and that's just what they'll do

First, some websites. Thanks to ASK for the first (Matt, if you're uh back in Berlin soon, there is a place you should stay at; I recommend rooms #2 and 23 ), and to Neal for the second (run-of-the-mill old-timey futurology stuff, but I enjoyed reading some of them).

Oh, I had another of those "unique experience" dreams again. I was around a guy I used to know; he was acting artificially chummy, and I was feeling uncomfortable. But it was a very distinctive sort of interpersonal discomfort, one that I specifically associate with this totally random guy whom I haven't thought about in the last seven years or so. Speaking of which, I've discovered a new sensory association I have: Purell Hand Sanitizer smells like Super Mario 2 to me. Go figure.

Also, I've noticed that where I work, things are pretty different than they were in grad school, so I'm compiling a list of Observations From the Real World (Or as Close an Approximation as the LJ Professional Center Provides):
1) Lots of people wear fragrance in the real world. This is fine, as I kind of like it. I would wear the stuff myself, but I don't want my subjects smelling me instead of the stimulus.
2) Women wear high heels in the real world. Meanwhile, I find myself wishing that my already-comfortable shoes were even more comfortable.
oh yeah,
3) There are women in the real world.

...more to come

I'd hammer in the morning

There are certain aspects of the job that I did not entirely expect. I envisioned it as mostly involving testing subjects and doing related sciency things. However, as everyone in the lab is a Science Person of some description, there are a lot of miscellaneous tasks that fall on me too. Unsurprisingly, some of it is administrative; lots of forms and billing, and my phone skills have already improved substantially (though my dread at having to use the phone has not quite kept pace with these improvements). However, it turns out that I am also very much a technician. A technician who mainly deals with intricate and unfamiliar pieces of equipment whose documentation is either helpful but incomplete or else hopelessly dense yet somehow uninformative (depending on whether or not the machine is one we built ourselves). So, for example, about a week or two ago they handed me a screwdriver, a three ring binder, and the vendor's business card and said "the Thermal Desorption Unit is broken. See what you can do."

The Thermal Desorption Unit, incidentally, is hands down the most impressively-named piece of equipment in the lab. Its function is relatively insignificant (if you must know, it soaks up chemicals and then releases them when heated, allowing you to squeeze the contents of 50 milliliters of vapor into a machine that can only process much smaller volumes), but doesn't it sound cool? I feel like I should be threatening Jabba the Hutt with this thing. I would be bluffing, of course, since it still doesn't work.

Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair

Happy 100 posts!
Yeah uh that was a couple posts ago.

Also sorry I haven't been good about updating, but between work and the instability of my Internet connection, well, you know how it is. Anyways, you're probably wondering about the job. True to form, I'm going to talk about some other things instead. (I'm not being contrary here; I actually do have plenty to say, but I imagine the interesting news will dry up faster than I'd like, so I'm trying to space my material out a bit). For now, suffice it to say that the job is going well.

A week ago I went to San Francisco to see some people. We went up lots of stairs to Coit Tower (so many stairs), and celebrated our triumph over all those stairs with sandwiches with fries and coleslaw in them, which is apparently some kind of Pittsburgh thing. Then we had to climb more stairs to get back to the car. Such is life. We also went up to Twin Peaks, where the wind was so strong that one could jump straight up and be pulled forwards a few feet (or about a hundred feet, if one were Jesse's sunglasses). The next day we went to the local comic shop, where on Sundays you can hang out and read comics while the proprietor serves you absurdly strong screwdrivers or cans of 98% Rocky Mountain spring water (2% beer-related additives). (I opted for the former.)

Then last Friday I went to the UCSD Open Studios, in which one can wander around the Visual Arts department and see the students' work on display in their studios. There was lots of neat stuff: photography, painting, film, sculpture, digital, performance, and each time you went into a new room you would encounter something novel, for example, piles of gray toruses (donut-sized cheerio sculptures?) and debris, or video of myself looking around the room at 10x speed, or the artist asleep under his desk.

Lastly, I've been having some unusual dreams. On Thursday I dreamed I had moved to Mexico and was commuting to work, to save on rent. The neighborhood was a very picturesque commercial space by a manmade lake, and things were looking good until I found my new place, which one entered through by pulling some boards off of one of the buildings and climbing into the uninviting crawlspace inside. Oddly enough, this seems to closely parallel Matt's recent housing adventures. Then on Friday I dreamed that I had spent too long in the sun, which is not interesting in itself except that it reminds me that we are capable of experiencing quite a few unique sets of physical sensations, but I think this was the first time that the experience of starting to get a sunburn has ever come up in my dreams.