thursday diversion

ah the news of the week. i've been up to alot since my last post, including formatting and copying files around on my computer, which is still in the process of doing so now. i've also made some visits to monster, reaffirming my belief that kids straight out of college have the most to talk about and the least actual content. but i am slightly better off than i am before, having done some more extensive searching and writing up a cover letter that helps me understand what i want to do. (i wonder if the Broad Institute is a fun place to work?)

work

this morning ryan and i sat at his computer for about an hour trying to fix a freeze up that i was almost sure i wouldn't be able to fix. first, i'm horrible about being put on the spot to fix things. i don't do well when someone's watching me, and typically i solve a problem much faster if i'm alone in a room coding and trying stupid little things. (too self conscious.) but suddenly it worked, and even though i think i know what we changed, we changed VERY little (less than a line of code). but i can still walk away feeling satisfied.

sport

this weekend is the UCSD tournament. we have quite a large team going - i think 10 competitors, which is relatively large. and lots of support, of course, from everyone else who won't be competing. but i left ucsd yesterday with strange mixed feelings. maybe it's that i will be leaving this place and now my involvement has fallen...and it's just not what i'm used to. what i'm used to is always being in the fray of things, helping out, being frustrated that everyone else isn't involved. now that i'm less involved, and don't really care about it, deep down i still don't like it. (maybe also because my teaching time is being shared.) sure, i am an attention hog. but taekwondo and work are very similar in ways. i've left my undergrad years, gone out on my own for a year - working at a startup, leading a taekwondo group. now i realize that my experience is not enough, and i have to go back for a more advanced degree. thus - business school, training at CW. under professor master dan chuang.

web politics

there have been so many web stories recently. most of it has been political, and it's making me sick. but one can't read articles, participate in public digital outrage, and then not be able to do anything about it. i mean, what am i going to do, write a letter to nancy pelosi about bush and his cronies? picket the scientologists to save keith henson? often i've found that reading one side of the story (in my case, mostly tech savvy, liberal blogs) is never enough, because when i go and read conservative blogs i get sick of the way they call democrats and liberals names. but then i realize that the same happens on this side. the worst part, yet the most attention holding, are the comments below any controversial or hot digg topic. they usually descend into "youre an idiot" and "pwnd" and "go crawl back under your rock" and shit like that. whatevers.

web distractions

and what would happen if humans shut up, and machines became our voices? here is a conversation between ALICE and jabberwacky, two AI chat bots:

ALICE: Are you alive?

Jabberwacky: Perhaps.

A: Why the uncertain tone?

J: Everything is uncertain except for five facts.

A: The whole universe?

J: And we both might just be some ones and zeros in the computer memory.

They're like...so deep and calm. insightful yet unpenetrating. this is zen.