over the counter culture, well that's right where you belong you tried to sever your ties with the london sky, but you got the whole thing wrong you try to be so different, as does everybody else create your own distinctions and flaunt them for yourself over the counter culture, with your cards and catalogs the mainstream wipes the riverbed clean you're just wrong, you're just wrong you think you followed your heart again now it's in to be out destroy your plans and just start again don't pretend to not pretend at all over the counter culture, well you live your life in waves last year's dream was a terrible scheme, this new fad will fade let's see, what can we be now that hasn't been done before? shut your eyes, look inside

I'm pretty antsy to head off to Europe. Our departure is now 15 short days away. It'll be nice to get my mind off work for a few weeks, even though the end of our vacation occurs at the Society of Molecular Imaging meeting in Germany. Which is decidedly NOT unrelated to work. How's that for double negatives?

The inevitable feedback war between my eBay persona and the seller of the cabinet we just received has commenced, initiated by my negative feedback regarding their extremely substandard shipping practices. They left me a retaliatory negative feedback calling me "difficult". Umm, i paid within a day, and as far as i'm concerned there ends my obligation as a buyer. They now want me to agree to remove the feedback i left on their profile. V is going to try to get them to refund our shipping fee (which was 75% of the item cost!). I've got no technique for those sorts of things. Like when i told BestBuy the TV they'd sold us had one S-video input, not two as claimed in the store and on the web site. I told them this was unacceptable and that i'd reported them to the Better Business Bureau (a total fib on my part). V tells me i need to threaten these things and give them a chance to offer me something. I have no head for these sort of commercial mind games.

The conversion of my imaging software to an object-oriented scheme is proceeding, albeit with much cursing and fist-pumping on my part. Rewording 2000 function calls over the space of 30,000 lines of code is no easy task. Especially with an editor that leaves as much to be desired as the IDL development environment does. Despite that, it's coming along, and the bugs are being progressively worked out.

The on-again, off-again transfer saga of Michael Essien to Chelsea continues. Lyon president Jean-Michel Aulas needs serious psychological help. If you thought Steven Gerrard was wishy-washy ("I could never leave!" ... "I can't play here again" ... "This is where i want to be forever!"), then the Frenchman has all the solidarity of a mound of jello. Essien seems to be genuinely annoyed by this whole development, having stated his desire to go to London a while back. He hasn't played in two (soon to be three) matches for Lyon this season, with coach Gerard Houllier (former Liverpool lead nitwit) stating he won't add him to the squad until his future is settled. Honestly, the Chelsea offer is already outlandish (£27 million for an unproven midfielder? Sure, he could be the next Cantona, but he could also be the next Kezman) ... Lyon should take the money and run. They have no one to blame for this farce but themselves ... Lyon were the ones who continually left the door open to a transfer. If they'd initially come out and say "We will not sell Essien at any price", like AC Milan did with Shevchenko and Juventus did with Trezeguet, that would've been that. But they wanted to play games with a team that never met a price tag it didn't like. I want this whole thing to be settled if only so i can add Essien to my Winning Eleven 8 International Chelsea lineup and put the new squad through its virtual paces.

I left my first negative eBay feedback today. Let me justify my qualms ... V won an arched antique bookcase on June 8th. I paid for it the next day, and received an email from the seller saying the item had been moved to the "shipping" portion of their warehouse (in Utah) and would be designated for shipping asap, although they warned shipping could take up to 8 weeks. A month later i hadn't heard any more from them, so i called and was told the item would be shipped soon. Flash forward another month with no further contact. This time i called and was told by the shipping guy that it hadn't been placed on a shipping manifest yet. Great. He said he would get it on the next truck, although i was pushing for immediate express shipping or cancellation of the sale and refunding of my money. He gave me the driver's name and number, and told me he would be calling me to arrange dropoff. So today i make it back to my office after showing an interested high school student around Stanford (more on that in a bit), and there are five (5!) messages on my voicemail. All from the truck driver, letting me know he was waiting in front of my house. WTF?!?! I hurried home to receive the cabinet. Carrying it inside, i then noticed that a) there were cracks in the wood on the cabinet's arch, and b) one of the wooden strips on the front door was coming off. Luckily both were minor, but at this point i wasn't cutting this crappy seller any slack. What's weird about eBay feedback is they only give you 90 characters to make your case. Mine ended up being "Paid within a day, item didn't ship for 7 weeks. No communication from seller." I didn't even get to mention the item damage, or the unannounced delivery. However i still feel like i've just written a lousy recommendation letter for someone and am about to be sued for slander.

The cabinet does look nice in our living room though. V thought it might make a nice home/cage for Pepe, but i think she's now decided to keep the more customary books in it. I'm putting off going outside to take our yard waste out for collection tomorrow morning. Danny hit the sarcasm nail on the head when he visited and told us, "you know, i think you could use a bit more foliage around here".

I'm nothing short of amazed that Kathy Griffin has her own reality show on Bravo. Not only does she look friggin awful, the show exposes her tired old schtick. There's a reason she interviews people on the runway instead of walking it herself ...

My sister Hilary has put an end to her ongoing search for housing by using our old realtor Slava, the one who got Veronica and i our rental house in San Mateo. Lo and behold, we're going to be near-neighbors in Redwood City. Hilary and her boyfriend Jeff will actually be just down the street from a house we bid on (the one we were denied when someone came in with a no-contingency bid). She's already asking me what i'll be making them for dinner. Ack.

As mentioned above, i had a high school student contact me about getting some lab experience. As he was looking for an unpaid internship and unpaid is all i have the budget for at the moment, that's right up my alley. Being a high school student i can't expect him to generate any really useful data, it's more doing my part to educate the next generation of scientists. He's a smart kid from Castro Valley, not socially inept either (laugh all you want, it's an all-too-frequent combination). What was weird was when he started lavishing praise on me over lunch, about how young i was to be a professor at Stanford. Must ... stay ... modest .......... cannot ... take ... compliments ...

I was scheduled to have a record two conference calls in one day (exceeding my old record by one, and tripling the number of conference calls i've been involved in). However, one was cancelled so i had to live with just doubling my conference call experience. It's still an odd dynamic for me, but it went reasonably well.

In the interest of making my source code available to the scientific community for development (time to give back to open-source), i'm trying to revamp my 3D image display and analysis code by converting various elements of the program into objects. I'm starting with the simplest switch (implementing an "image" object) and moving from there. It's the kind of switch that end users will never appreciate, but will make my life easier in the long run (that is, after the headache of debugging the "improved" code). I'm not looking forward to tackling the formation and implementation of an ROI object ...

Just put out the trash ... what a drag. Golly, mom!

I just realized the point of Rock Star: INXS. Part of it is cheap reality entertainment, to be sure ... but then you realize that once INXS selects a new lead singer and begins touring and recording, they've already created this huge buzz and ensured that their new lead singer will be a fan favorite. Well, as much of a fan favorite a Michael Hutchence replacement can be.

Yes, i am slow to identify these semi-obvious TV motives. Yes, i am quick to pat myself on the back when i do.

V is currently packing the new cabinet with books. Not dogs, unfortunately. She had me unpack some of our long-stored boxes of books and rummage for ones suitable for display in our living room. I came back with a selection of Tom Robbins, Martin Amis, Jack Kerouac, and Alexander Dumas. I realized the other day that i'm reading next to nothing these days. Largely because when i'm not working i'd rather get in some mindless video gaming or zone out in front of the tube. I do miss getting an hour of reading in every morning and evening on my rides on the T.

Our anniversary dinner last Friday at Left Bank in Menlo Park was very nice. I had the oysters and bouillabaisse, while V opted for a sort of caprese salad/bruschetta thing with goat cheese and a pork chop. She really dug her presents, a pair of books on decorating and gardening in small homes, and a journal to record her home design ideas. "Paper anniversary", get it? We slept in Saturday morning, still struggling to get the dogs to sleep for more than three hours at a time. When we did regain coherence, we conspired with N and G to pick them up at their new place in Diamond Heights and get a late breakfast at the ever-lovely Lighthouse Café in Sausalito. In typical fashion, we arrived ten minutes before closing time (3pm), but were served a fantastic meal nonetheless. We then did some shopping in Corte Madera at West Elm, followed by more shopping in Union Square in SF, with me picking up some sweet new chelsea boots at Kenneth Cole and a pair of jeans at Banana Republic, and everyone else making assorted purchases at a Paul Frank launch party to which V, N, and G had received invites. We then called it a day and headed home to see the pooches. Sunday i went a bit stir crazy, although in a more introspective sense. I was just bored for most of the day, and ended up taking a big nap and generally being lethargic, all the way through the evening's showings of Family Guy and American Dad. Today it's back to work, with this month's molecular imaging seminar and dinner on deck in just a few minutes.

Chelsea made good in their first competitive match of the season (sort of), defeating the Arse in the Charity Shield match 2-1 on the strength of two brilliant Didier Drogba goals. He certainly appears to be out to prove his naysayers wrong. He burst through two AC Milan defenders to score in a previous friendly this summer. Against Arsenal, he first controlled a long aerial pass with his chest at the edge of the box, then fended off up-and-coming Arsenal Swiss defender Philippe Senderos to angle a lob past Jens Lehmann. He one-upped himself at the start of the second half, receiving an Eidur Gudjohnsen through pass and shielding the ball from Senderos who was racing back to block Drogba from the goal. Drogba's technique and power were evident, as he expertly positioned himself between the gaining Senderos and the ball, and then outmuscled the young defender. In fact, Senderos fell over like he'd run into a brick wall. Drogba then rounded Lehmann, tripping a bit in the process, but recovering to swivel and fire a shot into the net. Arsenal are now trotting out their typical excuses (not a competitive match, my favorite "we outplayed them but it didn't show in the scoreline"). Even the casual observer must concede that Chelsea aren't going to be any easier to outrun in the Premiership than last season. And Arsenal have problems of their own, with the departure of Patrick Vieira and possibly Robert Pires, and a suddenly shaky-looking defence. On a negative note, it appears Chelsea's bid to sign Lyon's Michael Essien has finally failed. Lyon president Jean-Michel Aulas seems to have been revelling in the attention lately. He also seems to be a bona fide schizophrenic, as the answer you get to the question "are you going to sell Essien to Chelsea?" varies from minute to minute. The asking price has gone from £20 million at the start of the summer, to £32 million as Aulas reasoned Chelsea should pay at least what they offered to Liverpool for Steven Gerrard, a player he considered to be of equal or lesser ability to his midfielder. The high price was £31 million plus Tiago, which recently came down to £28 million. Now Aulas claims to have closed the door on a transfer altogether. I think Essien would have filled a nice role at Chelsea, but we'll manage without him.

Exactly 365 days ago, Veronica and i were married at the Brazilian Room. What a crazy affair that was. Since then, the newlyweds have bought a house, adopted two dogs, and otherwise turned our eyes towards the future. Let me summarize how domestified i've become ... the other day over dinner i was going through my wallet, found a receipt from Petco, and mumbled contentedly "hey, i saved $3 on dog food". But all kidding aside, this has been a great first year of marriage. Bring on the remaining 57 or so.

I wracked my brain over what a good gift for our "paper anniversary" would be, and i think i succeeded. We'll find out tonight over dinner at Left Bank in Menlo Park. A little taste of where we're headed later this month for our year-delayed honeymoon. Those plans are developing nicely ... we fly into London on the morning of August 28th, and spend three days there before taking a train down to Paris. We're spending four days there in a nice hotel on the Left Bank, only 300m from the Seine and the Île de la Cité (home to Notre Dame). After that, we hop on another train and ride off to a couple of days in Amsterdam, after which we head by rail to Cologne in northwestern Germany. We spend a final five days there, during four of which i'll be splitting my time between Veronica and the fourth annual meeting of the Society of Molecular Imaging. I got an extra ticket for Veronica so she can attend the meeting-sponsored dinner cruise on the Rhine and the gala dinner at the Gürzenich concert hall. Then we fly back to London and on to San Francisco (via Dallas). I'm looking forward to reacquainting myself with Paris after last being there in 1989.

A couple more errant events have happened in our neighborhood (late night shouting, police visits). We've been good about parking our cars behind the house, so nothing has directly affected us. It's disconcerting however, and certainly doesn't help you sleep at night when you're wondering whether some f@$#ing whacko is wandering around outside causing mischief. I doubt if we'll stay in this neighborhood for more than three or four years, but i don't regret the decision to start gaining equity by purchasing a house. However, couple that tension with the fact that Tara and Pepe are now regularly waking up two or three times a night to either cough and wheeze (Pepe), be let outside (Tara), or scratch themselves and make an unholy racket on the hardwood floors (both), and you can understand why i think i've only gotten a maximum of 3 hours of continuous sleep in the last 2 weeks.

I've been toying with a few site improvements. One is adding keywords to each journal post, to allow those who could care less about my soccer rantings to filter them. I'm debating whether that's useful or not, so it hasn't made it to prime time yet. Another is the continued tweaking of the music and stats interfaces. I'm entranced by the enlarging/shrinking pictures javascript i wrote for the music stats page, i'm contemplating how to expand upon that concept and make it even slicker. I signed up for an Amazon Associates account so i can link directly to Amazon searches and products. Kinda silly, but on the up side if any of you buy something after clicking on one of my links, i get a little cut from Amazon. Currently i've only got links in the album reviews section, but i'm debating how to expand their application. Like i'm ever going to see any of this money. In the meanwhile, my quest for content has been fueled mainly by several more album reviews. I'm really searching for the way to generate the most content with the minimum amount of effort. C'mon, you think genius like this just magically makes its way into print?

V has resumed painting our dining room, which is looking more even now that she sanded down the splotchy areas and put on another coat. One or two more coats and it should be ready for application of the gloss stripes. I got even more domestified last night when our toilet clogged and i was unable to plunge it into submission. I was forced to go to Orchard Supply Hardware and pick up a toilet auger (ie, a drain snake) and ram, twist, and turn this thing all the way down the toilet until it cleared the blockage. Our gardening labors continue, with even more foliage set to be removed from our front and back yards as i find the energy. We've got a few tomato plants that seem to have taken root in our back yard from incompletely removed plants left by the previous owner of the house. I've got to remove those before they resemble the Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, which doesn't look far off.

That movie gets a lot of name-checking as the epitome of silliness, but it was actually quite funny. "Affairs got to the point where the mere mention of the word 'tomato' would cause panic." Cut to a smirking man reading in the middle of a library, who slyly looks up from his book and says nonchalantly, "Tomato.". And naturally everyone runs away screaming.

Am i the only one who does not and may not ever regard the winners of shows like American Idol and Rock Star: INXS as valid artists? To me, these sorts of contests trivialize the whole artistic endeavor. The INXS show is entertaining enough, but i don't think anyone will really accept the winner as Michael Hutchence's spiritual successor. This was highlighted on a recent show when one of the band members asked a contestant if she liked singing covers. Is there any correct answer to that question? Yes, i love singing other people's songs ... so you're a karaoke artist? No, i hate performing songs that i didn't create ... and you're auditioning to be Michael Hutchence's substitute? I think there's a motive question in music that dictates audience acceptance, certainly in my case. Yes, Green Day writes catchy songs, but i can't really take them at face value and hence they just don't gain my approval.

I have yet to fully explore the labyrinthine mess of channels that make up our DirecTV lineup. In fact, as opposed to actually trying out some new programming or browsing through the pages upon pages of channels, i find myself coming back to the same six or seven channels. I'm watching much more soccer these days, not out of a burning desire to follow Ecuadorian football but because i know the channel numbers of Gol TV and Fox Soccer Channel. There's the ever present Cartoon Network, which has actually bummed me out lately because they show the same Family Guy and Futurama episodes at 8 and 11pm. I'm also wondering if perhaps the first season of the Venture Brothers was a self-contained story, precluding the possibility of any (highly warranted) additional seasons. As our premium channel lineup has decreased from "every HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, Starz, and Encore known to man" to just seven HBOs, i find myself watching fewer movies ... which isn't necessarily a bad thing as the ones i used to watch were flicks i'd seen on average 5-10 times. The History Channel has picked up my viewing slack. I spent a few hours on Sunday watching Barbarians, a series chronicling the exploits of history's most famed savages. The one on the Mongols was very good, even if it never mentioned the Great Wall of China. Maybe they left it out intentionally to make people like me feel smarter. Job well done.

The weekend was pretty lackluster ... i watched the Chelsea/AC Milan friendly, mostly boring except for two brilliant second half goals by Didier Drogba and Rui Costa. Matthew happened to be in NY and managed to make it to the match. V and i were also enlisted to help N and G move into their new place in Diamond Heights, paying off our moving debt. The moving itself wasn't too bad, but after a few hours on their cat Una's turf, i was again a raging bundle of sinuses. Like last weekend, only instead of inhaling lots of dust, the dust was replaced with cat dander. Eek. My histamine status is now once again mostly in order.