This place never cease to exists. Since being a student to now, there is so much to offer for…read moreeveryone. And of course a tremendous resource for knowledge. I stopped in to visit the new exhibit showcasing local bee diversity. It was simple but so elegantly done. I'm always impressed with things here. Thank you Gauchos!

Yelp tells me it's National Library Week, so here's an updated version of my review of the UCSB…read moreLibrary, a truly wonderful resource. I wrote the original last year when we were still in the midst of a terrible drought. We got a lot of rain this last winter, but nothing like the storm I describe below. Back in the 90s I was a grad student at UCSB and had the privilege of doing research in this library. It's an outstanding resource and staffed with an incredibly knowledgeable and helpful staff. Five stars all damn day! Also back in the 90s here in Southern California we used to have wet winters. Hardly ever rains in these parts anymore. This story took place in 1994, in the middle of an absolutely epic rainstorm. The wind was so strong that huge decades-old eucalyptus trees were blown down all around campus. Roads running through the campus were blocked with these fallen behemoths. The rain was coming down in torrents. It was a full on El Nino type storm event. I had spent the morning doing research and left the Library a little after noon to walk to my apartment about a half mile away I was wearing my trusty REI raincoat. It has a huge hood that completely covers my head and has a bill that extends out to cover the top part of my face. With the hood on and bill pulled down you can keep your face dry but your forward vision is limited to the area just in front of your feet. I was on the path that led back to family student housing, with a backpack loaded with like 15 pounds of books I had just checked out. The wind was blowing so hard it made the rain look like it was falling sideways. I was walking into the wind as fast as I possibly could, staring at the ground and only peeking out from under my hood occasionally to make sure I wasn't about to run into anything. Since it was raining so hard, and had been for hours, the path was virtually deserted. Every time I peeked out from under my hood there wasn't anyone else on the path. I kept my head down and pushed on into the driving rain. Then the damnedest thing happened. I looked up and saw Professor Steven Hawking no more than five feet away, speeding directly toward me in his wheelchair. We were just seconds away from a head on collision. At the absolute last possible moment I jumped to the right, out of his way. He motored full speed right by me. Missed me by mere inches. It happened so fast there wasn't time to process the situation. I stood there in the pouring rain and watched him roll away. I couldn't move my feet. I was shaking with adrenaline. WTF????? I almost collided with Steven Frickin' Hawking. Now, you wouldn't know it from my profile, but I'm actually a pretty big guy. At the time I was 6'2" and weighed 220 pounds. I had a backpack with over 15 pounds of books on my back and I was walking at full speed. Steven Hawking was 5'6" and weighed about 137 pounds. And he had ALS. All the way home this loop played in my head: Oh my god, that was so close! Oh my god, if I would've hit him head on, I might have killed him . Oh my god, I almost killed Steven Hawking! In my mind's eye I could see the headlines, "World's Smartest Man killed by Village Idiot." When I got home I tried to sort it all out. I had so many questions. Like, first of all, what the hell was Steven Hawking doing in Santa Barbara? And what was he doing out in the middle of a torrential downpour with no attendants? I mean, wouldn't you assume he would have at least a caregiver or a gaggle of grad students around him pretty much all the time? Well, he didn't. He didn't even have a damn umbrella. He had to have been soaked. And then I started thinking about the moment I looked up to find him just five feet in front of me. He had to have seen me coming right at him for a long time before I noticed him, but when I looked up he was coming straight for me. The path was eight feet wide. He could have easily steered around me. But he didn't. He was coming straight at me. That was a startling realization. Immediately I pictured a different newspaper headline: "Village Idiot Survives Assassination Attempt by World's Smartest Man." Since I wrote the original review I found out what Professor Hawking was actually doing at UCSB. He had a close relationship with the UCSB Physics Department and was on campus as a guest of the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics. The Institute was launching a series of lectures to make Physics more accessible to the general public. Professor Hawking gave the inaugural lecture of the series at Campbell Hall. Mikey C says: Hey Hawking, I'm walking here!

You already know I love discovering new Little Free Libraries around town. This one is near the…read moreStow House, Lake Carneros, and the South Coast Railroad Museum in Goleta. What's adorable about the library is how the paint and design is similar to the historic train museum. There were a good variety of books, though not any for kids. I also appreciated that this library wasn't stuffed too full. So grab a book and go for a read by the lake.

What a beautiful beautiful beautiful school what a beautiful blue beautiful beautiful place…read morethe people are really cool here too. there's a lot of diversity actually it's a huge school so there's a lot of people I had so many years of free counseling amazing course counseling I really like all the extracurriculars offered here having been out of college for a long time I've never been anywhere like this I lived some of my best years here

I attended UCSB from 2004-2008. While it was a fun party school, I can still barely get an…read moreentry-level job at nearly 40 years old (and getting a masters in business at USC Marshall). While the schools have prioritized reaching out to alumni for donations, they need to take accountability for improving the job market, to make sure their graduates have jobs. I'm sure the chancellor and other high level staff, sometimes making upwards of a million dollars in salaries, are smart enough to figure out how to help create more jobs and place graduates in them. If you're looking for an education in order to get a job, I'd say pass.

UCSBPD helped me find my "stolen" car. Well the handsome bike cop came to my house and helped me…read morefill out a report for my stolen car. I was driving a 1998 Toyota Landcruiser and I notice bolts and grease spots where I parked my car. Someone must have drove off with it, I thought. An hour later after I filled it out, one of my roommates came home and asked what I was doing. She told me she thought she saw my car parked on Pardall (right after the mini tunnel that you bike/skate through to get to IV from campus)... Pause... Silence... The Bike Cop biked with me (I was on my black beach cruiser) and yep... parked right infront of what used to be a Chinese Restaurant, now Chino's or something? I apologized to the cop and he told me I shouldn't drink as much and he biked my cruiser home for me. Yeah, I drove my car home (6700 block of Sabado) and he biked with my bike in hand. WOW! I was a lucky lady that day.

Not so long ago, I was a student at UCSB…read more I don't think many even realized that there was a UCSB Police Department until either one of two things happened...you had your bike stolen, or you had your bike impounded. Neither happened to me...gotta love kryptonite locks. Wait...the police have bolt cutters. Well, I avoided both irregardless. The men and women at the UCPD were pretty cool. I used to go by on my skateboard and high-five them as they were writing tickets to the people riding their bikes on the sidewalk. It's cool those yellow-shirted CSO's would give courtesy escorts after dark and did their best to move bikes to the proper parking areas instead of impound them. They also answered my questions about the parking situation so I knew what rule not to break. The bike auctions kinda suck though....crappy bikes that have been sitting in the elements for way too long. Give these men and women a brake and say hi to them...chances are, they will go out of their way to be nice to you in the future.

So glad we were able to do a self-tour and walk around the campus. It's a large campus and…read morebeautiful scenery since the beach/ocean is just walking distance away! Very big, spacious campus. Worth taking a visit, and tour if you can.

A great hub for students and visitors. Home to the bookstore, post office, and array of dining…read moreoptions. The Starbucks is always busy. Outdoor seating is wonderful with smells of the ocean. Fortunately the stench of the lagoon wasn't present on our visit.

"The Allosphere Research Facility is a 3-story high spherical space in which fully immersive,…read moreinteractive, stereoscopic/pluriphonic virtual environments can be experienced. Housed in the California Nanosystems Institute at the University of California at Santa Barbara, the Allosphere enables works in which art and science contribute equally and serves as an advanced research instrument in two overlapping senses." That was the official sciency bit. Layman description is more like, "WHOA!!" Followed by crapping your pants. Someone twittered a heads up to me that the Allosphere was having a tour today at 1 pm, and seeing how I was taking my lunch break at 1 pm, I thought, "why not?" Sucks that a visit here requires enabling the parking monster with $3 for an hour's visit, but the parking structure #10 is connected to the building, so at least you don't spend 30 minutes of your precious hour hoofing it from some parking lot in a different zip code. Inside, it's like your own little I-max, but you're immersed in detailed imagery of molecular structures. Static 3-d renderings can be rotated and enhanced, with additional illustrations of ionic movement. If that's not mind-blowing enough, the images are "sonified," or translated into audio, so you get a surround sound of pure electronica, and these are also projected within 3 planes, so as you move through the molecules, the sound moves with you. When I visited there were only a few speakers throughout the sphere. In time, there will be some 400 speakers. The guide did not go into too much detail of the commercial and educational value of this project, it was probably way too highbrow for us. But anyone with a joint and a big bag of doritos can see the vast entertainment value.

I said it in a previous review, so here I am doing it. I make good on my words. At least, I try…read more It's a code I live by, kinda like a pirate code. Anyhooz... Without a doubt, a large part of my adult making was fashioned by my association with the fine professors and colleagues that made up my college career. I don't know where I would be, or even who I would be, today without these peoples' wonderful guidance over my life for 5 terribly short years. There was a saying amongst us - Once you go geo, you can never go back. No truer words were ever spoken. I personally can't think of that many other majours where, once you take a Geology 101 course, you can't view the world through the same eyes ever again. So much love I have for this majour; but mind you, I actually majoured in a very special field subcategorized from these supreme beings - a little known field called Paleobiology. "What's that?" you say. Why, it's the study of ancient animals; more specifically, prehistoric animals. As I once told my mum all those years ago when she wished for me to study veterinary medicine - "Mom, yes, I do love animals. But I love them even more when they're dead." Strike that. Make that millions of years dead. So what makes geology, and more particularly this department, so worthy of praise? of 5 uber stars and more? Can ya really ask me that? It's pure love, baby! In no other majour can you find a WHOLE department chock full of HOT ladies and gents, all with the same desires and passions as you for all things hard and bony. (Oh, did I mention that geology's perhaps the dirtiest majour ever, pun intended? I didn't? My bad. Consider yourself warned) In case you're confused, yes - geology is the study of rocks. But because paleontology is part of the geology department, I made the bony reference. I think I'm digressing. I blame the extra beer I had tonight. Webb Hall houses my beloved department, and, not only is it filled to the brim with uber hot grads and undergrads, but some of this country's finest professors. In fact, we had a lot of national heavyweights walking amongst us at any given time. My own dear professors (there were only 2 on faculty that had anything to do with paleo stuffs) were world reknowned for their findings and breakthroughs in the paleo realm. I miss them a lot. I wonder sometimes what they'd say should they ever find out what became of me. Back to the subject. The entire building is stunning, and I recommend a field trip around and through it should you ever be in the area. Located in what I used to call the "hard core" section of campus, this area housed the Biology, Geology, Chemisty and Physics departments. And then there's a little path that leads to the Engineering area, but that's an entirely different kind of review. Let's not go there, shall we? Stretching from the Physics department, past our little brick building, and to the end of the Biology department spans a row of tall eucalytpus trees. I love eucalyptus trees. Not only do they drive all manner of bugs away from the area, but also there's nothing quite like coming out of the building after getting your rocks on to the lovely and enchanting fragrance of the boughs, swaying gently in the warm breezes that would drift in from the adjacent beaches. You'll find your peace there, amongst those buildings and trees. In and around our wonderful 2-level brick building are the massive rock gardens. One way to tell if you're a geologist is if your rock garden is inside your house. Trust, we had it covered! One of my favourite tales is of how one of our profs, during an intro course, fooled one of his students into licking one of our rocks. Mayhaps I'll tell you the tale and explain the joke sometime. I always find it hilarious. Aside from the trees and the rocks, we also had the coolest computer lab. I spent many hours there, both day and night, engrossed in all things techie. This is where my love affair for computers truly started. I used to sleep with them. They knew me better than my boyfriend did. One day I'll go back there and visit. But until then, you should go visit, dear Yelper. Perhaps you, too, shall discover a love that you didn't know existed. Perhaps you, too, shall be mesmerized by all the fine men and women roaming those very halls. Then, we'll have yet another thing in common. We'll talk.

Best department ever. We have the exclusive maclab and bagel sales on Tuesdays (sometimes)…read more Everyone is friendly and interested in geology just as much as the next person in Webb Hall (unless you're a undergrad just taking a geology class for a GE) but overall, this is my second home :)