i actually got enough sleep on tuesday night, so i was not exhausted all day, like i usually am.

but, instead of taking advantage of that awake state and getting a lot done, i was jumpy and hyper and in a great mood all day. which is fine, i guess.

in the early afternoon, i heard on the icb that bill gates was in the building in the south park zone of the south of market section of san francisco that houses hotwired, vivid, and organic online.

so i pulled on my denim miniskirt and black doc martens, tossed on my suede blazer, combed my dirty hair, jumped into my car and drove down there full speed. i had fantasies of spotting bill, taking a picture with him, then plummeting him with america on line floppies that arrived unsolicited in the mail, formatted for windows '95. colby met me there.

although we did not get to see bill gates, i got to take a look at organic online, and colby showed me big book. even more excitingly, a friend of colby's from hotwired gave us a fabulous tour of the wired and hotwired facilities.

organic was pretty underwhelming. a bunch of people running around trying to look harried, and talking loudly about the important clients in important client meetings, showing off in front of visitors like myself in the receptionist area. "oh, is that microsoft?" (glance over to my chest) "no ... it is colgate (glance over to my legs). yawn. lots of boys behind computers; lots of open space; not too sunny.

then forrest took me over big book, which consisted really only of a huge almost-completely empty room, and colby and kris. much nicer atmosphere. at least it was sunnier.

we next ventured down to hotwired, one floor below. the receptionist, strangely, told colby he had to sign in, but did not say the same to me. so colby signed in, and i did not. fine with me!

colby's friend met us and walked us through the office.

to be honest, i do not think i have ever seen so many 20-something white people working in so large a room with so few walls before. the white people to wall ratio was just strikingly high.

ironically, hotwired had signs up all over: wired .. we protect your privacy! if they are so big on privacy, why do their employees get so little of it?

i think i saw the suck.com people in a corner, but it was hard to tell. only one of them was there, if i was correct about the location, and that person i recognized only from a picture on justin's page.

we then were shown the hotwired game room, which comes complete with a huge vinyl couch, a 40 inch screen television, and a sega saturn, with many cartridges. colby seemed to be more impressed by this than i was.

what i did notice on the way out of that room, however, was that hotwired and wired charge their employees $1.75 for an odwalla drink, and $1.00 for a bottle of water. seems a bit high for multi-million dollar corporations, in my humble opinion. it almost makes law firms look good. at least they gave out free juice.

finally, we saw wired's office. a preppier bunch of individuals i could not have imagined. everywhere i looked, i saw barettes and scarves .. you know, accessories. it was a tad frightening. and of course, all white people in there too.

should i have been expecting anything different?

why is it so surprising to me that this industry, which prides itself on its progressiveness, appears to be so in the dark ages when it comes to staffing? and here, we are not talking about computer programmers, where the product might be relatively free of ethnic biases in its end form, but rather, we are talking about publications, where variety of backgrounds and viewpoints is always a plus.

am i proposing that all white men in their twenties think alike? well, not all, but it sure would not hurt the odds to toss in a couple non-white boys ... or even girls ... in their twenties, or (heavens!) non-twenties.

when i returned home, i was greeted by a friendly piece of fan mail telling me to check out today's suck.com, which discussed the stupidity of writing in all lower case.

now, it is not just because i myself write in all lower case, but i really think that the article sucked.

there was a time that i really liked suck, largely because it did not take itself too seriously. these days, it tends toward the so-pretentious-to-be-absurd. basically, the editor spent all 1000 words trying to argue that people who write in lower caps have tossed aside any respect for grammatical conventions.

that is absurd. anyone who knows me knows that i am a grammar nazi. i did so well in latin class in high school that the teacher eventually kicked me out, he hated me so much for reading seventeen magazine and chatting with friends all class, and then scoring 100 percent on his tests. i loved latin. i love grammar. i love traditional writing conventions. it is a somewhat hypocritical personality quirk of mine.

i write in lower case for several reasons. not only do i think that it is, in general, more aesthetically pleasing, but it also allows me to type more confrontational things while still appearing "soft" and "approachable."

the suck article was basically a waste of time. get over yourselves, sucksters.

to make the day even most action packed of all, my parents were in town, and i showed them around. i think they liked my apartment. they liked to see my computer and my brand new monitor. they were impressed by the indy at cyborganic, and even by the cyborganic servers. and we shared a nice dinner over falafel at the mediterranean place down the street, where i go for lunch all the time. it was cool to see them.

i ended the day by trying to get more stuff done, but instead playing around on the icb for hours.

it is nice to be in a good mood, every once in a while.