Vacations always pick up steam toward the end. Too much to do, not enough time to do it in, so things get smushed.

X- and I planned to go to the MacWorld Expo some time back. Well now X- has time (it’s his birthday, so he’s off work) and it’s the last day of MacWorld. We met up in San Mateo, and thanks to a miracle got tickets and parking permits mere seconds before the train arrived. Arrived in a very cold and windy San Francisco just before 10AM. The Expo was in the Moscone center. For the next 3 hours, we looked at booths, quibbled about tech products, and very occasionally chatted up company reps. Compared to LinuxWorld, the event seemed bigger and much better attended, but the actual booths were more consumer-grade and hence less interesting to us. Sure, there was plenty of cool stuff, but I came away overall disappointed: nothing really new was seen or learned. About the fanciest thing we saw was the iPhone demo, and let’s be serious: neither me nor X- is going to spend $500 on a cool phone.

Returning via train to San Mateo, we had lunch in a Mexican restaurant before I rushed off to Palo Alto in search of Fry’s and S- to whom I entrusted my older Canon camera (it being retired since Dad now has a Nikon D80, replacing the D70 I got from him. It was slightly humiliating getting lost on the way to the alumni center (and almost losing my car in the parking lot behind the new gym at Stanford), but it really wasn’t a part of campus I ever saw much of.

I had an early dinner with my parents and an old friend who was once our neighbor when I was young and we were renting a home in the hills behind Los Altos. Plenty of memories, and doings of former neighbors to catch up on. Amazing to see all the different directions people ended up going in.

From this, I drove directly back to X-‘s house for the birthday. Y- and L- were already there, as were all three cats and a very large and occasionally overexcited dog. We had fun playing around with cameras (X-‘s new Canon Digital Rebel is getting some use), putting ridiculous amounts of wood on the fire (that still only got the room to about 65 degrees), watching Y- frag away as cats crawled across his keyboard, and eventually eating for dinner (in my case a second one) steak as specially prepared by L-. Tomorrow morning’s flight cut the festivities short for me though. Bye folks, hope to see you again before the summer!

I had a novel thought this morning: why not go out and photograph all those nice beaches I’ve been planning on seeing for the last few weeks. Time’s running low after all (going back to New York on Saturday).

I started with Cowell state beach. It’s just a bit south of Half Moon Bay, and I figured it would have a good view north of the coast (including the hideous Ritz Carlton hotel). The last time I was there was senior year of high school. On the way there, you actually get a good look at the fields of asparagus and broccoli and whatnot that dot the Coastside. At the beach itself, I had fun scrambling up onto a rock that jutted out into the water, and trying to shoot photos of the waves breaking the rock (while not getting wet). Next I worked my way south, along Verde road, where I paused for a wider view of the coast from the inside (including a large egret).

My next stop, meant to capture the miles upon miles of vertical cliffs south of HMB, was at the top of the last hill before San Gregorio (coincidentally, not so far from where Y-‘s car expired during our last year of high school, leaving me some excellent B&W pictures of Y-, U-, Y-‘s car, and a calla lilly). As usual, the road doesn’t quite give an unobstructed view, so I went up a hillside, and trespassed through a fence to finally achieve a vantage point where I could see all the way to Pillar Point. If one is not averse to a little off-trail walking, it is well worth the visit. On my return, I found the same calla lilly plant, plus a few unidentifiable bones.

Returning, I rather spontaneously made a detour to Martin’s Beach. This rather funky community of perhaps 50 houses may have at one point been a fishing village, but at this point, it was a rather unique blend of bohemian refugee and yuppie getaway. The road ends right on the beach, and so after paying the parking fee (I was impressed anybody was around to collect it), I went the length of the beach in both directions. The only other folks about were some surfers, who launched themselves around the rather neat rock formation that dominates the bay (kinda like a big shark’s tooth). Also had a short walk through the town itself. Perhaps if this academia gig doesn’t work out, I can aspire to being the next parking attendant there?

Spent the afternoon on a mixture of website design (fiddling with WordPress’s K2 theme), packing and organizing the day’s photos. Owing to the fact that I’ll be in New York for my birthday, we had a little pre-birthday celebration in the evening too with pie, candles (thankfully not the relighting kind) and presents. I am now officially almost 23.

Politics and breakfast don’t mix. At least this is my running theory. A very pleasant breakfast with a teacher I’d had in high school somehow morphed into an extended political slugfest. This was doubly peculiar in light of the fact that said teacher is somewhat short on time. It is interesting how one can agree completely with someone on local issues, have great respect for them, and find their general politics… hard to stomach. And as my conservative friends will hopefully agree, I’m generally not too bad at finding some form of common ground (which explains, I think, why I was invited some time ago to write an article for the Stanford Review, the campus’s conservative paper).

So when I got home, I was in a political frame of mind, and in lieu of lunch, did more than the usual complement of moping about the state of the world. If, after all, people I deem reasonable, have views at such great variance to mine, it does leave me a bit concerned as to the validity of my own philosophy. And to be frank, I’m still not sure what that is. I vacillate. My pedigree is clearly of the left. My heroes are peasants, factory workers and revolutionaries, not industrialists, militarists or reactionaries. I believe people deserve a fair shake, and that given circumstances, a fair shake means the guarantee of a certain minimum existence.

And yet… And yet if the last 6 years have shown anything, it is the threat posed by consolidated power. A welfare state demands an intrusive state, yet how far is it from a welfare state to a nanny state (see Britain) or national security state (hi America). I am distinctly uncomfortable with the idea of people in far off places determining the lives of thousands or millions. If you’re the one facing the executioner, does it matter if it was Stalin or Hitler that put you there? The American claim has always been to have found a middle path: liberal democracy as a way to ensure both freedom and stability. Yet this is certainly not a stable equilibrium.

So I pondered. And pondered some more. And went back to working against Apache redirects. Yay. Gallery is now successfully embedded in WordPress. Time to start uploading photo albums.

I had this rather silly idea that it would be fun to see the first day of winter quarter classes at Stanford, now that I’ve definitely graduated (and left for greener pastures?). I shoehorned in lunch with a friend on California St. where we had a chance to discuss the state of entrepreneurship in the valley over kebabs and baklava. The Turkish Delight that I add to the desert probably shortened my life-expectancy a fair bit, but at least I have a good feeling of why Edmund was willing to betray his brother and sisters to the White Witch (in Narnialand).

To my amazement, I actually did manage to find a parking on campus that wasn’t ridiculously far from the class I hoped to pop in on. I don’t know why, but I got a kick out of sitting through the first lecture of U.S. History since 1945. It wasn’t that the material was new, but the professor’s manner of lecturing was oddly appealing. He combined digressions so seemlessly into the narrative, that it was hard to see where the actual substance let off, and the random bits began. It contained, in particular, a very articulate description of the means and purpose of higher education. In short, the sort of lecture I wish I’d had at the beginning of freshman year there, as opposed to the standard banalities traded about by administrators and fellow classmates.

My other attempts to find professors I’d had was less successful. One of my advisers left for MIT over the summer. The other one was back (briefly) from Egypt, but I didn’t manage to find him either. Just as in high school, my circle of acquaintances and teachers is disappearing rapidly. Instead, I rather aimlessly toured the campus, took some pictures of notable things (Memorial Church, Hoover Tower, the Rodin sculptures playing ultimate frisbee) before joining S- and T- (yet again) for some tea at a Peet’s that I didn’t know existed.

For the evening, I began the less-than-wise project of redesigning the website. Motivated by laziness, and the hope that a slicker setup will motivate better (and more) content, I spent some very quality time with WordPress, Gallery and my server. Apache redirects are being uncooperative right now though.

The most irritating thing about jury duty isn’t what you do, but what you don’t do. Consider that you’ve been told to appear at a place a good 45 minutes distant from where you are. Consider that you are to appear there by 8:30AM, having driven that distance, personally met a large portion of the morning rush hour commute, failed repeatedly to find parking in the assigned lot, and had your miniature pocketknife confiscated by security after passing through a metal detector. Consider that you then sit for nearly two hours, doing nothing, and are subsequently told that your presence is not needed, and you can go home, having had no more interaction with the ‘justice’ system than checking your name off a list at arrival.

The jury waiting room was packed with at least 300 people, presumably there for the same reasons. I had the benefit of a nice book to read, but this was offset by a disturbingly loud TV positioned directly at the front of the hall. Thus try as I did, Orhan Pamuk and Istanbul (thanks, Dad) did not receive their due attention. Initially, we were to be sent off to the court at 9AM, but that was postponed several times. Finally, after the third or fourth postponement, we were informed that due to an unavoidable delay, the case we had been brought for would be starting in a few weeks, and we could pack up and head home. I guess I missed out on some manner of murder trial.

Still, that left me a nice, uncluttered afternoon, so what with the continuing clear weather, I made another go at Montara mountain. Let it be said that hiking alone is a particularly bad idea for me. I have no sense of pacing. I set unrealistic goals. I don’t rest. Thus my first (solo) Pyrenees trip in 2005, for example, saw me start by hiking nearly 8 hours straight, with virtually no rest, up 1700 meters, more than 300 meters of it through deep snow. I wasn’t exactly in top shape beforehand either. Montara mountain, to its credit, is only 2 miles each way (and 550 meters elevation gain), but what with trying to get up and down each in under an hour, and contending with blisters from yesterday, it still took some doing.

So I broke my personal record, got really sore feet, and basically jogged back down (which proved both faster and easier than standard walking). The rest of the afternoon was comparatively unexciting, as I continued to negotiate with virtual machine oddities and the fact that Lightroom (which I organize my photos with) is a RAM pig under Windows.

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In only marginally related news, I should mention that my two all-time favorite bloggers have both quit blogging. The inestimable Billmon, at whose virtual Whiskey Bar I was constantly astounded to find clear, cogent, and frequently wickedly funny analysis of the worlds events, has apparently deserted us. His disappearance is a reminder of just how stupid and banal much of the politically-oriented blogosphere is. Sorry Markos Moulitas (Daily Kos) but you’re no Billmon. Simultaneously, Michael Bérube, the Penn State Lit. Professor whose sumptuous prose and show trials have undoubtedly encouraged the admiration of many, is closing up the blog for better things.

Billmon and Michael, your words (and, indeed, even thoughts) shall be missed.

Keeping with the theme of whiling away my time with idle pursuits, today involved a hike, a walk, a bit of driving, a dinner with friends, and various other consequential activities. Because yesterday’s 8-mile walk had clearly been inadequate exercise for the weekend, Dad and I took the morning as an opportunity for a trip to Montara Mountain. Weather was still clear, beautiful, and a touch gusty. We went from parking lot to elevation marker (a.k.a. the top) in about 55 minutes, giving us a nice ten minute break at the top to drink up, and take in the unusual sight of Oakland to San Jose. Magnifique. And mildly exhausting.

For some reason, going downhill is almost always slower (and harder) for me. No exceptions today. Blisters weren’t fun. Then off to Stanford to see T- and S- (recently returned from New Jersey). And by see I mean help move T-‘s stuff back to the dorms, take a walk at Arastradero (hi deer!), go grocery shopping, eat dinner at the University Ave. Cafe. and finally spend in an inordinate amount of time at S-‘s place drinking tea and musing. Musing that was cut short by the realization that I have to be in Redwood City by 8:30AM tomorrow morning for jury duty. Hrm.

It’s curious how each time I meet somebody in the process of determining their (medium-term) future, I feel vaguely envious, whereas each time I contemplate my own, I get a case of the heeby-jeebies. This in turn is cured by finding something immediate and important that needs to be done (or alternatively, procrastinating until such an event is created). And now, since my jury service has unhelpfully not been cancelled, good night.

Apparently a good anti-dote to my typical morning empty-stomach queasiness is a banana. Leastways, it worked like a charm on this particular morning. And why not generalize?

Putting together all the hiking equipment, plus a generous assortment of goodies for lunch (which would have been more generous still, had we not been largely out of high quality trail munchies) didn’t stop me and Dad from making it to the carpool lot at the 35-92 intersection just after 9AM. Cousin M- was already there, so we loaded ourselves into his car and took off. Traffic into San Fran was pretty scanty, and we made our way up Sir Francis Drake drive and into the Point Reyes National Seashore in pretty short order (ie about 2 hours, including a stop at an Inverness bakery that didn’t have any bread).

We conveniently got the last semi-legitimate parking at the Egere trail lot. Amidst the wind and hordes of other folks, we roped up (figuratively) and were off a bit past 11AM. Our trail, destination Sunset Beach, brought us down the hill to cross a lagoon/estuary on a peculiar little bridge. Where the ocean left off and the streamhead began was somewhat indeterminate, but the whole scene was pretty idyllic, save for a slowly receding bank of high clouds that resulted in blown highlights in most of my photos. The trail itself was quite ‘fresh’ courtesy of recent rains, so we worked hard not to acquire too much genuine northern California dirt ascending and descending several long hills. The view of the Point Reyes coastline with its miles of cliffs and rolling hills were marred only slightly by a driving wind that did its darnedest to delay and divert us at several points. Indeed, the final stretch down to the beach considerable insight into the phrase ‘sailing into the wind.’ M-‘s enormous backpack (containing copious camera paraphernalia) did not simplify matters.

The beach we reached continued beyond the little bay we saw for quite some ways. Desirous of wider vistas to accompany lunch, we followed it towards an apparent cape. Rounding this presented a long rocky coastline, terminating in what binoculars indicated was a long sandbar, complete with hikers, enormous quantities of seabirds, and not a few seals. Indeed, as we watched, a number of large polished black stones appeared and disappeared beneath the waves mere yards away from us.

Lunch was a leisurely affair on the farthest beach we could comfortably reach before the rocks became too slippery to continue. We were surrounded by about 25 folks from some sort of a group outing, also lunching. They had good carrots. Our return proceeded apace, with the frequent tailwind speeding us along. Even though it was only early afternoon, the low sun made for a curiously mellow spectacle. Still, we had 3 pairs of sore feet as we crossed the final bridge and worked our way up the final hill (almost walking right into a group of deer, who we saw at the last possible instant).

Before going back, we decided on a detour to the lighthouse at the extreme end of the cape. We were slightly late though, so we had to watch sunset a few miles shy of the destination. Figuring we might as well finish of what we’d started, we faced many large slow moving obstacles in the form of cattle being moved from one side of the road to the other. The parking lot below the lighthouse wasn’t as wet as it has been 8 months before when I’d visited for spring break, but the gale ripping around the area was enough. After more scrambling around in the dark than was truly advisable, we passed the lighthouse keeper’s place (illuminated by an otherworldly post-sunset glow) to finally admire the lighthouse and ocean. Our admiration for the colors of the sky and the brightness of the lighthouse’s safety light was tempered by several almost-lost hats and a wind chill that took the temperature down at least 30 degrees.

Returning from Point Reyes was a relaxed affair, via the same route we’d come. In San Francisco we stopped at Fisherman’s Wharf for dinner. The unseasonably clear weather apparently hadn’t kept the New Year’s tourists at hand, as the crowds were quite manageable. A San Fran sourdough bowl full of clam chowder later, we resumed the drive back, and I made a valiant rear-guard effort against drowsiness that decisively failed. Indeed, I was fast asleep within mere minutes of arriving home at the ungodly late hour of 10PM.

Tuesday’s visit to the alma mater (well, the pre-Stanford one) was marred by the fact that two of former teachers I’d meant to see weren’t in. So today was a chance to try again, in the afternoon. One was in, the other wasn’t, so I’ll either have to go up for a third time, or call it quits. Still, HMBHS looks like it’s in good hands, and indeed in what appears to be early spring, in mid-afternoon, it’s actually a pretty pleasant sight.

My next uncompleted activity was a solo dash to Montara Mountain. My brilliant scheme to race to the top and back before sunset, met hard realities in the form of headache and unsettled stomach. There are times when eating lunch (and breakfast) is more than merely a nice idea. Ditto wearing sunglasses.

So I took my disgruntled self to Princeton, and after a few false turns (and a nearly flattened bicyclist) I situated myself on the trail that takes you below the radar dish to Pillar Point. The scene was ocean, harbor, cliffs, birds, people, and really the whole kaboodle. Sunset added a certain touch, the wind added more than just a touch, so I made peace with headache, almost slipped on some sea anemones, and called it an afternoon.

A few hours later, it was off to a movie with the old gang of Y-, Z- and L-. Despite having not gone to a movie in ages as a group, the whole event felt wonderfully routine to me. Meet up at Coffee Company (okay, the 36 degree weather was slightly less routine), pile into somebody’s car, drive over 92 to the movie theater (San Mateo, not Redwood City, also an innovation), kill some time waiting for the movie (buying vodka in Draeger’s) and finally sit on our butts for an hour or two in the theater watching Hollywood’s finest.

Aside from the mounting seat prices (up $0.50 since last I was at such a theater) and the personal announcement by a rather jaded looking fellow about cell phones and talking (apparently, they can’t afford to tape such messages any more), this could have been half-a-dozen years ago and I wouldn’t have noticed much of a difference. Okay, Daniel Craig as James Bond and Eva Green as Vesper Lynd are also recent innovations, but of a more positive sort.

And now, I have about 5 hours to sleep before tomorrow’s Point Reyes adventure. And I haven’t had dinner yet. More unfinished business, what?

I’ve only really had two major hardware-related computer problems. The first was back in Jan. ’05 when my TiBook’s hard drive obligingly died. It actually started making funny noises the previous November, so I had pretty good backups, but I lost a week’s worth of work, and the experience of opening a TiBook (to replace the dead drive) without having the right screwdriver was somewhat traumatizing.

Much more recently, namely about ten days ago, my Compaq laptop decided that its screen was going to go all wonky. I’m not really upset about the data, which I can extract easily enough, but about the nuisances of having to switch over to another machine.

So, in light of these failures, maybe my nearly daylong attempt to create a complete, easily reproducible backup of both my webserver and my current loaner machine is understandable. Or maybe I’m just neurotic. Either way though, consider this a largely wasted day.

Oh, and I’ve now got a cold. No skiing for Darius with Dad and Cousin M- this weekend.

So I had three major goals in mind for today.

First was to get ahold of some whizbang technogadgetry capable of backing up my now defunct laptop. A brief stop at Fry’s got me that, in the form of a nice 2.5″ HD enclosure. It’s a particularly neat little enclosure in that it has a battery and a mode to back up attached storage without being connected to a computer. My camera’s 4GB CF card suddenly seems bigger.

Continuing with the whole meeting-folks-I-haven’t-seen-since-prehistory thing, I went to Palo Alto and had lunch with T-. On the surface, neither Palo Alto nor T- seem substantially changed since last August, which is mildly comforting. Maybe I can keep up with the world after all? Either way, the mint-flavored hot chocolate was an inspired moment of lunacy, which I hope to repeat soon.

The final step of my evil plan consisted of getting into the vaults of Stanford’s Green Library for a little R&R err… a book that NYU does not possess. Clearly, I failed to properly appreciate it when I had easy access. Mission accomplished with a minimum of hassle (hey, the alumni card is worth something), though it was a bit of a shock running across a former classmate who is now (as of 2 months ago) a father. True, he’s a doctoral student, but he’s not _that_ much older than me. Question: which is more stressful, oral comprehensives or a 2 month old? Answer: I don’t intend to find out.

And now bedtime for bonzo. Or resurrecting said stupid Compaq laptop.