My Web Journal

1:52pm: So I ordered a card
I ordered an Xbox Live Points Card, which looks like this:



This is what arrived at my desk:



And this is the sum total of the contents:



In the end, all I wanted was the 25 digit number on the card so I can add the digital points to my account. I could have ordered digitally, but for some reason a digital order was $10 more expensive than having this monstrosity shipped to me. Maybe we can compromise with an email?

9:58pm: It's a small world
Back when I was applying to grad schools at Hope, I read an article titled "So You Want to Go to Grad School?" by Thomas H. Benton. I didnt' think too much of it at the time, except that I had heard similar words from other professors, particularly one English prof. Today, I read Mr. Benton's newest article, which again reminded me of a certain English professor at Hope. Imagine my surprise when I reached the footnote at the end of the article. I suppose that when you combine academia and west Michigan, it really is a small world.

10:32am: Virtual walk through Hope
Thanks to the magic of Google Streetview, anyone can visit exciting places in their past or in their future. In particular, I decided to take a stroll around Hope College. For anyone who is interested, you can start at Columbia 5 and go from there. Or start a block away, at another familiar landmark. Ahh, the memories.

You can also see our car if you want to walk around our neighborhood in Ann Arbor. Feel free to post a link to your own neighborhood's streetview - I would love to see folks who live in far off places that I have not been able to personally visit.

Update: It looks like I'm not the only one with a famous vehicle. See if you can identify this rugged machine.

12:14am: Hope
As I sat down to watch the election coverage tonight, I couldn't help but think of the last presidential election. I remember watching the States change color in the basement of Columbia 5 and getting a slow, sinking feeling as Ohio went red. I shared disappointment with a group of fellow Hope students that watched the coverage with me.

Now, I didn't have to wait as long to see Obama win Ohio, then Florida. Before it is over, he will likely have won other Bush States. And using Twitter, Facebook, and other online tools, I have been able to share the excitement with many of my friends and acquaintances.

There is still a long road to go, but I feel better about walking it after tonight. I hope that Obama resists the urge to play from one side of the aisle, as Bush did, and instead reaches out to bring moderate Republicans in to embrace ideas that will help America. I hope that the Republican party takes a long look at where it is right now. I hope they reject the platform of hate and decisiveness that has taken hold, and return to being the party of small government and individual liberty that they used to be.

Congratulations America. It won't be easy, but this is an important and historic step.

9:18am: They were for strong women presidential candidates... after they were against them
I'm a Jon Stewart fan, but it makes me wonder why it takes a comedian to point out the obvious hypocrisy.


In other news, the_izit and I are heading out today for the other side of the lake to visit friends in Milwaukee and Madison, and squeeze a little vacation time in before the end of warm Midwest weather.

11:49pm: The passing of a gerbil
Ford passed away last night. He was about 4 years old, which is a pretty good life for a gerbil. Only Firbolg still remains from the original 3.

In happier news, the_izit comes home this weekend, and I think we are going to see Batman at the Imax.

9:02pm: Reflections on California
As the_izit mentioned in her last post, I returned yesterday from a trip to visit her in Goleta, California. I don't want to repeat too much of what she said, as we share many readers, but I will say that driving in Los Angeles traffic is horrible. I can't imagine doing that once each week, let alone five times.

I arrived very late on Thursday (10:00 PST, so my body thought it was 1 AM). I shuttled to the rental car point, and selected my car from a rather limited number of choices. I then drove for just under two hours to arrive in Goleta around 1:00 PST. The next day we just hung around Goleta, visiting the beach, the university, and the nice but even pricier than expected co-op. We also walked around the cliffs wearing bananas (edit: bandanas - thanks spell check) due to the cloud of ash that blew down from the burning mountains in the evening.

Saturday I took advantage of my rental car, which had a nice layer of ash on it thanks to the wildfires. We had a nice, hot, and dry hike to the top of a decent sized hill, visited a Mission with some nice murals, and then the_izit and I broke off to visit downtown Santa Barbara and wash our dirty feet off in the ocean (bouncehoper may want to skip that link).

On Sunday, the_izit and I drove back to Santa Barbara for some kayaking. While out, we saw pirates, sea lions, and even some dolphins while riding the waves. We then had some vegetarian food before heading back to Goleta to play some Catan and turn in, as I had to leave at 5 AM on Monday morning to fight L.A. traffic and make my flight. Despite an accident ahead of me that slowed traffic considerably, I managed to make my flight, and am working to fight off jet lag.

Lots of fun, though it went by quickly. It was good to see the_izit, since it will be another four weeks before she is home for a bit, which is rather sad. The rest of the photos can be found here.

8:08pm: New companion
As many of you know, the_izit is enjoying the sun and surf to the West, leaving me to man the fort here in Michigan. To avoid getting lonely, I decided to buy something to keep me company. He arrived last week, and so far I really like him. It's somewhat relaxing to watch him scramble around the apartment, though I did have to stop him when he managed to find a spool of thread and begin unwinding it. Otherwise, though, I haven't had any problems, as he is very good at cleaning up after himself. I still haven't decided on a name though. I've included a small video so you can see him roaming around.

( Video )

10:44pm: I'm glad I didn't attend Wheaton. While they are perfectly within their rights, it seems a pretty sad situation. Good professors are hard to find.

For my part, I am doing fairly well. I spent about a week and a half in Europe, which had its ups and downs. In Florence, I fought a sinus infection while volunteering and competing at the CHI conference. On the up side, we won second place, and I enjoyed seeing Assisi and visiting jewelsthemonkey in Oxford.

I'm currently in transition; graduation was last Friday (I won a surprise award for academics, which was nice, but I wasn't expecting an award and it probably showed while I stood on stage). I obtained a new job in Ann Arbor, which works well since the_izit still has another year of school to go. The job starts in a couple weeks, so I am just finishing off some library projects and enjoying the weather. I don't mind Ann Arbor, and I'm comfortable spending 1+ more years here, though it will be interesting being outside of the university.

10:13am: Hello from Florence
So I've finally arrived in Florence. I left DTW on Thursday at 9 and landed in Amsterdam on Friday morning. I took the train into the city and took a canal trip, then wandered around the city for a little while. I did wander through the outskirts of the red light district, though it didn't seem too active, probably because it was mid-day. I did see some stores that sold, among other things, "magic mushrooms" and "psychedelic herbs and pills". It looked crowded, so I didn't investigate further.

( Minor Adventures )

I wish I spoke more languages; it is sad, though not surprising, that foreign language skills aren't really valued in the U.S. Just about any resident's English is probably better than my Italian, though, so I'll make due. I'll probably take a nap today in an attempt to ward off the last of my sinus infection. Poster presentation tomorrow, and then I am free for a couple days, besides my volunteer obligations.

2:25pm: Update on General Busyness
It seems that there is some nasty bug floating around my LJ community, and it has now infected the_izit. She is down for the count, and has been since Thursday. She's probably due for a trip to the doctor's tomorrow, barring a sudden reversal of sneezing, coughing, and fever.

For my own part, I've been keeping pretty busy. Last week I picketed during the GEO work stoppage, which ended after one day with a very nice contract for our union members. I have a feeling that the main motivation for the administration's actions was that we shut down two construction projects (workers wouldn't cross our picket lines). Having classes canceled due to a GSI strike is one thing, but we can't be having our precious buildings slow down, or so the higher-ups may have thought. This kind of prioritizing illustrates the very issues that the union was trying to highlight, but I can't deny that it was effective.

Aside from the walkout, I've been very busy with school and job interviews. I just returned yesterday from Madison for interview #7, and I have at least one interview this week. On Thursday, I will be flying out to Italy to present a poster at the CHI 2008 conference. I am hoping to secure a good job soon after I return, so that my life will calm down by the end of April and I can start enjoying my weekends again. Not that I'm complaining too loudly; I know that I'm fortunate to have so many job possibilities, but it certainly drains one's energy.

2:44pm: Obama's speech
If you haven't seen Obama's speech on race, you really should watch it. I didn't intend to sit through the entire speech, but I found myself hooked. It is really thoughtful and heartfelt, and raises some important issues. I thought Obama was courageous to show the human side of his pastor, for all his faults, rather than just disassociating himself.

Unfortunately, the media flunks in its reporting of the speech. Part of Obama's point was that we need to move beyond sound bites and one-liners and look at serious issues underneath the surface. So far, I don't think the media gets it. Hopefully the American people will.

6:25pm: Politicing
Well, it is the big day for the primaries. It's also Marti Gras, and just a couple days after the superbowl. Good week for partying I suppose. I'll be more interested in the Super Tuesday results than the Superbowl, but I've never been a big American football fan.

I thought I'd post an interesting article on some non-policy differences between Obama and Clinton, and why they matter. The nature of the article slants it toward Obama, but I think it is a good read no matter which camp you are in. I recently read another good article from lunar_endeavor's LJ. For those who haven't seen it, it is on evangelicals and democrats, something which could be particularly important this year as the Republican base tries to figure out what they stand for.

Finally, I'm not a big fan of all this rain in January. How can I go snowshoeing if the snow only sticks around for 48 hours? This is Michigan, not Scotland.

9:56pm: Off to Italy
So we received word from the CHI judges that our project was accepted for the student design competition, so I'll be headed out to Florence in early April, which was about the time I was there 4 years ago. I do like the team I'm working with, and I think we have a good shot at winning. Of the 12 teams that advanced, 3 are from U of M, and 5 are from Indiana U, just like last year. I'm getting flashbacks already.

I did find myself annoyed with the New York chapter of NOW for their ridiculous statements about Ted Kennedy's endorsement of Obama, though I'm not surprised that someone finally played the gender card. Hopefully Obama and Clinton will keep it civil; I prefer Obama, but I'll take either over the Republican front-runners, and there is not need to give the Republicans more ammunition for the general election.

At any rate, I'm heading back to hunting for plane tickets. If you are currently in Europe (I believe this includes one of my LJ friends), I will likely look you up when I'm abroad.

10:46pm: Finished!
I just sent off my take home exam, so I am officially done with the semester. Only two classes left to go before graduation. Of course, that means job hunting, but I think that can be put on hold until after the holidays. I also have a conference paper that I need to finish before Christmas, but I have a possible trip to Florence to keep me motivated for that one.

I'm glad we have snow this year; perhaps I will even be able to go skiing. The last two years involved rain over Christmas break, so I haven't been skiing since my undergrad years. I do enjoy having snow, though I'll admit that the black ice on the way to the airport on Sunday made for possibly the worst driving I've ever had to do. I've driven in worse, but having semis around you always makes things a little more stressful. I don't mind going in a ditch nearly as much as I think I would mind being hit by a semi.

9:02pm: Irreverant, but amusing
The 9 Most Badass Bible Verses. Skip over this one if you are easily offended, but I found it pretty amusing.

It's been a while since I've updated. It was a relaxing, enjoyable Thanksgiving. I was able to participate in the_izit's amusing family skits at her aunt's, and won some Pringles playing Bingo. Also hung around Hobart, and played the Starcraft and Talisman board games with some old high school friends, which was a lot of fun. Though I was up until 3:00 AM trying to help one of those friends jump his car, and ended up giving him a ride home (he bought a new battery the next day).

School is pretty busy right now. I have a pretty busy day a week from now:

9:00 - Final exam
2:00 - Final presentation
4:00 - Final presentation
6:00 - Final presentation

Ick. On the upside, I'm done with all but one class after next Wednesday. And I only need to take two classes next semester; then I'm finished!

11:45pm: Someone needs it more than I do
I rode my first hybrid bus today. Ann Arbor Transit has ordered a fleet of them. While I'm glad they are going greener, I have to wonder if they might have been better served improving the existing infrastructure and getting more people to ride the bus. As for the ride, it was a little quieter and smoother, though that could have simply been because it was a new bus.

Had an enjoyable impromptu board game session this evening with a few first-year students at SI and another person I've played with previously. Had a good time. I'm starting to think I may connect better with this year's incoming class than my own, so maybe I'll see about hanging out with more of them. I don't have any immediate, looming project deadlines, which is nice.

9:10pm: Embrace your doom
I'm glad that the Whitehouse can put a positive spin on climate change. Because a warmer winter is a worthy trade-off for displacing millions along the coasts and screwing up agriculture around the world.

2:42pm: When you're up, you're up, and when you're down, you're down
I'll start with the good points. Last weekend was quite enjoyable - the_izit and I joined with quite a crew of hope folks, including sophiadendron, heroicallylost, bouncehoper, hopefuldancer83, and cgbookcat1, on a trip to the Holly Renaissance Festival for the third year running. Also had a few SI folks come along for the ride. All together, I believe we had about a dozen people. It is nearly impossible to keep such a large group together, so I floated between SI folks, Hope folks, and interesting mash-ups of people from both. I saw some impressive fiddling from a family of five, a bit of falconry, and the ever popular (though not with the_izit) Ded Bob Show. Afterwards, the_izit and I made a quick pit stop to change before meeting the Hope crew at the Arbor Brewing Company. Unfortunately, we ended up in the smoking section, which probably didn't do good things for my sinuses.

The week started rolling in a typical way - work, class, etc. Unfortunately, on Tuesday evening, I abruptly came down with a killer head cold. One moment, I was feeling fine, and 15 minutes later it hurt to move. Ick. So I started taking zinc, resting, and drinking fluids. I skipped classes and work on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday due to my illness. I did start to feel better by Friday afternoon, though, so I dragged myself to a group meeting for my Computer Supported Cooperative Work class. We have to come up with a system to evaluate the Nintendo DS, which should be fun, assuming my group comes together.

Unfortunately, I have a backlog of work to do now, and I'm still not quite over my bug yet. It doesn't help that the_izit and I are leaving next Thursday to go to Madison, so I really need to get going. Which probably means I should end this post and get back to homework.

Last two news tidbits:

1. Ann Coulter says that women shouldn't be allowed to vote. I'm convinced that she doesn't really believe half the things she says, but she likes the free media attention (helps her sell more books). So I probably shouldn't have even posted that, but she's like a train wreck - so startling that it's hard to turn away sometimes.

2. I had another news article, but I can't find the link. Maybe next time. Just enjoy the Ren Faire Pictures, if you haven't seen them on Facebook already.

4:02am: Don't traumatize your kids
Digg had an amusing post on the Top 10 movies for traumatizing your children. I don't know that I agree with all of their choices, but some of the commentary is amusing, and the top (or bottom) two movies certainly fit the title of the post.

Things are more or less rolling along. I have three classes plus a fairly intensive group project (another attempt at the CHI Student Design Competition I competed in last year. This year's topic is particularly challenging, as we have to design a system to help the homeless, which has a number of interesting concerns when it comes to interviewing and testing the system with people.

It will probably be another busy semester, but shouldn't be as bad as last year. I might even get to see the_izit outside of work!

11:12am: The people: 1, Jon Stewart: 2, the government: -3
I must say that I'm happy to see that our lakes are a little less threatened by BP's plans to dump large amounts of toxins. The people have shown that when both the State and Federal governments screws up, they can take matters into their own hands. I'm quite happy that some people in the Great Lakes region have overcome their usual political apathy and shown more intellengence than the local politicians, though that isn't saying much. Still, we only have BP's word at the moment - nothing is stopping them from dumping except their own moral fiber and fear of a consumer backlash. Which basically comes down to fear of a consumer backlash, and the public, sadly, tends to have a poor long-term memory for these types of things. Hopefully pressure will shift back to the environmental regulators to insure that BP lives up to their promises.

On another note, it's pretty sad that it takes a comedian to point out things that the mainstream media totally ignores. Jon Stewart has a wonderful summary of how well our current and past Middle Eastern policy has helped the region. Definitely worth watching if you haven't seen it before.



More Stewart analysis of Bush's lame attempts to build support of the war are available here. The fact that Bush has finally dragged Vietnam into the fray shows just how desperate he has become. And yet, still no one does anything about it. Grow a spine democrats.

10:40am: Birthday and Gencon
It's been a busy past week, but a fairly enjoyable one. Yesterday was my birthday, and I can feel myself falling into the "meh, I'm another year older" mode. Of course, I don't have much to look forward on my birthday until I can collect social security, assuming that is even around and that I make it that far. I just worked during the day, making the last refinements to my internship reports so that I could turn them in, and did some administrative things that needed to be done before school restarts in a couple weeks.

Still, I had a pretty decent evening. I tracked down a list of birthday deals in Ann Arbor and proceeded to take advantage of what I could. After an excellent (and free) vegetarian dinner of veggies, couscous, and grilled tempeh at Seva. the_izit and I then headed to Stucchi's for a free sorbet cone, and Zingermans for a free half-dozen bagels. I also have a coupon for a free treat at Cold Stone next week. Birthdays only come once a year, so I might as well take advantage of it.

the_izit and I left Thursday afternoon for Gencon. Sadly, cinnamonfern and my brother both weren't able to make it, so it ended up just being the two of us. I ended up selling all of the events my brother and I were going to do back to Gencon, but I still had a great time anyway.

( Gencon highlights below the cut )

Good times all around. Hopefully next year we'll head down to Indy with an even larger group (feel free to let me know if you are interested in gaming geekiness)!

10:52pm: Vegetarian is the New Prius
A decent article that discusses the reasons I am a vegetarian; it is one of the best things you can do for the environment.

I've been pretty busy for the past couple weeks, as I've been doing formal user testing for the library. This basically involves sitting down with a participant and guiding them through a series of computer tasks to test an interface. I've been very busy, since I'm testing and in charge of encoding and posting the videos for the test. This week will be busy as well, as we have some more testing to do, and I'm spending a few hours going to the District Library for some gaming.

This past weekend sophiadendron and heroicallylost came to Ann Arbor to do some scouting, and they stayed with us for the weekend. On Friday, we took them to Sevas, which has excellent vegetarian food. Saturday we had pancakes before sophiadendron and heroicallylost took off for some apartment hunting. the_izit and I did some errands on bike, then came back. pilgrimlost and his girlfriend met us earlier than expected, as the tournament they planned to attend was cancelled, as no one else showed, so the_izit and I played some games (including a new one, Infernal Contraption), then played double host duty and had a homemade dinner. After pilgrimlost and his girlfriend left, sophiadendron, heroicallylost, the_izit, and I went for a long walk, then sophiadendron got his first taste of Wii with some Mario Party. It was fun, even if the computer beat both of us.

It should be interesting with sophiadendron and heroicallylost in Ann Arbor. With thornsbreak moving out east and stellaluna83's fiance joining her in Peoria, hopefuldancer83 is the only person from our Hope group still in Chicago, which means that the epicenter has shifted to Michigan. I imagine the holiday get-together will be in Lansing this year, though Ann Arbor is still a possiblity.

8:26pm: Liveblog from the Weird Al Concert
Thought I would try a post from the weird Al concert in Lansing, which starts in a couple minutes. The crowds are pretty thick, but luckily we managed to get decent seats.

( Liveblog of the concert )

11:25 - We have reached our car and are heading out. the_izit, cinnamonfern, and I are marvelling at our own ability to be nerdy on the way to the car. It has been a fun night, though I don't see a full night of sleep in my future, as the_izit and I still have to drive home from Lansing. I did try calling bouncehoper but I just got her voicemail. Perhaps she was distracted by other things.

It would be a bit difficult to upload a picture from my cellphone, so I'll just wish everyone a good night. A concert isn't exactly ideal for liveblogging, but it was a fun experiment.

8:08pm: Friends and games
Interesting moment in my stats class today. We needed to generate 38 random numbers, and we were supposed to use a chart of random numbers in a rather complicated way to generate them. I asked the teacher if I could just generate the numbers with my calculator (TI-83). He said that would be fine, but I realized I didn't have a generator, so I had to program it. I hadn't coded in calculator BASIC since high school, but even though it took me about 10 minutes to write the program, I still generated the 38 numbers before anyone else. The most interesting part of this to me was that I still remembered the shortcut keys for frequent functions; I'd forgotten how much I had coded in high school to help me make it through my many dull classes.

This past weekend my high school friend Mike visited. Mike is working toward a PhD in computational biology at Cornell, but he is in Michigan for the month helping with research at Hope. On Saturday we were joined by pilgrimlost and his new girlfriend. We played several rounds of Mario Party 8 on the Wii. We also played a couple board games, including Settlers of Catan, El Grande, and Ra. Lot's of fun all around, a pretty even split on the game winners (unfortunately for Mike, who hates to lose).

On Sunday, Mike, the_izit, and I toured Ann Arbor. We wandered around a bit, ate some Mongolian BBQ and Bubble Tea, and stopped at the new game store that recently opened in Ann Arbor. It seems like a pretty good store; the most amusing part was the 70 inch HD TV with a Wii, PS3, and Atari. Nothing like Pitfall! on a 70 inch screen where the pixels are as large as your fingernail.