Documenting My Language-Learning Progress

As I'm beginning to notice that I'm actually learning as I learn German (imagine that), I'm wanting some way to record or document my progress. Already I have German sentences I've written all over the internet: this blog, Twitter, Facebook, Buzz, emails, and IRC. I think I'd like to keep them collected all in one place... somewhere. Where, or how, exactly, I'm still trying to decide.

Any suggestions? An acquaintance on Facebook suggested that I periodically take some official test (there must be a German equivalent of the Spanish DELE, perhaps the Goethe-Institut exams) to concretely measure my progress. I may do that, though I worry about memorizing answers. Maybe I should just make myself one big monolithic "Learning German" webpage and be done with it...

Blogger Tweet Gatherer

Not everyone who follows my blog is into Twitter, where I'm more active on a day-to-day basis that here. So I've been wanting some way of gathering the day's tweets into a single blog post. I found tools to make each tweet into its own blog post, but that's just silly. And I found another tool that almost did what I wanted, except that it made the first tweet the post's title; why would you want that behavior?

So tonight I finally wrote my own tool to do it. It was super easy, because of the Twitter Ruby gem. It handles interacting with the Twitter API, letting me focus on my application-specific logic. Yay libraries!

Today's Tweets

• Had a great time at our team dinner last night. My start-up experiences: it was fun while it lasted. Sums up both BillMonk and Jambool. [ 6:39 AM]
• @DoubleTranslate 1) Schläfst du? 2) Ich spreche zuviel schnell. 3) Sie suchen nach einem (Hotel)zimmer. 4) Wir lernen Deutsch. [10:02 AM]
• RT @german_tutor: Interactive crime story in German! Thanks to The Association for Language Learning for finding it. http://fb.me/JZx5oURS [ 2:04 PM]
• @wilw But if The Shatner and Chuck Norris fought to the death, who would win? [ 2:48 PM]
• These learning-German podcasts from the Goethe-Institut look promising: http://www.goethe.de/frm/pod/ Check it out, @giynlith & @staticfoo! [ 5:24 PM]
• So @pandora_radio is cool, but it can't separate same-genre songs by language. So I'm starting to use @lastfm instead: http://goo.gl/5mmAB [ 5:41 PM]
• How The FCC Plans To Destroy GPS http://goo.gl/RIMdE [ 8:15 PM]

Skiing

Jerry and I took our friends Ben and Paul cross-country skiing for their first time today. ... While it turned out better (as measured in collection number of falls and frustration vs fun) than our attempt at sharing downhill skiing with them two weeks ago, neither of them exactly said they were planning to go again on their own. I wish it could have magically been more fun for them, but Jerry and I aren't exactly professional ski instructors. :/

For my personal skiing experience, though, I'm pleased to say that it is "just like riding a bike." With the exception of the Jambool ski trip, I didn't go skiing at all last year. The year before that was my first year skiing. So I don't have a lot of experience yet.

One thing I hate, skiing or elsewhere, is adrenaline. I'm the opposite of an adrenaline junkie. So I dislike hills that are too steep for my current skill level to be able to control my speed sufficiently. This meant that a lot of the times that Forrest convinced me to go downhill skiing with him that first year, I was freaking out, flooding with adrenaline, wanting to be somewhere safe and slow.

This year, though, I have just enough technique to control my speed on beginner terrain. I actually found myself enjoying it, which definitely pleased Forrest (since he's been wanting me to get into it and go with him more often). I still enjoyed cross-country better, but I foresee Tahoe ski trips in our future. :P

Update: Turns out that Ben enjoyed the cross-country skiing more than I had thought. He asked us if we wanted to go skiing again this weekend! Wootles. So we're going to take him to Leavenworth this time, where we can enjoy some bratwurst and beer for lunch. :)

Fondue is Healthy, Right?

Today was a little lazier than the previous two days. My excuse is the my right foot's been hurting, so I skipped y half hour walk to give it some break time to recover. I'm planning on taking some friends cross-country skiing on Sunday, so I want to make sure my feet are in good shape.

I also indulged in some delicious Melting Pot chocolate dessert fondue, um, deliciousness. It was date night! Interestingly, even with that I'm only 250 calories above the lose-a-pound-a-week number of calories for the day. In other words, 250 below for weight maintenance. Not too terrible, and I did "plan" on a once-a-week semi-indulgent day... So log as I don't do that too regularly, and keep it as a treat, I should be good.

I wish I did enjoy the gym more. It's easier there. But I just get soooo bored. Maybe I should try rollerblading again. And set up my DDR home pads. Or drag Forrest out to a tennis course. :)

German

One unexpected Spanish interference with my German-learning is that I tend to make my H's silent. Oops!

Ich habe meine Lehrbuch, das heißt German: A Self-Teaching Guide, heute gelesen. Es lehrt mir viele neue Wörter. Aber habe ich nicht mehr zu sagen jetzt. (Korrekturen sind gutes! :))

Gym == Boredom

Exercise

Day 2 of HealthMonth, going strong! Well, all of me except the arch of my right foot; it's kinda achey, not so strong. I tried going to the gym at work today, intending to do 30 minutes on the elliptical machine instead of walking like yesterday. Within 5 minutes, I was bored to tears. I decided it would be better to do a less intensive workout that didn't make me hate exercise, y'know? As soon as I started walking outside, the boredom went away. So that's good to know about myself.

German

Heute sprach ich mit deutsche Leute im IRC. Ich habe über das Wort „Wort‟ gelernt. Es hat zwei Plurale. Lies diese.

Note: If you hover over the German text, it will translate itself into English for you.

Health, Happiness, and Hochdeutsch

Resolutions, Goals, Rules, Whatever

It's a new month, which is the new New Year. At the suggestion of a friend, I'm trying out HealthMonth for tracking weekly goals. Nothing too surprising here:

• Exercise for 30 minutes at least 5 days a week
• Stay under my calorie limit at least 6 days a week
• Track your meals at least 6 days a week
• Write or journal every day (blogging counts)
• Study German at least 4 days a week

I had been using Lose It to track my calories and eat more consciously, but I haven't logged in for a month or two now. So I started up again, to support my HealthMonth goals. HealthMonth uses gamification — points and teams — to encourage you. End of day 1 is looking pretty good. :)

Moving Back to California

So pretty much everyone who knows me in real life already knows this, but this month Forrest and I are moving back to California. When the startup we worked for was acquired by Google, moving to their headquarters in Mountain View was one of the conditions. So February 18th, we're packing up all our stuff and heading back to the Bay Area.

I've lived in Seattle since 2007, and we both really like the area. We had always strongly considered moving back to California... some day. We're not especially happy that we're being forced to move back sooner than we wanted to, however. (Despite great benefits and good pay. I know, I know, it's not really a horrible situation. I'm lucky that this is what I have to complain about. I get that.)

Neither of us like the sprawl of the South Bay, where you have to drive to get anywhere. We are definitely going to miss our apartment in Fremont, where we can walk everywhere or hop on a super-convenient bus. So rather than settle for some expensive, small apartment in some crappy, sprawling suburbia, we found ourselves a cool rental house 8 minutes above Los Gatos. (Note: There's a Borders in Los Gatos! Alas, they may soon be filing for bankruptcy...)

The house is this 150-home community in the middle of the redwoods of the Santa Cruz mountains. It's about as big as our old rental on Dexter Ave, except it has a second bedroom instead of a weird office/walkthrough area. The yard is pretty small, but big enough for chickens! I'm really quite excited about keeping a small flock of chickens. Number and breed TBD. Apart from the yard, there's a small deck between the bedroom's back door and said yard, and then there's a much larger deck off of the living room and kitchen. There is a wood-burning stove in the living room, and a pot belly stove on the large deck. All in all, I think we'll like it there — it will definitely be a nice daily break from the South Bay sprawl.

No, we don't have a date yet

Forrest and I are still engaged and still planning to get married in California this year. We've been holding off on setting a date, because we were waiting until we had moved to California. It's difficult to get a good sense of venues solely based on their websites — they tend to portray only their best side, y'know? And since venue will be the determining factor for specific dates, that's just going to have to wait a little bit longer.

Starting to Learn German

My sister Lisa foolishly said in my hearing, "I want to learn German." You should not say you want to learn a language in front of me. My response: "Orly? Let's!"

Turns out, she was actually serious. She's got some good motivation, since her boyfriend speaks German. We had some snafus with studying together remotely, however, so for now we're studying independently.

Ich nicht spreche Deutsch jetzt, aber ich studiere es. Ich lese deutsche Tweet, und ich höre ein Podcast bei Deutsche Welle.

Mid-Month NaNoWriMo Update

I should be writing my NaNoWriMo story right now, but I need to take a little break.

I was sick on Thursday and Friday. That could have been a perfect time to get some extra words in, but instead all I did was lie in bed, alternately sleeping and watching movies. Many movies: Notting Hill, The Ugly Truth, Proof of Life, Greenfingers, Robin Hood (2010), half of Australia (skipped the beginning), and When Harry Met Sally. Stay away from The Beguiled and Mr Fix It, both of which I abandoned after the first 10-20 minutes.

Yesterday was the "halfway" NaNoWriMo party at the Hugo House in Seattle, where ~50 of us gathered to write and chat for most of the day. I got up to 18k words by the end of the day.

Today, I'm currently at 20k. I still need another 3k to be on track, so I'll probably go to bed tonight a little behind, but that's much better than the 6k I was behind for a while. I'm taking a break now, despite needing more worlds, because I rewarded myself at 20k with a lemon bar and a hot chocolate and now I have a food coma. :)

In my story, I keep forgetting about one minor character or another, so they jump back into the story at random points after having been out of the story for many scenes. Oops. That's what December is for, right?

My characters have decided to take the king's second son -- still a baby -- to another kingdom. Unexpected, but it makes a certain amount of sense within the story. And now the goddess of life is going to claim the baby as one of her Chosen: also very unexpected. That's going to put a kink in their plans, for sure. Not to mention when the assassin gets captured, (mistakenly) thinks the clairvoyant betrayed him, and intends to kill her when he espaces; meanwhile, the clairvoyant will have to take care of herself and the royal baby while attempting to rescue the assassin. Good times ahead.

I still have no idea how the story will end, especially not with these sudden plot points that have appeared unexpectedly. But that's actually one of my favorite parts of NaNo: the story and characters go off on their own, and the writer has to chase along behind them. Sometimes shouting, "What the hell do you mean by that??" :)

Alright, enough of a break. None of these words are counting toward my 23k that I need tonight. Back to the salt mines of NaNo I go!

Omg I'm a Googler!

Social Gold + Google! Jambool + Google!
...Jamboogle?

Champagne! Excitement! Ponies! It's public!

I joined Jambool back in December. Today, we've officially been acquired by Google! It's been crazy-distracting keeping up work as usual while having the acquisition process going on. So much uncertainty and changes going on. And when the story leaked on TechCrunch this Monday, we had to fend off our techie friends' questions with "no comment" until the deal closed today. Now I can finally explain in detail what's going on!

Champagne Post-Acquistion

For the most part, I'm excited. The benefits sound awesome (free meals! subsidized massages!). It will be very interesting to be part of Google and see how things work there. From what I've heard, they're a very developer-centric culture, which will be interesting to see in a big corporate context (rather than a startup context, where it's hard to be anything but). Retention bonus handcuffs are very shiny, too. ;)

But there are some downsides; almost nothing is 100% good, eh? It is a big company, so I'll be going back to that environment. Also, we're being asked to relocate to Mountain View within 6 months. I like it here in Seattle — I have friends here, and I actually like the weather. :P Also, I'm not so crazy about the suburban sprawl that is the South Bay. But que será, será.

say "We just got acquired by Google" &&
SKIP_HOSTFINDER=1 cap production deploy

All things considered, I'm super excited about this new phase of my (ex-)Jambool career. :)

So my schedule for the next two weeks is hectic: partying today ;), flying to Mountain View for week-long orientation & training, flying back to Seattle to settle into the Fremont office, then flying to Hawaii(!!) for a long weekend celebration with the Jamboolers. Life's tough around here.

Recovered; Still Engaged; Moved; Aunty C

English:

It's been so long since I've written! First, I'm completely recuperated from my surgery. I'm very, very happy that my stupid, broken gallbladder is no longer attacking me. :) I can eat whatever I want now and I don't have to be afraid of it hurting.

On the topic of weddings, we are still engaged and we still don't have a more concrete date than "some time in 2011." We continue not-planning. ;)

We moved from our rented house to an apartment in the Fremont neighborhood. Packing our boxes and bags and everything was an epic disaster that lasted for 2 or 3 weeks. And now in the apartment, we still have the majority of our things in boxes. At least the boxes are only in one room of the apartment and we can use the rest. There are photos on Flickr.

Other news... Forrest has a full-time job at Jambool as an engineer! Yes, you read that right, he's working with me at the same company.

And in other, sadder, news, I attended the memorial service for my Aunty C, who died this past winter. She was 96 years old, was always feeling bad, and it was simply her time to go. Her family meet on Mount Diablo to scatter her ashes.

Spanish:

¡Tanto tiempo que no he escrito aquí! Primero, estoy completamente recuperada de mi cirugía. Estoy muy, muy contenta que ya no me ataque mi estúpida vesícula biliar rota. :) Puedo comer lo que quiero ahora y no tengo miedo de que me duela.

De la tema de bodas, todavía estamos prometidos y todavía no tenemos una fecha más concreto como "algún tiempo en 2011." Sigamos no-planeando. ;)

Nos mudamos desde nuestra casa alquilada hacia un apartamento en el barrio de Fremont. El hacer de las maletas y cajas y bolsas y todo era un desastre "épico" que prolongó atrás 2 o 3 semanas. Y ahora en el apartamento, todavía tenemos la mayoría de nuestras cosas en cajas. Al menos las cajas están en sólo un cuarto del apartamento y podemos usar los demás. Hay fotos en Flickr.

Otras noticias... ¡Forrest tiene un trabajo a jornada completa en Jambool como ingeniero! Sí, lo lees correcto, él trabaja conmigo en la misma empresa.

Y hablando en otras cosas, cosas más tristes, asistí a las honras fúnebres para mi Tía Cita, quien murío el invierno pasado. Ella tenía 96 años, siempre sentía mal, y simplemente le llegó la hora. La familia de mi tía reunimos en el Monte Diablo para esparcir sus cenizas.