Leon Barrett

Not quite a month

Tue, 05 Jan 2010 20:20:22 GMT

I haven't posted in nearly a month. But this has been the month of most of my job search, and I now have job offers. I need to choose, but I have some awfully good options. I have nearly 2 weeks to decide.

I'm at home in Tennessee, where it's awfully cold (in the teens) and snowing lightly. I've missed it, and it's good to have some snow again.

Vacation time is nearly over, though. I may be still at home, but even here it's time to get cracking on my thesis. Though I have job offers, before I can start, I've gotta finish what I'm doing now.

Terrible logos

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 19:41:58 GMT

Cracked.com had a great article on bad logos today. My favorite is the Hospital for Special Surgery logo:

stupid landlord forms

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 07:13:05 GMT

My landlord demands that I fill out a "student tenant resume", including my bank account number, references, my income, my SSN, and so on, in order to sign a new lease. Never mind that he already did a credit check in May, that I passed his damn standards. I'm highly offended. This unnecessary paperwork is highly stupid. I am angry.

Stranger than fiction

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 05:17:15 GMT

Nerd help: computer hardware!

Sat, 28 Nov 2009 19:05:26 GMT

We found my dad a cheap 28" monitor, but as a Black Friday sale, it sold out before he could order it. The best alternative is probably two normal-sized monitors.

However, I'm confused by the "maximum resolution" of the video card. It claims the max resolution is 2560x1600. The card has two outputs. Is that the max resolution per output, or the max resolution total? If it's the total resolution, that's pretty restrictive--he couldn't combine two 1900x1200 monitors.

The internet suggests it's the total resolution. My reason to doubt that is my own laptop. It has a 2.5-year-old Nvidia card, and it regularly drives a total resolution width of more than 3000. There's no way my old laptop card is better than his brand-new state-of-the-art card.

Can someone help clear this up for me?

new roommate

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 00:15:35 GMT

I may have found a new roommate. Special bonus: she attended WashU. Strangely, I didn't get any male applicants--two couples were somewhat interested, but no lone guys. What does that mean?

Job hunting

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 03:02:21 GMT

I have a scheduled on-site job interviews with [X] in early December, and I've got interest from [Y] and [Z], though visiting details with them need to be finalized.

The opportunities look pretty good, but I have two caveats. First, I'd still like to hear from [W], since working with robots would be pretty awesome. Second, it feels weird to have the limitless potential I've had ahead of me my whole life finally collapse.

It used to be I could do anything: be president, cure cancer, whatever. But now that I've arrived at the part of my life where I actually go do the things I'd planned to do, I have to pick only a single thing. Oh, sure, I've been narrowing down the possibilities for a decade, but it's never come down to picking exactly 1 thing to do. It's starting to look like I won't be the amazing cancer-curing president, but instead a guy with a job. Now the trick is to see the potential growing out of that one choice, passing through that needle's eye and expanding again.

[Edit: redacted company names]

A few interesting events

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 22:44:25 GMT

In no particular order:

ICSI, the lab where my office is, is located in a city building. There was a police practice in the building last week, and when I left, I ran into a robot in the lobby. It was a bomb robot, and even though it wasn't doing anything, it was *awesome*.

I had a Google phone interview. They didn't ask me any really hard questions; I suppose that means it went well enough, though I've heard much harder Google questions secondhand. Maybe they save the big guns for later in the process? Working for them would be good, I think, though I'd still prefer Willow Garage. (Robots!)

My car window was smashed so someone could steal the $3 I had sitting on the console. Awesome. Repairs weren't too bad, though 2 orders of magnitude bigger than $3, and I've learned a lesson about leaving valuables visible in the car. I was surprised they didn't steal my gum when they went through the glove compartment--it'd've added a solid $1 of value to their take.

It was rainy the (second) night of the Leonid meteor shower, so the big outing was canceled. After I'd dropped off my last dancer/passenger, I noticed the sky was clearing, so I went up to the Lawrence Hall of Science to look for a bit. (1) The parking lot lights were too bright, making it sucky. (2) It was cold and there weren't many meteors. I saw one out of the corner of my eye during several minutes of watching.

Berkeley weather

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 00:35:51 GMT

Last Thursday there was a beautiful sunset, and as I admired it from my tall building in downtown Berkeley, I noticed there was a light drizzle in the sun's glow. I dashed to the roof, and indeed I was correct to expect something pretty. I didn't, however, expect anything quite so good as this:

A perfect double rainbow, the first rainbow I've ever seen in Berkeley. And just inside the inner rainbow, without any space, there was the hint of a third rainbow. I'm not sure what would cause that, but I'm pretty sure it was really there.

Glorious.

Happy, from Emerald City

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 03:41:03 GMT

I'm as happy as I can remember being lately, as happy as I've been since the last time I began dating. On the one hand, it's a momentary thing brought on by a good meal and some mango nectar, but on the other hand it's been a good weekend.

Sure, there were some people who were annoying--I was amazed to rediscover my ability to really be irked by a person's tone of voice. But still, the lessons were good, and last night's astounding dances were worth the entire cost of the workshop. I've only ever been quite so on once before. I was on fire! I was amazing! The people who walked away from me unimpressed were the easily-dismissed exceptions.

My favorite quote was from an instructor named Ogden. He and Amanda were teaching us about leading from non-traditional body parts, like by touching our partner's shoulders or wrists. But he cautioned us about not getting too focused on using wrists: "Wrists are good as friends. But hands...!" It was the funniest moment of the weekend, which was hard after Topher and Mike's class.

A wise choice

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:35:49 GMT

I just got my bike serviced at The Missing Link, Berkeley's co-op run bike shop. It was one of the wisest decisions I've made in recent history. My bike is easier to pedal, though that wasn't terribly obvious on the 5 blocks I rode it so far. What was most striking was the way it shifts perfectly now. It used to click a bit, and have trouble getting into certain gears. Now it changes gears like a dream! I'm delighted.

Hooray for polarizing filters!

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 04:20:22 GMT

Halloween

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 22:55:32 GMT

It's a common subject of discussion this time of year--how the tendency is for costume shops to sell "sexy" women's costumes. Not "nurse" but "sexy nurse", not "cat" but "sexy cat".

I dressed up not as a mad scientist, but as a sexy mad scientist.

Elena did my amazing tattoos.

Learning to use my guitar

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 16:51:01 GMT

Apparently I still need to learn to use my guitar correctly.

A certain unreasonable jealousy

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 06:31:23 GMT

I consider myself a member of the blues community, here in the Bay Area, and our community has some shining stars. Chief among them are the attractive young women who dance so very well. We also have some photographers, and I've noticed that the photographers do photo shoots of the attractive young women. Just up and out of the blue, the photographers take free (and quite good) glamour shots of them.

I find myself intensely jealous. An attractive young woman is gifted with an inherently better life than the rest of us. There are no downsides to her fortune--she can do anything the rest of us can, but she can also inspire desire. As a plain young man, like all men, I will never be so enticing as any of them. No one will ever breathlessly hope to take my picture, nor will they for most people--just these lucky few.

It's not that I don't understand why it's so. It's just that it's so frustrating knowing that, like so many others, I'll always be a second-rate citizen.

J.K. Rowling is a woman. Are you?

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 05:14:05 GMT

Harry Potter was obviously written by a woman. I've been reading/listening to book 5, "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix," and I've just passed the point where Harry goes on a date with Cho. They go to a coffeeshop and sit surrounded by couples holding hands and kissing, and Harry's thought is, "she'll expect me to do that too--how terrifying!"

What. The. Fuck.

Have you ever had a chance to hold the hand of someone you had a crush on? Did you lack the desire to do so? If so, you weren't a young man, because I can assure you, the desire to touch and kiss is extraordinary, matched only by the enormous fear of the consequences if you do so and she's unhappy about it. I can't imagine anyone missing that drive; it's so visceral and all-consuming.

However, I'm told that women often engage in sexual behavior that makes them uncomfortable because they feel societal expectation, and so I theorize that this is the reaction a woman might have--indifference mixed with expectation and fear. How else could you explain such a bizarre set of emotions? It's just such an alien reaction to me, though, that I can't understand how it made it into the book. Wouldn't most anyone who read the book immediately wonder, "Why didn't Harry want to kiss her?"

So, my question to you: when you were young, say, 16, and had the chance to kiss someone, were you excited about it or just expected to do so?

My hand-drawn tattoos

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 16:59:01 GMT

Task: fake navy tattoos for Shades of Blues Navy Night
Difficulty: drawing them upside-down on my own arm, one of them left-handed

I think they turned out all right.

Left-handed:

I dared not draw a human form left-handed:

The voices of the internet

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 04:05:38 GMT

What would Google be like as a person? What about MySpace?

http://www.cracked.com/video_16271_internet-party-2-intervention-myspace.html

SwingCal compliment?

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 17:29:49 GMT

I've been helping "mentor" at SwingCal, Berkeley's student-run swing-dancing class. That means I don't teach, but I dance with students and give them tips.

After the class, there's some social dancing, and then too I mostly dance with students. One student was amused by my style and said, "You remind me of Will Ferrell." The question is, is that a compliment or an insult?

Yesterday's good and bad

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 17:36:35 GMT

Yesterday I was mostly not in a good mood. I was full of that anxious feeling in which I want reassurance, and I was unable to quell it.

But at Shades of Blues, it all went away, and I felt quite confident. I got "dance-drunk," where I didn't have to think too much about the movements and just felt good. I'm glad I went.

Topical webcomic

Sun, 04 Oct 2009 18:10:13 GMT

Job applications

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 18:27:24 GMT

I have now sent my resume to 5 different companies, including Willow Garage. I will do more, but it's a start.

Pre-need

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 16:54:02 GMT

I want to say something witty, but that'd just take away from the sign.

55

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 07:41:44 GMT

Today would be my mom's 55th birthday.

Half of my parents & grandparents died of cancer in their early to mid fifties. Of Ruth, Sam, and me, will we all escape that fate? Will treatment improve much in the next few decades? We'd better hope so.

New phone number

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 16:19:07 GMT

My new phone number is 423-915-6800.