Be sure to keep an eye on the album of the ~week section, since if you throw out the first two entries it now really is album of the week.

The date of my last post is July 2, which means it's been a good ten days since i was able to put some Ted news up here. I apologize for the delay. However, the astute reviewer of the site will note a few things have changed recently (just not in the journal department). One is that the photos interface has been overhauled ... albums are now selected from a droplist, which presents a set of thumbnails that can be viewed by clicking on them. I think it's a bit easier to navigate than the old version. I also added some admin scripts so it doesn't take me 30 minutes to organize and caption a new album. Taking advantage of this, i've added two new albums, shot with my new digicam. The first are pics of Leah's new kitty, who came to visit our house after being adopted in Menlo Park. The second is a collection of scenes from the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco, a place i've always thought is incredibly beautiful and perfect for relaxation and reflection. I have this idea for a movie (or, more accurately, an idea for a scene in a movie) where a man and a woman walk through the park and have a conversation about the figures at the top of the pillars, wondering what they're studying up there. After losing his love (somehow), the man revisits the Palace of Fine Arts at night at the end of the movie and sees one of the figures turn and put her finger to her lips, as if to protect the secret they now share. Too sappy? Shut up.

That album was shot while i was giving east coast Bill a whirlwind tour of San Francisco a couple of Saturdays ago. He was in town for the World Wide Developers Conference at Moscone, but had some time before he flew out that evening to sightsee. Naturally we picked the day when not only were the Giants playing, but also the Vans Warped Tour was happening at Piers 30 and 32. Luckily it didn't slow us down too much. We started with a burrito in the Mission (El Farrolito, of course!), then took a quick stroll through the Castro, a jaunt up Twin Peaks (unfortunately the usually spectacular view was obscured by fog), a stop on the Haight to check out Amoeba Music, a drive down Lincoln to Ocean Beach, up around Sutro and over through Land's End to the Presidio, a stop at the Golden Gate Bridge, and finally down Lombard, past Rudha's apartment on Washington, and back to San Mateo to get Veronica. After dinner at the wonderful Kan Zeman in Palo Alto, we fit in a quick trip through Stanford before dropping Bill off at SFO. I must've been a tour guide in another life.

That night we had Gary over to resume our long standing Mario Kart: Double Dash rivalry. And my ugly poor loser disposition was exposed. Paranoid that Gary and Veronica were conspiring to prevent me from winning, i prematurely ended our GameCube session. As it turns out right after Veronica had just won her first race, which looked really bad although truthfully that wasn't why i was upset. I then demanded that we play Scrabble, and when it became clear i wouldn't win at that either i gave up. I should play with little kids, then the sparks will really fly.

That Sunday was July 4, which we celebrated in the fairly unconventional manner of watching the final of the Euro 2004 footie tournament at an English pub with Jeremy Popscene. Despite the lousy video feed and mediocre bangers and mash, the match proved to be an interesting contest between the defensive-minded underdogs Greece and the hosts Portugal. Greece managed a headed goal from a corner in the middle of the second half, during a rare excursion into the Portugal penalty area. Their defense put up the same performance that had frustrated favorites France and the Czech Republic, and at the end whistle the unfashionable Greeks had taken soccer's second most prestigious award, leaving Portugal and Manchester United wonder boy Cristiano Ronaldo sobbing in disbelief. After that ended at 2pm, we drove home and resumed a more typical July 4 regimen including barbecuing a lot of meat. I forgot the side dishes, so Veronica and i dined on marinated ribeyes with a side of hot dogs and hamburgers. V politely requested that i bring some non-animal items to the party next time. Good advice.

After being reminded on my expedition through the city that July 5 was the last day for the Art Deco exhibit at the Palace of the Legion of Honor, V and i headed there on Monday for our post-July 4 holiday. Amazingly we were able to buy tickets at the door, unlike when we went to the Georgia O'Keefe exhibit on the last day and were forced to become members to get tickets. The exhibit was an interesting mix of art, furniture, clothing, accessories, and even an automobile from 1910-1937. I think i may now understand the aesthetic of art deco, with its focus on contrast, simple geometric primitives, and angles. They showcased many of the inspirations from which art deco drew as well, from Mesoamerica to ancient Greece and Rome. A few times i found myself looking at a piece and being a bit perplexed over it, then reading the caption and seeing it was from 400 B.C. and was an "Art Deco source". But altogether a nice afternoon.

This work week ended up being crammed into three days, since Monday was a holiday and on Friday i went to UCSF to work on finishing a paper i wrote with Sarah about three years ago. Didn't help that a grant preproposal was due on Friday, which i had to motor through by Thursday. Or that a colleague of mine needed a few pages from me for inclusion in a grant of hers. But with a little headache and elbow grease, everything was completed to my satisfaction. I even managed to work in a trip to the eye doctor to get an exam and order new glasses, to replace my two year old pair that are scratched to hell and keep giving me eyestrain. It's always comforting when your prescription doesn't change, reassuring you that you're not slowly going blind.

At the Euro 2004 final an ad for the Champions World Series played, as part of which Michael and i will be seeing Chelsea play Celtic in Seattle on July 24. I recently booked my trip from Seattle to the AAPM meeting in Pittsbugh, but it wasn't until seeing this ad that i realized that Chelsea were also headed to Pittsburgh after Seattle, to play AS Roma on July 29. Cursing myself for not being more observant, i managed to push my flight back a day, book the hotel room for another night, and buy a ticket. So i get to see the new streamlined Mourinho-led Chelsea squad in two matches this summer, and hopefully more this winter in London!

After returning home from UCSF on Friday i found some time to finish Ninja Gaiden on the Xbox. What a friggin amazing game. The cinematics are astounding in their clarity and composition, and the gameplay is excellent. As i said previously you must learn how to fight effectively, button mashing will get you slaughtered in no time flat. But when it clicks and you are stringing together long graceful combos, you earn a real sense of fulfillment. An Xbox Live upgrade featuring an improved camera, faster gameplay, smarter AI (eek!), and new weapons and monsters will be available next month, and i can't wait to play this one through again. Up there with Grand Theft Auto 3 as a genre-defining game.

On Saturday evening Veronica's cousin Naomi and her boyfriend Geoff drove up from LA. They'll be relocating to SF next month and were looking for housing, but stayed with us so we could hang and catch a movie. Spider Man 2 was the selection, a movie that has been called "one of the great action films" by more than one respectable critic recently. Maybe it was the hype, but it didn't do a lot for me. The visuals were certainly amazing, and the story followed the comic book well, and Doctor Octopus is one of my favorite Spidey villains, but somehow the film seemed less than the sum of its parts. A totally unnecessary setup (essentially a commercial!) for Spider Man 3 before the final denouement had me grumbling. Afterwards we grabbed a pizza and headed home to watch the best of Will Ferrell, volume 2, on Saturday Night Live. The man's a comic genius, but i thought they did a pretty lousy job picking skits for this one. Another Roger and Virginia Smythe sketch wasn't needed, and the Bill Brasky segments are more a concept and less a showcase for Will. Where was the skit where Will as the devil offers to sell Garth Brooks a hit song for his soul? I guess i was just unpleasable on Saturday night.

Naomi and Geoff were successful in their SF housing search Sunday morning, so they headed back down the peninsula to meet up with us as we headed out to the Tri-Valley SPCA to look at doggies. V and i had gone to see puppies on Saturday morning at a rescue event in Woodside, but we came to the realization that we don't have the time to devote to properly train a very young dog. So the four of us picked up my sister Hilary in Fremont and went off to play with a couple of older (1-2 years) dogs in the heat in Dublin. I feel sad at those shelters, i just want to take all the lonely doggies home. One shivering, frightened little girl named Pumpkin Pie had me really blue. But V and i decided we should probably wait a while more, until we have time to dedicate to integrating a new dog into our household, so no new pets for us yet.

I intended to spend the rest of yesterday evening whipping up a presentation for this morning's radiobiology faculty meeting, but i instead became obsessed with diagnosing and fixing our recent home network problems. Lately both my PC (wired connection to a Linksys wireless router) and Veronica's Mac (wireless connection) have had intermittent internet connections. It manifests itself in different ways: sometimes web pages will load slowly or will give DNS errors while instant messenger runs fine, other times it's the reverse. I ended up spending two hours fighting with it, determining the problem was with the router and not the ISP. Many solutions were tried and failed, and as a last ditch i went through the Linksys instructions for setting up a router with an RCN cable modem connection. Upon restarting my computer i went to clean a few things in the bedroom. I came out into the living room to see Veronica merrily surfing the web and chatting on AIM. Connection restored. I hate it when you fix something and you're not sure how you did it. Makes you less confident you can fix it next time. Anyhow, i took an hour break to watch Mr. Show, now a regular Sunday night activity, after which i dove into the presentation. I had 15 information packed slides by 12:30am, so i called it a night. I got up at 6am though so i could have an hour before the 8:30am meeting to put in a few figures from papers in my office. All in all, it went fairly well despite my lack of preparation. I tend to fluctuate between cautious optimism and reckless pessimism about my job these days. It has really gotten me down at times, and i have to fight to stay motivated. Veronica and my UCSF friends tell me this is the nature of academia, that not all your grants are going to get funded and you have to be ready to answer constant comment and criticism. It's a baptism by fire, and i suppose i haven't become completely flameproof yet.

And then there's that pesky wedding that keeps getting ever closer ...