Electric Ladyland

We're in ur computerz wiring ur activists' intertubz

It's gotten out of hand.  See what I mean?  A fellow nonprofit techie posted this on my FunWall tonight:

Ok, I actually got a kick out of it.  Wonder what variations of this are going to come out of the NTEN and Women Who Tech conferences.  Watch out now!

That's a nice little bit of humor to spice up the day.  That plus the fake donation acknowledgment card I received in the mail this weekend.  We've been having some problems with print quality and to make sure everything's peachy keen they've started sending me test cards every day for the next two weeks.  But see, these development folks and I have geekbonded and so I got no ordinary card but instead one that looked like a perfectly elegant card -- with a quote from Overheard in New York on it!  Aww yeah!  I love me some development folks.  They've got a sense of humor.  After all the drama trying to get their printeration to work this is a nice cherry on top.

I'm coming off the high of an A+ weekend.  Had a great night out Saturday with my friend Lisa in Forest Hills and Kew Gardens (QNS pride!).  We got some yummy Polish vittles for dinner (ever heard of white borscht?  It's good) and then went to see Juno, which was awesome.  Five stars.  Go see it now. 

Also got plenty of "me" things done - dropped off tailoring, did all the laundry and grocery shopping, cleaned the apartment with my roommate, and -- most importantly -- found, after much futzing around, a great personal finance site that I can use to track where my money's going and how much of it I've got.  It's called Geezeo and I am beginning to heart it very much.  Aggregates all of your financial accounts (from checking to investment and savings and credit cards on up... pulled in every last one of mine), lets you tag your expenses to generate a chart on what your top 6 expenses are, and lets you also create goals with little progress bars so you can track your progress towards filling up that emergency fund or whatnot. 

I'd tried Wesabe and Buxfer but unfortunately they didn't make the cut.  Wesabe was hard to configure and Buxfer, while blessed with a clean interface, iPhone access and handy-dandy pie charts, would have required me to enable OFX access on my Chase Checking account -- and Chase wanted to charge me $9.95/month for that privilege.  I don't think so.  Geezeo brought in all the accounts, which impressed the heck out of me because I've got a lot of them and Wesabe and Buxfer couldn't even get my Chase Checking account going without a lot of cajoling.  While playing around with the site I realized a few financial tweaks I could make right away that were so simple it was like a eureka moment.  Now I'm on track with one of my key resolutions for 2008 so I'm in good shape and feeling pretty fabulous.

Heard from Mom today.  Her hysterectomy has been scheduled for next Wednesday.  I'd been waiting for that to get set up already but now that it has been I'm feeling a little sober and sad about it for some reason.  It's real and it's happening and boy, it's a little bit scary.  But we'll get through it.  I'm planning on being there with her that day.  Whatever she needs, I want to be there for her.

Getting all teary eyed thinking about it so I'm going to head back to all the fun stuff I was up to just now.  More later, surely...

Social networking: new school and old school

Oh, social networking.  Socnet.  The buzzconcept du moment, is it not?  I was not exactly sold on this until relatively recently despite the fact that one of my biggest fascinations with technology is and always has been the way it facilitates communication between people. 

Well, I'm coming around.  As I posted a while back, I'm beginning to really appreciate FaceBook.  It's shown me more useful applications by far than MySpace or Friendster ever did.  It's the American version of Japan's Mixi that I'd been waiting for.  I hardly ever get spam from random people I don't know wanting to be my friend (what's up with that?) but I do get stuff of interest to me.  I recently found out about a telesummit for women in technology through FaceBook and was able to link up with fellow participants of that group through Twitter, for example.  And a fellow JET alum happened to post a New York Times article on trends in Japanese education which I'd read, so I started a conversation with him and another alum about that based on our previous experience as Assistant Language Teachers (ALTs) working in the Japanese education system. 

In these ways I've come to see the utility of FaceBook and that's to a large degree why I'm becoming a fan.  I have practical as well as personal reasons to use it.

And get this:  my enthusiasm got me interviewed by the Wall Street Journal today.  W00t!  It was because I'd been such an active user of TripAdvisor's Local Picks application, reviewing NYC restaurants left and right, that I apparently drew the attention of someone from TripAdvisor who'd been contacted by the WSJ about setting up an interview with a user.  The journalist and I talked not just about Local Picks but about FaceBook in general:  FaceBook versus other social networking sites, why FaceBook is useful, and especially how I'm linking up with other people through applications on FaceBook.  I mentioned how FaceBook is unique in that it merges my personal and professional networks.  Never did that with Friendster or MySpace and LinkedIn, while useful for professional networking, is still a bit staid.  FaceBook's a whole new ball game.

Anyway, tonight I ended up exploring some nonprofit techie and progressive political groups on FaceBook while chatting with some fellow techies on Twitter (Guy Kawasaki started following me yesterday -- woo!  Me and 3,000 other people, but still -- he's the Mac Evangelist so I'm pretty psyched) when it occurred to me that I might want to go a little old school and see what was happening on my very first social networking site (if you think of it in a loose sense), LambdaMOO. 

LambdaMOO's not Web 2.0, it's not even Web-anything.  It's a telnet session -- no GUI here -- and you have to specify the TCP port because it doesn't answer at 23.  I've been on there for 14 years now, since I was in high school, and I still chat with friends there once in a blue moon.  When I logged in tonight I found a friend I'd met lo those 14 years ago and got an automatic virtual text hug from him as a greeting.  Little script activates whenever it finds a friends of his logging in, I think.  So I paged him and briefly caught up with how he's doing, remembering how we first connected on the basis of our shared interest in francophone culture (him as a professor and enthusiast of Cajun culture, me as a Franco-American).  We both had French names on the MOO and that was how we found each other if I recall.  Simple as that.

Social networking is far more sophisticated now.  Finding people is almost too easy to the point of being a little uncomfortable.  Privacy is becoming a thing of a past along with these avatars and virtual identities people used to love cultivating on LambdaMOO.  And aggregating things, bringing them together under one neat and tidy umbrella, is becoming oh so convenient with mini social universes such as FaceBook, which I saw someone ominously describe this week as "All Your Bits Are Belong to Us."  Hard to tell what's coming down the pike but for now I think I'm going to keep all my options open. 

Despite the fact that I bemoan the ever growing number of methods in which people can get in touch with me (email, phone, text message, IM, snail mail, Twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn, comments on this here blog, FTF, and the list goes on... there goes my iPhone bleeping with an incoming text as someone pages me on LambdaMOO and another person messages me on Twitter while I write this) I still do like being reachable in all these different ways.   I guess they can cohabit for the time being.  But between you, me and the blogosphere, I wonder how many people on this hot app Twitter have ever heard of LambdaMOO.  I have an inkling of how many on FaceBook have heard of it because there's a group for it there, but still... out of the general online population?  I suspect we're a a dwindling group of old net fogies.

One of my friends on LambdaMOO just alerted me to the fact that my page echo message says "Rosie seems to be absorbed with her Power Mac."  Oh boy.  That is dating it waaay back.

Anybody remember Usenet?  IRC?  Yeesh.  I'm going to go check for white hairs now.

I'm in ur City Bakery drinkin ur hot cocoaz

Being someone who's right at home in IT and gets called out for too much geek-speak on a regular basis, as I was tonight by someone who is himself pretty geeky but even so did not know what the heck I was talking about (surprised me), I find it a little disorienting when there's an Internet meme or an expression out there I don't know about. 

So I got one.  What's with this "I'm in ur ___  ___ing ur ___" catchphrase?  I've been seeing it around a bit lately.  Found out tonight.  Of course it came from the gaming world - figures.  Had a bit of that "all your base are belong to us" ring to it.  But there are a lot of variations out there.  I'd already seen this one:

Now this one may not be considered correct because it doesn't fit with the theme of "LOL you got pwned and you don't even know it yet," but I still like it:

As for me, I've been in ur City Bakery drinkin ur hot cocoaz.  You gotta get on that stuff!  It's cold outside, man, and there's only one thing to hit the spot in weather like this:  hot cocoa.  We used to have an Italian cafe near my office that did a killer, rich hot cocoa to die for.  They closed so today I went slumming to Devon & Blakely to see if theirs would do.  It was ok in a pinch but doesn't hold a candle to the hot cocoa of its former next door neighbor, let alone City Bakery's legendary hot cocoa for that matter.  Guess I'll keep darting around in the frigid air until I find the right one.

Achtung!

Busy, working hard, whatever, blah blah blah.  You know the drill.  Job reared up and swallowed me up a little bit lately.

But I love this.  It's a slightly different version of an old Xeroxed sign I have hanging up in my offfice that dates back to the days I was a computer consultant in the mid-90s.  Going to give this to our sysadmin tomorrow and I know she will laugh.  For that matter, gotta give it to my friend the network admin consultant.

Oh, and it still feels good to say 2007 World Series Champions. 

Dwight vs. the computer

This is one of my favorite scenes from The Office in quite some time.  Jim and Pam take messing with Dwight to a new, IM-enabled level.  Priceless and, for any of us who might have engaged in such pranks (cough), a little familiar in its execution.  Reminds me of an email-based prank my fellow computer consultants and I played on a little punk who richly deserved it back at Oberlin in the mid-90s when email was still new to most people.  He fell for it hook, line and sinker.  Nothing as elaborate as what you see Dwight buying here but it was still pretty good!  As for Dwight's response to being pranked, I appreciate the binary code shout-out.  Too bad it doesn't mean anything though!

Downtown still sends me up in the sky

This takes me back.  I'm not a gamer and it's more of a self-defense thing than anything else:  if I had a Wii in my house I would probably never leave the house.  But back in my adolescent years I sunk a lot of time into mastering Super Mario Brothers and Legend of Zelda on my Nintendo.  It's a wonder Mom didn't throw the damn thing out the window because she got really sick of hearing the music over and over again.

This is the music video for Cibo Matto's "Sci Fi Wasabi" off their 1999 Stereo Type A album, which a fellow JET introduced me to while we were both living in Japan's Shizuoka Prefecture.  I used to stroll the streets of Shizuoka City and Hamamatsu listening to this album.  It was so atmospheric, left-field and original with sweet tones of samba that it really stuck with me.  Just like Björk and Beck, I think Cibo Matto kind of need their own genre with their name on it. 

I was thinking about their music earlier tonight because I just downloaded Miho Hatori's Ecydisis album from iTunes and have been really enjoying it since then.  It provided me with a few transcendent city-walking moments today that were reminiscent of the pleasant strolls in Japan listening to Stereo Type A (on a MiniDisc player at the time - this was before the iPod).  This morning the trains were all screwed up so I ended up walking over to the elevated train and putting this album on.  I watched our train snake and wind through Western Queens on its way towards Manhattan while listening to "Barracuda" and it was pretty cool.  Tonight I accidentally took the wrong train back again and ended up on that elevated line listening to some more Hatori tracks.  I really got into "Sweet Samsara Pt I" and "Sweet Samsara Pt II" as I ambled home slowly and aimlessly from the grocery store.  Time seemed to slow down and I could really sense the autumn climate around me.  Usually I just truck it when I'm running errands after work but not tonight... I took it easy. 

I actually met Miho Hatori a couple of years ago at Japan Society.  I was volunteering at the ticket desk the night of a lecture associated with their exhibition on Superflat.  A nice young Japanese woman came up to me and quietly said she had reserved a ticket, then gave the name Miho Hatori.  I didn't make the association right away but when I did, I smiled back at her and said "I love your music!"  She smiled somewhat tentatively, perhaps concerned that I would alert everyone else that she was there.  Of course I didn't -- I just wanted to let her know I appreciated her contribution to music.  She waved and smiled again on the way out after the lecture that night.  I thought to myself that it figured she'd be interested in superflat.  Her music is replete with that sensibility.  And it extends to her videos too:  there are elements of superflat in her "Barracuda" video.

And yes I'm aware that this is very trippy.  Mushrooms anyone?

Hiro is my hero

Today I got back on the crazy train.  A day full of meetings, meetings, meetings.  I'm kinda over meetings.  Think I could've done without quite so many.

Yeah, it was a blur.  I only got to start doing work-work at 4 o'clock.  And there was a very odd episode involving an Office Space premonition I had that bounced really funny.  I left the office shaking my head.

Came home and it was time for chores.  On the way to do my laundry I noticed leaves strewn on the ground for the first time this year.  Here it comes, fall.   Time for pumpkins, maple sugar candy, a trip home to Massachusetts and lots of fretting over the Red Sox.  I'm in.

Watched the season premiere of Heroes tonight.  You can tell Twitter is populated with my people because we were all twittering about it.  You can say what you want about social networking (and I have myself) but it's kinda cool to be linked up with fellow geeks and Sox fans in real time.  I've actually gotten some interesting tech resource references from people on there, stuff that's useful to know in my line of work.

Oh, back to Heroes:  so of course I couldn't bring that show up without mentioning Takezo Kensei, who is obviously a takeoff on legendary swordsman Musashi.  For starters, Musashi was also named Takezo when he was young.  I know this because I watch far too many Japanese historical dramas.  I was pretty tickled when Takezo Kensei was revealed to be an Englishman, someone of the Caucasian persuasion.  He's out there representing for all of us non-Japanese who've ever wanted to wield a katana (I actually got to do so once - it was pretty badass).   Still though, I have to say I have trouble following the Japanese dialogue spoken by the non-Japanese actors on Heroes.  The guy who plays Andoh is pretty good and George Takei's good too but our Takezo had some pretty noticeable glitches.  And the geeky side of me was hoping the 16th century Japanese people I saw would use the same old language they use on the dramas I watch.  Nope, mostly current.  But one can hope.

Also on the subject of TV, I have a confession to make:  I am getting addicted to Rock of Love.  I'm not big on TV in general and reality TV even less so but good god it's such a train wreck and there's metal and bad hair involved... I can't help myself.  15 very dodgy women vying for the affections of a man who wears eyeliner and boxy moo-cow coats.  Sure, I'll watch that!  I think it actually was good for resetting my brain after the weird day at work.

Now off to dreamland.  It's just the right temperature outside so we've got the windows open and wonderful breezes blowing through the apartment.  Think I'm gonna sleep well tonight.

A daze here, dumplings there

This weekend was pretty good to me.  Saturday I got up late and ambled over to the local cafe, sat down and stared out the window for a good three hours or maybe more.  I wasn't even keeping track of the time.  Wrote fifteen pages in my journal without even noticing as there was a downpour going on outside, big fat raindrops plunking all over the pavement on Steinway Street.  I was happy, in my element, just so elated to have a long afternoon stretching out before me.  Nowhere I needed to be, nothing I needed to do.

Last night I got together with my friend Dawn for some good buddy time and geek time in Astoria.  We had a great dinner at Mundo (mmm, baby okra!) and a lot of fun talking tech, politics, liberation, all the good things.  While we were at dinner my little (ok, not so little -- they're 20 -- but they'll always be little to me) cousins added me as a friend on FaceBook!  I was tickled.  I guess that fits -- they're right there in the FaceBook demographic.  To think I was hanging out with them at the family ranch in California just about a month ago.  Like Dad said tonight, it already seems like six months ago.

Today was GRE class and I hadn't done all the preview work before I got there.  Whoops!  Math kinda whaled on me a little bit, more of a preparedness thing, but I really enjoyed doing the problems and was actually really excited for someone who was running on four hours of sleep, a cup of coffee and a marginally tasty muffin.  I wished I'd had a teacher like my current GRE prep teacher in high school.  I would have been all over that math stuff.  On the sillier side, she's really hooked on Rock of Love (fellow glam metal fan and 80s child just like me) and so what am I doing but downloading that show, checking it out on her recommendation.

Went out for dim sum with Nina-chan today.  We hit up a Shanghainese place in Chinatown.  It probably wasn't dim sum proper that we were doing but we did get some xiaolongbao and gyoza.  It was dumplings-o-rama, oh so greasy and starchy and heavenly.  I went to work for a couple of hours after that and it's a minor miracle I was actually cogent enough to do any of the research and memo-writing that I did.  Maybe I'll wake up tomorrow, revisit those docs and see that I'm really making recommendations for the installation of a dim sum bar in the 10th floor common area.  Doh...  well, I am good friends with the Operations Manager.  Maybe we could make it happen.  ;-)

Now I'm going to take a bubble bath, read a book and drift off to sleep as befits a quiet Sunday night like this.  On to another work day tomorrow but tonight is all about the relaxing.  More later.

Meditation in the waking state

It's Friday and I'm off work.  Can I get a hell yeah? 

Let me start by listing the good things.  (a) I'm not working and that's awesome, (b) I've got my plane ticket to Japan in my hands and that's very awesome, (c) My "There's No Place Like 127.0.0.1" babydoll t-shirt from ThinkGeek arrived today (no I will not be buying the HTTPanties),  and (d) I had a really good calligraphy session last night - the kind I haven't had in a long time.  I was so absorbed in each stroke and each movement that it was like deep meditation.  Good for my bruised spirit.

Had a very good moment this week when someone was able to get me to slow down and just notice the world around me for a very tranquil 20 minutes or so.  My whole body relaxed from the inside out over time and I felt better in body and spirit.  The same calm, warm feeling washed over me last night as I was practicing calligraphy.  I felt pleasure in applying light pressure to the brush to bring out some nuances and curves in a stroke, joy in assembling a compact and well-formed character as well.  Now I'm about to take my journal to the local coffee shop and just write about whatever.  I know the same feeling will arise again.  Like I said the other day, as I write I remember and take stock of the big picture.  Then I realize that things are in fact not so bad and the sky is not falling.  What needs to be worked on (job, cough cough) becomes clearer and easier to solve, less fraught with emotion. 

Of course feelings of panic and desperation are likely to come back at oh, about 7:10.  Yes, that would be right on schedule.  That's when the Red Sox play again.  I hope they're not on what Dad heard called their "annual late-season march to nowhere."   

Deep thought:He-Man::?:?

Due to a combination of vacation days and Jewish holidays I had most of this past week off from work.  It was good.  I took the first day to just sleep and watch TV.  My body really needed a break and so I didn't make it out of bed much that day.  Wasn't feeling too great either.  The rest of the days I alternated between being productive (which I tried to resist), watching TV or movies, and planning both for grad school and my upcoming trip to Japan. 

Toward the end of the week I spent a lot of time having Deep Important Thoughts™.  Oh, they were so very Deep and Important.  And a little bit scary after I thought too much (probably shorted something out).  I had a brief spaz-out induced by said thoughts, the kind which I think everybody has when they're about to make a big life change, but fortunately I got on the phone to a friend who's also applying to grad school and talking to him helped immensely.  Now this was good -- usually I just freak out and don't call the friend.  Note to self:  calling friend = good.  Do more of that in the future.

Of course there's something else that's good for keeping the balance:  indulging in mindless distractions.  I'm really liking He-Man, which I discovered through Gothamist.  Apparently this guy is for real!  If you look back over previous posts you'll see a hilarious video of this dude doing push-ups on the pavement by Union Square.  I showed this to my buddy Marc last week and now we both really need to know what this guy's deal is.  Marc emailed the link to all his coworkers, who work around He-Man's stomping grounds, and they're on the lookout now too.  If you find He-Man you can even add your sighting to the Google Map they have up there!  And this site gets updated pretty regularly.  I wonder what's going to happen as it gets colder outside.  Will He-Man brave the elements and proudly continue to strut in all his shirtless, ripped glory?  Only time will tell.  Dad and I are also wondering what would happen if He-Man were confronted by Chuck Norris.  After all, when he does push-ups, Chuck Norris doesn't push himself up -- he pushes the Earth down.  He-Man is clearly encroaching on Chuck's greatness and that sort of provocation cannot go unchallenged.

Marc introduced me to Real Ultimate Power, which is freakin' hilarious.  Ninjas, man, they like flip out and kill people!  And it's awesome!  And if you achieve Real Ultimate Power somebody might hook you up with fries!  Check out the definition of seppuku and don't fail to read the hate mail, which is the best part.  Some of us Japan aficionados can be really sanctimonious and a select few chose to give this guy a piece of their minds with hilarious results.  Of course where ninjas are concerned I still have a soft sharp and deadly spot in my heart for Ask a Ninja.  He battles nonsequiturantulas but his recipes are even better.

So yep, I've had some giggles this week to go along with the Thoughts of Great Portent.  I also consumed a lot of media as I said.  Here's the accounting of my tele-gluttony:

• Hot Fuzz.  Awesome!  Hilarious!  Watch it now!  Yarp!
• Shoot Em Up.  Pretty funny in parts and Clive Owen is delicious.  My mom recommended this movie to me.  Jeez Mom, there are hookers doing things in this movie that I'd rather not know about my mom having seen!
• The White Countess.  Painfully boring and trite.  I only watched it to see Hiroyuki Sanada and even he couldn't save it.  Ralph Fiennes, I thought you had better judgment.  Kazuo Ishiguro, I loved your Remains of The Day but this story of yours had every cliche in the book and just nothing interesting at all.  I give it five Mehs.
• The Sea is Watching.  Screenplay by Akira Kurosawa, who died before he could film it.  Very good film, eerily reminiscent of Hurricane Katrina.
• Sakuran.  Didn't read the manga but I loved Anna Tsuchiya in Shimotsuma Monogatari so I checked it out.  The movie itself was very manga-like with everything in technicolor hues and I kinda liked it.  Also found it interesting for its focus on the oiran, about whom I knew next to nothing.  I'd love to learn more about oiran speech -- it sounded very rarefied but not quite like anything else I'd come across before.  In the movie it was sometimes startling to see how rapidly Kiyoha's speech plummeted from such politeness to outright guttural vulgarity.  Too bad the subtitles couldn't have denoted it somehow.
• All of the Firefly episodes.  Started off slow, got better and then there were a couple of downright fantastic eps!  Now I see what all the fuss was about.  Really good show.
• The Serenity movie to follow up those Firefly episodes.  I might... just... say... that this is the best sci-fi movie I've ever seen.  Wait.  Did I just say that?  Ok, I'll let that marinate for a while.  But whether or not I retract it later or get hit by a bolt of lightning, the fact that I said it at all should be an indication of how awesome it was.

I also downloaded all 49 episodes of NHK's Taiga Drama from 2004, Shinsengumi.  That will be my next Japanese historical drama marathon.   It's an excuse for me to sit on my butt and watch a lot of TV but I also get to (A) learn archaic Japanese that nobody uses anymore and (B) pick up a lot of Japanese history and some cultural tidbits.  Oddly enough the historical parts have helped me on several occasions as I've been doing calligraphy research.  Now can your average American TV show do that for me?  No.  I rest my case.

So yeah.  That's what I've been up to for most of this week.  Apart from that I welcomed my new roommate yesterday and it turns out she's an Obie from my era.  I'd say I'm surprised but this type of thing has happened too many times for me to be surprised anymore.  We're everywhere!  She's neat and I have to say that although it was great to have the apartment to myself for a while, it's also really nice to have the company too.  So here's looking forward to a happy cohabitation.

Also enjoyed watching the Sox pummel the Yankees on Saturday night.  It was nice payback after their painful loss the night before.  And I've been having fun studying for the GRE too (geek!).  Don't tell anyone!