This Saturday I woke up early and did some cleaning in the kitchen while listening to an episode of Bullseye. I was very interested in the Brian K Vaighan interview, and I thought I might go and get the first collection of Saga at some point. A little bit later I went to the coffee house on the corner and got some breakfast and did some work, and was reminded that it was Free Comic Day via a post on facebook. I decided to see if my neighborhood comic store, Isotope was participating, and they were, so I decided to head over there at 11 o’clock when they opened at 11:00. I picked up some free comics I plan to give to my nephew when I am in Chicago later this month and the Saga Graphic Novel.
I spent the rest of the sunny day at a long, several blood mary brunch at Absinthe, a couple of hours in the Suppenkuche beer garden, an impromptu cookout at my house, and then hanging out at our neighborhood bar late that evening with some friends in from San Diego. It sounds like I did a lot (ok, not really), but I never really went more than 3 blocks away from home. Lazy!
Here we are, it’s Saturday and I haven’t posted this week. I even had an idea, but I am a slacker. Oh well, I’ll talk about it now anyway.
There is a hidden gem in the city of San Francisco. Actually it’s not really a gem, it’s more of a semi-precious stone, and it’s not really hidden, heck I’ve even see it advertised on TV. I’m talking about the Presidio Bowling Center, a simple laid back (albeit kind of small) bowling alley tucked away in the Presidio. I’m not a huge bowling fan, but it’s fun sometimes, and my friend Erin wanted to to go bowling in the city last Sunday, so we went there. It’s not super cheap (is bowling cheap anywhere these days>) but it’s less expensive than the ’boutique’ bowling alleys in SF (Mission Bowling Club and Lucky Strikes), and super laid back. Nice to go, bowl a couple of lines and have a beer or two (nothing on tap, but a good selection of bottles).
Oh yeah, here i that TV ad, it’s not that impressive, but I’m trying to include more than just text:
Here are a few more things from this week:
I paid my first payment to my very own mortgage (remember, I had a shared mortgage for the TC until the condo conversion loan finalized in January. Yes, I owe more posts on that TIC Conversion experience).
Evidently the Pope stepped down, but wants to have his cake and eat it too. I wish this wasn’t news, by the way.
And the scariest thing this week, some guy in New Jersey shot a lamprey with a bow and posted it around the internets:
I just can’t think of anything. I think I cursed myself by not actually following through with my entry in the NYC Midnight Short Story Challenge. I entered this challenge, which begins with one week to write a 2500 word short story, with a genre, subject and character specified at the start of the contest, late last year. It seemed like it would be a good idea at the time, even though I knew I was going to be in Las Vegas the first weekend. I figured I could use that weekend to brainstorm, and then Monday night I could begin writing. Yeah, that was a smart plan… or not.
But the reality is, while I did brainstorm a decent story start, I couldn’t come up with an end, and we got stuck in Las Vegas for about 4 extra hours, so instead of having Monday night at home, I spent it traveling. And then one thing led to another, but there was really only one night that week when I was in any shape to write, Tuesday, and I just didn’t. So I failed.
Well the month experiment in daily posting is about over. I’ve posted a fair bit about food, and some about other random stuff. I certainly have complained about my house a bit (oh, and there is more to come). The experiment was fun, and I am going to try to post more often, but I won’t force out a post a day.
Also, there is at least one thing I was going to post about and I never managed to. And that is windows. So I will talk a little about them. My hundred year old windows are cool, even if some are painted shut, and very cold due to being single pane. You notice this a lot when you have no furnace for 4 or 5 days. Yes, my furnace still doesn’t work. But I know what’s broken now. The pressure switch is busted. The part has to be ordered and might take until next week to come in – although maybe this week. I paid my $55 and I’m good to go until it’s fixed though, so I think that warranty was a good gift from my realtor.
I watched the end of the Oscars. It was… well the show itself was cruddy, but hey, at least one of the only movies I saw in the theaters last year won best picture. Also, Trent Reznor won an Oscar.
Today’s main activity was going to Davis to attend Mackenzie’s nephew Orrin’s First Birthday party. It was a low-key affair, just the family, but it was fun. Orrin had a great time eating/wearing cupcakes. He also had fun playing with the balloons and such. And the drive back was surprisingly fast, for a weekend when I’m sure a lot of people were in Tahoe. Maybe the snow delayed people enough to make it easier?
Anyway, the great part about working on this holiday is that there is almost no traffic. Today’s drive to work was approximately as fast as possible, taking speed limits into account. Hitting every green light might take it down from 14 minutes to 12 minutes, but the chances of hitting every green light has to be almost zero.
This all being said, my favorite winter holiday is Casmir Pulaski Day. Sufjan Stevens wrote a song about it, sort of, not really.
Yes, I am cheating and back dating a post, because I didn’t have a chance to finish my Chemex post which I should finish tonight and make for the official Sunday post.
Anyway, I wanted to talk about a really interesting story I heard on the Radiolab podcast. Radiolab is a Public Radio show, not too dissimilar to This American Life, but the stories are more targeted towards science. It’s also very highly ‘produced’, since one of the hosts seems to be fascinated with that. Anyway, it’s an interesting show and I recommend downloading and listening to some of it.
Back to the point of this post – in the latest podcast, there is a story about a young woman who was hit by an 18 wheeler while riding her bicycle in New York. I don’t want to give too much away, but I will say that the story is uplifting despite the dire start of it. I recommend taking twenty minutes or so to listen to Finding Emilie.
You’d think that someone who works in the computer networking industry would have an easier time with their home network. And maybe I would if it weren’t for pesky game consoles. Just a note, this is rambly and a bit technical, so be warned. Also note that so far I am completely failing at writing about the cool topics I mentioned at the end of January – but I am also still soliciting more topics to write about…
Ok, to be honest, I started typing this out because there was a problem getting Mackenzie’s Wii connected to my wireless network, but then I recalled that you can actually mess with the network settings by non-intuitively clicking around – and of course that the Wii only supports AES for WPA2, which is OK, i guess. Anyway, I got it worked out but that’s the least of my worries.
Because my more modern Xbox360 also has problems with the wireless – in that it often refuses to believe the network exists, even though other devices have no problems. I can watch Netflix perfectly on my laptop, 10 feet further away from the WAP than the Xbox is. And the Xbox, when it can watch Netflix often scales the movies down to the lowest quality. If I plug it in via a long ethernet cable, HD all the way.
So, I have a tentative plan to buy another WRT54GL, put dd-wrt on it (which is what I am running on the current router), and set it up as a wireless bridge/repeater to get more coverage in the flat – which isn’t all that big. I’m hoping that maybe it can keep a more solid connection to the main router than the silly Xbox. Plus the wireless signal in the bedroom (which is the farthest room from the office) is pretty weak anyway – so maybe having another signal on this side of the flat will help? Or at least I can run a shorter cable to the Xbox maybe. I don’t know, but a router is only $50, and if it’s useless, I can ebay it with the bonus of the aftermarket OS already installed!
Ok, so we all know that the weather out there is pretty crazy in Chicago (where I am from) right now. A blizzard the like of which hasn’t been seen for decades – my brother was a bit confused and wasn’t sure if it was the third biggest snowfall after ’67 and ’79 or if ’99 (which I was present for) also beat it. Either way, they got a lot of snow:
My family’s cars were trapped for the day for various reasons, which I guess was OK because most work and school was cancelled. My brother told me that he took Milo, my nephew out on the shoveled path to the garage and the snow was completely over his head. There is video of this which I hope to see in the near future, but now we’ll all have to just live with the cute mental picture of an 18th month old kid, bundled in a snowsuit, and surrounded by walls of white powder.
Yes, I sure am glad I live in California and don’t have to put up with this sort of weather.
However, I am sort of sad that I didn’t get to experience Thundersnow. My friend Katie tells me it is common in Kansas City, but it seems to be a novel occurrence elsewhere in the nation.
Meanwhile, I got to contend with what was an outrageously sunny day for San Bruno, where I work. Rats!
Ok, now as a reward for those that made it this far, I know present what very well could be the greatest commercial of the decade (which is only about a month old…):
P.S. The amount of wrangling I had to do to get videos that didn’t bleed like crazy over the right column makes me believe it’s about time for a new blog layout.
