My father started to use a computer at the age of 71 or so. His email writing style is quirky, sometimes very strange. Funny unusual statements (at least for me) creep up in the middle of an otherwise serious, normal section. He and his current wife have packed up and are off to live in VT for part of the year. So he reflects on this move:

We will be back here next winter, but in a furnished rental apartment. It is
not goodbye, but it is goodbye to a way of life that started here in the summer
of 1974. That was the summer that Biella learned to walk and that President
Nixon resigned. The two are not related.
Love,
Papi

Heh, little does Papi know that in fact Richard Nixon knew of the “wrath of the sato” so once he heard biella, the little satito could walk, he was so out of the oval office.

When I am tired, like I am today due to an incessant week of deadlines pulsating through my veins and pounding my brain, I become a little senstive to news and my environments, easily disturbed, easily amused.

I was disturbed this morning by the bright sun which I felt like I had not seen in months in Chicago and the news that a math formula can predict relationship patterns. If it were so easy.

I was and always am amused to see the moving/transportation truck, called Yellow for Their signs are orange not yellow. I have always wondered if this was a mistake or just a little hack by the company president to bemuse highway goers.

I was amused in that sort of disturbing way to find myself singing to Ozzy in the car today. Without frequent public displays of karaoke, I am reduced to private sessions in the car….

Well. well, well, feeling grad school down? Here is something to cheer you up

Opps. That is my grad school research above, here is the real joke

This year during conversations with departmental friends, I discovered that I was not alone and unique in receiving attacks from a parental figure about our vocational choice, which has kept us in school for years (and thus rendering us wageless, parasitical bums who reek of steeeeeeeeeenky eeeeeeelitism). Though seemingly exciting and prestigious at first, they never really thought a Ph.D would take SO long (the average in anthro is 9 and thus I am still below average but this meaty statistical tid bit seems not to appease my mom’s appetite when she has these occasional yet voracious outburts).

Hey who knows, perhaps they are glaringlycorrect or perhaps there are judicious dissertation advisors behind such, at times amusing and at times really irritating shenanigans; our adivsor might, post-field, call our ‘rents once a year and feed em stories of our “bumliness”, white lies told in the hopes that the subsequent parental pressure and humiliation will hasten our time here…

But I think it really pains them at some level to have a kid that is still a student and thus offers really paltry gifts every birthday and holiday season.
Yet once you have the degree in hand, I am sure for most of the rents out there with kids like me it will all of sudden feel like going through 9 years of school was a worthy, noble, admirable, (it could not have been anything else for you choice) sort of thing. Funny how that is.

Soon, one of my favorite “days” will be coming: Talk like a Pirate Day. It is a day, let me tell you, worth celebrating…. I did last year and all without the helpful website which includes things like history and tips. They even have advanced, contextual words and tips like the following:

Bilge rat

The days blur together as rain and errands seem ever present in the last few weeks. As I get closer to my departure date the errand list grows which means I sit more and more in a car, stuck in the traffic of San Juan which intensifies in the rain and on Fridays. I am no longer surprised by much although I do continue to get frustrated from time to time at the hurdles I encounter during my errand hunting. I take pleasure in the little things that make me smile while make my way from establishment to establishment.

Anyone who really knows me, knows I am a big fan of the plantain. I find it to be the food of gods and if it were not for its high starch content and the fact that it really only tastes good fried, I would eat like a god, everyday. My favorite incarnation is the twice fried plantain, tostones, made divinely all over the Caribbean especially in the Dominican Republic.

I have really only seen one type of plantain but today in the supermarket I stumbled across a much stubbier and chubbier plantain than I have ever seen. This is what they usually look look like . I know I am probably the only person to get excited about a chubby plantain but well, what can I say? I am. Sometimes fruits and vegetables that come in slighly different versions or sizes, carry different tastes and since I am so fond of the taste of the plantain, I look forward to a new plantain experience. So I will make this plantain soon and report back!

PS– A plantain though deceptively looks like a banana, is not one! You can’t eat them raw…

So today there was a honest-to-god plea on slashdot asking for help to overcome the great problem of our century–> procrastination. I have been quite cozy to the “procrasitnator” lately which I think has most to do with my life as “errand woman” right now. I hate errands so it kinda saps the soul and biellaness from me being that I have to do all my mom’s errands as well as mine.

But anyway, I sat down and read some of the comments on /. about this great ill because I thought it would be fascinating to see what hackers and computer folks had to say about this. Given the fact that a) hackers have to spend an inordinate amount of time hunched over the computer b) they hate to do what they don’t want to do, I wanted to hear their solutions. Many were sincere and passionate. I recommend reading them. But just in case you don’t want to slog through them all, I present to you the strangest yet most endearing one that recommends a command line environment in the nude . Below is the comment for your convenience:

” Underwear and the Command Line (Score:5, Insightful)
by Snafoo (38566) on Sunday July 27, @01:00PM (#6545023) I’ve been diagnosed with ADD and I have two suggestions for dealing with procrastination and focusing problems. Note that I don’t to either of these much anymore, as I’m medicated, but they worked well enough at the time.

Suggestion #1:

I have a little theory to the effect that, for a certain percentage of the population, GUIs have made focusing a lot more difficult: Sure, your taskbar, icons, buttons and menus make it easier to switch rapidly between many different tasks and contexts, but they also _make_it_easier_to_switch_between_many_different_t asks_and_contexts_. One minute you’re studying faithfully — at your mental office, so to speak — and the next, you’re in your mental rec room, playing FreeCiv; or in your mental coffee shop, chatting on /. And, Oh God, the futzing that one can do with a GUI! Desktop icon arrangement. Wallpaper. Themepacks, for heaven’s sake. It’s a temple of distraction in here.

So here’s what I recommend: Ditch it. Ditch the GUI. Install Linux, if you haven’t already, and configure /etc/inittab to boot to initlevel 4. Learn to love vi or nano or emacs: They work great for comp sci projects, and if you have an essay or a paper to write, do it in vi first, import it to word_processor_of_your_choice (for formatting) only when you’re about to print it.

If you can’t ditch the GUI for whatever reason (i.e. you need a proprietary Windoze app, or you can’t bear to install Linux) then I recommend setting up a new account (linux) or user profile (‘doze) that will only allow you to run only those applications which you need to get the job done. If that doesn’t work, you should seriously consider getting yourself a (second-hand?) laptop upon which you will place only work-related programs — preferably, one without WiFi or some other way of exposing it to the Lethean floodwaters of the ‘net.

Suggestion #2. This next one is a little weird, but it works well for me. Note that it might work less well if you don’t have any roomates, as it depends greatly on your desire to avoid embarrassment. It also requires that you have an extra room in your house.

Make yourself a home office in a well-heated room, and keep only work-related things in it. When you go to study, take in all the food, caffeine, and books that you’ll need for a stint of about five hours. Set an alarm clock to go off in five hours. Now, close the door, and take off your pants. Yes, you heard me, take off your pants. If necessary, take off your shirt as well. Put them in a plastic bag, and tie the bag shut. Put the bag away (the further away the better.). This way, you can’t leave the room suddenly without raising eyebrows: If, say, you have a sudden impulse to jump up and watch TV, or phone a friend, it’ll take you a good five minutes to dress, which should be plenty to reconsider and sit back down.

After a couple of months of this, you get in the habit of staying in the room until the alarm sounds, you don’t have to take off your pants anymore.

Buddhists are Happier

Ws

There are times when you know that your “work” is done. As most know, I came
to do fieldwork in San Francisco on free software and as part of the
fieldwork gig, I interned at the EFF for a year.

The EFF folks there are fine, fine people: freedom loving folks that work
hard on many different fronts to ensure the cyber-rights we all love to
have and have to love.

But all along, I knew that something was missing from their lives. I mean
how could you love and work so hard for freedom when you have never tasted
the sweet liberation that is karaoke?

Finally, my mission here in SF has been accomplished. The proverbial “They”
say that an anthropologist always changes the people/society/culture that
she studies and this has formed some substantial and .”right on” critiques
as well as understanding of the fallacy of true objectivity. And indeed sometimes
an anthropologist and the knowledge produced by academic studies can change things for
the worse, but other times, she can clearly changes things for the better.
Like I did last night. I can now leave SF in peace.

For nearly a year I have been telling the EFF crew to get out there, come to
the finest karaoke in San Francisco and finally, they came to their
senses.

And let me tell you, I, a seasoned karaoke-goer, was impressed. The finesse,
the heart, the soul, the rhthms were just sinister. But sinister in that
good, deep, spiritually revealing sort of way. And I know they were hooked.
Some spoke of “a next time.” Yes, a next time because as
always, karaoke hooks, draws you in, no matter your age, background,
culture, emotional temperament, sexual orientation, or religious beliefs.
Why the strong pull, the gravitational allure of a seemingly benign form of entertainment?

It was an EFF employee, John, who summed up the power, the true transformative power of
this art form: “karaoke is “laundry for the ego.”

Yes, you have to toss theego away to get up there in front of peers, friends, strangers, and other karaoke-goers and sing songs by Journey, Vanilla Ice, and the Clash. The Ego
just has to vanish as you pound on the floor, play air guitar, and belt out
horrible cheesy tunes. You realize that everything you thought about yourself (that you are really an eduring you), melts like sweet butter on warm toast as you take the persona in play of someone else. The relativity of self,the source of emptimess, the reality of change and process comes to life
as you stare at the screen and become one with the microphone.

I am sure if karaoke had been around the time of Shakyamuni Buddha, the
Buddha would have used the “method of karaoke” as a technique to overcome our
ego attachment. He would have ‘roaked under the Indian night sky and stars,
next to bodhi tree and then would have integrated karaoke sining, in public
of course, as part of ones monkly duties to release the self from the cycle of
rebirth and to alleviate the suffering of all humankind.

It is at once a practice of wisdom (of realization of non ego) and
compassion (as it is a gift to others, the gift of making a fool of
yourself, or letting go of our pride in public). Yes, Karaoke is the
inseparability of the wisdom that is compassion.

So I was going to blog about some serious stuff like No Free Lunch which is this great org that is trying to get doctors to STOP the MADNESS of the relationship between drug companies (and all their freeeeeebies) and doctors. But instead I found something much more amusing to report being that it is so late at night. I knew there was a reason that yoda was such a peaceful dude. You see if only doctors would smoke more of the yerba and take less freebies from the drug companies, they would be much more pleasant to be around.