August 28, 2002
double vision
file under: thoughts about things
the most bizarre thing happened to me today. either i'm losing my mind or there are beings with strange powers walking the planet.
...
i was walking back to the BART station after a fine lunch with my friend Travis, when i saw a large black woman coming towards me. the street was fairly empty, so i couldn't help but notice her. she was maybe five and a half feet tall, equally round, with a short afro like tangled clumps of steel wool. she was talking to herself quietly as she made her way down the street, mutterings intelligible only to her. all of this paints a fairly common picture in san francisco until we get to her shirt - a white T-shirt with a black-and-white face shot of Brandon Lee, wearing his full goth-clown makeup from 'The Crow.'
why this woman would be wearing this T-shirt made no sense to me. maybe it was not so much chosen by her, as it was simply available. in any case, i spent about 5 seconds thinking this was odd and then fell back into whatever ocean of thought i was sailing before i saw her.
about four minutes and two blocks later, i looked up and saw her again, walking straight toward me in the same direction she had been walking before, muttering, Brandon Lee's face staring at me with that crooked clown smile.
i had been walking in a straight line at a reasonable pace. i made no stops. she was walking in the opposite direction, moving much more slowly than i. and yet, somehow, she appears in front of me again. it was like that scene in 'The Matrix' when Keanu Reeves sees the black cat twice (you know, glitch in the matrix, they've changed something, blah blah blah).
there are really only a few scenarios possible:
- she is an undercover Olympic sprinter. she ran around several blocks, stopped, and started walking again, just to mess with my head.
- she is actually an alien disguised as a street person, and has a small teleportation device that she used, just to mess with my head.
- she turned around right after i passed her, sped up, passed me without my noticing, then circled back to walk the same way again (just to mess with my head).
- she took a four-block cab ride just for giggles (...).
- i am losing (or have lost) my marbles.
i think i need a job to distract me from noodling about things like this...
Posted: 08.28.02 at 6:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
pigeons (again)
file under: thoughts about things
another entry about pigeons seems a little excessive, but life knows nothing about my blogging...
i was walking home from BART yesterday, minding my own business, when suddenly i heard the familiar sound of a pigeon in distress. i'm used to this sound by now, given my previous close encounter with these avian feces peddlers. what are the odds that i should have two pigeon close encounters in as many weeks?
...
the source of the distress was easy enough to find...sitting on a Victorian doorstep in front of me, naked to the world and its evils, sat a baby pigeon. this one was a little older than the one i had tried to rescue (in vain), but it was just as helpless. aside from the desperate 'cheeps' coming from this fuzzy grey prey, i heard the voices of its brethren nearby. tilting my head to the heavens, i saw the perch from which it had fallen - a ledge on the Victorian in front of me. i could see its parent in the makeshift nest, powerless to do anything about its offspring far below (and apparently oblivious as well).
it seems that pigeons falling from their nests is a common occurrence, which makes me wonder, where the hell do they all come from? if half of them fall out of their nests, and others get picked off by crows before they even hatch, it seems that the whole survival-of-the-fittest thing puts them pretty low on the survival totem pole, so to speak.
the surviving sibling from my previous encounter is still in the nest, unable or unwilling to fly away. its buddies keep falling out of their nests, subject to the whims of gravity and the like. these birds don't really seem engineered to survive, and yet they're everywhere, cooing and pooing and giving contractors a reason to build those nasty spikes you see on ledges all over the place.
what gives? i'm open to your theories...
Posted: 08.28.02 at 1:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
August 22, 2002
terror in the classroom
file under: my life
you would think that after about 50 years in lower and higher education, a classroom would be as comfortable to me as a pair of well-worn slippers. tonight i attended a creative writing class at the Community College of San Francisco (CCSF), and found that engineering school did not completely inoculate me against stage fright.
i've been talking (and talking and talking) about my desire to be a writer. it's a broken record i play regularly with some measure of self-loathing, mad at myself for never having really tried. so, when i had lunch with bernie today and he told me about this creative writing class in our neighborhood, i figured i'd give it a whirl. put my money where my mouth is. if not now, when?
this was a clear case of nice, clean logic that flies in the face of muddy reality...
...
CCSF has a 'campus' at a high school about 5 blocks from my apartment; they hijack rooms from the school once darkness falls, apparently. maybe it shouldn't be so surprising that, in a society which so clearly values teaching, the community college system is reduced to educational vampirism to survive. at any rate, i walked up there with greg (friend of bernie) to attend the first class i've been to in almost ten years- it was hard to tell whether the noise in my stomach was bees of excitement or butterflies of anxiety.
i think the bees and the butterflies had made a mutual non-agression pact, because there were measures of both in my nether regions. i was excited about the prospect of pursuing my dream of writing, and simultaneously scared that, put to the test, i would fail. after all, writing these blogs is easy - i don't have to read them to a class or a discerning teacher, exposing myself to public ridicule. the bar is generally pretty low on the Web (not to disparage my readership, but people don't expect Hemingway here), and there's a certain comfort in detachment.
the thought of reading my work to a class full of strangers, people armed with incisive witticisms and rotten tomatoes, made me feel seasick. i'm not entirely averse to criticism, but i'm not sure i am ready for a truly public forum. with this blog, it's different - most of my readers are people whom i know. the potential for embarrassment is pretty minimal, assuming i avoid overly personal and sensitive topics (you know, flatulence, sex, conspiratorial gossip - those sorts of things).
i think i could get over all of that, though. on some level, i just don't feel totally committed to doing it yet. i feel like i have to crawl in private for awhile before i do it in public. i also have some distractions over the next month or so that will force me to miss a few classes (blatant rationalization, but true nonetheless). i don't want to waste anyone else's time if i'm not fully engaged.
it will happen - someday; me trying to write something more than these blogs, that is. it may just not happen in the classroom for awhile...hey, i can always read a few books about it in the meantime, right?
Posted: 08.22.02 at 9:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
knob twiddling
file under: about this blog
the format of the primary landing page has been changed. given that i am prone to diarrhea of the keyboard, i have decided to conserve bandwidth on the splash page by only presenting teasers. this also allows quick perusal to find notes of interest (if any).
if a hue and cry is raised by my thousands of loyal readers to return to the old way of doing things, well, i guess i will...
we now return to our regularly scheduled programming.
Posted: 08.22.02 at 8:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
August 21, 2002
the cardboard-box man
file under: thoughts about things
i see him every few weeks, sometimes more. he drives a pale, metallic green american car from the 70s. his back is stooped with age, his face hidden behind coke-bottle glasses. he's usually wearing a powder blue leisure suit, or the equivalent, something he's probably worn for the last 30 years...
when i see him, he's always moving slowly and deliberately, intent on his singular mission - cardboard-box recycling.
...
he must have the corner on the san francisco cardboard-box recycling market. or at least, that's what i imagine. his car is packed to the rafters with flattened boxes of every shape, size and origin. they bulge from the trunk, obscure the windows, and pull the car to the ground. outside of a recycling plant, i've never seen such a menagerie of boxes, nor anyone so intent on collecting them.
the thing that struck me most when i saw him was not his profession, or his car, or his leisure suit, but the odd trajectories our lives take. ten years ago, i couldn't have imagined being in the place i am now, doing what i do now (ok, yeah, i'm unemployed, but i mean before that). similarly, i'm sure he couldn't have imagined being the cardboard-box man. if i had a time machine, took a snapshot of him today, went back to his childhood, and showed him a picture of his future, he would laugh and tell me i was nuts, that he wouldn't end up that way.
it seems to me this is the nature of life. we imagine futures, project ourselves forward to successes and happiness (or failures and sadness), but in reality, the threads of time and chance tangle to hide the reality...
maybe some people wind up where they imagined, but how many don't? look at yourself today - are you where you imagined you'd be?
Posted: 08.21.02 at 7:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
blah blah blah
file under: my life
paranoia is beginning to set in. i'm beginning to think that my social skills are degrading into near uselessness, that i talk too much and too eagerly when i spend time with friends, and that they are launching a plot to have my mouth surgically sealed to prevent further air pollution.
...
i'm normally not self-conscious about these things, but lately, for some reason...
maybe i'm becoming a shut-in. i do, after all, meet several of the criteria (spends more than 80% of the time at home, breaks out in sweat when thinking of outdoors, buys crunchy snack foods in bulk at costco...). as a consequence, my social skills get about as much exercise as artwork.
i can't figure out whether it's worse to be paranoid about this, or to actually be socially challenged. the thing is, i think my friends are probably too nice to say anything. most people probably are. it's just terribly hard to find a polite way to say, "i'm sorry - could you please stop flapping your gums? i think i'm about to have a boredom-induced seizure."
given that people aren't going to say anything, i guess i'll just do my best to forget about it, aiming for that un-self-conscious ideal. i'm reminded of one of my favorite quotes:
"you wouldn't worry so much what people thought about you if you realized just how little they actually do..."
Posted: 08.21.02 at 6:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
August 19, 2002
the first one is free
file under: thoughts about things
as if there aren't enough temptations...
this weekend was particularly debaucherous, at least, gastronomically speaking. friday night, niman ranch steak at Home (the restaurant, not the place). saturday night, monkfish and kobe beef cheeks at Watergate (the restaurant, not the hotel or scandal). sunday afternoon, burgers at in-and-out (the burger joint, not the act), followed by the thing most cherished by police and the american obese alike: krispy kreme donuts.
...
elaine did it. she was the serpent who spoke the words as the last bits of in-and-out passed out of sight. they make it too easy, you see. in daly city, the krispy kreme is right next door to the in-and-out. they both have drive-thrus, too. who ever heard of a donut drive through? it's wrong, i tell you.
i held strong: 'you can have some donuts sweetie...i think my double-double was enough for me.' (errrrrp) it was easy - through the doors, past the cookers, up to the specimen case, packed with glazed, crullers, jelly-filled. no problem - easy to resist all of that. and then, the magic words, music to the ear of most americans: 'would you like a free sample?'
i did a double-take, just like you re-read that sentence. 'excuse me?,' i said. yes, that's right - a FREE sample of krispy kreme donuts. glazed, to be precise, and recently spawned from the frying vat - warm, and ready to stay that way in your belly.
my knees buckled. the room spun. how could i resist? how could anyone resist such a temptation? the only people who could resist are the ignorant, those who have not tasted from the tree of donut knowledge.
they put heroin in those donuts, you know. i didn't care. i ate the sample and bought more for breakfast. you know, the box even tells you how to reheat them in the microwave...
resistance is futile.
Posted: 08.19.02 at 10:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
August 13, 2002
have you seen us?
file under: thoughts about things
they arrive in the mail every few days, these flimsy, envelope-sized sheets of paper. on one side, you'll find an ad, perhaps for a cheap oil change or discount goods. on the other, the side holding your name and forcing you to bear witness, are the pictures, the names, the statistics: name, DOB, age, ht, date missing, last seen...
...
every time i get one of these cards, it makes me sad. i never recognize the faces. they smile at me innocently from the card, the children asking for help, the adults, to turn a blind eye. when i look into the child's eyes, i can't help but think that they are gone forever, lost to this world (maybe by their own choice). when i look into the adult's, i ask myself, does this look like a kidnapper? a murderess or murderer? a pedophile, even? and the eyes always answer, quite simply, 'no.'
the pictures show smiling faces taken during smiling times, so it's hard to imagine the state of mind that led to a child's flight from home, or a parental kidnapping, or even worse, an abduction. chaos, anger, loss, madness - these things are all opaque to us as we look through the window of this small card stuck in our mailboxes.
i went to the web site on the card, wondering how much these things help, feeling guilty that i suspected they helped very little. i wanted to be proven wrong. i wanted to feel like people's hard work made a difference sometimes. you will have to go to the site and judge for yourself...after looking and thinking, i now feel that regardless of how much difference they make, if even one child is found as a result, it matters.
in 2001, the NCIC database held 840,279 missing persons reports filed that year (up 444% from the 154,341 entries in 1982). the FBI estimates that 85-90% of those reports are for children, which means roughly 2000 children are reported missing every day. it means that a parent felt strongly enough to call the police and file a report; it does not mean the child was kidnapped or harmed, necessarily.
in these statistics, 'missing' includes runaways, children taken by non-parental family members or parents without custody, and non-family abductions. most of these cases are solved quickly and without harm having come to the missing; 651,209 cases in 2001 were listed as 'Juvenile,' indicating that no foul play was suspected.
what about children taken by non-custodial parents? i used to think to myself that it's none of my business, that the problems of a family are invisible and unknowable to me, and thus i shouldn't interfere. but think of it from the child's perspective: when they are taken by that parent, even if the parent is in the right, they immediately become fugitives from justice, and they live the lives of fugitives - running, hiding. this is no way for a child to grow up...of course, there must be desperate situations where one parent, perceiving danger to their child, has exhausted all of their legal means to save their children, and feels abduction is the only solution. short of saving a child from certain physical abuse or death, i'm still not sure it's justifiable to lead them into the scary world of flight and pursuit.
and then there are the rest of the cases...one half of one percent of missing children cases are non-family abductions where foul play is suspected and danger is predicted. statistics show that if the abductor plans murder, 74% of the time they will do the deed within three hours of the abduction. the card in your mailbox is too late for these children. this is terrible - children are taken so quickly, their lives extinguished by demons walking the earth. at the same time, it means when you see those pictures, there is usually hope that the child is still alive, somewhere.
we are at the top of the food chain, with nothing to fear, except ourselves...we are also the only ones who can try to stem the tide of madness.
Posted: 08.13.02 at 10:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
August 11, 2002
black pigeon down
file under: thoughts about things
life is a delicate thing, but the world is anything but a gentle place - survival of the fittest is the cold truth, for pigeons, people, or polar bears. this week, some local pigeons taught me this lesson first hand as i tried to disrupt the gentle balance of life and death in their world.
...
if you ever wondered where baby pigeons come from (or conversely, where pigeons lay their eggs), i think the appropriate response would be 'anywhere they bloody well can.' this would happen to include the empty flower pot that sits on a small ledge outside my back door. the door opens out onto a landing with rickety, half-enclosed stairs down to the weed-patch-cum-garden behind my building. this atrium of sorts provides a quiet, sheltered place for raising avian families, and since i'm on the top story, pigeons can easily just fly down from the roof to feed their young or do whatever else they do as parents (which isn't much, from what i can tell).
several attempts have been made to lay eggs on that back landing (at least two in the empty pot, and one beneath the barbecue that sits out there collecting rust). none have been successful to this point; i think the crows often pick off the eggs before they mature and hatch. the latest attempt was successful, though, with two eggs reaching the proper ripeness and hatching to reveal their passengers.
i thought that pigeons, like many greek gods, might just appear in toto and mature, ready to fulfill their mission in life (fly, defecate, and destroy). actually, they come out as deformed little pigeonlets, which would have been a more reasonable expectation. pigeons are not attractive birds; it's no suprise given what they start out looking like. wrinkled prunes covered with tennis-ball fuzz is the best description i could offer.
i am not, in general, a fan of pigeons, in case it wasn't yet obvious. i can't say i really know many people who are. 'rats with wings' is a moniker that is used freely, and i must admit to often thinking it's not far from the truth. however, there's something about babies of any species that can bring about a change of heart. babies are so helpless, so much at the mercy of their surroundings, and when i see them, i can't help but feel some sort of kinship or protectiveness.
but i digress...
after the babies were born outside my back door, i watched them with fascination every day. i usually tried to be voyeuristic, looking through my bathroom window, but occasionally i had to take the trash down, and the back stairs are really the only way. they grew quickly, but they stayed in the helpless stage for much longer than i would have thought. on top of that, momma (or papa) pigeon was usually not in evidence. sometimes i'd see her/him up on the roof looking down, or heara chorus of little sheeps announcing the arrival of food.
two days ago, i walked out to dump the trash, looked in the nest to check on my friends, and found that the plurality of the nest had decreased by one. one pigeon was missing. the one that was left was clearly not ready to fly, not even close, so its sibling was probably the same. given that pigeons don't really carry their young like cats, the options were few, and all seemed to boil down to falling out of or being jettisoned from the nest, which meant the little guy had to be nearby.
sure enough...two steps down the stairs and i saw him, shivering weakly on the staircase, cheeping madly at my approach. my immediate thought was 'rescue mission' - but how am i gonna get the little guy back in his nest?? i figured maybe i could cup him gently in my hands and deposit him back in his home, or something like this, so i started moving down the staircase slowly.
i tried not to be intimidating, but it's pretty tough given that i probably looked like a 100ft-tall monster in search of pigeon dinner. so, he did what i would probably have done - kept his eyes on me and started backing up. well, unfortunately, there is a small gap between the enclosing wall of the staircase and the steps, just big enough, in fact, for our friend to fall right through it. two stories, straight down.
so far, my rescue mission was not looking good.
i ran down the stairs, and there he was, a little wobbly, but not too much the worse for wear. amazing - a human falling the equivalent distance would have broken quite a few bones. my mission still had a chance. the only thing i had to figure out was how the hell to get him without hurting him and without him or his brother pecking me with their sharp little beaks.
at this point, we descend into comedy as a grown man starts talking with a two-week-old pigeon, trying to say reassuring things, making cooing noises. sort of like what people do when they see babies. my first attempt was to try to shoo him into a box with a mopstick, carry the box up the stairs, and then drop him in the nest. this failed miserably; he just ran under the stairs and hid. then i decided that i would have to just pick him up. not wanting to get pecked, i went and got some leather gloves and went in for attempt number two...
it was much easier than i thought it would be. i scooped him up gently, made my way up the stairs, then set him in his nest next to his brother, who was protesting quite loudly and puffing up his little pigeon chest. despite his protest, my mission was apparently successful, as our little future divebomber cheeped in appreciation.
i went back inside and felt that i had done my good deed for the day. i had lunch, and kept checking on my friend throughout the afternoon, now that i was his guardian angel of sorts. maybe two hours after i put him back in the nest, i looked out and to my horror, there was only one pigeon in the nest. a little cheeping sound from below revealed our buddy two stories below again. so, i donned my trusty gloves, went downstairs, and performed rescue mission number two, hopefully the last...
the next morning, i woke up and went to check on my friend. he looked a little tired and weak, but was still in the nest sleeping, his little chest moving up and down. his brother seemed perfectly happy to have him there, and i heard them being fed earlier, so everything seemed ok. it appears that the grim reaper is fairly determined, however, and the next time i went to check, he had gone to the great poopfest in the sky. a brief service was performed in the backyard - the family were not in attendance.
i felt sad. it was just a pigeon, a dirty pigeon of which there are probably hundreds of thousands in san francisco alone, but it didn't matter. i had tried to alter the balance of the world by involving myself in its welfare, and i couldn't stop wondering whether i had helped or hurt or made any difference at all.
after all this, the one idea that sat in my head, ringing like the bell of the grim reaper, was that survival of the fittest is reality, not just some textbook idealization...how does anything make it through the teeth of predators, the burning stare of the sun, the chilling hand of rain and snow?
it's a pigeon-eat-pigeon world out there, but somehow life thrives...
Posted: 08.11.02 at 6:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
the amazing mosquito
file under: thoughts about things
anyone who is familiar with my sleeping habits will tell you that it almost takes an act of god (or some other suitable deity) to get me out of bed. apparently, mosquitoes work, too.
a few nights ago, i was awakened in the deep, dark night by that all-too-familiar eeeeeeeeeeee sound - you know, the feeding call of your friendly neighborhood mosquito. i flailed my arms around, trying to swat my nemesis, but it was all in vain. it might veer away for a few moments, but it always came back, homing in on the precious territory right above my ear. i tried hiding under the covers, but i could still hear it, hovering on the other side of my grey flannel shield. pretty soon, i felt like my whole body was crawling with unwanted visitors; every little itch or twinge became a harbinger of bites to come.
...
this has happened before, of course. i usually turn on all the lights and wait quietly in bed with the patience of oceans - anything to rid myself of these miniature flying vampires (my buddhist sensibilities take a break when it comes to mosquitoes and cockroaches). if elaine is sleeping near me, though, i can't very well wake her up to suffer with me. what to do?
i did the only thing possible - i went and slept on the couch, closing the bedroom door behind me. in retrospect, this wasn't really a gallant thing to do, leaving the damsel to face the dragon alone, but i don't really think straight at 4 in the morning (sorry, sweetie...).
as i was drifting off to sleep, happy on the couch, the math geek in me started wondering about the odds. i mean, how big is my room, and how can such a small bug home in on a potential dinner (me) so quickly, and without fail?
mosquito mathematics
my room is 16ft x 12ft x 14ft, or roughly 4.6 million cubic inches. if i assume the little guy fills up about 1 cubic inch of that space, then this means he's searching a volume 4.6 million times his own size. let's translate this into human terms - if i turn myself into a box 6ft tall, 2ft wide, and 0.5ft thick (ignoring the paunch, of course), then this means i fill up about 6 cubic feet, or 10400 cubic inches. the corresponding volume for me to search would be 48 trillion cubic inches (28 million cubic feet).
now, if the juicy space above my ear (the one the mosquito always finds) is about 1 cubic inch, then this is 0.00002% of the total volume of the room. translating into our human terms above, this would be 5 cubic feet out of 28 million.
mmmm...human pizza
so what does this mean? imagine a room that is one mile long, 10 feet tall, and 500 feet wide (roughly 28 million cubic feet). now pack the room with 5.6 million boxes of equal size (each filling 5 cubic feet). to make things interesting, let's say you're starving to death, and one of those boxes contains a nice hot Dominoe's Pizza - you can smell it, vaguely, but the lights are out in the room and you absolutely have to have that pizza. (hey, this might make a good reality-TV show...)
that's a pretty tall order, even if you can smell the pizza (fyi, if you opened 1 box every second, it would take you 3900 days to look through them all). of course, our mosquito friend has wings, and he's not slowed down by having to open boxes, so my example is a little extreme, but you get the idea.
it's pretty amazing. i think these guys are going to be around long after the nuclear winter, chillin with the cockroches. i wonder if they can get their little probosci through those hard cockroach shells...
Posted: 08.11.02 at 6:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
August 8, 2002
being jean-luc picard
file under: my life
a few of my close friends (okay, maybe just two), have said the hollywood figure i remind them of is jean-luc picard. when they told me this, i took it as the highest compliment, because i can only dream of having the same wisdom, wit, and composure. [for those of you not familiar with jean-luc picard, he's the captain of the USS Enterprise on 'Star Trek: The Next Generation'. there - i've just provided another data point that confirms i am a geek.]
tonight i watched 'X-Men' while eating my bowl of home-made green tofu curry (ok, i had popcorn, too). of course, patrick stewart (who plays jean-luc picard) is one of the main characters in X-Men, and his role is similar to the one he played in TNG - mentor, teacher, leader, role model.
each of us has (or had) people like this in our lives (hopefully, at least). they don't take cash payments to make a difference - usually, they do it because it's who they are, it's what they want to do. most of the time, they're probably unsung heroes, not hollywood heroes or sports superbeings - just regular folks - your friends, your parents, your lovers, your teachers, your colleagues. i've never really ackowledged these people in my life, and i want to do it now, for no particular reason, in no particular order, and with little explanation. (if you don't see your name below and you know me, best to assume that my forgetfulness got the best of me...)
- mom and dad (progenitors, fonts of wisdom, funding sources)
- elaine hsieh (long-standing significant other)
- mike kovalenko and family, kevin green and family, martha brant, chris mitchell, curtis fong, joe kress, betty lin, bill halloran, robert keil, polly grewal, tad palmer and family, trevor davis and family, pam leong, eric fredricksen and tracy, roberto de leon, jerry beltran, dianne west, laura hollingsworth, john dorgan, susan bogy, james badro, sebastien merkel, lisa ingenieri, kellie walsh, jim and jocelyn warren, james hopkins and marni, dada bacudo, andy and melinda roosen, sharon glotzer, lynette cains, nick armstrong and tania perry, claire evans, steve and allison langer, john harris, jason and laurie turner, anthony yell, ryan hoguet, steven sassaman, andrew lynch, travis culwell, jenny mclean, gene lee, alan yost and debbie, linda yeo, carl and feyna oman, chris jones, connie harvey, ramon colcer, ryan freitas, alder yarrow, ylva wickberg, aidan bunting, heather and clem odonnell, hideki kimata, aoi matsumoto, fumiko ikeshiro, naoko fujino, and on and on and on (good friends)
- karol kunysz, barbara carson, gary shapiro (high-school teachers extraordinaire)
- didier de fontaine (grad school advisor)
- ben burton and judy devaney (post-doctoral advisors)
- chris and whitnie wolverton, mark asta and theresa forni, vidvuds ozolins and alice heele, gerd and ineke ceder, dave teter, jeff hoyt and tracy spallina, john rodriguez, craig and marty carter, dane morgan, mark kraitchmann (grad-school cronies)
- professors jeanloz, gronsky, falicov, haller, theodorou, hanson, morris, vollhardt, strovink, wu, and others (all uc berkeley deities)
- the whole site-dev gang at sapient (especially kevin g, erin k, pascal and betsey g)
- many many many others who have taught me things, helped me laugh, helped me enjoy life
thanks for everything, in case i never said it before, or didn't say it enough, and in case you ever read this...all of you have made a difference in my life.
Posted: 08.08.02 at 11:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
