Tue, 30 Oct 2007

Quakin'

Uggh, I get all queasy when there's a quake like the one that just happened. Maybe being on the top floor of a building makes it worse. The USGS map is still pending an update- the square is still the "?" one (we don't know yet). Uhh, no, it just updated, big red square:

yikes!

USGS site

Sheesh- all the cell phone carriers got busy at once. That's reassuring. I can only send SMS.

30 Oct 22:14 | /news | 1 comment(s)


More Crack- Baron's Meats

Tagged as:

I had another "good crack" weekend. Cory, Kevin and I wound up going to Hangar One for a bit and also to a market in Alameda that had a great butcher so we could buy some flank steak.

The butcher shop is Baron's Meats at the Alameda Marketplace. The owner/butcher is David and is really nice. His site has a list of "exclusive" products which helps make his counter worth seeking out. We tried some of that "exclusive" sausage too and I thought the Alameda Merguese was great.

His prices are really reasonable too- especially compared to the nearest comparable butcher for me in SF: Bryan's, which I think is a bit pricey (but good).

Baron's even does aged short loin too. As it says on the site:

Baron's Meat & Poultry is the only store in the area, which carries the entire short loin rather than steaks. We will age the entire cut for you and prepare steaks to your order at your convenience. Please ask for more details.

Mmmm, I'd love a full loin in a fridge somewhere with my nametag on it- but alas, Alameda's a bit inconvenient for me.

30 Oct 11:53 | /food_and_drink | 1 comment(s)


Fri, 26 Oct 2007

Thoughts for Friday

A while back Sarah had sent me an invite for Shelfari which is like a social network site for readers. I haven't used it too much, but it seems like a good site. I thought I'd use it to get ideas for my next book purchase, but I haven't yet. My current book purchasing methodology involves browsing the stacks at Green Apple or by checking out what the girlspeople on the bus are reading- although they all read the same thing at the same time.

Here's a funny writeup at The Sneeze about Domino's ordering system (look at the bottom pic).

I still think Cellar Tracker is great - it came up recently in conversation- I use it a lot, but always forget about how useful it is to search for notes from other users.

I'm off again today and I was looking at google reader a minute ago to catch up on my rss feeds and was a bit shocked at the number of unread items. Why do sites like Cinematical post 40 times a day? I'd rather check out a blog that just has a few good original posts a week instead of just news tidbits and links to other movie news sites. Maybe I just answered my own question . .

Completely random but I found and fixed one of my fountain pens that I thought I had lost. I also thought the nib was broken, but it was just clotted old ink. I cleaned it up and got some Naples Blue ink from Private Reserve. I forgot how nice fountain pens were. Besides, I've been using paper and pen more anyway- I haven't felt organized in a while and I thought the last time I really felt that I was up to date with my calendar (and journals, etc) was when I used to hand write in a dayrunner/paper calendar- but once you go down the Palm path and multiple calendars and multiple email accounts one gets a bit out of touch. Maybe if I didn't use multiple sites I'd feel differently, but for now, I'll try to stick with ye olde pen and paper. Now, if I could get my penmanship as nice as Kuz's, I'll be set.

26 Oct 16:21 | /general | 6 comment(s)


Mon, 22 Oct 2007

Bye Bye GR

Okay, so originally I had guessed "1 week" - but it took almost 4:

Greg Ryan, criticized for goalie switch before World Cup loss, out as US women's coach

via yahoo!

Ryan was 45-1-9 since taking over in early 2005, but that one loss -- in his only major tournament -- overshadowed the rest of his tenure.

22 Oct 16:29 | /futbol | 0 comment(s)


Sat, 20 Oct 2007

Grape Stomp Again

Tagged as: ,

Man time flies. It didn't seem like that long ago that I posted pics from 06 and 05 of Stef and Paul's grape stomp party/bbq/tasting but it's already been another year.

Last Saturday I dragged Gretchen over to Paul and Stef's again for this year's grape stomp. As always, it was a lot of fun. I didn't have my camera but Gretchen had hers, I may have some pics soon.

But more of interest to you, dear readers, would be what I thought some standout wines were at the tasting. This will be mostly a list, but here's what you may want to pick up if you get the chance:

... there's more to read here ...

20 Oct 18:56 | /food_and_drink | 0 comment(s)


Wed, 17 Oct 2007

Suck It, Nancy

Yeah yeah, your movie's getting rave reviews. "Lars and the Real Girl" looks great and has a great cast yadda yadda.

But in 2003 Love Object had a better plot- especially as it mirroredresembled my life at a nameless company in the south bay.

The twisted tale of Kenneth, socially insecure technical writer who forms an obsessive relationship with "Nikahhh""Nikki", an anatomically accurate silicone sex doll he orders over the Internet.

Because of his experience with his new toy, Kenneth's life takes a turn for the better when his newfound romantic skills attract the attention of Lisa, a co-worker at his office. But when the doll's jealous personality invades his consciousness, Kenneth becomes trapped in a perverse triangle, torn between the dominating, silicone Nikki and the flesh-and-blood Lisa.

You could even argue that they're both remakes of Monique but from what I can tell Love Object started in production about the same time.

And no, I still haven't ordered my custom Nikahhh and Lisa dolls (yet).

17 Oct 18:09 | /movies | 0 comment(s)


Tue, 16 Oct 2007

Raves: Financial District

A while back, a friend pointed out an advantage of working downtown in the Financial District I would appreciate. He pointed out that on average, given average walking speeds, non-bank-holidays and other variable environment constants, that one will see a hot chick every two minutes on average.

Now of course you will say, I bet Kenneth knew that- and I did- but after enhancing my friend's research, I can now happily add that if the time of day is between 8:32 and 9:05am OR 4:37 and 6:11pm you can change the timing to every 37 seconds. This is tremendous news, and a huge "performance increase".

And no, you don't need to thank me for all my research time.

Now, if I could only stop a lot of them from wearing those horrid winter capri pants. . .

16 Oct 16:53 | /rants_and_raves | 0 comment(s)


Fri, 12 Oct 2007

The Week - Minor Rant

Tagged as:

I have a love/hate relationship with the magazine, The Week. It's a magazine I get every Friday and it kind of recaps the week's news from other magazines and newspapers.

The reason I got a subscription to it was because it reminded me of this news service fax that Simon and Gary used to get from The Guardian when we lived in Mexico (I guess it let them stay in touch with Blighty).

But The Week isn't nearly as good as that old fax service was. I can't put my finger on it exactly, but there are three main things that bug me:

... there's more to read here ...

12 Oct 22:53 | /news | 0 comment(s)


Thu, 11 Oct 2007

RSS Changes

Tagged as: , , ,

I'm trying to switch my blog's rss feed around a bit. If you don't mind, try using this feedburner link instead of my default rss feed link. I'll be changing the default link in a bit, hopefully it won't break anything.

11 Oct 10:46 | /tech | 0 comment(s)


Wed, 10 Oct 2007

Zoomerang Mobile Surveys

Tonight's going to be a long night. We're doing an upgrade at work today to introduce (in a limited manner) our new Zoomerang Mobile Surveys.

In a way, I'm a bit more excited just to close out some annoying bugs and enhancement requests that have kept me busy, but the mobile surveys are pretty cool.

If any of you are interested in purchasing or testing the service, send me an email to my gmail account and I'll get you the required information.

In a nutshell, here's what you'll be able to do:

... there's more to read here ...

10 Oct 13:02 | /tech | 2 comment(s)


Mon, 08 Oct 2007

Rotten Neighbors?

This is a bit scary- but fun. I found Rotten Neighbor via The Raw Feed. I plugged in my own zip code and found there was an entry for my street! Fortunately it's not me. But the funny thing is- I've heard the same guy- hell, so has Angie and she's only been over twice!

Loud Motorcycle!

Some guy parks his beat up green/orange motorcycle here. He is known to drive around the block between 11pm and 2am setting off car alarms. His bike is a very old Harley and makes a ton of noise. I don't have any problem with him driving during the day, but after 11pm, give it a rest! You don't have to drive full throttle through the neighborhood!

Actually, what the guy does is he starts at the bottom of the hill, across from me, and starts to rev up his bike as he goes uphill on the sidewalk. Or sometimes when he leaves he'll do the same thing going down the sidewalk, almost to jumpstart his bike. But it's insanely loud and inevitably sets off 3 car alarms every time.

But hey, at least my 'hood doesn't have a meth dealer, right?

08 Oct 13:45 | /tech | 1 comment(s)


Facebook

Although I'm just playing with the site because a friend asked me to log in (and then Angie added me as a friend), I was browsing around Facebook today.

I saw Tessa on there and when I went to add her as a friend, it asked for two security words to make sure I'm not a bot script. But I thought the two words it picked for here were a bit telling.

08 Oct 12:45 | /tech | 2 comment(s)


Che

Today's the 40th anniversary of Argentinian t-shit mogul Ernesto "Che" Guevara de la Serna's capture and death. His estate sells more tshirt than the Elvis estate to this day.

Let's just take a moment to remember what a totalitarian ass he was. I wonder if the Congolese miss him.

08 Oct 11:20 | /news | 1 comment(s)


Thu, 04 Oct 2007

Where's Ponch?

Where are Ponch and John when you need them? And wtf is up with traffic lately? Yesterday this guy narrowly missed me when he was running a red light. And Ponch and John did get him, so things are good. The guy didn't even see their lights to pull over (this was on 19th) so when I was pulling up next to him I honked and waved, then P&J hit their sirens to get him to pay attention. Yeah, I'm an ass, but that's ok.

But the other night, I saw a nasty wreck in the middle of Stanyan and Fulton. I was going uphill and was #2 in line to take a left onto Fulton from Stanyan. There was a guy coming up the hill in the right lane (to cross and go on towards Geary) and as he was going through the intersection, a dude going East on Fulton full on ran the light and hit the back panel of the first dude, spinning his car around like Tony Hawk. Crazy stuff. No one was hurt, although I bet the spinee was feeling it the next day. And then as I was getting home and was looking for parking I saw a near miss! And this morning a ped almost got tagged by a bus! (The ped was asking for it though) And right after that an air-headed ho' from the Marina bus almost got tagged by a UPS van backing in to a driveway! What's going on people? Why all the near misses?

You know what else was weird, there was a cute girl on the bus today (well, that's not news) and she had a short haircut that was cute with her red hair, even though her fake emo hipster boyfriend had the same haircut. But then I thought the girl looked like Eric Stoltz (seriously, a lot like him). And then I got creeped out like in a Tilda Swinton in Orlando meets the Crying Game kinda way. Ewww.

I don't know which is more disturbing, the car wrecks or the Eric Stoltz girl.

04 Oct 17:17 | /random | 2 comment(s)


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