coffeefog

top ten

• Top Ten Things They Never Taught Me in Design School

That's a great list that applies to any profession. Right now, and for the past 3 years, I've been struggling with "4. Don’t over-think a problem." The phrase "Every other critic I ever had always tried to complicate and prolong a problem when, in fact, it had already been solved," rings all too true as I enter month 6 of thinking about a certain problem that I really could have sat down and written up 3 months ago.

that is a dog

coworkers are suckers

apparently, to the hallway passer-by, NetNewsWire (the software I run to read blogs) strongly resembles XCode (the software I run to be a productive employee).

score another 3 points for workplace malfeasance.

Spent a lot of today

Spent a lot of today with my friend Jay from college. I honesty didn't know if we'd have anything in common, since I haven't talked to him in 6 years, and even back then we only knew each other on a superficial basis. But we had a very relaxed foggy day walking around haight/cole/gg park, trading theories on "why it's fun to sleep on the living room floor," with me providing the "it's not fun to sleep on the living room floor," counter-argument.

Jay had an open letter to the author of Space Invaders published on McSweeneys.net a few months ago. I wouldn't link to it if it weren't funny.

Old friends and acquaintances are funny, aren't they? The decay and renewal of friendships, that is. It always strikes me as weird when I become friends with someone I vaguely knew 4 years ago, but never particularly liked. It's like, even if you don't click with someone now, you never know if you'll meet again years later and become good friends. That's what makes blogs so weird. A lot of college people I like, but never would have kept in touch with, read this blog, and I read their blogs, and our relationships are given these 5 year extension passes. So instead of gradually letting our friendships fall into disrepair, eventually culminating in a 2009 awkward run-in at the LA international airport, I know these people and I get to be emotionally invested in their crappy jobs and new houses and ex-girlfriends. And that's good.

foggy day at the beach

I call this picture Emily Makes a Friend

flames

I think I just got flamed for a post I made on a public email list. But I tell myself "I am above the flame wars. I may feel personally attacked by what that man had to say about cron, but I will withhold my anger and go drink some water. From the cooler. From the water cooler." And in all likelihood the dude didn't mean it as a personal attack... but he DID accuse me of being lazy.

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Isn't this picture nice and post-apocalyptic? Last Saturday I took a 8 mile stroll through the Presidio for the first time, and stumbled across these super-beautiful decrepit and falling apart military bunkers. All of the windows into these rooms are covered with iron bars, and the doors are welded shut. And it's not like I want to go inside anyway - peering through the iron bars into this dark space, 10 degrees colder than where I was standing 3 feet behind me - that alone scared the shit out of me. As far as I know, none of San Francisco's many decaying sea defenses have ever been used in battle. Anybody know that for sure? The Presidio's a great place to walk around, but I don't know where all the pedestrian trails are, so I ended up walking a couple of miles along crowded road shoulders. But the views were still worthwhile. Somewhere along the way I realized that I needed to keep a list of "yearly walks" like this one, that I have to do at least once a year as long as I'm living in San Francisco. I think the list will include something like 6-8 day long city courses. The big problem with the walking is that you get thirsty, and you have to drink water. But my instincts tell me to buy coffee, and drink the coffee, and they do this on my behalf even though I know that coffee won't taste good to my parched lips. But if you're half the coffee addict that I am, you know that sensation well. It only takes a couple of sips of the gorgeous dark liquid to convince your body that, yes, it wants to drink coffee after all. And after that you don't feel the deep thirst for re-hydration until 20 minutes later when you've finished your 16 ounces of black coffee and you get thirsty again. Last night, sitting in a cafe reading, I drank decaf. I'm so sorry for letting everybody down like that.

web awards!

I tried giving this "web award" to Lorelei last week, but she basically ignored it, and has refused to display it on her livejournal. Since she apparently doesn't want it, I have hereby awarded it to myself, for having an awesome web page. I am the second recipient of this award in its illustrious 7 year history. Congratulations go to snafuu for receiving it back in 1997 for her geocities home page. yay geocities!

Only an 18 year old college freshman's newfound love for beer can explain the existence of this... thing.

Lorelei can still have it if she asks nicely.

Remember the good old days, back in '98 and '99, when there were all those "top 5% of all websites" awards that people proudly displayed at the bottoms of their pages? good times.

cat apartments

When I visited the SF SPCA on saturday I got to take a tour of the "cat wing" of the adoption center. Every cat has its own little apartment, the size of a medium-sized closet with at least one glass wall and lots of human & cat furniture. This all makes it a really nice enviroment for the cats to live, and a really fun place to come to adopt a cat. But what really struck me was that the cats had really nice stuff. One of the cats had an aquarium with tiny guppies in it, and another cat had a TV. The cat with a TV was watching this video of birds eating out of bird feeders. I'm fucking serious.

Nicotine & Gravy

in general, it seems like when I get up here and say "read this book," at least one person reads the book. Usually Mick. Thanks, Mick. I was just thinking about what a good book Andorra by Peter Cameron was. It's a few lazy days in a forgotten country in the Pyrenees, and it teaches the valuable lesson that, when you move to a romantic new country to escape some horrible aspect of your life, you should take a few days to chill out before you start repeating the same mistakes that ruined your old life. Also there are dogs in it. So apparently you can get a used copy on Amazon for 50 cents. Could it be harder than that? I have a new iPod. I've turned into an "iPod asshole" who's always listening to the iPod as I walk down the street, oblivious of nearby cars and low-flying airplanes. But it's really cool to have all of my music on random. When played on random it's a little "Beck-heavy", but, then, my library is a little beck heavy. If you stop to think about it, Beck has put out a TON of albums, ranging from "acid folk" on One Foot in the Grave to the bizarre electronic party creations on Midnite Vultures. This is never more evident than when you hear "Satan gave me a taco" and "Nicotine & Gravy" back to back. Listen to Thee More Shallows and My Life is on the Line. After another 8 mile walk this weekend, I have come to one conclusion. And that is that this doesn't even look like san francisco.

the buses have a schedule

I just recently started using nextbus.com to tell me when the next N Judah was coming to take me downtown. I pull up the page a few minutes before I plan to leave the house, just to see how far away the train is. If it says "2 minutes" I have to leave right that second and run the whole way, and occasionally I can make it. If it says "5 minutes" or more I'm good, and I can take my time.

But now I'm in the habit of checking the bus arrival times for the stop near my apartment when I'm at work. Just as something to do. And I imagine the train pulling up, letting people off, and then going onward, out to the beach. It makes a really pleasant rumbling noise, with a few electrical "whisk" type noises from the cables.

tax lady scares me

Hi... yeah... I'm trying to do my taxes, but this lady is staring at me.

I don't know if she's supposed to make me feel better or what, but it's freaking me out. WTF is she doing there? Maybe it's supposed to make people who are uncomfortable doing their taxes over the internet feel more like they're down at the neighborhood H&R block, with red shirt glasses lady telling them they can't deduct their playstation. The internet never tells you not to deduct your playstation.

robot grand challenge update

Well, the results of the DARPA grand challenge are in. Of the 15 teams attempting to traverse the 142 mile desert course, none of them made it more than 7 miles. 8 of them only made it "0 miles." Man, this is funny. The current (with today's technologies) impossibility of this contest reminds me of the ridiculous annual Loebner "Turing test" contests with the $100,000 reward for the first software that can fool a human into thinking it's chatting with another human.

I don't think Ian knows about the quick resolution to this morning's race yet, but I'll bet he won't regret missing it so much now. Yep - he gave up on the trip when he couldn't find anybody to go with him.

Adam will have wet dreams over this picture. And by "this picture" I don't mean the one posted here. That's just a random and unrelated photo. I'm talking about a picture from the grand challenge race.

road trip!

Ian's driving out to the desert this weekend to try to get front row seats to the DARPA Grand Challenge autonomous robot race. (spectator information)

Undeterred by the fact that this should be a fairly boring spectator event, Ian plans to drive 12 hours into the desert tomorrow to watch the driverless, completely autonomus vehicles navigate a 250 mile course through the desert. Ian will be making this 12 hour desert drive in a truck that lacks both a functional 3rd gear and a radio.

This is why we love Ian. He is able to take on this weekend trip without considering all the possible and likely outcomes of his driving 24 hours in a near-dead pick-up truck he borrowed from his boss. All to go watch a bunch of cars drive off into the desert. That said, he would like companions, and although I've declined his offer, I'll publicly offer a ride with him to the DARPA challenge from the bay area to anybody here...

scary internet

Today is "why you should be afraid of the internet day." Both articles are good recommended reads. be afraid of friendster&orkut&tribe be afraid of google Also, in computer news I'm using a new PowerBook G4 12". I highly recommend these things. I like it much better than I did the 17" I was using for a year or so. The 12" weighs 2 pounds less, and even though I lost 500,000 pixels in the trade it's a much better machine for me (more portable, better battery, better 802.11 reception).

sigh

the internet can be such a bitch. I just stumbled across a handful of live Mike Doughty recordings at archive.org, and I'm all psyched to download them and listen to them, but they're in FLAC format. So boring. I guess, as "The Internet Archive", they're entitled to store tracks in whatever lossless format "for the ages" they want, but, I mean, what a pain in the ass. Now I have to download a new app, a converter. But go listen to the show anyway, because even though I haven't actually done that yet, I'm fairly certain that the 11-13-03 show is absolutely great. Mike Doughty tours through here a lot, and his "small rock" shows are always spectacular. His crowd banter is unparalleled.

I saw Mike 2 years ago in San Francisco, and after the show I was standing in a crowd of people waiting to buy a copy of his solo CD, available only at shows. As I'm standing there holding my $15, the guy in front of me hands Mike $140 for one CD, and insists that Mike take it. Such is the awesome musical power of Mike Doughty.

Aron - you just missed him in Chicago.
Merritt - go see him on March 19 in Dallas.
Erin and Alison - go to this Saturday's show

psst - Alison - remember when we tried to see him in Pittsburgh and we were denied based on the poor quality of my fake id? those were the days.

museo

for the second time in the past couple of months, I got to hang out in a museum at, like, midnight. this comes as a TOTAL FUCKING SHOCK to me. That museums open themselves up, give you alcohol (all you can drink), and let you look at 11th century chinese plates. Until the alarm goes off when you try to hug the buddha, that is. I should clarify that it wasn't me trying to hug the buddha - I have the utmost respect for museum rules and regulations. I mean, I've been to all sorts of museums, but not until recently did I understand the existence of the "late night cocktail party for rich people" at said museums.

Emily says they do it to get young people out and to the museums. I guess so. All I know is that having a press pass is solid gold. thank you, leg-it-i-mate press.

run

If you have very recently donated blood, and are now considering going for a run, my advice to you would be "stop right there. you need all 8 pints to run to the beach and back. Because there's a very strong possibility you'll get a quarter of a mile and then collapse into a huffing, puffing, high heart rate mess." take my word for it...

crackheads and crackdowns

My girlfriend's favorite piece of luggage got stolen by a crackhead at the laundromat last night. She left it empty and unattended (while its laundry payload spin-cycled) for 15 minutes while she ran home, and when she got back a sorta-helpful guy, but not that helpful because the shit still got stolen, told her what had happened. That a tall skinny woman who "looked like hell" was standing around, sketchily eyeing the bag, and then eyeing him. Sorta helpful guy went down the street to get the rest of his laundry, came back and both crackhead and bag were gone.

I should point out now that we actually have no idea whether the girl was a crackhead or not - I mean no offense to any real crackheads. But, really, who the fuck steals a used empty rolling-travel-bag (too big for carry-on) from a laundromat? Estimated street value: $6

So, I just happened to be in my car nearby when Emily calls me with the "a crackhead just stole my bag" story. So now it's time for me to be big bad macho boyfriend man, track down the crackhead and bring some street justice Serpico-style. I cruised up and down the lower haight for a while (in my Saturn with my Warren G - Regulators tape playing to get me pumped up) looking for a crackhead with my beloved's favorite black travel bag.

I THANK GOD that I didn't find her. Can you picture me trying to retrieve stolen belongings from someone who's actively in need of a heroin and/or crack fix?

Ethan: How much for the bag?
Girl with bag: $18
Ethan: How about you give it to me for free because you just took it from the laundromat and it belongs to my girlfriend?

And I'm pretty sure that, had this conversation actually happened, here's where I would have gotten my ass handed to me. Even by a strung-out girl. Yep. Probably any girl could kick my ass, really.

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It's also worth noting that I convinced Emily to call the cops over this at the time it happened. Yes, yes, I'm a boy scout. And they laughed her off the phone, as you might expect.

righteousness

temperature: 98.8
pulse: 68
Hgb: 15.0
B.P.: 120/80

registered: Green party

i gave blood, and I voted. look what i just did for society.

I am so much better than you. all of you.

later skater

so long, Tim. service station no more.

I hope everything works out nice over at 12th and Judah. I hope all your regular customers can make it the extra 5 blocks.

What's going to happen to your freestanding house of bricks and windows? Is the city going to tear it down because it's seismically unsafe, as my 82 year old landlord seems to think?

if so, what's going to happen to the two russian dudes who run the machine shop next door? are you going to sell them out to build some giant new condos? maybe a hair salon?

a bookstore would be kinda nice, actually. i'd be down for that.