Half Moon Bay

more music charts

Your mom is a classy lady!

I can't see a rainbow without thinking this now. Thanks, Penny Arcade!

Rainbow over the bay, view from my office.

Billie Joe Armstrong - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Billie Joe Armstrong - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "In 1987, Armstrong formed a band called Sweet Children with childhood friend Mike Dirnt at the age of 15. In the beginning, Dirnt and Armstrong were both on guitar, with Teodor Boskov on drums, and a man called Sean Hughes on bass."

Emphasis mine. I guess I was a founding member of Green Day? News to me. I think this ranks as my second favorite person who shares my name, bumping down a stand up comedian, but still trailing the IRA member who causes me trouble every time I go through airport security.

Webisodes | Battlestar Galactica | SCIFI.COM

Webisodes | Battlestar Galactica | SCIFI.COM: "The action continues with a gripping 10 part web series of Battlestar Galactica."

Looks good so far, and it's got me itching for January 16th. Oh, if you haven't watched season 4.0 yet, keep away. The first 5 seconds gives away the ending of the half season.

Supreme Court Overturns Bush v. Gore | The Onion - America's Finest News Source

Supreme Court Overturns Bush v. Gore | The Onion - America's Finest News Source: "WASHINGTON—In an unexpected judicial turnaround, the Supreme Court this week reversed its 2000 ruling in the landmark case of Bush v. Gore, stripping George W. Bush of his earlier political victory, and declaring Albert Arnold Gore the 43rd president of the United States of America."


I love the Onion

Cookery

I like cooking. But I hate cooking regular meals. Well, that's not quite true. I hate cooking fast. I hate having to come home and cook something to eat straight away, which is almost always the case. We tend to eat sometime between 8:30 and 9pm ever night.

That said, I like cooking when I have time to do so. I made something with a french name a few weeks ago, and I decided I should cook and document something at similar scale every weekend. Problem with that: it takes me forever to upload photos from our real camera. I was keeping up with it too, until this weekend, when I spent my Saturday studying. Anywho, let's catch up:

Steak dinner, fancy marinade, asparagus, roasted potatoes. Nothing too fancy, but it came out pretty good. Next:

Vichyssoise, recipe courtesy Alton. This was a blast, I got to use my boat motor:
The soup was good, but it made a lot, and we didn't quite finish it all. In retrospect, I've discovered it's intended to be served cold, should have had some that way.

P.S.: Yes, I have a corporate logo'd apron. It was cheap, and I needed an apron.

Head Six's Red Dress

""The" red dress that Head Six is seen wearing throughout the series, starting from the Miniseries when Baltar first sees her on Caprica as he boards Boomer's Raptor. An iconic, custom-made backless red dress featured also featured in various promotional materials, including the "Last Supper" photo.

Estimate from $ 10,000 - $ 12,000 "

Everything you could imagine from battlestar is up for auction. All the costumes, Adama's desk, all the CIC sets, even a full size viper.

Blagojevich

My favorite thing about this news cycle is hearing news reporters say "blagojevich". That and the guy looks like he should be an indie rock front man. Pop quiz: find the corrupt politician.

White People Food

A few weeks ago, we went to the San Mateo Harvest Festival. Despite the name, there was little harvest related to be found. Mostly crafts dealers, jewelers, artists, and more than anything else, overpriced packaged food.At 5 to 7 bucks a bottle, this stuff isn't cheap. And it goes quick too. But it's so tasty. And there's so many samples. Highlights from what we didn't pick up:

• Wine flavored chocolate sauce
• Scotch enriched butterscotch (same booth as above)
  
• Wine flavored jams and jellies (oddly, different booth from above)
• Cake in a box (for like 10 bucks a pop. I mean come on, buy some duncan hines)
• Fudge
• Bar-b-que sauce
• Soups
• Cheese
• Cheese soups

The list goes on and on. We see this sort of thing every week, at the farmer's market, but this was a whole different scale. There's an odd sort of buyer's remorse inherent in these things. They seem like such a good idea at the time, but really now, they're not all that special. And it's hard to find a good reason to use it, I feel the need to invite someone over to crack open the jams in that picture.

Oh, also, apparently Jossie wants some too.

Party Planning: Seeking the Proper Tone - The Caucus Blog - NYTimes.com

Party Planning: Seeking the Proper Tone - The Caucus Blog - NYTimes.com: "The most elaborate presidential inaugural parade took place during one of the nation’s biggest economic expansions.

In 1953, in the postwar boom, the newly sworn-in president, Dwight D. Eisenhower, led a convoy up Pennsylvania Avenue with 73 bands, 59 floats, 350 horses, 3 elephants, an Alaskan dog team and military vehicles. There were 25,000 foot marchers, and it lasted four and a half hours. (It was deemed so excessive that subsequent parades were limited to 15,000 marchers.)

Perhaps the most austere was in 1945, when the nation was still at war and Franklin D. Roosevelt, on his fourth inauguration, was in failing health. There was no parade. He took the oath on the South Portico of the White House in a ceremony that lasted just 14 minutes. He wanted chicken a la king to be served for lunch to his guests, but his housekeeper said she could not keep it hot and instead served cold chicken salad, rolls, coffee and cake, unfrosted. Wartime rationing meant no butter for the rolls.

It is safe to say that Mr. Obama’s inauguration will fall somewhere in between."

Speaks for itself

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die

You can stone your wife
Or sell your daughter
Into slavery
--Well we ignore those verses
Well then friend it seems to me
You pick and choose
Well please choose love instead of hate
Besides your nation
Was built on separation
Of church and state!

Deacadence

Bacon and pineapple pizza.

DISTUBINGcats

more animals

Rockefeller Center lights tree in annual ceremony

The Associated Press

I watched the lighting thing on NBC tonight, despite the fact I never watched it back in New York and like all things west coast, Live here means Live (from a previously recorded broadcast). Even just on screen it's an impressive looking thing, and makes me wish I was back in the city. I've heard SF has a tree, but I've yet to see it and I'm fair sure it doesn't measure up.

Oh, one of the many pointless performances was the Jonas Brothers. Yes, I know. The remote was out of reach. There's three of them, one of whom only sings. The singer was not the lead vocalist on the song they performed. Something is wrong with that.

Most depressing thing ever.

For those who think they enjoied yams thursday

Mostly for Erin, really, since I have to try to re convince her of this every time we buy sweet potatoes.



There. If Alton says it, you know it must be so.

All Christmas music, all the time

This started at least a week ago. I mean, come on, is that really necessary? If you want to hear non stop christmas music this time of year, couldn't you just go into any store anywhere? I find it hard to believe that there are people actively seeking this sort of thing.

96.5 KOIT FM - Lite Rock, Less Talk

Out of 465 employees at

Out of 465 employees at my company, 262 have the day off. I'm one of the lucky 203.

"Well I want in. Borg

"Well I want in. Borg me up!" -Erin, on her envy of my internet based knowledge of all things pop culture.

French food on the go!

Roast Chicken Nouvelle Cuisine

Above is in progress as I write this. It's... challenging. I haven't cooked anything this complex in quite some time. Probably not since March, when I made a leg of lamb when my mother was our here. I've modified the recipe a bit, most notably in that I'm using bone-in chicken breasts rather than a whole chicken, and I think I messed up the proportions of vegetables to stock, but only time will tell. Time, of course, is something I'm short on, so I'm a bit worried about it finishing in time. I'm delivering it to Erin at Borders at 5, which as soon as I started, at 3, I realized was a mistake. Not only is this complex and time consuming to prepare, it's complex to serve, and I'm going to have to pack it into gladware. This of course also means I can't serve wine with it, or have a glass now for that matter, which I could really go for. Meat thermometer says it will be done in 10 minutes, but I don't know if I buy that.

I'll take pictures, if the camera battery charges enough in the next half hour.

Edit: I was right on the time, didn't have the probe in far enough. Will this all be done in 15 minutes? Unlikely.

Edit 2: Chicken done in time-ish. Rice will be done at 5 exactly.

"Only when you know the rules backwards and forward should you proceed to break them."

Does anyone know where this quote is from? I heard it on NPR's Selected Shorts, in a reading of “Stump Louie” by Lisa Halliday, where it's attributed to Michealgelo, but wikiquote doesn't agree and google doesn't help. Incidentally, the story is set in Albany. I hadn't even noticed that when I heard it on the radio.

Failure of Feral Cats Roundup Has Explaination

From "All Things Considered" yesterday:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=96922216

Would anything at all motivate your average person short of having a feral cat eat his face? I doubt it.

SC priest: No communion for Obama supporters - Yahoo! News

SC priest: No communion for Obama supporters - Yahoo! News: "COLUMBIA, S.C. – A South Carolina Roman Catholic priest has told his parishioners that they should refrain from receiving Holy Communion if they voted for Barack Obama because the Democratic president-elect supports abortion, and supporting him 'constitutes material cooperation with intrinsic evil.'"



Just generically opposing pro-choice candidates is one thing, but this is a bit precise. How's that tax exemption treating you, Catholic Church?

BTW, I'm using the google toolbar (goobar?) to post this, which makes posting links and whatnot significantly easier.

Prop 8

The bit in the Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert clips about African American turn out is a bit misleading, as Nate Silver points out. He's also a bit more gentile about the truly relevant point than Dan Savage was:

...the older voters aren't going to be around for all that much longer, and they'll gradually be cycled out and replaced by younger voters who grew up in a more tolerant era.

Top Chef Season 5

...starts tonight. While I'm happy to have my favorite cooking show back, and doubly so to have it based in NYC this year, I find the logo a bit disturbing:




On the other hand, this Statue of Liberty will be better equipped to handle any marshmallow men that might show up.

The West Wing

So Bravo runs two episodes of The West Wing every morning. 8am - 10am. Which means I've been tending to get into work at 10:15 or so. Friday just finished out the series, so I was hoping I could shift my schedule a bit earlier. But here I am, watching season 1 ep1 and ep2.

Mind you, I own the entire series box set on DVD.

iTunes

I recently merged the music libraries from the several computers we've owned over the years onto Erin's laptop. As may be expected, there was quite a bit of overlap between them, and iTunes isn't quite smart enough to realize it's got two of the same song, so you wind up with "Paranoid Android.mp3", "Paranoid Android 1.mp3", "Paranoid Android 2.mp3" all in the same directory. As a result, I'm been going through track by track checking for repeats. On the one hand, it's a great way to remember all the music I forgot I owned (or "owned", as the case may be). On the other hand, we're talking about a library of 6,600 tracks, just about 27.5 GB, so it's going to take a while. Honestly, I would have left it as is, but our iPods are both only 30GB, and between the music, podcasts, and video, it just wouldn't fit. Since I'd have to go through the whole of it anyway to pick what I didn't want synced, it can't hurt to clear out the trash on the way.

Notes along the way:
Most frustrating part of this task - incorrectly formatted ID3 tags (mostly the title of the song containing " - "). Worse yet - the same, plus the artist bit is wrong. I mean come on, The Beatles did not sing "Love Potion #9". Barenaked Ladies did not sing "Buddy Holly". Worse yet - the same, but I can't figure out who the correct artist is. Most in this category seem to be listed as Dave Matthews songs. I mean damn, they did alot of coversongs, c'mon!

Must... Resist urge... to delete all of Erin's Creed tracks...

I still have a copy of my all time favorite holiday song. It's got some competition this year though.

Guilty Pleasure #1: Fall Out Boy. After going to see them back in Summer '07, and realizing the then current Pop Punk/"Emo" movement was this decade's answer to Boy Bands, I stopped listening to them altogether. But the few tracks they have on Rock Band piqued my interest in them again, and damn if their tracks aren't catchy as hell. Fun Fact about that show in 2007 - they did a cover of Michael Jackson's "Beat It", and I'm pretty sure Adam, Erin, and I were the only ones in our section who knew what song it was, or even that it was a cover.

No many how times I tell it not to "ask me this again", iTunes insists on double confirmation before deleting anything.

I have been slowly amassing a large quantity of Greatest Hits CD's. Yes, I know, Greatest Hits albums are for housewives and little girls. A partial list: ABBA, Aerosmith, Alice in Chains, The Beatles, Billy Joel, CCR, CSN, Bowie, The Doors, Electric Light Orchestra. That's A through E.

OK, 312 duplicates removed, that's enough for today. Library size now 26.21 GB

Election running too long

I tried to stay up to see the Prop 8, GA, and Franken results, but it's too damn late. Also, AK and OR, your races are far closer than they have any business being. I expect satisfaction by the time I wake up in 7 hours.

Obama-rama live blog?

Short but powerful. The next year is going to be interesting as hell.

Whiskey refill, yes we can!

I suddenly feel like I'm in church.

Yes We Can!

Only took him 10 minutes to start talking about re-election.

It's going to be nice to have a well spoken president again.

Obama's stage is just far more impressive than McCain's.

That's a lot of flags.

I've never done this live blog thing before, and it's not like anyone's reading this, I'll give it a shot anyway.

Jameson 12 year

My bottle is running low. I'm at 250 ml or so left of 750 ml. I'm leaving out some, I'm sure, but the following are my reasons for consumption:

Bachelor Party
Wedding's Eve
9/11 (more or less annually)
Getting pay bumps/promotions
Moving to SF
Obama wins

Looks like I may need another jigger, as Prop 8 might be failing, but you can't win them all. I'm thinking of replacing it with a bottle of 18 year when it drains out, but that's a hell of an investment.

Also, Erin is drunk on Amaretto. I don't have a problem with this. She tastes like Hazelnut!

GObama! Wooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Make Sure You Get Your Riboflavin

Crystal Spring

I noticed as soon as we moved out here that google maps were more accurate, which does make sense, we live about 15 minuets away from the google campus. But I came across something today while searching for a bakery that really impressed me.


View Larger Map

It's the clouds, reflected in the water. I've driven past that reservoir before, and when it's still, it does have that mirror finish. The aerial view is something else, though.

I really should make a post that doesn't rely on Daily Show videos some time, but I just love it when Jon Stewart gets mad. Like, really mad. Wild untamed rage starts at about 6:15.

I should have posted this yesterday

but now's almost as good.



"The view from my apartment was the World Trade Center. And now it's gone. And they attacked it. This symbol of American ingenuity and strenght and commerce. And it is gone. But you know what the view is now? The Statue of Liberty. The view from the south of Manhattan is the Statue of Liberty. You can't beat that." - Jon Stewart, 9-20-2001

My last view of the towers was from Jersey, flanking the stage of Liberty state park on one side with the Statue of Liberty on the other. I'll never forget that. I'll also never forget my first trip back, on the Greyhound, going though Jersey and not seeing the towers. I'll never forget that day, the numbness, the not knowing.

I just realized I'm unintentionally using the "never forget" meme that has long been scornfully associated with those who experienced this tragedy from afar, and I'm almost tempted to edit it out. It's not that I mean to look down on what they felt from this. I know that everyone was affected in some way, and I know many were affected more than me. I've just listened to David Cross to many times, and it doesn't feel right speaking about this without being as expressive and eloquent as possible. This was the most important shared event of our lifetime, and to fall back on "Never Forget" and "United We Stand" seems a disservice.

Anyway.

An inch one way or the other, a butterfly's wing flap as it were, and the effect on my life would have been far greater. I still can't think about it without feeling empty. I'm... I'm going to have a glass of 12 year now.

PAX: the short version

It's been a while since I've posted. I've got a slew of stuff from this weekend - but no pictures! we forgot the camera. It all boils down to: we're going next year, and to PAX East in Feb 2010. This is the high point of the weekend:

Why does making new friends feel like asking someone out on a date?

Magic Hat

I just realized I went my whole NY trip without Magic Hat. Damn.

All kids out of the pool

By seemingly random chance, the best line up of [adult swim] episodes is on tonight. The robot ep of Sealab, the first Mooninite ep on Aqua Teen, and Knifin' Around. I am a happy geek.

Dentistry

I got 5 fillings today. It was only supposed to be 4, but I guess they missed one. I don't think they charged me for it though, so there's that. It took way too long and way too much Novocaine to get my lower jaw numbed, not to mention the pain of the the trial and error checking to see if it had kicked in yet. As a result, the left side of my face was numb until about 2 this afternoon. Between licking my lips and my hair being mussed from sitting in the chair for 2 hours, I was feeling like the Joker all the way up to lunch. "Well hello beautiful!"

The Daily Show

Every time I watch the Daily Show, and I mean every time, I ask myself why I don't watch it every night. Now that the full eps are online, mayhaps I'll start in on watching the weeks worth on the weekends. The commentary is spot on, Jon Stewart's delivery never fails, and the guests are full of win. Watch the below bit on don't ask/don't tell.

Flight 595

I'm back in the Bay Area. I got in something like 14 hours late. Flight out of Omaha to Denver was delayed from 4pm to just past midnight. I missed my connection (as you may expect), got booked on a flight from Denver -> SFO at 6am, that one got canceled, got another at 8:30am. Slept (if you could call it that) on the floor at the gate in Denver.

All the shops in OMA closed at 8, right after I had my first, and thus only, 6 dollar beer. It wasn't anything special (Bud was 5.25). Denver's shops must have closed at some point before I got there, as it was fairly deserted there. This meant I had next to nothing to eat from 2pm central when I had lunch (Vindaloo!) to nearly 7am mountain. Lucky for me I had a box of granola bars with me, so I made do.

That's about it for the end of the trip. I'll never fly United again if I can avoid it.

TDK++

Dark Knight view count: 2. Next up: IMAX in SF (hopefully).

I went by myself, as my cohorts go to bed early like. They did come with me to mark another fast food chain to my list: Sonic. I was tired of seeing those commercials without ever going to one, which I suppose makes it effective advertizing. Perhaps not cost effective, but I'm in no place to argue. Grilled chicken sangwich, vanilla coke, and a chocolate malt. Traditional drive in grub. Well, traditionalish, should have had a burger/fries, but I stand by the Vanilla Coke and the Malt. It was pretty good, I've got to say. The grilled chicken in particular was quite good, and I do love me some vanilla Coke. So much so, in fact, that I broke my HFCS rule for it.

Oh, something else: anyone who's played any GTA game can tell you you're more likely to see other cars of the same model you're driving. There's a real reason for this in that sort of game, it's a system memory thing. The same sort of thing happens to me all the time now. Ever since Adam got his Mustang, I see them everywhere. Now that I'm driving a wonky little PT Cruiser, I see them all the time. Here's a picture (unrealted to this concept, but funny none the less) - pastel car showdown!

PT Bruiser

There's a hotel room and rental car shortage in Omaha. Word is the Junior Olympic Swim Trials are in town, so the company was scrounging to find rooms and cars for us this week. As a result, I've got sort of bottom of the barrel on both counts:

No, I'm not in a basement, in fact I'm on the second floor. That tiny little thing on the upper left is a window. I have a (sort of) view of the roof of the bar down stairs, where they charge 5 bucks for a beer.

That's my car. It's even more obnoxiously blue in person. I can't help picturing it parked at a beach with a surf board sticking out the back. Anyone who's played any Grand Theft Auto games knows you see the car you're driving on the road. In video games, it's due to memory constraints. In real life, it happens the same way, but it's just a mental thing. I've been seeing them all over town starting with following one all the way across town from the airport. None quite as eye catching as mine though. My old Albany cohorts spotted me driving back from the office tonight, and came back to pick me up for dinner and beers. Score!

Dollhouse

It's all happening again! The World Series is on fox again this year. Run while you can Joss!

Fat Man!

One more post vacation thing: it may or may not have come up the last time I saw you, but I lost 15 pounds. I made sure not to bring it up unless it was brought up, so I didn't point it out where no one noticed. I tried to keep to eating healthy in NY, and I did ok in Auburn, but by the time I hit Albany it was over. PF Changs, Hibachi, BBQ, breakfast, and so on. It just got worse in NYC: pizza (one of my old favorites sucks now, BOO!), hot dogs, beers, it was all over the place. On the other hand, I did alot of walking. Anywho, I was expecting a bit of a roll back. Low and behold, on return, my weight is unchanged. I fell off the push up wagon, so I think I lost the little muscle I had gained, but my pants still feel loose, so I couldn't have put that much back on. There's a gym here in the hotel in OMA, mayhaps I'll hit that up.

Of course, I just had a 13 ounce NY strip and a baked potato, so my number has probably increased. Time shall tell.

I should be asleep

Yeah, it's late.

I found out an hour or so ago I have to be in to work at like 7:45. Still, I'm awake. Knocked Up is on HBO, so I'll use that ending as my "up way too late" point. I've got a whole lot of things I want to talk about, and I know if I don't do it now, it will just slip away, so here's a whole pile:

New York went great. The whole state. Yankees game was sweet, despite being (literally) 3 rows from the top. Them winning certainly helped on that. Seeing a whole mess of people I haven't seen in forever was great as well. Pictures will follow, when I'm in the same state as my camera.

The most touristy thing I've ever done in New York: photographed about 7 of the Parade of Statue of Liberties they put up for the All Star Game. Again, photos to come.

I spent... way too many hours of the last 2 days in planes or airports. Delays in JFK on the way back from NY got us in about 3 hours late. Came home, straight to bed, up at 7 to pack, right back to SFO. Minor delay in SFO gets me to Denver late, and despite my connecting flight also being delayed I missed it by 10 minutes. All the same, I'm pretty sure my luggage wouldn't have followed me if I had. So, 3.5 hours waiting in Denver, picked up my car and bag, promptly got lost as hell. I did get to see Iowa, so, that's good, I guess. Travel sucks. The one good thing about it was I got to play alot of Tactics A2, which rules. Twenwy is fun in it's own way, and to some degree seems like the perfect DS game, what with how many of it's features it uses. It just wouldn't work on any other system. On the other hand, graphics aside, A2 could run on a GBA, but it's just so much fun. I highly recommend it. It is so choice.

Taking off from Denver I spotted something really odd at first, but upon thought it makes perfect sence - crop circles. Well, sort of. Usually the farmland you fly over is all patchwork style, so it was trippy to see verdant circles in the brown, but hey, irrigation systems work that way. I saw them as we drove past, on "the trip". Yay efficency.

Oh, last thing, and I might split this into a separate post, as it's funny as hell to me, and sort of major: if you're reading this, you probably participated in a social experiment I conducted over the vacation. It began as a grooming experiment: I wanted to see what I looked like with a beard. I was pretty sure I looked rediculous, but I kept it anyway. Odd thing: no one commented on it. Or almost no one at least. A list will be provided later of those who did speak up, along with photos of the deconstruction of the vacation beard.

Guess that's it. Knocked Up is over, it's almost 2. I have to be up in 5 hours, and probaby give a presentation in 8 or so, despite not having worked in 18 days.





Oh, and in case everyone else you know isn't telling you to, watch Dr Horrible. Just remember, I was first. Well, probably. You have to pay for it now (I didn't have real net access when it was free, so I have to as well), but you know it's worth it. I can't wait for the sound track to come out. And check over NPH's shoulder in the opening scene:

Yeah, it's Serenity. Made of pots and pans. You love it.

Why So Serious?

Go see Batman. Now.

I don't care if you already saw it. Go again. I might just go see it every night this week in Omaha, what the hell else am I going to do?

Bobby Flay made me eat cheese

Yeah, I know, it goes against my primal nature. But I'm not going to leave food on the plate when salad was 10 bucks. Backstory: we went to Mesa Grill, because we were nearby and met my mother after she got done with some work thing. She offered to take us there, but we arrived pre-dinner, so all the could do for us was seat us at the bar and sell us overpriced drinks and appetizers/salads. There were 6 items to choose from. All but one featured cheese prominently. I ordered the odd one out, a chopped salad, and even that had cheese all up ins. So, I'm not going to leave it there, and how many chances am I going to get to eat Iron Chef cooking, right? So, I ate it. And it wasn't bad. Perhaps this will start me down the dark and cheesy path. Perhaps not. Either way, it's a good thing we got there early, I wasn't really comfortable with my mother paying for dinner for us at a place Zagat estimates at $55 a person. I did enjoy the experience of eating there at all though. Maybe we'll budget in a trip to something on par for next time.

Camp Rising Sun

It's been a packed few days. We got into Albany on Thursday and went out to PF Changs with Jen and Justin - high quality Chinese food, I was quite pleased with it - then saw Jen's apartment and cats. Friday we hung out with Adam during the day, doing some last minute wedding gift shopping, and then went out to Hibachi for dinner with quite a crowd, and finished the night off with a few games of Bang.

Saturday was the big day, the center piece of our trip. Jared's party was a great time - good food, lots of people we'd not seen in forever, a good time all around. Pics will be posted when we can get them off the camera. After the party Erin/Chris/Linda/Steve and I all went to see Wall-E in Kingston before making the run back up. The movie was great, as to be expected from Pixar, and I'm glad we finally got the chance to see it, even if at the expense of seeing Hellboy II.

Perhaps the most memorable moment of the trip so far was on the drive to the Theater. The party was hidden away on the back roads of Red Hook, and we quickly got lost on our way out. Chris and Linda had a GPS, so we let them lead the way, despite that taking a different route than we had taken coming in. About half way through our dark and winding path, we rounded a turn, and the light from our headlamps through brief illumination across a gathering of people just off the side of the road. There were perhaps 25 of 30 of them, ranging from children to adults, standing shoulder to shoulder with arms locked behind each others backs and their heads bowed. One man stood outside of the circle, dressed all in black, the rest were wearing street clothes. Other than the light we introduced in our drive by, they were in complete darkness - no campfire, no flashlights, nothing. They didn't seem to notice our brief presence. A sign glimpsed as we drove by named the place Camp Rising Sun.

SYR

Some further details on the flight from Philly: we were on a twin prop plane. 36 seats. Smallest plane I've ever flown on. There was no jet way, it was just walk out on the tarmac and up the stairs that folded out of the door. 1/6th of the passengers were wearing orange; these Syracuse people take their college sports seriously.

This weekend has been good, though a bit of a blur in retrospect. I can't really recall what we did on Saturday. I know we ate at Shari's on Fri & Sun, and I got some grilling in. My steak confidence has increased, though I under estimated a few of them. Not that big a deal, as that's correctable given more time while the opposite is not, and there were enough rare fans that it worked out anyhow. Still a lot to do in this chunk of the state. Still to come: wine tasting, Meghan's concert, Sammi's soccer game. I'd upload pictures, but I'm without the proper equipment to do so at the moment.

Oh, right, that's why I forgot about Saturday, we went out drinking for Meghan's belated 21st. We found someone who can beat me at car bombs, an impressive feat indeed.

Empire State

If you're reading this, I'm likely in the same state as you. Oddly, SYR is the first airport I've been to that doesn't charge for wifi. Trip was good, slept a bit on the red eye. We'll see in a few hours how hard jet lag hits. Oh, and the Philly airport has a chick fil a, so I'm aiming for stopovers there every time I travel east from now on.

Gas

I filled my gas tank on Sunday. Just over 50 bucks for 11 or so gallons. I get 200 miles to the tank. That means biking to work saves me 2 bucks a day - not insignificant! - and only takes me an extra 15 minutes or so. I'd been planning on doing once a week, I might just have to bump that up.

Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

This is what happens when Joss Whedon gets bored during the writer's strike.

10.48

10.48 hours.

That's a minute shy of 10 and a half.

That's what I worked today. Tomorrow isn't looking to be good either. I've got to get all my ducks in a line as it were, before we take off for the home state. This is the first time I've worked later than my boss. Oddly, it's about the first time he's been in before me as well, so I guess that works out.

Follow that up with a frustrating time preparing dinner (not enough pasta, couldn't get audio working on the movie I was trying to watch, burned the meat, etc.) and I have had a pretty frustrating day. At the end of it all though, I've consumed a tasty pile of carbs and protein, I'm watching my favorite movie, and (...pause to run to kitchen) drinking a glass of triple distilled, seven year aged, Irish imported water of life. So all in all, I guess it works out pretty well.

I really forgot just how much I enjoy the movie I'm watching - "most beautiful thing in the world" jokes aside, American Beauty really is the best film I've ever watched. I don't think I've watched it in... like 3 or 4 years, and it sort of drifted from my mind. Even before I fixed the sound, just watching the first 5 minutes on mute while I was cooking reminded me how much I enjoy it. Wonderfully shot, perfectly acted, flawlessly written, and, as I've noticed for the first time tonight, awesome use of music. I've wanted to watch it all day, but I must have subconsciously added it to the queue after watching Fight Club last night. Seeing them back to back, they've got some pretty strong thematic connections I'd not noticed before. Does that make me a bad wanna be film student?

Oh, and happy birthday to one of my (very few, based on the comments I get) readers. I'd say belated, but it's still June here!

Decadence

We ate out last night, at a place called Black Angus. They appear to be a chain out here. As Erin said to convince me: "We have a coupon!" It was a deal on their "dinner for two" special. We paid 37 for it (not including wine), where it would have been something like 50 or so normally. Chicken fingers(split), clam chowder (for Erin) and salad (for me), Filet Mignon with veggies and rice pilaf(for Erin) and Sirloin with veggies and baked potato (for me), and a Creme Brulee (split). I still feel sluggish 12 hours later. I'm fairly confident that there were more calories in that meal than I usually eat in a day.

Ugh.

I just got the following email:
Compare People to me show details 1:57 PM (38 minutes ago) Reply
This email was sent by Compare People. You can disable emails here.---Your friends have voted on your strengths and weaknesses:
STRENGTHS:
best friend
most punctual
bravest
WEAKNESSES:
most confident
craziest

I get one of these a week or so, always pretty much the same. The last bit is what bothers me: is the metric on "craziest" trating it as a positive or negative trait? Is this telling me that I need to be more crazy? To anyone on facebook: when that question comes up in Compare People, which do you peg me as?


A note about my upcoming trip: I've embedded a google calender on the bottom right of this page, check it to see where we'll be over the 2 weeks we're there. Let me know if you want to get together when I'm near your part of the state.

I love the new millenium

This is what's wrong with the world. I'll watch it anyway, but it's wrong on so many levels. I mean, come on. This stuff happened 3 years ago. What. The. Hell.

Smoke signals

I've given up the dangers of wind and water for those of earth and fire. Not really a good trade.

I never realized before we moved out here how far smoke can diffuse. Like our first earthquake, our we heard about our first forest fire after the fact. Well, sort of. We're in no real danger where we are, as our town and the surrounding are plenty urbanized, so we only get the indirect effects. The first fire of the season was in the Santa Cruz mountains, a good 30 miles or so south of us, about 2 months ago. The current crop are burning in the East Bay and Brisbane.

The smell is what really amazes me. From miles and miles away, we get the scent of burning wood. Erin insists it's like living at a campfire, whereas I find it smells like pipe smoke is following me everywhere I go. The secondary effect is on the sun as it sets. It caught my eye on the drive home this evening, and I did my best to record the image. Sadly, the photographic spirit is willing, but the equipment is weak; the following are my best shots and still don't do the glowing orange orb justice.





Damn I need a DSLR.

George Carlin

Frisbeetarianism is the belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck.

After dark... The pandas stalk...

Feasting on bums, who sleep in the park.

Doing my best to spread viral videos. This is all of 15 seconds long, but you'll watch it at least 4 times.

Start spreading the news...

Yankees win! Theeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee Yankees win!

4-1 Yanks over A's, thanks to a grand slam from Hideki "Godzilla" Matsui. Awesome seats, 30 rows back from first base. I'll post pics later on. (EDIT: Pics below!) There were, no joke, as many Yankee fans in our section as Oakland fans. And the drunk dude in front of us got kicked out. Good time was had by all.

Neeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrds! Mk. II

Just returned from the aforementioned game day event. A good time was had: we three were all at the same table (the store ran two events concurrently), with a pair of quiet hack and slash type guys who knew each other. We had a really great DM, by name of Travis, who clicked pretty well with us. Perhaps we shall make some effort to track him down, I was hoping to talk to him afterward but he seemed to be in a bit of a rush. All in all, no one died, children were rescued, and a good time was had. I had the human cleric of Pelor, Erin had the half elf rogue, and Steve had the human fighter. Having immersed myself in the new system for the first time, I'm pretty happy with it. Judging when to use encounter and daily powers will be rough to adapt to, but even at first level you have enough encounter powers to use them pretty freely. I've got some complaints about old favorites that they've reworked, prime examples being Fireball and Power Attack, and Magic Missile a little bit, but some of the new stuff interests me, like Hunter's Mar- um, Quarry, and Warlock's Curse. I'm really on the fence about multiclassing. I'll have to do a few builds to decide.

Neeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrds!

D&D 4e came out today. Erin's picking it up at work, since Amazon would only save us 10 bucks or so and rumor has it they're backlogged a month and a half. I've seen... a bit of the new material, via the standard channels, of course (wink wink nudge nudge knowwhatImean knowwhatImean), and I'm sort of excited about it. It's very different. Very. But it seems like it could be fun. Erin, Steve, and I will be going to a D&D gameday event tomorrow, or at least attempting to: there seem to be only 3 or so in the whole of the Bay area, and alot of nerds, so who knows if we'll get in. Handy for us that the only store on the penninsula (including SF proper) running one is a mile from our apt. I'm a little disappointed in the rumors about the pre-gens available in the adventure, but I'll take what I can get anyway. Seems a shame they're only demoing one of the new races, and none of the new classes. I mean seriously, why double up on fighters? Also rogue is the only striker that didn't catch my attention, and is the only striker in the party.

In context of the 4e release, I got an awesomly hilarious email from Amazon:

Amazon.com recommends "Complete Scoundrel: A Player's Guide to Trickery and Ingenuity (Dungeons & Dragons d20 3.5 Fantasy Roleplaying)" and more

None of the "and more" were 4th ed books. All 3.5.

Wontons and Weddings

At one point, I was going to make a separate cooking blog, but my cooking style due to our life style has gone pretty simple. Since Erin and I aren't home at the same time as often, I've been cooking either in bulk to make a bunch of meals at once (grill 4 pounds of chicken in one go) or making ridiculously simple meals to make the most of our time together (turkey burgers turkey burgers turkey burgers!). Last night, we made dinner together, and damn did it turn out good. Potstickers:

They're chicken, and non-traditionally shaped, but they're cooked the right way - at least I think they are. Damn tasty and professional looking. This any my other recent culinary adventures all come courtesy of Alton Brown. See the granola bars below, they're from Sunday.
I finally got my broken tooth fixed. It broke in, like November of 2003, I finally got a root canal last spring, and went to get it crowned last month. Since I waited so long, the next tooth over decayed to the point they had to crown it as well, and being so small they had to do it in gold - yeah, I don't get it either. I guess it's sort of bad ass? I'm like a pirate, or something. So, I guess my father's advice of "Why bother going to the dentist if it doesn't hurt" kinda failed me here.


We got to see D's pictures of Jared and Lisa's wedding on facebook, and immediately regretted not finding a way out there. I feel like this is the first major event we've missed out on since leaving, and it sucks. It looks like every one had a good time, and it looks to have been a nice day. Congratulations to the Happy Couple, we look forward to celebrating with you in July.

Non-lazy Friday

Oh, I forgot the redeeming factor that balanced (somewhat) my weakness on Friday: I participated in Bike to Work Day. It was fun, didn't take as much out of me as I expected, and made me feel a lot more connected with my commute. 30 minutes each way, I figure I almost canceled out the
Chicken Sang-wich from McD's. I didn't feel sore until Sunday, though that may have been part hang over, so it's hard to judge. I'm thinking of doing it once or twice again this week, maybe work up to doing it every day. It makes perfect sense, it saves me something like $2 a day in gas money, it's healthy, and it wakes me up in the morning. We'll see how I feel after doing it mid week I guess.

Lazy Friday

So, despite welcomed encouragement, I gave into both temptations mentioned in my last post. Good news though: the rip off chicken sandwich doesn't hold a candle to the original. The key difference is the bun. McD's steamed really doesn't hold up compared to the toasted original, it just tasted pasty and nasty. Could also be that I've not had white bread in months.

The other pit fall that got me was Mr Pibb and Red Vines, as they equal crazy delicious. Link to explain for the confused. The movie was good, better than the first. I'm going to reread the books before the next one hits.

We've been hanging out with Steve lately. He's gone from being a farmer to being a farmer. We met up with him on Saturday at a farmer's market he was working, and hung out all weekend. We had a great time, had some wine, and got Steve playing some Rock Band. He's got some rough decisions to go through, so good luck to him and I'm hoping everything works out for him whatever he decides.

Chick-faux-lay

So, I cut fast food and soda out of my diet. In fact, I cut out High Fructose Corn Syrup as much as possible. I knew there would be two holes in my resolve, one for each. One: when I go see Prince Caspian it is imperative that I have me some Mr Pibb and Red Vines, as they are crazy delicious. Two: I love me some Chick-Fil-A. My first, and only experience with it was on our cross country trek, and it was heaven on a bun. Seriously, I like me some chicken sandwiches, and this was bar none the best chicken sandwich I've ever had. But Chick-Fil-A is primarily a southern and mid west thing. How could it tempt me from half a country away?

Enter Mickey D's
This is the Southern Chicken Sandwich. Seasoned chicken breast, buttered bun, pickles. The classic Chick-Fil-A sandwich down to the garnish. On top of that, they're giving it away for free on Thursday. It... it's just not fair! Sigh. Expect a review of it sometime soon. Maybe if it doesn't live up to the original it won't be as hard to resist.

Raw Deal

We've been remiss in our movie watching. Not having a big group to go out with makes it less tempting to go see things on opening night, add in Erin's variable schedule and my occasionally late hours, and it's just not worth making plans. So we were a week late in seeing Iron Man. The two big-ish towns near us are San Mateo and Redwood City, the later of which is our preferred destination for movies, as it's got better parking, though the restaurants in San Mateo are more convenient and varied. We hit Redwood City this time, with my intent being to hit a fast casual place like Chipotle or Tacone as I love me some Burritos and even the chain places out here do a good job with them (don't tell Erin - I think Chipotle is better than Moe's). Erin wasn't struck by anything on either menu, so we decided to celebrate my recent pay increase and Erin's haircut (I'll link to her blog if she ever gets around to posting about it like she claimed she would). Just down the street for the counter service joints pandering to high schoolers we found this place.

Now, given that this is the Bay Area, a foodie mecca if I've ever seen one, and home to plenty of pricey eateries, this place was pretty reasonable. But it was up there, about as much as I'd be willing to spend on a dinner without a really good reason. (spoiler alert: we spent just over 100, tip included, for 2 meals, 2 decent glasses of wine, and after dinner drinks) I ordered the NY strip steak, and applied my rule of ordering steak rare if it's over 20 bucks - I don't trust chefs at any place less than that to do rare correctly, so I do mid rare normally. I should say in advance of this, I don't think I've ever sent back a meal at a restaurant before. I just don't do it, especially since I saw Waiting... - it made me a bit paranoid. We were waiting a bit too long for our meals, given both Erin and myself ordered rare/mid rare steaks, so I had a feeling something was up. Erin's came out fine, but mine was medium well - maybe medium being pretty generous. If I cooked it for myself, I'd have eaten it without complaint. I almost kept my mouth shut, but when our waitress came over to ask if everything was alright I decided couldn't let it go - Damnit I'm paying 25 bucks for this steak, it'd better be right!

An interlude here for a moment - I find I can't keep the venom out of my voice when I complain about something. Even if I try to control my tone and be up beat and what not, there's a tinge of malice at the end of the sentence. I must come off as really pissed off, which may or may not have worked in my favor this time.

She took my plate back without complaint, and someone (I'd assume the chef) came out to say it would be just a minute. The replacement was prompt, and just looking at it through the sauce before slicing into it I could tell this piece of meat had just barely been introduced to the flame, like a coworker's spouse at a party - an acquaintance made in passing and quickly forgotten about. Now, clearly, I enjoy rare steak. But this steak was rare in nearly the same way Sushi is rare. The center was literally cold to the touch. I'll repeat that for emphasis - the meat was cold! I really wasn't going to be the guy who sends his steak back twice, so I decided to live with it. I was fairly well rewarded; it wound up being a bit chewy, but it had a damn good flavor. By the time I finished it, the temp had evened out so I didn't even have that disturbing cold twinge with each bite.

I took this picture with my camera phone at the end of dinner - low quality for obvious reasons, I tried to clear it up a bit in Gimp. If anything, it was more red/purple in person. The pink you see here is deceptive, if I had seen it on someone else's plate I would have assumed it was seared tuna.


Oh, and Iron Man rocked. Tony Stark at the beginning reminds me of Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg, which I think was about right for pre-redemption Stark. I'm really looking forward to the sequels, since I love Warmachine and I can't wait to see what Terrence Howard does with an action role. Oh, if you haven't seen it, stay till after the credits for some awesome Marvel universe movies foreshadowing as well. If they can pull off (warning: Iron Man post credits scene spoilers in link) this whole thing the way they're talking about it, it will without doubt be the crowning achievement of the whole Superhero movie thing that's been going on for the last 6 years or so.

Big Money

I arrived at work today to find out the update I'd had released last night (which I'd been working on for 3 months) had half a dozen bugs. One of the underwriters stopped my on my way in the door to let me know. "Ok, let me clock in, I'll be right back." I made it half way to my desk before I realized I didn't have my laptop with me. *sigh* I'd brought it home so I could fix any bugs remotely in the morning. I got up early double checked with my contact in Albany, but of course the SF users wouldn't inform him, since they can just go straight to me. Now it's 10 AM, I could have solved this 2 hours ago and not killed productivity for the whole department, plus I have to drive back home to get my machine. I made record time and clocked in by 10:30, and knocked out the bugs one by one - half of which weren't even bugs, just misinterpretations of new features by the users. Damn, looking back on it I missed my chance to use favorite refrain of developers everywhere - "working as intended!"

I killed my whole day fixing bugs and hand holding users through the new, more automated UW system. Rough work as, well, everything that went wrong was my fault. Sort of depressing, having your mistakes laid out before you. Around 5 o'clock, I had a surprise annual review sprung on me. Surprise because we don't do annual reports in our company anymore. Apparently, we still do, just not on paper and they have no official effect. This one did. I got a raise.

A big-ish one. Not as large as the last, but seeing as instead of my expected cost of living increase (3.8%) I got more than four times that (about 16%), it certainly caught my attention.

So, big news I guess. Brightened my day. I'd been a bit worried since the other guy on my team got fired with no warning in February, and I wasn't really doing the job they brought me out for - still basically a software developer, maybe that and a project manager. Guess I've been doing alright.

Birthday greetings

The last time I spoke to my father was on my birthday. Today is his. I left work early to call him. He was at dinner, and said he'd call me when he got home. That was at 6:30 - 9:30 on his coast. It's now almost 1am his time. This should probably bother me, shouldn't it?

kitteh

No matter how down I feel or how bad my day at work has been, there's something about captioned cat pictures that I just can't help but laugh at. Yeah, I know, they're ridiculous, silly, and childish, but I just don't care. This brightened my day, I post it here with hope it does the same for anyone who happens to read this and needs it.


see more crazy cat pics

Birbigs

I'm listening to Mike Birbiglia. I think he's making fun of me. Well, not me in specific, people who have useless blogs. =/ Describing my displeasure at this in this medium makes it even worse.

Moving tribute

I don't know if any of you heard of Eve Carson, she was Student Body President at UNC, who was shot to death in a car jacking. A friend of mine was her room mate last year. He was doing an internship in India, and returned home early to speak at her memorial, below. In addition to being a moving tribute, it contains the phrase "Quarter life crisis", which I'd never heard before, and is the perfect phrase to describe college age crises.

The best idea ever.

So, we had a big Easter dinner. Lamb, roast potatoes, etc. On a whim, we decided to do chocolate fondue, mainly because we had some nice strawberries from the farmers market. Mixing up a pot of ganache isn't the easiest thing in the world, so it's natural to start looking around for things to dip in it. We acquired some pineapple ahead of time, and some grapes. Then we started scrounging around for other dip-ables. The easter candy was about, I had wanted to melt some bunny into the sauce. To make this clear, I already consider Peeps about the high point of Easter, in fact I think it's about the ONLY thing I like about Easter. Coating Marshmallow and Sugar in a coating of chocolate and cream is like heaven on a tiny fork. I've decided - just now - that this is going to be a yearly thing.

Wine Country

Second trip to wine country went just as well as the first. This time we had a bit more time, 2 nights rather than one, so we were a bit slower about things this time. Also, we got on a tour this time, which was full of win. No one driving means everyone gets drunker. Also, by the end of the trip all 15 people on board were the best of friends. Erin made an impressive cake, more on that when I upload pictures later - it deserves its own post.

So, when's my birthday?

I was born at 1:50 AM, in Manhattan, just around 26 years ago now. So, here's my question: 1:50 am 3/20 on the east coast is 10:50 pm 3/19 on the west coast, where I am now. So, am I 26 already? Does my birthday change? If I was turning 21, would a bouncer care?

Happy St Pat's

That would be my mother laughing incredulously in the background, she's out for my birthday and had never witnessed a carbomb before. She'd heard of them - infamous family story, real quick, my cousin ordered a carbomb in Belfast. Not a good move. Anyhow, beat my time!

Happy Pi Day

3/14... Credit to the very funny toothpaste for dinner for the above comic. Oh, and a *wink wink nudge nudge* to the other "holiday" celebrated today.

TV Land makes me feel old

I always knew at some point the music I listened to as a kid would be on oldies stations on the radio. TV Land has got to be about the same for sitcoms, right? It was bad enough when Full House and Home Improvement were on there, but right now I'm watching Just Shoot Me. It started less than 10 years ago, damnit! I mean what the hell.

EDIT (3/3) - this is my final complaint about Nick at Nite/TV Land. I won't even put words to it. I've accepted defeat. (LINK).

I can't shut up

Something about me being alone makes me want to write. I don't know what it is, it's not like I have that much more time or less things to do, I could be doing all the surfing/tv watching I usually do, but looking back at my post yesterday sort of amazes me. Anyhow, items of interest:

The Elenium: I've been an Eddings fan for... I'm not quite sure. Some time now. Whenever I read the Belgariad, I guess it was last year sometime. Some people (I won't name names. Ok it was Erin. And Chris. And I guess sort of Jared.) had been trying to convince me to read it (and the Mallorean) for quite a while. Chris... come to think of it now I can't recall if he said he liked or disliked the Elenium, but either way he described it to me after me first Eddings Experience, and it sounded like everything I liked from the Belgarion saga. Erin and I picked up the trade paper of it some time ago, but it just went on the shelf next to its brothers. I needed something to read on the flight, so I popped it in the laptop bag. It's awesome. It's quickly shaping up to be my favorite fantasy series, and I've only read a few hundred pages so far. I guess I should finish Wheel of Time before I make that statement, but I'm too pissed at Jordan for dying.

I really want to like comics. I've been looking into some of the "classics", thinking about picking up graphic novels from some of the big names. Not superhero books- well, at least not the traditional ones. The first few I looked into were Sin City - loved the movie, but not sure I like the minimalist style on paper; and Sandman - love Gaiman, but after looking into it, I can't stand the art. I did pick up the 300 book, mainly so I could do a comparison to the flick - it's supposed to be a shot by shot production, with the exception of the subplot they added in to give Lena Headey more screen time (and who's to blame them?). I think I've found the book for me: The Walking Dead. It's by the guy who wrote Marvel Zombies - oh, I bought that too. It was just way too awesome a concept to pass up. Anywho, I've browsed though a bit of Walking Dead, and it hits all the high points - the writer describes it like a Romero movie without an end. Matt, I don't know if you're still reading this, but if you are, read though it at Borders or something, it's right up your alley.

Fenix and Omaha

Phoenix (my stopover out here and returning) was an odd town to see from above. Coming in there were clear views of the well irrigated (by which I mean adequately irrigated, I don't know the source) fields surrounding, a grid of lush and green standing out against the stark desert. Leaving after the sun set (which was stunning, by the by, more on that later) gave a similar view of the grid of lights defined by the large and small streets. Phoenix is big, much bigger than I’d though. It’s the 5th largest city in the country, and also one of the largest in size, giving it a very low population density (2,937.8/sq mi compared to 27,083/sq mi in NYC). The whole of the city is very… regular. Repeating patterns, near groups identical houses stretching for miles few (if any) buildings over 3 stories. Omaha (my destination, and home for 4.5 days) is much the same. There are a few tall buildings (I refuse to call them skyscrapers, the tallest is only a floor bigger than the Corning Tower in Albany), but for the most part the city is a ridiculously large, sparsely populated grid (density of 3,370.7/sq mi – that’s my last quoted number from Wikipedia, I promise). In both cases, I think it’s the lack of any real geographic boundaries. Omaha has the Mississippi, but that’s about it. Phoenix just spreads out in all directions, on a massive expanse of flat land. Something about that flat land really contributes to the sunset for some reason. In both Phoenix and Omaha, the sky really lights up, showing strong red color every night, something I never really saw on the East coast. I’ve read, and been told, that the sunset in the Bay Area are particularly stunning, but you have to be in the right place – the Berkeley Hills, or on the coast, or something like that. Out here in Flat America, as I noticed when we drove across it, there’s a picturesque sunset from everywhere, every day.

I’m hooked on this game Elite Beat Agents: it’s for the ds, it’s like DDR with a touch pad. Adam Lisbon is to blame, both directly and indirectly: he gave us a copy of the Japanese version (Ouendan – which I’m pretty sure translates to Cheer Squad, not in the mood to look it up right now), and by doing so contributed to the amount of exported copies of that game that inspired a localized US version. I’ve gotten over my hatred of rhythm games, originally spurred on by the aforementioned DDR, primarily though Rock Band. This EBA game is fun, but frustrating as hell on higher difficulty levels. I’ve played it so much lately I think I’m doing damage to the touch screen. Not good. I’m trying to build up quote unquote Mad Skillz before PAX, gotta represent. As a result, I’ve got a crappy cover version of Jumping Jack Flash stuck in my head. Not good for sitting though meetings tomorrow.

Oh mc, Won't You Rhyme For Me...

Sunday we spent in SF, primarily for a concert. First we did some shopping. Erin, clearly jealous of my "fly new kicks", bought new shoes of her own, dooming her to carrying her old ones in her purse. Next we visited City Lights, historic paper back bookstore and Beat era publisher. Right down the street was San Francisco Brewing, for beer and dinner. Beer was good, dinner was OK. I'll have to head back to try the "Rainbow Stout", a clever name which took me far too long to get.

Cross town to the Filmore for... probably the least historic concert in a historic venue. 3rd time seeing mc chris, huge crowd, only about 20 there for MC. We got there early, right up to the front. Dead center were a bunch of teeny booper fan girls there for the main act. 2 of the mc fans were a 14 year old and a 6 (!) year old. Even if you're unfamiliar with the music, the attached image should give you a clue. Due to the limited number of geek rap fans there, I actually got a chance to chat with mc beyond the traditional pic of him flipping off the camera. I brought my copy of ATHF:MFFT and he thanked me for watching it. He's headlining a tour in May, maybe I won't have to pay $35+ a ticket to see him if he comes back to the Bay Area. Plus he's on Warped Tour this summer, though the closest that got last year was Fresno.

We left about 45 minutes into Pinback's set. They're not bad, in fact after listening to their myspace free bee tracks I was looking forward to seeing them. For some reason they weren't as good live. Plus a LARGE portion of the crowd was smoking up. You know it's bad when the lead singer asks the crowd to blow the pot smoke to the back of the room, it's affecting his voice. *shrug* We bought the album anyway.

New Shughes

So I finally gave in to the requests, demands, and pleas of both my mother and my wife over the last... 3 years? 4 years? Something like that. Saturday at the mall I picked up new sneakers, and am retiring my Airwalks. Below, a tribute and retrospective on the flaws derided by many but loved by me. Erin wants the honor of throwing them out. I kinda want to burn them- just for dramatic effect.


Here's the new ones. KSwiss. They're pretty nice, but walking around in the on Sunday kinda hurt my ankles. Not sure if it's just that they're new, or if the fancy lacing I have to use. Well, "have to" is strong. But look at the way they're set up: even laced the way I have it doesn't look quite right. Way better than normal would (I tried), but... what are ya gonna do. Stylin'!