The Physicist

Hah! I did it. I totally biked to and from work today without changing to a lower gear (all in 21st gear). Additionally, on the way there I didn't use my hands except for two stoplights. Strong legs. :)

So, we had a physicist come to work today to give a talk on her new book. The talk was pretty good, but unfortunately, since I was really tired, so I fell asleep for part of it. I really need sun glasses. When I ride to work sometimes some small bit of dust will get into my eye, and my eyes will just be tired and messed up all day. Ugh. Frustrating.

We also had some guy come to talk about Chickenfoot. Chickenfoot is perhaps one of my favorite firefox extensions ever. It lets you not only execute arbitrary javascript on the page at hand (any javascript console does this), but it gives you full access to Firefox's DOM as well. You can have it automatically execute when a page finishes loading, then have it execute a series of commands. Not only that, but these commands include things like 'click("search button")' and 'enter("title textbox")' or 'enter("title")' which interact with ui elements just as a user would. You can even write these commands in a more natural-language fasion: "press the search button" "search" "push search" all do the same thing. You never have to look at the page's source at all. All the work is done by algorithms finding things in context. This UI interaction can make unit tests easy to automate on web pages. It can make filling out forms really easy. And it can all be done by non-programmers! Really cool stuff.

Aside: apparently www.myspace.com had gone down earlier this weekend because of their servers getting heat stroke. Stupid global warming. Hehe. Rolling blackouts, here we come!

The Winery

Winery. Great word. Winery. I'm really glad Thayer's into wine now. One more person to share the joy. We have different tastes, but we both like the sweeter wines, which is kinda nice. On Sunday Thayer, Ross, and I went wine tasting with a bunch of Chris's friends from nVidia. We piled into three cars and drove out to Sonoma Valley. There were five of us in our car, which made it quite hot and uncomfortable, but it was worth it. The first two winerys we went to were really good. The second specialized in Zinfandel. I don't really like reds, but the Zins weren't so bad. They had a really good desert wine that wasn't syrupy, so I bought a bottle. It was really sweet, but not too sweet and gross. Yum. The last two weren't so good, unfortunately. On the way back we stopped for dinner at this fancy restaurant on the shores of Sausalito (North of San Francisco). Dinner was good, but there was a lot of confusion with the check (kind of our fault), so we didn't get back until midnight. <Yawn> So yeah. Tired. I'm going to go to bed now, since it's aftermidnight. Yeah. Sleep.

The Heat

It was frakin' hot this weekend. Last week too, but you don't really notice it when you're in an air-conditioned office all day. I did a bit when I was riding back, but not too much. But when you're in your east-facing room and it's 95+ outside, it gets kinda warm. On Saturday we went to a movie to get out of the heat. We saw The Devil Wears Prada. It was pretty funny and enjoyable. They didn't make an uber-cheesy ending out of it, which was kinda nice. After the movie we went to see Garrett's new apartment. That was in San Jose, which is 7-10 degrees hotter than here in Los Altos. After that we went to the mall which we had hoped would be cool, but there were so many people there, it was quite hot. Sigh. Oh well. The important thing is we had tacos and ice cream.

The Empty

Okay, so nothing really happened this week. I went in to work every day, got home, and went to sleep (didn't even play any games!). Really nothing exciting. We have plans to go wine tasting on Sunday, hopefully that'll happen. If not, I dunno. I guess the closes thing to news is that I've been making an effort to bike to and from work in just the highest gear. I can go to work in 21st gear regularly, and with no hands. With the exception of starting from an intersection or two in a lower gear, usually at the beginning of the way back, before I decide I'm going to commit to this, I can make it back in 21st gear. I tried on Thursday to come back with no hands where I could. It's a lot harder. To bike with no hands you need to be going relatively fast. Fast enough that the rotational inertia of the bike is enough to dampen any side-to-side swaying you may make when pedling. Having that speed going uphill is difficult. Not to mention the increased wind resistance. Thursday's ride back was really hard compared to Friday's, where I used my hands the whole way (that's a funny clause when taken out of context). Either way, my legs feel kinda weird. They're totally all muscle now. Like my forearm, I can flex it, and it's rick-hard with skin on top. Kinda weird. My stomach and biceps are getting there, but still not there yet. In time. In time....

Oh. In other news, it's frakin' hot. And we don't have AC. And my roommates have it worse than I.

"We've got a coast to coast heatwave, but luckily I'm America's biggest fan" - Stephen Colbert

The Andy

Okay, I should have posted this last week when I last talked to Andy, but I didn't really get around to it, so here it is. I had intended to say some of this at his wedding reception, but I hadn’t really flushed it out or run in by anyone, so I didn’t really feel comfortable bringing it up. I guess I’m running it by you, illustrious reader.

I met Andy my freshman year. I had seen him around the dorm a bit, but never talked to him. I remember the first time we talked quite well. I was in the lounge watching TV when Andy comes up to me and asks, "Can I be your friend? I've seen you around and I think you're pretty cool." Naturally, this caught me a little off guard. I had seen Andy around, and but that is kind of an odd way to start a relationship. By my initial impressions and Andy’s long-hair, he was a scary drug-dealer. One could only hope by “friends” he didn’t mean slipping me drugs, putting me in a dress and lipstick and having his way with me.

Okay, so initial impressions aren’t always that accurate. It wasn’t until later that I found out he didn’t actually go to UW, but instead to Seattle Central was it? One of the local community colleges. He was only always in our dorm because his girlfriend (now wife) lived there, across the hall from me. He invited Jo, Kat, Kathy Liz and I over at one point to his apartment which was on 8th at the time. I thought that was a long walk. Now I walk twice it every day (when I’m in Seattle) just to get to campus. I went once and it was a tad weird, so when everyone moved out of the dorms after freshman year I didn’t think much of ever seeing Andy again.

It wasn’t until I moved in with Jo and Alissa the summer after sophomore year that I saw Andy again. It was that summer that I really got to know the guy. Once I actually talked to the guy, he wasn’t weird at all, in fact, he was pretty cool. Andy was really friendly with everyone, and shortly afterwards, finally got a direction. I had mistakenly dismissed him a little before because of his CC background and not really knowing what he wanted to do with life, but I guess he just needed some time. His jewelry has been awesome for him. After that summer I managed to keep in touch with Andy. Andy was my comic-book buddy. We could talk comics and superheroes, watch dorky action movies (and comic-book movies), etc. I found his jewelry fascinating. I remembered back to my days in metal-shop in high school and how much fun that was and enjoyed seeing Andy’s creativity. When Andy and Alissa got their new condo I still hung out with them. Went over to visit every so often (though not often enough sometimes, we were both quite busy), and saw various incarnations of Andy’s studio.

When Andy got married I was really happy for him. Alissa’s great, and I don’t know of a better couple. I still can’t believe he made Alissa such a gorgeous ring. Really awesome. I was so glad I could be there for that. Seeing him propose to her, the look on her face, seeing that kiss at the alter. Wow.

I talked to Andy last week and heard all about the latest at his job. For the past few months Andy has been working on remodeling a jewelry store’s new location. He’s been really hard-core about it too. Just going balls-out with 12+ hour days to get the place nice and up and running in time. Well, it finally opened, and apparently the owner was so impressed he gave Andy a seat at a bench. Andy gets to actually do jewelry work. Of course, he loves the other work, selling, finishing, all that too. It’s so fucking awesome to see the passion Andy has for this. To see him just working his ass off and finally getting recognition for his good, hard, honest work. At a time when a lot of my other friends are stuck at crap jobs, and I’m about to enter the workforce, it’s nice to see someone getting his due. I just hope that this establishment recognizes it all. So yeah, Andy, you’re awesome. I love you, man.

The Premiers

I almost forgot to write my thoughts on the Stargate premiers. I really liked them. I felt like that Atlantis one was a stronger episode, but I am more interested in the outcome of the SG-1 one. Hehe, the best part of the Atlantis one was when McKay is trapped and complains about the computer virus the wraith hid in some specs they sent: "Ugh! It's like spyware that I get when I stupidly download porn. Music! When I download music." Poor McKay. I guess brilliant, arrogant scientists aren't a turn-on even when you're a galaxy away from home with a limited population.

Actually, now that I think about it, Valla and Daniel had some great dialog.

-She wanted me to give her a name.
-And?
-Adria. Told her it was my mother's.
-Not?
-Step-mother. Witch of a woman.
-The more I get to know you the more I'm starting to understand.
-Huh?
-Nothing.

The look on Daniel's face is great.

The Del Taco

Garrett invited me to get dinner with him today. Neither of us knew where we wanted to go, so we figured we'd drive around and find someplace that looked neat. We went to downtown Mountain View and walked around a bit. Yeah, Mountain View does have a "downtown" - it's on main street - but there wasn't much there, certain nothing that was open after six (we were there around six-thirty). Anyway, after leaving what called itself downtown and traveling down El Camino Real (the main street in these parts), we still hadn't seen anything but fast food restaurants. Then I get the idea that we should go to Del Taco. We knew there was a Del Taco somewhere in San Jose, and we were kinda close to San Jose at the time, so I called my brother for directions. Unfortunately, that didn't help so much. We got totally lost, so I called Chad. Chad told us to get to 280 and get off at San Tomas. That would have been great, had there been an exit to San Tomas. Garrett then called his friend, who gracefully stayed on the phone with us for the half-hour it took to get us there. Finally, after an hour and a half or so of searching, we found it. Del Taco! I had my fill. I tried their new cookie-dough shake - not as good as I had hoped, and about as bad as I had feared. I await strawberry! Garrett said our trip was very Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle. Garrett hadn't been to Del Taco before, but he deemed the trip a bona fide success.

The Lost Day

So... Yeah. I totally didn't do anything today. I spent most of the day aquiring and decorating a house inside Oblivion. It took me a long time to mule all my stuff from the first storage location you get access to in the game (Jauffre's chest). But now everything's nice and organized, and I have display cases and everything. Whee. Wow. I need a girlfriend.

At least I got to hear two guys fighting, and one shouted "This is the part where you fall down and bleed to death!". Then they killed eachother and I took all their good loot (I'm using it, not just selling it, too). Fun.

The Missing

So, I for a few minutes I forgot that Friday night was SciFi Friday. I'll post on that as soon as I finish watching them. This led me to make plans with some people from work. There was this girl who's been kinda flirty, and she invited me out with her team (which is mostlay a bunch of girls), so being caught off-guard and all, I agreed. This girl, Alex, is the one who was kinda flirty the first week, then told asked me if she could bring her boyfriend to my party. Then after she doesn't show up at the party is all firty whenever I run into her. Seriously, wtf?

I convinced Garrett to drive me up to the city and everything. We got there late, but not as late as the other people, so Garrett and I wandered around the city some. That was really fun. I love big buildings. It was nice to hang out with Garrett some. We finally got a "we're here, where are you" phone call, so we went to meet up with them. Unfortunately, the bar they were at had a $15 cover, and we weren't there for a long time, but I swallowed it - they were supposed to have an open bar at least. Of course, open bar means the drinks are mostly ice, and tiny 6oz plastic cups. I had a white russian, but then the bartender told me that it Kahlua is a "premium" drink, and it's three dollars. I told her I it was an open bar, she didn't say it was $3 ahead of time, and if she wanted to charge me I didn't want it. She was very busy, so she gave me a stern, "take it, but next time I'm charging you!". $15 cover, and then she wanted to charge me $3 for a really bad white russian. Shameful. That bar was definately not my element, so I kinda sat down and zoned out for a while. Alex finds me and brings me to meet all the googlers. I wander over and meet this cool guy named Sean/Shawn. We got into some cool conversations, but he disappeared later in the evening before I could aquire contact information. I'll have to check back at work.

When we finally left the crappy bar and walked to this other place. Turns out there were a lot more girls in the group than I initially anticpated. On the walk over, Alex informed me she had just broken up with her boyfriend. I also discovered that she smoked/quite smoking, and that she was a lot crazier than I had thought. I was very much not interested after that. She was pretty drunk and hanging over a guy Alex a lot, so I just let it happen. At the other place I met a few more girls, nothing too interesting though. When we walked in to the new place I saw a bunch of guys in suits with their "Sorry honey, I had to work late at the office"-girlfriends. Ugh.

I was persuaded to get up and dance with Alex at one point, and despite being told that I was a "good dancer" (which caught me quite by surprise, if it's to be believed), I had a horrible time. I'm guess I'm very not interested in her. And it's not like that dance was very hands-off. I'm intrigued that it was so unenjoyable. Heh, at one point I had to make a consious effor to smile. It's not like she's totally unattractive, either. Quite odd. Anyway, I was saved by having that be the last song of the night, so the bar closed and we started walking back. I got to meet one of the girls I thought was really cute, but changed my mind quickly. Finally met a cute asian girl and got her contact information (well, just her work email, but it's a start), so the night wasn't a total wash. Heh, one of the highlights of the night was talking to this Sean/Shawn guy (and that last girl). Interesting, ain't it?

The Intuition

<rewatches Jewel's Intuition video>

I love it when second-tier (or first tier, I suppose) artists make fun of the stupid pop idols. But that's not the point of this post.

Daniel Kahneman came to Google today to give a talk on "The Marvels and Flaws of Intuition". It was really good, sounded right (hehe, intuitively, anyway).

Hehe, apparently they tried using some algorithm to do things human "experts" do (like evaluate how qualified people are, predict politics) and the algorithm did a lot better than the experts in the field (recruiters, pundits) when it came to anything beyond a short-term. The big things were that the experts weren't consistent - same data yielded different answers, and that the experts didn't learn from their mistakes.

Basic overview: there are two ways judgements and decisions are made, method 1 - intuitively or method 2 - deliberatively.

Intuition	Deliberation
Fast/Instant Accessibility	Slow Accessibility
Presented with one solution	Presented with many posible solutions
Emotion-based	Reason-based
Slow to train and learn	Fast to learn
Effortless	Effortful
Emotion-based	Reason-based
Slow to train and learn	Fast to learn
Present perceptions only	Past, present, future perceptions and concepts
...	...

Basically, most decisions actions are made via method 1 with a little check by method 2. He had a lot of good examples:

A bat and a ball together cost $1.10. The bat costs one dollar more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?

The answer, of course is 05 cents. But most people say 10 cents. The idea is that your intutition substitutes a "similar" operation (substitution) for the more complex algebraic one, and that without the method 2 check overriding and correcting it, the wrong answer is given. Most people don't check this sort of answer. I imagine a lot of this check being used is related to what field someone is in - a CS or Math person is more likely to not say 10. Though, they will think it first, they will correct themselves before claiming it as the answer.

Other oddities:
At the airport you are offered an insurrance plan:

Plan A pays $50,000 in case of death by terrorism.
Plan B pays $50,000 in case of death for any reason.

Apparently, people are afraid of terrorism so they automatically pick the first one without doing the inclusion operation (I'm not at all afraid, hehe). Interestingly enough, when he asked the audience, every Googler I heard said "B", then he continued, "of course, the obvious answer is A... [here's why they are wrong...]".
Chess masters have trained their intuition (apparently the time has been determined experimentally to be about 10,000 hours before this happens) to just intuit positions and gameplay. They don't have to think about it the same way as us lesser folks.

The substitution of a similar problem for the one at hand I find most interesting. That and the fact that some things just don't get checked, and some people in general don't check most of their intution (afterwards, and off-the-record, he did say that man and women differ a lot in how strong their checks are and what they check). I'm trying to be aware of when I switch in a different problem for the one at hand, but I suspect detecting this sort of subconsious behavior is an inherently difficult metacognitive task.

The (Not) Censorship

So, we had a talk by the Jim Steyer, CEO/founder of Common Sense Media, at Google yesterday. I hadn't heard of it before, but the little flyer snipped said something about protecting children. I automatically assumed that this ment censorship of what I could produce, or what I could buy. I was surprised and grateful to be mistaken. Steyer actually seemed to have his head on straight. He wasn't for censorship at all. His site is reviews to inform parents so they know if something falls within the guidelines they deem appropriate for their children. Okay. That sounds good. Apparently they haven't really taken political stances on any censoring at all (well, censorship to kids, I suppose). I haven't looked into it too much, but I do intend to. Sounds interesting.

The Wireless Infestation Unravels

I'm feeling a bit better today. I went in to work and actually got stuff done. Yay! It wasn't until I'm about to go to bed that one of my ears popped. The other still hasn't popped since last night. Bah.

So, I had forgotten that my wireless keyboard needs batteries. Last night, I was in the middle of my game, and suddenly the keyboard stopped responding. Fortunately, I had just saved. I thought I maybe the game had just captured all the keys and screwed up the keyboard driver or something. So I pressed reset. Windows came back rather quickly, so it probably wasn't a driver error. I started the game up again, but still no keyboard. I tried reconnecting the keyboard, then I remembered there were batteries in the keyboard. I borrowed some batteries from Garrett and... voila! It works!

Man. The one thing I had forgotten about California was ants. I fucking hate ants. Yes, explicatives are necessary here. See, Washington is too wet to have many ants. The most I saw was about 20 in a week or so. Today I wiped 20 off the counter in one swoop. I thought I had gotten rid of them when I threw away a jar of jam that was on the counter and infested. Today they were all over the counters in my room. Ugh. Gross. I had forgotten and left a bag of trail mix out. I suppose it was only a matter of time before they found it. Aghhh. Stupid ants.

I did laundry this weekend and my sleeping shorts got some threads loose. I would have thought them to be shreded, but it seems so far it's just the threads on the seems. I've had them a while, and it's high time I get some new ones, so I'm looking forward to see when they finally expire and give me the last push of an excuse.

"If you want to destroy my sweater...Woah-ah-woah-ah-woah.
Hold this thread as I walk away... As I walk away.
Watch me unravel, I'll soon be naked.
Lying on the floor, lying on the floor
I've come undone." - Weezer, Undone

The Sickness, Part. 2

So, I talked to Ben. Turns out he is the one who got me sick. Dang. I didn't go to work today. I woke up feeling kinda bad. I could have gone in, but I didn't. I had occasional loud, gross coughs and sneezes, and have gone through 1/2 of both my bags of cough drops. I got the normal menthol ones (cough suppresant, oral anesthetics), and some pectin ones (oral demuculent, hehe). I have a huge pile of wrappers on my chair. So yeah, I sat at home today. Played some more Oblivion, took a four-hour nap (!), lost appetite. The usual. I finally remembered the last time I was sick I had a bunch of hot chocolate then got better. So I drank three cups tonight. We'll see if it helps.

I feel really guilty about not going in today. I know I probably would have just sat around waiting for and being frustrated at not having all the right permissions, but still. Feels weird not being at work. Unless I wake up feeling like shit tomorrow, I think I'm going to go in. I don't want to miss another day, and I should have access tomorrow. I feel like I'm just making excuses for not going in today. Ugh. Lame. Tomorrow I better feel better. I already feel better tonight.

The Sickness

Hey, that's an album by Disturbed.

Yeah, so suck. I woke up this morning feeling not very well, but I hadn't had a proper meal the night before, so I thought maybe if I just went to work and ate breakfast I'd feel a lot better. Unfortunately that was not the case. The sore throat from last night decided to morph into an ugly cough and incessant sneezing. Before noon, I was already really tired. Since I had more hoops to jump through before I had permissions to do much, I decided I should probably just go home. I wasn't going to get much done at work, and if I could take a nap and bed early, that would probably help. So I came took a nap. And now I'm going to bed early. Not as early as I would have liked, but early. Hopefully I'll feel better in the morning. If not, I may go in in the afternoon.

Borf.

The Weekend

So, yeah. I didn't just stay home all day yesturday. That was today. Yesturday Garrett and Chris both told me they were bored, so off we went. We went into San Francisco, hung out with Ben, and some of the people Garrett had met at the fourth of July beach party he went to. It was a fun evening. Dinner was pretty good - not sure if it justified the cost, but the bread was good. Garlic. Awesome. I had rabbit. Hehe, I saw it on the menu, and thought of the rabbit I saw run through our yard a few days ago. <licks lips.> Unfortunately, the wine we had at Ben's place before we went home had something wrong with it. It had a bit of a bite to it, or something was wrong. Either way, those of us who had it, Chris, Ross, and I, got really dry, sore, scratchy throats before bed last night and all day today. Ben, you should dispose of that wine. Blech. Ouch.

I have housing worked out. Doug (friend from freshman year) contacted me with an extra room in his place next year and offered it to me. Since Sam and Adam haven't worked out housing yet, I'm going to go ahead and accept Doug's offer. Should be fun. I am a bit bumbed at not living with Sam though. Oh well. It is nice not having to worry about it.

The Question

So... Help me out here, people. Does anyone actually read this thing? I'd rather not be as depressing as putting a tracker on this, but I'd like to know. If you do read this, can you post a comment or something. Thanks.

The Movies

I saw Superman Returns last night and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest tonight. Pretty cool movies. I don't want to spoil them for anyone, so I'll try to be general. Garrett was right, Lex's master plan in Superman Returns is kinda lame. The character development in Superman was great, though. Pirates was equally cool, and they seem to be setting it up for another movie, which is even better. Both were longer movies (about 2.5 hours each), which is nice, and definately an advantage over X-Men 3. Both certainly felt less cheesy than X3(not that I mind cheesy, but others do). Definate sweetness.

I'm really looking forward tomorrow to not doing anything. I've not had some down time in a while, so tomorrow I'm going to sleep in, and play Oblivion all day. Awesome.

The Fourth

Happy birthday America. You started off with a glorious dream. Here's to hundreds more years of awesomeness. I hope your people wake up soon and realize what they've got and how to keep it.

Today was pretty cool. Got a nice late start, sleeping in and everything. Pat and Jon came by to drop of Thayer and hung out for a little bit. After they left for LA, Thayer and I just hung out in my backyard. It was a really nice day, and just sitting out there with a bottle of water enjoying the back yard and the house was surprisingly nice. I was so freaking happy it was weird. The happiness was uncanny. After a while Ross came out and joined us. We talked a bit about thought and how the mind works and how frustrating it is working with people who don't, won't, or just can't think like us. Thayer started smoking his cigar, since Garrett told us we had a lot of time left. Apparently it was a really good cigar. Unfortunately, Garrett's plans changed, and he had to come early. Poor Chris had to put it out. He cut the end so he could try to save it for later. Hopefully it'll still be good.

Ross, Thayer, and I met up with Garrett and we went down to San Jose where we met up with Josh and some other people for dinner and fireworks. We half-missed some of the beginning ones, since they were behind a building a lot. We moved and were able to really enjoy some good fireworks. The best part was the big ones booming, then hearing the boom bounce off a nearby skyscraper/highrise. It was pretty cool. As we were leaving, we walked through a park, and the buildings around it looked so cool. If I hadn't been with other people who wanted to go, I would have just lay down in the middle of the intersection (the streets were closed), and just marveled at the beauty of the buildings and the park. It was pretty cool.

Happy Birthday America. These skyscrapers are your legacy.

The Friends

Wow, today was ridiculously fun. Pat, Jon, Thayer and I went to San Francisco. We met up with Seattle Ben and went to this Japanese Whisky bar, Nihon. I don't like the taste of whisky, so it was kinda disappointing for me, but Jon, Thayer, and Pat really enjoyed it. I kinda wish I really liked whisky, so I could enjoy this, but it was still fun to watch them get a kick out of it. The place had a bunch of different dishes which we all tried. I had real sushi (without the lame wrapping). The sushi was actually really good. All of the food was good, but not enough for dinner. I really liked this place. The head waitress, Janet, was super cute too. She and the bartender, Jojo, were really nice. Very cool to us, gave samples, friendly, talked, everything. Definately my kind of place - I just wish I liked the drinks more. After Nihon, we went to Rogue's Public House for some of their beer and their Kobe beef burgers. The burgers were really good - you definately notice a difference in the meat. I still can't say they were as good as Andy's buffalo and pepper-corn burgers, but they were quite tasty. They also had a really good chocolate-stout ice-cream float. We dropped off Ben and tried finding some bars after Rogue's, but failed. There wasn't much happening. So, we went back to Nihon and had some more whisky. I had a grean-tea liquor and whisky concoction which was pretty good. The green-tea liquor was pretty amazing. It was quite and expensive night - I spent somewhere around $80, Thayer and Pat (who were drinking a lot of good whisky) around $120. But it was so much fun. I really liked Nihon. I'll have to figure out some way of going back and being able to drink more. It was really sweet. This was the first time I've been to bars with Pat and Jon and Chris. It was really a lot of fun. You forget how much you miss really hanging out with people until you hang out with them again. Then it hits you, "wow, this is what I've been missing". Just riding back at night in the car with just the four of us, I can't help it. This feeling of happiness just washes over me, in that moment, life is just so awesome. Really amazing. I hope Pat and Jon come up here again. I love you guys!

The Party

Well, I had my first party yesturday. None of the Google interns I invited actually came. Pretty lame. Fortunately, most of the people Garrett invited did come. I spent about $200 on food and everything. I can't believe no one came. All that money. Kaput. Frakin' A. Well, at least we had enough food for everyone who did come. Pat and Jon drove up for the weekend, so it was great having them here. Garrett's friends were pretty cool too. Jane stayed the longest. She seemed pretty cool - when it started getting cold outside, she even suggested we all go inside and watch Battlestar Galactica. Pretty awesome. Thayer got her number, lucky bastard. Hehe. It was a fun time, cleanup didn't take too long this morning - mostly just dishes left. I wasn't exactly expecting it, but apparently my iPod was a big success. We put the speakers outside and piped my iPod through it, and apparently everyone really enjoyed the music. Pretty cool, especially since I expected Pat, Thayer, and Jon to not like most of my music. Anyway, we slept in today, so I don't expect to get to San Francisco until 5 or 6pm. Oh well. Hopefully we'll get to hang out with Ben some more and go cool places. We'll see.

The Retards

Okay, I don't kow what's wrong with me (or rather wrong everyone else - what makes me different), but consumer electronics have terrible user interfaces. Let me design my own phone's interface. Please. Some of their ideas are good, some are just terrible. Then again, maybe it's only the popular things, like the iPod and the Razr. Blah. I need to stop buying these things. My new phone plan came with the Razr. I'm skeptical, because I did really like my old phone (despite the small screen). My old phone was narrow, but a little thick. The Razr is really wide, but thin. This means my phone is no longer beside my wallet in my pocket, but behind it. This I thought I could live with, but the Razr has many other issues.

1. The phone doesn't vibrate very well. My old phone vibrates a lot - it even wanders off my desk some time. The thing is, I could hear this from across the room if it was on a hard surface, but when it was in my pocket, I could always feel it, and no one could hear it. Very good design. The Razr, not so much. It vibrates very softly, so I can't hear it, and I can only feel it vibrate if I'm paying attention. This means I'm going to have to have it on ring as well. This sucks, since now I have to actually turn it off in theatres. Now that everyone else will always know when I get a call, I can't discretely silence a call.
   Annoyance: 4 (of 5)
2. The Razr's phone book sucks
   1. The Razr doesn't let you sort through your contact list by name. I don't know how you could come up with this, but it doesn't. Sure, I can press a key, and it goes to that letter, but this does me no good when I have 10 people whos name starts with 'L'. My old phone I could type any characters in the name and it would filter by them. Very convenient, very fast access to any number.
      Annoyance: 5
      Stupidity: 5
   2. I haven't figured out speed dial yet, but I so far I can't just have my nine programmed numbers to just hold to dial.
      Annoyance: 3
   3. The phone doesn't like the SIM card. It was designed for the SIM card, I don't know why it can't play nicely with it. Sure, I can store a name with a number on the SIM card, but that's it. If I want any of the other features, like speed dial, voice dial, photo, what number for the person it is, anything, I need to store it on the phone, which as far as I can tell, means it's not on the SIM card. I assume that the SIM standard doesn't have this metadata. Fine, but how hard would it be to keep the name and number on the card as well? Then I could have metadata, and persist the crucial data?
      Annoyance: 3 (I may give up and store everything on the phone)
      Stupidity: 4
   4. For people who have multiple phone numbers stored with their name, the phone book lists their name multiple times, with no indication of which number it is. Since my dad has a home, cell, and work phone, this means he shows up three times in my phone book as "Dad". Last time I checked, I didn't have three Dads. Since his numbers are stored on the SIM card, it didn't know which number was what, but it should have showed one entry in the list and gone to a menu when I selected it (like my old phone did). At they very least I should have had something like Dad (1), Dad (2), Dad (3).
      Annoyance: 2
      Stupidity: 3
3. The "Smart Key". It "anticipates what you're going to do next, and does it when you press it". Yeah, thanks. I really needed a key that did a different and undocumented thing on each menu without telling me what beforehand.
   Annoyance: 1
   Stupidity: 3
4. The phone's display turns off after a short while. It doesn't dim the backlight (like my old phone and every other consumer electronics device with a screen does). No. It turns off. I can either get full brightness or no brightness. How battery efficient. Then, if I close it while it is off, it turns back on as it's closing. Whenever the phone is closed, the backlight stays on. Lighting up the keys with its full glory, wasting battery, and getting nothing done. Beautiful.
   Annoyance: 2
   Stupidity: 4

I'm sure I have more complaints, and I'll post them when I think of them. But seriously, doesn't this bug anyone else? Sure, the form factor's nice, but does it really make that big a difference - everyone's used to the older, bigger phones. And they're not unwieldy. It doesn't have a ton of features. It's just "in". Stupid fucking fashion.

The Pre-Party

So, Garrett, Ross, and I got to run around town today and set up for the party. We got drinks, then went to Costco. Spent lots of money, and got (almost) all the supplies we needed. Should be a good party. We came back, relaxed for a few hours, then cleaned the backyard, including the hot tub. We had to drain the hot tub, and we were told the heater didn't work, but we're giving it a shot. Hopefully it'll be ready to go by tomorrow night. I had the brilliant idea of putting the hallogen shop lights we have on top of the back porch roof, so we can light up the whole back yard now. Since the buttons are a toggle, we can even do it from inside (by just plugging it in), instead of climbing up on the roof. Should be a pretty cool party.