A really appropriate dream

I was on stage in a Scotch'n'Soda show, and it was some adaptation of Shakespeare or something, and I didn't know my lines. Well, that's not true, I did know my lines. I just realized like halfway through the show that I wasn't sure if I had ever read the script. But I was doing fine. Everything I said just happened to be the right thing, even though I was improvising. But I was worrying that the next thing I say might be wrong, but then I'd say it, and it'd be fine.

(Huh! Sounds like my life right now. But let's hope it's not prophetic:)

Then there was a scene where we pretended to be audience members, and we would all shout out stuff, and I wasn't doing so well there. Then there was intermission, and the tech people all had to come fix up the stage, and I kept getting in everyone's way, especially Ankur and Matta. (sorry, guys!) And then act 2 didn't happen.

Uh oh. Oh well, like I said, going fine so far. And, doomly prophecies aside, that's the best I can hope for.

Speaking of Scotch'n'Soda, I'm going to Pittsburgh next weekend! (The only Scotch'n'Sody thing I will do is watch their show.) Weird, I first wrote "I'm going home next weekend." I guess it's because, if you picked my family up out of Cleveland and transplanted them, there would be nothing homelike about Cleveland for me. Anyway, I'm super excited!

Barack-campaign, I have caught you in a lie!

Quote from my inbox today:

You already know how it feels to own a piece of this incredible movement. Will you watch the video and -- when Barack needs you most -- make another donation of $25 or more?

Quote from my inbox, September 30:
The need for your support today is more urgent than it will ever be.

Ah! Granted, the first one was Michelle Obama, the second was David Plouffe. But Barack-campaign, make up your mind! I'm afraid the need for my support has already been more urgent than it is now or will ever be, so I am not donating again. (I did donate the first time, though, cynic though I am. Partially because I have the same warped mindset as everyone else, that somehow my vote will count for more than 1 if I pay for it. Partially because I wanted an Obama T-shirt.)

Still vote for him. But pay some attention to your local politicians! I'm thinking of setting up a table somewhere and handing out candy to people if they will discuss state and local politics with me. That way, my vote can count for way more than 1, in races where it will matter a lot more. First order of business, though: I need a table. Seattlers, if there are any of you reading this, would you like to join me? (and do you have a table?)

Google Analytics is great

and not just because I work on it. Thanks to GA, I've been able to find that people have searched for the following things and landed on this humble blog. If any of these are you, thanks for making my day a little brighter, thanks for stumbling on the Snail Shell, and you're awesome at searching.
super disclaimer: nothing is personally identifiable. nothing. all I know is "someone searched for these things." I work at Google, and I probably couldn't figure out who you are, and if I tried, I would probably get fired. We are so all-about privacy, it is not even funny.

"Hyland Software" salary -- i probably shouldn't post this, but if this was you, let me know and i can tell you
"Oedipus Rex and the Motherfuckers" -- twice!
"Where the hell is Matt" "spoiled kid" dancing -- yep, that's pretty much my entire life
lucid dreamer summit county colorado -- ... and that's my ideal life.
Boyles bar slane -- who are you? were you there? that's awesome!
dress code at Hyland Software -- t-shirts and shorts. it's a software company.
in der yablons -- remember WASP?
Oedipus and the Motherfuckers -- close, but no cigar
Buses in Donegal -- hey, they're pretty weak, you should maybe rent a car.
rambutan circus jarred snail -- four unrelated things. what could this query be about?
"wenis mcgee" -- not quite a googlewhack... this guy also used those two words. i hope this was adam, though, bored late one night.
snail shell poetry -- good luck!
snail shell (for cars) -- it's not so useful.
is there another name for a snail shell? -- err, maybe?
snail shell nutrients -- Oh god, no! Stop! It's crunchy and it doesn't digest so well-
what is a snail shells door -- they, uh, don't have one, they just live in-
why snail shell is living things -- well, it's sort of like your bones, they're not living, but they're part of this living thing...
why snail have there shell so hard -- I have no more answers.

Blog Action Day: Poverty

It's blog action day! The theme is poverty! I'm sick of blogging for today, so I'll just shout out to Kiva. Hey, I was just going to donate there, but it looks like everything is just about funded. What's up? Are they out of people who need loans? If that's the case, I imagine they'll get more soon enough. Geez, this is the most dysfunctional Blog Action Day post ever.

Let me try again. Hmm. Poverty. I don't really have any big ideas on the issue. Greg Mortenson does, though, and after reading that book about him, I'm pretty convinced that he's doing a pretty good thing. I think I blogged about it before. He's building schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Kids can go to those schools and learn how to help their people out of poverty. (also, they won't go to the radical madrassas who will pay them to become angry fundamentalists. whatever you think about the USA's "war on terror", fundamentalists aren't great no matter how you slice it, and education helps prevent fundamentalism.) Throwing money at a problem won't solve it, but if you throw money at the Central Asia Institute (Mortenson's foundation) and they build schools for kids, maybe that will solve it.

At any rate, I don't want an argument about whether the Central Asia Institute is going to save the world, or whether they're The Best place to donate money. They are doing some good, and let's leave it at that. I'd just like to say that my personal Blog Action Day thing to do is to donate some money to the Central Asia Institute, and I'd encourage you to do the same. It's a tiny gesture, but every little bit helps.

... because everyone knows I hate gay people on the internet

Oh my god, oh my god, if you don't get the context of the title line, it's an inside joke from summer 2006. I do not hate gay people. I like gay people as much as any other people. I absolutely think gay people should be allowed to marry: maybe your religion doesn't allow two dudes or two ladies to get it on, whatever; but separation of church and state etc, and legally there are benefits to being two people who want to spend their lives together, and it's not fair if some people are oriented* towards that other person being the same sex. Hell, the state should only allow civil unions for any couple, straight or gay. "Marriage" seems like a religious term, and the state shouldn't worry about it.

*I am accepting as an axiom that gay people don't "choose" to be gay. If you disagree with that axiom, either we can agree to disagree, or you can show me evidence that it's false (I have yet to see any), or you can meet some gay people and talk to them and maybe you will be convinced.

OKAY! Now that's out of the way, we can get on with the content of the post. (note that most of the time, people who have to say that they like gay people, or that they have gay friends, actually don't. Please take this post as an exception to that rule.)

Huuggh. Right. The issue: adoption. Now, in the current world, I say hell yes, let gay people adopt, because orphanages exist. If there are two loving men or two loving women who want to give a poor kid a chance at life by bringing him/her up in a family, why are we stopping them? Even someone who thinks gay people are weird should agree that some parents are better than no parents!

BUT! Say the world were different. Say there was a shortage of babies, and a surplus of parents who want to adopt. Should we give equal adoption rights to gay and straight couples? I say no, from the perspective of balance. Men and women are different, and having two perspectives on life, from two people who are different in one of the most fundamental ways that two people can be different, is better than having an overly masculine or overly feminine perspective. Yin and yang n'at. Are there exceptions? Sure- there are tons of gay couples who would be better parents than straight couples. But, all other things being equal, I'd vote to give the kid to the man and woman.

Why am I even posting this? This is apropos of nothing: it's not like I'm in an argument with someone over this. I guess I'm feeling a conservative backlash, because I'm getting sick of politics in general. Hey, diehard Obama-ers: you're no easier to take than diehard McCainers. Okay, maybe a little easier to take because I agree with you usually. But still, there's a lot of smugness and sarcasm, and if I were a McCain supporter, I would say fuck off! There's no way you'd convert me to vote Democrat with the kind of attitude I've been getting. Give me a soft-line approach, or an argument that doesn't demean the other side, and I'll give you more than six seconds of my time.

So here it is: my little dash of conservatism. Of course I'm still supporting Obama- please vote for Obama. Today's reason is because McCain is super anti net neutrality, and Obama is for it- but geez Obama folks, lighten up!

(... aaaaand I just alienated 100% of Seattle. I do not think I have met a Republican here. Yeah, great, we Emerald City dwellers are the enlightened ones. But don't get smug about it.)

Gross/Not-gross?

1. Two friends, with whom I interact on a regular basis (although independently of each other), are loud eaters. Arrgghh!

2. I spit on the ground sometimes while I'm riding my bike. And I blow snot rockets out my nose.

Now, #2 is much grosser than #1. But nobody has to put up with me expelling bodily fluids onto the pavement. And have you ever ridden a bike in cold weather? I swear, all the moisture in your body condenses in your nostrils. So I'd say it's justified.

This has been gross/not-gross! What do YOU do that's gross?

Recipe challenge, round one

Fans of the formerly-at-CMU-but-now-not blogosphere may be familiar with the recipe challenge between Julie and me. If not, a quick recap: person A picks 3-5 ingredients, with which person B must make a dish. Then person B shall pick another 3-5 ingredients, and so on.

Julie's first challenge: beets, yellow mustard, angel hair pasta, cinnamon.

I'll walk you through my mental process to make it sound like I am a totally sweet chef: Okay, angel hair, first. So, noodle salad, or noodles and sauce, or noodle casserole, or noodles with something on top. Options "sauce", "casserole", and "something on top" all don't mesh with beets in my book, and certainly not when you throw in mustard and cinnamon. And angel hair doesn't have much flavor, so anything goes with it.

Beets are sweet. They're kinda like apples. Apples like cinnamon. Rock on. But yellow mustard? Dearest Julie, how cruel. I was tempted to substitute some mustard seeds and go Indian (with the cinnamon) because I'm on an Indian kick and mustard seeds are fun to cook, but she did say "yellow mustard." Yellow mustard! Some pedestrian Plochman's French's Heinz junk mixing with the furious beets and lithe noodles. Huh. I won't stand for this! I bought a little jar of Colman's (of Norwich) Original English Mustard, which must be better because it costs more.

Okay, so we have this noodle salad (sounds so much more enticing than "pasta salad") that's gonna be sorta appley sweet with beets. Toss in a cucumber for more crunch without changing the flavor much. Break the pasta into small pieces so it's easier to eat. We have our food. Now for the sauce.

I don't know from sauce, but I do know that you can mix oil and vinegar and get a sauce. Plain vegetable oil (olive oil sounds awful here) and apple cider vinegar (there are the apples!). We need mustard and cinnamon, so throw them both in. How's it taste? Hmm. Uhh... hm. Now the culinary hero in me says "it's sweet, it's tart... it needs something to balance the flavor towards salty and meaty... soy sauce." The actual me just says "I like soy sauce," and pours some in.

And it's pretty good! I would eat it again! I might even make it for guests! But I have no taste buds. Please, make it for yourself, and tell me what you think; I'm quite interested.

And Julie! Round 2 is cranberries, squash of your choice, milk, and peas. Ooh, that might be bitchy. In keeping with the fun spirit of things, of course, cool recipes are more important than necessarily using all of those four particular ingredients. The gauntlet is thrown, take it up at your leisure.

Happy Fall Friday!

The sun is shining, the brewhouses are making pumpkin ale, football players are getting fined for celebrating*, umm, leaves are turning colors, Traders Joe is stocking novelty decorative gourds, people are buying haystacks for the first time in their city-slicking lives.

(*NFL: lay off. Geez. Take a lesson from Usain Bolt and let the players have a little fun.)

Fall is here, it's nice, and it is super nostalgic. It's the season of high school football, weekend trips home when you don't like your current existence (I'm talking about college, not now), trick or treating in your nicely-sized 60-house neighborhood, awkward dates at high school dances (boy if I had a dime for every time some writer picked up THAT tired theme...), things burning, the Panther Hollow bridge a good view, listening to your new ipod as you walk through dark Shadyside streets, new opportunities! classes! plays! and you're not sick of it yet, your family putting out Halloween decorations, sweatshirts, baseball games and the smell of hot dogs in the air before you knew that hot dogs are terrible things to eat, pumpkin picking at an actual farm where you get as many pumpkins as your dad can lift, running up and down stairs so you'll be "in shape for ski season", and I dunno, chestnuts roasting on an open fire or something. Wait! That's not till Easter.

O Internet, you fail me!

For once, I know what I want. A duvet cover. Queen size. Solid lime green like #00FF00 none of this fake lime stuff if I saw a lime like this I would throw it away. Either organic cotton or cheap as hell, because it does not touch me. My luxurious bamboo sheets caress me so gently the duvet cover could be made of porcupines. This is entirely decorative.

Do not also sell me a duvet; I already bought this bag o' synthetic fill from a couple of honest but incorrect garage salers. They told me it was down I only found out later it was not down it was more like synthetic like from a polyester not a duck. NO SHAMS what is a sham I DONT WANT ONE. No sheets, or three-piece sets (of which two are undoubtedly shams), my sheets experience is complete but for a duvet cover.

O Bountiful Internet, get me a lime green like duvet cover now or I may be forced to do something tragic.

In the real world, you don't have to take work home with you

... so I don't. But I take my mental state with me. Wow! On a good day, I can go run a hundred miles after work! On a bad day, I can barely slink back to bed and curl up with a mug of tea. (or "Macafe", this bizarre root product I found at the Madison Market, which sure doesn't taste like coffee. it's not a bad taste, but it isn't coffee.) The Peter Bjorn and John album has helped my bike rides significantly.

It seems better for mental health to drop everything at work. Come on, zen zen zen. Oh also, I've been meditating daily (almost... probably 6 days/week) for ... 2 1/2 months? No real progress there, but patience patience patience, right? Fellow meditators: do you find that you sit down and time flies by without you actually focusing on your breath at all? I don't mean I get distracted from it, I mean I never get there in the first place.

If you know how to cook Indian food, I'm always open to tips, recipes, ideas. That's my new culinary venture. That, and a cooking contest with Julie.

At any rate, welcome to Relocation, Month 1.25. It only gets easier from here. (and in 2 weeks and 2 days I get to go back to Pittsburgh! not to say that everything is bad here; it's just difficult. a couple months from now, i'll be cruising along in this brave new world. for example: there is an awesome coffeeshop on every corner. i can count five places within four blocks that i can get killer coffee with atmosphere. how neat is that! if starbucks tried to start up in seattle today, it wouldn't have a chance.)

It's called "mudslinging"

and it's awful. Chill out, McCain and Obama! And here the blame falls maybe 50/50. I'd say it's 60% on Obama, because of his big push once upon a time to unite people, not divide them. But then, yeah, there's this "Obama is friends with terrorists" nonsense from Palin. What?! Haven't we moved past this? What's next, "Obama hates white people"? "Obama burns flags and also babies"? Come on, McCain campaign, as long as it's a knock-down drag-out war, why don't you come out and say it: "Obama is a Muslim. And all Muslims are terrorists."

But I guess the answer to my earlier rhetorical is no, we haven't moved past this. *sigh* And I guess I'm not helping here, by calling out McCain on his negative ads. This post is as partisan as any.

We need Jesus to run for president. Turn the other cheek n'at. Plus, he'd sure get the evangelical vote. At least, I hope.

Contacting voters inobtrusively

All you readers are pretty political. At least, some of you are. I have a question:

I'd like to try to convince people to vote for Barack Obama. But I don't want to go door-to-door, and I don't want to call people. It's a matter of principle: I HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE telemarketers, and like it or not, calling people for Obama is just as annoying as calling people to sell them a thing. Same with going door-to-door; it's a little nicer because you get some human contact, but it's still bothersome. (almost. maybe 75% as bothersome. still more bothersome than I want to be.)

What should I do, dear readers? I'd like to email voters, but that's as insincere as it gets: it'd just be a form letter. Plus, I don't have an email list. Another option is standing out on the street and talking to passersby if they look interested in talking. Actually, I'd like that: stand out with a sign that says "Talk to me about voting for Obama" or even just "talk politics with me!" and people can talk to me if they want. Basically, I want an opt-in, not an opt-out, method of convincing people. It seems more civilized that way.

The Best song length?

This guy wrote an article claiming that the optimal length of a song is 2:42.

It's a nice argument, but it's wrong, and I present one solitary but irrefutable bit of evidence:

"Our House" by Madness clocks in at 3:23.

The ups of edit/test/debug, and the downs of being That Guy

Let's start with the downs, so we can end on a high note. I was That Guy twice tonight. No, not that That Guy, or that That Guy, or... well, nevermind. That's not very descriptive, is it? I mean the wimp-out guy. The guy who doesn't want to do a thing.

First I canceled plans to meet some friends on the East Side, because it was far and buses and waah waah. To be fair, it is far, and I don't have a car, but that's not really an excuse. I think, if you're going to go carless, you have to be willing to get around on your own (via bike or bus), or else you become That Environmental High-and-Mighty Guy. Anyway, I felt kind of bad about that. Being the wimp-out guy just undercuts everyone else's plans. It's hard enough to make plans to do a thing these days without people undercutting your plans. Sorry, friends I was going to meet on the East Side!

Then I went to a swing dance, actually went to it, and then wimped out. I mean, I guess having no swing experience beyond a few moves Jared was kind enough to show me doesn't help. But I should have realized how ill-prepared I was; I could like stumble through a basic lindy hop step (or "swing-out", I guess it's called) which is fine if you're dancing for 8 counts and then stopping, but it makes it pretty painful to try to dance a whole song. I'm signing up for a class (or at least trying to; they still haven't gotten back to me) and after that I'll give it another go.

Argh! So, on to the brigher side of life: work is pretty fun. I say only "pretty fun" because I haven't actually programmed anything world-changing yet; other than that, it's a blast. Now that I feel like I can make changes somewhat competently, I'm just going to town. Hacking and slashing code wherever I want. (Sorry to the rest of my team if it's getting obnoxious!)

And every line of code I change, I can compile and run it, and then see my changes happening. Edit, test, debug, repeat hundreds of times. It's really thrilling! It's like Legos: I'll build a few blocks, then build a few other blocks over there, then click them together. Hey, it looks good, cool. Whoops, it broke, let's pick up the pieces and start again. I think CS is an unusually lucky field in that you get so much instant gratification. If I were an engineer building a bridge, I'd have to wait until the whole thing was done before I could see if it worked or not. Or if I were a biologist with some cells in a petri dish, I'd have to feed them and stuff, and then weeks later they could get bumped by a carelessman, and then you're ssssssssunk!

But programming is like eating candy. Make a change, get an M&M. Make a change, get an M&M. Make a bigger change, get a little fun-sized 100 Grand bar. Every two weeks, get a Payday. It's pretty great. You should try it.

I'm unsatisfied!

Grump grump grump! I wanted Sarah Palin to drop an f-bomb or something! (... still, more on that later) Instead, it was a bunch of 2-minute stump speeches. "What did they say that was different, really? ... There's all this talk about change, change, change. It's all gimmicks." I guess that's bad, if the only reason I'd watch a debate is to hope for a meltdown.

Maybe it's because I (like you, probably) don't follow local or state politics, really. It's just this one shot every 4 years, and by the time you have enough consensus to have half the country behind you, you have to be this inoffensive boring person. Glenn Beck wrote an article about how partisanship is the death of everything, and also you should follow politics more often than the Olympics. (I support the first half of this article, and not the second)

Tom Robbins seems appropriate, as ever:
"As any of the learned professors would explain, plied with sufficient tequila, no matter how fervently a romantic might support a movement, he or she must eventually withdraw from active participation in that movement because the group ethic- the supremacy of the organization over the individual- is an affront to intimacy.
...
As for magic, there's none at all because the aim of any social activist is power over others, whereas a magician seeks power over only himself: the power of higher consciousness, which, while universal, cosmic even, is manifest in the intimate. It would seem that a whole human being would have the capacity for both intimacy and social action, yet sad to say, every cause, no matter how worthy, eventually falls prey to the tyranny of the dull mind.
...
Dullards can put a pox on the most glorious moral enterprise by using that enterprise as a substitute for spiritual and sexual unfolding. Finally, it is dullness and not evil that begets totalitarianism, although some... go so far as to contend that dullness is evil." - Still Life with Woodpecker, chapter 53

I think this is appropriate. Maybe it's just a case of me agreeing with every zany thing Tom Robbins says, and forcing a quote where it doesn't really fit. Either way, with two-party politics, I am dissatisfied!

So vote Obama, but don't do it just because he's a Democrat. Or vote Tom Robbins. Or Optimus Prime, or Mickey Mouse, or Richard Nicklaus Hoesdown. I don't even know anymore. I'm voting for a good night's sleep.

Man, this is weird.

You know how sometimes you'd just really like to hear a certain song or album?

All day, I've had this urge to listen to James Taylor.

If I'm ever making fun of your music, just claim the nostalgia defense, and I will stand down immediately.

Well, it could be worse. My dad could have been into Neil Diamond and Barry Manilow.

Dear top 1%: deal.

This graph is pretty striking. Okay, it's nothing new; it says that the democrat's tax plan will help poor people more, and the republican's tax plan will help rich people more.

Maybe there are economic reasons to favor the republican's tax plan. Trickle-down economics, blah blah. Read those books, draw those supply and demand curves. But listen: I am almost in that top quintile. (source: Wikipedia, shut up.) Suppose I were. Suppose I got a surprise raise, and I was making $88k.

Eighty eight thousand dollars! I am now in the real world, so I know how far that goes.
Right now, my budget includes enough for me to live in a swank apartment in a big city, travel wherever I want, max out my 401k, spend $100/week on entertainment/fun/whatever, and still have thousands left over at the end of the year. And I'm not even making $88k.

At this point, even if a severely progressive tax were passed, I would not be whining about disincentives, or slacking off because "my raise wouldn't be as big." Living as a single man in the top 20% means you're living large.

Okay, okay, at this point you're saying "but what if you had kids to feed???" Fine, throw in a wife and two kids, and bump me up to the top 5%. $157k. I might have to scrimp and save a little. Say, move a few blocks out of the trendiest part of town. Maybe take two transoceanic trips instead of three. Buy note pads instead of scrawling shopping lists in Sharpie marker on Andrew Jackson's noggin.

So you folks in the top 1%, don't give me this nonsense about how "I deserve most of the tax cuts, because I pay most of the taxes." Suck it up a little bit. And take off your Ivy League sweatshirt before you tell me "I'm a self-made man, and I got here because of my own hard work." Because I'm a self-made man who got here because of my parents' support, the right interests (CS) at the right time, and only a tiny bit because of my own hard work; I will soon be one of those paying most of the taxes; and I'm willing to sacrifice a bit to help our country solve its huge huge problems.

(vote Obama, and vote progressive taxes!)

Good day to you from a Monday in which I'm doing better than last Monday.

Whew. Let's just put that little episode behind us. (although, semi-relatedly, I do have a thing to say about swear words, but that'll take some more time to formulate.)

Quick thought, and yes it's about a thing I put into my body, just like every single other post I ever post. Today it's coffee. I've noticed a pattern where, for a day sitting at my desk, a cup of coffee is like turning the key in the ignition: I'm sleepy before it, and I'm rocking all day after it. If I go halfway, like some tea, or a half-decaf cup of coffee, it doesn't help, but once I hit that threshold, boom, off to the races.

This isn't ideal; I don't like the idea of any chemical dependencies. But if we're just talking one cup of coffee a day, can I rationalize myself into it? I think so. It's a pretty natural, and mostly harmless, dependency. Plus, it helps me concentrate and work better. And I enjoy it.

(I guess that makes me more a white person. But hey, I like Trader Joe's and riding my bike, too.)

Retraction?

Again, not my style. But my mom and my dad are now both pretty concerned about what I wrote about my job the other day, and if they're both thinking the same thing about something, maybe it's true.

And I guess if you read this post in isolation you might get way the wrong idea. I would hate for anyone, particularly at Google, to think certain things about me based on one bad day.

For the record:
- Google is by far the best company I've ever worked for. Okay, I haven't worked for many, but they're really great.
- I am lucky to be working there.
- Starting a new job is hard. Moving across the country is hard. Sometimes I get stressed. Sometimes I blog about what's bugging me.
- That post was written on a bad day. Maybe it's a little angrier than it should be. I'm sorry.

Most importantly, if you have a problem with something I've written, or you think I have an attitude issue, for crying out loud please talk to me. Please. Odds are it's just a misunderstanding based on the fact that the INTERNET is bad at carrying emotions. (it's great at denoting sarcasm though.)

And I'd like to ask you, blog readers, do you think I say too much on this blog? Is it a little too prickly? Unprofessional? I go pretty much without review here, so it's possible I'm being a jerk. And was that post in particular a little whiny?

Oh! Homesickness.

I found myself meeting lots of fun people, in a cool setting, drinking a tasty drink (that included Zwack Unicum!) and yet not having a good time. This was cause for a bit of self-questioning.

I emerged from the bout of questioning moments later with a simple answer: I'm homesick. I mean, of course I miss many particular people. (if you're reading this, you're probably one of them.) I knew I would. But I also miss the feeling of being home, you know, of being with family or friends or people around whom you can be yourself. Where you can make an inside joke (because really, friendship is nothing but inside jokes, but that's another conversation). Where you don't have to start every conversation with "what's your name?" Where you can say, hey, it's Friday night, I would like to do a fun thing with people I love, and then go do it.

I guess I'm more homesick than I was in Maastricht, because we all knew that was temporary. Most of my friends would still be there when I got back. I would still be home when I got back. And even at CMU, I was still only a couple hours from home. Okay, that was tougher. But still, there was a community set up for me; it just took some time for me to adjust to it.

This is a whole new thing on two levels: I'm not going back home, and I have to make the community for myself. Huh! That's a double whammy.

But still, I'm just homesick. Oh! Okay. Well, if that's all it is. In a sense, knowing that (or even, becoming mindful of it) makes it easier. In another sense, it doesn't, because there's still that issue that it doesn't end until I create a new community for myself.

Here's how I would like the state of my mind to be:
*humm* mindfulness mindfulness mindfulness *humm* so I'm not constantly surrounded by friends, so what? that's okay. *humm*
and it is that way sometimes, but not always.

Anyway, as we're jumping around, I agree with Rolf Potts in this interview.

Windows. Really?

Windows Se7en? Really?

Dear Microsoft Branding and Logo Team,
1. I hope I don't have to point out to you that the thing that comes to mind when I and most people think "se7en" is a really gruesome horror movie.
2. Was Vista that bad that you need to cover it up with a new "version" (read: upgrade, costing hundreds of dollars) already?
3. Where did you get "7"? By my count, even if you only count major consumer-facing releases, you have Windows 3.1, then 95, 98, XP, and Vista, making this Windows 8. If you count NT, ME, 2000, 2003, etc, you have a lot more than 7.
4. Oh my god that spells "sezen."
Dan

*huuuhhh* publicity on the internet

There's been some concern about recent things I've written being public. That is, my mom wrote me an email worrying about how public my rants about work are. To which I promptly responded "geez, Mom, I KNOW!" And then I thought about it, and I guess part two (in which I wonder if software engineering is really the job for me) could be misconstrued.

Some would go back in and delete that paragraph. That's not my style. First of all, people have already read it; second of all, it's on the internet, so it's still there somewhere; third of all, I'm not going to censor myself above and beyond the regular, sensible censorship I already put myself through.

Instead, I'll clarify, you know, for the sake of my manager who happened to stop in here (hi!) (<--note I didn't even say hi [my manager's name], because if you knew my manager and my location, maybe you could find out our organizational structure, or something else confidential, see, I'm not as dumb as I look) : It's not like I'll just put in the hours, grumble about work, and then go home and drink to forget it all. For chrissake, I care about what I do. I hope Google knew that about me when they hired me. I'm pretty sure Google wouldn't have hired me if they didn't. And I care about the company too, and if I thought I wasn't doing my job well, I'd fix things until I was. I'm pretty goddamn lucky to be working for a company that I care about (especially considering there are like 4 corporations in the world that I'm pretty sure aren't evil). And my coworkers are pretty cool.

But I'm not sure if software engineering is the life for me. Who ever is, after a month on the job? Right now, I think it is; I think I'm doing fine, and after I get all acclimated, I'll be an all-star. If I'm not, that'll percolate up to the top of my consciousness, and I'll change things. I just don't want the rest of my life to fly by me in the meantime.

Anyway, this might be a good time to explain my privacy policy too. I'm pretty outspoken here, which is the beauty of the internet. Maybe you, my friends, do not want to hear my latest thoughts about why Kraft, Perdue, Cargill, and Monsanto are the four horsemen of the apocalypse. If I shout it out here, loud and proud, you can tune in or not. Similarly, maybe you're halfway across the world but would like to hear the juicy details of everything I do: you can opt in to hearing me. But I do have some guidelines, so here they are, in 7 parts:

- I try not to call people out by full name. If someone searches for "Dan Tasse", they'll find this page, which is fine, but if they're searching for "Joe Bloggs" and my most recent post is "hahaha Joe Bloggs got so drunk last night", that may not be so good for Joe. (I'm not shy about booze, parties, etc. I don't party a ridiculous amount, I'm not irresponsible, and it is in fact legal for me to drink. In fact, I even drank before I was 21! Yessir! However, Joe may not share my outspokenness, and his employer may be a fire-and-brimstone stick-in-the-mud, and I don't want to get Joe fired.)

- Nothing confidential. Duh. Ooh, except here's the secret of PageRank!

- Nothing about love, dating, relationships. If you'd like to talk about it in person, that'd be great! Manly man though I am, I dig a good conversation about girls and feelings. But I'm not going to livejournal it- I'm not a whiny teenager. (Okay, if you go back in the archives, you may find a couple references, fine. Want to dig through my love life? That's not creepy at all.)

- Nothing illegal. Big brother is watching you. No, really: I'm as paranoid as anyone about our warrantless-wiretaps patriot-act government.

- Nothing dangerously personally identifiable. It's okay for you to know that my name is Dan Tasse, I live in Seattle, and I work for Google. Much of this blog might not make any sense without a little bit of context. But I'm not going to tell you where I live, or the fact that I live on the first floor, and I keep the door unlocked, and I have an actual bag full of gold coins with a dollar sign on it.

- Nothing I wouldn't tell a stranger. My friends will never have to censor their conversations with me because of my blog. I'm not dumb. My friends (also of the facebook generation) understand this.

- Finally, privacy policy part 7, c/o xkcd.

Here's hoping you don't become a robot/

EDIT: please read this and this.

clang clang clang whoops, too late

God! Today was a fog! I am posting this right now to give some concrete proof that today even happened! What a crapper!

I slept through work, like all day, just zonk, and I was mentally unconscious even if physically responsive. My total output for the day was half a test and a one-line bug fix. I talked to humans for like five minutes at lunch. I drank five cups of tea (it was good tea, but I didn't even taste it) and ate some crappy pistachio snacks. I think I've gotten to the point where I don't just eat out of boredom anymore, now I go to the bathroom out of boredom too. Honestly- it was like hourly. I was amazed that I had any liquid left in me, but what the hell, go to the bathroom again. There was a fire drill! I almost provoked a chuckle with a lame joke about how our team is going to win the fire drill; that was the humor high point of the day.

And now I'm home, and forgetting about work. Hargfh! I've got to start working 9-5. Screw the dinner- it's fantastic, but getting home at 7:30 is too late. Blahness is the worst calamity at all, but it's not even, it's just the most blah.

But the occasional boring day is not a big deal. I'm just a little worried that I'm not at all cut out for software engineering, and I'll just put up with it for a while (because all the perks are great) and then I'll wake up all of a sudden and be 30. I made a pretty awkward comment about that yesterday, in the company of four 30-year-olds.

Uhhhhhhhhhhh I gotta get off the computer. Uuurgghh.

Register register register register register

Let's flowchart. I have no drawing tools. Okay.

START
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v
Are you registered to vote? yes --> okay, you can stop reading.
no
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v
OPEN THIS LINK do it now
Did you open this link? no --> OH MY GOD OPEN IT.
yes
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v
Did you register to vote? yes --> okay, you can stop reading.
no
|
v
GO BACK TO THE ABOVE STEP. I WOULD DRAW AN ARROW TO IT IF I COULD.
|
v
Seriously, do not close this page until you have registered to vote. Do it. Time is running out. I think. (I don't really know much about registering to vote, but you might have to do it 30 days before the election, which is like a week or two away.)
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v
Finish!

I can lock all the doors, it's the only way to live

Is it?

All this talk about fuel economy standards, battery-powered cars, hybrids, goddamn ethanol, emissions regulations, hydrogen cars, fuel cells...

Where's the talk about owning fewer cars?

See, even if a car had 1000000 miles per gallon, I wouldn't want one. And I wouldn't want to live in a world where it would put me at a (more) significant disadvantage not to have one.

Even if a car had 1000000 miles per gallon, you still have the negative environmental impact: large swaths of land cut out for building roads, huge hunks of metal required to build the cars, graveyards full of dead cars, oil, antifreeze, batteries, all the rest of the stuff besides gas that goes into a car.

You still have the negative personal impact of cars: suburbs. These McMansions on McEstates with all the spread-out-ness and personal separation that that entails. You say cars bring people closer together by letting people go places; I say what if the cars->roads->suburbs didn't bring people apart in the first place? Strip malls. Grocery stores. Factory farms. Megachains in every industry: Best Buy, Borders, Bed Bath and Beyond. Cars allow everyone to own their own big plot of land, and everyone owning their own big plot of land makes everything less efficient.

And you still have the negative health impact of cars. We're fat blah blah blah. Nobody walks or bikes anymore, etc. Well, in a sense, I don't blame them! If your supermarket (and therefore nearest source of food) is 4 miles away, no wonder you don't walk there every time you want some milk! But still, the fact remains that nobody DOES walk. ("we'd take a limousine 'cause it costs more")

Granted, cars have their purpose. But life is better without them. Unfortunately, living without them often requires a huge paradigm shift, the first part of which is moving to a city. So I'm not asking for a grassroots burn-your-car campaign; some people just can't do it. I'm asking for a top-down solution in this, because it's the only way it'll work.

Government leaders: give us more public transportation! Subsidize bicycles as well as hybrid cars! Quit with this whole ethanol kick! Do everything you can to move towards more consolidation, not more sprawl.

Give us the freedom to live without cars.

post script: Obama at least mentions "transit-friendly communities" and "public transit." Please vote for him.

Doublespeak.

Okay, first of all, Bill Nye is great.

UNRELATEDLY, here's something that's particularly chafed my willy the past few days, weeks, whatever: doublespeak. I think I'm misusing the 1984 concept a little bit, because they were all about just saying lies, like calling the war department the Ministry of Peace. What I mean is a little less blatant, and actually happens all the time. Let me explain:

Regardless of what you believe, or what's true, you can spin things two ways. Let's take drilling for oil in Alaska. I have a clear stance on this! (it's bad!) And if I were at a cocktail party with my more leftist friends, I could be all like "Yeah, drilling is a bad idea. It won't even help the economy, and it'll totally mess up the beautiful Alaska wilderness."
But if I were at a cocktail party with, say, my dad and grandpa, I could say "You're right, we need to help the economy! It's the worst it's been in years! And reduce our dependence on foreign oil! Therefore we need to drill for our own oil!"

If I didn't know you, I could spout truisms either way to make you think I believed anything, on any issue. Even on less important issues, like a new restaurant.

And I find myself playing both sides of the same issue. Like I test the waters one way, then turn around and argue the other side, or the first side, or whatever YOU think.
Me: Yeah, I went to that restaurant, the food was pretty good. (test the waters)
You: I didn't like it. (shit! retreat!)
Me: Right, yeah, it wasn't great, and the atmosphere isn't great either. (test the other waters)
You: Yeah. (oh! you agree!)
Me: It was overpriced, too. And hell, why go there when there are so many other awesome restaurants around? (pile it on! I super agree with you now! We are friends! File this in my brain: you do not like this restaurant!)

This is kind of frustrating. I feel like I'm losing my individuality. Am I just some dude who agrees with everyone on everything? But that's kinda a whiny little complaint, and it's a quirk of my personality, and it's not important. What's more important (and frustrating) is POLITICS, in which they do this all the time.

A recent example...
McCain: The economy is strong! (let's test these waters)
Everyone: AAAAAGH Lehman Brothers AIG Merrill Lynch! (shit! retreat!)
McCain: I mean, the American workers are strong! (a truism. I can agree with that!)

But let's not get all liberal smug. I mean,
Obama: I'm going to pull out of Iraq. (people will like this, right?)
Half the country: Don't do that! (shit!)
Obama: I mean, I'll refine my Iraq plan, and do the right thing. (yes! doing the right thing is good!)

Everyone does this about everything! There is no truth, or even consistency! (welcome to American politics, right?)

SO. Next person who criticizes my man Barack for "flip-flopping" gets punched. Every politician does this all the time. And even if they didn't, I'd rather have a president who can change his mind sometimes.

Unrelated quick rants:
How can Bush's approval ratings be at like 30% or whatever, and almost half the country is still willing to elect Bush #3?!
How can anyone not believe in evolution?!
Why is the whole Catholics-voting-based-only-on-abortion still happening? Even if fetuses were babies and we're killing lots of babies, I mean, we're killing lots of Iraqis, who sure are people; and hell, farm subsidies for corn are slowly killing lots of Americans through obesity (segue to another rant, but one is probably enough for tonight)

OPT YOURSELF OUT

Go here:
Green Dimes

Sign up for their free unsubscription service. They will give you a nice list of like 10 things to do, half are going to websites, half are mailing physical mailings. Do them all. This will help stop junk mail.

"But Dan, I can just throw my junk mail away. It doesn't bother me."

No. Do it. This will save you time in the long run. O(1) asymptotic runtime. Digging through your junk mail is O(n).

(my secret agenda here: save some trees.)

Free bambooooooooooos department?

First of all, have I mentioned "I Am Rich"? This is The Best iphone app. It costs $1000, and it does nothing. It just displays a little red light. That's pretty vainglorious. Unfortunately, I just looked it up in itunes, and it appears not to exist anymore.

Why did I link to Fox News? Because I was trying to figure out if bamboo sheets are really environmentally friendly, or if I got suckered in. I think they are, on the philosophical non-data-based arguments that:
- it grows real fast
- lots of people say it's more environmentally friendly
Jared called me out on that, because those are pretty shallow arguments. So I went looking, and here's what I found:
Fox News says bamboo is better than cotton
A bamboo clothing seller says so too
And another
Dr. Hauser says the chemicals involved in processing bamboo make it bad
Some people on some forum have lots of views both ways
Shit shit these are the sheets I bought
I'm inclined to agree with this person:

"Just my .02 worth, but I don't do business with or associate with companies that would not offer "green" products but for the "green" market has grown to a point where it cannot be ignored.

For example, the USDA lowered organic food regulations to allow products with only 95% organic content to be certified organic. Why? So General Mills could enter the organic market profitably. I'm sorry, but food with 5% synthetic ingredients and grown with 1 of 38 approved pesticides sprayed on it is not organic. Thus, I avoid companies like Bed, Bath & Beyond that suddenly offer "Bamboo" sheets because the "green" market is no longer ignorable.

Stick to companies that produce only "green" or organic products and do or have done so because it's the right thing to do, not because they cannot afford not to."

Right on. And it seems like organic cotton has fewer issues than bamboo overall. Maybe I got served, or bought a greenwashed Bed Bath & Beyond product. They certainly seem like a bit of a crap company to me anyway.

Although who can really tell?! This gets me mad. I feel a rant coming on.

Also, to further ramp up into said rant, this quote from the Direct Marketing Association website:

"Important: You have selected to eliminate all mailings from organizations participating in the DMA Mail Preference Service. Are you sure you want to proceed? The average household can save $1422 dollars per year from marketing offers. By eliminating all mail offers not only will you miss out on these savings, but you’ll miss out on at least 80% of all commercial offers and discounts! And you will miss the environmental benefits of shopping at home rather than driving to the mall!"

SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP
rant to be continued

I sure like lists!

I was gonna freak out about politics, and I may still do so, but that would take some time, so instead I'll treat you to this:

The Omnivore's Hundred.

How nice to see one person shout this out to the world and everyone say "yeah, that's a pretty good list" instead of "but you haven't LIVED until you've tried ____". It's a great list! No, it's not The Best List Of Food For All Time For Everyone, but it's pretty good.

I do think it'd be fun to make my own list, just for my own personal benefit, though. But as I'm only 22, and therefore 22% of my way through life (I'm going to be at least 100, I've decided), so I think I'd only get to make "The Omnivore's Twenty-two."

In other news, the new Of Montreal CD (it's out in a month, I heard it at a laser show) is an unrestrained nuts-o psychedelic party; Balkan Beat Box is also a party; my boss likes Balkan Beat Box too, and that's neat; I have all this furniture and I'm so proud (oh yeah, post about that coming up too); I hate politics; I like blues dancing.

Are you fucking me?!

I'm real cheesed off by politics and Internet companies right now, and I just made a nice long post about them (on my iPhone because I still have no Internet) and safari just cut out! (note to prospective iPhone buyers: it does that sometimes.)

Goddamn! I guess this rant will have to wait till I'm more connected. I hate every corporation and political party in the goddamn world!

('cept google.)

Eat less meat ++, and cut down fewer cotton trees

Dr. Rajendra Pachauri from the UN says so!

Not trying to browbeat you into it. Just saying, if you're thinking "I wish I could help the environment, but I don't know how," vegetarianism is a lot easier than giving up your car (depending on where you live). And semi-vegetarianism is easier still!

Says a 90% vegetarian for 2 1/2 months running. (some weeks I have gone over, but some weeks I've gone under, and I think it works out to under 10% of my meals that have meat in them. And this is strict meat-counting: a little bit of chicken broth or gelatin counts. +1 hardcore points.)

Also, if you want to do something else, try bamboo sheets.
Pros:
- informal googling around makes me think that they're a lot more environmentally friendly, although I have no proof, besides the rhetorical argument of "it's bamboo! bamboo grows super fast! and non-organic cotton is full of pesticides and awful chemicals."
- they feel very nice
Cons:
- they're more expensive
Pros:
- but not much! Check out these cheap bamboo-blend sheets at Target. I paid a bit more at Bed Bath and Beyond (I was kind of exasperated and I wanted to get the hell out of there as quickly as possible, and hopefully while killing as few environments as possible.) but ended up with 100% bamboo sheets. Hoo-ray.

Side note: Bed Bath and Beyond is absurd. They have so many varieties of everything. I wanted a comforter. I found duvets, throws, bed-covers, blankets, rugs, dust ruffles, mattress pads, beds-in-a-bag, and not comforters. Also, I wanted bright lime green sheets. No luck there either (especially not in bamboo!)

Why are pirates okay and Nazis are not; also, I'm a pansy

I kinda dig this "A and B" formula of posts, where A and B are entirely unrelated.

Here's part A of today's post:
Pirates are a cool thing, or at least a pop-culture-tolerable thing. Pirates of the Caribbean, for one. And Talk Like a Pirate Day. And every single goddamn idjit on the internet. This post is not about how pirates (and ninjas and zombies) are not funny anymore, although that is true. This post is about Why are they not offensive? And why are they even glorified? I mean, Johnny Depp is this roguish hero, and nobody cares.

Pirates were bad people! Right? They plundered and pillaged, and so on! Correct me if I'm wrong, but these guys were just common thieves, except common thieves who would kill you!

Nazis were bad people too, but we can't have a movie with a hero who's a Nazi. Is it a too-soon thing? If so, that's silly, because it means in 100 years, Johnny Depp's great-great-grandson will be playing a rakish, handsome Nazi. Is it a question of scale? Because Nazis were oppressive controllers, and pirates were just like little guys who committed minor (in comparison) crimes? That makes a little more sense... but I mean Jeffrey Dahmer committed minor crimes, in comparison to all the Nazis. Is it a question of premeditation? Nazis were systematically evil, while pirates were merely chaotic? Hey, guess who else is "merely chaotic": suicide bombers.

How about talk-like-a-Nazi day? Or Nazis of the Baltic? Hmm.

Also, I need to grow a spine, in terms of social interactions. If I, say, need a book, I tend to phrase the question like "Hey, is that your book? Can I maybe borrow it? I mean, that is, if you don't need to use it anytime soon, and of course it's totally cool if you do need to use it, no really, that's fine." And the other day, this one guy was beating up another guy in the alley, broad daylight, lots of people around. That's not okay! I noticed it and stopped and looked, as if to say to the beater: stop it! He looked at me and yelled "What the fuck are you looking at? Cross the fucking street. Cross the fucking street!" So what did I do? I crossed the (fucking) street. But I felt awful! What I should have done is cross the street and call 911. I didn't even do that, and it didn't occur to me to do that until later. Or maybe yell back: "I'm looking at you beating the crap out of this guy. You want me to call the cops?" I know what you're saying, don't get involved, but he was far away from me and there were tons of people around, so he couldn't beat me up.

Whatever it was, I didn't do the right thing, and I felt like a glub for hours.

Pirates are like that guy! They're not like Johnny Depp!

Corporations and Rock Concerts

Interesting post. Admittedly, half the reason I like it is it gives me fuel for my rage against the corporations, because every young person needs something to rage against. I'll just add that corporations dehumanize everything, and humanizing things is good. Like when you call Dell tech support, and it says "everyone is busy, please hold", you get pissed. If you went to your computer store and said "hey, can you help me?" the guy would say "sorry, I'm real busy" and he'd be taking apart a computer or something, and you'd say, okay, he's busy, 's cool. Or if he was real busy for hours, you could get on his case, and say, hey buddy, give me some time here. But with Dell, all you can do is get mad.

Am I too old for rock concerts? Rephrase: am I too boring for rock concerts? I'm more and more losing my desire to go to them. Now, Ratatat last night was awesome, as rock concerts go. They had a video projector with that sort of video stuff you sometimes see at concerts, synced to the music. They were going nuts on stage, super-theatrical. Their songs were punchy, smooth, and tight: no noodling! They played all their hits, plenty of new stuff, and finished off with "Seventeen Years" which you could tell everyone was waiting for.

But the waiting time is very long and difficult. It's loud, so you can't really talk; it's a lot of standing, and you never know when it'll end. And you often have to wait through openers you don't want to see (although, for the record, I dig openers). Plus, it's always ear-ringingly loud. It's expensive, and prices are often +$10 once you go through Ticketmaster, or you run the risk of being sold out. And what do you really get out of it? That you don't get by listening to recordings?
- the ability to see them perform, because they're awesome: not a big deal to me
- the opportunity to really lose yourself in the music: doesn't happen a lot to me at concerts. I thought Ratatat would be perfect, but not so. I feel like there's a lot of self-consciousness at concerts, for some reason.
- the chance to see the artists as real people: maybe. but most don't even talk much.

Conclusion: not worth it! So why do I keep going?

@ratatat

I got a ticket! Thanks to a friendly stranger named Gabe, who is going to spend the next year traveling the world (and particularly the Asian parts of the world). That is neat.

My coworker has a dog! He's cute! (the dog, not my coworker) That is also neat.

I'm in the depths of new-project incompetence, where changing one line of code is very difficult because there are a lot of other steps along the way. This is normal. I knew it would happen, and it is. So it goes.

Oh yeah, and I'm in a new city where I don't know anyone and I don't have anything to do. I kinda saw this coming too. Again, that's life!

But to complain about anything at all in my life would be goddamn ungrateful. I know the future will be really good. I am hopefully slowly becoming aware that the present is just as good. Alles goed.

Fit (but I know it)

That is what I'll have to become, if I'm going to keep up this commute every day. It's only 4 miles each way, but Seattle hills can be brutal! Moreso than Pittsburgh. (but not as bad as SF)

But it is SO PRETTY! Wow!

Also Chrome! I am no longer worried that I joined Google right after it jumped the shark. Haven't used it yet (no Windows box) but it sure does sound cool.

I can hear the Stone Temple Pilots from my balcony

belting out "Lady Picture Show." What.

Showing up somewhere with only the bags on your back is a challenge! I've been on a real spending spree this weekend, some good, some not so good. Like my bike: good! I got a Marin Larkspur, and I will not link you to info because I'm typing this on my iPhone. It is so smooth! I like it! (My bike, not my iPhone.) Mattress: okay. Mattress shopping sucks. They're all a bunch of snake oil salesmen, and whenever you balk at an upgrade ("oh, you have to get a Swedish Pillow-topped Mattress Protector") they give you the hard sell. ("well, if you enJOY dust mites crawling in your eyeballs...")

This was all written two nights ago, but not finished, because I have no internets yet and I was typing on my iPhone. The iPhone has been not a real life-saver but at least a partial life-maker-easier. Still, now I'm at work (compiling!) and it's nice to have a real screen and keyboard.

Bumbershoot yesterday rocked. I only saw two shows: Strange Fruit and Dan Deacon. Both were fantastic! I meant to see Battles/Del the Funky Homosapien/Human Giant, but they were all at the same time, and I went out to dinner with Jay and CMU friends instead, so I missed them all. Also, I meant to see Death Cab for Cutie, but by the time I got back, all the gates were "exit-only". What! Does this big purple stamp on my wrist mean nothing?! So I stood in the parking lot with my bike to listen in, wistfully tearing up as dreamy dreamy Ben Gibbard crooned "Transatlanticism". (no, seriously. It was pretty sad. Shut up!)

Also, I bought some sweet posters. I am so excited about them. Not as excited as I am about my bike, though.

Topic shift! I was thinking about blind taste tests. Say, for example, Coke vs. Pepsi. Say I think I like Coke better, but in a blind taste test, I pick Pepsi. Well! What do I know? I know that, with no context, in a blind taste test, I like Pepsi better. But real life is not a blind taste test! If I then go to the fridge, should I reach instead for a can of Pepsi? No. The whole experience, of tasting the Coke, looking at the Coke can, thinking "I am drinking a Coke," is better than the corresponding Pepsi experience. Clearly, here I should drink a Coke.

So why do blind taste tests at all? I don't know. In one sense, it's nice to dissociate your mind from the advertising monster that runs our world. Maybe you only like the Coke better because Coke has better ads, and you'd like to instead reward Pepsi for making a superior product. I guess in the Coke vs. Pepsi case, there's no difference. Okay, what if you're comparing El Cheapo orange juice with Super Organic orange juice? Say you thought you liked El Cheapo better, but after a taste test you found Super Organic tasted better... then you'd change your buying habits to reward the healthier/environmentally-friendlier company. Well, that's good. Still, you'd get more enjoyment out of drinking El Cheapo, and you knew this beforehand. You're sacrificing your enjoyment to save your health and the environment, no taste test required.

Okay, test case #3: to develop your palate. Say we're talking Crummy Wine vs. Le Super Wine. Are you trying to find out which you like better? Great, go for it. Maybe you like Crummy Wine better. Is there a reason you should drink more wine to eventually prefer Le Super Wine? (assuming they're equally healthy)... I don't know. Oenophiles would say that, if you have an awesome palate, you really totally enjoy awesome wines an awesome amount. I guess that's true too. Hmm. I feel like I'm tackling many different issues here. I'll leave this idea kinda half-baked. Let's just say that I'm now thinking that blind taste tests are a lot less great than I once thought they were.

My week at the Googleplex

It's over! I'm tired! That's why I'm sitting in my apartment this Friday night. And I have a flight tomorrow morning.

Okay. Post-mortem: Google is pretty cool. We had some talks in which we heard a lot of cool things. Stuff about how huge their datacenters are, stuff about how search works, stuff about how ads works, the exact PageRank algorithm, how to use their source control and build things, etc. That was neat.

Met some cool people. That was neater. Some are nerdy, but some are pretty cool. I'll never see most of these guys again, but some I will, because they're in Seattle too. Awesome.

Also bounced ideas around. That was neatest. The corporate world is not yet dashing my youthful optimism. It is instead reinforcing it! Course, I'm not even working on my main project yet, so we'll see how that goes next week.

I got to hang out with Will and Jing, Scott and Katie, and Andrew W. That was fun! I co-hosted Andrew's radio show, which was hella fun. He's quite a very good DJ. Will and I played Lost Cities (super-simple and still fun! go Rio Grande!) and the Catan card game (not as simple, but fun, maybe because I was winning the whole time), but not Agricola. Oh well.

And have I mentioned how great the food was? Highlights from the Googleplex include:
- No Name Cafe, featuring vegetarian and non-vegetarian food prepared sometimes in an ethnic style
- Pintxo 47, a "small plates" place with healthy, tasty, and appealing-looking small bits of food
- Cafe 150, where all food comes from within 150 miles of Google
- Slice Cafe, serving up smoothies and juices, like a kale, celery, and some other juices blend
- the minikitchens everywhere, each stocked with the sort of drinks that make you want to try them (Tejava and Honest teas, Henry Weinhard's root beer, Naked juices, etc.), espresso machines (made my first shot today!), granola and cereal, and other more real food if you're in a hurry
- the TGIF fun thing, featuring an assortment of pretty good beers, on the level of Stella Artois and Sierra Nevada

Anyway, I'm excited to get back to Seattle, buy a bed and a bike, and start living!

Usain Bolt, not Michael Phelps, saved the Olympics?

Okay, I'll agree with this. Partially. He was the high-profile athlete who had the most fun. And in a world of hypercompetitiveness, a (supposedly) low-tech happy guy from a country that is not a, you know, cold war powerhouse wins the biggest baddest races in record time.

It's the whole torpedo thing: if you want to be The Best at anything, you will fail. Some other jerk will go all-out, sacrifice his life, maybe take performance-enhancing drugs, and defeat you, because you chose to, I don't know, read a book sometimes, or grow a garden, or maybe have friends. So along with living a balanced life, you have to get into the mindset that not being The Best at anything is okay. The Olympics directly contradict that mindset: if you're not #1, #2, or #3 (or in China, only #1), you're a failure. I mean, Bolt would still be awesome if he got 16th in the 100m dash, just because he seems like a cool dude who's enjoying what he's doing. But nobody would have heard of him if he were 16th.

I don't want to bash Phelps, though: good for him, bringing a sport like swimming into the spotlight. Oh, and eight gold medals is cool, I guess. But yeah! Usain Bolt. What a champ!

Google, Day Two

Today, I played volleyball with my new team. And I learned deep dark Google secrets! No, I cannot tell you ANYTHING. Nope. Sorry. Then they gave us magic wands and taught us how to cast Wingardium Leviosa.

They trust us a lot! And everyone responds by being trustworthy! What a cool company culture! Plus I got a lot of free programming books.

My flatmate for the week is from Azerbaijan! How cool.

Google, Day One

It's been a day! A not so interesting day! Orientation, what do you expect. A lot of talks, some paperwork, and some great food. You know all that stuff you hear about the food at Google? All true. Tasty, healthy, tons of (vegetarian and meaty) choices, free, everywhere.

That said, I'm stoked about getting to start working (/learning) tomorrow! And about living in Seattle! Mountain View is kinda nice, but I sure did make the right decision. Mountain View is a big suburb. Everything is four miles away from everything else. And 1098209470 miles from San Francisco. Urgh!

But boy, the food is good.

I started a new binder in my Great Ticket Collection today

Yow! This is it! The single biggest change in my life ever! Rivaling college, I guess. Whoo! Splendid.

I'm in Mountain View, CA, right now, for orientation for a week at the Google HQ. I'm going to Seattle on Saturday. Today I gained three hours, due to time zones, that I never have to pay back! How often does that happen?! I'm keeping them in a box for later.

Yesterday I dropped off a carful of clothes, toys, and STUFF to Goodwill. How liberating! And what a luxury! To say, I have this stuff, but I will get rid of it, only because it's in my way. I hope it will help someone, but really, to get rid of this was not a selfless act but rather kinda selfish. No worries! No more neuroses!

I have three bags I'm taking on the plane, plus three bags I took on the plane last time, plus two big boxes being shipped to me. I can move with fewer possessions than you can! But that's not really fair either; I left some stuff at home for archiving.

I went to my high school to see some friends and teachers. For those of you dear readers who went to my high school, I ran into The Fr. Ober, Mr. Skerl, Mr. Corrigan, Mr. Barker, and a couple others, although most had left for the day by the time we got there. Dave and Erik are living in Chicago! I've got to go visit.

Did I mention that my family threw me a going-away party? I got to see family, family friends, and friends. My friends from CMU came up. How lucky am I to have not only lots of family and adults around who would like to see me, but also friends from Pittsburgh who would drive up just to hang out with me and my family! At one point everyone started saying "speech! speech!" so I said the most succinct and absolutely true thing that came to mind, which was: "Thank you all for everything, I have no complaints whatsoever."

My mind is a million miles an hour. I'll keep on with the bullet points.

iPhone! It's great! A couple things I wish:
- notes synched
- camera had like some options, and maybe one more megapixel
- it did my laundry for me

And I'm watching all my photos zip past, as they import into iPhoto, in a hyper slideshow of my last four years. It's a wonderful life! (later edit: I'm not so fond of iPhoto. Why don't photo programs just mirror the file structure? Why do they have to keep trying to be fancy by creating "events" or some nonsense?)

I've got the Mirrormask soundtrack on my ipod. I mean, iphone. It seems vaguely appropriate in a stranger-in-a-strange-land sort of way. Okay, Mountain View is not a very strange land. In a lot of ways, this is the easiest life-changing transition possible.

Aaaaaand one more: a new charity option. Instead of giving money to a kid and feeding into a machine of aggressive street canvassers, what if I started lending micro-loans through Kiva? Have you heard of this? Anyone know anyone who's done it?

Signing off, exhausted but excited.

I don't own my name on Google anymore?

It's true! "Mr. Daniel Tasse", the new President and CEO of Ikaria, Inc., now gets the top spot when you search for Dan Tasse. Furthermore, the humble Snail Shell itself is not even listed! You can still find it if you try, but it's not in the top N. Huh. Did I lose out in popularity that quickly? Is Mr. Daniel Tasse instantly a lot cooler? ...or do weird things happen to your internet presence when you start to work at Google?

(nothing sinister; I can understand if they block employees' personal websites because of inadvertent release of trade secrets OR a conflict of interest from an employee trying to boost their own standings)

Super I-am-living-in-Seattle

Found an apartment! It was quite easy! It took one day. Jared and I looked at 9 places. It turns out that he cared more about space (in the apt.) than location, and I cared more about location than space. We might find ourselves at odds about this! Or even at loggerheads. However, luckily, we instead found ourselves in Capitol Hill, in a place that was quite big and in a great location. The drawback? It's a bit pricier. To quote Gramp, "Money doesn't solve everything. But it does make life a lot easier."

Anyway, this does mean I have a sweet sweet flat. It's so sweet. I'm so that rich young guy. My place just screams "I am so cool" in that way that I hate sleek places to scream at me. It screams "the life that you see in movies is actually possible, and you have it." It's the iPhone of apartments: no particular character, and it's expensive, but it is pretty, and it's got everything you need.

But you never spend less money, and you never take up less space. Trying not to get spoiled, trying not to get spoiled, etc. I think I can do it. And after all, why worry about getting spoiled? Why not wait until you are spoiled, and it's a problem, before you worry? Says Zen Dan. (Western Dan is super excited about everything.)

Fantasy X, Finally!

I'm done with this game! Whoo! I beat Sin, Seymour, and Jecht! (spoiler alert: those are the final bosses. another spoiler alert: yes, those are their names, even though "Jecht" is the only one that sounds even a little bit like a video game boss name.) I got a bunch of sweet treasures! Three of my characters can double-cast Ultima! Two more can hit for 9999 damage every turn! My stats are, like, really high!

Okay, I'm actually pretty happy about this. As I was almost done, I was really hoping for the game to end soon, but now that it has, I remember why I like video games. Sadly, I like them the same way I like cereal: addictively.

However, I like to review everything all the time, so here are my thoughts on Final Fantasy X:

- The gameplay is mostly pretty great. They keep improving from previous Final Fantasies. You don't have to spend much time leveling up, which is key; however, you do level up a lot, and whenever you do, you really feel like you're getting something cool, which is also key. All the characters are useful, in their own way, and you can switch them each in and out quickly and painlessly. You can see which characters will attack next, which lets you strategize a bit.

- The setting is kinda neat. You, Tidus (the main character), live in Zanarkand, but you are mysteriously thrown into Spira 1000 years in the future. You traverse a land of devastated beaches, forests, a cool magicky river called the "Moonflow", a heaven-like place called the "Farplane", imperial palaces, underground rivers, caves, mountains, and eventually the inside of Sin (a big monster).

- The storyline is melodramatic and heavy-handed. You're on this mission to defeat Sin, but (spoiler alert) Yuna, the girl, is going to die! Oh noes! And it turns out that the religious leaders are really corrupt and don't actually want to save the world like they say they do! But if we all stick together and fight, we'll figure out a way to save the world AND Yuna! (On the way, we will also overcome racism.)

- Some of the characters are pretty okay. There's Auron, the mysterious wise old guy who (spoiler alert) is actually a ghost; Wakka, the big dumb religious carefree-but-not-really blitzball player; Seymour, the aforementioned evilman; Cid, the brash airship pilot, etc.

- Some of the characters are not okay. All the girls are hard to take, except maybe Lulu, who is the old, wise one, but still wears dark emo makeup. Oh yeah, and often underdressed, surprise it's a video game. Seymour is like this good-guy-turned-bad, except they reveal that he's super bad in like the first scene. Jecht just makes fun of Tidus a lot, and oh yeah, he's his dad, and Tidus hates him a lot, and this is like a major important plot point because he really hates him totally a lot yeah.

- Tidus deserves an extra bullet point because he totally ruins the game. He is the worst. His voice actor must have been an understudy because the main guy got laryngitis. Or rather, the understudy's son; I'm not sure he's hit puberty yet. His facial expressions don't help. He looks like an action figure. His mouth doesn't close right. His eyes are like vapid but trying so hard to be full of meaning. Whenever he was talking, I wanted him to stop talking. Gaargh!

Sidebar for Final Fantasy VII and X players. The characters are exactly the same:
Cloud <-> Tidus, the adolescent hero with a giant sword (no innuendoes, good god)
Aeris <-> Yuna, the healer who is in love with the hero and also (spoiler alert) is going to die
Barret <-> Wakka, the dumb likeable big dude who fights a lot
Tifa <-> Rikku, the young girl who steals things and wears short shorts
Red XIII <-> Kimahri, the dog/cat/whatever animal who fights with you and doesn't talk much
Cid <-> Auron, the grizzled, wise one
Sephiroth <-> Seymour, the really super bad guy with the hair that's all crazy

Right? Hurgh. Nothing new under the sun.

But hell. Nice game anyway. Good combat, well-scheduled rewards, a lot of friendly interfaces, they let you skip a lot of the stuff that you wanted to skip. Lots of sidequests you could do if you wanted, and apparently a ton of extra monsters if you have all the time in the world. They're learning from all of their mistakes. All in all, I enjoyed FFX, and if I had another life's worth of free time, I'd probably play FFXII. And a lot of other video games.

"No more monkeys jumping on my head"

to quote Ultimate Donny. Epic battle with the monkey mind last night, which I lost. I can't even quiet all my competitive, rank-based, worrisome thoughts when I sit on a cushion and look at the wall, much less in my daily life. (and much less when I'm playing Settlers!) I just want to be happier, and there are particularly great people in my life who just want me to be happier too. I almost feel like I've gotten worse at this over the summer, which is not so good, and I can only hope that my meditation kick is actually helping and not actually leading me down a worrying spiral by making me think about my worrying too much. But things seem a little nicer in the morning, and I am still super-stoked about finding an apartment in Seattle.

Sponsorin' a kid?

Thinkin' bout sponsoring a kid via Children International. They seem good by the Better Business Bureau, Charity Navigator gives them 3 stars, 82% of the money goes to actually helping kids (11% fundraising, 7% other administration, which all seems pretty good if not exceptional), it's non-religious, and the cool part is that your money goes to one kid.

And you could write back and forth a little bit and so on. I used to think that that was no big deal, but now along with my hopes of putting humanity back in everything, a human touch to charity giving sounds better to me than, say, throwing money at the American Cancer Society. I used to think it'd be demoralizing, too, like "oh I have to write a letter to this guy Dan because he's giving me money," but the more I think about it, the more it sounds like it's not a bad idea. He's thankful for my support, I'm thankful for the opportunity to give him my support. I'm not paying him to write me a letter, or wanting him to write me so I feel good about myself, or whatever; I'd actually like to hear from a kid in Colombia or Nicaragua or India or whatever, and make a friend somewhere else. And as someone who has, I don't mind giving to someone who has not. I'm not quite articulating this right, but I have a good feeling about the idea.

Beefs: Everyone's mad at the CEO's salary. Whatever. It's 0.27% of expenses; it's not making a huge difference either way. The bigger beef is canvassers. Yeah, I'm no fan of canvassers. And yet, here I am, about to sign up for a thing after a canvasser tracked me down in Union Square in New York City and gave me the hard sell. The hard sell! I hate the hard sell! With the emotional appeal and everything! I mean, he was a very nice guy, but still, do not attempt to play on my emotions! I am a goddamn robot, I see right through it, and I get pissed.

It's $22/month, or as they like to say, "just 70 cents a day!", but that's still $264/year. I can handle that. Anything else I should be checking out before I sign up for this? Or are there any other charities that you, dear reader, particularly believe in, that I should be checking out too?

Panic! Don't panic!

So I was buying a plane ticket to San Francisco on August 24 so I can start training, and then one to Seattle on August 30 so I can start work. Even though I wasn't paying for it, I still agonized about it for a while, trying to get the best times and the fewest stops and so on. Finally, I settled on two separate one-way tickets (why I couldn't buy them together for the same price is a bit of a mystery). Bought the SFO-SEA leg from Alaskan Airlines, no problem. Tried to buy the CLE-SFO leg from US Airways, the website timed out. It said "Try again." So I did. Bought the ticket, emailed it to my family, just so they know my plans.

My mom emails me back and says "Why is it for August 30?"

I AM THE DUMBEST. I am so dumb, CMU should revoke my diploma so I don't dumb down their alumni reunions. Toast should be renamed "Dan Tasse" so the next time someone says that they're dumber than toast, they would actually be saying they're dumber than me. I am not the brightest bulb in the bunch, nay, I'm made of dark matter, actually absorbing light from the real bright bulbs. They're actually making another sequel to "Dumb and Dumber"; it's called "Dumb and Dan Tasse." I'm not in it. I'm too dumb to act.

So I'm freaking out. Because I'm the dumbest. However, once I calm down, I realize that in my internet silliness, I have accidentally bought a "refundable" ticket. You know, those ones you never buy because they cost more. Apparently the flight I tried to get on was out of cheap non-refundable tickets, so I had bought a refundable ticket. So, one quick (okay, not quick, like 30 minutes of hold, but bear with me) phone call, and it was all fixed.

The one time I buy a refundable ticket is the one time I have to change my ticket! And how can those Buddhists say that the world is full of suffering? (I'm joking. Partially.)

I've been out of town

Just most recently, at Sarah's house in West Virginia last weekend. Fun time! And I discovered that my recipe archive unintentionally gave her mom her first bit of internet presence. Hooray internet!

Unrelatedly, I found out a thing about life: you may find yourself, wearing a banana suit, singing "Day O" at a karaoke bar with a half team of kickballers and half dozen nurses providing backup vocals. This is a pretty great thing.

Go Nanners!

San Francisco: the other New York

I could start talking about West Coast people are like this, East Coast people are like this, or maybe Northern Californians are like this, Southern Californians are like this, or whatever (warning: loud) but I don't really have any idea.

I do know that I went to SF with my family for 5 days last week, and then Yosemite National Park for 2, and it was pretty fun. Some highlights:

- The Ferry Building Farmers' Market. It's the second coolest market. (Pike Place being #1, Seattle pride, etc.) It's huge! And has all the food you'd ever want. Some of it is inside, some of it is outside, all of it is exciting. I got some chai and cookies ("alfajores") from a non-profit community kitchen/business incubator called La Cocina. How cool is that?

- An improv show. Two sets, one by some people I don't remember much, one by the Un-scripted theatre company who asked the audience for a (non-musical) playwright, then improvised an hour-long musical in the style of that playwright. For our show, it was Oscar Wilde. It was really slick. And there were only three of them!

- Dim sum in Chinatown. First time I've ever had dim sum! I have a new favorite style of eating. Okay, maybe not, but I still love any system where you get a little bit of a lot of things.

- SFMOMA. This is a neat museum. They had like one painting by every modern painter I know (and a lot I don't, of course) so it was fun to walk through. Plus, I went with my mom, who knows things about art, which is always fun.

- Millennium restaurant. It's vegetarian (nay, vegan!) and so my dad wanted no part of it. My mom was intrigued, I don't think my sister cared either way, and so one day when they were too tired to eat dinner, I went there myself. It was totally worth it, and not in an all food-orgasmey sense, but just because it was cool to see a nice restaurant that was also vegetarian/sustainable/organic/etc, not another vegetarian/etc restaurant that was also nice. It's an example of eating less meat (even in high society) without being a patchouli-stinking Grass Person.

- walking around the Mission was cool. I stumbled into 826 Valencia, a nonprofit/pirate supply shop. Also ate a fantastic burrito at a place called, appropriately enough, "La Taqueria."

- giant redwoods in Yosemite. These were neat. This whole bit of the trip was a little more difficult, because as a family we tend to not like camping and stuff, which means we do national parks like most people, which means that wherever we are, so are most people. Did a little bit of hiking, but a lot of driving.

Whoo! I am now back in Pittsburgh for like three weeks (minus a weekend). And I am super-happy to be back.

Mindfulness a day keeps dukkha away

Meant to blog this but never did and I have like 15 minutes so gonna do it now.

Part two of my trip (actually part 1) found me in West Virginia at the Bhavana Society. It's a Buddhist monastery. 7 monastics (5 monks and 2 nuns) plus a couple of lay people lived there, as well as a handful of visitors like Catie and me. Every day went like this:
5:00-6:00: meditation
6:00-6:30: chanting
7:00-8:00: breakfast
8:00-11:00: chores/personal time
11:00-12:00: lunch
12:00-17:30: chores/personal time
17:30-18:30: meditation
18:30-19:00: chanting
19:00-20:00: talk/q&a

When I say "chores/personal time" I mean the chores usually took like a half hour then we had a lot of free time. I spent a lot of this time reading. I learned a lot about Buddhism. Particularly Theravada (not actually equivalent but sorta similar to Hinayana, which is the south-Asia half of Buddhism, where Mahayana is the north-Asia half) Buddhism and mindfulness (Vipassana) meditation.

In short, and only applied to me: meditation is the only thing missing from my life.
In medium length, and more generally, and poorly translated: Life is suffering. Desire causes this suffering. To escape suffering, you have to stop desiring. There's an eightfold path that helps you avoid desiring, but mostly it translates into "be a good person" and also "be mindful."

But really what it means to me is that I really need to meditate. Life is good! I am happy! But I worry. And I fret, and the more free time I have, the more I fret about whether I'm doing enough good with my free time, and that's no way to be happy. Meditation will help me there.

I want to be clear, though, that when I talk about meditation, I don't mean just concentration, like going into a trance. Sometimes meditation means that. But Vipassana meditation (like Zen, I think) is more than that: it's concentration plus mindfulness. If I were really good at meditation, when I were meditating, I'd be totally concentrated on my breathing, but I'd also be totally aware of everything around me. It's one of those concepts that you can't really explain, even if you're awesome at it, and I'm sure not, so I won't try.

If you want to read more, though, and learn about what I'm all into right now, read this.

The end result is that I am now meditating daily. Eventually I will become better at meditating and at living life (because meditation is only "practice" for the "game" that is life). My "monkey mind" will calm down. That is nice.

(I'm throwing that out there because when I publicly proclaim things, I tend to do them. Like 90% vegetarianism (still good through 3 weeks) and not eating cereal (still good there too). Speaking of 90% vegetarianism, though, I might make a special reservation for travel. When I'm in a place, I want to try the food of that place, and I think that might be more important to me than vegetarianism, because it's always for such short periods of time.)

And speaking of things in general, I'm going to San Francisco for 5 days, then Yosemite for 3, with my family. See you later!

New York Fucking City

I kind of wanted to get my dad one of those shirts, because we both think it's great. But you could never wear it! Which is too bad.

I spent 48 hours in a West Virginia monastery, then 36 hours in Manhattan. I'll talk about the second one first, because there's less to say.

I made the right call to work with Google Seattle instead of NYC. I thought living in the city would be super neat. After my second visit (I was there for a week a couple years ago), I am a little disenchanted. Eww! I drove in to the city. Gah! 1 1/2 hours traffic, an $8 toll to drive through the Lincoln Tunnels, and $50 for parking 24 hrs. (actually, $42 for 24 hours; $50 for 24 hours and 3 minutes) Although that's not as bad as it sounds, I don't think. Apparently if you commute in on one of these commuter trains from Jersey or CT, it can be $20-30 (taking into account parking at the train station and the train cost) and it takes forever too. (Quote MattJ: it's more expensive to commute into NYC than it is to live in Pittsburgh!)

Okay, parking worries aside, a lot of it is dirty, it's a little cutthroat sorta kill-or-be-killed style, cockroaches are sometimes a fact of life, and most of the streets really are not that exciting. Come on, do you really want to see another boulevard of office buildings, food marts, apartments, and ripoff electronics stores?

And it's expensive.

THAT SAID, it's an awesome place to visit! I spent about half the time hanging out with a lot of friends, stayed with Mike Yin, went to bars with him and Catie and her friends, saw Todd and [title of show], and aforementionedly hung out with Matt J.

Speaking of [title of show], this show is great. Skip that Disney-movie-turned-musical (or Shrek the musical, which does exist, fuck you world I hate the entire goddamn planet shit ass fuck shit fucking hate you all) you were going to see and go see this instead. It's a show about how they made the show, and while you groan "meta-play shuuuuuuttt uuuuuuuuppppppp", it's really well done. Except for a few stale jokes about ATM machines and PIN numbers, the whole show was really pretty fresh, there was a joke in there that I was the only one who laughed at, and it's funny and then even at the end you're like "I'm watching a funny play" and then it's BAM you just got inspired. Not inspired, just a little like "awww!" because you're watching these lovable losers become winners as their show gets to Broadway and then you're like, hold up, this is really them. I hate Broadway! But I like this show. Did I mention Matt's working on it? Support your friend/fellow SnSer/guy you don't know, depending on who you are, and go see this!

Chelsea Market: I saw this again! It is still my favorite spot in New York! I had the best espresso of my life there! They have a milk bar, and a couple bakeries, and a Moroccan shop. I later learned that the Google NYC offices are right across the street! Shit, maybe I should have worked there!

The rest of the time: I pretty much retraced my steps, entirely unconsciously, from last time. I found myself in the same stores, and I totally didn't mean to. It was pretty surreal. Except I ate at a place called "OMS/B" which sells (appropriately) omusubi, which is rice balls, and that was neat. Drank a lot of coffee.

I like this city. I do not love it anymore. I will gladly not live in it, but I will gladly visit it. Thanks to Mike for hosting me, thanks to all my friends for making it super fun, and more about WV (arguably the more interesting/life-changing part of this trip) whenever I get around to it.

A weekend of happy losing

Sorry I haven't been around. I went home for the weekend, which you'd think would mean more free time, but it really means a lot less! A lot of my friends from school were home, so I was hanging out with them a lot, and of course family.

It was nice seeing my grandparents and especially my aunt and uncle on my own. My parents were out of town. You don't really get to talk to relatives much at family things because the grown-ups are always talking. But they're really cool people, and hey, I'm an adult now too, and we can actually talk.

Seeing my friends was great fun too. Dan, Erik, and Brad were in from Cleveland (okay, he lives there), DC, and Dayton, respectively, and I got to see Ananth, Seth, Tony, and Kev too. (new slang for pot: "steaks." As in, "Hey man, you want some steaks? I got some nice juicy New York strip steaks!" Ironically, Kev doesn't smoke. He just looks like a stoner.)

I managed to be terrible at everything we did! First poker, well, what do you expect. I watched Ananth and Tony play chess. They're incredible. I guess they're some level of masters, but I don't know what. The next day, we played tennis. I was easily the worst of the four of us. We jetskied the next day too, and did some tubing, and I just didn't like tubing, and was even getting freaked out by jetskiing as the day wore on! Oh, and between going out on the lake, we played Corn Hole. I didn't win a single game. Then Brasa Grill (a Brazilian steakhouse) and a party across town where I got a stomachache from eating too much at the Brasa Grill. We finished off the weekend on Sunday by hitting up the newly-reopened art museum, and I still don't know much about art.

This was probably good for super-competitive me. Honestly, I didn't mind, as long as I wasn't slowing them down. I don't really have much to say, and I have to go take a shower. When you don't work, you can take showers whenever you want!

And also, I'm a little addicted to Final Fantasy X. But it sucks so much! (the characters, I mean. The story's all right, and the gameplay is pretty fun, which is why it has me hooked. I just say this because I'm finding myself embarrassed to be playing the game.)