Hi. In case you were wondering, this journal is now friends only. Meaning, you need to have a Livejournal or OpenID account and I have to add you as my friend for you to read it.  Sorry. You can leave me a comment if you would like me to add you.

Thanks!  --Sandra

WTF is up with the images next to Cuil searches? See screenshot below. I searched for myself. Note what comes up next to my UW webpage. Why? How? I have a photo of myself on the page. Why does Cuil correctly find my webpage, but then think I look like a 50-year-old white woman?

Creepily, the 50-year-old white woman actually looks like an age-progressed photo of the actual photo of me on my webpage.

Hi, folks. If any of you are in the Seattle area or would like to move up here (it's great!) the company I am interning at this summer has a couple openings, one for CTO, the other for a senior web developer.  Job descriptions in the LJ-cut below.  The company is great to work for, the projects are interesting and the people are fantastic.

It's terrific out here in Seattle, and it'd be nice if I had some old ICS buddies around here to hang out with.  Feel free to pass this along if you know someone who'd be interested.

I passed quals (for real, this time) about a week ago, and I just got an email saying I get a raise as a result! Hurray!

So I, uh, joined eHarmony. For $60 a month. I was advised by a friend that if I wanna do the online dating thing, it's best to go with a pay service, because then you know the people on the service are serious about this. I first tried out eHarmony maybe 3 years ago. The first thing that happens is you get a honking huge, roughly 20 minute, survey to fill out.

So I did, and they said, "Sorry, you don't qualify. Some people we just can't match."

Made me feel kinda sad. As though I am so undesireable, even the int4rw3bz can tell I don't deserve a boyfriend.

Anyway, a couple years pass, I went out with Craig, and then we broke up, and I sat around moping in my apartment. I read various self-help books to find some comfort, and one of those was Neil Clark Warren's Finding the Love of Your Life: Ten Principles for Choosing the Right Marriage Partner. This book was so inspirational and made me feel so hopeful! I think it's made me more picky, but it's made me more picky because I feel like I don't have to just take whatever I can get, there is some set of characteristics that I want in a guy, and I can find them, so I shouldn't just settle. It's a really good book, by the way. I'd recommend it to any single person, especially people with low self-esteem. The only thing that's kind of weird is the Christian part; Dr. Warren's not too pushy about it, and it's contained, but it's still a bit odd. He also says, "Premarital sex is bad" which I thought was sort of quaint and adorable that he'd straight out and say it, even knowing what today's society is like.

Dr. Warren is the founder of eHarmony, and he uses principles similar to the ones in his book to match people based on personality, values, and interests. You know, the important stuff. He wrote his book before eHarmony, and it's easy to tell. The book is decidedly non-PC, and seem very honest and straightforward and scientific. The books Dr. Warren (co-)wrote AFTER eHarmony I found decidedly PC, not very scientific, more fake anecdote-filled, and read like advertisements for eHarmony. I can just see the PR and marketing guys working on those other books. (I only read one, "Falling in Love for the Right Reasons" and skimmed another.)

Anyway, but "Finding the Love of Your Life" made me a Dr. Warren fan, so I tried eHarmony again (with a different email, you're only allowed to do the survey once with each email, apparently), except I changed my answers a bit to make myself personality a little more attractive than it actually is, and they let me in!!!!!

But then I felt bad for lying on my answers, so I didn't pay for the account (you can see matches, but not communicate with them if you don't pay) and just let it sit there.

A week ago, I decided to try again (another email address), and to answer honestly. I did, and they took me this time! This freaked me out, because I think it means maybe their standards have gone down, and Dr. Warren's sort of relented due to the business folks saying, "we need more customers, let's stop turning people away just because they're unmatchable." Dr. Warren probably doesn't even actually do anything anymore, he's probably just the figurehead, and somebody else sits around planning the business side of things.

The weird thing though is that I read the personality profiles for both this new account, and the older slightly-inaccurate account, and the personalities are different, but the one I lied on actually matches what I think is my personality more accurately. So as a result of that, I decided to keep both accounts (and pay for both....I'm a sucker, I know). How did they hook me into paying? This weekend and this weekend only (so join eHarmony now, single people!) they are letting you communicate with your matches for free! But that got me so hooked, I decided to pay anyway.

Anyway, so how's the matching going? Eh, so-so. It's a long process. First, eHarmony finds you a few matches. Second, you read their profile. Third, you send them exactly five multiple-choice questions from a long, long list that eHarmony provides, and they send you theirs. Then you exchange your list of exactly 10 Must Haves and 10 Can't Stands (personality traits/values/etc. that you, well, must have or can't stand in a partner). Then you select and exchange a set number of open-ended questions (I've not gotten to this part yet with anybody). Then they let you communicate with them directly.

The whole thing seems so structured! I want to defer to Dr. Warren's infinite wisdom, but it feels like I get such limited and stilted information this way. I wanna ask my own specific questions too (like "What time do you get up?" ...past bfs were always yelling at me for staying up to late and in bed too late). Well, at least the process is kind of fun. It's sort of like a game.

Other thing that's bothering me is, everybody works out! I want to find someone who *doesn't* go to the gym very often, whose favorite activity isn't "running" or "anything outdoors" etc. Why is everyone so god damned healthy and active? I'm not really into that, and I wouldn't want a boyfreind who's always trying to wake me up at 5 am on weekends so that we can go hiking or kayaking or skiing or something. Neither of us would be happy with that.

I want someone likes to sleep in late, or at least, doesn't mind that I hate getting up in the morning (even when we're on vacation to somewhere, I don't like to get up and do stuff), who likes to sit around at home and read, likes to go out and eat and try new food and new restaurants, likes to sit around at coffee shops or wherever and talk late into the night, stay up late debating anything and everything under the sun.

But I'm thinking, eHarmony is probably smarter than me. That's probably what I *think* I want, but that's probably not what I *really* want. Maybe I'm secretly the outdoorsy type, and eHarmony has secretly determined this, and thus actually knows better than I do what I really want. Maybe I'm focusing on the wrong things.

Anyway, we'll see how it goes.

Brought to you by way of nilok

1. Who was your best friend? I didn't have a best friend throughout most of high school.

2.What sports did you play? I played basketball briefly, and badly.

3. What kind of car did you drive? I didn't get my license until college.

4. It's Friday night, where were you? Erm, at home panicking about writing the next revision of my play in time for my playwriting class the next day.

5. Were you a party animal? I had never been to a "party" party.

6. Were you considered a flirt? Ha. Ha. Hahahahahaha. Ha. Stop it, you're killing me.

7. Were you in band, orchestra, or choir? I was briefly in orchestra. The rest of the time I took random classes such as "computer music" (where we learned about synthesizers and MIDI and the like) and AP music theory.

8. Were you a nerd? Something like that.... perhaps more of a dork.

9. Did you get suspended/expelled? No, my life was quite boring in high school.

10. Can you sing the fight song? What's a fight song? Did we, uh, have one?

11. Who was your favorite teacher? I don't think I really had one. I guess I liked my math teacher Mrs. Kaida (I don't even actually remember her name, I think that was it) and Senora Woolford (I don't think I spelled that right), my Spanish teacher, at the Priory.

12.What was your school's full name? I went to three high schools: Orange High School (Orange, CA) 9th grade, St. Andrew's Priory (Honolulu, HI) 10th & 11th grade, and Iolani School (12th grade).

13. School mascot? OHS Panthers, Priory...uh? Did we have a mascot?, Iolani Raiders

14. Did you go to Prom? Yes, I did.

15. If you could go back and do it over, would you?

Sure, why not. Would I just relive it as it was, or would it be the current 23-year-old Sandra doing it over? Doing it over, yes, because I guess I would do things differently. You know how they say "no one ever says on their deathbed, 'I wish I spent more time at the office.'"? Well, I'd redo it to "spend more time in the office" rather than having fun, enjoying myself or talking to people. I would have worked harder, actually studied, etc.

If it was just to relive the miserable experience, no way.

16. What do you remember most about graduation?

Hm, you know, I don't remember much about graduation really. The only things I remember are our nice white ho'omu'umu'u (no idea if I got that right) and me trying to suck it in so my stomach wouldn't show. Standing next to the other "F" people (we were ordered by last name) and realizing I didn't know any of them really.  Being super pissed my grades weren't good enough to be valedictorian. And being a shallow, stupid monkey and wearing my cum laude pin on my necklace because I was so proud of it (I feel embarrassed having done that now, I don't think anyone else wore theirs, but I am a show off).

17. Where were you on senior skip day? Probably at school? Anyway, I don't think we had one.

18. Did you have a job your senior year? No, I didn't.

19. Where did you go most often for lunch?

Um, my locker, where I would remove my lunchbox and retrieve its contents to consume as lunch. 

Or do you mean where I ate lunch? I ate lunch alone, then I found friends and ate lunch with them in the grassy area outside the biology/chemistry/etc classroom. Then I moved to Hawaii, ate lunch on the 2nd floor balcony with friends, then I ate lunch in the journalism room. Then I changed schools again, and ate lunch at the senior benches.

20. What did you do after graduation?

Immediately after the event, or the summer after, or with the rest of my life? Immediately after, my family and I went to dinner, and then we had that Project Grad thing where they lock us in for an all-night party so that we don't go drinking and killing ourselves in accidents and such.

Summer after, I went to UH for summer school, and spent some time with friends. Probably the first time I ever really spent large amounts of time with friends outside of school was then.

Rest of my life? I went to college, and now I'm in grad school. So I'm still in school, basically. :-p

My VL/HCC paper got accepted! Hurray! Who's the monkey? Who's the monkey? I am the monkey. :-)

I just painted my nails for the first time since, probably, middle school or so.

The shade itself is gorgeous, but I did such a bad job that my nails look more like kindergarten art time, than pretty, rosy nails. It's really bad. Mostly only my right hand is bad, because I'm right handed. The left hand nails can at least appear in public without my being laughed at.

I would post a pic, but my nails are still wet. (How am I typing then, you ask? Good question. I should probably stop before I ruin my nails further.)

I hate myself, I got nothing done today. I suck. Anyway, I think it's time to go home. Better luck tomorrow, I hope.

In other news, because I was on a trip with my family, I missed the finale of Survivor: Fiji. I've never seen a single episode of any of the other Survivor seasons, but this season's Survivor is just about the only TV show I've followed since X-Files in high school.

So I tried to catch up my missing episode on cbs.com, the first half of the episode played just fine but the second half won't play! I can't figure out why. It just keeps saying "Loading..." and "Buffering" but never loads or finishes buffering, apparently. I watched the first part just fine. Suck. So I'll never find out what happens. Waah. Well, I mean, I found out what happened just because it's everywhere online, but I DON'T WANNA KNOW! I want to watch it myself.

Mom bought some Chinese bakery pastries for me before she left. I left them out for a few days (wrapped in Saran wrap) before eating them, and they were all nasty and dry and crunchy, in a bad way.

And then I realized why: I neglected to take the additional paper wrapper off the pastries before I bit into them. I hadn't noticed it because I was busy unwrapping the Saran wrap. So, I was munching on paper. I had eaten one and a half hot-dog-sized pastries before I realized what was going on.

Saturday, May 19, 2007

Hi, I thought I would post an update, as I've not updated in, well, a very, very, very long while.

Not really sure why I should update, I mean, really, why would anyone care about the mundane things I do in my mundane life? Back in 2000, when fewer people blogged, I guess it felt like I was actually adding something interesting to the internet. But now that everyone and their grandma's poodle blogs about their dubiously exciting lives, why would anyone really care about mine?

Here I go anyway:

My family came to visit, and to go to Howard's graduation, so I've been pretty occupied the past week. They went to Salem/Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver. I have no pictures of this, my brothers took massive pictures and put them on Facebook, so I didn't need to take any of my own pictures.

They just left yesterday, so I'm trying to get back into the swing of things (and failing pretty miserably at the moment, but oh well). I've got a *lot* of backed up work to do, and I'm feeling quite guilty about it.

I have an internship this summer at a startup. It should be an exciting change of pace. I'm looking forward to doing something different than school, which is the only thing I've ever really done. At the same time, I am a little worried; maybe I'll find that school really is the only thing I'm good at.

About a month ago, I started wearing makeup. I put makeup on every morning. I thought it'd make a big difference in my life, but I look exactly the same. No whistles from guys on the street or anything. It's a little retarded that I waste an extra 10-15 minutes or so of my life each morning for this. But now it's kind of a habit, and it's a lot of fun! Even more alarming, I've started to go shopping, and actually enjoy it! Not "I'm out of milk and toothpaste" shopping. But, you know, "shopping" shopping. I bought a whole bunch of new shoes, and some new clothes. I've always, always, always HATED clothes shopping. So this is all quite bizarre.

I also think I've gained some weight and gotten fat. I don't know if this is because I've *actually* gained some weight and gotten fat, or if it's because my new obsession with my looks makes me think I am fatter than I am.

Sunday, May 20, 2007

Hi. I had left for dinner last night without finishing my entry. So I guess I'll finish it now. U-district street fair's now, but it's been raining on and off like a monkey all day, so I don't know whether I really want to go. I have a lot of work to do, besides.

Let's see, what else is new with me? My apartment's nice and clean--at last!--because I cleaned it up in preparation for my family coming. I bought some new furniture and stuff to help store things, etc.

I got a keyboard (music kind, not the typing kind). It finally arrived, I am very happy with it.

I also got Guitar Hero, I play it every so often, but I'm not very good.

Also bought Age of Empires III, but I don't play it nearly as often as I would like. :-(

Went on a few trips. Went to Maryland for my grandma's 80th birthday party in February. Went to Orange, CA in April for a Shinnyo-en service. Went to Oregon & BC when my family came. I'll probably be going on another trip in June. Spending a lot of money these days too. It's very bad. I'm kind of scared I'll run out of money.

Oh, that's the other thing that's different about me too. I care a lot about material things now. Never been quite like this before. I have *never* wanted to be rich. Of all the things I could want, that used to always be on the bottom of the list. Heck, not even on the list. I was always happy with just the bare minimum, but now I find myself wanting more and more, and spending money more and more recklessly (on clothes, trips, furniture, makeup, perfume, eating out, etc.). I hope this is just a phase, and not permanent, because it's *really* weirding me out.

My attitude toward grad school is really weird. Some days/weeks/months, I absolutely love grad school and really want to get my PhD and desperately want to do research more than anything else. Sometimes I absolutely hate being here and am horribly miserable, and I hate my research, and I really want to just quit. I don't know what's going on. I think I need to keep a log of my attitude toward grad school each day, and find out over the long term if I hate it more often than I love it, or the intensity of one emotion surpasses the other, or something, just so that I can justify my staying even during the times that I hate it. That is, if one day I'm thinking "this sucks like a monkey" I can look at my log and go, "ah yes, but it only sucks 1 day out of 10, so it's not that bad, you'll get over it."

What else? Oh yeah. I didn't realize this before, but I have been led to understand that actually, my parents and upbringing really affect the way I act and view the world. Probably obvious, but I always thought I was, you know, "above" my childhood, or something.

Maybe I should stop here. I hate LJ cuts (I don't mind creating them, I just hate having to click on them to read people's posts, etc. so I don't want to do the same to anyone else) and I don't want to have to put this in one, and have people complain that it's too long and that I should hide it in a god damn LJ cut.

Blizzard has announced StarCraft 2! OMG, OMG, OMG!

Waiting in line @ GPSS social. Line so long, it goes down the hall, down the stairs, to the ground floor. Yikes.

Posting from a text message right now. Hurrah, so much fun.

Wow, I'm updating my LJ with IM! And apparently I can post with IM too! Hah! So now I don't have to use Twitter anymore, hurray!

Been updating on my Twitter account mostly, so not that many updates here.

Hi. This is actually just a test of something, not a real entry. Readers, you can ignore.

Good Link

Okay. Bye bye.

Hey, guess what, folks? My first ever conference paper got accepted to IEEE ICALT 2007! I submitted a long paper and only a short paper got accepted, sadly, but it's better than nothing! Hurrah!

In other news, I have two phone interviews tomorrow, one for Healia (9 am, yikes!!!) and then another for Microsoft (10:30am, yikess!!! I barely get a breather). I've never done an interviews for programmer positions before, so I'm pretty scared.

I'm also a little unhappy because, in my excitement, I stupidly scheduled both of them for tomorrow. And they were scheduled today, meaning, we settled on the time and dates today. So I only have tonight to prepare, but unfortunately, I have to give the 590h presentation tomorrow, so I don't actually have any time to prepare tonight, and then it seems that no one wants to attend 590h anymore and they think we should cancel it, which sorta pisses me off even more because I have to prepare my 590h presentation tonight for a possibly canceled seminar, when I would rather be prepping for my interviews...blarghy. Perhaps I should have been smarter about the scheduling, but I was excited and wanted to do them as soon as possible.

Well, gotta do what I gotta do. Wish me luck, please. :-)

My cat just pooped on the carpet in my hallway. Lots of nice, big, moist poop cakes.

Anyway, I'm not sure how to clean it up. I did the obvious--got some paper towels, picked up what I could, then tried to blot and rub at the stain with soap and water and paper towel/toilet paper, which then left paper lint everywhere, which I just vacuumed up.

But I'm not satisfied. I want to kill the bacteria. I want to get rid of the itty bitty, slightly darker part of my carpet that could still be cat poop. How do I do this?

The last time this happened, I poured bleach on the carpet. I figured, bleach will kill anything. Bad idea. Turned my beige carpet orange! (Shh, don't tell my landlady!)

What should I do? I really wanna be sure I get rid of the bacteria.

I read about "enzymatic cleaners" online, but they seem to be focused on odor removal--I don't think it's going to leave a bad odor, I just want to kill germs (and possibly get rid of what might possibly be a stain...not sure yet, it could just be that the carpet's still wet.

Any advice? Thanks!