all i can say about certain events through this medium is that things continue to go extremely well.

anyway, i know that i haven't been posting a whole lot lately. it's been a work hard/play hard week, which is actually quite a typical week all in all. we are all going to a special screening of AI tomorrow night on the westside. and of course tomorrow will be another long day.

one thing that i will say, however, before i sign off is that it seems that i may be on my way to ending what i need to end. perhaps i'm finally beginning to break free of the pattern.

well, people and places aren't always what they seem...and i don't mean that in a bad way. seattle's seemed more like a home than any other place in recent memory has seemed. and the people constantly surprise me. especially today.

one word: brazen.

am i really?

ok, i'm still trying to catch up on my email.

big weekend. last night i went with a few people to the i-spy where six parts seven, poor rich ones, and carissa's wierd were playing. so we were all out WAY too late but at least the 520 bridge wasn't backed up on the way back to the eastside. today, however, was a much different story. the westside was totally jammed due to the pride parade and i had to circle for a half hour before finding parking so that i could meet up with a friend and head down to the market. so after wandering around the market and checking out the aquarium (don't bother), we saw anniversary party. wow...that's a MUST see and i am not kidding. go SEE it. NOW.

and if you haven't yet realized the brilliance of ok computer, give it a whirl in your cd player. great, great stuff. sure, it's been out for a few years but i listened to it again the other day and remembered how truely great it was.

on my way to work (i know...) but i thought that i would say that they have plenty of festivals out this way, such as this river days festival next month in renton.

ok, three things for tonight...

first, you have all heard all your base are belong to us ad nauseum by now (right??? please don't tell me that you have no idea what i am talking about). so anyway, i was thinking earlier -- i mean really, really thinking about this -- that the line that i like the best is "you have no chance to survive make your time." it's much more cool.

second, have you seen those new "got chocolate milk" ads? brilliant. i love those bad ass little kids making chocolate milk. sure, i'll be ranting about how sick i am of the ads in no time. but for right now they get two thumbs up. in a related note, we drink a TON of chocolate milk at work.

finally, i was watching one of those half hour stand up comedy routines on comedy central earlier this evening and there was a mention of friday night videos. remember that show?? apparently it went off the air in 1991 (at least in it's original format) but i had stopped watching it right before i left for undergrad (when i finally had cable for the first time!!). that show was kick ass. and yeah, what the fuck was up with the name FRIDAY night videos? the damn show came on in the wee hours of saturday morning.

ok, wait...one more thing...while i am remembering the "no cable" years, any washingtonians remember super tv (early 80s...a.k.a. the betamax years)?? the same signal is now the WB channel from baltimore. so anyway, i'm looking for a link to some nostalgic recollections about the station and i run into this link. what the hell is that? channel listings from 1994 and back? people put anything on the web...even blogs like this. ;)

ok, the battlebots exhibition was lame but hell...beer and sunshine so how can anyone complain? and after all...it's not that anyone's ass is sitting in a bowl of jello, it's that they have...ok...sorry...inside joke. if you want the whole story, then you'll have to email me on that one.

the weekend is gearing up...tomorrow we have a battlebots exhibition in the parking lot outside of my building, which will truely be a beer and lawnchairs moment.

my fucking email has been totally screwed up for two days...i finally got some direction from campus that allowed me to straighten that out. unfortunately now i have about 800,000 emails so i am completely buried under it right now. patience.

check out indiebride, "...a place for would-be brides who have more on their minds than planning a reception, women who never for a second believed in prince charming and who have not, despite all of the cultural cues, been breathlessly awaiting their wedding day for their whole life." right on. reclaiming and reinventing the fairy tale! there's a great article about being single at a wedding shower. i've gotta say...been there, done that!

i just remembered wearing black to laura's wedding (ok...i was one of the musicians), therefore serving as the wedding's anti-bride. someone had to do it, right?

...if you want the fairy tale, you have to end it... (english)

...si usted desea el cuento de hadas, usted tiene que terminarlo... (spanish)

...si vous voulez le conte de fées, vous devez le terminer... (french)

...wenn sie die fairy geschichte wünschen, müssen sie es beenden... (german)

...se desiderate il racconto fairy, dovete concluderli... (italian)

god i love babelfish. probably the most fun is translating their translations back to english. for instance, their translation of my fairy tale line into italian is "se desiderate il racconto fairy, dovete concluderli." if i translate the italian phrase back into english, i now have "if wished the story fairy, you must concluderli." concluderli? from the german? "if they require fairy history, they must terminate it." wow...sounds harsh! french was pretty close with "if you want the fairy tale, you must it finish." spanish wasn't far off either with "if you wish the fairy tale, you must finish it."

can you believe it? mcfalafel in egyptian mcdonald's. why the hell don't we have those here? speaking of...why the hell don't we have any middle eastern restaurants in this town? we have about 4 billion teriyaki restaurants per block but not much else...then again, that's the eastside for you. the westside is decidedly more diverse.

hmm...you know, you really should make sure that you include some context when you send a link to a satirical article or you may be misunderstood. yep, the mistake came from me this time. i forwarded an article that was a satire on efforts to market games to women that was trying to make the point that our efforts to cluster gender differences into "all girls like..." and "all boys like..." is overly simplistic. anyway, the article was a pretty outrageous satire and i forwarded it without including some context other than "this is an interesting satire." soooooo...i ruffled a few feathers with that one. hopefully i've cleared things up a bit. i was really only trying to show the diversity of approaches that online gamer sites have applied to the "games for girls" question...only i forgot to add that part.

anyway, it's interesting what a dangerous issue that gender is at work. i guess it stems largely from the fact that it *is* a male dominated field. according to a recent survey by the IGDA, women represent only 6% of the industry...and that included the marketing divisions, which have much higher numbers of women in them. i suspect that the percentage is really closer to about 3% when you remove marketing from the picture. just my thought anyway...

ok...for some reason my uiuc email inbox is appearing as a message within telnet...this is the second time in a week that this has happened. this must be the same voodoo magic that had me fighting with our survey software at work all day.

i am in control of my destiny.

i am empowered.

ok, forgive me...i am losing it!

read the latest review that tells all about why we're gonna win the console race! your eternal soul is at stake here!

ok...this can't be true, right? it's like tarzan...only with dogs...and in chile...

keep us bloggers in business...help blogger win a webby award! vote for blogger in the "personal site" category! vote now, now, NOW!

thank god this guy was found guilty. it makes me sick just to think about it...like that story about those kids in iowa that killed all those cats at an animal shelter a few years back...what the hell is going through people's minds?

ever wonder what happens to old loves? i mean the ones that ended years and years ago in the most painful ways. there's that excruciating period of time after you first break up when you see them all the time or your friends report back news to you. and part of you hopes that at least one single day will pass when someone doesn't mention them or that something doesn't remind you of them. and part of you just refuses to let go and keeps some glimmer of hope alive that maybe they will change their minds if only your heart remains true to them. you replay and replay and replay the end, thinking that maybe you could have done something different, said something different...been someone different. then you move backwards in the relationship...remembering the time before the end, remembering the time before the hatred. you keep moving backwards...remembering, reliving...forgetting. and then you realize that you have been moving forward despite all your best efforts. and you no longer hope to rejoin the path not taken and instead hope to find a path not yet discovered.

you have to end it...

wow...where has the summer gone? how do i only have six weeks left out here? do i really have to go back?

at lunch today we were talking about writers. so i was telling people that i have been wanting to write a book for years and how i just need to just set aside time and just write. of course several others brought up the state of their unfinished dissertations, thinking that what i was talking about was the same thing. i couldn't get anyone back on track enough to get them to understand that i was talking about writing a NOVEL not just a dissertation (which in some circles could be the same thing...). mine certainly will be a great work of fiction...

we get to keep our name...we had totally forgotten about that. i bet our marketing and legal people didn't though.

god...i can't even fathom how some things come to pass. apparently the media has picked up on a certain piece of (vi-)shit from illinois that i think that several of you know about. could someone please tell me why this is??? do they really think that this is a UI that people WANT? what i can't believe is why headline news picked it up. must be a slow news...CENTURY.

here's a great article on weblogs in case you are interested in reading more about why so many of us post so much online...

my back is up to its usual tricks again. god...i don't want to do physical therapy again. what a drag that was. i went hiking with laura and a few others from you know what company! it was interesting hearing the differences between divisions and how unique my division really is. i'm meeting a few people from the research division on tuesday because they want to talk to me about my dissertation research. so that should be interesting...

anyway, i forgot to mention that after the film festival last night i went out to eat at this place called "flowers" in the u district -- the "campustown" of the university of washington. actually, to say that it was anywhere close to the campustown at illinois doesn't do the u district justice. the u district is much more hip...but then again seattle is an actual city unlike chambana.

well, i finally caught a few films at the end of the seattle film festival. i saw the irish film disco pigs and the thai film tears of the black tiger. of the two, disco pigs was my favorite. it was interesting listening to the director, why she took on this project (which was a popular play) and what the film meant to her. she said that a lot of her interest in the film was that it centered around the issue of how girls often have no choice in their destiny and how the female lead has the chance to make choices...not knowing what choices to make but at least she finally has the change to choose. at first i was like "what?" but then thinking back on the film, yeah, i can see what she means. hopefully you can all see it at some point. it was really quite powerful and the music was amazingly haunting.

as for tears of the black tiger...it was interesting. miramax has picked it up and has a load of changes to make in it. and that's probably good...it was a bit too long and they should have left some things out to add to the element of surprise. very interesting art direction though...it was like a black and white film that had been oversaturated in color in very unusual ways. the film on a whole had an "old western meets thailand" theme. whatever that means!!

so i stayed on the east side tonight. i was just too tired to do anything else and everyone at work seemed to be in the same mode today. it was pretty much a worthless friday. i think that it's post-e3 depression or something. who knows? going to bed now...too tired to write anything else.

guess what? i pinched a nerve in my back again. i hate that...the same thing happened last summer too. fucking technology. anyway, am finally watching requiem for a dream. damn...depressing and extremely difficult to watch. without a doubt it's in the same category as dancer in the dark, only requiem is much more relentless. the kronos quartet did a great job with the soundtrack too.

woo hoo! i have my first official product now!

anyway, it's super late but i have to read through a report. maybe i'll just do it tomorrow morning. blech. yes, it's that time of the month. are you sick of hearing about it? i'm sick of DEALING with it! :)

star wars...nothing but star wars...

just got back from seeing the blake babies in seattle. remembering chapel hill and cat's cradle back when juliana had her solo career, road tripping and crashing at the mammoth records party, the hard floors, and those donuts that we never did get. not quite like this summer but not without similarities.

the 520 bridge sucks. another hour spent on the bridge as they *inspected* it at 1:05 am. lots of people walking around, unsure of exactly what to do as we just waited.

happy birthday, nerd! um...jerry? what the hell are those plastic things around everyone's neck?

does anyone remember that show vegetable soup? it seems like it was pretty much an exclusively an east coast thing...but feel free to refute. i haven't yet found anyone from outside new york or dc who has even heard of it. the thing that i didn't realize about the show? two of the character voices were done by bette midler and james earl jones. anyway, if you never saw it...it was pretty much a super "must see" show. it was a much more urban and hip sesame street. and much, much darker. what other show could be described on the yesterdayland message boards as invoking a "sickening fear yet love for the show?"

good times.

want to see what we are up to? check out our ULTRA SECRET active death (tm) technology. shhhhhh...

before i forget, i saw moulin rouge today. i really liked it. you kind of have to check your sense of reality at the door in order to fully appreciate everything that the film is...it's worth it though. it's a gorgeous film.

every go to the movies by yourself? i highly recommend it. it's like going to a restaurant alone. there's a sense of boldness about it. yeah, you could look at it as pathetic but i think it's a good idea to do. people shouldn't be afraid of doing things by themselves. if you want to do something? do it. life is way too short to let it pass by because you were too afraid to go through it alone.

and speaking of being an easterner...i forget how sometimes my mouth runs away with me. apparently i called someone an asshole the other night but they didn't get that i was joking. yeah, ok...why on earth would i call anyone an asshole as a joke? regardless, i did...and they thought that i was serious. what's wrong with me? why do i put on this tough exterior? to avoid being seen as weak? to avoid letting anyone close? to avoid the inevitable pain? tell me what i have to end...

here's a tip for all you east coasters transplanted to the pacific northwest: when you see a pizza place advertising new york style pizza in the greater seattle area, run far away. the same, i imagine, would apply to chicago-style pizza but you know that i don't eat that "rock in the stomach for 2 days/heart attack on a plate" stuff so what do i know?

i ran across an old favorite web site...the thumbs up around the world project. this was around the time that i was trying to get my web page at tech listed in useless web pages.

have you been watching all the mcveigh stuff today? just a few more hours now. it was interesting hearing the pre-execution interviews with the victim's families...all the reasons for being for and against the execution. i've said it before, but i truely think that we can believe what we want about the big moral issues like the death penalty, abortion, right to die...but we will never really know what our real stance is until we are faced with the awful reality of such issues. the families of the bombing victims and the family of mcveigh know.

be careful what you want...interesting article about my fav composer, philip glass. happy, happy, happy...

apparently we had an earthquake sunday morning at 6:19 am. you know...i *did* wake up sometime in the six zone but didn't know what was up with that. now i guess i do. it wasn't a big quake but it was a 5.0 (the one in february was 6.8) and it's not an aftershock either...totally independent. freaky. remember that one in reno? it was so lightweight but it did knock out the lights in my building. i note that it did NOT knock out the power to the casinos...they have generators that could keep california in business for decades...

in my cd player now? girls can tell by spoon. it's one of those rare albums that you can listen to from beginning to end, a totally well put together collection...unlike most cds these days where maybe one tune is decent and the rest stink up the joint at unbelievable levels.

who exactly were the critics who acclaimed that's my bush according to the ads on comedy central?

just wondering...

this cd is quite possibly one of the weirdest things that i have seen. i'm thinking about getting it to add to my collection of ridiculous cds, which includes classics like hooked on classics (the first edition only...not as good as the original vinyl but what can you do?), transformed man, spaced out, music from outer space, stairways to heaven, and if i were a carpenter. i need to get in a metal mood and the annoying music show cd too. i don't know why i don't have them already.

i'm completely exhausted right now. yeah, it's getting close to that time of the month again. i should go to the gym but i just feel like vegging out today. am watching less than zero on the tv now and remembering how i can never decide if ellis is a genius or not. today i'm feeling that he is. the critics really hate him ("a literary poseur"). i think he's a love/hate author. i don't think that you can be in between when it comes to ellis. he's on the extreme and so are people's feelings about him. it *is* really interesting that robert downey jr, who plays julian in the movie, has lived a life that mirrors the book/movie. art imitating life or life imitating art? it's a chicken and the egg argument.

maybe i'll go to barnes and noble now...look for something to read.

computer games for cats...cool.

i've made it onto a weblog portal so it seems like i should go through this thing this weekend. brigitte talks about the censoring of weblogs while telling her own story about taking a break from work. i seem to know a lot of people who have been taking work breaks lately.

i haven't decided exactly what to change about this or how to go about it so it's staying as is for the moment.

just got back from seattle (if you are wondering what that means...i live in redmond, which on the other side of lake washington). it's only about 15-20 minutes to downtown though, provided that there's not a lot of crazy traffic on the 520 bridge. like tonight. on the way home at 2am, i got stuck on the bridge for 45 minutes and it took me an hour to get home. frickin' annoying.

seattle's a strange city. there are just a ton of homeless and the number of teenage runaways is extremely high. i wonder how seattle got to this point. i hear portland is a lot of the same. i thought that it would be a good idea to go out a blow off a bit of steam after the stress of the day but i think that it only ended up making me feel a bit lonely. i miss everyone. i'm constantly wondering what you would think of the place.

well...it's come to my attention that i should do a bit of editing on this thing and do a better job to disguise a few things here and there...such as where i work, what i do, and other identifying features that could get me into a load of trouble. unfortunately, the search engines have finally picked up on this and it's been cached so it's a bit too late to do some major revocation but regardless i will have to do some editing this weekend. yeah, i don't nearly put everything that's going on in this thing...not even close. but i have been putting enough here that it could cause some problems and so i have had to reconsider my approach. and, no, this hasn't been prompted by any incident...just some gentle suggestions by a few friends. i'm not sure how much i'll go back and actually edit though. probably not enough for me to get a new job at the ministry of truth but enough.

2+2=5

oooohhhh...the stranger...

so anyway...remember how carl used to hate when people would say "so anyway..."? so anyway...one of the guys burst into my office this morning and said "did you grow up with a brother?" um, yeah. so then he says "good, because we were saying that if you didn't then you would probably be thinking we were psycho by now." well, now what does that have to do with anything? do they act like a brother would? sure. do i think that they are psycho? sure. are these the same thing? not necessarily...

and for the nostalgia lovers out there, my real brother (not my gang of work brothers) sends along a link to yesterdayland dedicated to all things related to "the childhood experience of the 20th century."

still at work...am trying to get things settled with this study but it's fucking huge already. the best news of the day was when i beat a few people at doa 2. whoo hoo! victory dance!

am dragging a bit today though. i guess it's the crazy schedule...i have so much going on right now. it's funny how quickly you can forget the way life was back in chambana. there are the pros and cons of that, of course. more pros than cons, though. the pros especially being the fact that you start to forget all the depression. some people say that seattle brings out depression. no...that would be champaign-urbana.

well, it's always interesting when you get situated and start figuring out where the alliances are. wait...what the fuck am i talking about? is work like survivor? well, maybe. but i hope that no one's getting kicked off the island. anyway, what i meant was it's always interesting when you figure out who you are the most comfortable with at work, who you click with.

but anyway, a certain very argumentative person in my life right now has been becoming more and more annoying by the minute. take tonight's phone conversation. i was getting ready to call back my brother when the phone rings. guess who? yeah, it was sleepless. for some reason he has to frickin' talk to me. not knowing hat the hell to say to him, i mention a lunch time conversation that took place today where this one guy caught me saying that i didn't like team games like soccer. well, i'm on his team for UT. so he says "that's IT -- you don't play ANY team games...that explains it!" so after telling sleepless this, he says "yeah, but you played in bands and such where you competed as a sort of team." so i said, yeah but that was different, that's a TURN-based game. so he says that i just committed a beer foul for talking about work outside of work. well, what the fuck? i am out here to get immersed in this whole world, right? so i referred to music competitions as turn-based...they are! last time i checked, there weren't a lot of head-to-head marching band X-TREME competitions. although that would be kind of cool, wouldn't it? the closest that i think i've seen is that scene in xanadu where the swing band and the *rock* band converge. damn. where the hell did that reference come from?

keep me suspended in time with you...

what's your nerd sign? i'm the slide rule.

news flash: microsoft employee actually a nice guy. and if you are so inclined...check out your geek horoscope for the week. even the sports info is hilarious on bbspot, particularly this bit on chris weinke heading for the little league.

i was laughing earlier tonight because my study participant just didn't want to leave. and i was remembering jesse's story about how people do exchange pleasantries in nyc but that they don't really expect you to continue the conversation past that. so there i was telling the guy "have a nice evening." and then the guy would say some more. so i would say more forcefully "have a NICE evening." and then the guy would say some more again. so there i was at the door practically shouting "i said 'HAVE A NICE EVENING!' what the fuck don't you understand about that?"

all i know is that i hope that we do get some people together to go see a band or so this weekend and/or hang out at the cha cha lounge in capitol hill. and remember: just because one guy is wearing a dirty white bodysuit with 6 foot long claws for nails, doesn't mean that reflects all of america. btw, check out one of my new favorite sites: seattle stories -- are we characters in seattle's story or is seattle a character in ours? it's part of the city stories network. so...am i fleeing something or looking for something?

god...i did clean out my fridge before i left didn't i? i mean i *did* throw out the things that would be extremely scary to discover when i get back to chambana, right?? this is like an even more freaky version of the "i did turn off the coffeepot, right?" scenario. i *did* turn off the coffeepot, too, right?

it's june and i have the heat on.

btw, congrats to cece for successfully defending her prelim! wish i could be there for the official k.a.c. super blowout bash festival!

from psych central...more on the kaycee hoax! god, i can't get enough of this!

just got back from work. i got my tapes transcribed for the project that dan and i are working on so i'll be able to spend at least some of tomorrow on my work. thank god. but speaking of work...here's something for the GEO fans out there: read all about the strike by your counterparts at the university of washington and the aftermath. then if you can't get enough, you can read the editorial that talks about how union's alliance with the united auto workers may make things even more sucky than before. i'm sorry but my opinion still stands on the ridiculousness of the alliance with labor unions...as if our situation even begins to compare.

you know...you can't call yourself a gossip if you can't gossip about people you don't know. here's the situation: i was talking to someone who *says* that they are a gossip and explaining the situation from last night. and they were like "big deal -- i don't know who you are talking about" and that wasn't the point. the point was the thrill of the story, the thrill of the situation that lets us talk about the situation in general. surely this person had something to add from other scenarios of people that they did know, right? you don't have to know the people in question to know people like the people or to recognize some part of yourself in the story. and that's the main point of gossip anyway...or at least i think it is. it's all about the human condition -- what would we do or what have we done in that situation and how does that compare to what other people have done and what can we learn from what other people have done. it's social benchmarking if you want a term for it. yuck...that's a shitty term. let me re-think that one a bit...

i am sooo exhausted...i have been doing double time set up crap all week and today was the worst of all. at least i'm getting better at unreal. still, someone had to blast my performance on it afterward. i think that he was just mad that i killed him. hehe.