Oh yeah, I did end up getting a Gmail account. It’s actually a pretty rockin setup. I have about a dozen peeves, and I’ve dutifuly reported all of them via the “Submit A Bug” link. I even got a response for one of them, saying that they would look into implementing a feature I suggested. Gmail has compatibility problems with Safari that are annoying, but since I’m using Firefox most of the time anyway, it’s all good. I’m not gonna switch to it, though, until I can do more procmail-like things, and I can get the email out of it somehow if I ever want to. IMAP access would be nice…

Oh, by the time I got an invite code, dsilverman and silverman were both already taken, and they don’t allow names < 6 characters, so zeno is right out 🙁 . I'm not going to publicize my Gmail address (although it's no secret) just because I have procmail bouncing all my Brandeis mail there and @brandeis is still the best way to reach me.

I’m feeling elated.

Life consists of forward progress and backward progress. When I’m getting more and more homework, that’s backward progress. When we get in fights with administrators about things students have that are being taken away, that’s backward progress. When I’m locked away in my room, mindlessly watching TV because I just don’t want to comprehend all of the work ahead of me, that’s backward progress.

But today, a few really nice things happened. Some keys that I was waiting for came in earlier then expected. I turned in two homework assignments — one of them even on time! We picked up some cubicle walls and set one up in the office. Perry emailed to tell us that Matt’s quest for a new space for the COG servers is successful — he’s going to give us a room in Feldberg. Awesome.

One of my big goals is to professionalize the Student Union and student organizations. We continue to move into a world of decreased student autonomy and increased administrative control. This isn’t just a Brandeis phenomenom, and we’re probably a lot better off then most small colleges. But it is absolutely important to the Brandeis mission to keep student autonomy in all of it’s forms. And it’s painful when administrators and staff and even students themselves want others to step in, to run things, to control student organizations and take care of student problems. College is about learning and growing and experiencing, preparing for the world, finding one’s self. Allowing students to assume leadership roles, to make real decisions, to solve real problems, to make mistakes and fix them, is an incredibly powerful and wonderful thing.

The Union office is starting to look better. Many of my improvements in workflow and information flow have been successful. The year is over, and people are filled with promise and new ideas for next year. Another administrator today expressed commitment to reinvigorating student leadership training on this campus. We’re going to get our SAF organizations onto QuickBooks so that they can be more accoutable and manage their money better, and more transparently. And the COG reorganization looks like it will be wildly successful. We’re getting all of our servers straighened out, we’ve got a new space for them, we’re working on projects and ideas for next year. Finnegan, the wake up call service, is finally done, and just about to launch. We’re becoming a professional, powerful, useful force on campus. We’re filling a niche that ITS doesn’t have the resources or desire to fill, and we’re working cooperatively to do good things for students. As it should be.

Now if only I could turn around the Justice and WBRS, I’d feel a lot better. I think this leadership thing is really, really important. I kinda wish I could be here for another two or three years to try and guide these organizations, to make sure that things are working as they should, that strong student leaders are found and cultivated at Brandeis, instead of ignored. A lot of people have a lot of potential, and, hey, they might just find their calling in the process. I know that I have.

I find it surprising that all the media attention and discussion about Gmail deals almost exclusively with the email service, the threading, the text ads, the labeling, and basically ignores the search. Google’s big thing was that you would be able to use a powerful and proven search engine to search your mail, and I, personally, would love this ability with my current 200MB mailbox.

But will Google’s email search be as good as it’s web search? Google web results are based on hugely complicated algorithms that began with PageRank, basically an innovative system of ranking results based on who else has linked to them. If CNN links to your site, and lots of people link to CNN, then your site is probably somewhat relevent. Of course Google is constantly fighting with people who manipulate their rankings by making all kinds of fake links. And the blogging phenomenom also chhanged some of the “standards” of linking.

But email, where does email link? I don’t think that the few links I send and receive through email are going to be very useful for the GoogleBot. I don’t think that email really works the same way. The labelling ability (as opposed to folders) might help with searches, but I don’t know how much. What has been lacking in every single review of Gmail, however, has been any talk about the search function, and if it’s any good. Especially since it doesn’t really support any kind of advance search features, such as regular expressions, which are very useful when you have a set of data that you have a pretty good understanding of (seeing as you’ve read it all at one time or another).

In my last entry when I said I need “help” I think I meant I need a new approach, I need a better understanding of what my purpose is and what I’m trying to do and why I’m doing what I’m doing. I need something new and different, not the same old same old.

So I have about 50 important e-mails to respond to, a bunch of books to read, an essay to write

Just another day in the life of a college student. September 19, 2001, to be exact. In my life. I’m just trying to figure out why I keep doing so many things wrong. Back in 2001 I found Brandeis and I was so happy. I did my work, I took part in activities, everything was new and exciting, and I enjoyed it all, learned and grew, and much of that was through classes in addition to all of my activities. Sure, I talked about how personal growth wins out over academic growth, etc., etc., but I did my work, I enjoyed it, I didn’t avoid it (so much), and I got it done. And I did okay in classes, and I got good grades.

So what has changed? Why is it now that when I sit down at a book to read it, a book I’m interested in, for a class I enjoy, I just don’t? I get distracted, I do stupid time-wasting things. Last semester was a disaster, a wake-up call, and this semester was going to be different, damnit, and I knew what I had to do and I knew I needed to fix things. So why am I back where I was? Why does this cycle continue to repeat?

I know I did the same thing freshman year, the same thing sophomore year, the same thing back in high school. But I always ended up getting things done, getting through it, coming out okay. I always knew that it would all work out. Last semester it didn’t, this semester was my chance to prove myself, and I don’t know why I can’t. I know, superficially, the things that I am doing wrong. I don’t know, I don’t understand, deep down, what I’m doing wrong, and why, and how to fix it.

I need help. I don’t know what that help is, exactly. Why am I not happy anymore? And now that I’ve stopped hiding that fact, where do I go from here?

What was I saying back in 2001, after a month at school? Oh yes:

I’ve been here some insanely short period of time, like less than a month, but already this place is my home. The people, the buildings, the surroundings are all mine now. Everyone I talk to who doesn’t live around here and who goes away or visits another college or whatever, comes back and tells me that this is what is home. They miss Brandeis when they’re gone. Its a great feeling.

Meanwhile, people in the UC system start college in the next few weeks. START! I’ve already been here an eternity. Yet, right now, I hope it never ends.

I thought if I ignored things like Friendster, LinkedIn, and Tribes they would go away, but for some inexplicable reason they are still here. Yesterday Adam Herman made me join Friendster, and so I’ve been spending the last 20 minutes trying to figure out what the point of it is, why it is here, and why I’m trying to add friends to it. Apparently I have something like 3,000 “third-degree” friends. Um, yay? I don’t get it…

I also decided to check back in with Orkut, which Nat made me sign up for, and noticed that it’s basically the same exact thing, only a little faster, and it says that I have more like 300,000 friends. Well, for 297,000 more friends, I’ll go with Orkut! Come on Friendster, give me more friends!

This is very interesting. This morning I received two very legitimate pieces of criticism about things that I’m doing that are stupid. I’m not exactly sure what to do with this information. The logical reaction is to attempt to fix the shortcomings, but, because that is hard, I’m instead spending time with internal meta-commentary on the criticism, the act of criticisizing, and probably, justification of my actions, although that’s all fuzzy and I’m not sure if I’m doing it or not.

Generally in a situation like this, I would createa task list or schedule. The problem is that I won’t stick to it. I guess I’m trying to think of something better that I can do.

I know one thing for certain though — one should not send somewhat self-righteous emails to people at 3:00am…the mind is not at the high point of it’s clarity.

You can win if you run a smart, disciplined campaign, if you studiously say nothing — nothing that causes you trouble, nothing that’s a gaffe, nothing that shows you might think the wrong thing, nothing that shows you think. But it just isn’t worthy of us[…]

It isn’t worthy of us, it isn’t worthy of America, it isn’t worthy of a great nation. We’re gonna write a new book, right here, right now. This very moment. Today.

I think the great hope of myself and so many others was that Howard Dean would be our Bartlet, a dark horse who wasn’t suppposed to win but did, who could run a campaign that was different, who could be idealistic to a fault, who could change the level of discourse. Well, he was eaten alive. Perhaps there is a reason why The West Wing is fiction.

I’m feeling really stupid right now. For a while I’ve been taking notes in my SOC 181a class (“Quantitative Methods of Social Inquiry”) but not really understanding what I’m doing. It all seems fairly clear on the board when he explains it, but I never quite know why we’re doing various things, or where they are useful. I’m getting flashbacks to, oh, every match class after geometry.

Tonight I realized that the reason I’m so lost is because I don’t have a textbook. The book didn’t come in at the bookstore and the professor has been posting it chapter by chapter as these evil image PDF thingies, and I found them almost impossible to read so I skimmed them but didn’t get anything out of them.

Tonight I just printed everything out (after having to adjust is a bunch to get it to print in a readable format) and now I have something somewhat equivalent to a “textbook” that I can flip through and highlight and actually read, and now I have just a bit of an idea of what I’m supposed to be doing.

If I can spend most of tomorrow reading the darn thing, maybe I can catch up in this class before it’s too late.

Here’s hoping.

I’m feeling very good right now. It’s almost 3 in the morning, and I’m wrapping up my first paper of the semester, an examination of the law of attempts for my Philosophy of Law class. I haven’t found the class incredibly stimulating, mostly due to the direction of the discussions. But the subject matter itself is fascinating, and I’m loving this paper.

Did I start late? Yes. Did I wait until the last minute? Yes. Would my paper be better if I had given myself another week or so? Most definetally. But I’m still happy. I started working on this paper a few days ago, I did some readings, I thought about it, I did some more readings, I talked to a few people, and, when I felt I was ready, I started writing. The words flew from my fingers, and in an hour I had three pages.

Often I have the problem where I don’t know where to start, I don’t have the “feel” of a paper, I can’t write it. Other times, I just click with the topic and I can start writing from nothing. In this case, I could have started writing a few days ago, but I liked the topic enough that I wanted to hold off, to roll it around in my head. By this afternoon I had a pretty good idea of what my argument was going to be, by tonight I had enough readings done that I felt I was ready to go, and very soon after I had a lot of my thoughts down on paper.

I don’t think my paper is incredible. I don’t think I deserve any special praise. I know I should have started earlier. But this paper is not bad, it will be turned in on time, it will be rewritten if necessary, and I won’t fail the class.

I’m feeling pretty good. This is what school is supposed to be about.

Ya know what’s amazing? I always thought Holocaust deniers were in the lunatic fringe. I always just kinda figured with so much work to spread the history, with so many utterances of “we must never forget,” it would kinda…you know, mean something. And then Mel Gibson started giving interviews about his new pornographic bloodfest.

Mel can go on TV and say the Holocaust never happened, and Diane Sawyer, or whomever, will just nod and smile.

Shit. Guess we have a little more work ahead of us.

Addition: Roger Ebert offers a fairly good review of the movie itself, seperate from the “artist”.

I was looking through shared movies on the Brandeis network and I stumbled upon one that was instantly familiar to me — Flight of the Navigator. Re-watching this film, the favorite movie of my youth, caused me to reflect on the other movies I most enjoyed as a kid. They fit a theme. See if you can guess it:

• Flight of the Navigator
• Explorers
• D.A.R.Y.L.
• Space Camp

These are four movies that I remember making an impact on me. I know that we discovered Flight of the Navigator at the small video store we used to frequent in Lake Arrowhead, and I recall renting it several times over the years. Perhaps my parents can shed some light on this, or on other movies that captivated me.

Long ago I made myself the promise that I would do everything in my power to leave Earth, if only so briefly. Visit the moon, maybe, or at least reach out to touch the stars. I think at some point in my young mind I decided that the only way to do this with any certainty was to become fabulously wealthy, as an organization like NASA is just not reliable (and, as depicted in Flight of the Navigator, it’s kinda evil). I’m not sure what I’ve done with that dream, perhaps hid it away in the recesses of my mind, hoping to one day dust it off and achieve it.

I know it’s still there somewhere, just waiting for it’s time. Man, do I hope that time comes.

After a hiatus, my photo galleries are back online! Yay! I have a few sets of pictures here that need to go online, including some of the construction at home, the family’s visit to Waltham last week, and some older things. I have put up several “new” albums for your amusement, but none of them are new in the temporal sense:

• Ralph’s 80th Birthday (07/03)
• Palm Desert House (04/03)
• Palm Desert (06/03)
• My Bedroom (08/01)
• Fiesta Party (07/01)
• Lake Havasu (06/03)

You ever have that problem where people don’t know if you’re joking or serious? I have that problem every day. It’s kinda cool. Keeps people off balance. I like to think I have a dry wit, although I’m sure other people have less pleasant names for it. My favorite TV shows — Buffy, Angel, Farscape — somewhat share this characteristic. Characters are constantly reflecting on the world around them with a healty dose of cynicism. Jokes, rather then overblown and obvious, are quietly snuck in where you least expect them. Every line has untapped potential.

I think my favorite professors are the ones who use the approach, who kind of question everything just through their tone and their word choice, who constantly keep you atuned to sheer strangeness of the world. I think that this approach is what draws me to Discordianism, a worldview (or is it a religion?) then emphasises the sheer strangeness, unpredictibility, and randomness of the world around us.

And I find my approach to speaking helpful in that so many times I am ambivalent about things and, instead of needed to take a strong stand through my speaking, I am able to talk and act in a way that portrays, I think, my ambivalence, so that even as I say one thing it can be seen that I may not quite believe it.

This whole thing is very difficult to describe, I’m not sure I’m doing a very good job. I keep re-writing sentences, and I’m not sure I’m making them any clearer. But then again, this meta-commentary is probably even less helpful. And this meta-meta commentary can’t be much better. And this meta-meta-meta…

Anyway, I noticed the other day in the game room that Dave W kinda acts the same way as I do, and that’s what prompted me to try to get this into words. He said something and I stopped and thought, wow, I have no idea if he is serious or not. Now I know how so many people feel about me!

Ya know, it’s hard to talk through text the same way as I do in person. I guess that’s why I use smilies so much. 😉 And it probably explains why I hate personal confrontations, and much prefer to have them in textual form…because I’m probably not very good at reading what people are thinking, unless they express themselves the same way I do. Sometimes text can make things much more clear. Sometimes, quite the opposite. I’m not really sure what I’m saying, or what conclusions I can draw from all of this.

Stuff to ponder.

This NYTimes story really struck a chord with me. It suggests that the geeks of the world are getting sick of providing so much free tech support, and that we are expecting people who enjoy the fruits of computers and the net to also take on the respoinsbility of learning about how things work enough that they behave correctly. Some disagree. I don’t think they get the point.

Yes, yes, you’re all upset that you can’t understand these incomprehensible computers, and it’s not your fault that they are difficult and new, and techies can’t treat you like second-class citizens. In much the same way that we can’t all be lawyers, or doctors, but that doesn’t mean that doctors or lawyers treat the rest of us with disdain because we don’t know how to perform open-heart surgery or get a million dollar settlement.

No, you’re wrong. It’s not that at all.

We expect people who operate cars to know enough about how to do it that they do it correctly. We actually make them take tests! Penalize them for doing things that are hazardous. We don’t expect people to be lawyers, but we expect them to obey laws. We don’t expect them to be doctors, but we expect them to know the basics of healthy living, and when to get their shots, and the like.

We don’t expect everyone to be a computer expert. But we expect that, if they decide they are goint to use a computer, that they take a little bit of time to learn how computers work — read a manual, take a class, buy a book, whatever — and take the necessary steps so that they can safely and conscientiously operate their computers.

I don’t do tech support any more. I get ill every time I hear someone say, “I don’t understand computers!” If you don’t understand them, don’t use them. We’re not forcing you to. And if you want to use them, learn the basics of understanding them. You don’t have to understand how the circuits pass electrical signals. You don’t have to know what a compiler is. But come ON. If you go into the kitchen with no experience, no training, and no recipe book, what you get out of the oven for dinner will more likely then not taste terrible. Is your excuse that you don’t understand how this strange cooking thing works?

With an excuse like that, no one will want to come over to your house for dinner. Same in this case — no one wants you on the internet.

Well, less then half an hour ago I dropped off Dad, Mom, and Shaina at Logan Airport. They arrived on Friday evening and we had a near-perfect four days. It was really nice because we didn’t have any concrete plans and everything was very flexible. On Friday Shaina and I went to the women’s basketball game and saw them beat U. Rochester and move on to the semi-finals. Shaina got to meet all of my Students & Enrollment administrative buddies — Alwina, Brian, Rick, and Jean, because they were having a department party at the game. Then we went to New Mother India, which everyone loved. Yay, now when I go out to California my family will want to go to Indian food with me!

On Saturday we went into the city to do some shopping and see some friends. We had dinner at Legal Sea Foods and got tickets to see Blue Man Group on Sunday. On Sunday we did some checking out of Brandeis, went to dinner with Alwina at Porcini’s, and then saw Blue Man Group, which rocked. And finally today we did some more shopping, ate Lizzy’s ice cream, and then went to the airport. Every day we did something special, and the whole experience was fairly relaxed and easy.

I liked it. Tomorrow we start work on the gameroom. Stay tuned!

Matt and I went into Boston today to see Larry Lessig speak at Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute. He talked for an hour about remixing culture, and afterwards we went to Fire+Ice to remix some food. 🙂 Imagine what the world would be like if you had to pay a license fee to put ketchup on your potatoes, or combine them with steak. That’s kinda what copyright has come to. Matt blogged the talk, and I’m mirroring it because his Brandeis site won’t be around forever. This is also a good time to again plug my notes on a Zittrain talk from last year.

The best way to experience the lecture is to be there for it, the second best thing would be to have the MP3 along with slides available online. The third best thing is to watch/listen to a similar talk that Lessig gave a year or so ago at OSCON that has the MP3 plus the slides. He has a very neat presentation style — instead of PowerPoint bulleted lists, Lessig flashes short words and phrases onto the screen in real time as he talks, thus pointing out key words and quotes to give them an additional impact. It kinda has to be seen. Hopefully this lecture will get the same treatment as the OSCON one at some point.

You know what’s weird? Technically Lessig owns the copyright on his talk, and Matt, by blogging it, has probably violated his “rights”. Here’s hoping the hero of the commons won’t sue. 😉

Between 8 and 9pm tonight as I was entering the parking lot adjacent to Pete’s Pizza & Wings, a large SUV was exiting from the one-way entrace. I was in the middle of the street completing my turn. As I slowly backed up, foot on the brake, I lightly tapped the right front bumper of a smaller car behind me with the left rear bumper of my car. The SUV exited, I parked, and the guy I hit collected my license and insurance information. I got a bit of paint of my bumper, and he got a bit of a scratch on his. Jeremy dissuaded me from taking pictures of the damage — he thought it best not to upset the guy. I was a bit confused about not having any kind of insurance card, but only the information listed on my registration. The guy didn’t like that I had a California drivers license, and insisted that you can’t register a car in MA with a license from CA. Apparently he’s wrong. 🙂 The collission occured at maybe 3 miles per hour, and neither the other driver nor his female passenger seemed to be or in any way indicated that they were injured. Jeremy and I got our food and the rest of the night was pretty good. Here’s hoping I don’t get a $500 bill in the mail for the tiny bit of scratching I inflicted. Eh, sometimes it just isn’t your day. It could have been worse. Luckily, it was not. Wish the guy would have honked or backed up or something. Oh well.

Pondering…if students know that they can come to the Student Union with complaints about things like broken toilets when facilities/res life is giving them the runaround, is that a good thing? If we are effective, yes. If we are inundated with complaints that really aren’t directly related to what we’re doing, then no. And if we’re ineffective, then they just have one more group to complain about. Hmm.