Raw Food Diet

Poverty is surely a problem, and as someone who lives pretty comfortably I feel like I should make an effort and help folks out when I can. Passing people on the street who ask for spare change always makes me uncomfortable because if I give them a few cents I feel like a cheapskate, and if I give more I feel like a sucker. In the end I don't give anything and feel bad about it.

My solution to this has been to start carrying a couple cans of soup (the kind with pull-tab lids - no special tools required) so when people ask for money I can offer them food instead. I like this for a number of reasons:
- Cold soup out of a can tastes fucking GREAT when you're as hungry as these guys look. I know it and so do the students in my lab who watch me scarf one down in section every day. Can a guy get a lunch break? Jeez.
- You can't buy drugs with soup.
- I frequently get turned down. I mean, if you're holding a sign that says "Hungry, anything helps" then take the soup! Money has no nutritional value. Trust me, I ate a nickel when I was a kid and it passed right through me (true story). But seriously, holding out for cold hard cash makes your sign seem kinda dishonest, and if you're going to be like that then I don't feel bad keeping my money.

Anyway, the guy in the picture didn't want my soup either. His reason? Raw food diet. Only in California...

Puttin' the rad back in graduate school

Software Open Forum with music/MAT professor Clarence Barlow - we're hoping to create a suite of [web-based?] composition applications. In addition, I hope to be parallelizing Clarence's harmonicity analysis program by the end of the quarter (and maybe presenting it at the MAT Year-End Show? I get pretty ambitious when I've got a few [coffees] in me...)

Anyway, SOF meets 4-6 on Wednesdays and this week after Clarence had been sitting behind the exhaust fan of the LCD projector for 90 minutes he decided a round of beers was in order. I expect we'll maintain good attendance and have a productive quarter.

Five Oh

Rolled over fifty thousand miles in the Element the other day. Hard to believe that I've gone that far already, but then I realize it's been over five years since we drove it out to LA (the picture of me and dad was taken the morning we set out). Kinda seems like a long time ago.

Definitely time for another oil change. And probably a tune-up.

SPriNG bReAK woo!

Mark made it down to SoCal for spring break - we hung out in LA for a couple days with Talia and then came back up to Santa Barbara. Mostly just wandering around downtown and campus, beach, frisbee, coffee shops, chess, pizza, beer, autotune. Yeah!

Merry Christmas

Dad came to visit in Santa Barbara over Christmas and we built a deck off the back of the house. Well, there was already a deck there, but it was very small so we made it bigger. I'd say this was a pretty good father/son activity, and now we have a deck!