So, I haven't posted here in a long, long time. That is at least partially because I've been pushing really hard on a big project at work for a while. And I just released that project!
http://officialblog.yelp.com/2009/08/lettuce-suggest.html
Lightning fast, location-aware, search suggestions. Check it out!
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Monday, July 6, 2009
Visits
Its been two weekends and if I don't get down *something* now its never going to happen. Lets go with chronological order.
The weekend before last we had an huge amount of visitors. Scott & Shusta came up and stayed at Scott's house, Caro, Rob, Jillian, & Nicole stayed at my house, and Kris & David stayed up in SF (though David crashed on my floor one night). That is a whole lot of people! I managed to see everybody, but it was pretty crazy trying to do so!
A few highlights:
* Top-roping with Shusta & Scott for a long time on Saturday morning. It was awesome except for the part where they I did poorly enough on my belay test that I only got a day pass and will have to retake it. Two observations here. First, they have a bunch of strange differences that I'm not used to that tripped me up (like a double-overhand saftey knot that they claim is necessary :-P). Two, if I did poorly enough that you want me to re-take the test WHY LET ME BELAY FOR A WHOLE DAY IN THE FIRST PLACE! *ahem*. After that little boondoggle we had an awesome time, and I even got up a crazy 5.10d, which is a new record for me (and I haven't top-roped in well over a year!).
* Little star in the city with Kris, Ben, Sketchy, Morgan, and Ben's friend Kyle. Pizza was, unsurprisingly delicious. Conversation highlight:
Me [to Ben]: I'm really not that sorry to have missed out on watching a speedo contest
Kyle [to Ben]: Wait... is he not gay?
[Minutes later, after having established that I am indeed not gay]
Kyle [whispering to Ben]: Which ear is it [my earring] supposed to go in...?
I need to figure out what makes guys hit on my and change it to get girls to hit on me instead.... :-P
* Meeting up with Caro et. al. as they were walking out of where they had dinner, being offered pot gingerbread cookies on the way to Coit Tower, and the view from Coit Tower at sunset
* It was Pride weekend, and we went to the parade on Sunday. Quite epic, even though I missed most of the leather (sub?)parade while I was getting a piece of pizza
* Caro brought Morgan and me Pattys!
So, *excellent* weekend. As always, I love visitors! This means *you*. Come on out and visit ^_^.
The major event of the week was a mountain biking trip before work with my coworker Adam. We hit the trail by 6:15AM, had a great time biking in the peaceful morning air, and I was proud of how well I held up on the trail despite barely ever having mountain biked before. Then, on the way back down a wide dirt road I took a corner too fast and completely wiped out on the gravel, which kindly *ate* my right elbow. This is still healing, and I really should come up with a better story about it before it is gone...
*This* weekend I road tripped down to LA and stayed with Scott in Irvine (Greg was also visiting, which helped motivate the trip). This post is starting to get long, so I'm again going to do highlights:
* Drove down with Morgan, and didn't stop on the drive to eat. Just went strait to Pattys and had the best burrito I've ever had there (Chicken & Rice w/ everything on it). I just need to do the chili rellenos next time and it will be perfect.
* Hung out with Greg, Scott, and Shusta. Caught up on old times, listened to a bunch of Michael Jackson, wandered around a beach and failed to find a cave, and went to Red Robin in Fashon Island (despite a nearly apoplectic Shusta)
* "The Core" drinking game. For those not familiar, the movie is about saving the earth from being fried by solar winds after its core stops spinning. It is as bad as it sounds. The game is simple: drink when there is bad science. We had to slow down a bit after the first half hour because we were going through beers too fast. My favorite line: "We don't have enough room to land!" "Its OK, I've calculated L over D max". I highly recommend the movie, but only with energetic company, a sense of humor, and a copious amount of alcohol.
* We spent the 4th joking about American excesses, admiring Greg's flag pants, eating at China Gate, and enjoying the Claremont fireworks and company of amazing friends ^_^. I spent most of the later evening hanging out in south courtyard and Scott's apartment chatting ^_^.
* Sunday involved watching the last part of Die Hard 4 (I haven't seen the first part, but it was on TV and apparently it isn't really necessary to see the first bit) and watching Bruce Willis "Badass all over the place". I've only seen the first Die Hard before, and now I want to see the rest of them. Choice quote from the main characters daughter, as she and the fairly nerdy computer guy are being led away to a van by bad guys and he is scared, "Take a moment to dig deep and find a bigger pair of balls because you're going to need them." Priceless.
* Also, did Mongolian BBQ and watched Greg eat what was simply an absurd amount of food.
* Finished off the weekend by having an almost pleasant drive home (traffic over the 152 :-P) and polishing off the last two episodes of Chuck.
I also realized this weekend that I need to decide sometime in the next few months if I'm going to go to graduate school in '10 or '11.... This frightens me, and along with general worrying about having stagnated and being sad was a slight damper on the weekend.
Man... that seems a bummer note to end this post on.... Maybe I should take a boat ride.
The weekend before last we had an huge amount of visitors. Scott & Shusta came up and stayed at Scott's house, Caro, Rob, Jillian, & Nicole stayed at my house, and Kris & David stayed up in SF (though David crashed on my floor one night). That is a whole lot of people! I managed to see everybody, but it was pretty crazy trying to do so!
A few highlights:
* Top-roping with Shusta & Scott for a long time on Saturday morning. It was awesome except for the part where they I did poorly enough on my belay test that I only got a day pass and will have to retake it. Two observations here. First, they have a bunch of strange differences that I'm not used to that tripped me up (like a double-overhand saftey knot that they claim is necessary :-P). Two, if I did poorly enough that you want me to re-take the test WHY LET ME BELAY FOR A WHOLE DAY IN THE FIRST PLACE! *ahem*. After that little boondoggle we had an awesome time, and I even got up a crazy 5.10d, which is a new record for me (and I haven't top-roped in well over a year!).
* Little star in the city with Kris, Ben, Sketchy, Morgan, and Ben's friend Kyle. Pizza was, unsurprisingly delicious. Conversation highlight:
Me [to Ben]: I'm really not that sorry to have missed out on watching a speedo contest
Kyle [to Ben]: Wait... is he not gay?
[Minutes later, after having established that I am indeed not gay]
Kyle [whispering to Ben]: Which ear is it [my earring] supposed to go in...?
I need to figure out what makes guys hit on my and change it to get girls to hit on me instead.... :-P
* Meeting up with Caro et. al. as they were walking out of where they had dinner, being offered pot gingerbread cookies on the way to Coit Tower, and the view from Coit Tower at sunset
* It was Pride weekend, and we went to the parade on Sunday. Quite epic, even though I missed most of the leather (sub?)parade while I was getting a piece of pizza
* Caro brought Morgan and me Pattys!
So, *excellent* weekend. As always, I love visitors! This means *you*. Come on out and visit ^_^.
The major event of the week was a mountain biking trip before work with my coworker Adam. We hit the trail by 6:15AM, had a great time biking in the peaceful morning air, and I was proud of how well I held up on the trail despite barely ever having mountain biked before. Then, on the way back down a wide dirt road I took a corner too fast and completely wiped out on the gravel, which kindly *ate* my right elbow. This is still healing, and I really should come up with a better story about it before it is gone...
*This* weekend I road tripped down to LA and stayed with Scott in Irvine (Greg was also visiting, which helped motivate the trip). This post is starting to get long, so I'm again going to do highlights:
* Drove down with Morgan, and didn't stop on the drive to eat. Just went strait to Pattys and had the best burrito I've ever had there (Chicken & Rice w/ everything on it). I just need to do the chili rellenos next time and it will be perfect.
* Hung out with Greg, Scott, and Shusta. Caught up on old times, listened to a bunch of Michael Jackson, wandered around a beach and failed to find a cave, and went to Red Robin in Fashon Island (despite a nearly apoplectic Shusta)
* "The Core" drinking game. For those not familiar, the movie is about saving the earth from being fried by solar winds after its core stops spinning. It is as bad as it sounds. The game is simple: drink when there is bad science. We had to slow down a bit after the first half hour because we were going through beers too fast. My favorite line: "We don't have enough room to land!" "Its OK, I've calculated L over D max". I highly recommend the movie, but only with energetic company, a sense of humor, and a copious amount of alcohol.
* We spent the 4th joking about American excesses, admiring Greg's flag pants, eating at China Gate, and enjoying the Claremont fireworks and company of amazing friends ^_^. I spent most of the later evening hanging out in south courtyard and Scott's apartment chatting ^_^.
* Sunday involved watching the last part of Die Hard 4 (I haven't seen the first part, but it was on TV and apparently it isn't really necessary to see the first bit) and watching Bruce Willis "Badass all over the place". I've only seen the first Die Hard before, and now I want to see the rest of them. Choice quote from the main characters daughter, as she and the fairly nerdy computer guy are being led away to a van by bad guys and he is scared, "Take a moment to dig deep and find a bigger pair of balls because you're going to need them." Priceless.
* Also, did Mongolian BBQ and watched Greg eat what was simply an absurd amount of food.
* Finished off the weekend by having an almost pleasant drive home (traffic over the 152 :-P) and polishing off the last two episodes of Chuck.
I also realized this weekend that I need to decide sometime in the next few months if I'm going to go to graduate school in '10 or '11.... This frightens me, and along with general worrying about having stagnated and being sad was a slight damper on the weekend.
Man... that seems a bummer note to end this post on.... Maybe I should take a boat ride.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Epicness
I'm pretty proud of this past week. My life has been lacking in epicness recently, and needed a bit of a booster. Lets start with last weekend. On Friday there was a engineering event at Yelp. This basically meant that we all went out to a bar, chatted, and got rather drunk on the company's bill. After a few excellent hours at the bar I ended up at Pagolac with about 7 other co-workers and had the highly recommended seven course beef (epic!) for dinner. It was *amazing*. Different from most Vietnamese food that I have had before, and even more delicious! Also, it was great getting to hang out with a bunch of awesome people from work ^_^.
After dinner I walked back to the office with 2 others and hung out there for about half an hour. I have to say, it is really fun just chatting with a couple of people after a night of fun in a big, quiet space that you have all to yourself. ^_^ I caught the midnight train home and, after delays due to electrical problems (i.e. train moving at full speed on the tracks, suddenly all the lights and air conditioning go out in the car... actually surprisingly nice and peaceful, if terrifying to think about) I made it home by 1:30AM and was in bed by 2.
Now, you are probably saying to yourself, "well, that sounds like a pretty cool night, but where is the *epic*?". Epic you say? The epic comes when I wake up at 6AM, hit the road by 6:30, and drive 400 miles to my hometown in southern Oregon by 12:30PM (using exact numbers and including breaks I averaged 67.5mph for 6 hours). I then took a 15 minute nap, showered, shaved, put of my-if I do say so myself-spiffy suit, and headed out to a wedding. After a fairly short ceremony and dinner I danced for hours. That is the epic (can you tell I'm proud?) ^_^.
So, the wedding was really awesome, I got to meet some cool new people (saw Bryce Larkin {reference nobody will get}), and caught up with a friend that I was in school with from elementary though high school, but haven't talked to since *high school* graduation!
I then drove back home on Sunday. It was a pretty crazy weekend and set the tone for the week. I had a pretty epic Tuesday night doing work stuff that I don't really want to talk about, but the real epic-ness following this weekend was Wednesday.
I finished work on Wednesday and biked, as usual, to the train station only to discover, after waiting in a crowd for a while, that there was a train crash in San Bruno and the trains were delayed for an unknown length of time. A guy shouted out that he was biking to San Mateo (20 mi away) and invited anyone who wanted to come along. I figured "what the hell" and joined Douglas and Remiko on an adventure!
After the bloody *crazy* hills of SF (I didn't get in my lowest gear for the first one, and barely made it up {when I was *fresh*. And I'm not in *amazing* biking shape, but I'm pretty damn strong. That was a huge fucking hill!}. I partially burned up my brakes trying to stay sane going down them) we had a pretty pleasant ride down the peninsula to San Mateo.
Douglas is a senior architect and explained a whole lot of things to me about how architectural projects are organized (sounds a bit like software with lots of extra rules & regulations and cross-disciplinary stuff), and how incredibly specialized architecture firms are (his firm *only* does medical buildings!). He also had is own practice for about 6 years and I heard a lot about that and the toll that it can take on your personal life. I asked my 'how do you meet people' question and was given the good idea of becoming a regular at a few restaurants and cafes. I explained a bit about startups and stock options to Douglas. Remiko had a pretty strong accent, and I didn't get quite the same conversation with her.
Douglas and Remiko were done once we reached San Mateo, so I biked the next 20 miles home by myself (and I think actually made better time, thought it wasn't as enjoyable). I've actually been pretty thrilled today by how little this destroyed me. My legs were a *bit* tired, and my shoulders are sore (from carrying a backpack with a laptop 40 miles), but other than that I'm pretty much right as rain! Yay for being in shape! Now I just need to climb more than once a week....
Well, that is all the epicness that has been had so far this week. (Though I guess we did have Guiness floats [Guiness + ice cream] today for an (Irish) co-worker's birthday). This weekend promises great epicness in that Scott, Shusta, Caro, Rob, Kris, Sketchy, Jillian, and Jillian's friend are all visiting!
So, with that, goodnight. I wish you epicness (and consistent hyphenation)!
Cheers,
Jason
After dinner I walked back to the office with 2 others and hung out there for about half an hour. I have to say, it is really fun just chatting with a couple of people after a night of fun in a big, quiet space that you have all to yourself. ^_^ I caught the midnight train home and, after delays due to electrical problems (i.e. train moving at full speed on the tracks, suddenly all the lights and air conditioning go out in the car... actually surprisingly nice and peaceful, if terrifying to think about) I made it home by 1:30AM and was in bed by 2.
Now, you are probably saying to yourself, "well, that sounds like a pretty cool night, but where is the *epic*?". Epic you say? The epic comes when I wake up at 6AM, hit the road by 6:30, and drive 400 miles to my hometown in southern Oregon by 12:30PM (using exact numbers and including breaks I averaged 67.5mph for 6 hours). I then took a 15 minute nap, showered, shaved, put of my-if I do say so myself-spiffy suit, and headed out to a wedding. After a fairly short ceremony and dinner I danced for hours. That is the epic (can you tell I'm proud?) ^_^.
So, the wedding was really awesome, I got to meet some cool new people (saw Bryce Larkin {reference nobody will get}), and caught up with a friend that I was in school with from elementary though high school, but haven't talked to since *high school* graduation!
I then drove back home on Sunday. It was a pretty crazy weekend and set the tone for the week. I had a pretty epic Tuesday night doing work stuff that I don't really want to talk about, but the real epic-ness following this weekend was Wednesday.
I finished work on Wednesday and biked, as usual, to the train station only to discover, after waiting in a crowd for a while, that there was a train crash in San Bruno and the trains were delayed for an unknown length of time. A guy shouted out that he was biking to San Mateo (20 mi away) and invited anyone who wanted to come along. I figured "what the hell" and joined Douglas and Remiko on an adventure!
After the bloody *crazy* hills of SF (I didn't get in my lowest gear for the first one, and barely made it up {when I was *fresh*. And I'm not in *amazing* biking shape, but I'm pretty damn strong. That was a huge fucking hill!}. I partially burned up my brakes trying to stay sane going down them) we had a pretty pleasant ride down the peninsula to San Mateo.
Douglas is a senior architect and explained a whole lot of things to me about how architectural projects are organized (sounds a bit like software with lots of extra rules & regulations and cross-disciplinary stuff), and how incredibly specialized architecture firms are (his firm *only* does medical buildings!). He also had is own practice for about 6 years and I heard a lot about that and the toll that it can take on your personal life. I asked my 'how do you meet people' question and was given the good idea of becoming a regular at a few restaurants and cafes. I explained a bit about startups and stock options to Douglas. Remiko had a pretty strong accent, and I didn't get quite the same conversation with her.
Douglas and Remiko were done once we reached San Mateo, so I biked the next 20 miles home by myself (and I think actually made better time, thought it wasn't as enjoyable). I've actually been pretty thrilled today by how little this destroyed me. My legs were a *bit* tired, and my shoulders are sore (from carrying a backpack with a laptop 40 miles), but other than that I'm pretty much right as rain! Yay for being in shape! Now I just need to climb more than once a week....
Well, that is all the epicness that has been had so far this week. (Though I guess we did have Guiness floats [Guiness + ice cream] today for an (Irish) co-worker's birthday). This weekend promises great epicness in that Scott, Shusta, Caro, Rob, Kris, Sketchy, Jillian, and Jillian's friend are all visiting!
So, with that, goodnight. I wish you epicness (and consistent hyphenation)!
Cheers,
Jason
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Class, Moving, and Loneliness
Ok. So it is truly absurd how long it has been since I updated this blog. I could point fingers at a number of things, but really I just haven't had the energy to put together an entry, and it has been becoming more and more daunting as more things happened that I want to mention... I want to thank those of you who have steadfastly pestered me to update this blog again. It really does help get me off my butt and on the keyboard.
So, what *has* happened to Jason since he last updated? Well, its been long enough that I'm just a little bit hazy on it myself. However, probably the biggest thing thing was me enrolling in CS224N, Natural Language Processing at Stanford. This is a full-scale grad-level CS/Linguistics course that I was taking through Stanford's online distance-learning program (even though I am about 1mi from the school). Once enrolled I proceeded to have my life eaten by said course (note that this is when I stopped updating this blog).
So, the course has just ended (hallelujah for short classes in the quarter system) as of this past Tuesday. Now, I am really glad I took the class. I learned a lot about NLP, and I also feel like I finally understand a bunch of larger concepts in AI and Machine Learning that I have been working with since summer-after-sophomore-year but never really had completely understood till now (naïve bayes, discriminative vs. generative models, exponential models, ... the list goes on). That said, the class was a *lot* of work [here is another lesson: don't do assignments that are meant for pair-programming completely in isolation]. Most of my weekends since that class started that I did not travel were me working on NLP. I also learned that while I *love* learning and *love* school, the massive work ethic that has always been by my side when I work on anything school-like is linked quite a bit to the people I am around. So, when I take a class online and don't really have any contact with other students in the course, I don't feel nearly as interested, I don't process the material as well, and -worst of all- I don't have the motivation I usually do. I'm still planning on taking more online classes (really, I'm addicted to learning), but I'm definitely going to try to establish contact with other students in the class *much* earlier in future classes.
Ok, so that was NLP. What else... Well, I've been down to Mudd *twice* (I think...) since the last time I posted. The first time was for Donut Man (wooo! 17.4 miles of unicycling, awesome people and *delicious* strawberry donuts!) and Slinky Dress. It was an *awesome* weekend, really great to be around so many good friends, and really brought up my spirits (which had not been all that high) up a lot. The second time was for graduation. It was also really great to visit, thought I did not get to see nearly everyone I would have liked (which is particularly sad, as I have no idea when I will see most of them again :-/). I also had too much to drink that weekend and really owe Scott, Shusta, and a bunch of others a huge debt for taking care of me so well. Sorry for being a dumbass, but it is really nice to know I have such amazing friends.
Through those two trips to Mudd I became aware of something. I didn't realize how much I had missed being around... science. Between conversations with Helen and Ben during drives to and from Mudd (about StatMech and BioChem respectively) and a conversation over dinner with Mike about the actual physics of black holes (white dwarfs, neutron stars, and how Hawking radiation could be used to make a small black hole into a perfect matter to energy converter) [and now a subsequent conversation about what the Grand Unified Theory means!] I have picked up (if not understood as well as I would like) a fair bit of a few different subjects. And it makes me *incredibly* happy. I have *hugely* missed this feeling, of learning *new* things, not just refinements or explanations of things I had some inkling how to do before. That is the problem with computer science for me right now. I'm still learning new things every day, but they are not generally *big* things or new *ideas*.
This sort of feeling makes me feel even more so that I will be going to grad school in the next few years, if maybe not for computer science... Don't worry, since this is one of my bigger existential crises right now, there will definitely be future posts about such things ^_^. For now, I'll move on
So, housing has changed around quite a bit for me as well. Mike moved out, Brett (after he graduated) moved in, and we all moved to a new place. The move actually happened *last* weekend, and I have come to the conclusion that moves are *exhausting*, take *way* too long (we moved all our crap in two days, including cleaning the old house, but I'm still trying to get moved into the new place [but I have bookshelves now!!! I actually have all my books from Mudd out on shelves! It is awesome {if you didn't already know, I passionately love books (I want to have a personal library, and already have a good start) so it makes me really happy to have all the books out of boxes}]). Also, moving being tired and crotchety for a week after the actual move is not a great way to appreciate your new house or roomates...
So, the new house. We are now closer to Stanford and generally closer (i.e. walking distance) to a bunch of nice places like a used bookstore and a Safeway (that is open 24hrs a day). We also happen to be a couple of blocks from the Tesla dealership (Tesla == electric *sports* car). However, we're now living in an apartment instead of a house. This means there are other people around, so we have to deal with their noise and try not to piss them off with ours. That said, there are actually other people around. I think think the main thing that I miss is having a big, airy room with lots of natural light, surrounded by greenery.
The feeling is lessening a bit now, but all the moving and change (moving houses, finishing a class, seeing class of '09 graduate, and even moving my desk at work) has made me a bit pensive and lonely. I still really miss having the people I hung out with all the time at Mudd around me, and I really miss the closeness and companionship of a relationship. I've learned a lot over the last few years about self-sufficiency, independence, and making myself happy, but I guess this current shakeup has make me start missing the good times. Maybe this is what it will take to get me out and trying to meet some girls.
Incidentally, no real progress on that front. Its been a year since I graduated college and I still haven't met or really started hanging out with many new people. This is in no small part my own fault, but I'm still not really sure how to start...
Ok, this is starting to get long and to the point that I might never finish it if I don't just cut my losses and post now. There are a few more things that I wanted to mention, but I'll keep them in bullet form:
-Marry, Boff, Kill: Entertaining game where X gives Y a list of three people, A, B, and C. Y must choose which Y would marry, which Y would boff, and which Y would kill (or, for those people that are just too nice, banish). Best between friends who can give each other really really hard triples.
-Been keeping up w/ summer movies: wolverine (awesome), star trek (surprisingly good), terminator (enjoyed it while I was there, but didn't make much of an impact on me). Still need to see Up!
-Turned 23: holy crap!
-Paul is starting @ Yelp! Yay Mudder goodness!
-Got new glasses (and they're pretty hot ~_^).
-My cousin Andrew was here to visit this weekend! (*Awesome* visit. I haven't seen him since I was in 8th grade. Got to catch up a *lot*, find we have enough similarities it is almost creepy ^_^, and had a ton of fun [hanging out, Stanford Dish, and I FINALLY GOT OUT TO ALCATRAZ!!!]).
-Had a great suggestion from a guy at work to use blogging as a way to clear my thoughts when I'm trying to learn something. This means there will probably start being technical posts in addition to write-about-my-life posts.
Ok, thats all for now folks! Thanks for still reading!
Cheers,
Jason
So, what *has* happened to Jason since he last updated? Well, its been long enough that I'm just a little bit hazy on it myself. However, probably the biggest thing thing was me enrolling in CS224N, Natural Language Processing at Stanford. This is a full-scale grad-level CS/Linguistics course that I was taking through Stanford's online distance-learning program (even though I am about 1mi from the school). Once enrolled I proceeded to have my life eaten by said course (note that this is when I stopped updating this blog).
So, the course has just ended (hallelujah for short classes in the quarter system) as of this past Tuesday. Now, I am really glad I took the class. I learned a lot about NLP, and I also feel like I finally understand a bunch of larger concepts in AI and Machine Learning that I have been working with since summer-after-sophomore-year but never really had completely understood till now (naïve bayes, discriminative vs. generative models, exponential models, ... the list goes on). That said, the class was a *lot* of work [here is another lesson: don't do assignments that are meant for pair-programming completely in isolation]. Most of my weekends since that class started that I did not travel were me working on NLP. I also learned that while I *love* learning and *love* school, the massive work ethic that has always been by my side when I work on anything school-like is linked quite a bit to the people I am around. So, when I take a class online and don't really have any contact with other students in the course, I don't feel nearly as interested, I don't process the material as well, and -worst of all- I don't have the motivation I usually do. I'm still planning on taking more online classes (really, I'm addicted to learning), but I'm definitely going to try to establish contact with other students in the class *much* earlier in future classes.
Ok, so that was NLP. What else... Well, I've been down to Mudd *twice* (I think...) since the last time I posted. The first time was for Donut Man (wooo! 17.4 miles of unicycling, awesome people and *delicious* strawberry donuts!) and Slinky Dress. It was an *awesome* weekend, really great to be around so many good friends, and really brought up my spirits (which had not been all that high) up a lot. The second time was for graduation. It was also really great to visit, thought I did not get to see nearly everyone I would have liked (which is particularly sad, as I have no idea when I will see most of them again :-/). I also had too much to drink that weekend and really owe Scott, Shusta, and a bunch of others a huge debt for taking care of me so well. Sorry for being a dumbass, but it is really nice to know I have such amazing friends.
Through those two trips to Mudd I became aware of something. I didn't realize how much I had missed being around... science. Between conversations with Helen and Ben during drives to and from Mudd (about StatMech and BioChem respectively) and a conversation over dinner with Mike about the actual physics of black holes (white dwarfs, neutron stars, and how Hawking radiation could be used to make a small black hole into a perfect matter to energy converter) [and now a subsequent conversation about what the Grand Unified Theory means!] I have picked up (if not understood as well as I would like) a fair bit of a few different subjects. And it makes me *incredibly* happy. I have *hugely* missed this feeling, of learning *new* things, not just refinements or explanations of things I had some inkling how to do before. That is the problem with computer science for me right now. I'm still learning new things every day, but they are not generally *big* things or new *ideas*.
This sort of feeling makes me feel even more so that I will be going to grad school in the next few years, if maybe not for computer science... Don't worry, since this is one of my bigger existential crises right now, there will definitely be future posts about such things ^_^. For now, I'll move on
So, housing has changed around quite a bit for me as well. Mike moved out, Brett (after he graduated) moved in, and we all moved to a new place. The move actually happened *last* weekend, and I have come to the conclusion that moves are *exhausting*, take *way* too long (we moved all our crap in two days, including cleaning the old house, but I'm still trying to get moved into the new place [but I have bookshelves now!!! I actually have all my books from Mudd out on shelves! It is awesome {if you didn't already know, I passionately love books (I want to have a personal library, and already have a good start) so it makes me really happy to have all the books out of boxes}]). Also, moving being tired and crotchety for a week after the actual move is not a great way to appreciate your new house or roomates...
So, the new house. We are now closer to Stanford and generally closer (i.e. walking distance) to a bunch of nice places like a used bookstore and a Safeway (that is open 24hrs a day). We also happen to be a couple of blocks from the Tesla dealership (Tesla == electric *sports* car). However, we're now living in an apartment instead of a house. This means there are other people around, so we have to deal with their noise and try not to piss them off with ours. That said, there are actually other people around. I think think the main thing that I miss is having a big, airy room with lots of natural light, surrounded by greenery.
The feeling is lessening a bit now, but all the moving and change (moving houses, finishing a class, seeing class of '09 graduate, and even moving my desk at work) has made me a bit pensive and lonely. I still really miss having the people I hung out with all the time at Mudd around me, and I really miss the closeness and companionship of a relationship. I've learned a lot over the last few years about self-sufficiency, independence, and making myself happy, but I guess this current shakeup has make me start missing the good times. Maybe this is what it will take to get me out and trying to meet some girls.
Incidentally, no real progress on that front. Its been a year since I graduated college and I still haven't met or really started hanging out with many new people. This is in no small part my own fault, but I'm still not really sure how to start...
Ok, this is starting to get long and to the point that I might never finish it if I don't just cut my losses and post now. There are a few more things that I wanted to mention, but I'll keep them in bullet form:
-Marry, Boff, Kill: Entertaining game where X gives Y a list of three people, A, B, and C. Y must choose which Y would marry, which Y would boff, and which Y would kill (or, for those people that are just too nice, banish). Best between friends who can give each other really really hard triples.
-Been keeping up w/ summer movies: wolverine (awesome), star trek (surprisingly good), terminator (enjoyed it while I was there, but didn't make much of an impact on me). Still need to see Up!
-Turned 23: holy crap!
-Paul is starting @ Yelp! Yay Mudder goodness!
-Got new glasses (and they're pretty hot ~_^).
-My cousin Andrew was here to visit this weekend! (*Awesome* visit. I haven't seen him since I was in 8th grade. Got to catch up a *lot*, find we have enough similarities it is almost creepy ^_^, and had a ton of fun [hanging out, Stanford Dish, and I FINALLY GOT OUT TO ALCATRAZ!!!]).
-Had a great suggestion from a guy at work to use blogging as a way to clear my thoughts when I'm trying to learn something. This means there will probably start being technical posts in addition to write-about-my-life posts.
Ok, thats all for now folks! Thanks for still reading!
Cheers,
Jason
Monday, March 23, 2009
Fun week, but I'm still at work now...
The below was written on the train this morning... I'm still at work, pushing out a new feature now!
Hey all,
Boy, this has been an exciting week! I visited Berkeley on Tuesday, delivered a slightly-old-but-still-delicious pair of Patties burritos to Shelley, and hung out with Sketchy-David and his friend Janik (probably butchering the spelling, pronounced Jan-ick) for a while which was lots of fun! It also made for my 3rd tip to Berkeley in 4 days, which was a little much, but worse things have happened in life.
My brother and his friends arrived in San Francisco on Wednesday and I had dinner with them and then train/car-ed back to my house for an evening of chatting and watching hilariously awesome shows on TV.
As a sidebar, I don't really watch too much TV, but I've gradually accumulated a fairly large list of TV shows that I watch and really really enjoy. How I Met Your Mother, 30 Rock, and Big Bang Theory are the major three. All are fantastic and come highly recommended. Maybe I will gush more about them in a different post.
Anyway, my brother and friends stayed with me on Thursday too. They managed to see the MOMA and, unfortunately, mis-timed seeing the Exploratorium, but overall got a good tour/wander through the city. We had delicious delicious back a yard for dinner and then again engaged in chat & TV. I was particularly happy to go for a walk with just my brother and get to just chat with him for a while. Its always great to actually get to chat ^_^.
Friday was exciting because I presented the paper on GFS to the rest of engineering for work as part of a paper-reading group that we are doing. I think the talk went well overall, but that is largely because it moved primarily to Q&A pretty quickly. I was once more reminded that, no matter how casual of a talk, *I* always need to actually practice beforehand or I will get a bit lost & confusing while I actually give the talk. I'm a bit frustrated with myself for that, but I guess I will make it better next time.
Sunday is the final notable part of my past week. Greg was in the area for a conference that ended around noon yesterday, but he doesn't leave until today (monday) at ~3PM. So, I picked him up around 1:30 and drove up to SF to meet up with Doug and Shelley. We had an all-round fantastic, if not too exciting, day. I was extremely happy seeing Greg and getting to hang out with all of them!
We basically wandered around SOMA & surrounding neighborhoods. We went to the comic book museum that I walk by every day at work. I have decided that such museums are not great for groups of people that just want to socialize, but nonetheless it was very neat. I found the Watchmen exhibit to be particularly excellent, especially since it had real props and costumes from the movie!
After comic books we wandered to Yerba Buena gardens and had lunch/tea at Samovar which was *delicious*, beautiful, and much better for chatting. The one downside is that I forgot that most tea has caffeine in it. I don't normally ever drink anything with caffeine, so I credit the tea with messing me up for the rest of the day a little bit (basically just loopy/tired).
After wandering through Union Square we retired to Berkeley for dinner at a Thai/Soul Food place that was excellent, and provided us with plenty of food. We hung out at Shelley's for a while after that, stopped by Doug's, and then I took Greg back to my house where we rockbanded, chatted and went to sleep far to late for this to be an entirely excellent day of work. Overall, fantastic day ^_^
Thats all for now folks!
Cheers,
Jason
Hey all,
Boy, this has been an exciting week! I visited Berkeley on Tuesday, delivered a slightly-old-but-still-delicious pair of Patties burritos to Shelley, and hung out with Sketchy-David and his friend Janik (probably butchering the spelling, pronounced Jan-ick) for a while which was lots of fun! It also made for my 3rd tip to Berkeley in 4 days, which was a little much, but worse things have happened in life.
My brother and his friends arrived in San Francisco on Wednesday and I had dinner with them and then train/car-ed back to my house for an evening of chatting and watching hilariously awesome shows on TV.
As a sidebar, I don't really watch too much TV, but I've gradually accumulated a fairly large list of TV shows that I watch and really really enjoy. How I Met Your Mother, 30 Rock, and Big Bang Theory are the major three. All are fantastic and come highly recommended. Maybe I will gush more about them in a different post.
Anyway, my brother and friends stayed with me on Thursday too. They managed to see the MOMA and, unfortunately, mis-timed seeing the Exploratorium, but overall got a good tour/wander through the city. We had delicious delicious back a yard for dinner and then again engaged in chat & TV. I was particularly happy to go for a walk with just my brother and get to just chat with him for a while. Its always great to actually get to chat ^_^.
Friday was exciting because I presented the paper on GFS to the rest of engineering for work as part of a paper-reading group that we are doing. I think the talk went well overall, but that is largely because it moved primarily to Q&A pretty quickly. I was once more reminded that, no matter how casual of a talk, *I* always need to actually practice beforehand or I will get a bit lost & confusing while I actually give the talk. I'm a bit frustrated with myself for that, but I guess I will make it better next time.
Sunday is the final notable part of my past week. Greg was in the area for a conference that ended around noon yesterday, but he doesn't leave until today (monday) at ~3PM. So, I picked him up around 1:30 and drove up to SF to meet up with Doug and Shelley. We had an all-round fantastic, if not too exciting, day. I was extremely happy seeing Greg and getting to hang out with all of them!
We basically wandered around SOMA & surrounding neighborhoods. We went to the comic book museum that I walk by every day at work. I have decided that such museums are not great for groups of people that just want to socialize, but nonetheless it was very neat. I found the Watchmen exhibit to be particularly excellent, especially since it had real props and costumes from the movie!
After comic books we wandered to Yerba Buena gardens and had lunch/tea at Samovar which was *delicious*, beautiful, and much better for chatting. The one downside is that I forgot that most tea has caffeine in it. I don't normally ever drink anything with caffeine, so I credit the tea with messing me up for the rest of the day a little bit (basically just loopy/tired).
After wandering through Union Square we retired to Berkeley for dinner at a Thai/Soul Food place that was excellent, and provided us with plenty of food. We hung out at Shelley's for a while after that, stopped by Doug's, and then I took Greg back to my house where we rockbanded, chatted and went to sleep far to late for this to be an entirely excellent day of work. Overall, fantastic day ^_^
Thats all for now folks!
Cheers,
Jason
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Parkour!
Hey all,
Sorry I didn't post last weekend. I was was busy driving back up from Mudd, where I had a terrifically fantastic time!
The exciting news from this weekend is that I learned some parkour on Saturday. For those not familiar with the term, check out wikipedia and youtube (there is plenty more on youtube ^_^). While I didn't do anything nearly as badass as what you see on the youtube video, I did learn how to roll and do a whole bunch of vaults and jumps over walls. It was really really really fun and I am definitely going to keep it up (even though my whole body hurts today). The event I went to was a beginner jam held by SF Parkour, which I highly recommended if you are at all interested in learning!
This was actually a pretty active weekend, in addition to the parkour on Saturday, I made perogi on Friday with a whole bunch of people. I love perogi, it is just about the only Polish connection I have, despite being half polish, and is a cherished piece of my childhood. What I'm saying is that people, beer, and perogi all combined with finishing Arrested Development (finally! its a great show!) made for an awesome Friday.
After parkour on Saturday I hung out/drank beer with Doug before driving home and then going up to San Mateo for dinner with Morgan, Jay, and Kelly along with watching a ton of ZeroPunctuation and the newest Futurama movie.
Today was generally lazy, though I did drive up to Berkeley and have dinner with Shelley, Sayuri, Corrine, and a bunch of other Mudders going to Berkeley. We went out to Ethiopian, which I have only had once before. It was quite good, and it was surprised by the vegetarian offerings, but I'm not sure I'm fully a fan of taff (maybe not spelled like that), which is the Ethiopian flat sourdough bread that you eat everything with. It just adds a little bit of a sour edge to everything and I'm not sure I'm a fan.
Well, I want sleep, so I think that is all for now.
Cheers,
Jason
Sorry I didn't post last weekend. I was was busy driving back up from Mudd, where I had a terrifically fantastic time!
The exciting news from this weekend is that I learned some parkour on Saturday. For those not familiar with the term, check out wikipedia and youtube (there is plenty more on youtube ^_^). While I didn't do anything nearly as badass as what you see on the youtube video, I did learn how to roll and do a whole bunch of vaults and jumps over walls. It was really really really fun and I am definitely going to keep it up (even though my whole body hurts today). The event I went to was a beginner jam held by SF Parkour, which I highly recommended if you are at all interested in learning!
This was actually a pretty active weekend, in addition to the parkour on Saturday, I made perogi on Friday with a whole bunch of people. I love perogi, it is just about the only Polish connection I have, despite being half polish, and is a cherished piece of my childhood. What I'm saying is that people, beer, and perogi all combined with finishing Arrested Development (finally! its a great show!) made for an awesome Friday.
After parkour on Saturday I hung out/drank beer with Doug before driving home and then going up to San Mateo for dinner with Morgan, Jay, and Kelly along with watching a ton of ZeroPunctuation and the newest Futurama movie.
Today was generally lazy, though I did drive up to Berkeley and have dinner with Shelley, Sayuri, Corrine, and a bunch of other Mudders going to Berkeley. We went out to Ethiopian, which I have only had once before. It was quite good, and it was surprised by the vegetarian offerings, but I'm not sure I'm fully a fan of taff (maybe not spelled like that), which is the Ethiopian flat sourdough bread that you eat everything with. It just adds a little bit of a sour edge to everything and I'm not sure I'm a fan.
Well, I want sleep, so I think that is all for now.
Cheers,
Jason
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Videogame music and other momentous things
Hey all,
Today has been a big day! I just finished doing my taxes for the first time on my own. Yay for H&R Block's semi-free only system to make sense of that whole mess, boo for having to spend a bunch of time on it, yay for getting $$$ from the government, and *fingers crossed* that I didn't fuck anything up too badly...
In even larger news, I'm not going to Cornell next year and I just emailed them today. I feel like kind of a terrible person for doing this, since I told them that I was accepting their deferred admission at the start of February. The decision has gotten a *lot* of thought though and I think that staying in California is what will be best for me. You can IM/email if you want more details.
That is the big exciting life news. Now for other things that happened this week.
Yesterday I went to a videogame music concert with Mike (http://videogameslive.com). It was very nerdy, and very very fun. Basically is videogame music performed live by a full orchestra along with really cool light show + videos. Definitely something for videogamers though. Half of the fun was getting all the references, and it was way more fun to listen to songs I knew (e.g. Mario & Zelda) than those I didn't (e.g. other games that I didn't play as much). That said, the WoW music + epic Blizzard video was amazing, and my favorite songs were the last two: One Winged Angel (the Sephiroth song from FF7) and Castlevania. Both of these were full orchestra + heavy metal style guitar, and were *so* full of energy. It was amazing. And I *really* should go to metal concerts, because I really really like that music (sorry to all you classical music players out there, it just doesn't do it for me).
The concert actively encourages you to take video and put it up on YouTube ^_^. Here is an example of what they do for Mario:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4LVJSzt-Ds
Man, I just keep thinking of other highlights from the concert. They had Martin Leung (youtube him) play a bunch of oldschool stuff on the piano (which he could also do blindfolded and at *incredible* speed). They had a Guitar Hero contest and had the winner come on stage and play while accompanied by a full orchestra. He had to get over 150,000 pts on 'Hard' to win a prize, and instead did it on 'Expert' (the audience was screaming & cheering him on. Soooo fun).
Ok, I'm going to stop gushing now. And I think this post is long enough to. Back next week with more updates!
Cheers,
Jason
Today has been a big day! I just finished doing my taxes for the first time on my own. Yay for H&R Block's semi-free only system to make sense of that whole mess, boo for having to spend a bunch of time on it, yay for getting $$$ from the government, and *fingers crossed* that I didn't fuck anything up too badly...
In even larger news, I'm not going to Cornell next year and I just emailed them today. I feel like kind of a terrible person for doing this, since I told them that I was accepting their deferred admission at the start of February. The decision has gotten a *lot* of thought though and I think that staying in California is what will be best for me. You can IM/email if you want more details.
That is the big exciting life news. Now for other things that happened this week.
Yesterday I went to a videogame music concert with Mike (http://videogameslive.com). It was very nerdy, and very very fun. Basically is videogame music performed live by a full orchestra along with really cool light show + videos. Definitely something for videogamers though. Half of the fun was getting all the references, and it was way more fun to listen to songs I knew (e.g. Mario & Zelda) than those I didn't (e.g. other games that I didn't play as much). That said, the WoW music + epic Blizzard video was amazing, and my favorite songs were the last two: One Winged Angel (the Sephiroth song from FF7) and Castlevania. Both of these were full orchestra + heavy metal style guitar, and were *so* full of energy. It was amazing. And I *really* should go to metal concerts, because I really really like that music (sorry to all you classical music players out there, it just doesn't do it for me).
The concert actively encourages you to take video and put it up on YouTube ^_^. Here is an example of what they do for Mario:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4LVJSzt-Ds
Man, I just keep thinking of other highlights from the concert. They had Martin Leung (youtube him) play a bunch of oldschool stuff on the piano (which he could also do blindfolded and at *incredible* speed). They had a Guitar Hero contest and had the winner come on stage and play while accompanied by a full orchestra. He had to get over 150,000 pts on 'Hard' to win a prize, and instead did it on 'Expert' (the audience was screaming & cheering him on. Soooo fun).
Ok, I'm going to stop gushing now. And I think this post is long enough to. Back next week with more updates!
Cheers,
Jason
Saturday, February 21, 2009
OMG! A post!
Hey all,
I don't actually know if there is any 'all' anymore, as I post so infrequently on this blog. I'll really try to get better! I promise! My schedule was all messed up by traveling 6 weekends in through December and January and I'm only really starting to recover now.
Lets see... how can I summarize the last couple of months without going to crazy? How about we just say that cool things happened, I met cool people, and generally life is going pretty well right now. I recently read "Old Man's War" on a friend's recommendation, and I continue to slog through "Poland" which I've been reading since December and still am not really into (which is why I'm less than half-way through!).
The major event of this past week was another party at my house on Friday! It was pretty much all Mudders and we had a blast! Unfortunately Shelley wasn't there so there are no incriminating pictures...
I don't have much more right now. I'm just hoping to build up some momentum so that I start posting on this darn thing again...
Cheers,
Jason
And to DM who is telling me to post: I think you have missed a week or two :-P
I don't actually know if there is any 'all' anymore, as I post so infrequently on this blog. I'll really try to get better! I promise! My schedule was all messed up by traveling 6 weekends in through December and January and I'm only really starting to recover now.
Lets see... how can I summarize the last couple of months without going to crazy? How about we just say that cool things happened, I met cool people, and generally life is going pretty well right now. I recently read "Old Man's War" on a friend's recommendation, and I continue to slog through "Poland" which I've been reading since December and still am not really into (which is why I'm less than half-way through!).
The major event of this past week was another party at my house on Friday! It was pretty much all Mudders and we had a blast! Unfortunately Shelley wasn't there so there are no incriminating pictures...
I don't have much more right now. I'm just hoping to build up some momentum so that I start posting on this darn thing again...
Cheers,
Jason
And to DM who is telling me to post: I think you have missed a week or two :-P
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Cancun!
Is awesome! I haven't posted for a while so I wanted to give a quick update. The week in Palo Alto after Christmas was pretty awesome [arguing with Mike Roberts about religion at Mike Buchanan's New Years party was a highlight ^_^]. After that quick trip to *my* home, I drove back to my parent's home (Medford) on the 1st and am now (after a *long* plane trip) enjoying the sunny weather of Cancun! Thus far, I am rapidly tanning, have finished 2 books (I already owed you a summary of "Fall of Hyperion", and now I need to add "Watchmen" and "Botswana's No. 1 Lady's Detective Agency" to the list!), and learned to pilot a catamaran today. Also, lots of food and booze.
Summary: Trip is awesome, though it is giving me plenty of time to ponder the current state of my life and the things I would like to change.
More updates will come, with a long one at the end of the week when I once again have internet that I am not paying for by the minute!
Cheers,
Jason
Summary: Trip is awesome, though it is giving me plenty of time to ponder the current state of my life and the things I would like to change.
More updates will come, with a long one at the end of the week when I once again have internet that I am not paying for by the minute!
Cheers,
Jason
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Merry Post Christmas
Hey all,
I hope you all had a merry christmas! I managed to after some initial difficulties. I managed to make it home without too many difficulties after my last blog post, and after another trip to the hospital for abdominal pain on the 24th I started feeling better. I even managed enough of a recovery to join my mom & brother for a trip up to a family friend's house for Christmas Eve dinner!
Overall, the trip home was pretty awesome. I got to spend time with all of my family, have a few great meals (prime rib with Dad on Christmas, hand-made perogi with Mom on Boxing Day), exchange gifts, and even bought myself a fancy new coat from Macys! I'm actually really really excited about the coat, to the point where I've posted a picture of myself in it at the end of this post. I've been meaning to buy one like it for a long time, and I got it for 50% off! This was partially aided by signing up for a Macy's credit card in the store, which I am hoping to pay off and cancel as soon as possible. We shall see if I get bitten in the ass for trying to get another 15% off my coat...
Who out there watches "The Big Bang Theory"? If you are unfamiliar with the show, the basic premise is 4 nerds + 1 hot non-nerd girl who moves in next door + various misadventures. I think it is *hilarious*, if occasionally painfully familiar to watch. My brother gave me season 1 on DVD for christmas (^_^), and I am currently trying to catch up on season 2. The one thing that has struck me about the show as of late is how *very* well, if somewhat eclectically, dressed all of the "nerd" characters are. Apparently even super-nerdy characters that have their lack of social graces played up as a central piece of the show nonetheless maintain immaculate grooming. It is like the classic 'teen transformation' movie where the ugly and unpopular kid suddenly becomes gorgeous and popular with the right haircut and wardrobe adjustments. Hollywood seems to tell us that your social zenith lies no further away than the hairdresser and mall. I think that 'ugly' people on TV are just beautiful people that people treat as ugly. Opinions? Discussion? Do I even have people reading this?
Lets see, almost done with this post. I just wanted to mention that I finished reading "Hyperion" by Dan Simmons. I've actually read it before, years ago, but I'm trying to read "Fall of Hyperion", which I checked out from the library, and it was too confusing without re-reading "Hyperion" again first. I'm glad I did. The first time I read the book I was *really* confused, probably because I read it quickly, skimming parts, instead of really paying attention and figuring out what was going on. One of the most interesting parts of the book is that it is told in the style of Canterbury Tales. A group of pilgrims are on a journey to a strange beast known as "The Shrike" (or, to members of the Shrike church, "The Lord of Pain". Its not exactly a cuddly sort of book...). Through their journey the each relate their stories and how Hyperion (the world the Shrike inhabits) has intertwined itself with their lives. Even beyond this interesting literary device, the book manages to combine mystery, suspense, and even a bit of existential philosophy. Dan Simmons deifies the English poet John Keats, making him a central piece of the book (did I mention it is 700 years in the future?) and spends a lot of time exploring the possibly consequences of a sentient AI and the sort of technological singularity that you hear people talking about w.r.t the Internet now and again. All in all, I recommend the book. Make sure you have the sequel available to you though. Hyperion is a cliff hanger.
Thats all for now!
Cheers,
Jason
I hope you all had a merry christmas! I managed to after some initial difficulties. I managed to make it home without too many difficulties after my last blog post, and after another trip to the hospital for abdominal pain on the 24th I started feeling better. I even managed enough of a recovery to join my mom & brother for a trip up to a family friend's house for Christmas Eve dinner!
Overall, the trip home was pretty awesome. I got to spend time with all of my family, have a few great meals (prime rib with Dad on Christmas, hand-made perogi with Mom on Boxing Day), exchange gifts, and even bought myself a fancy new coat from Macys! I'm actually really really excited about the coat, to the point where I've posted a picture of myself in it at the end of this post. I've been meaning to buy one like it for a long time, and I got it for 50% off! This was partially aided by signing up for a Macy's credit card in the store, which I am hoping to pay off and cancel as soon as possible. We shall see if I get bitten in the ass for trying to get another 15% off my coat...
Who out there watches "The Big Bang Theory"? If you are unfamiliar with the show, the basic premise is 4 nerds + 1 hot non-nerd girl who moves in next door + various misadventures. I think it is *hilarious*, if occasionally painfully familiar to watch. My brother gave me season 1 on DVD for christmas (^_^), and I am currently trying to catch up on season 2. The one thing that has struck me about the show as of late is how *very* well, if somewhat eclectically, dressed all of the "nerd" characters are. Apparently even super-nerdy characters that have their lack of social graces played up as a central piece of the show nonetheless maintain immaculate grooming. It is like the classic 'teen transformation' movie where the ugly and unpopular kid suddenly becomes gorgeous and popular with the right haircut and wardrobe adjustments. Hollywood seems to tell us that your social zenith lies no further away than the hairdresser and mall. I think that 'ugly' people on TV are just beautiful people that people treat as ugly. Opinions? Discussion? Do I even have people reading this?
Lets see, almost done with this post. I just wanted to mention that I finished reading "Hyperion" by Dan Simmons. I've actually read it before, years ago, but I'm trying to read "Fall of Hyperion", which I checked out from the library, and it was too confusing without re-reading "Hyperion" again first. I'm glad I did. The first time I read the book I was *really* confused, probably because I read it quickly, skimming parts, instead of really paying attention and figuring out what was going on. One of the most interesting parts of the book is that it is told in the style of Canterbury Tales. A group of pilgrims are on a journey to a strange beast known as "The Shrike" (or, to members of the Shrike church, "The Lord of Pain". Its not exactly a cuddly sort of book...). Through their journey the each relate their stories and how Hyperion (the world the Shrike inhabits) has intertwined itself with their lives. Even beyond this interesting literary device, the book manages to combine mystery, suspense, and even a bit of existential philosophy. Dan Simmons deifies the English poet John Keats, making him a central piece of the book (did I mention it is 700 years in the future?) and spends a lot of time exploring the possibly consequences of a sentient AI and the sort of technological singularity that you hear people talking about w.r.t the Internet now and again. All in all, I recommend the book. Make sure you have the sequel available to you though. Hyperion is a cliff hanger.
Thats all for now!
Cheers,
Jason
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
There is a party in my stomach and I wasn't invited...
Ugh. I've been having stomach pain since Sunday and took a sick day today to go into the Stanford Medical Clinic ER. After some lab work and an ultrasound the conclusion is that I just have a badly upset stomach (yay! I don't have to have surgery!). As wonderful of news as this is, my stomach still really doesn't feel good... So, I'm going to attempt to drive home today and have my family take care of miserable me. Wish me luck with the 6 hour drive.
On the work front, I'm *finally* making progress on my current project at work and *really* would like to finish it up. I also had a bit of an adventure on Friday. Normally I wake up at 7:23AM, get ready, bike a mile to the train station, catch the 8:23AM train, and bike from the train station in SF to get to work at ~9:15AM. On Friday things were going wonderfully normally, until I got on the train and realized that I had forgotten my wallet.
Now, as Caltrain so gleefully reminds you a dozen times a day, Caltrain requires you to have the ticket to be on the train and if you don't have one you get hit with a hefty fine. My monthly pass is safely contained in my wallet, where I am least likely to misplace it. Unfortunately, that doesn't really help when you misplace your wallet.
I found a conductor and asked her what to do. She told me to get off the train. So I did, at the next stop. But this is an *express* train, so the next stop was 6 miles from my house (and that is me being luck, a different express train would have dropped me way farther down the line). Having no money to buy myself a ticket, I biked home along somewhat soggy roads and switched to my trusty automobile to convey me to work. 45 minutes and a wrong turn on the 280 later, I finally made it to work a little after 10. And I was still one of the first engineers there.
The happy epilogue to all of this is that I used my car (which I don't normally have up in SF) to visit Doug over in Berkeley after work. It was great to see him, hang out, and try another delicious beer ^_^.
The only other recent news is that I went up to a party Jen DuMond threw up at her parents lodge in the nearby mountains. I carpooled up with Shelley, and after *lots* of being lost on dark, damp, and dangerous mountain roads we finally found the place (a little over an hour late). There were a few other Mudders there and it was generally an awesome time!
Thats all for now. I want my stomach to feel better :-P
Merry Christmas,
Jason
On the work front, I'm *finally* making progress on my current project at work and *really* would like to finish it up. I also had a bit of an adventure on Friday. Normally I wake up at 7:23AM, get ready, bike a mile to the train station, catch the 8:23AM train, and bike from the train station in SF to get to work at ~9:15AM. On Friday things were going wonderfully normally, until I got on the train and realized that I had forgotten my wallet.
Now, as Caltrain so gleefully reminds you a dozen times a day, Caltrain requires you to have the ticket to be on the train and if you don't have one you get hit with a hefty fine. My monthly pass is safely contained in my wallet, where I am least likely to misplace it. Unfortunately, that doesn't really help when you misplace your wallet.
I found a conductor and asked her what to do. She told me to get off the train. So I did, at the next stop. But this is an *express* train, so the next stop was 6 miles from my house (and that is me being luck, a different express train would have dropped me way farther down the line). Having no money to buy myself a ticket, I biked home along somewhat soggy roads and switched to my trusty automobile to convey me to work. 45 minutes and a wrong turn on the 280 later, I finally made it to work a little after 10. And I was still one of the first engineers there.
The happy epilogue to all of this is that I used my car (which I don't normally have up in SF) to visit Doug over in Berkeley after work. It was great to see him, hang out, and try another delicious beer ^_^.
The only other recent news is that I went up to a party Jen DuMond threw up at her parents lodge in the nearby mountains. I carpooled up with Shelley, and after *lots* of being lost on dark, damp, and dangerous mountain roads we finally found the place (a little over an hour late). There were a few other Mudders there and it was generally an awesome time!
Thats all for now. I want my stomach to feel better :-P
Merry Christmas,
Jason
Monday, December 15, 2008
A Plott Filled Weekend
Hey all,
At the gentle and vauguely parseable nudgings of one of my few readers, I will one again endeavor update all y'all as to what has been happening in my spectacularly exciting life over the last week.
The major exciting news is that Sean came up to visit this weekend, hence the title of the post. He arrive at our house Saturday evening and the lot of us (Sean, Mike, Morgan, and Myself [yes, I deserve the capital]) drove up to San Francisco to meet up with Andy, Angela, and Kevin. After navigating the heavy Saturday-evening traffic and being chased through SF streets by bone-chilling winds, my trusty iPhone and I led the group to the "Hong Kong Clay Pot" restaurant, one of the best recommended restaurants in Chinatown (according to Yelp!). We had a massive and delicious meal there (yay for honey-glazed prawns ^_^) and then navigated our way back to transportation through hordes of drunken Santas (actually, they may have been high. Andy, Angela, and Kevin ran into a gigantic Santa-rave that stank of pot before we arrived [No, I am not shitting you. Angela got it on video.]).
Through a series of unbelievably complicated steps that I will not bore you with, all of us (plus Tracy! ^_^) ended up at Angela & Andy's apartment. Once there we hung out, drank a bit, and in general had a nice little Mudd get together ^_^. I love how many Mudders ended up here.
We left at 1:30, and got home sometime around 3 (where we had a delicious midnight snack of dumplings and then collapsed). Sunday was a bit less eventful. Morgan when out to tide pools (he actually manged to wake up at 9:30am after being up till 3... :-P), Mike did stuff with his dad all day, and I hung out at home with Sean. This largely involved lots of watching Go, and me trying and failing to play Fallout 3 & Rock Band because they felt like too much work. We eventually went out for Thai food and I managed to start Mass Effect, which is the first fun-feeling RPG I've played in a long-long time (though I think the interface kind of sucks). I also realized that I miss Super Smash Brothers Melee. I think I need a gamecube, and to live closer to Joe...
The other exciting thing this weekend was a Rock Band party after work on Friday where I got to show off my (somewhat rusty) fake guitar skills while drinking Chimay and whiskey-spiked Nog, and then actually have Jack as company on the train down to Palo Alto ^_^. (Work in SF + Home in Palo Alto => at least 2 hrs of commute/day).
The benefit of my long commute, however, is that I get to read on the train. I used to read for hours ever day before college, and it is really wonderful to be reading again! I will try to keep a log of what books I've recently finished along with this blog. Speaking of which: I just finished "Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell. The general premise of the book is that we as humans have an incredible capacity to make very complicated decisions very quickly with very little information. Gladwell tries to persuade the reader of this and then explore the character of this ability (particularly its pitfalls) and how it can be trained and guided. I definitely thought it was a good read, though he can be a bit causal with the conclusions he draws.
To give an example of a conclusion that I thought was hasty, Gladwell uses the statistic that an *very* abnormally high portion of CEOs are far above average height (50% are > 6', 33% are > 6'2") to conclude that people have an unconcious bias to consider tall people in a more positive light. This effect has actually been documented to some degree, but I don't buy Gladwell's conclusion. First, he doesn't give any underlying reason for why this preference should exist (the only one that I can think of is some evolutionary bias, but that smells of BS). Second, I've read Freakenomics, which talks about exactly the same effect (tall people in aggregate have higher earnings are are more successful than their shorter counterparts). However, Freakenomics looks more closely at the data and points out a study that found that that correlation only exists for people that were tall in early high school. The explanation floated is that if you are tall early then you are more likely to have more self confidence, which is much more believably associated strongly with success.
Nit-picky objections aside, I thought Blink was a good book and worth my time to read. If anyone has good economics/sociology/psychology books, please recommend them to me. I'm getting very interested in econometrics, social psychology, and similar subjects but really have no background in them.
Next book to read: "All Tomorrow's Parties" by William Gibson
One last thing: Sean's visit was awesome. It was *fantastic* to have him up here, even for so short a time. And it was *no* trouble to us. What this means is that all of you should come and visit us whenever you feel like it (or more frequently than that even. We will compensate your overexposure with free bedding and food). We like visitors. Make us happy! ^_^
Cheers,
Jason
At the gentle and vauguely parseable nudgings of one of my few readers, I will one again endeavor update all y'all as to what has been happening in my spectacularly exciting life over the last week.
The major exciting news is that Sean came up to visit this weekend, hence the title of the post. He arrive at our house Saturday evening and the lot of us (Sean, Mike, Morgan, and Myself [yes, I deserve the capital]) drove up to San Francisco to meet up with Andy, Angela, and Kevin. After navigating the heavy Saturday-evening traffic and being chased through SF streets by bone-chilling winds, my trusty iPhone and I led the group to the "Hong Kong Clay Pot" restaurant, one of the best recommended restaurants in Chinatown (according to Yelp!). We had a massive and delicious meal there (yay for honey-glazed prawns ^_^) and then navigated our way back to transportation through hordes of drunken Santas (actually, they may have been high. Andy, Angela, and Kevin ran into a gigantic Santa-rave that stank of pot before we arrived [No, I am not shitting you. Angela got it on video.]).
Through a series of unbelievably complicated steps that I will not bore you with, all of us (plus Tracy! ^_^) ended up at Angela & Andy's apartment. Once there we hung out, drank a bit, and in general had a nice little Mudd get together ^_^. I love how many Mudders ended up here.
We left at 1:30, and got home sometime around 3 (where we had a delicious midnight snack of dumplings and then collapsed). Sunday was a bit less eventful. Morgan when out to tide pools (he actually manged to wake up at 9:30am after being up till 3... :-P), Mike did stuff with his dad all day, and I hung out at home with Sean. This largely involved lots of watching Go, and me trying and failing to play Fallout 3 & Rock Band because they felt like too much work. We eventually went out for Thai food and I managed to start Mass Effect, which is the first fun-feeling RPG I've played in a long-long time (though I think the interface kind of sucks). I also realized that I miss Super Smash Brothers Melee. I think I need a gamecube, and to live closer to Joe...
The other exciting thing this weekend was a Rock Band party after work on Friday where I got to show off my (somewhat rusty) fake guitar skills while drinking Chimay and whiskey-spiked Nog, and then actually have Jack as company on the train down to Palo Alto ^_^. (Work in SF + Home in Palo Alto => at least 2 hrs of commute/day).
The benefit of my long commute, however, is that I get to read on the train. I used to read for hours ever day before college, and it is really wonderful to be reading again! I will try to keep a log of what books I've recently finished along with this blog. Speaking of which: I just finished "Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell. The general premise of the book is that we as humans have an incredible capacity to make very complicated decisions very quickly with very little information. Gladwell tries to persuade the reader of this and then explore the character of this ability (particularly its pitfalls) and how it can be trained and guided. I definitely thought it was a good read, though he can be a bit causal with the conclusions he draws.
To give an example of a conclusion that I thought was hasty, Gladwell uses the statistic that an *very* abnormally high portion of CEOs are far above average height (50% are > 6', 33% are > 6'2") to conclude that people have an unconcious bias to consider tall people in a more positive light. This effect has actually been documented to some degree, but I don't buy Gladwell's conclusion. First, he doesn't give any underlying reason for why this preference should exist (the only one that I can think of is some evolutionary bias, but that smells of BS). Second, I've read Freakenomics, which talks about exactly the same effect (tall people in aggregate have higher earnings are are more successful than their shorter counterparts). However, Freakenomics looks more closely at the data and points out a study that found that that correlation only exists for people that were tall in early high school. The explanation floated is that if you are tall early then you are more likely to have more self confidence, which is much more believably associated strongly with success.
Nit-picky objections aside, I thought Blink was a good book and worth my time to read. If anyone has good economics/sociology/psychology books, please recommend them to me. I'm getting very interested in econometrics, social psychology, and similar subjects but really have no background in them.
Next book to read: "All Tomorrow's Parties" by William Gibson
One last thing: Sean's visit was awesome. It was *fantastic* to have him up here, even for so short a time. And it was *no* trouble to us. What this means is that all of you should come and visit us whenever you feel like it (or more frequently than that even. We will compensate your overexposure with free bedding and food). We like visitors. Make us happy! ^_^
Cheers,
Jason
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
A post, finally!
Hey all,
At long last I am starting to blog again. I've been stuck on the front page of blogger for two weeks lazily trying to pick a title for my blog. I feel like I'm wandering through this funny thing called life these days, trying to see where I'm headed, so I finally decided that "Wanderings" makes a decent enough name.
For those who happen to start reading this but I haven't talked to in a while, I am living with Morgan Conbere & Mike Tauraso (fellow HMC '08-ers) in Menlo Park, CA and working for Yelp (check it out! www.yelp.com) up in San Francisco as part of their search team.
I'm sure I will write a more inspired post at some point, but for now I have overwhelmed myself with the amazing accomplishment of having started a blog. I don't want to strain myself too much, so I'm going to sign off for now.
Cheers,
Jason
At long last I am starting to blog again. I've been stuck on the front page of blogger for two weeks lazily trying to pick a title for my blog. I feel like I'm wandering through this funny thing called life these days, trying to see where I'm headed, so I finally decided that "Wanderings" makes a decent enough name.
For those who happen to start reading this but I haven't talked to in a while, I am living with Morgan Conbere & Mike Tauraso (fellow HMC '08-ers) in Menlo Park, CA and working for Yelp (check it out! www.yelp.com) up in San Francisco as part of their search team.
I'm sure I will write a more inspired post at some point, but for now I have overwhelmed myself with the amazing accomplishment of having started a blog. I don't want to strain myself too much, so I'm going to sign off for now.
Cheers,
Jason
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)