Recent Posts

Sunday, November 30, 2003

New Scientist

art in mapping the internet

My resolutions

ok i realize it's not new year's yet, but if i wait, i'll forget these and i'll come up with some fake resolutions that i won't stick to anyways.

blah. so here goes:

1) "I will not diet." this resolution probably goes against at least half the nation's resolutions to diet. Honestly, although i have been feeling slightly pudgy lately, and people have been quite critical of my eating habits, I do not eat unhealthily. Most of the food e and i make are of quality ingredients, and we don't use excessive oil or anything. I may have my pitfalls (i'm a sucker for palmiers), but I like my pitfalls. And i don't believe i should have to give up these little things i love (especially because i am NOT FAT). in truth, the way i eat would be just fine if i moved once in a while. it's my sedentary lifestyle that makes me slightly pudgy. so i'm not giving up my food. last week i tried having my morning yogurt without my granola. Let me tell you, i was sad throughout the whole cup of yogurt! i was raised to enjoy food and to believe that good food is an integral part of life. I'm not giving that up. I will on the other hand, start moving more.

2) "I will not move this blog to livejournal" honestly, first it was just about not being one of the many many people who start a blog and then abandon it (how could i abandon my 1st blog?). I tried to compromise. I put links in my food lj to this blog when i updated. But now I've been told that it's just too much effort to click on hyperlinks. Well, fine then. I won't put links in, but I won't move this blog either. If it's too much work to even click on a hyperlink, then I don't need those people to read my blog. My blog is for me, and I'm not going to move it for the laziness of others.

so that's it.

on another note, I found out why tenecia put the large and quite cold shoulder on e and me. it turns out, apparently, when we lived in our apartment 1.5 yrs ago, we got too pda -ish. well, it's good to finally know, and i wish she had said something before she decided not to be our friend. again, in truth, i really don't care anymore.

I realized that due to all my homework this thanksgiving week, I missed the best and biggest shopping day of the year.

Boo! all the amazing sales were friday, and my small checkbook and i should have gone out to buy gifties for everyone on my xmas list. e could have saved 30-40 dollars on the scanner he bought yesterday had he bought it on friday. that's life i guess.

it's the end of the quarter, and as usual, i've got papers to write and exams to study for.

Saturday, November 29, 2003

small update

we had fun yesterday going to the store. even though mr. security made us relinquish our fun ride.


we watched Grease, and had some refreshments. Now I'm stressing about my paper. ARRGGGHHH!!! i hate the end of the quarter. on the plus side, my parents brought back our garage door opener that i left in my grandma's car.


HAPPY BELATED THANKSGIVING TO ALL!!!

Tuesday, November 25, 2003

The Sect of Homokaasu - The Gematriculator

rate a website on whether it's good or evil. Rate your blog.This site is certified 43% EVIL by the Gematriculator

i was mentioning microsoft's policy on blogging to e several days ago

but I hadn't realized someone had gotten fired for it. that's so extreme. Supposedly, this guy's post could have led to more knowledge about the microsoft campus, but I don't really think you get that from his post. It just seems damn illegal that they could fire him for that.

coffee


ahh... nothing like a warm cup o' coffee and time to blog to help you relax in the morning, eh? I brought my own supersized dining hall mug thingy, so i get more coffee than the largest size cubberly offers, for the price of the smallest cup they sell. I don't even think i can drink all this coffee, but i'm getting a better deal. i'm so chinese.

i almost didn't make it here. it was difficult to get up this morning. the kids had the screen door open and the fan on, so leaving the bedroom was like jumping into an ice bath. my body nearly forced me to go back to my warm bed. damn kids and their need for freezing ass temperatures. damn stats and their tuesday morning quizzes. i wouldn't have had to come to school today were it not for that. my other class is cancelled due to thanksgiving. I'll be here till 10pm now (12 hours from now), so i might as well go to lab meeting even if i don't have to. it's ok, staying here is a better choice then going home to deal with whiny kids.

I got my hair cut! e and i found a supercuts near our house. we were looking for a brand name hair cutting chain (we didn't want to waste time at a hoity toity salon near school or menlo). as usual i flipped through a magazine as soon as i got there to find something to model my hair off of. I chose a funky styled asian chick from a l'oreal hair color ad. My haircutter's name was Homa; she's from Persia; maybe she likes long walks on the beach. Homa immediately tried to persuade me not to get it done so short. she asked me over and over and over again if I was sure. Hell if she's not sure about doing my hair short, i sure as hell wasn't going to trust her to do it. So she did it roughly shoulder length. she whispered to me "men don't like women with short hair. they love long hair." I explained that that was probably true for some men, but not all men (e was egging me on to go short). She said, "they're lying, they only like long hair." fine. so my hair isn't short short. but I like it. it's cute. it's layered and feathered. e says he likes it. apparently he could be lying. I've actually been turned into an anime character. I've got a few distinct hair strands that love to slip right in front of my left eye. kind of like this

but without the curl on the forehead and without the ears sticking up like that. Thanks Homa, now I'm a cute cartoon.

I went to the cardiology clinic yesterday. e reported a sad story on the way in to the clinic. apparently an old women was wheeling her husband out and then had to stop as she burst into tears. Her husband followed suit. One can guess as to the news they might have just received from the doctor.

after sitting around some very sad looking old people, i got whisked into a small room where two doctors told me i was going to live, and that when i experience chest pains, i should just move on with my life and forget about them. they also tried to persuade me to get off the pill since it puts me at a higher risk of blood clotting. which i don't necessarily believe applies to me. i'm invincible, didn't i tell you?

in other news, my friend fuson (aka "fufu") finally set up a blog. see it here.

in light of the new michael jackson scandal. Perhaps you'd be interested in reliving his changing face in society. quite amusing. Or you could just see what he has to say about it.

Saturday, November 22, 2003

blah day

I never knew there was anAmerican Ostrich Association, but it seems there's an organization for everything. I'm watching animal planet right now (I've missed watching nature videos) with a special on ostriches that is currently showing an ostrisch hatching (damn they're pretty ugly as babies right out of the shell, but after they dry off a bit, they're cute a fluffy). they look like this: . I also get to see their mating ritual. The narrator reports the mating dance saying, "the male approaches but she trots off again, she's such a tease."

I'm so tired. Maggie and Sean are visiting us now which makes the apartment feel a little too tiny for my liking. plus, they started watching lord of the rings fairly loudly this mornng and it woke me up, and then gave me restless nightmarish sleep. Also, Maggie was getting really frustrated that we kept asking them what they wanted to do today. Maggie said she didnt' know what there was to do around here but she wanted to do something "Californian." Well I'm Californian, and I am interested in seeing the Diane Arbus exhibit at SFMOMA. But that didn't excite them.
I also suggested going out to see Elephant, I know minger wants to see it again, and I thought sean has been more interested in film. I want to see it as well. there was also little interest from the kids.
Well those were this californian's suggestions, but as there was frustration at what to do (and a suggestion of seeing the golden gate bridge), I took a nap instead and let the crew wander off to go to a beach on this very very cold day (according to wheather .com it is 52 degrees F in Half moon bay, plus you have to remember the damn winds will freeze your ass even more). plus since they left around 3ish and the sun has been setting around 5ish, there wasn't much beach time to be had anyways.

Report on Steambath. Yes I watched the play yesterday. It was actually rather offensive (as in sexist and racist). I'm not sure if that was purposely conscious, but honestly it came off in poor taste. Anyway, I felt the storyline and dialogue dragged.
Overall I'd give it a C+.

Sean went out and bought us MARIOKART!. We spent much of the early afternoon playing it. This is good. now we don't need to steal adam's copy :). e and i did play Simpsons: hit & run borrowed from adam and paulie. We thought it would have been better in cartoon rendering (it's rendered like that one simpson's episode where homer enters that 3d universe). Also, while the box says it is capable of multiplayer, we couldn't figure out how to make that work. Plus, the game got repetitive.

Friday, November 21, 2003

e's bro and bro's gf are coming tonight

that means i have to clean, and do laundry and clear out space for their luggage etc etc. I thought they were coming in this morning, but apparently they're getting in this evening which means i'll probably make the trip to the airport with e. I hate airports.

update on my spideys: the spidey near the stairs retreats from his web and goes into the edge of the overhang during the day. In the evening, he's ready for food to come into his web. The spidey in the garage is always looking terrifying in the middle of his web. I have this weird fear and fascination with them. I also want to feed them. Maybe i'll try to catch some bugs to fling into their webs. I'm too lazy to go to the pet store for a couple crickets. I wish I could catch a fly and force it to fly into the web, but that seems unlikely. if i do feed it, i'll try to videotape it with my camera and post it here for all o' ya'lls morbid fascination.

I ran out of Law and order SVU season 1 discs. Now I have to rely on USA to keep my addiction up. I do have Better Luck Tomorrow which Ming says comes highly recommended by Bernie. I also have Grease, an old time favorite of mine that neither e nor ming have seen. I also picked up Steambath. Its synopsis from the GreenCine website goes as follows, "A televised play involving God as portrayed by an irascible steambath attendant who performs miracles and wrath while scrubbing and handing out towels. Starring Bill Bixby (of INCREDIBLE HULK fame) and Valerie Perrine -- and Jose Perez as the tricky, wise-cracking God." Sounds humorous enough, but looking briefly at the poor quality recording made me less anxious to watch it. Maybe I'll read it instead.

Yesterday I had a scare. I walked into emotion class, and my professor started talking about our grants. he said that the scores were distributed from 75 to 95 out of 100, and that there were several papers at the 75 level that he felt needed quite a bit more work, and really needed to be more polished for grant review. Being the incredible pessimist that I am, I just knew without having checked my email yet, that I had been one of those to receive a 75. I knew my paper was bad. I knew it needed more work. Oh God! So I stressed about it for the next hour and a half until break when I ran to the computer to check my grade. I actually got a 90. I was so relieved/elated that I really really wanted to hug someone (this is a very odd feeling, because I rarely want/like to hug people ever), but I don't know anyone in the class well enough to do that. Really, I am just amazed that I didn't get the 75. You know how sometimes you just know how you did? I really knew. I really thought I had the 75. I still have trouble believing I didn't. I had to check my grade again twice when I got home, just to be sure. I'm still in disbelief.

skeeter



WHHHEEEEEEKKKK WHEEEEEKKKKKK!!!

After posting about Skye, I realized I hadn't posted any pictures of my furry children. This is Skeeter (nicknamed from his name which is actually Mesquite). He is the loudest of my furry friends. He squeaks at me when i get up, when i get home, when i'm getting stuff out of the fridge, etc. He's a demanding fellow. It's his way of begging for food (as in fresh veggies).

when he's excited, he likes to jump and twist in the air, and he hops and makes little "pop"ping noises.

he is the funniest cavy ever.

Thursday, November 20, 2003

trying to identify the spiders outside my house

There are two very large scary spiders outside my house, and I was trying to identify them. Some woman in the psych dept came by and told me they're probably tan wood spiders.

In my investigation of spider species, I came across this spider finder. Take a look here to identify or just see some freaky looking spiders. Some freaky ones I ran across were the Jewel spider and I assume its relative a Four-spined jewel spider.

Also, talk about giving me the creeps! There's this 3rd grade classroom that collected spiders and fed them and housed them. I think my parents would freak. It's also a little freaky reading about how much these kids love watching their spiders inject things with venom.

i haven't found the spider yet. here's what it looks like

the picture is actually a composite of two pictures. one i used the flash, and the spider was whited out, but without the flash the photo was blurry because i couldn't hold the camera still enough. so i superimposed the blurry spider on the whited out spider. but you can get the general idea for the scary spider.

Wednesday, November 19, 2003

furry children



paul has been showing off his furry child. skye is such a cutie. I get to take care of her for a week!!! yay!!! my own furry child for a week! oh wait, i already have little furry children...

props for arnold for one thing

I at least really appreciate that Arnold is cutting his salary as part of the budget. He doesn't need the money, but there are a lot of politicians/people out there who wouldn't have cut their salary or even part of it if in the same position.

Tuesday, November 18, 2003

sick day again

ok this time i made it into school - for 15 minutes. yes i drove in for my lovely tuesday morning stats quiz, and then i left. i didn't think i could take going until 10pm this evening.

driving to and from school was a little frightening actually. when i first started the car it had that condensation all over the windshield. i flipped on the wipers, but the crappy old things need to be replaced because it just smeared the water in half moons everywhere. with the water still on my windshield, i tried to go on el camino, only to have the sun bounce off every droplet on my windshield, making my vision to the outside world one very large bright white rectangle. i had to pull over and wait for the condensation to drip off in order to see other cars and people.

on my way back home, i completely missed my turn onto my street. so i thought, 'hey i'll just loop around the back.' but apparently pg&e was doing work on the other side of my street. there was no warnign but i turned into my street only to have a tractor advancing at me. well that was no good. where are the burly men in orange waving signs to tell me that i'll get run over by the machine if i turn down this way? i guess they just didn't expect traffic from my direction, retardos. so i got to park around the corner from the farthest end away from my apartment building. swell.


i guess things could be worse. i emailed my advisor to tell her i wouldn't make lab meeting tonight because i was ill. she said she's doing crappy herself as her laptop with her dissertation and all her quarter's work was stolen last week. she is now scrambling to try to collect the work she's been doing all over again.

npr had a bit with the survivors of jonestown. i didn't realize people had survived. today's the anniversary of the mass suicide. it was interesting to hear a little about jim jones. his son said that he was racist (at least sexually). high officials of the people's temple were apparently determined by who he slept with. he was afraid he wouldn't sexually measure up for black people, thus he didn't sleep with them and they didn't become high ranking officials in his order.

happy 16th month anniversary sweetie!

Happy Anniversary to e! I love you!

death cab for cutie

yay death cab for cutie! It was a nice concert. I felt ill all the long trafficky way there though. And all through the opening band I thought my brains were boiling over and ready to spill out my ears, although e assured me he didn't see any dripping out. I didn't want to have to leave, because 1) I like dcfc 2)I wanted e to have a good time watching dcfc 3) we'd already paid for the tickets and I sure as hell wasn't going to waste the money.

after eating a large pile o' nachos and gulping down 4 advils, 1 excedrin, and a sprite, I felt better by the end of the concert. Plus I got a cute new dcfc shirt.

Being sick at the concert made me feel pretty tripped out. The whole scenario seemed surreal, with the flickering of the fake candelight in the chandeliers and the bunches of phoney hipsters surrounding me. Through my drudge of a mind, I could hear people at the next table having a thrilling intellectual conversation. "They have nachos here?!" exclaimed one girl. "Oh my GAWD, I LOVE nachos! If nachos were a man, I'd marry it." ok girl, keep your panties on.

e and I went to the concert wearing our dcfc shirts. only when I got there did I realize that although every 'hipster' there probably owned a dcfc shirt, none of them would dare to wear one to the concert. We probably stuck out as some incredibly uncool nonhipsters. Personally, I couldn't even understand why most of the people would go to this concert only to stare stonily at the musicians without moving a muscle. As if the music didn't move them at all. Why be so stark? In case you've missed my personal feelings on hipsters, go take a look at hipstersareannoying.com. They take a nice tear into the lovely crowd.

Monday, November 17, 2003

sick day at home

I didn't make it into school today. I just didn't feel well enough. So I slept till noonish, ate some breakfast and checked email, and then i went back to sleep.

e and I are going to death cab for cutie at the Fillmore tonight, so I have to make sure I study for my stats quiz in the next hour. Otherwise I've threatened to study at the concert (who knows how effective or enjoyable that would be).

e has been geeky today playing with his computer. I think he's kinda cute when he gets all geeky.

Friday, November 14, 2003

ARCO Gasoline - Pre-Paid Gas Cards, Station Locator and Trip Planner

I realized I'm being ripped off byARCO Gasoline. Maybe arco does have lower prices (on their signs). But I never pay cash (i never have cash) and they don't take credit. But using my ATM to pay for gas charges me a surcharge. $.34! that may not seem like a lot at first, but considering my tank only fills 10 gallons so it's actually cheaper to go to another gas station a couple cents cheaper and pay by credit card.

OOooh fuson!

Thursday, November 13, 2003

no money really

So financial aid office says i can't turn my loan into work study. so i need to start looking at the student loan interest rates at different banks. bah money.

today i went to vaden to see if i could determine what's going on with my chest pains. the dr. said it is unheard of for someone my age to have angina. if i did apparently i'd be in all the the medical journals. i did get an EKG, a chest xray, and blood sample. we'll see what turns up.

I barely made it through today since I was so sleepy. by the end of the day i started feeling pretty ill - all headachy and warm-headed. no time for sickness though.

Tuesday, November 11, 2003

veteren's day

we don't get the day off. that's fine i guess, although i could really have used the sleep. i tried to get some reading done for thursday's emotion class, but i couldn't concentrate enough. i wish acrophobia were still around. too bad berkeley sold out. they had some majorly fun games. I do admit i enjoy text twist quite a bit, but still, it gets repetitive. You know today's been one of those rollercoaster days. I've gone up and down emotionally without much provocation.

to move away from things to personal to me (for comfort really)...
I became a member of xanga today. I didn't want to, and I don't believe I want three blogs. andrei says it's the asian blogger. I don't know about that, but i guess he would (silly romanian). I was looking up an old friend, but apparently she felt that her blog had become too personal (what i'd be afraid of with this as well) and had made all of her posts private. What I did see though, suggested that she's happy. Anyway, I had to become a member of xanga to comment on her blog.

in other news for the day, I FINALLY got my hapa survey up. I just need to send it out. The other girl I've been working with probably wants to kill me right now. but i couldn't get it uploaded without the psych administrator because the software i'm using has to go on the psych server. Funny enough, they don't trust me with the administrator password.

in other news, i lexus-nexused 'rachel ray fhm' to see what journalists might be thinking of the foodtv's little lady. well people thought that the spread was tastfully done. she really liked the photos of herself. She thought they were kitschy (sp?) and cool. interestingly enough, she has no formal training as a chef, she just makes what she has come up with at dinner. e says you can tell. i think that she should get props for getting as far as she did, even if i think that the fhm spread and burger king endorsement were in poor taste.

money money money money

oh! i just looked on axess today, and guess what, axess was mussed up last time, and as it turns out, I was given some financial aid in the form of loans.

I'm going to head over to the financial aid office today to see if I can change it to work study. woohoo!

Unstable angina

ack, i'm not a hypocondriac or anything, i swear. but i hope they don't tell me i may have unstable angina. this sounds way to serious for me to deal with. anyway it seems the risk factors i fall under may only be sedentary lifestyle and possibly body weight, but that's unlikely. MEDLINEplus Medical Encyclopedia: Unstable angina

at least the pains aren't going down my arm so i'm not having a heart attack.

my food blog

here's a link to my lj about food mainly.

munchies

on other notes, I've been having really bad chest pains for the past few weeks right around my heart. they last around 5 minutes and i have problems breathing. I made an appt. at vaden, but honestly, i doubt their helpfulness. last time i called them they swore my doctor didn't exist even though i saw her name on their webpage and I had talked to her a week before!

my mom thinks it might be anxiety attacks. i'm running google searches right now. Weirdly, I get them even when I'm waking up now. oh balls.

oh rachel ray

I saw this on another blog I wandered on to. I have to admit, I find rachel ray a tad annoying, but i think what she does with the 30 minute meals is great. i was even going to pick up her second book for my parents. This FHM spread seems really sad and degrading. The poses the have her in are horrendous. I think it would have been much classier for her to pose in play boy. you can see what i'm talking about here :FHMUS.com - Rachael Ray

click on 'full image' to see what i'm talking about. compare with her clean image of her new book:

Sunday, November 09, 2003

exblog

Hey lookie! as it turns out, a has an lj! i found out cuz i had him proofread my grant paper. yay he's gonna refer me! woohoo!!!!

the notebooks of A. Octavian Pop

super nabla!

i was going to start another blog just on food but...

i realized food is such a big part of my life that i wanted to have a whole blog to remember what foods i've tried and loved or hated. so i thought, hey i'll try live journal since that's the other big one out there. but me being in the tight $$ position that I am, I don't even feel i can spare 5 bucks to try it. i do have friends who use lj, but right now, i'm still not sure i want to pass around my blogs to my friends...

maybe i can get a stranger lj person to generate a code for me...

oh balls.

mmmm... my favorite

ok, you know i've been craving shepard's pie since i last went to bermuda abou 10 years ago. a couple nights ago i watched rachel ray make a makeshift shepard's pie in 30 minutes. i'm going to try it tonight to see if it satisfies my 10 year craving...

Food Network: 30 Minute Shepherd's Pie

squish squash

e and i have bought some nice organic squash at Sigonas. I tried the carnival, but they were too sweet for the recipe i used them in. now we have this huge blue hubbard squash on our table. I'm thinking about using it in the place of this foodtv squash recipe. it looks so yummy!

Food Network: Butternut Squash, Apple, and Onion Galette with Stilton

ah i'm distracting myself with food. ah oh food!

pretty copper pots that my parents don't want

my favorite pots are on sale (i think they're being discontinued which is odd because they work so well - they're rated second by consumer reports!). I thought hey I enjoy using them, perhaps it would be a great present for my parents so they can replace their old narsty crusty cheapo pots from the beginning of their marriage! Blah, but i understand about the money thing. So no pots for parents...

admittedly i'm tempted to get my own set just in case things don't go perfectly with e. but i guess i'll take my chances...

9 Piece Set Cookware - PotsandPans.com

Saturday, November 08, 2003

Perseus - The Blogging Iceberg

Perseus - The Blogging Iceberg

this is an interesting survey of bloggers. will i be among the 66% that drops blogging after four months? possibly, probably...

to all the people who read my blog (you unique special person) don't get too hooked

slow and steady or not so steady

writing this pseudo grant to study affective states of bloggers is going so slowly. Perhaps when i finish i'll post my 'grant.' blogs talking about blogs. actually i think most blogs i've seen talk about blogs to some extent (there is at least self-awareness of blogging). would that be considered metablogging. what would a blog blogging look like?

bloggity blog blog blog

when I took a nap this morning, the words blog, blogging, and blogosphere kept circling around my dreams.

how quiant

yesterday in cognitive development, my mind drifted off to many many years ago. I remember my parents were going to a neighborhood party next door, and they were trying out a new babysitter for my brother and me.

As it turned out, my new sitter had a hypoglycemic attack while watching us, and she scrambled around frantically looking for sugar in our house. I recall thinking that while it was rather disturbing that the person in charge of my brother and me was crying hysterically, this would be a great chance to go borrow a cup of sugar from the neighbors. It would be so quaint.

So I grabbed a pyrex measuring cup and headed over to the neighbors (where my parents were enjoying their party). My parents freaked about the situation and needless to say, we never had that sitter again.

the end.

Thursday, November 06, 2003

hungry sleepy stressed

e and I got home late again last night after a long dark review session and helping minger fetch a 'new' bed. So we heated up some congee around 9ish and settled in with some seinfeld and law & order svu. due to the lack of substance in congee, I awoke starving.

stress was also an order of the day as I struggled to get reading done before my emotion class (3 out of 4 readings ain't bad)

I also had a great conversation with J from stats/roxy. I realized how much I can enjoy talking with people I don't know all that well. hazah for the shopkeep!

Wednesday, November 05, 2003

e is my cutie

my e looks like skeeter when he lets lettuce drift into his mouth.

his laptoppy is working now which is good, because I couldn't blog otherwise. however, this unexpected opportunity has left me with little to say.

I guess I'm still stressing about my honors presentation yesterday. I have developed an aversion toward cubberley and the people that heard me talk. silly lo. snap out of it.

no snaps for lo.

Tuesday, November 04, 2003

talk sucks

I had to give my honors presentation today. Let's just say that I sounded way less intelligent than George "Dub-Yah" Bush.

Karma. It must be because I registered Republican by accident (ah, Bill O'Reilly, I followed your ineptness, but hopefully not your blotchyness!)

coffee woes

Cubberly cafe peeps were brewing Napoli when I walked in. I got Perugia instead. A break in the normal routine really puts me out of whack. My coffee satisfaction level has gone way down.

I wonder if everyone posts lots of posts on the first day they blog.

the thought process

introducing me: psychology major with a need to write a paper about emotion.

problem: no ideas

what did I do: thought about a couple random things that intrigued me.

came up with:
1. eliminating the female period through BCP's like Seasonale (yes i know you still have four periods with it)
2. the hilarious political satire of Al Franken (oh how i wish i could be part of teamFranken)
3. blogs

picked: blogs

need to do further thinking... paper due next monday

1st post

hello world