malota had been asking for a picture of my tattoo and i hadn't gotten a good one yet, but russ3ll took this one at chillography this weekend. yay!

there's a bonkers party on friday night with dubstep & idm-y stuff that looks fun. headliner is wisp from rephlex.

put up some san francisco pictures. i should really start bringing my camera places and using it.

i also uploaded a video of the michael jackson flash mob that we attended.

mattholland was an awesome host.

some of the highlights:
- 2562's aerial album
- fantastic deep fried donuts (beignets) at brenda's soul food
- delicious italian at caffe sport
- biking across golden gate
- sfmoma rules
- amoeba records, of course
- illegal techno loft party with open bar
- supercute new friend who's a yoga teacher/soon to be sysadmin

this weekend was also quite fun. friday was derrick may and then a party at the electric tea garden with some local house djs. i danced more than i have in quite awhile, although i was actually more into the house music party than derrick may. he played some good tracks of course, but overall i wasn't feeling it. on the 4th itself i slept in and had breakfast at 6pm and decided that meant i should spend the day cleaning. the floor is now visible in my room. sunday was the chillography dj park party. i threw a bunch of school stuff on the kindle and did some studying in the sun. i miss park parties and wish there was one every weekend.

unfortunately i messed up my sleep schedule so much on friday and saturday that last night i didn't sleep at all. i tried but finally i just gave up and read some more of infinite jest.

world record zombie walk. tonight in fremont. including zombie thriller.

http://community.livejournal.com/seattle/5966111.html

stereo99 says: "eew, i don't know about that idea at all. i don't like zombies. they're dead. that's gross."

to clean my piercing i was instructed to use a specific ratio of sea salt to water. i'm pretty sure jovana was correct in her guess that i've been eyeballing and using the wrong ratio. the piercing's mostly been fine but my lips themselves have been constantly cracked and dry to the point of bleeding. d'oh.

while googling the reasons for using sea salt, i came across a post about the nutritional/health differences between table salt and sea salt. wow. i had no idea. i vaguely knew that sea salt was considered healthier/better for cooking but not that it would have any significant impact on blood pressure, pulse rate etc.

my technical communication class is similar to an anthropology class i once had - the entire course is spent working on a single giant paper. it occurs to me that i might actually be able to help someone out with this assignment by researching something for them. here's what i've been given:

"For your project topic, choose a question that presently is of concern to your reader (or you) at work, school, or home. It should involve a decision that must be made by comparing a number of possible options:

Ø A major career decision (career change, choice of career specialty, relocation)
Ø The best treatment for a medical condition or physical injury.
Ø Decision about a major purchase (home, boat, motor home, motorcycle, computer system)"

i could always just pick a theoretical topic that interests me or one that's related to my job.
i've considered the idea of making my project my own career and interviewing people who work in usability/UI and/or are studying it at UW. that gives me an excuse to hang out with friends who i like but don't see often enough and question them about their exciting, inspiring jobs. but if any of you have been considering one of these topics and haven't had time to research it yourself, i could also potentially choose your subject. i'm required to work harder than a quick google - interviewing people who are considered to be unusually knowledgeable about the topic, reading studies on the subject, consulting a variety of books etc. feel free to comment anonymously if your topic is one that you don't want everyone knowing about. i won't have the final product until august, though, so it won't be useful for anything that must be decided urgently. there are no implied guarantees that i won't decide to just do my original idea, and of course i'll be more interested in your topic if it's something that i'm already curious about. but i'll give consideration to anything ;)

i love san francisco so much. i'm the biggest sucker for it. i'm sure it could be one of those things where you start dating someone and everything is perfect and dreamy and then you notice that they pick their nose and eat it at dinner parties. but for the past 13 years every time i go it's just this cavalcade of joy even if it isn't a great time of my life or whatever. i love the roar of the ocean and the smell of it, the little bright squished buildings and their narrow little stairs, delicious food and fog and bridges and street food carts and getting a tamale at 3am for $2.50 and looking up a hill so steep that all i can see is sky. it made me quite happy to get coffee and then go recordshopping at amoeba with stereo99 'cause that's about as close to my idea of the perfect date as you can get.

not that i'd consider now to be a not-great time of my life. there's a lot of stress but i think i'm working it. i got a 4.0 spring quarter (which i never could have done without the help of stereo99). hopefully that's enough to convince the informatics people that i'm a contender. i won't find out if i got accepted until the end of this month so i'll be mentally pacing around 'til then. i have to put off applying to human-centered design & engineering until spring quarter. bc dropped me from the statistics class after realizing i hadn't finished the second half of trig last quarter. dammit. i thought i might be able to sneak in anyway.

i now have to get up at 6am every day to retake trig. predictably, it's killing me. i am not a morning person by any stretch of the imagination, nor am i great at going to bed at 10pm. i've gotten an average of 5 hours of sleep each of the past two days. it doesn't help that i frequently have to stay late at work and don't get home until 8pm or later. on the upside, i love the instructor. unlike my last one, she spends most of class explaining the theory and relevance of the formulas and only then does a few problems on the board. our last instructor wanted us to solve each problem in pretty much the same way. this instructor teaches how to determine which method will be the most efficient and then do that vs. using a certain style just because it happens to exist. she doesn't give us a list of formulas and say "memorize this" without ever explaining why anyone should care, how they can be useful, etc. i am very into efficiency when it comes to things like math and programming, so being forced to do something that seems redundant/wasted effort when i can sense that there's gotta be an easier way drives me nuts. one of my biggest problems in math has been staring at equations for extended periods of time trying to figure out an easier way to do them than the way i've been requested to do them, so that's awesome. she also frequently starts sentences with statements like "when you go on to differential calculus" as though she can't imagine the idea that any of us wouldn't. it makes me laugh but i appreciate her enthusiasm. i probably will end up dragging myself through calculus. it's hard to muster the same level of enthusiasm for any subject that early in the morning though.

i'm also taking a technical communication class which i absolutely love. one of our textbook's examples is the different documents that segway used. they show the one for their patent application, one to explain the balance mechanism to engineers, one that explains how the microcontroller works to technicians and a press release. did you know that segway initially targeted the u.s. postal service? the press release shows a postal clerk delivering mail on one. i found this all very entertaining.
i just can't stop thinking of the weird al white and nerdy video whenever i see them. while in sf we observed a tour group going around on segways in neon jackets. on the flight down i'd also been reading a vice magazine article about combining light sabers with segways into a battle called sabersegging.

i decided to celebrate the 4.0 by buying myself a used kindle. now that the dx has come out it's a lot easier to find less expensive older ones on craigslist since everyone's selling their old ones to upgrade. i totally want native pdf support but i can't justify paying ~$550 when the non-native-pdf ones go for less than half that price. i figure it can't be long until they release a new version with a touchscreen and the dx drops to an affordable price.

i'm totally infatuated with it and am now an evangelist. i carry it everywhere. i cannot wait until my laptop/phone/etc. has a hybrid e-ink and non-e-ink screen. i sat on the bus to the airport with sun shining brightly down on it and read with no trouble and no glare. i am totally into clicking a button and downloading a newspaper. i don't have time at work to catch up on all the news sites, so i'd try to read news at the gym. but trying to drape a full sized paper over the elliptical was unwieldy and squinting at my phone was annoying. i also frequently combine studying and the gym and being able to drop my files on it vs. carrying around a bunch of textbooks, papers, etc. is rad. apparently UW agrees 'cause the CSE grad students are part of the pilot program for the dx. i used to have a new york times subscription but i got rid of it largely because i found the physical paper more inconvenient than the digital form. but i totally don't mind paying for content if i think it's worth it, and i do feel like journalism and blogs aren't synonymous.

i've also been curious about infinite jest but have never been motivated enough to carry around a 1,104 page book. so today i downloaded it and i'm going to try and catch up and join in the infinite summer project. i read very quickly so i think i can still do it.

real sf post to follow once i find more time ;)

i should be packing for san francisco but i can't stop reading about the situation in iran.

"A woman called Hana posted a comment on Mr. Karroubi’s Web site: "I am alive but my sister was killed. She wanted the wind to blow into her hair; she wanted to be free; she wanted to hold her head high up and say: I am Iranian. My sister died because there is no life left; my sister died because there is no end to tyranny."

(re: neda agha-soltan)

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today a partial/preliminary lineup for the decibel festival in seattle was announced. for those not familiar, it's a 4 day electronic music festival a la mutek which has daytime workshops about audio production/musicmaking, independent films, ambient/idm/listening music, and late night dance parties. this is its 6th year and each year it gets bigger and more awesome.

every year i try to convince you out of town people that you should really come visit for this and stay at my house. sometimes you even take me up on it. :D this year they're selling temporarily discounted full festival passes for all 4 days and nights for $100 (normally $150)

i volunteer every year but this year i've decided to buy a pass in addition to volunteering. it's just that awesome :)

-----------------------------------------------------
:::: 2009 PRELIMINARY LINE UP ::::
-----------------------------------------------------
Alex Under (ES) : Alter Ego (DE) : Andrew Weatherall (UK) : Benga (UK) : Boxcutter (UK) : Bruno Pronsato (DE) : Caspa (UK) : Daedalus (US) : Goldmund (US) : KiloWatts (US) : Lusine (US) : Mad Professor (UK) : Martyn (US) : Mary Anne Hobbs (UK) : Megasoid (CA) : Mikael Stavöstrand (SE) : Monolake (DE) : Mountains (US) : Move D (DE) : N-Type (UK) : Nosaj Thing (US) : Pezzner (US) : Reagenz (UK / US) : Spacetime Continuum (US) : Sub Swara (US) : Tadeo (ES) : Tanner Ross (US) : Voodeux (US) : The Wighnomy Brothers (DE) : dozens more to be announced later this summer

this weekend we went to the awesomerad wedding of blowtorch_betty & batboymaxx which had people hanging from the ceiling, laying on nails, wearing awesome costumes, dancing to punk/techno/industrial etc. i took some pictures. it's the first wedding where i've felt like i could wear my furry hat.

also the moore inside out show (stranger writeup - my photos) which was rad.

it was the first weekend in months where i haven't had hours of schoolwork to do, so i turned sunday's agenda over to stereo99.

we started with snuggling and then healeo for breakfast. it's a new place on 15th and madison that has vegan soft serve, granola/breakfast bowls, free wifi, organic smoothies and to-go lunch food. the interior is a lot like remedy teas and the employees are very sweet.

next we got delicious coffee at vivace and went record shopping at everyday music. they don't have a very good selection of electronic music on cd but they have bins of records. there's a lot of crappy stuff in there but you can dig and find some good stuff.

i'm super excited about san francisco. i could only get a few days off work so we're leaving thursday morning and returning monday. i'm still trying to figure out where we'll be staying. i'm debating whether i should rent a car for one of the days 'cause i love driving along highway one. i'm also considering renting bikes and going across the golden gate 'cause i've never done that.

today congress voted to ban cloves and other flavored cigarettes in the next 3 months, along with the use of the terms light/mild, tobacco sponsorship of sport and entertainment events, and various other new restrictions on tobacco.

i quit smoking regularly around the end of march 2008 although i've still been having the occasional clove (once a month or less). i rambled about it in a facebook comment to matt and figured i'd repost it:

the main reason i finally got motivated to quit smoking actually wasn't my personal health. i liked smoking. it was fun. i'm sure i do plenty of things that are pretty unhealthy regardless, and inadvertently ingest a wide variety of cancerous chemicals etc. it was easier to motivate myself after learning about the ways tobacco impacts the environment. the tobacco industry uses large amounts of pesticides, uses 12% of all the timber felled in the world, butts kill birds & fish etc. and in other countries they still use DDT :( i'm totally cool with screwing myself over but killing other stuff needlessly bothers me. even though i don't eat meat i don't view eating meat as ethically equivalent because you're at least using the thing that you're killing. here's a good article on environmental impacts of tobacco farming. i've never been much for tobacco company conspiracy theories though. of course they lie to you. they're a megacorporation. they all lie to you and view you as a digit and don't care if you get some horrible disease. almost all major companies use creepy chemicals, pesticides etc. in their products that are harmful, people just aren't aware of it 'cause they don't research anything.

there are still little family farms who grow tobacco. i lived in raleigh for awhile when i was a kid and it's a big industry in NC. i doubt they're getting rich off it either 'cause it's almost impossible for a family farmer to make a good living on any product when they're competing with giant companies.

looking at random people's photos on flickr is often inspiring. in fall i plan on finally getting around to launching the seattletechno site that i've been sitting on for years. it's going to be a group blog primarily focused on local electronic music but one of the sections i want to have is street fashion. i like pikepine.com and she's a great photographer but i'd want to cover more unusual style. i'd also like to do profiles on my friends who make clothes/accessories, do hair, etc. i feel like i'm surrounded with a lot of talented people who don't get enough press coverage of their awesomeness.

stereo99 has been very sweet. he'd been considering some kind of facial piercing for awhile. when i mentioned that i wanted a vertical labret but would be terribly sad to not kiss for an extended period he said "oh, i'll just get one too." so now we rub noses. i never thought i'd have a matching piercing with someone. or that i'd like it. it's not quite like my name as a tramp stamp of course ;)

the piercing doesn't hurt at all. it just feels odd and awkward. soaking it in sea salt constantly really dries out my lips though. they form a layer of chapped dead skin and it's hard not to peel it off constantly or obsess about how it looks icky. i don't want to inadvertently injure it, so i cut all my food into tiny pieces and eat it very slowly.

finals. first test on friday, then my programming exam on sunday, then another wednesday. this means a mostly-glum weekend of studying, but also that i see the glorious light at the end of the tunnel.

lots of couchsurfers appear in summer. this week we have a guy from australia, a girl from san diego and a girl from austin.

next quarter starts june 29. i'm taking technical writing, statistics, and trig early in the morning. it won't be the most fun way to spend a summer.

piercing party! today i went and got a vertical labret at slave to the needle. i thought josh did an awesome job. it was as close to painless as a piercing can get. stereo99 got one too. megamary got a tragus and enth got his ear stretched & other ear... and i got no picture of him :(

it's a little puffy but no pain yet. i'd anticipated eating smoothies for the next week but right afterward we went and got pizza & salad & homemade gelato at the tasty and recommended veraci (yay wood/brick oven!) and i had no problems.

i also had them swap out my navel jewelry 'cause i've had it for 11 years and it's been irritated periodically over all of them. some research indicated that titanium could be a better metal choice so i'm trying that. switching to a barbell rather than a hoop will hopefully help too.

stereo99 and i were advised to avoid kissing & nekkidpartsjuices for 4-6 MONTHS. i'm not sure i'll be able to hold out that long, but i'll try to maintain for as long as possible. i'm working on my new technique of nose-kissing. it needs a better shortened name, though. nissing? hmm.

i was going to study tonight but now people are trying to convince me to go see punisher at the baltic room. maybe i'll study at bauhaus for awhile and then head over there.

there's a new public art project called 23rd & union about the corner a few blocks from my house.

"The Corner: 23rd and Union is an interactive public radio documentary about, for, and created with the people who make the corner part of their lives.

From mid-June through August 2009 an art installation, featuring larger-than-life photographs of neighbors, will revitalize an empty lot on 23rd and Union. The artwork will invite viewers to call a phone number, where an automated voicemail system plays neighbors' impressions, memories and stories, and invites you to share your own."

during an argument with jeremy about whether a track was electro (his opinion) or house (mine) or electro house (his, i refuse to acknowledge the existence of this genre), i opened up wikipedia in the hopes of settling it. wikipedia uselessly commented that the genre "electro house" is controversial.

but then it helpfully introduced me to the existence of a genre called skweee. first of all, any genre named "skweee!" is obviously up my alley.

so i found this interview about it. some favorite quotes:

S: How did you get involved in the music and the movement? Were you looking to chart a new direction?

R: Well, I guess back in the days the movement for me meant sitting alone in a basement. 2005, Imatran Voima was on a break and I thought I can do whatever I want. The studio was very dark, walls covered in fungus and had no bathroom so I had to piss in a bottle. Nobody took the bottles out and in the end the room was full of bottles of molded urine. The place stank like a shelter for homeless and I think it gave my production some extra finesse.

Once Benny Bofors, a good friend of mine came for a visit. We smoked some hash and I played him the original version of Ape Shit. After 10 seconds of awkward silence he asked: “You call that music?”
Good times.

S: Many styles of music are very diverse when they start because there are no established conventions. So it is with skweee. Do you think skweee will remain quite diverse or will there be a natural convergence of the sound?

R: I don’t know. I just know that skweee is extremely hard to make.

here's some skweee audio.

here's a rusko skweee remix that's cute.

today i went to the farmer's market and then did some "real" grocery shopping for the first time in months. i've been so busy that i've only been doing amazon fresh/lucky palate combinations. then i made freshsqueezed apple, orange, carrot ginger juice and a scramble with green pepper, tomato, onion, avocado, field roast spicy "sausage".

i organized a study group with some people in my c++ class for today. our instructor has been MIA since shortly after the online class began. he didn't respond to emails or bulletin board comments very often. he took weeks to grade papers. recently he was replaced by another instructor. the new guy grades assignments/tests (after a long delay) but that's about it. we're essentially teaching ourselves. i feel like i've only managed to scrape by in the class via extensive help from stereo99 and all the other code-y friends who've helped with my assignments.

i decided shortly after the class started that i was obviously a c++ moron. things that i think should take 15-20 minutes take several hours. i frequently have to read and re-read chapters in the textbook 'cause i don't understand them the first time. it's not infrequent that i get so frustrated when coding that i burst into tears or start yelling profanity in the coffeeshop.

when i arrived, the people in my study group said "we're so glad you here! we're totally lost and you understand this stuff so much better than we do!" i stared at them, agape. i asked them if they were sure they weren't thinking of somebody else. they said "no way! you're the girl that kept answering people's questions on the bulletin board. we didn't understand it at all until you explained it. and you always seem to understand the concepts and how to implement them very quickly. the reason we never comment on the bulletin board is because we don't understand anything well enough to participate. are you planning on doing this for a living? 'cause we think you'd be awesome at it."

at first i assumed they were really feeling sorry for me and trying to boost my spirits. but i realized that i hadn't posted any of my selfloathing commentary publicly. i figured it wouldn't help to call the instructor's attention to my belief that i was a remedial student ;)

my mind is kinda blown right now.

lately i keep staring at vertical labret piercings and wanting one. i find them very sexy. it's not at all practical, though. you have to go weeks without kissing. i don't even like to go a day without kissing.

tonight: bbq at goldfischegirl's. the final cut at rebar.

i sure have spent a lot of time working this quarter instead of doing fun things :( but i checked my grades today and i think i'm on track to get at least a 3.3 and probably higher. yay! it sure has been a lot of work.

next month is my summer vacation. i'm going to vancouver bc from june 19-21 and san francisco from june 24-30 (assuming i get the time off approved). companions & hosts welcome ;)

goals for june & july:
- yoga 2-3 times a week, gym 3-4 times a week
- average 8 hours of sleep a night (this by far will be the most challenging goal)
- eat my damn vitamins
- ride my bike somewhere at least once a week
- apply to human-centered design & engineering major

goals for august & september:
- finish the c++ book and get reasonably good at it
- start learning java
- start learning japanese

things i learned or was reminded of:

- i can find ways to stay awake night after night on very little sleep, but it makes me a moody weirdo. next year i'll arrive friday night and catch up on sleep before the days of dancing begin. i don't sleep enough during my "normal" life to start my vacation off sleepdeprived.
- my friends are sexy and sweet and i love them.
- being vegetarian in detroit often means eating a lot of less than ideal food. despite my attempts at yelp research i ate a lot of crap that i'd never eat at home. it's esp. rough in airports.
- octave one = awesome.
- bring or buy a flask.
- talking to my ex is melancholy but can also be cathartic
- the kindle app on the iphone is sweet. i read mark twain on the way home for free.
- in-ear headphones that cancel out noise are so fantastic for travelling. scream your lungs out, 2 year old. it's cool.
- people at demf aren't ridiculous like in seattle and don't take my shirt seriously
- xamichee and enth do hilarious things to their hotel room
- here are a bunch of other demf pictures from xamichee

i added some black to my hair.

i registered for classes next quarter - statistics and technical writing. the very exciting part is that it's looking like girlstyle might take the statistics class with me. i've almost never had anyone i liked in a class, let alone anyone i was previously friends with. i consider myself reasonably social but there's never been anyone at bcc that i felt like i had much in common with. it seems like most people i know have some work friends or some school friends. my life's usually been relatively segregated.

i should be excited about demf but mostly i'm just anxious about having to spend a bunch of time alone in the hotel room working. at least the hell of this quarter will end june 18.

this entry is boring. sorry.