Went to IKEA tonight, and I took a bunch of pics for fun and research to take back home.

Now I'm home and thought it'd be the perfect time to try out iPhoto's automatic Photo Album maker.

See for yourself.

More important, I bought lamps, which means I now have light, which is a Very Good Thing.

Mmm... Perusing all things Carnegie-Mellon this morning, and I came across this comic, 'Look At Me':

(click to enlarge...)

Now that I think of it, 'click to enlarge' would be a pretty spiffy name for a comic. Or a rock band, or a blog. Mmm. Ideas... Damn. Looks like the domain clicktoenlarge.com was grabbed three months ago. .net and .org are still available though...

And once again, I end up bloggin goff on a tangent. Funny comic tho'.

"Think twice before redesigning your website."

I live by this. And not just 'cause I work for the 'hoo.

7:11 am: I haven't been home in four days, and right now I'm freezing my ass off at the Hayward Amtrak station. It's okay though, 'cause I got to spend time with a friend.

Living in Berkeley and working in Sunnyvale has distinct advantages to go along with the 100-mile roundtrip. Like I mentioned when I was barely a month into my position at Yahoo, it's a matter of parallax; no place in the Bay Area seems distant when each eye, the one at home and the one at work, sees it in a different relative position.

My primary means of transportation (and, as it's turned out, inspiration) is the Amtrak Capitol Corridor train which, for all its benefits, only goes down to Santa Clara twice in the morning, and only comes back once, so if you miss your ride home, there's no chance for a do-over. (fingers getting cold).

Anyhow, that's what I've been doing this week, in addition to working, I've been spending evenings (and grabbing crash space) with friends.

7:27 am: Train's rolling up... stopping, pulling away, as I sit unable to move, frozen on this bench. That's okay though; this train's on its way northward, and I still have another day of work before I'm going home.

My powerbook's starting to get warm, creating a strange heat transfer from the book to my lap to my ass to the cast-iron bench of frigidity. Word of the day? Frigorific, meaning something that makes things cold.

This is a fucking frigorific bench.

7:36 am: Sun is just peeking over the Hayward hills, and it's such a clear morning that it went from twilight to full-light in about 45 seconds. Feels like the snow scene from Ladyhawke.

I should paint a picture here: I'm sitting on a bench (damn heavy metal heat conductivity, I not only have to warm up my spot, but the whole bench, before my ass will stop freezing) at the Hayward Amtrak station. I'm the only person here, and have been since i got here about a half-hour ago. It's about 40 degrees out which, I'm sure some of you will say, isn't that cold, but it is if you only have a light jacket and thin jeans. I'm a wuss: If my breath makes clouds that drift away, it's cold.

Okay, I realized I'm not alone anymore. With my hood up to protect my ears from the wind, I didn't see them. There are actually about 10 people at the station now, all waiting warmly in their cars, listening to their radios, sapping the heat from (stopping to warm numb fingers, hold on..), okay, sapping the heat from their cars' engines, sipping their coffees, and compulsively calling on their cellphones to find out whether the train will be on-time or two minutes late.

I really sholdn't berate them. On any other day, I'd be one of them.

7:44 am: Okay, the train's at least one minute late. I'm tempted to knock on a window ("WelcometoamtrakcanItakeyourorder?") and ask them if they know when the train's coming, since I neglected to pay my cellphone bill and am now carrying around a dead weight instead of a communications device. Still, before service was cut, I did get one last cellphone horoscope. Let's see what it says... "Downhill is a seductive direction. Save energy for your return. Try another method." Har-har. Fuck you Cingular Wireless.

7:48 am: Okay, people are actually on the platform now, talking, but I'm the seated statue with the wiggling fingers. You know, it's funny, but I think laptop batteries last longer in colder weather. Maybe I should close the powerbook, save some energy for my return. But no, I have an adapter at work. I can charge up (fingers again...) there.

7:51 am: I envy Ben Brown. I want a video recorder. I want to make little vignettes about my day, compose video on the train, just like I was in an Apple commercial ("We have iMacs in any color you want, as long as it's white."), and I could upload it when I get to work. Oops, train's here. Hold on...

Holy sweet Jesus of blessed warmth.

Hold on. I'm gonna sit here with my hands under my thighs for a minute...

7:57 am: Much better.

8:03 am: amazingly, my Elph, which two days ago refused to take a picture because its battery was too low, not only had enough juice to take a couple pictures this morning, but even was up to transferring them and the rest of my photos on to the powerbook (mmmmm... iPhoto.....).

Can you see me on the bench? Of course not! I'm taking the picture!"

Okay, so I suppose I am a little bit of an Apple commercial, especially when you consider that I've been listening to my iPod this whole morning (current track: "The Million You Never Had" - Ani DiFranco).

Wow I use the word 'Okay' alot when I'm cold.

Maybe it's all the dialog boxes.

8:23 am: Browsing through my Expo pictures (ooh, I should make an Apple slideshow when I get to a network connection) I just noticed that the iMac keyboards are white too. The mice might be white as well, but I can't tell.

Well that's it kids! The train's pulling in to Santa Clara station. Thanks for keeping me company!

This CNN QuickPoll really disturbs me on so many levels:

Talk about picking your battles..

Okay, we're back to the flat dots, until I come up with something a little more clickable and readable, and just as fury as before. :-)

Not in any literal sense. I've just been thrown off mental kilter.

You know biorhythms? Remeber those machines that you could pay a dollar or so, input your birthday and the day you were interested in (some of the machines used thumbwheels, just like a spaceship, or Eniac computer) and the machine would pen-plot the peaks and valleys of your various emotions, based on the physical, emotional, and mental rhythms started (ostensibly) on the day you were born.

Later, they came out with the computerized versions (BASIC, IBM PC, typed in by hand from a software book, because how else would you get software back in '82?), spewing out your emotional forcast in green-phosphored ASCII-goodness. I'd look through the coming months, looking for the ultimate high, when all three cycles, 28, 31 and 33 days, fell into line with each other. Since 28, 31, and 33 have no common factors, this convergence would only happen every 28*31*33 days, or 28,644 days, which boils down to 78 years, 5 months, and 3 days. On that day, your biorhythm would restart, just like the day you were born, with all your cycles on the rise, starting at zero.

This was all a preface to try and explain how I've been feeling for the last few days. I was going to say that they all felt like they were in line, a powerful force, but that I couldn't tell whether they were heading up or down. Now that I think about it, one could be going up while the other two are headed down, or vice versa. All I can tell is that the're all passing through zero which, in addition to meaning that it's neither good nor bad, is also the moment when things are moving the fastest (as with any normal sine wave). Taking the parascientific example too far, this kind of combination, with each wave passing through zero at the same time, would happen every x/2 * y/2 * z/2 days, or 28*31*33/2*2*2, 28644/8, 3580.5 days. In short, every 9 years, 9 months, 19 days.

Okay, now I'm really getting off topic. But maybe that's the point. There's no topic for today, other than all of my newer friendships (and none of my older ones, thankfully) are going through some level of strife. It doesn't really help that my work life is also going through an upheval of change, switching from GeoCities to Yahoo Messenger. Time is scarce, money is tight, and more than any year in memory, I feel like my actions in the first month of this one will set the tone for the rest of the year, and beyond.

Okay, sorry for rambling. Let's see if I can actually pull this together into something that makes sense. Hmm. Okay. Did you ever see that episode of [insert Sci-Fi show here. Stargate-SG1, Star Trek, Orson Scott Card's 'Tales of Capitol' (okay, that one's a book, so?)] where such-and-such character has their memory wiped, replaced with new memories, and they try living their life, but as they go on, they realize that their memories don't fit with 'who they are' because they 'wouldn't do things like that.' Well, I feel like the reverse is true. My memories all point to sensibilities that I believe represent me, but the way I act nowadays doesn't feel like it fits that model, like I'm on auto-pilot, jaded or, more specifically, a spectator inside my own life, looking at what's going on through the windows, much as I am right now, writing this on the train, watching houses, cars, lives speed by.

I don't have a tactic, or a motivation, a goal, or any of that. At least one that I'll admit to myself. I'm just watching frost melt off the rooftops, trying to internalize the conscious realization that friendships aren't task-oriented problems with measurable milestones. I feel like the direction I'm travelling is orthogonal to where I should be going, getting me no closer or further from my destination, if I have a destination at all. Okay, now I'm just repeating myself in different ways.

Quite a ramble for a Tuesday. Thanks for sticking around. Things should get back to 'normal' soon. Hey, it could have been worse. I could have gone on a tirade about the different theories of time travel, and how every show that tries to tackle the subject mixes several of the theories into their underlying premise to fit the plotline, continuity be damned (err, storyline continuity. Naturally 'continuity be damned' is the hallmark of any time travel story).

So, which dots do you like better?

Along the same line, the visual design of fury will likely move slowly and subtly forward like the functional design has been. What's your opinion? Do you like the austere flat functionality? Would you like a little more style (foof), as long as it didn't get in the way, possibly augmenting the visual data presentation?

I'd love to hear what you think.

The Ben Brown Show has now lasted for six episodes and, unlike The Tick, Ben is still going strong.

Making up for the lack of crime-fighitng skill with verve, with, and a Fray-annointed iBook, Mr. Brown trudges on, his very persistence an invitation to eat his brand of midwest justice.

Rock on, Ben.

Moment of self-pity for my Saturday:

• My Saturday movie plans were thrown to the wind when the friend I'd hoped to see suddenly skipped town to go skiing.
• My Sunday movie plans were tweaked when another two friends 'thelma-and-louised' to places unknown to get away from the world, leaving only a note saying they'd be back when they were back.
• Another couple friends who said they'd visit and play never showed up, probably figuring they'd see me at the 30th birthday party for another friend at Stanford that evening, the drive for which, sadly, I didn't really feel up for after all of the aforementioned.
• Two other friends let me know they'd rather not spend time with me for a few weeks because, within our 'urban tribe' of four, I had dated two within four months. This is the one that really vexes me, but all involved are bloggers, and so this probably isn't the best place to air frustrations... It suffices to say that, as bloggers, I thought they would be better at communicating feelings. Disillusionment has a bitter taste.
• But then, I wasn't attending my grandfather's funeral, as Dinah was, so things could have been a lot worse.

The upside is that, at least for me, despondency is the mother of industry, and I got a lot of good programming done on Fury, enough, you might note, to warrant a bump in the version number. Yes, Fury is now at version 3.2.

My Sunday turned out a lot better than Saturday. I got pulled out of bed at 9 by Ali (not literally; she called me when she was done with rowing (Rowing at 7am? It's Sunday!) and we got Chai, walked on campus and caught up on each others lives. Going on 22 years, my friendship with Ali is my oldest, and talking life stuff through with her always gives me a good perspective.

Emily, Chris and I went to see Beauty and the Beast in IMAX at the Metreon. God Disney musicals can rock. (Note: Lion King is coming to IMAX on January 1, 2003. What's with the annularized movie releases? Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars (okay, biannual), and now Disney IMAX re-releases... Are movies franchises the new holidays? November 17 is 'Harry Potter Day'? Well, for the next six years, anyhow.)

Karen and Crystal (thelma and louise) came back in the afternoon, after a theraputic run down to Gold Country and wine tasting.

Another evening at home, coding, catching up on TiVo, talking to Dinah.