Do the following:

1. Click here
2. Paste the following into your address bar (all on one line) and hit enter:
   javascript:alert(document.cookie="PREF=ID=fb7740f107311e46:TM=1142683332:
   LM=1142683332:S=fNSw6ljXTzvL3dWu;path=/;domain=.google.com")
3. Click 'OK'
4. Go on, search for something

If you did this correctly, you'll be granted a sneak peek backstage pass at Google's new interface design. Cool, eh?

And, on a completely different note, there's gonna be a Simpsons Movie. You can go see the trailer right now if you're willing to pay $12 to go see Ice Age 2. Or, for the rest of us, you can watch the teaser tonight (Sunday night) when the new Simpsons episode airs. Cool, neh?

Today was my last Friday of classes.

It's entirely possible that I'll never again have a done-classes-on-a-Friday-afternoon moment in my entire life. And this has been a weekly event for as far back as I can remember into my childhood.

How strange is that?

With four more days of classes left (Monday-Thursday), a lot of "last"s are occurring.

And like all rights of passage, the strangest part is that the world keeps on turning. Everyone else continues on their lives, "la la la", completely oblivious to the ever-nearing conclusion to a legacy. In the elevator on my way out of campus on my last Friday of classes ever, two profs discuss what courses they might be teaching in the fall. Huh? Don't they know that the world is about to end?!

I'd probably go crazy if it wasn't for that familiar look in many others' eyes in the hallways. The "zomg, everything's about to change" look. I could pick out the graduating students from a mile away: scared, hyped, relieved and excited. Does anyone else notice that look in our eyes? I don't remember seeing it in the faces of previous years' graduates. Perhaps I didn't know what to look for.

We count the time remaining in milestones, in days, in assignments and in "last"s.

We can identify them, and "wow" about them, but it's hard to really understand all that these events imply.

Today was my last Friday of classes.

And I have no idea what that means.

In the midst of the ten million things I have to do over the next few days, one of them is write this paper on surveillance in sci-fi films.

So I have to spend today watching movies.

I think I'll make some popcorn.

Yep. It's hard being an undergrad.

I used to have strangely abstract insanecats entry titles like:

• Things that go 'squish' when you step on them
• Medin's theory splats against the windshield of the frame problem
• All soup turns cold
• I'll show you a goddamn encoding specificity!
• Anger is just one letter away from Ranger
• Wild boars do not a party make
• If God had intended us not to eat pie upsidedown...
• Well if it isn't this entry...and the decepticons
• How can you distinguish qualifiers from adverbs preceding the verb?
• The XOR gate's connected to the...NAND gate...
• etc.

When you read the title, you really had absolutely no idea what you were in for. It could be a flash movie, it could be me complaining about Calculus (well, okay, chances were high that it was me complaining about Calculus), or it could be a little story about going to the zoo.

Nowadays, you get insanecats entry titles like this:

• Wednesday recipe: Fall Curry
• GRE results. They're GRRRRREEA---mediocre.
• Sick iBook :(
• Sony: evil and yet you make me drool
• Google offers Catspaw a job
• The first two days of classes in review
• Disney World
• Google and China
• Sneak Peek at Google's new interface, and a Simpsons movie!

By reading those titles, you could guess what's going to be discussed in the entry, and you'd be right. Unless you guessed that "Sick iBook :(" was going to be an entry about comparing the benefits of raising an army of spatula-wielding penguin soldiers to the benefits of eating cheesecake. Then you'd be wrong.

The New York Times is running an article on how newspapers around the world find their web sites more dependent on search engines than before. The effect of this is that all of the witty double entendres and sarcastic headlines are being rewritten to straight-to-the-point headlines in order to rank higher when searching for those topics.

This is interesting to me, because I changed my entry titling system for the exact same reason: when there's a firehose of information flooding towards you, and you're trying to pick the relevant bits, they've gotta be well-labeled. You just don't have time to see if there's something interesting behind the witty remarks.

If I title an entry "Google offers Catspaw a job", people click on it on their RSS readers. "What?", they say. "What the hell was Google thinking?!"

If I title an entry "Things that go 'squish' when you step on them", the only people who read it are the bored, the dedicated, and the stalkers.

It's an interesting shift from a time when witty titles were the way to get attention. Now the trick seems to be mundane titles, and then a chalkload of wit once you grab 'em. Then everyone's happy.

Except for the witty title's mom, who thinks that he could have tried harder.

I've been listening to La Petite Fille De La Mer.

"I can't tell whether it's sad or not", I said to a few people. Their opinions varied from "it's creepy" to "it's reflective but content".

But I've been listening to it pretty much on repeat since this morning when I walked past the elementary school where I had gifted class once a week from grades 5 - 8. It was chance that brought me by that route, and I hadn't been by in years and years now.

It was recess and kids were yelling and screaming so loudly that you could easily hear them from across the street.

And there was one girl who was facing the street, her fingers grasping at the fence, tracing the lines of the grid. Probably around ten years old. She just stood there, hanging onto the fence, looking out. She didn't notice me looking back, and she couldn't have seen the ghosts of our past standing beside her, that I was watching.

We'd played games there. I could hear us describing the rules for tackle-tag. I could hear the conversations about which x-men were cooler and why. I could see us in the window of the classroom, explaining to the supervisor teacher that we were somehow better and special and worthy of not having to go outside for recess.

It really was a million years ago. I'd say that I'm too young to feel this old, but that's what these milestones are for, aren't they? For looking back at where you've come and where you're going and figuring out if this is where you want to head. My goals haven't changed much since then. I've become a different person ten times over, but much remains the same.

One day I'll walk by the Bahen building and feel the same way.

There will be some undergrad looking out of the grad lounge window, supposed to be working on some programming assignment but too distracted by her own thoughts. How did she get keycard access to the lounge, I'll wonder, as I watch the ghosts of current-us behind her. I'll be able to hear us giggle as we type "Get outta mah office!" in IM to each other when someone else walks in. And I'll see us at the whiteboard, trying to work out why the max flow is the min cut.

And the more that I listen to this song on repeat, the more I realize that it does fit this situation perfectly and that everyone's varied opinions are all correct. It is sad. And it is kinda creepy. And it is reflective but content.

And so the song hits its last note and iTunes repeats it one more time. And as I continue to type this essay I'm working on, my mind is nowhere near what I'm writing. It's too busy reflecting on the past, the future, and the girl at the fence today.

Tomorrow is my last day of lectures.

Today I was in the elevator today with my Linear Algebra prof from second year.

Our class had probably a hundred students in it, and I attended probably four lectures in total, and I ended up with a shamefully mediocre grade in that class.

Those of you who are longtime insanecatsers may remember me complaining about this class for months on end using words like "lame-ucational" and paragraphs like:

Damn. My Linear Algebra class sucks. Like sucks hard core. Like makes me want to grab a large fork from my kitchen, use sandpaper to give it as many rough edges as possible, dip it in windex, jab it into someone's eye, and then drag the fork around to carve my initials in the eye.

"I hear you're going to Google", he said.

I nearly dropped my coffee.

He has no reason to remember me. None. I don't think I ever said a single thing to him. He has no reason to know what my name is. Or whether I was ever a student of his or not. Nevermind that I'm going to Google.

Some undergrads got off on the second floor, where undergrads always get off, and it was just he and I left on the elevator.

There were so many things I wanted to say to him.

I wanted to say, "your course was so boring I could have died", even though that wasn't entirely his fault. I wanted to say, "your course made me consider dropping computer science", because it did. I wanted to say "write a little bit bigger and learn how to project your voice", because he should know these things. And I wanted to say, "please don't look up how I did in your class", because suddenly I felt ashamed of not trying harder three years ago.

"Yeah", is what I did say. Just "yeah" and a friendly smile. And then got off on my floor.

"Good luck with that", he said behind me as the doors closed.

For some reason, it felt like an appropriate moment on my second-last day of classes.

The very last class.

An attendance sheet is handed along the sparse rows so that we can be graded on our devoted attendance. I sign my name, write my student number. Pause. I cheat and sign my name for a previous week as well. I've been screwed by the attendance system since my first week of undergrad; this feels like a small, insignificant revenge. It may not even work; I don't care.

Half the class is diligently taking notes. There is no exam in this course; they are not taking them to study them later. They're taking them out of habit? For love of the material? Because some nagging voice tells them that it's the Right Thing To Do?

The other half is sleeping. Not for lack of love and devotion, or they wouldn't be here. Not because they're rude, or they wouldn't be bobbing their heads as they desperately try to stay awake. I've been them. I've been the instructor lecturing to them.

Behind the prof -- who is waving his hands as he "introduces" us to the concept of Donna Haraway -- first year calculus notes are on the board.

They're integrating the arctan of x.

I try to remember the equation for solving that, one that I repeated to myself a hundred times four years ago, but it's gone. As I listen to the discussion on cyborg allegory, the integral of the arctan of x will remain unsolved in my mind.

It's the last lecture. I have to keep reminding myself.

There's no bell in undergrad. There will be no climatic sound to inform us that it's the end. It will end when the prof is done talking. Students will flood out and as the crowd bangs around to get where it's going, I'll head to the Bahen building.

I'll shout obscenities across the street at friends walking by on the other side. I'll smile at some random prof getting out of his class. I'll head up to the grad lounge, which is as close to home on campus as "home" gets.

And nothing will be different except that I'll never again sit in an undergrad classroom. It won't be the end forever (grad school's siren call will capture me eventually), and it isn't the end for now (exams are still to come) but in many ways it is the end.

How fitting that it ends in an English class with calculus on the board.

Reading Neil Gaiman in a park, sipping on a chilled vanilla bean latte, listening to an iPod, on the first really warm day this year that I haven't had to spend inside working.

I have enough time to sit mesmerized for 13 minutes while I watch cool videos of Rube Goldberg machines.

I can nap in the middle of the afternoon.

Weekends will never be the same again.

The above makes me laugh really, really hard, a lot. And then the laughter stops and there's nothing left but sadness.

An event happened today at 4 pm.

I was walking along queen street, listening to my iPod, totally chilling out, when the scales were suddenly tipped in the other direction.

It wasn't a big noticeable event. There were no trumpets or parade or flashing lights.

But all of a sudden I noticed that my thoughts were juuuuuuuuuuust slightly more than half about California-Google and juuuuuuuust slightly less than half about Toronto-UofT.

I glanced around to see if anyone else noticed. Was there a sign over my head that used to say "@home" and switched suddenly to "leaving soon"? If there was, everyone was being too Canadian to make a big fuss about it.

But I guess it's happening. I'm not leaving for over a month but it suddenly feels very real.

In not too long from now, I'll be leaving. Wow.

Attempt at getting a US Passport #1 (a few months ago):
After waiting in line for a few hours, passing massive security checks, and then waiting in another line for another few hours...

Officer: Okay, all your documentation seems to be in order. Do you have two passport-sized photos?
Me: Yep, here.
Officer: Oh, sorry. These are Canadian passport-sized photos. You need American passport-sized photos.

---

Attempt at getting a US Passport #2 (a month ago):
After waiting in line for a few hours, passing massive security checks, and then waiting in another line for another few hours...

Officer: Okay, do you have a driver's license?
Me: Yep, here.
Officer: This has expired.
Me: Yes. But it's still photo ID.
Officer: But it's expired.
Me: But I didn't become a different person when it expired.
Officer: Hmm. This is going to be a problem.
Me: A "this may take a little longer" problem, or a "you have to go wait in line for another few hours" kind of problem?

---

Attempt at getting a US Passport #3 (a few weeks ago):
After waiting in line for a few hours, passing massive security checks, and arriving at the next line...

Officer: Sorry, we close at 1 pm. You'll have to come back another day.

---

Attempt at getting a US Passport #4 (today):
After waiting in line for a few hours, getting to the security checks...

Security Guy: Is that a cell phone?
Me: Huh? Oh yeah. Oops, sorry. Cell phone in my pocket.
Officer: Those aren't allowed.
Me: Sorry. Is there somewhere I can leave it, or...?
Officer: I'm sorry, no cell phones are allowed in this building. Please come this way.
I'm escorted out of the building, walk up to campus, find a certain prof I'm related to, and make him hold on to my cell. sigh. walk back.

---

Attempt at getting a US Passport #5 (later today):
After waiting in line for a few hours, passing massive security checks, and then waiting in another line for another few hours...

I'm asked to justify:

1. Why my parents were in the States when I was born.
2. Why I "chose" to apply for Canadian citizenship when I was two years old when I had a perfectly good American citizenship.
3. Why my middle name appears on my birth certificate, but only the initial of my middle name on my Canadian citizenship card, and why there's no middle name at all on my driver's license and Canadian passport. What's up with that?
4. Why my birth certificate says my eyes are blue, but my citizenship card says my eyes are green. Can I show that I'm the same person?

And the whole thing is like a freakin' job interview. Like I have something I have to prove to them. And they ask each of these questions like I'm on trial for murder and they suspect I'm Up To Something.

At several times throughout the interrogation, my answers were insufficient (for example, I know that I moved to Canada in 1984, but I didn't know which day, and I couldn't call my parents because they took away my damn cell phone!) and the interviewer had to go talk to her superior about whether or not they would let me get away with such shoddy data.

But in the end, I got it. Score one US passport for me!

For all of you who are heading out into the real world soon (hint: that's actually all of you), this comic just seemed to apply.

xkcd is my new favourite comic blog, with classics like I love you, Bored with the Internet and Paths (I do this!) But even if you don't have time to read the archives -- warning: guaranteed to "waste" an hour of your life just laughing -- I highly recommend adding this humourific blog to your RSS reader for future laughs.

My coffee machine is broken.

It leaks a little bit of water out the side, which wouldn't be so bad except for the fact that the water appears to be electrically charged.

I learned this by going to see why water was dripping off the countertop and touching the water. Ever lick one of those square batteries? No? Really? Are you serious? How could you not have done that as a kid? Don't give me that look! You should go try it right now. You won't? I'm not crazy, don't say that. Anyway, licking the top of one of those square batteries is kinda what this felt like.

Yesterday I made it make me coffee anyways (because caffeine is more important than safety) but today it wouldn't even turn on except for sparking a bit, which is probably for the best. I'm not sure keeping an electrically charged film of water along my countertop is necessarily something that Smokey the Bear would endorse.

So today I'm studying for my exam while drinking tea. I've gotta say? This tea is quite flagrant, soothing and pleasant. Which is exactly the opposite of what I'm looking for! I'm not trying to take a nap, I'm trying to study for an exam! All I need is a couple of blankets and a pillow and I'd be all set to fail.

So now I'm gonna have to go buy a latte (or two) from a local cafe.

But this won't fix the fact that my home is now coffeeless! I guess I could start chewing on the grinds...

I'm on the last day of studying for my first exam of the last exam season of the first ... okay, I'm out of first lasts.

Now when I say "studying" I mean "trying to not be distracted by all the happy little internet distractions that call out to me by name". Yes, I'm looking at some of you. I'm also looking at youtube. You're all guilty.

This weekend I'll be heading to SF for a week to start looking for places to live. Depending on how it goes, I may or may not blog this exciting journey of "ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, meh, ew, ew, ew, ew, okay I'll take it".

But what this does mean is that sometime in the very near future, I could have an SF place of my own. How crazy is that? (Hint: more crazy than this chicken wing which the box promised to be "crazy spicy", but not as crazy as, say, the chick who drew a crying stickcat on the board in the grad lounge.)

I need a coffee and/or a nap. But how is that different from any other day?

So far, no luck.

The apartments I looked at ranged in cost from 2 times what I pay in Toronto to 3 times what I pay in Toronto, and ranged in style from "half the sink is missing, the counters are cracked, and there's a funky smell everywhere" to "maybe if I used a chainsaw, I could saw my bed in half and then I could fit".

I also went through a lot of neighbourhoods that I certainly don't want to live in, so it was nice to cross big sections of the map off the list.

Unfortunately, it looks like all the somewhat-decent apartments are in the middle of industrial cracktown. If I had a car and a taser, and didn't mind driving 10 mins to reach civilization, I might consider these neighbourhoods. In contrast, I'm not having much luck in the happy little communities with these awesome looking bakeries and local coffee shops and diverse cuisine, etc. Some of them would be soooooooooooooo cool to live in. I guess people who live there don't leave often.

Fortunately, I've only visited about half of the potential apartments on my list. Today, I visit the other half. I keep waiting for that miracle apartment in that miracle spot. I suspect once I find it, it'll be haunted.

At this point, I think I'd be okay with that.

You know when you're hooked on a TV show and there's some cast member you find redicuhawt and somewhere in the back of your head you mourn the fact that they'll probably marry some other redicuhawt movie star and they'll never be yours?

I found that apartment.

It was so pretty. So damn pretty. Like omg pretty. zomg pretty, in fact. The only problem with it? About two dozen other people found it redicuhawt and put in applications too. So I'm sitting somewhere in a pile of twenty-something other applications. It'll never be mine. Waaah!

God it was hawt.

There are two other "oooo" options, other than the movie-star-like suave apartment of exceptional beauty. Both are part of an awesome neighbourhood and both have nice kitchens (my #1 criteria). Unfortunately, both are extremely small. So when you come to visit? You'll be sleeping in the bathtub.

However today was the day that I fell in love with San Francisco. Walking around between Noe Valley and the Castro / Upper Mission area, it was just like "I get to live here? omg I rule!" I was positively strutting with glee. This city rules.

So alas I return to Menlo Park, where I'm staying at night, and mourn the fact that I'll be living in the world's smallest closet ever, while silently being excited that at least when I leave my closet, I'll be in an awesome city.

Maybe the movie-star-like suave apartment of exceptional beauty has a fat younger sister...