Hey Now

Hey everyone. Hope you are doing well now that summer is unofficially/officially over. So I have been keeping myself busy with my new young professional lifestyle. In that vein, I bought myself a new queen size bed to replace the futon I have been sleeping on. Futons are very collegish. Plus it was just a tad too short for me anyway. So I will be sleeping on my comfy new mattress tonight. If I seem excited about it, I guess it is a sign that I am getting older. I was actually talking with one of my co-workers and we lamented how we now get excited over new furniture. In contrast, when we were younger, back in college, we would find getting excited about furniture totally lame. Probably some of you are thinking that right now. Well, I like my mattress so there! Eat it!

These past weekend, I went to Electronics Flea Market with Cheng and DJ that is now being held at De Anza College. It definitely attracts a different crowd than the regular flea market. First off, many people give you their parking passes for free after they are done. Which is quite nice and helpful. But the crowd is overall much nerdier, therefore much more male. I hadn't been to the Electronics Flea Market for over two years. Unfortunately, the vendors I used to go are no longer there. There was this guy who sold cheap DVDs, which meant many of which were bootlegeed. There was also the used CD guy, but thankfully he still shows up to the regular flea market. I guess with eBay, half.com, and netflix, it sorta kills off those people who sell used CDs and movies. Thankfully, nooone was on their hands and knees digging through a big box of porn as there was two years ago. The night before, I watched Hollywoodland, which is actually quite good given that Ben Affleck is in it. I definitely like film noir movies (one of my favorites is LA Confidential) I especially like seeing the 50's Hollywood/LA setting that many film noir movies are set in. I would like to live in that era (what with the glamor, cars, and style) but without the rampant racial discrimination. I saw the movie with Noor, who said that much of LA and Hollywood today still looks like the 50's LA you see in the movies. Which is either a testament to the timelessness of the era or the rather poor new housing and building development in LA.

Speaking of cities, I attended a talk today by Stewart Brand. He came to talk about cities and urbanization. He had an interesting premise. He says that urbanization can actually be a good thing for society. He talks about how the biggest growth in urbanization are not in established cities but in cities in developing nations such as India. And while the mass migration of people creates slums and squatter cities, it are precisely these slums and squatter areas that eventually develop into more or less prosperous cities. Cities like SF, Boston, and New York were pretty much grown from squatter cities. Having urban cities also allows poor people better access to healthcare and social services that otherwise would be much less available in the countryside. While I find many of Brand's points debatable, they are at least interesting and thought provoking. He is also a very entertaining speaker. One of my favorite parts of the lecture was when he went off on the places outside cities as "boring." Take that small-town America! Up Yours!
On Tuesday, I went to BayCHI where I listened to a talk by Marc Cantor, who is well known for starting what eventually became Macromedia. He came to talk about his thoughts on aggregating all people's online personas from services like Facebook, MySpace, and Friendster. But he pointed out we needed an "opt-in" system in order to do so. Take that si.clops! He basically argued that we need tools to let us build our own social networks and on top of that we need social networks of social networks. He is also an entertaining speaker but in much different way than Stewart Brand. As my co-worker who also attended the talk said, "He reminds of the Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons." The great thing about being in Silicon Valley/The Bay Area, is you great access to all these leading thinkers, some of whom I read about when I was in grad school back in Michigan.

Speaking of Michigan, some of you (actually none of you) may remember I wrote these words a while back:

So this is the last night in Ann Arbor for me and right now I don't really have any regrets...But I think I have had my fill of Ann Arbor for now. I will probably visit again sometime in the future because its such a fun place.

Well, little did I know that "in the future" meant a little more than three months. That's right, I am heading back to Ann Arbor the first week of October to do college recruiting for Google. I am even sitting on a panel at SI. Funny, it seems like almost a year ago that I was sitting on a panel at SI. So it will be nice seeing everyone who is still left there again. Anyway, that's all for now. Until next time, peace.