted through over 300 CDs - With Dinah's help, went through my CD collection, finding which ones hadn't been MP3-encoded yet, and matching CDs with their long lost jewel cases.
• Went to Karen and Crystal's Cinco de Mayo Fiesta - Much fun was had. Viva la Mexico!
• Dinner with Ali and Mark - Well, dessert really. They had dinner, but I had rice pudding and horchata. A good Mexican ending to a good Mexican day. I'm atoning for skipping out on my Spanish class last Thursday.
• And before I sleep...
• Writing a few blog posts - Like this one, for example...
• Watching the Simpsons - And a few other TiVo'ed goodies
• Working on stuff for Kevin 3.0

I don't think anyone can say I sat on my ass this weekend.

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Written Tuesday evening. Didn't get to finding the links and posting until Thursday morning. Read the article. You'll understand...

I store up ambition for the weekend, just in time to be tackled by my ambivilance. I'd have a list of things to accoomplish in the coming fin de semana, but the lethargy of choice usually meant I'd stay home, getting ready to do things, and spending so much time making everything optimal to work (or getting stuck in front of the TV) that soon the clock ticked around the the fateful five o'clock, that time by which if I wasn't underway, I'd already feel defeated because 5 is close to 6 and coming up on 7, the time when things start getting dark, and the time when I'd get home on a workday, so if I didn't feel like making something of the evening after a day at work, how could I bring myself to do it now?

This clearly had to stop.

A lot of intropsection revealed the following interesting insights:

• I'm afraid of success. As long as I'm not giving my 100%, then I can't fail inside, because I could attribute the failure to my not giving my all. But, if I do give my all, and it turns out to not be enough, then it's not that I failed, but that I'm incapable of success.
• I likw creating things, and often feel a sense of loss, of time wasted, when I do things that don't have permenent, tangible end products. I used to be an avid gamer, but nowadays I think about the prospect of sitting home alone for a weekend and churning my way through Half-Life II or Diablo II, networked or otherwise, and think about how it's just another drug, wasting valuable time for little more than an increased ability to play that game. (Irony so thick you can lap it up.)
• I don't have a spontaneous social life. Nearly all my friends live between 8 and 70 miles away, and those who are closer are those with their own social circles and a dearth of free spontaneous time. If I want to see a movie, I plan it between four and twenty days in advance.
• How the above factors combine when it comes to meeting new people is an exercise left to the reader.

Clearly, a change was called for.

It wasn't always like this...

A good part of the problem was accursed Berkeley. Having a car in Berkeley means walking a lot, or working your travels around the ebb and flow of cars, Bereley's tidal urban detrius.

On weekdays, the meters start filling up around 9am, and by 10 spaces are scarce, with those vacated by residents going to work quickly filled by commuting students. Around 3pm the student exodus exceeds the inflow, and spaces start to appear until the wave inverts around 5:30 and residents start coming home. By 7pm spaces are scarce again, and won't free up until 10pm, when those visitng friends, drinking, or studying late start heading home, and the influx is low.

On weekends it's almost reversed. The spaces are empty until nearly 1pm, then they quickly fill, to stay packed until nearly midnight.

All this leads to windows: It's hard to do something during the day if you know you'll have to walk a half-mile home from the closest parking space (which you only know is the closest because you followed your regular parking circuit twice to find the 'edge' where spaces go from nil to plentiful). Instead, you plan activities not around the traffic that moves, but that that is supposed to stand still.

Time for a change...

So as I've mentioned before, the commute is a beast, a killer of time, a murderer of sleep, and while it gives me in tome to write introspective soliloquies like this one, those six hours a week are bought at the expense of a great many more.

The solution isn't a simple change. A paradigm shift would be abandoned nearly as abruptly as it starts. A lifestyle is a heavy boat, and trying to turn it 90 degrees in an instant would only succeed in tipping it over by the might of the momentum it carries.

There are the small things: Do laundry when you only have a load or two, not when you no longer have anything to wear.

Ditto for dishes.

Next comes weekends: Make plans. Give themes to weekends. Get excited. Home is the place you get to escape from on a weekend, not cocoon yourself inside while waitng for yourself to do the things you know you won't.

In the words of Gary Graves, a drama teacher of mine who, in spite of some questionable productions, was one of my better mentors, "make the bold choice." (Alternatively, you can take the words of Dark Angel's 'Original Cindy' when she admits, 'it's a large life.')

Skydiving is a good example. I didn't go out to Byron ten days ago out of defiance against a life half-lived, but as an opportunity to experience something new (the latter being a natural positive, the former merely a double-negative).

And the fun doesn't stop there. This last weekend's original plan was to take a kitesurfing lesson with my father. Though they were booked (and I'm going on my own this coming weekend), and our alternate foray into flying model planes had disasterous results, it was still a thing to do. Any weekend that I don't have to complain about the jesus freaks because I wasn't home for them to torment is a good weekend. The more I do this, the more it sinks in.

Well, I'm starting to approach Jack London Square, without even getting to the heart of what is likely the most rambling post I've written in months.

Tonight and tomorrow morning is Beltane (okay, so finishing and editing took a while. Today's Beltane). Celebrated as a pagan holiday representing the renewing of the annual cycle, it's the closest thing to a spiritual new year. Medieval (and earlier) druidic cultures witnessed Beltane as nature's fertility rite. It was the time when the god and goddess came together to start the seed of a new goddess. In proper imitative ritual, it's the time when young couples would by and by leave the celebration to wander into the woods and fields and make merry, either for their own fertility, or in the fields, to ensure the fertility of the coming crops.

This month I'm seeding my metaphoric fields, planting for the longer view. I'm changing the way I work, the way I play, and to some degree the way I think.

As always, I'll keep you posted over the next few weeks on the more tangible changes.

Have a great Beltane everyone!

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<Dr. Nick>Hello Everybody!</Dr. Nick>

Did everyone have a good weekend? I saw Ice Age Saturday morning with Karen and Crystal, which was lots of fun and good fodder for our der rigour pickapart session over lunch afterwards (example).

We went to Borders ('your multimedia outlet if you don't have the patience for Amazon'(tm)) and I picked up a book (Derek's Design for Community), a CD (Baroque Adagios (2-disc set)), and a DVD (Say Anything).

That evening around 7pm I dropped by The Underground (the video arcade on the Berkeley campus, a whopping three blocks from my apartment) to see if they were open or if, as I suspected and was proven correct, they're closed for the week for Spring break. Walking up to Sproul Plaza, I called Gypsy's on cellphone speeddial. "Gypsy's" "Yeah, tortellini marinara?" "Okay, ten minutes." Click. It's a tradition. He recognizes my voice and knows I won't be ordering anything else. It's just nice to give them a few minutes lead time so I can get in and get out.

Anyhow, they're two blocks away and I've got 10 minutes. It's a nice night on campus and I figure I'll wander around in the night air to burn off a few minutes. On Sproul Plaza I step up to the brim of Ludwig's Fountain and walk around the circle of the fountain slowly, twice. A small part inside me feels self-conscious that someone might be watching, wondering why I would be walking around in circles, and a slightly larger part squashes that part, surprised I would actually be that self-conscious.

I step down and wander towards Sather Gate and I hear in the distance someone asking for directions to Hertz Hall. Ever helpful, I wander toward the lost traveller, and in front of Dwinnele I come across an elderly woman, around 75 years old, talking to a backpack-(the 'life on my back' kind)-laden youth, doing a lot of pointing, giving vague (and incorrect) directions, as the lady's three friends look on.

Backpack-youth looks to me for a little help and I start giving directions, but it's a little twisty and they'd get lost again. "I'm headed that way myself" I lie. "I can show you where it is."

The lady lets me know that one of her party has a cane and walks very slowly, so I might not want to walk with them. I tell her not to be silly, and we're on our way. As we take our ten-minute journey, I give them a handful of campus trivia. After eleven years I've gathered quite a bit of floatsam on most of the buildings of campus. She tells me they're here to see 'the 12-year-old Bach,' a piano prodigy. Like many of the concerts at Hertz Hall, this one is free.

My quartet drove in from Walnut Creek, from a retirement community of ten thousand, with seven thousand apartments, but no Bach prodigies.

They asked me if I'd like to join them, and I was really tempted. For all that I know about the events on campus, I've actually gone to a saddening few of them. If not for the food that even now was growing cold on the counter at Gypsy's, I would have. "Give the food away to someone else and I'll pay you later this evening" I didn't say. Instead I walked them past the Campenile, helped one of them down the steps to the bridge over Strawberry Creek, through Faculty Glade, and around to the front of Hertz Hall, giving them directions on how to get to Bancroft and down to the Zellerbach parking lot after the recital.

I'm not sure why I blew this out into a full story, but it was really nice. It was nice to walk slowly for a change. It was nice to look around and see the campus through someone else's eyes. Nice to be reminded of all the culture going on just outside my door (okay, honestly the culture going on just outside my door is something I could live without, but go a little farther and there's beauty and art to be had). I won't be in Berkeley forever. I should make the most of the remainder of the experience.

Anyhow, I had a nice dinner at home, listened to some adagios to make up for missing young Bach, and felt a little better about Berkeley.

Okay, train's pulling in to Santa Clara so I'll wrap up. I still have some notes from the Google talk at BayCHI a couple weeks ago, which I'm hoping to type up on the ride home. I've got a backlog of stuff to write about and never enough time to do the stories justice, but I'll do my best to catch up this week.

Happy Monday!

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Last night on Telegraph I was walking home past three gutterpunks (trustifarians, whatever...) and just after I pass them one of them calls out:

"Hey, y'know that game where you make a circle and if the other guy looks at it you have to punch 'em?"

Without thinking (dorm habits die hard), I reach behind and make an 'a-ok' with my hand on the back of my head, not looking back. They all laugh.

I guess that means I should've gone back. After all, I owe'd 'em a punch, right?

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I'm loaning a friend my Vision Science book for her class in Visual Perception. I envy her this semester, taking Visual Perception with Stephen Palmer, and Mind & Language with George Lakoff. I remember when I was in those classes, and how clear it was that you were learning from two of the leaders in the field (and I mean that in the good way). She may also get the chance to study in a small neurology seminar with Rich Ivry. Ivry's great, not only because of his extreme knowledge (and ongoing research) in the field, but because he's easygoing.

Back when I took his Cognitive Neuroscience course (CogSci 127), I remember (and wouldn't you know, I've got the photos too) when he talked about Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation. Basically, a TMS is a solenoid that generates a very powerful, but highly focused magnetic field that disrupts the delicate electrical potentials within its reach.

The thing is shaped like a ping-pong paddle, with a wire going from the handle to a computer that controls the pulse duration and frequency. The flat paddle projects a disruptive field a few cenitmeters beyond its surface. Scientists use it to create temporary harmless brain lesions. Basically, this will stop a select few square cenitmeters of a person's cerebral cortex from functioning for under a second per pulse.

As we in the class are all amazed by this, he rolls out a cart with a laptop and a TMS paddle on it and asks his head TA if he could come to the front of the room. It sucks to be the GSI. But no, the TA was going to man the computer, while Ivry took the paddle in his own hand, placed it carefully on the right part of his skull (right forward parietal lobe, the motor cortex, a little off from the top, the part controlling the left arm and fingers), holds out his left arm, and signals to the TA.

Professor Ivry takes his role as an educator very seriously.

The class goes very quiet. Shuffling stops, pens stop writing, the 360 students in the room completely fixated on what's about to happen. A flashbulb goes off and 361 heads turn toward me as I sheepishly lower the camera and everyone starts laughing. Once everyone looks back to the spectacle-in-the-making, Ivry gives the sign and the head TA presses a few keys. Pulses accented by quick beeps pulse though the paddle, and every four seconds the professor's arm and fingers twitch. "Okay, now I'm going to concentrate on keeping my fingers absolutely still" he says, and there's absolutely no difference.

I snap another picture without a flash, just in case it looks better (it did).

It starts to dawn on some of the students that he could move the paddle a little along the motor cortex and affect other parts of the body, the face, the legs, the toes, and right next to toes on the cortex, the genitals. Scattered pockets of giggling ensue. Made bold by the professor's daring, a few students call out requests: "Can you put it at the back of your head?" (occipital lobe: temporary lack of vision for part of the visual field (not darkness, but a completel lack of awareness that it exists)), "Can you put it at the front?" (prefrontal cortex: temporary lack of personality), "Broca's! Broca's!" (Broca's Area: inability to formulate coherent words).

But no, even when a few students volunteered to be guinea pigs (err, monkeys. I think this thing could probably disrupt a whole guinea-brain at once, and that wouldn't be good) trying, no doubt, to remember where the pleasure center of the brain was. Besides, it wouldn't activate it, as an electrode would. It would just disrupt it anyhow.

I wonder if the grad students ever mess with the paddle after office hours.

Ahh, I miss Berkeley...

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"Some days you find the content --
Some days the content finds you."
- Ancient blogging proverb.

So I was driving home from work tonight, and in the last mile, driving up Telegraph Avenue, I found myself driving behind an ambulance, 'off,' driving with traffic.

I noticed that the lights were on inside, and I could see the med-tech, leaning against the back (err, front) of the van, his back against the driver's seat, dozing.

A small part of me thought, "Wow, a long day for the EMT. He's probably catching a little shuteye while he can before the next emergency.

Ever the vigilant blogger, (err, journaller, err, blogger, err, documentor) I took my Elph out from my jacket pocket, waited until we were both stopped at a light (Telegraph @ Alcatraz, northbound, right lane), turned off the flash, and snapped a pic:

On preview (err, postview) I noticed the picture was a little blurry, so I wanted to take another. Of course, it would have to be without a flash. Two panes of glass, a dirty windshield, and 20 feet dont make for good flash conditions, and two moving vehicles don't make for good non-flash dark photography conditions. So I stayed behind them, waiting for the next stoplight.

Keeping my eye on the EMT, I caught a momentary glimpse lower into the ambulance, and I could see that he wasn't sleeping, but was slowly writing on a clipboard, always looking down at the paper, head unmoving, hand writing low on the form.

Webster; red light; no, green before we get there. Ashby is next, red light (and a long one). I get ready with the camera, but the ambulance turns its blinker on and edges to the right, never coming to a full stop. I can't get a good shot, and don't try. As it's accelerating out of the turn, pivoting up as it climbs onto the crowned road, I can see fully inside the ambulance. I can see that there's a patient on a gurney. I can see the face of a handsome black man in his late 20s. I see how his eyes are closed on an expressionless face, and his head lolls with the van. As the van edges up Ashby to Alta Bates, I realize that it was in no hurry. I realize that what I had originally assumed to be a resting EMT, then one filling out a little paperwork, is actually a man steadfastly keeping his gaze lowered to avoid the face of the dead man he's sharing the van with.

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Dear Kevin Fox:

Thank you for your inquiry about your service fee.

As of today, we have reimbursed your missing $0.25 and have corrected the billing error. Your reference number for this transaction is RB9430442. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you.

If we can be of any further assistance, please email us or call us anytime at 1-800-956-4442.

Sincerely,
Online Customer Service

Yay!

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This is my life:

From: Kevin Fox
To: Wells Fargo Customer Service

To whom it may concern:

On Saturday I went to the Downtown Berkeley Wells Fargo branch, and gave the teller $20 for two $10 rolls of quarters. Later, upon examining the rolls side-by-side, I noted that they weren't the same size. Counting (twice) revealed that one of the rolls contained only 39 quarters, or $9.75.

I would appreciate it if you would remit the remaining $0.25 into my checking account.

Thank you very much for your time.

Sincerely,
Kevin Fox

I'll keep you posted.

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Okay, that's got to sound strange, but I live in a very strange building. One of the oddest things is that there has been *no* cold-running water for over a year. That's right, only hot and very hot, which is great from a showering perspective, except for very early in the morning (between 5 and 6) when it's just above lukewarm and just above lukewarm. Terrible showering water.

Anyhow, I turned on my faucet this morning and cold water came out, and it stayed cold. It was actually a weird thrill to be able to control the temperature by choosing more or less hot or cold water. The bathroom sinks at Yahoo! have IR sensors and no temperature control, so I haven't had any daily temperature control in just about forever.

The most disquieting thing was going to the toilet right after someone else and finding not just the seat warm, but *steam* rising from the bowl, buffeting ones unmentionables.

It's a brave new world of cold water. Ahh...

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Need a femur? Looking for a spare rib cage?

Where's your head at? Berkeley, of course.

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As a Berkeley native of 10 years, I feel like I'm part of the community, and that my City Government should reflect the aggregate views of its constituents, especially when purporting to send a message to the nation and the world on our behalf.

This is why shit like this pisses me off so much. The people of Berkeley as a whole don't support the City Council's condemnation of US attacks on the Taliban, but the vocal minority, along with the Berkeley City Council's self-declared mission to 'be as Berkeley as we can be,' gets in the way of what a democracy should be.

It's ironic that one of the leftmost cities in the country has become a true republic, and not a democracy. In a democracy, official acts mirror the majority will of the people as closely as possible. In a republic, people just elect officials, and from there, the officials do whatever they want, because at least we got to choose who's up on the pedestal. In the US, the elected officials usually try to keep their votes in line with their constituencies, but apparently not in Berkeley.

Sadly, Berkeley is interested in profit more than democracy. The City Council's actions are attempts to differentiate Berkeley from the mainstream, cashing in on the 60s hippyism legacy to maintain a fading individuality because it's good for tourism.

The trouble is twofold. As if I wasn't offended enough that my elected representatives have decided to sell themselves out under the guise of an altruistic purpose, their ill-conceived and politically dishonest tactic backfired, with companies and individuals boycotting Berkeley businesses, and unthinking journalists projecting the will of city council members onto the citizens of Berkeley.

Not to be a linkwhore, but I hope that some of you with weblogs might point out that the People of Berkeley and the City Council of Berkeley are two separate realms that, sadly, only seem to touch one day every few years, when elections roll around.

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I rag on Berkeley a lot, but there really are some cool bits, like firebreathers on your doorstep.

I took this 10 minutes ago, about 30 feet from my apartment:

(bigger)
(full-size source)

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Something wasn't right.

I've been having some strange dreams lately. It's probably been a lot of things: I rearranged my bedroom and now my bed's in a strange place. I'm regularly living on 6 hours of sleep a night. I go to sleep thinking of unfinished projects and wake up in a rush.

I've been having strange dreams. Dreams of flying I'm completely familiar with; not flying like a bird, soaring, gliding, and circling through thermals of inspiration, but more like the flight of a butterfly, alternating floating downward and twitching upward. This is a familiar dream.

Strange dreams. Dreams like vignettes. A few seconds here, lay the background, and scene. And on to the next. Most of them I don't remember beyond the wheel-of-fortune structure of flipping from one environment to the next.

Strange. Two nights ago one flash was my car, the front fender damaged on the driver's right, sort of shredded, sort of planed off, so the bumper was higher on that side for want of a bottom. I was unsettled on Saturday, vaguely unsettled on Saturday, until I remembered this night-picture and segmented it off from reality. All better.

Today's morning ritual involved getting up later than I ought to have, to catch my train, rushing to get it all together, walking up Haste to my car.

Berkeley parking is somewhat of a mystery. When I get home, bet it 6pm or midnight, Berkeley is perpetually packed, residential and meter parking alike. Luckily, a silver-lining of my working world is being able to park at a meter, as my start time is substantially earlier than when the meters tick on at 9. The mystery is that, though the meters are packed when I get in in the evening, come 7am mine is the only car remaining on a block of 25 spaces.

Are the other 24 who were here last night all earlier risers than I am, or are they partying until 2am, then driving home?

No matter. My car is at the top of the block, and walking towards it from 300 feet out, I can't decide if it's mine. It doesn't look quite right. I don't think about it again and come half-a-block I can see that it's Baby. I walk up, unlock the door, hand on the handle, and I stop.

I go back to the front of the car, the dream-vision coming back, to check out the front bumper.

Fine, normal. Okay. I turn back to the door.

Something wasn't right.

Back to the front I go, and realization dawns. No license plate. Gone. Just an empty bracket. No trauma of a violent parallel parker, just the void of absence.

I check the back, just so see if my assailant was going for a hat trick. At least they left me that one, with the registration tab I spent far to long acquiring.

When did this attack occur? Were there cars around bearing mute witness? Did it happen days ago and I only just noticed? Was my dream prescient, coincident, or simply a subliminal realization trying to share itself with my conscious awareness?

So now I assume that my license plate, too clever by half, is adorning someone's dorm room or apartment. What my assailant isn't counting on is the interconnectedness that seems to run through my life. Three friends of mine who don't know each other all attended the same wedding on Friday, for two people I've never met. I can meet someone and within 15 minutes find a common acquaintance. I just know that I can find someone who knows upon what wall, in which hall or frat house, the license plate "GRR ARG" stands imprisoned and shackled. Have you seen it? Vanity theft is the most dangerous kind indeed. For the victim robbed of a non-fungible item, the desire for recovery is strong, and the thief feels the need to display the acquisition, for what good is art in a drawer?

It will take a few weeks for this spell to run its course, but I know that I will get it back. It may take some help from friends, or some more dreaming, but it will come back.

Grr, arg! Indeed.

Addendum: I just got off the phone with Ali, who tells me I was very lucky that they didn't take the back plate, as I can get a replacement front plate without a problem, but if someone steals the back plate, they'll keep the plate out of circulation for seven years. Umm, thank you I guess?

Comments? (52)

The Jesus Freaks are outside again today, saving souls by squandering electricity on loudspeaker-enhanced prayer, singing, and proselyting. I've got to get out of here before the words crack my skull.

Dear god, the Hari Krishnas are coming by now too.

You guys think I'm kidding, but no. I'm living on Telegraph.

Okay, it's off to lunch at Baja Fresh, read some more Crypto, sketch some more design ideas for Randompixel, write up our playtest report for Nanofictionary, and just maybe Jesus will have saved everyone by the time I get back.

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First, Romeo & Juliet (L337 version) is really funny if you've spent too much time in chat rooms or on IM, and pretty nonsensical if you haven't. Gotta love flash.

Second, an inpassing moment last night:

Getting into my car, parked at People's Park, at 11pm last night...
• Girl on sidewalk: You leavin'?
• Me: Yeah.
• Girl: 'k, cos I'm gonna cop a squat an' I don't want you to watch me.
  and then she does...

Third, Gaskell's Ball is tonight! Ammy's getting back from Lark in the Morning Camp today, and I finally have to clean the post-Europe luggage explosion from my living room so she'll have someplace to crash after the ball tonight.

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For those in the Berkeley area, and/or into Neil Gaiman, he'll be reading excerpts from his latest book, American Gods, at Cody's Books on Telegraph tomorrow (Wednesday) at 7:30. I'm hoping to make it back from work in time to get a good seat. If you haven't read any of Gaiman's other works, you really should (each for very different reasons), and if you have read Gaiman before, then you'll probably want to be there tomorrow night.

Comments? (4)

Driving down to and returning from my second interview at Yahoo!, back in February, I was weighing the merits of employment against those of a Masters education, juxtaposed against the realities of working 50 miles from home and studying 3000 miles from home. Lounging most heavy in my mind were the changes that would manifest transitioning from the 9-4 life of a student living 300 yards from campus and that of a full-time designer working 9 hours bracketed by a combined four-hour commutes

Amidst the down