Fancy Tea

One of the cool things I did in Seattle was visit Perennial Tea Room which is, as best as I can describe it, a tea boutique. More...

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Am I Slacking on Blog Entries?

Am I losing interest in my blog? No, I'm spending more time with my wife. Since it's so pleasant in the evenings we've been hanging out together instead of sitting on the couch with our laptops writing emails and blog entries.

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What I Didn't Do On Friday Night

I didn't get my tickets in advance, so I didn't get to go see this either sold out performance of "The White Album Live" as described in this story in the Sentinel by Wallace Baine. I hope the popularity means they will do it again. How cool to live in a town where local people put on a show like this. A performance of the entire White Album by the Beatles on the occassion of its 35th anniversary of its first day of recording. The whole album, performed by a great ensemble of musicians and singers, in order, with a dance interpretation of Revolution 9. Why didn't I think this show would sell out?

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A Big Day for My Union

Today we heard that the contract that has been in negotiation for 18 months finally reached agreement. If the members approve it, this contract will sets for a much, much better deal than UC had offered to us in the beginning.

And also, my union filed a petition with the state to hold an election for 13,100 Administrative Professionals. I'm confident that we will win this election too, and UC will be an even better place to work, and an even better public institution.

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Strange Chocolate

While snooping around the Wall of Candy at Shoppers today, I found four strange chocolates from Belgium. More...

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King Charles's Head

I started this blog because I wanted a place to write about my life, but lately I have been posting mostly impersonal items and links. This is because my work life is very stressful, but I can't write about it. I'm like David Copperfield's "Mr. Dick." More...

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News and Notes from Chancellor's "Brown Bag"

AFAIK, UCSC Chancellor MRC Greenwood is the only UC chancellor who meets regularly with University staff, and opens up the floor to any question on any topic. This is a wonderful thing. More...

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Joss, the Buffy Slayer

A great interview with Joss Whedon.

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Secrecy and the UC Investment Strategy

The Mercury printed an editorial this morning urging the University of California to tell us how they are investing our money. Seems reasonable to me.

In another editorial, it urges a public-employee union (SEIU) to not fight the public for the right to see salaries of all public employees. I have to agree with the Mercury on this one. Having access to their co-workers' salaries is extremely important to employees who are negotiating raises associated with promotions. Everyone needs to know the salary comparisons, not just management. (That editorial seems to not be on-line.)

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Welcome to My World

Last week's Sentinel featured a long cover story about how hard it is for faculty to buy houses in Santa Cruz.

Some of the quotes from faculty were memorable: More...

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Oh, Neat! More Cool Stuff

The same guy who did the IR goggles collected this huge page of cool stuff to do.

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Another Cool Science Experiment I'll Probably Never Try

This guy messed around with theatrical filters and figured out that you can shut out so called "visible light" and see infrared. I've always been told that human's can't see infrared, but these goggles he shows you how to make demonstrate that we can (or HE can). The page is pretty funny and deeply interesting, as he tells what it is like to stagger around Seattle in the infrared "dark." He's not sure, but he thinks it's not bad for one's eyes.

...via idletype

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We Won

Scientific American reports that a recent mitochondrial DNA comparison gives weight to the theory that modern human beings are not descended from the humanoid species known as Neanderthals, which also gives weight to my theory that we and our dogs killed and ate all the other competing humanoid-types, thus giving us our legacy of psychopathic hatred for The Other, and centuries of genocide.

Just my theory.

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A Few Snaps from Seattle

There isn't much to write about my trip to Seattle because it was so wonderful. No horrible travel or restaurent stories, for one thing; and Seattle seems like a grown up and mellow Santa Cruz. The people seem so friendly, the coffee shops and bookstores are full of happy customers, and the lilacs bloom abundantly. But maybe that was just the neighborhood I stayed in. More...

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Harrius Potter Et Philosophi Lapis

Finally, I have so been waiting for this. Bloomsbury has finally translated the first Harry Potter into Latin.

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Changes Layoff Policy at UCSC

Dear UCSC Administrative Professionals Who Want
Union Representation,

Last week, Staff HR solicited comments on changes they plan to make in
the Personnel Policies for Staff Members (PPSM) as applies to
layoffs and reduction in time. PPSM is the rulebook for Administrative Professionals'
employment at UCSC (until we can negotiate a contract to replace it). More...

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Back from Seattle

The trip to Seattle was wonderful and I'm working on the photos. I'm so lucky to have a friend like my college roommate. What a treasure to keep a good friend for so long.

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Seattle Bound

I'm going to Seattle tomorrow to visit my college roommate. I'm not taking the computer with me, but I'll bring back photos and a few stories, I hope. I've never been to Seattle before. I wonder what it is really like.... More...

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How I Meditate

I had a pretty tough day at work, where I found out that one of my "teammates" had undone a bunch of work I had finished last week. When I asked about it, he said, "I messed around in there, what can I say? You can just do it over can't you? It's only a couple of commands."

When I got home, I decided to do a healing mediation. With the dogs. More...

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Sisters are Doing It to Themselves

Naturally, one of the best parts about being lesbian is the special powers we have. One of my favorite special powers of lesbianhood is the power to DESTROY CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. Just this weekend, my wife and I threatened the marriage of the people next door when I brought her coffee in bed, and when we cuddled on the couch watching a rerun of "Larry Sanders" we knew that the lady down the street was about to file divorce papers, so to get her to do it on Monday, I gave my wife and extra kiss before we settled into our most important Object of Mass Marriage Destruction: our bed. Quite satisfying.

Lesbians don't rely on Christians to destroy our families. We do a good enough job on each other. More...

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SNL: Harry Potter Joke

This from the The Leaky Cauldron:

Harry Potter Mentioned on SNL
Saturday Night Live made mention of the Harry Potter phenomenon tonight, commenting that Book Five's print run of 8.5 million books would merit the sixth book the title: "Harry Potter and the End of Trees."

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Real Spam

We're hyper-aware of spam at work these days. Dealing with it isn't really my job, but I'm on the mailing list with people who scan it, respond to complaints about it, and discuss policies about it. Spam has exploded in recent months. Although I no longer see much of it, spam is about 70% of my already considerable email load numbering hundreds of messages a day.

We filter spam, but the recent tumbling of the subject-line characters has pretty much rendered our scanners useless unless they are tuned high enough to reject any messages that mention "penis," "mortgage," or "lesbian." Recently, I'm sorry to say that I opened some pornographic spam and got an education I didn't really need.

So I wasn't surprised when a can of spam caught my eye at Albertson's on Saturday. More...

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Industrial Age Meets Information Age

I work with a very man who faithfully visits the Silicon Valley Junk Shows at Foothill College where he finds partially used network equipment at absurdly low prices, especially since the dot.coms melted down and hemorrhaged their electronics out on to the grey market. He also visits yard sales, where it is I think he found these artifacts of another kind of engineer. More...

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Happy Beltane

I really try to take holidays off, but this year I had to work on May Day. As a partial compensation, I took my lunch in the Merrill Garden. (Several photos. ) More...

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River Law-Breaking

So did you know you can't put a boat in the San Lorenzo? It's against the law. Incredible. More...

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Walnut Relics

It's that time of year when the walnut trees leaf out. People don't plant walnuts much anymore, probably because of "the mess." What they call a "mess" I call nuts and I boggles me that I'm not fighting off my neighbors for the walnuts the drop from the tree at the Hidden Court. They are so sweet and wonderful. So what if husking them stains my fingers like a Camel-smoking grandpa. The Hidden Court tree is older than the motel, so it was probably planted by the Armstrongs, or maybe even the Campbells. More...

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What Does Your Phone Number Spell?

Now this little tool would have saved me many hours. via FunnyGirlNetwork.

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"There's nothing brave in saying, "Hey, I don't think this is right."

Alternet has an interesting interview with Janeane Garofalo where she speaks on celebrity activism. More...

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1880s Nebraska Girlhood

"No Time on My Hands" by Grace Snyder was loaned to me by a woman who is selling out the contents of her Oceanview attic on eBay. I had bought a copy of Rose Wilder Lane's book on American Needlecraft from her (with patterns $20). She thought I'd like the story, as it is similar to the tales told by Lane's mother, Laura Ingles Wilder. More...

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Clericals Settle for Next To Nothing

The clerical union (CUE) at UC passed their contract yesterday. Their raises are going to be just as low as what UC offered them before their strike. I haven't heard the details, so they may have negotiated some equity increases or better language in the contract. CUE employees are treated so poorly at UC.

The Lecturers still have settled yet. I hear Governor Grey Davis is coming to campus Monday.

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Rail Trail Progress

The Transportation Commission voted to apply for the grant money to buy the rail between Davenport and Watsonville last night. The best quote in the story is this one:

"This is a cheap deal," said Ron Burke of Capitola. "It's costing us $250 million to widen the highway. If $10 million to $15 million is all that it's going to take to build a rail trail, let's do it."

duh. This rail must be twenty miles of the most beautiful coastline in the world. Everyone is going to win with this one, no matter what the Aptos snobs say.

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Too Much Cuteness

One of the better blogs I read, Crazy Tracy, has added a blog all about the feral mother cat and four kittens that were born in the basement. The photos really are terribly, terribly, cute.

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Blog Off-Line for a Day

This blog was out of service for a day while I moved my computer from Kerr Hall back up to the Comm Building. We had moved down there in December because of the remodel of Comm for the Arts Division. So we were told. But since then the cubes two of us vacated have been left empty, and the office quickly became a make-shift conference room. So there was no need to move us in the first place and it has been a big drag. The worse part has been being shut out of day-to-day conversations with my co-workers.

Somehow, space opened in the temporary spot for us, the Old Benefits Office, and they moved my stuff today. I moved my compute myself, and it seems that DNS hasn't propagated my new IP address quite yet. It might take a week or so for everyone to catch up.

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