replaced by every day

I found out last week that my old comments provider (Blogback) is shutting down next month, so I decided to switch to Blogger's built-in comments. I know, I'm a little late on the bandwagon here, but I had tried using Blogger's commenting system back when they first released it, but at that time they required a Blogger account and they also didn't support pop-ups, so I stuck with my old comments. Since then they've fixed both things, so now I'm pretty happy with the way my comments work. I like that everything's all within one system, and Blogger gives me the ability to delete comments (in the case of evil spammers).

As far as I know, there wasn't any automated way to import comments from Blogback into Blogger, so the only way that I could think of to save my old Blogback comments was to go back and manually re-enter them all into Blogger myself. I considered just letting those old comments go, and was chatting with Ethan on AIM about this:

jleepig: eh, that's ok, i don't have that many comments anyway
ethan: no, you have to make an effort!!!

I laughed and was like, okay okay I'll do it manually! But while going back through my entries for the last couple months and copying the accompanying comments into a notepad file, I realized that I had a lot more comments than I thought I did.

jleepig: huh. i'm glad i didn't just delete my comments. i had forgotten how nice some of the older ones are
ethan: of course!
jleepig: thanks, ethan :D
ethan: I never delete anything.
ethan: when in doubt, I keep several copies.
jleepig: lol

And what's more, I don't even have as many comments as I should; one of Blogback's limitations was that it only saved your last 50 comments or something like that, so I've lost all my comments on entries older than five months or so. When I go back and read some of these older posts, though, I'm surprised by how many of your comments I remember anyway, even if they were lost -- for example, I know I got several comments on this entry about ECE4000, comments about how "you made me laugh" and "I totally remember having to do this when I took ECE4000 too." So I'm kind of sad that none of those comments are there anymore.

But at least I've saved your recent ones. And in this whole moving-comments process, I was reminded (again!) about why I keep on writing in this weblog, even when I feel like I don't have anything exciting to say and only, like, five people read this anymore. It's because even if I don't have anything exciting to say, those five people will still read this. And they'll care enough to leave me comments every once in a while. So for that, I'm thankful.

Posted by Jennifer at 02:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

The inevitable question I get these days is, "So, how is Stanford/Palo Alto/California?" Most of the time my short answer is something along the lines of, "Well, the weather is great," which, I've realized, is not an entirely satisfactory response for some people. Tonight we had dinner with some friends from Tech who have been in the Bay Area for a couple of months, and I fielded that question a couple of times. When I gave my typical noncommittal response, one of the guys we were eating with raised his eyebrows.

I tried to explain, "Well, we just haven't had a chance to get out and explore the area that much; Alan has classes..." I paused, then diverted the question back. "What about you?"

"Oh, I love it here," he said enthusiastically, though with a touch of incredulity, as if to say, how could you not?

Of course there are plenty of things to love about California. People are justified in gushing about the weather here, because well, it's just awesome. Our apartment is pretty nice -- the kitchen and bathroom are both a little small, but for the most part, we have a considerable amount of space, sturdy furniture, and a patio area. We have laundry machines one floor below us, and they're free! Also, they're high-efficiency front-loading washers and dryers, so you use less detergent and less energy. We have our own mailbox within our building and a trash chute just across the hall, so I don't even have to go outside to take out the trash. Stanford has a much more comprehensive recycling program than Tech ever did -- they take plastic bags! glass! corrugated cardboard! It makes me so happy!

Also, the food scene here is supposedly awesome, and I haven't been proven wrong on this one yet -- there are lots of small, non-chain restaurants serving every type of food you can think of, and so far the few restaurants we've been to have been really good. The grocery stores are nice, too: the nearby Safeway has a good selection of fruit and produce, and the other day we checked out Trader Joe's, a small organic grocery store chain that still offers reasonable prices. (We bought mango salsa! and strawberries! and the guy at the checkout counter used paper instead of plastic!) And it's beautiful out here. It amazes me to know that just outside the city there's rolling hills, and if you drive a couple hours in any direction you can reach mountains, or the beach. I haven't gotten a chance to really pore over our guidebook for northern California, but it seems like there is so much to do -- granted, we haven't done much of it yet. But so far we've hiked around in the Palo Alto foothills and spent a day in San Francisco, and best of all we didn't have to drive more than an hour to get there -- something that I can't say about Atlanta.

But for every awesome thing, there are also things that take getting used to. Gas is more expensive. Actually, everything is more expensive. It never gets above like, 80 degrees here and it hasn't rained the entire time I've been here, but that also means I'm always cold -- at night, when it can get down to below 60, you can usually find me curled up in long flannel pants and my Georgia Tech sweatshirt. Living with Alan means that I'm left to puzzle over things like his insistence on hanging his towel over the shower curtain rod (so that I have to move it every time I want to take a shower), as opposed to on the towel rack or on the hook behind the bathroom door. It's strange living here at Stanford but not being a student -- I still haven't seen much of its sprawling, 8,000-acre campus -- and stranger still to be living in couples housing, which makes me feel simultaneously old (because, dude, it's couples housing) and young (because, whoa, some of our neighbors have kids). I've accompanied Alan to a few law school events, but when you don't have classes or professors to talk about, what's left? Being on Pacific Standard Time means that my favorite Food Network program, Good Eats, comes on at 4 and 11 p.m. instead of 7 p.m. and 2 a.m., which suits my TV-watching habits much better -- but it also means that after 10 p.m. most of my east coast friends have gone to bed... though there are still a few good men who are willing to stay up until four in the morning -- EST, that is -- to chat and play Literati with me online. :)

It just takes a little getting used to, that's all.

Posted by Jennifer at 04:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)