Card confusion

I went to a party in San Mateo with my landlord's girlfriend's room-mate (seriously). I considered not going but it actually turned out pretty chill. My landlord is probably ~40, average age at the party was probably ~35, I'm 24.

Met an engineer who designs lens-stabilization systems for cameras in spy satellites. We talked about vibration dampening, resonant modes, and the collapse of the Tacoma-Narrows Bridge.

Met a Mexican girl who was talking about leaving to go get some weed. I asked her "do you have a card?," meaning:

Do you have a cannabis card; i.e., do you have a doctor's note saying "RX: copious bong hits in order to treat back pain / migraines / boredom / whatever."

However, she thought I was asking:

Do you have a Green Card or Work Authorization Card; i.e., are you an illegal immigrant?

Got the misunderstanding cleared up and we made out so I guess that means no harm done? In retrospect, it could have been much worse; she might have thought I was asking for her business card, and given me one.

I just need to remember to be careful of possible cultural differences when meeting people who are "4x as Mexican" as me.

Peas out.
V4L.

Genericized Trademarks

I assume the string "Kleenex, Xerox, Taser, Google" is a list of genericized trademarks, and all I have to say is:

"Don't Xerox me, bro!"

I'd like to tell people not to Google me either, but that would be sketch.

+++

Also, in SF last weekend--Bobby will like this one:

"Do you like hiking?"

"Sure."

"Have you been up to Coit Tower?"

"No."

"Oh, it's amazing. You get this three-hundred-sixty-five-degree view of San Francisco, it's just beautiful."

"Woah. That's really an amazing view. I don't think I've ever gotten a 365-degree view of the city. The best I've seen is from the Bay Bridge, but even that's not 365 degrees."

"Yeah. You have to see it. We should go sometime."

"Sure."

+++

I've been asking around about cell-phone locks, and the consequences have been:

1 (minor consequence): Learning that cell phone locks are not at all unusual, and learning that many (perhaps most) of my friends use them.

2 (major consequence): Thinking that perhaps I had better set up a lock on my own phone.

Peas Out,
V4L,
-L

gots 2 b on ur ethical grind 24/7

Meyer. View from the lip of a trash can, or recycling bin, or something.

Click to view larger.

Cell Phone Lock: Red Flag?

I tried to call about this (ha, ha), but my question is as follows: how much of a red flag is it if a woman has a lock on her cell phone? It’s the sort of lock where the phone displays a grid of dots and she connects them in a certain order to unlock it.

I tend to think it’s a serious red flag, especially given that:

1. She texts constantly, so the lock must be much more of an inconvenience for her than it would be for someone like me who uses their phone less frequently.

2. She works at a restaurant; it’s not as if she’s working for the CIA and has to protect confidential information; it’s not as if she’s a lawyer and needs to safeguard communications with clients.

3. As far as I know, there isn’t anyone who specifically threatens the security of her phone. She has one roommate and they get along impeccably.

4. She’s twenty-three.

I consider myself fairly paranoid about data security, and I’m very careful what I say over the phone, and even more careful about what I write in texts, letters, and email, but even I don’t have a lock on my cell. Thoughts?

Peas out,

V4L,

-L

Please translate if possible

Scan below. Click to view larger. Sorry about:

-The low image quality
-The racism (is this Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Thai, or what? I don't know; all Asian characters look the same to me).



Thanks, V4L

Financial Aid

I saw this on The Facebook yesterday (click to view larger):


I don't really understand how there can possibly be a need for substance abuse counselors in California. It seems to me that, if there's someone you want to cure of substance abuse, the first thing to do is to get them the hell out of California.

If you're going
to San-Fran-cisco,
be sure to wear
two glowsticks and a tiara in your tie-dyed hair.

I hate youth unemployment, because it means seeing absurd ads for useless education, and also because it means that, if I go to a bar and meet someone, I can't ask him "so, what do you do?" as a way to open conversation; so many people are out of work that it's a dangerous question.

If I have to deal with this, I'd at least like a revolution. From what I've seen of the entries for the Leica reportage award, a revolution is like a continuous Kodak moment, or Leica moment, I suppose.

I got in an argument on Friday or Saturday about the perishability or non-perishability of calendars.

"I need to get up early."
"Why?"
"Because the Post Office closes early on Saturday, at like, noon or something."
"You have to mail something?"
"Yeah."
"Just mail it on Monday."
"I need to send it soon, though. Plus, the Post Office is crowded on Mondays and I hate standing in line."
"It it perishable?"
"It's a calendar, so it's perishable, in a way."
"What, it's going to mold or something? Little mice are going to eat it?"
"It's perishable in the way that--it's a 2012 calendar, so the later I send it out, the less use he'll get out of it. If I waited till December 31st, and sent it to him, it'd be totally useless to him."
"That's true. And it's already February. Was it for Christmas?"
"Yeah."

I went to a party on Friday with Stanford people; I hadn't intentionally met anyone from Stanford since graduating. The only Stanford people from my undergraduate years I run into are LDS men who were in my class year but took two years off to go on their Missions and are therefore graduating this year, rather than having graduated in 2010. I'll see one on campus once every few months. By and large, they're quite tolerable.

The party was a "Groundhog's Day Soiree." It was in celebration of someone's leaving for New York to get a Ph.D. in Acoustics. I was worried, because in the invitation, he mentioned he would be debuting his first home-brewed beer at the party. I'd heard many accounts of home-brewed wines turning out disastrously, and brewing beer is much more difficult. I almost didn't go, but then I remembered he was a germaphobe, which reassured me. The beer was fine. He had bottled it, and all the bottle caps popped up properly when the bottles were opened.

a long way home