honor system

during grad school, i made frequent use of the student commons for the library program. there was a microwave, a fridge full of sodas, and a table of snacks with a jar for students to put in change for whatever they took. and people always put money in the jar (maybe not the always $.50 that’s requested, but you’ll always see money in the jar).

and the microwave wasn’t even chained down or anything!

i say that because a classmate from another department remarked, upon using our lounge, that this was rather remarkable. most other departments have to lock down any and all equipment of any value, because otherwise it’d be stolen in a heartbeat.

people have left computers alone in the lounge, with nobody else to watch it for them, without consequence. i guess it is sort of crazy, especially given how abjectly poor most of us are.

part of it, though, is probably that there are no undergrads in the library school. everyone knows undergrads are the worst (so suck it, Liz Lemon and Jack Donaghy!)

i just got an email (note to self, unsubscribe to those student listservs already!) about an upcoming bake sale for the program’s student organization. they have these periodically throughout the year, and the interesting thing (to me) is that they leave everything out on the table in the commons, and expect people to pay for the goods, without having anybody standing there to watch the stuff or take the money! this is how they do fundraising!

it’s pretty crazy, but kinda awesome, i think. i will say this: studies have shown that the honor system is more effective when you place a mirror near the tip jar or whatever. because apparently, seeing your physical image triggers something in your mental self-image that somehow pushes you to be more honest. or something.

on a somewhat related, if totally pointless note, the metro in LA and subway in berlin also go by the honor system, whereas on BART and in Paris, you have those clangy ticket taking machines. Yet the MUNI and buses in Paris and Berlin go mostly by the honor system, but in LA, the bus driver is ticket-taker, enforcer, and generally merciless ruler of the Bus Universe.

Filed under: Uncategorized

migration!

I went to BarCamp LA this year, and had a blast. Since it’s an un-conference, I went with very few expectations, and that may have helped, but it also meant I was open for whatever might happen.

After breakfast AND lunch, the day officially began when the organizers had every last person introduce himself/herself (in a pleasant surprise, the male-female ratio was somewhat healthy – not the typical sausage fest, unlike most tech-centric events =P).

Each person was allowed only 3 tags, and I had some difficulty choosing mine. In the end, I went with “archivist,” “Django,” and “women2.org,” figuring one of these might stick in somebody’s mind. And as it happened, it was the second one! Immediately after introductions were finished, I met with several Django-ologists, and we convened for almost an hour, missing the first set of sessions almost entirely. Later, we had a Django BoF, and that was enlightening.

Anyway, one of hte big sponsors of the event was Dreamhost, who offered free registration and a year of hosting! So I took that offer this morning, and have registered my real, full name. I was even able to take advantage of their birthday promo, and now have unlimited disk space/bandwidth for the life of the account! Not too shabby.

So stay tuned for a change of address and a new design. Now that I’m on my own server, I’m no longer stuck with using the woefully inadequate WordPress.com templates, or even stick to the…well, not woefully, but still somewhat inadequate WordPress platform!

Really, now that I’m on my own server, the possiblities are endless. Realistically, for this maximizer, that means the change won’t be soon, but it is imminent!

Filed under: computer, web2.0

yuck!

strangest Google search term to reach my blog:

“boba jello shots”

Filed under: fun , food

the opposite of insomnia

Dogsitting has disrupted my sleep schedule considerably. Working for a media organization (ie., artists) means I can slide into work as late as 11am, so I’ve managed to maintain waking hours more typical of a college student til recently.

But having to wake up to answer the morning wake-up call of nature early every morning (and I found it really amusing how the dogs make this call: they crawl out from underneath the blanket and hop around or otherwise shake the bed to rouse me awake, and then when I’m looking at them, they lift their hind leg to mimic peeing), meant I began to go to bed early so as not to miss out on those precious few hours of the dreamless.

Which is annoying, because I recently learned that the most creative time of the day is around 10pm (the least creative time is 4pm – those siesta-practicing cultures knew what they were on about!). So that means I have to cram in as much productivity as I can into the hours between, say, 9pm – midnight, as opposed to before, when I had all the hours before around 2am sprawled before me.

Hmm. This is probably not making much sense, because it’s almost midnight and I am beat.

Filed under: personal , sleep

Bow wow

The owners of the dogs I sat for a few month ago went on a trip recently, so they asked me to dog-sit for them again. It’s nice, especially as the weather’s gotten cold; the three of us can snuggle under the blanket and stay pretty toasty.

Still, the dogs have been sort of a handful. I’ve always wanted a dog, and still do, but it really is a lot of work to take care of them. At least these two have each other for company when I’m away, but when I come back it’s as though they haven’t seen a human for years. They are pretty attention-hungry, and make me feel guilty when I’m at the computer or playing Rock Band on their owners’ PS3 (hee!).

This is the single most oft-repeated question I’ve had to ask since Friday: “What did you just eat?”

Of course, they never answer.

Filed under: Uncategorized , dog

fail, indeed

I downloaded the Mac version of Freemind to try since I can’t afford something as nice as Mindjet. I opened the app, and it seemed deceptively simple. Freemind is a Java app. But nothing happened!

So I dutifully went to the software’s wiki, and forthwith is a direct excerpt from their FAQ (which they call “Asked Questions,” probably because nobody uses this software, heh):

I start FreeMind but nothing happens on MacOS X Leopard

This issue might be related to the problem met by OpenOffice users on Leopard. Apple seems to have replaced “Apple Computer, Inc.” by “Apple, Inc.” in the Java string. The JRE is thus not recognized anymore on Leopard, and Java fail.

That’s like, the sorriest bug I have ever seen. Not the worst, nor the funniest. Just sorry.

Filed under: computer