I have seen WALL-E and now I am going to bed. Since wiki can tell me what I skipped last year, I can start putting DVDs on hold at the library first thing tomorrow.

Woo-hoo! Bought Perl for Bioinformatics. I think I have a plan: pick 5 schools to apply to, write pathetic multiply-proofed emails to Bay Area faculty sounding them out wrt application, game system for admission to Fall 2010 quarter. Email contacts for letters of recommendation. If all else fails, pick up classes and/or subject GREs, reapply for Fall 2011. Debate value of education versus location. Angst a lot. Consume comfort foods at an alarming rate. Run anxiety off on evil treadmill. But it's all going to be okay! I have Anathem to keep me company through the cold dark winter of my soul.

Just in time to save us all from my overwrought emotions, XKCD brings us all back to dorm living and geekery. But does this count as a sort of posthumous example of the Pauli effect?

A couple months ago I saw the LeSportsac deluxe everyday handbag at the mall. Today I opened the shipping box and started the miscellaneous items transfer.

Guys - ladies - my bag holds the basics for a day trip plus Anathem. Freaking Anathem. And I am not a light packer on a good day. It has an adjustable strap for cross-body carrying. So far, the only thing I would add is a clippy key thing. I suggest eBay for an affordable print in your style. My bag shopping is done for at least a year, woo-hoo!

Today I had an unbeatable hair day, and brought brownies to work, and I discovered a copy of The Best of C. L. Moore on my hard drive. When I need some perspective on life, I can open "Shambleau" or "Vintage Season" and all will be well.

Last night M. mentioned she was going to the haunted forest with her friends Friday night, and I tagged along. Apparently I am easy to startle but hard to scare, since I lead the way through the haunted forest with cider in hand. I lost it when the chainsaws came out, but dude. Chainsaws. I faded early, since I know I'm doing overtime this weekend.

Apparently I am going through a period of trashy fiction: I have been reading hardboiled noir with fairies, and flipping through Catherine Asaro's novels. I am also going through a period of retail therapy, which may need to be photographically documented when my Macy's package is opened... tomorrow morning? Tomorrow afternoon? If I did this right, the package contains a Handbag of Awesome, which should be savored as long as possible. My life is a perfect cake of cool with awesome frosting on top. And tomorrow I am going to work four hours of OT as part of Project Grad School Application Procrastination and Project Meredith (my next laptop will be named Meredith; do not question this on any level lest your brain explode), and maybe finish my October book log. Or sleep. I miss sleep!

Dear universe: the ringback is another sign of the decline of America.

A question for techies: why do files occasionally just disappear off my external hard drives? Both of them? The entire point of having files in two places is so that when something happens to the music on one drive it's still there on the other drive, and then I have awesome music when I'm at a lab bench.

Highlights of this week include touching the ABI machines, and figuring out that to get people to do what you want you have to talk to people, or occasionally more than one person, or occasionally people's bosses. And that is how I scored overtime authorization for Saturday.

Roommate M.: "I could do this all day."
Me: "Stare at pictures of your hot boyfriend?"
Roommate M.: "Yes."

Tonight M. and I and our laptops are sharing kitchen table space with two pans of brownies. The survivors go to my work's Halloween potluck tomorrow. Either my oven runs cool or the recipe is 25 C too low; the first pan is under-baked. What a shame if my roommates and I have to keep the first pan. Terrible, I say.

I think I'm trying to have a book club. If you live in the DC area and like me have a burning desire to talk about wacky sort of femnist hijinks on alien planets or that first contact book I actually sort of hated (in my defense, I was about 15 when I read The Sparrow, and wildly misread anything to do with religion), or feminist speculative fiction novels, feel free to get involved.

The baby laptop decided to start randomly shutting down last weekend, possibly because it's been a while since I blew the dust bunnies out of the casing. So Wednesday I went to the computer store to restock on air cans and incidentally cheat on the baby laptop with other portable PCs. Netbooks are right out: the tiny screens gave me eyestrain within five minutes. Then I let myself be talked into looking at Macs. The MacBook Air is very sexy to the touch, but got slammed on wiki for overheating and hinge issues, and despite its weight and nerdcore solid state drive, is pretty much out of the running. I am being tempted by the 15" MacBook Pro, which is sort of impossibly over my original tentative budget, but is leading me down the pros/cons primrose path:

Pros: 15.4" widescreen, at least a pound lighter than the baby laptop, my sister loves her Mac. Everything I do on a Windows box is available for Mac: Firefox, MS Office, Photoshop.

Cons: Limited ports, proprietary Apple stuff, limited DIY. (I grew up on home-built desktops. Voiding the warranty was not an issue.) Freaking expensive. Jerks in the Cult of Mac. Turning into one of the Cult of Mac jerks. Still 5.6 lbs to haul around.

Unresolved concerns: durability and battery reputations, money,

Possibly it's time to look into working retail for the holidays for an employee discount? Unfortunately, Apple keeps such a lock on prices I'm not sure authorized retailers extend the discount to the Macs. Maybe I need to find the magic words that will persuade my supervisors I want to work extra hours, and that they want me to work the overtime.

The internet tells me that the Orionid meteor shower peaks in the predawn hours tomorrow, so I am unplugging myself from the internet and setting my alarm for a hideous 5 AM wake-up call. I plan to stagger into the night with Bag Of Stargazing Awesome in one hand and a thermos of Earl Grey in the other. Notice I didn't say anything about changing out of my PJs.

Because of work* and midterm studying, I missed most of the day programming, but I had a good time at the evening/night parties. Friday was dominated by the Brave New World party, Saturday I got sucked into the Erfworld crowd (Wiki article) - mostly college-age and 20somethings - and Sunday was dominated by a pass through the dealer's room, and heading home with norabombay for a hard drive dataswap and pancakes. We learned that a shot of amaretto is an excellent addition to pancake batter. I saw lots of WSFAns, and hung out with many new people whose online handles I neglected to get.

*So far I am two for two on the Friday after Columbus Day coinciding with work wackiness. But this year I didn't have bronchitis! A vast improvement. Next year I will pre-plan and 1.) take October 15th as my optional holiday, 2.) schedule Friday overtime, or 3.) be in grad school.

Ultimately, I made it to only two programmed events at Capclave: the "Fandom: Losing by Winning?" panel, and the Small Press Award presentation.

The Losing by Winning panel may be summed up for biased and comedic purposes as:

PANEL: Why are none of the young people reading the SF classics? Dune, Asimov?
NORABOMBAY: Because they suck.
ASE: Have you read Foundation recently? Interesting idea, bad plot, bad prose. No girls. The cool parts have been mined by other authors.
PANEL: Space isn't romantic anymore. No one reads hard SF. Why are all the younger fans into unskiffy anime and stuff?
NORABOMBAY: Seriously? You have answered your own question.
ASE: Can I invoke the neocolonialist attitudes of steampunk now? Please?

( Possibly I should not plan my panel attendance as The East Coast H8rs Reunion Tour. )

In conclusion, a weekend made awesome by people. Go people.

I am filled with the serenity and self-loathing only achieved during midterms, finals, and major papers.



And now I am giving up on stupid linkage analysis - when did my classes start incorporating sudoku puzzles? - and moving on to brief nightmares of mitochondrial defects. Hopefully the alarm will kick me alive before I dream up an exam question involving risk calculation for a mito defect of unknown transmission with attached wacky pedigree. If I were writing the exam, I'd totally make a question like that, but if I were writing the exam, I would've used my lecture time more effectively than I think the teacher has.

On my LJ f-list tonight: "imbrolgio" in 1word1day community, right above the latest news post.

How has the rest of my week been? Snickerdoodles and soccer are made of awesome, but the weather has turned chilly and rainy, with no sign of remission before Sunday. Gossip is that we're in for a cold, cold winter. Work awesome will be severely hampered by broken equipment until Monday at least. Capclave is this weekend, norabombay flies in tomorrow, and I am feeling none of it. I blame a combination of factors, most importantly the rain. Last night was saved by cookies and an amazing USA-Costa Rica game. Tonight I failed to study enough, and my room is still only 80% ready for people to crash this weekend.

It's time: laptop suggestions? My HP zv6000 is pushing four years, and the A/C port on the baby laptop is getting... wiggly. I'm seduced by the netbooks' size and price, but I'm replacing a primary machine, so I think I actually want something larger. I'm not sure I want to shell out for another HP machine: the two year warranty covered the replacement of one or two CD drives, which never worked for more than a month, and the motherboard, as well as two power bricks, but that seems like an excessive amount of wear and tear. I want something more durable for my next laptop.

This time around, I want Windows 7, a fast processor for handling ever-larger picture files, and a working CD/DVD burner. Integrated bluetooth optional but nice. Power bricks that aren't an annual expense also nice. I'm willing to pay for quality, but the only pointless flashy feature that might sway me even a bit is an illuminated keyboard. My other tab is open to Lenovo's Thinkpads, because I will use my laptop until the hardware cracks up, and all the consumer models have shiny finishes that look like an open invitation to scratches. My other other tab is open to Craigslist, because sometimes it's necessary to drive by the $20 savings on netbooks as a reminder it is not worth the warranty transfer hassle.

Typing the Appeal to Internet Computer Geekery on the baby laptop feels positively brazen. Despite my better intentions, some part of me has confused the baby laptop with a velveteen rabbit and I'm expecting it to grow up a bit more and start talking any time now.

I had a really good weekend, with a fabulous six-item consignment haul, including the gray wool blazer of awesome, for $15 and change, and socializing, and somehow between Monday morning and tonight I managed epic sleep deprivation, and seriously, how did I get more phone calls between 6:30 and 7:30 Monday evening than I did all weekend? Today was rough, but totally redeemed by class suddenly turning into something interesting and useful tonight. And Friday - oh, right, Michael Chabon's reading downtown, so I still can't fall over. Is anyone else going? I think it's going to be fun, but I'm not sure about $7 of fun.

I finally got some vacation photos edited and uploaded this weekend. Cross-posted to facebook, which means, help us all, my dad may show up in flickr comments.

Tonight, my mp3 player took a plunge some fifteen feet onto concrete. The Sansa Clip's little plastic clippy bit bounced dramatically as it separated from the body. And when I picked it up, it turned on and still worked. Win.

Also, 45 hour work week. Overtime also for the win. This weekend I have social obligations, and during the next week I have something academic, social or edifying every night except Thursday, which I think I will use to make soup, or chili. I have lots of ground beef in my fridge that needs to be used, plus some pork chops that may be freezer-burned by now, but might be resurrected in soup? I got nothin' until I try somethin'.

It's almost October, I should probably post my August books. I am particularly motivated to do so tonight because I learned it is Banned Books Week. I'm tempted to do a Banned Books Readathon and donate funds to a civil liberties or book-related charity. Unfortunately, tonight's nonfiction selection is neither banned nor particularly likely to be. Apparently atypical genetic inheritance isn't salacious enough to get the citizenry up in arms.

Ella Enchanted (Gail Carson Levine): Cinderella retelling. Ella is cursed with perfect obedience at birth. That's probably my definition of Hell right there. The story is about how she struggles with this and eventually overcomes it by will and love, but the mechanics of "obedience" are the clever bit and the part I want to poke at: Ella must obey the letter, but she's not an automaton: tell Ella to clean the silver, and she has to, but unless you say otherwise she can scratch it all up after getting the tarnish off. That's kind of subversive and interesting. The story itself is a borderline children's / YA book, and has a very simple plot that I was less interested in.

The Plague (Alfred Camus): Oran, Algeria, is hit with bubonic plague. I read this in translation, and was distracted by my unfamiliarity with French: there was something in the grammar of the translation that made me wonder if the translator was emulating French grammar, or trying to retain some spirit of the original that evaporates in translation, out of context. I do not think "abstraction" in English renders the same meaning it does in French, or perhaps I would be baffled in both languages.

The wiki article says the themes concern destiny, but it seemed to me the novel was more focused on the isolation of experience: three people in a room are three people alone, yearning to be with others so they can connect, but incapable of perfect knowledge of another.

I was tremendously distracted by the lack of female characters, and Rambert's attitude toward his unnamed wife. Characters pined for their absent women, but didn't even mention their names, or particular characteristics they longed for. I found it very notable of a certain time and attitude.

Dark Mirror (Diane Duane): ( It's a shame this wasn't filmed for the costumes alone. )

Incomplete, The Innocents Abroad (Mark Twain / Samuel Clemens): Americans tour Europe by boat. I had to put this down because I couldn't distinguish Twain's satire from Clemens's obnoxious and genuine 19th century perspectives.

Latitude (Dava Sobel): Short, entertaining story focusing mostly on the 18th century British strugge with an essential navigation question: "how far out to sea is my ship?" North/South is apparently a relatively easy problem to solve, since one can reference the equator, but longitude is a completely arbitrary thing. I was distracted by the descriptions of the lunar and clock methods of finding latitude as "the clock of the heavens" and "the clock of the sea", because really, isn't that beautiful language? I'd recommend this for beach or bus reading any day.

A House Like a Lotus (Madeleine L'Engle): Polly O'Keefe is 16 and struggling with feet of clay. I read this sometime in my teens, and ( I forgot some of the plot but rememberd most of the themes. )

Numbers: 5 total. 4 new, 1 reread; 4 fiction, 1 nonfiction. 1 unfinished.

Tonight I had brownies and soy milk instead of dinner. If you'd had my day you might have done the same.

Also, they were delicious, gooey brownies make from scratch. M. - not an unbiased audience - was appreciative.

( Delicious pictures behind cut. )

In my absence, my landlord filled the third bedroom. My new roommate graduated with an international studies B.A., is working a street campaign for Amnesty International, her DC contact is a friend from her days with AmeriCorps, and she wants to go to American for graduate studies. She will be forever known as Oshkosh in this journal to celebrate her roots. I've already mentioned that there in anecdotal gossip linking American students and craziness, and I'm trying to give her the crash course to DC (don't go to SE alone at night; metro is your friend, until it pantses you; everything costs more than you think it should; Adams Morgan is not actually on the metro; there's lots to do and most of it is worth doing). She seems nice and worth keeping; if this pans out, I will be blessed with two roommates who are nicer than me.

I did eventually make it to yesterday's Library of Congress book fair: I heard Azar Nafisi speak and then I was done. It was also raining like crazy. I wound up doing dinner with scifantasy and one of his pals, and incidentally discovered the solution to my beer problems: if I get a 20 ounce 5 beer sampler, I finish the set and possess the sunny disposition of the truly lightweight. I get bored with big glasses of the same thing, but if there's only four ounces of some dark larger-ish thing? Good times.

Tonight I make brownies from scratch. They are gooey and delicious and I may post pictures tomorrow. Tonight I am too hyper from the sugar rush.

I picked up a really awesome biography of Robert Oppenheimer for plane reading and now I am torn: do I read the remaining 200 pages before checking wiki, or does that count as experience-contaminating spoilers which should be avoided?

Yeah, I'm a dork.

Tonight I am also bored out of my skull. Library of Congress book fair? Meh, weather. Free museum day? Getting downtown takes effort. Photoshop? No inspiration. TV? I caught up on House and NCIS last night, I am TV'd out. In the midst of my meh I was sufficiently motivated to start another pile of old clothes to ship to goodwill or turn into rags. It doesn't matter how much I love my Kennedy Space Center nightshirt, it's nearly ten years old and shows its age. I have no explanation for the appeal of simplifying over anything else; maybe it'll manifest as a dusting binge next?