Personal

Jun 28, 2003 — Got wireless today! It’s totally new to me, but not to most other people, so I won’t dwell on it. Anyway, I’m in bed, which means Penelope is in the chair and Alison’s got her arms all over my pillows. This laptop has a very loud hard drive, which I already knew, but which is a bit more of a problem in this context.

Jun 11, 2003 — I just finished watching Armageddon and it reminds me of an issue I have with the grammar of the Aerosmith/Dianne Warren song “Don’t Want to Miss a Thing.” The lyrics go “…don’t want to fall asleep / ‘cause I miss you babe / and I don’t want to miss a thing.”

Apr 20, 2003 — Yesterday was my 30th birthday. Alison threw me a surprise party (just the two of us) on Friday night and made me a bunny cake! Yesterday she gave me a bottle of really nice tequila, and I had some with breakfast ;-). My brother got me a book, and there are more gifts on the way that I don’t know what they are. Alison and I had a nice visit to our favorite boba tea place in Long Beach, then headed over to Anaheim to see the Angels play the Mariners, and I got a proper Angels hat. It’s made of really light, breathable material and it was very comfortable. It also represents some sort of turning point for me, as I do not change baseball allegience lightly, though eventually I guess I always do.

Apr 14, 2003 — This past week, my wife’s dissertation was aproved by Columbia’s dissertation office, meaning the printouts had the right margins, her paperwork made its way from the Art History department, her library fees were all paid, her account was in good standing, and 12 years of your typical bureaucratic wrangling has sorted itself out.

Apr 8, 2003 — My birthday’s coming up, so head on over to amazon.com and check out my wish list! :)

Mar 8, 2003 — So I guess I’ve made a mess of all my various weblogs. First there was a Movable Type blog in 2001, then a radio blog, then a new radio blog, and then this new Movable Type blog. I’m going to settle on this one, but all my old posts to the other blogs will just have to be lost unless I can muster the enthusiasm for scrounging them up somehow.

Mar 8, 2003 — Still working on Fabric of Reality, because I am a little lost in the chapter on quantum computing, which was the main topic I bought the book to read about. I’m sure I’ll figure it out eventually.

Mar 8, 2003 — Now that I’m finished American Gods, I’m just reading The Fabric of Reality by David Deutsch. It’s about physics, quantum computation, DNA, and lots of other topics, sort of unified into a really interesting and idiosyncratic world-view. David Deutsch is a father of quantum computing, so he knows what he’s talking about. I always prefer well-expressed personal viewpoints to bland, objective information.

Mar 8, 2003 — I just finished reading American Gods by Neil Gaiman. I enjoyed it, but it was a little slow. Basically it explores the idea (in fictional form) that gods from the various pantheons traveled to America with the settlers and started trying to eke their living here. In this day and age, it’s not easy to be a god, and they’re almost like pathetic people.

Mar 8, 2003 — Oh my, I haven’t posted for a long time.

Aug 14, 2002 — Test, test. Blah, blah, blah.

Aug 1, 2002 — We have proper internet hosting now, via the domain langmead.info. More soon.

May 17, 2002 — Alison and I are all set up in L.A.! We have an apartment on the beach, and two cars. We’re moving June 1. Here are some pictures.

May 7, 2002 — So I have progressed nicely in my quest to hear new music that I like. I bought two CDs! Blur’s greatest hits (or is it “best of?”) and Ben Folds Five (Whatever and ever amen).

Mar 26, 2002 — I need new music. For years I’ve been listening to a core group of bands: XTC, Beatles, Squeeze, Joe Jackson, various solo Beatles, R.E.M., Billy Joel and They Might Be Giants, with smaller amounts of the B-52’s, Indigo Girls, and a little Classical (mostly Mozart, Bach and Beethoven of course).

Mar 14, 2002 — I recently rented The Lord of the Rings in audiobook format, on CD, from Recorded Books. They make, sell, and rent audiobooks. When you rent, they send you the books in a box-within-a-box. The inner box is for sending it back, so there is very little hassle.

Mar 2, 2002 — I was thinking about Close Encounters of the Third Kind the other day. I was pretty young, so take this with a grain of salt, but here’s what I was thinking. At the beginning, a mood of chaos is set when as-yet-unintroduced high-ranking officials meet in a remote location where a World War II plane (boat?) has been found. They arrive in a helicopter, and part of the fun and tension of the scene is the landing of this loud helicopter. It really is exciting, because, you know, you don’t see helicopters land every day. These guys must really be important, and there must be quite a bit of urgency!

Feb 28, 2002 — There is a lot of buzz about a book called The Cluetrain Manifesto. I can’t tell if it’s about dotcoms, or about social forces in the Internet Age. But, they provided the whole book online, so I ciphoned it onto my Palm and I’m going to read it. I’ll keep you posted.

Feb 28, 2002 — Speaking of books, here is my reading list for the coming months: 1984, by George Orwell The Future Does Not Compute: Overcoming the Machines in our Midst, by Steve Talbott. (See also the FAQ for his excellent ongoing email newsletter “Netfuture.” The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, by Robert Heinlein Shadows of the Mind: A Search for the Missing Science of Consciousness, by Roger Penrose To Say Nothing of the Dog, by Connie Willis

Feb 28, 2002 — Alison came up with an interesting quote in her dissertation research on 12th century France: As I hear more and more about this time period from Alison, I see why she studies history. It sheds light forward onto our own time. Would you describe our current ways of thinking as “eschewing univocal interpretations,” because I wouldn’t. I forget who said the following but I agree and I guess so would the scholars of 1100: the older I get, the more I learn that not only is it okay to hold contradictory beliefs, but the deepest, most important elements of life are bound up in such opposing truths.

Feb 9, 2002 — I was really looking forward to the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympics tonight, but over the last few days I’ve been growing increasingly uneasy about what I might see there. As it turned out, after the initial voice-overs by Messrs. McKay (co-alum of my high school!) and Costas, I turned off the television. I’m only going to tune in when events I want to see are on.

Jan 29, 1999 — Note, this was written before I had a blog. I recovered it from the Internet Archive. Back in graduate school I had a “musings” section of my site and those essays are in the same spirit as this blog so I’ve added them with retroactive datestamps.

Apr 17, 1998 — Note, this was written before I had a blog. I recovered it from the Internet Archive. Back in graduate school I had a “musings” section of my site and those essays are in the same spirit as this blog so I’ve added them with retroactive datestamps.