A few weeks ago, Jeff and I did a 14-mile training run. A couple of days later, I noticed that there was some pain in the bottom of my right foot. After it persisted for a few days, I started to wonder, but I kept running. 10 miles on the weekend, less during the week, then Bay to Breakers. Finally, when it hadn’t gone away in over two weeks, I did some searching and talking and it seems I had developed “plantarfaciitis” due to overuse of the tendon between my heel and my toes. Intent on not injuring myself for the marathon, I took two weeks off running and did other stuff for cardio. Last Saturday I tried easing back in with a three-mile run, but the pain came back almost immediately. Sigh. So, since it seems like if you aggravate this injury it can take years to recover from, I’ve decided to shelf the marathon. It sucks. I really, really, wanted to do this, and I have already run so much to prepare, but it’s not worth hurting myself to do. So, maybe in 6 months or a year I’ll try running a bit more and see whether it has cleared up. grumble.

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Comments

Cameron — 2005-06-02 08:03:38

Leslie didn’t tell you about Mom’s year-long struggle with that affliction? It was awful. I’m sorry, Bryan :(

bryan — 2005-06-02 09:05:48

yeah, I know she had it too. I hope I’m starting soon enough that the recovery won’t be too bad.

Back at work! Back at Apple! What a strange trip. I’m actually sharing Doug’s office for the summer; it seemed like a better choice than sharing a cube with other interns (ick). The first few days were filled with awkward moments where I met people who all remembered me quitting and we probably very confused by me showing up again. In all, though, I suppose that’s better than building up a group of work friends and resources from scratch.

Sharing an office with Doug has been great so far… he was nice enough to clear out a whole corner for me, and Rick hooked me up with a computer and after battling the account gods, I’m pretty much back to the state I was in after working about 2 months from the first time I started. We even bought a cheap stereo for the office and can now rock out to something more substantial than the tinny built-in speakers in Doug’s G5.

The first week was almost entirely absorbed by the process of differentiating my ass and a hole in the ground, as is expected. In all, I think the summer will be a blast. I regret somewhat not just taking the summer off to study for prelims and lounge, but I know I would probably just get bored and frustrated doing that, and this way I make some money while I’m at it.

On an unrelated note, I moved all my IRA money over from Fidelity to Etrade, mostly to take advantage of the very low expense ratios and low minimum investment in their index funds. This in itself is not interesting, but what was interesting was when I logged in at the beginning of last week to discover that someone had thoughtfully deposited $28,000 in cash into my account. I resist the “withdraw by check” button on the webpage and discovered that someone had just written the wrong account number in somewhere. Sigh. Just reinforces this feeling I have that money is a farce.

I was driving home today on the freeway, noticing all the people around me talking on their cell phones. I wondered how many conversations were being beamed through my skull at any given moment–10? 100? Just streaming through, little packets of people’s lives, diced up into electronic squirming coils, passing through my cortex, my medulla oblongata, my heart, my liver. And me, blissfully unaware, listening to the sound of the road and a trillion molecules of air getting shoved aside by a thousand cars. And as I sit here typing this? How many? How many wifi packets of porn sites that the neighbors are browsing at this moment? Where precisely through me will the new york times front page headline burrow? I can almost feel the sensation of being saturated by information, constantly awash in it, even when I sleep. We are all being slowly microwaved.

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Comments

clare — 2005-05-21 03:23:12

“that the neighbors are browsing”

riiiiiight.

if i had a microwave right now, i’d make some bagel bites.

bryan — 2005-05-21 07:52:25

well, see, when I’m browsing porn I don’t use a wireless connection. so i couldn’t have been mine.

leslie — 2005-05-22 09:17:47

Mmmm, bagel bites.

Well, I’m sitting here in my office at Berkeley waiting to give a presentation of my class project for the only real class I had this semester. This year I’ve managed to show up, weasel my way into being a graphics student, land an advisor, and help write two papers, one of which will be in SIGGRAPH. I also somehow managed to land an NSF fellowship, taking care of money for the next three years. In total I rode BART to and from Berkeley at least 160 times and spent at least $1200 on BART tickets to do so. Will I appreciate the 10-minute walk from our fabulous Berkeley apartment? Oh yes, I will.

This weekend is Bay to Breakers, which I will be taking this year at a more leisurely pace than last in order to better enjoy the chichanery that abounds there. And then, quite suddenly, on Monday I will be back at Apple, working away on some dark and magical task that you will no doubt here about via Apple’s PR team in good time.

In all, life is beautiful.

So, we’ve had a netflix subscription for a little over a year now, and we’ve really build quite a little library up (you can browse it here). I know there are tons of great movies we haven’t gotten yet. You know, real staples. For me it was stuff like The Princess Bride, Dune, Blade Runner, Amadeus. I’m running out of ideas now after cycling through about 300 discs. What are the classic movies you’d want in any library?

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Comments

Jeff — 2005-05-01 10:32:35

You need more classics. Your collection is way too biased towards recent stuff. Get a list of academy award winners or that film institute list of the top 100 moveis that came out during the millenium rollover or the IMBD top 50. I bet you’d find some gems.

Susan — 2005-05-03 17:44:53

Gone with the Wind, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Stagecoach, The Wizard of Oz, The Muppet Movie, Adventures in Babysitting (ask Leslie about this one), Dances with Wolves, Young Frankenstein, E.T.

bryan — 2005-05-03 22:53:04

Yes, perfect! Thank you both.

george — 2005-05-08 15:55:09

city of lost children, desperado, spy kids, kung fu hustle, war games, ferris bueler’s day off, alien, aliens, predator, aliens versus predator, terminator 2, original bbc hitchhiker’s guide, original bbc underworld (by neil gaiman), the crow!!!?!, at least one or two seasons of macguyver and brisco county junior, firefly (i hear it’s good), twin peaks, 007 Goldeneye (whatever other bond films that didn’t suck), batman, batman returns, quigley downunder, the good the bad and the ugly, 24 (i hear it’s like crack), uhf, lost highway, castaway, Tamala2010: A Punk Cat in Space, election, creul intentions && dangerous liasons, hero, mad max 2 (roadwarrior),