I was photographing the courthouse in Washington, Georgia and noticed that the back of the courthouse is a jail:

d and I went on a hot air balloon ride over Napa on Sunday -- quite a blast. It floats so smooth and gently over the valley, highly recommended. All of the balloon rides happen at sunrise so it's like seeing a secret side of the valleys: hot air balloons being inflated on railroad tracks and parking lots, flying over the vineyards, and then landing in whichever field the winds take them to. By the time the first winery opens they're already gone.

More photos

I've been riding a stationary bike at work during the rainy months, but yesterday's Road Bike Review ride was my first time on the bike in a couple months. We spent about 3 hours on the bike on mostly flat terrain, which I followed up with a burrito, four tacos, and half a bag of chips -- the lady at the counter gave me two cups when I asked for a glass of water. Then I slept for a couple of hours. Then I ate some pizza. Then I slept for a lot more hours.

The Tour of California rules

In the event that our flight does not land in Chicago, we will be landing in Dulles

That was the gist of what I heard as I sat down on my Southwest flight this morning. There was much missing from the announcement, such as why a plane that had not yet taken off was uncertain about the location of its landing. We were given the option of leaving the plane, but we opted to stick around for this new adventure in 21st-century quantum air travel. After all, both Chicago and Dulles are closer to our destination than San Jose. Win/win.

I got off my plane in Dulles with a hop and a skip, eagerly looking forward to what Southwest's next exciting twist on air travel would be. They didn't disappoint: we could not be given a refund or voucher because those can only be given at our destination. Dulles was not our destination, but I thought they had already redefined the concept of 'destination' earlier in the day.

They offered us a "40 minute" shuttle from Dulles to BWI in rush hour to catch another flight, but we decided to go rent a car on our own. At worst we arrived an hour later. At best we are currently not in Alaska.

We pigged out at the delicious Alexander's Steakhouse to celebrate a friend's birthday. When it came time to settle the bill there were five Amazon credit cards. As it turns out, we all enjoy that post-Christmas Christmas from Amazon: the day the envelope of $25 gift certificates arrives.

Friday's rainstorm was quite a day: our roof at work poured water, we lost power at home for 12+ hours, two lanes of the highway were closed between home and work, and trees were tipped over on my commute. I also hear that Highway 17 was closed and an 18-wheeler tipped over and closed the Richmond bridge. Other areas suffered 80+ mph winds, but all of the damage in my area was from about 3 inches of rain. Go Cali!

I've been swamped, mostly by having to clear off all three my work computers of data I'd like to save before they're wiped. Foldershare has made the process easier, but there's no good solution for 1.8GB iTunes video files.

The main event for me today was my going away party. Strangely enough we only get company gear when we leave, so I at last have an SRI shirt, mug, and pen. I had been looking forward to the SRI mousepad -- the mouse was invented at SRI -- and was shocked to find that they were out. Who knew they were such popular items?

Of course a going away party is not about getting things but rather the opportunity to say farewell to everyone. Mine was made easier by the fact that I will continue consulting for awhile, so there were less goodbyes and more, "see you less often." At my new company I will be working with people I have not seen in awhile, and so even there the goodbyes did not last long.

July has been a busy month, as always. d and I are still getting settled into our new place, my sister just gave birth to my niece, I've been waking up at 5am every morning for the Tour de France, and Comic-Con is less than two weeks away. But that wasn't enough, so I had to throw in one more move.

In August I will start my new job as an engineer at Willow Garage:

Willow Garage is a research institution dedicated to building prototypes of autonomous devices. We have an autonomous car entry in the 2007 DARPA challenge, and are also working on building a boat that can sail autonomously around the world.

Many of you are aware of my fascination with robots. bp will recall my constant planning for building a WiFi robot while I was at PARC, which fell through due to cost and broken laptop. Now I get to finally build that robot, except it will be... bigger. And I will get to do it while working with some old friends from PARC.

Although the combined move distance for both home and work is only about 2 miles, this caps a month of big changes for me that leaves me extremely excited. After working for two historic research institutions in the field of computer science, PARC and SRI, I'll get my opportunity to contribute to a brand new research lab.

I'm happy to announced that I am now an uncle twice over. I couldn't be there like last time but look forward to visiting soon. At 8lbs, 12 ounces, 20", my new niece isn't quite the heavyweight that my 10 lb, 23" nephew was, but she'll hold her own.

We just signed a lease on a house in Mountain View. We get to keep the location that we love but upgrade everything else: garage, yard, fruit trees, quiet, no smokers, and more rooms. I'm excited as I'll have more room for bikes (I've been eye-ing a new one) and we'll be able to fit some more bookshelves in for my double-stacked books.

Estate sales beware: d will be on the hunt for furniture again.

From m's post nearly three months ago, it should be a bit obvious that I'm a bit behind posting my processed photos of the Great White Shark at Monterey Bay Aquarium. Back when we saw it, it was just a little tyke. By now I'm sure it's proportions are worthy of a Jaws remake... probably not. Either way, you can see what he looked like several months ago. I didn't really have the right camera equipment, so I decided to get creative with the treatment.

Photoset: Monterey/Great White Shark, September '06

A kind anonymous donor has come in as a matcher for the Matching Donations Project. This donor has selected East Palo Alto Charter School, a not-for-profit charter school started by parents in 1997.

After Hurricane Katrina hit, my company offered to match any contributions to the Red Cross. I thought this was a fantastic way for my company to encourage donation. Not long after my dad and I matched donations with one another for the holiday season.

This season I'd like to do something similar, but bigger. I thought, why not match other people's donations? That can be fun in itself, but I'm not super rich; I still need enough money to buy a Nintendo Wii to help... myself. Then I thought, what if multiple people could team up to match donations? The more that can be matched, the more that people can give. It also makes it easier on me: if two people team up to match donations, then I only have to match $0.50 for every dollar donated; if three people, $0.33; and so on... Thus came the idea of the Matching Donations Project. Thankfully, m has already stepped up to help out.

There are two ways to participate:

1) Donate to any of the charities below and send me a receipt (please indicate whether or not you wish to be anonymous):

• Child's Play: raising money for toys and games for Childrens' Hospitals worldwide
• East Palo Alto Kids Foundation (more info at epak.org): provides grants to teachers in the Ravenswood school district. Please enter under "send acknowledgement of this gift to".
• East Palo Alto Charter School (more info at epacs.org: directly support a non-for-profit charter school in East Palo Alto

OR

2) Agree to match contributions and add your own charity to the list above. You must a) agree to match at least $250 and b) donate $50 up front.

• Current totals: $250 ($500)
• Matching funds left: $1000 out of $1250

Current Matchers: * kwc * m * 1 anonymous donor

Do I expect a huge number of people to participate in this? No. But I figured nothing bad could come of trying this, so why not?

FAQ in the extended.

I've managed to put the finishing touches on my computer setup, which just about covers everything I needed to do to get everything in order for the housewarming -- d's got all the other stuff covered. We were running out of wall space, so I was a bit worried as to where I was going to hang my biggest Comic-Con acquisition, an Usagi drawing by Stan Sakai, when I saw this nice big blank space on the side of my computer. A couple minutes later I had the setup you see here:

I'll get a better scan of the drawing (as well as all the other Comic-Con goods) when I have a bit more time.

Wednesday is set for the day of my move from one side of Shoreline Blvd to the other. A detailed plan of attack for each carload has been drawn up; it should be glorious.

A consequence of every move I make is that kwc.org goes into identity reassignment. In the past, I have sometimes temporarily transferred some of the kwc.org files to movabletypo.net. Now that I have separated out my mythbusters and cycling blogs, though, it may be too much of a headache to do the brain transplant. Also, with the Tour de France set to begin, nothing short of the real kwc.org will do for the torrent of multimedia blogging that is set to ensue.

If you happen to know of a spare static IP address and line in Mountain View/Palo Alto/Sunnyvale that I can borrow for a week or so to hookup this server, please drop me a line. If you know of anyone at AT&T/SBC that I can bribe to not take the week or so they normally take to turn a DSL line on, also please drop me a line.

Back at Comic-Con I had the motto, A fool and his money should be parted swiftly, not slowly and painfully. I'm reminded of this motto because the soda machines here at work suck.

Ignoring the ever-present post-it notes requesting refunds because sodas tend to get stuck halfway down, they have the very annoying problem that they make it difficult for you to pay. On my floor, we have Soda Machine I and Snack Machine. Soda Machine I seems to not want to take my dollar bills. Crumpled or crisp, it doesn't even bother sucking the bill in. Luckily, Snack Machine will and it will even change it into four quarters, which allows me to get enough change to buy a soda... except when it doesn't have enough quarters to make change. That's when I get to visit Soda Machine II downstairs. Soda Machine II likes bills, but it requires exact change because Soda Machine Guy didn't putting any change in its slots. Exact change might be possible if the sodas were sensibly priced, but every item requires quarters plus a single nickel to purchase: $0.80, $1.30, $1.80. I don't have exact change, I have two f'in dollar bills and the machines only make change in quarters, so I have to go to downstairs to Soda Machine II, make change, and then walk back to Soda Machine I and get my drink.

You may wonder why I've started blogging about work all of a sudden. Well, this is a very roundabout way of welcoming Adam's new work blog, where he will be talking about Sharpcast -- hopefully not about their soda machines. Adam and I worked in the same group at PARC back in the day and I look forward to seeing what he has to say on his blog.

At last my new workstation has made it to my office. It's a dual Xeon but it's virtually 4 CPUs. I ran a compile of our ginormous application while doing some photoediting in Photoshop CS2 and it didn't blink. I was still getting instant previews of filter effects on a 6 megapixel photo.I've forgotten how to fully utilize this much power -- clearly I've lost my edge. It has earned it's moniker Kilkenny already.

My new work machine is almost ready: 3.2Ghz dual Xeon with 4GB of RAM. Our desktops get beer names and I was asked to submit a list of names:

• Kilkenny
• Arrogant Bastard
• Dead Guy
• Delirium Tremens
• Fat Tire

Kilkenny wins, not for taste, but for its many possible meanings. I also considered Maudite ("cursed"), but I'll save that one for an injury-prone Mac.

I had an fMRI brain scan tonight. The computer scanned me doing several rounds of simple addition and subtraction and was about to move onto a more complex series of problems, at which point it crashed. First, it refused to show me the actual problems -- they were appearing almost fully offscreen. Then it start to flash alternating black and white screens at me while the MRI machine buzzed away. The experimenters were forced to shut it down and only showed me Spongebob thereafter. I think it was afraid.

Read on for an semi-complete essay written in the spirit of silliness. It's an old draft I wanted to wrap up now that we are in the final countdown to entry 2000 (three to go).

Much in the same way that I was certain that I was the only person blogging the Comic-Con, Tour de France, and AAAI artificial intelligence conference, I'm pretty sure I'm the only person in the entire universe with a backpack (any object for that matter) signed by:

• Don Knuth (thanks ota)
• Douglas Hofstadter
• Neil Gaiman
• Dave Zabriskie

Not so coincidentally:

• Neil Gaiman <-> Comic-Con/Comics
• Dave Zabriskie <-> Tour de France/Cycling
• Don Knuth/Douglas Hofstadter <-> AI/Computer Science

Which is to say that I now have tangible/wearable proof of the absurd nicheness of this blog. Allow me to congratulate myself. Now how is it that Bloglines lists other subscribers to this feed? If you've read this far, you're all as dorky as me.

My 11-month-old nephew, can't even really speak yet, but he's already practicing his ninja stance :

(click for movie - 1.6MB)

Ninjas learn silence at a later age.

I meant to wish everyone a Happy New Year and apologize for the flood of entries as soon as I finished writing that flood of entries, but it turns out there were quite a bit more than I thought. I sometimes get asked how I manage to get any work done and blog so much. My answer in the past is that blogging doesn't take that much time. You see a site, save it in a Firefox tab, hit copy and paste a couple of times, and add a snarky line or two. Or you type what you're watching on TV, hit post, and you've got yourself an episode summary. Or you write an entry about writing entries, if you're feeling self-referential.

Having recently succumbed to deadlines at work, though, my new answer is, "When I work eight hours a day, there is plenty of time to blog. When I work more than eight hours a day, there is not." Thank goodness for this Monday holiday. Here's to 2006.

This is post #1902. I will be doing another free dinner for guessing the post date of entry #2000 like I did with entry #1000, but I'll wait until things get a little bit closer before accepting guesses. I don't regularly make New Year's resolutions, but I notice that on entry 1000 I said that I would probably:

• work more on the 1010 aggregator aka movabletypo (true, though bp did most of the work)
• blog less (true)
• write an MTInNOut plugin (0% progress on this one)

These aren't resolutions as much as predictions, which is perhaps more fitting with my pragmatist approach. I guess I have until entry #2000 to write that MTInNOut plugin and write up some new predictions.

Featuring my 11-month-old nephew and an 18-month-old girl.

Girl is playing with a toy. Girl offers it to my nephew, who takes it, shakes it, and is very happy. Girl is smiling ear to ear. Nephew offers toy back to girl. Girl reaches out to grab toy -- nephew pulls it back just as she lays her hands on it. Girl walks away dejected.

Apparently babies learn sharing somewhere between 11 and 18 months.

I'm happy because I have this all on video.

First place would have gone to a friend's 3-year-old toppling an entire Christmas tree by pulling on a single ornament (no injuries), had I actually witnessed the event or aftermath. My nephew can't walk yet, but I'm sure my sister and brother-in-law will use that story as a lesson for baby-proofing their house.

y helped me design a gingerbread house, but this is a case where she probably wishes that I minimize any credit. She designed what was the pretty side, made of hearts and sweetness. With some left over gumdrops and the remaining piece of Gretel's body I turned it into a grotesque caterpillar. She knows better now than to work with me.

• Trader Joe's sells Niman Ranch organic bacon. d and I finished off the whole pack. Actually, we finished off all but about five pieces. The remaining pieces must have been finished off by bacon gnomes chomp munch chomp
• Got tix to the Live 105 Not So Silent Night concert on Dec 9 with The White Stripes headlining
• USC clobbered Stanford 51-21
• Two of my pants were rescued from buttonlessness
• Bought an R/C car (still need to pickup a radio and battery)

The only bad news is that I bought the R/C car because it was on sale at San Antonio Hobby Shop's going-out-of-business sale. Their banner says that the owners are retiring after 40 years. I may have to make several trips there before they close, though the shelves are already starting to look pretty picked through. I should have gotten started on my kite camera project earlier as I don't know if there are any local shops that will be able to sell me all the parts I need anymore.

On Saturday I went on my third Shangri-La hike, an annual hike that Jed organizes that starts at the Squaw Valley parking lot and up the mountain to High Camp. There are many hikes that you can take that give you scenic views of mountains, trees, rocks, and lakes; this is the only hike that I've taken that combines those elements with a hot tub and bar at the top, as well as a cable car back down to your car.

On Sunday I drove back to the Bay Area to go to a wedding (congrats Steve and Heidi!). Weddings can tend to blur, but this one will always stand out for the musical roast the father of the bride delivered during dinner. Sadly I don't have the lyrics.

sidenote: it only took two and half hours to get from North Lake Tahoe (King's Beach) to Berkeley. I'm used to Tahoe trips taking 4-5 hours as I usually leave from the Peninsula. I think future trips to Tahoe (leaving from Berkeley) are in order.

As always, many pictures were taken, and as always, it will take me awhile to go through and select ones that I like. With the Shangri-La photos I can even compare the photos of trees and rocks to previous years' photos to see if the rocks and trees have weathered any. Maybe there is a geologist out there, somewhere, that might be thrilled. Or not.

My desktop still isn't at 100%, but most of my photo workflow is back online, which gives me a chance to post these photos from a Muir Woods hike we did over the 4th of July weekend. The parking lot was packed -- we ended up parking half a mile down the road, but once we got high enough up the trail is became fairly quiet once more, until we reached the Tourist Club with its beer garden and board games. The fog rolled in while we played Trivial Pursuit (rather difficult to answer questions from 1981), so I broke out my camera and snapped some shots.

Foggy Muir Woods photoset

I've been a bit busy the past two weeks. It would be nice to write about all of it, but then I wouldn't get the rest I very much need right now. There's a lot of photos I've got to go through and ship out to people, so that will probably be one of my main tasks this week.

Here's most of what happened the last 13 days (in approximate order of occurrence):

• Went to a wedding in Asilomar/Monterey
• Spent a weekend backpacking in Big Sur
• Entertained my parents in NoCal for three days (mom's first visit to Peninsula)
• Spent the night in Monterey
• Went hiking in Pinnacles National Monument
• Drove the Route 1/Big Sur-Carmel Highlands coastland (twice)
• Introduced my parents to In-n-Out burgers
• Went wine tasting in Sonoma
• Ate at the Girl and the Fig (thanks paul)
• Met my friend's baby daughter
• Went to a wedding in NJ
• Ate at Popeye's in NJ, but failed in my attempt to eat at Popeye's in Texas
• Read half of Baudolino. It's more focused and coherent than Foucault's Pendulum, but it lacks some of the brilliant dialogue.
• Took over 1,000 photos

I'm going to be mostly Internet free until Monday. Laters!

I kept driving up Page Mill Road yesterday. I was intending to go to Russian Ridge, but the road was so much fun that I kept on driving and driving until we came across Portola Redwoods Forest. The park is only 15-20 minutes outside of Palo Alto and costs $6 to get in. We were extremely slow due to our picture-taking addiction and inability to find the trailhead, but there are some good 7 mile and 11 mile loops you can do there. It was also eery to listen to how much the super-tall redwood trees creak in the wind -- it's like hearing a door open.

On the way back we quickly stopped at Russian Ridge so I could get some shots of the foothills before they turn brown -- Palo Alto Foothills Park is already fully brown. The wildflowers were also in full force.

I found the afikommen for the second time in two tries. Two times in a row makes it a streak, and two-for-two means that I am undefeated, so by all rights I title myself an undefeated afikommen champion. I hope to defend my title in the future, but in the meantime my chocolate prize will help bring back good memories of a delicious meal.

With all this talk of accountability, it's time for me to come clean -- this entry is the only entry I've ever penned myself. The rest were outsourced to India, where one can purchase high quality posts for $0.01 per word. I can't afford those rates, but much like hair school haircuts, one can volunteer to have your blog posted to by a blog trainee.

Wait, I must confess some more -- I'm not writing this post either. It's the thought that counts, and a lot of thought went into the $1.00 I paid for this. Pity, a dollar doesn't buy very

If you get into a fender bender, even a very minor one, and the other person is an elderly old man, don't assume (out of respect for your elders) that the person is a kindly gentleman that will stop and exchange insurance information with you. In fact, be prepared to sprint after his fleeing vehicle and shout out his license plate number to your fellow passenger -- it might save you an expensive deductible. Of course, if you're like me and don't follow this example, you can take solace in the fact that the damage on his car looked much, much worse.

Update: let me emphasize, this was a minor fender bender, and the elderly person in question fled at an comically slow speed, giving me plenty of time to stand in disbelief, and giving me plenty to kick myself over for not getting the license plate number.

There are many ways this past weekend can be summarized. First, let me start at the end of my story and say that I am now a proud uncle. He's a big guy -- 10 pounds, 2 ounces, 23" -- and he's already got a head full of black hair and brown eyes, so it hardly seems like he was just born.

Everything turned out great this weekend, though it's not to say everything went to plan. On a states-travelled basis, my planned itinerary was:

California
Pennsylvania
West Virginia
Pennsylvania
California

As a result of unforeseen events, my actual travel ended up being:

California
Pennsylvania
Virginia
Pennsylvania
West Virginia
Pennsylvania
West Virginia
Pennsylvania
California

When I was boarding the redeye plane out to Pittsburgh, I thought I was in a bit of luck as my sister had already been checked into the hospital and they had started inducing labor. When I arrived in Pittsburg, I got a voicemail message from my dad saying that they were sending my sister home (to be readmitted on Monday), that the inducing had not worked. The general reaction was, "they can do that?" We had assumed that inducing labor, even if "induce" is a weak term, was generally a one-way process, one that resulted in the mother holding the baby. The notion that they could un-induce (reduce?) was a new concept. My personal reaction had an additional element of "b-b-but, I'm only out here until Monday! They can't send her home! I want to see my nephew now!" My sister, of course, had the worst of it, as it meant yet another day that she would have to spend in the hospital going through contractions.

Instead of heading to the rental car counter to get a car to drive to West Virginia with, I turned around and went back into the airport to buy tickets to fly to DC, as no baby meant no mom/dad/dog travelling to West Virginia, and, so, a couple hours later I found myself stepping off a plane in Virginia, several hours east of my original planned destination.

Visiting with the parents went well, though there was a touch of disappointment that I was not going to be able to see my nephew, as I would have to extend my trip by two or even three more days. I had a return ticket to Pittsburgh on Saturday, though, so at least I would be able to see my sister with her big belly.

As my dad drove me to the airport early Saturday morning, disappointment disappeared -- my sister called to say that the baby was on the way, and with a fortunate choice of return ticket it turns out that I would be arriving for the birth after all. I had to pickup my mom at the Pittsburgh airport later that day, so I missed the first couple hours of my nephew's life, but I got to spend plenty of time with him, my sister, and my brother-in-law the rest of that day and the next, taking tons of photos (300+), and watching my nephew change: sneezing, hiccuping, crying, and farting -- all the things that made him more and more human in my eyes.

I just finished reading Curious Incident of the Dog at Midnight. It has a passage where the autistic main character (Christopher) talks about counting cars on the way to school: if he sees four red cars in a row, it's a Very Good Day, if he sees five it's a Super Good Day, but if he sees four yellow cars it's a Very Bad Day. The teacher asks him why -- when every other behavior of his is so rational -- he has such an illogical manner of judging what sort of day it will be. Christopher points out that his way of judging days is no different from other people who look out the window in the morning, see a sunny sky, and decide that it will be a good day -- what does the weather matter when they are going to spend all day inside the office anyway?

This is a roundabout way of me announcing that on the way to Caltrain today, I was walking east towards a clear sky with the sun shining, while rain sprinkled from grey clouds above, and behind me there was a beautiful double rainbow behind me, as if to say, I had a very good weekend, I will have a brief spell of Bad Day as I catch up on work, but the rest of my day will be a Super Good Day.

Home DSL on...

New digital camera is over in shipping and receiving...

May go to the TiVo talk tonight...

I got a drink bought for me, by a woman. It would have been nice if she had bought it to hit on me, instead of buying it as part of a round because she was hitting on a friend, but I'll ignore my pride and drink that beer happily, knowing that I did absolutely nothing to deserve it -- that only makes that nice, cold, free glass of Anchor Steam taste even better.

Not much time to post, but, with the generous help of friends, my stuff has now been moved to Hope. Thanks to all who helped. Apologies to pholist members who were not enlisted for help; it wasn't a slight against your skills -- I figured ten pairs of hands were already a bit much for what there was.

BTW: I continue to recommend Hengehold to anyone renting trucks in the peninsula for moving. They haven't screwed up a reservation yet, and they have good quality trucks.

They should give you nose plugs when a doctor uses a hot knife.

The tortoise-style move is progressing well. After three consecutive days of two-three carloads, I've managed to move almost all of my non-large-furniture items. The Incredibles bag I got at Comic-Con has been perfect for transporting everything from DVDs to books between the places. The computer is coming up in the moving queue so kwc.org will be moving to its temporary home soon.

Thanks to all those who have helped thus far and will be helping on Saturday.

I had a great Thanksgiving. As I am prone to do, I will be backposting entries describing some of the things I did in more detail, but, in summary, I got to do nearly everything I consider worthwhile: spending time with family, eat lots of mashed potatoes, looking at Impressionist and Modern paintings, watching USC beat up Notre Dame 41-10, reading, and taking lots of photos.

As it often occurs with my reading, there were many coincidences surrounding my reading choices. I have been reading Umberto Eco's Travels in Hyperreality, which is a series of essays that indirectly reveals some of the genesis of Foucault's Pendulum. My aunt, out of the blue, handed me The Da Vinci Code, which is, in many ways, a light/pop version of Foucault's Pendulum. As we discussed The Da Vinci Code, she brought up the Glendale/Forest Lawn Cemetary, which has a stained-glass rendition of The Last Supper. This rendition, as well as the cemetary in general, are directly discussed in Travels in Hyperreality. In a bunch of clippings she was keeping with The Da Vinci Code, she also had a clipping with a photo of the glass Last Supper, which made the Eco essay easier to understand. All-in-all, it was a convergence that made the material easier to appreciate, though my paranoia wonders why these convergences so frequently center around the Templars.

I didn't have time to visit the cemetary on this trip, but there will be future opportunities.

Apologies for the bad title pun, but parakkum and I just signed the lease for a townhouse on Hope Street (so long No Hope! The Curse is over!), about a block away from Dana Street Coffee. This location does present some problems, as the close proximity to my favorite caffeine dispensary may result in permanent tremors, and the close proximity to both new and used bookstores will leave me in literate poverty. Thankfully, the new Scientology center down the street can provide me with daily e-meter readings so as to correct any imbalances.

If you're hanging out on Castro Street in MV, give us a buzz.

I'm leaving tomorrow to visit my Aunt and Uncle. I shall return on Monday with photos from the Renoir to Matisse exhibit at LACMA and the USC/Notre Dame homecoming game -- my first USC home game, I'm looking forward to it.

As I re-enter the housing market looking for a place to live, I am buoyed by the fact that it could be worse. I located an old entry in my paper journal that details just how bad it can be, in excruciatingly anal detail.

I posted some of my Castro Street Halloween pics to my Flickr. You can witness the massive crowds, ln m's Incredible teammates, and tranquility. However, I think the best costume prize has to go to Team America -- they had the whole squad, even Kim Jong Il.

I have to say, given all the stories involving stabbings and puke and other bodily functions associated with Castro Halloween, things were pretty tame, though really crowded. I hear that the city took over control, and if so I guess I'll never get to witness the true splendor :).

Night three of three was completed for the Star Wars marathon. Thanks to all those who came -- you all made the movies far more fun and entertaining than George Lucas is capable. Thanks to bp and joy, whose sangria still has me a bit tipsy, and thank you all for witty, insightful commentary, and for stocking my fridge.

A little known fact: I fought the US all the way to the Supreme Court, but my appeal was rejected. Seeing "Kenneth Conley v. United States of America" brings back such fond memories.