tow.com

If David doesn’t look as chipper as he did when you last saw him in July, that’s because he’s on a whirlwind tour of California pediatric residencies. In the span of three weeks, David is interviewing with 12 programs in 5 cities and 2 states. The problem is, his interviews are organized somewhat chaotically. One day, he’s in LA, and the next in Sacramento. Two days later he’s in Oakland and then back in LA the next day! I’m glad that I did not become a doctor!

According to Dave, however, this is the good life of being a medical residency candidate. The programs act all nice and feed you lunch. It’s all to prepare you for when they work you to death as an intern, assuming you match. Man, hearing David talk about “The Match” makes me cringe in memory of the housing draw at Stanford. The housing draw at Stanford, however, didn’t determine the course of the rest of your Stanford life! Egads!

We enjoyed eating my famous Ma Po Tofu and reminiscing about his favorite restaurant in San Diego. We calculated that he has spent a total of one full month at that restaurant, which would equate to 0.32% of his life. That is a pretty significant number any way you put it! Dave boosted my ego in praising my Ma Po Tofu as equal to what he gets in San Diego. Thanks, Dave!

Tonight at 10:00 pm, Christine from HeyChristine.com is going to be in Mountain View. I’ll try to make it to meet this online personality. Look for updates by tomorrow!

December 15, 2001: 10:43 am

People who run personal web sites often get email from readers saying that they have gotten to know them from reading their sites. While it’s true that you can get a good impression of a person, I don’t think that you can get the complete picture until meeting that person face to face. After all, these webmasters are only putting up what they want you to read, right? We could all be like George O’Leary, the now-former head coach of Notre Dame football (and before that Georgia Tech) who falsified information about his background and achievements. Thankfully, most of the people that I know don’t take such egregious liberties with their sites’ content.

At any rate, I’ve been following HeyChristine.com off and on for the past several months. She recently flew back to the U.S. from Taiwan for the holidays and was spending a night in the Bay Area before heading home to the East. At the Tied House Brewery and Cafe in Mountain View, a few of us — Rae, Amabelle, and Eric — went to meet her. Raymond, another online journalist was also there, along with over a dozen of Christine’s friends from work and home.

Yes, it’s definitely something else to meet someone in person whom you’ve been reading for months now. It was a bit surreal to look across the table and see the person right there in front of you! From an hour and a half with her and her friends, she does seem very similar to her online personality, right down to the trusty pen camera that she uses to take all of her pictures! I bet she was thinking the same thing about Eric and me, with our luggable cameras!

December 16, 2001: 19:53 pm

Christine wrote about the evening on her web site.