Thanks to Slashdot for bringing this to my attention. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ran a story last week from Cary Sherman, head of the RIAA, where he lambasts students using Internet2 for file-sharing, claiming that the music industry and artists everywhere are in danger of going under because 42 students traded thousands of mp3s with each other on the high-speed backbone.

In response Roger Dannenberg, one of my favorite professors at CMU wrote his own letter which was subsequently printed in the Post-Gazette. I only wish he had more column inches.

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From seat 24-A I can just see the exhaust port under the wing of this Airbus A321. The sun has just set over the world and the thousands of miles of desolate brown heartland are now overlaid with a slowly brightening spidery lattice of towns, emerging in the accelerated dusk.

I'm on my way to Pittsburgh, where I'll stay through Saturday recruiting for Google. This will be the first time I've been back to Pittsburgh since I drove to San Francisco right after graduating in August of last year.

This trip resonates nostalgic in so many ways. Though it's only been a little over a year since I left CMU, virtually nobody I know is still there. I'm getting here a day before most of the rest of the Google bunch and so, like when I arrived in Pittsburgh two years ago, it's just me and the campus. Having built so many relationships with people during my time there, it seems eerie to think about walking among the buildings washed clean of any relationship I have with them. Rob and Kerry's offices are occupied by strangers now and the masters labs, still teeming with eager students who are probably bitching about their GOMS assignment in HCI Methods class, would only welcome me as a stranger, the ratty sofa and desk will refuse to acknowledge our all-nighters, but I'll visit anyhow.

A large city has just passed below. Given that we're about 40 minutes from touchdown, I'm guessing that it's either Cincinnati or Columbus. In about an hour it'll be 10pm local time and I'll be outside waiting for the 28X bus to take me to the Holiday Inn, across the street from the Cathedral of Learning; the same hotel that Marissa and Nate utilized when I interviewed with them a year and a half ago. It'll be at least 11pm by the time I'm checked in, and I'll probably walk in to Oakland to grab some half-priced dinner at Fuel and Fuddle amidst youth-heavy Pitt students.

In the morning I'll have a fair portion of the morning to myself and I'll start off with a walk down to Craig Street for some Kiva-han chai, then I'll see about getting wireless access for my laptop on campus and doing a little work and probably some more writing.

There's nobody in the center seat and the guy on the aisle has faxes and contracts spread out all over the place. God I have to pee...

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Now that the weather has dropped precipitously from 90 down to 50 in the last week, I'm nostalgic for Pittsburgh. I still follow the news there now and then. I'm vaguely pissed that Starbucks is moving to Craig Street, giving Kiva Han a run for its money, and I congratulate Michele, the CMU HCI program coordinator, on fulfilling her dream and moving to upstate New York to open a B&B!

I miss the leaves, wearing gloves, and walking through a leaf-strewn cemetery to the bus stop with my iPod in my pocket and feeling so very in-the-world.

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So suddenly the five weeks I had to complete grad school has vaporized to one, two weeks spent in Los Angeles with family, one week back now, and leaving one week early to spend more much-needed time with family.

My life is suddenly thrown into fast-forward, a mixed blessing of keeping busy and of having to work fast enough to stay on my own life's train.

Within the next week I have a bunch of work do do on my masters project, and my independent study project, and I need to pack up my apartment to be ready for movers to come and take it all in their van.

Late next week Rachel and I head to Vancouver, with a 7 hour layover in San Francisco, where we can spend a little time with friends, then a week with family, then flying home from Anchorage by way of a redeye to Atlanta (can you believe there's a plane that goes from Anchorage to Atlanta?) where we'll meet Ammy and hop on another plane to complete the return to Pittsburgh. Then it's two days in Pittsburgh before Ammy and I drive off on a 12 day road trip back to San Francisco, with stops in Los Angeles, Vegas and the Grand Canyon for certain (not in that order), and a bunch of other destinations to be finalized, but likely including Mammoth Caves, Mesa Verde, and the Painted Desert.

Two days later is my first day at Google. Meanwhile I'll be staying with Ammy and Rick for a few weeks (or less) while I find an apartment and tell the movers where to appear with my stuff.

All-told I'll be living in six different environments over the next six weeks. Maybe my internal bolstering preparing for once again changing my total environment has helped a bit in dealing with the unexpected change in my life. I knew I'd be off-kilter, and so perhaps I'm a little more prepared emotionally, though just enough to keep standing, not enough to absorb the blow.

So much to do, and so little time. I need to compartmentalize. I need to make sure that when I leave next Thursday that school is checked off. I need to make sure that when I leave on the road trip, Pittsburgh is checked of. (I mean materially, not personally. Those I love here in the 'burgh will be with me for a long, long time, and do not have little boxes next to their avatars in my mind).

The last 10% is always the hardest.

Here we go!

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Congrats to my HCI classmate Micah, who today accepted a UI position at eBay, and is wasting no time in flying to Florida on Thursday to get to know his users at eBay Live: Orlando!

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The fire alarm in my office's building on campus went off 10 minutes ago. One of the joys of campus-wide wirelessis that I could just pick up my laptop and move to another building and continue working.

I hope the place doesn't burn down. That's where I keep all my stuff! (Okay, a little of it anyhow.)

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Uncaptioned as of yet, I wanted to post my gallery of pics from today's graduation. So much fun!

Click to see the rest

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Tomorrow I'm going through graduation ceremonies, celebrating the completion of my masters degree in Human-Computer Interaction. Nevermind that I and all my year-mates (augh, vocabulary sublimated from Valdemar books) don't actually finish our work at CMU until August; there's only one ceremony a year, for the whole school, so it's now or nunca.

This is kind of a trend. All my scholastic life I've looked forward to 'graduation'. It has such a cathartic ring to it. Yet I'm not sure that I've ever experienced 'graduation' in the true sense.

My first graduation, from elementary school, was called a 'matriculation', a big word I wasn't willing to internalize when I had already pegged the ceremony as being a 'graduation'. In Junior High School, graduating from Portola Magnet, we also were 'matriculating', but at least we got honest-to-god diplomas certifying our achievement, and we got them on stage, in front of our families.

High school, the most well recognized of all levels of 'graduation' was, I believe, actually referred to as a 'graduation', [oops. As I recall this morning, it was called a 'culmination'. No graduation there either!] but the actual ceremony of the principal calling each (of 655) graduate's name, shaking their hand, and handing them a scroll tied with a ribbon was slightly dampened by the growing pile of gumballs and other paraphernalia at Principal King's feet, as some of the less mature students wished to leave their final (only too literal) mark on the school (or the hand of the head of that institution) which they were departing. The other downer was that the scroll we received wasn't, in fact, our diploma, but instructions informing us that we needed to return our caps and gowns to the basketball gym, in exchange for our diplomas-held-hostage.

Berkeley graduations were fun. Here we had elevated from the terms 'matriculation' and 'graduation'. This was 'Commencement': the simultaneous completion and onset of our lives, representing initiation in the truest senses. Mind you, mine was premature. I still had one language requirement to fulfill, a requirement which not only did not need to be filled in Berkeley's hallowed halls, but one which we were encouraged to complete at community college, to free up space and professors for pursuits more novel and advanced than rote memorization. But I digress.

Like High School, each participant in the Berkeley ceremonies receives a small, tightly tied scroll. This time the scroll attests that the bearer participated in the commencement ceremonies for the department in question. It doesn't say they earned a degree, but it does affirm that they sat in a chair, and had their name read aloud.

The funny part is that they'll let anyone with a cap and gown in to the various Berkeley commencements. Indeed, several students were supposed to repeat, considering that there are roughly 20 ceremonies for different departments, in addition to special ceremonies for students of color, re-entry students, and other groups unaffiliated by field of study. I have friends who participated in as many as 10 ceremonies, writing their name down on 10 cards, sitting in 10 seas of graduates, and having their names read by 9 unphased professors or directors (okay, 0, but the 10th should have been unphased, considering that one of the ceremonies was the one they were expected to attend), before offering their hands to be shook on stage, and proceeding down to the inevitable champagne and strawberry reception following the ceremony.

Still, it feels really good, and it's easy to suspend my disbelief into convincing myself that this is what it's all about, on loan for one more semester; Christmas early.

In about 10 hours I'm going through my final Commencement ceremony. This time I get to wear the plaid and gold hood of a master, and I have family from nearly 3,000 miles away to cheer me on. This time really does feel like a commencement, a tipping point, a point of inflection on the integral of my life. While actual completion is still 12 weeks away, I'm rapidly narrowing in on what my future holds beyond August, and should have it resolved by the end of the week. It's as though the train tracks that I've been laying just in front of the engine of my life are finally connecting with the main line, and I can continue on without counting on just-in-time education, planning, employment, or anything else.

I'm clearly rambling, but what I'm trying to say is that it's funny (that I'm graduating prematurely once more), and that it's good (that life's map is being drawn well, and by my own hand).

I should go, because in five hours I have to pick my mom up from the airport, where she's flying in on the redeye from Los Angeles, and then drive back to campus to start the festivities. I'll make sure plenty of pictures are taken, including some by me.

On a tangental note, I've interviewed with twenty-eight people in the last three weeks, and the single most common question asked of me was "why did you go back to school and get your Masters?" I came back for answers, for training, and an internal affirmation that the skills I learned in the real world aren't a facade of confidence, trendy design ideas, and design-by-ego. While here I've built a foundation of UI and HCI understanding that I can build on for the rest of my life. I have a much clearer idea of my own abilities, and of the things I want to do with them.

Anyhow, I should sleep and quit it with the St. Crispin's Day deal. Tomorrow I get to graduate, rain or shine, and it's going to feel very, very good.

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Back in Pittsburgh, after three weeks away in various corners in and outside of our nation.

In a meeting with my project team yesterday, Liya told us she had a hard out at 6:30 because she needed to get a good spot for the They Might Be Giants concert.

"Oh, where are they playing?" I asked, miffed that I wasn't aware back when tickets must have gone on sale.

"They're playing on the Cut [one of the two lawns that form the backbone of the CMU campus]. It's free. Why, do you know them?"

Hah. Know them... Am I living in a bubble? In Kevinland, everybody knows TMBG.

So off I went. Rachel had a play to go to at 8, but was going to try and come for the beginning of the 7pm concert. As it turned out, they moved the stage indoors, into the gym, for fear of rain, so there were lines and such, with enrolled students getting priority, though I think everyone got in. As it turned out, Rachel didn't go because by the time all was said and done it was almost time for her to leave for the play anyhow, and as it turned out there was a warm-up band that played for an hour first, so TMBG didn't hit the stage until 8:30 anyhow.

Oh, and when I say gym, I don't mean Pauley Pavilion or Haas Stadium, with seating for 12,000. I mean three basketball courts side by side. No bleachers, no terraces, just a big honkin' stage that took up one corner of a building where acoustics, if they were considered at all during the design process, were made extra-echoey, as if to pump up the spirits of a practicing basketball team by making them sound like five teams.

TMBG was the perfect band to play this gig. And we were the perfect crowd to see it. People in front of me and in back of me, waiting in line to get in, were practicing their bouncing. If you love TMBG, then you know what I mean.

Okay, so I was bad and bootlegged a little. First off, so you know I'm not kidding about the acoustics (though admittedly I was using my camera's audio record, so high fidelity isn't its primary feature either).

The show was a lot of fun, though I had to leave about 2/3rds of the way through. I was about 40 feet from the band, which I had to remind myself would be absolutely amazing if they were playing, for example, at Shoreline, or any mainstream venue. At 40 feet they're just some talented guys from New York, which is exactly the kind of image they want to express, so that all works.

Nostalgia pang, wishing I was in San Francisco, when they burst in to their first song: Istanbul (not Constantinople). Oh how I wished I had seven of my Irish friends in the room. There was plenty of room in the back for a polka (oh, a whole 200 feet from the stage) and it was all I could do to not ghost seven partners right then and there. Considering the aforementioned bouncing audience, I don't think anyone would have noticed. Ammy, you were missed.

Oh, set list... I don't remember the order, except for the first song, but they played:

• Istanbul
• Birdhouse in Your Soul
• Older
• Doctor Worm
• Particle Man (yay!!)
• Cyclops Rock
• Why Does The Sun Shine?
• Bangs
• James K. Polk
• Fingertips (yay!)
• She's Actual Size (thought of Benjy)
• SuperTaster (hadn't heard that one before)
• Obligatory Drum Solo Requests
• ...and more

Which reminds me... while waiting in line for the show, I was IMing Benjy (from the sidekick), telling him (the biggest TMBG fan I know) about the surprise free concert. He told me about how TBMG was coming to the Bay Area and he bought three tickets for $90 and change. Then he told me about how TMBG promised that each of their bay area concerts would be different. It didn't dawn in me for a few minutes that he bought three tickets for himself for the three different shows. Truly a big fan. I'm sure he won't be disappointed.

Anyhow, I've got work to keep my up all night for the next four days, so I should get back to it. So much for a 'micro-review.'

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So throughout the cruise, Karen was journalling in her Little Red Book. I intended on writing up entries each evening and posting them when able, but with my lack of a power supply, I was forced to journal on paper, and I'm just not as good at that as I used to be. I'm used to thinking just slow enough to type. Thinking slowly enough to write longhand is just too hard. Maybe I should parctice.

Anyhow, the point is that Karen's Little Red Book (with beautiful Chinese designs in gold all over it, making me feel a touch guilty each time I'd look at it that it wasn't being used for its intended purpose) existed as her blog for the week of the cruise. Now she's making good on that designation by transcribing it, day by day, giving a more thorough accounting of our cruise than I ever could. I'm enjoying reading it, reliving each day as I go.

Anyhow, the short of it is that those of you who feel shortchanged by the recent dearth of Fresh Fury Fun should head over to Karen's and read the daily accounting of our Mexican cruise. That, along with the photos I posted yesterday, should paint a pretty good picture of the trip.

As for me, tomorrow me and five of my classmates will be representing Carnegie Mellon in this year's CHI Interactionary competition. I've said ridiculously little about it so far, and had better blog by morning, so you'll feel some of the anxiety that I feel at the prospect of competing in the industry's only timed Computer-Human Interaction team competition in front of most of the leaders of the industry, judged by Jared Spool, Terry Winograd, and other notables.

Ack!

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Worked through the night last night, and have a lot to do for tonight and tomorrow. Sorry, my poor, neglected baby blog...

On the brighter side I spent last night coding my first 100% CSS site, eschewing tables completely. It gives me headaches, but I know it's the way to go.

Stuff to share soon... Oh, and I need yinz help with a survey. I'll post the word doc here later tonight. I'd love it if you could d/l it and fill it out.

Soon!

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SNOW
DAY!

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Did a lot of great work on my Game Design project. I now have a dice game that, packaging issues aside, I feel is actually ready to be pitched to small games distribution houses. All I know is that people with no vested interest enjoy playing the game enough that they really want their own sets.

In other news, it's snowing tons. It snowed about a foot in the last 24 hours, and another 6-8 inches in on the way tonight and tomorrow. Add this to the fact that the City of Pittsburgh ran out of salt. Last week they dusted the roads with cinder, and today snowploughs and bravery were the city's only salvation. With tonight's storm, the Pittsburgh weathermen are calling this the worst winter on the books. Last month's average high was around 20, compared with the 40-year average of 36.

Htet Htet, Dana, Rachel and I all went sledding down the hill at Homewood Cemetery, about 200 feet, stopping jst before the frozen pond. I have a little video I'll try to get up once I finish the considerable assignments due tomorrow and Tuesday.

I had a very nice Valentine's Day with Rachel. We stayed in, cooked, and watched My Big Fat Greek Wedding. I also had a bad crick in my neck, and the doctor said it could take 10 days to get fully better, but backrubs were the best thing for it, so I should get out of the medical center and find myself a valentine. Thankfully I was prepared.

Also, for those of you who use the RSS feed, I did a little code work on the feed, so it shows the first two paragraphs of each article on Fury, with a link and a message showing what % of the post is currently displayed, if it's longer than two paragraphs.

and amazingly, I still like the snow. I've rediscovered the wonder of more-than-four-inches of snow, when the pillowey yet nonslippery powder means you can stop being so careful with your step. Heck, I even jogged to the bus stop.

Now it's time to go to sleep. My game prof is going to mail us by 9:30 to let us know if class is delayed or cancelled due to the snow. Officially, CMU never closes for weather. But then, I wouldn't expect any less from the only institution I've every worked for or attended that doesn't observe President's Day. Apparently that's more common in private East Coast institutions. In California, pretty much all offices close (Am I wrong?).

Well, maybe Mother Nature will enforce what CMU doesn't.

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So I've finally emerged from this tunnel of work I've been confined by for the last week. I've designed and field-tested two iterations of a photocopier interface, an iteration of an online banking site, created a six-page feature proposal for a meeting with General Motors this afternoon, written two essays on the previous week's readings, and designed a (imbo) kickass dice game for game design and put it through more than eight iterations.

For next week I need to put my copier through another three iterations, my bank site through another one (both using high-fidelity prototypes), run my nearly-perfect game through another three iterations, and call dice wholesalers to discuss volume pricing to determine the final in-store target price for my game to assess the viability of self-financing a small run to seed to local game stores, and possibly find a distributor.

Oh, and my sidekick but the dust yesterday evening, with the 'LCD screen of mayhem' but apparently coughed that dust up in the night because it's working fine again now.

So now I have a similar workload to last week, only I have a full week to do it, and not the two days I gave myself last week (except for the game which took up most of my cycles). There was Buffy and it was Good. My new TiVo is on its way and will probably arrive today (oh yeah, sorry to the folks who are lusting for my old TiVo. This one's going to Mom. (Hey Mom, you've got Tivo!)

My Dad's birthday party is this Saturday and I'll be there in spirit.

It snows pretty much every day but I'm still waiting for that big snow that will make snowmen and sledding the inevitable order of the day.

Our guest speaker at last night's seminar at one point asked, "who else is sick of the cold?" and I was surprised that as most of the hands made for the sky, mine was not among them.

And in the midst of all this, I plan to start production code for Fury 4.0 tomorrow. I've got a lot of changes I'll be rolling in to one release, so expect that to take up a lot of my (ahem) extra time for the next couple weeks.

Hey, how you doin'?

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I'm completely overloaded and panicing today. I emailed in sick to my classes, because it's true enough. There are so many things fighting for importance in my head that I can't do anything at all. Total and complete lockup.

So I shut the doors and am trying to sort it all through.

I have a 4:30 GM meeting I really can't miss, and I'll have tons to do this weekend, but for the next three hours I'm working at relieving the pressure inside and outside my head. Don't worry; no literal spikes will be used.

Oh, and I desperately need a new glasses prescription. After spending so much time awake and working I decided to give my eyeballs a rest and went from contacts to my glasses for a while. Big mistake. It took me almost three days to connect the difference in prescription to the headaches I was having. I'm so used to headaches coming on from dehydration, I neglected to think it could be anything else.

It wasn't until I lost the ability to focus without my brain physically hurting more that I put two and two together. Back home and with contacts in, at least that torment has eased.

Now I'm resting for a few hours and then playing a game of life-tetris, where the blocks are assignments, and the column is my day-to-day life. I've gotta work that pile down, because level 9's coming up.

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It seems that I regualrly pull one all-nighter a week nowadays. Last night was that night for me, working on an assignment for Programming User Interfaces. Argh. I got to sleep for a couple hours between 9 and 11 this morning before my 11:30 class, yet I have class until 9:30 tonight, and then Rachel's picking me up from school and we're goin gto watch TiVoed Buffy (since we both have class at 8 on Tuesdays. Grr!)

Anyhow, my last project for Game Design was to write up a bit about my five favorite games. I shifted it around a little. Bango's gone, and Air Hockey, #5 until the last minute, didn't make the cut, when I remembered a game I had'nt played in years, but really want to again.

Anyhow, I hope you enjoy it, especially the picture of my cousin Sara and the monster Cirbbage board.

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So, after listing over three hundred games, our next task is to pick our five favorite games, with the condition that the games can be demonstrated in a classroom setting. There's more to the assignment, analyzing the nature of the game, what makes it distinctive, and all that, but I won't bore you with those details.

Sifting through the full list in my head, I think I've settled on Fluxx, Cribbage, Zendo, and Bango (yeah, so we might have to go outside to demonstrate (and I'd need to borrow a wicked knife)) as my first three games. I'm still looking for a fifth, and I'm not married to Bango.

Am I missing something obvious? Not that your favorite is necessarily mine...

Okay, ditching Bango in favor of Karen's and my movie game... Maybe Bango will stay as #5 if I don't think of a good alternative.

One thing that got me praise in the hopscotch assignment was my use of pictures. Now that I'm doing the movie game, I wish I had a photo of the paper tablecloth Emily and I made at Rio Grill in Carmel, covering the entire tabel with a couple hundred actors and movies, all latticed together in a huge Gordian neural net knot.

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So there are games missing, and of the 312 games on the list, only 175 currently have descriptions, and the whole thing is in a 13,000 word, 28 page PDF file, yadda-ya, but in all its state-of-fluxiness, this is My Game Toolbox version 1.0.

It will be added to and updated as time goes on, and may even be database driven, allowing others to add their own comments, memories, and rulesets for games. But that's for later.

Oh, and I got a coveted 'A' on Fitaly Jumpboard Hopscotch. Yay!

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Another in a long series of displays of why I get so little sleep, here's my latest class assignment, this time from my Interface and Interaction Design course.

The assignment: Take a widget (defined as a single interactive element, like a lightswitch, a pull-top can, or what have you), and redesign it, demonstrating the affordances and benefits of your new design.

Since the professor said the assignment would be graded as much on final production value as for the design of the widget itself, I went a little photoshop crazy.

If you're truly interested, I have a lot more specification detail than made it into the poster, but the poster still gives a good idea.

I chose car exterior door locks.

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Well, all games anyhow.

That's this week's Game Design assignment: Make a list of all the games you've played. Then go through and determine, as best you're able, what year you first played each (and how old you were). Then come up with a sentence or two describing what was notable about that game to you.

That's right. Every single one. From the past 25 years.

The exercise is intended to provide us with a toolbox of ideas. Looking through the list of games we have experience with should prove useful when trying to deal with design problems or coming up with new game designs. In this I have no doubt it will succeed.

When Prof. Schell handed out the assignment I was a little panicked. He's looking for at least 150 games on our list, due Monday. Specifically, he also wants at least five games for every year since age 5. 150 games? It sounnded like an awful lot.

Then I started thinking...

...and writing...

...and thinking and writing.

Quickly I realized that 150 is a cakewalk. A really low number.

Christ I've played a lot of games. Board games, video games, card games, sports, made-up games...

I'm still scared of this assignment, but I'm not scared of 150. It's clear that by Monday I could easily have a list of 400 or more, and the only part that scares me is knowing that for weeks after I turn in the assignment I'll keep thinking of games from my past that didn't make it on to the list.

Truly this will be a living document.

As such, I'm putting it up here during its fetal stages. Each of these games reminds me of several more, but since I have to start somewhere:

Cat's Cradle, Jumprope, Doubledutch, Chinese hopscotch, dodgeball, "operator" math games, hopscotch, fitaly jumpboard hopscotch, bouncy-ball (Ali), D'n'D, HitchHikers Memory game (Josh), M.A.S.H. (fortune-telling), Hitchhikers Guide (Infocom), Enchantment (Infocom), Tee-ball, Baseball, Basketball, Stunt-kite flying, Boggle, Bridge, Sorry, Handball, Tetherball, Tag, Freeze Tag, Keep away, Chasing, Unsnapping bras (AP Calculus (Thank's Jeff!)), Apache, Airborne, Gato, Dark Castle, Crtstal Quest, Crystal Castles, Crystal Crazy, Glider Pro, World Builder, Minotaur (World Builder), Spacequest (World Builder), 3 in three, Fools Errand, Cosmic Ozmo, Orbiter, Microsoft Flight Simulator, Falcon, Rummykub, Rummy, Cribbage, Wizardry, Knights of Diamonds, Ultima IV, Final Fantasy VII, Galaxian, Galaga, Defender, Stargate, Space Invaders, Robotron, Daleks, Snood, Tempest, Solarian, Pipedream, Lode Runner, Donkey Kong, Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros., Super Mario World, Super Aqua Blooper, Dig-dug, Centipede, Millipede, Tapper, Track and Field (video game), Frogger, Zork, Bejeweled, Dopewars, Tetris, Dance Dance Revolution, Beatmix, Quake, Doom, Quake II, Quake III, Half-life, Myth, Myth II, Myst, Riven, Dark Forces, "I know you are, but what am I?", Air Hockey, Pong, Ping Pong, Foosball, Volleyball, Charades, Movie Game (Karen), Movie Game (Ammy and Rick), Croquet, Marco Polo, Scavenger Hunts, Geocaching, Easter Egg Hunt, Phase 10, Gimmie the Brain, Lord of the Fries, Deadwood, Bitin' Off Heads, Kill Dr. Lucky, Clue, Masterpiece, Life, Hungry-hungry Hippos, Malibu Gran Prix, Kings in the Corner, Blackjack, Keno, Poker, Spades, Hearts, Roulette, Craps, Slots, Minesweeper, Hangman, Jeopardy, Battleship, Chess, Checkers, Othello, Tennis, Racquetball, Wallyball, Speed Cribbage (Dad), Scrabble, Speed Scrabble (x-mas 2002), Nurtz, Speed, Spit, Pictionary, Cranium, Kickball, Relay Race, Obstacle Courses, Footraces, Touch Football, Tossing Football (Karen), Aerobee (Dad and Karen), Frisbee Golf, Ultimate Frisbee, *Drama games, *SCA games, *Faire games, *Card games, *Fezziwigs games, Chrononauts, Fluxx, Nanofictionary, Icetowers, Zendo, Liars Dice, Tiajuana, Yahtzee, *Dart games, Matchbox car racing, Firetruck playtime, Grapes-in-mouth, RC car racing, Guillotine, *other computer games, *console games, **odyssey 300, **colecovision, Red Baron (snoopy), **Intellivision, **gameboy games, **single-game handhelds, **current (gamecube/playstation/etc), **GBA, VirtualBoy Tennis, **pinball games, Parchesi, Poor Pussy, General Post, Blind Man's Bluff, Telephone, Picnic on Mars, Alphabet in the Round, Bondage, "Honey if you love me, why won't you smile?", Horseshoes, Wheel of Fortune, Name That Tune, BlindDateBlog, SurvivorBlog, Tic-Tac-Toe, Nine Mans Morris.

*The one with aserisks are genres that I've only barely dipped in to, lest I forget old favorites like Venture for the ColecoVision or Super Monkey Ball for the Gamecube. With those last two I have exactly 201, and if the recall of games follows the same decay curve as most large recall tasks, I'd estimate I have another 300-600 games left in me. Time will probably be the limiting factor for Monday.

So did I forget anything obvious? Err, obvious to you, that is. I mean, I probably didn't play all the games you did, but I bet your thoughts will trigger more of my own memories.

This should be one of the funner and more nostalgic discussions...

Thank you Zhaneel and Ammy for your help. Ammy, sadly I accidentally deleted our IM convo. You don't happen to have it, do you?

Oh, a few more I shouldn't forget: Milles Bornes, Uno, Lord of the Rings Board Game, Chez Geek, Magic: The Gathering (just twice, but still), Diplomacy, Risk, Illuminati, Shinobi, SimCity, The Sims, Sim Tower, Battlezone, Robotron, Dragons Lair, Billiards, Bowling, Tron, Tron Discs, Street Fighter, Gran Turismo 2, Need for Speed II, Need For Speed III: Hot Pursuit, Virtua Fighter, Sands of Egypt (CoCo), Guess My Number (Mickey), Merlin (handheld), Red Rover, Trivial Pursuit, Kinesis, Speed Sliding Puzzle, Snake, A-Maze-Ing (Mac 128K), Pyramid Solitaire, Clock Solitaire, Klondike, Dark Castle, Diablo, War, Bullshit, CivNet, 10 women (Mr. Bad), Warcraft, Warcraft II, Warcraft III, Starcraft, Pole Position, Lunar Lander, Maelstrom, Gother Than Thou, Aquarius. Okay! I'm stopping now! I could keep going on and on but I have to sleep now. This paragraph adds another 51 games to the total.

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So it's week two and the semester's already at full tilt. I pulled my first all-nighter of the semester Sunday night, and have been packed with work all week, and all the week to come.

It feels SO GOOD.

I learned a new word yesterday: eustress. I haven't found it in an online dictionary yet, but I'm going to check out the Oxford. Eustress is an opposite of 'distress.' In effect, eustress is 'good stress.' To me it feels like 'frenzy' but then I'm a sicko who likes frenzy. Anyhow, that's what I've been swimming in, and I like it.

Every single one of my classes is awesome. My teachers are fantastic, in contrast to a mix of brilliance and disappointment last semester. I'll write up my course listing in the next couple days, and will dive into detail on each of my classes later on, with syllibi and possibly even photos and video.

Right now, I just finished a simple maze program, representing my first foray into visual basic. It's a simple maze game for my Programming Usable Interfaces class. We were told to code something, anything, in Visual Basic. Don't even try to map the maze; it randomizes each time you turn. It's nothing special, but it's great to have the freedom of sitting down in a computer lab for a few hours, letting my imagination being my guide. Oh, and I wouldn't have called it 'impress.exe' except that was the sole constraint of the assignment.

For a (very, very slightly) more down-to-Earth example of what I've been doing the last few days, our first project in Game Design was to create a new game based off of hopscotch. The assignment was in three parts:

1. Brainstorm at least 50 ideas for hopscotch.
2. Pick three or more ideas, and write a paragraph or two exploring them.
3. Pick one, create a rule set, playtest it, document your findings, iterate the ruleset, playtest again, and document your findings.

I love this place. Wait'll you hear about our project for this week. I'll write that as soon as I finish my reading for tonight's classes.

I'll need your help. Get ready for some great nostalgia.

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Okay, more a note to myself, but today, the first day of classes, was great. I had two classes today, just getting started. I'll write more on them in the morning.

I also need to talk/write to Trisha, Emily, Mellie, my Dad, Ali and Mark, and Dawn, not to mention follow-up on my two interviews last week. Ahh, documenting. I want to write about my absolutely fabulous month, but I'll settle for the moment to say that it was tremendous, and to thank my friends for being my friends, and adding such richness to my life.

Okay, sleeptime. One class I wanted, a fiction writing workshop, I've been asked to de-list since it's intended for undergraduates. I'd be miffed, but it's okay because my courseload was getting crazy-heavy and now I have 90 minutes in the middle of the day on Tuesdays and Thursdays to do things like finish this post.

I'll do a write-up of this semester's courses, but I should at least wait until I've at least attended each class once. Until then, here's my schedule.

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...I am done.

Granted I haven't slept since yesterday morning, and I have two hours to pack for four weeks away, including a little housecleaning so I don't feel it nagging me in the back (2700 miles back) part of my mind.

There's a little story about Christmases and my own personal holiday tradition, but it'll have to wait until after I sleep, because it's about all I can do to type this, and I shouldn't even be doing that in the face of folding, packing, forgetting, remembering, forgetting again, cleaning, and oh the lugging.

But it doesn't matter, because the semester's done.

yay

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I've no idea if this is normal or not, but getting ready to drive to my final this morning, scraping the ice off my windshield, I had to do double duty and scrape off the ice that formed on the inside of my windshield. Burr...

In other news, my final went well. My last scholastic responsibility for the semester is a multimedia project that's to be presented tomorrow morning. I'm actually kind of miffed: the coure was supposed to teach us Director with Lingo, and Flash with Actionscript, but we mysteriously never got to Flash at all. I can't recall such a truncation of a curriculum since my 11th grade AP US History class never made it up to World War II. No wonder that was the only AP test I didn't pass and that's including AP Government, even though I've never taken a government class in my life.

I've got half a mind to bring up a plain white screen tomorrow and say, "I decided to do my final project in Flash, and so I incorporated all the Flash and Actionscript I learned in this course." Even though the instructor likes John Cage, something tells me this assignment wouldn't fly... At the end of the semester, with only one thing left on your plate, such things do get so tempting though.

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So today is my last day of classes for the semester. I still have a final on Monday, and a final presentation the day after, but as far as class goes, I have my last session of Communication Design Fundamentals in a little over an hour, and that's it.

I'm sure it's partly the snow, partly the fact that I'm coming off an all-nighter, after coming off 4 hours of sleep (6am-10am) on Tuesday night (Wednesday morning), and partly having far more exciting stuff to do than time to do it, but it's literally incredible to me that the semester's essentially over. Incredible, as in not credible, as in I understand the concept, yet cannot give credit to the prospect of its validity. Sure, I still have work to turn in in three of my classes, one of which I haven't started yet, and sure I have a final that could snap me like a tiny twig of logic, but I'm not the only one. A lot of people are in a daze, looking vaguely like they should be passing their yearbooks around for people to sign, but they forgot to make yearbooks in the first place.

Okay, enough with that. Time to enumerate stuff:

There's snow on the ground and lots of it. I checked Weather.com at 4am and saw Pennsylvania covered in dark white (heh, 'dark white' makes sense if you look at a precipitation map). I looked out the window and saw the world covered in softness. Don't worry Ali, I got your snowscaped graveyard picture. I just need to get home to download it. I forgot to bring the cable. The snow's about 5 inches deep; just enough to change a road from a right to a privilege. The forecast is pretty clear for the next week, but the temperature will sway from 36 to 8, so I don't see much of this stuff clearing away before I take off. I hope my car likes its snowbank.

My powerbook came last Tuesday (wow, two days seems so much longer when you were conscious for 49 of the intervening 53 hours), and I've barely had time to give it its due, much less revel in it here. Fittingly enough, I'm typing on it now in the UC center, its frosted silver mirrors the suddenly winterized world just outside the double-paned glass. I haven't had time to install enough apps or docs on it to feel comfortable giving it dominion over my digital well-being, but somewhere between Tuesday and Thursday I'll be loading it up with my 20gig mp3 dowry, 4gig photo tome, and assorted other data vaults. The thing is truly freaking beautiful. I don't know what more I could want in a machine. I can't reasonably ask for faster than a 1Ghz G4, and the screen constantly seems bigger and brighter than this svelte machine should be able to house. Internal wireless is also a dream come true. Joy.

When I brought the box up from the FedEx guy Tuesday morning, I gently patted my newly-old powerbook, telling it that it would always have a place with me. I have an affinity for my portable machines. In contrast, I'm planning on selling my Quicksilver G4 tower, its noise and continuing depreciation outweighing the little unique utility not duplicated by my sibling powerbooks.

I should have treated my sidekick so well. Nestled in my pocket yesterday, it decided to make a plea for attention, no doubt feeling neglected and threatened by the new baby. It decided to deactivate every other vertical line of pixels, and dim several of the others. Cajoling, rebooting, and eventually slapping it briskly (think baby's first breath, not crying toddler over the knee) to kick'start the display, but to no avail. The true irony (if one can extend anthropomorphosis this far) is that the temper tantrum is backfiring: T-Mobile is sending ad advance-replacement my way this morning, and it'll be here early next week, so the sidekick that wouldn't shape up will now ship out, replaced by a new doe-eyed machine that's never known a world without the G4PB. Now I just have to make sure the powerbook doesn't get jealous. Oh, and a name for the new powerbook? I'm leaning towards 'Sendai.'

What else can I tell you? For the first time in memory I have both of my Congresses of Vienna blocked out for a Gaskell's Ball that's still over two weeks away. Not bad for a country boy. Now I just have to make sure I can still dance.

The Great Blogger Diet hasn't been forgotten or abandoned. On the contrary, there's quite a tale to tell on that front; one that might just rival this post in length, and may even rise to the level of the mythic laundry story, so you'll understand that I want to take my time with it. Some time this weekend. (I just want to add how cool it is that searching for that url was so easy

It's amazing how everything's quieter in the snow. It's like hanging tapestries on the walls, all over the world. Busses driving by no longer chug, but shoosh, and traffic moves slow enough that you don't have to look both ways, just walk with the traffic, going at a downstream angle, just like how they told you to escape a running river.

The air is so quiet, and everyone looks like a student. It feels like a weekend on campus, which is just like a weekday on campus, with authority figures removed.

But I still have a few miles to go before I sleep, and more upon my next waking, so I'll cut this short (even though it's anything but). I could write all day, but I need to turn it to more scholastic ends at the moment.

And yea though I had to trudge through powder to get to a packed damp bus early this morn, I do still so love the snow.

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It's 3:25am, it's 17F degrees outside, and I'm at Kinko's with my three teammates printing 36 color pages for HCI methods. Between this and next Monday's final, over half the semester's points are just waiting to be won, here on the burgh is right! (where right = really, really cold and late)

Hell yes I'm punchy.

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(If you're looking for the piece on my mom's chorus and the singing holiday cards, click here.)

So this is the last week before finals. Of course, I only have one final exam. The rest of my work is finishing final projects for my courses. On Wednesday our final report is due in HCI Methods class, worth nearly a quarter of my grade, to be followed next Monday by the course final, which will be worth more than a quarter of my grade.

On Thursday I'm presenting my final project for Computer Music, a set of code (written in at least three languages) which takes in a logfile and outputs music. I'll be writing up more about this once the project is done, but it's pretty cool.

Later on Thursday I'm turning in my notebook for Communication design Fundamentals (damn I keep wishing I'd posted a lot of the work I've done in these classes as I went along. Just too busy, and now's no exception, but soon I will have a lot more time...), a notebook showing my creative process for each of the assignments I've done over the course of the semester.

Monday the 9th is the aforementioned Methods final, and the following Tuesday and Thursday are presentations for our interactive programming final projects; in my case that's a Director project along similar lines to the computer music project: visual and aural representation of a logfile for easy cognition, only this time augmenting the sounds with some kinetic typography and realtime controls.

The long and short of it is that I'm insanely busy, but just for the next week and a half. Oh, and I'm coming back to the Bay Area for Winter break on December 12th.

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On one hand, I'm stressed because I didn't get to sleep until 4am, and had to get up at 7:15am for class this morning. I have work due in three classes that I need to get done by the end of the day (Communication Design Fundamentals, Computer Music, and HCI Methods) along with 7 hours of class. Ugh. I just want today to be both over and done with. Actually, I'm pretty excited about the Computer Music project. It's my final project for the class (an interim report is due today), and as soon as I foist off today's shackle, I'll talk about it on here. It's only fitting: in a roundabout way, you're all a part of it.

Helping me get through the day (in addition to the anticipation of new powerbooks tomorrow) is this which, at this moment, is here.

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Went to a great Halloween party last night, courtesy of Rich (all praise Rich! Give him money if you didn't at the party! If you were there! Why am I yelling?! I don't know! OK then!) Pretty much everyone there was from the HCI or Interaction Design programs, or with someone from there.

Click on Death to see the photo gallery:

Happy Halloween!

I didn't think I had a costume in the stuff I brought out from Berekely, (and so I didn't wear one to the party the night before), but in the end I remembered my communicator badge and pips I had in my special box in the closet, and my sweatshirt that I've always thought looked 'Federation Casual' and it all came together okay.

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So I was up until 6:30 this morning, in the cold multimedia lab, before walking over to my office to take a nap on the couch, prepping for my 8:30 class.

My cellphone went off at 8 as I asked it to, and I opted for a 5 minute snooze before facing the next half of my 48-hour day.

Apparently reality and I have a difference of opinion as to what constitutes 5 minutes, or so I realized when I looked at my watch and saw that it was 9:55.

Pissed at being (so very) late, and having a flashback to the recurring nightmares of waking up 2.5 hours late for a 3 hour final, I got up moved my car which, after two hours of delinquancy, didn't have a ticket (small favors, I thank thee), and was grateful (for once) that Interactive Programming is a 3 hour class, and I'd be coming in just after our mid-class break.

Walking in on a presentation, I was still asked by Pamela to see her after class. I thought I was older than that. Wanh. (stomping foot)

Nevertheless, the presentation went off without a hitch, and all went well. She told me I should be working on more challenging programming projects, and I certainly could; I just have to clear my work buffer to the point where the assignment doesn't get shoehorned into the sandman's time, because sometimes he takes time when you've really got better things to do.

So some of the fonts won't work quite right, unless you have the full Lucida family on your computer, but if you're interested, here's the thing I made last night, a takeoff on the traditional hangman game.

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I'm in the multimedia cluster, coding a Macromedia Director implementation of Hangman... It's so cold here that it's getting hard to type.

Note to self... Check the windows, and next time bring my gloves.

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If any of you have never been to Exploding Dog, you really should. Readers email him captions and he draws the pictures. I love that site because content only comes every week or so, so I forget about it for months at a time, then visit and spend a half-hour rolling in laughter.

And I'm not the only one. The only thing better than Sam's juxtaposed cunning wit and crude drawing style is when people take that art and put it in the most (in)appropriate of places.

Yesterday I was walking down the hall from my office, surrounded by Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute in the subfloors of Newell-Simon Hall, when I came across this office placard:

Usability study, anyone? (click to enlarge)

In related (well, loosly) news, the CMU HCII t-shirts are in! During orientation week we split into groups to design our class shirt that we would wear to conferences, and to show our HCI pride. My group's design won out, and now we've got the threads to show for it!

(Okay, very loosly. In Kevin's head it went "Ooh. I should get one of thise nifty exploding dog t-shirts. Oh I should tell them about the HCII t-shirts that came in! Yeah, I'll just talk about it here, since it followed from the train of thought. Oh, but not their train of thought. Oh well. It's my site. Yeah. I can just explain it all in 100 words or less at the end. Then it'll all make sense. Do you really think they care about it making sense? Do you think they're still reading? Oh, nevermind.")

Anyhow, funny sign, new t-shirts. End of line.

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Damnit damnit damnit... this stupid software we're supposed to use for my computer music class is so buggy on the mac. not only do I frequently come across functions that just don't work on the mac side, but a couple hours ago it actually brought down my machine to the point where I had to install system software on another partition to get up and running again.

I hate this... I'd go talk to the instructor (class is right now and I have to go so I can at least catch some of it), but I think this is another one of the weeks he's away at a seminar. Fuck.

I'm just stressing.Part of me wants to ditch this class, but then I'd have to take seven classes next semester to graduate on time.

Okay, I'm stressing and venting, venting and stressing. Parental and familial types who may be reading this, don't worry, I'll take care of it in typical Kev fashion, but that doesn't stop me from having the stress, and using it as a fuel, a belly of burning coal to fire up a solution to this problem.

It's nobody's fault, and I'm not mad at anyone (except myself) but arghhh, it's so frustrating.

More later, I'm sure.

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So today I'm planning on skipping my Communication Design Fundamentals course to go see a lecture from Stephen Wolfram regarding his new book, A New Kind of Science which I've touched on before.

The book is a tome, and it's hard to wade through it while trying to keep its pomposity from sticking to your boots, but maybe seeing him in person will provide a nice precis of the text, and either encourage me to actually work through the tome, or know enough to put it into storage the next time I have to render judgement on my books' fates.

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Big mid-term today (my first ever grad school midterm), but after that, the workload will ease off for a few days, and I can start posting the plethora of content I've been building up, waiting only for time to polish and format...

But first, I must study...

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'Interactive Programming' aka the Director/Lingo, Flash/Actionscript class, to be exact. Yay! The compromise made between the instructor and the two of us still dying to get in is that, as long as the class remains full, we use our laptops instead of the cluster computers in the classroom, but that's a small price to pay. After all, I'd rather work between classes on this computer than a cluster computer anyhow, so not having to shuffle the file between the two daily is actually a plus.

Coming in late, I have to play a little catch-up, but it's worth it, and the assignments that I choose to post on Fury will be much more interesting than the papers for Human Factors, which I'll be dropping. Not that Human Factors isn't a good class, but it's not as entertaining for you, and that's what it's all about!

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I'm sitting here in the University Center (dubbed 'the U.C.' which having come from a U.C. is confusing), fifteen minutes before my 9am Computer Music class, relazing and drinking my first chai in over a month.

Things are really settling in, and I'm enjoying the warm weather (94 degrees yesterday!) in the absence of the earlier high humidity. The cicada have all died off, and night has been reclaimed by the crickets. I can feel the days getting shorter, yet the perpetually forecasted 72 degree days are always several days off, replaced by scorchers as the days roll on.

All's well in Kevinland at the moment, and I'm doing cross-country-trippage video-editing in the off-hours. I dreamed that it snowed last night, and that day will probably come sooner than I expect.

Just wanted to wish everyone a pleasant morning, while most of my readers are probably still asleep...

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I went to the CMU Ballroom Dance Club's first meeting of the semester last night and it was a blast. Though in form and nature it was almost identical to the UCBD lessons I took five years ago, but my experience here was completely different, because somewhere over those intervening five years I actually learned how to dance. Not necessarily specific dances, but just the general comfort of dance.

It's like learning to play the piano. Learning to dance isn't about learning one kind of dancing, say foxtrot, then learning another, say cha-cha. Learning that way is like learning to play the piano by learning one song, then another song, and another and so on until you're a pianist. No, it's far more effective to learn how to play the piano, then learn songs.

I suppose that's how general dance classes work, but sadly 'pick-up' lessons, like those taught in most clubs, have to cater to all points in the learning curve, so they just teach you the specific dance, like teaching a specific melody.

The good side of this is that nowadays I can pick up these dances in a snap. Lead/Follow ratio was about 1.2:1, which isn't bad, but if UCBD is any indication, it'll oscillate over the course of the semester.

In the absence of a dance-focused circle of friends (I miss Plough/Gaskells/Peers/FNW) I'm also planning on attending the Saturday competition team lessons. It looks to be a fun group, and though I've never tried competition ballroom, it could be a lot of fun.

Only they all do Rotary Waltz out here, not Viennese. We'll have to see what can be done about that.

That, and I'm considering teaching some Irish set dancing... (Ammy? Any advice on a lesson plan? It's been forever since I've spent time in the beginning class at Plough... Oh, and I might need my Starry Plough dance book after all! We'll see...)

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So after day two, my class schedule is starting to settle down. I'm really excited about several of my classes, and I'm still on pins and needles and will be until everything's finalized. First off we have the core classes for the HCI Masters students this semester:

Intro to HCI Methods - Dealing with all the old standbys of contextual inquiry, task analysis, heuristic evaluation, and the like, only unlike my classes at Berkeley, this time we'll actually be going through the gruntwork of GOMS instead of just reading about it. (Briefly, GOMS is a 'hard math' way of doing usability analysis. Basically you assume an expert user and calculate exactly how much work, (time and cognitive effort) has to go in to accomplishing each of a suite of common tasks.) GOMS is interesting because it ignores the personal side of things, the enjoyment factor or the learning curve, but it's really valuable for those expert systems where people will be performing repetitive tasks, or will be highly trained in the tool. The class will also contain a good-sized usability project for a group on campus (25 of us are split into 6 groups, each assigned to a different campus computing effort in need of interface design or refinement). More to come soon on that front.

HCI Pro Seminar - Each week we'll have a distinguished speaker in the field come to talk to us on Wednesdays, followed by school-sponsored pizza. This time the class is so large that we'll probably trade off half-and-half for pizza chats, but we'll all get to glean the wisdom of visiting and local experts.

CDF - or Communication Design Fundamentals, is the class I'm taking because I didn't have a formal design background. This year it looks to be principly about typography, which suits me fine. As a bonus, we'll be doing all our work in Adobe InDesign, which I've been meaning to pick up for a while anyhow. I just know this class is going to make me frustrated with the web. I love typefaces almost as much as I dislike using gifs and jpegs on sites just to render specific typefaces. I'm considering putting up the occasional post in PDF, just so I can really run free with the design. As an added bonus, google will index it just the same.

Intro to Computers in Music - One of my two 'wow' classes, this is the first time Roger Dannenberg has taught this class in over five years. Prof. Dannenberg is famous (if you're into music and sound synthesis) for his work in creating Nyquist, the powerful programmatic sound-synthesis tool (open source, multi-platform, and using LISP for scripting no less! I swear I thought I'd never again use LISP after taking my AI class). Filled with CS and Music students (though more of the former), the class's final project is a choice between a ~10-minute original composition or an extension of Nyquist, to be incorporated into the package. Actually, the parameters are more broad, and those are just highly-suggested routes to realizing the final project, but I find it *really* intriguing, especially in light of my interests in realtime use of sound for ambient interfaces.

Interactive Programming - Okay, so I'm not in this class yet, but I'm really hoping (yes, this is the other 'wow' class). Led by Pamela Jennings, this class helps artists (formal or otherwise) realize their inspirations in interactive art, primarily through director and flash, relying heavily on advanced scripting in Lingo and Actionscript, respectively. Now, y'all know how interested I am in art- and computer-mediated communications (AOLiza, Randompixel (Cameo), War, Yahoo Messenger, et al). What I've always wanted is a good foundation in richer tools, because coding in javascript, perl, and html will only take you so far. Anyhow, the class is impacted, and there are about 10 of us HCI masters students and others vieing for maybe 4 remaining spots in the class. I consider this a once in a lifetime opportunity, and I think it would only be even better taking it at the same time as Prof. Dannenberg's computers in music class. I'd love to be able to share the projects with you. Here's crossing all my fingers!

As always, I'll keep y'all posted. The weather's finally cooling off in Pittsburgh, and things are finally settling down. Envy goes out to all those who have TV and could watch American Idol tonight. I've officially been TV-less for a month now, restricted to a diet of DVDs, but the cable guys' due to come a week from Friday, so my TiVo can feed once more.

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Wow. This is the first time I've been full-time at a new school in eleven years. One thing's for certain: It's a lot different than starting at Berkeley in '91.

On nearly every axis things are different. At Berkeley I lived in the dorms, surrounded by other freshmen; here I live alone in a quiet neighborhood (across the street from the aforementioned cemetery). Before I came in not knowing what I wanted to do with my life; this time around I'm tightly focused: I know exactly what I want to learn and I have a clear idea of how I want to apply those skills when I finish. Back then I took a lingering academic dalliance that would, over the course of a decade, traverse between academia and industry no less than eight times; this time it's a straight 12-month shot, from Yahoo to my Masters in HCI, back to industry.

I also realize how different a person I am. Always the first to jump to the proverbial wall (you know, the one coated with flowers), shy around strangers while trying so hard to fit in -- a juxtaposition that leads invariably to a palpable social awkwardness far worse than shyness: When you're shy, people overlook you. When you're socially inept, people avoid you.

Luckily 18 year-olds are different than the twentysomethings (and thirtysomethings) in grad school, not to mention our shared interests and complimentary backgrounds.

It turns out that we have a huge leg up on last year's Masters students in that most of us got to know each other before classes, and being a social bunch, we had gatherings pretty much every night the week before classes, so now most of us already know a lot about each other, and hang out together, in sharp contrast with last year, where one of the Masters students told me they spent the whole first semester getting to know each other, and even then they didn't really know everyone. We already feel like a team.

So, first day of classes! More pragmatic and slightly less stressful than Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon condones (or, at least tolerates) 'shopping' for classes: signing up for more classes than you could realistically take, to find the ones you like in the first week or two, then drop the others. This is a nice change from Berkeley where you can't sign up for more than max units, so you have to crash all the classes you want/need. The difference is subtle, and probably all in the student's mind, the distinction between trying to crash into a class and trying to stay in a class, but at least it postpones the despair for a few weeks.

Of course, as a grad student the situation is different. I'm taking one or possibly two classes that are taught at the undergrad level, and are heavily impacted, but as a grad student in the department that offers the class, I got an email today saying I'd been enrolled in the class even though I was #21 on the wait list. It's not as unfair as it sounds, considering that undergrads sign up for Fall classes in April, and incoming grad students sign up in July, so naturally allowances have to be made for impacted courses. Still, it's nice.

Oh, the wireless network: It's great. Every foot of lawn, every lounge, classroom, hallway and broom closet is blanketed in 802.11 goodness. I keep my laptop with me as a matter of course now, pulling it out whenever I'm taking a break on campus, eating lunch, or otherwise want to check in on the ether-world which, month-by-month is where more of my work and communication takes place. It's a wonderful thing to have my distal friends so close, even when they're so far.

I'm making a lot of new friends here, too. Despite the pressure-cooker drive to find new people to share experiences with, I'm making some good friends, and a lot of acquaintances. I still feel odd naming names, since I'm made more aware daily of how many of my costudents read this, but I'm sure I'll feel more comfortable with it as we all get to know each other better.

As soon as I finalize my class load, probably by the end of the week, I'll post the list, and describe each one. You long-timers probably remember the left-hand nav module listing the classes I'm in. Well, I'll bring it back, and I'll try to open it up wider, writing all my assignments in HTML so I can share my voyage of discovery with you.

Well, that's probably it for the moment. I'm struggling to get DSL at home so I don't have to plug and unplug dialup whenever I want to check email or movie times. I also need cable, and a bank account, all of which beg the question "why are you blogging until 6pm when you have domestic things to sort out?" Well, you guys come first.

The apartment's really shaping up, and now that I have a hammer I can finish making my space up just the way I want it. Once I do, I'll take 'after' pictures to go along with the 'before' pics I took last June when I signed the lease.

Oh! And I have a new cellphone number! Okay, call me just too clever, but if you know my old Berkeley home # and want my new Pittsburgh cell #, type the Berkeley home # here (no spaces , parentheses, or dashes):

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