Well it's my birthday too

Been a good one so far. Nothing big or fussy. Spent the morning cleaning up the apartment. Exceptional birthday surprises:

1) found a paycheck for $176.86 from April that I had not yet deposited (woot!)
2) Matt called from Beijing (it's his birthday too) and we talked for 20 minutes ^_^

Yesterday I went to the mall by myself (I miss Deepa). Found some denim capris at Old Navy. Thought they'd be like $30. Paid $17! But then I just missed the 4:30 bus back, and the next wasn't 'til 5:45, so I ate Chik-fil-a and got my ears pierced (second hole).

June 2002 -- navel
June 2004 -- nose
June 2005 -- right and left ears

So I guess this year I compensated for 2003. Going to have to find a new birthday tradition. Don't know that I could upset my parents more than ever with lips or tongues or traguses (tragi?) and such. But piercing is so addictive. No joke.

My own box to play with

I am sitting here in the Mac lab waiting for Martin to give me access to one of the PlanetLab infrastructure machines. He called it "a box for [me] to play with," and he's going to set up PHP5 and everything for me. I'm rather excited.
Otherwise I have done no work so far today. Could probably start plotting out some other pieces of the project, but why rush? When there are emails to write and blogs to read...

And Clarence is quite adorable. I finally learned his name (it's on his shirt) earlier this month. We've been buddies since the summer I spent here on SPE (2002). I haven't been around this building much since SPE (as much as I programmed these past two years, you know), but he still remembered me and went out of his way to ask how I was doing. I was so amazed when this happened after not seeing him for a long time.
Now, everyday we say good morning and make small talk, and he comes in and checks on me every few hours. I haven't been in here since early Friday, so when I got in this morning he asked if I'd seen "my floor" yet. It's lovely and polished and waxed. People like him really make my day. And he and a few of the other janitors/staff seem to think of this as my lab. Mmmm I wish. Lovely machines.

Rocky Raccoon

The Beatles are/were brilliant, but

is it legit to rhyme "hoedown" with "showdown"...?

Woot!

I have won the battle of the widget!

FINALLY.

Effin' widget

I really don't understand this. It seems so arbitrary. One second it will be working in Safari but not on Dashboard, and then I'll tweak it a little and it will get better on Dashboard and not work at all on Safari, and then I'll go back to the original and it doesn't work in Safari anymore! I'm starting to think it has absolutely nothing to do with me.

Spoke too soon

Premature celebration.
Widget not working.

The Daily Grind

Woot! May have finally finished the Planet Lab Widget. Clearly it is grabbing the monitor info and it isn't horrendously ugly... just have to ensure it is updating, but since I can't run it at home, hopefully Ryan or his dad can tell me that by tomorrow. Finally(!) feel ready to move on to other things (i.e. my *real* assignment for the summer). How many days of this left? ...approximately four weeks. Okay. I can do that.

Do I have anything more interesting to say? Not really. After all, I'm not in Tokyo yet. Though I *did* see Batman Begins Friday with Darren, and it was FANTASTIC. Better than the originals. Must go see it again sometime. Emphasis on the horror and darkness of humanity, on Batman's internal struggle. So well-cast, too. I didn't realize 'til afterward who each of the actors was, they played their characters so well. Just wish he hadn't *spoiler* kissed Katie Holmes at the end. It was really unnecessary. Stupid, I thought.

Haven't left yet

Counting down my days in Princeton. Probably won't blog much until I really get to Tokyo. Shout out to Jacob. I said I'd never blog. Oh, well.