Putting the Ignoble in Vignoble

Had the chance to wine and dine in the famed wine-producing region of Napa Valley this last Saturday. I decided to don my only suit jacket (and no socks - hey, it's laundry day) for the occasion so as to meet the requisite minimum standard of pomposity. (I should really source a monocle, kerchief, pocket watch, and top hat. As a general rule, you don't argue with anyone who is actively employing all these objects in the service of highbrowdom.)

The Stanford Canadian Club Thanksgiving dinner was a resounding success as measured by the excess of available foodstuffs; there was turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and pumpkin pie in abundance. Yum. Maybe this whole gastronomic shindig should be a weekly affair (or fortnightly, at the very least.) In true seasonal fashion, the leaves are Monty-Python-style suicide-diving off the trees in droves; the air is crisp with that familiar decay-scent, something I had not expected to find this far south.

Important news flash: I just saw a rainbow out the shuttle window. If I were inclined to believe in such nonsense, I'd say that was a good omen for the day.

My One Lunar Cycle No-Post-iversary

Yeah, it's been that long. 28 Days Later, stuffs and things at varying orbitals of excitement have been happening with acceptable regularity:

• Not only am I the proud owner of a longboard, but this particular plank of my comprehensive transportation platform now bears the inimitable insignia of one Randall Munroe. (I can only wonder what joyous blasphemies #666 will bring.)
  
• Finally made it out to the infamous DNA Lounge; this SF institution has the peculiar distinction of being owned by ex-Netscape programmer Jamie Zawinski.
• Canadian Thanksgiving shindig, complete with full turkey and pumpkin pie. Need I say more? (No, but I should probably add this: there's another Canadian Thanksgiving dinner this Sunday hosted by the Stanford Canadian Club; despite what their (apparently infrequently updated) site says, it really is this weekend.)
  
• Pretty Lights at The Independent last night. If you haven't seen them, you really should.

How's Facebook? (Come on - if you care enough about me to read my pithy musings, you're probably expecting an answer to this question.) Intense. It pains me to say it, but Facebook has so far provided much more in the way of personal development and work-related awesomeness than Google ever did. How can that be? It comes down to recruiting strategy: Google casts as wide a net as possible, hoping to grab what it considers to be the best of the best before someone else does. In my opinion, this strategy is bound to backfire. You end up with a zillion interns and, well, less than a zillion interesting and/or useful projects; it doesn't take a math major to see that you can't pair each intern up with something worthwhile to work on. (It does take a math major, however, to look at the whole situation and start rambling about bijections.) Here's the point: half of the interns coming out of Google are extremely wary of returning, and that can't be good. ("Half" here is an extremely unscientific guesstimate, but several co-interns (who will obviously remain nameless in such a public forum as The Internet) have expressed similar sentiments.)

Denouement

"It is criminal to steal a purse, daring to steal a fortune, a mark of greatness to steal a crown. The blame diminishes as the guilt increases." -- Schiller

I was sitting in the City Cafe (accent intended) Bakery (held in slightly-above-average esteem by the professor who brought Waterloo's CS frosh such delights as Scheme), taking a quick breakfast with my brother; this quote was written on their blackboard. City Cafe is an economic enigma. They have no cashiers, opting instead for a self-serve honour-system model; you deposit your payment into a bus fare box (Cleveland Transit, I'm told, although I've never verified this) before leaving.

Question of the day: why does this work? By traditional economic theories, the dominant strategy is to eat and run. One theory holds that this is a form of the tit-for-tat strategy: the City Cafe Bakery places trust in its customers, who then feel compelled (perhaps because reciprocity helps maintain social norms) to pay. Another possibility is that the players are maximizing self-interest according to a different payoff function. There might be quantifiable reward in keeping the bakery open or in appearing honest to one's friends. (It is notable that customers often leave tips - maybe it is psychologically easier to tip when the register and tip jar are combined into one receptacle!) There is also the novelty factor; by following an unorthodox business model, they generate a certain amount of word-of-mouth buzz.

(According to Schiller, your best strategy is to grab everything in the bakery and run - that way, you minimize blame!)

Denouement (again, accent intended) comes from the French noeud for knot; the literal translation is "unknotting". I'll leave that open to interpretation.

Z

23 days to go. After reflecting upon the virtues of getting proper amounts of sleep and not eating takeout Chinese or Pita Factory twice a day, I've decided that my approach to this month has to change. From now on, I'll be experimenting with a strict 11-7 sleep schedule. I've also stocked up on snacks of the apples-and-carrots variety, and I took some time aside last night to concoct container-loads of pasta e fagioli and salad. I'll also try to set some time aside in my daily breaks for exercise.

The hypothesis is that, if applied correctly, this will increase my general alertness and productivity. As a side effect, it will likely contribute to a more psychologically-balanced state. This seems obvious; I'd wager, however, that most students faced with crushing workloads panic and go the graveyard-shift route, a path which I had been following up until last night.

So - 23 days to go, and may each be better than the last!

Bric-A-Brac, Post-Weekend Style

Decided to try waking up earlier this week. Today: 7:20 am after one false start at 7:07 am. (Yes, I really do set my alarm clock for times like this - my favourite time is 8:08.)

Sugar is wonderful, maple sugar all the more so. I had the inimitable pleasure of visiting a sugar bush on Saturday along with the rest of my office; turns out the uncle of one of our programmer-analysts runs the operation, now in its 27th season of business. Nothing like maple sugar, maple syrup, and maple taffy in one day to mount a buffer overflow attack on your sweet taste buds.

Just found this cool animation off a link posted in a tweet from an ex-coworker; as explained on the video page, it uses data from this site. My $.02: I think all public services, utilities, etc. should be releasing data APIs for the general public to hack on. They could even release the data under a GPL-ish licence that requires any resulting apps to be made publicly available. They could even go one step further - simply hold an online vote to pick the top apps, then host them free of charge on their website. Help us to help you...

Edit: I forgot to post links to the sugar bush photos! Here they are. Additionally, here's some more pics as taken by coworker Boxing Chen and uploaded by the owner, Pierre Joanis.