had gotten emails about the protest, but only coincidentally showed up to get some pizza for lunch before heading to work. very large crowd, peaceably shut down franklin street for a short while, walking, shouting, chanting, beating drums, waving signs from campus to carrboro. go people!

next friday i fly to tanzania. not much to say about that. mostly i’ve been obsessively reading about digital cameras. i’m just not sure what I value in a camera the most. or put more zenly: “what camera most resembles the inner me?”

(jackie would laugh, as i’m having the same trouble in picking out a car to hypothetically purchase.)

planning on going to the chi (computer human interaction) conference in fort lauderdale in early april. i’ve never been to florida before. that might be cool. i guess this would be me trying to participate in the academic side of my masters program (as opposed to just going to the bar with folks in my program).

synthesizing them in interesting ways.

not having a car is sort of a disability. yet having a car is a financial burden.

my mozilla web browser has been sporadically making the sound i’m programmed to respond to when new email arrives. turns out is a new ‘feature’ that alerts me when a popup has been blocked. that just got turned off.

i want to write something about the nature of the bond that holds two people in a friendship or relationship together, but i just can’t seem to put it into satisfactory words.

could the above be possible if we thought in language? if we thought in language, how could i compare something i’ve said (or tried to say) with what i meant to say? clearly (eric raymond) there must be some representation of “meaning i wish to convey” which is separate from my linguistic representation of it.

i just bought a couch and a chair. of course i was not content with the stock fabrics, so i had to make a special order–for a smoother blue-gray. this means i have to wait 10-12 weeks for them to arrive. in 10-12 weeks it will be mid-may. in 10-12 weeks i may be in cambodia again. in 10-12 weeks i may no longer live where i told them to deliver everything.

note to self: license photos in photo gallery under creative commons license

back to working on my web application/java servlet assignment. let’s hope things go better today.

having dinner with eric s. raymond at mama dips tonight. that’s pretty wild. i should go grab a copy of the cathedral and the bazaar for him to sign or something.

last night went out to see the movie, adaptation. holy crap! what a good movie, best thing I’ve seen since i can’t remember when! go see that movie!

the update: i am back from cambodia, readjusting to regular life. except it is anything but regular. my laptop died upon arrival (thankgod for pretrip hard drive backup) thus bringing my euphoric state of ubiquitous computing to a screeching halt. actually it wasn’t so bad when it happened, but now i’ve been waiting for FOUR DAYS for an EMPTY box to arrive from ibm so i can send it away for diagnosis and treatment.

the unexpected consequence being that no computer at home means no reason to stay up late into the night doing whatever strikes my fancy. instead, i just start getting sleepy round about 9pm and go to bed shortly thereafter. now there must be something massively therapeutic about sleeping when you’re actually sleepy cause it seems that my body clock has no problem waking me up just 6 hours later. so i wake up at freaking 4AM!!! what is wrong with this picture!!!

anyway, i’m at work (early!) doing some of the stuff i’d probably do at home (as well as some work). good morning.

Update: look who came home…

i shot some guns today.

i don’t particularly like guns, as i fall into that liberal camp which believes guns kill people–but then you’ve got to know your enemy, right? sure doesn’t help that i just saw ‘bowling for columbine‘ over winter break with casey.

so i went out with melanie and pj, melanie’s sister tamineh and fiance jadem (a gun dealer), and melanie’s dad and his friend doug. we took a short course on gun safety, and went into the gun range.

let me tell you, shooting a gun is hard. it’s loud. it smells. a burst of flame shoots out of the muzzle. and the thing kicks back at you. so you’re trying to precisely line up the sights on the target while keeping your hands firm but not too firm, knowing full well the thing is going to kick back at you when you pull the trigger. not easy.

after an hour or so in the gun range, we had lunch, and then we (minus melanie’s dad and friend) went out to one of those great places that have putt-putt golf, go-karts, and video games. the video games were ok, but what really kicked serious ass was the go-karting. i should do that some more. that would be serious fun. anyway, we completed the soggy overcast day with a very lively 18 holes of putt-putt golf.

there’s something dark about the juxtaposition of shooting guns, racing go-karts, and playing putt-putt golf. kind of like mixing death with childhood. or violence with nostalgia. or power with innocence.

ahhh, and i finally gave in. i have purchased a cellphone. hopefully this will be a good thing.