I always mis-remember the quote as, "miles to go before I wake."

I wonder what that's about...

I figured out why I don't get enough sleep. I get caught up writing posts like this one.

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(Note: Slashdot has archived the story, so you'll have to follow the link and search for 'check this shit out' in the resulting page.)

I applaud the minimalist aesthetic, but I'm not quite sure of the message. Unlike the AIDS Awareness theme of the Day Without Weblogs, GreyDay seems to be about 'eliminating online plagiarism, the unlicensed use of copyrighted works, and bandwidth robbery.' These really aren't issues too close to my heart (and considering their cause, should I really be quoting them?). Looks like an attention-seeking media-grab if you ask me. 'Eyeball stealing' should be a webcrime...

There should be more color days though. I'd love to implement a stylesheet script that would color-coordinate my site to the 'plight of the day.'

So I was talking to my mom on the phone today. My mom, the superbusy accountant who finally got a break now that April 16th has passed, had her computer crash yesterday, but reinstalled Windows just in time for her appointment to take Traffic School on the web.

Basically, they give you 10 pages of material to read and study (on a web page, of course), then they give you a test on it. Note that you don't have to put up with the 8 hours of instruction, banal instructor (or, if you're at comedy traffic school, a sublimely banal instructor), or, of course, the other 15 drivers in the class who are actually bad drivers, unlike you, who are perfectly safe, though perhaps not always within the law, and just got unlucky enough to get caught this time. (side story: Last time I was in traffic school (about 4 years ago) we all went around the room, saying what we were 'in' for. Speeding 35 in a 20 zone, speeding 50 in a 35, blah blah, one making a right hand turn from the center lane, me for doing 90 in a 65 zone (talked the judge down from reckless driving), and the girl who drove every day for a year in the carpool lane then got caught with the infamous $271 ticket. I was laughing inside, then she went on to say since she'd finally been caught, she was even more surprised when she got caught again two days later, and it was traffic school or losing her license. Then I laughed out loud. Couldn't help it. She didn't understand why.)

Anyhow, they give you the test on the net, and even give you the relevant passage in the text to help you out with your question. I'm just wondering how long it'll be before parents just pay their kids to take the test for them... Okay, yeah, bad idea. Just make sure you only pay them 10% up front and the rest upon successful completion.

My turn: I got called up for Jury Duty. I get to serve with pride, starting May First, aka May Day, aka Beltane. Now as often as not, my notable homage to the pagan holiday of the flowering of life is to bear witness to one of the several Dancing Up the Sun rituals performed by the many Morris Dance groups in the Bay Area. Basically, a crowd of a couple hundred people (I've been to the ones in Tilden Park and Mountain View) gathering well before sunrise, and watching the Morris dancers dance until dawn breaks.

This is just the thing to do before going into a courtroom and judging guilt and innocence. Not to mention on only a little sleep.

So can I take jury duty on my powerbook? I have a DSL line for streaming video. I could stay in front of my computer all day, with just some short breaks for lunch and so forth, then come back and press either the big green 'innocent' button or the big red 'guilty' button. Heck, if they gave me the spec I could write a WAP front end so I could adjudicate by cellphone.

Grr. Well, I do have a Womens Studies paper due that same day, which means a busy weekend, especially if I hope to get some sleep Monday night. Everything's getting so busy so quickly... Only two more weeks of classes, and only another after that before I graduate! Let's hope I don't get stuck on a long trial...

If they let me take my digital elph in I'll webjournal the experience for y'all. I've never actually been on a jury before. I'm sure it's not as exciting as it sounds.

Yep, I've got to finish that 'unpublish' feature in Metacookie... I was blithely clicking through all my bookmarks when I noticed that one of them is my 'update fury on metacookie' link. Gar.

Going to the Gaskells Ball tonight. I've still got to pick out what I'm wearing! I'll try to take lots of pictures and put up another gallery, this time with more full shots of the people and clothes rather than poorly lit motion shots.

Have a great Saturday everyone!

I got a scooter when I was 17. It was a Honda Elite and I thought it was very cool. In places like Berkeley and San Francisco, where parking is nearly impossible, a scooter is the perfect way to get from place to place, without having to give up a choice parking spot.

Anyhow, a few companies are trying to fit scooters into a larger demographic than teens and students. BMW has started producing a hybrid vehicle that's like an extra-safe scooter, with a seat harness and roll bar (be sure to check out the crash test videos).

My favorite though, the one that makes me drool, is Mercedes-Benz's concept vehicle, the Life-Jet F-300, an enclosed inline two-seater, three-wheeled vehicle with a motorcycle engine driving the rear wheel, accelleration from 0-62 in 7.7 seconds, and about 45 miles per gallon.

Of course, the train's not bad either. It's harder to check your email while driving...

You'd think that after three months as a TA, I'd know pretty much about my students, but I didn't discover until today that one of them has a weblog of his own, and a pretty good one at that.

Damn, I accidentally hit the 'update' button for metacookie, so now I feel obligated to write a post. What's going on with me right now? I'm franticly working on the last three weeks of school before graduation (which I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to!)

In the meantime I have a midterm (I'm not sure what's 'mid' about it!) on Tuesday, a short report due tomorrow, a final paper due a week from Tuesday, another one due a week from tomorrow, an in-class presentation on Wednesday, and finals right after that.

It's all okay though, because Gaskells is this weekend and ballroom dancing with beautiful women makes everything okay.

All right, that's it for now, other than to note that for every post I actually write, I have two more notes, either in my palmpilot, my class notebook, or voicemail I've sent to myself, for ideas I want to blog. One day in the near future I'm going to do some serious info-purging.

Have a great Thursday!

Okay, I pulled out my copy of Basic English Revisited to settle in my head the question of when to use "who" and when to use "whom."

Basically, substitute the word in question (who/whom) with "I" or "me." If "I" fits better than "me" then it should be "who." Otherwise it should be "whom."

So, in the sentence, "they are going to meet who/whom," "they are going to meet me" makes a lot more sense than, "they are going to meet I." Therefore, the sentence should be, "they are going to meet whom?"

I'm also finally getting my quotation mark and punctuation rules down, so I'll stop being sloppy with my punctuation. Spelling, on the other hand, is another matter entirely.

or: "English is so ambiguous"

One of my favorite books in school was "Basic English Revisited" or 'The thin yellow book' as we called it. My 7th grade teacher enouraged us to 'lose' them at the end of the semester, have our parents pay the fees, and keep the books for ourselves. It had all the gems of the english language including how to use an apostrophie correctly, how to quote properly, how to write all kinds of bibliographic references (though there's no data on citing web pages. The book came out too URLy...).

What I remember most from the book though was the bit about ambiguity in sentences. Accompanying the phrase, "we make combs for people with unbreakable teeth" there was a cartoon of a trapese artist hanging from the sky, holding a rope carrying an elephant, using only his teeth.

I was just reading a photo-essay on yoga and I came across the phrase: "Herbal animal eye pillows are available for serious relaxation-seekers' and I was thinking of all the different ways to read it. Pillows made out of animal eyes? Herbal pillows for animal eyes? Shaped like animal eyes? Shaped like animals? I'm not sure any of these interpretations would really help me achieve 'serious relaxation'...