The pics from Gary’s Seventh of July party are current up!

Bocce Ball, drunken koi-pond maintenance, Six Degrees of Girard DepardiOOO, it’s all there. Enjoy.

First off, yesterday was mine and Kelly’s “monthly anniversary”. We usually try to do something each 2nd of each month (as we “started going out” Oct 2, 1996). Holy shit. That’s a long goddamn time. Anyway, we try to go out and do something each 2nd of every month. We went to Ramsi’s Cafe and I had the 15 Bean Medley Soup. Kelly had some sort of stuffed pita thing. We went to Target (mini Bocce Ball set!) She makes me happy.

The second thing that makes me happy is this game called BridgeBuilder. It’s ludicrously simple to learn, and yet hard to master. Build a bridge on a grid-like background with little links. Then you “test” the bridge by running a small train over it. You can even view the stress on the individual links, and if that stress is too great, well, BLAMMO! You have a money limit, and the water you must trespass gets more and more complex. It’s too cool.

You may or may not have heard of A.I. until it was recently released (on Friday), but chances are, you did. Mostly because it was the last project, the project that Kubrick “had been trying to make for the last 20 years”, I’m sure. The marketing campaign was more underground than over the top, and thankfully so. The elaborate internet “game” was interesting, but by all accounts an elaborate attempt to re-create the “organic” wave of hype that vaulted the Blair Witch Project into success a couple of years back. “But wait!” you say. Yes, I know. The game had so little to do with the movie, it was just a little confusing, and many people got more caught up in the game than the actual movie (and in my opinion, the idea of this highly involved, distributed, puzzling game was/is more exciting, riveting, compelling than the movie was). Well, stick with me, gentle reader, ’cause it don’t get much better. Well, maybe a little, but then when you think it gets better, it doesn’t again. And then that keeps happening waaaay to long. In any case, I swear this is a good review.

You may also want to go and read the original short story, it will take you 10 minutes. Unless you are dumb.

P.S. — enjoy the Slashdot review

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Now, I respect both of the filmmakers involved with this project. Stanley Kubrick is and will always be ahead of his time. You don’t make Clockwork Orange or 2001 on accident. Spielberg, much the same, reinvented film in his own image. Putting a sense of the fantastic, and a touch of humility and emotion into all that he does (see E.T.), and sometime to a fault.

First up, I’m gonna do a review! No spoilers, but perhaps a little plot discussed. Nothing you wouldn’t know. Then, a complete capsule of the movie. Plenty of spoilers there. But it will be funny! So, REVIEW then HUMOROUS CAPSULE.

REVIEW

I enjoyed chunks of this movie. I really did. But that is a problem when you are attempting to tell a cohesive story. Chunkiness is good for tasty salsa, and not necessarily for a story to be told in 2.5 hours. I know in my heart of hearts that there is a 6 hour edit of this movie. There just has to be. There are so many things that are either not explained, or not investigated long enough, leaving out what could be some very interesting, very engrossing details. Spielberg instead tries to involve the viewer by using long, meaningful shots. And plenty of them. Like a robot staring at this, and a robot staring at that. One movie that got those long, meaningful shots right was Terrence Malick in The Thin Red Line. But the shots are really just tools that the movie uses to re-inforce certain themes. In a movie with so many swirling themes as AI, these shots seem to get lost, or forgotten within the film.

I guess that’s my big beef with the film. It’s too short to do the MANY MANY themes of the film justice. Half-explored, half-detailed themes, and little if any mingling between them. I would have liked to have seen a better explored mother-surrogate child relationship, rather than the hour-long treatise it was served. The seedy underbelly of the world, and the dischord between humans and robots could have been played out much better than the Mad Max-esque treatment in the middle of the film. Jude Law REALLY, REALLY was excellent as the singing, dancing digital Don Juan, but we see too little of him in the film. The idea that William Hurt, who plays the creator of David (Robo-boy), is suffering from his own loss of child could have seen more justice, rather than a panning montage of “In Memory Of David” photos on his desk. Robo-lad’s entire journey to become accepted could have been better played as well.

This movie seems to have been mashed together in the editing room, and glued into place by numerous cheap plot devices, warm-fuzzies, and the occasionally horrid action sequence, cameo voice-over, or mushy plot device. I attribute this to the fact that it was headed by two very independent filmmakers, Kubrick and Spielberg. Combining the compressed time-frame of the movie, the many shallow treatments of the themes of the movie, and the ill-executed bridgework between them made this movie feel more like a patchwork, a Frankenstein’s monster, if you will. The end result will leave many viewers either disappointed or asking many questions. It’s not a BAD movie, per se, and is worth the price of admission. See it once, if only to bask in how good this movie COULD have been.

END REVIEW

****WARNING! SPOILERS AHEAD!****

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PLOT SUMMARY

(with humour added to make reading this at least partially worth-while)

Anyway, lets get on to the capsule of the movie. The movie starts off, providing us with some little-needed backstory about time/place, you know, important stuff to a movie that starts in the future, and spans two millenia. The seas have risen, and many people have moved in-land (rather than growing gills), and due to the crowding, limits on child-bearing are put into place. Combine that with the fact that our two parents (who appear in the movie for one solid stretch, and then are promptly forgotten for NEARLY the rest of the movie), have “lost” a child to a viral disease. Oh, but modern science allows us to make ice-pops out of dearly almost-departed! Thank goodness. Keep in mind that in any movie that involves people in stasis (i.e. 2001,2010, The Mummy), they will ALWAYS wake-up, usually at inopportune times.

But i digress. So, the stage is set for our pale-faced, solemn eyed little cyber-boy. The first scene is actually a meeting in a company that apparently builds these little electro-hominids, with William Hurt as the Ed Harris-like (see The Truman Show) genious who has the psychological trauma to actually subject the populace to these tiny little kill-o-drones.

Meanwhile, Mommy is lonely, and needs to let go of her Otter-Pop son, whom I’m sure will NEVER, EVER come back. Ever. Never-ever. So, cue up the hilarious mom-and-robo-son getting acquainted while Daddy is at work scenes. Pay no attention to time. Sprinkle this with the unnerving possibility of a silicon-fueled bloodbath (from having seen Child’s Play), and there you have it.

Yay! Mommy likes the little boy. Oh no! What? Otter-pop has come back to life unexpectedly and unexplainably? I thought the medical technology to do so was years off?! Sure, it probably was, but we were never given any cue to the time frame. Daddy didn’t seem older, and Mommy’s hairstyle didn’t change, so I guess…. Anyway. Now Otter-pop has to come home after what I assume were some most horrorshow cinnies he’d ever viddied in his whole life, and to complete the Clockwork Orange reference, he meets up with his replacement at home! Yay!

Needless to say, Otter-Pop and Boy-Bot are immediately friends, and as any good REAL son would do to a fake son (i.e. stepson or robo-sibling), he subjects him to the sort of mind-games that one would only expect from a Ho-Chi Minh era Viet-Cong torture-master. Mommy doesn’t REALLY love you, she just likes the fact that you can pick up the couch when she vacuums. So, in order for you to win back her heart you must A) surprise her with sharp objects to the facial area, and B) freak out and nearly drown me.

Well, as you can tell, the little cybo-tyke pulls off his mission with exacting precision. This causes Mommy to do the next sensible thing, and drop little mechano-lad OFF IN THE WOODS, like some puppy “because I know what they’ll do to you!”.

Oh, let’s not forget Teddy. Teddy is a Teddy-Ruxpinesque little gem who shines in this movie. He’s got a voice like gravel, and with his freakish ability to walk upright, form complete sentences, and even act angry, he’s a PERFECT kids toy. He once was Otter-pops, but now has been sent to the same deciduous demise as Lectro the Boy Wonder. Oh, he also provides a convenient stowage place for a silly, redundant, and yet somehow heart-warming plot device (more on that later).

Now, after machinenkinder (machine child in German, btw) is dropped in the wood, we bid farewell to the BEGINNING Of the movie as if it ALMOST, ALMOST didn’t happen. Or at least, we don’t pay to much attention to it, or they try to make us forget it. This was done affectively in CastAway, and even made sense (castaway.theme == loneliness, whereas ai.theme == journey). So, if you just walked into the movie at this point, it’s okay. The filmmakers left THAT end of it open too. Nice.

Now the movie takes an interesting turn, and one that could make an interesting movie in itself. The beginning of the movie could have been a movie by itself, but I sure as hell wouldn’t have gone and seen THAT. In any case, the second chunk of the movie involves the seedy robo-underworld that is apparently not visible, or not spoken of in the suburbian bliss that was chunk #1. Gigolo Joe, (played wonderfully by Jude Law — see Gattaca), is of course, a Robo-Gigolo with the script from Singin’ In the Rain printed on his circuit boards. He dances, he sings, he bones like a madman. And then he’s framed all of the sudden by a murderer, which is pretty handy, considering he wouldn’t be exiled to the “Wood of Misfit Robots!”. As if the woods weren’t filled with dangerous hippies, bears, and gypsies, apparently it has become a stomping ground for forgotten/exiled robots, a latter-day Tijuana.

Then the movie takes an interesting turn, thematically speaking. The beginning was very lovy-dovey, with hints that some folks aren’t really comfortable with walking, talking, thinking, autonomous robots. Sure. Makes sense! But we don’t see that a good section of the populous is vehemently against their robot helpers. We are cordoned into a small setting, of a suburban household, with no real sense of the outside world. Now, while it is good to see from just Small Wonder’s POV now and again, it makes for a jarring transition, and made me lose hold of the initial theme of the love between mechano-boy and Mommy (especially since we don’t see Mommy again for more than an hour later).

So Gigolo Joe and cyber-anklebiter are in the woods (along with the plot-device toting Teddy). People hate robots. Especially old ones. So, much like the derelict cars underneath the oppressive treads of “BIGFOOT” or the “UNDERTAKER” monster-trucks, we destroy them in a ludicrous show of destruction, right? Right. Well, Gigolo and Bot-boy are surely doomed, eh? Well, after surviving what is quite possibly the most horrible guest actor voice-over (by Chris Rock, being the voice of an Al Jolson circa “The Jazz Singer” style man-servant robot), they are in the acid-bath pillory! But, oh no! That looks like a little boy! You can’t kill little boys, the crowd says! “Oh, but he’s just a robot! The MAN is making robots to replace your children! They are making machines that will not make juvenile mistakes! Open the pod bay doors, Hal!” Well, as you could probably tell, heartstrings were tugged, and Cybo-Tyke’s human oppressor is pelted with many a projectile, and RoboBoy escapes. Oh yeah!

Now, if you were a walking dildo, where would be the first place you would go? Well, i’d go to Rogue City, damnit! Well, Gigolo Joe takes the young, impressionable Electro-boy to FunkyTown, because Electro-Boy is looking for a blue fairy, which will turn his ePinocchio arse into a real boy, or so he thinks. So far, I’ve found that not only are Robo-Children impressionable, but stupid as well. I must get one. He will do my bidding. Which brings me to a side note. Are these little Plasto-Children anatomically correct? I should hope not. People get strange ideas. In any case, we are now on a Pinocchio-esque quest for the Emerald City, of some sort.

The police, meanwhile, are still searching for Gigolo Joe, the murderous cybo-ho. You wouldn’t know that, though, if i hadn’t told you. They are, trust me. This is just another seemingly forgotten about occurence, one of which pushes the movie along, ’cause it would move along on its own. Anyway, let us move on to “Disturbing Celebrity Voice-Over Cameo #2″. Playing the part of a franchised information-booth floating head called “Dr. Know” is Robin Williams. So, here we are, enjoying the Pinnochio story, and out pops the damned Genie. And as per usual, the animators have given Williams’ cartoon image much the same annoying exorbitancy that Williams unleashes when in public. I really worry about that guy. In any case, all credibility of the scene is thus lost, and we are informed that there is a guy at the end of the world who can change him into a REAL BOY. Oh, our prayers have been answered.

Exit the “Dr. Know” franchise, enter plot-propulsion device #342. The coppers are outside! They are looking for Joe! Run, Joe, Run! Be captured Joe! Thank goodness that for a split second in chunk #1 of the movie, you see little Robo-Rugrat playing with what appears to be the VERY same controls for the helicopter (amphibicopter, actually, which is REAL handy). This of course means that he can attempt to fly it. Oh, and Teddy is here. Let’s not forget about TEDDY. Ahhhhh! Robo-boy in helicopter! Spinning blades! Joe escapes! Yay! Thankfully Joe, being a gigolo, can fly a helicopter. “Oh, Ben, that last sentence didn’t make sense”. No shit. Neither does a Gigolo robot being able to fly a helicopter, thank you very much.

So we are flying to Man-hattan. The end of the veritable world where the Blue Fairy lives. Fly Joe, fly Teddy, fly Electro-Lad. Fly Fly Fly. Seconds later, we find our destination! Oh doctor! Where art thou? Oh no! It’s another Cyber-Boy. He looks just like me! Must control violent tendencies! I’m an individual! Thankfully, my want of robot violence is satiated (for the moment). Little Lectro-Lad goes buck-nuts on his twin “brother” with a lamp that looks like a cheese-grater. Ouch, not in the face!

Well, enter William Hurt, the creator of all this pre-teen cyber-madness. Oh, Cyber-Boy, you ARE an individual. Or, per se, and Individually wrapped cybo-o-drone, I mean. Let me walk off the set to “get the rest of my team,” and leave you alone in the lab, which apparently has doors that lead out onto 400 foot drops to the open sea (this is the end of the world). Oh, keep in mind that I don’t return with my “team”. Ever. Later! Don’t forget to send my royalty checks. Ol’ Willy Hurt is hurtin’ fo’ cash! Hep me!

So, there sits Cyber-boy, 400 ft above the risen sea. Gigolo Joey Joe has apparently left in the helicopter, as he is now flying around outside. No, Cybo, don’t fall to your doom! Don’t end the movie on an introspective point! Well, needless to say, facing the fact that he is in fact a boy replace-o-drone fashioned in the form of William Hurt’s long-lost son, he does the respectable thing and dives into the water, hopefully to never be seen again.

Damn you Gigolo Joe! You just couldn’t leave well enough alone, could you? Oh no! Save the little boy. Goddamn it. Expertly fly/dive the amphibicopter and save him! (Meanwhile, where the hell is the “team” from the “company”? They are so technilogically advanced, they can’t even build some sort of crude raft/winch combination? Jesus. The Professor from Gilligan’s Island could have. Don’t go and rescue the only Cybo-Boy to ever be released into the public! Ignore him! We’ll make more!)

Well, the police opportunely show up to give Gigolo Joe a ride out of this god-forsaken hellish ending of a movie. Little Wonder still wants to find his “Blue Fairy”, which is apparently RIGHT NEXT DOOR to the “company”. In Coney Island! Thank goodness. Dive, Electro-Whiz, dive Teddy-Bear. Find the Blue Fairy. Stare at Blue Fairy. Fall, giant entrapment device! Wish in vain, Electro-ersatz-Pinnochio. End movie, Spielberg. End MOVIE! PLEASE!

Now, just when you think “the movie is over” and/or “how Kubrickian was that?”, this movie GOES ON! Apparently 2000 years is enough for the earth to move into another ICE-AGE, and the seas have frozen over. Aliens now roam the earth, on a dig. Hey! We found a robot boy here in frozen coney island! And a creepy gravel-voiced bear! Wow. Let’s use him as a bipedal Tivo, and check out the re-runs from 2000 years ago. Oh boy. Well, long, long, LONG story short, Robo-tyke is duped into believing that the Blue Fairy is real, and wishes that Mommy could come back. All of the sudden, the aliens speak English, inform Robo-kipper that they can’t bring back Mommy without DNA, and that if they do, she will only live for one day. Now, where the hell is that incorrigable Teddy?! Oh, that’s right. He’s busy pulling the plot-device out of his furry little ass. Oh, but Cybo-drone! Don’t forget that when you cut off Mommy’s hair on a dare from Otter-pop?! I was thankfully there to snatch up this handy little swatch of DNA! Yay. Mommy’s back. The earth has frozen over. End of story, a happy end. Sort of.

The end of Ben’s synopsis.

I’ve been working 10 and 11 hour days the last couple of days. It’s kickin’ me arse! But, considering I’ve been where I’ve been working for a little over a year, and this is the first big project I’ve seen to completion, I’m pretty happy.

As a kid, the “do nothing and get paid” job was the ultimate. However, you have to find something to do, else you go mad. Whether it is hefting a typewriter to stay in shape, digging a tunnel to freedom, or even plotting the deaths of your Viet Cong masters, you’ve gotta do what makes you happy, right? Right.

Chuck has written to us “Day 6″ — and it seems that his little travelogues are less and less about Physics and more and more about eating and getting screwed by fake porn-mag distribution company. Well, enjoy.

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DAY 6

Well, another illustrious day has come and gone. In the mid-afternoon, after heading up to SLAC for boring meetings and some SP, we headed off to San Fransisco again.

This time in SF, the day was not so optimal, it was a rare summer rain in the city of rainbows. Incidentally, the National Gay Pride parade was on Sunday, wow, what a goddamned spectacle!

So, we arrived and parked on pier 39, remember that number. After a little wandering of the low-cal, we found the cable cars and rode it. Irony was beheld, when I noticed the Rice-A-Roni add on the cable car. As I was not quick enough on the stampede when the car arrived at the station, I got to stand at the front (open, mind you) edge of the cable car, ad get to hold on to a single pole in the rain(the standing room was not covered). The cable car went up steep ass hills (SAHs) at a near 40 degree angle in places, and then down again on the other side of the hill. On the ride, we passed that section of Lombard street that is the most curving section of road in the world, and sure as fuck, they do not exaggerate. Soon after this, we entered a more traffic strewn section of town. First, there were some road cones in the road(obviously), but the cable car ran over them(it is on rails), the annoying part is that it ran over them right at the edge, the edge I was standing on, and they slid over to the side and pummeled my ankles, fuckin-a! But then, a car tried to pass us in the parking lane and fucking hit me, not the cable car, ME! goddamnit!

It is not as bad as you think, his side view mirror caught a bit-o-my-pants, but still, the fucker hit me. I did him better by leaving my muddy footprint on his window.

We then walked around in the shopping centers, and eventually found chinatown. Its nice, but to many foreigners. We ate there and I had the Dim Sum, which is just a plate of several finger foods. It was ok, but I suspect that this place was not the best dim sum in SF, as the sign proclaimed.

On the walk back to the car, I saw another YANK mag box! Yeah!! This one looked legit, with a handle and a stack of yank mags visible . So another attempt to get the YANK mag ensued. And, it ended in failure. The quarters got stuck in the change install place. NO YANK mag, and now, im almost totally positive that this is a scam. It re-goddamn-diculous!

Thats all for Monday, soon I shall return!

Chuck

Chuck realizes that work is boring, hits the road to San Francisco, realizes that the Golden Gate bridge is the world’s longest tourist trap, and much more…

Peep it… Day 5 (Sunday, June 24, 2001)

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Day 4

So I yet enter another day in the great state of California. I getting pretty fucking bored of the stuff at SLAC, I’ve learned about all that im allowed to learn, and we have to wait for Dr. Brown to finish his work and go to the meetings(the colloboration meeting started today) There is SP work for us to do, but with the three of us being proficient in doing it, all the work is done in les than an hour.

SP: Simulation Production, the use of Monte Carlo (MC, a better random-number generator) techiniques to create a simulated high energy event(s), then use intelligent processing to recreate it ‘inside’ a virtual detector. This data then can be run through a third process of data analysis to try to reconstruct the original creation. This reconstruction process is the same one as actually used on the real detector data, and it helps the colloboration to fine tune the different processes.

Ok, that is what I do in a nutshell, I don’t do the fine tuning, or anything other than oversee that the computers are working on the assigned tasks correctly, and then update the database for the completed simulations, of course, there are millions of events simulated….

So, anyway, after several hours of boredom, we headed off to the mall, then a few more hours of boredom, but finially we got everyone together and headed north on highway ONE to SAN FRANSISCO! (song in my head…. ‘san-fran–sisko’)

So, we drove into SF, really nice, really big, really hilly. WE drove on Lombard street, the guiness records most curviest street in the world, saw some other shit, and ended up on pier 39, which is a popular tourist attraction, basically a floating mall, really big too.

It seems that everything in Sunny California is bigger: roads, buildings, trees(redwoods), you name it.

We ate at a lovely Italian restaraunt on the pier, I had the prawns, and then checked out the mall. IT was a Sunday nite, and much had already closed.

But then we had a lovely drive across the bay bridge to treasure island, then across the other half of the bay bridge to Oakland(about 4 miles long I estimated a definite Long Ass Bridge, or a LAB). Then north thru Oakland, a not so pretty city, to the other side of the Golden Gate bridge, we drove south across the bay again into SSan F on the golden gate bridge, its really big!

Cost $3 goddamn dollars too, and they dont charge you till AFTER the ride, what a racket!

Long drive home, then passed out at 1.30 in the am.

Chuck

Here are Chuck’s travelogues from Days 3 and 4 in his trek to SLAC

Day 3, Chuck climbs a big hill. Day 4, Chuck goes to the ocean. Read it all below!
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DAY 3

So, day three began early as usual, but instead of heading to work, we headed to the Stanford wildlife refuge and big-ass-hill, or BAH for short.

This area is on foot only, and a very steep climb into the mountian. It is very pretty up there, and the view of Silicon valley is tremendous. I saw the NASA Ames research center, and the Airforce base there, and later I saw a F-22, onw of the new ass-kickin airplanes that we have.

After that, back to drudgery.

At approx 5.30 PST we succeded in removing the keys from Dr Brown, and headed out of SLAC in a fury of dust and gravel. We cruised the town for a while, ate mexican at Celia’s Mexican restraunt, drank beer, and proceded to walk home. On the way back to the hotel, I noticed a newspaper vending machine on the street. It was called ‘YANK’. I was first struck with the thought that Kelly, being herself a Yankee, that she would be interested in this magazine about British stuff in Cali, but as I looked closer into the vending machine, I noticed that the YANK-mag was of a different sort.

I was indeed a YANK-MAG!

Soon, you all shall see the wonders of the YANK, if you so choose….

DAY 4

So, Day four begins early with us excited about heading out to the coast. Dr Brown arrived early at 9.30 or so, and we began the trek.

First we headed into the commercial areas of Palo Alto and checed out some of the businesses. We saw SUN Microsystems, Silicon Graphics Incorporated, GOOGLE headquarters, Lorel Space Systems, Replay TV (TeVo), and maybe some others.

Then he headed across the mountians towards the coast.

WE went through the beautiful country-side, and as we crossed the mountians we entered into the fog zone. It was still too early for the sun to beat off the fog. We arrived at the coast and went south on California Highway 1. Yes, the same one mentioned in the books, songs, movies. The California coast if beautiful. WE drove for several miles all the way to Santa Cruz county and stopped at a beach. The ocean is FRIGID, but the sand is HOT from the sun. IT is a real nice mix. I played in the sand for an hour building a sand hole, while the others either sat, wondered, or layed out. There were naked people on the beach.

After the equally beautiful drive home, we came to work.

I shall continue this day if anything merits the mention later.

Chuck

Day 4 – Continued…
So, after some more work at the accelerator, we headed out to eat, since Dr Brown didnt like fish, and he wasn’t there due to having to stay in the control room till midnite, we went and ate…. fish.

Somewhere near our hotel was a place called the Fish Market, it was pretty good. I had grilled Hawaiian Ono, a large white-meated fish, it tasted much like chicken. I deduced that this fish is large, as the ‘flakey’ meat of fish(you know what im talking about), well the indivudual flakes were quite large, about the thickness of 2 cm. Big. More importantly, Tasty.

So, on the drive home we passed that Yank-mag stand. Tires squealed, pokets were turned out, and 4 quarters were found for YANK. Becc stepped out, inserted the quarters, and began to yank on the door. Well, to make a long hilarious story short, the YANK mag door didnt open, apparently it does NOT open, its just there to steal your money, this was figured out after the family with 3 kids(ages 7-13) walked by, giving Becca the oddest looks as she(and then Darius) were attempting to open the YANK mag stand. Sorry guys, no YANK mag souvineer. I will try to get some postcards, but I canna find any. I thought about purchasing some California lottery tickets, as all big payout lotterys are invariable won by out-of-towners, but alas… apathy prevailed. This morning I heard that the winning ticket was sold in Palo Alto(this town that im in right now). Oh well…

Thats it for Saturday, June 23, 2001.

Chuck

Here is Chuck’s Travelogue of his journey to Stanford’s Linear Accelerator.

In this episode, Chuck hits the Stanford campus, sits through a boring meeting, and once again, steps over the line from disgusting to obscene
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Hola amigos!

Me gusta apunular los ninos!

er… I mean, hello how are you doing today! Day 2 opened with much ado about nothing. Or actually, we got up at 6am, then headed over to the laboratory, pronounced la- boor- a- torie, and worked.

Later in the day, we (consisting of Dr Brown, me, Kelly, Becca, and Darius) headed over to the Stanford campus to ‘check it out’.

I soon realized how shitty the UofL campus really is. First spotted was the Leeland Stanford Jr Memorial Bell Tower, rising phallically in the distance. Next there was Palm avenue, which is for some odd reason lined with palm trees, 40-fucking-foot palm trees. We then entered the Leeland Stanford Jr Memorial quadrangle, which is about the size of the ENTIRE UofL Belknap campus(excluding parkinglots). The building of this campus are in the southwest style of terra-cotta roofs, and freso’ed walls and floors, mucho impressiva.

One side of the Leeland Stanford Jr Memorial quadrangle is the Leeland Stanford Jr Memorial cathederal, this is one big-fuckoff church.(ive got pictures that will be posted when I get back and fix madbovine.org, that will be added into these emails, if someone saves them for me.)

Anyways, this cathederal is filled with the carvings, inscriptions, stained glass, icons, et all of the religious types. Seats about 1500 I estimate.

I saw the rodan statues of the 7 Berghers of Calais. The also have the thinker, an original cast, just like ours.

Next followed was the daily BaBar meeting, the most booring fucking meeting ever, even fro us physicists, 1.5 hours of mind-numbing-tedium consising of charts of the ramifications of changing the gas mixture in the injector-something from 70/20/5/5 to 60/27/8/5 percentages of some four gasses, N O Co2 and something else…. baH! who gives a fuck if you arent actually working on that project yourelf.

Finially it was over, and we went into the control room, and worked with DrB on ‘shift’ And we nearly broke the record for sustained luminosity through an eight hour period.

luminosity: combined strength of the 2 beams being collided (simple version)

Soon after came me with the car keys to Dr B’s car!! hehehe watchout So Cali!

well, anyways, we ate (not Dr B) at Sizzles, king of the steak. I had the …… steak. The converstion here drifted into the vulgar, even the obscene very quickly, but the group was guffawing loudly. And interestingly enough we had the attention of the old couple that was sitting next to us.

One snippet, you can add a new chapter to the Charles Pearsall story: Chapter 23 Sphincter Flex

Basically, I rehased all those funny stories that I have. None really new, just the same old same crude Chuck.

Thats it for day 2.

Peace, out

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Here is Chuck Pearsall‘s account of his first day at SLAC (the Standford Linear Accelerator), where he is participating in the BaBar collaboration, which “was built at SLAC to study the millions of B mesons produced by the PEP-II storage ring”.

In our hero’s first episode, there are deer, beer, and Delroy Lindo. So, read on for his full account!

A minor update — Chuck says the website to the sushi place is here.
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Day 1

Open: 4.30am ugh, this sucks, early morning trip to the airport. After a quick flight to Atlanta, there was a 2 hour layover. What to do during these 2 hours? BEER! yes, beer is on sale in the airport 24-7. So, 2 beers later, then off to LAX.

Slept through most of the 4 hour flight to Cali, but i nearly throttles this annoying, and I MEAN ANNOYING woman sitting behind be. In addition Del Roy Lindo(I think that is his name, the black policeman actor in Gone in 60sec and Ransom) was sitting in the same row as I was. OHOHOH, get this: it now cost $5 to get the inflight movie, to RENT the fucking headphones, how much shit is that??!!? Its a fucking travesty I tell you, and THEN the movie was that pile of shit the Weddding Planner? who the fuck would pay to see shitty j-low act like a stupid cunt in that dumbass movie???!!!??

Enough ranting…

So, then a commuter flight from LAX to San Jose, and Im in the silicon valley!!!

So, we drive from the San Jose airport, which by the way I had to climb down a fucking ladder(almost) to get off the plane, it just stopped in one corner of the concrete, and a stairway drove up and parked next to the plane. what is this? 1962? no airconditioned pedway? no automatic slidewalks? WTF?

Again, we drive from the san jose airport to the ‘heart’ of silicon valley, SLAC and the Stanford campus(adjacent,but different cities) On the way, we see headquarters for the following companies:

Intel
Apple
Compaq
Hewelet-Packard
Wall Street Journal West
Silicon Graphics
Sun Microsystems

And many others…

Impressive, most impressive isn’t it?

well, then a quick tour of the area insued, and we stopped at the Stanford Mall, yes, this is the open-aired mall owed and operated by the University of STanford, On the Stanford campus. So, more driving around towards SLAC, and we drive OVER the LINAC (or linear accelerator) which extends over the interstate. Soon we arrive at SLAC, and are ushered into the guard boot to get our dossimiters and ID’s.

dossimiter: a device worn that measures radiation levels

Next we headed into the BaBar control room, as Dr. Brown, our professor and chauffer, had to start his 4-12 shift, and it was 3.56. So, some down time akwardness as Dr B did the startup sequences, and we stood around looking dumb. But, soon we got a small tour of the facilities, as the LINAC was down. We saw a 50000 liter tank of liquid nitrogen, the multiple control systems of the BaBar detector.

BaBar: the name of a detector system for looking at high energy particles, also the name of the collorobation of scientists working on said system.

We also saw much equipment in front of the detector, we COULDN’T see the actual detector, as the radiation levels would be fairly unsafe, now that the experiment was in progress, so it was safely buried behind 1.5 meters of high pressure concrete. Nearby was the ‘farm’ of computers that run the command and control systems of the BaBar detector.

farm: a large group of computers, usually dedicated to a single, or similar tasks

So, next was the outside of the project building, and right there was a not so wild deer and her two babies.
Up, comes the camera and what? the fucking camera is now broken..wont turn on. shit, fucking digital camera broke.

Alas, soon it will turn on again, dunno why it failed to turn on earlier, dunno why i suddenly decided to start working, dunno how long till it acts up again.

But, back outside, and got the pictures of the deers. No as great as I could have, they were 10 feet away, at first when the camera didnt work, but still, pictures.

Also found out about a large herd of wild horses on the Stanford wild lands on top of the LINAC.(it is buried)

Work, work, work followed, the same shit I do at Uof L, but actually loggin on to the computers, not accessing them thru the internet.

We get a ride back to the hotel, or the roach hotel as id like to think of it, and start walking down the street looking for a restraunt.

We pass up Denny’s and some taco stand and come to Grub and Grog, which sounds promising, but still we move along. Suddenly the clouds part, a shaft of light from the heavens illuminates FUKI SUSHI! we enter, and the numerous awards and articles that litter the anteroom walls proclaim this restraunt to be the BEST SUSHI IN Silicon Valley, even Southern California, a 5 star resturant, etc,etc,etc… so, we eat, then we eat some more, then our comes my sushi plate ($22 it was) and it was the best sushi ever, in my book. it beat the best of Bonsi of Louisville hands down, Bonsi is CRAP, it sucks. This was the best!!!!!! Those 6 exclimation points aren’t for nothin! those are deliberate! I’m not the type to use excessive emphasis!!!

So, after 3 hours of feasting and splitting the bill, which was a major hassle, we trudged back to the hotel. Where we soon passed out after our gorged bellies forced us into a coma, otherwise known as sleep.

To be continued….

Fade to Black……

– END TRANMISSION –

What is Kludge-O? — Well, Kludge-O is something on the order of theLocust v2. And I’ve been working on it (or what became kludge-o anyway) since something on the order of DECEMBER 2000. I thought I’d get it done end of February, as a boatload of it was completed in late Dec 2000 / Jan 2001.

So, “Where the hell is it?” you say. {more} Well, I try and try to sum up the motivation to finish developing the extra features I want on it (ie. User-defined Color Schemes, Personal Top Tens, News Queues, New Article Voting, Better Comment Handling), and out comes the sun and I go outside, or (as has lately been the case) I fall asleep.

What’s my motivation? Sometimes, I’m not real sure, and since work had been slow ’round March, April, I just felt drained… so drained that I didn’t want to work on the ‘kludge. May and June have been a little hectic, a little up and down at work, and I still feel drained. Argh! The last couple of posts on theLocust have given me a good deal of motivation, in that I think that if I post more like it, and allow OTHERS to submit their stories, that theLocust could prosper.

I intend this site, which is my “personal” site, if you will, to be much like Killoggs. I like their design a lot, but that really isn’t the gist of it all. It is (what appears to me to be) a group of friends, relating little bits of their lives to us, and most of it is entertaining, or at least thought-provoking. I like it. It’s smallish and the “signal to noise” ratio is rather high. Lots of good postings.

But, not being too technical of peoples, the Killoggs site isn’t too functional. It is, but not to Kludge-levels (oh dear!). So, that’s my idea for the site.

I’ll also have a few other installs of the ‘kludge goin on, too. Prolly one for my other domain, KYGeek.org, one for Kludge-O itself, and mebbe one for MPy3, if I ever get around to it.