In any case, excuse the plain, unpolished state of the site until I can finish implementing the redesign. For WordPress geeks, I’m currently trying out the Constructor theme as perhaps a free alternative to the Thesis theme (which I have learned to customize more than I ever imagined I would).

Related posts:

1. Web site logs and search engines
2. New site design
3. The Switch, Blog Version

Crappy cell phone picture of a cool looking tree at Finch Ave and Stevens Creek Boulevard in Cupertino, CA. The Google Street View is a bit better, although I don’t think it looks as cool in the daytime:

View Larger Map

Related posts:

1. The KKUP Cupertino – 91.5 FM Listeners Award, 1971 Dodge Charger
2. Christmas Tree
3. Christmas Tree

So, stay tuned.

Related posts:

1. Back to life, Back to reality
2. Take-back
3. Status: Sindy is back from Spain and not looking forward to returning to regular life.

Yet, the thing that actually annoys me about these emails is that they contacted me, but their emails come off as if it was the other way around, telling me how to pursue them. “Send us your resume.” “Apply here.” They are interested in me based on my background, experience and qualifications, but then I’m supposed to go to the trouble of applying or submitting my resume (which they already have since that’s how they found me in the first place). It’s like going up to someone and saying, “I really think you’re attractive and interesting. I think you’d be interested in going out with me. Here’s my number– please call me and I’ll consider a date.” I’m not saying that they should automatically make me a job offer or even guarantee me an interview, but they contacted me– a better approach would be, “We came across your resume and think you would be a good fit for some job opportunities at [insert company]. We would like to talk to you further if you are interested,” etc. From my experience, only a handful of recruiters do this and they’re usually internal recruiters from the company. In the end, I may not be interested, a good fit, or even qualified, but if they’re reaching out to random people on job websites and the web in general, they’re looking for more and/or better candidates than those contacting them and even the semblance of trying to “woo” the applicant wouldn’t hurt.

However, an interesting thing happened today, which is why I’m bothering to write about it at all. I received another one of these unsolicited recruiting emails today, but after receiving the message, it was quickly followed by another email from the same company (but different recruiter) and even with the same subject line that started with the following sentence:

While conducting an online search we came across your resume. It appears that you are over qualified for our positions.

Ha! They go on to mention executive positions posted by their clients that may be more applicable. They still end up telling me to submit my resume (“for free”), but it’s a start!

Related posts:

1. What is the definition of spam?

However, the tendonitis suddenly became very severe a few months ago and is now accompanied by numbness and tingling that are certainly more annoying than the pain. The irony is that these “sudden” RSI symptoms started and worsened when I had actually reduced my work hours (only 40 hours per week!)– like most departments at Stanford do for significant cost savings, my office closes for a few weeks at the end of the year and aside from taking the long break (and even managing to avoid doing work despite being on-call), I even left for the break a week early. Since then, I’ve been out of the office more than usual due to illness (it’s largely a crapshoot everyday how I’ll be feeling) and a slightly ridiculous number of doctor and physical therapy appointments. I’m pretty sure I’m being punished for a life of playing piano and typing.

As of now, almost all of my test results are normal and one thing we’re pretty sure about is that it’s NOT lupus. So, for the most part, we’ve managed to rule out a number of things and otherwise, we’re back to the drawing board and I just need to suck it up while we figure things out. At the end of the day, I having basically decided that if I was a superhero, my powers would be tolerance of prescription drugs and the ability to stay relatively high-functioning despite constant pain.

In any case, I’m slowly starting to improve and get back to a somewhat normal life, including maintaining my offline social life and my online presence. Look forward to more frequent posting soon.

Related posts:

1. Pain

When you have an LP (as you may also have heard it called, especially on something like House), there’s a 10-15% chance that you’ll get a severe headache with nausea, but that can usually be avoided by making sure you stay lying flat on your back for a few hours after the procedure and keeping your fluids up. A persistent headache can mean that a proper clot didn’t form at the puncture site and there’s a CSF (cerebrospinal fluid) leak– a microscopic leak, not one that comes oozing out your back, so the headache is the only real tip off that you have one.

Amazingly, after staying strictly in the supine position after the procedure at the doctor’s office and then at home (except for the brief trip to the car in a wheelchair and all and then up the elevator home), I avoided getting a severe headache and hopefully, a CSF leak. Imagine my luck, considering I otherwise have a headache everyday, often all day.

Anyway, thanks to Marina and Charles for taking me to the doctor and taking care of me all day yesterday. For the less squeamish, check out this video of an actual LP.

• Finished my Masters degree
• Finished my first full year leading my own team at work
• Dad went through four close calls (and God kept telling him it’s too early to go)
• Went to Barcelona (and loved it)
• Participated in and lost a beer a day contest
• Missed my 10-year high school reunion
• Read the last Harry Potter book and saw the end of an era
• Suffered through increased and more frequent pain with my headaches/migraines, cycled through more medications than I’d like to think about, switched doctors, finally got an MRI, and am entering 2008 with plans for more tests and more digging

I think that’s about it for now. Maybe I’ll add more as I continue to reflect. Either way, it’s been a long year. A couple more days of rest as I ease into 2008 and brace myself for the coming year. Here’s to a happy, hopefully better and brighter, new year.

Related posts:

1. Happy Christmas
2. Happy Holidays
3. Happy Halloween!

• Confessions of a College Callgirl. I think the appeal here is self-explanatory, but particularly interesting tidbits lately: Blowjob Tutorial (try comparing notes to what’s in Sex Tips for Straight Women from a Gay Man), The Number is Eight, It Happened to Me!, and Workin’ for the Weekend. There usually isn’t art along with the posts that make it obviously NSFW, for tread carefully.
• David Byrne Journal. Aside from the awesomeness of Talking Heads and his continued work as a very talented musician (like being on the composing team that won the Oscar for Best Original Score in 1988 for The Last Emperor), he’s a talented and accomplished writer as well. His blog is both interesting and entertaining; the first post I read when I discovered it– Social “Hateworking”, IKEA– got me to subscribe right away.
• Overhead in New York. One of many “Overhead in…” sites (linked to from the NY site), but being a New York-er, this one appeals to and entertains me the most. Overheard in the Office is a pretty good second.
• Stephen Fry. There are so many reasons to love Stephen Fry, including his role as Jeeves in Jeeves and Wooster (probably the best screen adaptation of P.G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves stories), A Bit of Fry & Laurie, and Blackadder (I know there’s an association-with-Hugh Laurie theme here). He’s only been blogging for a few months, but I love the way he writes (reflected well on screen in A Bit of Fry & Laurie) and he’s been blogging regularly since being asked to write a weekly tech column for The Guardian. He knows his tech, among many other things, and both techie and fuzzy can appreciate his posts. Check out his first column post, “Welcome to Dork Talk”, his hilarious review of smartphones, and his very well-written post on botnets.

Check ‘em out. (As if you didn’t already have RSS feeds to get through everyday.)

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1. clippy blog
2. Blog prison
3. Not everyone sees the beauty of the blog

As I mentioned earlier, two of my photos from my Barcelona trip this past summer were short-listed to be included in the fourth edition of the Schmap Barcelona Guide. I just found out that they have been selected for final inclusion! Check them out:

• Via Laietana
• Tramoia

I had a great time there, so I’m glad that my photos can be used to direct and guide others to this great city. Check out the photos, the guide, and if you can do it, the city itself, live and in-person.

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1. Schmap!! and Barcelona
2. Status: Sindy is back from Spain and not looking forward to returning to regular life.
3. Circuit City is a big fat liar

Despite being one of the most amateur of amateur photographers with my point and shoot digital camera, I just found out that two of my photos from my trip to Barcelona this past summer have been short-listed for the fourth edition of the Schmap Barcelona Guide (to be released later this month). I guess it pays to actually make some of your Flickr photos public and publish them with a Creative Commons license.

Random!

If you’re curious, check out the photos: photo #1 (shown here) taken while walking down Via Laietana and photo #2 taken while lunching at La Tramoia. Or browse through the entire Barcelona photoset.

Related posts:

1. Status: Sindy is back from Spain and not looking forward to returning to regular life.
2. Photos
3. Now that’s a big fat rooster

Both of us were too proud/stubborn/competitive (characterize it however you like) to back down, but really, it’s a relief for both of us. As I predicted, the only thing that would stop this contest would be one of getting sick and it would most likely be me– I’ve come down with some type of super-cold and I figured, when you have trouble breathing, maybe it’s time to throw in the towel. (Not that I’m making excuses– Ian won fair-and-square.)

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1. That’s not beer: distractions at the John Mayer show
2. Virtual Beer Pong and Keepin’ It Real

As mentioned earlier, I spent most of today at the 6th Annual San Jose City College Street Rod & Classic Car Show and just wanted to say congrats to my friend Noel Clarke for winning the KKUP Cupertino – 91.5 FM Listeners Award for his 1971 Dodge Charger. The station’s website should be updated soon with photos, etc. about the award.

Weirdest thing about the show though: the presence of “Natalie,” Miss Northern California, about whom I can’t find any information on the web. She helped present the awards, wearing her inappropriately short skirt (imagine what happens when the wind blows), and you didn’t really get a choice whether she was in your award photo or not (you actually didn’t even get an opportunity to get out of the car either when they took the photo either). And being very blond and very pale, she didn’t really strike me as being a very “representative” Miss Northern California– I would have gone with someone Asian or Chicano myself.

For more: Another photo of the award presentation and a closeup too.

A group of alumni, highly established in their careers, got together to visit their old university professor. Conversation soon turned into complaints about stress in work and life. Offering his guests coffee, the professor went to the kitchen and returned with a large pot of coffee and an assortment of cups – porcelain, plastic, glass, crystal, some plain looking, some expensive, some exquisite – telling them to help themselves to the coffee.

When all the students had a cup of coffee in hand, the professor said:”If you noticed, all the nice looking expensive cups were taken up, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones. While it is normal for you to want only the best for yourselves, that is the source of your problems and stress.

Be assured that the cup itself adds no quality to the coffee. In most cases it is just more expensive and in some cases even hides what we drink. What all of you really wanted was coffee, not the cup, but you consciously went for the best cups … and then you began eyeing each other’s cups.

Now consider this: Life is the coffee; the jobs, money and position in society are the cups. They are just tools to hold and contain Life, and the type of cup we have does not define, nor change the quality of Life we live. Sometimes, by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to enjoy the coffee God has provided us.”

God brews the coffee, not the cups…….. .. Enjoy your coffee!

“The happiest people don’t have the best of everything. They just make the best of everything.”

Live simply.
Love generously.
Care deeply.
Speak kindly.
Leave the rest to God

Discovered a new caffeine delivery system. Notice the marketing approach– an “all positive” battery!

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1. links for 2006-04-27

Now what do I do with all my free time?

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1. Why DRM systems are a bad idea and the freedom to tinker
2. Educational freedom

In any case, WordPress is known for being ridiculously easy to setup, providing a convenient way to migrate from other blog software, and good at dealing with spam. And after setting it up yesterday, that all holds true. The only thing is that all my permalinks are screwy now, so anything using those links are broken now. I’ll be updating those links here in the next few days. Work and school are running my life right now.

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1. Blog prison
2. Not everyone sees the beauty of the blog
3. The switch

For some time now, squirrels have regularly been taunting and wreaking havoc on my plants and balcony in general. Well, it’s really just one squirrel– pictured here, the little devil– and basically, he is slowly driving me nuts (no pun intended) by regularly digging up my plants and kicking up dirt all over my balcony.

When I first moved out to the Bay Area for school, I was amazed at how tame squirrels were, especially on the Stanford campus. I grew up living within a 50-mile radius on New York City my entire life and back East, squirrels are afraid of human beings, like most wild animals are. Like George laments in the Seinfeld episode about the unsaid agreement between pigeons and humans, I thought there was an unsaid agreement between squirrels and humans: we try not to hit them with our cars, they leave us alone. Specifically, they scamper away when we’re around. Apparently, not so in California– they are not the least bit frightened by people and they simply hang around. They’re not even looking for a food hand out. They’re just going about their business. It is the strangest thing and certainly takes getting used to.

Don’t get me wrong– I have nothing against squirrels. I think they’re pretty cute actually and might even want to pet one, if it weren’t for the fact that they’re basically rodents, carry all sorts of disease– including plague– and even if they’re trained to feed from your hand, often mistake fingertips for food.

You see, squirrels, cute and harmless as they may seem, are not the brightest animals in the world and it amazes me that they have somehow managed to survive this long as a species. (Have you ever seen the confusion and utter lack of instinctual decision making capacity of a squirrel trying to cross a street?) From what I can gather, persistence is their most admirable trait. My daily squirrel visitor (I should really come up with a name for him) lives in the tree whose branches hang over my balcony and lead a convenient path right to my sego palm. And every day, I watch this poor squirrel, I’m assuming, either bury or look for nuts in the several potted plants of varying sizes I have on my balcony. Do you know why he does this constantly? Well, squirrels have very limited memories and never actually remember where exactly they buried their nuts– instead, they use spatial clues to remember, such as always burying nuts on the north side of trees. So, instead of X marks the spot, you get X marks every spot on the north side of the tree. How efficient.

In any case, I’m not sure what spatial clue this one is using, but this squirrel has convinced himself that he always buries his nuts somewhere in these potted plants. Well, because he is constantly digging up these plants and kicking up dirt everywhere, I am often forced to add dirt, reset the plants, etc. and in the process, I have never found anything buried. Not one single nut or anything remotely resembling something a squirrel might want to eat.

But who am I to judge?

Anyway, there are worse things squirrels can do to you in terms of being household pests, so I have come to accept this sad state of affairs. But apparently, weird behavior among squirrels is a particular phenomenon in my city– after several actual squirrel “attacks” (yes, more than just one or even a few) in a local park, the city officials actually want to trap and euthanize “aggressive” squirrels. It’s launched a big controversy of course and now they’re looking to alternatives to stop the wave of attacking squirrels. Read all about it: Online outrage over Mountain View squirrel-killing plan.

If this isn’t proof that the Earth is turning against us, I don’t know what is.

(For more fun squirrel facts, check out the squirrel Wikipedia entry.)

Well, it’s already 4am here on the East Coast and I am finally getting settled in after the obnoxious travel ordeal I’ve been through today (today still wasn’t as bad as the time I got stuck in St. Louis for eight hours during holiday travel season). This picture was taken apparently at Newark Aiport (for you frequent travellers to the New York area, that’s EWR, Newark/Liberty), but that’s basically the view I got for about two and half hours while stuck on the runway at Dulles Airport in Washington today.

When I was buying my ticket for my Thanksgiving trip home, I made the mistake of breaking one of my most sacred rules for air travel: always fly direct. (One of my other sacred rules is to avoid checking baggage as much as possible, but our recent War on Liquids has made that virtually impossible for me.) But given how expensive flights were, I had to compromise and decided to fly from San Francisco to DC and then take a puddle jumper up to Newark (the second leg is only about a 35 minute flight). I even kicked in the extra money to upgrade to Economy Plus for the cross-continental leg of my trip.

Unfortunately, the tiny Dulles to Newark leg is where it all fell apart– by the time I landed in DC, the flight was already delayed and our departure time got pushed back from 8:40pm to 10:30pm– of course, this delay was announced in 30 minute increments, pushing back again every time each successive departure time rolled around, so you couldn’t even really stray to far away from the gate area. We finally boarded the plane at around 10pm, but this is when the real fun started– we sat on the plane for the next two and half hours with announcements coming about every half hour that we would be taking off soon. Do you understand what I am telling you? At 10pm, we would be leaving at 10:30pm. 10:30pm would roll around and then it would be announced that we would have to wait until 11pm. 11pm would roll around and it looked like it would be more like 12:30am. Oh wait, we got moved up in the schedule, so it looks like we’re going to be able to leave at 11:30pm. 11:30pm rolls around and we’re back to waiting another 20 to 30 minutes, so we’re looking at a midnight departure. Midnight rolls around and just kidding, we’re looking at that 12:30am takeoff time again. Eventually, we took off around 12:38am, but at that point I think we had little choice– at some point, they do have to close the airport.

In any case, the hold up was because of “gusty winds” blowing at EWR and causing arrival delays exceeding 90 minutes throughout the evening (according to my Orbitz Travel Brief Update, an unexpected and surprisingly useful service) and of course, that caused a huge backup of air traffic, especially considering the amount of air traffic on the day before Thanksgiving. So, I realize that weather conditions and the realities of air traffic control and holiday travel can’t be blamed on the United service crew or pilots (although people on planes, mine included, seem to think somehow yelling at the flight attendant is going to make something happen), but jerking people around constantly is probably one of the worst customer service things you can do. Personally, I think they– and by “they,” I mean everyone, from air traffic control to the flight crews to the customer service folks– should have been more realistic about the backup at Newark and should have avoided boarding passengers before they had a more concrete departure time. You can’t control the weather and the pilot can’t control whether or not air traffic control gives him clearance to take off/land or not, but I feel like there’s probably a little more power out there to make better choices about estimating when things will happen and perhaps more importantly, won’t happen.

But of course, the whole thing that really tied up the night nicely was that when we finally got to Newark and went to baggage claim: our bags weren’t there. There was a weight restriction on the flight (who knew?) and the majority of the passengers’ bags for our flight were actually put on another flight from Dulles and we had to wait another 20 minutes for that flight to get in and for the luggage to be unloaded.

Oh, what we do to defy gravity and take to the skies!

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1. Happy Thanksgiving and positive celebrity influences
2. Happy Holidays
3. Happy Halloween!

Well, I’m on my way back home from Japan, to race against the sun, leaving here in the evening to somehow end up in San Francisco in the morning to relive my Wednesday. Imagine, of all days to live over again– Wednesday.

Of course, I got sick toward the end of my trip, so spent my free time sleeping. More entries about Japan to come soon.

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On the way back to the Asakusa subway station, we noticed this street vendor. The figures are supposed to swell up to 40 times in water, but then shrink down to their original size when dried. Among the figures are lobsters, crabs, frogs and… well, just take a close look at the full sized photo.

‘Nuff said.

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1. Tokyo: The Giant Abacus
2. The Water Ionizer

Well, today was my first full day in Japan and we spent the morning in Asakusa, where much of old Tokyo remains. Apart from visiting Sensoji Temple, we walked around the area and found this abacus shop with this great giant abacus outside. What’s particularly great about it is that it’s just like the one our family had growing up– black with orange beads shaped just like that.

Of course, ours was much smaller.

Friend A: “I’m going to be Marc Antony for Halloween.”

Me: (pointing to his boyfriend) “And are you going to be Jennifer Lopez?”

Friend A: “No, Marc Antony, not Marc Anthony.”

Me: Oh, sorry. I thought you said Marc Anthony and when I think of you, I think of the Puerto Rican singer first.”

(Later that night)

Friend A: “So for my costume–”

Me: “Wait, is someone else going as Cleopatra at least? Because Marc Antony is kind of a peripheral figure to go as. People will think you’re just a guy in a toga.”

Friend A: “Yes, someone else is going to be Cleopatra with me.”

Me: “Okay, because that’s like going as Patroclus with no Achilles.”

(Conversation continues)

Friend B: “Wait, did you just make a Patroclus joke?”

So, if you’re eligilble to signup, take it for a spin. The current list of eligilble schools is:

Brown University Columbia University Cornell University Dartmouth College Duke University Harvard University Massachusetts Institute of Technology New York University

Northwestern University Princeton University Stanford University University of California – Berkeley University of Chicago University of Michigan – Ann Arbor University of Pennsylvania Yale University

So, to get started, go to http://www.meeteor.com/ and sign up!

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1. meeteor.com is coming soon…

There are more stories coming.

Related posts:

1. Story #1: On Being Korean

There could be a lot of answers to this question. Do you want to know where my parents immigrated from when they flew into JFK over thirty years ago to make a new life? The answer is South Korea, Seoul to be specific. But where is my family really from? Korea. There was no North or South when my parents were born and while the political status may have changed many times over the course of the life they lived before they stepped foot in America, they are from everywhere– from the north, from the south, from the countryside, from the city. They are from the Land of Morning Calm.

I don’t want to say the North-South question offends me, but it does bother me because it reflects a fundamental ignorance of the situation and the Korean experience and outlook. First, if you’re a Korean in America, you or your family immigrated from South Korea. Nobody immigrates from North Korea. You defect from North Korea and you’ll be hard pressed to find anybody who has successfully. Or you’re a Korean national visiting the States, which most likely makes you a South Korean national. There aren’t many North Koreans vacationing or going to school in the US.

But more importantly, these North-South distinctions are just political ones, just words that remind us of an over fifty-years old war that still continues to this day. But some say that with such a deep division, the rapid development of such different political and socioeconomic states, especially with the isolation and cult of personality built in the North, is it really just a political distinction anymore? Haven’t two contemporary cultures developed that only make the divide even greater? Can you really call yourselves one people anymore?

My answer is yes. Koreans share a much longer history and commonality than our recent history in the international arena belies. A fifty year divide that is the “tragic consequence of superpower rivalry at end of World War II” cannot wipe out hundreds of years of history, culture, family. And this recent history is the history of all Koreans, no matter which side you are on. It is the struggle and the suffering of the Korean people as a whole around the world. Han. Those are still our brothers we look out across the DMZ, both literally and figuratively. We are one people and we still hope for reunification into our one true nation. Han nara.

So at the end of the day, am I North or South Korean? I’m just Korean. To be exact, I’m Korean American, American born.

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2. Koreans, Koreans everywhere, everywhere the Koreans
3. In mourning

• Berkeley
• Brown
• Columbia
• Cornell
• Dartmouth
• Duke
• Harvard
• Michigan
• MIT
• Northwestern
• NYU
• UChicago
• UPenn
• Princeton
• Stanford
• Yale

The site is actually my friend’s brainchild and, for the most part, I’m the technical heavy lifting part of our little team of two. In general, we know that there are a lot of people who are alumni of these schools– i.e., our friends and people like our friends– and are having a hard time finding people to date, despite using services like Match.com and other online dating services. And to some, a site like meeteor.com might smack of elitism or just plain snobbery, but the reality is that people use a variety of factors as filters when selecting who to date, everything from race or ethnicity to height and weight to taste in music or books. So, of course, educational background is a possible factor and it’s up to individuals to decide how important it is, which will decide whether or not they use our site and whether a particular educational background is an absolute requirement when selecting a mate. But more importantly, educational background can be an important factor because college– at least four years of undergraduate and however many more years of graduate school– is an extraordinarily influential and memorable period in a person’s life and people who graduated from the same school or similar schools often share common backgrounds, experiences and views in the same way people from the same regional areas or cultures do. And at the end of the day, isn’t that what most often brings people together?

In any case, admittedly, the idea is not a completely original one. There are, of course, a bunch of dating sites out there and even a few sites targeting this particular community. However, after taking a look and asking around, those particular sites aren’t very popular and have a few serious shortcomings, including one that only allows you to search for members of the opposite sex. I seriously think that we can put together a better, more useful site that will hopefully really hit the mark. We’re not trying to reinvent the wheel when it comes to the way people date– we’re just trying to give people a better way to find the type of people they want to date.

So, we’re working hard every free moment we’ve got and we’re scheduled for launch in August. In the meantime, visit meeteor.com and sign up to be notified when it goes live!

(I know, Phoenix’s hair is more red, but in some shots from the movie, it looks purple and in the sun, my hair sometimes looks more red than purple, and in general, it was creeping me out. Case in point: see screenshot.)

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marinaluz.net

She’s the one who made me my lovely sea turtles along with a number of other pieces of photography and artwork around my house and office.

Bits and pieces of her portfolio are up there on her site and although photo is kind of her thing, there’s stuff in drawing, sculpture, and even letterpress and design. Very cool. Check it out. I love her.

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The weather cleared up. It’s like it’s just not allowed to rain in Hawaii when somebody’s paying to be visiting. Lovely.

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It’s raining and thus the slightly gloomy/grey quality to the photo, but hey, it’s still Hawaii and it’s still vacation. And once again, I was off the plane for a grand total of 10 minutes before someone asked me if I was from the islands. I’m keeping track of how many times this happens.

Yes, yes, it’s a commercialized holiday, as most holidays are. Yes, yes, sometimes, or most of the time, or maybe even all of the time it feels like it’s a holiday that has been created by the greeting card companies just to have an excuse to sell us more stuff. To make us feel obligated to spend money on flowers, chocolates, and a fancy dinner and be overly sentimental and romantic for fear of punishment by a night on the couch and accusations of being a significate other and to make single people feel all the more alone and crummier.

But here’s the thing: while it seems silly that we need an entire holiday to make us stop and appreciate our significate others, to tell them that we love them, to do something special for them, would it be so horrible to actually do something on Valentine’s Day? You don’t have to give in to the machine, you don’t have to make a romantic spectacle out of it and frankly I could live without the pink and red Valentine’s Day decorations that sprout up everywhere come February 14th, making everything look like the inside of a womb, but hey, who doesn’t like getting sent some flowers or a box of candy or a simple card or just being told, “Hey, you’re pretty cool, I like you and thanks for being in my life”? While Valentine’s Day, like most holidays, has been completely commercialized and might leave a bad taste in our mouths, at least gives us an excuse to slow down for a moment, take a look around, let others know they are loved and know that you are loved as well.

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Work and school and life have been taking over lately and there will be more blog entries soon, but for now, here’s a pic of my new hair color. I was going for a reddish-purple/black. I am becoming a comic book character.

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2. Comic book heroes and history

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Another shot of the Winter sky from the back porch of my parents’ home in upstate NY.

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A shot of the Winter sky from the back porch of my parents’ home in upstate NY.

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1. Sunset
2. Winter in California
3. Christmas Tree

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2. Christmas Tree
3. Christmas Tree

Lovely wreath I won at my department’s holiday party– handmade by one of our administrative associates.

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2. Christmas Tree
3. Lovely seaturtles

Here’s a better pic now that I have my camera back.

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2. Happy Holidays
3. Sunset

We got there around 7pm and while the bar was fairly full, the restaurant was only about half full. There was no one else waiting for a table, but it still took 15-20 minutes to get seated– the bartender clearly saw that we were waiting for a table and still didn’t bother to call over the hostess or somebody to seat us and I noticed a woman giving us surly looks from the bar the whole time. In any case, we were finally seated and a bus boy came around relatively soon with water. So, we sat eating handfuls of peanuts at the table, sipping water, looking over the menu and waiting for a waiter or waitress to at least come and take a drink order. And we waited. And waited. At first, we thought the service was just slow, but the restaurant was only half full and there seems to be plenty of waitstaff working. We soon realized that people who were seated after us were being waited on before us. After about 20 minutes of eating our weight in peanuts and waiting to just be acknowledged by one of the waitstaff, we decided to leave and on the way out, the bartender saw us leaving, but did nothing to stop us.

Now, my friend and I don’t like to play the race card and maybe the service was just bad yesterday, but as we were leaving, I realized that we were the only minorities I noticed in the entire restaurant and I can’t help feeling like our bad service (or lack of any service) directly correlated to the color of our skin. Maybe a little bit of it was that he’s Black and that I’m Asian, maybe a little bit of it was that we were Black and Asian (Blasian) together, but having been discriminated against individually our whole lives and often when we are together, recognizing racism becomes a skill. Racism comes in many forms, but there are definitely some greatest hits and poor service at a restaurant or business is a pretty popular one. And even if wanted to write it off as poor service, the fact people who were seated after us were served before us AND that the bartender saw us leaving and didn’t do do or say anything really put the nail in the coffin.

So, yes, even in easy, breezy California, racism is still prevalent, so believe it, bitches. In contrast, when we headed over to Amici’s, we were seated right away and as our waitress walked by, even though she couldn’t help us immediately, she let us know that she would be right with us. Then, when she did come over, which was only a few minutes later, she apologized for the wait and continued to give us great service for the rest of the meal. She was the big winner of the day and she got a fat tip as well as two happy customers.

Sorry for the crappy picture, but my digital camera broke and I am borrowing the worst digital camera in existence.

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1. Happy Holidays
2. Oh, Photo!

A beehive seems to have fallen outside of the building I work in at Stanford. Upon closer inspection, they seem to be your standard European honey bees, but the queen is down there and all. Pest control was called yesterday and this morning, this is what showed up. Go figure.

a: we are married

or

b: he’s gay.

Option (b) is correct, but I wonder why people always come to these conclusions.

Perhaps they sense the sexlessness of our relationship.

I am often reminded of this, but it’s particularly driven home when I talk to people who grew up in California or who have lived in California for much longer time than I have (it’s been about eight years now). Nobody’s burning a cross on my lawn, but the little barbs, the comments, the questions– they happen more often than you might think. For example: yeah, you know, being part of interracial couple is not as easy as you might think, even in California. Oh, and don’t even get me started on assumptions about Asian fetishes. Is it possible that someone might be interested in someone for who they are, not what they are? Yes, thank you, our children would be beautiful, but some bizarre breeding goal is not the reason we’re together. Oh, and where am I from? Uh, New York. No, you mean “originally?” Uh, the Bronx? Oh, I see, you weren’t looking for “New York” or anything else within the US or the Western Hemisphere for that matter as an answer. And no, I’m not Chinese or Japanese. You realize that there are other Asian countries out there, right? And no, I’m not the same person as my Asian female coworker. If you’re so politically correct and culturally sensitive, why can’t you tell us apart? And yes, I keep up with the news on North Korea, but no, I don’t have some special “inside information” nor am I responsible for what that crazy fuck is doing there. Or how about this one: “oh, well, you had help getting into Stanford because you’re Asian.” Yeah, because at nearly at 25% Asian American undergraduate enrollment, they’re really looking to accept more of us even if we’re unqualified. You know, because that’s how affirmative action works.

For many people, these anecdotes may not be very surprising and you’ll write them off as the everyday experiences of being a person of color in this country. But often, when I discuss it with people who have grown up or lived in California for a significant period of time, they are surprised and to some extent, don’t actually believe me. The even weirder part of this is that it’s not just white males that have this response– I often meet people of color here who have these reactions. Everyone seems so surprised that there is still intolerance in this world, or at least that there is still intolerance in California, this “great melting pot” of a state.

Then why is it that materials like these could be produced so high up in the 49ers organization– you’ll take six million dollars from a Chinese-American for your stadium, but you’ll turn around and portray an Asian man as buck-toothed and speaking in broken English (Breakfast at Tiffany’s, anyone?) in your media training tapes? Or two Asian police officers only have to pay a $250 fine after clubbing and pepper spraying a 59-year-old black man?

I don’t know if it’s just an overgrown sense of political correctness, but when faced with a racially-charged situation, I find people desperately trying to find some other explanation. Now, I hate it when people play the “race card” unnecessarily, diminishing the credibility of true accounts of racism and prejudice, but sometimes, when it’s staring at you in the face, you should call a spade a spade (no pun intended). To not do this, to not confront it is to say that these episodes aren’t important, to say that people’s feelings about these issues aren’t important. As human beings, we’re the same, but we’re also different: history has shown us that the fact that you’re white, he’s black, she’s brown, and I’m yellow surely affects the way we interact with each other, for better or worse. Saying that race or ethnicity doesn’t play a factor in certain situations when they clearly do or even saying that it is an issue, but that we should “rise above it” or “ignore it” or “not focus on that” only perpetuates the cycle of intolerance and feeds our complacency.

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2. Glamour shots

My friend Marina finally finished the lovely piece of artwork shown here in my own little private dining room exhibit. The photos don’t do it justice, especially since I’m using my simple point-and-shoot DiMage and I couldn’t get the lighting to quite work out the way it should. Nevertheless, to take a closer look, check out the closeups of the whole piece, the left-hand panel and the right-hand panel.

I was also pretty good at changing handwriting styles at the drop of a hat too– which made me pretty good at forging. And if you flipped through a notebook from my high school days, you could see the various handwriting styles I had adopted and tried out over the year.

Now, I barely write anything with a pen, outside of writing on a whiteboard (where I can still write neatly and clearly in slightly stylized all capital letters). I sit in front of one computer or another at least eight hours a day, usually more, and I can type God-knows-how-fast for God-knows-how-long even with highly manicured long fingernails. I’ve even passed the point where I’ve either adopted better typing practices or I’ve just gotten used to the repetitive stress. I can barely remember a time when I didn’t know how to type, using correct home keys and everything, just like I can barely remember a time before computers.

And now when I do need to write something, my hand cramps up and I painfully etch out chicken scratch on post-its, legal pads, and the like. I hate taking notes by hand. I don’t even like using a stylus– I prefer to type everything out, including on my Blackberry. The only thing I can still do effortlessly is sign my name.

This is our future.

This whiteboard sits on the first floor of one of our undergraduate libraries and serves mainly to separate the “Teamspace” from the rest of the first floor lobby area. Usually unused, some students (or one industrious student with too much time on his hands) decided to decorate. But alas, all good things must come to an end. (Check out the close-up.)

• security
• privacy (or no reasonable expectation of)
• DMCA
• file-sharing
• p2p
• copyright
• alleged
• infringement
• piracy
• subpoena
• liability
• indemnify
• rights (or lack thereof)
• wireless
• mobile
• virus
• exploit
• vulnerability
• compromise
• spyware

I’m not sure this is a good thing.

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Now, every asshole I’ve told that I got sick after donating blood has been saying, “Well, what did you expect?!” They throw up their arms and look at me like I’m crazy to have expected to give blood and not feel like shit for the past three days. Those who don’t donate blood regularly, they try to attribute a direct causal relationship. Well, I’ve been giving blood regularly for the past five or six years and this is the first time anything remotely bad has happened. And before I donated, the medical assistant noted that my temperature was a little high (but still within the acceptable range for donating) and my pulse was a little high. These are traditionally signs of some infection or dehydration, but since I felt fine, we went ahead with the donation. Unfortunately, for the past three days, my pulse has been racing, my blood pressure has been high, my head has been throbbing, and I’ve barely been able to keep anything down (I am a new fan of Pedialyte freezer pops). So, obviously, I was already sick when I walked into the blood center and donating exacerbated any preexisting condition, but it certainly didn’t cause the last three days of hell I’ve been going through.

In the end, I ended up getting more blood drawn to get some bloodwork done (I’ve got the needle marks in both arms to prove it) and although not conclusive, it looks like I was legitimately sick in some way. (And appropriately, they pulled the blood I donated in the end.) I’ve been on medication for the past three days and was basically sleeping on and off all day yesterday because of the medication and attempt to sleep off the sheer pain and nausea. I’m finally feeling better now, although I’m taking it slowly. I’m behind in so many ways and I feel like I’ve lost the past three days in a blurry, drug-filled haze. To be sure though, this doesn’t discourage me from donating blood in the future– and I hope it doesn’t discourage anyone else– because I know how important donating blood can be, especially for a universal donor like myself. I’ll just make sure that if I’ve got even the smallest sign of not being 100%, I’ll wait to donate another day.

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1. Save a life. Give blood.

In any case, I have my permissions back. As someone who does some system administration, I understand why they did it– the traffic was taking up something like 70% of the CPU. But obviously, it was a spam attack similar to a DoS attack, which can happen to anyone and wasn’t even necessarily a security foul-up. While I can close commenting (a drastic measure that I don’t really want to do, but will for now), really anybody could launch a similar DoS attack just by inundating your Web server. Hopefully, I’ll be able to turn commenting back on at some point. Once again, spammers ruining everybody else’s fun.

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2. clippy blog

In any case, that’s been part of my posting lameness. Another part is starting school and how my life has been consumed by work and school, but more on that later.

I wonder what happens when we pass away… I don’t mean if there’s a heaven or a hell or anything like that. I mean, right after we pass away. Do we look back at our earthly lives and the corporeal world behind us? As I get older, more people I know are starting to pass away, suddenly or after short or long illnesses. I always picture them watching over us, but I wonder if they really are. Is what waits for us in the afterlife so compelling that we can easily let go of what’s behind us? Part of me hopes that they won’t forget us, but part of me hopes that they do as they look forward to so much better before them.

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In any case, maybe I’ll change my mind, but for now, I’ll stick with random photos of stuff.

Photo of the sunset from my parents’ back porch in upstate NY.

So, after I almost had a nervous breakdown when they postponed the Information Security and Networking program until an undetermined date, I talked to the West Campus admissions folks, including the head of the Software Engineering program, and figured out what options I had left. Luckily, my acceptance to the SE program was still good back from last December (I can hardly believe it has been this long) and I was even eligible to go into the new Software Development and Management program, although for Fall 2005 (this program didn’t exist when I originally applied in Fall 2003). I will admit that even though I’m anxious to start my Masters program, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go into either one of these programs. At face value, software development/engineering programs are not exactly interchangeable with a program in information security and networking and like I said earlier, that’s a lot of time and money to waste on something I don’t necessarily want. But after speaking to the department and getting more information on the program, I realized that it might not be exactly what I wanted, but I can still make it what I want and need. The skill focus is a little different and the topic is a little broader, but I can certainly tailor my studies to focus on the desired areas, including my interest in information security and privacy as well as my desire to develop more management skills. And the folks in charge of the program were very helpful, encouraging me to start the program and letting me know that they would be happy to help me tailor the program to my needs.

As I’ve said before to others, after working for a university for a few years, I am more than aware that there is very little relationship between internal university operations and academic excellence. As prestigious as Stanford is, you’d be surprised how decentralized and disorganized we are when it comes to regular operations (although I will acknowledge that the undergraduate admissions process is very streamlined and conducted very well). Simply scheduling a classroom is a bureaucratic drama. So, even with the entire admissions ordeal, my confidence in CMU’s academic strength was still there. And after speaking to the folks I did at the West Campus, their helpfulness and willingness to come to the best solution as simply and quickly as possible was really what sold me. They were very understanding of my frustration, clearly expressed why attending the SE program would be beneficial to both CMU and myself, and that because of that, they were willing to be flexible and come up with the best solution for both policies. And now, I’m excited to start the program and feel like not only will I have a good experience and learn a lot, I am welcome to the program and that my contribution will be valued.

So, it looks like the drama has been resolved. I’m filling out the final paperwork, ordering books for the new semester, setting up my computer, and more. Finally!

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1. CMU, more debt, information security, and privacy

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1. The necessary disclaimer

Are you kidding me right now?

Tuition for the 2005 Spring semester is due on January 3rd and classes are scheduled to start on January 10th. (Most of this information I gathered by sifting through the INI Web site and the CMU West Web site as well as flat out asking inviduals running the program.) I got the bad news via email at 11:24 am today, December 20th. I suppose the only thing worse would have been to send me the bad news an early holiday gift decorated in CMU colors– seal it in an envelope, place the envelope in a huge gift box wrapped with luminescent cardinal wrapping paper, tie white and silver ribbons all around, and then send it out on Christmas Eve via first-class mail with no delivery confirmation and to the wrong address. That sounds about right, if you take into consideration how things have been going for over a year now.

Let’s go back to when my particular drama with CMU started. Now, for most people, when they hear “Carnegie Mellon,” they vaguely recognize that it’s a pretty good school somewhere among the mid-Atlantic states. Now, if you grew up on the East Coast (especially in or around the Tri-State area) or you’re into tech and/or are an engineer of sorts, you’ll know that Carnegie Mellon University is actually quite a prestigious university located in Pittsburgh (not Philadelphia), Pennsylvania and is ranked by US News and World Report as 22nd among national universities, following University of California – Berkeley (#21) and tying with University of Michigan – Ann Arbor and University of Virginina. And specifically, you’ll know that it’s one of the best engineering schools in the country– #9 among undergraduate engineering programs (at schools where the highest degree is a PhD), #11 among graduate schools of engineering.

I’ve always intended to pursue another degree, at first an MBA, but now more likely another degree in or related to computer science and engineering. But most programs like these are full-time and to be honest, I’m not really in the financial position to be going back to school and even if I did, the personal temperament to go through that. But last year, I found out about CMU’s West Campus, an example of a trend among many upper eschelon schools offering part-time, distance programs. I was glad to find out about this and hoped that this would be a great way to get my Masters degree while still continuing to work and live in the Bay Area. Additionally, by attending CMU, I could continue to be part of the tradition of academic excellence, especially in engineering, that I began with my undergraduate years at Stanford. So, over a year ago, last fall, I applied and was eventually accepted to the Masters program in Software Engineering (MSIT-SE). Unfortunately, the way the admissions schedule works there, I was basically told of my acceptance right about this time of year– a few days before Christmas. I had little time to apply for financial aid, do the paperwork for employer tuition reimbursement and more. So, I deferred until the following Summer or Fall semester, the next time a new cohort might be starting.

However, when I originally applied in the early fall of 2003, I was at the edge of my work as a software developer and my interest in it. Yes, I still do it and a fair amount of my day is still about writing and fixing plain old code. However, that fall was perhaps the last I would still be engaged in that work and thinking of it as part of my future– the focus of the world around me and as a result, my job, was quickly changing and both my interests and skills began to shift toward network management, information security, and privacy. Sure, my title is still “Systems Software Developer,” but a good chunk of that development is now directly related to investigating and developing host and network security tools. And a good chunk of my day now is spent working on relationships with networking, security, and legal departments and developing strategy, educational materials, and more related to networking and security. The change happened very quickly, but it’s a change I like, for the most part.

So, when the West Coast campus decided to start offering the Masters program in Information Security and Privacy (through the Information Networking Institute), I decided to apply. I figured, after reevaluating my education, recent work and career hopes, that this was the more appropriate program for me and even if I didn’t get in, I had the SE program in my back pocket. This was back in February 2004.

So I applied and didn’t hear anything back. In the meantime, I took the necessary steps to get ready for the MSIT-SE program– filling out a FAFSA, filling out the CMU financial aid application, applying for my staff tuition reimbursement program, etc. Summer semester neared and I still hadn’t heard back about the MSIT-ISP program. I was still holding out on it though, so I deferred again until Fall 2004. I followed up with the MSIT-ISP people, trying to find out what was going on, when they were sure they would start a cohort out here, but I got back very little. The only thing I heard back was that they would not be offering the MSIT-ISP program until January 2005. So, for the third and final time, I deferred my acceptance to the MSIT-SE program to January 2005.

Around September of this year, I saw that the application had changed for the MSIT-ISP program and that it was now being administered through Pittsburgh by the INI. I asked questions about the new application, wondering how previous applicants would be evaluated. I was told that I would not be penalized for having completed the earlier application, but if I really wanted to, I could fill out a new application. So, I went to take a look at the new application and saw that they were now requiring a GRE score (they had not previously). So, I told them that I would just stay with my old application since I had not taken the GRE. Unfortunately, they told me a GRE score is now required and that an email had gone out informing earlier applicants of this new requirement. When I said I had not received any email, a representative told me that many people seemed to have been saying that, leading her to believe that either emails sent out had bounced (and nothing was done to resolve the bounces) or the list passed on from the West Coast campus to them was incomplete. Utterly surprised by this, I asked if they even had my application– the answer, of course, was no. My application had been misfiled because I had been accepted to the earlier program and was never sent over with the other applications to the Pittsburgh campus. So basically, had I not prodded and asked repeatedly what was going on, I would never have known that they didn’t even have my application and that there was a new GRE requirement. This was almost at the end of September. I was told that I should get my GRE score in by the beginning of November, which left me about three weeks to study for, register for, and take the GRE. I have been out of college for over three years and have not taken a standardized test since high school.

And of course, I have been plagued with sickness and fatigue this whole fall/winter and although I studied and took the GRE in mid-October, I didn’t do as well as I think I could have. Anyone can have a bad testing day. But you can only sit for the test once a month, so I would have to wait another two to three weeks to sit for the test and hopefully do better. I was frustrated and felt like, maybe, it wasn’t in the stars that I attend this program. I was ready to withdraw my application and call it quits and although it wasn’t quite what I wanted, go ahead with the MSIT-SE program. But what happened? That day, I get an email saying, “Congratulations! You’ve been accepted to the MSIT-ISP program for January 2005!” Basically, they had decided that I was very qualified for the program based on my application from March and that I should be accepted to the program. I didn’t have to study for, pay for, or take the GRE, the first time or otherwise. So, I was out $200 (test fee, study books), a vacation day, and three weeks of standardized test cramming, but at least I had gotten into the graduate program I wanted. This was at the end of October.

So, a few weeks ago, I thought everything was settled. It took a few weeks to actually get my official acceptance letter (they kept saying they were re-writing drafts and then they sent it to my office instead of my home) and I quickly sent back my letter of acceptance of admission and graduate student information sheet. I eagerly waited to be entered into the system to finalize my financial aid– my FAFSA had been processed in April and I had already signed a promissory note for the loans– and send in my tuition reimbursement paperwork. I had notified my boss of my class schedule and that I would be leaving early twice a week. I had told my coworkers that I won’t be able to quite pull the sixty, eighty hour weeks anymore since I’m starting a part-time masters program. Hell, I even announced it on my blog. I started my vacation (most of Stanford is shut down for the Winter closure) and thought, by January, I’ll be refreshed and excited, ready to return to work and to start school.

Apparently, no go. There are other options being offered to me now, but I seriously don’t know what to do anymore. Today’s email “apologized for the inconvenience,” but I think canceling a Masters program three weeks before its supposed to start is a little more than an inconvenience. Yes, a full-time program is usually logistically much more complicated– you have to deal with relocation, much larger tuition and financial aid, etc.– but a part-time program involves a fair amount of logistics on the part of the student. We still have to figure out tuition and synchronize work and class schedules. For those with families, the time management problem only becomes more challenging. And changing Masters program isn’t like changing majors when you’re an undergraduate.

I’m tired, I’m frustrated and I feel like I’ve been jerked around for a year. I don’t want to spend time and money pursuing a Masters degree I’m not really that interested in anymore, but at the same time, I feel like I’ve jumped through a lot of hoops this past year to get here, only to feel like I’ve been screwed. And I don’t want to wait around to see if the MSIT-ISP will ever be offered out here or reapply to another program only to be screwed over again. Six months ago, I was seriously looking at changing jobs and moving in a new direction, maybe even to a new city. Two days ago, I turned down an interview offer. All of this because I had, in my mind, committed to continue working at Stanford for the next two years while I worked on my Masters degree. I’m only twenty-five years old, but for all the opportunity and time I have in the world, I had to start to do something, but when I did, the immediate future I had constructed for myself all just fell apart this morning. My level of disappointment right now is unbelievably high.

Content won’t change much. I just did’t want anyone thinking I put the disclaimer there just because I got in trouble or got scared. It’s more because of things like, after explicitly asking not to refer to my blog in an article for which I was being interviewed (explicitly agreed to as just a person, not an agent of the University), my blog still got linked to, the most potentially incendiary quote was taken out of the context of a very lengthy email and used, and the distinction between personal and professional was not made as clear as I would have liked since many people have enough trouble separating the personal from the professional. I don’t really blame the author of the article– it’s not really his job to protect me from the problems of “unsafe blogging,” but in any case, this disclaimer is my own preemptive change.

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Here’s a thing though– the program is in Information Security and Privacy. That’s right. Information Security AND Privacy. They go together. You can’t talk about one without the other. Maybe more people should remember that.

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clippy blog

Clippings from my blogroll if you’re curious to see what I find interesting off of my regular feeds.

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I’m no stranger to sickness, to disease. Throughout my life, I’ve seen close relatives struggle with cancer, diabetes, and general ill health, and certainly, I’m aware of my own mortality as I face the truth of genetics and heredity and must always be on guard for signs of diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, and breast cancer. So, it’s not really my own mortality that frightens me when I hear news of my friend’s stepfather passing away or another friend’s stepmother being diagnosed with lukemia or, today, my aunt passing away. It’s more the realization that the people that have been such a fixture in our lives may suddenly not be here anymore. Suddenly, it’s the realization that while we are young and energetic, afraid of nothing and living with the idea that it’s too early to get married, it’s too early to have kids, it’s too early to be tied down, that our parents and other older figures in our life, many of them are entering the winter of their lives and may not be around to see us do all the things we think we are too young to do yet. And while we may not always like them or enjoy their company or welcome their involvement in our lives, we suddenly realize that their heretofore constant presence may not be present someday anymore.

When we begin to see our contemporaries pass away, we are struck by the reality of our own mortality, but when we begin to see our elders pass away, we are struck with the reality of our own adulthood, of responsibility. That even if we don’t always like the role our elders play in our lives, they are a part of our lives, our history, and that when they are suddenly, or not so suddenly, taken away from us, we wonder if we said all the things we had to say, heard all the things we needed to hear, took care of all the things we needed to take care of. We come to the realization that we do not have an infinite amount of time to say all those things, hear all those things, and take care of all those things. We do not have forever to make peace with adversarial parents or give back to them in some meaningful way while they are still alive to appreciate it, for us to see them appreciate it, rather than when it is too late. And we are reminded that someday, perhaps sooner than we might like, we will be somebody’s parent or aunt or uncle and that we will not be somebody’s child forever.

As scary as a root canal sounds, it’s actually not that bad. Maybe it was because we caught this very early on (the x-ray didn’t even show anything wrong really), but the whole thing was over in like 20 minutes. I went in, the endodontist tapped around my tooth again and then before I knew it, he was breaking out the novacaine. You think he would have eased me into it, but 20 minutes (and $1200) later, I was off on my way home. I’ll admit that when I was younger, I didn’t really take care of my teeth and have had my fair share of cavities and subsequent fillings, so I still have this associated nervousness with dental procedures. But with all the cool things they have now– including the little cotton swab to apply topical anesthetic so you don’t even feel the needle go in– it’s all become a lot less painful. Modern medicine! (Granted that whole side of my mouth is sore now and it hurts to bite down on that side, but still.)

Weirdly enough though, I had to bring my x-ray along with my referral to the endodontist’s office. Between the dentist appointment and endodontist appointment, I stopped into work and we spent a few minutes peering at the x-ray with the help of my high-powered desk lamp, trying to make sense of it. And as part of my photo archiving project, I had this strange desire to scan it in and preserve it for all time. What is it about pictures of our insides that fascinate us so much?

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There are probably a whole handful of things I could do to try to fix it, but in an effort to find a quick solution, I threw money at the problem and went and bought a cheap replacement tower that was actually better than the old one. I figured I could just grab the data off of the old drive and then sell the parts from the original computer to make up most of the cost of the new computer. Ah, silly me. In the end, it was probably good that I bought the new computer because I can’t even get the new computer to see the main partition on the old drive, the partition filled with my old email, gigs and gigs of mp3 and video, photographs and more.

I’m still holding onto some hope that I might be able to grab some stuff off of the drive, but I’ve slowly started rebuilding my life. Thanks to things like Ofoto and Plaxo, I’m able to recover some stuff. But alas, I doubt I’ll be ever to recover over six years of collecting digital music. Especially since iTunes doesn’t have a data-in-the-sky model. Or just a download-as-many-times-as-you-need model. The record companies win again.

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• One way to remove the smoke smell from a fire-affected building is to put ozone machines around and let them run for 24 hours to deodorize the area. However, now, instead of smelling like smoke, the common areas of the building now smell like a dentist’s office– that weird bubble gum flouride scent. It gave me a headache just walking back and forth from the car to my apartment while I was moving back in. Maybe I would be less affected if I was a dentist.
• When they say you should properly defrost your fridge when turning it off for an extended period of time, they really mean it. Despite the apartment management company entering the apartment earlier this week to empty the fridge of perishable items (i.e., almost everything save a few bottles of champagne and some cans of Diet Coke), the fridge did suffer from the sudden lack of electricity for over a week. I had a fair amount of bagged ice in the freezer and that not just melted, but leaked down into the regular fridge section, leaving a nice little puddle to clean up under and in the crisper drawers. And, even if your fridge is pretty clean, there is invariably some food molecules and such that end up lingering on the shelf surfaces and if there’s no power and therefore no refrigeration, those tiny molecules will end up spoiling and necessitating some cleanup. That was fun.*
• Keep your sink clean of dirty dishes. There were only a few, but any lingering milk from your coffee or morning cereal will create a nice little petri dish surprise when you get back two weeks later. Yay for bleach and other harsh cleaning chemicals.
• Plants need to be watered regularly. Seriously. My several window boxes of pansies weren’t doing that great in the first place, but they seemed to have made it through the worst especially since it rained during the second week of my absence and they are out far enough on the balcony to actually catch some rain. However, I have two very sad, very dehydrated variegated ginger plants. But I think they’re resilient– they were once one medium-sized (but still expensive) plant that over the course of six months, grew big enough to become two large plants. They are as tall as me! Granted I am a small person, but if I were a house plant, I would be a relatively big one.
• Tivo is, in fact, one of the greatest things ever. When the power turned back on sometime late Tuesday, it just went back to doing it’s thing. So, when I returned, there was almost a week full of my favorite TV shows waiting for me, including new episodes of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and this week’s Law & Order SVU.
• Whatever time of day, wherever you are, there is always an episode of Law & Order on . This is something I realized not when I moved back home, but as I relocated around and didn’t have my hundreds of DirecTV channels. I think I may have watched more episodes of this show in the past two weeks than I have in all of the years prior. Between reruns on TBS, TNT and USA, this has got to be the most frequently run show in history. And I never get tired of it. I still watched three Tivo-ed episodes today when I returned home.

So, it was not the worst time of my life, but this was perhaps one of the most frustrating and unsettling two weeks of my life. I love to spend time in my apartment and I love to spend time alone. I have lived in this particular apartment for a year and a half now, but I have worked hard to make it exactly the way I want it, from decorating and redecorating to setting up all the little amenities that have become an integral part of my daily life and routine. And suddenly, when I was faced with the reality that I was not going to be able to live in that home I had created for an undetermined amount of time, a frustration, stress and sadness hung over my head constantly. Yes, I had somewhere to stay, complete with all the modern conveniences of life including cable TV and high-speed Internet, but it is difficult to go through every day without a place to call home, to call your own, to know where you are going to go at the end of the day and know that it isn’t just a temporary resting place. I felt always out of place with a forced loneliness and need. I felt unsafe. I know my brief experience does not even begin to compare to what actually homeless and disadvantaged people experience, but I have learned to truly appreciate my home even more after whatever slight taste of the experience I have had.

But now, I’m tucked back in my own bed with fresh sheets and my beloved comforter. And I’d just like to thank the manager and the staff at the Hilton Garden Inn (Mountain View) for being sympathetic and a great hotel staff and hotel in general. And thanks to my manicurist and friend for being sympathetic, for getting angry and worked up on my behalf, and for getting me the name of a personal injury lawyer just in case. And finally, thanks to my friend for letting me stay with him in his one-room palace when I didn’t want to stay in the other hotel they switched me to because I didn’t feel safe and for making me feel safe and at home.

* Did you ever notice that “fridge” is spelled with a “d,” but “refrigerator” (for which fridge is an abbreviation) and “refrigeration” are not? Ah, the eccentrities of the English language.

Related posts:

1. Another amusing waste of time using the Internet

Despite the fire being out and the damage being seemingly contained, we’re still not allowed into the building because of the danger of asbestos. However, the firemen were nice enough to put on a whole lot of gear and go into the apartments to retrieve essential items so that we can get through the next couple of days (the price you pay for a fire breaking out on a three-day weekend). I made out my little list with all of the things I would like to have for the next few days, but then I prioritized and marked the items the fireman should actually bother with. Realistically, it would be easier for me to go and buy clothes than having a very large fireman searching through my underwear drawer for matching bras and panties. However, he did make a brave effort anyway to get some clothes and in the end, here is just a sampling of the weird items I have with me:

• My (work) laptop
• My briefcase with all important office keys, my new digital camera, and the bottle of nail polish from my last manicure (for convenient touch-ups)
• Some clothes, including a not very useful assortment of underwear and a velour jacket I threw on when the fireman (woman, actually) was practically beating down my door to evacuate the building
• Contact lenses plus related accessories as well as backup glasses
• Almost the entire line of Dermalogica products that I had in my bathroom plus random hair care products that were with them
• Disc 1 of the West Wing first season DVD set (happened to be in my laptop)
• My (khaki) Coach purse
• My watch
• Random CDs in my car that I never listen to because I usually listen to my iPod
• My wallet and my Blackberry, both of which I grabbed when evacuating the building
• The plastic laundry basket all of this was carried down in

What I would also like to have (and would have gotten if allowed to get my stuff myself):

• My iPod
• My Blackberry charger
• All of my clothes and shoes
• My Tivo (I still haven’t watched the newest ER and I am almost physically incapable of watching live TV)
• My brand new Tiffany Elsa Peretti necklace and my custom made ID necklace
• My silver hoop earrings that I wear almost everyday in four of my five ear piercings
• Some real luggage to put everything in

And while all of this is going on, one of my best friends is in the hospital with appendicitis! And here I thought it was going to be a quiet weekend.

And in some ways, breasts really are silly. In this modern day of baby formula and bottles and plastic nipples, breasts are, for the most part, non-essential and most of the time, non-functional. If anything, society places an unwarranted value on breast size and beauty, encouraging both men and women to judge women (and the men they are associated with) by them and women to place their own self-esteem in them. They are, at the end of the day, purely cosmetic and yet, a woman’s breasts hold an incredible place in her definition of who she is and how she carries herself, whether consciously or subconsciously. And perhaps this is why the threat of breast cancer haunts us. While there are countless life-threatening diseases that affect both men and women, including breast cancer, the effect of breast cancer on women is such a peculiar phenomenon because of the special relationship women have with their own breasts. In America, a woman dies of breast cancer every twelve minutes– a tragedy that we must work and fight against because everyday, more and more women experience the shock of finding that first lump or the anxiety of having a biopsy or the pain of hearing an unfortunate diagnosis. Everyday, how many women are faced with the loss of one or both of their breasts?

Men have no real counterpart through which they may understand this phenomenon– this phenomenon of a cosmetic loss that can be so life-changing. Yes, men can and do contract breast cancer as well, but even after a mastectomy, the change is not nearly as pronounced as for women and a man’s breasts do not hold nearly as dear a place for a man as they do for women. And so, once again, we are reminded that men and women are equal, but still different.

Outside of the threat to our actual lives, when we are faced with breast cancer and the prospect of losing one or both breasts, we are faced with a greater loss than just to our physical appearance. Even if a woman was to opt for reconstructive surgery after a mastectomy and thus, not be faced with a significant change in physical appearance, the loss of one or both breasts is a deeply personal and psychologically traumatizing experience. It is the loss of a part of ourselves that has shaped how others have looked at us and how we have looked at ourselves and how we have defined ourselves, even if it is just to say that my body looks like this and this is how my body moves and this is how I move in my body and when you look at me, you see this. Suddenly, we are different and it doesn’t not affect us in the same way that losing a functional part of us would– if we were to lose a limb or a sense– but it does affect us deeply and truly.

1. Slept in. Although I did have a dream about work.
2. Caught up with my TiVo.
3. Cleaned my house.
4. Agonized over my yet unshipped eBay purchase.
5. Got my nails done. (Current nail color: Cognac by Essie.)
6. Gave in to my temptation to check my work email. 91 messages. Scary.
7. Bought and installed a new 160 GB hard drive, although the partitions are all messed up because of the 137 GB confusion.
8. Picked up some shampoo finally.
9. Had some milk tea and Q-Pop chicken. Yum.

The last two done while dodging a strange drunk guy in downtown (and being mistaken for being with him/his friend). All in all, a surprisingly productive day for a vacation day. On the agenda for tomorrow: sleep.

I don’t know who does the graphics for Google, but they have the cutest holiday graphics on their search page. This year’s Halloween one is particularly cute. ]]> http://sindylee.com/2003/10/31/happy-halloween/feed/ 0 http://sindylee.com/2003/10/30/youre-never-alone/ http://sindylee.com/2003/10/30/youre-never-alone/#comments Thu, 30 Oct 2003 18:48:50 +0000 sindy http://www.sindylee.com/?p=39 It’s pretty messed up when your boss basically tells you that you are working too much and tells you to go take some time off. In fact, he doesn’t even consider it “vacation.” He’s just sending you on a really long break.

It’s also pretty messed up when you go to the dentist and he tells you:

1. There’s nothing wrong with your tooth. You just need to stop grinding your teeth and clenching your jaw. Relax.
2. Get some sleep. Your geographic tongue is out of control.

Everyone pretty much knows that work seriously took over my life the past few months and not in a “I’m really excited about my job and I’ve got lots of projects I want to work on” kind of way. And of course even after I’ve finally come to admit that I am seriously burnt out, looking at my calendar, I can hardly find time to take two days off before Thanksgiving, which will be a whole other stress-fest unto itself. And even if I did take a four-day weekend, I can hardly think of anything that I’d like to do or anywhere I’d want to go (that wasn’t completely expensive and far away). At this point, I’m pretty much looking at sleeping like 16 hours a day, watching TV and sitting around in my underwear. While a good plan, the problem with it is that it means I’m at home with a high-speed Internet connection and my computers. Which means I’ll probably end up checking work email which means I’ll end up thinking about work which means I’ll end up doing work at some point during my prescribed time away from work.

You would think the solution to this would be to leave my house and to leave my computer behind. Oh, but I’ll have my Blackberry wherever I’ll go. Doh. I guess that was the whole point of getting that right? Have email with me wherever I go? And yes, you’re probably saying “Well, leave the Blackberry at home.” Ah, but my obsessive-compulsive need to always have a phone with me and always be reachable in some way will never let me do that.

I think I just need to let go.

I realize that I really do like living in the Bay Area. It’s got great weather (sunny and clear without being too humid or hot), great beaches just a short drive away and city life in all different flavors with San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose. It’s a great place to be when you’re in your twenties and looking to just live your life.

I’ve always felt out of place for most of my life, but here, you can be anyone you want to be– especially yourself. Yes, Palo Alto, or “Shallow Alto” as we sometimes like to call it, and the rest of the Peninsula can be tiring sometimes, but when I came to California for college on a fluke, I didn’t realize how much I’d like it and how I’d grow and learn from it. The large acceptance of gay culture and alternative lifestyles is a testament to the attitude and atmosphere of the Bay Area and while I sometimes find the granola, liberal outlook a little annoying (having grown up around New York City my entire life), I have to appreciate how it’s a great place to just be yourself, whether you’re a geeky programmer, a flaming drag queen, or a hemp-wearing hippie.

For me, getting started with a new book is a lot like that. I usually enjoy most books I decide to read, but it takes a little while– I have to get into the groove of the author’s writing style, I need to learn the characters, the world in which the book takes place. Sometimes it’s a little uncomfortable and sometimes I’m a little impatient. Sometimes, I’m so impatient that I end up forever trying to read a book only to find myself stuck trying to get past those first few chapters. And I don’t even think it’s the fault of the writer– it’s just my own version of ADD perhaps. That’s why I often find myself opting to start books on planes because I have nothing else to do except focus on reading. And suddenly, like taking off on that rollercoaster, I’m completely immersed in the world I’m reading about– picturing the characters live and in color in my mind’s eye, seeing what they see, feeling what they feel. And when it’s a really good book, I don’t want to come up. I want to live in that world forever, explore it until I feel like I’ve completely internalized it and have lived the story myself. When the story’s over and I finally come up, I’m almost exhausted. I feel like I’ve lived a thousand lifetimes through that story and have, of course, been changed by the experience.

This is what a good piece of fiction means to me. It touches some part of me, is somehow relevant to me, some deep experience and emotion inside of me that I feel like the author’s talking about someone like me, that I’m not completely alone and someone else has experienced the same types of things I have, had the same thoughts I have, felt the same emotions I have. Even if in a completely different way from me and my world. Even if the fiction is completely fantastical, perhaps especially when completely fantastical, I’m completely drawn in because I can escape reality for just a moment, but at the same time, experience it even more fully through the window of fiction. Good fiction provides catharsis, perspective, education, growth. It enables us to sympathize with and understand the villain, to criticize and understand the hero. It brings light to the gray areas of life, the grayed-out areas of life and to learn about ourselves as well as “the other.”

And that’s why I’m fascinated by people who don’t read fiction or who don’t read at all. Because of the rush I get from reading a great novel, because of the things I learn and the emotions I experience just from reading a story, I thirst for books with great characters and gripping storylines set in a world that completely envelopes you. And while I love movies for a lot of the same reasons, books are such a deeper experience. Everyone brings their own unique experiences, who they are, to the table and the internal reading voice and the mental images created are different for each person, each time they read a piece of fiction. The result is a much richer, much more personal, much more intimate experience that can become it’s own thrilling addiction.

It seems too good to be true. We’ll find out if it is.

I only finally sacked up and started my own blog though when I was talking about it with my boss and he suggested we use a blog to track how students use wireless in the dorms that are participating in our new wireless project. So, we installed Movable Type on our server and tried it out. Very cool piece of free software that is pretty easy to setup and configure.

So, since we were at it, we decided it would be a cool service to offer to our student employees for their dorm Web sites and personal sites as well. Blogs have been a pretty popular thing on the Web for a while and thought it would be a cool service to offer to our students. They wouldn’t have to worry about setting up the Perl app themselves– they could just take advantage of the work we did! Sure, there are sites on the Web that also offer blog services, like Blogger, but from my experience, they don’t always work the way you want them to and it’s nice to have software running on your own server. We even one-upped the larger IT organization by setting it up and offering it to our students first.

Of course, when I presented it at one of the student meetings, most of them did even know what a blog was! And when I explained what it was and how people use it on their personal Web sites and how it could possibly be used in a dorm setting, they were not impressed. They just said, “But why would somebody want to do that?”

Of course, why would somebody want to watch a bunch of people they don’t know doing nothing through a Web cam? Who knows, but it happens. A lot.

So, not everyone sees the beauty of the blog, but hey, I find it entertaining. And if you’re reading this, so must you. At least a little bit.