From the hike:

fence. That is Mt. Diablo in the background to the left, the double peaks.

Jeff's pics (go to the bottom, Berryessa). Jeff has too many pics. Watch the movie, it is funny.

The Word of the Day for February 9 is:

animus \AN-uh-muss\ noun
1 : basic attitude or governing spirit : disposition, intention
*2 : a usually prejudiced and often spiteful or malevolent ill will
3 : an inner masculine part of the female personality in the analytic psychology of C. G. Jung

This weekend I was hit with plaxo and orkut requests from someone who lives relatively close, but I have not spoken to or received an email from in ... hm ... over six months. I refuse! I will not let my friendships be dictated by polite form-letter emails!

Went hiking today with Loopy and Jeff, same place as last year. We didn't see another person the entire time (nice), but we did get to see (in the distance) Shasta, Lassen, Sutter Buttes, Sacramento, Davis, and cows. It was a perfect hiking day.

If you want to read a completely depressing novel you can try Shipwrecks, by Akira Yoshimura. Is there a genre of novel called "story of survival and barbaric human nature set on a beach"? You know, Lord of the Flies, The Beach, etc. All three of those novels made me pretty uncomfortable while reading them, seeing inevitable/inherent/in-whatever evil survival instinct. Well I got through a good chunk of the book while on the BART yesterday (sorry, had to throw that in there) and just decided to finish it last night. Not a very uplifting ending there.

Adventure to the peninsula yesterday. It ended in two games of sober pictionary. Skoo and Jim vs. Bossy and me. I concluded that as a child, I was scarred for life by a brother seven years older and five orders of magnitude smarter than me, who won every single game we ever played. As a result, I now generally refuse to play any game that my bro would've played. (Any card or board game.) And I choose things to do that he doesn't like, e.g. basketball. Anyways, when skoo yelled "trachea" and then later identified the rabbi as "Bob Marley" I just lost it. Oh man.

The latest Basement Jaxx is very good. Also that Air stuff isn't bad either.

I feel trapped in the city. A couple of years ago, this is when Naomi and I would get in her Outback, drive anywhere from 30 minutes to a few hours, then be surrounded by only desert and cacti and dirt roads, cloudless skies, dry air, and silence... sigh.

Today in the review session (six 2nd years that normally would not hang out with each other making each other anxious about impending exams) the question was "explain where most of the elements in the solar system are and why" and I said "black holes". haha, oops. OK fine, there are no black holes in our solar system. (Except for the ones that my afternoons go down). Man, I am dumb. But I'm okay with that.

Cal beat Arizona by four points. Damn. I would've been happy either way. I went to work out afterwards and very coincidentally saw Jo, Dan, Demola, and G2 in the weight room. G2 was all decked out in his AZ gear and so distraught.

I've decided that what makes a person interesting is if you are interested enough to figure out what is going on in the second layer. I suppose some people's first layers are interesting enough, but not many. The first layer is all for show anyway.

I need to sleep less.

Diatribe on geomorphology (skip if you are not a geomorphologist and don't give a crap).

Officemate just sighed and muttered "It's truly amazing what gets published in Nature," then stormed from the room. Okay maybe "stormed" is an exaggeration, but this is the thing that makes me confused. The paper had many well-known authors on it, Nature papers must be short and to the point, what is officemate's problem? Who knows. Maybe not enough field measurement, maybe not enough theory, maybe too much theory. Well, there's only so much you can say in four pages, and when academics are supposed to pump out 4-5 papers a year, how much quality can there be anyway? Every paper can be picked apart for its inconsistencies. That's why I'm afraid to publish stuff. Every time you put something out there people just want to tear it down. Guess only those with thick skins survive.

...Just had a nice little fight with him, very exasperated. I asked "Would you like to discuss what is frustrating you?" and he said "We are on the track of removing process from geomorphology. The world's impression is that this is the way it is." He is a proponent of process geomorphology, which means being all gung-ho about "explanations" of why things are the way they are. All the funding and Nature papers seem to be going the way of "observational" geomorphology, which is looking at big data sets of precipitation, sediment yield, earthquake frequency, etc. and correlating them to make conclusions about the way things ARE. Process geomorphologists view this as going back to the stone age, or at least back to the first half of the century when other scientists abhored the non-process oriented, non-quantitative nature of geomorphology.

In my experience, people who think too much about WHY end up going crazy. The people who concentrate on what IS are less crazy. I'm generalizing to other parts of life there. I am being trained as a process geomorphologist now but I was not for two years and that part is still sticking with me. Most people just don't care about the details. Why can't people tolerate other methods even if they think theirs is the best?

To me, it just seems like a religious argument between different sects. I will gladly take part in the argument, but we are arguing in circles, no one will win. I am just saying people are trained in different manners and they will do the easier analysis first instead of getting into all of the theory. It's just one of those things, there will always be tension and one group is not going to die out. It's like a political argument.

Fine that is all I have to say about that now and I'm sure everyone was so interested in that.

Bossy used the phrase "all-star lineup of characteristics" which made me to try to think of mine. I came up with (1) fast emailer (2) look of disdain (3) self-righteousness (4) silence. I like to think that I'm constantly trying to improve myself but sometimes I think I am too old and stubborn and set in my ways so the only way I'll change is if I'm beaten down to complacency.

All of this listening to Jay Chou is turning my brain into mush.

I've read a couple different accounts of this story, but Bobby Knight is in the news again. I fear him, but love him.

The dispute happened when Smith approached Bob Knight at the salad bar of a local supermarket and told him he thought he had been doing a good job this year. Knight said he thought he had done a good job for the past three years and walked to the other side of the salad bar.

I would love to get into that guy's mind.

Today I was paralyzed by what is to come.

This journal needs more nerdy material. Alas, I can't think of anything worthy right now.

Do you know what's so sad, I web-searched Shawn Wong, author of the book I read cover to cover this weekend, and discovered that he is a poor academic prof. who has moved from institution to institution every 1 or 2 years over the past 20 or so years as a lecturer. And he had time to churn out that book? Now he's just a poor bloke that needs to serve on committees and teach undergraduates and advise grad students. It's sort of saddening. I wish that he could just sit there and write more books for me to read.

I promise that if I am your friend and you hate someone because they are dating your old bf/gf, if I ever run across them I will give them dirty looks and bitch slap them, if you want me to. (I just promised that to someone.)

Q: Is the whole world selfish?
Loopy: The whole world is not selfish. Friends did an episode on this.

Sometimes I wish I were just dumb and beautiful like Jessica Simpson. I would be so HAPPY! -jt

I read American Knees by Shawn Wong yesterday afternoon. One of those "supposed to be doing something else but why don't I read this book cover to cover" deals. I thought it dealt with AA issues in a non-annoying fashion. I wish more authors would write like this, characters that I want to hang out with, in a way that makes me laugh out loud or get a pain inside my chest.

She wanted to skip feelings altogether and go right for the answers.

Started watching 8 Mile around midnight on a laptop last night, to get a friend's mind off things and onto Em. Em - a panacea. hahaha. She went to 2fast2furious opening weekend with me last June for the same reason (except not Em but Paul Walker).

I ignored a recent email about intramurals. Times have changed.

Q: Blogs, insightful or a waste of time?
A: Blogs are for people who think their lives are more interesting than they actually are.

Enroute to the field station yesterday morning, the shuttle driver stopped on Center St., got out, crossed the street, then disappeared. Perhaps hoping that something exciting would happen, I had this vision of him leaving for some terrorist activity. Maybe the shuttle and three passengers would be sacrificed for some higher purpose. Uninterestingly, he returned after about two minutes and we continued on our way.

It was the same shuttle driver on the way home, and in the first comment he's ever made to me, he said, "Hey, I'm listening to Berkeley's radio station and they had this quote, 'Behind every terrorist there's a Bush.' Pretty funny, huh?" I smiled and nodded.

Got another Jay CD/VCD set in the mail yesterday. (The wonders of the internet purchasing.) There's one video when he's playing bball (with a mic) and it was hella funny 'cuz there are 5 girls but all they get to do is stand under the basket and watch the guys with adoring eyes. Well, later they get to spray paint some graffiti on the wall. Good Lord.

Jeff suggested that we set the cranes free by throwing them off the 5th floor balcony on a windy day. (There are only 18, residing in a small cardboard box.)

The Word of the Day for January 30 is:

woolgathering \WOOL-gath-uh-ring ("th" as in "the")\ noun
: indulgence in idle daydreaming

I've made some more cranes.

It's amazing, I went to sleep last night and woke up to find that I had lost all of my convictions. Or at least the ones dealing with quals. I don't give a crap when the hell I take them. I just want to pass. Losing one's convictions is a little unsettling though.

Bro writes: in terms of having a nice life, it's pretty much all downhill after grad school (in my opinion). Hopefully, there is a definite plan for you to graduate in a finite number of years, though.

Funny, one of my friends says he always believes there is something better down the road. So.... what if there isn't? I guess it's all the same.

I asked sc for a cure for general malaise and he said, trip to a third world country. Now that is an answer that I appreciate. Puts me right in my place.

I forgot where I got this mp3:

Are these times contagious
I've never been this bored before
Is this the prize I've waited for
Is this a cure among us
From this processed sanity
I'm going to buy back memories
To awaken some old qualities

That's judiciously edited from Run, Collective Soul. Yeah, remember it was on the Varsity Blues soundtrack... quality flick. I went with jpt since she was reviewing it for the Crimson and we both got carded at Alewife because it was an R movie.

After a "discussion" from 9-11pm today, I figure I have 2 options. (1) Crawl under a rock and curse the world (2) Stop being a wussy and get smart to prove I can take my quals when I was planning to. I'll sleep on it. Cursing the world seems like a viable option. I hate when my plans are thwarted. I just don't see how one month will make a difference when I've been planning for a year, no matter how much of a slacker I am. Curse the world. Please don't make eye contact for the next month.

You know how in the South Park movie, Cartman had that electronic device implanted in him so that he'd get a shock everytime that he swore? I need one of those for every time I go to open the web browser.

wchou passed her quals and jo passed her prelims. Guess I'm the last one of past and current housemates left for that fun-fest.

Last night we went out and had our belated Chinese New Year dinner on Broadway. 14 dishes. Forgot the noodles! At some point near the end of dinner, people started speculating how many krispy kremes they could put down at once. I think the original question was if one could eat 3 pizzas and drink 24 beers in a 24 hour period. Without going to the bathroom? Anyways, echoi's friend said, "Two dozen krispy kremes!" Then for the love of the donut, we drove to Daly City in four cars. That was the first time I saw the mass production of donuts. It was somewhat sickening but also fascinating. I had one. Some people got up to four. echoi's friend didn't eat any!!!! Personally I prefer the Dunkin' Donuts munchkins, even if they are not hot. I'm an east coaster.

On the BART home, we continued our discussion of wrath. hfu thought I didn't have any wrath. I have known hfu since 1995 and I thought he was more observant than that. Then again, I have known hfu since 1995 and I didn't know he was capable of locking a roommate in the bathroom. We decided that wrath usually manifests itself during sports.

I've found a new obsession (uh oh). One year ago I brought home "The One" double CD and VCD of Jay Chou from Taiwan. I listened to the (live) CDs a couple of times but never really got into it. Then somehow forgot all about the VCD until yesterday. Popped that baby in the computer last night. OMG. I'm in love. (BTW, Bossy has known about him since she lived in Taiwan and did not share him with me????) jay

I find it sort of funny how impatient I am. That's probably part of the reason why Loopy says I treat him like crap. A lot of times I am content with just going along with the flow, but then once in awhile I get impatient and go on the offensive. Then funny things happen. For example someone asked me, "Is talking to me like talking to a 12-year old that doesn't know anything???" I just wish I weren't so self-righteous about the whole thing.

Maybe I'll be patient enough to make 1000 cranes. The count is up to 8. I'm sacrificing myself and doing lots of chocolate-eating for this project.

1000 cranes make a wish come true (or so the internet tells me). I made four today out of pink Dove chocolate foil wrappers. Only 996 to go...

I invented a new word by accident today. I said "on the leftern" (insteada "western") side of the fault when describing uplift and faults. Everyone (in review group) got a kick out of that. At least I am still sometimes good for entertainment value.

Went to Cal vs. USC. Cal won by 1 pt. Ubaka made both ends of a 1-and-1 with 17 seconds left. That was about the only inspiring part of the game.