Höpöhöpö

3 weeks down

2008-07-19T11:10:00.000-07:00

Training is going well, knocked out the 4,5, and 6 mile weekend runs, along with 2 3-mile runs during each week (plus some strength training on other days).

It's hard to gauge how well I'm doing - the run I do around my house is extremely hilly, I think one part of the run has a street sign saying 11% grade. To put it in perspective, when I run 3 miles around home, it takes around 31:30. When I run it on a treadmill, I think my last time was around 27 (or 28? I don't remember) minutes. So my pace around home seems really slow, but I know a lot of that is due to the hills. Hopefully the training will make it easier to run the relatively flat course in October.

San Jose r'n'r half marathon 2008

2008-07-06T12:16:00.000-07:00

It's not that interesting to others, but I like keeping a record of my running training programs so that I can refer back to them the next time I train.

So with much fanfare, I announce the 2008 San Jose Rock 'n Roll Half Marathon long-run training schedule!

July 5 - 4 miles
July 12 - 5 miles
July 19 - 6 miles
July 26 - 7 miles
August 2 - 5 miles
August 9 - 7 miles
August 16 - 8 miles
August 23 - 9 miles
August 30 - 10 miles
Sept 6 - 7 miles
Sept 13 - 11 miles
Sept 20 - 12 miles
Sept 27 - TAPER
Oct 5 - RACE

I ran the 4 mile run on July 4th - 4 on the 4th! It was hard - running in my neighborhood is quite hilly, and I walked a lot. But it kicked off the program.

Amsterdam musings

2007-10-10T11:52:00.000-07:00

I just returned from a vacation in Amsterdam and Paris. I could write about a zillion things, but I'll start by writing a bit about Amsterdam. In Amsterdam, we stayed with a friend in her apartment, so we got to learn a lot about the local culture... For example...

The Dutch drink a LOT of coffee (the claim is that they are they are only second to the Finnish in coffee drinking), but they drink small cups, not the Starbucks super-venti-flavored-sugar things. They might drink 5 cups throughout the day, and taking coffee breaks during work is a regular thing that everyone does.

Dutch toilets are weird. Each one seems to have a different flushing mechanism. Furthermore, they have a "shelf" in the toilet, where there is no water. The concept is that when you use the toilet, toilet water does not splash on to you. The result is a smelly experience.

There is a special kind of Dutch apple pie that a lot of places serve for dessert.

The Dutch birthday party is a weird ritual where everyone basically sits in a circle the whole time while having conversations. I'm not sure what the circle is about. I didn't get to experience this myself but heard about it from a few sources. They also have the cake first.

The Amsterdam streets are interesting because they are built with bicycles in mind. There are a ton of bike riders in Amsterdam. However, even though riding bikes is so common, it doesn't mean it is not scary to navigate them through traffic!

European beer has much more flavor than American beer (a generalization of course), and also contains more alcohol.

Many Dutch leave their curtains open everywhere except the bedroom. The idea is that they have nothing to hide because they are just doing "normal" things. If you close your curtains, it tends to indicate that you are hiding something.

The Dutch customer service experience is largely non-existent (another generalization of course). People working at stores rarely greet you or offer help. It is not that they are acting rudely, it is just that they don't offer help without being asked.

Tons more to say, thats just what popped into my mind right now.

What running on empty looks like

2007-07-14T19:04:00.000-07:00

Courtesy of the wrist gps system that my wife uses when we run, here are some interesting graphs of our last two runs.

First, 2 weeks ago, a 7.5 mile run, which was one of our best runs:

A couple of interesting points:
The run started at 9:15 AM, the weather was very cool and slightly damp.
The run as a whole had an average of 6.3MPH
The drop at about 1.6 and 4 were bathroom breaks.
The drop at aout 3.5 was the turn around point.

Now look at this week's run 8.5 mile run:

Some points:
The run started at 3:33, the weather was very warm (especially compared to what I am used to at 9AM).
The drop at 3 was a bathroom break.
The drop at 4 was a turn around point
The drop at 5 was a long re-fill the water bottle break.
The drop at 7 was me completely running out of energy.
I managed to run another half mile between 7.5 and 8, but that was it.

Anyway, it was pretty interesting how different it was to run when it was warm, and also the difference in running late in the day versus first thing in the morning. I made the mistake of not eating a good lunch before my afternoon run, and I ran out of energy. I think the heat made me need a lot more water intake than I'm used to also...

Behavioral pricing

2007-06-15T20:29:00.000-07:00

I can't be 100% sure, but I believe I was almost a victim of an internet site adjusting their prices based on my web surfing behavior...

I had been using one of the major travel sites to book an air and hotel combo the other day. I looked at the site several times to check prices, and once even got to the purchase screen, before I decided to back out and check one other site to see if there was a cheaper deal.

Finally I decided there wasn't a better deal out there, went back, and looked up my flight and hotel combo again, only to find that it was now $40 more expensive. Now I have seen airline tickets change prices over a period of days, but this price had changed in 10 minutes, at 8PM at night. I checked the individual prices at the airline and the hotel websites - those prices had not changed. So the price change came from this particular site alone.

So I went to a different site to buy the package at a slightly higher price than the original price, but cheaper than the new $40 more price. But then I decided to just check again in the morning to see if the price went back down.

An hour or so later, I remembered reading an article awhile back about how travel sites might offer different users different prices. For example, maybe they offer cheaper prices to people without accounts in order to get them to register the first time, or maybe they offer cheaper prices to frequent customers to keep them loyal.

On a hunch, I deleted all my browser cookies. I went back to the site, and suddenly my trip was the original price I had seen many times before.

So one of two things happened: 1) There was a random fluctuation in pricing over about a 2 hour period. or 2) For some reason, some computer algorithm thought that I deserved a $40 price raise in the package I was trying to buy.

I'll never know for sure what happened. But it is pretty interesting to think about the implications of changing prices on interenet stores. At your brick and mortar store, it wouldn't work to offer different prices to different customers - they would all see eachother's prices and complain. But on internet sites, where everyone could possibly see something different, who knows what is really going on...

Gun control

2007-04-22T15:06:00.000-07:00

So I'm probably the 87 millionth person to bring up gun control this week.

I thought CNN.com did a respectable job of presenting the two sides of the issue with two columns: this column is in support of getting rid of all guns (except for certain hunting or sports clubs), and this column is in favor of mandating that everyone carry a gun (written by Ted Nugent, which, despite having practically opposite ideals than I do, I always enjoy hearing or reading his thoughts because his passion for his beliefs is quite amazing.)

The issue of gun control is really complicated, but some things always bug me about the debate. First of all, I will never buy an argument that begins with "the founding fathers intended..." The Constiution originally allowed slavery and denied women the right to vote. Constiutional amendments have been passed to outlaw alcohol, and then repeal that prohibition. The fact is, things change over time. Our government is supposed to be the "great experiment." If we don't learn from our mistakes, the experiment is bound to fail. I believe this to be the case for all parts of our Constitution, not just certain amendments. The Constitution is there to prevent spur-of-the-moment governmental changes that would derail our society. It is not there to prevent us from developing a better government as time goes on.

Secondly, I don't buy the argument that no one will shoot anyone if everyone carries a gun. I am willing to listen to the argument that mass killings would *probably* become practically extinct if everyone carried a gun, because as soon as someone started going ballistic they would be stopped. But I do believe that random, heat-of-the-moment crimes would increase. People get mad and do irrational things. People get drunk and do stupid things. People don't pay attention and cause accidents. Increasing the chance that a simple accident could turn into a fatal one is not a good idea.

But beyond that, things get really confusing. The one thing that I keep coming back to is that in my imaginary, ideal world, guns don't exist. But in the real world, guns do exist, and somewhere, someone will have them no matter what governmental laws are in place.

Sometimes I wonder how Supreme Court Justices are able to handle the weight of their positions.

juice fast

2007-04-09T12:44:00.000-07:00

As part of the cleanse I'm doing, I did a 24-hour juice fast from Friday night 9PM til Saturday night 9PM.

A juice fast means that you are only supposed to intake fresh juices.

Saturday morning we made a lemon-lime-grapefruit juice. Then saturday afternoon we made a "green lemonade" with lemon, lime, apple, celery, carrots, ginger, and maybe something else I'm forgetting (we usually put in kale but were out).

We cheated a bit and had a "raw soup", which was a bunch of vegetables and vegetable broth thrown into a blender, and was actually quite tasty. We also drank a ton of tea throughout the day (augmented with flax seed and grapefruit seed extract).

At about 8:30PM I had half a banana, and then at 9PM dove into friday night's leftovers.

It was a difficult experience - there were times when I was very hungry, but those would usually pass. I don't think I've ever gone that long without eating before, so it was nice to know that the next time I am an hour late taking my lunch I won't actually die of starvation.

One thing I realized during this was that in the face of starvation, I would not hold on to being a vegetarian.

Another thing I often thought about was how certain religious groups do a fast every week. I wonder how that frequent fasting affects their health.

candida cleanse

2007-04-05T20:40:00.000-07:00

As part of my wife's nutritional education, she has been learning about candida, and has embarked on a month-long "candida" cleanse. I'm joining her (though I've only signed up for 2 weeks...).

Quote the wife:

Candida Albicans, a fungus present in everyone’s system in small amounts, is an opportunistic yeast that multiplies when there is an abundance of simple sugar present in the large intestine. Under ideal acidic conditions in the large intestine, the presence of friendly flora, including lactobacilli and bifidiobacteria, controls the growth of Candida. However, the high sugar, high fat, low fiber of the standard American diet, use of antibiotics and overuse of alcohol all can contribute to an alkaline environment leading to the overgrowth of Candida. The most common symptoms of Candida are: diarrhea, constipation, abdominal discomfort, bloating, gas, rectal itching, menstrual complaints, depression, irritability, inability to concentrate, insomnia, memory lapses, headaches, hives, hay fever, sore throat, asthma, ear fungus and chemical sensitivities.

So basically for the next two weeks I can't eat sugars or refined carbs. So no sandwhiches, burritos, beer, cookies, etc. It's sort of like the atkins diet, but I'm a vegetarian, and I can't have anything sweet either. In addition to this, I'm taking probiotic pills and drinking a ton of tea, which is supposed to help with the flushing of candida.

I'm just finishing day 3. The food thing hasn't been that bad, but only because my wife is helping me figure out what to eat. Whenever I get hungry and think of what to eat it always revolves around some sort of carb. Cutting that out has been tough.

I'm really not sure if I have an over growth of candida or not. I figure it can't hurt to go through this cleanse, and if I end up feeling better, great.

But man, I sure could go for a nice sweet piece of chocolate cake right now.

A little more about capoeira...

2007-03-27T20:58:00.000-07:00

A little more about the capoeira style I practice, and the instructor that teaches it:

Here's the New York City school of the same style, during one of their performances:

viacom v. youtube/google

2007-03-14T21:45:00.000-07:00

Continuing with the copyright theme...

Pretty much everyone predicted that Google would get sued once they purchased YouTube. No one bothered to sue You Tube before they were bought because there was no money to be earned. But now that Google owns them, there's a lot of money at stake.

From a purely legal standpoint, I think that Viacom is in the right. YouTube is streaming thousands of copyrighted videos a day. I'm not sure if they are making money off advertising yet, but it's not a far stretch of the imagination to imagine them making a ton of money off of advertising.

One of GooTube's defenses is that they remove copyrighted videos when they are discovered or reported. So essentially their defense is that "it's only illegal if we get caught, and if we get caught, we'll stop doing it."

But legalities aside, it really is in Viacom's best interest to have their videos on You Tube. 99% of the things I watch on YouTube I would never watch anywhere else - it's not like if I watch a clip of some Comedy Central show on YouTube it prevents me from watching it directly on Comedy Central, because I was never going to watch it in the first place. But sometimes I actually do end up watching an actual TV show because of something I saw on YouTube. YouTube is basically free advertising. Certainly Viacom already realizes that.

I think the main reason for the lawsuit is that Viacom is jealous - if people were going to their websites to view these clips, then they would make the money off of advertising. But the fact is that it's highly unlikely that their website will ever get the amount of traffic YouTube is getting...

Normally I would guess that this would be settled out of court, with some sort of agreement where Viacom gets 10% of any ad revenue generated on copyrighted videos (which is a sweet deal for them because they aren't paying any bandwidth or development costs). But Google has historically been very stubborn, and they don't change their policies for anyone (well, except for maybe the Chinese government). So we'll have to see what happens...

The future of TV

2007-03-13T20:44:00.000-07:00

There's an interesting article on the Electronic Frontier Foundation's website called "Who Contrls Your Television"?

The basic summary of the article is that the big media companies are meeting behind closed doors and discussing some ideas that could greatly change what rights a television viewer has when watching television.

We're all aware that home viewers do not have the right to rebroadcast shows that are received in their home - this message is repeated over and over again on sports broadcasts, and is in the fine print in credits on most shows. I think it's a reasonable assumption that if I were to set up my own TV station, and basically just show exactly what some other station is showing by reproducing their signal, I'd get in trouble for that.

But now the media companies ("Hollywood studios, major pay TV providers, free TV broadcasters, and some of the largest technology companies in the world") are taking it a step further. What if your VCR was suddenly unable to record certain shows, or your DVR (i.e. Tivo) could only hold one episode of your favorite show at a time? These are the things that these companies are considering doing. You might think that it is not technically possible to do these things, but it is. And even worse, if these companies get their way, it might make your current TV equipment simply not work.

There are two main reasons that companies are doing this. The first is that when people use VCRs and DVRs, they skip over commercials. This means TV companies lose ad revenue. The second reason is that these companies see a market in reselling content after the initial air date. Miss your favorite episode of Lost? You can buy it online from iTunes. Or you can stream it for free from abc.com (if you watch the ads during it).

It's a tricky issue. TV shows depend on ad revenue for their source of income, and if it is true that ad revenue is drying up, then other revenue sources must be discovered. But this is not the way to do it.

I am not in favor of just getting rid of copyright protections, but I am a believer in that once you purchase a product, you should be able to do what you want with it, as long as it's for private use (with some exceptions of course, I'm not claiming this is a cut and dry issue). If ABC releases Lost to the world for free on Wednesday, and I can't watch it until Thursday, I think it's completely reasonable for me to record it and watch it later. The TV company needs to realize that by having the freedom to watch the show when I want also makes me more likely to be a loyal viewer of the show, which in turn means I'm more likely to see the advertisements that happen during the show (even if I skip over them most of the time).

One of the more understandable things they are trying to do is prevent the skipping of advertisements. Despite the fact that I hate the idea, at least it makes sense to me - in exchange for being able to watch their show for free, I agree to watch so many minutes of advertising. But they need to be careful - too much advertising just makes me change the channel.

All in all, the main problem is that media companies are slow to react to technological changes. Apple was able to figure out how to make money off of online music sales, but that only happened atfer many years of people trading music for free online (although the issue of Apple's use of DRM is a whole different discussion topic). Now there are new ways to watch TV, and media companies must understand how to use those new ways to their advantage instead of trying to prevent them from happening altogether.

It's going to be an interesting few years while this is all sorted out.

An important conversation starter

2007-03-05T20:58:00.000-08:00

They say there's no such thing as bad publicity, so I feel bad about posting this, but I think it's important anyway.

Without giving my own opinion, I just think the following clip is an important conversation starter.

For those that don't know, Ann Coulter is a best-selling conservative political pundit. What follows is what may be offensive to some people, but can also spark some debate that this country really needs:

I could go for days commenting on this, but instead I leave it up to you to discuss over your next dinner table discussion...

Tipping

2007-02-07T21:01:00.000-08:00

One of the most controversial topics in the San Francisco Chronicle's food critic's blog is the topic of tipping. Whenever he writes about it, the comments become practically violent.

Tipping at a restaurant in it's most basic concept is pretty simple to understand - if someone does a good job, you want to reward them for their service. Somewhere along the way, tipping has become a compulsory part of dining - it is no longer a reward for good service, but rather more likely the absence of a tip is a punishment for bad service.

I actually feel that tipping has become a mechanism that restaurant owners have created to make the experience of dining out seem cheaper, and if their staff doesn't earn enough, it is the fault of the "cheapskate" customers, not the restaurant owners. It is somewhat conflicting with our capitalistic society that diners should tip extra for service that should be expected - if the service is not good, ideally diners would not attend that restaurant, thus causing the restaurnt to either hire better servers or go out of business. In this sense, it's the diner's fault for frequenting restaurants with poor service that the entire tipping concept exists.

The topic becomes even more confusing when proper tip amounts are discussed (20% is now expected in SF and most cities, because 15% is "so 20 years ago", which doesn't make sense to me because percentages shouldn't change with inflation), who should receive tips (waiters versus chefs versus hosts versus busboys), the taxation of tipping, tipping on $100 bottles of wine versus $5 bottles of wine, etc. And then when you move outside of restaurants to coffee shops, hotels, or any other business, it gets even more confusing.

But the reality of the situation is that restaurant staff do depend on their tips for their living, and so I participate in the system even though I feel it is not correct. I am personally leaning towards the belief that the restaurant staff should be paid by the restaurant, and the corresponding raise in prices should be reflected in the menu. That way the animosity between the staff and the diner is removed, the wait staff gets a dependable wage, if the restaurant doesn't pay proper wages they will have trouble hiring good staff, and if the staff is bad the restaurant will have a hard time attracting customers.

In the end, tipping has definitely departed from its original intentions - when I fill out the tip portion of my bill the service quality only affects a very small part of my decision.

Universal health care

2007-01-28T18:13:00.000-08:00

1 month since my last post and I choose to write about universal health care? How boring is that! But I've spent a lot of time this week trying to make sense of the health care plan proposed at the State Of The Union address earlier this week. I agree that health care is one of the major problems facing this country, and also agree that it is a very difficult one to solve, so when politicians actually take action on it instead of just mention it, I tend to pay attention. So let's try to make sense of the proposed health care system.

Let me start by saying that I could be misinterpreting this plan, so if I've gotten some of the facts wrong, well, chalk it up to the confusion of the plan.

First off, there's a tax break for people that buy into health care plans. A $15,000 tax break, no matter what your actual plan costs. Ok, that sounds good to me. Health care should be tax deductible to help people afford it. But isn't it kind of odd that I get a $15,000 tax deduction, even if my plan only costs $5,000 and my employer is the one paying for it? Hmmmm. A little strange, but let's continue.

Oh wait, it turns out that for plans that cost more than $15,000, the amount over $15,000 will not be tax deductible, whereas currently if I contribute more to my plan at work (i.e. to add my wife or to increase our coverage), it is tax deductible. So now I'm a little confused - will this plan raise or lower my taxes? Wow. Hooray for the crystal clear American tax system.

So the incentive here is that people will no longer opt for more expensive plans, thus dropping the earnings the health care system makes, which in turn encourages them to offer cheaper plans. I guess that makes sense, but it's a lot of wishful thinking I think.

So anyway, the whole point of this is to bring health care to people who currently don't have it, and pretty much everything we've talked about so far is really only relevant to people who already get health care through their work. So how do the people who can't afford health care currently get health care under this plan? Oh that's right, with the tax deduction, they can now afford health care... but wait... most of the people who can't afford health care are already tax exempt because they have so little income they don't pay taxes anyway, so essentially this plan gives them a great deduction on the $0 they already pay.

But then the plan also aknowledges a further need for universal health care that this plan doesn't provide. How is this handled? By giving federal aid to states that implement a universal health care system. "We can't figure out the solution to this problem, but if you figure it out, we'll chip in a few bucks and take the credit. But if you live 5 miles in the other direction you're out of luck. So sorry."

This plan is so confusing, I'm not even sure who it helps and who it hurts.

It brings to mind an article my wife likes to quote so much. Essentially the point of the article was that the U.S.A. pays more per person on health care than any other (or most other) countries, but still has a higher percentage of "sick" people (people with diabetes, heart problems, etc.). The article argued that we need to increase spending to drop the percentage of sick people. My wife's reaction: "uh.... duh... when you have sick people, you need to spend money to treat them, which is why we spend so much money on health care. Maybe if we figured out why these people in other countries weren't getting sick, we wouldn't have to pay so much money to treat them?" In other words, maybe we need to shift our focus from treatment to preventative care - not as lucrative to pharmacuetical companies, but certainly a lot cheaper on our country as a whole.

Bass and treble

2006-12-26T19:53:00.000-08:00

For some reason I started wondering today why home stereos come with bass and treble knobs (or sometimes full EQ settings).

Musicians spend a lot of time getting their sound just right. And then an audio engineer spends a lot of time making sure the record sounds just right. The engineer tests the sound on a variety of speakers. Sometimes they'll even test on a crappy hand-held stereo because of times thats what radio execs will hear the CD on in between meetings. In the end they have a finely tuned piece of audio, with each frequency meticulously set.

And then someone buys it, goes home, and plays it on their stereo with the bass and treble knobs turned to some bizarre value.

I guess it's because of two things: 1) Home speakers are usually cheap, and all the effort the audio engineer puts into the tuning of the sound doesn''t matter because the home system won't do it justice anyway. 2) Everyone just likes different sounds. Some people love low end, some people high end.

In a way, I guess it's similar to food. The chef might create a masterpiece, then the customer might cover it in salt to suit their own taste. And the same goes for film colors. The director may work for days with the art director and the film guys to develop the film just right, only to have it played back on a DVD with the colors on the TV set all wrong.

I guess unless you have your audio or video set the way the original author had theirs set, you really aren't enjoying the experience as the artist intended.

Replacing an iPod battery

2006-12-04T22:31:00.000-08:00

It's fairly well known know that iPod batteries lose a lot of their life after about two years (it is well known thanks to campaigns like this one - though this problem is not unique to iPods, all rechargeable batteries have this issue). My wife's iPod was starting to have this issue, and it was becoming very unpredictable to tell how long a charge would last.

So I went to the apple store, and was given 3 options:

If I had "apple care" it would be under warranty or something. I don't have apple care.
I could pay $70 for them to replace the battery.
I could have them recycle the iPod in exchange for 10% off a new iPod (which starts at $149).

None of these options seemed ideal to me. So instead I went online to ipodbattery.com and paid $16 for a new battery that I could install myself. It arrived in the mail today, and I installed it in about 5 minutes. It's charging now, and we'll find out later this week whether it works out or not.

The main problem is that Apple designed the iPod to be pretty much disposable - there's no easy way to open the iPod up to replace the battery or other parts. In fact, one of the pieces you have to remove is held together by glue, so I'm guessing that when they replace batteries at the apple store they might actually have to reglue it back on (though it's sticky enough to put the part back on again without glue). Taking the iPod apart scratches it up a lot, so I don't recommend doing it if you will be upset by a few dings on your iPod. And of course it voids your warranty. But my warranty was void anyway, and $16 seemed a lot better than $70...

Anyway, I'm confused as to why Apple made iPod so hard to take apart. I guess they just want people to buy new iPods every 2 years...

Hopefully this battery lasts for awhile.

Hacking democracy

2006-11-26T17:06:00.000-08:00

I just finished watching the documentary Hacking Democracy. The basic story is of one woman's efforts in founding blackboxvoting.org in order to uncover various ways that election results can be incorrectly (accidentally or purposefully) tabulated.

The documentary has some flaws - I think a lot of documentaries about "conspiracies" have an uphill battle because the point they are trying to prove can't be "proven". If they could legally prove some of the claims they make in a court of law, then this documentary wouldn't be necessary - the courts themselves would be exposing the fraud in our elections. Instead you are left with some hand-wavey arguments in certain areas of the film.

However, the underlying message of the documentary is very powerful - when you keep secrets, the potential for abuse of power becomes big. When there are no secrets, people might still try to abuse power, but they are easily caught.

The film focuses on how easy it is for computers to be reprogrammed to change election results. Although this has been proven to be true time and time again, I feel this is primarily a scare tactic and one used to make the story more dramatic. The real issue is that once you cast your vote in an election booth, there is no guarantee that your vote will be counted correctly. This doesn't matter whether it's computer tabulated or hand tabulated.

I suspect one of the reasons we keep our election votes secret is so that people cannot be attacked for how they vote. This is an important protection. However, this same secrecy makes it impossible to trace whether or not votes are counted correctly. Exposing the system to public scrutiny as much as possible is the right direction to move towards - public records of votes, people should be able to recount the votes at any time, examination of voting machines, etc.

On a related note, when I took a cryptography class in college the first lesson we learned is that if you develop a crytographic algorithm privately, most likely it will be quickly broken. If you develop an algorithm publicly, publish it to the community before you start using it, give people an attempt to break it, and only after it survives public scrutiny then you use it, you'll end up with something much more solid and trusted. It seems like our voting process needs to go through the same sort of scrutiny. Unfortunately, for privately owned businesses (such as the ones who develop election machines), this sort of model is often disregarded as it would expose their "industry secrets".

Maybe this documentary is wrong, maybe our election results are 100% correct. But if they are, then exposing the inner workings of our voting system shouldn't hurt anything, and it would at least put all our conspiracy theories to rest.

Breaking my video game streak...

2006-11-24T12:26:00.000-08:00

I grew up playing the Atari 2600. I know that at one point I "bought" my Dad the game "Superman" for the Atari for Father's day - presumably because I wanted to play it.

In 1985, my parents bought me and my sister a Nintendo Entertainment System, complete with the light gun and the robot-thing.

At some point during the 16-bit game era, my sister and I ended up with a Genesis. It was several years into the era, we had not immediately jumped into the 16-bit era.

In 1996, I received a Nintendo64 for Christmas. I was pretty surprised. My roommate ended up with a PlayStation, so between us we had the best of both worlds.

Because I worked in the "industry", I was able to obtain a PlayStation 2 and a GameCube very close to their release dates in 2000 and 2001 (I think I had to wait a month or so after they were released).

But I don't own an Xbox360, a PlayStation3, or a Wii. I'm not sure that I ever will. If I do, it'll be after the prices drop. The Xbox360 and PlayStation3 are too expensive right now. Plus with one betting on HDDVD and the other on Blu-Ray, I'd rather wait and see what happens there. Many publishers are no longer doing exclusive titles for just one console, so with the exception of a few games, it really doesn't matter which one you buy. The Xbox360 online experience is very nice though, we'll see if Sony's measures up. The Wii is pretty interesting - I haven't played it yet but I'm very curious to see what they've done with their motion-sensing controller and how it ties into the games. It seems like it could be a great "social" gaming platform. The Wii's technical specs are really low, which lets them keep the price point low. Plus Nintendo's Intellectual Property is second to none, and people will buy Mario, Zelda, etc. no matter what type of game system it's on.

I still like video games. I think Guitar Hero is a lot of fun. And sitting down with some friends and playing the latest multiplayer game can be really fun too. I just don't invest as much time as I used to in playing games. And with many of the PlayStation3 or Xbox360 games, if you don't put enough time into the games, they just don't become fun enough. Every once in awhile there are games that you can play for either 5 minutes or 5 hours and still enjoy (SSX and Katamari Damarcy come to mind). Those are the games that I am more interested in lately.

To all the parents who have kids saying they won't speak to anyone ever again if they don't get a PlayStation3 this holiday... well, good luck with that.

5 weird things our cats do

2006-11-15T21:25:00.000-08:00

Big Boi digs through the trash looking for used dental floss, and when he finds it, he eats it.
If only one of us is home in the evening, Logan waits at the top of the stairs until the other person comes home.
When you scare Logan, his reaction is to turn his back to you and purr.
Big Boi loves anything shiny or made of plastic, and will chase it and try to eat it.
Logan makes weird clicking/chirping noises when he sees birds outside.

More election babble

2006-11-03T09:55:00.000-08:00

Just some random thoughts about the upcoming vote on Tuesday:

Apparently I am part of the three dirtiest words in politics: San Francisco values. The GOP has created an all out war in trying to convince people that if the democrats win, Nancy Pelosi will become speaker of the house and the country will fall apart under the "far left" ideals of San Francisco. I'm not sure whether I should be offended by this statement or proud of this statememt.
Voting machines. I find it extremely funny that computer experts everywhere are telling counties NOT to use computers for voting machines (well, except the computer experts that work for voting machine companies). There's even an HBO documentary about the situation. There's been reports of voting machines tallying the wrong votes to bizarre reports of hacking voting machines to play chess. Some counties put locks on the connections to the voting machines to prevent tampering. But if you break the lock while you are in the booth, then the machine must be declared hacked and therefore all votes will be discounted, which is just as dangerous as changing the votes themselves. I understand why people want e-voting machines: it makes figuring out who won the election very easy. But why are people so resistant to the idea that an e-voting machine also spit out an old-fashioned voting card, that the user needs to double check? That way, we get the benefits of both worlds - the immediate vote count of an e-voting machine, with an old style paper ballot that can be manually checked and counted.
I don't think California's proposition system is quite ideal. First off, in election off years (i.e. 2005), these propositions are put on the ballot knowing that voter turnout will be extremely minimal. That seems completely against the whole idea of why the proposition system exists. But in the big years, the proposition vote just becomes so confusing that I'm not sure people know what they are voting for. On the one hand, I really appreciate being able to participate in the law making process and define the area I live in. On the other hand, if these propositions are costing our state so much money, why not just leave it up to the law makers that we elect? Isn't that their job? Oh yah, I forgot, even though we elect these people we don't usually trust them to do the right thing. It just gets more and more confusing and more and more expensive with each new vote.
I sometimes wonder what the future of the USA political landscape looks like. For example, I think splitting California into two states would make a lot of people a lot happier in all areas of the state - it's pretty clear that there are two very distinct political ideals going on. But I also wonder if the religious right will spin off from the Republican party, to form a major political party of their own? The Republican party can probably only last so long trying to appeal both to the religious right and the "central" voters. The religious right certainly has the population to form their own party. What would happen to our current two-party system if this ever took place?

True voting reform

2006-10-29T08:05:00.000-08:00

This year's voting is serioulsy irking me. It's probably the same ever year, but for whatever reason, this year it just seems like more misinformation is being spread than ever before. It's gotten to the point where I'm not reading or watching anything about the vote until a few days before, so that my mind isn't tainted by incorrect information.

I haven't studied the propositions yet, which sort of helps me stay immune to the television ads about them. The television ads I've seen give no indication as to what the propositions stand for, they just explain how a yes vote or no vote would cause the world to fall apart. I know that the california police say one of the propositions would cause our state to crumble into a Gotham-City-like crime state, but I have no idea why, and I don't even remember what proposition would do this. When I finally do read the ballot I'm hoping that I'll be able to approach it from a fresh perspective, since really none of the advertising is all that meaningful to me right now, because it has no context.

On the other hand, I feel my approach is not pushing forward what I believe is right. If I was a concerned citizen, I would have studied the issues months ago, and been writing, calling, protesting, flyering, etc., about the issues and spreading the facts. I feel torn between the fact that I loathe the marketing that goes into the campaign and proposition process, and the reality that this process actually does affect the outcome of the vote.

I personally think that the only way to reform this process is to get rid of privately funded media advertisements altogether. Instead, take those millions of dollars spent on campaigning, and cut it back to just a few ads that air the weeks before the election, and the ads would mirror what happens in the official ballot guide: the first 20 seconds of the ad would be the information about what the issue was about, the second 20 seconds would be the argument from one side, the last 20 seconds would be the argument from the otherside (and the ads would randomly alternate which side went first and second). That way, as long as you are seeing the whole ad, you are receiving the facts and both interpretations of the facts all at once. I feel like this would be the most effective and fair way to get information out to the voters, and would also save the voters money in the long run because these hundred-million dollar mudslinging campaigns would be reduced to a few million dollars of fair media coverage.

There's also something inherently flawed with the fact that as a San Francisco resident, I should be so concerned with a senate election happening in some small town in the midwest. Theoretically senators are elected to represent their local district. The fact that there are huge campaign events where people from Oregon get together to call voters in North Dakota just seems wrong. Again, this is where the ideal world falls apart and reality steps in - of course local elections matter on a national level because they determine who controls the senate, the house, and therefore the nation. But the system was not intended to be that way, it's a side-effect of having a two party system. However, this system is so ingrained into our government that I'm not even sure at this point that there's an alternative. It would probably be more worthwhile for me to start taking interest in elections in Ohio than trying to support a system where local elections only have local effects...

Grape crushing

2006-10-22T21:17:00.000-07:00

I took part in the Vincent Arroyo Winery Amigos De Arroyo day today. I picked grapes, crushed them, took part in the bottling process of some 2004 grapes (well actually I just watched that part), and ate lunch there.

First, let's get the obvious joke out of the way - yes, we paid money to partake in the process that wineries normally pay other workers to do. Yes, we are crazy like that.

But it was a lot of fun. We started off the morning with about 40 of us picking grapes off the vine. They gave us gloves and a knife to cut the grapes off with, and the normal crew followed us in tractors to help us pick up the buckets of grapes. All in all, the 40 of us picked about 2.5 tons of grapes. Normally, a crew of just 8 people picks 4 tons of grapes a day.

Then we crushed the grapes. Instead of just putting them into the machine, they actually let us do it the old fashioned way first - we took off our shoes and got in the crates and stomped around. Pretty silly but surprisingly fun. It makes me chuckle to think that in 2008 my foot funk will be drunk by someone somewhere.

The lunch was prepared by a chef that specializes in making paella for large groups of people (apparently he goes around doing this for celebrity parties such as for Teri Hatcher or George Lucas). I didn't get to partake because I'm a vegetarian and got a salad box instead, but the word on the street was that the paella was amazing.

The thing I'm realizing about wine tasting is that I really enjoy going to wineries that emphasize the fun aspects of wine. Sure it's a business, but also wine is supposed to be social and fun. It seems like every winery in Napa knows Vincent Arroyo (and his dog J.J.) and the first thing everyone says about him is what a great guy he is. We also had the pleasure of stopping by two wineries on the way home where the pourers were quite social and ready to make sure we were having a good time. Some of the larger wineries tend to lose this personal touch in their tasting rooms, and while the wine may be good, the experience is not.

The Arroyo wines are often sold out, and many of them can only be bought as future orders. However, they are one of the few remaining wineries in the Napa area that offer free tastings (though you have to call in advance to make an appointment - something about their building not being up to handicap code so they can't have an an "open door" or something). It's definitely worth a stop to meet Vince, J.J., and try some great wine.

The condiment conspiracy

2006-10-14T09:25:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I find it disturbing that there is an apparent monopoly in regards to restaurant condiments. Do you ever see ketchup that isn't Heinz? Probably not unless it's a house-made ketchup. Or when you ask for hot sauce, it's almost always Tabasco (or if it's a Vietnamese restaurant it's Sriracha or if its a Mexican restaurant it's Tapatio).

Why is there such a limited supply of these sauces into restaurants? I guess it's not that different than how restaurants serve almost all the same sodas - large distribution channels keep prices down.

The thing that really gets me about Heinz ketchup is that it contains high fructose corn syrup. The media may be obsessed with trans fat right now, but when that dies down most likely high fructose corn syrup will be the next big focus in regards to making American foods healthier. Plus, I personally don't think Heinz ketchup tastes as good as the alternatives you can get in a grocery store.

As for hot sauce, I'm not a hot sauce connoisseur. It wasn't until a few years ago that I started eating spicier foods. However, I am learning that there's a difference between "hot" and "spicy and flavorful". I actually like Tabasco on some foods, but when I was in Costa Rica last year I found a hot sauce I really liked - Lizano Chilero. I brought a bottle home with me and used it on a wide variety of things, and the flavor was great. I'm going to order some online now that a year has passed and see if I was just under the "everything is better when I'm on vacation" spell, or if it really is an excellent sauce.

At least when it comes to salsas, restaurants seem to be willing to offer varieties, many of them are house-made. In fact, many people go to specific Mexican restaurants simply because of their salsa alone.

Race results

2006-10-10T20:15:00.000-07:00

On Sunday I participated in my first half marathon. When I first started training, I thought maybe 2:15 would be a good goal. About half way through the training, I felt like I would be around 2:30. But then at the end of training I was able to run a little faster and 2:15 seemed realistic again. I ended up with a 2:18:12.

My split times were:
5k: 30:31
10k: 1:00:56
10mi: 1:42:03

I ran very well the first 8 miles. I cramped up a bit around mile 5 but ran through it ok. I actually ran the first 6 miles a little faster than I had been practicing, but felt pretty good about it. Around the 8 mile marker, I used the bathroom, and made it to about the 10th mile before I started really slowing down. At the last 3 water stops, I walked a lot farther than I had intended, but by that point my muscles were completely fatigued. I had hoped to do a last little sprint at the finish line, but I had nothing left by that point. Despite all the pain, I felt I did pretty well for my first half marathon.

I think that if I boosted my low-mileage practice runs by 1 mile each, I would have been better prepared for the race. I also learned during the race that I can push myself a little harder than I did in my practice runs. We'll see if I can keep up that intensity for my next event.

The fact that the marathon had rock 'n roll bands helped the race seem faster. When the race got to the residential area around mile 7 there were no bands and no people cheering, and that part of the race seemed to take forever.

Also, knowing that there were other people I knew going through the same experience made the entire thing more bearable. Knowing that my wife, sister, mother, and friends were pushing themselves just as hard as I was made it seem like I could keep going.

I'm not sure what my next event will be. Right now, I just want to relax a bit and rest my tired muscles.

So I have a something to look back on, here's a log of my entire training:

09/30/06 - 6.5 miles (65 min) at Crystal Springs
09/27/06 - 30 minute neighborhood run
09/25/06 - 30 minute neighborhood run
09/23/06 - 11.5 miles (125 min) at Crystal Springs
09/20/06 - 31 minute neighborhood run
09/18/06 - 49 minute neighborhood run
09/16/06 - 10.5 miles (117 min) at Crystal Springs
09/13/06 - 31 minute neighborhood run
09/11/06 - 41 minute neighborhood run
09/02/06 - 9.5 miles (101 min) at Crystal Springs
08/30/06 - 41 minute neighborhood run
08/28/06 - 40 minute neighborhood run
08/26/06 - 8.5 miles (91 min) at Crystal Springs
08/23/06 - 35 minute neighborhood run
08/21/06 - 39 minute neighborhood run
08/19/06 - 8.5 miles (92 min, and two yellow jacket stings) at Crystal Springs
08/16/06 - 25 minute neighborhood run
08/14/06 - 38 minute neighborhood run
08/12/06 - 7.5 miles (81 min) at Crystal Springs
08/11/06 - 33 minute neighborhood run
08/09/06 - 38 minute neighborhood run
08/06/06 - 80 minute run at San Andreas Trail
08/04/06 - 3.5 mile treadmill run
08/02/06 - 3.5 mile treadmill run
07/26/06 - 2.5 mile treadmill run
07/24/06 - 6x400 interval treadmill run (3.0 miles total distance)
07/22/06 - 6 miles (66 min) at Crystal Springs
07/20/06 - 39 minute neighborhood run
07/16/06 - 4x400 interval treadmill run (2.5 miles total distance)
07/14/06 - 5 miles (53 min) at Crystal Springs
07/12/06 - 33 minute neighborhood run
07/10/06 - 2.5 mile treadmill run
07/08/06 - 4 miles (43 min) at Crystal Springs
07/07/06 - 30 minute neighborhood run
07/04/06 - 4 miles at Crystal Springs

Comedians

2006-10-07T08:31:00.000-07:00

I was thinking the other day that being a stand-up comedian has got to be one of the most difficult careers to break into. Here in San Francisco, there are many bars and clubs that no-name bands can play at in hopes of making it big, but I think there are only 2 comedy clubs where a comedian can perform, and usually they are booked with touring performers (I'm sure there's some small bars that hold stand-up nights, but they certainly aren't advertised well).

I guess the reason that there's such limited opportunity for stand-ups is probably because there's actually very few good and unique comedy routines. Most of what you see is just not that funny, or is a rehash of someone else's material. But every once in awhile a gem comes through that gets the crowd laughing.

I think Chris Rock is pretty funny, as is Adam Sandler and Dave Chapelle. I thought Dane Cook's first SNL performance was horrible, but after a friend made me listen to some of his CDs, I've changed my opinion about him because I laughed a lot during his CDs.

I would say that my favorite comedian is currently Mitch Hedberg. Like too many other creative-types, Mitch died young and didn't reach his full potential (he died right before filming an HBO comedy special). I had the opportunity to see him twice. The first time was a free show at Stanford where Pauly Shore was the headliner. Mitch was so funny and Pauly so unfunny that half way through Pauly's set he commented on how he needs to get a mediocre opening act to make himself seem funnier. The second time I saw Mitch was at the Punchline in San Francisco. Like all comedians, his humor isn't for everyone. A lot of his jokes are transcribed here, but if you can't hear his delivery style in your head while you read them, they might not come off as that funny. The joke I always remember him telling on Dave Letterman is 'This guy asked me if I wanted a frozen banana and I said, "No ... but I would like a regular banana later, so ... yeah."'... his delivery of the lines was perfect.

The Tivo is back!

2006-10-02T22:11:00.000-07:00

I lasted a week without Tivo... but I caved in to fixing it.

I decided to go a do-it-myself approach rather than pay Tivo $150 to fix it. I found a cheap hard drive on Craigslist, bought an installer program called Instant Cake, and now for half of the price of that Tivo would have charged me, I have a working Tivo with a much larger recording capacity (118 hours at best quality, 400+ hours at basic quality).

It was fairly easy to complete the setup, though you do have to be somewhat computer savy in order to follow the instructions.

I've read that some people experience problems with power and heat issues when installing their own hard drives, but I think that's mostly when you end up installing 2 hard drives, and I only installed 1. Hopefully this drive works out great for a long time!

Life without Tivo

2006-09-28T21:42:00.000-07:00

My Tivo died this week. I think the hard drive went out. I now have to go back to watching TV without Tivo.

It's a weird feeling. Did I really used to schedule my time around when TV shows were on TV? If a show started at 8, did I make sure I was in front of the TV by 8? Did I have to depend on what the networks wanted me to watch at a specific time instead of what I had saved up over several days?

And recording with a VCR? Forget about it. I haven't even plugged in my VCR since I moved 2 years ago, and I'm not about to go back to the days of having to set a date and time and channel, only to realize I was off by an hour or was using the wrong channel.

It's a weird feeling. I may have watched more TV when I had Tivo, but at least it was TV I wanted to watch and when I wanted to watch it.

I missed The Office tonight. But that's ok, it's on On Demand so I can still see it. But what happens when Lost starts up next week? Do I go back to scheduling my time around a TV show?

I want to fix my Tivo, but I'm not sure what to do. Tivo will charge me $150 to swap it out for one that works. I can buy a used Tivo for $50, but then I lose my lifetime subscription and have to go to a monthly subscription. I can try to install my own hard drive, but that's probably $100 unless I find a great deal somewhere. Or I can try to figure out if I can fix my existing Tivo drive somehow. Or I could plop down the $800 for the brand new Tivo Series 3, but I bet I save $200 if I wait a few months for the first price drop...

I miss my "blip blip!" during the commercial breaks...

I'm now a Lost geek

2006-09-21T21:13:00.000-07:00

I played the role of a Lost geek on Wednesday. I went to the Acura RDX tour. But I wasn't there to see the car, or to try to win the prizes. I didn't register for a chance at a VIP pass for free beer, food, and wine. I was there on a simple mission, to pick up an Apollo Bar.

A free candy bar? But it's more... the Apollo Bar is the fictional candy bar that is consumed in the TV show Lost. But even more than that, it's part of the alternate reality game called The Lost Experience.

The Lost Experience started out pretty cool. It started out with a bunch of information about The Hanso Foundation, the fictional organization in Lost. Clues were released a few times a week, and if you solved the clues, you learned more about the foundation and a little bit more about the show. I never solved any clues on my own, I always relied on the numerous blogs that provided tips on how to solve the clues, such as this one. However, I didn't get in to the second and third "episodes" of the Lost Experience, though for anyone who wants to see one of the major things it led up to, you can check out this video.

The concept of an alternate reality game is pretty interesting. It's fun to submerge yourself into this type of universe. I suspect that we'll see more of this type of marketing as time goes one and people get better about making it more accessible.

But the big question now is, do I eat the Apollo Bar, or do I save it and sell it on E-bay? I think they are going for around $5 right now...

It is dark chocolate though, which I prefer over milk chocolate, so I might just have to eat it soon.

Breeding for politics?

2006-09-17T14:18:00.000-07:00

I thought this was a pretty interesting article in today's paper:

Republicans' fertile future.
Through the past three decades, conservatives have been procreating more than liberals

The summary: republicans have more babies than democrats do. The question: does that mean as time goes on, the dominating political party will be determined by breeding?

The article says 4 out of 5 children take on the political viewpoints of their parents. I think that nowadays, that number may be a little high, due to the rapid spread of information. So maybe things like the internet will help people make up their own minds more often.

It's pretty common knowledge that people have had (and still have) babies in different societies for motives such as prestige, money, social standings, etc. But I guess I just never thought of this particular point of view. Could this have anything to do with the conservative anti-birth control, pro-young marriage, etc., view points? Or is it really more environmental (it's not nearly as easy to raise a family in densely packed urban areas which are typically more democrat)?

I wonder if any studies have been done on this throughout U.S. history? Are the U.S. political changes throughout history largely due to certain populations having more children? That would be quite an interesting discovery...

The stock market scam

2006-09-13T21:57:00.000-07:00

I've randomly found myself in a couple of different conversations lately where the question comes up as to whether or not the stock market is just a pyramid scheme for the rich.

The idea of the stock market makes a lot of sense. A lot of people don't have enough money to really kick off a business, but want to contribute to a business in order to share in the profits. If the company does well, I get rewarded, if it doesn't, I lose my investment. At any time I can transfer my investment to someone else if I no longer want it and they are willing to pay me for it.

Seems like a pretty understandable system. But in reality, this isn't what is happening. First of all, if a company earns profit, it doesn't mean that I as a share holder earn anything (unless the stock pays dividends, which it seems like a lot of stocks aren't doing nowadays). Really the only way that I earn any money is by selling my stock to someone else. So now it basically becomes a game of buying stock in the hopes that someone else will buy it from me in the hopes that someone else will buy it from them etc. Essentially, as long as people keep trading stock, money keeps flowing and people are happy. A company's performance usually has an affect on the stock price, but not necessarily. It's really more a matter of a few key people saying whether or not to buy or sell a certain stock.

So to me, the concept of stock at that level is pretty imaginary.

There are some other things that come along with stock, such as ownership of the company. If you were able to buy 51% of a company's shares, you could take over the company. Or if you and 5 friends each bought 10% you could do it. But in reality, does the average investor really intend on doing this? Do they even participate in the voting process that comes with owning shares of stock? Probably not.

So sometimes I wonder if the whole thing will just collapse some day because all of this imaginary value goes away. It seems that if stock were more directly tied to investing in a company, then the system would be more secure. But then that wouldn't be good for the rich investors, because now they are tying their investments into actual performance, and not market whims (which are often controlled by rich investors).

But I guess as long as my investments keep going up, I shouldn't be complaining.

Anniversary in Healdsburg

2006-09-11T20:26:00.000-07:00

My wonderful wife and I celebrated our one year anniversary by taking a weekend trip to Healdsburg this past weekend. Neither of us had been there before, and we were looking forward to learning about some wineries outside of the Napa Valley.

Friday night we checked in to our B&B and wandered around town looking for a place to eat. After passing by a couple places, we stumbled across Cena Luna and, with only a 10 minute wait, decided to try it out. The highlight of the night was that the chef came around at the end of the night (there were only a few tables left), which afforded my wife the opportunity to express her extreme delight at the duck entre she had ordered. It's kind of fun talking to the chef at the end of the night, I think that may have been a first for me. The vegetarian entre selection wasn't great, but the appetizer, dessert, and wine made up for that.

Saturday we went on the Getaway Adventures Healdsburg Sip 'N Cycle. We had done the Calistoga one before, and thought it was a great opportunity to mix wine tasting, site-seeing, and exercise, so decided to try the Healdsburg one (which is why we stayed in Healdsburg). The 24-ish mile bike ride stopped at 3 wineries: Lambert Ridge, Bella, and Quivira. Bella was having their harvest party, which is normally open to club members only, but they let the 6 of us on the tour in, and it was quite festive with free food, wine tasting, games, etc. Lambert Ridge had a few great wines, and at Quivira we got to watch them pour grapes through the de-stemming machine.

Saturday night was the big culinary event. We had phoned in ahead and made reservations at Cyrus. Along wth our reservation, we had also informed them that we would like to do a vegetarian version of the 7-course chef's tasting menu. Tasting menus are always fun and a great way to sample lots of different foods, and this meal did not dissapoint. I'm not sure I can describe many of the dishes, but I assure you they were all very yummy. The stand out moment for me was the 6th course, where the waiter wheeled a cart of cheese to the table, asked us about what flavors we liked in a cheese, and then proceeded to cut us a cheese plate in front of us consisting of two goat, two sheep, and two cow's cheeses, giving excellent descriptions of each one. Eating at nicer restaurants is definitely more than just about food, and the service at Cyrus did not disapoint. Combine this with some champagne and wine, and my wife and I had an excellent evening.

After coffee Sunday morning, we detoured through Napa on our way home so we could stop and taste the new releases at Cosentino's where we are wine club members. And of course we had to stop off at one of our favorites, Mustard's Grill, for lunch.

Healdsburg was a great weekend getaway. Lots of nearby wineries, restaurants, coffee shops, boutiques, book stores, a park, etc. Finding an available room that is not extremely expensive is difficult, though during the off season it is supposedly easier.

All in all a wonderful weekend, with a wonderful wife.

To my long lost friend, MTV

2006-09-06T21:43:00.000-07:00

I happened to catch about 45 minutes of the MTV Video Music Awards the other night. Most of the 45 minutes can be summed up as... Huh?

There was a time when the VMA's were one of my favorite nights of the year. It was one of the few nights my sister and I would argue for a "tv-tray" dinner, where we got to eat our dinner in front of the TV instead of in the dining room (these were the days before MTV aired the show repeatedly for a week after it first debuted). These were the days when seeing Pearl Jam and Red Hot Chili Peppers perform back to back songs was the highlight of the year, or watching Nirvana's bass player bang his head with his bass guitar, or seeing Jon Bovi and Ritchie Sambora doing a 2-song acoustic set, or seeing Eminem get a hundred look-a-likes to walk through the crowd. Not to mention all the non-music highlights, like seeing Pee-Wee Herman make his public reapperance, or Lil' Kim's scandalous outfit, or Eminem getting in a fight with Triump the Insult Comic Dog.

But this year, when I flipped through, two things came to mind:
1) Who are all these people?
2) This is lame.

The first thought made me a little sad. I always thought I'd be able to keep up with pop culture, especially in regards to music. But apparently my efforts to stay in that demographic are failing.

But even when I did see people I knew, I couldn't help but feel very underwhelmed by what was happening. And I'm not the only one. But then again, when I was growing up, didn't I hate reading the reviews written in the papers trashing the pop culture I loved so dearly?

I still watch MTV. One of my top 5 guilty pleasures is that I still watch The Real World. And I love watching Pimp My Ride for its absolutley ridiculous ideas (and it's also one of the few shows on TV that always has a positive attitude, so it's hard not to feel happy after watching that show). I haven't seen a video on MTV in a long time though... which probably explains why I don't know much about what's going on in the awards show.

But at least now it's easy to watch videos on the internet, so it's never too late for me to catch up.

Snakes on a plane

2006-08-28T21:37:00.000-07:00

A lot of you won't understand this. But I went and saw Snakes On A Plane. On opening weekend. And I had a blast.

And to make it even more dramatic, I think it is the only movie I've seen in the movie theater this year. No wait, my work took me to see Mission Impossible 3. And I think I saw one other movie in the theater. Everything else I've watched at home on cable, DVD, or TV.

I am a victim of Snakes On A Plane grass roots marketing. If you haven't seen any of the fan sites for SoaP, you need to do check them out. There's a bunch listed here. When you're done with that, you have to check out this page of SoaP sequel ideas (warning: language). Viewing those pages alone got me laughing so hard that I felt I had to see the movie. And even though I might not have admitted it, when my wife brought it up as a possibility for something to do, I wasn't about to say no.

The reviews of this movie are all wrong. They are actually pretty favorable towards it. The movie itself was horrible. The plot was thinner than plastic wrap. But as an event, opening weekend at SoaP was a blast. Throughout the movie, the entire crowd would hiss, yell, cheer, scream, and make fun of the movie. It's the most fun I've had at a movie in a long time.

The theater industry is not doing well. There are many theories as to why, but a prevelant one seems to be that watching a movie at home has become more economical than watching a movie in the theater. With $10 per ticket, $5-$10 for parking, $20 (or much more) for pre-show food or drinks, $??? for a babysitter if you have a kid, it defiintely makes a $4 DVD rental seem pretty sweet.

But maybe SoaP has hit onto something. For a long time, being social at the movie theater was frowned upon. Movie theaters were supposed to be silent. But maybe that's not what movies need. Maybe movie theaters need to be a social gathering. Some movie theaters, such as The Parkway in Oakland are setup more like a pub, with beer and pizza, and bench seats, which tend to promote a more social atmosphere. It might not be appropriate for your oscar-winning-tear-jerkers, but for a large percentage of the movies that hollywood produces, it's probably a better environment than your regular AMC or Century theater.

There's still a bunch of movies that are in the theater that I keep meaning to go see. But SoaP seems to be the only one that actually got me out the door so far.

Jury duty

2006-08-27T08:56:00.000-07:00

I spent the last week on call for jury duty, was finally called in Friday, then dismissed Friday afternoon when the case I was assigned to was settled before juror selection really began.

It's pretty easy to point out the problems with jury duty, but for all its problems, it does seem like there are good intentions behind the system.

However, there's one thing about my service that was too ridiculous not to mention. When I first got there, I had to watch a video in the waiting room. The video began something like this:

"California. The best state in the nation. With natural parks, beautiful cities, blah blah blah. But sometimes... it's not so great. And sometimes... there's crime."

It was really hard not to laugh at how cheesy the video's introduction was.

You're right, I don't understand

2006-08-19T11:42:00.000-07:00

In reference to the recent court decision that the government's wiretapping without getting warrants violated 2 constiutional amendments and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, President Bush said: "Those who herald this decision simply do not understand the nature of the world in which we live." (Source: cnn.com).

I have to admit it, President Bush. You are right. I don't understand the nature of the world in which we live.

I don't understand why our government allows someone to tack on an estate tax law onto a bill about minimum wage, thus causing the bill to fail to pass. I don't understand why we have a minimum wage that puts a family of four below the poverty line.

I don't understand why people are more concerned with flag burning and defining marriage than they are about education or poverty or disease.

I don't understand why people think the best solution to developing a third world country's economy is to bring in McDonald's. I don't understand why American companies are used to rebuild war torn countries, instead of letting the money stay inside their own economy which desperately needs it.

I don't understand how we can develop these miraculous drugs to cure and treat some of the worst diseases known to mankind, and then not share them with the people who need them most. I don't understand why universal health care is even a topic of debate, as opposed to a human right.

I don't understand why we are cheering for tax cuts for the wealthy, while at the same time we are raising interest rates on student loans.

I don't understand why we claim that as a whole we want to be more environmentally conscious and reduce our dependance on oil, but when large corporations complain that laws are too strict, the government backs off. I don't understand why a major world leader would not watch a movie about theories ofglobal warming Even if it turns out those theories are completely wrong, I don't understand why we would not encourage hearing different viewpoints.

I don't understand why we are trying to rid our government of the checks and balances that we were all taught about in elementary school that made our government so unique and so strong.

I don't understand why people resort to violence and destruction and death to civilians in order to make their point. But I also don't understand why people want to continue creating a world in which oppression and money create this hatred.

I am sincerely grateful that our government is devoting their time and resources to protecting us from horrific acts against us, and I do understand that we do not live in a perfect world. But I don't understand why President Bush feels the judge's ruling was incorrect. Does President Bush want to amend the 4th amendment to say that unreasonable search and seizure is illegal, unless a government official decides they want to do it because they think something bad is happening? Surely that way all of this misunderstanding would go away. Until President Bush can get this change to the 4th amendment through the proper channels, which I'm sure the population is eagerly awaiting, it might be worthwhile just to go through the process of getting warrants, just like our law intends people to do.

Big box stores

2006-08-13T19:03:00.000-07:00

One of the most common ways to criticize "liberals" is to find an ideal they support and then point out an every day action that makes them hypocritical (this is also a very common reaction to finding out someone is a vegetarian). For example, most liberals are pretty anti-"Big box store" (the most notorious being WalMart). But at the same time, if you look through their house, they will probably have products bought from a major chain.

I definitely fall into this category. I haven't been to a WalMart in years. But this weekend I shopped at Ikea. And I've often shopped at Target or Home Depot or Costco other super stores that do nothing but cause horribly congested traffic, encourage lots and lots of oil use, encourage minimum wage (or below minimum wage) jobs, etc.

Sometimes it's hard not to go to one of these stores. For example, we wanted to buy some patio furniture. We didn't want anything fancy, and most importantly, we were on a budget. Ikea was the perfect solution. To find such furniture at a local store would have taken many hours of exploration and probably would have involved more money. We didn't want to put that much effort into it.

If there were a local furniture store in my neighborhood I could depend on, I would choose that over Ikea. But there's not. But maybe there isn't because they couldn't compete against Ikea and Crate and Barrel and all the various other chain furniture stores. So you end up with a chicken and egg problem, where an individual store would have to charge more for their product because they won't sell as much as a chain store, but no one will shop at these individual stores because the chain stores are much cheaper.

I'm not sure what the answer is to this situation. I have a feeling that individual store benefits society more than the chain store (though I'm far from educated in economics and haven't researched this thought all that much), but I'm not sure if that's a realistic ideal to have.

High definition movie standards

2006-08-08T22:10:00.000-07:00

I think it's funny that I'm pretty much a techie-nerd, but I haven't had a single entry about technical stuff yet. So it's time to put an end to that.

I think it's pretty much ingrained in our minds that "competition is good for the consumer". That's why we have anti-monopoly laws. And in general, it's a good idea to let the little guy be on the same playing field as the big guy.

But when it comes to technology, I'm not always sure I agree.

Take for example, HD DVD and Blu Ray Discs. These are the two new types of media that will let you watch high-definition movies on your home television. The problem is, the two formats are incompatible, so you pretty much have to pick one or another. And it's entirely possible that one of your favorite movies might be on one format but not the other.

You might think it's good that there are these 2 formats for consumers to choose from, and that the better one will end up winning a bigger market share. While this might be true, often times the "better one" is the one with more marketing dollars behind it. There's a huge incentive for a company's format to be picked as the "standard" because they often own trademarks or patents or other proprietary material that makes them rich when other people start licnesing it. Is that really "what's best"? And until this format-war is played out, consumers will have to pick one side or another (with players costing upwards of $1000 right now it's unlikely people will buy two players).

I personally could care less which format wins. I'd much rather have the format war be over with, so that I know for sure which types of movies I can watch at home. But maybe it's not so bad this is happening, because prices are so expensive now anyway that I'm going to wait a few years for prices to drop, and hopefully by then there will be more of a standard.

But then again, maybe I'll never really need a HD DVD or Blu Ray player anyway. I barely watch the DVD's that I currently own - I'm much more apt to watch something on cable. And with On Demand and internet movie purchases getting better and better, it's possible that video rentals may be going the way of the past. So by the time the prices have dropped and the clear winner has been declared, it may be that no one really wants to buy a high-definition movie player anyway.

Exploring breakfast

2006-08-05T10:34:00.000-07:00

Living in a city exposes you to all sorts of food from different cultures. But I've noticed that generally breakfast is the same at every restaurant. You can get eggs, pancakes, oatmeal, toast, etc. You might venture out and get crepes or corn beef hash, but generally if you are eating out for breakfast you are probably eating an American breakfast (well, I'm not exactly sure of the origins, maybe it's not American, but it has come to be considered as such).

I often wonder what other cultures eat for breakfast. When traveling in Europe, I noticed that often times breakfast consisted of cold cuts, cheese, bread, and yogurt. And when in Hawaii, sometimes they served soba noodles at breakfast. So I know that breakfasts must vary somewhat depending on where you are.

Just a few weeks ago, I got to experience an Arabic breakfast (the restaurant's term, I don't know if it's accurate or not) at one of our favorite local restaurants which just started serving breakfast, Goood Frickin' Chicken (and yes, I know it's weird that a vegetarian would consider a restauranted named Goood Frickin' Chicken to be one of their favorite local restaurants). We ordered the Fool Madamas, which we had also had before at another local restaurant, Joe's 24th Street Cafe, and also ordered a couple other dishes, but I can't remember their names. The food was quite unlike a typical breakfast at any other restaurant. It was delicious, but very heavy and oily, and we were barely able to eat half of it, which left us with some yummy leftovers to take home. We also ordered Turkish coffee, which I believe is a thick coffee mixed with cardamom, which, once I put sugar in it, was pretty good.

I'm definitely curious to try more types of breakfasts. I've never seen a Chinese or Japanese restaurant around here open for breakfast, though certainly there must be one somewhere... and there's tons of breakfast burritos being served in the various Mexican taquerias in town, though I'm not sure if that's a California breakfast or a true Mexican breakfast.

PDX

2006-08-01T21:52:00.000-07:00

I spent the weekend in Portland, Oregon for a friend's wedding. It's the third time I've been to Portland in 2 years. I'm pretty fond of Portland so far and definitely wouldn't mind spending more time there. The feel is less crowded and more spread out than San Francisco. I sometimes wonder if Portland is similar to how San Francisco was 30 years ago before the big technology boom (even though the actual city layouts are quite different). They have a decent public transportation system around the downtown area, though it seems like Portland has a lot of suburban-type housing areas so I get the feeling that it's really a driver's city. One odd observation I had is that the homeless population seemed very different from the San Francisco homeless - the Portland homeless seemed like they were a younger type of crowd (more like what you'd see around Haight and not around downtown). It also seems like it might be time to widen the freeways a bit.

While we were there, we of course hit my wife's favorite, The Delta Cafe. Being a vegetarian is pretty easy in Portland, and even this southern-style restaurant had vegetarian options. We also had a great lunch at a Lebanese place (when I ordered the Lebanese beer, the waiter was very excited for me, saying it's good I drink it now because in 2 months their restaurant may never be able to get it again with the way things are going over in Lebanon). The other must stop food-related place was another of my wife's favorites, Coffee People. I must admit I found their Black Tiger soy mochas to be quite delicious.

And, to top it all off, the wedding was a great time.

Tainted blood

2006-07-24T20:02:00.000-07:00

I had an appointment to give blood today. I hate giving blood, as I am afraid of needles. But I understand the importance of it, and used to do it fairly regularly. However, it's been about 3 years since my last donation.

Unfortunately, when I went in today, I was turned around because I had been in Costa Rica within the last year. The funny thing is that the state/province/area in Costa Rica marked as dangerous is where we stayed in the Four Seasons, which was probably as sanitary and clean as Costa Rica gets. The area where we stayed literally in the rain forest was not on their list of dangerous places.

But they invited me back in September, when my year is up.

There's a north bay too?

2006-07-23T14:39:00.000-07:00

Despite the fact that I grew up in the bay area, I know next to nothing about the north bay at all. So yesterday was quite the adventure when one of our friends took us around where they live.

For example, when he took us to Tiburon, including the famous Sam's Cafe, I was surprised to learn that there was a tourist destination across the bay. I had no idea that scores of tourists got on the ferry from the city, headed north to Tiburon, and would ride bikes or walk around during the day.

We also checked out Larkspur and Mill Valley. The north bay definitely feels different from most of the bay area I've been to. It seems less populated, surrounded by more nature, and less diverse (I get the feeling that the average income is higher in the north bay than elsewhere, though I can't be sure). There are towns elsewhere in the bay area that are similar (Los Gatos, Los Altos, Saratoga, and Woodside all come to mind), but still, the north bay just feels like an entirely different place.

It also seems like there are a ton of restaurants to try out over there. We stopped in at a few different places, and had a gazpacho shooter at Picco's and dinner at Bungalow 44, but our friend told us about many of the other restaurants which all sounded very good.

I guess I should play "tourist" more often and check out what's outside my backdoor...

The art of happy hour

2006-07-21T19:48:00.000-07:00

I have come to the realization that happy hour in San Francisco is not just an event, it's an art. Sure, there are many "happy hours" around, but you have to be on the top of your game to know which are the happiest of the happy.

Downtown it's hard to find a good happy hour. Most of them end before you can get out of work, or if they are happy hours, they are $1 off of their $13 cocktails. But recently we've disovered a gem at One Market. True, it's an upscale restaurant and you can't get too rowdy in the bar, but the $2.50 pints of Stella until 7PM can't be topped anywhere else. They also have specials on cocktails, food, and even wine.

Of course the true holy grail of happy hour is when the food is free. And not just pretzels or nuts. The Last Supper Club in the Mission has bruschetta, pasta salad, and sausage available at their happy hour, along with $3 cocktails. Furthermore, every thursday they have a wine tasting with their extremely friendly and knowledgable wine manager. I've only been once, but it's on my "to return" list. In general, the Mission district happy hours seem quite generous, including great deals on sangria at Cha Cha Cha, cheap beer at Toad's, and my wife is quite curious to try the free oysters at El Rio. It's harder to get to the Mission in time for happy hour if you're working downtown, but seems like it might be worth it.

But the bestest ever happy hour has to be the one at my grandparent's house. It's tough to obtain an elite invite to their exclusive friday night martini hours, but if you should be so lucky, you'll be greeted by a wonderful martini, and even better company.

The joy of bad service

2006-07-20T21:39:00.000-07:00

Over the past few days, we (my wife and I) have benefitted from bad service at restaurants/bars.

Wednesday night we got a free cheese plate because the "kitchen forgot the order" (or maybe it was the waitress?).

Tonight we ended up with a free dessert, a free espresso martini, and 2 free glasses of dessert wine because the bar was slow delivering the drinks to our waitress.

And we didn't ask for any special treatment, it was just given to us.

Obviously if you're in a hurry then slow service can be a hassle and annoying. But if you've got time to kill, it can actually be to your benefit...

Confessions of an EHM

2006-07-17T20:33:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins.

It's hard to comment on a "conspiracy theory" book. If I dismiss it, then the author can say that I'm just falling victim to the conspiracy. If I accept it, then those that don't believe it wil tell me I'm just believing some crazy nut job. Regardless, here are my thoughts.

The basic premise of the book is that Perkins, along with other economic hit men (EHM's), would go into third world countries and convince them to take loans of large sums of money in order to develop their economy. However, the true goal of the EHM was to force these countries into debt, so that they would be able to be held as a political prisoner any time the lendors needed to call in a favor (i.e. for oil, for military base stations, for land use, for business use, etc.). Despite the fact that these loans were made by the World Bank, Perkins claims the money went straight back to the United States, in the form of contracts with companies like Halliburton or Bechtel. The end result, according to Perkins, is that the rich got richer, the poor people in these third world countries stayed poor, and in some cases, become more and more angered with society, sometimes leading them to form militant groups (i.e. terrorist oragnizations). Perkins even goes as far as to make the comparison of the British Empire during the American Revolutionary War to the global economic empire that many militant groups are fighting against today.

There is a lot of criticism about this book, which can be found easily by a web search (or start here).

The first thing I'd mention about this book is that while I do believe much of what Perkins is describing, I don't completely believe Perkins' actual stories. This book was obviously written to sell books (which it has done quite well at), and some of the message gets lost behind that.

With that said, the themes he presents are pretty common themes in a lot of writing lately. There are constant protests against things like globalization and the G8. I find it hard to believe that it's just coincidence that so many people are worrying about a global empire taking over.

At the very least, the book made me think about what it must be like to be in a third world country and to be heavily persuaded by a richer country to do certain things. And while the book might not be the best source of information, it's certainly valuable for kicking off a good discussion.

SF muni characters

2006-07-13T21:33:00.000-07:00

I'm extremely glad I live in an area where I can take public transportation. My transportation costs are probably a quarter of what they would be if I had to drive. And while I may not live in a city forever, it has definitely made me want to stay in pedestrian-friendly towns with good transportation.

With that said, it's pretty easy to get frustrated by the SF Muni experience. I realize it's cliche to complain about it, but here it goes.

The people on SF Muni that make the experience oh-so-wonderful:

The door blocker. When catching the muni underground, there are 5, sometimes 6, trains that stop there. They announce them over the loud speaker ("J in 3 minutes. N-N in 7 minutes"). Yet there is always the one person who feels they must stand right at the edge of the track where the train stops, even when their particular train is not arriving for 10 minutes. The result is that people have to practically shove them out of the way to get on their earlier-arriving train. And of course, the person blocking the door always gives the people who need to get on the train a dirty look.
Kids that don't share seats. When you are lucky enough to catch the "school bus" tram (one that is loaded with junior high and high school kids on the way to school in the morning), chances are that each kid is taking up 2 seats each. Granted, they always move when someone asks to sit down next to them, but not without obvious annoyance.
The impatient driver. I try not to rip on the muni drivers. They have a very stressful job and deal with complete jerk riders on a daily basis. And a lot of them are surprisingly cheerful and funny despite that. But there is one behavior that really irks me. This is when the driver tries to close the doors when there's still 10 people trying to get on or off the train. When the people pull the doors back open, the driver closes them again. And so it repeats. I understand the drivers need to stick to a schedule, but when there's a line 10 people deep trying to get off the train, it's not like the riders are lollygagging around.
The impatient rider. This might be a result of the impatient driver. This is the person who tries to get to the exit door 2 minutes before the train actually stops, presumably because they are afraid they won't be able to get off the train in time. This isn't so bad, except that when the train is completely packed, this means trying to shove their way through a large crowd, half of which are probably going to get off at the same stop anyway. The result is just a lot of unnecessary pushing and shoving.

World Cup finals

2006-07-09T20:39:00.000-07:00

I watched the World Cup finals today. France seemed to deserve the win, they were dominating the game in the end. But Italy came up the victor after the game was tied and went to penalty kicks. That's fine with me, because that means I win the bet I had with my wife.

A lot of people think penalty kicks is a horrible way to decide the World Cup. I agree, but am not sure what the alternatives are. Lengthening the game might raise the chance of injury happening as the players become more tired and play sloppier. Some people sugget removing players from the field until someone scores. That might be the way to go. But it seems that no matter what the rules are after 120 minutes of play, there's really no great way to decide the winner, but no one would really be happy calling it a draw either.

Zidane's headbutt was definitely disappointing. The situation reminded me of something our high school soccer coach taught us. One day he pulled us all aside and said, "Ok, today I'm going to teach you how to fight in soccer. When you feel like you want to get in a fight, just get in the guy's face and say the meanest, dirtiest things you can to him. Keep at it until he throws the first punch. Once that happens, he'll get the card because that's all the ref will see." Something similar must have been happening with Zidane, though it doesn't excuse the penalty at all. It will be interesting to see if we get any explanation of what happened over the next couple of days.

I guess this means we go back to not hearing about soccer in the news for 4 more years... a few years back I actually followed the European Champions League - they had a nice show on one of the sports networks that would compress the games into 10 minutes of highlights and made it easy to follow along. But more likely than not, I won't be watching much soccer until 2010.

Friday fat day

2006-07-07T13:08:00.000-07:00

It's Friday! And with Friday, come the Friday rituals!

At one of my previous jobs, Friday mornings included a free bagel/pastry/fruit spread. Then for lunch, a bunch of us would partake in what became to be known as Friday Fat Day. Basically, we would find a restaraunt that had a buffet, go stuff ourselves, and then come back to the office and complain about how full we were. We tried several buffets, but the old fall back was Mountain Mike's.

Now, Friday mornings I usually start with a workout of some sort. The workout helps (incorrectly) justify the fact that I buy a small breakfast somewhere downtown. I spent the first several months downtown going to a different place each Friday, to find the best breakfast. For awhile, I settled on a chocolate croissant and decaf soy mocha at a nearby Tully's. But lately, the breakfast of choice has been a soy hot chocolate and a veggie bagel sandwhich at Cafe Venue. I'm not sure how long I've been going there, but it's gotten to the point where they know what I always order.

I haven't had the Friday buffet lunch in awhile though...

An interesting note - the Bill Phillips Body For Life program actually allows you to have one day where you eat "anything you want" and still have a perfectly healthy and fit body. I don't really agree with this. I know that if I were to control my friday Fat Day cravings a bit I'd be that much healthier for it. Part of the philosophy of this "anything goes day" is that by allowing yourself one "bad" day, it helps cure the cravings you have throughout the rest of the week... again, not sure if I really believe it.

Anyway, it's Friday!

Half marathon training

2006-07-04T18:40:00.000-07:00

I was so excited about the 4th of July that I woke up at 5 AM. Actually, it's because I'm jet lagged. I went to bed at 6PM the night before... fun.

But since I was up, I figured what better time than to kick off my official training for the half marathon I'm doing on October 8.

I've trained for marathons twice before, and both times I had to stop due to injury. This time I'm training for a half marathon, and my muscles are stronger than they were during my last attempt, so I'm have high hopes that I can complete the program.

I've been running off and on for awhile now, so I kicked off the training with a 4 mile run. Not bad. I have 13 weeks to get up to running 13.1 miles. Definitely do-able!

The long emergency

2006-07-03T15:51:00.000-07:00

I recently read The Long Emergency by James Howard Kunstler. The basic premise of the book is that Kunstler believes that "peak oil" - meaning the time when we have removed half of the available oil from the Earth - has already happened or is due to happen in the next few years, and the result is that we will no longer be able to continue our current lifestyle.

Kunstler is pretty dramatic in his descriptions, so much so that a lot of people would probably dismiss him as another y2k doomsday preacher. When he leaves the discussion of oil and starts talking about things like bird flu or global warming, it only furthers the impression that he is intent on the idea that we are all doomed.

However, contained in this book are some very interesting and important points. While the book as a whole may not be the best reading, I think that the ideas in this book are important enough that everyone should be made aware of them.

In particular, the following ideas really stood out to me:

In the past 150 years, our world has changed so fast. People are able to fly across the world whereas 150 years ago they had to ride a horse to get anywhere far. But people have grown to believe that this sort of technology will always exist, that we will never have to go back to the way things were.
Alternative energy sources such as solar power are effective in limited amounts. However, their main draw back is that they require significant energy to make energy. Kunstler does not consider hydrogen-fuel cells a valid alternative energy source because hydrogen molecules do not exist on their own on Earth - instead a different energy source must be used to seperate the hydrogen. For wind turbines or solar panels, energy must be used to create these structures and maintain these structures. For things like bio-diesel, currently much of our nation's fertilizer is created by oil-based procedures.
America is heavily invested in the ideal of suburbia. Unfortunately, suburbia requires large amounts of energy to operate. Without constant energy sources, suburbia cannot exist.
Along with suburbia, America is heavily invested in the ideal of WalMart-like stores. These stores can only exist when there are large amounts of cheap-energy available such that they can transport their goods around. Without cheap-energy, these stores collapse, but unfortunately, as these stores take over America, they are also putting out of business many of the small businesses that could help our country get through an energy crisis.
It is possible that we will figure out a way to power our world post-oil, but there still might be an awkward low-energy transition period while we figure out how to do this.
As a result of oil being so valuable, America and other nations did many questionable things in areas of high oil reserves. These actions continue to have side effects to this day, and as "peak oil" occurs, the political relationships between nations will be stressed.

For me, I tend to fall under the group of people that hold on to the hope that technology will find a solution to our energy crisis - a group that Kunstler seriously despises. However, the book is opening my eyes to the idea that at some day in the future I may have to live much closer to the way people lived 100 years ago until we enter a new technological era.

There's so much more to discuss in this book, such as the history of oil and war, or how the climate changing may effect our energy sources, or how different areas of our country will survive an energy crisis. The book itself may not be a masterpiece, by the ideas presented in this book are important enough to think about, discuss, and act on.

Going to sauna

2006-07-02T08:06:00.000-07:00

Part of the Finnish experience is when you "go to sauna". A lot of houses have their own saunas, and even some apartments will have an individual private sauna in your apartment. Those that don't have them might have one in a vacation cottage, or else might have a neighborhood sauna where they can reserve time.

The saunas are not like the ones I have seen in America (usually at gyms). Unlike most saunas here, which are "wet" (or what Finnish people call "Russian" saunas), the way a "dry" sauna works is that you poor water over heated rocks to let hot steam fill up the sauna. Modern saunas have a heater in the room which heats the rocks which rest on top of it, and you poor spoonfuls of water on top of it whenever you want more heat.

The sauna experience begins by rinsing off, then entering the sauna (naked). You sit at the top of the sauna (because heat rises), and poor water to release more and more steam, until you are good and sweaty. You might also have a beer with you inside the sauna. You also hit your body with a bouquet of freshly cut wild birch branches, which is supposed to stimulate your blood flow (and also smells kind of nice).

Once you are done with that portion, it is common to go from the extreme heat of the sauna into something very cold to shock your body. If you are a by a lake, it is common to go jump into the lake. If it's winter time, you can go roll around in the snow. If you are at home, you can rinse off in a cold shower, or just cool off outside (and maybe drink another beer). From there, you go back in the sauna, and repeat the process. You do this as many times as you want.

When you are done, you take a shower and wash off. It is common to wash other people's backs during this shower... which was quite a shock to me when I did "boy's sauna" with my uncle-in-law (luckily I was warned ahead of time that this was traditional).

After the sauna is done, it feels great to drink a beer, and I've heard that salty sausages taste great afterwords too.

I'm not sure how often people use the sauana, but I've read that during the summer, people might have sauna days (like on saturday) once a week during their vacations. During the winter, people might go every other day, because the sauna feels great in the cold weather. In the week I was there, I went 3 times.

Finland, part 2

2006-06-30T02:32:00.000-07:00

Just a few quick thoughts...

I enjoyed playing the game mölkky. I think part of the reason was that I know about 1020 Finnish phrases, and 999 of them are the numbers 1-999. So at first I thought I would be able to understand everything people said. Imagine my surprise when I heard how people actually speak numbers, as opposed to the "official" way to say numbers... it would be like in english if instead of saying "twenty-seven" you said "twe-sev" or "thir-fo", except even a little more abstract than that. But I did manage to catch on fairly quickly for the most part.
The game of Finnish darts is different than American (English? Irish?) darts. I think you throw from farther back, and the board looks different (concentric rings).
San Francisco is trying to place a tax on plastic bags at grocery stores to cut back on bag waste. Finland already has the problem figured out - when you get to the check out stand, you actually have to pull down the bags you want, place them on the conveyor belt, and pay for them. The bags are higher quality too, so you don't need to double or triple bag.
I missed blueberry season by 2-3 weeks... there are some green ones but nothing ripe. But we were able to find a few ripe wild strawberries. While they are very tiny, they are packed full with flavor! Yum!

Hyvä paiva

2006-06-29T04:47:00.000-07:00

Greetings from Finland. Some quick thoughts:

The 24 hours of day light (the sun actually does set below the horizon where I am, but it's still light outside) is pretty amazing. But what is even more amazing is how the people who have lived here 20,30,50,70 years still get so excited about it. Their excitement speaks volumes about how different the dark winters must be.
Lordi, the recent champions in a European music contest, may look like they are demons from Hell, but they are played on the radio in between Ashlee Simpson and Kelly Clarkson. 12 year olds love Lordi.
My aunt-in-law could not understand why in Germany you had to ask someone's permission to pick berries from their yard. In Finland, it's in their constitution that 15 meters away from your house is public land, and anyone is allowed to pick the berries or mushrooms that may grow there. When we mentioned that in the U.S. you might be arrested for tresspassing, she was even more confused.
When you combine strong governmental control of alcohol with months of darkness and snow, you end up with a lot of home-brewed alcohol. But, due to their strict law enforcement, drunk driving incidents are extremely low.
The sauna isn't just a place where you sweat, it's practically a religious experience here. More on that later.
There is a region near by where there are a lot of glass factories. Some of them are larger companies, and some of them are small houses with 1 artist. In a way, it reminded me of driving through Napa and visiting wineries, but instead of drinking wine, I got to look at glass products, and when my timing was lucky, got to see someone making something.
Don't call Finland part of Scandinavia, or call a Finnish person Scandinavian. They'll correct you, and might be a little angry by the common mistake.
There are green forrests everywhere. It's amazing. I joked that perhaps half the world's oxygen was produced here there are so many trees.

World cup babble

2006-06-20T13:23:00.000-07:00

All the criticsm of Ronaldo sort of irks me. Yes, he's not as good as he used to be. And yes, he's heavier than pretty much every other player on the field (thus earning him the nickname "Fatty"). And perhaps it's true that Brazil should be starting Robinho instead.

But hold on.

Isn't Brazil winning?

And wait... wasn't the opening goal in the Brazil-Australia game the result of Ronaldo drawing three defenders to him, allowing him to pass it to Adriano for what turned out to be the game-winning goal?

Yes, yes. Brazil isn't living up to their reputation right now. And neither is Ronaldo. But if I were coaching a team, and could put someone on the field that drew that much attention from the defense, leaving other players open to do their thing, I'd certainly put him on the field too.

Brazil might fall out of this tournament, but so far, it hasn't mattered if they aren't executing up to their potential, they are still winning.

As for the U.S. - they've still got a chance to make it to the next round...

In cold blood

2006-06-19T13:10:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. I haven't seen the movie Capote yet, and actually hadn't heard anything about the movie or this book. I just picked it up due to a recommendation from a friend.

The most interesting thing to me in this book is how the criminals in this book are humanized. They committed horrific crimes, but Capote also goes into great detail describing the personalities and histories of the two criminals. In most fiction, the bad guys are presented as 100% evil. But here, even though the criminals are still evil, we also see them partaking in daily activities along with everyone else. It's a chilling feeling to think about how the world is not all clear cut as most fiction makes it out to be, and to think that sometimes horrible things happen to completely innocent people, and that sometimes the people committing these horrible acts are humans too.

I believe this was the first "true crime" book I have ever read (which may be appropriate as this one is credited with starting the genre), but it'll probably be awhile before I pick up another. While Capote's writing was amazing, and the story very captivating, knowing in my mind that everything in this book actually happened made it difficult to get through.

I do question how Capote was able to obtain so much research in writing this book, but maybe the movie will help to answer that question.

Sardinian food, and I don't mean plates of sardines

2006-06-17T07:58:00.000-07:00

One of the joys of living in San Francisco (or any large city) is that there's always a new restaurant to try (though it's also a little depressing to see how often restaurants close down...). Last night's adventure was the first time I've been to a "Sardinian" restaurant: our neighborhood's own La Ciccia.

La Ciccia's menu (small but very enticing) features a lot of seafood (which I guess you'd expect from an island), and pizza. Normally I would have immediately gone for the pizza, but the special sounded too good: they were featuring porcini mushrooms in several dishes, and for an entre they were offering a fresh-spaghetti dish with porcini mushrooms cooked in some light oils and spices (I don't remember the details, I just remember saffron and lemon being in there...). I don't get to eat fresh pasta that often, it's quite different from the normal store bought pasta, and I think the texture is a lot more pleasing.

For an appetizer, I went with the Casisceddu cun Pibaroni e Croccoriga (Mozzarella with Roasted Peppers and Zucchini). The roasted peppers were great - placing them in the same bite as the mozzarella created a good mixture of tastes.

My wife went the seafood route with the Inzalaredda de Mari cun Patata a Buddiu (Seafood salad with boiled Potatoes) - which had fresh calamari and squid. And for an entre had another special, which was the prawns.

For dessert, we both went off menu again towards the specials - one was a blood orange sorbet, the other was a chocolate dessert (some sort of tart) with an espresso-based topping. The cholate dish was great. Side story: the person from the kitchen who delivered the desserts started putting the chocolate down in front of my wife, but when I corrected her, she said "ah, usually it's the woman who orders chocolate!".

In general, everything on the menu seemed very simple and pure. There were only a few ingredients in each dish, and everything was presented in a very natural way. I have no idea if this is typical of Sardinian food or if this was just a Noe Valley restaurant trying to be hip. Regardless, it was a good dining experience.

One of the reasons we were excited to go to La Ciccia was because we had read about the owner's passion for wine. Unfortunately, they had discountinued their wine flights, so we weren't able to sample as much as we would have liked. Although I'm finally starting to understand California wines, when it comes to identifying Italian (or Sardinian) wines, I know next to nothing. Our waitress kindly helped us pick out a few glasses. I ended up with a glass of Carignano del Sulcis "Grotta Rossa" Cantina Santadi 2003 and a glass of Monica di Sardegna "Perdera" Argiolas 2003. I actually felt they tasted extremely similar (not a bad thing, but was surprised a bit). I'm no wine connoisseur, but the wines definitely tasted different from the California wines I'm used to drinking, which was a nice change for me.

Enjoying food and wine is still a relatively new experience for me, so I'm just learning how to talk about the experience of eating. Bear with me for awhile as I search for the right voice to use when describing a dining outing...

The other jogo bonito

2006-06-15T21:28:00.000-07:00

Nike might be telling you that soccer/football is the jogo bonito, but today, like most Thursdays, I took part in Brazil's other jogo bonito, capoeira.

The simple way of defining capoeira is "a Brazilian martial art" or some people say "dance-fighting", but really it's hard to define capoeira with words. After a year of classes, I'm still learning about what it is. You might have seen capoeira-inspired movements in movies (recently Catwoman or Ocean's 12), but as the Mestranda at the school I go to says, those moves alone are not capoeira. Capoeira is the combination of fighting, dancing, singing, clapping, instruments, tradition. It's the entire package.

The particular style of capoeira that I do is called abadá. I'm not sure how it compares to other styles yet as I haven't been to other schools (yet). Essentially the hour and a half class usally goes like this: 45 minutes of warmups and technique training, 10 minutes of ab and arm strength training, 10-20 minutes of couples work, and 10-20 minutes of the roda. It is an extremely thorough workout, and each time I leave feeling exhausted.

I've been taking these classes for a year now, and I try to go twice a week. Although it sounds odd, I think the thing I enjoy most about capoeira is that I am absolutely horrible at it. It tests me physically (I don't have the flexibility or strength needed), mentally (getting past that "maybe I'll just sit out the next 10 minutes..." phase each class), and socially (playing with strangers can be difficult). I am getting better, but not nearly as fast as the other people in class that go 3-4 times a week, or the people who came into the class with better physical preparation. But despite the difficulty, it's improving my physical strength, flexibility, and even my mental and social outlook on things. And on top of that, it can also just be a lot of fun. How often does a grown man get the chance to practice doing cartwheels? And how often do you see two people that are trying to kick eachother smiling or laughing when they are done?

The first tuesday of every month is a "fundamentals" class geared towards first-timers. Anyone wanna come out and join me?

10 seconds of aural entertainment

2006-06-14T13:38:00.000-07:00

One of the benefits of working downtown and getting out at the Montgomery Muni/Bart station is that on most days I am treated to a free concert by a street musician. Even though I wisk by and only hear them for 10 seconds, they have become an integral part of my day and I miss them when they are not there. I don't know too much about them; I suspect that some of them earn their money this way, some of them are students practicing, and others just stop and play a bit before work to make some extra latte cash.

At my particular station, I'm often entertained by:

The Steel Guitar Guy - Singing songs like "Why Do Birds Suddenly Appear"... this guy has one of the purest-toned voices I've heard, which sounds pretty cool in the reverberant station hallways.
The Large Johnny Cash Guy - You wouldn't know it from his image, but man, he does a mean Johhny Cash impression. Those low notes are great.
The Weird Asian Instrument Guy - I have no idea what that instrument is that he plays, but its a nice break from the usual street performer routine.
The De Colores Guy - It seems that everytime I pass him by, he's playing De Colores. The mariachi outfit makes up for it though. (By the way...maybe look into tuning your guitar more often?)
The Crazy Flamenco Guy - I can never decide if this guy is so passionate about playing that it comes off a little too frantic, or if he's just lost some of his skills over the years, but it's still a great flamenco guitar performance.
The String Quartet - This is my favorite. I think it's a group of students. They don't play very often, but when they do, and I hear that classical music as I ride up the escalator, it's hard to not forget about all the stressful things I've thought about on my commute and just relax and enjoy life, even if it is only for 10 seconds.

Summer television

2006-06-12T21:54:00.000-07:00

I watched way too much TV this last year, so I was actually looking forward to the summer season and having nothing new on tv to watch. But the evil television networks have already started sinking their claws into me...

On my list for this summer:

Entourage - At first I didn't like this HBO series, and didn't really watch it until the 2nd season. But now it helps justify my HBO subscription.
Rescue Me - Another show I didn't tune into until after the first season. This series (along with the amazing but cancelled Over There and the also cancelled Starved) really surprised me. I never really thought I'd be excited about an FX original series.

I'm on the fence about:

Hell's Kitchen - It's way too easy to get sucked into this show, even though it's so forced and fake most of the time.
So You Think You Can Dance - Given that I live in a 1-tv house, if one of us watches it, it pretty much means the other one does too.

I guess 2 shows isn't that bad...

Mocha with love

2006-06-12T13:06:00.000-07:00

It's the little things that count.

Today's little thing began when I gave in to temptation and decided to try out the new espresso joint across the street from work (Café Amici I think is the name). I normally don't drink coffee during the week, but whatever, it was one of those days.

So I ordered the decaf mocha with soy milk. And when I went to pick it up, I looked down and noiced that on top of the drink, the barrista had made a white heart with the soy milk and foam.

I thought that was pretty cool.

5 ways not to respond to a vegetarian

2006-06-11T20:47:00.000-07:00

5 ways you should not respond to a vegetarian when they first share this fact with you:

Do you eat chicken? No, chickens are not vegetables. Asking someone if they eat fish is not as bad, as there are so many people that are pescatarian I can understand the confusion. Someone who says they are a vegetarian but then answers yes to this question is greatly confused. Give me the benefit of the doubt that I know what I'm saying.
Really? How do you get protein? If you are asking this question with the genuine intent of discussing nutritional philosophies, then its a great conversation starter. But more often than not it's said more as a statement of disapproval. Are you ready to answer the return question of how you get your fiber? Your calcium? Your various vitamins?
That's cool. Sometimes I eat veggie burgers instead of real ones. It's funny to point out that despite the fact that your meals most likely contain a large number of non-meat ingredients, it's really the almighty veggie burger that defines vegetarianism.
I'd like to be a vegetarian, but I could never give up [fill in meat product here]. If you really wanted to be a vegetarian you'd find a way to give it up. This statement is almost always just a space filler until the next conversational topic comes up.
But your shoes have leather in them. First of all you are confusing veganism with vegetarianism. And secondly, yes, I am quite aware of this fact already.

Bonus round! Good ways to respond:

How long have you been vegetarian? Why? I actually hate to answer the why question, because I'm not a militant vegetarian and don't want to come off as one. But at least its a good way to start a dialog.
I don't believe in vegetarianism because... It's interesting to hear different belief systems, and I'm always open to new ideas/research/etc.
Interesting! Anyway, about that other thing...If you're not interested in talking about my vegetarianism, that's fine with me. I rarely tell people I'm a vegetarian unless the situation necessitates it or if it fits in the conversation. By all means, feel free to change the subject.
In what way do you obtain vitamin b12? Ah - you know what it means to be a vegetarian. You may have been one for awhlie or at least read about it before.
Awesome! I've been meaning to try out this really interesting recipe that has no meat in it. Come on over for dinner! Sweet, free food for me!

Futbol in the U.S.

2006-06-11T11:01:00.000-07:00

Of course with the 2006 World Cup going on, the question of "why isn't soccer popular in the United States" is asked again and again and again. And now it's my turn...

It's not that soccer doesn't exist in the U.S. Many people claim that more U.S. children play soccer than do little league baseball (I've seen this stat mentioned a lot but haven't seen a valid source for it yet). But at some point, our attention turns to the NFL, MBA, and NBA.

The first answer the usual American sports fan gives is, "Soccer is boring! Any game that ends 0-0 is a boring game!" I definitely think the lack of goals takes away from some excitement, but is soccer really that much more boring than baseball? Soccer is 90 minutes of non-stop play. Does baseball even have 90 minutes of actual action in a 3-hour game?

I think the issue is a little deeper than this.

If you look at the NFL, MBA, and NBA, it is often about individual champions. I'm not saying that an individual can win a game, these are all team sports. But in baseball, people go to games just to see the 4 at bats that Bonds will take (well maybe not anymore, but still...). In the NFL, we put so much attention on the quarterback (and if it's not the quarterback, it's the runningback, and if it's not the runningback...). And I personally think that basketball is the ultimate in celebrating the individual star. But take a look at the NHL - which doesn't do quite as well in the U.S.. Sure you have your stars, but the star might only play for 1/3rd of the game. Maybe this is part of the reason the NHL isn't as big as the other sports in the U.S. I think soccer is similar - just because you have a superstar on your team doesn't guarantee that you'll get to see that person shine in any given game.

Another thing about the NFL, NBA, and MBA is that it's easy to know when to pay attention. In soccer (or the NHL), a goal can happen at any time, requiring constant attention or you might miss the game's (possibly only) highlight. In the NFL, if all you want to see is your team's offense, you can tune out of half of the game. In the MBA, the offense/defense split is explicit, and you know exactly when your hero is going up to the plate. And while the NBA is less scripted, you know that if you miss the 1st or 2nd quarter, you're still guaranteed to see some points in the rest of the game.

Perhaps a final issue with soccer in the U.S. doesn't involve fans but does involve money and corporations. When else on TV can you watch 45 minutes without being interrupted by an advertisement (the only thing that comes to mind for me is a Presidential Address)? What incentive do television channels have to put on these 2 hour programs when they can't pull down major ad revenue? And if there's no money for the TV companies, will it ever really catch on in the mainstream media? One twist in this scenario: with all the television companies freaking out about people no longer watching television ads because of Tivo, soccer may provide the perfect opportunity to really perfect the in-program advertising idea.

As for me - well, I'm just bummed that the U.S. World Cup team kicks off their journey on a Monday while I'm at work.

4 influential albums

2006-06-10T17:35:00.000-07:00

As a guitar player, I began playing along with Hendrix, Van Halen, and all the usual guitar heros. But when it came time to forming a band and writing my own songs, these 4 albums really shaped the kind of music that I created over the last decade. They might not be my favorite albums, but I can't deny the mark they've left on me:

Dance Hall Crashers - "Lockjaw": When I first heard the song "Enough" on the radio when I was in high school, my first reaction was "Oh my gosh. Someone has made what I want to create." The super simplistic guitar solos and the dual vocals would forever change my songwriting style.
NOFX - "Punk In Drublic": This isn't even my favorite NOFX album, but it is the one that really hooked me. I can't count how many times I've played "Linoleum" on my guitar. This album taught me how to play pop-punk.
Sublime - "40 oz. To Freedom": The funny thing about this album was that the first time I listened to it in the store I didn't like it. It wasn't until several years later that I picked it up, learned every song by heart, and even ended up covering several of the songs in one of the bands I played in.
Skankin' Pickle - "Skankin' Pickle Fever": Skankin' Pickle was an independent band, but in my own 16-year-old-world, they were the ultimate rockstars. They introduced me to a world of music that I couldn't hear on mainstream radio. And, if nothing else, the fact that I often write silly/simple lyrics is a tribute to them.

Hopohopo

2006-06-10T17:07:00.000-07:00

I guess I'm several years late to the party, but I've finally started a blog. Just a place to share some experiences with my friends and family, or maybe just to share my thoughts with myself.

I'm not Finnish, but in trying to learn Finnish, I came across a word that may end up describing this blog quite well:

Höpöhöpö - nonsense.

At the very least, it's fun to say.