Saturday Night

Fun things to do on a Saturday night:
Ride rolling Athena chairs down slanted basement hallways at MIT. Ride tricycles down same hallways. Invent ways to roll down the hills in groups of four. Turn the group of four into a group of five halfway down the hill without slowing down.

Not fun things to do on a Saturday night:
Be on the front chair when the group of four crashes into the wall.

On the plus side, purple is a good color for me - just maybe not on my swollen knees.

Also, the Emergency Pizza Button is pretty sweet.

Strangers on a Train

This morning, like most mornings, I grabbed a copy of the Metro and headed straight for the crossword puzzle. I generally try to pace myself to finish it by the time I hit Central, three stops away from Davis. However, this morning, a fellow passenger interrupted me at about Harvard to ask how the Metro crossword compared to the Boston Globe crossword. I was a little surprised, and slightly annoyed that he broke my rhythm, but I was polite and told him it was approximately the same level of difficulty, but that I really preferred the Times.

He then proceeded to ask me what I do and I treaded lightly, not quite sure who this random stranger was. Eventually, I mentioned that I was going to grad school in computer science in the fall and he asked me what area. When I responded natural language processing, he immediately perked up. His (London based) company, he explained, was starting a Boston branch and looking for developers. One of the board members is a Stanford professor - the PhD advisor to the guys who took time off to found Google. He also wrote one of the earliest natural language parsers back in the late 60s and their company would be developing similar knowledge representation and parsing algorithms. The man then gave me his card, the guest username and password to the company's website, told me to check it out and said that if I was interested in working for them, I should send him my resume.

"I saw the speedy crossword solving and the brass rat," he said. "I figured it was worth striking up a conversation."

My question is, where was this guy when I was looking for a job last summer? Also, I never did finish the crossword.

Tooting my own horn

Someone in Michigan likes me! More specifically, someone in the Computer Science and Engineering Division at the University of Michigan likes me.

The important question to consider...

Do I or do I not want to bring my magic baseball luck to the Detroit Tigers? They don't have quite the drought that the Red Sox had or that the Cubs still have. Plus, they're in the American League central and would be competing directly with the Twinkies.

Poor Iowa *snicker*

As regular listeners of Prairie Home Companion are aware, one of the few things Minnesotans like to do more than mock North Dakota is mock Iowa.* Even our governors have been known to mock Des Moines. And so, I was extremely amused to run across this headline in the New York Times:

The article included such choice Iowa bashing lines as:

"Another Iowan, when asked what the state needed to keep its young people, said, 'An ocean would help.' This is the kind of big thinking Iowa has always been famous for."

"Iowa would be a great place to live, if only the air and the water weren't polluted and you could be sure you wouldn't find yourself living next to 10,000 sows in a hog prison."

In all fairness, Minnesota farm towns, such as Clara City, don't do very well at keeping their young people around either. But at least they tend to stay in the state. (And I do realize the irony of me saying that.)

* Even more than Iowa, we like mocking Wisconsin the most. At least that one's a fair fight and involves sports rivalries. Iowa and North Dakota don't even have sports teams.

Blog Updates

Rodin, the high commander of this here chronosilence.org domain, has made a few updates in order to prevent spam comments. For one thing, he installed MT-Blacklist. Not that you care. What does affect you is that he made the commenting and search features password protected.

It also tells you that those are the username and password when it prompts you for them. However, since I disable commenting on any entry that starts to accumulate spam (which generally happens after an entry turns a few weeks old), I might ask Rodin to turn the password feature off if it turns out to be really obnoxious. So try leaving a comment and tell me what you think.

Edit: Nevermind. I had Rodin turn off the username/password feature. It was a little much for the sake of preventing spam. I'll continue to endorse my method of turning off commenting for old entries instead.

Confusing Advertisements

On the T this morning, I was surrounded by advertisements for Axe body spray, two of which I understood and one of which I didn't. All of the ads had the tag line "The New Longer Lasting Axe effect." The woman sitting next to me was equally perplexed about the ads and we started up a conversation about them. Mostly we discussed how terrible they were.

One of the ads that I understood was a dirty couch with a clean spot where someone had clearly been sitting. Okay, so the effect of the body spray is so great that places you sit are cleaner and prettier. That one makes sense to me. The other ad that I understood, though found mildly offense, was the doorway to an apartment with one of the "Take a Number" machines that you see at the butcher's. Okay, so the stuff is so great that women will be lining up outside your door. I get it -- I'm a little put off and offended by the whole meat market analogy, but at least I understand it.

Now, the ad that neither I nor my fellow T-rider understood was the one in the bedroom. It consisted of an approximately queen-sized bed with white sheets and hundreds of cups on the nightstand next to it. The cups may or may not be filled with water -- we couldn't decide. Either way, exactly what is this ad supposed to be saying? That their body spray makes you really thirsty? That it takes that much water to wash the stuff off?

Whatever the message, we remained unconvinced that "Axe body spray" is anything more than your average deodorant. And we certainly weren't keen on it relegating women to a number.

The Vagina Monologues @ MIT

I'm going to shamelessly self-promote the show I'm directing by sending you to this website. Just click the pretty buttons and buy yourself some tickets.

The Flood

I was over at MIT this evening, running some rehearsals for The Vagina Monologues, completely unaware that there was no water until one of my actresses mentioned that she couldn't shower in her dorm. As it turns out, a water main broke on Broadway, right in front of the Marriott, causing most of MIT and a good part of Cambridge to be without running water for the evening. After rehearsals, I headed over to Putz to hang out with a pair of foolios. Being hungry, we headed up to my neck of the woods where the dihydrogen-monoxide was still flowing.

But first, we made our way to the scene of the incident to survey the damage, dodging the firemen at the hotel by going around the back. It was quite the sight -- a small bubbling geyser in the middle of the street, which had turned into a river. I couldn't quite gauge how deep it was, but I'd guess 6-8 inches from curb to curb. We were pretty much at the head waters of the newly formed Broadway River, but from what I could see, it's mighty waters flowed down for at least a block or two.

We left the river and headed down to the T, where we discovered that the main power was out. The lights that were on seemed to be running off of the very loud backup generator. On the plus side, since the card swipes on the turnstiles weren't working, our ride to Davis was free. Which doesn't mean much to me, since I have a T Pass.

During our hearty meal at Redbones, we had a water fight*, perhaps to celebrate the fact that we had the luxury of wasting it, while those back at MIT were stuck with nothing. And now I'm going to take a shower because I can.

* When I say that "we" had a water fight, I mean that Fucking Amal was spraying us with his straw.

Vagina Warriors, Part 2

It has come to my attention that certain readers aren't actually aware of what a Vagina Warrior is, or why I am proud to be one. Apparently, some of these readers call my father, slightly concerned, as his comment didn't make things any clearer. And so, direct from the flap of the book:

Every year from February to March, local activists raise awareness and funds through benefit productions of The Vagina Monologues and other events as part of V-Day, a global movement founded by Eve Ensler. Vagina Warriors - people committed to ending violence against women and girls around the world - are at the heart of V-Day.

And now you know...

Now who's crazy?

As I made my way back to my office after lunch, I observed a man who appeared to be talking to himself rather loudly while sitting on a bench. Being a hospital in the city, it's not completely out of the ordinary for slightly crazy people to hang around in the lobbies. A nurse, observing the same behavior I had, approached the man and asked if he needed to be helped.

The man looked at her slightly confused. Then he took the nearly invisible earpiece out of his ear and said, "Sorry, I'm on the phone. Could you repeat that?" The nurse sheepishly mumbled "Nevermind" and went on her way.

Whistle Pig Day

'Tis February 2. The day the National League was founded. But since I've always been an American League kind of girl, I'll not dwell on that. February 2's other claim to fame is, of course, Groundhog's Day and Punxsutawny Phil. This year, Phil saw his shadow, meaning six more weeks of winter for us. Personally, I can't wait for another snow storm to blow through with 3 more feet of snow.

On the other hand, Phil's not the only predictor these days. Wiarton Willie, the albino resident of Ontario, did not see his shadow and is predicting an early spring. But then again, he's Canadian and can we really trust those Canucks?

Vagina Warriors

I got my copy of Vagina Warriors this weekend. I flipped through the pages and sure enough, page 78, there Shereen and I are. And on page 79, we've been quoted. Yes, it's fairly evident by the large amount of wrinkles that I pulled that shirt out of the dirty laundry pile in order to wear it that day. But, hey, that dirty shirt got me in a book. A book selling all over the country.

A friend of mine from New York e-mailed me to tell me that he saw it while perusing the Virgin Megastore. I think this might be my fifteen minutes of fame.

Mom - Don't buy it. Your birthday is soon.