Category: Sumana Harihareswara

September 15, 2003 /

There’s a bit of rough going, as you might have noticed, as I try to install my journal software on the new server. It’ll be back, honest idjit. Meanwhile, things I’ve been meaning to talk about:

  • Sumana has not only been published in Salon, she’s also turned 22 (Sumana is younger than me. I can’t stand it) and written what is possibly the definitive blog entry on spam.
  • Lisa is back at school, next to Flora, having fun without me and taking my single favorite picture of a door ever.
  • My roommate Maria is taking about eighteen exams today, over there in dag blasted medical school. Wish her luck! I’m not really worried about her, since (as I recently discovered) she has a photographic memory. Never try to win an argument with someone who has a photographic memory. Or rather, try as you will, but get ready to lose a lot.
  • The new work-school-rest-school-work schedule is working out very well–it’s a lot of effort, but I’m never as tired as I was this summer, partly because the breakup in my week keeps me refreshed and life interesting. I’m also doing a lot at work. Putting up dummy pages for my journal, for instance. No, I’m not doing anything actually work-related.

That’s most of it. With any luck, the journal will be back this week, but I wouldn’t wager any real estate on it. Meanwhile, if I have any updates of lesser importance, I’ll post in the (again) spanking new forums. Take care. Wear a jacket.

This actually took place about 24 hours ago.

August 30, 2003 /

2212 hrs and Emma Hayes has tricked me into showing up at a party at her house, filled with cool hip extremely professional twentysomethings I don’t know. Emma Hayes herself is predictably not here, so I’ve vaguely procured a 7-Up from her roommate Dawn. I am lucky to have met Dawn once in a parking lot, and to have her mercifully remember me.

Here I am sitting on the front porch of a freshly warmed house, trying to look writerly with my pocket Moleskine. Perhaps, I think, this will politely make it less obvious that I have no idea what I’m doing.

Adventure!

Sumana is not actually the big sister I never had, and would probably be a little weirded out if I claimed she was, but she DID display a frighteningly big sisterish sixth sense in calling about half an hour after I wrote that down. This was wonderful; it gave me a good excuse to laugh for twenty minutes, recharged my ability to talk to humans, and gave evidence that I have a life outside of showing up at parties filled with people I don’t know.

Emma finally did show up at what, 2320 hrs? And it was great to see her, and I got to know some of the people at the party. By the time I hitched home (around 0300) I had actually had a good time. None of this outweighs the first panicky hour I spent retreating into introversion, though, really. There’s a reason for the fact that, in college, I only went to parties in my own apartment.

August 26, 2003 /

The day went very well, actually. Object-Oriented Software Development is going to be hard and a lot of fun; AI and Algorithms are going to be hard and… well, basically just hard. I managed to buy my books and a lunch and backpack. Oh! That’s a great excuse for a gimmick, because I was actually buying said backpack for Maria, and I had biked to class and had only one way to carry it. That’s right: for a few hours, mine was a metabackpack.

That biking was the first time I’ve ever actually done a real bike workout, and it was pretty cool. (It’s also longer than I thought; now that I’ve scouted the route, I think I’ll mostly TARC it.) At times I felt like an escapee of TRON, whizzing through lightfields with limitless dexterity. At others, such as when I ran into a chain link fence within five minutes of leaving my apartment, I did not. And at still others, I tried to stop, ha ha, whilst riding with a misaligned brake pad and fifty pounds of new textbooks. The other thing I learned today is “inertia.”

Also! I returned Sumana’s call and ended up talking to Leonard, who was gentle and solar-powered, the way I imagine dimetrodons. I babbled a lot, at one point, I think, engaging in extended discourse on the subject of avocados.

Yeah. I lived through one day, and tomorrow it’s already my weekly Hump Day Vacation, wherein I do nothing but hang out with Ian and get excited about secret projects. Also, try to find a longer CAT5 cable so I can get Yellow Puppy out on the interweb. Ph34r! My… vastly underpowered new computer!

August 26, 2003 /

Sumana recommended weeks ago that I read “In the Beginning was the Command Line,” a very long essay by Neal Stephenson about operating systems and Disney World and nuclear weapons. I’d heard of it before, and I like Stephenson a lot, although his direct-address form is so clear and dry that I spend a lot of time wondering if he’s making fun of me.

Anyway, today I got bored at work, and I read it (213k of plain text; I was very bored), and it got me all excited and I went home and dug out my reject iMac and now, a few hours of downloading later, I’m watching it brainwash itself with Yellow Dog Linux. This is way too easy. I want it to hit a snag now, so I won’t be won over.

You hear me? I won’t be won over!

I don’t know why I have such a grudge against Linux. Maybe it’s because my first experience with it was being thrown into the cold water of a bad implementation of Debian–a hacker’s imp, done by my hacker of a first professor, running chill and unfriendly in the basement that was the old Centre CS lab. (The new lab was still in the basement, it just ran Red Hat instead. I was shocked to realize Linux could do 24-bit color.)

Or maybe it’s just because I’ve been using Windows for such a long time, and I hate admitting I was wrong. Bleagh. Oh well.

The install’s 18% done, and I think I’m going to crash soon and let it run while I sleep. In the morning I should just about have a Linux box, as is only fitting for my first day of CS grad school.

The only problem now, really, is figuring out what I’m going to use it for. I’ve got my desktop publishing and image processing pretty well taken care of on this old warhorse (my PII), so I didn’t install any of that, but do I try to set up a friendly ftp server? Learn to write Xwindows apps? Run a MUD? Suggestions are welcome.

Pork-barrel entry-end tagalongs: I baked my first batch of chocolate chip cookies from scratch this evening, waiting for Yellow Dog to download. And they’re GOOD! I’ve been strutting around all night thanks to that. Also, The Devil’s Dictionary does in fact have an RSS feed, and its author, a Mr. Kn____, is apparently some kind of referral-log ninja. And I owe Maria big for letting me download and burn like a gig and a half of computer-geek stuff on her shiny new laptop, since my CD burner is still dead. Thanks, Maria! Get a blog!

Apparently I define myself by bloggers

August 20, 2003 /

Coincidentally, my farewell lunch was scheduled for the same day as Emma’s, and my last day would have been the same too–except I’m not leaving after all. I’m going to keep working here part-time, Mondays and Fridays, with class on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I’m counting on that break in the middle of the week forcing me to get some work done.

This wasn’t a decision lightly reached. I talked about it to three people I respect a great deal–Sumana, Maria, and (the other) Emma (from GSP 2001)–and finally came around to staying after a lot of thought. This isn’t my dream job, but it’s a good job. My next best option would be a possible opening at The Great Escape, a really neat comic / music store on Bardstown Road, but a) it’d pay less, b) I’d have to have a driver’s license and c) it wouldn’t look nearly as good on my resumé.

So I’m going to get to know the people here a little better, and I’m going to pay my crap-programming dues, and I’ll be able to breathe a little easier financially. I’m going to be putting a big chunk of my pay into a savings account every month, and that account is going to be reserved for exactly one thing–Amtrak, California, Comic Con, Stephen Maria Lisa Will (Ian?) Sumana Leonard Graham next summer. You gotta believe!

August 8, 2003 /

It’s the Talk To a Terrifyingly Quick Standup Comic in California on the Phone Game!

  • Premise: You have been contacted by email and phone, so as to double the super top secretness of a responsibility with which you have been entrusted. After such secretness is secured, your contact will call you back later and you’ll end up talking for like an hour.
  • Imagine the conversation as a cooperative race, in which the object is not to reach a finish line, but rather to match pace with the other conversant.
  • For the purposes of this scenario, you have an old bicycle, the one from when you lived in Georgetown. It has pink flowers on it, and one squeaky training wheel that likes to make you turn right.
  • Meanwhile, Sumana has a street-illegal Ferrari.
  • Sumana is a kindly driver, and will cruise along comfortably halfway up the gear train, in eighth. You will attempt to pedal along at speeds matching her train (er, car) of thought; if you were on a real bicycle and not a metaphorical one, this would cause your tires to sublimate.
  • Now–and this is important–try to make it look easy.
  • Seriously, I did get to talk to one of my role bloggers on the cellular telephone last night. Layla cut us off a couple of times (I think she was cranky, and maybe jealous), but it was still pretty great, and my face hurt from smiling afterwards.
  • I think I’m going to have to make a California road trip next summer after all, and hit San Francisco and LA and of course San Diego. Sumana recommended Amtrak, which could totally be a week’s worth of party. Stephen, Maria, you guys still up for Comic Con?
  • Oh, right, the topic and such.

Thanks for playing the Talk To a Terrifyingly Quick Standup Comic in California on the Phone Game!

November 13, 2002 /

Reasons for wanting to hit Harlan Ellison

Old: Writing things with titles like “‘Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman” and “Objects of Desire in the Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear.”

New: Just being a jerk.

October 18, 2002 /

The heat appears to operate entirely independent of my control, turning itself on sometime around 10 am and turning itself off around 10 pm. The knobs on some of the radiators don’t turn at all,and the ones that do turn have no effect. I wasn’t under the impression that this was how radiators worked! Evening is interesting, at least, as I have to open windows around 6 and turn the space heater on again by 11.

Things that have distracted me lately:

Del McCoury wins Bluegrass Award! McCoury Band Wins Entertainment Bluegrass! Bluegrass McCoury Wins Entertainment!

And that’s the news from Kentucky.

if I had a penny for my thoughts
I’d be a millionaire

August 23, 2002 /

Today is my sister’s birthday! Caitlan is eighteen! Happy birthday, Caitlan!

In other news, Sumana has frequently plugged Bookfinder, a kickin’ service that, well, finds books. It’s kind of like the “network of bookstores” that Amazon uses to find out-of-print books, only much, much better. I was reading some of her comments on the service and how cool it was, and I kept thinking “gee, I wish I had a rare or used book that I was looking for.”

A couple days later, I was surprised to remember that I WAS looking for such a book, and had been for three years–Orson Scott Card’s short story omnibus, Maps In A Mirror. Bookfinder turned up several copies, all of which were too expensive at the moment, of course, but most of which were still cheaper than the few an Amazon search turned up two years ago.

So I went away satisfied, but came back tonight when I remembered a book that this amazing girl had showed me at a convention. The book is Anthropology, and it’s one of those forced-restriction masterpieces: 101 stories, each 101 words long. What I got to read of it was fantastic, and I wanted my own copy, but I remembered she’d said it was out of print.

Which it is–but tonight I found it for just ten bucks with shipping, and bought it. Thanks to Bookfinder! Hooray, Bookfinder!