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.