Reminder:  God is watching… No, this is for real. The Vatican released driving commandments. Even I had to double check because it sounded like an article from The Onion. They actually recommend reciting the rosary while driving. Apparently it isn’t distracting. Hmm. Not sure about that, but I’m not going to test it out. The SF Chronicle is giving readers an opportunity to submit their own commandments. I didn’t see anything about swearing at other drivers while driving.

I had an unexpected call from a girlfriend last night. We met up to go dancing. We found outselves back at the country bar. It’s not so bad. It is quite comfortable and large. Dancing there isn’t like being a sardine. I think it was a slow night or else we sat in the wrong place. she anted to sit so we could watch the dance floor, but you have a much better chance of meeting new characters if you sit near the dance floor. We finally moved, and yes we met some characters. I got in a couple of slow dances with a young cute guy. Gotta love those young bucks. WooHoo!

It seemed like a slow night really. Not a lot of picking up going on. A lot of watching though. There was little in entertainment (watching the inept try to meet). We really have to go out again. We had a good time.

Well, now this isn’t something I do often, but the opportunity arose and I grabbed it. So it was suggested that we go to the Saddle Rack. She was bringing another friend. With much trepidation, I decided it might be fun to do something a little different. It’s a dance club, but country.

For me, this is a fate worse than death. I left the Midwest and happily got away from all things country. I avoided like the plague (really) when I lived in places where country music was on nearly ever radio channel. Here, there is only one country music channel on the radio (might be two by now).

I don’t even know the dances. Although I did see them swing dancing to country music. Who knew? I was asked if I danced West Coast Swing…I think lost my brain there for a moment because I said no. But I do know. It has been awhile though. I always think of it as just swing, as compared to Lindy Hop. I missed a fun moment there. Silly me. However, I was waiting for my friends to show and watching for them was more important.

The band was good, and they did play some rock music later in the evening. So really it was fun, but it has to be the whitest night club in Silicon Valley. We arrived later in the evening and missed dance lessons. While the line dancing looks easy, it’s not. I know. I’ve tried at least once in my lifetime.

They have a bull. What’s a country night club without the crazy drunks riding the electronic bull? Our friend S rode that darn bull. Pretty well actually. I was in charge of taking pictures. She got pretty wild. The cage brought out a side of her I’ve never seen. Pictures were taken of that as well.

I would probably go again if the chance arose, but it wasn’t so bad being there by myself for the half hour that I waited for my friends. So perhaps if I’m itching to go out and no one is available, you will find me there.

Well, I was never going to mention this insidious and hideous website again, but… Violet Blue‘s column today has too juicy of a quote to leave alone. MySpace is about “collecting friends like white cat hair on black Dickies. ” If you’re on MySpace, you know people like this. I’ve seen some profiles that should be sneezing. Although it is titillating white cat hair. I’d hate to see their mouse. Eeew!

Mostly her column is about Web 2.0 dating, and how we love not interacting with people in person. But there is one gem in the article about a entrepreneurial San Francisco techie who has his own page to advertise for dates. Now, there’s a solution! Tired of Match.com, eHarmony, Yahoo? Build your own page and accept applications. Hmm. I wonder if it would work?

My first audition ever was Sunday morning on the Stanford campus. It’s a nonpaying movie fora graduate student’s thesis. Apparently they couldn’t even tell that I was nervous and had no idea that it was my first time auditioning. Funny. I guess I’m good at hiding things–better than I thought. Interesting. The hardest part of the role I read for was this little bit where you had to act like you know nothing about computers. Act like you don’t get it. This is rather hard to do when you use computers all the time, but I did what I could. Even those of us who are the most seasoned computer users have trouble from time to time. So now I get to wait and see. I’m not holding my breath. It was an interesting experience though.

I just loved this article by Violet Blue in the SF Chronicle (I read online only). She tallied up the number uses of different key words advertising for sex in Craigslist in the area. If you want to see the numbers, scroll down to the bottom of the article. Interesting that the financial district has a lot of kinky requests. I wonder if working with all those numbers makes them lustful. It also seems that San Jose has it’s share of married players–at least they are announcing they are married. I’ll bet the numbers are the same for SF, but they just aren’t telling.

In another article though, a drug-resistent gonorrhea bacteria is getting more common. So if you’re answering those ads, be sure to wrap it up!

On another note, they are telling us that water may be rationed this summer. So what are the brilliant minds suggesting? Showering together, of course! How’s that for a new pickup line? Let’s do good for the environment, baby.

Don’t forget to vote for me for best blog design… click that button over to the right.

Monday I went up to San Francisco. I forgot how busy the city can be on a weekday. I much prefer the weekends. I even went late (after 11 am), and there were lots of people walking around. I went up there to go to a casting agency for free photos. The agency posts casting for extra work. I think most people would be surprised by the number of movies and commercials that are shot here. Even I am surprised. I’m sure you wonder how I found out about this. Well, I can thank Mr. O for the information. It sounded interesting, so really on a whim, I signed up. Why not? It might be fun.
I’m not very fond of the photos on the site, so I will get some other ones at some point. Right now I ‘m working on finding a photographer who is willing to trade for a CD. I would really like to get photos taken at the studio where my son and I had photos taken a few years ago, but he’s a bit on the expensive side. Well worth the money, but spending $500 on photos isn’t in my budget.

So SF on a Monday… I saw a guy walking a large, hairy black cat on a leash. Now, I see dogs all over, but this is the first time I saw a cat. The cat didn’t even seem spooked by the cars. My cats freak out over cars and sirens. I also drove by the place where I have to take my son to a seminar at the end of the month. I didn’t see any parking even though the map shows parking nearby. I couldn’t find any parking this morning except on the street (which probably was sheer dumb luck). I really hate driving in SF because you can never make a right or left turn because of all the pedestrians. They can be pretty aggressive too, if–god forbid–your car sticks out into the crosswalk.

Taking the train up to SF isn’t necessarily convenient. I can say I’m not looking forward to Friday morning traffic to SF. I wonder how long it will take. I will have to keep you posted if I get any film, commercial or print work. Keep your fingers crossed.

Awhile back, I had an issue with Google Adsense. Lots of bloggers have had this trouble because Google seems to think that sites like BlogExplosion, BlogMad and Blogsoldiers are in violation of their policies even though I’ve seen statements by BlogMad stating the contrary. As any of you know who have tried to get adsense re-instated, Google sends out these form letters (they only seem to be sent by a real person because everyone gets the same letter) and makes no effort to understand that you have taken a look at your stats and see no invalid clicks.

Well, Google’s Adwords has similar problems. Adwords is the flip side of Adsense. They have rules for Adwords where certain words are not allowed. A sex columnist who writes for the San Francisco Chronicle gives an interesting overview of what Google deems inappropriate in spite of the protests from companies who use adwords. Apparently words such as dyke and transgender terms (used by the transgender community) are banned by Google for silly reasons. The reason cited in the article is that these terms are “teen porn concepts.” What? Since when? Also, when did Google get to be big brother of the internet? Did I miss something?

The last part of the article really gives the crux of the issue. Adwords doesn’t have a blacklist of words in its policy. This means that the allowable terms are truly subject to the whim of whomever is approving ads that day or whomever your ads get approved by. Companies using adwords also report problems with responses from Google, very similar to the experience I had.

My opinion is that Google is worse than Microsoft. Nearly every computer geek loves to hate Microsoft, but really they should be watching Google as it grows more and more powerful. I see very little stopping Google and the way it does business.

The time has come to increase the IQ of this blog. Perhaps then I will get more reasonable searches. I’d love to know how these keywords arrive at my blog: amateur porn festival, silicon doll, groped gal vids, girls getting muddy and hot girls playroom. I’m actually a bit concerned about the people doing these searches. First, I’ve never written about any of these things. I think one word in each actually is part of a post somewhere. I also hope that I don’t know any of these people. I know some oddities and searches like this wouldn’t be unusual.

Someone also arrived here by searching for the “french equivalent of silicon valley.” Now, if anyone in France reads this, please correct me if I’m wrong. I think that Grenoble is called the silicon valley of France. The whole area is dominated by high tech industries and is a huge draw for geeky engineers and skiers. Hmm. Imagine a geeky French engineer. That French accent.

I also can’t tell you the best gyne doctor in silicon valley. Although I’d recommend that you check San Jose magazine‘s doctor rankings that they do every year.

Another search was “hate living in Silicon Valley.” I’m sorry to hear that. I love it here. If you just moved here, give it six months. It took me quite some time to adjust, but going back to where I came from made me realize how great it is here. I had moved on. The city I loved as a grad student just didn’t have the appeal it once had.

So now, how do I increase the blog’s IQ? I’d like to get readers who are less interested in porn (you won’t find it here) and more interested in life. I could talk about chemistry. I have thought about it some. In fact, this week’s ACS magazine has an article on chemistry bloggers. There are only 100 blogs dedicated to chemistry. I doubt that I could cover chemistry all the time. Besides, I hardly got comments about my grad school years, so it must not be terribly interesting. Yes, porn and sex will bring more readers, but I’d like readers who don’t have sticky keyboards and mice. Sticky keyboards make it difficult to write comments.

Apparently my normal posts bring out the kinks, perverts, crass and horny. Obviously, that won’t help. Now for some smart words: chemistry (ah, but it has a double meaning), physics, calculus, fluorescence (no one comes here from that and I’ve used that one before), lasers, and nuclear magnetic resonance. There!

One thing that doesn’t change when you leave graduate school is the ratio of men to women in the sciences. I suppose I thought it would. I hardly noticed while I was in grad school. You do notice when you go to work. It’s very obvious when you’re the only female in a room of 30. All eyes are on you and your presentation. I have to say I was respected, but I think that was more out of being more educated.

I understand the desire to blend in and hardly be noticed as one of the few females in a sea of males. It’s easier because being noticed means for some very strange encounters. Weirdness on occasion is okay. Weirdness on a regular basis makes you want to shoot people.

As an undergrad in engineering, I dressed conservatively as well. My sorority sisters often begged me to go to the engineering library. I got interrupted every five minutes by some guy stopping by. The girls thought it was great. They were guaranteed to meet at least a dozen guys through me. Not even going in sweats without makeup made a difference. I hated going to the engineering library because I couldn’t get anything done. I had enough homework that I didn’t have time to play at the library. Going to the engineering library to “study” meant several more hours of study time back at my room. Worthless. Waste.

I dressed very conservatively for work as well. On the occasions that I wore a v-neck, all attention was on the skin above the “v.” It isn’t easy to work when your coworkers and boss are tyring to get a glimpse down your shirt. I was able to be more productive if I wore turtlenecks and long sleeves. No way would I wear jeans. I don’t own a single pair that doesn’t hug every curve. I like them that way, but they are useless for work. Even dressing so conservatively didn’t keep the guys from looking, but at least they could still work. Those lovely tops that are all over the stores were just too distracting for them.