Ideorium

It was about a year and a half ago that we got the word we'd be moving to San Francisco. Not unwelcome news, by any means, but somewhat sudden. I applied to a bunch of places out here--not easy, when one is looking for work in the worst depression of the last 70 years from 3000 miles away in the part of the country where every other person has the exact same skill set. Still, I did manage to land a pair of interviews. One was at San Jose State, which was a bit of a joke. The other was at Stanford.

There was a whiteboard at Stanford upon which was written "Smile! You have a job! :)". That kind of picked me up, gave me hope. I got the job, moved out here, and started working while other people ended up losing their jobs. The whiteboard didn't change after I started, and then it turned into kind of an affirmation rather than a sliver of hope. I did have a job! And it was exactly where I wanted to be!

Turns out, people don't erase the whiteboards in my building. That phrase was still there eight months later, when the job started really sucking for a variety of reasons. Then it took on a kind of mocking tone, and I could just imagine the smiley following it being a sadistic little thing enjoying watching my career shrivel up. Punk-ass smiley.

A month and a half ago, we found out we didn't get our five-year, multi-million-dollar NIH grant renewed, and it's due to expire this August. This isn't a sum of money one can rapidly switch over to asking someone else for, so that was pretty much it--we're sunk. The phrase on the whiteboard was still there, even more malevolent and jeering. Guess who thought he had a job, huh? Yoink!

Well, today I turned in my resignation. The job was getting to be pretty grating anyway, and there's no reason for me to hang around while the center wastes away. I've been interviewing other places, and although I don't know where I'm going to end up yet, I do know that I have two offers on the table and both of them are pretty exciting. The phrase is still there--someone's drawn a T Rex next to it now--and it's come about full circle, right back to where it was when I first saw it: a happy, encouraging little thing. Yes, I do have a job! I don't know which one yet, but I have one.

So I was just thinking of leaving my shift at the Hacker Dojo--I have mentioned that I volunteer at the Hacker Dojo, yes?--when three men walk in. One is clearly a hippy of yore, maybe 60 years old, one is a fairly awkward engineer who talks a lot when he's nervous, and the third doesn't say much because of some kind of neurological condition. They all have that air about them that I've come to recognize as saying "this is going to get pretty surreal in a hurry."

They're all about the Hacker Dojo, though. They're really impressed with the hardware workshop, and they've clearly got some pretty good technical chops. Cred from the early Silicon Valley days, Homebrew Computer Club, all that jazz. I'm actually really enjoying talking with these guys when suddenly things take a turn into la-la land. It starts when the hippy catches sight of our kitchen and says "whoa, you guys have a kitchen? Do you have a freezer you can keep food in, too?" I stop talking about the soldering irons and show him that yes, we have a fridge, and lo, it even opens. Then he starts talking about how he has all this food, huge bunches of it that he keeps when he finds it, and how he's got everything stored in his bus that has a propane oven installed. I'm thinking to myself, "that's a pretty cool hack, an oven in a bu--wait, finds?" and then he starts asking if he could maybe, you know, trade food for membership. Suddenly we're in a barter economy.

It kind of gets weirder from there, in spurts and bunches. We talk about the technical library for a bit, the rent for the Dojo and holding events and such not, robotics, and then suddenly things veer off again when the idea of "alternative physics classes" come up, and he starts talking about how he wants to hold a class about this plasma research that was apparently done in 1956 where they found... something that was never really clearly defined which the astronomy community wanted to sweep under the rug because it showed that everything they knew about stars was wrong. And it apparently proves that dark matter is a joke too. And apparently this... plasma structure, whatever it is, has something like 56 degrees of symmetry, and do you know what else has 56 degrees of symmetry? Stonehenge. That's right. And apparently a lot of ancient art and mythology also has these 56-symmetry structures (or 28-symmetry structures) embedded as well. And that just proves--just proves, man--that there's some fundamental truth of the universe that's been known for ages but covered up lo these many millennia.

Just when my head is reeling from trying to follow the logic there, suddenly we switch again. Because you know what else has been covered up for millennia? Presidents. Yep, apparently all the US presidents except for one can trace their lineage back to this one guy in the English aristocracy back in 1200-something. And that just proves that there's something going on behind the scenes, because the chances of being able to trace people back to the same person, even 800 years ago across--what? 24, 30 generations?--are, like, a trillion trillion, man. So it's gotta be a conspiracy.

Fortunately my brain is given a bit of respite as the trio then start talking in very poorly-coded lingo about where they're going to find some drugs and how much food they can trade out of the back of the hippy's bus for them, and they go off to find something to eat and put into their bloodstream. And then it strikes me that that's the last part of the quintessential Californian experience which I hadn't seen yet. Conspiracy theories from a hippy. Welcome to Cali.

Just went hiking for the first time in ages today. I will say that DAMN, does California have some humongous trees.

Also, the fact that I went hiking in a T-shirt in late January is not to be understated.

Strikes me that I haven't posted here in a while. It turns out most things I have to say on a daily basis can be squeezed into 140 characters, and really aren't that important anyway.

Stanford is fine enough to work at, although the sheer energy in Silicon Valley has me considering jumping the academic ship and working in industry instead. I've taken on a lot of spare projects--possibly too many--and some of the other things have fallen by the wayside. That's the problem with this area--there's so much going on, it's hard to finish one thing before going to another.

I've been volunteering a lot of staff time at the Hacker Dojo, which is an amazing place. Right up my alley, and it's been a blast. I fully recommend checking it out, especially if you're involved in technology at all.

I think that's really all I have for an immediate update. Trying to keep my head above water with the various projects balanced against a full-time job. Have a video instead! I love the interplay of frame-space and physical space in this one, and the idea of capturing all 6,000-odd of those frames in stop-motion kind of makes me glad I had no part of that project (although at least the video frames were made by someone else, and this is just a fan re-casting them in a novel way). Oh yeah, it also has blaring techno J-pop:



Also, Square-Enix of all people went and remade Thexder and none of you told me?! And I thought you were my friends. Of course, it more than likely sucks....

I just found out there's yet another fan-made Shadowrun MMO in the works. This is... what, attempt number two or three? Here's hoping it does better than its predecessor(s).

Though for sticking to it beyond two years of development, I think they're already ahead. Hm.

Anyway, I guess it's time to start actually re-learning this newfangled edition. Since I'll be running it soon, and all.

So the text says "Jesse Morrell — a 25-year-old evangelist preacher from Cheshire, Conn., who said he did three stints at the juvenile detention center on Whalley Avenue for selling drugs — says he knows where most Yale students are headed: hell." But really, it's the picture that makes the whole thing:

http://www.yaledailynews.com/media/2009/12/04/preacher-2/

Reason #4 I love it out here: Woz is in local car dealer commercials. LOCAL! Yes, he was on his Segway and dancing. Not at the same time.

Reason #5: Casual conversation with somebody who said "Yeah, I just quit my job at NASA to go work at Google."

LOVE. IT. HERE.

So... I went ahead and sis it. D&D Online, huh? Now I hear you say, "but you dislike D&D for being too simplistic!" Well, yes, that's true. But the arena of video games is quite different. The simplistic mechanics work quite well there because they're abstracted away from the player and all you have to worry about is the content.

And I have to say, the content is really good. After the grind of WoW where every mission is either A) some variant of "kill X number of Y creature", B) "escort so-and-so", or C) "go over here", it's really refreshing to see an MMO where very mission has a plot purpose, a mini story, a well-planned level with opportunities for every class (I'm playing a rogue, for example, and there's no shortage of purpose to my detection and lockpicking/trap disabling skills). Bonus: they actually do character interaction. That's right, bluff and diplomacy actually have a purpose for NPCs in an MMO! Charisma isn't a dump stat! My mind is blown. Also, actual puzzles in the dungeon crawls. Wow.

I mean, not everything is roses. Some of the abilities don't translate over quite as they are in the offlien version. The voice-over throughout every instance of the game's GM describing stuff to you ("The fetid stench of the undead wafts through the dimly-lit caverns as you frubjub through the gromulims") is pretty cheesy, but honestly, I think I prefer even that to not having it--it really re-creates the table-top ambiance, as over-dramatic as it is.

The developers did an excellent job of porting D&D over to the computer, all things considered. I don't think I've enjoyed a D&D-based game this much since... well, hell, the first gold-box games.

Of course, I am still at the beginning, so this could change. But so far? No pointless grind (it's there if you really want it, but it's not a mission), there's a facility for every character to get through missions with more than just "pit my damage-dealing and -resistance against the enemies'", and an actual use for non-combat (or -healing) skills.

Also, it's free.

Hallelujah.

I'm Finkly on Argonesson.

Overheard on the bus home today, some guy was talking very loudly, holding forth and trying to impress the girl sitting next to him. (Seriously, I could hear him on the complete opposite end of the bus.)

"So where'd you go to school? Notre Dame? Oh yeah, I know all abouts that place. That's the football college in Paris, right?"

Priceless.

As is my habit, I'm auditing a class here. Pretty interesting, it's all about information visualization and interactions with the same, but I kind of feel like this is a milestone class.

This is the first one where the professor is younger than me.

Oy....