Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Visitor Embargo Begins next week!

Okay. School is officially insane. I had to pull yet another all-nighter to keep up with the increasing load of homework.
Yes, friends, when you see me online at 2am PST, I am actually up. And if I'm not responsive, It's because I'm frantically markering or drafting another homework assignment.

On top of that, some of my lovely Californian friends are visiting and staying with me later this week. But honestly, I don't know if I'll even have time to hang out with them.

So I am placing an embargo on entertaining visitors, starting next week. If you are visiting New York, sadly I can't commit to spending time with you. If I magically can get away from school, I'll let you know.

They tell me school will be more manageable starting 2nd semester. In the meantime, I am NOT going out, unless you catch me on my rare once-a-month allotments.

Every month, I am allowing myself one concert, 1 date, and two other miscellaneous fun activities per month. This works out to one fun activity per week at most, if I can even fit those in. With the recent Tokidoki party, my upcoming visit from Emotion Eric, KP, BK, and Steph (we're going to see Spoon), plus Halloween (with various friends and classmates), and hopefully another date sometime this month... I am done for October!!

But my N.Y. cousins get a special pass to have meals with me.

I will now return to Santa's workshop.

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Saturday, October 13, 2007

Gold MONKEY

Agh! I want this pendant. But I don't think I feel right spending $900 on it. Boo.

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Adventures in Web Nerdiness

People who don't websurf often wonder what gets me so addicted to the web.

Usually I get online to check email, Flickr, and Facebook. That, combined with my general curiosity to find out more, is usually enough to lead me onto 20+ other webpages that I didn't expect to get to that day. And if not, I end up checking the usual blogs of my friends and influencers.

So in a potentially embarrassing exposé of my web-nerdiness, I will share an example of what happened this morning (after a 14-hour night of sleep, to recover from my weekly all-nighter for school):

From Facebook:

I get notified that John threw a sheep at me, and Gary's pet has beat my pet, Squiggy, in a race.

For those who don't know Facebook, this sounds probably much more exciting and insane than it actually does. It's all virtual. There are no real animals involved.

Newsflash: Full-grown adults are online, playing pretend!!!!

"Throwing a sheep" is part of the "Super Poke" feature on Facebook. You can send a message to a friend's profile page that says they have hugged, petted, pinched you. There are an array of actions you can choose from, and one of them, of course, is throwing a sheep. The point of this "poking" thing is generally a mystery to people, but it seems like an amusing way to say "hello," express affection, or to maybe nudge someone that he/she hasn't heard from in awhile.

So, in an attempt to try and "Super Poke" a friend on Facebook from my own profile page, I accidentally "petted myself," thanks to the confusing interface of Facebook apps.

I actually had to delete the action displayed on my page, that said "[Misocrazy] just petted herself." Afterwards, I thought maybe I should have left it there, to be funny. But then I thought that might be a little rude among my ex-coworkers, but then again I am a student again, so why should I be so concerned?

Generally, though, I try to somewhat cautious about posting vaguely inappropriate things online, even if it's seemingly harmless. It's very easy to get stuff passed around, taken out of context and have it come back to bite you in the ass. I know it's happened to my friends. I call it the Lindsay-Lohan effect.

Anyway, it fascinates me, as an ex-web designer, that despite the confusing Facebook UI, I still enjoy using it. I think there is a sense of exploration and surprise combined with all the changing, updated content of my friends and favorite things all on one page that makes me enjoy it.

So then I checked my Facebook virtual pet, which is a squirrel named "Squiggy." I can see pics of the 3 most recent people who have "petted" him. Petting other people's pets earns you virtual "munny", which you can use toward buying food for your pet, which then increases your pet's mood and potential racing speed.

I noticed that they updated the user interface for the pets, so that each pet has its own page of stats, and you can easily see the pets of all your friends. At this point, I notice that, according to the stats on its profile page, Squiggy has supposedly been in 137 races???

I had no idea that my pet was living such an exciting life. So then I start exploring my friends' pets' profile pages to see what their stats are like. And of course I have to go and pet them all, to get money to buy Squiggy a cupcake, and a pumpkin (a new food for the season!) which apparently he thinks is "exquisitely delicious."

I then noticed the samples of favorite songs shown on my Facebook profile, and then I decided to update that with some new selections. So I searched for Architecture in Helsinki and The Bird and the Bee and added some of their songs to my profile.

When I found "Bird and the Bee," it was labelled with "local show," which meant there was a show coming up for them in New York! So I clicked on that and marked it as "Want to go." Then I realized you could post this on your profile, so I set that up, in case one of my Facebook friends likes them and wants to see it with me.

See? Sometimes online nerdiness leads to getting out of the house and meeting real friends. Really! --except, unfortunately, nobody I know in New York uses Dodgeball, which is useful or that.. (--Not that I even have time outside of school to be running into friends at bars and events.) I do still use Upcoming and iConcertCal to keep track of concerts and events, like tonight's Tokidoki party, but again, none of my New York friends are as e-nerdy as I am.

I did find a couple hipster/e-nerdy New Yorkers on iminlikewithyou last month, when I made an online "game" to get some ideas for Robot drawings (for homework inspiration). But again, school is destroying any time I have for a decent social life, so I haven't met them in person yet. (If anybody would like access to the invite-only iminlikewithyou site, I can send you an invitation.)

From Yahoo! Mail:

Then I check my email. LuckyKT sent me a link about the new Murakami skateboard decks, which led me to this really fun blog by Josh Spear. I decide to bookmark that (in which I discover that Yahoo's "My Web" service is getting migrated to Yahoo! Bookmarks??) and browse his other blog entries. One of them is about the new Play-doh bunny ad for Sony's Bravia, which I hadn't seen.

That of course, reminds me of the other cool Sony Bravia commercial, with the bouncy balls in San Francisco. Then I saw the other one I hadn't seen, with the awesome paint explosions. So of course I had to look those up and post all of these to my Facebook group for my FIT classmates, for inspiration.

Then I saw another entry on Josh Spear's blog about a nifty, hand-sized vacuum sealer, which I then email to my brother, because he's a big foodie and has every cooking device ever made. I decide that I kind of want one of these, so I check Amazon to see if I can put it on my wishlist. Sadly they don't carry the device, but it is sold at Sharper Image and Linens 'n' Things.

Then I was browsing my endless Amazon Wishlist, on which I had an import album by the 5.6.7.8.'s. I wondered if they had it on iTunes, so I checked that out and found a compilation album that features the band. I was browsing the user reviews and really enjoyed this one review that was titled, "what!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" (with mispellings retained from the original entry):
"It sounds so retarted but yet cool if you like the origanals get out if you like messed up songs stay in"
I decided not to buy the album, but I did end up buying a song called "Woo hoo" by the band, which I recognized being used in some commercial, probably for a car.

I could go on all day looking up stuff like this. One thing leads to another, which I end up having to share with friends, and my friends send me interesting stuff, and then I chat on IM, play Scrabble on Facebook, and then I decide to blog, and then I realize that I need to get out of the house. Like now.

But it's cold now! Maybe I'll go back to bed. After I check Flickr.

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Thursday, October 11, 2007

So like, in Psych Class today...

I couldn't get myself to stay up to do my work last night, so I woke up at 6am to finish my Psych paper and take-home exam.

I was kind of a comical mess. At one point I couldn't locate a #2 pencil to fill out my scantron, but luckily I did finally find my one Powerpuff Girl pencil in some drawer and a hand-pencil sharpener.

Then I printed out my paper. But then I found typos. When I went to edit it on my laptop, it froze. My laptop is fairly new too. I freaked out for a second, but then when I restarted, my file was still there, Phew!

Then after my paper printed out, I realized I wasn't sure I had a stapler.

After frantically hunting around my room, I found my tricky German stapler (bought from a Japanese stationery shop) that doesn't use actual staples, but I wasn't sure it could take 4 sheets. So I tested it on a couple sheets and subsequently BROKE the stapler!! I thought German engineering was reliable!!! I couldn't even find paper clips!!

Finally, I resorted to using double-stick tape to attach the four pages. I rushed to class, thinking I was late, but I wasn't late at all. Other classmates were frantically filling out and checking the remaining scantron questions still, and a third of the class showed up late. Two of them had to still print out their papers at school at class break. So I guess I did relatively ok! Phew.

Later on, in the middle of class, we heard some kind of annoying high-pitched sound and all started making twitchy faces about it. So the teacher said, "What? What's wrong?"
Classmate 1: There's some high-pitched sound! Don't you hear that?
Classmate 2: Yeah, what is that?
Classmate 3: (--whose cell phone usually goes off in classes) It's not me.
Classmate 4: I don't know. Is it coming from the door?
Professor Culler: Are you guys playing with me? I don't hear anything.

And then it dawned on me that it was that high-pitched sound that I read about... I think from Wall Street Journal! Apparently after about age 28-30, you stop hearing sounds beyond a certain level of pitch. In the news stories it said that some kids had discovered this and would use the pitch as a ringtone to get around teachers' rules about not using cellphones in class.

The professor knew about this too and explained it to the class, to explain his skepticism. I said, "Wait, but I can hear it!" I don't think my classmates realized why I was impressed that I could hear it. We figured that it was probably some strange problem with the building's PA system rather than some ringtone.
Classmate 1: Really? You can't hear that?
Prof. Culler: Wow. No really, I can't hear it. Hmm. that's a little depressing.
Classmate 4: Oh, now I don't hear it anymore.
Classmate 2: Yeah, well that's cuz it just stopped.
Prof. Culler: Well. I'm just going to blame it on that loud concert I went to last week.
Classmate 1: Yeah? What concert did you go to?
Prof. Culler: Bloc Party. You know those guys?
Various Classmates: Oh... yeah!
Prof. Culler: I am sure I was the oldest person there. Yeah, by far. Anyway, so, IQ tests!

At that point, I think we were stunned, because our professor is maybe in his fifties? I had barely heard of Bloc Party myself, except that I had seen it as a video selection last weekend when I flew Virgin America. As if it weren't already cool that he lived in the same building as Deborah Harry, he just won extra street cred from the rest of the class.

Class itself was very entertaining today, as usual. Professor Culler is always an amusing story-teller/lecturer. Today we learned about various IQ exams that they give to children. He even gave us sample questions and problems. At one point he showed us a sample puzzle that they use on the kids' version of the Wechsler IQ test, so I got to try that one out. Luckily I could do it pretty quick, so I didn't look like an idiot in front of the class.

Ok now I have to suffer my usual Thursday of hell when I cram for my massive load of homework drawings due Friday. Ack.

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Tuesday, October 09, 2007

Grades, schmades

Holy crap! I just got an A+ on my Plastics/Organic Chemistry test! I guess going on that long super-date/SNL thing was worthwhile after all.

On the other hand, some of my other studio class grades might not be doing so well. After a week of midterms and too many assignments leading up to my 4th all-nighter at FIT, I spent a weekend out of town for a L.A. wedding and took a red-eye flight back home just before Monday morning class.

My eyes were insanely bloodshot, and I knew a virus was going around lately, so I decided to finally get some sleep for the sake of my own health, instead of rushing to finish a snazzy robot drawing. I had to give into turning in an assignment late.

I had sent an email some weeks prior to my instructor asking for an extension on this week's assignments, knowing that the wedding in L.A. might set me behind schedule. But now he tells me that he never got the email. WTF!? It's not like I'd lie about something like that. Dammit!!

But you know what? I am willing to sacrifice high grades if it means I get proper rest and good times with my very special friends in L.A. And hell, I already have a Design degree, so maybe high grades don't matter as much to me.

It's just aggravating when I know I'm capable of doing well on the assignments they give me, but I don't have the time to properly execute. I think also I tend to get a little bit ambitious on the types of designs I come up with, which require more time to do them properly.

But all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. We even learned how essential "play" is in child development in my Psych class!

Anyhoo. I must get back to writing my Psych paper on applying Cognitive Developmental theories on Truffault's film, "The Wild Child," due tomorrow. And I have to finish that take-home exam on seven chapters of Developmental Psych.

And people wonder why my eyes are perpetually bloodshot.

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