On a related side note, the Jargon File defines the term “egosurf“:

egosurf vi.

To search the net for your name or links to your web pages. Perhaps connected
to long-established SF-fan slang `egoscan’, to search for one’s name in a
fanzine.

I’m having a heck of a time trying to get this site to show up on Google’s search results. I’ve heard that some people have “spoofed” Google into listing a site by creating a bunch of dummy web pages that link to that site. Obviously this isn’t an avenue I want to follow; I’m hoping this site will naturally percolate upwards as the #1 result for “Viet-Tam Luu”.

Anyway if you want to help me out, try clicking one of the following Google search links:

• “greymatter viet-tam luu“
• “links lateef radioactive weekly ars“
• “viet-tam luu CGL centipede“

My home phone has an answering machine that says, “… I never answer the phone, but I do return calls, so you know what to do… <beep!>” That way I can just screen calls and never have to pick up the phone when it rings. This works out well, since over 95% of the calls that come in to my home phone are from telemarketers; my friends know to call me on my mobile phone.

Now, most telemarketers just hang up when they hear my message (knowing darned well I would never return their call). But a particularly stupid one left a long-winded message on my voicemail today… for the second day in a row! I deleted both his messages without listening to them (other than the first couple seconds). Idiot.

Telemarketers suck. I’ll give a few of my favourite tips and tricks for dealing with them in a later entry…

Been doing some more work on fleshing out this site. I’ve started filling in the Projects section, though as you can see it’s only partly done at the moment.

Yes, I know the last few pages of photos haven’t been annotated yet. And yes, some of the photos are out of order.

Also put in a few links to friends’ web pages, in the Links section. I wish more of my friends had web sites. The way it looks know, you’d think I have almost no friends.

I’m updating the sidebar from time to time, whenever I think I have a new and/or interesting piece of music, television show, movie, book worth noting.

Artwork section still non-existent. Yes, I do have a few pieces of my own art to display… though I’m not sure exactly how I’m going to get pictures of them, since they’re at my parents’ or friends’. Anyway, with specimens of my artwork so few and far between, their value can only go up, right?

Home Automated Living makes a product that allows you to control lighting, appliances, etc. using voice commands. And it even talks back! When I finally get around to buying a place, this is the first thing I’m going to install… Now if that thing could control my TV and other electronics, I think I would get a microphone permanently attached to my head…

I’ve installed a number of X10 (source of those stupid webcam pop-under ads, and of endless spam… Brian Edwards must die!) modules in my apartment over the past couple years. Unfortunately the wiring in my pad is so shoddy that the control receiver can’t communicate with half the outlets, not to mention the lights, so a number of lights can’t be controlled. Also, I used to have the system wired to my computer, but the software wouldn’t work with Windows 2000 so I gave up on that. Now I just have a bunch of remote controls and wall keypad that can control the lights.

I used to have a motion sensor installed in my bedroom as well, but I found that if I moved around too much (like rolling over in my bed) the sensor would activate and turn on the lights… not really what I wanted.

A story on CNN’s website—about how over three thousand Pakistanis have sought citizenship in the fictional (?) country of Ladonia—caught my eye. I think Ladonia should be given its own top-level domain (TLD)… “.la” is already taken (Laos), but I think “.ld” would do nicely. Surely, if a country like Tuvalu can have its own TLD (“.tv”, which it has leased to Verisign(?) for $50M), why not Ladonia? I’ll have to write their Minister of Internet and get his take on the situation.

Speaking of Tuvalu, check out the CIA World Factbook entry on Tuvalu, population 10991. With as many Internet service providers (1) as radio stations (and one ISP more than television stations), I think that makes them—statistically speaking—the most Internet-savvy country on the planet…

I don’t think Ladonia has a national anthem either. I’m off to compose one…

Spent most of yesterday feeling dazed, feeling a bit blown away, and haunted, as if a wave had crashed over me unexpectedly. It had been months since I’d even thought about her, and the beauty, the realness of the dream brought with it a tremendous cascade of emotions that I’d thought buried.

Sometimes it feels as if I can’t get far away enough from my past.

… about a girl I briefly dated, and with whom I later was madly infatuated back when I was at Waterloo. It was an altered-reality kind of dream, one where everything seemed real and plausible enough that my mind was totally at ease with what was going on.

The dream took place (I think) shortly after—possibly on—our graduation day. We were at her place, sitting around and sipping drinks, and one thing I said to her stood out enough that I still remember it:

“My only regret about my time here at Waterloo is that I wasn’t more persistent in pursuing you. Some people think it’s romantic when a guy is persistent, but others think it’s creepy.”

We talked for a while and then she whispered in my ear a hint that she didn’t want me to go home that night. The dream concluded with us going to bed together. But as often happens to me, I woke up before the “act” itself… as if it somehow triggered an automatic reality check within my conscious mind.

For the most part I’ve made peace with my past—my mistakes, my regrets, and those I’ve left behind—but occasionally I see a hint that unconsciously (literally) I yearn for another chance at changing what happened….

Had the pleasure of having dinner at Masa’s last night. Their chef is Ron Siegel, notably famous for winning of the Iron Chef challenges.

We had the 9-course dégustation (tasting) menu which was generally excellent and stood up well against tasting menus I’ve had at The French Laundry, Aqua, Elizabeth Daniel, Picasso, and others.

I eventually resolved my CD burner troubles after I power-cycled the burner—it’s an external burner connected via FireWire (IEEE 1394) (no more SCSI cables as thick as my arm, thank you very much) and apparently it has a few little eccentricities. For example, it normally rips CDs at 24x to 48x speed (reaching maximum speed on the outermost tracks). But sometimes it gets into some weird state where it will only rip at 9x tops, until power-cycled or after ripping a certain amount of audio data (after which it suddenly kicks back into high gear).

The nice thing about it being a FireWire device, though, is that I can disconnect and reconnect it without rebooting my computer. (It sure would be nice not to need to reconnect it at all, though.)

My little home-office setup is a bit of cabling challenge. My computer itself is hidden inside an adjacent room (walk-in closet, actually) and I have one long USB cable going from it connecting to a USB hub under my desk, which then connects to all the input peripherals on my desk: mouse, keyboard, video camera, scanner, etc. Similarly I have one FireWire cable to connect my CD burner, one digital audio cable to my speakers, and one digital video cable to my flat-panel monitor.

The main reason my computer is in a separate room is that it’s a huge monster of a machine that generates about as much noise and heat as a small jet turbine. While I also like small, quiet, cute computers—for example I’m thinking about getting one of those new iMacs—I think the tendency to build biggest, baddest computer possible is a “guy thing”. “Geeky machismo” I guess you could call it.