that’s whacked

woefully lagging on blog posts

Friday, Nov 14. 2008  –  Category: Musings

sigh. my blog is being neglected… mostly because i end up twittering more often these days. what’s sad is that i’ve even started twittering as Char-siu. sadder yet, is that i’ve realised that twittering as my dog is way more interesting and fun than twittering as myself.

writing blog posts and twittering my actual life often just reveals the reality of life and how boring it can be.

pretending to be my dog on twitter means i get to make up wonderful things that may or may not be true. meh. being grounded in reality was never that much fun anyway

winter is coming, the resorts are opening, and i spent some time in the basement tonight cleaning up (lubed my cams for the first time ever too (why does that sound vaguely dirty??)) my climbing gear, and putting it away for the season. doesn’t look like i’ll get any more outdoor climbing in this winter unless an “emergency” jtree trip comes up. i lined up my boards and boots, and then crossed my fingers for snow. thinking about planning a trip to Park City this winter for some riding, except now apparently i’m supposed to be boycotting Utah because of Prop 8.

sigh. i wish politics would stay out of my sports. okay, enough rambling… i’m going back to twittering as my dog.

best firefox 3 launch press article ever

Wednesday, Jun 18. 2008  –  Category: Musings, Songbird

seriously. i love firefox as much as the next guy… but this article cracked me up.

i love the accompanying photo – but is that really the best accompanying photo they found to run it with?

screenshot here in case the article changes:

overstuffage

Wednesday, Jun 18. 2008  –  Category: Musings

i’m packing for this weekend’s camping/climbing trip and my pack is exploding – and i’m not even bringing a tent. i’m trying to go light… minimal food, no tent (just a tarp + pad + sleeping bag). fortunately the weather looks good (all sun, no Tuolumne™ showers in store, and lows in the 40′s, possibly 30′s depending on elevation)… and yet my pack is stuffed.

it’s hard to go minimal when you’re packing climbing pro. i’m sitting here staring at a 2.5″ piece thinking “hrm, i can probably skip this” while the other voice in my head is picturing me pumped staring at a 2.5″ crack thinking “darn, that extra 2.5″ piece sure would be handy right about now”. i tend to err on the side of caution (okay okay fine, i probably don’t need 10 slings), but… well… it’s my life, right?

the “luxuries” i intend on packing: toothbrush and cards

cards are awesome. they’re fun… by yourself you’ve got solitaire, with groups you’ve got other games, they make a decent fire starter, and if worse comes to worse, you’ve got a place to scribble down your dying man’s last thoughts. (wonder what card i would choose to right on? probably ace of spades… how unimaginative)

i’m a craigslist and climbing junkie

Monday, Jun 16. 2008  –  Category: Musings

i’ve been craigslisting stuff like mad lately… old snowboards, old furniture, basically anything i can find in the basement that we’re not using i’ve put up on craigslist. it culminated this weekend with me selling my Audi A4 (which, mind you, was NOT in the basement)

i was hugely bummed when my A4 blew, but i’m glad i found a good home for it. the guy who bought it clearly knew cars, knew about VW/Audi’s, and is going to rebuild the engine himself and get it running again. that helped assuage my conscience a bit for selling my first car i ever loved (the ’87 Thunderbird i totalled in high school doesn’t count)

zac, jaime, and i went to Castle Rock State Park on Saturday and climbed Castle Rock Falls. i’ve climbed it once before, but this was the first time i lead the main falls climb (100 feet of 5.8ish) up the face. i’d forgotten how beautiful and aesthetic a climb it was… we got out there early in the morning and soaked up the sun and had a great time. this was the first time i’d been belayed by zac on a lead climb, but it felt pretty good and pretty comfortable…. so hopefully we’re all good for next weekend’s climb up Cathedral Peak.

i’m really really psyched to go to Cathedral. i’m determined that this year will be the first year that doesn’t end in disaster of some kind. cross your fingers for me.

euro and beer

Monday, Jun 9. 2008  –  Category: Musings

two of my favourite things in the world… and they go hand in hand.

for what it’s worth – my money is on portugal or the dutch. if i had to choose one, i’d say the portuguese. but, given that england ain’t in it (curse you steve mcclaren!), i’m rooting for the dutch. (how can you not root for a team willing to go out and duel it in oranje?)

the dutch proved themselves well today with a sweet 3-0 drubbing of italy.

i’m loving this weather we’ve been having the past few days. wendy and i just got the house re-landscaped, so we have a beautiful gorgeous house… which reeks of mulch/compost. especially nice with the heat wave… mmm… chicken manure anybody? i spent a good chunk of saturday fighting the good fight against our bamboo jungle in the backyard. we have a gorgeous bamboo grove, and i wanted to pull out some of the dead bamboo in the middle. i got whipped quite a few times by some harsh slaps of bamboo for my trouble, but managed to thin out the grove a bit.

saturday night we had dinner at a wonderful Chinese Muslim restaurant that had fantastic food, but served no beer. (name/location left out to save one of the few restaurants that’s gone above and beyond the call of duty and deserved their tip) i went and asked the manager if i could go next door to the Chinese supermarket and bring in some beer. without skipping a beat, he told me to bring in a 6 pack and he’d put it in teapots and bring it to our table. 7 minutes and $5 later (really! $5!!!) i had a frosty 6 pack of Tsingtao. 3 minutes after that, we were pouring ice cold beer from a Chinese teapot. we left a big tip for those guys.

on sunday, zac, jaime, and i did some climbing at the local gym in preparation for our attack on Cathedral Peak coming up in a couple of weeks. we’re planning to hit up Castle Rock for some leader belay review for zac to make sure everything goes smoothly this year. i’m hoping this will be the year i finally tackle Cathedral with enough time to also do Eichorn’s Pinnacle at the top.

Pomposity

Tuesday, Apr 22. 2008  –  Category: Musings

Here’s a tip. When you’re applying for a job, in your intro paragraph, don’t describe yourself as a “renowned industry icon”.

About the only good thing I can say about that resume is that the the intro paragraph I read saved me the time of having to read the rest of the resume.

yay history meme!

Monday, Apr 14. 2008  –  Category: Musings, OpenSolaris, Songbird

originally from planet gnome but it looks like the meme jumped worlds over to planet mozilla where i found it from dan mills (of weave fame).

wonder if it’ll jump worlds over to planet opensolaris too.. ?

[stevel@grommit:~] 501$ uname -a
SunOS grommit 5.11 snv_75 i86pc i386 i86pc
[stevel@grommit:~] 502$ history | awk ‘{a[$2]++ } END{for(i in a){print a[i] ” ” i}}’|sort -rn|head
87 ls
81 cd
41 vim
38 ll
22 cat
18 svcs
14 java
12 svcadm
11 su
10 ps

east bay skeptics society

Monday, Dec 10. 2007  –  Category: Musings

ran across the east bay skeptics society online last night while i was doing some googling/research for wendy’s job hunt.

sounds intriguing. i definitely want to go check it out sometime.

chinese food for dinner with a table of skeptics? could be good fun.

i drank and drove

Monday, Dec 10. 2007  –  Category: Musings

had a lovely weekend. spent sunday morning cleaning up the basement; this was the first good chunk of time wendy and i spent down there since it flooded, so it was nice to get things organised and sorted.

we then met geoff and chris for a terrific lunch at The New Zealander (or 1-866-I-EAT-PIE, no kidding) where we tossed back some Snakebites while Wendy and I had curry pies (yum). after lunch we wandered up the street, oggled geoff’s Kindle and then went slot-car racing at the HomeRoom Racing Club which was incredibly fun. $5 for 20 minutes? totally worth it. geoff pretty much cleaned up against the younger generation though i will protest that the wife got in my way on several occasions.

sadly moving up in the ranks

Monday, Nov 19. 2007  –  Category: Musings

oakland #4! oakland #4! oakland #4!

yeah, sad i know.

on the one hand i’m annoyed by the report, sure. but on the other hand, i’m annoyed by the people who are annoyed by the report.

In Oakland, Police Chief Wayne Tucker said people might be misled by the report. “The department is always interested in how we’re being rated,” he said, “but I think a rating can be very deceptive and ultimately give a false impression.” He said being ranked fourth on the list of dangerous cities could easily lead people to believe the whole city is under siege from crime.

I don’t think people reading the report will honestly believe the city is under siege, but let’s be honest – Oakland has an absurd amount of crime. Deceptive impressions go both ways. Tucker’s quote saying “crime is concentrated in “two reasonably small areas” in East and West Oakland.” is bullshit. There is crime all over Oakland, and while the Oakland PD has noticeably and admirably stepped up its efforts to combat it (and it has be on the decline, to be sure), I think having the press to put some more pressure and resources on the issue is a good thing.