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!

*Just* started, and only tiny flakes, but real, honest snow! Yay!

It's no secret that Fury is highly rated on Google. For dubious reasons I'm currently the #1 entry for "Strongbad", not counting the Strongbad site itself. I also get a bunch of search requests every day for things I mention on the site in passing. Most of the time they're relevant, but now and then I notice funny bits.

For example, the ever-changing tagline just under the main page header is responsible for at least a few google hits every day. I have about 40 different taglines that are rotated randomly, and so the googlebots get a pretty wide range of them, index them, and feed them to users searching for who-knows-what.

I am, for example, currently the 6th and 7th hit for 'I am currently away from the computer'. (this is where I was going to go through a bunch of my other taglines and show how highly they're ranked, only they're not. Mweh; how anticlimactic.)

Carry on!

Just got an email from Jeff Bezos (err, from Amazon, anyhow) asking me to test their new clothing metastore, spanning offerings from the Gap, Old Navy, Nordstrom, Lands' End, Target, Eddie Bauer, Foot Locker, 'and many more.'

I get a $30 gift certificate if I spend $50 or more, and it's likely not so much a test as a buzz campaign. It looks like anyone gets the $30 gift certificate. You don't have to be sent the letter (though I bet millions got the letter all the same).

I'm shopping for a winter jacket anyhow, so perhaps I'll check it out. You can too.

Like the ultimate Jewish dilemma (see above re hammy part), I just got a spam from an artist who's composed his own 'inspired by Lord of the Rings' soundtrack, and it's available on mp3.com. I don't know whether to be happy about the distribution of small, unlabeled artists, or to be annoyed by the spam. I think I'll do both.

Yay!

For no good reason today I found myself thinking of Dr. Peterson, my AP Chem teacher in high school. I was only in his class for three weeks before switching to AP Physics, realizing that chem wasn't for me. Give me the gravitational constant over avagadro's number any day.

The two salient features I remember about Dr. Peterson are that, in his thick Indian accent, he would often joke, "We call it de Pidiodic Table because we use it... pidiodically." Also, before teaching high school, he did cancer research at USC. I remember that because I used to wonder, inthe back of my head, why someone would stop doing cancer research; I had this notion that people working to cure cancer wouldn't stop until it was done...

Not really sure why I thought of that today.

So as I've been mentioning, the air's been getting colder, and along with that, it's been getting drier and windier. No biggie, a fine chance to enjoy my wool overcoat while thinking that soon I should shop for a good winter jacket. I'm thinking along the lines of REI, except the nearest store is 5 hours away, but that kind of thing. Something lightweight but good down to 0 degrees. You know, leveraging the space-age fabrics we invented over the last 30 years instead of making jetpacks and helicars.

But I digress...

What I meant to post about was the effect this weather is having on my music listening. No, no. This isn't some monotribe about listening to "Winter Kills" on endless repeat or anything. It's all about the static.

So I use my iPod all the time, putting it in my pocket, with a ling headphone cord stretching from there to the in-ear Sony earbuds I use. These headphones are great. They block a lot of external noise, have great fidelity, and with three different sized sets of plugs to choose from, they don't hurt your (err, my) ears with prolonged use. The in-ear part is all rubber, and the only but of metal is on the outside, where it doesn't touch the skin at all.

Herein lies the problem...

It seems that with the dry, cold wind whipping along the headphone cord between pocket and ear, it builds up quite an electrical charge (and I'm sure the 5400rpm drive inside the iPod probably isn't helping much either). Something about the way the headphones are made seems to necessitate that the charge is not balanced between the two earbuds. so the charge builds up until, after about seven seconds, click-ow! a tiny spark leaps around from the metal bit on the earbud, questing for something grounded, until it finds my ear, two millimeters away.

Both ears...

...at the same time...

...every seven seconds.

It only happens when I'm walking outside in the cold and wind, and the clicks are just annoying enough to be annoying, but not tear-it-out-of-my-ear-and-kill-it annoying. Personally, I'm just wondering how this kind of thing makes it past testing.

So now it looks like I'll have to turn to an alternate set of headphones, depending on the weather, or tape tinfoil from the earbud to my ear, so that the current flows cleanly, instead of arcing periodically.

In effect, I need to ground myself for listening to electric music...

So last Saturday was the Gaskell's Ball and, being 2600 miles away, I had to miss it this time around. I really haven't done much dancing since I've been out here. I've been going off and on to the SCA dance practices on campus (mosly English country: picking up sticks, milkmaids, kettle drum, jenny, sellenger's round, and the like) but I haven't had a good waltz in too long.

The ballroom dance club on campus has been teaching salsa, swing, samba, and that kind of thing, but I have yet to find a group who dances more or less what I would call 'Victorian Ballroom', polkas, Vienese waltzes, schottishes, all with abandon. I miss it all so.

Still, I'll be in town for the Christmas Gaskells, and I'm really looking forward to that. To get my fill, I'll also go to Dickens Fair the same weekend, either the day of Gaskells or the day after.

Meanwhile, maybe it's time to try expanding my activities here, and see if that subculture exists in Pittsburgh, and has just been eluding me.

The leaves they are a'changin' round these parts. Here and there it's as if a tree has burst into flame amongst its still-green brethren. More and more the trees are giving up this year's ghost, losing their chloraphil and letting their keratin shine through.

The leaves are changing, and changing fast. After a summer that stretched further into October than it ought'o've, Fall looks to be compressing itself into a few short weeks, as temperatures have been dipping from the 80s three weeks ago into the 30s and 40s now.

I think the trees were just hanging on until the cooldown, and are now feeling pressured for their wardrobe change before winter sets in, casting the city into a moder-world Narnia of snow and limb.

And they're rushing, too, perhaps because they're aware that the season's first snowfall is forecast to come as early as Friday.