Received a request for lyrics for Fairy Fore's "Feel My Song" and "Hallelujah". I did a first draft of the romaji lyrics for "Feel My Song" but I need to rip the song from the CD to check it. I hope to fill the romaji lyrics by the end of the week, but the English lyrics will be a bit tougher because I haven't done this in years.

Tuesday's Cat and Girl summed up the experience for me, except instead of sitting at home attempting to get my TV to work, or going to a cafe to get a better wireless signal, I went to the Laurelhurst Theater where two of the screens were devoted to the election. (And instead of falling asleep on the couch, the free Starbucks coffee had me wired until I eventually fell asleep.) I voted a week ago using the handy Oregon mail-in ballot, but it took me 3 hours to finish the entire thing minus single-candidate elections. Being an educated voter is hard work! I also feel uncertain about what I ended up voting for, especially with the state measures, but I attribute this to stewing for weeks and then attempting to get together with Pete for an "I'm trying to vote" party.

The elections at Laurelhurst were interesting... lots of Portlandy people getting drunk and cheering every 5 minutes whenever Obama's name had a checkmark next to it, then halfheartedly booing every time McCain's name came up. To be fair, there was one McCain supporter present, though compared to the "I want to have Obama's babies!!!!" camp, it was kind of sad. I actually wanted to find out about the early returns for state elections, though admittedly the Senate race didn't interest me until I found out that Merkley and Smith were in a dead heat. I assumed that Merkley would win by a good margin, even though I was mysteriously mailed lots of anti-Merkley/pro-Smith flyers.

Most of the CNN coverage was pretty dull with the usual talking heads, and not enough flashy graphics to cover up the lack of things to discuss. Unfortunately I missed the hologram interviews. :( I also wanted to see Fox News and MSNBC to get a comprehensive cable news overview, but everyone freaked out when someone upstairs changed the channel.

I didn't believe that Obama won because I was afraid of a lot of things - afraid that the electoral college was rigged, afraid that someone made a mistake somewhere, afraid that Obama would be shot before he could even make an acceptance speech. But the numbers for the electoral college kept going up until it grew to be over half of McCain's total. Even as the words "President-Elect" flashed on screen I didn't believe it, until Obama actually took the stage safely and spoke. I admit, I got a bit teary. I also breathed easier after I noticed there was bulletproof glass, and that Obama was able to complete his speech safely without incident.

My strange feelings bring up a very interesting point. Despite the electoral college vote being 349 to 162 in favor of Obama (via the New York Times), the popular vote was only 51% to 49% for Obama at the end of Tuesday evening and 53% to 46% this evening via CNN, and 52.42% to 46.28% via Fox News. While I had expected the stock market to rally as it did Tuesday, all of the major indexes (Dow Jones, Nasdaq, S&P 500, NYSE) dipped about 5% lower than yesterday. While these look somewhat unrelated, I believe they are somewhat interconnected. Politically, Obama has gained enough clout to work with the Hill, thanks in part by the democratic majority. Despite backing by JP Morgan Chase, financial leaders are not satisfied by the election results and are ready to pull the plug at any moment. Because mainstream America is still very divided over ideology, any financial losses will be catastrophic and cause further problems over class issues. Racism in the upper class will no longer be a problem, but will continue to be a problem for lower class people. In short, we're headed down poop creek and the Obama administration better start paddlin'. (I also hope that this election will start to create bonds among people, but I sense a further fragmentation of our society before we are able to reach a warm fuzzy collective.)

My congratulations to President Obama. :D

Whoo.

I got back earlier this week from a trip to Texas for my friend's wedding. It was nice actually, and I was happy to see my old friends from high school. First part of the trip was visiting my family, which was nice. I saw a high school football game for the first time... it was pretty terrible. It was like watching my university's football team playing. (UNT is known for their marching band, not their athletes. If they have good football players, it's a fluke.) I also got to eat plenty of non-food, including yogurt with unknown preservatives and managed to avoid an angel food cake that had sodium lauryl sulfate, the foaming agent in toothpaste.

I travelled to San Antonio for the wedding. I brought along my old/new Canon SLR to try out. It performed pretty well, though I took a lot of blurry pictures because the lighting was bad and I didn't have a flash with a diffuser. I had it set to aperture-priority, but then it would set the speed to something ridiculously long and poof, blur. Later I figured out how to set it manually, and managed to take some nice light-painting photos with fireworks.

I have a computer now, so I will be attempting to update my site when I can. Or something.

Dad and Suzanne were married last Saturday, September 26. In lieu of taking lots of vacation time and scrambling between Victoria and Santa Barbara, I took Thursday afternoon and Friday off of work.

Thursday I actually shopped for things and discovered that I don't like the mall. Friday I took the bus to the train to the plane to Santa Barbara, which has the tiniest airport I've ever been to. Tim picked me up from the airport and we hung out for the first time in months. We got pizza near UCSB and attempted to watch the presidential debates, but that side of the pizza place was covered in birthday celebrants and smelly, sweaty people. I got to observe Santa Barbara bike culture, which involves owning a bright-colored cruiser. People leave their bikes unchained around campus, and the bikes I saw off-campus were minimally secured since no one will steal your bike anyway. There were bike lanes on most major streets and overpasses, and bike traffic is generally accepted around town. We also talked about our current projects - he is building circuit boards and working on audio gear involving tiny parts, and I'm still working on the NES USB controller and the Arduinoboy. I introduced him to the Benito, which he thought was pretty cool. Much ranting about Ruby ensued, par for the course. I also got to see his parts closet, which is filled with lots of goodies for making whatever you please.

Saturday we drove to Lompoc, but I forgot the wedding invitation at home and frantically called random people trying to figure out where it was. I decided that we should just show up at Grandma's house, so we did. My grandma was surprised to see me. I met more of my relatives and stood around awkwardly watching teenage girls do their hair. Grandma whisked me away to check on the reception hall briefly, while Tim accidentally met my dad by making random comments about his food choices.

Neither of us actually knew where the wedding was, though Grandma gave me vague directions ("It's at the top of the hill"), so we followed people that we assumed were related to me to the church. I borrowed Tim's camera and dragged him out of the car to determine what lens to use. I was torn between the 28-130something mm and the 50mm prime, so Tim suggested I use the prime after he poked his head in the tiny chapel. I swapped lenses and went inside while he dashed off.

The ceremony itself was very nice. Both Dad and Suzanne looked great, and everything was so cute. I was fumbling with the camera a bit since I hadn't used it in a year, but I tried my best and took quite a few nice shots of the bride and groom, and one or two of my cousin's daughter poking her head up from the pew. (I should have them up later this month.)

The reception was fun, despite the bad music that wasn't on the official wedding playlist. I tried to take pictures of kids but the combination of a prime and running children is a recipe for disaster. At that point I wished I had the Bag O' Lenses, but I ended up making friends with Ken, the wedding photographer, and got to borrow his Canon 20D. At some point I was juggling two cameras, and he brought out a third camera with a flash, and we played with the flashes. In between I stuffed myself silly and talked to the neighbors. I also tried New Old Lompoc beer, and I'm still amused by the fact that I had Lompoc-brand beer from Portland, OR in Lompoc, CA. Much dancing was had, and I suspect that embarassing pictures of me dancing are probably going to circulate through my family and perhaps the internet, so by announcing this I'm attempting to deflect any damage done to my social and professional life. Actually, who am I kidding? I have crazy hair and can dance like a crazy mofo.

The night wound down with Tim missing barbeque, someone's husband grilling me about my Ruby experience and functional programming, Tim and my dad meeting each other for real and giving advice on barbeque and surfing, me explaining to my dad that I wasn't going to miss his wedding to go to Canada for ICFP because wedding > ICFP, and finally Tim taking me back to Santa Barbara while I sleepily explain that Python is good for doing a bit of functional programming when necessary but I liked how everything in Ruby had a method. I missed the after-reception, needless to say.

Sunday I got a quick tutorial on how to use Eagle to create a part and build a board. My test was a board that has an LED and a switch to turn the LED on and off. Simple, but considering it was my first ever, it gave me a fuzzy feeling. Realizing that we were short on time, we rushed off and I flew back to Portland just in time to go to the OpenLab and work on the NES controller.

My dad, however, is currently in Maui for the honeymoon. Congrats to Dad and Suzanne for a successful wedding!

I've gotten a few assignments at work that have to do with Javascript, which is kind of exciting because it gives me a chance to work on my Javascript skillz (with a z). I think I'm finally getting the hang of it, now that I am slowly understanding how it works. After a few "duh" moments emailing Tim and reading the MDC docs, I finished another assignment. It's not hard, it's just a matter of understanding the syntax and how it operates within the DOM. Once I get another computer, I'd like to do a bit of Javascript tinkering on this site to get my skills to mutate into mad skillz of the doin' it right school of thought. There's nothing worse than clunky Javascript ruining your internet, but if you do it right and remember to make the important things also part of your server-side scripts, like form validation, it seems less bad.

Last night was supposed to be an ordinary Dorkbot meeting, but when I got there, we ended up taking over Lucky Lab. I didn't even get to see all the projects or say hello to all the new people. TONS of stuff was going on, unlike usual. I was floored. Lots of projects too, and Ward was there with his version of an Arduino/C++ "hello world" that had the boss of AboutUs.org dancing and twinkling his eyes. Hehehe.

I brought over my NES controller and my Benito board, and Laen walked me through how to figure out how controllers work and how to hook it up to the Benito. It's fairly straightforward - when I finish I'll post pictures or something, probably on Flickr since I am computerless and can't access my SVN repository. The difficult part will be the programming, but since the Benito comes with the MyUSB library which has a joystick example, I figure that would work. The ultimate test is to use it with an emulator. After that, I plan to put together another Arduino with LittleSoundDJ, now that I found cheap-ish Midi ports on Octopart.

Laen brought over his stuff, which consisted of a bunch of scavenged parts and the new issue of Esquire that uses electronic paper. It's not programmable though. I saw Alex, who had a neato midi controller thingie that had LED lights. Basically... you push a cute button and it makes beep and boop noises. I was amused. :D I also met a cyborg anthropologist named Amber who I wish would have been in my department when I was in school. It made me yearn for anthropology a smidge. She's supposed to do some kind of thingie at CubeSpace in November. I also was formally introduced to Anselm, which is funny because I've talked to him briefly a lot, and Paige and I know each other. His business card is nice. (Speaking of which, I need business cards again. I ran out.)

There was also a guy with a machine that made outer-space noises which was AWESOME, and I saw this guy Eric again who was at the Luz code sprint. I think this was probably the largest amount of geeky people I've ever hung out with in one room outside of a convention and I didn't even get to talk to everyone!

At least now I know what I'm doing a little more, so as soon as I clear off the coffee table I can start some soldering. I'm excited. Plus, I got a Game Boy on eBay for the LSDJ/arduino thing so I'm well on my way to actually doing things.

I'm checking the reports at Weather Underground because Texas is about to get hit by Hurricane Ike. I call my grandma every day to check on my family in Houston. Both of my uncles that live there are stupidly staying there, though I would rather they left to Austin or San Antonio, away from the direct path. Dallas is supposed to get the residual rain and wind, so my mom is stocking up for emergencies. The power goes out a lot in her neighborhood.

It's supposed to be worse than Katrina. I'm worried, yet I have a strange faith that my family members will survive. Part of living in a coastal area is dealing with hurricanes, and they all lived through Hurricane Celia in 1970. If not, I'm returning home for a visit to make sure everything is ok.

We will wait and see.

I finally found a use for the Arduino - the Arduinoboy! I actually have an old Game Boy at home but I haven't the slightest idea where it is. I *do* have the cables and a few games, which will be useful in hacking together some things. Plus, there's always Goodwill and eBay. Oohoohoohoo.

I want to try this out in conjunction with Luz, but there's no way I can get a working Arduinoboy put together in time for the next code sprint. Hopefully this time I can be useful instead of eating M&Ms and getting into discussions about Git and fake meat. Also, I sold my last computer (Maggie) and now I can't try out Luz in my spare time. At least I have a spare Arduino board. I'm hoping to make a case for it out of either the 4-way Game Boy switch thing, OR I could put it inside of a Nintendo controller, OR I could just hack apart my Super Game Boy... oh, the possibilities...

I left my Sparta Locals CD at home, so I looked up their stuff on YouTube and found the Trend DVD. It's amazing and gave me butterflies in my stomach. It also made me want to slamdance a little.

I have finally succumbed to considering buying cycling clothing besides socks. I'm attempting to look for a cheaper pair of Sugoi shorts because even though they are silly, when I tried them on they were HELLA comfortable. (Also useful if you need an extra layer under your pants.

I thought about a jersey, but I was torn between puke green and fugly green. There was a red jersey that matched my hair (I currently have red and purple hair), but it made me look pudgy. Not that I have a beer belly, mind you, but most cyclists I've met have a protruding ... except David, but he is a stick with legs. And Bike-steve, who is skinny because he is hardly ever off his bike.

It was suggested that I try eating goo to fend off bonking, which happens more often then not because of my goofy metabolism and my need to eat to fend off The Diabetes. I had one Clif Shot yesterday after my sad shopping trip (I bought one pair of socks... I think I need a Capitalism Ambassador). It tasted like chocolate-coffee sludge and made me very perky as I was riding home in the rain. I had one Hammer Shot (it's hammer time!) and while it tasted more like food, I discovered that goo != breakfast and was crashing a little bit during my pathetically short ride in the rain this morning. (On my list of things I need: rain pants.) Then after 30 minutes at the office, I had a headache and was instantly like "WHOA OMG WHEE CAFFEINE". I have decided that the third pack of goo in my bag is for emergencies only, just like the tire patch kit and the multitool.

I realize that part of this is a bit hypocritical considering my last post, but I'm tired of the chafing and wet thights that accompanies every trip. I wonder how many of these companies pays a decent wage..