An airplane is flying overhead, flying low, and turning sharply and uncontrollably. It is a passenger jet, not meant to do this sort of thing. It looks like it might crash soon. We are down town, a large city. The plane starts diving, it's hard to tell where it's going, but I yell to people to try to run the other way. We hear it scream down to the ground and crash with a giant rumble, minor earth quake, and explosion. A fireball rockets up to the sky. Now we run towards the plane, to try to help with rescue.

I'm not sure, and the situation is far too chaotic to tell, but my sister and aunt were both on a plane that was to arrive at this city at around the time this plane crashed. I worry that they were on this plane. Now my family is here, my mom and dad are here. We are trying to figure out how to deal with this situation. I have also lost my clothing... my orange fleece jacket is missing, as are my shoes. I finally find the sandals, but the fleece jacket I seem to have lost somewhere. I return to a classroom where I had been earlier, and find not the fleece jacket, but the windbreaker -- it turns out the windbreaker I was wearing was not mine but a different one I had collected accidentally. I swap them.

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Statistical plotting.

SQL queries. Writing and following through all kinds of queries. Trying to get complex responses from a db.

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I am walking down a canyon, it is remote, but this section is town, and even urban. And a gangster I pass pulls out a gun, fires a warning shot and tells me to get out of there. I run, and encounter my family and a whole bunch of friends who are all sitting around in a large group out on the street. I run to the back of them, and as I do, yell at them that someone with a gun is chasing me and asking them to call 911. I am fearful, and also intentionally seeking protection between a large crowd of bodies, equally vulnerable. I wonder if this is ok, or if this is evil.

Hiking and returning to a central little collection of houses. We are remote here. Filter's "Hey Man, Nice Shot" becomes a song that I am going over in an acoustic version. Of course the high part in the vocals is way too high for my voice. I try to figure out how I can sing it anyway.

I discover a new method for election verification. Basically, each person is handed a random key, which they can use to vote. This random key becomes the key to a hashmap. If they use the wrong key, they override someone else's vote, but it's a random vote, so they have no idea whether they are overriding someone voting like or unlike them. I realize at the time that there is a chance this has conceptual flaws, but it seems sound to me.

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A place that is vertically divided (an upstairs-like space and downstairs-like). I live in one or both of the spaces, and must travel between them for work. Many interactions with people that are based around an object or more. Obligations and time schedules.

I am trying to find some food. I am in a suburban town. I walk through one store to get to a store in the back that supposedly sells food. The rear store is a combination Barnes & Noble and some kind of greasy fast food shop. But the store is supposed to be closed, and they just forgot to lock the back door. The employees are in the process of closing down the store, cleaning up, clearing the registers, etc. I encounter the manager on duty, who, it turns out, is one of the managers from my days as an employee at the Berkeley branch. He recognizes me, too -- which I find somewhat disconcerting. I explain to him that I was just after food, and he says that's alright, even though they are closed, they can accommodate me. I'm surprised by the hospitality, it is quite out of character for the institution.

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Data sifting, like powerlines stretching across the desert.

We make our way through the desert evening (which threatens of rain) to the restaurant. It's a local place, with family style seating. Probably capacity for 30 or so, and we just about fill it. People sit at long tables together in large groups. We place our orders.

About half the group starts getting food, but then the rest of us wait, and wait, and wait. I walk balk to talk with the waiter or host and ask what it is that is taking so long. I ask this of the person I think I remember being the host, but it turns out he is just another guest. I make this mistake several times over the course of the evening, becoming ever more sheepish in my interaction with him. Finally I do talk to the host. We've been sitting here for the better part of an hour, and still no food. People whose food had arrived are beginning to leave satisfied, many others are leaving angry. The restaurant seems to have just shut down, ceased producing any food at all. But there are still some leftovers on the table: bread sandwiches. Sandwiches made of large pieces of bread, with condiments, sauces, and vegetables, and then another piece of bread in the middle as the "meat".

My dad is inside the house, but I leave, orbiting outside, wondering if he will spot me. I'm looking for a restroom, but also for a path out.

Preparing for crit day. Going over the presentation, talking points, and responses to potential criticisms over and over and over again. Working through the system step by step time after time.

--

We're on a coast. It's well traveled territory for me, but it is still enjoyable. The coast is dotted with tourist sites, archaeological sites of some importance. We are there to see those, but it is also an important occasion for some meteorological or astrological event -- moons, eclipses, something. As we are standing waiting, a large, wavy and strangely shaped rainbow appears somewhat inland over the first hill. I point it out to people who are near me.

Someone offers to give us a ride. He is a 4 wheel driver, and I half think he's going to just bash up the side of the mountain, among the boulders, without taking the path. But instead, he just goes up the road, taking us something like a quarter mile up the hill, really inconsequential, and on very easy roads. We thank him, and mostly I'm glad to have escaped something more destructive with him.

Negotiations. It is an optimization problem, but instead of optimizing for equations, we are optimizing for people. It gets much trickier and slipperier. Heat, a beach, deliberation over whether to count someone.

I am in a car doing food shopping or pickup, with some other folks from the house. One of them is an older guy who has a more formal job with the house, some sort of building maintenance guy. We're talking about books we're reading just as we pull in, and I'm surprised to hear someone else is reading Erewhon, of which I just read a chapter for class. I start to try to explain the chapter that I just read, but it seems the interpretation and take home messages I got from the chapter and the class are quite different from what she got from reading it independently.

We get out to start loading things into the house. The more official guy hands me a big set of keys to open the doors with while he backs the truck in. He's saying something about a friend of his who uses all these sorts of readings to write essays and theses. Fiction, poetry, whatever, he makes arguments based on them.

Into the house. It is a residential house reminiscent of so many small american homes built in the 50's.

I am back in the mountains, a place like Gothic. I am preparing to go backpacking. Loading up the things I need, being some level of minimalistic about it. Up and down the hill, collecting things, coordinating with people. Snowmelt on high.

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Enumerating motivations. One is an obvious one; the persuasive technology idea, which is like a rock (moderately sized, and shaped like a very wide shoe), which has an aura of the intentions around it.