Gettin' Locked Up.

Yep, I went to Prison today.

Its actually rather pretty. Lots of flowers everywhere and a whole bunch of birds. Also, lots of artistically charred ruins from where the old warden's house used to sit.

Where else, but Alcatraz. Which was interesting on several accounts. 1) the actual history of the penitentiary is interesting, and 2) when you give people an audio tour with headphones, they fall silent. Absolutely silent. I had taken my headphones off (after pausing my tour... never fear, I still took a wrong turn and got lost for a bit) to scratch my ear, and the only sounds that greeted me where the shuffle of feet.

It was like a bunch of zombies, minus the moans and huger for human flesh.

Other things: it takes 430 steps to get to the top of Coit tower, which still isn't the highest spot in San Fran. But your calf muscles sure as hell feel like it. And, as far as I can tell, they built Coit tower because they felt like it.

San Francisco Arts Committee: "This hill in the middle of a residential district looks like a good spot for a tower that'll attract idiot tourists".

Ghirardelli Square has no less than 3 chocolate shoppes in it. And they all serve the same brand of chocolate.

This town still feels backward. We passed by the Inga Donut. Which serves Chinese food.

The west coast is just weird.

Hello from San Francisico!

Yep, I'm rockin out the East Coast!

I'll be here in California for the week, and will make an attempt to have a story up every day from here on out.

Judging from my itinerary, this may be difficult. There are several travel days built in, and those tend to be boring on all accounts, and I (hopefully) do have a day of rock climbing on actual cliff faces also set aside.

I may be too exhausted after defying gravity all day to write. Gravity's a bit of a jerk, she doesn't like people going against her all-powerful order that things shall fall.

At any rate, even after one day here, I can tell you that everything is seriously backwards here in San Francisco. Look for a train, get a parking garage. Look for a bathroom, get a hotel lobby.

Go visit in the summer, get flippin' winter.

Today was COLD. And, due to the sliver tongues of some people who used to be my friends, I was in shorts. And a t-shirt.

Other than that, we took a 8 mile bike ride/tour over the Golden Gate Bridge (which, I guess from growing up in New York, part of me wants to shorten to the GGB). And, aside from the assurances of the people we rented the bikes from, aside from the logical impossibility of it, this ride/tour managed to be uphill. The entire way.

Seriously, the place really has seemed pretty. I mean, there are some lower-end areas, don't get me wrong. But uper-end San Fran kicks the crap out of uper-end New Orleans.

Relimited (At times): "You know, I could get a job out in Silicon Vally, and get a house out here..."

But, then I'd here some piped in music from a restaurant, and spend a good 5 minutes looking for a street musician before I figured out it was piped in. I do so like my street musicians.

And, so far, I haven't been able to locate a good tongue in cheek humor t-shirt shop. Its like all the places that sell t-shirts are far to uptight about where they live and refuse to poke fun at it.

That's just... weird.

Out of Style?

WARNING: This post is about books. Judging from the people at the book store, this means that 99.9% of you will walk away in disgust.

Seriously. I was in Border's (a book shop- Its closer than my personal favorite, Barns and Noble's) using it like a big library. I am poor. I will gladly buy all the books I read.

Someday.
Maybe.
Ok, only the good ones.

On with the story! So, I was in Borders books a while back, telling myself that I was going to study for my Computer Science final but really going to read Ender's Shadow.

Normally I'd recommend such a fantastic book, but it would appear that reading is so rare these days that such a point would be totally missed entirely by my readers.

I had three, THREE separate people congratulate me on "Being so absorbed in a book". Including a sweet (I assume, she seemed to be sweet for the three seconds we interacted) old lady who also added that "I should never loose that fantastic gift- the ability to get so into a book".

In the immortal words of my wind band conductor, "huh?"

Since when did getting absorbed in a good book count as a "gift"? Anyone should be able to find a book that they really enjoy and get lost in it, its not some special power that the gods gave me after a quest or some great gift I was born with.

Able to enjoy a book != (that's not equals for all you not Computer Science nerds) artistic genus. Seriously?

Have we moved so far from the written word as a culture that it is now considered "special" to be able to really enjoy a written work? Are we that dependent on motion picture/music?

huh?

I know, I know, I shouldn't get so into three people telling me something. Just because it happened three times doesn't mean anything. I understand how probability works. It wasn't exactly an improbable occurrence. I was reading for a couple hours, I'm sure many people came and went in the book store.

And maybe I get really, really absorbed into a book. I wouldn't know my own "interest rate" in a book vs the average, because questions like that are creepy.

Relimited: "So, like, when you read, like, how deep do you get into it?"

Ranks right under "I want to talk to you about Jesus" please-go-away-faster-you-really-creepy-guy type questions.

Still, moral of this blog post: If you are part of my generation, READ MORE.

Major Problems

Fun part about a backlog-

what is actually kinda relevant at the time of writing may or may not be relevant when you finally dig it up to post.

But whatever.

Anyway, it's about programming, so I think this is really relevant. And my opinion matters and yours doesn't.

Because it's my blog. Unless by following your opinion you'll read my blog more. And get your friends to read it too. Then your opinion matters a lot.

I'm such a sellout.

I've pulled many an all-nighter in the lab over the course of this year. Why? Because I spent my time very wisely over the school year and have not tried to cram work that should have been spread out over a month into a week. Nope, not me!

I generally stay till about 3, then fall asleep on the keyboard, wake up and go find a real bed to sleep in. The worst time was when I was in the lab till 5 am. And I had got there at 9pm. So, it was like a workday, after my workday.

good times!

After struggling with the same code for 8 straight hours, you'd think I'd have gotten it down. That somewhere along the way, I had become the code incarnate- the god programmer- that there would be nothing, no error message to heinous, no algorithm to complicated, that I couldn't tackle.

You'd be wrong. Here's a picture of what my complier returned after 8 hours of work.

Yes, It wanted the exact same type it indentified. Yes, it makes absolutely no sense. I was and still am aware of this.

And remember, I got this error at 5 am.

I was too tired to even be mad, really.

It must be in my blood

ah, before I launch into this tale, you must first know that it is not mine.

In fact, I wasn't even there when it happened.

I wasn't even born. (insert audience *gasp* here)

I heard this one from a family member over a nice meal at a nice restaurant in the french quarter. The best part being the the food was light years better than anything the school cafeteria had ever put out, and I didn't have to pay.

I love getting a meal at someone else's expense. I feel guilty as hell when the bill comes, but deep down I love getting treated to food. Make a note of that, any of you blog readers that want to get me a present for being awesome- free food rocks.

So, way back when, my relative, Jill, was playing around in the basement of her parents house.

A few things to note: My extended family is very Italian. Everything happens in the basement. They have a kitchen down there. They also have a kitchen on the first floor, but that one is more immaculate than a clean room. I don't think they have used the upstairs kitchen in eons.

Family Meal? Basement.
Entertaining Company? Basement.

Also, my great aunt wanted those floors spotless. You could perform open heart surgery on them they where so clean. Seriously.

I mean, you could be getting a glass of water, and spill some of the water on the floor and she'd be after you over the sticky spot on her floor. The water spill, however, would not be sticky if you took a towel and sorta wiped/spread the spill around. Then it was fine.

Never mind the fact that I have trouble trying to see water as sticky in the first place. But, she was right. Every time you spilled something, bam, she knew exactly where it was. She had developed some kind of synergy with the floor, it was less a floor and more an extension of her nerve network.

Anyway, so Jill was playing around, in her words, "Trying to kill a bug or something", when she managed to break the triangle shaped window from the basement to the garage. So, naturally, to try and hide the event from my great aunt, she tried to clean up the glass shards quickly.

However, being a wee little gal, she didn't quite do a fantastic job. This led my great uncle coming back and seeing a pile of glass and then sticking his head through the new triangle shaped hole in the door.

Great Uncle: "Why is there a pile of glass around the door?"

And he wasn't being sarcastic in the least. He honestly did not make the connection between the broken window and the pile of glass.

It would appear I've been cursed from birth.