magic, as usual

The smell of lightly
Cooking pumpkins on porches
Wafts to Halloween.

Chet and Roy came over this weekend so that we could get our pumpkin carving on, and it was a good time.  We pizza'd hard, watched Ghostbusters, and sang along to Aladdin (well, Roy and I did; I guess Chet had sensibilities or some such nonsense).  I hope this Indian summer doesn't rot our pumpkins, which are currently located on the Llama School porch, before Halloween.  :(

On that note, my Halloween costume is now complete.  :D  I'm pretty stoked about the Mad Scientists' Ball (CS/Info/CogSci/Philosophy/SLIS Halloween party).

I had a phone interview with Facebook this week, the language-knowledge half of which I futzed horribly.  But I redeemed myself with algorithms and data structures.  I get to go on to the next stage... which involves solving one of the Facebook puzzles at http://www.facebook.com/careers/puzzles.php (they're fun, if you're into that kind of thing; check it out!).

I am continually intimidated by the musical knowhow in this house.  I had my piano midterm this week, and I was excited like nobody's business about playing the James Bond theme for it.  Then my roomates--3 of them across two bands--put on a show at a Café in town, and I was reminded that I haven't been studying music for, um, 10 years.

It's midterm week, which means no work!  Well, except for studying, but who does that?  I only have one exam left to go: Networks.  Let's hope that this temporary lull in work doesn't put me to sleep...

As for recent movies that are worth watching, I definitely recommend The Saddest Music in the World.  It involves a woman with glass, beer-filled legs who sponsors a contest during prohibition for musical ambassadors from every country to journey to Winnipeg and show off how sad their country's music could be.

hello, goodbye

Footprints from the sky,
Cast darkly across cacti,
Wavering in heat.

Arizona is more gorgeous than I remembered.  I haven't been here in... what, like 8 years or something?  Anyway, it's been a while.  Flying in, I was once more enthralled by desolation from the air.  Excuse me for a moment while I wax poetic about the scenery, and then I'll get to talking about Grace Hopper:

Desert towns make no concessions.  Grids cross their space in the sand, and they don't taper off so much as they just stop when civilization does.  Sometimes a street will waver with a suggestion of organic shape.  The roads that connect the towns are Hugh Hefner-straight across flat, sandy inbetweens.  There are no curves to follow around hills.  There are no speed limits.

Dark veins of runoff channels spider across the dunes, giving the desert an appearance of old life.  Dots of brush don't seem like much from so high.  The outlines of sanguine mountains in the distance are made fuzzy by saguaros, which up close seem to be classic cowboys with their arms askew.

On the ground, one sees that there is more to this place.  The burning sun and the dry heat it brings are interrupted occasionally by a plane-shadow: the footprint of some great, rigid bird-god.  A lizard suns himself on a rock.  Some of the cacti are blooming--strange spots of bright in a landscape of brown and muted greens.  Some of the cacti are dying, but there is a romance in the extinguished ones covered in spiderwebs.

At sunrise and sunset, when Helios is at an end of his long drag across the southern sky, the silhouettes of hills and flora make dramatic backdrops for the southwestern dance music floating out of the conference centre.

Ok, anyway, I really loved the desert and actually am rather going to miss it.  The conference was way more fun than I expected, too, and I learned about a few really awesome grad school opportunities that I'm going to have to look into (including the Media Lab at MIT).  I think I also landed an internship for the spring, but we'll see how that goes.  ;)

There were lots of cool talks about things ranging from Lego Mindstorms to expanding involvement of women in technical fields (no surprise there) to how to best use the fairly extensive penetration of mobile phone service in Africa to improve medical care.  There was also a really inspiring panel about interdisciplinary research, which is most likely where I'm going to find myself.

There were also, of course, parties and lots of swag (Sarah and I got some great umbrellas from Bloomberg).  The platinum sponsors of the event were Google, Microsoft, and Intel, but there was a lot of participation from Amazon, Yahoo!, Bloomberg, IBM, Raytheon, and others.  I came away with a lot of free t-shirts (and 5 sets of Google sunglasses for the llamas back home).  I also got the chance to squaredance with Alan Eustace, to set up Guitar Hero and play with the Intel folks, and to jump in a pool fully clothed, which I haven't done in years, haha.  :)

I had a good time.  I hope that I have enough time to get my homework done on the plane flights home, but we'll see how that goes.  Oh, the life of a jetsetter.