6.28.2007

be careful what you wish for (as usual)

Not so long ago I lamented the lack of birds in the area. First the hummingbird moved in, now these guys. But unlike the hummingbird which was small, quiet, and pretty, these birds are chirpy and crap EVERYWHERE. On one hand it's cool that birds are building nests and there's a feeling of 'one with nature' in a small way, but on the other hand, I think they've discovered the fountain finally and are building homes near a source of water (like us humans tend to do).

I know it wont last forever, but the constant 'cheep, cheep, cheep, cheep' of the baby bird(s) is starting to drive me crazy because they're right outside the office window. I really have thought during times today that I could have some quiet and a lot less bird shit on the house with just a few well placed blasts with the hose turned all the way up. Think I'm mean? Try this on for size...

CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP!CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! ..... CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! ..... CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! ..... CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP!CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! ..... CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! ..... CHEEP!

6.27.2007

something weird this way comes

So this afternoon, I think, "Nice day. Go for a walk!". It was indeed a good walk and I got an errand taken care of as well. The walk only took about a half hour, but sometime after I left and before I got back, someone left a little something on the doorstep. How did they know I liked Hello Kitty? Do I have a secret admirer? Hmmmm... actually, the paper was folded to make a rudimentary envelope and the small ballerina bracelet probably means that it was a gift for someone else and was left on my doorstep by mistake. Still, it's very sweet. Or very weird. I'm going to sleep better at night thinking that it's sweet though :)

So you want an iPhone, do ya?

I'm an existing ATT wireless drone, so I was pretty excited about the exclusive iPhone deal, but I'm tiring of all cost associated with simply having a cellular phone. I currently have a mere $40 a month plan, but want 7pm off peak minutes, so I pay an extra $9 – up from $7, a nice 30% increase from what I originally signed up for, and all my text messages are now $0.15 instead of $0.10, a whopping 50% increase. It may not seem like much until you consider that such percentage increases in price would hardly be tolerated on anything else except for gas (and even that's finally motivating people to drive Priuses).

As an existing customer, I have the option of getting the phone but I'll have to tack on a $20 data option to my plan. That would increase my base plan cost by, yup 50%. And regardless if you're an existing customer or not, they still stick you with a $36 activation fee for the privilege of taking the iPhone home to do all the activation yourself via iTunes after agreeing to a two-year plan extension. Just bending over isn't good enough any more, now you have to bend over so much it would take Stephen Hawking to figure out how many different dimensions you're being bent over in.

Let's do the math, shall we? iPhone $600 (because really, are you going to pay for the $500 version once you've gone this far?) $20 extra a month for 2 years: $480; $36 activation fee; grand totaling to: $1,116 on top of the $1,176 that I would already pay for staying with ATT for 2 years with no changes to my current reaming plan! And that's not including taxes, other hidden fees, and the "oops we realized where we can make even more money" fees that they will probably charge down the line like they did for the 7pm off peak (which was once standard by the way) and text messaging. Funny how their contracts are written so they can increase any fees they feel like, but you'll be charged $175 if you decide to change your mind.

The bottom line, I would still like to get an iPhone, but only if I can take all the money I will spend on it and cram it down the throat of the ATT CEO.

Want to see more number crunching but in a less wordy and ranty form? Check out engadget's cool iPhone cost matrix.

6.26.2007

monkey monkey monkey

If you haven't already, you should read this article on the Monkeysphere. Just what is the monkeysphere you ask? Basically, it's the sphere of people you know and care about. Within that sphere, any losses are tragic and very hard to take, but outside of that sphere, you're just reading about it casually with some coffee and a donut before going to the bathroom for your morning dump. And you guys thought I was a heartless bastard! It just turns out that my sphere is smaller than most.

[insert joke about having a small sphere here]

my kryptonite

It's a good thing that only one of these items is kept in the house on a regular basis. Growing up in a family that was a proprietor of a liquor store for almost a decade gave me an aversion to alcohol until I was about 24 (first beer: sierra nevada at Bottom of the Hill) and also developed my snacking palette. I remember when Nacho Cheese was the new Dorito flavor as well as when Chili Cheese Fritos first made their way onto our shelves. It was glorious!

If any of the above snacks find their way into my hands, I turn into a snack eating zombie and don't notice what I'm doing until I'm halfway or ALL the way through the bag/can/package/box! Sadly I can't eat any of these much any more... the whole getting old and having a high cholesterol thing.

One day perhaps, on a lost weekend, you're find me passed out with a pile of empties atop my bulging midsection and a huge grin on my crumb covered face.

Honorable mentions: Famous Amos Chocolate Chip Pecan Cookies, Funyuns, San Francisco Sourdough Snacks, Planters Cashew Halves, Hawaiian Sweat Onion Kettle Style Potato Chips, and Cheetos Twisted.

6.22.2007

See Britney Spears and Angelina Jolie Naked on American Idol!

Yesterday, if you haven't heard already, an amusement park ride severed a girl's feet at Six Flags in Kentucky. Gruesome!!! I think I'll stick to roller coasters where your feet are tucked in at all times from now on. Long time ago I was on the Top Gun ride at Great America and thought that we were passing pretty close to the trees below. I stuck out my foot a little bit and clipped a branch as we zoomed by. Thankfully I still have my feet, but it hurt like the dickens!

Google Analytics got updated and now I can see what people are searching for when that happen upon my little blog. My favorite search so far is, "where in the fuck are my passports". Ha! I feel your pain, whoever you are! It turns out a lot of people are getting two passports. The one they suffered for at the passport office and the one they were supposed to get months and months ago that arrives the day or day before travel. Can you feel the increased security? I can. O yes. I can. Fuck Bush indeed.

So even though Britney Spears has been outed as the trailer trash she always has been, people can't seem to get enough of her. They also wont shut up about American Idol. And since I'd personally agree with trying to see what's going on with Angelina Jolie, I've made the most powerful blog title ever! Surely this will increase site traffic...

hooray for Friday!

For whatever reason, Thursday felt like Friday. Does that make Friday Saturday? And if so, do I have to work?

6.21.2007

honk if you think the Patriot Act is unconstitutional*

I had forgotten about the photos I posted to stock.xchng when I was contacted by Midori Nakamura (an editor for DivineCaroline) who wanted to use one. Good for Laura Sweeney who wrote a positive article about how the French and U.S. helped each other out during times of war and how we have much to celebrate this coming 4th and 14th of July (Independence Day and Bastille Day respectively). Right now I feel the world has had enough of the U.S. and I don't blame them! But feel good for a moment and remember that times were once tough but got good again by reading this nifty article.

*Read up on the Patriot Act

6.20.2007

winning BART widget

Check out my fabulous London Underground inspired BART map!

A couple of years ago I helped out a guy make a map for an Apple widget he was making. The fun project really hit a sweet spot for me because it involved design as well as map making. A few weeks ago I received an email from the author informing me that his widget had won an Apple Design Award in the Dashboard category!

It was very cool to be a part of something fun that actually got some well deserved recognition (it actually is a very cool widget), and if you live in the Bay Area, take BART, and own a mac, I would recommend that you check out Bret Victor's BART Widget and revel in all its well designed utilitarian glory :)

6.19.2007

busy bee

So as part of my new health regimen, I've been trying to get out of the house more and take rides on BART. My hope is to expose myself to as many different antibodies as possible to help strengthen my immune system. Of course, now I'm finding less time to get out to the gym or go biking. But I think I'll figure out a good balance between work, play, exercise, and food.

Believe it or not, I'm pretty sore from playing about 20 minutes of Wii boxing yesterday (I also broke a decent sweat). If you Google Wii boxing, you'll come across a cute video of a little girl playing the game and a spastic woman playing the game (I'm probably in between somewhere as far as style goes). But the bottom line is that I may finally have a quantifiable reason to purchase a game system! Woohoo!

In other news, my Kenwood KDC-MP8017 (AKA my car's now dated CD player) has finally been repaired! I purchased this when MP3's were being made famous by Napster. Due to a serious design flaw, the ribbon cable that connects the unit to its display face broke (you really need that display to see what's going on). I mothballed this unit only after a year or so of operation.

Fast forward four years later and I found that I wasn't alone in owning a flawed receiver. So much so that replacement cables were being sold on eBay for 10 bucks! Between me, Cathyrn and her mom (who has serious skillz in electronics fabrication), the old cable was desoldered and the new one was resoldered in its place. Granted, while I had spent 10 bucks for the cable, 3 for the solder, and 15 for the new soldering iron when brand new MP3 units are going for 90, I got to have a fun experience with Cathryn and her mom, I now can try to solder anything I can shake a stick at, and I didn't send yet another piece of electronics into the landfill :)

6.18.2007

more background love

I thought I'd share some more photos from my trip to Italy. Clicking on the thumbnails below should take you to a nice 1024x768 jpeg :)

6.16.2007

no rut today!

Me as Astroboy. If I could only fly...

Ganesh watches over the third story landing.

Today we trotted into SF to visit the manga exhibition at the Asian Art Museum. It's definitely a worthwhile show, especially for the artsy, designer, geeky set. There were lots of amazing Japanese wood block prints on display as well. The sheer genius of style and execution was both inspiring and humbling.

Afterwards, we had a delicious meal at Lalita around the corner. If you're into Thai food, this place will delight you taste buds. The service was excellent and the restrooms very clean. The deep fried vegetarian egg rolls, fried banana, and sweet mango rice are highly recommended :P (all the entrées we had were delicious, but you'll have to figure those out on your own). As we were walking out, we noticed a dead fish floating in the pond. I wish I got a shot of it to share...

This pic has nothing to do with today, so think of it as a bonus! (a numerical, bluish bonus) This address is right next door to a new gelato place on Shattuck. The employees all dressed in black, but disappointingly, did not speak with harsh German accents. The gelato was good, but not very memorable. Meh.

tranquility

Click the thumbnail for a desktop sized photo :)

On our way home from a visit to Pioneer, we saw this incredible sunset. As beautiful as this shot is, what we first saw was even more spectacular. But in the 3 minutes it took us to pull off the road and find a nice place to shoot from the sun had dipped below the horizon. Who knew the sun was so speedy?

The word of the day is...
qintar [kin•tahr]* ~ noun
1. a coin formerly used in Albania and worth one one-hundredth of a lek.
2. in Scrabble, worth 15 points and doesn't need a 'u'
3. you can also spell the word, "tranq" if you have these letters

*also, qindar
[kin•dahr]

6.15.2007

the vacation: Oh yeah! Videos!

A quick pan from a vista point in Montepulciano.

A cool clock from the Leonardo Da Vinci Museum (which was kind of disappointing actually).


Dukes of Hazzard in Italian! (you need to turn up your sound a little bit to hear it)

6.13.2007

the vacation: Italy

Click on the panoramarama for an extra large view (our building on the right).

Ah Italy! Finally! After two plane trips (8 hour and 1 hour flight), a crazy taxi ride through downtown Florence (half hour in traffic), two trains (1 and half hour and half hour chug interspersed with an unpleasant walking tour of Sienna with all of our luggage in a futile search for a rental car), and a nice car ride (15 minutes), we wearily arrived at the castle :)

The room we stayed in was the size of a small loft space with a living room and a kitchen. The kitchen was key, because we were way out in the middle of Tuscany (boo hoo) and would need to buy groceries for making our own meals in between touring nearby towns. I actually loved the grocery buying part of the trip because I got to visit small towns that were completely non-touristy and shop with Italians doing their daily thing. It of course helped that I love product packaging and poking around to see what they've got that we don't. The short answer is that they've got a lot more tasty, unprocessed, or less processed foods than we do (I can go on and on about their delicious eggs, meats, and cheeses).

The castle grounds are amazingly beautiful, and like many of the nearby towns, it was built at the top of a hill so there are incredible views of verdant, sprawling valleys and farmland. This place really makes you want to get a $3000 camera because everywhere you look there are postcard shots to be had. After a while, you run out of adjectives to describe things - amazing, incredible, unbelievable, breathtaking, astounding - I'm sure the natives are used it and it's just home, but for me it was definitely a welcome change of scenery!

This is a fortress in Sienna. Aside from their podunk train station, I love this town! There's lots of stuff to see, but it's not overrun with tourists. There are plenty of shops which have reasonable prices for not just souvenirs, but textiles, antiques, crafts, silverware, and clothing. Remember how I mentioned that towns are built on top of hills? Sienna is no different. Be prepared to walk up and down hills and always have water on you to stay hydrated (imagine an entire town built of stone, baking in the blazing sun, then imagine walking through it).

Ah Montepulciano - the town I could never pronounce the same way twice (mon-teh-puhl-chee-AH-no). I came across this funny sign in the park where apparently, you are only allowed to discard refuse properly. All other fun activities are strictly prohibited! (Actually, I don't think anything in Italy is strictly prohibited. Parking signs like this one are merely for show or to hold up other signs).

Here's a shot from the Ponte Vecchio in Firenze (Florence). I keep writing about how blissful non-touristy places are because you'll have to deal with things like a slack jawed yokel ruining an otherwise decent shot through the arches. Oh yeah! I forgot to mention that all the sidewalks are tiny tiny, so you'll not only be dodging people, but cars and mopeds that are trying to push through. Italian drivers are crazy, but surprisingly patient and civilized when they have to wait for a traffic obstruction to move on.

Florence, while having major attractions, was probably my least favorite town. It reminded me why I hated traveling with my parents when I was younger; it's a zoo and the food prices are unsurprisingly exorbitant. It's not all bad though! There is a cafe right next to the Duomo that's fair and quite delicious (B. Gallo) and all the shops on and nearby the Ponte Vecchio have more knock off purses than you can shake a stick at.

There's LOTS more to write about of course, but I'd have to write a short novel about the experience. I skipped my friends's wedding ('cause you don't know them), eating Kosher meals, cooking class, sweating through my clothes on trains planes and automobiles, doing laundry, waiting in the car rental line, waiting in the airport line, waiting in the food line, waiting in the train line, waiting in the church line, waiting in the waiting line, finding the miracle 20 euro in my shorts*, our Modanella room not having a shower, so we were stuck taking baths the whole time (I either need to get a whole lot smaller, or bathtubs need to get a whole lot larger), our room in Florence having a shower that folded up like a phone booth, our taxi arriving at 5:00am sharp, and us relishing Mexican food and an ice cold Pepsi at JFK on the way home.

My favorite line from the entire trip (besides the "yes, I'll marry you" one of course), "See you back at the castle!"

The vacation was an amazing experience all around - even the tough parts - and I think the only way it could have been better is if we were able to share it with more of our family and friends and of course able to stay longer, too :D

*While cooling our heels in the Leonardo Da Vinci Museum, Cathryn asked me if the many pockets of my cargo shorts were secure. While showing her the various pockets, I miraculously found 20 euro that I had mistakenly tucked away in an auxiliary pouch pocket next to my velcro one. At the time we had just enough for the taxi ride to the airport and a night's stay at the pensione. We figured that we'd have to reluctantly pull out the charge card again or find an ATM, but the twenty took us through lunch and we had enough leftover for water and snacks :)

6.08.2007

an idiot's (me) guide to turn your Airport Express into a WDS access point



About a week ago I managed to find an amazing deal on a practically brand new Tivo on eBay with a lifetime subscription attached to it. Since the seller lived in the bay area, it was easy to set up a clandestine pickup at nearby Union City Landing at midnight to save on shipping charges and hassle (okay, it wasn't really secret, but it WAS in a parking lot at midnight!).

By the next day, we were pretty much up and Tivo-ing. The only problem was that there was no channel info! Being a complete Tivo n00b, I didn't know that it would have to dial home to its mothership quite often to get all the info that makes it so useful. So after a trip to Radio Shack for a telephone line splitter and a trip to my parents for an extra, extra long phone cord, the Tivo slllooowwwly got all this info.

Besides possibly tying up my phone line and being slow, I was pretty happy. But then I got to wondering, what if I could just hook up my Tivo to my Airport Express? It's wireless, right? It should be easy, right? Well, it is, but Apple doesn't officially support WDS for the AX for third party wireless routers. So of course I turned to the internet!

The internet had plenty of answers, but that was a problem. What I found was all kinds of slightly different solutions, but almost all of them required that I flashed the firmware on my router with third party open source code. My initial thought was that doing so was a bad idea, but I was convinced it would be possible and I'd be saving myself 40-60$ in getting a wireless adapter for the Tivo (Cathryn had fortunately saved her USB ethernet adapter, a Linksys 200M, from her old computer so I was set).

It turns out updating the firmware on my router WAS indeed an incredibly bad idea. I started out with a working system at 8:30 in the morning, and a dead router as soon as I started to fiddle around with things. By the grace of something and maybe some sheer luck, I went from updated Linksys firmware to partially working router to third party firmware and a dead router back to updated firmware with a dead router all the way back to my original firmware and everything working like it used to 7 and half hours later; with the weird exception that I seemed to have turned on the SES button somehow, somewhere along the way.

So the moral of the story is DON'T CHANGE YOUR ROUTER FIRMWARE! And here is a guide on how to make your Airport Express not only stream your tunes, but also act as an bona fide internet givin' access point through its ethernet port.

1. Make sure your AX has updated firmware (I don't know if this step is completely necessary, but unlike updating the firmware on your router, updating your AX shouldn't be a big deal - my current version is v6.3) This guide is for the WRT54G v3 - any other ones I can't guarantee this will work with.

2. Hook up your AX directly to an available port on your router via ethernet cable

3. Launch the airport admin utility, and choose to configure your AX (if it doesn't appear in your selection menu, you may have to reset it)

4. In the Aiport tab
- choose to "Create a Wireless Network"
- name the network the EXACT same name as your wireless network
- for your wireless security choose the EXACT same type of security protocol as on your router (I'm using WEP - the only protocol that both my AX and Linksys router seem to share), and use the same password you're using to access your wireless network (not your router)
- choose the SAME channel as your router is using
- choose the SAME mode your router is using (see a pattern here? mine is set to 802.11g Only)

5. In the Internet tab
- connect using Airport (WDS)
- for your MAC Address, go to your router and find it under the "wireless" tab. This is where I made my mistake. I wrote down the first MAC address I saw, which was the router's, which is so very wrong. Make sure you get the wireless MAC address.
- configure with DHCP and see if that works, but the site I got all these instructions from said to do it manually:
IP 192.168.1.2
Subnet 255.255.255.0
Router 192.168.1.1

6. In the Network tab
- make sure the Distribute IP addresses box is unchecked

7. Skip, port mapping and access control

8. In the WDS tab
- check the "enable" box as a "remote base station"
- check allow wireless clients on this base station
- your main airport ID should already be filled out

9. In the Music tab
- you probably want to enable AirTunes, right?
- iTunes speaker name: whatever you type in here shows up in iTunes as the remote speaker

10. Click on the "update" button and watch the magic happen. In less than a minute you should see your AX light turn green and your AX appear on the airport admin utility list.

11. Disconnect your AX from the ethernet port and tote it over to plug it in wherever you plug it in! For me, I took it into the living room and plugged in my Tivo and now it gets its updates super fast from the internet :) As a bonus, it seems like the AX connection to my computer is now more stable, so music streaming is better, too!

I'm so very glad everything worked out in the end. But no more hacking/modding for me - I don't think I have the nerves for it! Thanks to Hitesh for moral support and the Mac OS X Hints article where I got all this info from :)

6.05.2007

the vacation: NYC

JFK roof

chew toy in our pet friendly sweet suite


Sushi Twist, oh that's good stuff!

cool graffiti near W 22nd

Ah, my nice warm fuzzy blog, how I missed your ability to comfort me from the cold harshness of work and all things productive. I don't really know how to encapsulate what a great vacation we had, but I figured maybe by location and loosely chronological would be good (when I get to the Italy part, hopefully I can label the towns correctly).

New York was a lot of fun, but unfortunately I spent most of it in a mental fog. Still suffering from bouts of coughing, the trip added jet lag into the mix and that pretty much made me a walking zombie. There was semblance of life, but I'd eat your brains given the chance and could not make proper change if I were running the till.

The good news though was that I was getting better, and by day 3, I could put together cogent thoughts and thoroughly enjoy our visit to the Met and delicious meals at a favorite restaurants of our NYC residing friend, Heather (who thankfully played guide for the day - thanks Heather!!). Who knew the Met had a roof garden? Not I! I was grateful to have another shot at properly going through the armory unlike during my visit years ago. It must be the D&D geek in me, but I so do enjoy the Samurai swords, ornate armor, and chain mail; and am glad I don't have to use any of it (though the sword would probably come in handy in long lines).

I almost forgot! Sushi Twist on 66 Madison and E 27th is the home of some seriously delicious vittles! We got to catch some live jazz there because it was Monday night. Here's a tip: skip Monday nights. The music was good, but was just too freakin' loud! The wait staff couldn't even hear our orders! But other than that, the food is amazing, drinks are good, and everyone is super nice :)

Logistical info:
JetBlue again comes through with another great flight and the TV helped to pass the time. Book anything row 9 and up and enjoy extra leg room! At the airport I decided that we should take the SuperShuttle because I had a good experience with them before. BIG mistake!!! The driver had no clue what he was doing and no pride in asking for a tip after taking us on a completely unnecessary detour through all of Manhattan that took almost two hours (he was a decent fellow, but I'd probably try trip him down some stairs if I ever saw him again). My advice, pay the money and take a cab! Or fly into Newark and take the train in...

...which we should have done since we stayed at Affinia Manhattan which is about 2 blocks away from Penn Station. I can't say enough about how fantastic this place is! It's pricey at $400 a night. But that price is calculated after taxes and fees, and instead of staying in a (literally) rat infested room the size of a shoe box for $350-$380, the extra money spent was well worth it. Affinia hotels only have suites - no rooms. Ours was about 700 square feet with two full baths, a living room, a kitchen with a stove and full sized refrigerator, and a bedroom with a king sized bed, TV and bureau. Luxury!! Even better was our placement in the back corner of the building and 21 stories up; we hardly heard any of the hustle and bustle of the city.

The only downside is that it's on 7th and 31st, which isn't the best part of town and kind of far away from everything. But walking isn't so bad, and you're always a short subway ride away from something interesting!