AOLiza works because of two simple concepts:

First: In the AOL world, there's this thing about having the last word, or at least making sure the conversation is over before leaving. 95% (an admittedly fabricated stat, but probably close) of all AIM conversations end with one person saying goodbye (however they do) and the other one saying goodbye. To leave before the double-signoff would be like hanging up on someone, and most people don't do it.

AOLiza never stops. It never pesters, but for every message you send, it will send one back. The only ways to get it to stop are to sign off or to simply let any one if its questions pass without a reply, but people just can't bear to do that.

The other thing that makes AOLiza work is that there's a HUGE tolerance for illogic on AIM. If this took place in email or a phone conversation (even if speech synthesis was up to snuff) it wouldn't work. People would see right through it. But in a medium where most people don't use punctuation of any kind, contractions you have to sit there and figure out, and phrases that just don't make sense, the average AIM'er is going to beleive that they just don't understand what's being said before they believe that it doesn't make any sense at all.

As a preview, here's an excerpt from a conversation that's going on right now:

AOLiza: does that have anything to do with the fact that you're e-mail?
Sela: do you mean female?

People have wicked pattern-recognition systems, they'll find meaning in anything. That and they have to have the last word. That's what makes AOLiza work.

AOLiza's going well. I'll be putting up some more conversations on Wednesday for your viewing pleasure.

On the Cameo front, Rick is being developed and will be back tomorrow, but the site redesign won't be up until the end of the week. If this is your first time here, be sure to add your email to the notification list at Cameo so you'll be reminded when the four rolls (Mercury, Bob, Emily and Rick) go up.

Classes begin on Monday, so I'm doing all I can, working full tilt on a client project and putting in a couple hours a day on other projects before the classload kicks in.

Okay, this is the funniest thing I've seen all week. Porn stars beware! Nobody is safe from design criticism!

It's funny how phrases are used as the seeds of new concepts. If someone says "The quarterback is toast" everyone knows he means toast as a metaphor for death, which is in turn a metaphor for done or defeated.

This metaphor chain goes so far that if someone says "that bread is toast" most people get the implication that the bread has somhow become unfit, not that it, surprisingly, is actually toasted bread.

Okay, interesting, but a couple days ago a friend of mine used "big brother" as an adjective, as in "the whole sitch is so Big Brother, only I was the red room!"

A month ago, to call something 'Big Brother' would have referenced the invisible, omnicient hand of society's leaders in Orwell's 1984. Before that was published, it just meant the benevolent, if heavy-handed and overprotective, actions of a metaphorical or literal older brother.

Everything's gone meta. My friend's English teacher used to say, "The greatness of the English language is thatany noun can be verbed." Nowadays it seems that any metaphor can be coined anew, and served as the basis for a new one. Talk about language recycling.

Another quick example: Did you realize that the word 'realize' didn't mean to notice or comprehend, but more to literally picture something? Language moved on, and 'actualize' was brought in to fill the gap left by the migration of 'realize.'

Random note: I hate it when people say "I literally blah-blah-blah" like "I literally died right there." or "I literally blew my top." don't people know what the word means? It's almost as bad as "Ironic". but that's a whole other story I might do a project on next semester. That would be ironic.

Or would it?

Wow, seek and ye shall find. I went hinting tonight for a command-line AOL client, or ideally an AOL module for Perl, and here it is.

This will let me enhance AOLiza in a bunch of ways, most notably that it won't require a semi-dedicated mac running Applescript.

It'll also be more robust, let me have several screen names running simultaneously (different personas), be a heck of a lot faster (though I'll still keep delays in to make it feel real), and will let me open the project up to everyone. I should be able to handle dozens, if not hundreds, of simultaneous conversations.

Anyhow, it's back to real work for me now, so other than putting up a few gems that came in this weekend, AOLiza enhancements will have to wait 'till next weekend.

Wow. Berkeley's a mob scene as thousands of freshmen (froshpeople, this is Berkeley, after all), and their parents, storm the campus and the dorms, triple-parking and driving the wrong way up one-way streets.

Now I feel a little silly for not having bought my books last week. I really should know better by now.

Anyhow, the cycle's beginning again. Football season starts in a week or two, sophomores will be trying to crash 14 units at the same time, while neglecting to drop the 8 they don't want, just in case. Juniors will 'hook up' with people they're sure are their lifelong loves, after two years of college flings, or lack thereof, and seniors will walk tall, stolidly refusing flyers from street vendors and ASUC wannabes alike, feeling like they did in high school, that they're on top and the end is near.

And somewhere, invisible in the teeming masses, I'll be flowing through the crowd, in it and of it to be sure, but more like the water, and less like the fish.

After 10 years at a school it's hard to be anything other than a part of it, an institution within an institution, as unnoticed as the inner courtyard between Hesse and McLaughlin. Berkeley is the oldest institution of higher learning in California, and I've been here for 8% of its existence.

A beurocracy that has stymied thousands each year, including myself, is now an old adversary, a teacher of strategy that prepares its students for the future through strife and conflict. I've learned all the lessons it has to teach, and I look forward to the next.

For this is my last year at Berkeley. In the Spring I'll be graduating in a major that didn't exist when I started at Cal. I already have a career, financial security, and a firmly established sense of self. While gone from Cal I discovered new sources of inspiration, and upon my return I was elated to find that there is a change to explore those interests in academia, away from the world of client deadlines and shifting requirements and expectations, where discovery is the purpose, and not just a welcomed by-product of a client engagement.

Classes start up a week from Monday, and of course I have a class to crash, a class to hold in reserve, street vendors to dodge, and a beaurocracy to keep in check. I do look forward to the challenge, to discovering the new ideas, to smile at the old ones, and forget it all and watch new episodes of Buffy once a week. Heck, it's better than being a freshman. Back then all we had was 90210, and we liked it.

First it was 10 free hours, then it was 20, then 50, 100, 300, 500, and yesterday I got a CD in the mail saying "700 FREE HOURS when you sign up!*" Of course, reading the fine print, it says "* Free hours must be used during the first month". Let's see... 30 days in a month. 24 hours in a day. Hmm. 720 hours. Wow. I'm so glad I didn't take them up on their 500 free hours. At that rate I could have only been online 17 hours a day, but now I can stay on 23 hours and 22 minutes! I guess I'll use the other 44 minutes to check voicemail, and call friends and family who aren't in the AOL circle...

You know, it's funny but while I think the final transcripts are intriguing, funny, or downright cringeworthy, I can't bear to watch as an AOLiza session is actually taking place.

This guy's been talking to her for over an hour now. I'll post it later today, along with 4 more I got yesterday.

As usual, I'm interested in what you think of the project. Is it funny? Is it evil? Is it wrong? All three? Tell me, I'm curious.

I've decided that weekends were actually invented by project managers in order to pad every schedule on the planet by 40%. When a project runs late, dip into the weekend padding.

To share my joy, I've opened up a Discussion Board for AOLiza.

Make yourself heard!