I'm headed to Houston tomorrow to spend a day looking at the PET/CT setup at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. Never been to Texas, but statements like "the best thing to come out of Houston is the I-45 to Dallas" don't have me all that excited.

Decided to post weekly top 10 played artists lists for a while to see if it produces any interesting results. You can still get my all-time top 10s on the music page.

The nay-sayers are quick to point out Chelsea's lack of quality in their unconvincing 1-nil win over Aston Villa last weekend. I watched the Chelsea TV highlights online this morning, and cannot sugarcoat the continued defensive lapses. But i also saw continued flashes of brilliance in Duff's runs and Veron's midfield marshalling, and further signs of cooperation among our star-studded squad. And hey, we did win, in the kind of match we would've drawn or lost a year ago. The Soccernet Insider sums it up nicely: "It is a point of some concern for the rest that Chelsea are winning despite the fact that they are playing well below their best. If they do eventually click, they are well placed to mount a championship challenge.".

On a somewhat-related note (at least in my video game-addled mind), i started a Master League season using Chelsea in Winning Eleven 6 International. My squad now includes speedy side back Ulises De La Cruz, wild-locked Taribo West, midfield general Emmanuel Petit, track star Tijani Babangida, scoring machine Juninho, and strikers Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink and Emmanuel Olisadebe. I picked up Gianfranco Zola as well, but to my extreme dismay he has been horrifically ineffective. The Master League mode is fun ... it gives you the chance to mold your squad a bit while still focusing on the competition element of the game. I'll have to give Championship Manager a try soon.

I like laughing along to Howard Stern on the way to work in the morning, but sometimes that guy says some incredibly stupid things.

Cat Power is hot.

Back to the bay, and sooooo many shows to choose from. Paul Weller at the Fillmore, Mark Gardener and The Stratford 4 at Bottom of the Hill, more Pretty Girls Make Graves, Echo and the Bunnymen at the Fillmore, a chance for Death Cab for Cutie to wash away the bad taste of The Photo Album, and Sondre Lerche at the apparently revitalized Cafe Du Nord. Plus Veronica and i are taking my parents to the live performance of A Mighty Wind at the Warfield for my mom's birthday in November. Got to see the movie now.

Woohoo!!! My new computer just rolled in the door! Got's to cut this short so i can get this show on the road.

met a girl, introduced myself i asked her to go with me and no one else she said, "i'd really like to see you every day but i'm afraid of what my friends might say you need a bath, and your clothes are wrong you're not my type, i can tell we wouldn't get along" i just laughed, what else could i do? just then her friend chimed in singing "get a clue get a life, put it in your song" there's something i've been meaning to say to you i've rehearsed a little speech i haven't practiced what i've preached but she was easily impressed and i was bad, and i was weak and my conscience sprung a leak and now it's time that i confessed

The fruits of my feud with Purchasing come trickling in ... my 120 GB external hard drive arrived yesterday, allowing me to back up all my data at home, and bring my 50 GB of mp3s to work so i can listen to something while coding/writing/laboring. My computer (a Dell 3 GHz Pentium IV Windows XP workstation with 2 GB of RAM, a 17" inch flat panel monitor, and USB 2.0 and Firewire ports) isn't scheduled to arrive for another two weeks, so until then i'm using my poor, suffering 1 GHz laptop and its paltry 256 MB of RAM. It's served me well, but it just can't compete with these speedy desktops.

This is a sports team or a band.
This is a place.
This is an album, a video game, a film, or a book.
This is a quote.

Finally got around to doing something i'd been meaning to do, that is tag different types of references in my posts. All done with Perl, for one because i think Perl kicks butt and for another because i'm afraid of CSS.

Holy god, what a weekend.

I went to work Friday morning not feeling too great, and it only got worse until i decided to head home at 11:15am. I relaxed and worked on my Master League squad in Winning Eleven 6 International for an hour or so before Veronica got back from Sacramento. I then pulled myself together so we could hop in the Tercel and head down to Los Angeles. As we got on the road early, we made it there around 9pm and encountered minimal traffic. We arrived at Dionne and Matthew's new house and made the acquaintance of lick-happy Cinnamon, then grabbed a bite at Coco's before Veronica and Dionne headed out to shake their bootays. Matthew and i came home and passed out.

I woke up just in time to catch the 11am replay of the Chelsea/Wolverhampton match on Fox Sports World. It was the first full Chelsea match i'd seen all season, and it didn't disappoint. Frank Lampard opened the scoring fifteen minutes in with a cracker from the top of the penalty box, and Jimmy Floyd added another before halftime. After the interval, Damien Duff scored his first for Chelsea and the rout was on. New Argentinian striker Hernan Crespo came on for JFH with 30 minutes left and proceeded to rifle a pair of shots into the back of the net. At the final whistle, a 5-nil victory for Chelsea, a masterful display of fluid football, and a warning sign to the rest of the league that our expensive squad may be gelling sooner than expected.

Manchester City fan/masochist Gary arrived soon thereafter, and around 1:45pm we again hopped in the car, headed toward San Bernardino and the KROQ Inland Invasion. I fell asleep while stuck in traffic on the 10, and awoke in traffic on the 15. We arrived in the parking lot, a gravel wasteland in the middle of nowhere (i was afraid we'd return to the car and find it surrounded by jaguars), at 4:30pm and spent another 30 minutes taking the tram and walking into the venue. Inside it was a mob scene ... we were all starving, but the food lines were enormous. We had lawn seats, but it seemed the vast expanse of grass (must've been 100,000 people there) was full. We finally picked a random hot dog/burger line at the top of the lawn and started waiting. Having missed Marc Almond, Bow Wow Wow, and Dramarama, we finally started watching the show while in line.

• Interpol: We heard the opening riff of "Untitled" while walking inside the venue, and saw the last half of their set while waiting in line for food. They sounded much better than the two other times we'd seen them. Did i care that much about them? Not really.
• The Psychedelic Furs: Still in line for food. Richard and the boys belted through "Love My Way", "The Ghost In You", "President Gas", and "Heaven". They sounded good, but not as mesmerising as when we saw them open for the B-52s and the lackluster Go-Gos. Whether it was their performance or my rapidly deteriorating demeanor, i don't know.
• The Violent Femmes: Still waiting for food, at this point slightly delirious. I watched a girl in an adjacent line fall over twice from dehydration/drink/drugs and thought to myself, "hey, that's not a bad idea!". I've never been a huge fan of the Violent Femmes, but they ran through the hits and sounded nice doing it ... "American Music", "Blister in the Sun", "Add It Up", and "Gone Daddy Gone". From our vantage point they looked like ants on the stage. At this point i'd pretty much given up on the visual element of the festival and was just concentrating on hearing some good music. At the close of their set we were finally munching on lousy tri-tip sandwiches and hot dogs, and had located Veronica's friend Gabriel and his crew further down the lawn.
• Echo and the Bunnymen: At last, one of the reasons i decided to come to this god-forsaken place! A solid set by one of the true innovators of modern music, beginning with "Lips Like Sugar" and touching upon "The Rescue", "The Back of Love", "The Cutter", "Seven Seas", "Bring on the Dancing Horses", and the Ian McCulloch-proclaimed "best song in the world" "The Killing Moon" (it did sound quite good). One of the songs fused into a cover of Lou Reed's "Walk on the Wild Side", which was excellent. Halfway through another song McCulloch asked the crowd if anyone knew the day's Liverpool result (2-1 over Leicester City). He then improvised the rest of the song about Liverpool Football Club ("... and Gerard Houllier, is the manager ...").
• Hot Hot Heat: It's no secret that i can't stand this band. If i hear "Bandages" one more time, i'm going to take one and gag the singer with it. Naturally, it was their first song. Their set wasn't bad ... energy was high, the band was tight ... and it was short. 'Nuff said.
• Duran Duran: One driving thought pounded through my brain during the completely-reformed Duran Duran's performance: Have these guys ever done anything musical or artistic that wasn't designed for the sole purpose of getting chicks? Enough of my cynical rantings. They were pretty good. Not my most anticipated act, but enjoyable nonetheless. The set featured "Hungry Like the Wolf", "Save a Prayer", "Wild Boys", "Come Undone", "Ordinary World", some truly awful new material, "The Reflex", "Notorious", and an encore closer of "Girls on Film".
• The Cure: The headlining act came on at 10pm, after Jed the Fish nearly got booed off the stage for claiming that the Cure needed a 25 minute pee break after Duran Duran. It would've been okay if he hadn't been indignant that we should be grateful. Anyhow, the Cure emerged at 10pm and started into "10:15 Saturday Night" (albeit 15 minutes early). I love this band, but let's face it: Robert Smith looks like a reanimated corpse. The set progressed as chronological highlights from each of the band's albums. Let's fire up the old memory here:
  Boys Don't Cry: "10:15 Saturday Night"
  Seventeen Seconds: "A Forest"
  Faith: "Primary"
  Pornography: "One Hundred Years", "The Figurehead", "A Strange Day"
  The Top: "Shake Dog Shake"
  The Head on the Door: "In-Between Days"
  Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me: "Just Like Heaven"
  Disintegration: "Pictures of You", "Fascination Street", "Lovesong"
  Wish: "From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea"
  Wild Mood Swings: "Want"
  Bloodflowers: "Maybe Someday", "Bloodflowers", "39" (i think ... although i think this album is quite good, i'm just not as conversant with it as i'd like to be)
  By this time we were all dead on our feet, but Robert and co. came back out for three encores. The first was two more from Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me, "The Kiss" and "If Only Tonight We Could Sleep". The second was two more from Disintegration, "Plainsong" and the awesome, apocalyptic title track. At long last he closed the show by coming full circle, ending with "Boys Don't Cry". A great but exhausting two-hour long set.

At 12:30am Veronica headed off to drive back with Michelle while Gary and i trekked to the outer provinces and his rental car. We agreed to meet at a Denny's in Whittier, but our hike through the parking lot informed us that we were not getting out of this place anytime soon. Cars were scattered motionless in no apparent order in attempts to merge into an exit road that was clogged already. We spent five minutes searching for an alternate exit, then parked, leaned our chairs back, and fell asleep. At 2:30am i awoke, looked around, and woke Gary up as the lot was now empty. Amazing, considering an hour and a half earlier it had been a gridlocked mess. We met up with the girls, had some food, then headed back to Matthew and Dionne's house to hibernate. We never even got to see them at the show, given the rampant cellular communication difficulties.

Sunday morning we watched the Middlesbrough/Everton match with Boro devotee Matthew, and got to see him enjoy their first win of the season. We then slowly got ready and hit the road at 3:45pm. Our traffic luck had not changed though. We spent two hours going 10 miles through the Grapevine, as a fire had closed two of the four lanes. I spent this time composing my own improvisational ditty:

I love L.A.! (We love it!) Gridlock downtown! (We love it!) Gridlock on the 5! (We love it!) Gridlock in San Bernardino because these morons get 100,000 people on a 2 lane road! (We love it!)

We got home at 11:30pm, after forgoing a planned excursion to Sacramento to pick up Veronica's grandmother. And now i'm at work, slightly worse for the wear.

An even ten days since my last post. Don't think i need to say for the umpteenth time that being an assistant professor can eat up all your time. Who'da thunk it?

My Stanford computer order was just sent to Dell today. Gee, that only took a month to get a computer ordered, not to mention the forthcoming construction and shipping times. And i thought MGH purchasing was a joke. Veronica tells me i need to just cut loose, barge into the purchasing department, and start screaming and throwing things. Perhaps.

Last weekend kicked off with Veronica and i heading to the Café Du Nord in the city for Seattle indie punk outfit Pretty Girls Make Graves. We first stopped by Thailand Restaurant in the Castro for a few vegetarian curry puffs. Then it was a ten minute walk down Market to the venue. V's friend Hakeem was working the door, and graciously pulled us out of line and into the club. Despite our best efforts, we only missed one of the two opening bands. At our arrival, a best of Johnny Cash compilation was playing on the PA to commemorate his passing earlier that day, and one or two members of the next band, the Fuse!, were setting up. Veronica and i found a place to stand about ten feet back from the stage, and were thus treated to the mesmerising epic preparation of The Fuse. For some unknown reason, each of the three musicians set up their instruments in succession rather than all at once, meaning it took them a good forty minutes to get a guitar, bass, and drums ready. The singer/guitarist was this deranged hispanic hipster wearing a swanky mod suit with a red shirt and skinny tie. The bass player looked more ordinary, but also had a nifty suit. If the preparations were any indication, they looked totally incompetent. I had a bad feeling we were in for a really horrible power pop set. After an intolerable wait, the drummer finally appeared (also in mod gear) and put together the drum kit, and the show began. The singer/guitarist sauntered up to his mic and said something incoherent about Johnny Cash. Then the music began. Lo and behold, they weren't retro at all, but launched into an emo punk set reminiscent of the Nation of Ulysses. All three completely rawked out, and left the stage and a good portion of their equipment a shattered wreck. During the set the guitarist made frequent trips into the audience, scaring the crap out of several indie kids who probably thought this nut was going to clobber them. The drummer wrapped things up by admitting he'd finished a bottle of rum on the way to the show, then picked up his cymbal stand and came within a cufflink of braining a fan in the front row. The best summary i can offer is that halfway through their set, Veronica told me "This might be the worst band i've ever seen", to which i replied, "These guys are f*#@ing awesome!".

Pretty Girls Make Graves were great too. I liked their set a lot, despite the fact that the first song, "Something Bigger, Something Brighter" from their new Matador record The New Romance, sounded god damn awful. But when i remember the show, i can't get past the insane brilliance of The Fuse. Their first album is due out in November, and you can bet i'll be scouring Amoeba for it.

Saturday V and i drove to the Berkeley to check out a few possible wedding locations for next summer. That's right, this two-year engagement of ours may actually be going somewhere! My collection of good intentions and lousy excuses seems to be running out. After surveying the beautiful Brazilian Room in the heart of Tilden Park, we headed down to Fremont. There we picked up my parents and headed to Milpitas for an Italian dinner followed by The Italian Job at the second-run theater. I haven't really cared for Mark Wahlberg since that horrible remake of Planet of the Apes (what was Tim Burton thinking?), so i wasn't giving him much of a chance in another remake, but it was actually very enjoyable. Seth Green as "the real napster" was a riot.

This evening i got sucked into City by the Sea on HBO. With a cast featuring Robert De Niro and Frances McDormand it was hard not to get sucked in. James Franco and Eliza Dushku put in good, gritty performances as junkies. The end is a little contrived, but you could watch De Niro thoughtfully paint a fence and it'd be fascinating.

Off to L.A. this weekend for the KROQ Inland Invasion III featuring The Cure (their shows are always fantastic no matter how old and fat Robert Smith gets), Duran Duran (not being a girl or gay, i don't really care), Hot Hot Heat (everyone's indie flavor of the month ... except mine, i friggin hate them), Interpol (yet another chance for them to redeem their live act in my eyes), Echo and the Bunnymen (a personal fave, looking forward to it), the Psychedelic Furs (saw them with the B-52s and Go-Gos a few years ago and they were terrific), and many others. Should be a good show if i can last. I'm more focused on my impending FIFA 2001 battle with host Matthew.

Work is tying my brain in knots these days. Writing my first grant proposal, just finished writing a set of IDL dicom i/o routines, pondering how to incorporate them into my existing image processing software, trying to decide on a postdoc candidate to hire, talking to anyone who'll listen about research projects for the future, and all the while waiting for Purchasing to order my friggin computer. I submitted the purchase request over two weeks ago, and as of this afternoon it's still sitting on some bozo's desk at Stanford, albeit with an assortment of mediocre excuses. Given my experiences ordering equipment at MGH and now Stanford, i suspect Purchasing departments must hire based on some sort of inverse IQ test.

So given that i'm concentrating on about twelve things at any given time, more assorted musings is all you're gonna get.

Some comments on the first official week of the 2003 NFL season:

• Saw about 3/4 of the Monday night game between Tampa Bay and Philadelphia, and oh man do those Bucs look scary. Their defense absolutely pasted McNabb and company. The offense wasn't brilliant, but it gained momentum in the second half and produced two unbelievable touchdown catches for Joe Jurevicius. The second, where he tipped the ball into the air, over a defender, and dived to catch it in the endzone, was about as close to football Jordan as i've ever seen.
• Saw bits and pieces of the Niners yesterday as they destroyed the Bears. A good start, now let's keep it going. I was at Mad Dog in the Fog in SF while the game was going on, hanging out with Mike K and former PETE drummer Bill W, in town for a few days from Chicago. Great to be able to rehash the old days over a few pints of Boddingtons and some bangers and mash.
• I'm not the first to say it, but it looks as if the Raiders' tank may be just about empty.
• St. Louis looks primed to repeat the ignominy of last season after a thoroughly disheartening 23-13 loss to the Giants. Kurt Warner gets sacked six times, fumbles six times, and gets a concussion. And he didn't look particularly good either. But moreover, the egomaniacal, convention-be-damned Mike Martz twice elects to go for it on fourth-and-long instead of kicking a field goal in the fourth quarter. He gets stuffed twice, the second time effectively ending the game. When he could've kicked a field goal, tried an onside kick, and gone for the tying TD. The man is a jackass, plain and simple. And now rumors are coming out that he kept Warner in the game after he knew he'd suffered a concussion. Oh well, i can't complain ... it feels so good to see the Rams play so bad.

V and i travelled about 850 miles in the span of 28 hours last Friday and Saturday. Danny drove us down to L.A. on Friday night and dropped us off at newlyweds Michelle and Sean's around midnight. We then stayed up drinking and talking until 5am before finally succumbing to sleep. Despite being thoroughly grungy and exhausted, we arose at 8am to go pick up a U-Haul truck, drive to Veronica's aunt's house, and load it with a variety of furniture and boxes from the de la Mora's old house. After a quick bite at Carrow's we hopped back on the 5 and coaxed our aging truck back to San Mateo, which we reached at 9pm. My parents helped us unload, for which we took them for dessert at Heidi's Pies, then we came home and hibernated.

My pet peeve of the day has to do with Apple. V and i are going to be setting up a wireless network now that her computer will be moving to the newly-obtained desk in the living room. Better than running an ethernet cable across two rooms. I did some research and decided that a Linksys 802.11g router ($99) and an Airport Extreme card ($99) for Veronica's eMac would give us the most affordable, current, and versatile system. So i wandered by the Apple Store in Palo Alto on my way home from work today to look at and most likely purchase the wi fi card. I picked up the box and noticed a disclaimer reading "Compatible with Airport Extreme-capable systems only". I'm thinking, "The eMac isn't even a year old, it's compatible, right?" Thank god i asked the smarmy Apple "genius", who gave me a curt answer: "No". There was an web-vid a few months back parodying the Apple switch commercials in which the narrator says "And i love upgrading Macs ... it's so easy! With a PC i had to remove the old hardware and put in a new part, what a pain! But with my Mac, when i want to upgrade i just unplug the computer, pick it up, drop it in the trash, and go buy a new one! What could be simpler?" That rang true today. I asked the clerk what computers did work with the fledgling Airport Extreme hardware, since the only thing i could find on the web or on the box was that "all new Apple computers are compatible". He said "Well, the new iMacs, and ... umm ...". I guess i'll have to go with a garden variety 802.11b system and a regular Airport card. But this "don't upgrade, just buy a whole new system" philosophy drives me nuts.

60% of the incoming class of 1996 BEASTs (UCB/UCSF bioengineering Ph.D. students, that is) met up last Sunday evening at Art's Crab Shak in Oakland to catch up with each other. It's funny, i used to live not four blocks away from Art's, but when i was given the meet-up details i kept scratching my head going "Why does this place sound so damn familiar?" Anyway, Donna, Pete, Kathy, Michelle, Max, and i reminisced over several plates of crab, mushrooms, french fries, hush puppies, and jalapeno poppers, topped off with some peach cobbler. More nostalgia to put a wistful smile on Ted's face.

Law and Order is a dangerous little program. You sit down, flip through channels, and decide that since nothing else that's on is incredibly compelling, you'll give L&O a go. Especially since it just started so you don't have to do any detective work just to figure out what the heck everyone is talking about. Every time a commercial comes on, you tell yourself, "Oh, I'll go make dinner/do laundry/check my email during the next break", because you don't want to run the risk of missing any important information presented just after the commercial break. Next thing you know you're crying during the last five minutes as they come to the gut-wrenching climax and bittersweet denouement.

A Law and Order marathon on TNT? Oh man ... you're screwed.

(I kid because i care ... L&O really is a great show)