Capricious Me

I guess now that the paperwork’s been sent in, I can say with certainty that my job hunt is done. I’ll be working for Yahoo after graduation!

Next checkbox: Dissertation.

Tony’s ok!! :) As if some earthquake could take him unawares… psh.

Time flies.

Grace & Anita came visit for a few days. Grace will be back to spend Christmas with me in sunny California.

The car’s pretty neat. I’ve been getting really good mileage, like consistently close to 50mpg… Drove to Palo Alto and back with a few trips to Sacramento airport from Davis on one tank of gas. It’s pretty cool… And it still has that cancer inducing new car smell. Alas, the Davis dust settles faster than I can scrub.

Major ones:

• Saw Maroon 5 live in concert, thanks to Mike.
• Had a visit from Anita :)
• Proud new owner of espresso machine. currently enjoying Peet’s Arabian Mocha Java blend. Almost done with that bag and moving on to italian roast next.
• Won a bag of rice from spinning the wheel at Mikuni’s on my birthday. Wooo! A Bag of Rice! (Seriously, with the price of rice going up, that’s an AWESOME prize. The server tried to tempt me away from it with a BEER GLASS. As if a Mikuni’s branded beer glass could trump a bag of rice. Pshaw.)
• Baked a very chocolatey cake. Not as good as what I remember from my childhood… but still yummy. Finished it off tonight with some green tea ice cream and matcha powder.

Koala here. Pictures here.

( Last day! Shopping, haircuts! )

I’m back in Palo Alto for another two days before I leave for Japan and Korea.

I drove back most of the way, with Mike sitting in the passenger seat risking life and limb to make sure I didn’t freak out or do anything bad. This was my first long distance trip on the freeway. I probably should have done something like this as a teenager, but driving never did and still doesn’t hold any interest for me. I still don’t like to drive.

Do people really find driving aimlessly relaxing?

Tomorrow I’m to pick up some groceries from Ranch 99 when Mike and I go to Cupertino village for lunch. We’ll make a quick trip to Stanford shopping center where I’ll head straight to Travelex and avoid other distractions. :-P I’m bringing him home to finish season 4 of the Wire and have dinner. (We’ll have to put off season 5 until we’re both done with summer internships, alas!) Sarabi will be so excited to see him, because she knows he’ll give in to her begging eventually. Mwahahhaa only my mother can tell Sarabi “no” and have my not-so-little puppy obey.

Back in Palo Alto for a brief stay to house and dog-sit. My parents are sending my little sister off to college (UCSD) and are planning to stay in San Diego for a couple of days as the much yearned for, well deserved vacation they need yet have never taken.

So here I am… back from walking Sarabi (who is as cute as ever and still likes to drink from water fountains. hehe) and ready to work.

Davis is too hot. It makes me want to live with the penguins.

It’s getting harder and harder to be open and bare my soul via this blog. As I get older and more entrenched in security I get more paranoid and less eager to share all but the superficial details of life with a world of strangers connected to the web. (Plus, I know you read this, Mom and Dad.)

That said… let’s go on to the banal details now. Summer’s here, and it’s unbearably hot in Davis. Luckily, this new apartment is rather cool so I’m not roasting as long as I’m here. I’m finally unpacked and all settled in, except I still have to connect my desktop computer to the internet.

This summer, I’m determined to learn to make desserts. And cook a lot more, which probably requires that I shift my schedule forward a few hours so i don’t drive my roommates crazy. It’s annoying to go to lab and the come home and go back again though, because Davis is disgustingly hot until maybe 8 or 9pm, at which point it turns pretty chilly.

A comment at Bruce Schneier’s blog regarding phishing and Harry Potter fans has a fairly plausible point, and I can easily see avid Harry Potter fans (the majority of which I’m assuming are fairly young) clicking on links that promise spoilers, downloads, notification of new content, etc, but instead deliver malware. The “beauty” of social engineering attacks online is that you just have to have an inkling about what people want, and somewhere, someone in the world will want it… and those who aren’t so keen or educated about security, like say… the young fans of Harry Potter, are bound to try and click.