My computer just took a really random dump. CMOS lost state, and all settings and clock were wiped. Not sure if the CMOS battery is dead, or if something else happened. Talk about being scared out of my shorts though...i really do need to by a DVD-burner and back up my stuff.
Time to catch everyone up on my personal life since I know no one comes here for the links….
Saturday was my "longest" run to date...going 13 miles. I put longest in quotes, because while our coach said it was 13 miles, the consensus from our team is that it was only 10 to 11 miles long. Still my longest run, but not the magic half marathon number. It was in Atascadero and was boiling hot on the back half. Towards the end of the run a toolbox fell out of a truck driving next to us, and we played goodie to shoes and picked up the mess. The best part of the run was getting to chat with my mentor Michael and another Mentor April. We paced the back half together and had a blast chatting. Overall, I felt good, but my right thigh was bothering me....not sure what is going on there, but if it continues, I will have to get it checked out.
Saturday afternoon was spent wine tasting (3 times in the last 5 weekends...what a great life). Went with a bunch of old friends from the dorms who all came back in town to party like we were freshmen again. All in all, it was a total blast. After wine tasting we hit up happy hour at the hotel everyone was staying at (free drinks!!!) and then headed downtown. I was pretty pooped and came home around midnight (after not drinking for 5 hours) and crashed out. But I did have some fun at Firestone and then at Mission Grill. A pretty cute girl asked me for my number, so we shall see if I get a call (I put the chances in the low 40s). Lol.
Sunday was recovery day...wrote some code and everyone I went wine tasting with came by to check out the pad. We played some pool and video games and then everyone headed out.
Jumping back a few days, on Thursday my friend Zack, Dr. Larry Gorman, and I hiked bishop's peak in SLO town. The hike was solid, with some rocks at the end that took a bit of effort. The reward (view) was incredible and I can't wait to try another trail up there. Thursday night headed out to downtown SLO for farmers market and checked out the downtown scene. We ended up at SLO Brew, where a new band, Pepper, I am totally digging was playing. Found this pretty cool feature on MSN Entertainment that gives you "sounds like" album comparisons. If you liked sublime, you will probably like pepper. Funny story about this whole thing is, my friend Scott got me listening to them last weekend, I went and bought the album on wednesday, and then ended up buying it again so they could sign it on thursday night. I really do think the music industry can go fly a kite...i have had the MP3s since scott clued me into them, but i bought the albums because I really dig the band.
Zack and our other buddy Justin and his galpal Martina (aka Smartina, Tunes, Stunes) and two of the roomies head over to the Cliffs for a little happy hour that turned into dinner. Followed that up with a good scary as shit movie...The Ring. I don't want to be a spoiler (my friend chris has taught me to be sensitive to that), but i would totally recommend watching it. Great ending and good freak factor. Only bummer is I now need to go see Ring-U.
Now to continue with this stream of consciousness writing, I am going to jump back to today. Knocked out a 7.5 mile run this afternoon…started a little tough, but I settled in and knocked it out at about 11 minute mile pace. Also hit up a great lunch with Nikole at High Street Deli. I forgot how good their sandwiches are…piled high with fresh veggies, good tasty meat, and super fresh bread…man, oh man…I really do love good food.
Good food brings to mind my dinner last week at 7 Hands ….WHAT A FEAST. My friend Bill and I went huge and had the chef’s grand tasting menu…and boy was it huge. Here is the break down:
Course 1: cardamom crusted sashimi with a dried sashimi slice over the top and surrounded by a sweet soy based sauce. The cardamom added a great and unique flavor to the sashimi and the fish freshness was excellent. The dried fish was interesting, but not memorable.
Course 2: lobster shooter in a tomato absinth sauce. Marvelous flavor and fully enjoyable…
Course 3: cold citrus soup with sliced citrus, avocado, cilantro, and fresh sweet citrus sorbet. This was a very unique soup that relied on the combination of ingredients mix in the mouth in order to offset each other in a tasty manner. Great flavor when it worked, but too much of anyone thing ruined the balance…
Course 4: seared ahi tuna with Fois Gras. Not a big fan of duck liver, but the tuna was good.
Course 5: Mac and Cheese…with lobster, black truffles, and mascarpone cheese. Unreal…perhaps my favorite dish of the entire evening.
Course 6: Caribou steak medallions with goat cheese flan. Very tender and extremely flavorful. The goat cheese flan was super tasty and did a good job complimenting the caribou flavor.
Course 7: Cheese souffle with dates, crumbled blue cheese and fresh mini pear. The blue cheese and dates were incredible. The souffle did not have enough flavor for me…
Course 8: Chocolate Creme-Brule. 'Nuff said.
I am glad I am running...but even then I wouldn’t recommend eating that much on any sort of regular basis. Bill eats out like that for a living (he is in sales/marketing of sorts) and says he runs 4 miles a day just to keep the ship on course. I think 8 might have been needed after that meal.
Final notes of this post...next week I turn 25. Kinda feel weird about that...but not sure why. Cheaper car insurance is cool, and 25 is the first b-day since 21 that has any sort of significance (even if it is just because it is divisible by 5). Anyhow…more to come on that later…
Oh, go watch Roger Dodger. Peace.
USA today reports that for many, their cell phone have become their only phone (from gizmodo).I haven't had a landline for almost 3 years now and have only given out my cell number for almost 5 years. Many of my friends are similar and I often never hear from them if I leave them a message at home. With AT&T's unlimited mobile plan I was in hog heaven...but now I am back to verizon and paying a bit more for less phone (time and hardware...I miss using my t68 and bluetooth headset...btw, anyone want to buy them?). I bet within 5 years the vast majority of people under 30 only have cell phones.
What I can't wait for is for when phone calls are just made, like email is just sent. It doesn't matter where, who, or how you are calling...it is just data being transmited over a network. So many walls will be brought down when that can happen. I have deja vu...maybe I have said this before....
wouldn't that be intresting from dave.
So much to write, and so little time. I just set up this to help my group of friends in discussing current events. My friend zack is in town from NYC en route to his new house/career/life in Newport Beach. I have been working on a side project to get a little work lined up. Oh, and did I mention I am trying to ready and digest all that is going on right now? Finally, I have been "working" on my thesis project. More to come later today, but for now email me if you are intrested in joining the Talk team blog and want to throw in your two cents.
Heads up, this blog post is a pretty sharp departure from what I usually write about.
For the past few months I have been pretending to be an ostrich. I was just sort of minding my business and focusing on the immediate issues of my day to day life. But Monday's news about world events triggered me to re-evaluate my complacency. I took a little while to read several big media articles, President Bush’s speech, and the blogsphere (the blogging collective) in order to get educated. I would link to them all, but I don’t want to try to make this a “researched” tit-for-tat type article…rather I want to keep it in the domain of an opinion based on my currently internalized data and mindset. With all that said, let me get down to some of my thoughts.
I think disarming Iraq and removing Hussein from power is the right thing to do because both expose the national security of the United States to large amounts of risk for the following reasons:
War is not something anyone in the world should ever want or aim to achieve, but I believe that it is the only method (both in the current situation and historically since the first gulf war left Hussein in control of Iraq) available to disarm Iraq and remove Hussein from power.
I could spend significant time defending my belief, however I decided that the rest of my writing is not going to focus on the right or wrong of starting this war, but rather on what caused the strongly polar divergent opinion in the world on the need to disarm Iraq and Hussein by force. I acknowledge that by trying to explain why there is so much polar opinions on this issue I am, at one level, defending the decision to go to war. I will also expand on my concerns are about the outcome and the subsequent future. This is something I have not heard a lot of my friends talk about, and think it is an important discussion as the war is eminent but the outcomes and future are not.
One of the major causes of polar opinions was the poor and irresponsible diplomacy demonstrated by members of the UN. All governments (and people for that matter) hold their own interests in clear view when it comes to making politically sensitive and strategic decisions. Individual countries can not be expected to do more, but it is disheartening when such decisions result in broken agreements and damaged relationships that set back the worlds ability to make progress as a race. I am of course referencing the shenanigans that France and Russia pulled at the UN. By threatening to veto any resolution that came before the Security counsel these countries prematurely ended consensus building discussions and effectively ended the worldwide discussion completely. By ending the worldwide discussion opinions could no longer be converged upon, but rather now opinions have been forced into extremes.
An additional issue that contributed to the polar opinion of people is the mixed messages that the White House has given throughout the national and world wide discussion of the situation. These mixed messages could have been avoided by assessing what our risk exposure was in 1991 after Desert Storm (can someone please tell me why he was left in power?), and then again after 9/11 when it was apparent that the risk presented by Iraq/Hussein was larger than was tolerable. If our government believed that significant threat to national security existed and that force was going to be necessary to eliminate it they should have taken decisive action early and effectively. Instead we got messages that the government wanted to seek diplomatic methods to disarm Hussein while it acted as if it knew that force was going to be necessary to achieve this goal. Add in the fact that the current President made some inappropriate comments about the situation (I don’t find the fact that Hussein tried to kill your dad a valid reason to ask Americans to risk their lives…) and you have another reason why opinions are so heated.
I am now going to move to my concerns about the outcomes and the future. First and foremost, I am concerned about our country’s long term foreign policy goals. President Bush’s speech fundamentally changes our foreign policy and our willingness to use force and ultimatums overtly. While, it appears that the present situation requires these short term actions, I am very unclear on what it means for the long term. What is really scary is that I do not have confidence that our government knows what it intends in the long term either. Are we going to go after “evil” countries as soon as the Iraqi situation is solved? Furthermore, what defines a solution to the Iraqi situation? From what I have internalized, it is appears that removing Hussein and weapons of mass destruction are all that are being focused on. There is some nice rhetoric about Iraqi citizens jumping for joy to be free, and “plans” to re-build Iraq as a democracy, but how do we plan on doing this without pissing off the whole Middle East? I want actual plans and commitments for the White House, not just words and hand waving to help me alleviate this worry.
Next concern is the damage that has been inflicted on the international relationships and political community. This is just fucked. How much “payback” will have to be doled out before the world can move forward and keep working towards playing nice with each other? BTW, when I say payback, I mean both political maneuvering as well as terrorism that could potentially arise. Both are serious and real possibilities now that this war is going to move forward.
I am starting to get tired, and I am guessing you must be getting bored. My last thought is that War is never something to enter into lightly, but sometimes is a required in order to achieve security and safety objectives. I hope in my heart that this use of force is brief, causes the minimum loss of life for all sides, and results in safer place to live in for everyone (but am not convinced that that is going to happen as of yet).
Finished up a nice ~6 mile run this morning. I have to say I might live in one of the most amazingly beautiful places in the world...especially for running. I ran south and got a killer view of pismo and the ocean and then cut back up north and ran ocean side for the back half of the run. Finished up the run on a cliff over looking 50 surfers catching waves...it was unreal. Cut out a solid pace for the distance and hope I can keep dropping my time as training progresses.
posted @ 11:03 AM | archive_link | Comment
Some light hearted food stuff, because this war is weighing on my mind.
Nuvo (no web link :( ) is a killer new tapas and gourmet sandwich joint in downtown san luis obipso. Located across from Mother's Tavern where Kona's used to be it is a very tasty joint. Super fresh breads, daily made soups, and kick butt sandwiches help make it a pretty place for the lunch time business crowd. Plus, it looks to have incredible desserts (I didn't sample them, but did look at the tray and almost get hungry enough to order one). It is part of the new trend in SLO town of upper scale joints targeted at the local 30 somethings yuppies and the older established people of this town.
In that same style Madisons, the old greek favorite, has been replaced by Blue, again no web link. This is a louge inspired joint with leather stuff and a darker ambiance featuring not to loud music and more called drinks than I have seen in a while. However, I am not as enthusiastic about Blue as I am Nuvo...it is a something that is going to do well in town (from what I can tell), but i don't think it was laid out well enough or that it uses the space it has well. Adittionally, their tapas (so trendy that even SLO town has two tapas restraunts now!!!), are overpriced and under wheleming in taste and proprotion. Nevertheless, the late 20 somethings (now me...yikes!) and early 30 somethings will embrace this joint because it is a notch diffrent then the rest of downtown bar scene.
Finally, tonight I am going to "Seven Hands on Higera." It has been billed as the best food in town by several people I trust. They have a definite gourmet look and feel (big plates, little food) and focus on the concept of a tasting menu. I am looking forward to trying it and will report back tomorrow.
I own this search query! It is a very happy day in bubba land.
posted @ 7:51 PM | archive_link | Comment
toy cars. I really do love the internet.
posted @ 6:12 PM | archive_link | Comment
Ladies, memorize 408-344-9412 for those nights when you go out without me.
posted @ 4:56 PM | archive_link | Comment
It looks like karen has moved to her new site and done a little update to the graphics on her frontpage. Suh-weet!
posted @ 4:50 PM | archive_link | Comment
Google PR. This is the first peice of google PR I have ever seen. Makes me wonder if they are picking up that they can't be a blackbox to the world because it risks their image and trust with customers. More to the point, it looks more and more like a hell of a place to work. I am not sure I am turned on by search tweaking, but maybe there is something there (blogger?) that I can get into...i wonder if they have any bozo bloat yet?
A little marathon training update....it was raining cats and dogs yesterday morning, so our team long run was cancelled. Nevertheless, my teammateTrevor and I decided to get some milage in at the Cal Poly Rec center. We trucked over there, and put in 99 mintues on the treadmills (max amount of time you can dial in). Luckily, Trevor and I had a enough to bullshit about (including stuff we didn't need to be discussing in a crowded co-ed gym, but oh well) otherwise I think my mind would have suffocated from the boredom that is treadmill running. I have to say, I thought I was going to puke when we stopped because of the world was still moving at about 5.5 miles an hour while I was just standing.
Besides training, I headed up to my good friend Steve's house for his big 29th birthday bash! Between green beer, corned beef, and the oodles of intresting people Steve knows it was a GREAT time. It definitely got me ready for the Big Bad Birthday Luau V that is coming up in a three short weeks! Stay tuned for more details, but know this...there will be a PIG!!!
Practice your aim in a safe, clean and dry enviorment.
Dude, I am using Virtual PC...it is SICK! What a great app...lets me run an os in an os!!! I am digging around to see if I can find my old OSX cds so I can run some of the cool mac blogging software out there. On my next software project I am going to buy multiple licenses to VirtualPC and give'em out like candy to the test, pm, and dev teams. Fil is a fan of VMware, but I am not sure there is major functional diffrence (UI for sure) but the functionality is similar, and from what I read VMware is a bit faster, but not a huge diff with 5.0. Special thanks to my buddy Jason Weber for hooking me up with a legit copy of VPC a bit back.
Something new for the found bubba section of my site.
posted @ 8:34 PM | archive_link | Comment
for my old friends...and me now a days.
posted @ 5:11 PM | archive_link | Comment
toys rule! from gizmodo.
My roommate greg is one smart cat. He observed that the game of pool, and more specifically 8 ball, has a built in catch up system much like most modern video games. You know, when you are down by 55 points and all of a sudden you become a stud and catch every ball, break tackles, and dunk like shaq was your little brother. Well, in pool two things happen when you are losing:
1. You have more possible shots on the table to take and make.
2. Your opponent has harder shots to take because of working around the mine field that you have left for him.
Thus pool continues to remain fun even when you are getting the crap kicked out of you.
Pool is my new vice.
posted @ 11:48 PM | archive_link | Comment
My car hit 40K miles today...I feel like I just bought it last year!
posted @ 5:04 PM | archive_link | Comment
So my friend Lisa just busted my balls over email. She says enough geek (though she like those posts) and more speak on TNT and the marathon. So, here I go....Yesterday was a killer day with a very nice run. 5 miles up and down the frontage roads of Shell and Pismo Beach. Ocean was visible the whole time, and the run felt good. My pace is steadily improving (about 1.5 minutes a mile faster then when I started) and I would love to break 5 hours for the actual marathon.
I have been a bit concerned because last week's long run hurt my achilles and my coach told me to chill for a few days (5...including the first long run I have skipped all season). I could feel the achilles a bit yesterday, but I think it isn't muscle based, but rather friction based. I think my shoe is rubbing and noticed that my left shoe is a bit looser than my right shoe (left achilles what is bothering me). Other than that, just normal runners pains - shin splints and general leg soreness.
Overall I feel really good about training and I can't believe I can run the distances I can. Still have a long way to go with training...this weekend we go big; 12 miles to be exact. Coming up in April, our team is going to do the Wine Country 1/2 Marathon in Paso Robles as our long run for the week. Pretty cool, eh? Rumor has it Christina & Lisa are going to motivate and run it with us...right?
P2P gurilla marketing! I freaking love it (well not the music industry part...but rather the fake p2p files part). We talked about doing this for a beta of a project I worked on a while ago, but canned the idea...XXX_HOT_CHICKS.exe could be more than meets the eye! :> Actually, speaking of that, why aren't there more p2p viruses? I can't imagine that it would be that hard to create a virus that modifies the kazza.exe and then replicates itself like mad throughout the network. It could easily hi-jack incoming requests (file and search) and seriously fuck shit up. Hell, I wonder why the music industry hasn't created a seek and destroy mp3 virus...once downloaded it would delete all non-drmed mp3s on a users hard drive. I could totally see them fucking doing that too. When are they going to understand I don't care about the fucking bits anymore...I care about the access to my music. I will give you 20 bucks a month if I can easily listen to anything I want from any device I own, without toooo much waiting, sound quality degredation, or work on my part. Oh, and isn't if funny how fucking smug the music industry dudes are in the article? Its is like hahah, we finally won something...to bad you look like total dill weeds for so freaking long (not that they don't look like total ass for this, but now at least they aren't being whiney). Sigh....end rant.
psychic flash ball...Math is cool! (from metafilter)
posted @ 11:44 PM | archive_link | Comment
Here is a pic of the copter that landed next to the house:
Turns out it was just a drill, but good to know that I can get out of here in a jiffy if needed. :>
posted @ 9:20 PM | archive_link | Comment
Well this was crazy...a helicopter just landed next to my house. Like i am sitting 50 feet from it now. It blew all the shit out of trees too..so they look cleaner now.
Heading over there to check it out now.
posted @ 1:02 PM | archive_link | Comment
This is clutch for when you are getting a new phone number! Thanks fil!
posted @ 8:03 PM | archive_link | Comment
Hey, all you corporate type friends of mine...read this on email and productivity.
posted @ 2:54 PM | archive_link | Comment
A couple of things occured to me today:
1. Why the hell did the marketing morons at Exress/Structure decide to rename Structure to Express for Men? I was happy to shop at structure, but am not happy to shop at Express for Men. Maybe it is just me that has this dislike, but a few friends have also expressed similar opinions...way to go marketing morons!
2. Warm sun + good beverages (cold beer and good wine) = great afternoon.
3. Wine is really a complicated subject. But it is a cool complicated subject. Some people know a lot about it and can give you the exact reasons for how one wine is diffrent from another, or how the way it was made affects such and such character. Other people can only say it taste good or it taste bad...but regardless of this range of abilities, people can still hang out and go wine tasting together as long as they are open minded and don't rag on each other (too much anyhow). That isn't always the case with other complicated subjects.
4. Driving fast on a back country road is really fun.
5. Why is it so hard to find a good pair of shorts in march in california? Doesn't compute.
Rumor has it some MS wigs are checking out this site...if so, smile...you are on Candid Camera! :>
Okay, bust this link to make your day much better. Shiggity Shiggity Shwa...the flag sound track rocks!
posted @ 9:05 PM | archive_link | Comment
Does anyone know if it is "fair use" if start a gallery of past Google front page logos? Today's (michalenglo) is quite unique and I am intrested to see if they continue to expermient with them. Traditionally they have kept the color scheme (blue, red, yellow, blue, green, red) and font of the "Google" word static and then added some graphics (ie hearts on v-day). Today, they totally changed the font and color of the logo for big mike's birthday. Intresting, no?
Man, I could see a coffee table book coming out with Google front page logos with commentary...wouldn't that be the sheik geek item to have?
Update (3/8/2003): the comments show the way to a few resources that are already dedicated to this very pursuit...I love it when what I want already exisits!
posted @ 12:53 PM | archive_link | Comment
Dude, my friend Dana just set out to really help me with fund rasing for the Marathon! Check out the mail she just sent to all of her friends:
As some of you know my good friend's mother just passed away from Leukemia at age 55. Coincidentally, my other friend from Cal Poly (Bubba) is part of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Cancer Society in the Central Coast and is running in the San Diego Rock and Roll Marathon on June 1st, 2003 to help raise money. He will be wearing a bracelet with my friend's mother's name on it in her memory and this battle she had with Leukemia for one month. Your contribution is 100% tax-deductible and checks can be made out to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.
If you haven't already take a moment to support the Lukemia and Lymphoma society, please help out now. People of all ages are affected and the research benfits all forms of cancer in the long run! Thanks!
Oh, and my friend kevin sent me this. I started to read it and it looks intresting...funny I just read this subaverage article a bit a go as well!
posted @ 5:34 PM | archive_link | Comment
I am back after being MIA for a few days (as several of you noted). I had all of my work items for the thesis converage in the last few days....a two hour presentation and usability study seriously cramped my blogging style! Good news is it is all done, the better news is the prof I did the presentation about CSCW and Blogs for wants me to deliever it as a departmental colloqium (spelling?), the best news was the UI model I estabilished for my blogging tool made sense and garnered positive praise from the usability study! Nice tripple hit! Of course the bad side, is I now have to burn some fuel to get it up and running!!! No more fluffy stuff...I got real work to do now!
On a diffrent note, why is Murphy so mean? I practice my little presentation, know what I want to do...and then Blogger.com won't auth me when I try to log into my account from the presentation computer...crash and burn! I had to back up into Greymatter that I installed on my school acount. Brutal. F murphy and his stupid law!
Went and checked out my friend's new house...in avila (a nearby beach town)...AMAZING VIEW! They are up on a hill and are having the house built to spec for themselves. I wish I had my camera because you would not believe how cool the view was! Anyhow...time to go watch the sunset from my backyard...:) I love shell beach!
