Very belated weekly updated

Indeed, almost biweekly. I'll try to dig back and feed you the goodies though.

Homecoming

I intend to consume Americana while I'm here. Anything is good enough to try once, after that I can always decide not to do it again.

And one of the Big American College Things seems to be Homecoming. I know about Homecoming from such authorative sources as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Gilmore Girls - so obviously my hopes and expectations were set high.

I fished around for someone to go with for about a week, and ended up going with two math grad students from Stanford who make a habit out of going to the Stanford games. So we went together.

As a student, not only do we get free entrance. We get free T-shirts (to make sure the loudest section in the stadium is bright red) and seating in one of the very best sections. Not only that, but the entire student corps views themselves as cooperating partners in Making The Game Succeed: by being loud whenever The Enemy needs to communicate within the team, we can make them spend resources (time and timeouts) they otherwise wouldn't have spent, and making the game more difficult for them.

So, for one raffling game - with Arizona leading over Stanford, but with a manageable lead, for almost the entire game - I shouted when everyone else shouted, and I banged the seat in front of me when the big monitors flashed "MAKE SOME NOISE!" and had a decently nice time. In the end, during the last 4 minutes, the Proud Cardinals made their way across the field, with 6 points down, and scored a touchdown in the last 30 seconds. Then within the margin, they punched in the kick too - leading to a 24-23 win.

And this, just here, is the most sports talk I've produced since middle school.

Noisebridge

I read the Make:blog. And that's a nice and constant stream of cool ideas and links. Last week, it linked to Noisebridge - a hacker community / hackerspace that's just starting up in the middle of the Mission district, San Francisco.

So, on the day after the Make:blog link, I went in for their regular Tuesday Evening plenary meeting - and I liked what I saw. So, by now, I'm an official member of Noisebridge.

Noisebridge is a big crowd of Really Cool People. Hackers, hacktivists, activists, and ... well ... cool people. There's one there who's making glow-in-the-dark yoghurt by genehacking. One who does embroidered electronics. One who makes and sells Really Cool Electronics Kits (TV-B-Gone and similar stuff).

This crowd - with a LOT of social pathos and quirks - does all the decision making for the organization by unanimous decisions. These are detected by single-question voice vote. After the first three-four votes, I suggested we at least change the single question from All in favour to All opposed - so that dissent is easier to detect.

This suggestion was greeted as revolutionary improvements - and very slightly later, everyone was cheerily shouting "NO!" on the question for opposition. *eyeroll*

I am SO happy I'm not on their board.

Weird things seen and found

On the bus station, a while back, I found an abandoned small paper book - with both covers ripped off. Title: INGLES PARA LOS TRABAJADORES. I'll bring scans when I get around to scanning it.

For now, you get to enjoy some samples. Imagine these texts written in cheap print in a penny paperback book with really kitchy 50s style cartoon illustrations. The first page carries - above everything else - the word Diswhacher (sic!) written in pen. Various other misspellings are sprinkled throughout the book.

Esta el gerente ahora?	Is the manager in?
Podria esperarlo?	Could I wait for him?
Estoy dispuesto a trabajar en lo que sa	I am willing to work in any job
Odio estar en la linea de desempleo	I hate to be on the unemployment line
Llene la solicitud	Fill out the application
Motivo de desempleo	Reason for lay-off
En linea segun su apellido	In line by your last name
Ultima fecha de trabajo	Last date you worked
Factoria	Factory
Use la maquina merrow	Do it on the overlock
Trabajo por pieza	Work by piece
Trabajo por hora	Work by the hour
Ponga los ojales	Put the buttonholes
Ordenes que pueden darle
Ama de llaves/sirvient	Housekeeper/maid
Puedo ayudarla?	May I help you?
Barrer/Fregar/Encerar el piso	Sweep/Scrub/Wax the floor
Limpiar inodoro/bañadera/lavamanos/azulejos/espejos/persianas	Clean toilet/bathtub/sink/tiles/mirrors/blinds
Recoger log juguetes	Pick up toys
Autoridad (policia)
Me puede dar su identificacion?	May I have your ID?
Donde vive ud.?	Where do you live?
Habla ingles?	Do you speak english?
Esta perdido?	Are you lost?
Por que iba corriendo?	Why were you running?
Ud. dio una vuelta completa	You made a U-turn
Ub. iba con exceso de velocidad	You were speeding
Su chapa ha expirado	Your license tag has expired
Tienen un permiso?	Do you have a permit?
Enseñenmelo	Show it to me
Formen una fila	Form a line
No haga eso otra vez	Don't do that again
Mantenga la calma	Keep calm
Espere aqui	Wait here
Venga conmigo	Come with me
Siga	Keep moving
Atras!	Move back
En contra de la ley	It is against the law
No discuta conmigo	Don't argue with me
Usted esta bajo arresta	You are under arrest

The whole thing is published in Miami, FL.

Ant infestation

At first I saw one ant. Occasionally. It wasn't even enough to mention to amerikabrev.

Then all of a sudden I come back home late night, and the Coca Cola can and glass I had used were crawling with ants.

Over the next three-four days I'd find two new ant trails every day. A google gave me the suggestion of chili and cinnamon against ants - so I sprinkled whenever I saw them. When this didn't actually DO anything, I went out and bought ant traps. Also no help. Then I bought the heavy duty Raid Antkiller spray - so heavily laden with poison warnings that you can barely heave it from the ground.

Spraying the ant trail of that day - in two streaks - with this bubbly poison of DEATH then apparently provided a final solution to my ant problem.

Another couple of days later, I ran into the manager, and told her about the problems. It turned out there had been 3-4 other ant complaints in the house, and yesterday an exterminator sprayed outside.

Hopefully this is the end of this story. Otherwise it might be hard to convince amerikabrev to come back and visit.

The hell that is telephone queues

Lately I've repeatedly felt royally screwed by telephone queues and postal services in general.

• My SSN should have arrived over three weeks ago. This screws with my Online BillPay, my banking, my salary, my cell phone plans... Annoying, on the verge of being a Royal Pain. So I called - according to instructions - to SSA, and got told that even though my receipt TELLS me I should call, in reality I shouldn't. This, they tell me after about 35 minutes of telephone queueing and trying to answer inane automated voice recognition questions:
  "Please state or punch in your social security number" [......]
  "Please state and spell your mother's maiden name" To a system that's been trained on recognizing american speech? It starts with an Å fer cryin out loud!!
  "Please state and spell your last name" "Vejdemo Johansson. Vee Eee Jay Dee Eee Emm Ooh Space Jay Oh Aitch ..." "I'm sorry, I couldn't catch that. Please spell your last name. "Vee Eee Jay Dee Eee Emm Oooh Space Jay Oh" "I'm sorry. This seems to be difficult for you. Let's move on."
  So I take the trek to the SSA office. And get my number. Apparently the card was mailed to me a good while back - but just never made it.
  
• I'm still waiting for my student credit card. I've already maxed out the CREDIT on it (transferring credit debt from my German card to my US card, essentially) - but the card got lost in University mail. They're sending me a new one - should arrive this week, I think...
  
• We tried, when amerikabrev visited, to get an AT&T Family Plan for the two of us. Of course, due to the SSN snafu above, I didn't have mine. So we tried anyway, using her SSN, and were told that they wanted a $1000 deposit.
  $1000.
  So, advised by sellers at Radio Shack, we started trying with Sprint. In fact, we ended up trying thrice, getting denied each time. Each time involved an interrogation by someone on the other side of a phone line... Once, we got approved, but then denied anyway later.
  Having spent about 3 hours on this abject failure, we were pretty fed up.
  You can all imagine my nuisance when Sprint then promptly mails me a BILL! For $0. We're apparently not good enough for a plan, but we are good enough to waste paper on. Argh!
  
• And the laptop saga. Last week, my parents received my MacBook Pro. And so we sicced FedEx on them. And the pickup failed: bad phone number. So we gave them my mother's cell phone. And the pickup failed: bad phone number. In the end, FedEx told me that we could just give all codes and phone numbers to my parents - so we did.
  And this morning, I was woken up by my cell phone. My mother and The FedEx Guy were trying to _do_ the pickup, and all the data fed into the order from us had not made it all the way to the pickup guy - so I had to give all the adress data again. And preferably also Stanford's Tax ID # and Sales Tax exemption #. We gave up, gave the adress, and I vowed to make sure FedEx got the rest later.
  I haven't heard back since - so I'm assuming that the pickup went through. When Rose called FedEx, they were apparently not particularly interested in the Tax ID # - so we will, I guess, deal with it once the US customs start complaining. With any luck, I'll actually have the office computer I'll be working on by this time next week or so.
  

Finally: I might end up doing research in political sciences.