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01 Jan 2006, 12:48PM: Winds of Change: Happy new year!

01 Jan 2006, 03:21PM: MC Masala Mixes It Up: MC Masala this week: job interviews are like dates.

Here is proof that I will never be sophisticated: I called up a bunch of friends to brag about the hotel room. It had a flat-screen TV and a bathroom with a tub next to a shower and a white-noise generator next to the unbelievably comfortable bed. I was, for that hour, more excited about the hotel room than I was about the job interview.

I learned from the in-room literature that my minibar contained an "intimacy kit." Somehow I doubt that this kit contained an inflatable psychologist to help couples break down their emotional barriers.

I can't believe it -- readers are emailing me to wish me good luck in NYC!

Some other links. The disturbing Life and Death, a meditation on evil and forgiveness; read the comments, if you can. A tremendous NYT musing that advocates cultural contamination and gives new context for "I am human: nothing human is alien to me." And the wonderful Something Old, Nothing New, via the incisive Kenny Byerly.

01 Jan 2006, 03:31PM: Self-Defense: Protect your privacy this year.

01 Jan 2006, 04:43PM: Gotta Stand Up To Start Moving Forward?: According to some estimates, every six months in the Bay Area, I've made some new amazing friend whom I am now leaving behind. I arrived in August of 1998 and met Seth; most recently (basically) Eric. He lent me Daniel R. Headrick's Tentacles of Progress, about the infrastructure that empires lay down in conquered lands.

The Fashoda incident of 1898 (see Chapter 4), which had only a temporary impact on international diplomacy, was the turning point for Dakar. In response to the British threat, France decided to build a harbor in West Africa for its cruisers, submarines, and torpedo boats. The project took ten years and cost 21 million francs (£ 840,000). Deep dredging, over 2 kilometers of new breakwaters, and a dry dock made it a harbor fit for cruisers. By 1908 Dakar was the finest naval base between Cape Town and Gibraltar.

This passage struck me. The leaders of France made hard decisions and plans, and ten years later they had an awesome artifact and tool. They made their bet and won.

I've been afraid to bet. I've been loathe to predict or plan, to even cautiously strategize a career or make any long-term commitments. And now I'm locked in for the next three years. I've discarded other options and shaken off paralysis.

If you could save your mother, but at the cost of killing your father, would you do so? What if the situation were reversed? What if your great aunt would die, but your father would live, but he would have cancer, but that cancer would go be cured by a doctor, but that doctor eventually creates a supervirus which wipes out 1/3 of the Earth's population. Would you date that doctor?

I can't live like that anymore, second-guessing every move.

Joe is one of the friends I'm going to miss. Last night we saw a whole show of good comedy, in which none of the four comics disappointed; how often does that happen? It started with stand-up and so it shall end.

San Francisco's Bay Area was the first place I chose to move, and the first place where I made myself a home. Now it's the first place I'm leaving completely on my own. From November of 2002: Sumana stands up.

02 Jan 2006, 10:13PM: Good Idea, Bad Idea: Leonard kindly gave me a belated Christmas gift yesterday, making it a New Year's gift. He had surreptitiously transferred the first few minutes of several episodes of Law and Order from the TiVo to a DVD, creating an anthology of all the "du du du du du Oh My God A Body" moments (my favorite part of Law & Order). It was fantastic and amazing and I can't thank him enough.

I needed cheering up because I spent most of New Year's Day in bed, resting my knee. Returning from a New Year's party, just before getting into the car of a kind acquaintance for a ride home, I'd fallen and hit my knee on some broken pavement. Ow. It didn't break, but it's still not quite right. I wish I'd had a pratfall instead; my prat at least has some cushioning.

03 Jan 2006, 11:47AM: From Email To Editors: I get to keep my weekly column in Bay Area Living even though I am moving to New York. My current miniseries of columns has to do with the move.

I believe I have succeeded in tricking the reader into thinking it's just a light column about domestic frustrations and then BAM! it's actually about the deep joys and sorrows of our inner lives! But even if it fails at that then it's still funny.

04 Jan 2006, 07:15AM: Comedy Carroll: "As we know now, space and time are really the same thing. Space is just time moving very slowly. So, if our time is slightly off and needs correcting, it follows that our space is also slightly off. What you call your "personal space" may in fact belong to Anthony Hopkins. We may all live in Nevada. We won't know until scientists figure it out -- and that could be a long time because most scientists are spending their time standing up at rural school board meetings explaining radio carbon dating."

Filed under: Comedy

04 Jan 2006, 08:47AM: Quote Of The Year 2005: From an executive: "It's a global world."

04 Jan 2006, 03:56PM: What Makes Me Cry: Ads for Monster.com where people celebrate their new jobs.

05 Jan 2006, 08:52AM: Last Day of Work: I feel as though my last day at Salon should get more thought and attention. I've been there since May of 2003 and it's the longest job I've ever had. But it was a job that never turned into a career, and never would. So -- bittersweet, like everything else.

05 Jan 2006, 09:58AM: Career Advice From Scott Rosenberg: Always work with people from whom you can learn something. Preferably people smarter than you.

05 Jan 2006, 02:46PM: More Last Day Magic: Finalizing a billion things before I leave Salon for the last time. A horrible day to discover Overheard In The Office.

Filed under: Comedy

06 Jan 2006, 11:16PM: A Long Goodbye: A zillion people, including people who never worked with me or are no longer at Salon, came to my goodbye lunch at Taylor's Automatic Refresher and my goodbye party at Town Hall (a restaurant/bar on Howard). I was touched.

This weekend: a zillion people want to come over, to see us one last time before we go, to help us move boxes into other, larger boxes, to buy us dinner and drinks, to give back borrowed books and take away unwanted furniture.

We are so busy, so frazzled, and so lucky.

I'm listening to Vienna Teng and to the William Shatner/Ben Folds collaboration. I'm watching the house empty, pouring my life into cardboard boxes, keeping track of a thousand details, and convincing myself (with Leonard's help) that it'll all be okay.

Maxine Hong Kingston wrote in The Woman Warrior that it's tough to distinguish the layers of one's heritage. What comes from your parents, and what from theirs, and what from your village, and what from being your ethnicity, and what just from your own idiosyncratic history?

Saying goodbye is like that. All at once, I say goodbye to Salon, and to my loose affinity with Berkeley, and to BART, and to Northern California, and to almost all my friends, and to San Francisco, and to the futon I've had since 1999, and to the comfy brown chair I've had since 1991....

The rituals help. I sent the mass email, Subject: Farewell. There will be more. It's never enough.

Filed under: Apartment Life

06 Jan 2006, 11:23PM: Goodbyes: a Retrospective: Note to self: What kind of pretentious crap am I writing? "Blah blah blah, goodbyes, a single teardrop on the vividly portrayed barren wasteland of the nearly empty home." Come ON. Moving sucks but there's starving children in China, etc. Grow up.

07 Jan 2006, 09:15AM: Distributed Moving: I came up with an idea for how to move your stuff. You distribute all your boxes to your friends and tell/pay them to mail it to you after you've arrived at your destination. If your friends have cars or live near your old location, and they can schedule pickup by the postal service online, and you or a trusted associate will be home all day at the destination apartment, then this could end up being much cheaper and less concentrated hassle. Leonard and I decided not to burden our friends this way, but it sounds workable.

07 Jan 2006, 10:23PM: Read My Craigslist Post And Take My Stuff: Bookcase, nightstand, pantry/media center. Update: All those are gone. New Craigslist post for the last remaining item to give away: free folding table. Further Update: That's gone too.

Friends coming by for last chances to say goodbye make me so sentimental that the word "poignant" isn't enough. Cameo appearance by... fear of the unknown!

07 Jan 2006, 10:26PM: The First Half Of Goohoo: I saw a headline, "Google's Page gives keynote address," and thought it said, "Google page gives keynote address." Leonard's joke: "Did you mean: to major in the hard sciences?"

08 Jan 2006, 10:52PM: MC Masala: On socks and forgetting.

09 Jan 2006, 06:48AM: From Goodbye Conversations: "No, no, you're thinking he's dead, but he's Canadian."

"My great-grandmother was Irish." "Oh, really?" "No, O'Reilly."

"That mouse isn't fooled by that mousetrap." "Yeah, to him it's the equivalent of a Nigerian 419 scam." "Hello! I have a large piece of fruitcake that I wish to distribute!"

The weekend was relatively crazy. I think I saw four high school friends, a cousin, a neighbor, a Russia-trip friend, two Salon-related friends, three comedy-related friends, and four unrelated geeky friends. I'm sure I am miscounting. All these people came to my house, almost all of them after all the chairs were gone. They all gladdened and heartened me by visiting, but the logistics and the emotion of it all, oh boy.

Last night, Angel toasted to Leonard and me, for luck in New York "even though they won't need it." John toasted Fog Creek "for its impeccable hiring decisions." And I toasted Leonard, for being the best friend, boyfriend, mover, and logistician I could ever hope to know, and United Airlines, for channel 8 where you can listen to the cockpit-control tower chatter.

09 Jan 2006, 07:51AM: Goodbye, Will Franken: The only DVD I hadn't packed: Will Franken's Good Luck With It, which I foisted on John, Angel, Michael, and Julia.

I'm sorry, Terri. I can't do it. I may be God, but I'm no miracle worker. In fact, last week, I accidentally made a rock so heavy that even I couldn't lift it.
Filed under: Comedy

10 Jan 2006, 10:43AM: Tiny Nostalgia Victory: I get to keep the brown comfy chair because Leonard is the Sokoban master so it fit into the relevant crate. Yay!

Just saw Star Trek: Nemesis, which is in theory about loss, change, etc. Not nearly good enough.

11 Jan 2006, 08:08AM: Split: Leonard and I have left San Francisco. We looked in all the cupboards and shelves and found the obligatory forgotten thing, in this case a round pastry-cooling rack. This was after the move-out cleaners did their number on the place. They came from a service that advertises its use of only nontoxic, bioderadable, organic-type cleaning solutions. And they did, until they ran across some heavy gunk and one of the maids asked, "Ma'am, could I use 409? I have it." I gave the okay.

13 Jan 2006, 08:59PM: Last Night in California: Leonard and I are visiting his ancestral home (Bakersfield, Los Angeles, and environs). Tonight: dinner and bowling with his family. I need better upper-body strength.

14 Jan 2006, 01:07PM: The Final Countdown: But not by Europe.

Leonard and I are visiting Kris, Kim, and Adam in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. I thought I didn't like cheese-infused crackers but evidently Trader Joe's makes a highly adequate version. I'm trying not to think about the giant presto changeo awaiting me a few hours from now.

14 Jan 2006, 06:50PM: Tougher Than I'd Thought: Removing SFGate from my bookmark bar.

Restraining myself from ruining the backup vocals for Leonard/Kris/Adam songs with screams and melisma.

Listening to acoustic guitar without thinking I'm in a montage in a movie.

Staying on key.

14 Jan 2006, 06:53PM: "The opposite of QED": More propositions within arguments should end, as did one a few nights ago, "So that's why I know I'm smoking crack."

Songs on the way to the airport; right now Kris/Adam/Leonard are harmonizing on "Asia Carrera." Pretty poignant. Goodbye, California.

15 Jan 2006, 09:31AM: Made It: Safely ensconced in temp housing. The plane had a pretty turbulent landing; listening to air traffic chatter on the audio channel made me feel better about it. Feeling informed made me feel more in-control even though I wasn't.

Soon, off to see Astoria.

16 Jan 2006, 07:21PM: MC Masala, Only Slightly Behind The Times: I wrote yet more moving stuff because my editor loves it.

The day I panicked over that mouse was also the day I crashed a car for the first time. I wrote a column a few months later, telling you that I hadn't driven since, and many of you wrote to encourage me to get back on the road. Since then, I have driven a car on city streets and even on a highway. I still hate driving and even riding in a front seat while a car is on a highway, but I can stand it.

So I'm making headway on my own little insanities; the big leap of the cross-country move and job change bring my phobias, insecurities and superstitions to light. I'm afraid of death and of forgetting and of being forgotten, but all of those things will happen anyway.

16 Jan 2006, 11:22PM: Blogging For Choice Month: "And suddenly--if we have no doctors who are trained to abort pregnancies, even for health reasons; if doing so is illegal--we have women dying not only from illegal abortions, but from pregnancy itself."

18 Jan 2006, 01:01PM: The Golden Ticket: I signed a lease on an apartment in Astoria, in Queens. Astoria feels like San Francisco's Ingleside/West Portal with a bit of the Mission, only lots of Greek instead of lots of Spanish. Many thanks to Fog Creek and to John for their instrumental roles in getting me the place.

The shipping container gets delivered Friday morning; anyone in NYC want to help me move boxes for an hour?

I am getting used to the tradeoffs of living in New York. Various protocols are byzantine and efficient. One enters it after many players in all the markets have brutally competed and iterated through a lot of opportunities and loopholes, and though "[i]t is usually incorrect to believe that you are on the efficient frontier", businesses in NYC seem nearer the efficient frontier than in other cities I've visited.

The best preparation I had for living in New York was probably living in St. Petersburg for a summer and visiting Tokyo for two weeks. I learned how to get out of people's way.

In conversation, Adam and I decided that living in New York City is a skill with a big learning curve, like knowing Unix. Many people use it all the time without really mastering it, which is fine, because you only need to know the bits you use. And having a goal, or a set of tasks to accomplish, directs and facilitates one's study.

Off to change my address in a billion places.

Filed under: Apartment Life

20 Jan 2006, 01:20PM: Moved!: Huzzah for having moved. Huzzah for ABF U-Pack and for LaborReady. Huzzah for easy access to a subway station and to cheap restaurants that deliver. And a giant huzzah to Leonard for not only following me to New York but doing almost all the heavy lifting.

Filed under: Apartment Life

20 Jan 2006, 02:50PM: Availability: Leonard and I will have only intermittent access to the Internet for the next week or so.

22 Jan 2006, 02:53PM: Confusion While Unpacking: Leonard: I have the nails, now I just need to find the hammer.
Sumana: But doesn't everything look like a hammer to you now?
Leonard: No, no, it's the other way around.

25 Jan 2006, 07:37AM: Readings: As I was going through a cold this week (am currently 90% over it), I read Jane Austen's Persuasion, whose title I love. Persuasion is very fun for the first 90 percent of it but then once the endgame becomes obvious it is less compelling.

I also read Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge, which is fantastic. Anna Karenina revealed to me why people love epic soap operas, and Casterbridge is smaller in scale but no less epic in the scope of human emotion explored. And it is funny.

Casterbridge couldn't happen today, I think, what with all the bureaucracy and open access to information the First World enjoys. It's like Jane Eyre in that way.

The town of Casterbridge is a minor town somewhere in England, like Stockton. Now I live in the equivalent of London. A weird thing to get used to.

At the Friends of The Library store in San Francisco's Fort Mason, I bought a cheap Blues Traveler CD, entirely because it has "Hook" on it. "Hook" was my first experience, possibly aside from Weird Al and songs from Broadway musicals, with meta songs. It blew my little teenage mind. I still like it.

25 Jan 2006, 08:26AM: Welcome Back!: John-Paul Spiro is blogging again.

25 Jan 2006, 08:47PM: Fog Creek Stuff: In preparation for my first day on the job tomorrow, I just watched the Project Aardvark movie, which was enjoyable but made me glad I won't have a film crew following me around as I get settled. The DVD has silly extras in the chapter menu.

Now that I've met Joel, I read his essays and hear his voice. His most recent essay includes a section on "Administatrivia," which UC Berkeley folks always called "Administrivia." This reminds me of John Hodgman's excellent Daily Show appearance:

Stewart: It's Hodgman-mania!
Hodgman: Actually, the correct term is Hodgmania.

Anyway, I am nervous about my new job, and then three years from now it will all seem like a blur. So it goes.

27 Jan 2006, 03:11PM: Sort-of-Paid Advertisement: My first and second days on the job have been a dream. I'm installing, learning, reading, conversing, and generally having a ball. When the workday ends I'm wrung out but in a good way, and can't wait for the next morning.

Today I got my business cards. How cool is that?

28 Jan 2006, 06:14PM: Request For Recommendations: I want to take night or weekend classes in accounting and finance either this semester/quarter or this summer -- ASAP, anyhow. What colleges should I consider? There's a surfeit of opportunities and I'm not sure where to look.

Also, are NYU's MS in Management & Systems or Columbia's Executive MS in Technology Management any good?

29 Jan 2006, 09:15AM: Two Weeks' Worth of Columnity: Actually published last week: On the mini-International-House I lived in, years ago.

The Frenchman, The Italian, The Mexican, The Texan and I had all answered an ad on Craigslist.org for rooms in an apartment in Berkeley. You couldn't beat the price, but the location -- across the street from a pub -- was a mite sketchy.

That experience four years ago helped me define my criteria as I looked for an apartment in New York this month: dishwasher: yes; elevator: yes; four roommates: no; proximity to booze hall: no.

This week: I have a cold! Plus: the contrasting ways in which Californians and Noo Yawkers be walkin' down the street!

We made conversation while waiting for the freight company. Jésus, a longtime New Yorker, shook his head at the thought of living in California.

"Earthquakes!" he said simply, shaking his head, even after I tried a cheap-shot argument balancing the threat of earthquakes against the threat of terrorism. I hadn't realized I was a Californian until I found myself explaining and defending California to the guy who was helping me move to New York.

I have to make MC Masala more Dave Barry and less Carrie Bradshaw. That is, more absurd-funny, less ninth-grade essay slogging through obvious analogies to a sappy conclusion.

01 Feb 2006, 07:16AM: Too Geeky To Put In MC Masala: It still amuses me that TiVo's abbreviation (and possibly the official abbreviation) for The Food Network is FOODP. If you've read Levy's Hackers or are otherwise familiar with LISP slang, you'lll recognize "foodP" as "do you want food?". Alton Brown is proud of having elicited from at least one viewer the statement, "Other cooking shows make me want to eat. Your show makes me want to cook." So maybe everything except Good Eats is foodP.

Oh yeah, maybe I should go through SICP and really learn LISP this time. Or Python or Ruby, which are supposedly easier, but for which there is no one canonical curriculum the way there is for LISP.

01 Feb 2006, 09:23PM: Is It True?: Female soldiers at Camp Victory in Iraq, afraid of being raped by male soldiers, drank less liquid so they wouldn't have to go to faraway latrines at night. And then some died of dehydration. Could it be true? Ginmar, a Reservist who was at Camp Victory, says that something doesn't smell right with this story. I indeed hope to God it isn't true.

02 Feb 2006, 08:23AM: Reminder: For those of you who don't recall what I'm doing at Fog Creek: I am a trainee in the Fog Creek Software Management Training Program, which means that around the office I am known as an SMTP, which amuses us all.

04 Feb 2006, 09:57AM: Running Cliches Through The Cuisinart: Hey Leonard, how did Collabnet work out for you?

Like Leonard, I got book-reading as an initial task at my new job. I accidentally powered through Influence and the Carnegie way too fast because I also read them recreationally. Boy, were they good.

Cialdini's Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion and Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People approach salesmanship from different angles. Carnegie quotes Jesus and Lincoln a lot and focuses on specific tactics you can use to make others more amenable to your requests. Cialdini talks at a more theoretical level but includes examples from scams, sales, and studies to teach the reader to defend herself against manipulative techniques. Where Carnegie advises the reader to get the customer to start saying "yes, yes, yes" to a string of initial questions, Cialdini cautions the reader against the urge to accede to disproportional requests just to be consistent with earlier statements or behaviors.

Both authors mention that sincere persuasion is nothing objectionable. Carnegie stresses that it's also more powerful than sleazy tricks. I'll be using tips from both authors to do honest sales work for Fog Creek.

On my way out the door Friday I borrowed a copy of DeMarco & Lister's Peopleware, which I probably should have read years ago. I delayed reading it to read Book 6 of Y: The Last Man (a page-turner but not as politically awesome as earlier books, and with less captivating badinage, and more gratuitous skin, but I'll keep reading the series). I was especially struck by Chapter 3, "Vienna Waits For You." It quotes Billy Joel's song "The Stranger," [Belated update -- whoops, Zed reminds me that "The Stranger" is the name of the album and not the song] which made a huge impression on me when I saw it for the first time in 13 Going On 30.

But you know that when the truth is told
That you can get what you want
Or you can just get old
You're gonna kick off before you even get halfway through
When will you realize
Vienna waits for you?

Now, I was evidently not alone in thinking that the Vienna of the song was the dreamed-of wish, a paradise of our own making, the chance of happiness here on earth if we would only get up the gumption to reach out and grab it.

I'd not considered another view. DeMarco and Lister:

The Vienna that waits for you, in Billy Joel's phrase, is the last stop on your personal itinerary. When you get there, it's all over. If you think your project members never worry about such weighty matters, think again. Your people are very aware of the one short life that each person is allotted. And they know too well that there has got to be something more important than the silly job they're working on.

The bit in the song about dreams not always coming true speaks to the Peopleware view, while I find support for my interpretation in this bit:

....it's the life you lead
You're so ahead of yourself
That you forgot what you need
Though you can see when you're wrong
You know you can't always see when you're right

Here's where I pull a species of cheap conclusion trick: the fact that contradictory well-grounded interpretations of this song can exist is a testament to the enduring power of this classic! And maybe they don't contradict at all somehow!

(If you Google for "vienna waits for you", the top results are for tourism in Vienna. So the various Austrian tourism councils probably don't lean towards the Vienna=death side.)

Something like a decade ago, I was denied a spot as a page editor for my high school newspaper because (I was told) my people skills were insufficient. They were right. I was told to read Carnegie, which I did. They made up a copy-editor position so I could learn and practice editorial skills that year, which I did. The next year I got to be a page editor.

Carnegie was great for me because it systematically spelled out reasons for tactics that other people (e.g., my parents) advised haphazardly. Instead of just bumbling through a billion use-cases I got to learn the rules of the thing. Why shut up and let other people talk? Because they like to talk about themselves and their own problems and triumphs, just like you do, and if you listen to them they'll like you. That sort of thing.

My dad once told me to stop bringing books to read when we went to family friends' houses. "Bringing a book to a party is like bringing a sandwich to a dinner," he said, and I got it. And my mom tried to get me to listen better: "Listen to what people mean, not just what they say," she said, but I didn't get it.

My mom and dad tried their best, but I needed a handbook, something to memorize and apply, with lots of examples, and Carnegie helped a lot.

I wonder, in the same fashion as Leonard, how little teenager me would feel if I told her: the next time you read How to Win Friends and Influence People, it'll be to brush up, not to become a functioning member of society. You'll have self-confidence, a great job, a paid newspaper column on the side, a wonderful boyfriend, and a posse of superlative friends, who miss you because you've just moved to New York. Vienna waits for you.

04 Feb 2006, 01:25PM: Calling the Waaaaahmbulance: Good Lord, I miss my friends. California people: I miss you all.

05 Feb 2006, 08:40PM: Sketch Mayhem: I met up with an old friend of Nandini's on Saturday night to watch some sketch comedy. Incidentally, Nandini is not only pursuing two simultaneous Master's degrees, she also just visited China for a few weeks. When we were kids we'd pretend we were jet-setting millionaire witches. She is much further towards that goal than I am. Although I think neither of us is making much headway on the witch thing.

Anyway, I got to see Slightly Known People (they perform at 8pm every Saturday night at Rififi/Cinema Classics on E. 11th St.) and thoroughly enjoyed it. I laughed at every single sketch, which is quite rare. They remind me of the sadly defunct Fresh Robots.

Saturday night's show included a sketch set on a subway platform. In one part of the scene, one character rather slowly and methodically listed, to an unwilling listener, various strategies for getting to one's destination while expending a minimum of time and money. I found it hysterical and yelped in laughter while the rest of the audience was silent. This caused other audience members to laugh and caused one actor to break character and laugh. The actor tried to stifle her laughter, but this only caused her eyes to tear, making her mascara run. After the show, I heard that this was incredibly rare, as she never breaks. What can I say; I'm a demolition derby of suspension of disbelief.

Filed under: Comedy

06 Feb 2006, 03:10PM: MC Masala On Food, Again: Nabisco Brand Oreo Snack Cookies or whatever the correct term is.

My new company is tiny, with only about eight names to memorize, camaraderie around the lunch table and fast decisions on administrative trivia. But at a big company, if you need to stretch your legs but don't feel like going outside, you can just take a brisk walk in a circle around the office while holding some piece of printed matter in your hands, and everyone will assume that you are being businesslike and productive.

Here that gets me perhaps 20 seconds' worth of exercise, and people are more apt to notice since there's only one corridor.

07 Feb 2006, 10:30AM: Credit Card Tips: It's very useful to have a credit card; a credit card is convenient, especially in emergencies, and helps build a good credit rating if you use it responsibly and live within your means. CNN Money has identified the best credit cards for each type of credit card user; for example, a student just starting out with credit might want the Sovereign Preferred Student Visa, since low interest rates, fees and penalties matter to them more than reward points.

09 Feb 2006, 09:04PM: Error Messages From The Bard: A zillion years ago, back when Leonard was one of the editors of Segfault (a geek humor site with user-submitted content), I wrote and he published this bit:

If Shakespeare Wrote Error Messages

What a piece of work is man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god: the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals; and yet your login is incorrect, try again, you quintessence of dust.

'Tis nothing to you, for there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so, except for that bad command or file name.

Brevity is the soul of wit; too many arguments.

A little more than kin, and less than kind, and even less memory.

The fs type is out of joint. Oh cursed spite, that ever I was born to set it right!

What is the matter that you read, my lord?
Read error, file not found.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are in your kernel, but it's still too big.

Your process hath shuffled off this mortal coil.

Oh, what a noble drive here is o'erthrown!

'Sblood, do you think I am easier to be played upon than a pipe? OK, maybe not that pipe.

I'll lug the guts into the neighbor room, or just dump them in your root directory.

Something is busy in the state of your mount point.

Revenge should have no bounds. As for floating points, I'll make an exception.

Oh, what a rogue and peasant slave am I, to this server what reset my connection!

Fie, thy grief is a fault to heaven, a fault against the dead, a fault to nature, and a fault of segmentation.

Dost thou hear me, old friend? Can you play The Murder of Gonzago?
Memory access error.

Your login flies up, your password remains below; to logins without passwords authentication never goes.

Something wicked this way comes -- oh good, permission denied.

Bus error: the rest is silence.

As he did command, I did repel your packets and denied you access to me.

And flights of angels sing thy process to its rest!

Someone wrote me once, telling me that he actually used "Your login flies up, your password remains below; to logins without passwords authentication never goes" as an error message in a live system. I wonder whether it's still out there.

Filed under: Comedy

11 Feb 2006, 10:06AM: A Stroke, Claude, and Dinner: Waiter Rant makes me cry far more often than I deserve.

11 Feb 2006, 10:12AM: Jellyfish - Wait, "Sea Jelly": My instant messenger icon is something I did in Microsoft Paint ten years ago.

nandini: i like your im icon
nandini: did you draw it yourself?
sumana: yeah, 10 yrs ago
sumana: I call it "jellyfish"
nandini: it feels as though you are talking to me.
nandini: so i am talking to a jellyfish
nandini: i can call you jelly from now on
nandini: "what up, jelly?"
sumana: LOL
sumana: I told Leonard
sumana: he also laughed
nandini: he is the bf of the jelly fish
nandini: bfjf
Filed under: Comedy

11 Feb 2006, 11:02PM: The Legacy of Mr. Rogers: I was in charge of a big student poetry reading/musical performance night at my high school during my senior year. It was an annual thing and took much planning. The amphitheater got half-filled with water and floating candles, tiki torches ringed the stage and the audience, and students read and performed their work. It was a nice institution. I accidentally scheduled it for the last night of "Seinfeld."

Now we have TiVo. Last night I saw a pretty compelling community theater performance of Macbeth (what a bloody, bloody story!), and then today I got to watch last night's broadcast of Arrested Development's season (and possibly series) finale. I'm really not used to digesting two hours' worth of new AD at a sitting. So, so good, and now probably gone.

The title of this entry refers to Fred Rogers, time-shifting, and Betamax.

12 Feb 2006, 09:02PM: Dale Carnegie and the Friendly People: New MC Masala on influence.

So the Carnegie technique is like secret manners, if there is such a thing, courtesy that makes someone like you until they sense the mindfulness behind your smile.

12 Feb 2006, 11:06PM: Misc: Penny Arcade does an ad for Copilot and Leonard foreshadows my fear.

Filed under: Comedy

15 Feb 2006, 07:54AM: Valentine's Day: Leonard made delicious pesto pasta, salad, and apple crisp. we watched Operation Petticoat, which didn't have the most conventional plot, and then I helped clean the kitchen.

Of course India hosts controversy over Valentine's Day each year. Greeting cards get burned in the public square, young lovers get roughed up, etc. I love where the youth leader does the reductio ad absurdum - if you hate Valentine's Day because it's a Western influence, you have a lot of battles to fight.

15 Feb 2006, 08:35AM: Puzzling & Disturbing: Opinion = sedition?!

15 Feb 2006, 11:44PM: Heard Today on the 8th Floor of a Building: "It means a lot that you came today, overcoming snow...well, there's not that much snow now, really...overcoming, um, elevators..."

Filed under: Comedy

19 Feb 2006, 10:47PM: "Robin" Was Supposed To Be Androgynous: New MC Masala.

I pondered the topic as we climbed out of the subway station and wandered among the Statue of Liberty, Times Square, Ground Zero, Rockefeller Center and Central Park, all of which are, of course, in the same neighborhood.

21 Feb 2006, 12:27PM: Miscellany: My great-grandmother was a midwife. Even though she was a Brahmin, she delivered babies at Muslim and Harijan houses without fuss or ceremony.

"The mouse! Overcome! Will never be a plum!"

"Software development" in German is Softwareentwicklung.

The equivalent of the SF Bay Area's public transit TripPlanner is the Trips123 planner for New York City.

Stonewall's Jerquee comes in an "Original 'Wild'" flavor that does not actually evoke thoughts of or resemble organisms devoid of civilization.

North By Northwest includes a turn by Martin Landau as the malevolent henchman Leonard.

I got to see John-Paul Spiro and Heather Gold over recent meals. Pretty awesome. Hey John-Paul and Poorman: I know both of you!

VeganEssentials sold non-leather gloves at reasonable prices (evidently they're sold out now).

22 Feb 2006, 07:44AM: Should I Call Him Gordon Or RLP?: I had a conversation with some coworkers yesterday about customer service, and about whether to try to get abusive customers to realize their rudeness and stop. If one is more concerned with one's sanity than with justice, then one just manipulates and detaches, and stops seeing the person on the other end of the line as anything but a real-life NPC.

Gordon Atkinson writes, then, on a topic close to my heart.

And where am I in this whole process? Where am I? The real me? I don't know. Sometimes I think the better the essay, the farther away from you I am. Every minute I spend polishing adds another layer of separation between us.

22 Feb 2006, 08:00AM: Although I Do Like the Clones:Headphones Rhyme: Sometimes I listen to the internet stream of Rock Chicks Radio. They play a rather limited set of music (say, compared to L9, which had me chair-dancing to Ace of Base's "I Saw The Sign" the other day) but I like the genre.

Through Rock Chicks, I've been exposed to a song called "Billy S" by Skye Sweetnam, in which a girl expresses that she doesn't want nor need to go to school and read Shakespeare. She adds:

Teachers treat us all like clones
"Sit up straight, take off your headphones"
I don't blame them
They get paid
Money, money whoo!
Lotsa money, money whoo!

Is this child suggesting that schoolteachers are in it for the sweet, sweet moolah? If so, is this a sign of an unreliable narrator?

22 Feb 2006, 12:31PM: Someday Green Day Will Be On An Oldies Station: It feels ridiculous to accuse advertisers of co-opting, say, a Moby or Jewel song to sell a product. These songs are not hidden gems by Emily Dickinson; they're as much products as the razor or the car is. Where's the authenticity to co-opt?

22 Feb 2006, 11:45PM: Self-Deprecated Markup: I met some neat hackers tonight at a Google tech talk. (Guido van Rossum spoke on Python.) The moment that I say nonchalantly, "I work for a small software firm in midtown called Fog Creek Software," eyebrows shoot up and the name Joel is pronounced. I'm not quite used to this.

Lots to chew on.

23 Feb 2006, 11:23AM: "I hate all new Yahoos": Incredibly useful advice for the new hotshot. "If you have to tell someone about your reputation then it isn't a reputation."

24 Feb 2006, 01:53PM: How To Avoid The Cycle Of Customer Support Viciousness: Some good ideas on stopping yourself from responding to hostility in kind. Included: "check your ego at the door" and the reminder that someone has to be the adult.

25 Feb 2006, 03:48PM: Old Love: "Crush" by Carol Ann Duffy.

26 Feb 2006, 09:02AM: Subway: I'm fine using the subway system on weekdays. On weekends it falls apart. Freaking weekend advisories.

27 Feb 2006, 08:43AM: Various Articles For Your Perusal: Yesterday Leonard and I served as extras for an episode of Uncle Morty's Dub Shack. We were two people in a crowd watching a musical performance. Also yesterday, my column on my own musical tastes went up.

For some reason it's very easy for me to judge others by their musical tastes. When I was in high school, I didn't know anything about popular music and judged it as inferior commercial pabulum. Of course, this was because I was insecure about getting judged myself. Tell me if you've heard that one before.

The abortion ban in South Dakota makes the story of Jane more relevant, and one blogger is taking that seriously.

01 Mar 2006, 11:28AM: "We have not done the needful": An awesome effort to put medical knowledge in the public domain to guard against patent hijackers, but also an example of "to do the needful" in the wild.

01 Mar 2006, 04:41PM: Time Capsule: Fog Creek just rearranged some furniture. Probably the most minor effect of this was that I espied a copy of Linux Journal whose cover article was titled:

Podcast And Reel In The Blogs And Wikis

Every once in a while I try to imagine myself as a person from a really long time ago, like 1990, seeing that sort of sentence with a high jargon-to-common-word ratio.

Currently I'm reading a Christmas gift from Leonard's sister and mother, the very good A Midwife's Tale by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. Ulrich interprets a diary of a Martha Ballard, a New England housewife and midwife from colonial and Revolutionary times. Ballard was resourceful, sturdy, and smart (as far as we can tell), but "Podcast And Reel In The Blogs And Wikis" might seem a sentence from a foreign language to her.

02 Mar 2006, 07:01PM: Snow's Stopped: More furniture's been rearranged at work. It feels as though I work in a living room, which is pleasant. Then again, I want to take my shoes off to read on the couch, but I don't want to take off my shoes at work. Dilemma!

It seems relevant that the book I'd read is one on positioning.

Green Day's "Time of Your Life" relates to "American Idiot" somehow.

The silliest Joel On Software entry.

I pace when I talk on the phone.

03 Mar 2006, 10:35AM: Krepichy On A Mac: "I didn't say any of those things. Why are you claiming that I said that?"

05 Mar 2006, 07:47PM: Fulfilling Weekend Socialization: Saw MC Frontalot live with Adam, John, John's posse, and a math postdoc who's like Cousin Vinay Meets Steve Shipman. Also met a member of the Upright Citizens Brigade comedy troupe and a neuroscience grad student. The postdoc and grad student and I reminisced about reading Amar Chitra Katha. Adam explained horrible things about his job to me and I understood them, and I learned lessons about what NOT to do when I am a software manager someday. John's posse had me to lunch in the wilds of Long Island, so I took the Long Island Railroad for the first time. I also saw a New York City rat for the first time, and screamed like a caricature in a New Yorker cartoon.

Dar Williams plays Huntington (on Long Island) this week. I'm interested in going but only if someone else is too.

07 Mar 2006, 05:45PM: Evidently Everyone But Me Reads Overcompensating: I know Leonard is a Rowland fan, so when MC Frontalot pointed him (and Goats's Rosenberg) out on Saturday night, I asked him for an autograph for my boyfriend. He indeed did draw a nice picture, dedicated to Leonard, in my notebook, just after someone informed him that some other female wanted to kiss him.

This is depicted in his cartoon today and I evidently have the most angular chin ever.

08 Mar 2006, 03:00PM: Of Course: Wikipedia explains the history of Amar Chitra Katha.

It's possible to buy all of ACK. The official ACK site in India charges 9097 rupees (about USD$205) for the whole set of 244, plus overseas shipping. DesiKnowledge in the US charges $423 (plus shipping I assume) but only has 235 of the books.

I already have a bunch of the comics, but many of my copies are falling apart, I don't have (for example) the biographies of Einstein, Jesus, and Kalpana Chawla. So I should just make a list of the ones I'm missing and ask my parents to send or bring them to me. Ordering the entire run of ACK online smacks of decadence. Doesn't it?

09 Mar 2006, 11:46AM: Bodies And Motion: John-Paul might like some thoughts on "Skin".

Some lighthearted "How geeky are you?" litmus tests, including:

I assume you all know what time division you have to type into the microwave so your coffee mug returns to the same position? I mean, you don't want to have to twist your wrist, or grab the sides of your hot coffee mug...do you?

So, I made the effort to figure out what time interval it takes for one rotation, and then always punch in a multiple of that so I don't have to strain myself to grab the mug, and the handle is always facing me when I open the door...

11 Mar 2006, 12:05PM: Park Slop: Yesterday and today feature the best weather since Leonard and I arrived in NYC. The window is open and Leonard has fed me macaroni and cheese (with peas and mockmeat and hot sauce) and apple pie (with cheddar cheese). What tremendous well-being good weather and food can produce.

Fred Clark points us to Orwell's book analyzing Dickens. I have read almost no Dickens, which is rather a flaw in my education. More cool stuff to read! I've actually been exhilirated over the past few weeks as I've discovered topics I really want to learn, like Scheme, the advantages and disadvantages of various bugtrackers, accounting, finance, microeconomics, effective sales techniques, etc. The Fog Creek reading list (although that's out of date) and my wantlist hint at some of those topics. Part of the Fog Creek program is that I'm getting paid to read, after all.

Leonard and I visited the "Second Chances" thrift shop on Astoria Boulevard yesterday. It feels like a giant unkempt garage sale, and the thousands of books are precariously piled in such a way that you can't even see the titles of half of them. I wonder whether that store hides any treasures. I might have extracted "Anatomy of a Compiler" from the stack were I more courageous.

One great thing about learning tech in 2006 is that so much great material is free and online -- SICP and the accompanying lectures, for example. Reddit provides me with a few edifying items each day; I might start reading Digg, or even visit Slashdot again.

I've become a more productive and self-directed worker than I was at highly structured jobs I've had before. I restrict my web browsing at work to Reddit links, basically, and wipe out my web history every few weeks to lower address bar autocompletion temptation. I sometimes listen to rock music to get my spirits up to do some hairy task, or have no music or instrumental or non-English music for background. But more than all this, I feel responsible and important.

This week, a bunch of Fog Creek people went to the Emerging Tech conference in California. The first day, I was sort of freaked out that I was the only one who could take care of various incoming stuff. But then, the second and third days, I took ownership of the thing and was actually more productive than I've been since I got here. It was pretty awesome. Soon my mentor will be lounging on a beach hammock or something inside the office, sipping fruity umbrella drinks while playing Xbox with sunglasses on, while I explain to prospective customers why FogBugz is tremendous. Maybe I can shoehorn in the "Benjamin Harrison/no comparison" campaign theme song, only it's FogBugz instead of Harrison.

This weather is making me punchy. Maybe I'll trot around and do NYC tourism this weekend. Sketch comedy or diners in Brooklyn, anyone?

Yay for seeing Brendan soon! Yay for Leonard's book deadline and an application deadline for me being over soon!

12 Mar 2006, 04:08PM: MC Masala on Alcohol: Still chasing down a link to last week's column; InsideBayArea has redesigned its site. My column this week is basically a giant response to my parents, my ex, Leonard, DARE, and especially Brendan. It's insufficient as a response to Brendan's essays, but it's a start.

But I only started drinking after I'd gotten some maturity, as a person paranoid about self-control and the epistemology of experience, just as I only got a credit card after I'd started supporting myself and living within my means. Your mileage will vary.

Brendan wrote, of being a teetotaler among drinkers: "Their choices don't define who they are; I don't think I'll ever understand why mine apparently does." The pat answer is that all our choices define us. Also, especially when the abstainer is abstaining from something that people in his society commonly consume or do, the conscious choice of the abstainer forces the person who doesn't abstain to examine her unthinking choice, possibly finding it wanting. Look at how US meat-eaters often treat vegetarians or vegans, imagining self-righteousness where there's often none.

My first semester at UC Berkeley, I went to some seminar/workshop at a gender resource center on campus. There, I learned some interesting and useful factoids about reproductive health, safety, and the like. But one thing I was told there I've never quite gotten over: people's identities are independent of their behavior. Example: a man who has sex with men may identify as straight, not gay or bisexual.

I reflexively believe that choices generate identity. (Yeah, there are some identities you get born with, too.) You choose to teach, you're a teacher. You choose to lie, you're a liar. You choose to abstain from alcohol, you're a teetotaler, and that's an unusual and shaping choice if your milieu partakes. A man who has sex with other men but identifies as heterosexual is entertaining delusions. This is a huge topic and I'm probably being too harsh and narrowminded, somehow, somehow.

12 Mar 2006, 05:23PM: Online Voice: Flea of One Good Thing writes a letter to her sons. She's pseudonymous. Even if I were too, I don't think I could be as vulnerable in a blog as she is in that entry.

12 Mar 2006, 05:53PM: More Profound Jon Stewart Advice: Via Slacktivist: Very odd interview between Larry King and Jon Stewart.

I really feel like I have gotten to this weird place where rejection, like, or bombing or things like that is kind of like it's a good kind of pain. Like you get a shot to the ribs sometimes and you go, eh, I'm alive, you know what I mean? Like it doesn't -- it doesn't -- you get to a certain baseline where you feel confident in your ability to do that tiny little thing that you do. And the other stuff that you've been allowed to do is sort of gravy, and if it doesn't work out, that's really all right.

12 Mar 2006, 06:38PM: "Spaced": Turn-of-the-century British sitcom "Spaced" is pretty funny. Leonard and I watched the entire run of it last night. Of course, it's British, so the entire run is 14 episodes. And you thought Arrested Development was a brief candle!

12 Mar 2006, 10:39PM: Links While Procrastinating Writing Important Deadline Things: Haikus about Muni, often on the themes of tourists, lateness, and feast-and-famine arrivals.

"Religion isn't the opiate of the masses anymore, Karl. IDEs are." My ad hoc campaign to learn the world of programming continues apace! A booklist from the same guy may help; I've added a few books from there onto my wantlist/to-read list. Probably most of them are already in the Fog Creek library.

13 Mar 2006, 09:06AM: Quote of the Day: "That's my meta-weakness: getting into situations where my weakness is applicable."

Filed under: Comedy

13 Mar 2006, 06:48PM: What Do You Call Someone Who Knows No Languages At All?: Last week's MC Masala did not answer that question but poked fun at my own language foibles.

As an aside: If India's Hollywood, Bombay, is called "Bollywood," then shouldn't we call Bangalore "Bilicon Balley" or "Bilicon Bateau"? Then again, Bombay is Mumbai now and no one's calling it "Mollywood."

13 Mar 2006, 08:47PM: Sad Insight: Frighteningly often, the moments of lucid contentment in my life involve consumption. Just now, I felt that complacent blanket as I drank rooibos tea, listened to Belle & Sebastian and Harvey Danger, and read John-Paul. Yes, these are all exquisite experiences, but how come I don't feel that way while or after creating something?

Back to column-writing.

18 Mar 2006, 07:48AM: Certainty And Judgments: Slacktivist pointed me to a post about morality at Obsidian Wings.

18 Mar 2006, 09:50AM: QOTD: "Sales is seduction; marketing is propaganda."

19 Mar 2006, 03:26PM: Erudition: In this week's column I talk about the word on the tip of my tongue.

The most powerful word I've learned in the past decade is probably "satisfice." Researcher Herb Simon coined this word, a combination of "satisfy" and "suffice," to describe a common decision-making method: instead of evaluating all possible options, we take the first adequate one. We often don't have the time or resources to find the optimal solution, so we quickly satisfice instead. I've taken to reminding myself to satisfice when ordering in restaurants. If I hadn't learned the word, I might not be using the concept.

20 Mar 2006, 01:39PM: Business Names: Man, there are a lot of business out there with "solution[s]" in their titles.

20 Mar 2006, 05:00PM: Nerdvana: Some peers of mine have been wondering whether any of the YCombinator startups actually cure pressing user needs. Leonard points out that reddit and infogami are cool, and that two successes out of eight attempts aren't bad, but I still can't reconcile that outcome with the hype.

More than a year ago, Eric Sink wrote "Great Hacker != Great Hire". Graham thinks you want to hire prima donnas, who are fussy and don't want to solve niggling little problems. Or, rather, he thinks these people should start and run companies. But if you can't stand to interface with the real, grubby, world, then how will you know what problems in it need solving?

It's the same problem that leads to engagement (and not sanctions) in trade with China, or agreeing to see relatives with hateful political or religious views at Thanksgiving. Purity loses you more than engagement gains you.

My views are limited by limited information and perceptions, I am but a tiny grain of rice, blah blah blah.

22 Mar 2006, 12:25PM: In Which I Ponder Joe's Amazement That I Watch Substantial TV: You know what's really depressing? When I could have been learning Lisp or Kannada or organic chemistry or the piano, I was watching multiple episodes of

and I don't know how many other forgettable shows. I've also watched a lot of Seinfeld, Mad About You, Star Trek, Animaniacs, Batman: The Animated Series, Bill Nye The Science Guy, Square One TV, Law & Order, The Practice, House, The Daily Show, Arrested Development, America's Test Kitchen, Good Eats, and other stuff that seems more worthwhile to me than the sitcoms and dramas in the first list. But there was still a horrible lot of time wasted.

I don't know why my parents let me watch so much TV; maybe they thought I worked hard at school the rest of the time so I should get to relax in front of the tube sometimes. And God knows I read enough for three kids even though I watched a lot of TV. I had hardly any friends (at least ones that I spent substantial outside-school time with) between sixth and twelfth grades, so that left a lot of time for homework, reading, and TV.

Still. How many hours was that? I envy the imaginary person I would be had I eschewed all those useless shows on my first list. I can't even imagine the person I'd be if I had never seen the others.

22 Mar 2006, 11:10PM: Miscellany From The Last 36 Hours: "You could use Dissociated Press to generate the string and then reverse the tokens. Is 'tokens' the right word?" "Yes, it is." "YES!"

"What's the singular of vermin?"

Since people who arrive new and befuddled at Fog Creek are like children who walk into the middles of movies, I'm now a Donny.

"There's a difference between not caring what people think and not caring how people feel."

"I am pretty sure I am paraphrasing Bruce Schneier...."

"....since we're a Haskell shop."

"[A colleague] is awesome. But I respect his boundaries!"

Joe heard that I am probably going to learn Lisp soon, tried to think of reasons to use to dissuade me, then realized that he shouldn't.

Ed McMahon could be an oracle. If you tell him a statement and it's true, he says, "Heyo!" or "You are correct, sir." If it's false then he just sits impassively.

"I called to talk to you! You are an end, not a means!"

"Is there casinoness?"

[Awed silence, upon seeing and lightly touching the boxed set of the complete Calvin & Hobbes collection.]

Filed under: Comedy

23 Mar 2006, 08:23AM: A New Theodicy: "If you don't like it, file a bug with God."

"That's it! The reason that bad things happen is that God doesn't have a copy of FogBugz."

Filed under: ComedyReligion

23 Mar 2006, 08:50AM: Applying to Grad School: Not as tough as I'd feared. This is probably because I already took my GREs years ago, at my mom's and sister's insistence, and because I'm applying to various Executive Masters programs and not, say, Ph.D. programs in the hard sciences.

A Crooked Timber thread reminds me of another reason I'm glad to be rid of the Salon customer service gig: print magazine fulfillment.

23 Mar 2006, 07:56PM: Have A Laugh With UPCs: "Welcome to the Internet UPC Database! One reason this site exists is for me to practice my own web development & database skills, experiment with new things, and to get a good laugh."

24 Mar 2006, 07:44AM: Insults: When you are insulting a piece of software in the "it is ugly" or "it sucks" manner, does it make sense to say "it has diabetes"? Or -- as a colleague suggested -- is mere diabetes morally neutral such that a proper insult would be "it has adult-onset diabetes"?

Filed under: Comedy

24 Mar 2006, 07:52AM: God Gave You Eyes, Plagiarize: The Domenech plagiarism scandal has been a field day for Salon, and a more hilarious one than its other recent scoop (censored torture photos from Abu Ghraib (in which they made efforts to protect the privacy of the victims, good on them)).

"By the way, I don't see why so many physicians nowadays claim that Xanax has a 'high dependency profile' when even the most stable adult requires at least 10mgs in order to read the tamer political stories on Salon without experiencing profound generalized anxiety."

25 Mar 2006, 01:56PM: Output of Conversations Yesterday And Today: Make (the magazine) could have sister publications Do and Think, with a yearly compilation entitled Be.

I have a huge constellation of thoughts about initiative, harshness, arrogance, stereotypical geek qualities, and vulnerability rolling around in my head. Maybe I can make it into 1 column; it may be 2.

26 Mar 2006, 01:18PM: Frickin' Caitlin Flanagan: This week, my MC Masala column talks about the trouble with directness.

In software development, you find certain pairs of goals are aligned, like localization and internationalization. And some are opposed, like permissions systems and ease of use. The goal of straightforward information exchange aligns with the goal of getting the date or the kiss sooner, more efficiently. But it opposes the goal of lingering infatuation.

26 Mar 2006, 02:11PM: A Punker John Gilmore: Steve Schultz has moved from Tokyo to the Berkeley Hills, and has started a new blog.

Obviously some [elided] bureaucrat in some badly lit room punched some buttons on a computer and now I am on a List. I will never know her name or reasons. That just blows, it is like the movie BRAZIL. Actually brazil rules, but you know what I mean.

Warning: right now he has some Dooce/Austin Powers II-type scatology on the main page. Balancing that out: a great theme image starring cereal, milk, and booze.

26 Mar 2006, 03:55PM: Taste Of The Arts: Every day I give thanks that the strength of the prejudice that led to Gentleman's Agreement (1947) has let down. Yeah, almost everyone's prejudiced in various ways, but it's not as bad as it was. My father came to this country and made a pretty good living as a knowledge worker, a civil engineer. He wasn't the same color or religion as most of his coworkers, but he got jobs and supported his family all the same. How far we've come!

Gentleman's Agreement surprised me with its plot and dialogue. There's a scene where a hotel clerk quietly shuns Peck. I thought it would just be a bunch of those scenes together. Quietly shunned at a restaurant, quietly shunned at an employment office, etc., etc. But it's not, and it's more an attack on cowardice than on out-and-out villains.

I took a couple of acquaintances to see Mike Daisey's show "The Ugly American" (for the second time). I recommend it, and it's closing this week. Warning: very, very dark. And very funny.

Flux Factory, "a not for profit arts organization supporting innovation in things," has a very neat show right now involving beautiful semimechanized musical machines. Walking around in the installation is like playing with the innards of a jukebox. I highly recommend it. It'll be there for the next five weeks.

26 Mar 2006, 10:07PM: Cory Maye: Have you heard of Cory Maye?

26 Mar 2006, 11:32PM: From The Women Of New York: The New Underground Railroad. Funny how Jane gets distributed.

28 Mar 2006, 06:24PM: "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.": "[Mr. Rogers] did tell me that he considered the space between the television set and the viewer holy ground..."

"...[I] saw that my son's eyes were darting, the way they do when he is nervous. He'd researched, made a decision and spoken it aloud. This had cost him."

And then, found because a Joel Spolsky fan said "Verba Volant, Scripta Manent": a liberal blog reminding us of a Borges line:

Nothing is built on stone; all is built on sand, but we must build as if the sand were stone.
Filed under: Religion

29 Mar 2006, 07:28AM: When Framing Devices Go Amok: "The Mahabharata" at Wikipedia:

Arjuna's grandson Parikishit rules after them and dies bitten by a snake. His furious son, Janamejaya, decides to perform a sacrifice in which to kill all the snakes. It is at this sacrifice that the tale of his ancestors is narrated to him. (Incidentally, the sacrifice has to be stopped after sometime and the snakes are not annihilated.)

02 Apr 2006, 10:36AM: Does Anyone (Who Writes This Blog) Have Anything Worth Saying Anymore?: Leonard and I were reading a really interesting comments thread comparing the advantages of tech publishing models in the middle of last week. Against all odds, it stayed almost entirely informative, polite, and well-written. Then:

God, it's all such a bunch of s***. It's hard to believe that anyone is buying stuff from either self-publishing or the mainstream press. The tech world, and the literature world has become so faddish.

Does anyone have anything worth saying anymore?

I'm trying to learn to deal with geeks. I thought they were like my friends, Zack and Seth and Leonard and Joe and Eric and Devin and Zed and Brendan and Riana and too many names to reel off. And the people at Fog Creek are also of this type and I can communicate with them. But somehow I selected for something -- compassion? well-roundedness? a lack of arrogance? -- and now I have to learn how to talk and work with these people, this other species.

The geeks I'm running into socially here are almost all white guys, probably wealthier than me, usually older than me, and they treat feelings and uncertainty as irrelevant distractions. I believe that there's a difference between not caring what people think and not caring how people feel; this distinction eludes many of my new acquaintances. And forget about showing vulnerability! Their neat and easy distinction between their ideas and their selves means that I'm never talking to them, can never affect them one way or another. For all I know, they were born on third base (hitting the lottery in the Punnet Square of machine intelligence) and think they hit a triple. And I've gotten halfway through Glen's Leading Geeks and Duncan's The Career Programmer: Guerilla Tactics for an Imperfect World and they make me want to run for the hills. Am I choosing to spend the rest of my life working with misanthropic, nitpicking jerks?

Part of me wants to be productive and useful, to engage with the Other. After all, isn't this what I have to do? I'll have to work with this personality type for the rest of my life; shouldn't I resign myself and acclimate? And part of me is yelling, loud enough that it interferes, "God, it's all such a bunch of s***!"

Rachel has an awesome career that I could imagine having someday. But I would still have to show compassion for and empathize with people who never return the favor. The more I can understand and work with them, the more like them I become, and I want to keep that part of me that doesn't act like a machine intact. Irrational, non-adversarial, respectful, compassionate stuff is important.

Their arguments keep ringing in my head, the way Ayn Rand's used to, telling me to come over to this utopian paradise where nothing can ever hurt you. After all, they've already won. They set the terms for discourse in the places where I'm going to work if I keep up the career I've chosen. And they think they understand all my arguments and have already proven me wrong.

Or are you so flummoxed and confused and crazy that you decided that what they did made it OK for you to forget the handbook? They're evil, so ... so what? So you get to be evil? Well, of course you get to be evil, but then you're evil. Is that how you envisioned it turning out?

More Jon Carroll, since I'm in that mood:

I mean, render unto me a break. If your family feels so threatened by my family that you think you have to organize a boycott of a car company, then your family has problems my family can do nothing to solve.

I've been reading Jon Carroll archives and lists of April Fool's Day Hoaxes and they make me feel better because they make me laugh. I prefer laughing to arguing with the voices in my head. I miss my friends, I miss San Francisco, I miss the time before I saw mice in my apartments, I miss not caring whether admissions people at major universities saw what I wrote on my blog, I miss thinking that I could get along equally well with suits and geeks. Now I think I get along equally badly with suits and geeks, and that if I want to be a good interface between those two sides, I have to change into someone I don't think I want to be. I feel as though my self is in danger.

I'd say that it'll all be better in the morning, but that's what I thought last night, and this is the morning. But eating might help.

02 Apr 2006, 11:58AM: MC Masala Slams The Ramayana: Now this should get me some letters! Indian epic slamdown!:

In "The Mahabharata," the ultimate family feud roils a great dynasty. Good people end up on the wrong side, a woman has five husbands, a god comes to earth, curses and prophecies and magical weapons intersect in giant explosions on the battlefield, and a bird threatens to kill a guy unless he answers some pretty heavy philosophical riddles. It's awesome.

In "The Ramayana," perfect people foil evil people's plans. The hero's allies show perfect loyalty, a model wife has to go through a magical test to see whether the villain has sullied her purity, the hero blithely destroys the city the villain rules and a monkey army makes a bridge between India and Sri Lanka. The monkey-men constitute the only lively part of the whole tale.

02 Apr 2006, 07:53PM: In The Application Of My Seat To A Chair: Lunch (and dinner and Wikipedia and writing and conversing with Riana and Leonard) have helped me feel better.

Riana wrote about caffeine addiction, social acceptance of same, and prostate cancer (among other things) earlier this year, on the same day that Wikipedia featured an article on prostate cancer on its main page. This reminds me of Daniel Davies's musings on caffeine and the US. Both essays are amusing and edifying.

Back to the grind.

04 Apr 2006, 11:25AM: Dr. Warren's Logic Class Shows Up Again: The other day, I made a funny typo when writing a letter to a customer. I wrote, "Iff you'd like to order..." Logically, that's "If and only if you'd like to order..."

Filed under: Comedy

07 Apr 2006, 01:10PM: For Brendan's Eyes Nonexclusively: WBFF Radio has been playing Ben Folds for the last several hours. I finally checked the site to see how long this marathon will continue. The answer: WBFF plays the complete discographies of Ben Folds Five, Ben Folds, Darren Jessee, Robert Sledge, Fear of Pop, and The Bens. And that's it.

In retrospect, the name should have given it away.

09 Apr 2006, 03:07PM: Yet Another Reason: If you're in transit through Moscow, and you have a stop at Domodedovo Airport, you might have to pass a lie detector test that includes the question, "Have you ever lied to the authorities?"

When I visited Russia in the summer of 2001, I asked a program coordinator whether I should worry about racism. She said that it wouldn't be a problem for me, because I'm female and because Russians love Indians (the Cold War relationship between the USSR and India was warm). Now violent racists have made a lie of her words.

10 Apr 2006, 07:12AM: MC Masala Shares Subway Anecdotes: Some mildly entertaining stories about mass transit.

You can guess the transfer blues that ensued. Our first walk through the midnight streets of Berkeley had no romance in it; we were arguing over whether I was naive. (That argument never goes well.) When we finally arrived, no one seemed relieved; no one had worried about us.

If you enjoyed "Indian lit: Leaping over tall tales in a single bound", you may also enjoy John-Paul Spiro's more expansive take in "If it feels good, worship it".

10 Apr 2006, 07:41AM: Trying To Explain: I like story arcs in my TV these days. House, West Wing, Fall And Rise of Reginald Perrin, Deep Space Nine -- I want stories that grow and deepen.

The West Wing is almost over. We found out last night who won the fictional election. I was happy but disappointed too, not that it matters. We'll never get to see what the new administration would look like.

I do wish that the character of Josh either didn't exist or were much, much more competent and compelling. Maybe it's just the way Bradley Whitford plays him, but he's always seemed to me a screwup and the worst kind of conventional-wisdom repeater. Why in the world does Donna find him attractive?

10 Apr 2006, 04:28PM: West Wing Redux: Aha! Writers changed last night's election outcome because John Spencer died.

11 Apr 2006, 11:04PM: Music: Yesterday, as I waited at 59th and Lexington for a subway train, I listened to a busker play a steel drum. As I came in, he played a medley of "When the Saints Come Marching In" and the Battle Hymn of the Republic. Then he turned to the most awesome rendition of "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" that I have ever heard, and that includes the Switched-on Bach version. Sometimes you get wonderful gifts that you never did anything to deserve.

12 Apr 2006, 08:28AM: Advice to Colleagues of Indians: If you have coworkers, vendors, or customers who work in Bangalore or some other Karnatakan city, you won't be able to get much done with them today. Rajkumar has died. Think Elvis plus Jesus. Mourning in the streets, state funeral, all shops closed, that sort of thing.

Rest in peace, Dr. Rajkumar.

12 Apr 2006, 03:42PM: Why Do I Want To Type His Name "Ynggve"?: My favorite writer this month: Steve Yegge.

Update: I know I already mentioned Yegge. Here's an excuse to mention him again:

Paul Graham has to be that way. Not just because he's a rich bastard who (with two friends) implemented an application in Lisp that we've been unable to match at Amazon, and Yahoo bought him out for $40 million in stock that proceeded to soar. That's not the main reason he comes off the way he does, although as far as I'm concerned, it gives him at least a halfway decent excuse.

Paul comes off the way he does because he's good at marketing, and he realizes that in a world full of egotistical programmers, the only way to be heard in all the noise is to be an arrogant bastard. ....

We work in a fashion industry, and marketing really matters.

12 Apr 2006, 03:58PM: Still Seems Weird To "Build" A "Gem": Yay for Leonard! He is a triumpher!

Within Ruby, there are these packages called Gems. Whenever I hear Leonard refer to a RubyGem, I think he's being sarcastic. "Oh yeah, I have to go over this ABSOLUTE GEM of an application tonight."

13 Apr 2006, 09:36PM: Irregular Verb Conjugation: I have a healthy respect for the inherent viciousness of the feline.
You don't care for cats.
He's afraid of the kitty.

Filed under: Comedy

13 Apr 2006, 09:53PM: Dead Mice Eat No Peanut Butter: "Man, [that instance of vermin] is eating that poison like crazy!"
"Yeah, we can't keep it on the shelves!"
"Yes, because the FDA won't let us, because it's POISON."

Filed under: Comedy

14 Apr 2006, 11:07PM: No One Has a Calling Anymore, Just A Core Competence: All this time I thought I was a multiply-layered intersecting matrix of identities, and all this time I was actually a seven-word elevator pitch.

15 Apr 2006, 11:10PM: "Charade": Leonard and I saw the very odd and very good movie "Charade" tonight. It has suspense, romance, comedy, and international intrigue. All it's missing is some song-and-dance numbers! Recommended.

16 Apr 2006, 03:23PM: Brian K. Vaughn & Bernie Hou: I have started spending regular cash at Midtown Comics to get the compilations of Brian K. Vaughn's comics Ex Machina, Runaways, and Y: The Last Man. I grew up on Amar Chitra Katha and only recently have I graduated to the grown-up stuff. Man, it's fantastic.

One issue of Ex Machina includes a reference to Midtown Comics itself. Disorienting.

Alien Loves Predator also helps me feel at home in my new city.

16 Apr 2006, 05:01PM: MC Masala on Paying Attention To Tiny Numbers: Small print on restaurant menus will bite you.

The server started treating me very, very nicely. She chatted me up and gave me a flight of comparison sakes so I could understand the subtle grace of the daiginjo.

You can tell where this is going.

18 Apr 2006, 11:36PM:

Leonard

Make It New, the man said, and I took it to heart, the one place I shouldn't have. I feared cliches because I was young, but life's too short for that game. Love is classic, fresh when the meme wars fade. Love is never played out.

So now I choose to prune my decision tree, and blossom in love, and taste of this new fruit. We'll make meaning of our lives together.

Leonard, you initiate me into the colors of the world. Your love sends me casting for words and throwing them away. I gladly accept your proposal of marriage, Leonard.

22 Apr 2006, 10:09AM: I'm Testing the Upgrade: Just like Linus Torvalds did
I'm testing the upgrade
(Except that he is talented)

22 Apr 2006, 11:06AM: LiveJournal Userpic Epicenter: A LiveJournal user with the awesome username of "pinstripe_bindi" (I like both bindis and pinstripes!) has the ultimate collection of LJ icons. House, Powerpuff, Calvin & Hobbes, Futurama, Lost, Frida Kahlo, Firefly, Harry Potter, anti-Bush, Jon Stewart, My Neighbor Totoro, Daria, Hello Kitty, Snakes on a Plane, and more. I approve of this cornucopia.

(12) 22 Apr 2006, 12:19PM: To Love And To Cherish: Leonard and I married each other yesterday. Our friend Camille took pictures.

As Leonard mentioned, we need for nothing except your good wishes and your advice. In celebration, I've turned on comments for this entry. Please tell us your hard-earned wisdom to keep our union strong and loving. This is the biggest project I've ever undertaken, and your words are more than welcome.

23 Apr 2006, 01:29PM: The Proto-Schemer: Scheme and me in this week's column.

Lisp has considerable status among programmers. Growing proficient in Lisp, the conventional wisdom goes, is like learning Latin or Greek; it teaches rigor and elegance in thought. It helps you grasp the essential patterns, challenges and creativity of programming a computer. A culture surrounds this language, as a culture surrounds any language, and the Lisp community is regarded as smart and snobby. Maybe coders as a whole regard Lispers as I regard particularly obnoxious geeks: infuriatingly smart and arrogant, as though they have discovered the true scheme of the world.

23 Apr 2006, 05:23PM: Nonobvious Stuff I May Do Now That I'm Married to Leonard:

Filed under: Comedy

25 Apr 2006, 03:41PM: