Ok.. i shouldn’t already be getting anxious about Burning Man, but i really can’t help it… For starters, Becky is in the process of buying a vehicle to get us across country. Unless a miracle happens today at the police-confiscated vehicle auction, we will be driving across in a big red van, and i do mean big. Now, although Becky thinks that this thing should be monochromatic, i know her well enough to know that she doesn’t really know what that word means. I mean, c’mon – her wardrobe is 1000 colors plus, so i’m hoping and praying that maybe we can make it into a nice little art car. Or better yet, an art car for the playa! As if that wasn’t enough, i’ve been tracking down fun places to visit on our trip across country. After Ming’s adventure, i’m just dying to go to the Crayola Crayon Factory, but i seemed to have found the home of kitsch located centrally in Chicago – a surplus warehouse of random kitsch toys and crap!! How great would it be to have that shit on the playa!?!?!

Now, if only our country doesn’t pass a resolution to invade the Netherlands….

getting one’s wisdom teeth removed takes a lot more than i would have thought. sadly, i continue to be completely delerious. perkaset included, i’ve been very ill, nautious and dizzy. it’s a terrible terrible feeling. plus i look like a chipmunk, can’t think or see straight and am otherwise dreading the days. at least i’ve seen 1/2 of 4 mostly-terrible movies….. original sin (mm… angelina), live nude girls, virtual sexuality, waiting for guffman– and 1/2 of one really good one – american beauty (’cause dan had never seen it and bless him, he came and dealt with my drugged self)

hoping to recover soon… don’t like this one bit.

as we’ve mentioned before, i’m addicted to surveys. outright addicted. but even with said addiction, i get overjoyed when every month or so, i get a check from one of the survey companies because i’ve sold my opinion to them to fulfill my survey addiction and get a few dollars. anyhow, everyone who hears about my addictions asks where they can sign up… so now i have a link (that also makes me a teensy bit of money if you sign up). enjoy!

::gulp:: well, it seems as though i might have endometriosis. i can’t really think about that right now (damn bloody law paper is very overdue) but it would make a lot of the really annoying pain, crampiness, problems with painful arousal make a lot more sense. the question is where to go from here. i think that first, i need to graduate. then i need to get myself to a calmer state fast. then think.

ooh oooh ooh ooh. so i am going to work for V-Day in the fall!! 20 hours a week for what amounts to a barely livable full-time salary!! i think my title will be “online organizer” or something to that effect… basically doing what i did this year and then some… this means that i will be able to get by, travel some, see my family and friends. yippeee!!!

Today was another sponsor demo day at the lab. These are always quite entertaining, often absolutely intriguing, as i babble babble babble about SecureId and Social Network Fragments for two hours. This time, i spent my two hours with three different groups of sponsors – from IBM Research (formerly Lotus), AOL Time Warner, and the DoD. The IBM folks are fabulous – they are academics and researchers and so our conversations are completely in line with research; this time, we talked mostly about social networks and the role they can play in research. Fun Fun. The AOL guy was fabulous, and had intriguing insight on the way that AOLTW and corporations worked. His job is to seek out what are the up-and-coming technologies that can make & break AOLTW, where technology is going and what should be built. I desperately want his job. Finally, my conversation with the DoD guys was almost depressing. They didn’t understand what i was doing, why it was interesting, and they didn’t understand the basic technology that made anything work (like spring systems). Now, i wouldn’t have been so annoyed that they didn’t understand my work (maybe they were management types), but they were so egotistical and in my face “you’re-just-a-little-girl” that i found myself 1) not trusting them; 2) wondering why they were wasting either of our time. (And my negative and frustrated impressions were built before i knew that they were DoD… they succeeded in magnifying my stereotypes.. i hate it when that happens.)

The NYTimes printed an interesting article about sociology, written in response to David Riesman’s death.

[cypherpunk login for nytimes: c1ph3rpunk/c1ph3rpunk]

My research is on technology, privacy, identity, individual perception of self/community, etc. And while i know that i want to continue my education into my Ph.D., i have no idea what field i should be studying in, or with whom. Computer Science? Sociology? Media Studies? Communications? Anthropology? Information Sciences? Frankly, i find the whole separation of disciplines aspect of academia disheartening, confusing and utterly aggrevating. Of course, this gets magnified by what is considered valuable to fund (science of course, particularly military-related research). I find this quite problematic, as though there only valid ways of thinking are scientific. Not everything can be understood by measurement, and much of what can’t be measured is still quite valuable. Maybe at a core, everything can be measured, but we aren’t at that core and there are useful ways of understanding the world outside of that which can be measured.

The idea of a society that only values one train of thought is quite disturbing. The most intriguing ideas have always come from a combination of thoughts, a well-rounded perspective for thinking.

Ok.. i need a stable emotion and mood. I am tired of living on the ultimate rollercoaster. It’s not doing me any good, or the people around me. I feel like an unchartered, unpredictable tornado, full of surprises, constantly shifting direction, grappling everything around me. Highs & lows, passive aggressive interactions, murderous desires, not healthy. I feel like i’m driving myself insane.
Luckily, tonite, there was temporary relief in the form of limited Jar-Jar for opening night – Yoda kicking ass (and hobbling off), atrociously acted love scenes, pretty CG (although terrible lighting and poorly done blue screening)… the works. And damnit, i want a purple light saber, like Monsieur Jackson had, although i’d prefer a few bible quotes… “And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my light saber upon thee.”

Wow – Brad Rutter, one of my high school classmates just won $1,000,000 on the special 4000th tournament of Jeopardy. What an odd flash from the past…

I definitely have a love/hate relationship with the random Ani fans who visit my site every day. They are the primary cause of my Klez.E irritation, but they also send me wonderful emails, like this one:

From: Carlos Munoz
…. anyway, came across this quote today and thought you’d like it: “in an age where mass media provide the basis of common experience, ‘Star Wars’ and a handful of other cultural icons may have become a kind of shorthand form of communication”

i’m sure you’ve thought about this, but maybe this quote has some un-congruent edges to your prev thoughts

I can’t help but think back to late nights when Jon and Danny and their friends had entire conversations in Monty Python quotes. Or how many ridiculous conversations emerged out of discussions over terrible 1980s fashion statements – Do you remember jelly shoes and all style Madonna or garbage pail kids or … And yes, the 80s come complete with a survey.
Mass media does wonders for a common language of communication…