coffeefog

eewww

This is sick food. But these guys are funny with their coffesicles.

Thanks to John, another MovableType weenie.

it's coffee time!

Apparently coffee time is always 1:37. But is it AM or PM? I wonder when this clock last accurately tracked the time of day. (22nd ave and Irving, San Francisco)

I have a co-worker leaving the company today, and he apparently stayed up until 2am last night finishing up a project. That's dedication. Or at least it's an engineer's compulsion to finish the problem he was working on. But it reminds me a lot of college - pulling all nighters at the end of the semester to finish assignments. I know a few people who apply the all-nighter work ethic to their jobs, but I'm pretty happy to be free from that insanity now.

enternet

Hello, devotees of Ethan. Or "web surfers," as you may call yourselves. Today we're going to tackle a very interesting topic - "workplace productivity." No, no, fuck that. Let's talk about nothing in particular. Let's just talk about nothing in particular because I haven't posted in a day or two, and I'd hate to let down my 9 recurring daily hits. That's right, 9. Once my uncle finds out about this page I'll be gettin' double digits! Uncle Phil - this one's for you.

You know what I hate? Coffee doesn't freeze into popsicles too well. I grew up on home-made apple juice popsicles, but over the years my tastes matured, and now I prefer a fine Arabican Sumatra blend to the Jammin' Juicers of my youth. See, the coffsicle goes all wrong when you put the sugar in. The problem seems to be that, once you stir the sugar in, it settles to the bottom when you pour it into your home-popsicle kit. 6-8 hours later, the first bit of the popsicle is quite enjoyable, but soon you run out of sugar and your pleasure turns to pain.

But what really gets to me is the way corporate america has ignored my plight - that of the yuppie with disposable income who needs coffee in popsicle format. And they say the straight white male age 18-39 demographic gets all the marketing attention. They are wrong, and they are bastards for that.

You'd think that there wasn't a war going on, the way I'm babbling about nonsense... GET YOUR WAR ON

grad schoolers

A lot of friends have picked out their grad schools for next fall. In conclusion, my friends are a bunch of fucking smart bastards.

• Brendan to Georgetown
  
• Shelby to Northwestern
  
• Katy is undecided
  
• Travis to MIT
  
• Monzy to Stanford
  

softwarez

In the "things you don't care about" category, lets talk about cool software I've been using lately. OS X is my operating system of choice these days, so any time I talk about software I'm usually talking abut OS X.

LaunchBar is the shit. hit cmd+space, then type in any shortcut command that it learns from you, and it will launch the document/application/web page you have associated with the shortcut. Never take your hands off the keyboard again! Then admit that you're an uber-nerd for caring about how often you have to take your hands off the keyboard. I paid $20 for it. Even if you don't run OS X, you should still pay for it.

That's actually only the second piece of software I've paid for in 3 years. Partly blame that on old college pirating habits, and partly on the fact that Apple provides you all the software you could ever need in their default OS X install...

best poem ever

Daddy's wigwam tall and straight
See them open heaven's gate
See them walking one by one
Astropup chillin' in the sun

-- sifl & olly

weekend is over

Yesterday I bought a new pair of shoes and wore them out of the store. I left my old extremely battered and worn-out pair of Simples on top of a trash can - they've been dead for months, anyway. I guess I can do this because I'm really a "one pair of shoes at a time" sort of guy - I got about 2.5 years of daily wear out of that pair. I always imagined that I would burn them in a bonfire, but it just didn't turn out that way. Burning shoes is pretty extravagant, anyway. And it can't possibly be good for the environment, what with the chemicals and stuff.

The fact that I've worn the same pair of shoes for the past 2 years probably comes from my childhood fantasies about wearing a uniform. I would have been happy either at a school where I had to wear slacks, shirt and tie all the time, or as a cartoon character like Bart Simpson. I just didn't want to have to think about what I'd be wearing, or worry about whether or not I'd get a new hypercolor shirt to wear for the first day of 7th grade. I found junior high to be a very trying time fashion-wise, especially for someone like me who's bad at dressing. But luckily, in the real world, people really don't give a shit how you dress. I was pretty psyched once I figured that one out.

other planets

On Tuesday we took Dave to Mars and left him there. He looked sad as we pulled away.

no jury duty

Groups 602,604,605,607,608,609,610,612,613,614, 617, and 619, we do not need your services Friday, March, 21, 2003. You have now completed your Jury Service.

workin' from home

Hey internet buddies-
Fate dealt me the "car will be in the body shop all day, instead of just until 10am" card today. Fate is a whore. But, the up-side to sitting around waiting for the body shop to call is that I'm at home, not at work, 'cause I need my car to get to work. And my boss is super-chill, and he doesn't care where I am.

In today's mockery of "working from home," I chose to fill in the table of contents at the front of my super-phat Boorum and Pease 18-300R lab journal. If you've never seen one of these journals up close, you haven't lived the pathetic office-bound existence that I've been living for the past 3 years. As much as I joke about how much work sucks, I really do love my job most of the time. Other times it makes me throw up and cry, but I won't dwell on that today.

We'll overlook my terminal office-space outlook for now to discuss my made-up task for the day. I'm a computer programmer, and I do a lot of writing with pen and paper. I do most of my thinking with pen and paper, and I only turn to the computer once I have everything figured out in my head. I fill-up these 300 page bound journals with all my design/debugging thoughts, regularly emptying the software part of my brain into them. So today I was like "thinking sucks, I'm going to fill in the table of contents in this journal instead." And it was fun - I skimmed through a couple of hundred pages of me banging my head against walls, trying to solve problems that, in retrospect, seem easy. So that gave me a little bit of confidence to deal with the ugly-ass situations I've got right now. But that's not the funny part - the funny part is that I discovered that I write "fuck this!" pretty often, like every time I get frustrated with a problem. I saw it like 10 times in there. "fuck this!" just seems like something you should shout, instead of write down.

But the real funny part of the story is that you're still reading. I mean, this was a boring fucking story, but you're still here, suckers. Also, I filled in the table of contents pretty thoroughly. If I ever needed to find some particular notes (which I won't), I'd be able to.

world_right_now

War's a bummer, so enjoy this yellow picture.

lunchens

This is a reminder for Emily to read a comparison of French and American elemantery school lunches. I stole the link.

The rest of you may also follow the link, but one at a time please.

skimping by

It's Wednesday, and I haven't been called into jury duty yet. Every night they've been directing me to check out sfgov.org/juryduty in case my number is up. But group 612 hasn't been called in yet. I wonder what the other people in group 612 are like, and if I'll ever get to meet them. Do you think they like playing frisbee, and going to the park with dogs? Do you think any of them would like to sit down and talk about cool unix command line tools with me? My favorite is "wc", oddly enough. If group 612 never gets called in, I may never find out. But I kinda figure that, no matter how cool they might be, it's gonna get old sitting in the jury waiting room for 8 hours with them. So maybe it's better that I haven't gotten tapped.

I haven't done any civic duty, like, ever.

requests

For adam:
It's a grind grind it's a grind it's a grind grind

For me:
If you are one of these people, you should email me sometime, because we used to know each other and I haven't heard from you in years:

• Brian Dougherty (pittsburgh, 1999)
  
• Melanie Wakefield (pittsburgh, 1999)
  
• Merritt Tierce (Denton, 1997)
  

Although that's one of the best lines from Rushmore, from the end of Max's production of Heaven and Hell, it doesn't appear in the online copy of the script I've been reading. My bound copy of the script is at home, hangin' with the coffee table book version of Apocalypse Now.

gas

Do you have any idea how much gas costs in California right now? I paid $2.49 a gallon (cheap stuff was $2.39, I accidentally bought the mid-grade) at a Shell right off I-80 last night. That's expensive even for the bay area, but I needed gas. Anyway, it's making my commute-heavy lifesystle expensive. What a bummer.

I'm spending the week re-learning how to use my passenger side side-view-mirror. I haven't had one for 3 years (and it's legal! thank you California vehicular code!), for reasons that I irrationally blame on Alison. Although Alison was in another state when I broke off my side-view mirror, I was stealing her parking spot at the time, and it was the act of backing out of her parking spot that claimed the mirror's life.

But just last Friday, it was my own driveway that claimed the driver's side side-view-mirror. You'd think that I'd have no problem getting into and out of narrow driveways when I only had one side view mirror to worry about. But I am a fucking moron. I'm having both mirrors replaced this week...

seattle in january

Here's a random shot from a weekend I spent in Seattle this January. If you're in a band, and you know photoshop, I encourage you to touch up the "Southbound 99" sign so it's a little more readable, name your next album "Southbound 99", and use this as cover art. Or perhaps put it inside the liner notes - it's up to you.

noisy

I'd like to keep the content of my web page "family friendly", so that I won't be embarrassed should my parents, sister, or 9 year old cousin Madeline ever read it. For that reason, I shall not post the things about my upstairs neighbor that I came here to post. Just remember that "I can hear everything" and draw your own conclusions about what he's doing up there right now.

Last night, around 12:30 am, he fell asleep before I did and I could hear him snoring. We've got walls and floors between us, you know. As Modest Mouse once said, "these walls are paper thin and everyone hears every little sound."

I'm wary of associating my real life identity with my blogging personality, but I'm also a very lazy and careless person. It's only a matter of time before a google for my name pulls up coffeefog.com... and that's when I'll be truly internet-stalkable. Just like in the old days. Let me take this opportunity to re-inforce how much the wayback machine kicks ass! They have my web pages from sophomore year of college (although without any pictures archived), right behind that link. How truly embarrassing for me.

coffeedog.com - it rhymes.

spun

We got him, Dirk. We got him.

Spent Saturday night watching Rushmore for, I would estimate, the eighth time. The Jason Schwartzman fans among you should be sure to check out Spun, starring Max Fischer as a meth freak, as it reaches indie movie houses near you this month.

burlesquery

My girlfriend got us tickets to a burlesque show next Thursday. As a reporter she frequently gets us free tickets to movies, plays, and performances, but I was a little taken aback when she announced we were going to see Kitten on the Keys. Oddly enough the show will be at the same venue I saw Thee More Shallows play on Monday... Maybe I'll make Emily drive so I can get drunk and rowdy. Are you supposed to be rowdy at burlesque shows? I'll find out for you.

Planning for next week's jury duty is proceeding on schedule. The marshmallow peeps have been arriving at the rate of about 3 crates/day, displacing my car for garage space. If all continues as planned, I should get the medical exclusion without a problem.

playing in fog

About 6 months ago I was at a bar called Cafe du Nord in San Francisco, listening to local "country" bands (the court and spark, the real sippin' whiskeys) when this girl came over and put a flyer for a website on my table. I picked up the flyer, and the name immediately jumped out at me - Playing in Fog. As an outspoken fog proponent myself, the mere mention of fog piqued my interest. So I took the flyer home and made a point to check it out later.

Since then Playing in Fog has been my most reliable and frequently used source of music recommendations. A couple of local indie rock fans run the site, recommending and reviewing SF bay area rock shows almost every day of the week. When I feel like going out to a show but don't have a clue where, I turn to playinginfog.com and usually find 3 shows playing this week that look promising. Just last night I headed out to see Thee More Shallows at playingfog's recommendation and had a great time listening to mellow new music. So my advice to you is to surf over to playing in fog and pick out a good show to see this week. I realize, however, that my blog readership is a) small, b) geographically diverse, and c) not necessarily into geek rock. So I take it upon myself to attend more shows on your behalf.

nature's majesty

California - it's all majestic and shit

my left eye eats contacts

It's a Sunday morning. And while I'd traditionally spend the next few hours in bed, my apartment building came alive at about 8:30 and there was no going back to sleep for me. The guy upstairs got up and started walking around, and at one point in my sleepy haze I thought he was trying to tap me a message through the floor to get me up. I now realize he was probably not trying to tap me a message.

But, having just put in my contact lenses, I now know that my left eye eats things. somehow. Yesterday morning I woke up at Emily's apartment, went to put my contact lenses in, and realized that 1/4 of my left eye contact was missing. It was cut cleanly off with a line directly through the contact. I said "huh" and chalked it up to clumsy contact storage. When I got home later in the day (after lots of squinting), I replaced both left and right contacts. Today I wake up, repeat the contacts-in-eyes routine for the 5,800th time (that's an estimate - I've been wearing since 1986) and discover that the same thing happened to my brand new left eye contact. There's a chunk torn out of it much smaller than yesterday's. It's almost inexplicable how this could happen two days in a row. What's up, God?

So, like I said, I'm up early today. I'm thinking about working on some source code that I SHOULD have worked on at work on Friday, but Friday was a sick day. The kind of sick day where you go drive across the golden gate bridge to try Joe's Taco Lounge.

seasons

Winter's almost over, which means it's time to watch Rushmore again. It's entering its 4th year as my favorite movie of all time, and remains my "movie that I watch when I need to chill out." (Bottle Rocket is the movie that I watch when I need to sleep.) I own two copies of Rushmore on DVD, the script, and one giant sized poster hanging over my bed. I used to have my Eraserhead poster hanging over my bed, but Jack Nance started to freak me out.

Perhaps the saddest thing to note is the silent passing of lawnwranglers.com. For the past few years it was a fan site dedicated to the Lawn Wranglers, the landscaping company/crime syndicate from Bottle Rocket. It linked to Wes Anderson interviews and its fan boards discussed places to buy yellow jumpsuits. But today it's gone. Hopefully it's just a temporary outage, but if its gone for good, we'll still have the wayback machine. It's a good thing SOMEBODY finally got off their ass and started archiving the internet.

phase 1 complete

I'm 23 years old, and I can't tell if I'm a yuppie yet. I'm pretty sure I am. That sucks.

juno

I've got a new upstairs neighbor to replace the dead guy. It's been 4 months without anybody, and I've appreciated the silence. My paper-thin ceiling makes everything going on upstairs (and most things going on downstairs) audible from my apartment. I tune it out, but sometimes Emily comes over and reminds me of how loud it is. Like when the phone upstairs rings, and I don't do anything, and Emily's like "aren't you going to get that?" and I'm like "that's not even mine." That's how well the noise carries. I can hear entire conversations if I really keep quiet and concentrate.

Somehow the noise doesn't bother me at all. I'm what I'd call "considerate as fuck" to my neighbors, just cause I know how well the noise carries and I hate stepping on toes. That's basically the relationship I have with the world - tiptoeing.

But anyway, the new guy must be a smoker or something, because he was coughing his ass off for hours. That's what I came here to say, but I've written and re-written this thing for 30 minutes. I fucking love caffeine.

best weekend ever

My weekend kicked ass. My weekend destroys your weekend.

Check out this photo from Saturday at Kirkwood, hiking up the ridge off sentinel bowl, into the palisades. The photo's relatively low resolution since it's a snap from video footage. That's me on the left.

nudity

speaking of "pictures of me with my pants off," I just remembered this one from the elevator safety page. We really helped a lot of people with our elevator safety message, didn't we? I think we did.