Jen's miscellany

And we get more rain this weekend too!

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 23:25:43 GMT

Wow, it is actually getting cold enough that I am considering closing my windows.

"It was 38 degrees in San Francisco this morning, 4 degrees above the record. Elsewhere, it was ... 34 in downtown Oakland."

Idle thoughts on caretaking...

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 04:57:11 GMT

Earlier yesterday I had a conversation about caring for people who are puking. I was boggling that apparently some people appreciate company and having their back rubbed while they are hunched over a toilet in what, for me, is a miserable and humiliating to be witnessed situation. The best care I have had while vomiting was someone setting glass of water and a towel set beside me and leaving. The impetus for the conversation laughed and suggested that could also have been the response of someone who really had no idea what to do and was checking out of the situation.

Apropos to nothing more than the conversation with he who had way too much gin: When you are ill, how do you flag what is the appropriate way to be supported (or left alone)? When you are with a dear one who is clearly ill and there is ambiguous messaging as to needs, how do you respond?

Taking care of oneself... the dork edition.

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 05:41:26 GMT

I was up till two last night. Mostly packing, but being me, time was spent super-gluing googly-eyes to plastic martini sticks. The thank you plant for my turtle/plant/fish-sitter required modification. Despite the late bedtime, I still made it to the airport by 7, using public transit, hauling over 100lbs of luggage.

One large suitcase of clothes, gear, and a desktop that accidentally got left off the freight shipment. One small suitcase with Cliff Bars, Oatmeal, books, hand sewing projects, stationary, and board games.

Yeah, in Las Vegas I expect to be the kinda woman who invites people back to her room for games. Like Scrabble.*

One of the few nice things about this job starting a week early is that it normally takes me a few days to get acclimate to the 10+ hour work days such that I am not completely exhausted most of the time. Which means I will have the resources for self-care when we hit the longer more rigorous days this coming weekend. Well, pending not starving to death for lack of nutritious vegetarian food at prices I can actually afford. (It is 9 o'clock and the best balanced vegetarian evening meal I could find for under $15 was a veggie omelette. It was also the only thing on the menu that had spinach in it. <sigh>)

*I brought Set, Power Grid, Guilllotine, and Race for the Galaxy too, but Scrabble is the one I am most likely to rope people into playing.

things I didn't need to know first hand...

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 05:51:00 GMT

Tonight I have learned that when a train strikes a vehicle on the tracks the passengers on board only feel an innocouos bump.

The car in question was fortunately unoccupied, unlike the vehicle this same train hit earlier today (not a great day for crossing tracks.)

I have been stuck in the marshes west of Fremont for an hour and a half so far. <sigh>

posted using my silly phone.

Tasty, tasty theater...

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 06:08:52 GMT

Green Day's American Idiot at Berkeley Rep was time and money well spent.

Earth Abides

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 19:55:05 GMT

Today on my way to work I passed a line of people waiting for the H1N1 vaccine.

It was at least 4 blocks long.

After the overhyping of SARS (and every flu-season since then) I am inclined to disbelieve the media about health news. While I know H1N1 is particularly brutal in that it is more likely to take out children and people in their prime rather than the elderly, it is still unclear to me where in the risk matrix the swine flu actually falls.

Thoughts? Useful cites?

In Denver, too busy for timely posts

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 19:58:21 GMT

If one has to spend one's Halloween working late away from home, there are worse places to be than Denver.

The walk back to my hotel follows the 16th Street Mall, a downtown commercial street which is closed to all vehicles but the free busses, pedicabs, and on weekends, horse drawn carriages. While Bay Area Halloween costumes tend toward the ribald or licentious, most of the ones I saw out on the streets were conservative-safe. It wasn't that there was no tackiness or raucous revelry*, just the undercurrent of competition to be outrageous was missing.

I was absolutely delighted that the horse-drawn carriages were all decked out. There was a winged dragon whose wings flapped with its gait, a unicorn complete with glittering pink hooves, a dark steed with velvet and gilt clad tracings pulling a carriage decked out like a ghost-ship, and a delightfully convincing elephant. The elephant was the only horse that seemed to be aware of the costuming, and it mostly seemed a bit confused by the large stuffed trunk attached to it's bridle.

The pedicab drivers were all costumed and had tricked out their vehicles with EL wire and minor decorations, though none so elaborate as the carriages. Silliness abounded. A ninja, who I had earlier seen driving a pedicab, seemed to be spending his evening off ambushing his fellows. His war-whoops, while not evincing a grasp of 'ninja-ness', added to the festive air.

While it has been a long work week here, and I am so looking forward to going home tomorrow, I am glad I got to see somewhere else have a Halloween.

*The most egregious of the former was a very well padded old lady costume with a stuffed dog wedged in her rear, and the latter included a drunken screaming Kevin Smith as well as a bar crawling hockey team in full gear with sticks.

Deeply conflicted...

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 02:40:14 GMT

2012 sounds like an incredibly inane and skippable movie....

...except it has Chiwetel Ejiofor and John Cusak. (Oooh, and Danny Glover!)

<sigh> And I bet it is one of those movies that I am going to keep my eyes shut through much of anyway. Such a wuss.

On language acquisition

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 18:43:24 GMT

Was macht der Seeräuber?

Er arrrrbeitet auf dem Wasser!

(okay, so I had to look up Seeräuber, but the rest is all mine.)

Getting rid of more stuff...

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 19:53:26 GMT

cyclothemia handed an AeroGarden Classic off to me before heading to London ages ago and I used it once to grow lettuce (which the cat now known as Virtue probably ate more of than me). I ran into her briefly at the Fire Arts Festival she said she was probably heading back to London, couldn't take it, and gave me permission to hand it off. Anyone interested? There is one lettuce pod set included. Claimed, woohoo!

Also, my large stuffed Animal (as seen here) needs a new home. He has water stains on one foot, but is otherwise intact.

ObPolitical update...

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:40:12 GMT

New Boss is not the same as the Old Boss.

Old regime policy. New regime:Obama has promised to sign this into law

And while I am not entirely happy with the upholding Bush policy about the polar bears, but this is is reassuring.

Catching up on my friend's page...

Sat, 17 Oct 2009 05:51:41 GMT

And I just have to note that there were two entries in which guys requested ponies and one where a woman apparently was attempting to bribe a guy onto a horse using steak.

It is two AM so I find this incredibly amusing

Gender in Movies [315]

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 23:51:00 GMT

Chloe and Myles dragged me out last night to see Whip It; while not the best film I have ever seen, it was thoroughly enjoyable and totally worth the price of admission (given many of the movies to come out this year, that is high praise). Whip It even passes the Bechdel test with flying colors, and, as sophiism suggests, that is worth a monetary vote on its own.

I find it frustrating that I still live in a world with enough subtle gender pigeonholing in the media that merely having female leads in something other than a romantic comedy is notably refreshing. I have spent most of the afternoon trying to think of movies I have seen where most of the key personalities in the movie are female and the list is depressingly short. Ghost World, The Magdalena Sisters, and Bend it Like Beckham came first to mind. But I'm a Cheerleader, Bound, and Chutney Popcorn have being a lesbian as a key plot point. The Election (which I hated) has a majority of relevant female characters but I can't remember if the women talk to each other about things other than the guys. Same for Monsoon Wedding (which I loved). Rommie and Michelle's Highschool Reunion probably passes the test though I am not sure whether I am more surprised by this or shamed that I am owning up to having seen it.

Most of those films were only shown in indie art-house theaters.

Even when I include children's movies, My Neighbor Tortoro is the only additional film I can think of. The Harry Potter movies pass the Bechdel test, but aren't close to parity genderwise.

Really, how difficult can it be to sell a worthwhile movie with a bunch of female characters? Preferably one without a plot that revolves around their love lives.

Little things...[410]

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 04:59:30 GMT

I seem to have hit a run of mild ill luck of late: petty thefts, misfortunately delayed mail, food poisoning yesterday, and today I am pretty sure I am dealing with the onset of being sick. But, given all that, let me share the little things I have been focusing on that make my world better.

Today’s joy was watching a Dane-mix, having escaped it’s leash along Lake Merritt, launch itself into the midst of a flock of Canada Geese. The beauty in that instance of grace and chaos as the geese took off and the clear canine-bliss of the running dog had me laughing. I caught up with the owner just as she was reattaching her dog to his lead and thanked her for that moment. “He has been wanting to do that for a while and finally found an opportunity”, she looked rather frazzled. The dog was entirely unrepentant; tail wagging he butted my hands with his huge head demanding attention.

Another silliness is the micro-relationships I have with people who are otherwise strangers. For instance, part of my weekend commute ritual is to race the train after I debark in Santa Clara. My goal is to reach the end of the station’s parking lot before it catches up with me. This is not really a competition as my success is determined entirely by how quickly the ushers get the other passengers sorted and what car I boarded rather than my speed. On occasion I look up at the engine as it passes and catch a glimpse of the engineer in the window. A week or so ago, while trying for that last futile burst of speed I glanced at the passing engine and noted the engineer watching me in the iconic pose of insouciance: casually leaning back, elbow on the window ledge, hand holding a cigarette which he idly ‘toasted’ at me. I was thoroughly amused though I figured it was a coincidental moment rather than intended communication. Since then, I look up every time the engine passes and invariably I get a wave or a blast of the horn.

Lastly, this week I received confirmation that I am now registered with the National Bone Marrow Donor Program. I originally found out about this through ladylonglocks and later was alerted to the free registration window by shoutingboy. Now it seems that registration is entirely free again (they used to have a fee to cover the lab costs).

CS folks: Bookshelf Purging

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 23:41:01 GMT

During the many year (and still incomplete) exploration of what I do and don't want to be as I grow up I have aquired quite a few CS textbooks. Most of these are probably out of date, but if any of you are interested in them, or can think of something useful to do with them, speak up.

Introduction to Languages and the Theory of Computation 3rd ed (Martin)
Discrete Mathematics and its Applications, 4th ed (Rosen)
X Window System User's Guide, vol 3 (O'Rielly & Quercia)
Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools (Aho, Sethi, Ullman) Wow, it even has a Wikipedia page
Modern Operating Systems, 2nd ed (Tannenbaum)
Concepts of Programming Languages, 6th ed (Sebesta)
Data Abstraction and Problem Solving with C++ 2nd Ed (Carrano, Helman, Veroff)
Computer Animation (Parent)
Fundamentals of Computer Graphics, 1st ed (Shirley)

Also, a large miscelley of c++ books.

More bicyclist travails [322]

Sun, 04 Oct 2009 05:44:12 GMT

Today my coworkers were laughing at my dilemma. Not out of malice, but because it is as ridiculous as it is frustrating.

"Who the hell takes a bike seat?"

Petty thieves in the Mission, apparently. While it pains me to admit it, this clearly counts as a Stupid Tax: I really should have known better.

Most of the time I do know better. I remove my headlight and always chain both tires when locking my bike in the Mission after dark. I am aware that nice seats with quick releases get stolen; even without a quick-release, nice thing like Brooks’ saddles should never be left with the bike. However, my old seat was so dilapidated taking it would have been a waste of energy so I never got in the habit of securing it. My new one was relatively cheap so it didn't occur to me till I was looking at the hole where my seat-post should have been that my seat qualified as theft-worthy.

Alas.

My attempted temporary fix was to borrow the seat from a neighbor's playa-bike ("Sure! I won't need it till next August anyway"), but the post is slightly too narrow and all of my efforts to effectively shim it in place failed. So today’s ride to and from work was made standing, which, while not as uncomfortable as I had expected, stressed joints and muscles I don’t usually use. One of my coworkers sympathetically predicted that I would be in agony by the morning. Tomorrow I will see if I am sore enough that jengineering a seat for the day seems like a worthwhile endeavor.

For now, though I have more important things to do: there is a moon to be watched from the roof, port to be sipped, and a long, hot, candlelit shower to be had. If I am sufficiently wakeful, I might even manage to get quality time snuggled in bed with a book.

The moment you leave the sidewalk, you are in play. [340]

Sat, 03 Oct 2009 02:57:28 GMT

Let us say I am on the far right edge of the far right lane where, as a bicyclist, I should be.* Three lanes over is the left hand turn lane, where I want to be. The traffic is relatively heavy.

Looking over my shoulder before I signal (as not to have my arm taken off) causes the nearest cars behind me to slow down such that they are driving just enough back so that they can slam on the brake if I suddenly pull out in front of them, but not enough such that I can actually merge into the lane without either throwing myself under tires or screeching brakes.

In my experience, signaling at this point just adds to the problem as now the driver won't pass me as they now actually know I want to pull into the lane and are worried that I will suddenly do so. They also don't tend to back off enough such that it is safe for me to merge. During this whole thing I have been slowing down a bit so that I won't overshoot my turn lane, and so whatever gap there may have been behind the first car is now closed by the car behind it.

The most frustrating part of this is that I suspect this is causing the driver annoyance at bicyclists. Not because I am doing anything wrong, but their own not knowing that I am trying to be safe is conflating with the occasional instance where bicyclists are actively aggressive in traffic (and thus cause screeching brakes).

There has got to be some elegant solution (currently, if I can't merge I continue on to the intersection and use the crosswalks to make my turn. Depending on the light pattern of the intersection, this can take up to three cycles to complete, which really really sucks.)

*in California, if there is no bike lane, bicyclists legally can use the whole lane, but regularly making use of that right is kinda rude.

Data management...

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 23:42:22 GMT

I am attempting to update, sync, clean, and otherwise manage my address book.

If you think I might not have your relevant details (phone number, address, and other such important information) but should, leave it in the comments. (screened)

Leaving a mailing address increases your likelihood of getting postal silliness from me.

In other news..

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 23:34:46 GMT

You call this a heat wave? Bah.

I was all ready to show the world that, as much as I tend to melt in the heat, I could tough it out if I wanted to. I shaved my legs and everything.

That being said, having the day free to nap, sit in a cafe with iced tea, wander around the lake and not be roasting is delightful.

grrr....

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 07:22:18 GMT

"You sure you don't want to put your backpack in the trunk?" <looks critically at my bulky "security blanket">

"Yeah, my livelihood is in here."

Turns out that was a good call. The $120 or so worth of clothes to replace my current hole-ridden wardrobe got taken from the trunk while we were in the movie.

National homicide statistics

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 21:50:19 GMT

I am still mulling this, but a few things stood out so I figured I'd share.

From the NYT (Look! I can cite something that isn't the Chronicle.)

"A young black man being shot to death by another black man who is an acquaintance continues to be the most “typical” homicide in the United States, according to a Federal Bureau of Investigations report released on Monday that showed an overall drop in violent crime for the second year in a row."

80% of the US population is white, but about half the homicide victims were black.

53% of those arrested for homicide were black

"While Mr. Carter of the F.B.I. declined to discuss crime trends and the reasons for them, he speculated that better medical care in recent years has spared some assault victims from being listed eventually as homicide victims."

Not getting conservatives...yet again

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 17:14:14 GMT

Okay...someone with better touch with politics, media, and the mindset of folks who really aren't my demographic please help me understand:

When reading reports about people protesting Obamacare in specific, and Obama in general I come across statements like Erica Coyle, who's in her 50s and is from Louisville, Ky., said problems began before Obama took office, but she said the situation has worsened and people are "finally waking up."

What situation? How have they gotten worse?

Also, I strongly suspect these protesters are not the same ones protesting the Bush's involvement in Iraq and the outrageous cost, so why is this costlier than Iraq?

First Rain...

Sat, 12 Sep 2009 14:46:35 GMT

First Rain announced itself with thunder which feels like a gift as we so rarely get thunder (I don't know that there was lightning).

Have a most wonder First Rain, everyone.

For those not in the know...

Sat, 12 Sep 2009 00:01:23 GMT

it is SF Fringe Season. Again I am one of the volunteer coordinators, so life is a bit hellish.

My stress aside, you all should come see shows!

For the folks with longer memories than mine...

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 02:42:17 GMT

Comments, please, on your takes of the industries and how they served people before and after deregulation:

The American Telecommunications Company (for you young ones, Ma Bell used to be strictly reigned by the FCC)

Energy companies in California (partial deregulation) and Texas (total deregulation except for a few counties).

Any other notable instances that I am missing?