nohat.net

After the slash–that’s David Friedland’s web site in Japanese. Read: debiddo furidorando no webbusaito. If you have a Japanese input method activated on your computer you can type it in yourself, just be sure to switch from katakana to hiragana for the ‘no’. And to those who ask why do I put the title of my web site in Japanese I say “because I can”.

(Update 2005-09-25): I removed the thingie: it used to say: nohat.net / デビッド･フリドランドのウェッブ･サイト : David Friedland world

$200 later my computer is working and it has all four hard drives that once lived inside all inside and on and purring happily. That’s right, 120GB + 80GB + 20GB + 20GB = 140GB of data that I have NO IDEA HOW I’M GOING TO BACK UP. It seems these days the cheapest method of backup available is, well, another hard disk. Oh, and I made a total gaffe on quarry-l; fortunately the only feelings that were possibly hurt were my own. I’m so glad I have friends who don’t mercilessly rub stuff in forever. At least I hope they don’t.

I had a very strange interview at Best Buy on Sunday. I was just interested in a part-time position, and they called me the next day after I filled out their online application wanting to schedule an interview. The interview was strange because it took place in a room with multiple people in it and coming in and out and interrupting the interviewer. Perhaps it was a test of my ability to stay focused in chaos. The interviewer didn’t really ask many questions about my qualifications and seemed to be surprised when I offered him my résumé, which now extends to two pages per the advice of my cousin Sarah. It was also strange because it took place on a Sunday. After the brief interview he said they would call me later that night after they made their decision. It’s now Monday evening and I still haven’t heard from them. I don’t suppose I’ll be getting a job offer, which is just as well, because I have decided a job right now would be a hindrance to my greater effort which I must expend on my work.

I installed Panther a couple weeks ago. It was great at first, but then it started getting unstable. My computer actually hard crashed, which it never ever did under Jaguar. So I tried to do a clean install, and my computer wouldn’t even boot from either the Panther or Jaguar install discs. I tried swapping out everything I could and still no luck. My computer was busted. So I took it to Baka computer repair on Thursday, paid $65 and am hoping to hear back from them. They said 2-3 (business) days so I expect to hear from them on Monday. If not, I’m going to call them. I hope my computer isn’t totally busted because I can’t really afford to buy a new one right now, and I can’t just use my laptop (from whence this message) because all my data is on the hard disks in my desktop. As soon as I can afford it, I’m getting a new desktop, but in the meantime, I’m suffering here.

One of my many third cousins, but one of only two who also live in Ithaca, Miriam, is having her Bat Mitzvah on Saturday. Her father Jim has been very sick for the past several weeks with flu I think. He had even been hospitalized, but he’s home now and it seems he’ll be well enough to attend the Bat Mitzvah. There was a scare that he wouldn’t be well enough to go, and Mariana asked me if it would be possible to have a streaming video from the ceremony to their bedroom so Jim might watch from bed. I said, yes, assuming there is high bandwidth internet at both places. I said I would be happy to set it up if need be, but let’s hope that we won’t need to. It would have been a bittersweetly interesting project to undertake, but it is good I don’t have to.

Now I have to go buy Miriam her present. I think every 13-year-old should have an excellent dictionary, so that’s what I’ll get her. I hope she doesn’t read my web site and ruin the surprise.

I met two cousins of mine last night named Tibeau and Perrine (I think that is how they spell their names). They live in Montpelier, France and are 11 and 9 years old. They were both absolutely charming. They are my third cousins, and their father James is my dad’s second cousin. They are a very interesting and amiable family all around, and it is always exciting to meet more foreign relatives, although James is American. I hope to meet them all again. And last week I met my second cousin once removed Michael Kay from Atlanta, another new relative for me.

Not sure what it is exactly that my company does, but we sure do have a swank logo.

I went with Diego this afternoon to a “reading” of his and some of the others in the department’s pieces. All the pieces were for violin, cello, clarinet, and piano. I liked most of them, and it was really interesting to see the interactions between the composers and the musicians. The musicians made suggestions about how the scores might be improved, and the composers indicated where the musicians didn’t play the pieces quite like they wanted.

Unfortunately, with some pieces, I find my mind wanders partway into the piece and I would start thinking about all kinds of other things that have nothing to do with the music. I haven’t quite figured out why I do that with some pieces but not others. Overall I find the music to be hard to appreciate. I don’t mean that I think it’s bad, but simply that I don’t have the musical knowledge necessary to fully appreciate the pieces. It kind of frustrates me but I think it is somewhat symptomatic of the genre of music. Most people simply aren’t capable of appreciating it.

Got OS X 10.3 Running on my desktop last night. My favorite feature so far is the new character palette. And the Font Book. I’ve already begun sorting fonts. Makes me wish I was still doing print work. Maybe I still can, because Miriam B. called me earlier this week about possibly doing Ryan’s siddur for his bar mitzvah. Haven’t done a bar mitzvah prayer book, since, well, my own, in 1994-95. Could be exciting. I really miss doing print design. It’s so satisfying. The web really has ruined typography. And I saw they redid an old building in downtown Ithaca: The Gateway Center or something, and they carved the name of the building into the facade. It would look nice, but they carved it in Helvetica! Bah! Oh well.

My job comes to an end on October 31. It was a lot of fun, but it is time for me to move on. I plan to leave Ithaca by the end of the year. Where to? Probably California, but who knows? If you are aware of any positions available in text-to-speech software development, let me know. Thanks.