A recap of the weekend

One of my friends noted how people take things seriously online. The things people say in im are not will not have the same realistic undertones as things said in person. A disconnection effect. This would be the same reason why people don\’t feel immoral when they download music or programs online. In his perspective, not seeing the physical world–the other person we\’re talking to, the actual cd case of music we\’re listening to, the envelope of a letter–results in a lack of seriousness and a presumption that we can escape from what we do online.

I believe it\’s more complicated than that. At least for the social exchange that occurs in im. The entire discussion started because a mutual friend of ours said something online that she later rejected in person. An im is not meant to be taken seriously! she said. But it\’s so much more complicated than that. There are thousand of im conversations exchanged per day. Sometimes for convenience. I certainly don\’t want to run downstairs to talk to my roommate if I can just ask him a question from my room. The ability to privatize your conversation in a large room full of people. It gives us another outlet of conversation. There are serious statements said–a breakup, a death in the family, the beginning stages of relationships, the cry of loneliness. Why would things online be less serious? If anything, it\’s the difference between a joke and statement.

When randomly surfing upon a blog on someone you know, do you tell him or her?

If someone told me that they found my blog, I would feel impressed and extremely proud. Yet, for others, I know it\’s an invasion of privacy. For some people, this becomes an issue of keeping offline relationships and online relationships separate. After nearly six years of successes and failures, I finally reached a relatively stable censorship. I try to stop myself from talking about people. I talk about myself and my observations. I try to say what I would have told everyone. Yet, I would like to know who reads.

For the longest time, I didn\’t know that my roommate in Berkeley read my blog. I had once posted the url in my aim profile, but removed it one month later. Then one day, as I was dropping off something at her desk, I saw my page open on her computer. I was surprised. I had written a little bit about our disagreements. Later, I did confront her about it…and from that, I learned to keep heated things offline.

But since someone inspired me to search for her blog (which I still haven\’t found), these are some blogs I found in the process. Particularly, the professor I have been working for the last two years.

But for all purposes, I must keep this in mind.

Good food is a good way to end a busy week.

So around 10:30 pm, I got responses from a server saying that \”document not found\” when searching something in the CMU website. I thought ok, the CMU google search must be down. Some idiot kid probably broke while trying to show off to his friends what he could do with the CMU server.

About 30 minutes later, I tried again to search using the form in Safari. Because I want to find a screen protector for my powershot s60. It doesn\’t work. I get the same message again about \”Document Not Found\”. Ok, something doesn\’t seem right. I go to the google home page and get the following.

I am shocked. I check images.google and news.google It seems as if everything is functionally normally. I im Polo and ask him what he sees. He sees the regular google page. Ok WHAT IS UP. I start thinking that someone messed with the router that I am currently leeching off of…and taht someone thought it would be funny to direct leechers to a non-google site. I spend a few minutes trying to get into the router\’s admin page to no avail. I don\’t know the default password to DLink\’s router page because…guess what, I can\’t access google (although a few minutes later, it did occur to me to use Yahoo). So I start spinning around in my chair in frustration, thinking maybe this is a sign. They want me to really study for my human factors mditerm.

I start feeling yet another pang of hunger, which comes too often these days. I start thinking about whether I should eat my fifth banana that night or whether I should bake my instant cookies. Or eat cornbread.

But I digress. I return to my computer and suddenly it works.

But sadly to my geekiness, Google was NOT hacked. It was just a DNS glitch as computers all over the world tried to find the site of Google. Strangely enough SoGoSearch is google.com.net? How is that possible? I don\’t get it. But ok. It happened earlier in May, but I wasn\’t around to witness it.

So it has been nearly one month since the new class of masters student have moved in. The new class is different. And like last year, I can sense their earnesty and their drive to discover hci.

Yet, I can\’t help sometimes looking in the class for the \”people\” that used to be here. There are times that I wonder where Joon, the one who took stealthy phone calls all the time. Where is the Joon? Or the Janette? The energetic Asian girl who has great music taste, outgoing and unassuming. Where is the Alex? The one who seemed so serious at the beginning, but turns out to be a kid who can\’t stop joking around. And the Lisa. The one who states her opinion loudly, then you realize you had the same thoughts all along but you were afraid to say it. There\’s so much more that I could describe, but it\’s me just missing what used to be.

Of course, the new always gets better. There are still interesting people here. The ones who love bowling. The ones who go swing dancing. The tennis players. The ones who talks about drinking all the time. But to me, it\’s still at that shallow level. I don\’t know them all that well yet, but hopefully soon I will.

Indulgence of the day: a comparision study of Hershey\’s Skor and Heath Bar at 8:51 pm

Total Cost: $1.50

Purchased at: Entropy, the great late night CMU store of things that ruin students\’ health

Winner: Heath Bar. Nothing beats a chocolate bar that works well on its own and hidden in pieces in sweet cream ice cream

Consumption time: 3 minutes, 10 seconds for both

Consequence: a fleeting moment of happiness, then a slight stomachache

Today, one of my groupmates suddenly interjected in our conversation, \”I read your blog! About how you went to brunch Sunday. And I saw your pictures!\”

I always find it amusing when people tell me that they read the latest entry on my blog. After repeated failures, I tend to assume that nobody reads what I wrote and that what I say won\’t be repeating what some people already know.