A blog entry a day keeps the guilt demons away: For fans of self-help books and unexpected self-referentiality, take a look at How to Read How-To and Self-Help Books: Getting Real Results from the Advice You Get

I just got hold of the BAM/PFA calendar for July and August. Coming attractions include CZECH HORROR AND FANTASY ON FILM. It is series like these that used to make me think that "I'm a high-brow person but this is even more high brow than I can ever aspire to!" (I guess times have changed, being a hopeless addict to the wonderful archives that are only hundreds of feet from my office.)

Yesterday, Krista, Don (friends of mine) and I went out on an excursion of the new
BART line that goes out to SFO. It was fun to get out, especially to do so with
friends. I wasn't sure how many would show up for a new BART line -- does one
have to be a BART geek to trek out there? I was pleased to see families do the
BART tour -- I hope that this bodes well for a new generation of BART riders.
(Get them while they are young!)

The central disappointment was the lack of interesting developments around
the new station -- at least the parking lot around the Milbrae station did not
strike me as an attractive destination -- unlike what I understand the Fruitvale
Transit Village to be. Maybe it doesn't make a lot of sense to make the
end of the line a destination spot; it'd have to incredibly hot to get folks
to travel about an hour to reach the station.

At any rate, access to SFO is the main attraction; looking forward to using
it soon (providing the hours are right.) I just downloaded the new Palm-based
BART schedule. I realized yesterday that I didn't have a schedule for the
new station.

See the SF Chronicle coverage of the tour date of BART for something more journalistic. Darn, I missed being on the train with Nancy P.....

I have tons of stuff to do at home today but I was thinking of taking the BART tour of its new lines to the San Francisco Airport: "Saturday, June 21 from approximately 3 p.m. to 8 p.m., BART will be offering free rides on its new San Francisco Airport line. Riders wishing to tour the new line and its facilities will be able to ride free between the new South San Francisco Station and Millbrae Station, or into the BART Airport Station, making all station stops."

I should have blogged in the early morning, when I had the energy and the time and the right ideas. But the day was full, and the time was short, and the drive to get stuff done was pushing hard, relentlessly. It was a good day -- no, really it was a great day. How many get to sit around and dream big dreams for a living and have the great fun of chasing those dreams? But it didn't feel like a good day while I was in the thick of it all. Too many masters, just one slave.

I'm thankful for the evening, for the cessation of conscious striving. Dinner was a blessing, communion with my beloved housemates. Tonight we met a prospective housemate, a rare treat. Later this evening, the newspaper lay open for evening contemplation as we talked about our days. I said I wanted to blog, to write something before I slept tonight. But what would that be?

From 06.16.2003 - Can money buy happiness? UC Berkeley researchers find surprising answers:

"Perhaps making a lot of money in your job can actually cause you to question why you are working at the particular job you have, even if you chose the job for intrinsic reasons," Malka said. "There's a substantial psychological literature showing that receiving monetary rewards for doing a fun task can make the task seem less enjoyable. This past research suggests that your sense of how fulfilling and personally rewarding you find a task is very fragile, and money can shake this delicate sense of enjoyment."

"Individuals have a fundamental psychological need to feel as though their actions are freely chosen," the authors wrote. "In other words, we all need to feel that we are not just doing the work for the money, and intrinsically motivated individuals need to feel this even more so," Chatman added.

A quote from A Blogger's Big-Fish Fantasy that resonates with my thoughts on blogging (blog daily; keep in mind that my parents can be reading what I write):

If quality is the ultimate reader magnet, what makes a blog great? One ingredient is to write daily, according to Mr. Sifry, who said Technorati's rankings showed that daily bloggers tended to draw more readers.

Ms. Hourihan said she made postings to her blog (www.megnut.com) as if she were writing for a small group of readers, while being aware that a larger group might end up reading it. "My guiding principle is always to write with my grandparents in mind," she said. "It keeps me from being too personal or too technical or too complainy."

How do you deal with what you read and learn in your local newspaper? My household has subscribed to the San Francisco Chronicle for years. For a while, one of my housemates also subscribed to The New York Times -- which I much prefered but found to be too expensive. I typically read The Chronicle over breakfast. If I'm out of the house for breakfast, I don't tend to read the paper that day -- the Chronicle is almost always a morning-only companion for me. I sometimes wonder whether this means that reading the Chronicle is mostly a waste of time -- like channel surfing or mindless web browsing.

Still, I learn stuff when I read the paper. And they certainly provoke various reactions in me.

Articles that make me think that I should watch my bank very closely: Banks defeat privacy bill yet again / Speier vows to put stricter measure on state ballot and Wells dishing out bank data

Article that makes me think that the current administration is really as bad as I have suspected:
E. J. Dionne's Framing the issue and the lastest column by Robert Scheer: "What Did He Know and When Did He Know It?" (no permalink yet)

An article that makes me want to organize a group of friends to go to the Oakland museums: Powerful glimpses of black history in Oakland exhibition

Something that helps me think about what I can do for the many homeless in Berkeley: John Carroll's Well, sure, a house can be a home, about the Berkeley Food and Housing Project

A techno-lust inducing piece: Handspring unveils Treo 600 handheld / Wireless device to be available in the fall

Forcing myself to respond to what I read, I hope, redeems some of my morning time. (But isn't it just enough that I have fun reading the Datebook?)

It's about 10:30pm now and I am dead tired. I will go to bed soon. This is probably the worse time to blog since I am not thinking terribly clearly. Yet I don't want another day to pass with adding something to my personal blog.

When I'm not in front of my computer, my mind races with ideas for my blog. But right now, I'm at a loss as to what to write -- save this self-referential drivel.

Just got the latest issue of The New York Review. Started reading Freeman Dyson's review of James Gleick's new book Isaac Newton. (Quite fitting to have a great physicist review a book about the greatest physicist of all time....) I'm also looking forward to reading Clifford Geertz's second part of his megareview of new books on Islam. Indeed, I might read it in bed tonight. I'll read the review and think about the new books -- though I am getting small hints that what I'm really after will not be found in the books. Not quite sure what I'm looking for though.

I hope that all of you out there are having a great time celebrating Father's Day -- as a father yourself or as someone who has a father. Since I sent my Dad a card a few days ago, it probably hasn't arrived in Toronto yet. It's not the usual type of card I send -- it's actually sillier and more sentimental than usual. But I hope he'll like it.

I'll give him a call in a few hours, wishing him a wonderful Father's Day, hoping that I'll be able to convey even a small part of how much I love him.