Boston Marathon tracker
If you'd like to follow polyrhythmic  in her Boston Marathon run today, just click here and hit "search".

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Eat jelly donuts and lose 20 pounds a day
It would seem that I've lost about two pounds over this Thanksgiving weekend. If this keeps up I'm going to have to go and patent my turkey-sweet-potato-pumpkin-pie-ice-cream diet. I'll make bank!

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Selling off some furniture (what a bargain!)
 I'm now almost entirely moved out from my place in Mountain View and starting the long, long process of culling boxes as fairyshaman and I try to merge two households into one, but in the meantime I have a few items I hope to sell off before they ever make it to Alameda. Here are the prices I've quoted on Craig's List, but I'm happy to give a deal anyone who mentions this LJ post -- make me an offer :).

• 48" round glass table with dark wood base - $40
• Brass & glass 4-shelf display - $35
• Dolce Dark Walnut Coffee Table with drawer - $35
• Burgundy Leather Couch for sale - $200

For all four I'm hoping to have people pick up Thursday night at my townhouse in downtown Mountain View, as I'm almost completely moved out now. Just drop a comment here and we can work out details.

fin

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DJ suggestions?
Does anyone have suggestions for a good wedding DJ in the Bay Area? By "good" I mean someone who can keep a dance floor of multiple generations dancing, incorporate songs and play lists from the happy couple's eclectic musical taste and generally keep a party going into the night. Any suggestions, and/or suggestions on good places to look?

Current Mood: busy

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It's official!
I'm pleased to announce to that I asked fairyshaman to marry me over the 4th of July weekend, and that she accepted. That makes official what both of us have known since the day we met — that we're right for each other, and that we want to spend the rest of our lives together. Now we just have to plan the wedding and have Sabrina help us pick out an engagement ring. :)

Current Mood: happy

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happy-go-lucky luck strikes again
Me: The iPhone has been out for 2 days, so I'm sure the lines have died down.
[Wanders into Apple store]

Me: hi, do you have any 8-gig iPhones in stock?

Haggared-but-perky-Apple-store-employee: We just got a few in from another store, but I think the 8 gig may have already sold, let me check.
[Perky employee talks into  headpiece]
We've got one left.

Me: Cool, I'll take it.

Perky-employee-at-register: Man, are you lucky. We got that last set here just 30 seconds ago!

And yeah, it's real purty. :)

Current Mood: tech lust

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Happy Summer!

Små grodorna, små grodorna är lustiga att se.
Små grodorna, små grodorna är lustiga att se.

Ej öron, ej öron, ej svansar hava de.
Ej öron, ej öron, ej svansar hava de.

Kou ack ack ack, kou ack ack ack,
kou ack ack ack ack kaa.
Kou ack ack ack, kou ack ack ack,
kou ack ack ack ack kaa.

Current Mood: awake

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Congratulations to thatwesguy for having his illustrious voice on KQED's Quest segment this morning (mp3 here). (I'd make some comment about 15 minutes of fame, but this is Wes -- he's already well over quota ;).

Current Mood: amused

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Puzzle ring vendor at Dickens Fair?
Anyone know the name of the puzzle-ring vendor who's been at Dickens Fair at the SF Cow Palace the past few years? I gather he also works Ren Faire, I just can't remember his name or where he's based...

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History of the Love Sux dinner

Looks like I've hosted what will (hopefully!) be my last Love Sux Dinner for Valentine's day, so I figured I'd mark the occasion with a little historical retrospective.

The Love Sux Dinner started in 1994 when my friend Derek and I were both grad students at Stanford. As Valentine's Day approached our love lives were looking pretty bleak. My long-distance girlfriend had dumped me a few months back, Derek's fiance was back in Boston, and the rest of our friends were CS grad students and therefore also single. So Derek had the brilliant idea of starting a tradition...

We explained to our various single friends that every year either of us had been single we had hosted a Love Sux Dinner at a local brew-pub, and that this would be our third annual. We had actually just made up the whole thing the night before, but everyone was so happy to join us in such a good tradition we really hated to disillusion anyone. There were about 8 of us that first dinner (including, if I remember correctly, a subsequent founder of a well-known search engine company).

Derek and I both came back to Boston the following year and took our "tradition" back with us, and we kept making up new traditions, rules and exceptions as they suited our fancy. But the most important tradition we kept from the very first event: this was never a pity party, but a celebration of singlehood. Sure, some attendees might have felt lonely or sorry for themselves, but for at least one night our goal was to create a kind of George-Bernard-Shaw "safe, sane and single" mood for everyone. Thus the toast we always gave since the very start: "Here's to good friends, good food... and to staying single so we can enjoy them!"

Of course, I'm not actually so curmudgeonly as all that, and it's looking like I've finally hosted my last Love Sux Dinner. However, others have taken up the mantle for this year (post a comment or email me and I'll forward the invite to you) and no doubt the tradition will continue. Hopefully they'll all be raising a glass to me and their other fallen comrades, tonight and every February 14th for years to come.

If anyone's interested, here's the invite template I've used in past years.

Current Mood: happy

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Hauntings
I went to a haunted ranch in Hollister yesterday, my first haunted house in well over a decade. It's interesting to see how my reactions have changed over the years. When I was a kid they scared me to death, and most of all I felt powerless to do anything about the fact that the bogyman that just jumped out of the shadows was going to eat me alive. Normal feeling for a kid, no doubt. Kids really are powerless in most situations.

When I did live-action role playing in undergrad I'd often go sneaking through the woods at night, both hunting and being hunted by people in monster masks and make-up that rivals any haunted house. I remember after doing that for a while I no longer felt powerless in a haunted house. I still felt the heart-pounding rush as someone jumped towards me, but instead of screaming for me to run my hind-brain would start trying to figure out the best way to dodge and counter attack. I was still frightening and still situated in the fantasy that this was a bogyman intent on doing me harm, but certainly it was a more empowering feeling than wanting to curl up in a fetal position. I suspect that's the core of the shift that groups like Model Muggers try to induce on a more robust level, and clearly in a real violent situation it's better to have the ability to fight back (or run sensibly) rather than be emotionally overpowered before the assailant lifts a finger.

So fast-forward to last night, years after my last goblin hunt and after I've had experience with both improvisational theater and public speaking in general. This time I was neither victim nor hunter, but a character and storyteller. I felt the same feeling I got when on stage in an improvised skit, collaborating with other actors to create a story. There are still rules to follow in the improve environment, the most important being to embrace and extend what another actor gives you (simple example: if a fellow actor mimes firing a gun and goes bang!, fall down or mime Matrix bullet-time or something but don't just say "that's not a gun, it's just your finger.") From a hind-brain perspective it's the most empowering feeling yet, because it essentially puts me on even footing with all the other characters haunting the area. And I can't help but think this mode is also the most powerful when it comes to real-life dangerous situations too, where shifting a potential assailant into some other role before things get bad can be the best attack of all.

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Haiku
Flying to Vegas.
Why are we threat level orange?
Mid-term elections.

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To quote the Python boys...
I'm thirty-seven, I'm not old!

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Killing and eating babies is wrong!
We would like to know who on livejournal really believes that killing and eating babies is wrong. If you truly believe in the rights of small children to not be slaughtered and eaten, then repost this and title the post as "Killing and eating babies is wrong!" If you're a heartless kid-hating cannibal then just ignore this. Thanks.

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Good thing I'm an extrovert...
I've had something social going on all but one evening in the past two weeks, and my next three weekends are already at least singly-booked.  What is it about Autumn that brings out the socialness in me, anyway?

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Safety Last this Friday at the Stanford Theatre
The Stanford Theatre is showing Safety Last, the great 1923 Harold Lloyd silent movie, this Friday at 7:30. Anyone care to join me?

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Brass fireball


One afternoon about 9 months ago I closed my eyes and saw a vision of a Van Goghesque fireball made out of brass and colored glass. Many scribbled designs, two construction-paper prototypes, one Illustrator mockup and a ultimately successful battle with Squid Labs' computer-controlled plasma torch later, it's finally on my wall!

(Still thinking about where and whether colored glass "sparks" are still in order, but that can wait a few months while I get to know the piece.)

Current Mood: accomplished

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Joshua Tree trip

Sarah and I went camping in Joshua Tree National Park this past weekend [pictures]. A few quick highlights (and lessons learned):

• The drive down is a grueling 8-10 hours if you try it all at once. You're also better off cutting across from 5 to 138 → 14 → 18 → 247 rather than face LA traffic.

• Mummy-sack sleeping bags are your friend. So are wool hats.

• Cholla cacti are not.

• All food tastes incredible after a 7-mile hike.

• As alethia_juturna put it, the park should be named Jumbo Rocks Park — some of those rock formations are positively other-worldly.

• Bobcats are smaller than you'd think.

• Flood by They Might Be Giants is a great driving album.

• There's nothing quite so amazing as a full moonrise over a winter desert wilderness.

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Pancake revolution
I rarely remember my dreams, and from the few times I do I understand why: they're rarely coherent. (I sometimes envy my friends who can dream epic plots in full technicolor -- it's like Netflix while you sleep!)

A couple nights ago I dreamed I was giving a lecture in front of a high-school class about how a pancake-batter recipe is the quintessential subversive document. There's no one way to make pancakes, I explained, no canonical batter given from on high. And yet the quality of a batter isn't completely subjective either -- cultural relativism can only forgive so much extra baking powder before the pancake hits the garbage disposal. The cooking experience rewards those with training and skill, and yet unlike high art you don't need that training to appreciate the results.

I gotta lay off the NyQuil...

Current Mood: on the mend...

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Lesson for the day
Even though that stack of extra-strong magnets look like they'd fit almost perfectly into the hollow of your Kryptonite Lock key, do not try it and see.

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