Okay. I’m basically like an adult now right?
Okay, ignore that for a bit.
What the fuck am I supposed to do? (damnit!)

I had a conversation with a friend of mine about it, she offered the following insight

Her: i dont know, all i've been thinking lately is that when i was younger i thought people figured things out as they got older and then lived what they figured out they should be doing / really, everyones just going along with things, just trying to be happy / you can pick any purpose that'll make you happy / and you can change it every day / its a big free for all
me: i should get a little game show wheel and spin it when i wake up

that bit about the game show wheel – I feel like that’s almost true for me right now. I don’t feel like I’ve got any clear direction. unless you’re totally new to my blog, this should be a familiar gripe...
next time: what I am "doing" about it, what my strategy is, and... stuff. Sorry about promising the actual "meat" of this post for later, but this is the only way I’ll get around to it.

happy birthday to me.

i have no clever words to mark the occasion other than i'm pretty tired. perhaps you could do better, give it a shot...

oh yeah, i motivated ques to make some more commentary about VD... in honor of the post he had last year, which was pretty classic.

It’s my birthday Friday, so you can start thinking about how awesome I’ll be when I turn 23 a whole day ahead of time. I can’t wait.

ok, the same thing happens every time, you'd think i'd learn by now: so i let my hair grow out for a bit, then i think it would be cool for it to be long, then i get into the slightly awkward stage of growing it out, then the awkward stage, then the ridicules stage and I realize that my hair will continue to puff for 5 more months, then I get really pissed and cut it really really short and screw up a spot on the right corner of my head. oh well.

and somehow i turn oranger after also.

I have to say orkut is pretty amazing, especially as a beta. It has communities, friendster type networking, online dating, business networking (not sure how well that would work) and meetup type capabilities. It’s waaay more responsive than friendster right now. the communities are easy to use and are immediately useful with event planning and message board. I imagine an e-vite type application will be available soon as well. You can send mail through orkut also. There are probably applications and features I don’t know about yet. I forgot to mention that this was designed by a guy that got a PhD at Stanford and works as a UI guy at Google – so it’s uber useable with all these features, there aren’t a million buttons, everything is well laid out - the look and feel is very consistent throughout.

And it’s all free, for now. Right now there is no online dating that is free that I know of, and meetup.com is always trying to choke money out of you to be able to change venues and such. I wonder how orkut is planning on making money. In summary: orkut is an all-purpose-everything that’s free, isn’t freaking slow (ahem) and is user friendly.

i think this is one of the better error messages i've ever seen... if you want in on orkut, i'm on the inside now...

I found out from a current Rose student that one of the students from my freshman class, Doug Jeffries, died in a car accident last night. Doug lived directly across the hall from me my freshman year. I didn’t really know him well, but he was a smart guy: double majored in computer engineering and computer science. I graded him in PLC, we were in a few classes together, we were both were on the academic programming team and the department’s student advisory committee. He was a nice kid – it is really too bad.

Music

I noticed Amazon now has free mp3s for download - I tried one and the one I got was 128k quality... pretty decent. If you’re interested in seeing other free mp3s, Epitonic is pretty neat and features music way off mainstream. Also, for some reason mp3.com has fallen by the wayside. It doesn’t look like other sites seem that interesting or have streaming instead of downloads (doesn’t do me any good for my work music needs).

Whenever you’re stuck on what to listen to, you can reference Tom’s SuggestedListening (oh yeah, add something while you’re there). You can also hit up pitchfork for their recommended new music section. Currently I maintain a list of music I’ve heard good things about but have not yet heard, if you think there’s a glaring admission, please feel free to add something. I intend to get a list of my favorite artists up at some point, perhaps after things settle down at work.

Stephen Wolfram has made the text to his book, A New Kind of Science, available online, for free at the website for the book. While I intend to continue reading the book in paper at Barnes and Noble, the website has resources not in the book, such as his initial draft of open problems regarding cellular automata. Too bad I didn’t go to Wolfram’s NKS research boot camp last summer, it sounds like fun and I don’t think I can make it this summer either, stupid... job.

Later this month, as a belated celebration of my birthday I'll be meeting with my family in NYC. NYC turns out to be a convenient place for family get-togethers because it is the midpoint between me and my sister; also, it's got plenty of things to do.

Last time we went (pics), we visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art, walked around in Central Park and other parts of the city (weather was quite nice) and the Guggenheim (I went solo on this one). We also ate, because that’s what really brings us together. We ate a lot and it was gooood.

Anyways, I'll be there for a weekend, and I'm not really sure what we're going to do. None of us really likes going to theater (especially when it’s quite expensive) and have visited the two main art draws in the city (for me). We don't like lines or excessively touristy stuff. Also, I don’t think we’ll be hitting the nightlife together (especially with the underage sis...). But we do plan on eating a lot.

If you have any suggestions I’d really love to hear them. Thanks in advanced.

When Rory was here back in December, he started reading Slaughterhouse Five – one of few fiction books I have in my collection. Nearing the end of his stay he made sure to finish it before he left. I wasn’t too anxious, I got it to read in Europe and have read it twice... I don’t really need it anymore, and if I do, I can get it from the library (my policy for all fiction now). I kinda wanted him to take it and pass it on or something. Fast forward to today, I found this thing called BookCrossing:

What is BookCrossing, you ask? It's a global book club that crosses time and space. It's a reading group that knows no geographical boundaries. Do you like free books? How about free book clubs?. Well, the books our members leave in the wild are free... but it's the act of freeing books that points to the heart of BookCrossing. Book trading has never been more exciting, more serendipitous, than with BookCrossing.

Seems like they have a pretty healthy following with 200k some odd members and 800k books "in the wild". I think it's pretty neat and I'll be glad to donate a few fiction books I have read through.

They also have a meetup, which should help make passing books on an easier task. I’d like to know I’m giving the book to someone who is down with the program, not just leave it for someone to take out of a coffee shop for their personal collection.