Sunday Morning Call

Hello on this gorgeous Sunday here in Silicon Valley. It is not the morning but hey, it is a great afternoon. It is a lovely 77 degrees outside without a cloud in the sky. Accordingly, I am sitting in Coffee Society in Campbell, drinking a caramel coffee shake, listening to my iPod, and basically looking like your basic Silicon Valley yuppie at the moment. So its been a while since I last blogged, so what has been going on? Workwise, I went through a cycle of my different work phases. I was traveling and conducting studies (that's one phase), then I entered in the report writing phase (writing reports from said travels/studies), and then I finished off by the meeting phase (where you end up going to meetings all day). So now I am going to cycle through the study phase again. I am heading to Seattle for work next week. While I am there, I hope to meet up with Erika, Apete, Nabeeha, Maurice, and other SI-related folks who are there. Speaking of SI-alums, the Bard was in town for a conference so I hung out with him + Olga, Noor, and Carolyn. Speaking of Noor, I went to her birthday dinner last night where I got her a totally respectful and mature and in no-way embarassing gift from the De Anza Flea Market. I should mention that Cari was there, since if I don't, she will most likely point out the omission. We tried to go to Dave and Busters but that was too busy. We then tried to go to Palo Alto Bowl but it was booked up for a Stanford MBA thing. Yet another reason why I hate MBAs and Stanford in particular. They're so pretentious and smug that they hogged up an entire bowling alley. They should be doing pretentious and smug things instead of bowling. Like having wine and cheese parties where they laugh at poor people...at least that is what I think Stanford MBAs do. I also went to yet another house-warming party as in it was Doris's and Weiling's. It was quite a fun time, where I got to try CWP$'s latest home-brewed beer, a stout called Gwenstar. Tasted very stoutish to me.

In other news, I ran the St. Pardi-Gras 5K Fun Run this past week at work. It was charity race to benefit New Orleans. Note to self: one should attempt to train for long distance running before attempting to run long distances. Yeah, I felt like crap the entire race but I did manage to beat my previous time by 6 secs (for the record I ran 24:30 for a 5K which is my personal best). I placed 32nd out of 144 runners which I thought was pretty good. Felt like crap and was really sore afterward, which was not helped that I decided to go to my boot-camp fitness class also. Needless to say, I am still a little sore even several days after the fact.

I am finished reading this book, Holy Vote by Ray Suarez, which at the same time pisses me off but also reassures me. It is basically about the influence of conservative Christians in politics. It pisses me off about how much hypocrisy they get it away with in the name of Jesus Christ. However, it is reassures me that even after all their dedicated manipulating, campaigning, and smearing, they really haven't accomplished that much. Prayer is still no allowed in schools, abortion is still legal, and their hero, Judge Roy Moore, got himself thrown off the Alabama Supreme Court for insisting that a 2 ton marble Ten Commandments monument was not a violation of church and state. I have decided to take a break from reading political books for a while since it tends to piss me off. Instead, I should be reading more HCIish books, especially since I registered for CHI so I can impress people with my awesome knowledge and humerous stories (including the one about the gum in Canada that is so strong it masks breathalizers)

To finish this entry out, I think it is important I recognize a work of true greatness. You know, I have read many books, seen a lot of movies, been to many museums, but none of them compare to the sheer genius of this:



Hope everyone enjoys the rest of their weekend. Until next time, peace.