James Lin’s infrequently updated blog
Everyone else is linking this, so I’ll join the fun. (Thanks, Jason!) Take a look at this rap video from Saturday Night Live: “Lazy Sunday.” There are some sick rhymes in there (sick as in phat. uh, yeah). As a geek, I love this verse:
Yo where’s the movie playing? Upper West Side dude
Let’s hit up Yahoo Maps to find the dopest route
I prefer MapQuest. That’s a good one too
Google Maps is the best. True that! Double true!
I finally submitted my Ph.D. yesterday. I would have blogged yesterday, but as you might imagine I was too tired. I spent all weekend prepping my dissertation for printing, and then a few hours actually printing the necessary three copies. It weighs in at 583 pages (about 200 pages for the text, and the rest for the table of contents, appendices, etc.).
Andy submitted just after I did, so we celebrated with dinner at an East Bay institution: Zachary’s Pizza. So one day later, it doesn’t feel so different. But I know that in the future, I won’t have to endure the question, “When will you be done?” What a relief! And I get to put “Ph.D.” on my business cards, heh heh…
I just got back from a BayCHI talk by Jensen Harris, the lead designer of the new Microsoft Office 12 user interface. He’s actually already blogged a lot of what he talked about, so I won’t repeat it here — take a look at his “Best Of” list on his blog for an overview. Instead, here are some high-level impressions.
It was a busy weekend for me. On Saturday at 2 PM, I first went to the housewarming of Tessa and Dan, who I know independently from IBM and Caltech, respectively. It was made all the more memorable by Seth flying a radio-controlled helicopter right into a tree, and then him climbing the tree, a good 40 feet up, to shake it out. [photos]
Then I made my way up the peninsula to San Francisco, where Andy was throwing his farewell party — he’s graduating from Berkeley and moving out of the area. I plan to see his dissertation talk this Thursday. Andy most certainly did not want gifts (unless it was food), since he was trying to clean out his apartment. [photos]
After that I went to another party, this one in the East Bay, where Jennifer and Fredrik, who I know from SIMS, were holding their annual Glögg party. Their first party had mostly Berkeley students, over the years it has shifted to mostly co-workers. I’m glad I was there to uphold the Cal tradition. [photo]
I stayed overnight at my old apartment in Berkeley, where my former roommate Chinh still lives. It’s nice to have an option to sleep overnight up there! The next morning we had breakfast at Rudy’s Can’t Fail Cafe in Emeryville [photo]. I enjoyed the corned beef hash, although the salt gets to you after a while.
Then I drove down to Palo Alto to meet up with my high school friend Jon. Together we went on a tour of the house and garage where HP was founded. The only public tours scheduled so far was today, yesterday, and Saturday, so I feel lucky to have snagged a spot. Unfortunately, we weren’t given much time to linger, but I did get some good photos.
Finally, I went back to the South Bay to Shumin and Pernilla’s housewarming. They have a beautiful house complete with a pool, and Pernilla cooked way too much food. 🙂 Good stuff! She said if we had eaten like Swedes do at a Christmas party, there wouldn’t have been enough. Those Swedes must fast for days beforehand… [photos]
I finally went home at 4 PM, 26 hours after my first party. When I mentioned my schedule, someone said, “I’m sorry.” But they misunderstood — for me, it was fun! I got to see a lot of friends spanning high school, college, grad school, and IBM. It also helped that I didn’t have to host my own party at the same time.
The New York Times has a four-part series on the “Golden Quadrilateral“, a set of four-lane expressways that connect Delhi, Mumbai (Bombay), Chennai (Madras), and Calcutta, and the rapid changes to Indian society that comes with it.
My German friend Clemens said this has a ring of truth to it:
Germans value letters attached to their name more than money, love or having children with nine out of ten rating a good qualification as their most important aim in life, a survey showed Wednesday.
Germans prefer letters after name to love or money — Reuters
Today the SBC/AT&T merger was completed. It’s a little bizarre to think of AT&T as my local phone company, essentially having grown up after the 1984 breakup. Anyway, the new AT&T logo was also introduced today, and it’s like the old one but 3-Dified for extra spiffiness.
Actually, I don’t think it’s too bad, but I decided to look at a design community blog called Speak Up to see what they think. The verdict: nearly universal condemnation, with a few “let me sleep on it”s. Not unexpected — I haven’t seen a logo redesign that these people do like.
What I found more interesting is that there was also dismay over how the new logo was described in their press release. One commenter said the statements were “empty, meaningless BS that do a huge disservice to the profession of design.”
Since I and so many of my friends are turning 30 this year, I thought this New York Times article would be appropriate: Smiling Through the 30th, a Birthday Once Apocalyptic
Once, turning 30 was slightly irritating, an embarrassing passage, and people were in no mood to broadcast the news. This was especially true for unmarried women and for men whose careers had not yet ignited. Today, when marriage is routinely delayed past 30 and the 20’s are often an extended adolescence — a time of romantic and professional hopscotch — a 30th birthday feels to many the way 21 once did, as the gateway to the more serious adult world. It is no longer a day to count up regrets stoically, but to pop the Moët & Chandon.
So far, I can relate to this article. Until this sentence:
Increasingly, it is celebrated with all the pomp of a graduation blowout or a wedding reception, with formal invitations, speeches, rented halls or yachts, and guest lists drawn from every stage of the person’s life.
Uh, okay…
Bipartisanship is like virginity. Once lost, it’s never recovered.
—Professor Bruce Cain of UC Berkeley, reacting to the challenge Governor Schwarzenegger faces, now that all eight propositions lost, including the four championed by him
Your vote probably will not change the outcome of an election. Only one congressional election and seven state legislative elections in the past 100 years have been decided by one vote — and if it’s that close, the courts are likely to get involved. So why do people vote? (Of course, if everyone thought this way, democracy would be doomed.) I vote out of a sense of “civic duty,” but is that enough to motivate most people? The Swiss provides a clue, and the answer may be surprising.