dialectics

moving to fiji

Sun, 14 Dec 2003 19:16:22 GMT

So finals really suck. Here's a funny story - on tuesday me and Xanadu were pulling an all nighter for a presentation that we had to give on a project we hadn't started yet. the first step involved digitising a LOT of dvd's - and as anyone whose ever tried to do this before you need a lot of space. so we went over to circuit city and she bought me an external hard disk - 120 GB of clean digital slate - it takes firewire (which i have) and USB 2.0 (which i don't have). so we're all excited, we get home to plug it in and then we find out that there's no firewire cable. now we desperately needed this thing for tomorrow's presentation, so we were calling around like maniacs - but no store was open at 11pm on tuesday - only the virgin megastore and they didn't have it. so xanadu started going through the yellow pages looking up emergency 24 hr tech support companies, the kind that would charge $100 to get the cable here. she finds one that calls us and it turns out he is greek - so they start chatting in greek and lo and behold it turns out you can use the USB 2.0 devices with USB 1.0 ports, so we didn't need any new cable since we had the USB 1.0 cable from her printer... and since xanadu was greek he didn't charge her for his advice... but while i was looking through the box for the instructions, what did i find? a firewire cable. now that's all well and good, except it didn't fit my laptop because it was 6-pin to 6-pin, and my computer only takes 4-pin firewire. but we were able to use the USB 1.0 cable like the guy said - and it worked!

i really can't wait for this thing to be over - i'm starting to feel really strained... my grandmother (my mom's mom) is not going to make it much longer, and i may have to ditch finals and go right up to montreal. i don't know if i'm going to be able to handle this one too.... but its really about looking after my mom at this point.

happy birthday to me!

Sun, 07 Dec 2003 00:37:11 GMT

Wow, Xanadu went a little nuts for my birthday. the night before, she got me 4 little cards and told me not to open them until after my talk - oops. that was torture!

Finally, i got to open the first one, and she decided to send me ALL over the city to pick up presents - how cool is that? (luckily she changed her mind and came with me because otherwise i NEVER would have been able to manage). First stop was bloomingdales, where she got me these WICKED COOL martini glasses - b/c she knows how much i like them and the 4 i have now aren't very good. They are real crystal (and i made the mistake of finding out how much they cost - WOAH!). Next stop was a map store in midtown - where she got me the giant map of the world i've always been talking about (i wanted one ever since i was in london and saw winston churchill's war room) - and also a HUGE map of the stars so that we can figure out which one is which instead of trying to guess.

After that, the next card told me to go to 160 48th st - and i knew EXACTLY where that was, so there was no hints necessary. Get this - she got me this 2ch compressor! it was the one i was drooling over last time we went to sam ash, and i was saying that this was the thing i needed to make my music sound better. how cool is that? and finally, we went to the planetarium where - you won't believe this - she got the telescope we've been staring at. its got everything - once you orient it in the sky from where you're looking, the motor will move the telescope to find anything you want. you can even track satellites, and it has a hole so that you can attach a camera and take pictures of what you see. how cool is that?????

anyway, now i'm a kid in a candy store.... i got all these presents and there is boxes and wrapping paper all over the place... we set up the telescope and tried to look into people's windows but nobody was doing anything cool :(

haha this was the best birthday ever!

xanadu is so good to me...

Thu, 04 Dec 2003 19:13:23 GMT

OK so tomorrow is my birthday... and she's going on a mad crazy shopping binge for me right now. I'm really kind of scared actually - i know that she was in midtown, so unless she's getting a pizza that means she's at sam ash. god, she's amazing. i don't know what the hell she's up to, but i have a feeling its going to be big. wow, i'm so in love... i don't know what i did in a former life to deserve this, but it must have been something good :)

RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE

Sat, 29 Nov 2003 19:19:05 GMT

So apparently the government has perverted justice and has chosen to use the so-called war on terror as an excuse to invade the lives of every american.

That's right, congress just approved a bill saying that the FBI can now snoop into your internet activity, your financial records and your reading lists from bookstores and libraries without obtaining a warrant from a judge.

the only thing the FBI has to do is to sign a "NSL" or national security letter, which is not approved by anybody or anything outside the FBI/DOJ. When the list of NSL's that were written so far was requested under the freedom of information act (which says that americans have the right so see anything written by the government because, after all, the government is our property - we pay for it) the list that the FBI returned. it was really useful.

I for one can't wait to see the end of the bush/cheny/ashcroft/rumsfeld era. I hope that the united states citizens are willing to stand up and fight for their privacy and civil liberties. Unfortunately i'm all too cynical - it seems that as long as americans are somewhat comfortable... a car, an apartment and a few small luxuries, nothing seems to matter at all - least of all that they are SLAVES. we are all slaves.

the only way to free ourselves is to fight. fight for your right to privacy at all costs! fight against government intervention into your life! fight against the military industrialist regieme that makes war a profit-bearing enterprise! fight against the eroding of our system of so-called democracy....

shout at the top of trees and mountains I AM FREE. and if that doesn't work, well then maybe its time for a revolution.

if rights continue to erode like this, pretty soon anyone who makes a post like this will end up in a gas chamber in cuba. fuck this.

Fri, 28 Nov 2003 08:18:49 GMT

this is the eulogy that me, my brother and sister wrote about my zaidye:

Our Zaide- a legend. We heard the legend of our Zaide in the blistering cold of war-ridden Siberia- chopping down trees for his brother’s quota before his own to save his brother’s life. We heard the legend of our Zaide working his hands and feet to numbeness- to give his children a home. We heard the legend of our Zaide... But, these were all legends. We heard them from others, never from him. Nothing ever hurt him. Yes, he felt pain, he felt hardship, but to us; to us, nothing ever hurt him. That was our Zaide.

He was a survivor, a man who made his life off hard work, but never told about it. In life he asked for nothing, and gave everything. Our Zaide- a giver. He gave of himself, he gave his whole self and never wanted anything in return. Anything and everything for the children- for his children, and for his children’s children, and their children. That was our Zaide.

He would tell us how lucky he was to have such wonderful children. No, zaide, we were lucky. We had you- a true Zaide. A zaide that would take the 8 hour drive to NY, or 12 hour palne ride to Israel for his childrens’ bris, bar mitzvah, graduation, award, speech birthday. A zaide that would show us his jumping frog, tell us about hertz rent a car, and offer us 2 ton not 1 ton soup. A zaide whose handshake was always more powerful then mine. A zaide who was not a grandfather, grandpa, or saba. He was a zaide. He is our zaide. Zaide… we were lucky. We are lucky. We have you... we have your legend.

taking care of baby

Fri, 21 Nov 2003 11:35:21 GMT

So xanadu and i realized that we both ditched out on the entire semester because we are in love - and started to panic. for the past few days we were taking turns being the baby - the one who can't handle everything so they fall apart and need the other one to take care of us... just because we were scared of failing the semester. its too bad it took us an entire week to figure out that we were manipulating ourselves into not getting any work done... and thus not even having any fun! its amazing how similar xanadu and i are.

anyway, since we've been eating out 2 sometimes 3 meals a day and staying up until 5am every night our eating habits weren't exactly stellar. so we decided to take matters into our own hands and start cooking... xanadu made dinner tonight, and we all thought it was cute because it was the first time she cooked for me. i thought it was the sweetest thing EVER! yum, yum!

there is something about making food yourself that makes it taste SO much better then when u get it at a restaurant, i don't know what it is but its just better. who knows.

i have a dentist appointment tomorrow and i'm a little nervous because i have a huge cavity. dammit!

Fri, 21 Nov 2003 00:50:56 GMT

Where were you to hold my hand,
Do the things that we had planned
Yes I need you by my side when things go crazy
I just need to know you care,
Guarantee that you'll be there
When I wake up in the night,
Will you be my guiding light
I don't care how far, I'll take a plane tonight
Just tell me where you are and
Everything's gonna be all right

Like a shooting star across the midnight sky
Gonna fly just to be with you tonight
Like a shooting star across the midnight sky
Gonna fly just to be with you tonight

Like a shooting star across the midnight sky
Wherever you are you're gonna see me fly
Like a shooting star across the midnight sky
Wherever you are you're gonna see me fly
So high

Like a shooting star across the midnight sky
Wherever you are you're gonna see me fly
Like a shooting star across the midnight sky
Wherever you are you're gonna see me fly
Across the midnight sky

what is the shmatrix?

Thu, 06 Nov 2003 19:01:14 GMT

wow, did that movie ever SUCK!!!!!!!!! I honestly can't believe that they would actually produce this 2 hour piece of drivel expecting people to buy it. Lets see if we can see some of the list of flaws in this movie:

1) why the hell did those giant armor plated robotic exoskeletons have no armor for their operators? they're just sitting there waiting to be targets.
2) why the hell did they need operators anyway? they could have just as easily been guided remotely.
3) now why the hell did they even need the robot exoskeletons anyway? if all it took was one EMP that could be fired from a hovercraft, why the hell didn't they just PUT ONE UP THERE IN THE WALL and make it go off when the machines got there????
4) even if they did need robot exoskeletons, couldn't they have come up with a better way of feeding them ammunition instead of having some doofus run out into the middle of a battle and loat it in with a platform??????

5) could they have possibly motivated the whole "the machines are afraid of agent smith?" thing any less? i mean that whole fucking plotline came out of nowhere. pretty pathetic right there.
6) ok i know - the machines have never heard of a distributed system - so that one unit doesn't have the power to make all the important decision... this is how neo could talk to "the machines" and save the world.
7) ok, so even if that was somewhat plausible, couldn't the machines have heard of redundancy? sending in ONE digger to dig a little hole for 250,000 machines to get through doesn't seem like such a smart idea. of all the 250,000 machines, only three of them had drills?
8) so even if they had more diggers, wouldn't it have just made sense to cut a hole in the dome, watch it collapse and destroy zion a whole lot faster?

9) five words: "don't worry, i'll be ok"
10) the final battle: convenient how a computer program can "die" in a kung fu battle... and even then just by being buried under some rocks, even though he can fall from tall buildings without flinching.
11) the economy of unnesccessary characters (props to ebert for that one) when you introduce an unnessicary character just so that they can die. blech.
12) mfune's last words: i never finished the training program either. not "holy fuck my face has been carved like a pumpkin".

13) suppose there was peace, how will the peace last if the machines have no renewable energy source with which to power themselves? In theory its because the little girl made the sun rise so they'll now have solar power, but still it seems pretty stupid to not actually mention that in the movie. maybe they'll invest in natural gas also?
14) talking killer syndrome: why the hell the wade dump trinity down the hatch knowing full well that she could have stopped him somehow? he had a fucking knife to her throat! man, that made no sense. he should have seen more bad movies and he could have learned that one.

things that i DID like:
1) watching trinity die.... "no, you're going to make it... oh wait a minute, maybe not."
2) the way they brushed aside the architect: "yeah, he doesn't know anything." that was so cool :)

wow engineers are so dumb

Mon, 03 Nov 2003 19:23:18 GMT

So there is this one guy i work with who had a second interview with this small company. for the interview they asked him to put together a presentation, to show his communication skills. he gave his presentation on software engineering (how to design large-scale computer programs), and it was a very good presention. but he didn't get the job.... why not? because they asked him to give a presentation on embedded systems (how to put computer chips inside everyday objects). oops.

love and other stuff

Sun, 19 Oct 2003 13:57:22 GMT

I'm in love.... yes, i am. It feels really good but it can also be really draining sometimes. Yesterday we had the most amazing day. After all of the doubts we had on friday and all that tension yesterday we had a great day. We walked around and went to brunch, got some work done and went out to party. Well, Xanadu doesn't exaclty party the way i did, so we went over to Xunta, stopped in this amazing little bookstore on the way. At xunta we were ALL OVER each other, like those couples that i really hated watching when i was single.... we were even feeding each other.

we wanted to go bar-hopping after that, but it didn't really work. Openair looked cool but it was empty and they wanted $5 to get in for a dj that wasn't going to go on for 1hr (it would have been amazing - q-burns), and we decided to go to this other place that we passed by that looked cool from the outside. It was about the size of my bedroom, and the designers of the place never actually thought to give the dj some space, so the decks were set up off to the side. But they were playing some crazy tribal music and they let xanadu smoke.

but something happened on the way from openair to standard - i felt like i lost xanadu. i don't know where she went, but she was in some other place. and trying to figure out what happened and how to get her back took all the energy out of me, i was so tired when we got to the other bar. and she proceeded to make fun of me for the rest of the night. i passed out as soon as we got home :)

oh by the way... we found an AUSTRALIAN in new york - it just opened 1mo ago. its expensive ($2 for each piece of chocolate!) but its worth it. if you've ever been to amsterdam you know what i'm talking about. OMG!!!!!!!

but the funniest part was that they had no idea how to run the store... least of all the credit card machine. there was something on fire and the girl proceeded to pour water on it and the whole counter started smoking. it was great.

eh, i'm not sure how to always keep the highs of love, but to avoid the silly lows. i mean the only reason why this started was because i asked how she was and she said "okay" instead of something else. And no, i'm not overanalyzing, trust me.

Oh well, today she offered to come with me to visit my dad. how cool is that? it will be interesting when he meets her - he's been going hardcore into the jewish thing, but i think he'd be one to say that my happiness is more important then anything else. my mom is a whole other story....

Sun, 21 Sep 2003 22:24:00 GMT

R: Anee ohev otach
X: Anee ohevet otcha

Fri, 19 Sep 2003 07:33:09 GMT

so it may not be that bad outside, but there was definitely a hurricane in my life tonight and her name is xanadu.

weird

Thu, 18 Sep 2003 21:35:35 GMT

so i'm sitting in the library grading papers... and all of a sudden this incredible sadness came over me. i miss xanadu. this is weird - we've been apart for all of 4 hours. i don't know what to do with this longing...

Thu, 18 Sep 2003 18:24:29 GMT

i am in love with xanadu. i'm just afraid to tell her that because of what's going to happen in 10 days. she's also spent her life in long-term relationships... will this come too soon? too late? yesterday she wanted me to tell her a secret - i didn't really have any (most of my misdeeds are now "funny stories" and the others i've long since forgotten) but the real secret is just how long i've been searching for someone like her, and just how happy i am to have found her... but she knows just how afraid i am about what's going to happen in 10 days... because she's feeling it too. maybe i should just relinquish control and say what i feel... but then again once these things are said they can't be unsaid. for me, getting over her will be painful but it will eventually happen... but she has to live with the consequences....

and until then we're just going to have to enjoy each other for the moment. i've fallen pretty hard.

speaking of falling - yesterday i was having a rotten day, students were stressing me out at office hours, i was really tired and behind on my work and xanadu and i had to study stochastics... i thought that when i was going to get home she was going to be ready to study and i just wanted to sleep... and i was so late and so far behind that i was falling apart. this morning i was in the shower and i was thinking "yesterday i was falling apart now i'm falling in love".... and that reminded me of a song, so i started singing it. when i got out of the showe, guess what song was on the radio? total eclipse of the heart!!!!!!!!!!!!! how insane is that?????

tonight we're going out dancing - PYRAMID BABY!!!!!!!

Thu, 11 Sep 2003 20:01:18 GMT

OK - so you know when the unexpected just happens and makes your day? That just happened to me.... i'm really happy right now.

the saga continues

Thu, 11 Sep 2003 19:23:54 GMT

So i did not pull an all nighter - instead i left the library around 3.... and stayed in bed until noon. i missed my morning class, went to lunch instead of sitting in on the class i'm TA'ing for, and am now finally sitting down to get to work.

Ran into Xanadu outside the engineering building... she was looking sleepy, though by some miracle she managed ot make it to class. Anyway, she invited me to come out with her and her friends to the fireworks at central park on monday night... i'm really excited. i want to avoid describing her in any sentence that involves the words "i've been looking for" so you won't be hearing any of that from me, but lets just say i'm a happy rob. :)

pia is coming over tonight - she's driving me insane. i really hope she's normal in person, instead of the loony toon she is online. She comes online at 1am, wondering why i'm in the library so late. I ask her how she's doing, she makes a little sad face and signs off. oh well, she's on a plane as we speak. this isn't going to be pretty - how do i end up in these situations????

(by the way, that question was rhetorical - anyone that knows me just needs to hear the sentence "everything i've been looking for in a woman" from me to know how i get into these situations all the time.... hahahahaha!)

peaz,
rob

most amazing night

Thu, 11 Sep 2003 04:32:33 GMT

So i had a great night tonight.... Xanadu had this big presentation for our statistical methods for video analysis class, and she was working really hard on it for the past few days... and after it was over she was really excited. We were supposed to talk about our project (the one that dumbass rob asked her to do instead of asking her for coffee) but we ended up walking from 120th st all the way down to 83rd.... we had dinner at cafe lalo and got this cute little heart-shaped creme brulee afterwards (the heart shape thing went a little overboard - we didn't know about that part, but it definitely gave my brain some silly ideas). then we went across the street to look at books at the barnes and noble - wow this girl is just like me, she reads all of the pop science books... we sat on the floor looking at "pictures of the universe" for like an hour. i bought the book :)

Anyway, i've got all these happy buzzy feelings going on now.... No matter what happens with Xanadu or where (if anywhere) our relationship goes i just have a feeling that she's someone that i can relate to. Very few people inhabit the world that i live in, and i think she is one of them. But then again, it could just be my cerebral cortex going haywire, as it does whenever i'm around that certain kind of person that makes my brain act all funny and goofy. She smiled a lot and that helped too.

But anyaway.... Office hours went well today, thank god. I also have a grader now, which is nice because i only have to grade half of the homeworks (sweet!). I'm going to pull an all nighter now to work on my probability, and then tomorrow get some headway on my SVIA project before Pia arrives. I am really loving this semester.

(by the way, for more info on that really REALLY low note - possibly the lowest note ever detected in the universe, check out http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/space/09/10/blackhole.music.reut/index.html)

horniest song EVER!

Tue, 09 Sep 2003 06:00:46 GMT

department woes

Mon, 08 Sep 2003 23:19:30 GMT

You know sometimes i really hate the electrical engineering department. First, they don't tell you you have a TAship until 2 weeks into the semester (which means you're playing 'catch-up' right from the start, and you have no idea if you have any money for school or not). Last year, when my advisor knew i was going to be a TA, the department didn't get their thumbs out of their asses until 2 weeks into classes, and did not invite me to the "TA orientation" so i had no idea what i had to do and when.... so every 2 weeks i would get an e-mail saying "why didn't you fill out this form????" and it took 2 months before i got paid. what the hell is that????? then this year they have no idea if i'm going to be a ta or not, but they invite me to the orientation anyway. While i was there, i asked the new "ta czar" what i can do to make sure that i get the TA-ship, and he says "well, why don't you try not horsing around and getting some results for people". I have never met this guy before in my life, who the hell does he think he is????? What kind of prick makes a judgement call to someone's face when they have never even met them before???? Anyway, so just now the department tells my former advisor that i got the ta-ship, but not me.

But anyway, the rest of today has started off kinda foul as well.... I am trying to manouver my way into working for this professor that does video here... but he is a much different type of advisor then what i'm used to - he is more of an administrator of a large facility then a technical genius. We had a meeting today and i'm not quite sure what happened there. he seemed eager to fund me, but then there were so many issues because if philips partially funds me, then technically half of what i invent is theirs. if columbia funds me then technically half of what i invent is columbia's.... and none of these institutions like to share. he talked about how he didn't want to set up a "chinese wall" within the lab (like they do at morgan stanley - keeping secrets between departments to avoid the possibility of insider trading, like if the investment banking people were doing a big deal between companies they could not tell the brokers or else!). so it seemed like it was going well, but he also said something that rubbed me the wrong way "you will take up my time and resources from the lab" so i don't know what that meant. But anyway, at least he knows that i'm trying to politick my way in.... which is a lot farther then i expected to be at this point in the semester.

but anyway... just because i haven't learned my lesson from last time... a spaniard i met on jdate is spending the weekend in new york, and will be staying in my spare room. aside from the fact that she's beautiful, has just gotten over a bad patch in her life, has a nice family and wants me to change my voicemail message, i don't know much about her. this should be interesting... but at least i have someone to go to the met with :)

over and out!

If you're from manhattan make some noise!

Mon, 08 Sep 2003 00:50:56 GMT

So i have never seen a WORSE performance by an MC in my life. Holy hell, i don't know how that guy was ever allowed to hold a mic in his hand. All he ever did was yell "if you're from brooklyn, make some nose. if you're from the bronx, make some noise. if you're from new york make some noise. if you're not from new york, make some noise. if you like sex make some noise." for two fucking hours. i couldn't take it anymore - kim left early -

luckily the rest of the party was cool. i met a pretty blonde and spent most of the night giving her massages, and eventually they started playing house music again which i've never been so happy to hear. we managed to find a place to smoke by the wicked cool plastic fountain thingy (i'll post pics soon). danced until 6:30 or so when they kicked everyone out. had the best muffin i've ever had in my life at a greasy spoon joint by ryan's place and braved the hour+ subway ride home, and got back at around 9am. a good night, despite the crappy MC.

what a tangled web we weave...

Fri, 05 Sep 2003 20:47:07 GMT

so the internet date noticed that i blocked her on IM.... and wrote to bitch about it. I enjoyed talking to her but she was so damn needy that every conversation lasted 3 hours and i really need to be doing my work right about now. Also, i really didn't want to lead her on. I really hate being the asshole here but i spent way too much time in my life trying to interpret the minutae of what some girl i was hanging out with was thinking because she was still going on dates w/me long after she decided she wasn't interested. One of these days i'm going to meet someone smart, sensitive and interesting who posesses all of their teeth.... who is also interested in me!

back to work.

redbull: mix it with vodka and it will make you feel like you're rolling

Fri, 05 Sep 2003 20:15:24 GMT

Last march i was at a party on the seaport, with carl cox and richie hawtin spinning. i was there with my date tatiana, and one of her friends were there. also, redbull and this vodka company were sponsoring it, so everyone's drink of choice was (you guessed it) vodka redbull. now for those of you who don't know, vodka redbull is the PERFECT drink - its a combination of "out of this world" with an intense rush of speed and energy. anyway we're at the party and we run into a friend of tatiana's, whom i had met a few times before. he had just taken a pill and proceeded to buy me a whole bunch of vodka redbulls. all of a sudden i started to panic - "i'm rolling, i'm rolling!" i find sarah and i'm like "i'm rolling - tatiana's friend bought me a drink and he put pills in it so i would act crazy and he could steal tatiana from me!" and she's like "you're not rolling." and i'm like "look, i know what rolling feels like and i'm most definitely rolling." and she says "look at your eyes, they're fine, you're not rolling get over it." and i'm like "i'm rolling and he dosed me so he could go home with tatiana" and sarah asks "how many vodka redbulls did he buy you?" and i said 5. oops.

anyway, today dan suggested that this be an ad for redbull: "nothing beats a redbull: mix it with vodka and you'll feel like you're rolling."

day of striking out

Fri, 05 Sep 2003 04:33:16 GMT

so in the morning xanadu wasn't vibing me the way she was yesterday. silly rob should have asked her out, instead of dumbass rob who asked her to work on our course project.... although i doubt that would have changed anything now.

i chatted up another girl in my program, and she said she was from holland, so i started talking to her in dutch. she had no idea what the fuck i was talking about so i thought my dutch was bad. it turns out she said "poland" but said it funny. so i said one of the only words in polish i know: gindobre (hello). the only other word i know is "domo" (home) though i don't think we were quite ready for that stage in our relationship.

my internet date was horrible - she was missing a bunch of teeth, and that was kind of a turn off. but otherwise she was very nice.

finally after the date i was downtown by a resturant that i like and i stopped in for dinner. i ran into ronit, someone whom i had gone out on a few dates with before, but she was totally batshit and also wasn't very interested (which was the real problem, because if you hadn't noticed already i'm attracted to insanity). nothing changed.

what a day.

kubla kahn

Wed, 03 Sep 2003 23:25:11 GMT

Kubla Kahn - or: A vision in a dream. A fragment.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree :
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round :
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree ;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

this was written by samuel taylor coleridge, after he had just consumed 2 grains of opium. In the middle of his composition, someone walked into his room and interrupted him - and he was uable to reclaim the "moment" he had while writing this (i'm sure this has happened to almost everyone who would read this) and thus the poem remains unfinished. For the rest of the fragment of the poem, click here.

Anyway, needless to say I met a girl today. This should come as no surprise to anyone, but this one is perfect (again, no surprise here). She's intelligent - in my program and interested in a/v analysis, witty (she compared a certain member of the faculty to rain man), cute (blonde, greek), sarcastic, and isn't afraid of throwing around her affections to someone she just met (don't get any ideas - all she said was she feels comfortable with me as a TA). She's going to be in all of my classes - including the one i'm TA'ing (which is insane right there!). And get this, her name is the coolest name i've ever heard in my life: XANADU. i've had that poem running through my head ever since.

Well - i don't believe in colorgenics... it is pure barnamism (e.g. its like horoscopes, they tell you things that are true for everyone like "think about where you want to go in your carrer") but the one thing they said about me was that i always go for the brightest colors, the shiniest objects, what looks beautiful now. I'm like that in my research - always going from one hot topic to the next.... with love, from ogling one 50's movie star lookalike to the next... one thing i really need to work on is sticking around something - doing the hard work and not doing what's easy and changing around, running from one thing to the next.

such is life.

school daze

Wed, 03 Sep 2003 19:40:03 GMT

Man, that psychological disorder test was bullshit. As anyone who's ever met me knows, i am manic depressive with a huge helping of ADD. And I don't avoid people, they just don't know what the hell i'm talking about when i try and talk about what interests me - so the conversation tends to be one-sided and they get bored (my mom just started saying "you can't expect to find someone that's your intellectual equal" - well why the hell not?????). At least they got the co-dependancy thing right, hehe :)

But anyway, back to reality - or at least that fantasy land i call life. School started again - lots of administrative stuff to take care of, and everybody loves that. But then again, lots of really cool projects in the works, so i'm excited about that. Met with my old advisor, and what i really thought was going to be an awkward meeting turned out to be really cool. He was very kind and professional about the whole thing, and has really been interested in giving my career a kick-start instead of dragging me down like he totally could have. Considering i've been plotting to do some research behind his back on the project we abandoned just to "stick it to him", i'm actually really looking forward to having him as an ally, and continuing a very beneficial professional relationship. Like i said before all of this stuff happened, he's some kind of super-genius. All of the stuff people were saying about me (i can "see" things, analyze everything so quickly), i've been saying about him.... And at his young age he's built the kind of life that i'd like to have for myself.... so consider it more of an inspiration. And i guess now that we don't have the pressure of working together, well, whatever.

Anyway, met a girl online and we've been, um, chatting for a few hours each night for the past couple of days. We're meeting f2f tomorrow but i'm a bit apprehensive. Already she's grown quite attached to me, and i sort of had to force myself to remain aloof of the situation - especially considering the last time i got into trouble like this (after she showed up 7 hours early and lied about her appearance, she took a whole bunch of e's and decided that she loved me and wanted to stay with me forever. she refused to leave my apartment and after i suggested getting to know her better before commmitting to "forever" she threatened suicide). But anyway, i'm starting to get this feeling that things are progessing way too quickly, considering we haven't met in person yet. I'm trying to remain optimistic because she does sound mad cool over the phone, but what happens if there is no chemistry? She was saying that she broke up with her last bf because he was so focused on work he couldn't give her the time she needed - and that just really starts to scare me as well. But she's just so irresistable - she sings and she's been to amsterdam and she thinks i'm cute.... and you really can't go wrong with that, hehe :P

Anyway, i have class now. This is a statistical methods for video analysis - shih fu's new class, a guy that i'd really like to work for now. As steph says though, anything involving statistical methods is a pain in the ass. But i love that stuff, and i really hate the way the mathematicians teach it (they make you waste your time proving things instead of actually working with the data and seeing how things work) so this should be a really good opportunity to get my feet wet with some real data. Obviously i'm going to use this class as another excuse to continue my semantic analysis of film - which is rapidly becoming my new love. To be able to analyze movies and get paid - wow that would be hot. And the best part is that Shih-Fu, is a very right-brained guy - he doesn't always grasp some of the new techniques that people are throwing out, but he is always interested in "the number" - how well your method does, or how much of an improvement it is over the other guy's. But when he got his feet wet with film theory in our sessions last year, he started opening his eyes to a much larger world. He's reaching a little bit far with some of his proposals (which i can't discuss here because they are proprietary research) but needless to say i think if he continues along in this direction we'll be doing just fine.

Another guy i'm interested in working for is John Kender. He is definitely the kind of guy i want to be when i reach his age - he has had a long and extensive career and reached the top of his field, so he doesn't give a shit about anything. In the first session of his class - which by the way was broadcast over the internet and stored in the columbia archives - he is talking about gestures, and proceeded to make his favorite gesture (closed fist with middle finger extened) and waved it around at the class and the cameras while tracing its origin back to greek times when it meant "bad food." He was asked by spielberg to design the gesture interface to the awesome computer in "minority report", but his gesture language was "too realistic" (he thought tom cruise would get tired waving his arms around like that all day), and instead they went with the guy from mit media lab, whose gestures were broad, sweeping and elegant like a conductor of an orchestra (but a total fallacy). This guy rocked. He overwrote the windows mouse drivers to be driven by a camera - and you point at the screeen to move the "mouse", and make a little tapping motion when you want to click, and for drag n' drop you actually make a fist and move it around, and open it when you want to drop it. how hot is that????

speaking of click n drag, that was the name of the cyberfetish party i used to go to back in the day - but mother, the joint that it was at, has long been closed - just like every other good venue in the city.

i have spent the last 3.5 hours doing no work whatsoever.... so i think i'd better get on that action. class in 20min....