Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in JP's LiveJournal:

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Saturday, January 17th, 2009
4:12 pm	Settling in Portland's been pretty good so far. Work is mostly good. Although there's a rather steep learning curve. One great thing is they expect you not to work more than 40 hrs a week (most of the time). But the standard schedule has us getting off at 5. And most of the dance events don't start until 8 or 9. These empty early evenings have been the first significant time I've had with nothing to do in about a month. What with the job interview trip, going-away parties, dances, driving with my parents to my sister's in Florida for XMas (Driving!), packing, online apartment hunting, packing, getting rid of all my accumulated crap that wouldn't fit in the shipping container, packing, driving to Portland (thankfully with a backup driver), live action apartment hunting, Portland Fusion Exchange, hosting someone for PFX, and starting work. I saw the best and worst of Portland weather on my first two trips here. I first visited Portland back in June when the weather was fantastic and the city was verdant and shiny. The second visit was in December, and the city got shut down by ice and snow (apparently very rare). Since I've moved here, it's been somewhat cold and frequently rainy and cloudy. Overall I found it not too bad, but I suspect most people would think it was quite horrific weather. The lack of a sales tax is very cool and very convenient, but I think I might have been better off with Texas's sales tax than Oregon's income tax. I rarely buy all that much. I had some serious sticker shock when the government ate 42% of my signing bonus. (8 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, December 10th, 2008
9:32 pm	Portland Ho! I leave tomorrow for a job interview in Portland. I got them to extend my stay so I could check out the city (and the dance scenes). Portland is really cool! I'm excited! Wish me luck. (7 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, June 15th, 2008
3:13 am	seattle blues dance It's 3 am. There's a live blues band. The lights are low. There are over 100 awesome, sexy dancers on the floor. I've been getting great compliments on my dancing. Why am I posting about it and not out there on the floor? (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, June 11th, 2008
4:44 pm	deaf sociology On the plane today I put in some earplugs. They're bright orange and I have no hair to conceal them, so they're very obvious. They're great at completely cutting out white noise like an unusual and disconcerting engine rattle. However, I can still hear things like normal talking and the aggressively obnoxious screaming of the babies. The flight attendant started working her way down the aisles. I could hear every word she said even from several aisles away. But when she got to me, she started speaking super quietly. I guess she was just having fun with me. Fortunately, given the context, I was able to read her lips. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, June 4th, 2008
9:41 pm	A dirty trick So I was leaving a most excellent Flipside decompression party last weekend out near dripping springs. It was around 3:30 AM. I pulled up to a left turn traffic light. The light was red, so I waited around a while. Then I waited some more. And then I waited even still more. This was a looong light. Then it starts a whole new cycle of the light without ever giving me a green. About this time, a car pulls up behind me. It takes me a second, but I realize that it's a cop. Without the cop there, this is about the point I would have carefully checked for cars in every direction, and gone ahead and run the light. But now I have to wait and see what the cop does. I might have tried to signal to the cop that the light was foobar, and asked what I should do, but there were several reasons I didn't think this was a good idea. I sit through four cycles of the light waiting for the cop to do something. Finally, he pulled up beside me and told me I could go on through, then he blasted through the light. So I followed him. The thing that freaked me out most afterwards, is that I didn't even bother to look to see if anyone was coming. It just seemed natural to follow the cop blindly. I have to wonder if he was intentionally lurking there waiting for people to get stuck in this catch-22. Coincidentally, I just started reading Catch-22. On another note, this new PDA cell phone I got is dangerous. I keep being tempted to post Twitter-like not-quite-one-liners to LJ. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
5:12 pm	I approve of this redwood grove I'm standing in a redwood grove. There's no sign of man. It's increadibly peaceful. It could 2000 bc. Then this little device in my pocket rings. The spell is shattered. But, hey now I may as well blog about it! Hmm... How do you backdate an entry to BC? PS I'm at UC Santa Cruz. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, May 21st, 2008
1:49 am	Flipside and Dancing trips Well, I'm off to Flipside in the morning. Woot! Then I'll spend about a week back in Austin. Then it's off to dancing and hilarity on the West Coast. Jun 4-11 in San Fran and Jun 11-18 in Seattle. (I decided I couldn't fit the Portland trip in.) I'll see some of you at Flipside. Camp wIsh will rock the house! I hope to see some of you West Coast peeps in a few weeks. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, April 24th, 2008
2:41 am	Low tolerance for bad user interfaces Setting the LJ option, "Default privacy of new entries", to 'Friends' actually means "Default to making it look like new entries will be accessible to 'Everyone', while silently overriding the user specification and making them 'Friends Only'" I suppose they are trying to err on the side of caution, but damn, that's a wrong-headed user interface. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008
11:10 pm	Herding through the Arch Visiting the Arch monument in St. Louis is like a masters coarse in line-waiting. ( Read more... ) (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008
9:46 pm	More crazy vagabond-ness, but with planning I'm considering going to three different dance events on the west coast in early June. May 30 - Jun 1 Portland Come Rain, Come Shine Jun 6 - Jun 8 San Francisco Down Home Blues Shout Jun 13 - Jun 15 Seattle Jeremy and Karissa Wedding Blues and Lindy Exchange The tentative plan is to stay on the west coast in the intervening weeks.  No point in coming back home for a few days just to go right back out there, right?  I'll be be pretty occupied during the actual events, and staying with a local dancer.  Anyone want to host me during the week in one of the relevant cities?  Or just meet up somewhere and catch up on old times or go sightseeing?  One of the reasons for this trip is to check out the respective cities to see if I want to move there.  I've never even been to Portland. (7 Comments |Comment on this)
9:03 pm	City Museum in St. Louis This past Friday I went to a Lindy Hop dance at The City Museum in St. Louis. This place is frackin' amazing! It's like a giant playground for adults. Take a look at the photo tour. I had so much fun running around and "spelunking", that I almost didn't get any dancing in. We went to a diner afterward. I had an Irish cream milkshake and a slice of someone else's deep fried french toast. Delish! Oh, on Sat, I also went up in the Arch. It was cool, but City Museum was way more fun. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Tuesday, April 15th, 2008
4:30 pm	Crazy Vagabond-ness I'm in Memphis. Last weekend I went to Fleur de Lindy, a Lindy exchange held during the French Quarter Fest in New Orleans. It was a blast! Tromping around the Quarter all day, dancing in the middle of the street to awesome live jazz bands. I went a day early so I could meet up with by boardgaming friend, Mischa. We chatted and caught up, played some games, and I met some of his New Orleans friends who seemed really cool. Food quality was a roller-coaster. I had some awesome Mediterranean, the blandest, largest po-boy I've ever tasted (or failed to taste) (and it could have fed 3 people), a scrumptious jambalaya omelet, a very dry muffalatta and a very good, but ultimately very overpriced ritzy meal. I met a bunch of awesome people from Memphis while there, and they invited me to come back with them. So I pushed my free Southwest flight back almost a week and changed from New Orleans to St. Louis. Despite not flying to Memphis, Southwest rocks. I'll be driving with the Memphis folks to some dance event in St. Louis on Friday, flying home Sat. Woot! (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, February 22nd, 2008
6:47 pm	Going private I've decided to start making most of my posts friends-only. Post a comment on this entry if you'd like to be added. Edit: It appears that this post has confused some people. Anyone who is already a friend will continue to see my posts and I don't intend to unfriend anyone. I'm just worried about prospective employers or someone coming along and finding something they consider damning. (Which is kind-of silly since there's much more risque stuff already posted than the entries I've posted recently.) I may go back to mostly public entries with no further notice. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, September 6th, 2007
2:01 pm	Some say the man will burn by moonlight. Some say shadow. Now that I've felt expression's bite, I'd wait for half moon's full insight. But if the man were twice laid low, I think I know enough of spite To say that it would also glow With enough light To have a show. If you're confused, check out: This story and Fire and Ice by Robert Frost Thanks to Camp Wabi for inspiring me to write this at Burning Man. And, holy synchronicity, Mathman!  This had to have been composed at about the same time. (Comment on this)
Saturday, August 25th, 2007
3:04 am	accomplished Prepping for Burning Man has been a monumental task, but I think I'm nearly done. It included lots of reading, picking friends brains, planning, shopping, sorting, packing ...and sewing! I'm particularly proud of the sewing. I sewed fabric over the loose mesh sections of my tent to help keep dust out. It took several hours. I've never done a sewing task quite so monumental before. I also made some minor repairs to other stuff. On the work front, I've finally finished several projects that have been particularly resistant to progress for the past few months. One was to integrate the eye-tracking hardware of another lab with our lab's 3D simulation software. It was pretty sweet to see that finally come together. Now the computer knows where you're looking. Soon, we'll be sticking probes in your brain and the computer will know what you're thinking. Bwa-ha-ha! Sadly my dancing has been stagnating. With everything else going on, I haven't been to any lessons all month. Although I do hope to dance some at Burning Man. And I've actually been blogging! Whee! (Comment on this)
Friday, August 24th, 2007
9:16 pm	pneumatic There's a man outside my window. About 30 ft down. He's worked his way into a wet hole he barely fits in. Sweaty from exertion, he pumps his jack in the hole. All up and down the building other men have worked their way into tight slimy holes of their own. They serenade me in an exotic foreign language in time to their pumping. ...veinticuatro veinticinco... The whole building creaks in protest of their exertions. Soon she will be well-balanced and whole once again. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, August 21st, 2007
3:06 am	There's a Man Burning a hole in my pocket I'm going to Burning Man! I'll be on the Playa in less than a week! I'm so pumped! Woooo!!1!! I'm camping with awesome people, Mumbleville. Mumbleville has a lot of Camp Ish and other local Austin Burner friends. And our camp is right next to the other awesome people I was considering camping with, Ultra Stunt Danger Academy. USDA has a few Lindy Hoppers I know from around the country. It's an amazingly awesome coincidence that we're so close considering the whole temporary city is almost 2 miles in diameter. And it's been frackin expensive. I have $980 in recorded purchases, and I know I've spent more than that. I've got some crap left to buy and there will be transpo costs from Reno to the playa. I suspect it'll end up coming out to somewhere between $1200 and $1500 all told. I rarely do any shopping at all. And I don't think I've ever been on this extensive a shopping spree. For the Man, I spent six straight hours (ish) going to seven different stores. And that was just one of several days of shopping. It seems ironic that it takes an event as supposedly counter-culture as Burning Man to turn me into a good little American Consumer. Oh, and... I'm going to Burning Man! (3 Comments |Comment on this)
2:37 am	staccato moat They're fixing the foundation on my apartment building, but I'm beginning to think they're installing a medieval security system. A couple months ago they started digging a series of holes all the way around the outside of the building. About 2 ft wide and 4 ft apart. Then it started raining. And kept raining. And eventually, the holes stopped draining and filled up with water. So now we have a punctuated moat. Then they started digging holes in the apartments downstairs. They had to pile all the dirt somewhere, so they created ramparts out the back of the building. Which, incidentally, blocked off the back stairs. Today, I came home to discover holes in the middle of the walkway to get to the front stairs. So now they've installed pit-traps, cleverly hidden with planks of wood that barely cover them. And, naturally, all this work makes a lot of noise. Jackhammers, and inexplicable thumps that shake the entire building. At 9am or earlier. Not exactly conducive to restful sleep. So as the final touch, they've turned my bedroom into a torture chamber. Add to the mix new management that are complete jerks with their heads up their asses, and you get me plus roommate moving out in November. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, May 10th, 2007
6:22 pm	Flipside projects I'll be camping with Camp Ish again at Flipside this year.  So I've been spending a lot of time at Ish workdays.  We call them workdays, but they don't feel like work. I get to hang out with cool people and build huge nifty artsy projects. The workdays have been scheduled Wed, Sat, Sun for the past two months. Yeah, that's a lot of time. Naturally, these frequently conflict with other things that I'm doing. (I have too many hobbies.) Early on, I was prioritizing other things over the workdays, but still making a high percentage of them. Now, with only two weeks left, things are really kicking into high gear, and these are the days I'm really looking forward to. I'm really bummed that I'll be missing the weekend just before Flipside. But I'll be at the Denver Lindy Exchange so I'm not too bummed. Camp Ish has an empire theme this year, but the overriding theme of Camp Ish every year is comfort.   Flipside is a lot of fun despite being hot and dirty and hard and pointy. We make the most cushy, relaxing, shady camp we can, and the fun comes easy after that. We also work hard before Flipside to minimize the amount of work needed at Flipside.  No one wants to spend an extra 2-8 hours finishing building that art project under the sun when they could be off playing or relaxing in the shade. Another part of this theme is no guilt. Not everyone can come to all the workdays. This is fine. There are lots of ways to contribute. We explicitly order them not to feel guilty about it. So I'm sad when I miss workdays because they're fun, but I don't feel guilty about it. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
4:27 pm	LJ and RSS I've been really bad about reading LJ recently.  On the other hand, I recently started using Google's RSS reader for online comics and some other stuff.  And I've been really good about checking that.  So I just added my LJ friend's page to Google reader.  Unfortunately, I'm only able to see public posts this way.  (LJ has a way to authenticate with a popup password dialog, but this doesn't work through google reader.  Plus, it only works with a direct feed of someone's LJ, not with a friend's page.   Does anyone know a way around this?) The upshot is: I'm much more likely to read your LJ posts in a timely manner, but much less likely to comment or to ready your friend's-only posts at all.  Maybe this isn't such a good thing after all.  We'll see how it works out. (5 Comments |Comment on this)