Thursday, July 9, 2009, 10:15 pm
I still don't get it.
In other news, I was in Ohio last weekend. Click here for pictures!
Is this Condi?
Thursday, July 9, 2009, 10:15 pm
I still don't get it.
In other news, I was in Ohio last weekend. Click here for pictures!
Thursday, July 9, 2009, 10:15 pm
I still don't get it.
In other news, I was in Ohio last weekend. Click here for pictures!
Return of THE GIANT SPACE VOMIT
Tuesday, July 7, 2009, 6:00 pm
Oh noes!
Tom Ellard recently posted about THE GIANT SPACE VOMIT and now it's back!
Click on THE GIANT SPACE VOMIT v2.0 to listen to streaming versions of ten lovely Max Tundra remixes - for the first time ever, thrill to the sounds of his unreleased remix of Pet Shop Boys' I'm with stupid. And if that's not your cup of tea, perhaps Freddie Mercury or Missy Elliott might be?
He's also posted a blog entry explaining a bit about how he makes this stuff. Check it out!
Tuesday, July 7, 2009, 6:00 pm
Oh noes!
Tom Ellard recently posted about THE GIANT SPACE VOMIT and now it's back!
Click on THE GIANT SPACE VOMIT v2.0 to listen to streaming versions of ten lovely Max Tundra remixes - for the first time ever, thrill to the sounds of his unreleased remix of Pet Shop Boys' I'm with stupid. And if that's not your cup of tea, perhaps Freddie Mercury or Missy Elliott might be?
He's also posted a blog entry explaining a bit about how he makes this stuff. Check it out!
China Air Lines fail
Wednesday, July 1, 2009, 10:30 am
Just for grins, I tried to see availability for vacation packages to Taiwan. What I got, however, was this error message:
Tee hee!
Wednesday, July 1, 2009, 10:30 am
Just for grins, I tried to see availability for vacation packages to Taiwan. What I got, however, was this error message:
Tee hee!
Thanks, Yogi
Wednesday, June 24, 2009, 9:45 am
For those of you whom I don't know well, I'll start this post with a brief backgrounder. I moved to San Diego in July, 2007. Shortly after moving here I took a temporary position as a software test engineer with a company that manufactures medical devices. On my first day at work, I ran into![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
yoginca at the office - I'd met him before in San Diego but had no idea he worked there. He's an awesome guy and I was really excited to be working in the same place as him, but a really big telecommunications company I refer to as Quality Cell extended a full time job offer which I accepted - I mean, it had benefits and all, so who wouldn't? - which led to me giving notice at the medical devices manufacturer within a month or so of starting there, which was really embarrassing and also frankly a bummer as I really liked the people I got to work with there.
Fast forward to about a year later: the Quality Cell experience turned out to be kind of a crappy one, resulting in me being distinctly unhappy about the entire situation and writing the occasional blog post about it. Yogi thankfully happened to read that entry and immediately chatted me up on AOL Instant Messenger to let me know about an open full time position that had opened up at the medical devices company. By the end of the week - June 27, 2008, to be exact - I had sent in my résumé and scheduled an interview for the following week.
My first day back at the medical devices company as a full time employee was on July 21, 2008. This past year has been intellectually stimulated, challenging, educational, well compensated, and pretty much everything anyone could hope for in a job. My coworkers continue to be awesome and I'm grateful to be here. More than anything else, though, I'm grateful that Yogi took the time to let me know about the job here - it's made a huge difference in my quality of life.
So: thanks, Yogi!
Wednesday, June 24, 2009, 9:45 am
For those of you whom I don't know well, I'll start this post with a brief backgrounder. I moved to San Diego in July, 2007. Shortly after moving here I took a temporary position as a software test engineer with a company that manufactures medical devices. On my first day at work, I ran into
yoginca at the office - I'd met him before in San Diego but had no idea he worked there. He's an awesome guy and I was really excited to be working in the same place as him, but a really big telecommunications company I refer to as Quality Cell extended a full time job offer which I accepted - I mean, it had benefits and all, so who wouldn't? - which led to me giving notice at the medical devices manufacturer within a month or so of starting there, which was really embarrassing and also frankly a bummer as I really liked the people I got to work with there.Fast forward to about a year later: the Quality Cell experience turned out to be kind of a crappy one, resulting in me being distinctly unhappy about the entire situation and writing the occasional blog post about it. Yogi thankfully happened to read that entry and immediately chatted me up on AOL Instant Messenger to let me know about an open full time position that had opened up at the medical devices company. By the end of the week - June 27, 2008, to be exact - I had sent in my résumé and scheduled an interview for the following week.
My first day back at the medical devices company as a full time employee was on July 21, 2008. This past year has been intellectually stimulated, challenging, educational, well compensated, and pretty much everything anyone could hope for in a job. My coworkers continue to be awesome and I'm grateful to be here. More than anything else, though, I'm grateful that Yogi took the time to let me know about the job here - it's made a huge difference in my quality of life.
So: thanks, Yogi!
"Son, do you even know what a Turin Sanchez is?"
Tuesday, June 16, 2009, 7:30 pm
[thanks tochrisglass and pinner123 for this one]
Tuesday, June 16, 2009, 7:30 pm
[thanks to
chrisglass and pinner123 for this one]
I really don't want to get out of bed this morning
Friday, June 12, 2009, 8:15 am
Not shown: Sophie the cat, who is kneading and drooling just off camera to the right. It's a lovely morning.
Friday, June 12, 2009, 8:15 am
Not shown: Sophie the cat, who is kneading and drooling just off camera to the right. It's a lovely morning.
Some old stuff
Wednesday, June 3, 2009, 10:00 pm
One thing's for sure: when your parents come to visit, you wind up talking about the past. Yes, I showed them some pictures from New Caledonia and we chatted a bit about what they've been up to lately, but inevitably the past reared its fusty head and hey, well, we wound up talking about the past for a while.
I always seem to remember being a terrible student. It turns out that it isn't necessarily the case; I did wind up earning a 2.99 GPA at Berkeley (somehow!), but of course there is indeed evidence that proves I was in fact a terrible student. Here's a sample:
The AP exam did go well; I got a 5, which meant I didn't have to take any math classes in college. Oh, and do note the excellent early dot matrix print job here.
Yes, that's a D in Calculus. This was my final math class in high school. In college, I'd wind up getting 2 Fs in calculus as well, but only because I took self-paced courses that I never actually attended. Oops. I love the subject, but I really wasn't one to prepare for anything.
Still, this kind of made up for it in a way:
( Here's some old stuff from 1983-1991 or so... )
Wednesday, June 3, 2009, 10:00 pm
One thing's for sure: when your parents come to visit, you wind up talking about the past. Yes, I showed them some pictures from New Caledonia and we chatted a bit about what they've been up to lately, but inevitably the past reared its fusty head and hey, well, we wound up talking about the past for a while.
I always seem to remember being a terrible student. It turns out that it isn't necessarily the case; I did wind up earning a 2.99 GPA at Berkeley (somehow!), but of course there is indeed evidence that proves I was in fact a terrible student. Here's a sample:
The AP exam did go well; I got a 5, which meant I didn't have to take any math classes in college. Oh, and do note the excellent early dot matrix print job here.
Yes, that's a D in Calculus. This was my final math class in high school. In college, I'd wind up getting 2 Fs in calculus as well, but only because I took self-paced courses that I never actually attended. Oops. I love the subject, but I really wasn't one to prepare for anything.
Still, this kind of made up for it in a way:
( Here's some old stuff from 1983-1991 or so... )
Honey
Monday, June 1, 2009, 8:15 pm
I think I've now reached the point where I need to make a conscious effort to stop buying honey. Here's my current stash:
Here we have niaouli honey (New Caledonia; this is a melaleuca native to both NC and Australia also known as tea tree), one of the two honey bears from our neighbor Kristin, orange blossom honey (France), honey from the Pyrenées (also in France; this is a very good, dark honey), the other wedding honey bear, and forest honey (also from New Caledonia).
Here we have palisander honey (a tree from Madagascar most often used to make furniture), coffee honey (from near Sarraméa in New Caledonia, presumably from coffee plants and not with coffee mixed in), honey toutes fleurs ("all flowers," from Madagascar), a bunch of New Zealand honey (rata, or New Zealand Christmas tree, a type of myrtle; tawari, an unusual native angiosperm; two types of bush honey; blue borage, or echium (similar to Pride of Madeira, but this is presumably viper's bugloss); manuka (also called tea tree, but not the same as niaouli/melaleuca, although they're in the same plant family - this is actually a leptospermum); Fijian honey; an interloping jar of artisanal quince preserves from France; Tyrolean chestnut; and more manuka honey packaged in a lovely, over the top French jar from Seresin winery (it's actually from the same producer as the manuka honey - it's just that it costs twice as much!).
All of this over the top honey notwithstanding, my favorites are still French lavender and sunflower honey, both of which were eaten long before I've moved on to any of these things. La Maison du Miel in Paris does these things well an inexpensively; they also had something called miel de garrigue that was phenomenally good. Of these honeys, I'm currently working on the honey from the Pyrénees, which is almost gone; once it is, I'll probably move on to something a little less strong (the chestnut honey is delicious, but so pungent I rarely choose it for breakfast).
By the way, the best honey delivery system I've found in San Diego is Trader Joe's honey wheat bread, toasted, with Irish butter. This will have to do until I find a place that bakes decent baguettes, at least. :)
Monday, June 1, 2009, 8:15 pm
I think I've now reached the point where I need to make a conscious effort to stop buying honey. Here's my current stash:
Here we have niaouli honey (New Caledonia; this is a melaleuca native to both NC and Australia also known as tea tree), one of the two honey bears from our neighbor Kristin, orange blossom honey (France), honey from the Pyrenées (also in France; this is a very good, dark honey), the other wedding honey bear, and forest honey (also from New Caledonia).
Here we have palisander honey (a tree from Madagascar most often used to make furniture), coffee honey (from near Sarraméa in New Caledonia, presumably from coffee plants and not with coffee mixed in), honey toutes fleurs ("all flowers," from Madagascar), a bunch of New Zealand honey (rata, or New Zealand Christmas tree, a type of myrtle; tawari, an unusual native angiosperm; two types of bush honey; blue borage, or echium (similar to Pride of Madeira, but this is presumably viper's bugloss); manuka (also called tea tree, but not the same as niaouli/melaleuca, although they're in the same plant family - this is actually a leptospermum); Fijian honey; an interloping jar of artisanal quince preserves from France; Tyrolean chestnut; and more manuka honey packaged in a lovely, over the top French jar from Seresin winery (it's actually from the same producer as the manuka honey - it's just that it costs twice as much!).
All of this over the top honey notwithstanding, my favorites are still French lavender and sunflower honey, both of which were eaten long before I've moved on to any of these things. La Maison du Miel in Paris does these things well an inexpensively; they also had something called miel de garrigue that was phenomenally good. Of these honeys, I'm currently working on the honey from the Pyrénees, which is almost gone; once it is, I'll probably move on to something a little less strong (the chestnut honey is delicious, but so pungent I rarely choose it for breakfast).
By the way, the best honey delivery system I've found in San Diego is Trader Joe's honey wheat bread, toasted, with Irish butter. This will have to do until I find a place that bakes decent baguettes, at least. :)
Greetings from New Caledonia!
Tuesday, May 26, 2009, 12:36 am
Enjoying cocktails on Malabou Beach with the marmot. La vie, ç'est magnifique!
Tuesday, May 26, 2009, 12:36 am
Enjoying cocktails on Malabou Beach with the marmot. La vie, ç'est magnifique!
Tuesday, May 19, 2009, 10:15 pm
OMG! A local paper just published a picture of a couple of naked furry guys:
Would you say that..
Poll #1402709 Hot or not: UCSD edition
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All
OMG! A local paper just published a picture of a couple of naked furry guys:
Would you say that..
Poll #1402709 Hot or not: UCSD edition
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All
These men are...
23 (65.7%)
OMG TRAVEL
Monday, May 18, 2009, 8:00 pm
This is going to be a hell of an exciting week. My parents are leaving for London Heathrow airport in four hours or so; this time tomorrow, they'll be unpacking in our guest room. I haven't seen them since our wedding last August, so this is super exciting.
Then, we're off to New Caledonia for a quick week long road trip; luckily, we get to seenzbear5 briefly on the way out and on the way back, so the killer 6 to 10 hour layovers in Auckland each way should be a lot of fun as well!
I've uploaded a couple of pictures from a 1943 guide to New Caledonia printed by the US government; it includes some very sage advice such as "Almost every white family in the island has a Javanese servant," "Throughout New Caledonia toilet facilities are very primitive by our standards," and "Watermelon is particularly common." It sure didn't look like that 7 years ago - and there seem to be a huge amount of new luxury hotels all of a sudden, so I'm of course exceedingly curious about what all has changed.
To give you an idea, we enjoyed a meal on the beach near Port Boisé in 2002 at a small gîte with no other customers whatsoever, enjoying a bottle of Sancerre with fresh seafood - and now that same gîte is a self-proclaimed "ecolodge" with restaurants that seat 440 people. Crazy!
Anyhow, we'll be back in June; my parents will be housesitting, so all I have to do is explain how to find CNN, where the wine is hidden, and which cat not to let outside. :)
Monday, May 18, 2009, 8:00 pm
This is going to be a hell of an exciting week. My parents are leaving for London Heathrow airport in four hours or so; this time tomorrow, they'll be unpacking in our guest room. I haven't seen them since our wedding last August, so this is super exciting.
Then, we're off to New Caledonia for a quick week long road trip; luckily, we get to see
nzbear5 briefly on the way out and on the way back, so the killer 6 to 10 hour layovers in Auckland each way should be a lot of fun as well!I've uploaded a couple of pictures from a 1943 guide to New Caledonia printed by the US government; it includes some very sage advice such as "Almost every white family in the island has a Javanese servant," "Throughout New Caledonia toilet facilities are very primitive by our standards," and "Watermelon is particularly common." It sure didn't look like that 7 years ago - and there seem to be a huge amount of new luxury hotels all of a sudden, so I'm of course exceedingly curious about what all has changed.
To give you an idea, we enjoyed a meal on the beach near Port Boisé in 2002 at a small gîte with no other customers whatsoever, enjoying a bottle of Sancerre with fresh seafood - and now that same gîte is a self-proclaimed "ecolodge" with restaurants that seat 440 people. Crazy!
Anyhow, we'll be back in June; my parents will be housesitting, so all I have to do is explain how to find CNN, where the wine is hidden, and which cat not to let outside. :)
Dear LAN
Thursday, May 14, 2009, 7:00 pm
Dan and I are headed to Chile for vacation this December. I discovered something, um, fascinating today: LAN, the national airline, charges you different prices depending on whether or not youare Chilean physically located in Chile when you buy your tickets.
Here's the demo:
Let's start by going to lan.com by entering the following URL:
Now, let's search for flights from Santiago (the capital) to Calama (the airport nearest to the Atacama desert).
Wow, US $48.25 for a one-way flight? Dude! I am so totally there! But wait a second, the site won't actually let me buy the tickets... it just says Estimado cliente, los vuelos escogidos no permiten ningún pago a través de LAN.com, which I gather is Chilean Spanish for "Sorry, dude."
So, let's try changing the URL to specify that we're in the USA:
And now let's try searching for the same flights:
Holy balls. The same flight now costs US $312? Amazing! That's a price premium of only 647%. Hell, you could fly to Calama and back three times for the same amount of money you'd pay if you bought the ticket outside of Chile.
Seriously: WTF?
Thursday, May 14, 2009, 7:00 pm
Dan and I are headed to Chile for vacation this December. I discovered something, um, fascinating today: LAN, the national airline, charges you different prices depending on whether or not you
Here's the demo:
Let's start by going to lan.com by entering the following URL:
Now, let's search for flights from Santiago (the capital) to Calama (the airport nearest to the Atacama desert).
Wow, US $48.25 for a one-way flight? Dude! I am so totally there! But wait a second, the site won't actually let me buy the tickets... it just says Estimado cliente, los vuelos escogidos no permiten ningún pago a través de LAN.com, which I gather is Chilean Spanish for "Sorry, dude."
So, let's try changing the URL to specify that we're in the USA:
And now let's try searching for the same flights:
Holy balls. The same flight now costs US $312? Amazing! That's a price premium of only 647%. Hell, you could fly to Calama and back three times for the same amount of money you'd pay if you bought the ticket outside of Chile.
Seriously: WTF?
That was surprising
Thursday, May 14, 2009, 10:30 am
A few minutes ago, both my office phone and my mobile phone starting ringing; both of them featured disembodied voices that didn't make any sense. Why? It took me a few minutes, but then I remember I'd signed up for a Google Voice phone number. If you call that number, it asks you to say your name, then rings my phones. When I pick up, it's supposed to tell me who's calling, but if you don't say your name, then it's just a bunch of dead air. If you leave voice mail, it then sends me a transcription; this morning, all I got was creepy, empty phone calls and empty transcriptions, so I'm guessing someone hit a wrong number.
One of these days, who knows? Someone might actually call me on that number and it might be useful. But in the meantime, it's just a cool technology demo that's trying to solve a problem I didn't know I had. :)
Thursday, May 14, 2009, 10:30 am
A few minutes ago, both my office phone and my mobile phone starting ringing; both of them featured disembodied voices that didn't make any sense. Why? It took me a few minutes, but then I remember I'd signed up for a Google Voice phone number. If you call that number, it asks you to say your name, then rings my phones. When I pick up, it's supposed to tell me who's calling, but if you don't say your name, then it's just a bunch of dead air. If you leave voice mail, it then sends me a transcription; this morning, all I got was creepy, empty phone calls and empty transcriptions, so I'm guessing someone hit a wrong number.
One of these days, who knows? Someone might actually call me on that number and it might be useful. But in the meantime, it's just a cool technology demo that's trying to solve a problem I didn't know I had. :)
My credit card was too awesome to live
Thursday, May 14, 2009, 10:00 am
Earlier this week, I tried to use a picture I took of the Ost-West Kontaktzentrum at the old Leipzig trade fair as a background image for my credit card:
Yesterday, I received E-mail informing me that my submission was rejected. Why? Well, that wasn't clear: the provided reasons included a long list of things that seemed wrong (lewd or sexual content, celebrity images, images of money or flags, etc.).
This morning, I called 'em up and spoke with a friendly, helpful woman named Charise who explained that the image I submitted was obviously copyrighted material. Taking that as a compliment - wow, my photography skills are SO AWESOME that someone is mistaking them for professional quality - I laughed and asked if I could prove it. She acquiesced, I've sent off a long legal disclaimer form to Capital One, and hopefully I'll get a different decision after an internal review next week.
I do have to wonder, though: what's the point of custom credit card images if it's this difficult to get one? I probably should've stuck with one of the default cards...
Seriously, though, I wish we lived in a world where copyright was so damn tenacious, pernicious, whatever. From DMCA takedowns of innocuous vacation videos on YouTube that incorporate music from commercial sources to over-the-top worries about whether or not a picture of a frickin' building violates copyright, it's just tedious. I wish we lived in a world where copyright basically meant "you can't duplicate and sell this thing as-is, but you're free to incorporate it into something else." Of course, that's probably too laissez-faire, but what the heck, I'd rather let a thousand flowers bloom...
Thursday, May 14, 2009, 10:00 am
Earlier this week, I tried to use a picture I took of the Ost-West Kontaktzentrum at the old Leipzig trade fair as a background image for my credit card:
Yesterday, I received E-mail informing me that my submission was rejected. Why? Well, that wasn't clear: the provided reasons included a long list of things that seemed wrong (lewd or sexual content, celebrity images, images of money or flags, etc.).
This morning, I called 'em up and spoke with a friendly, helpful woman named Charise who explained that the image I submitted was obviously copyrighted material. Taking that as a compliment - wow, my photography skills are SO AWESOME that someone is mistaking them for professional quality - I laughed and asked if I could prove it. She acquiesced, I've sent off a long legal disclaimer form to Capital One, and hopefully I'll get a different decision after an internal review next week.
I do have to wonder, though: what's the point of custom credit card images if it's this difficult to get one? I probably should've stuck with one of the default cards...
Seriously, though, I wish we lived in a world where copyright was so damn tenacious, pernicious, whatever. From DMCA takedowns of innocuous vacation videos on YouTube that incorporate music from commercial sources to over-the-top worries about whether or not a picture of a frickin' building violates copyright, it's just tedious. I wish we lived in a world where copyright basically meant "you can't duplicate and sell this thing as-is, but you're free to incorporate it into something else." Of course, that's probably too laissez-faire, but what the heck, I'd rather let a thousand flowers bloom...
Yelp comment of the day
Tuesday, May 12, 2009, 10:15 pm
"I came here for a conference and ate the brassiere."
- from a review of the Sheraton Gateway Hotel LAX
Tuesday, May 12, 2009, 10:15 pm
"I came here for a conference and ate the brassiere."
- from a review of the Sheraton Gateway Hotel LAX
Fancy credit card
Tuesday, May 12, 2009, 7:30 am
I have a Capital One credit card that I only ever use for foreign transactions, as they charge less than anyone else for transactions denominated in a foreign currency. While paying my bill today, I noticed that they let you make custom cards, so I figured why the heck not?
Not too shabby, I hope. Can't wait to see what the actual card looks like...
Tuesday, May 12, 2009, 7:30 am
I have a Capital One credit card that I only ever use for foreign transactions, as they charge less than anyone else for transactions denominated in a foreign currency. While paying my bill today, I noticed that they let you make custom cards, so I figured why the heck not?
Not too shabby, I hope. Can't wait to see what the actual card looks like...
TripAdvisor quote of the day
Monday, May 4, 2009, 4:00 pm
From a review of the Hilton Garden Inn San Francisco Airport:
O RLY?
Monday, May 4, 2009, 4:00 pm
From a review of the Hilton Garden Inn San Francisco Airport:
Tried to watch a movie but couldn't adjust the brightness/contrast of the TV so we couldn't see any of the black people in the movie.
O RLY?
