I’ve been in London for some meetings this week, and it’s been absolutely great. The first thing I did of course was to buy 3 packs of Fruit Gums, which I prompted devoured. Being super gummy, this of course, led to two days of jaw pain and muscle ache.

Completely worth it

The meetings went really well, one of the things that was interesting was observing the agile development process in a large corporate environment. We’re on agile at Songbird, and it’s one thing to see it work well in a small group of 30 people, but to see it in place at a company of several thousand was pretty cool.

So far I’ve had some great food (screw all you who disparage British food - I love it), an insane amount of good beer, and for the first time in ages, I got to watch a Champions League match on TV at a reasonable hour in a pub full of cheering fans. (Yay Liverpool 2-0 over Inter!)

Add comment February 19th, 2008

fosdem and me

where i’ll be @ FOSDEM:

• i’m giving a 45 minute talk on Songbird in the Mozilla DevRoom Saturday @ 18:15
• i’m giving a 15 minute lightning talk on Songbird Sunday @ 17:20
• i’ll be at the Friday night beer event. presumably i’ll be drinking beer. which means, look for the asian guy rocking the awesome asian blush
• i’ll be at the Mozilla dinner Saturday night.
• i’ll be hanging out variously in the Mozilla DevRoom and the main room. i’d love to meet folks, grab lunch, drink beer, whatever.
• at all other times i plan on stuffing myself with moules et frites, chocolate, stroopwafel, and beer.

Add comment February 10th, 2008

mmmm…..postino

mmmmm…. highly recommend the place wendy and i had dinner at tonight: postino. it’s a super-cozy italian place in lafayette (just on the other side of the caldecott tunnel over here on the lesser-hip side of the bay ;))

three words: ox tail ravioli

mmmm.. tasty. a nice glass of wine, smooth salmon and seafood chowder, and really really tasty clams as appetizers followed by the ox tail ravioli, which i’ve certainly never had anywhere else.

1 comment February 1st, 2008

culinary macguyver

came home from work starving, cause my wife ditched me to join her coworkers at Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse. oh well. can’t blame her, i’d have done the same.

check out the fridge to see what i’ve got. not a whole lot. lots of half drunk beverages (thanks wifey), a bunch of cytomax (great for post-workout drinks - not so great for dinner), and uh… yeah. pretty bare.

fortunately, what i did manage to find was pretty huge: kimchee (slowly fermenting away). leftover steamed rice. eggs.

huge? yeah. huge cause then i remembered that can of spam i kept in the closet.

oh yeah. that’s right. spam. spam as in the mystery meat. spam as in the oft-ridiculed monty python stuff. spam as in the meat i’ve never actually ever eaten until 19 minutes ago.

there’s a korean place we go to in berkeley where i always order the kimchee spam fried rice, and i think to myself “damn, that can’t be that hard to make.”

turns out it isn’t. stir-fry the kimchee, toss in some soy sauce, kimchee, and rice. stir-fry more. stir-fry some more. throw on some sesame oil. stir-fry some more. set aside in a bowl. fry an egg sunny side-up. put egg on rice. eat.

woot! serve with an ice-cold Hite, and i’ve got my culinary macguyver korean restaurant comfort food. good stuff.

the only off-putting moment was when i opened up the spam. it smelled exactly like opening up cans of wet dog food. isis and char-siu even came running over and sat down next to me expectantly. their looks were communicating, “sweet. we don’t normally get two meals a day.”
sorry to disappoint, guys. but this canned mystery meat is mine. (it smells a lot better after some soy sauce, stir-fry, and a shot of bourbon (what?? like you’d smell spam and then eat it while sober??)

Add comment December 19th, 2007

My 5 Things.

I was wondering when it would be my turn… looks like I’ve been tagged by Forrest. For those unable to see the connection, Forrest is one of the engineers in the Solaris Kernel test group in Beijing whom I worked with (on Hierarchical Locality Groups test support) when I did my six week rotation in Beijing.

So… 5 things you may not know about me: (I say may, because I’ve certainly done my fair share of exposing embarrassing secrets about myself when drunk - so who knows if you know or don’t know this already).

1. I don’t play video games. Seriously. People generally know me as a computer geek (true), and believe I spend most of my day on the computer (true, on weekdays) - and make the assumption that (like a lot of geeks), I must play video games. I can’t think how many conversations have been abruptly pre-empted by me interrupting with “actually I’ve never played World of Warcraft.” My self-imposed computer game ban dates back to sophomore year of college, when a huge addiction to Rainbow Six caused many a missed class, and a caused me to lose a lot of focus at school. That was the catalyst for finally wiping the last vestiges of Windows off my computer and declaring myself free of computer games. We kept a Dreamcast around for short non-continuous (read: no storyline) games for a while, but… well… every good thing comes to an end. Though I do have to admit, I do indulge in cell phone solitaire.

2. I dislocate my toe about once a week. Weird, I know. I’ve had this problem for as long as I can remember. I don’t know why… it just happens. And yes, it hurts like a mofo every time.

3. I was expelled from my first high school… and that was probably one of the best things that could have happened to me, seriously.

4. I sometimes wish I were Canadian. I don’t know why. I’m fiercely proud to be English… but yet I’m culturally very much American. Canada just seems to be a logical midpoint between the two. I go to Canada at least once a year to see family, and I love it there. I always have a great time. I think I could be a really good patriotic Canadian. Except for the football team… seriously, you Canucks need someone other than DeRosario to carry you. You lost out with Hargreaves (coincidentally, just named best English player of 2006!)

5. I’m allergic to alcohol. Tragic I know… Especially given how much I’m fond of the stuff. It’s not just the usual Asian blush either… my asthma kicks in and I get very short of breath. Does it stop me from drinking? Not really. But along with my lactose intolerance, it makes wine and cheese hour (and those of you who know me know I LOVE & CRAVE cheese) both thoroughly enjoyable and miserable.

2 comments February 1st, 2007

oakland bans styrofoam take-out containers

from my city councilmember’s website/newsletter:

article here

effective Jan. 1, 2007 - no more takeout styrofoam containers in Oakland restaurants. this is great news!

Add comment December 11th, 2006

a search for seoul

just got my confirmation that i’ll be speaking at the OpenSolaris Day for Sun Tech Days in Seoul, Korea on November 8th. double-bonus: i’ll be doing the same talk at the Kuala Lumpur event in Malaysia next year on March 6th.

i’ll be presenting the ‘Building and Deploying OpenSolaris’ talk. i’m hopefuly i can help out with the BOF too. i also heard rumblings about an OpenSolaris user group meeting. i’m super psyched. i’ve never been to South Korea before, and i’ve always wanted to check it out.

on that note, thanks to Connie for introducing Wendy and I to “Sahn Maru”, hands down our new favourite Korean restaurant. it’s at 44th & Telegraph. the black goat stew is amazing.

oh yeah - if anyone wants to meetup in Seoul - drop me a note. or let me know if there are any places you recommend checking out.

1 comment September 26th, 2006

weekend photos

i just uploaded some photos from this past weekend… namely wendy’s 30th birthday party, and photos of char siu

he’s a great beagle

1 comment August 4th, 2006

busy busy busy

i so rarely blog about anything personal these days.. to the point that my default new blog post category is now ‘OpenSolaris’. a little bit sad, neh?

i guess that’s what happens when you love your work. oh well. losing some blog audience is a small price to pay i guess

anyway, after today’s cleanup and reorganising work, my basement is starting to look… well… almost there. two years after we started, with countless distractions along the way (including putting up two windows last weekend), we’re finally done with the drywall. (seriously, we started drywalling two years ago… sad, i know). our next steps are to texturise, and paint the walls/ceiling, and then lay down a floor. once we have those done, the basement will be… well, liveable!

our inner storage room in the basement is finally done, with all the storage in place, and my new workbench area and tool wall all organised.

after a long afternoon of inhaling plaster, we headed down to Milpitas to “Cafe Orphelia” at McCarthy Ranch for some great filet mignon on the “hot rock” grill. they bring out a big rock/stone that’s been super-heated, and you grill your own steak on it. great steak. mmmm…afterwards, we had some red bean shaved ice. we ate all the red bean and then asked the waitress to box up the remaining unfinished ice. she gave us a blank stare and asked why we wanted to save ice? of course, isis was in the car… and she looooooves ice cream, so we thought she might want some shaved ice.

of course, isis lapped it all up - and we have some great photos (which i’ll post tomorrow).

after that, we headed down to Los Altos and tried out the new Satura bakery which was awesome. we got 4 desserts and loved all 4 of them.

and on a very last quickie note: we’re planning on adopting a second beagle. his name is Dusty and he’s 3 years old. i can’t wait!

2 comments July 15th, 2006

mmmm…coffee

you know what’s better than making your own vietnamese coffee at work?

nothing.

(well, coffee-wise anyway)

1 comment April 10th, 2006