(no subject)
Today I received a coolest gift ever for my birthday. Yesterday (this Sunday), when I was out of the house, Julien stole my key card and snook into my workplace. She decorated my cubicle with several squads of miniature police officers and cop cars (it's really funny because I don't like police so much and because they are watching over me, making sure I do what I'm supposed to do at work), also with a small vase with flowers (picked from the colorful and blooming streets of san jose) and a cute green plush crocodile. I also received a stress ball, a slinky and a large can of wasabi beans. Few months ago, we had bought a small black and white mexican indian style tapestry at a yard sale. She brought that in as well and draped it over my chair.
I also received some sandals, which I really do need, because mine are falling apart.
I feel so much more comfortable in my cubicle now and so happy I have to record this permanently and publicly.
so more boring crap about my every aspect of my life here:
I guess I could also note down some of my life happenings which are not that exciting. My linguistuics class is going well, we have just finished phonology (phonology is the study of rules which determine what are the possible used of various sounds in a given language - for example in english no work can start with the "ng" [ŋ] sound used in "sing" and no word can end with the "h" sounds - words like "tadah" are only written like that, but pronounced [tada]. I'm glad we're done with phonology because a large part of phonology is phonetics, which is fairly hard for me to do on this English language. The other part of phonology is the rules, which is strangely reminiscent of CS theory (go go, mr. noam-generative-chomsky). Syntax is next, which is going to be even more CS'y and even more [fʌn].
I went a five year anniversary of the Iraq war (2.3 million Iraqis displaced in those 5 years, 1.3 mil of whom went to Syria, while the USA gvmnt allowed few thousand iraqis to come last year but "wants to do more") anti-war rally in palo alto this saturday, where I met my boss from work. It was partly pleasant to learn that while I had idiotically and self-righteously thought that everyone who made videogames was not interested in the anything but living their own comfortable lives, they really are not. He seemed little out of place (perhaps it's the first one he'd been to), and I was a little afraid of getting questioned about the "Food not Bombs" sign I was holding, because I was there as a part of SJ food not bombs - John, the other guy from FNB had managed to get a lot of food donated from farmers markets and we were able to feed some people there. Unfortunately we had nothing warm ready. Fortunately, after the rally we still had a lot of stuff left (carrots, mushrooms, bok-choi) and combining that with stuff we've received previous weeks (beans, rice, turnips, tomatoes) we were able to cook up some kickass soup the same Saturday and serve it on Sunday.
John couldn't be there this Sunday (he's a unitarian and they do their church things very often). But it was me and this other 16 year old kid named Aaron. We did well with the food, but not too well with inviting people to come. I didn't feel comfortable to ask people to volunteer (I didn't want them to think that they were obligated to us - that would be inimical to the anarchist ideal driving Food Not Bombs, but I do need to learn to be more confident talking to people without being demanding and authoritarian)
Been reading lots of stuff: Orwell, my boy David Greaber, a little pamphlet by the anthropologist Susan McKinnon that tears evolutionary psychology a new butthole and books from Crimethinc like this, stuff by Situationists ("All Power to the Imagination!")
Been watching movies, some good, some bad (saw every oscar movie this year, except the dull ones), dvd of tv shows (Curb your enthusiasm - tis good, L Word - tis boring), older italian movies from netflix.
At work I just finished a thing that permits havok terrain collision data to be streamed in sections for a level instead of being loaded at once (this way you can have larger levels in your game), but I don't know if that will get used, because we still don't know what we'll work on because our publisher, THQ needs to be criticized on a public forum so I can get fired.
Also, I've been learning web techs (XHTML, CSS, javascripts and rails) like a fucking curious monkey, just soaking it up. My favorite and most awe inspiring tech must be JQuery. I have to admit, that J-nplate-Resig is a genius after all. JQuery is beautiful and nothing more.
Alright, other stuff is more personal, so I'll be more vague I guess. Still living with Julien, had a rough week of ambiguity and uncertainty (probably worse for her) about our whole relationship, but eventually found some new perspective and learned to put less pressure on feeling "like we're supposed to", instead looking at things as they are are enjoying them for that.
We disagree a lot about politics (it's my fault, because I'm too militant, even whilst I exclaim that being forceful and trying to bend people to your way is counterproductive and deadly), but I'm learning that there are a lot of things we agree about (like the need to break down gender conditioning - the fact that many women will hold their keys like a weapon, when walking down a dark street, constantly considering the possibility of rape for example and the fact that in daily interactions men can violate womens' personal space, but women can not do the same to men so casually) and I guess that keeps us from thinking that the other person is somehow "wrong" about everything.
My friend Clement came down to visit this weekend - it was a lot of fun to see him.
Sorry about crappy spelling, stream of consciousness and other mistakes, I'm trying to finish this quickly because I'm at work and I need to be working.
I also received some sandals, which I really do need, because mine are falling apart.
I feel so much more comfortable in my cubicle now and so happy I have to record this permanently and publicly.
so more boring crap about my every aspect of my life here:
I guess I could also note down some of my life happenings which are not that exciting. My linguistuics class is going well, we have just finished phonology (phonology is the study of rules which determine what are the possible used of various sounds in a given language - for example in english no work can start with the "ng" [ŋ] sound used in "sing" and no word can end with the "h" sounds - words like "tadah" are only written like that, but pronounced [tada]. I'm glad we're done with phonology because a large part of phonology is phonetics, which is fairly hard for me to do on this English language. The other part of phonology is the rules, which is strangely reminiscent of CS theory (go go, mr. noam-generative-chomsky). Syntax is next, which is going to be even more CS'y and even more [fʌn].
I went a five year anniversary of the Iraq war (2.3 million Iraqis displaced in those 5 years, 1.3 mil of whom went to Syria, while the USA gvmnt allowed few thousand iraqis to come last year but "wants to do more") anti-war rally in palo alto this saturday, where I met my boss from work. It was partly pleasant to learn that while I had idiotically and self-righteously thought that everyone who made videogames was not interested in the anything but living their own comfortable lives, they really are not. He seemed little out of place (perhaps it's the first one he'd been to), and I was a little afraid of getting questioned about the "Food not Bombs" sign I was holding, because I was there as a part of SJ food not bombs - John, the other guy from FNB had managed to get a lot of food donated from farmers markets and we were able to feed some people there. Unfortunately we had nothing warm ready. Fortunately, after the rally we still had a lot of stuff left (carrots, mushrooms, bok-choi) and combining that with stuff we've received previous weeks (beans, rice, turnips, tomatoes) we were able to cook up some kickass soup the same Saturday and serve it on Sunday.
John couldn't be there this Sunday (he's a unitarian and they do their church things very often). But it was me and this other 16 year old kid named Aaron. We did well with the food, but not too well with inviting people to come. I didn't feel comfortable to ask people to volunteer (I didn't want them to think that they were obligated to us - that would be inimical to the anarchist ideal driving Food Not Bombs, but I do need to learn to be more confident talking to people without being demanding and authoritarian)
Been reading lots of stuff: Orwell, my boy David Greaber, a little pamphlet by the anthropologist Susan McKinnon that tears evolutionary psychology a new butthole and books from Crimethinc like this, stuff by Situationists ("All Power to the Imagination!")
Been watching movies, some good, some bad (saw every oscar movie this year, except the dull ones), dvd of tv shows (Curb your enthusiasm - tis good, L Word - tis boring), older italian movies from netflix.
At work I just finished a thing that permits havok terrain collision data to be streamed in sections for a level instead of being loaded at once (this way you can have larger levels in your game), but I don't know if that will get used, because we still don't know what we'll work on because our publisher, THQ needs to be criticized on a public forum so I can get fired.
Also, I've been learning web techs (XHTML, CSS, javascripts and rails) like a fucking curious monkey, just soaking it up. My favorite and most awe inspiring tech must be JQuery. I have to admit, that J-nplate-Resig is a genius after all. JQuery is beautiful and nothing more.
Alright, other stuff is more personal, so I'll be more vague I guess. Still living with Julien, had a rough week of ambiguity and uncertainty (probably worse for her) about our whole relationship, but eventually found some new perspective and learned to put less pressure on feeling "like we're supposed to", instead looking at things as they are are enjoying them for that.
We disagree a lot about politics (it's my fault, because I'm too militant, even whilst I exclaim that being forceful and trying to bend people to your way is counterproductive and deadly), but I'm learning that there are a lot of things we agree about (like the need to break down gender conditioning - the fact that many women will hold their keys like a weapon, when walking down a dark street, constantly considering the possibility of rape for example and the fact that in daily interactions men can violate womens' personal space, but women can not do the same to men so casually) and I guess that keeps us from thinking that the other person is somehow "wrong" about everything.
My friend Clement came down to visit this weekend - it was a lot of fun to see him.
Sorry about crappy spelling, stream of consciousness and other mistakes, I'm trying to finish this quickly because I'm at work and I need to be working.