I went to add a new RSS feed to my LJ account today (since aside from a sparse handful of people, I use LJ as an RSS aggregator), and discovered that unpaid accounts can't add new RSS feeds by URL. Reasonable, no doubt, but means that my last excuse for using LJ is gone. I don't post, I don't read people, I'm pretty much just here for the RSS.

So, I'm going to archive off my content over the next few weeks, unfriend everyone (since I wasn't reading you anyway), and give serious consideration to deleting my account.

The people I was already reading: I've added your LJ RSS feed to Google Reader, but I won't see any non-public posts. So, zunger, I'll continue to read your posts on middle eastern politics with fascination, but will miss any potential wedding updates. cpugrud, same to you, will only catch the public stuff.

Later!

melting point of aluminum: ~1220 F.
temperature of a body emitting cherry red black body radiation: ~1350 F
Discovering that your stove is hot enough on high to melt a cheap pan into ingots: Pricelessly kick-ass.

Still life in charred collard green

She watches the ocean for days sometimes, in her cold grey tower looking out over the rocks. Sometimes there is a seagull. But there is never a ship.

+++++++++++
Sometimes, when the light is just so through the trees, and a yellow leaf comes falling, he remembers the color and the taste of her hair, and he smiles all over again.

+++++++++++
He didn't sleep for a week once... There are a thousand and one coffee shops in the city, but none of them were ever again the one where she stood behind the counter, no matter how long he sat nursing a non-fat latte. He caught a glimpse of her smiling out of the corner of his eye once, and turned to give her his card (Robert J. Suffolk, Junior Accountant), but found only her portrait done in neo-cubist romantic style mocking him from the wall; 300 dollars. He took it home that night and drank drip coffee for a month, 15 minutes a cup, one coffee shop at a time, one coffee shop where she did not work. Some nights he would lie in bed with his heart pounding and remember the butterfly collection he had as a kid. His father telling him "The most beautiful butterflies are the ones you can never catch". And he thought to himself, now as then, "That is just so much bullshit." Maybe he'd find her tomorrow.

Only in silence the word,
only in dark the light,
only in dying life:
bright the hawk’s flight
on the empty sky.

Ursula K. LeGuin - The Creation of Ea

I have been silent a lot lately. I've taken this summer to watch myself change and grow slowly over time, considering where I've come from and where I want to go. It's not as self reflexive or depressing (or pompous) as it might seem... On the contrary, this summer has been one of the richest and happiest in a long time. I've been learning guitar, and riding my motorcycle, and delighting in the brilliant, loving, surprising human I was lucky enough to marry. Taking time off from LJ has given me more time to think, to play, to enjoy life. And along the way I've realized something rather important.

This isn't the way I want to be friends with you. I've lost touch with many of you over the past many months while I stopped reading LJ. Some of you were, at best, casual interesting acquaintances, and easily lost. Some of you were friends. Some of those friends I've found the time to see in person, talk to one on one via IM, or swap emails with. And I like you better that way. You're smarter, funnier, and more real in person and one on one. You complain less, you smile more, you're more honest, your little ups and downs seem less petty when I'm face to face with them than when they're part of a murmuring sea of everyone's ups and downs. You become people instead of news. I hear you better when there is silence.

Some of you use your LJs almost exclusively for poetry, stories, news, humor... I'll probably go back to reading you individuals, one or two at a time. (merovingian, I find myself really missing your stories, and that in and of itself is enough reason to start reading you again.) However, most of you I would rather not read. I'd rather nurture an offline friendship, or let things wither away and die, if such is the natural course, than maintain a friendship by mass distribution.

I'll go back to posting off and on, I think, but I'll disable comments by default. If there's a dialog to be opened, then by all means open it, through IM, or email, or over coffee. I'm not unfriending anyone at the moment, just removing people from my default view. I may still post things friends only from time to time, so there are advantages to not trimming anyone I still want to be able to access those posts.

I'm off to enjoy the silence.

I rode my new motorcycle for the first time last night. It's an 1988 Honda Hawk, looks like this, only grey:



I may take some pictures of the actual bike and post them at some point.

I haven't forgotten *too* much since the MSF course, I took it for a brief spin around a quiet residential neighborhood, only stalled it twice, didn't bobble it at all, and managed to correctly work the turn signals. (My education didn't really cover those.)

It needs a bunch of mechanical TLC. There's a slow gas leak in the vicinity of the petcock that needs finding and fixing. Throttle sticks very slightly, seat's a little beat up after 20 years of use, some hoses could probably use replacing... But it's mine, all mine, and it's FUN. I can't wait to get better at riding so I can take it on more interesting rides instead of puttering around residential neighborhoods.

The last two weeks have been great. I didn't do everything I was planning to (when do I ever?), but I did get quite a bit done, and got to relax a lot.
I kicked things off in style with a Sisters Of Mercy concert on the 22nd, followed by dinner with a few close friends on the 24th, and a housewarming party at sunyata__'s.
Sunday I dropped woody77 off at the airport, and then went to a friend's house and proceeded to slack mightily, playing a whole lot of Gran Turismo 4, watching Tampopo, and doing exactly nothing productive. It was glorious. I also went bookshopping later in the day, and at long last, I have picked up "On Food And Cooking" by Harold McGee, which belongs on the shelf of any geek who loves food. It is a treatise on culture, nutrition, chemistry, biology, with side excursions through medieval cooking, and etymology, and most importantly, it is all about food. This man loves food with a passion that cannot be described, and he would love to help you learn how to make better food.
Monday was tacos with a friend, and Tue was running around, picking up woody77 from the airport, and packing like mad for:

Seattle

Wed morning, woody77 and I boarded a plane for SeaTac to go visit the numerous friends who have aggregated there over the years. (We missed a few, sorry, das_prompt. I still want a go game with you, too.) hansandersen graciously volunteered his guest bedroom as a base of operations from which to sally forth.
Wed was mostly a quick trip up and around Seattle and over to Redmond, where we caught up with hansandersen, and grabbed dinner and watched Porco Rosso before passing out.
Thursday was snowboarding. Seattle has resorts that I would compare favorably to any at Tahoe, and the people are friendlier, the lift passes are cheaper, and holy crap, it's only an hour and a half drive to get there! My snowboarding has been improving by leaps and bounds. I'm getting more comfortable going fast, and I'm spending more time headed down the hill straight, and less time maple leafing and trying to slow down in a panic. My best run of the day, I think I only fell down three times, and it was roughly 3 times as long as the bunny hill that I started out on and fell every 30 seconds on. :) A slight cold was the only thing marring my day, but I ignored it and boarded on.
Friday I was slightly sicker, which was annoying. I went through gobs of kleenex. But Aaron and I wandered around Pikes Place Market, admired the flowers (pretty!), the fish (fresh!), and the many intriguing little stores (much shiny.) Rejoining hansandersen, we went off and had mexican for dinner, and then came home and watched both Ghost in the Shell movies, sipped most of a bottle of port and ate cheese.
Saturday we took the ferry out to Bainbridge, and drove around most of the day, just exploring. Evening was sushi with the other people besides hansandersen was had come to see, at a glorious little sushi place in the Queen Anne district that has AMAZING FISH. No, really, I'm not just saying that. AMAZING. Fresh, succulent, tender, deftly prepared AMAZING fish. I have a new bar for sushi, and it's going to be hard to hit. Catching up with old friends, meeting woody77's old friends, incredible fish... Marred only by that pesky cold. It was heaven.

Sunday, we made our way home, and here we are once more in the swing of school. Which brings me to the other bit of this post.

hiatus

I'm going to make a concerted effort to actually stay focused and buckle down a bit more this quarter, which means I am tentatively taking a break from reading LJ, since it's one of my #1 self-distractions. I may post off and on if I have something interesting to say, but I'm gonna try and not read. Sorry about all the brilliant, artistic, insightful, and otherwise worthwhile things I will miss out on. :( If it's really really good, feel free to drop me a line and I'll go look, but it'll be on a one-off basis.

Ok, quarter and finals are over, as of 10 PM tonight. I'm going to go fetal for a bit. *Can't sleep, homework will eat me, can't sleep, homework will eat me...*

This one's been kicking around in my head for weeks now, but something aaangyl said made me think it was time to finish it.


After The End Of The World
The tallest thing you'd ever seen
They said it all stops there
Nothing more to see or do
After the end of the world

I died a hundred times in my mind
And that was just the start
Sat down beside my burden and cried
And thought I'd never get that far

But no way back to the simple lands
no place to go but up or die
No return to my homeful plans
Nothing but die or try

And here I am a stranger
In the lands past the end of the world
They say there's a taller mountain range
And they say it's the end of the world

I tried to find home, I tried to plant roots
In the gardens past the end of the world
But it's shoulder up burdens and keep moving on,
still walking past the end of the world.

woody77 and I went and saw "V for Vendetta" tonight. It's really amazingly good, but it breaks my heart to watch it. I am too young to personally remember the Berkeley riots, or Stonewall, but I am old enough to remember Ruby Ridge, and Waco, and educated enough to know about the Bonus Army march during the great depression. And I have not yet forgotten what happened to Radio Free Santa Cruz, or to the student protesters on campus only last year.

I understand how much a large group of determined people can do to change the world. But I also know that the punishment for assembling too small a group and trying to change the world anyway, is swift, and brutal, even in this country.

I watch movies like that, and I think of all the young idealists that will be inspired by it, and it makes my heart ache for all the stupid waste of life and breath that a one man army brings, and angry at the foolish children of all ages that think that talking louder about the righteousness of their cause will bring everyone behind them and bring down the state.

And yet the alternatives can get so much worse. Heaven help us all.

So, as anthologie rightly points out, before you commit a really dumb crime, you should consider if you really want a headline that says "Moron Gets Caught in Stupidest Heist Attempt Ever" plastered across the front page of the news, alongside your photo. However, really, I think that criminals should have more flair than that. You should design a really good headline FIRST, and then come up with the crime to fit it. So, with that in mind, if you were going to commit a crime of any sort (doesn't have to be something as nasty as murder, disturbing the peace is just fine), what would you want your headline to be?

At 2 PM on Friday afternoon, one of my friends called me. She'd made group reservations at supperclub 2 weeks ago for that night, and two of her party had cancelled on her. Did woody77 and I want to join her? No, we'd never been, and yes, yes we did.

supperclub is an international chain of restaurants founded in Amsterdam, and the SF branch is the first one to open in the US. It's a rotating prix fixe menu, $60 ($75 on Friday and Sat), not including drinks. It is indeed a place to get food, but more to the point, it's a place to be entertained, pampered, and amused. Costumed waiters bring you truffle flavored popcorn as you recline on a huge bed that rings the entire restaurant and watch the floor show. Masseuses circle the room offering massages ($15 for 15 minutes.) The cooking is all done in a display kitchen in the back of the room (doubles as the bar after 12 AM.) Techno is playing at all times, although not so loudly that you can't talk over it. They do only one seating per night, at 8 PM, and you should probably expect to be there until midnight. It's currently one of THE see and be seen places in SF, and the the clientele when we were there was strongly dominated by the hot hip young 20-something crowd. Dress as if you were going to a club, not an expensive restaurant.

( our eveningCollapse )

Mostly sober, insanely well fed, we plow a path through the well dressed 20-somethings in the bar, and acquire our car from the valet, and then make our way out through the lively streets of San Francisco.

I'd just like to say:
SNOW!


On my driveway and my house and poor little recently pruned rosebush that you can't see in this photo. it's continuing to come down, too. We have about an inch and a half at the moment. I was going to have friends up for dinner, but if it keeps this up, we may have to cancel.

One of the good things about having cooking as a hobby is that no matter how busy things are, I still need to eat, which means I can still pursue my hobby, within reason. I can't make things which take a long time, but that just adds a little spice to the game. Making delicious food fast makes me happy, and knowing how means I'll never again spend 20 minutes making Hamburger Helper.

My local grocery store often carries a pre-packed sampler of gourmet mushrooms. I’ve eyed them wistfully before, but always postponed buying them. However, when my organic veggie delivery service (Planet Organics, if you’re curious) sent me fresh thyme the same week my local grocery store started carrying truffle oil, I knew it was fate.

If all you’ve ever had is Campbells, you may not be aware of how good real mushroom soup can taste. A real mushroom soup starts with cream, and fresh herbs, and chicken stock, and winds up being a rich, savory concoction with about as much relation to Campbells as a duck billed platypus has to a duck. It’s delicious when made with the little bland white button mushrooms that everyone carries. It’s decadent when made with truffle oil, oyster, pioppini and nameko mushrooms, and fresh thyme.

( Cream of Mushroom soupCollapse )

Start to finish, that's a 20 minute recipe, tops. Served with francese, or sourdough baguette, it's a great lunch. And it tastes NOTHING like Hamburger Helper. :)

WHEEMUTHAFUCKERWHEE!! *splat* *thud* ow...

The Expanding Your Horizons conference was this morning. (a.k.a., for those who have not been playing the home game, "Let's convince teenaged girls that they want to go into science and engineering, and in the case of my workshop, programming".) I thought I had the workshop all (well mostly) laid out as of last week. But after running through it in my head mid-week, I realized I was making things WAY too complicated, and I was just going to confuse people. *grumble grumble refactor*. I wasn't done refactoring last night, but I was close. I did a trial run through with Aaron, since I couldn't come up with any teenaged girls to use as testers. A single run halfway through, and it was clear that it was WAY too long. I swore a lot, and chopped a lot of stuff and broke a lot of code, and swore some more, and fixed the code, and rewrote the outline for the workshop, and then went to go print and discovered that half my outline had mysteriously disappeared. Swore some more, retyped the outline, and finally, finally, at 3:15 AM, got everything working, had debugging tips for the (non-programmer) assistants I had been promised, had uploaded a zip file to a server so I could download everything in the morning, was, in fact, quite fully prepared, as far as I could tell. *insert evilly chuckling deity here*

( The morning sessionCollapse )

I considered finding a bridge to fling myself from, but the closest one I could think of was Bixby or Golden Gate, each an hour away.

( The afternoon sessionCollapse )

So, in summary, I have decided that I have worked my ass off today, and I need a nap. And chocolate. And shiny freshly dyed red hair. In that order.

I need an simple example of self modifying LISP code from which I can learn and go forth and do evil. Google is being uncharacteristicly unhelpful. Do any of you know of such, or for that matter a repository of good LISP examples period? The future of the world (ok, just this quarter) depends on you!

School proceeds apace. The extra couple hours a week less work does, in fact, turn out to make a big difference, as does having the side project for Aaron's company taken off my plate. (Ashamed though I was to not finish it, one of their programmers had time to work on it, and it's a big stressor gone.) Still on my plate, though: 10 hours a week of driving (minimum), 35 hours of work, 8 hours a week of class, roughly 20 hours of homework, 2 hours discussion sections, plus whatever other masochisms I can find to heap on myself to limit the number of hours available for sleeping.

Speaking of which, I'm giving a workshop on programming next Saturday for girls grades 8-12 at UCSC. It was a favor for a friend of a friend that I rashly agreed to over Christmas break, without looking closely at the fact that it would land two weeks before finals. I've been sort of dreading it for the past few months, but as it comes closer, I'm actually feeling kind of excited about it. I've been working on the workshop over the weekend, instead of procrastinating until next Friday night, and I think it's actually coming together decently. I think it'll actually be fun and interesting, and I'll be prepared instead of panicking and putting together something crappy at the last minute. This is a lovely and novel feeling that I may have to explore more. ;)

woody77 and I are also doing spring cleaning this weekend, making huge piles of stuff to donate and recycle, which is really therapeutic for me, especially as the floor and closet of the office get cleaner (which is one of my pet peeves around the house.) We're starting to talk about putting artwork in a corner of the upstairs which has just been cleaned out and was historically the home of a huge pile of junk which is getting sorted, moved, and/or tossed, which is a great feeling. I am starting to feel like I live in a grownup house, with art, and quasi-matching furniture, instead of a jumble of plants and furniture and random junk. It's pretty cool.

On the down side, my moods have been cycling more than usual lately. I'm feeling all perky and energetic and motivated from time to time, which is GREAT, except I have to remember not to make any major commitments, because I know I won't continue to feel this motivated, which sucks. The other half the time, I'm sitting on the couch in my sweats trying to convince myself that, yes, I really do need to get off the couch and get some food and get some real clothing on, and generally failing to be convincing. Meh.

I will, however, take an actual vacation after finals, which will probably help somewhat with the massive burnout I'm experiencing. Go to another state, visit some friends, do some snowboarding... I'm really looking forward to it, I have been itching to travel like you wouldn't believe. :)

Public service announcement: to whoever just text messaged my phone, and to anyone else who's considering doing so: the callback number functionality doesn't work on my phone, so if you text message me and don't sign it, I will have no idea who you are, and won't be able to call you back. Deepest apologies!

1. Because tomorrow is Valentines day.
2. Because I realized, due to a bunch of posts lately asking for confirmation, that I am really bad at complimenting people as often as I should.

Therefore, it should be noted here and now that my friends are, collectively: brilliant, funny, mature, well read, kind, supportive, insightful, and above all, individuals.

I have deeply kind hearted friends who try to pour more goodness into my world than I can reasonably accept. I have friends who fill my mind with fascinating insights into the world, friends who make me laugh my ass off even as I am wiping tears of horror from my eyes, and friends who I know I can call for a ride at 2 in the morning the next time I find myself knee deep in alligators in the middle of nowhere. You're great people, and I'm delighted to have you all along for the ride.

I'd been planning on avoiding this meme, but since it's clear that a manual is required...

( To prevent simple failures...Collapse )

An old and sorely missed friend has a new name, I see. That's excellent, I've been SEVERELY jonesing for my Cannibals in the News fix. :)

Breaking the coffee pot first thing Monday morning is not the right way to start the week. Damn.

Experimental data indicates that driving into work while listening to the Amelie soundtrack does, in fact, improve your morning. it's hard to be cranky at traffic while listening to bouncy accordions.

I'm up to my eyeballs in homework, and getting further behind, which is a bad sign. Means I need to trim even more stuff out of my time budget, which, since work and school are fixed costs, and I can't cut any more sleep safely, probably means the non-existent social life, and maybe eating, while I'm at it. *sigh* I miss peoples. This is a rough quarter, lots of homework, lots of coding, lots of things to memorize. I have to keep reminding myself that I'm here of my own free will, with a specific goal in mind, and that this really is all worth it.

As I expressed to a friend earlier, I'm not in school for a piece of sheepskin, or I'd be eyeing dropping out yet again. But this time I'm back because I want to learn things that I can't learn in the workforce. I want to learn how to write operating systems. I want to learn how to do algorithms analysis so I can write good scalable software. And, most importantly, I want to learn AI and do a thesis in that field, which is why it's breaking my heart that I'm behind THIS quarter, of all quarters, because this is the quarter that I'm taking AI from my advisor. I want to impress him so that doing the research I want to do will be easier later, but I also want to really LEARN the material, and not just learn it, but build on it, take it a step further. I know I have the smarts for it, but I don't have the time. Something's gotta give. I'm sick of well distributed adequacy. I want to excel, and this is the field I want to do it in.

Still not king.

[8:11p] ex-coworker 1: you've heard of the type id10t error?
[8:12p] ex-coworker 1: well, ex-coworker 2 was a bit confused. he thought it was something like i18n, you know?
[8:13p] kamileon: ​*ROFL*
[8:13p] ex-coworker 1:​ so I figured out
[8:13p] ex-coworker 1:that you can expand id10t to idontknowshit
[8:13p] kamileon: Dude, you are my hero.

After 4 days of antibiotics, my ear was better, but definitely not healed, and I only had a 5 day prescription, so I left a message with the doctor yesterday. Twice. No call back. So, today I scheduled an appointment with him rather than relying on him to actually call back or re-evaluate matters. After another visit, I have a new prescription for more antibiotics, specifically one that is supposed to be better at knockin anaerobic bacteria on their ass. This is good. Alas, it's a mix of penicillin and clavulanate, which means another month of hormonal whoopsies. Oh well. Not the end of the world, and we have techniques for dealing with these things.

It's not that I cringe from sex
But seeing your soul naked in your stories
Seems so wrong when we are only strangers.