Monday, July 31, 2006
A whole wonderful year!
Happy anniversary sweetheart.
Sunday, July 23, 2006
Local Weather Forecast for Palo Alto, CA
Weather.com says today's high is 102 degrees. Low is a nice 65, so we attempt to blow in lots of cold air during the night, but it's not going to be enough. And I have to move furniture today. Ugh. Worst of all, my awesome new 24" monitor generates a LOT of heat. I mean, the weather is nice and dry here, which means we don't need air conditioning to survive (but that hasn't stopped some students from starting a pointless pro-AC online petition).
I'm gonna get brunch and then migrate over to the showers for the next few hours.
Edit: Things aren't really that bad. The forecast for the rest of this week has highs in the 80s and low 90s. Horaay.
I'm gonna get brunch and then migrate over to the showers for the next few hours.
Edit: Things aren't really that bad. The forecast for the rest of this week has highs in the 80s and low 90s. Horaay.
(Sorry it's only a) QotD: Mitch Hedberg
Mitch: I was at a restaurant. I ordered a chicken sandwich, but I don't think the waitress understood me, because she said, "How would you like your eggs?" So I tried to answer her anyhow. I said, "Incubated. And then raised. And then beheaded. And then plucked. And then cut up. And then put onto a grill. And then put on a bun. Damn! It's gonna take a while. I don't have time! Scrambled!"
Wednesday, July 19, 2006
Summertime and the bloggin's intermittent
(Yea, no title would have been better than a trite song reference, right?)
Last summer, living on campus in Mirrielees, working at IBM Silicon Valley Lab in San Jose, cathing two one-hour-long bus rides (7:30am-8:30am and 5:30pm-6:30pm), and courting Kat long-distance, I blogged effusively. My naïve theory at the time was that the simple requirement of sitting at a computer in a quiet office for forty hours a week made it inevitable. I'm spending a huge amount of time in front of computers, just like last summer, so that can't be the reason I'm blogging less now.
At the very start of the summer, I postulated that I blog inversely to the amount of interesting stuff in my life, and maybe my day-to-day was unremarkable. My time here has similarly walked the line between pleasant and dull, so that can't be it.
More likely, the two hours on the bus every day gave me an inordinate amount of time alone in my head to think of and jot down blog post ideas in my spiral notebook. (Although I found ways to fill the time: sleeping through most of the morning ride, listening to The Shins on huge ear-covering headphones borrowed from Shane -- until I dropped my old iPod mini -- and for a few days slavishly reading Catch-22 and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.)
But the most significant factor must absolutely have been Kat, who still writes better on her blog every week than most people do in their entire lives, which surely motivated me to try to do the same while we had few things to go on between us. Now I don't feel that same pressure. I mean, I think about her way more this summer than I did last summer. It's just that we communicate directly now, and not roundabout e-flirty-like.
==change of subject==
Tomorrow will be a busy and exciting work day. I finally have the microphone on the robot computer working, meaning I get to start taking hundreds of audio samples from people saying such things as "Robot, go to my office" and "Where are you going, STAIR? Stop!"
Oh, and my work on STAIR (the STanford AI Robot) is now officially Legit, having been featured in a New York Times technology article (that was also on the front page of nytimes.com yesterday): Brainy Robots Start Stepping Into Daily Life. Not that I needed vindication, but still, I almost can't express how awesome it is that my CS Faculty Advisor, Prof. Andrew Ng, is not only cited in the New York Times as a major player in restoring the United States competitiveness with Japan and Korea in the field of household robotics, but also is pictured teaching a robot how to load a dishwasher! I mean, it's just a staged photo, but still -- awesome!
My two-room-double roommate returns this Thursday. I have to move some of my random stuff out of his room before he gets back, and psychologically prepare myself for not having a single for the next eight weeks.
Oh, and thanks to the motivation from my grad student friend, I've been exercising regularly for two weeks now. Which makes me very tired and occasionally sore but hopefully sleeping better. I think I'm seeing improvement in my stamina already -- I won't hold my breath for the muscle mass.
Sheesh, now I remember how long blogging takes me. Maybe it's a habit worth keeping in check. Or to be more precise, keeping proportional to one's writing abilities. (Yes sweetheart, I'm referring to you.)
Last summer, living on campus in Mirrielees, working at IBM Silicon Valley Lab in San Jose, cathing two one-hour-long bus rides (7:30am-8:30am and 5:30pm-6:30pm), and courting Kat long-distance, I blogged effusively. My naïve theory at the time was that the simple requirement of sitting at a computer in a quiet office for forty hours a week made it inevitable. I'm spending a huge amount of time in front of computers, just like last summer, so that can't be the reason I'm blogging less now.
At the very start of the summer, I postulated that I blog inversely to the amount of interesting stuff in my life, and maybe my day-to-day was unremarkable. My time here has similarly walked the line between pleasant and dull, so that can't be it.
More likely, the two hours on the bus every day gave me an inordinate amount of time alone in my head to think of and jot down blog post ideas in my spiral notebook. (Although I found ways to fill the time: sleeping through most of the morning ride, listening to The Shins on huge ear-covering headphones borrowed from Shane -- until I dropped my old iPod mini -- and for a few days slavishly reading Catch-22 and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.)
But the most significant factor must absolutely have been Kat, who still writes better on her blog every week than most people do in their entire lives, which surely motivated me to try to do the same while we had few things to go on between us. Now I don't feel that same pressure. I mean, I think about her way more this summer than I did last summer. It's just that we communicate directly now, and not roundabout e-flirty-like.
==change of subject==
Tomorrow will be a busy and exciting work day. I finally have the microphone on the robot computer working, meaning I get to start taking hundreds of audio samples from people saying such things as "Robot, go to my office" and "Where are you going, STAIR? Stop!"
Oh, and my work on STAIR (the STanford AI Robot) is now officially Legit, having been featured in a New York Times technology article (that was also on the front page of nytimes.com yesterday): Brainy Robots Start Stepping Into Daily Life. Not that I needed vindication, but still, I almost can't express how awesome it is that my CS Faculty Advisor, Prof. Andrew Ng, is not only cited in the New York Times as a major player in restoring the United States competitiveness with Japan and Korea in the field of household robotics, but also is pictured teaching a robot how to load a dishwasher! I mean, it's just a staged photo, but still -- awesome!
My two-room-double roommate returns this Thursday. I have to move some of my random stuff out of his room before he gets back, and psychologically prepare myself for not having a single for the next eight weeks.
Oh, and thanks to the motivation from my grad student friend, I've been exercising regularly for two weeks now. Which makes me very tired and occasionally sore but hopefully sleeping better. I think I'm seeing improvement in my stamina already -- I won't hold my breath for the muscle mass.
Sheesh, now I remember how long blogging takes me. Maybe it's a habit worth keeping in check. Or to be more precise, keeping proportional to one's writing abilities. (Yes sweetheart, I'm referring to you.)
Tuesday, July 04, 2006
QotD: I'm an e-smartass
A random AIM conversation from months ago that I randomly came across:
[20:12] tlow: can you have 0 ball?
[20:13] JeremyHoffman03: i'm really not sure, tlow
[20:13] tlow: you're a linguist, no?
[20:13] tlow: WHAT AM I PAYING YOU FOR THEN!!!!????
[20:13] JeremyHoffman03: you're paying me for my linguist girlfriend
[20:13] tlow: oh.
[20:13] tlow: 0 balls?
[20:13] tlow: or 0 ball?
[20:14] JeremyHoffman03: i think there are sentences where "zero ball" or "no ball" might be correct, but generally, we're talking zero balls
[20:14] JeremyHoffman03: if you're playing some weird kind of pool where instead of 1-15 you do in fact have a 0 ball
[20:15] JeremyHoffman03: or, if your parents, Mr and Mrs Ball, named you Zero
[20:16] JeremyHoffman03: or, if someone asked you "do you have any kind of ball?" and you said "i have no ball!" (a la "i have NO HAND!" from seinfeld)
[20:16] JeremyHoffman03: or if you were attending a party celebrating the new millenium, and it was the two zero zero zero ball
[20:17] tlow: thank you.
(Sticklers, feel free to replace "new millenium" with "end of the 1900s" -- I was working fast to deluge him with inanity -- and to dislodge your thumbs.)
[20:12] tlow: can you have 0 ball?
[20:13] JeremyHoffman03: i'm really not sure, tlow
[20:13] tlow: you're a linguist, no?
[20:13] tlow: WHAT AM I PAYING YOU FOR THEN!!!!????
[20:13] JeremyHoffman03: you're paying me for my linguist girlfriend
[20:13] tlow: oh.
[20:13] tlow: 0 balls?
[20:13] tlow: or 0 ball?
[20:14] JeremyHoffman03: i think there are sentences where "zero ball" or "no ball" might be correct, but generally, we're talking zero balls
[20:14] JeremyHoffman03: if you're playing some weird kind of pool where instead of 1-15 you do in fact have a 0 ball
[20:15] JeremyHoffman03: or, if your parents, Mr and Mrs Ball, named you Zero
[20:16] JeremyHoffman03: or, if someone asked you "do you have any kind of ball?" and you said "i have no ball!" (a la "i have NO HAND!" from seinfeld)
[20:16] JeremyHoffman03: or if you were attending a party celebrating the new millenium, and it was the two zero zero zero ball
[20:17] tlow: thank you.
(Sticklers, feel free to replace "new millenium" with "end of the 1900s" -- I was working fast to deluge him with inanity -- and to dislodge your thumbs.)
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