1) William Faulkner - Sanctuary 2) Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman (yep, I *DO* get around to books!!) 3) Ask the Pilot - book about how planes work and stuff about the industry 4) The Tao of Pooh 5) The Physics of Star Trek - stolen from my sister's collection in the basement. yes, I R NERDCORE.
Part of this is thanks to spending the weekend at my mom's in CT -- Shabbat on Saturday = no use of electricity, which then translates to doing nothing but reading. Add to that two train trips.
So I'm in the process of planning my yearly "get out of the country" trip and was delibarating several options:
1) Amphi Festival in Germany - July 2) Cambodia/Ankor Wat in November - I've wanted to do this for a LONG time. 3) Machu Picchu 4) Germany/Poland/France - tip of the 'World War II Historical Trip" iceberg 5) Sweden/Norway/Finland - I know someone in Norway
Reasoning and mitigating factors: 1) Amphi - because I missed WGT and want to go to an industrial festival, this is a good choice. Pro: I can buy 2,000 more frequent flier miles for $99 and not have to pay over a grand for the plane ticket. Con: the festival and just being in Germany will be expensive! 2) Cambodia/Ankor Wat - I want to see Ankor Wat before it becomes even more of a tourist trap than it already is. Pro: I can buy 12,000 frequent flier miles for around $430, thereby not paying $2,000 for a plane ticket. Con: I'd have to wait until November. 3) Machu Piccu - I was reminded of this by one of my friends, who went there some time ago. Pro: pure coolness, and Peru is less expensive than Europe. Con: isn't at the top of my interests list. 4) Germany, etc. WWII Trip - this would be any part of the World War II historical trip I want to do at some point in my life, and would probably include these major points: Paris/Versailles, Berlin, Dresden, Vienna, Auschwitz, the Beaches of Normandy, Verdun.... Pro: pure awesomeness, knowledge and relevance. Con: narrowing down the list of sites, and would probably be the most expensive. 5) Sweden/Norway/Finland - this would be fun. Pro: I know someone in Norway I could probably visit. And maybe find some metal concerts to go to! Con: not quite as high on my list, and moderately expensive.
I might also want to plan a smaller trip earlier in the year. The thing is, my frequent flier miles expire at the end of November, so I need the trip to be before then. Not that that'll be hard -- I'm one to totally jump at the chance to get out of the country! If anyone has suggestions or experiences to add, that'd be awesome.
From the website: "What is protein folding and how is folding linked to disease? Proteins are biology's workhorses -- its "nanomachines." Before proteins can carry out these important functions, they assemble themselves, or "fold." The process of protein folding, while critical and fundamental to virtually all of biology, in many ways remains a mystery.
Moreover, when proteins do not fold correctly (i.e. "misfold"), there can be serious consequences, including many well known diseases, such as Alzheimer's, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, ALS, Huntington's, Parkinson's disease, and many Cancers and cancer-related syndromes.
You can help by simply running a piece of software. Folding@home is a distributed computing project -- people from throughout the world download and run software to band together to make one of the largest supercomputers in the world. Every computer takes the project closer to our goals. Folding@home uses novel computational methods coupled to distributed computing, to simulate problems millions of times more challenging than previously achieved."
Watching some episodes of Star Trek reminds me of why I love it and hate it. Some are poignant, some are just stupid. It depends on the series and the season...
There's this one episode of Voyager I'm watching where Torres, after hearing how her old colleagues back home have been massacred, starts running dangerous holodeck simulations with the safety off. Her friend confronts her, and she basically explains that she didn't feel anything when she heard what happened, but when she gets hurt in the programs at least she feels something. The episode is basically about self injury, without actually addressing it directly.
It's just weird having a new perspective on the same episodes I was watching when I was a kid, and I wonder how much of an impact they had on me -- aside from the general geekiness and ability to recognize completely obvious plot conclusions.
If anyone has a few extra bucks, I'm selling the following CDs from my collection. They are all in Like New condition (anyone who knows me can attest to how anal I am about my CD collection!).
J-Rock L'Arc en Ciel - Ray - $25 L'Arc en Ciel - Ark - $20 L'Arc en Ciel - Dune - $20 Malice Mizer - Memoire + Voyage Sans Retour - $25 X Japan - Fan's Selection (Compilation) - $15
C-K-J-Pop/Rap Ayumi Hamasaki - & (HK release) - $15 Baby V.O.X. - Devotion (Chinese release) - $15 BoA - Love & Honesty - $20 Kick the Can Crew - Best Album 2001-2003 - $20 Kick the Can Crew - Good Music - $20 CoCo Lee - Just No Other Way - $15 Rip Slyme - Time to Go - $25
Has anyone been to either festival before? There's a chance I might not have the money to go to WGT in May (though I can find a way to make it happen) so Amphi in July might be a great plan B. Besides that, of the announced bands, I'm interested in a much higher percentage of those appearing at Amphi. There are still a whole lot of bands to be announced, though. Not to mention that I also want to go to Wacken Open Air, M'era Luna....oh hell.
The following is an abbreviated version of a speech called "The Last Lecture" given by Randy Pausch, Carnegie Mellon Computer Science Department. I never would have known about him if not for the Alice Project , which I was involved with when I was 11 years old.
Most of my logic and intuition about systems (syntax, language structure, almost everything involving computers) comes from my background in computer programming. Since I was about 10, I've dabbled in everything from Visual Basic to C, some Python, and HTML whenever I had the need to. But the first serious programming I did was with Alice, my first exposure to programming virtual reality. With code (based on Python, as far as I know), you could animate characters and perform actions. In my most complex world, I had Alice on horseback galloping around the perimeter, the horse's legs moving in the correct motions I had learned from the dictionary. I had a feast in a gazebo, with lunchboxes that opened when you clicked on them, objects that changed color and moved about, interacted with other objects.
Imagine being a kid and actually getting to design your fantasy world in virtual reality, to have a vast playground you could create anything in. My sister and I were Beta testers for the older version of Alice, and we emailed back and forth with the Alice founders about our experiences with the program -- errors, things we liked, and suggestions. When you're a kid you don't think about limitations, so anything was possible. Randy was a huge part of that -- as Alice's founder, he was particular interested in our experiences with it and never talked down to us despite the fact that I was 11 and my sister 13 or so.
Some years after we fell out of contact, Randy developed Pancreatic Cancer and is "considered a terminal patient", hence his last lecture series. I really relate with everything he says in this lecture, about being persistent in the pursuit of your dreams, and about living for the moment. It's something I've been thinking about more than usual lately, considering my unexpected (and strangely deliberate) unemployment and impending career change. Despite the grueling experience that is waiting for everything to fall into place, I don't regret it for the very reasons that Randy is talking about in the lecture, because of everything that I've talked with my parents with, and for all that I've come to my own conclusions about. I know that my life decisions are quite different than terminal illness, but I think that any terminally ill person will time you that time is your most precious commodity.
Please listen to what he has to say, and pray that he gets all the time on the earth he can.
Somehow God has saddled me with the curse of reducing to sniffles and sobs everytime I look at a map too long, watch a documentary about someone backpacking the world for a year, or even being at the airport without actually leaving or returning from somewhere. I've accepted the fact that the purpose of my life at this time is to concoct a way to leave the country for an extensive amount of time, and ALL of my frustrations at this point are directly related to me not being quite there yet.
Unemployment has given me several wonderfully depressing things: 1) Time to think. Always bad... 2) No income to pay off debts on things that I definitely didn't need to spend money on in the first place. 3) A reason to part with things I could've held dear to - my iPod speakers, books, CDs, clothes (following the debt thing...). 4) Related to that, a detachment from those same objects I could've held dear to. Since I'm planning to move across country, I've really started to prioritize what I'm keeping. I just threw out old CD and CASSETTE!!! mixes I've held onto for ages, old cards from relatives, clothes that I bought because I thought I'd eventually shrink and fit into them, old school papers and syllabi (yes, I kept a bunch of them). 5) Profound realization that I have to live in the now and not have to suffer in a job I hate just because it makes me a ton of disposable income and yet allows no free time to travel.
My brain is just going to explode, every time I think about the (relatively few) experiences I've had abroad, but the major impact they've had on my life and on how I think... Learning Japanese and living in Japan for 9 months turned the first page... Backpacking China taught me lonliness and what it feels like to be disconnected from everything comfortable... I also experienced the awe of some of the oldest man-made things on the face of the planet -- the Great Wall, Terracotta Warriors, and the Forbidden City. And lastly, that my Chinese teacher's family could teach me Mah-Jong without knowing a word of English. Bermuda taught me what blue water really is, and how to capture that beauty in a photograph. Germany taught me how to make 5 days feel like two weeks -- the value of time and experience over everything else, and that I need much beyond than just that taste... it left me craving more.
Coffee companies bought out by Starbucks: Tazo Tea Company Seattle's Best Coffee Diedrich Coffee (many Coffee People locations in Oregon)
Starbucks at the Forbidden City in Beijing (closed since July 2007)
The Starbucks location in the former imperial palace in Beijing closed in July 2007. The coffee shop had been a source of ongoing controversy since its opening in 2000 with protesters objecting that the presence of the American chain in this location "was trampling on Chinese culture".
Funny thing is, I've been there! And it wasn't so much a culturally inappropriate sore thumb as just another way in which the Forbidden City has been pillaged by the tourism industry.
Note: From what I can tell, the only country in Africa that has a Starbucks location is Egypt. I bet they have them right at the base of the pyramids.
Ethos Water:
Ethos water is a brand of bottled water owned by Starbucks and sold throughout North America. It is known for its campaign to raise ten million dollars by donating between five and ten cents from every sale to a non-governmental organization working to increase access to clean drinking water in the developing world.
Starbucks' critics points out the Ethos brand is primarily commercial, since only tiny fraction ($0.05 to $0.10) of the retail price ($1.80) goes to the charity. While the company raised around four million US dollars for this purpose, the vast remainder of the price ($1.70 - $1.75) is the company's revenue (140 million US dollars). This led many Starbucks' customers to suspect that the company is engaged in unethical and unfair market practices.
Critics of Ethos cite how the for-profit company selling water detracts from other efforts to provide water to impoverished nations.
Fun Stuff:
The founders of Starbucks were 1) inspired by Peet's Coffee and Tea, and 2) left Starbucks to focus on Peet's. Go Peet's!
The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf is a Los Angeles, California-based coffee chain, [and is] is one of the oldest and largest privately held chain of specialty coffee and tea stores. Random fact: Most, if not all, of the products at "Coffee Bean" are certified as kosher.
Well, my hard drive crashed recently and all I have to say is:
THANK GOD I BACKED EVERYTHING UP!!!!!
The only stuff I wound up losing was spreadsheets I was entering for my roomie, and, unfortunately, the most recently updated XML file for all of my music (which means that iTunes doesn't yet recognize all of the music I got from Nicole, nor any of the information changes since January 13th.) But despite all that, I have everything direly important to me all restored.
In other news, I'm still waiting to hear back from the Apple store about jobby goodness. I'm stressed to high hell in anticipation. I need income pretty desparately, although I can borrow from my mom until I get it.. I just don't like resorting to that. I've sold off a bunch of stuff, which has been helping a little bit. It's nice to have the time to sort through all of my crap, too.
Instructions: Open up your iTunes and fill out this survey, no matter how embarrassing the responses might be.
How many songs total: 21165 songs How many hours or days of music: 64.5 days Most recently played: Bendeniz - Kirmizi Biber Most played: Funker Vogt - Snow Was Falling x 34 Most recently added: Dream Theater - Honor Thy Father
Sort by song title: First Song: A La lune by Cirque Du Soleil Last Song: 12305te Nacht by Einstürzende Neubauten
Sort by time: Shortest Song: Pop Will Eat Itself - Orgone Accumulator Longest Song: Zoopy - Hello, Can You Hear Me?
Sort by album: First album: Absolution - Muse Last album: 4630 Bochum - Herbert Grönemeyer
First song that comes up on Shuffle: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Stagger Lee
Search the following and state how many songs come up: Death: 431 Life: 274 Love: 960 Hate: 72 You: 1374 Sex: 114
Once in a while I break and pay lots of money to have someone cut my hair, and then I hate it and think it's not worth it, and don't get it done again for another year. This time I opted to pay again and have it done for my dad's wedding on Sunday, and it rocks. God bless the gays.
Hey everyone! I wanted to post this email I got from my bank because I keep seeing this happen everywhere. Whenever I repost the room for rent on Craigslist, a ton of fake responses from spammers come back! If you've ever wondered way you're keeping completely fake responses from CL, this is why. They are mostly just hysterical and badly written, but apparently a lot of people fall for them.
Happy New Year to all of my East Coast friends -- I'm in San Francisco, and it's only 5:30 here! Anyway, I wish everyone a wonderful and safe New Year. 2007 has been crazy, but I sense that every year for the next indeterminate amount of time will be crazier, in some sense of the word.
I'm just amused that yet another non-western country has it's first elected female president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. Hey...uh, America?
According to Wikipedia, "In the October 2007 general election, Fernández ran for President of Argentina, representing the ruling Front for Victory party. She won the presidency with 45.29% of the vote, and a 22% lead over her nearest rival—one of the widest margins a candidate has obtained since democracy returned in 1983—avoiding the need for a runoff election.[2] She is Argentina's second female president (after Isabel Martínez de Perón), but the first to be elected. She was sworn in on December 10, 2007, becoming the first wife in history to succeed to her husband as a president. Néstor Kirchner also become the first First Gentleman in Argentine history."
Here's how it works: 1. Open your library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc) 2. Put it on shuffle 3. Press play 4. For every question, type the song that's playing 5. When you go to a new question, press the next button 6. Don't lie
1. Opening Credits: Ayumi Hamasaki - Immature
2. Waking Up: 4 Hero - Star Chasers
3. First Day At School: Infected Mushroom - Acid Killer
4. Falling In Love: Yoya Ma - Mumuki
5. Fight Song: And One - Techno Man
6. Breaking Up: Charlotte Church - If I Love You
7. Prom: Megaherz - Freiflug
8. Life: Peter Murphy - Dragnet Drag
9. Mental Breakdown: Bella Morte - Where Shadows Lie
10. Driving: Funker Vogt - The International Killer
11. Flashback: Clan of Xymox - Scum
12. Getting back together: Neuroactive - Moments Passing By
13. Wedding: Unheilig - Maschine
14. Birth of Child: Funker Vogt - Prisoners of War
15. Final Battle: Ayumi Hamasaki - Kanariya (Power Mix)
16. Death Scene: E Nomine - Himmel und Holle (which, ironically, means Heaven & Hell!)
17. Funeral Song: Love Psychedelico - Life Goes On
Ich mag deustchland. Can I move here? :D I´ll post more later, but here's the jist:
-Ich spreche nicht deutsch. It makes functioning much more of a hassle. I suddenly realized that I've never had this problem -- I learned Japanese before I went to Japan, and Chinese before I went to China. Deutsch? Not so much.
-Funker Vogt puts on an AWESOME show. Jens seems bored out of his mind, but the rest of the guys were friendly and very amused. Angelspit was good, too.
-McDonald's here looks classy. Weird.
-Grufties are hard-fucking-core.
Route: Düsseldorf - Bochum - Düsseldorf - Hannover (via ICE, which I believe is the German version of Japan's bullet train. Some confirm this for me...)
Anyway, I'm tired and smelly. Thank god German youth hostels are the shit.
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twilight_tea's journal
geeky
restless
tired
pensive
melancholy
quixotic
sore
rejuvenated
indescribable