Winter's Peak

6:46pm: Bing
Dear "Bing" search engine:

One of your commercials concerns the problem of internet searches giving you too much information that doesn't help you. For making the decision of what brand of salsa to buy at the grocery store, you suggest typing "salsa" into your search engine in Shopping mode. I tried this, and all the results on the first page you showed me were for music, and under your "Category" menu only the fifth option was even related to food (following "Sports & Outdoors").

Another of your commercials features Bing making it a lot harder for a guy to ask someone out by, I dunno, giving him too much information that doesn't help him. To help with the date, you suggest typing "powder blue tuxedo" into your search engine. I tried this, and the first three results (in shopping mode) were for t-shirts. The fifth was for a movie featuring a character who wears a powder blue tuxedo, as described in the extended summary that I had to click through two links to find so that I could understand why you were showing me that result in the first place.

For comparison, I tried the same searches in Google (in shopping mode). "Salsa" gave me real salsa of the kind you put on your food, plus one bike frameset from a company called Salsa but to be fair that was result #8. "Powder blue tuxedo," similarly, did not offer a t-shirt until result #8: the first seven were real (components of) powder blue tuxedos. The movie simply did not appear in the lists.

Dear Bing, I'm sure you have your uses. But if you're going to suggest a specific search in a commercial to be viewed by countless potential users, would it kill you to try out that same search and make sure it'll actually give people helpful results?

10:10am: A weekend with wheels
That was a lovely weekend. The sun was shining bright throughout, leading to much water consumption (and homemade maple ice cream on returns from various excursions), and I found plenty of excuses to get out of the house. Saturday some Reed students were advertising their garage sale, and I got some more coat hangers, some kitchenware, and a couple miscellaneous items. On getting back home, I went to local Mt. Tabor (apparently an extinct volcano, but now a lake on top of a hill) to watch Portland's annual Adult Soapbox Derby for about an hour. I guess the track was pretty long, since the cars tended to drive by with pretty significant time gaps, although they'd often be in hotly contested groups of two or three, so really I don't know what was going on. One of the cars had a giant bear head on top made of smaller teddy bears sewn together, one resembled a dog with a wagging tails, one particularly large car had two of its occupants spraying the audience with hoses to help them keep cool under the sun, and of course the fastest cars were very aerodynamic and not particularly decorated. On the way back down the mountain, I smelled the familiar scent of fresh, sundrenched blackberries and eventually found several plants by the side of the road, obviously not well-tended but not too picked over, either. Bliss! After resting up at home for a little while, I set out again a few blocks down Woodstock to the Laughing Planet burrito restaurant, which was hosting "Chimpfest 2010," a fundraiser festival for chimpanzees, and I listened to some live music and drank a cold drink to guard against the possibilities of incurring another headache like I did while writing my last update over here.

I learned Sunday morning of another annual event called "Sunday Parkways," in which certain parks -- on that day, Colonel Summers, Laurelhurst, Sunnyside, and apparently Mt. Tabor again but I didn't make it out there -- were connected by several miles of residential streets blocked off from car entry and restricted to travel by pedestrians, cyclists, unicyclists, skateboarders, etc. In addition, the parks themselves were home to many organizations promoting themselves and/or various aspects of green and healthy lifestyles, plus some free prizes and many, many food vendors. (There were also various households selling lemonade, ice cream, etc. along the streets in-between.) At one of the parks I spotted the first person I knew I'd seen at any of the events all weekend, Devin the former student body president, for whom I signed a petition calling on the EPA to regulate coal ash (which at first I heard as "polash"). Despite two different booths offering free biking maps of Portland, I passed (and would have even if I'd had somewhere to carry them) -- my old one is falling apart from water damage and potentially itself a bit outdated in content, but it covers all of Portland, whereas the ones being offered only covered individual quadrants. In more detail, certainly, and with greater coverage of walking paths, but still just not as useful overall.

Still, it was a nice event overall... it took me a while to get into riding on the roads that are recommended for biking, instead of the most direct route possible (usually car-infested major streets), moved not a little by that time someone threw something at me out of their car window on 39th, but it's definitely an interesting feeling being surrounded by other bicycles on a street with no cars to worry about anywhere. The only downside was that events like Sunday Parkways bring out plenty of less regular cyclists who are even slower than I am, and it's harder to tell when a bike is going to come to a stop than when a car is, which can be a problem when you're stuck behind them because there's not quite room enough to pass just yet. I wouldn't have minded some friends somewhere in all that weekend noise, though I did run into camille_c for the first time this summer a little later on, at Safeway, where our dietary and thus purchasing preferences/restrictions are on pretty much opposite sides of the aisle, but there was a lot of biking and interesting Portland eventwerk, so I can't really complain.

7:40pm: "I'm alive, and sometimes I know it; here's to those times." ~Vagabond Opera lyrics

( If it weren't for incredibly sporadic updates, I'd have no updates at all. )

11:45pm: Bulletpoints

• I passed the qual, unconditionally, on my first try. My advisor revealed to me unofficially that all the professors were pleased with it and had no disagreement about its passing.


• Finals... well, I don't know how I did on them, but they're over.


• Renn Fayre was better than last year, perhaps due to the presence of undercover cops making sure people weren't doing or dealing drugs on campus. I didn't do any service shifts, though, because a) I got to the signup sheets too late and someone had taken my preferred time, and b) the shirts weren't too attractive. I managed to find people to hang out with for the most part and I played a game of softball with some others of my department. We lost, but I got my shirt design printed!


• I ran another shift at Stim Table, making sure people were fed and playing music for the library lobby from 9pm to 3am. I put together five themed playlists (Classic Rock Hour, Modern Culture Hour, Bipolar Hour, Comedy Hour, Epic Music Hour) and played a CD of Bollywood music for the last hour which I'd gotten at a Bollywood Dance event earlier in the quarter.


• Moriah and I volunteered as box office manager and merchandise seller, respectively, for local music group Vagabond Opera, who were putting on an opera they'd written called Queen of Knives, and we got to see the show for free and take home two pieces of merchandise (in our cases CDs), amounting to a wage of about $50/hour. Very generous, and a fun show.


• I got a summer internship with the Living Tongues Institute and as such will be staying in Portland over the summer. That's all I know so far: no dates or specific duties have been made available to me.


• Tomorrow is commencement and our seniors will become alumni! We've lined up a couple of first-year girls to take their place in the Future next year, but it will be sad. We also have a full crop of subletters, huzzah!


• I applied again to be a tour guide, with a whole year of lunch hosting experience behind me, and they wouldn't even give me a job interview. Stupid admissions office.


• ElfQuest still makes me cry like nothing else.

10:47pm: at the shrine of friendship, never say die.
The big news should be that we're on Spring Break and the Qual is, given the o'clock, now less than a week away. Instead, the big news is ( behind the cut. )

11:02pm: Ennui the People
I've been holding off on posting anything here until the semester had stabilized and I had a good sense of how things were going to go and where I'd be spending my time, but so much of that is still kind of in flux (but stabilizing, I think) that I decided to post something now rather than waiting several weeks longer.

( Lots of paragraphs below the cut. )

10:58pm: Fall 2009: Addendum and Follow-Up
This post is obviously late, seeing as I'm already back in Portland by now, in the countdown to the Spring semester, but I thought I might as well go over a few more adventures for posterity/future reference.

( Adventures! )

5:55pm: huh, it's a meme
the rules (from cacahuate:

take a picture of yourself right now.
don't change your clothes, don't fix your hair... just take a picture.
post that picture with NO editing.
post these instructions with your picture.


Ordinarily my hair is a bit tidier, but there was no hot water today to shower with.

3:41pm: Fall 2009: Semester in Review
( Read more... )

12:14am: Analysis of Directing Scene from Man and Superman
I'm taking Directing I this semester, and during the first quarter we auditioned, cast, rehearsed, and presented short scenes from various plays. We were assigned to write 5-6 page reviews of our scenes and getting to the point of performance, and I thought I might as well cross-post my assignment to LJ in lieu of any other sort of update. All mentions of "you" refer to my teacher, who sat in on part of one rehearsal.

( Also I snipped a brief passage which might have been too personal, who knows. )

2:15pm: East meets WEST
( Connecticut; WEST; people )

8:06pm: Getting the hang of this whole Django thing...

Pretty! Just pretend that the indents were preserved into LJ. The first line looks a bit clunky yet but it does seem to work. (contributions is an intermediate manytomany model with null=True on author_id.)

ETA: I replaced the anteantepenultimate line with the simpler {{ contributions.author }}. It's such a common request that I thought it might as well be the __unicode__.

1:12am: Let's Hear It for the Rainbow Tour
So, Sam, you demonstrated resounding insanity a few weeks ago with your 16,000+ word six-part epic, but what have you been up to since then?

( A bit... )

4:09pm: Month-Late Blogging: The Future
Month-Late Blogging Part the Sixth:

( The Future )

4:09pm: Month-Late Blogging: Santa Cruz
Month-Late Blogging Part the Fifth:

( Santa Cruz )

4:08pm: Month-Late Blogging: Nicola and Emily S
Month-Late Blogging Part the Fourth:

( Nicola and Emily S )

4:08pm: Month-Late Blogging: End of the Year
Month-Late Blogging Part the Third:

( End of the Year )

4:08pm: Month-Late Blogging: Extracurriculars
Month-Late Blogging Part the Second:

( Extracurriculars )

4:06pm: Month-Late Blogging: Classes Spring Semester
Month-Late Blogging Part the First:

( Classes Spring Semester )

1:48pm: stream of consciousness: children and linguistics
Humankind. Mankind. Womankind. Okay, not bad. Ratkind? Childkind? That would be funny given German haha Kindkind? Perhaps languages should not be merged in such a way. Merge! Like minimalism! Minimalismkind? What would that even mean? "All those things that are instances of minimalism"? Which I guess according to some would be, umm, every sentence in every language ever? Perhaps I am misunderstanding the concept. Perhaps I just really like the prefix mis- and how it carries over into German too unlike perhaps Kindkind. Oh! So I realized the other day that misbegotten, in addition to being a scathing insult, is an incredibly logical word deriving from mis- and beget. I suppose that's not worth pointing out when you see it in print like that but I'd never put two and two together before about it. Languages (or some languages) are so full of those crazy little affixes! Unfortunately Word's spellcheck is not too fond of my attempt to talk about misbegetting people. What if I want to misbeget? I can beget, can't I? "Can" of course is not the same thing as "should" and I'm really not in a good position to go around begetting, even if I had someone to beget with. College does that to you, yes it's summer break but that's nowhere near nine months, not that that's the only time to be worried about, perhaps the least. What month is it right now, anyway? May? So that would make February the time of final begettance – not practical at all. Let's not have any babies, whomever I'm talking to. Adoption kind of works. Look, kind. Are we ever to get away from children? And kinder? And kindkinder? Kind of?

3:12am: BED
NOW

10:39pm: oh, wow.
I'm reading through old LJ entries from when I first came to Reed, almost four semesters ago. And here's a startling quote:
"Acting lab is gone, replaced by Introductory Syntax - my first choice, Introduction to Ethics, wouldn't let me in because I had too much of a background in philosophy, and the secondary choice, Philosophy and Religion in Pre-Imperial China, would only let me in if I had fewer units or changed my Hum conference, so I'll be in Syntax instead. Could be interesting!"
What if that had gone differently? A different background from Cabrillo or (more simply) the Phil/Rel class at a different time? I don't even know.

6:45pm: pawning my weekend worry
 What happens when I have a half-hour I can't easily squeeze something else into: attempted LiveJournal update! Today we will discuss my weekend and how awesome it was, minus other people getting sick, not being seen, having relationship difficulties, refusing to have fun, or whatever. Friday was Nitrogen Day, which was a total washout last year (a single booth in the quad that promised ice cream but failed to deliver any the entire time I waited) but was majorly reformed. CAEE was trying to make it an actually worthwhile celebration through Ian MacDonald by eliminating the whippets, which didn't work, but there was still ice cream and shirts and an enormous bouncy slide castle based on the Caribbean. I enjoyed it in many directions, running up slides, jumping over walls, not crashing into people, etc., and sustained several minor wounds for an excellent cause.

 

Saturday played host to a consent workshop from the Sexual Assault Task Force, which was quite fascinating and made me appropriately uncomfortable, and then later the Reed Audience Participation Society showed Twilight, which is a thoroughly bad movie with an uninteresting plot but not nearly as laughably awful as people had made it out to be, at least not the latter half. Then it was off to the Hauser Fun Dome at 11:30 for Laser Tag in the Library, lasting until 2. Another CAEE product. I helped set the library up by caution-taping off damageable areas, and then patrolled a reference section while gangs of Reedies darted around behind shelves firing lasers at each other. Quite of their own volition they formed teams, which were absolutely adorable. Really, the whole thing was. I had a lot of fun watching this huge number of people enjoy something I was helping to maintain, as usual. My main goal in getting involved, I guess, is to please people with my work? Extremely enjoyable evening, everyone did a great job, everyone was responsible and the library was entirely undestroyed.

 

Sunday was basically a standard Sunday, although we took our In Nomine campaign outside because Reed has been extremely sunny of late, Portland having noticed the season. Everyone's wearing shorts and t-shirts and minidresses and having to stand or sit at certain angles so as not to expose themselves. Anyway, we blocked a major bicycle lane for four or so hours and many people rode around us across the grass. I also met with my academic advisor and got my PIN to begin signing up for classes today (which I have since done).

 

Today has been Monday, and probably one of the lesser Mondays this semester, but still quite warm. Currently the reserve books I need to read for tomorrow are either checked out or missing, making that difficult. So instead I haunt the Quest Office, because this weekend we're making our final issue of the semester. I feel I may be the only one who's at all unhappy about that. It feels like our term went by so fast, I have misgivings about the plans of the incoming board, and I'm not sure I really know people with whom I could run again some later semester if I wanted to. It's a problem. But we're making the issue, and there are space concerns, as often happens… either we don't accept people's submissions or we make the issue extra long and employ filler, I guess. I definitely prefer the second option, but I doubt I can persuade anyone of it. I've really enjoyed working on the Quest and it's going to suck not to be able to do anymore.

 

Elowyn and I have not successfully contacted each other all semester. On the other hand, I've kept up a (one-sided) penpal relationship with my friend in Germany all year, with admitted weekslong breaks. So I'm still pretty bad at keeping in touch with people, but I definitely think I like this old-fashioned penpal idea (even if it is done over the internet in some cases) and should invest in that more heavily in the future. Cassia will be in Yosemite for the entire time I'm back in Santa Cruz over the summer – the latest in a long series of accidents wherein she leaves a place just after or before I get there – so that's a good opportunity. Perchance I could strike up a correspondence with Haley for a bit, or I guess even with Reed students while it's summer? I dunno. There's something satisfying about the long account of things tailored to your recipient's interests, although I'm still only so good at it. With practice?

 

Aaanyway, academic crunch time is hitting – I have definite worries in the form of assignments I will need to tackle sooner rather than later. But I thought I would at least greet the internet, and say that I probably won't be calling anyone for a couple weeks. During or after Renn Fayre, probably. Which may well get its own update again, unless it's absolutely uninteresting. There are definitely things I need to write about – the H-word, particularly, and maybe something about classes or linguistics as a whole – but this is absolutely not the week. Peace, harmony, and blackbirds!

12:03am: Super-Impractical Team-Building Exercises Department
Team Building Exercise for 81+ people only: Human Sudoku! Eighty-one people divide into groups of nine each, identified either by number or (probably simpler) by color of shirt/hat. I'd suggest red, purple, blue, teal, green, yellow, black, white, and gray or brown or orange. Color-blind people would not be allowed to play. Set up a 9x9 grid (of squares big enough for people to stand in), send in teams of nine with one person from each group, have them stand in a 3x3 ninth of the total grid, and leave them all to construct a solved 9x9 sudoku board through conversation and coordination. Team members may not leave their ninths but may switch places with other team members in the same ninth.

8:16pm: a note that I hoped would say more
( Rooming alone at the top of the stairs. )