Life, the University, and Everything

Off for a four-day weekend in Las Vegas. So long and thanks for all the fish. (For those of you keeping track at home, Kat lives in Henderson, which is like living in Vegas except you don't have to say "I'm from Vegas" if you want to avoid the what-happens-in-Vegas-stays-in-Vegas connotation.)

---

I'm dicking around with my blog template. Adding my picture kinda broke the layout, and I'm too rusty on my CSS to fix things properly. Bear with me as I attempt to fix the width of the sidebar while allowing the main body to be variable-width, without this weird space between the horizontal and vertical orange dotted lines that has now appeared.

---

Kaiser Chiefs were awesome. Shane's car getting towed by Taco Bell sucked. I'm going to Vegas this weekend with Shane, returning Tuesday night. I hear it's like 105 degrees there, but Kat tells me it rained so hard today that Hollywood Video closed early.

QotD:
[23:51] Mike Dalton: and then i would go to your house, on the day of our wedding
[23:51] Mike Dalton: and your family would say "the princess is in another castle"
[23:51] Mike Dalton: and I would die of sorrow

(Clarification: In Super Mario Brothers for the NES, after beating Bowser and expecting to rescue the Princess, Mario would be told "the princess is in another castle," and he'd proceed to the next world, until finally finding the right castle in world 8.)

---

QotD: Robin Williams

"It's kind of like, in the dictionary, under 'irony,' it says, 'See irony.'"

---

QotD: Steven Wright

"I know when I'm going to die; my birth certificate has an expiration date on it."

---

CS Prof Quotes

Play along at home! Match the Stanford computer science professor with his or her favorite catchphrase.

Catchprases:
1. "Does this make sense to people?"
2. "Is it clear? [exasperated sigh] No?"
3. "But that's not important right now."
4. "Hmm... I'm not going to finish this proof. I can't remember how it ends and it's probably not interesting to you anyway."

Profs:
A. Mehran Sahami (CS 106)
B. Jerry Cain (CS 107)
C. David Dill (CS 154)
D. Daphne Koller (CS 228)

---

Two amusing bits of conversation from dinner with Matt, Megan, Shane, and Dat at Darbar, an Indian restaurant in Palo Alto:

1. Matt and Megan are doing their typical playful antics -- Matt reaches over and drinks from Megan's water; Megan retaliates by licking his fork and then attempting to lick his neck.
Me, laughing: "You guys are ridiculous, with the licking, in a restaurant."
Megan: "Actually, we do even more licking in private." (I hold back a giggle.)
Matt, turning to Megan with an honest expression of that's-news-to-me: "Oh, do we?"
At this, I crack up. I guess he could get desensitized to it...

2. My phone vibrates; I silence it before Green Day's "Basket Case" starts playing. I step outside to answer it, returning a few minutes later.
Someone: "Who was it?"
Me: "That was [name deleted]... he wanted to know... if I would be available... in September... to drive him home after a colonoscopy..."
Someone: "Well, I'm full."

---

The IBM job is going well. Instead of installing and reinstalling malfunctioning software, I'm now actually programming! Quick summary: I'm adding new functionality to a Java software testing package called IBM Rational XDE Tester (aka Rational Functional Tester). I'm writing code to allow the testing data (what instructions the program under test should execute) to be stored in a database, which will make it more flexible and maintainable.

Today I arrived at work with $3 in my wallet, and the cafeteria doesn't take credit/debit cards. Oops! Had to borrow some cash from a coworker to buy lunch. :-)

Shane, Matt, Megan, and company are going to the beach again this weekend for surfing, grilling, and other good times.

I dropped my iPod mini today, and now it's not working. It shows me an image of a broken folder when I turn it on; it's not recognized when I plug it into a computer; holding down Menu and Select doesn't reset it. I'll try more troubleshooting tomorrow.

It's 11:30pm, and I am tired out of my mind. I can barely stand this schedule that has me taking a 7:30am bus. It's every bit as bad I as imagined it would be. It's like being in effin high school again.

I keep jotting down ideas for interesting posts that occur to me on the bus, so keep your browsers peeled.

---

Hit counter

I added a hit counter to my blog!

Now I'll know just how fewmany visitors I receive. My traffic has probably skyrocketed (for certain values of "skyrocket") since http://jhoff.blogspot.com started appearing on a much more popular blog. I'm like "American Dad" trying to ride off of the success of "Family Guy."

Well, here's logging your visit. *clink*

---

I loved this movie, and I liked the title for this post so much that I wanted to stick it here before I forgot.

Edit 8/26: I'm such a flake that I never came back and actually wrote this post. Sigh, maybe when it comes out on DVD...

---

I once read an article describing a study of how men adjust their voices to match the voice of another man who is perceived as dominant. It was based on analysis of voices of a talk show host and his guests. When the guest was less famous than the host, his pitch would raise or lower to match the host's; when the guest was a VVIP, the host would adjust his voice.

I realized that I was experiencing this phenomenon at work, talking to a senior IBM programmer with a very low voice.

Sadly, my preliminary attempts to Google corroborating evidence were unsuccessful. The last time this happened, I was trying to confirm the origin of the punctuation-inside-quote-marks rule, which Kat was able to do for me. So i'm optimistic that I'll be able to resolve this one too (three take my hand and come with me because you look so fine that I really wanna make you mine DUM DUM DUM, DUM DUDUM DUDUM DUM--sorry, good song).

---

QotD:
"Let's do hardcore tequila shots." ("What's that?") "You take a shot of tequila, then you snort salt up your nose, then you squirt the lime in your eye."
-Shane Combest

---

QotD:
"Life is too important to be taken seriously."
-Oscar Wilde

---

From Google Maps, here's a satellite picture of Mendenhall Glacier, just north of Juneau. My grandfather Hal, my uncle Kevin, my cousin Daniel, and I took a helicopter ride over the mountain to fly around the glacier and then land so we could walk around. I'm pretty sure the spot we landed is the small offshoot on the east side of the glacier before it hits the lake. I went cayaking I think somewhere off the south coast of that lake. (We were within clear sight of the glacier, but not too close.)

Mendenhall Glacier, with the north tip of Juneau in the bottom-left.

Closer look at the spot where we landed.

---

Every now and then, I'm fortunate enough to experience a moment of cosmic bliss. This afternoon, I had such an experience.

Today was the start of my second week of work at IBM. Shane had been driving me in the mornings of my first week, but I took the IBM Express bus this morning. In the afternoon, after getting off the bus at the Palo Alto stop, I ask an IBM guy about the route the bus takes in the morning. (Turns out I can hop on a mere two blocks from Mirrielees at 7:30am. Convenient.) As he's unlocking his bike from the rack behind the bus stop, the following conversation ensues...

IBM Guy: "Yea, the bus goes down California Avenue every morning.--Oh, watch the dead duck." (Points a few feet to my side.)
Me, jumping back: "Oh my goodness. Ew."
IBM Guy: "Yea, it's got quite a smell."
Me: "Well... you know what they say... if it smells like a dead duck..."
IBM Guy: "...and it quacks like a dead duck..."
Me and IBM Guy: "...it's a dead duck!"

Beautiful.

---