Ostensibly a skunk, or some angry skunk ghost spirit, got into the house two days ago while I was spending the weekend at Wai’s.  The increasingly intense smell which my Dad described as “burnt rubber” prompted him to go on an in house skunk hunting adventure in the middle of the night.

After finding nothing, the next day him and Jon tore up the basement trying to figure out where the skunk actually was.  His plan was to air out the house, and then locate the skunk based on the leftover smell.  I wasn’t here for this, but as I was being told this story I was hoping with all my heart that they found the skunk and it sprayed one of them in the face and attacked the other.

But they didn’t find it, and after some cursory internet searching my Dad learned that skunks are nocturnal.  So at 5 past the witching hour that night he went outside in his robe, with a brick, and a flashlight.  I guess he had the brick just to plug up the skunk’s burrow, but I’m sure he would have chucked the brick or at least postured with it as a weapon if he saw the skunk.

Anyway, he found a burrow under our front stairs, but instead of a skunk there was a possum, which did what possums do… and just stared at him.  He stared back, and after about a minute of the two staring at eachother my Dad went back into the house to do more research on the internet about possums.

Wikipedia says they’re pretty harmless, and he guesses that the possum got sprayed by the skunk and stunk up our house by proximity.  They don’t fight cats or dogs or eat wood or anything.

So now we have a new pet possum who lives by our front doorsteps.

Now, let me help you get something straight here. I know damn well that 99% of Twitter is crap. Most people mistakenly respond to Twitter’s prompt “What are you doing?” with what they are actually doing at the time. Eating, lamenting the weather, being depressed. I do not care.

In fact, really only follow @Waiyeecita, @Perrymecium, and @CobaltIfinity. They’re my 1%. “Johnny Depp looks even more like Elijah Wood in IMAX 3D than he does on the posters. If nothing else, see it for the Tron Preview”. That little tidbit of information is actually something I wanted to know, something that doesn’t warrant a blog post, and probably wouldn’t come up in conversation considering that this is real life and not Seinfeld.

Beyond passively partaking, I like writing. This is because most of the hatred that I want to archive in the cloud for all of time is already instantaneous and under 140 characters. “Quentin Tarantino should have won Best Director for most Nazi’s killed in a movie,” is all I wanted to say. It’s still relevent a day later, but I probably wouldn’t have been motivated to say it if I had to wait or if I had to write a coherent post.

Tweets are not without thought either. Like I’m sure my 1% does, I pause for a bit to think about each tweet that I send out. It’s a punchline. How do I make it fit? Is this how I want to say it? This might make me a tool, but since I already have a blog, I don’t think it really matters.

But sports do nothing but break my heart.

The Cubs almost making the playoffs, the Illini losing to North Carolina, the Bears forgetting they were at the superbowl, and now Team USA all make for a very dismal sport-watching-career for me.  It’s not like I watch sports a lot, I only tune in for the big games where one of my guys is in it.  But I still get riled up!  And no matter what, I almost always have my dreams shattered.

Getting emotionally invested in a game must be bad luck.  Even Apolo Ohno, my half-asian brother, got unfairly DQ’d when I started to watch his races and trailed behind the Canadians in the relay.  The only difference is that I was watching.

Still, the Olympics are pretty awesome.  I’m a little bit more inspired to be the best in the world at…. well… something.  I’ve got competition fever in me in short.  I don’t care what it is, I want to win.  Could I maybe be the best developer my company has ever seen?  Really good at school?  A Starcraft II master?  As long as I’m not watching myself, then it’s possible.

“Is Hapkido a good one?”
 ”Uh yea… it’s good but what you’ve really got to-”
“Oh never mind, it starts at 6:00 instead of 6:30″

This is the most recent of my interactions with people who have grand aspirations for their kids. I had dinner with one of Wai’s friends who is shopping her 5 year old around private school programs, taking tests to determine whether or not the kid is gifted. Guess not.

I mean, I DO understand the mentality, but at what point do the parents give up and just admit their kid is normal? She kept insisting that the kid was an early reader, but I was too nice to retort that apparently reading early isn’t correlated with being gifted. If it were my kid, I’d just beat smarts into them the Asian way and then let the schools sort it out.

Tonight was the first time I watched them, and it was an assault on my ears, eyes, and mind.  Besides having the Black Eyed Peas on singing the worst song of the year, they tried their best to modernize their show with gimmicky technology.

For that godawful Black Eyed Peas number about weekdays, or whatever, the Grammys asked users to submit YouTube videos that would be displayed on live network tv (!!!) in the background of the performace.  And by displayed, I mean shoved into background out of focus for about half a second between flashing images of the band’s name.  PSYCHE!  I guess even CBS doesn’t want to see your YouTubes.

They then tried their hand at 3-d technology during a Michael Jackson tribute with Usher and 4 other singers I’ve never heard of.  The type of 3d technology which employs the same red/green goggles that I had on a Ninja Turtles coloring book when I was 5.  Not only did the black tie audience look ridiculous in cardboard and plastic green and red glasses, they chose the worst song of Michael Jackson’s postmortem movie: This Is It to sing.  Some song about saving the planet.  Michael Jackson was a nutbag.

Featuring a melodramatic portrayal of big logging (?) and a hyper-romanticized view of nature, the musicial number took your face and bashed it in with GCI about on par with Quake III.  There is what appears to be an awkward rubber robot whale Free Willying over NOTHING into a some kind of clear gel; I think it’s suppose to be water but I’m not sure.

(By the way I saw This is It yesteday, and the producer, Kenny Ortega, is a sniveling dog.  He patronizes Michael Jackson at every chance he gets and his only skill is riding coat tails.  I swear to God, in one scene he says “Michael, if you’d like…” at least 4 or 5 hundred times.  Anybody who uses someone’s name that many times is a bitch.  He must have started on the movie seconds after hearing of The King Of Pop’s death.

Also, I shit you not, the end credits are done in Windows Movie Maker.)

Anyway, I declared the Grammy’s the worst reality show on TV when they had online voting during a Bon Jovi set for the next song in a pathetic attempt to drive users to the CBS website.  Which I went to, because Bon Jovi is awesome, but found out that their website is down.  I should just be thankful that nobody who matters at CBS has ever heard of Twitter.

The Grammys is a grand example of why the music industry is dying.  Besides the country numbers which sounded like every other country number ever, all the acts and winners were Top 40 crap that a boardroom full of execs pumped out over cigars and putting cigars out in struggling artists eyes.   It’s 2 hours of the fucking radio, with an award every now and then.

You know how I know it’s crap?  ”I’m On A Boat” lost.

So that’s exactly what I’ve been doing the past two weeks.  Going to be at 10:30 instead of 12:30 along with all that other stuff.  Here’s my review:

+ Waking up is no longer the worst thing in the world.  I don’t want to wake up still, but it doesn’t feel like I was hit by a bus when I do.
+ It’s not so hard once you get in the habit.  Weekends completely destroy you though, and Sunday nights are very tough to get to sleep.
+ I probably have more overall energy, although about 3-4pm I’m totally ready for nap.
+ My workouts are probably better, but I’ve been sick a bit this week so it’s hard to tell.
+ Saturday nights when I stay up late I’m actually MORE awake, because I don’t have sleep debt AND I have to wake up early Saturdays anyway.

- When you realize you only get about 4 hours from when you get home (6pm) to when you gotta get ready for bed (10pm) you feel like killing yourself.
- I was told no heavy reading, so my reading time has taken another huge hit.

= Overall, the positives far outweight the negatives.  The lost time to sleep does seem to make everything else better.  When I want to party, I can party harder.

First off, one of my professors was uncomfortable with being video taped and decided after the fact that he didn’t like it.  And even though the second professor was okay with it, the first’s status as Supreme Badass of the Program cancelled my hopes of launching the MSIT program into the 20th century.  My only consolation for hundreds of dollars spent on equipment and dozens of hours spent on video hosting and editing is that there’s now a conversation happening about video recording.

I also did not get Donald Norman as my advisor for my independent study.  That’s a bummer.  Although the chap I’ve been recommended, Alan Wolff, is doing some pretty interesting research in HCI and I think things will be just fine.

On a related note, this quarter has been pretty brutal so far.  I’m blitzing my homework all day Sunday, and Monday night, so that I can do movie nights on Tuesday, meet with the group on Wednesday, and fix up and submit things on Thursday.  Friday nights are quite alone time when I stare out the window at all the other kids playing while I try to go to sleep early.

Whatever you do, do NOT get your business cards or do any business with Vista Print.

1. Vista Print’s website looks like trash dump, and hard to use.  I spent 10 minutes trying to figure out their uploader program.
2. Vista Print’s business card confirmations are so pixleated you can’t see what you’re really getting.  It’s worse than gifs.
3. Vista Print’s checkout process ticks you into ordering more than you want.
4. Vista Print’s order cancel policy requires you to write an e-mail and them to confirm.  It’s easy to order, near impossible to cancel.
5. Vista Print tries to sell you magazine subscriptions.
6. It takes two weeks to get your business cards, the second business we ordered from took 3 days.
7. The quality is horrible, the ink is splotchy, the stock is flimsy, and the cutting is uneven.

I would rather be kicked in the face than do business with Vistaprint.

Vimeo is what YouTube should be.

I would highly recommend Vimeo’s premium service

1. 5Gb of uploads a week
2. Unlimited space
3. Unlimited length
4. Easy to use, sign up, bill, upload… everything
5. Cancelling?  Just e-mail them.  They cancelled my account in 2 hours and refunded me in full.

Customer service isn’t dead.  Vimeo should light vistaprint on fire.

The entry fee is not zero! Okay yes, you have to spend a little bit of money to apply for colleges and some time crafting an essay or resume, but I think the real cost is the one you pay with your emotions. You’re putting your heart on the line, willing to be judge, hoping that you won’t be told “No, you are not good enough.” Just because it’s hard to measure the damage to your self-esteem doesn’t mean that it’s not signifcant or important.

I recently started a long process for an independent study for my MSIT program. I’ll be opting out of the Database Mining (a solid resume building but personally uninteresting) class in order to pursue my own studies. My own studies in this case, will focus on human computer interaction, a mix of design, cognative psychology, and engineering.

Where I put my heart on the line is that I’ve asked Don Norman to be my advisor. He literally wrote the book on human computer interaction. Having Dr. Norman be your advisor for HCI would be like having Michael Phelps as your swim coach.

Unfortunately it turns out he’ll be retiring from Northwestern at the end of this academic year, which I imagine means he’s very busy not taking on the extra work of advising some dude who isn’t even in one of his programs. He also travels to University of California at San Diego often, and something tells me that he’s not spending much of the winter season in Chicagoland.

So I’m very anxious to hear back, which should happen this week. I might be playing the lottery here, and it’s going to suck if things don’t work out, but at least it won’t suck as much as the enevitible guilt of not trying.  Which is what the advice for job seekers and college applicants should be — “Don’t be a bitch.”

Vimeo – $60 a year for extra features, and the ability to upload up to 5GB of video a week. Vimeo > than youtube because there’s no cap on file size or length, whereas with youtube you’re limited to something like 1GB or 10 minutes, whichever comes frist.  I decided to go with this to suppliment my Kodak Zi8, as I plan to upload my class lectures here.  

Another guy in the class and I both had the idea at the same time, but this is the first time my two current professors have been recorded.  As IT Gurus, I could see their minds racing when I asked if I could put the files online.  One said it was okay, the other is thinking about it because he wants to write a book from his slides.  

One of the interesting things about the program is that it’s not really focused on using technology.  None of our classrooms are “smart” and they don’t demo or really talk about this program or that program.  It’s kind of a mishmash as the students are left to their own devices to solve problems and understand things the way they want.  About half the class doesn’t bring a laptop, and I’ll bet of the half that do, they don’t use it to take notes.  Maybe after working with technology all week, everyone is just like “Fuck that.”  

LogMeIn Pro^2 (squared?) – $12 a month for some cool dashboard features, FTP style transfer and music streaming.

I find myself not wanting to deal with multiple locations and desktops while I’m studying at Wai’s place, so I’ve decided to kind of use her barely capable computer as a thin client to my home computer.  

It’s actually not too bad, although I still do word processing and Excel on her computer.  The music streaming is pretty cool though, and after about 10 seconds of shaky buffering it’s solid.  In the future when she gets some kickass speakers, I look forward to streaming my music to her place while I’m there.