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 ;)

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 ;)

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.