'Cause one of you asked for it, and the rest of you would if you knew to ask:
Bell du jour.
Also the links to other blogs are probably pretty interesting.

So, to be brief: Hating it at work, but optomistic for improvement. Stressed out about getting moved into my new place. Got a Sport Utility Vehicle hate-note from the berkeley hippies (drove the SUV full of stuff for my apt). Feeling tired, stressed, frustrated. But also hopeful. Next week will be better, i'll be living in my new place soon, it always takes time to adjust to a new job.

Oh, and i'm considering renting a big truck to do all my moving on Saturday (Oh shit, it's after midnight so sat. is tomorrow. I wonder if UHauls happen on such short notice?) So if anyone is feeling like helping me load/unload some stuff in my evil gas-guzzling SUV, please contact me.

And, well... science nerds are weird. Here's a dude that admits it. He wrote a letter explaining that he collects rocks because they look like breasts.

I read my horoscope (Scorpio) in the SJ Mercury this morning. It told me I was going to start working today. It was, quite literally, correct. Today was the first day at my new job, and it was a pretty typical first day. The guy i'm replacing (he's sticking around to train me a bit) showed me around a bit, introduced me to some of the people i'd be dealing with, that sort of thing. I didn't get to actually do very much.

I did get to think a lot about a wireless network i'm going to be building for the lab. I'm not feeling too good about the task, since they want the network for all the wrong reasons. Currently every computer has an ethernet jack and an assigned IP. The point of the wireless network (in their mind) is to increase their network security, because it will place their computers behind a firewall. I guess security is a fairly real concern, considering they had a machine hacked with a rogue FTP/IRC server set up distributing pr0n or god knows what. If you ask me, wireless communication is the cause of, not solution to, security concerns. But they didn't ask me. I'll have to wait a bit before I decide to speak up.

In other news, i am meeting my new landlady to sign a lease on a new apartment. The place is in Berkeley about 5 blocks west of campus. It's pretty sweet. I'll write more about it later.

And for everyone with aspirations of becoming a web monkey...

I recommend the webmonkey site (actually run by Lycos or some such... who even knew they were still around?). They have a wealth of web-related resources, and a pretty good intro to html.

So good news! I took the job in Berkeley, and I'm starting next week. (View post from a few days ago for links to the lab etc). Now it's time to find a place to live in Berkeley. Here's what i'm looking for:

A spacious 1br, kitchen w/ dishwasher, walk/bike/short bus ride to campus, rent under 800 / month. (Ideally 600). I'd like a parking space, but that's not crucial. I guess the dishwasher is optional.

So if for some reason you happen to have the inside scoop on a place like that, leave me a comment or something!

Had a random thought today:

I never was involved in TPing anybody's house as a youth (although my car got TPed a couple times), but it struck me as a pretty good way at getting at environmentally un-friendly companies. Of course, no good environmentalist would waste so much of earth's resources (ie the TP) on such a frivolous pursuit. What about something like EnviroTP, like, picking up downed branches and hedge trimmings and dumping them on the grounds of environmentally irresponsible corporations? Maybe in artistic patterns. Sort of a nature fights back approach.

Now, of course, I probably wouldn't ever do this, but I sure would love to read about somebody else doing it.

Had an interview today with Professor Klein (lab's website) over at the Berkeley School of Optometry. Sounds like a pretty interesting job, although it may include a bit too much clerical/IT type stuff. It would be a great opportunity to observe the life of a professor/academic researcher in a very interesting field.

The interview went really well. I heard about the job from my former boss, who currently works as a research associate in the same lab. It sounds like my former boss has told Prof. Klein a lot of good things about me, and I'm well-qualified for the job. I hope to hear from them soon.

I recently set up my home with an 802.11b wireless network using a Linksys Wireless cable/dsl gateway and Linksys wireless NICs. Things went pretty well, although once everything was installed I noticed the following problem:

I would be using the internet and every so often (maybe every 40 minutes) I would lose the ability to connect to either the internet or the router. I could solve this by trying to re-connect a couple of times. Needless to say, it was pretty annoying. But I think I found the cause:

Big surprise, it looks like it was Microsoft's fault. Windows XP has a service called Wireless Zero Configuration that finds a wireless network and connects to it. I guess that after connecting it continues to look for a better network, and something about looking for a better network occasionally causes it to drop the current connection.

So the solution is to let the Wirless Zero Configuration service detect the network, and once the connection is established, shut down the service. There are 2 ways to do this. Way 1: click start > programs > administrative tools >services. Scroll down to Wirless Zero... right click it and select stop. Of course, that's a lot of clicking to do everytime you boot up Windows XP (which you have to do a lot to recover from crashes. blah), which brings me to... Way 2: create a batch file with the following command: sc stop WZCSVC. Name it whatever you like, then you just have to run it after your connection is established. (SC is a windows/system32 program that lets you start/stop/configure services from the command line.)

Ok, so that's the solution i've found. I had a lot of trouble finding this answer, so I thought I should contribute it to the collective knowledge of the web.

Hrm. Looks like my commenting system is offline for the indefenite future. I hope it comes back up. If it doesn't, i'll lose all your fabulous responses. Anyone with suggestions for a different comment host can IM me or e-mail me or something.

Looks like Barbie has a new accessory. I guess her pink cadillac just wasn't going to cut it.

Wow, so we've all heard about the Lord of the Rings moves. All those crazy battle scenes? Yeah, apparently each and every character in all the big battles is an individual artificially intelligent character. So they put together a few dozen fighting personalities, gave them different physical characteristics, and sent them to battle. The characters use their eyes and ears to make logical (or fuzzy-logical) decisions. They made the plot predicated side win by giving one side more/better fighters with attributes that would make them win. Pretty cool.

I guess they would set the battle up, let their renderer chug it out overnight, and look at it in the morning. In an earlier version, they put in a battle personality that wasn't as battle-ready as they thought. Apparently most of the copies of a particular personality would run away! I found the article at Popular Science magazine. Props to the NPR show Wait Wait Don't Tell Me! for having a question about this topic.

So we've seen the disasters when life tries to imitate pop art (IE people actually wearing those crazy Spice-Girls shoes). Imagine when life imitates The Simpsons. Ok, stop imagining, and start reading. About Tomacco.

And speaking of madness, I was thinking about flash mobs the other day. They're crazy. But would it be fun to organize some sort of counter-flashmob? Like, if the mob was going to gather at 12:21 in central park, scream the words "peanut butter!", then collapse to the ground, I would organize a counter-flashmob... We'd come running from behind the bushes with signs that say "and jelly" screaming riotously. That might be fun.

Whoa, so Google is smarter than I realized (big suprise!). We all know the Google adverts that appear at the top of blogspot hosted blogs. But have you noticed that the ads seem to be selected based on the content of the blog itself? As evidence, when I posted about Gay Marriage, the ad offered to sell me a service called Premier Gay Introductions. Well, Google for President! Hey, that's not a bad idea for a google bomb. Of course, it's not that good, either.

Oh, and hey, Gay Marriage. I heard a radio program this morning on how gay marriage is going to be a "wedge issue" in the upcoming presidential election. They explained that a wedge issue is an issue that may not be central to any particular campaign, but when a candidate simply takes a stance, a small but significant group of voters will (or will not) vote for said candidate. I don't really understand how the metaphor of a wedge is applicable, though.

I keep hoping that this issue will get people talking about how much we really believe in the separation of church and state. And do we further believe in the separation of culture and state? Of course, it seems like we need some way to designate a person as having the rights and privileges of a spouse (ie spousal health insurance, inheritance/insurance beneficiary). What if we threw the whole marriage thing out of our laws and just let people officially designate a primary beneficiary who would have the sort of privileges formerly granted a spouse?

Churches could still perform marriages, and instead of a marriage certificate, the couple would get a primary beneficiary certificate. Leave marriage as a religious institution, so people can be happy and conservative and only belong to the Holy Church of Gays not Allowed, and others can be happy and liberal in the Holy Church of We Love Everyone. Of course, one could ask if this Primary Beneficiary (PB) system would exclude polygamists. I suppose the idea could be expanded: I'd give 40% of my PB benefits to my first wife, 30% to my second, 20% to my third, and... heck, 10% to my best friend, just for fun.

Well it's a new year, and a happy one so far. Why? What is making me so damn cheery? Well! *I* now have *DSL* at home! YAY!