dennis yang dot com

So, I didn’t go to burningman this year (since I’m here hanging out with grandma in Boston)… After going for 4 years in a row, I took last year and this year off. Honestly, last year I didn’t miss or even really think about it very much, but this year, I definitely was feeling the urge to return… And all week, I’ve been scouring flickr, awaiting for tales and pics to start to be posted, and alas…. it looked like it was an amazing time, so yah.. I think maybe I’ll be going again next year..

Check out some of the pics that I found from this year… Oooo.

Yah.. only 362 days till the man burns…

So that last post about my crazy sleep schedule got me to thinking… why are we constrained to this whole 24 hours per day, 7 days per week schedule anyway? I mean, our biological clocks run on more of a 25-hour schedule, so the 24-hour day isn’t even what our bodies are dictating..

So, I remember a few years ago, I stumbled upon this proposal of the 28 hour day.. It’s an interesting concept:

Basically, instead of the 24/7 week, you have a 28/6 week (no more mondays!!).. And, the idea is that this schedule maximizes your daylight, non-working hours… It’s a pretty cool idea.. it’s kind of a waste to spend most of the daylight hours (for those of us with day-desk jobs) behind a desk… so, this way, you’re working when it’s dark out 10 hours a day for 4 days, and then you get a 36 hour weekend in the daylight… woohoo!

Anyway.. thanks to Thomas Edison, we no longer have to structure our day around the rise and set of the sun… hooray technology!

So, I’ve been working from home for a little over a year now, and while I do appreciate the commute, the best part of this gig is that the schedule is ultra-flexible. I only have one scheduled meeting a week, and the rest of the work week basically just happens whenever. I mean, there’s more than enough work to do, and yes, I typically do need to be working during the middle of the day, and I have deadlines and stuff, but for the most part, it’s nice to have the flexibility to, say, go for a bike ride in the afternoon or something.. That is, of course, I get my work done, which is cool, cuz then I can chill when I’m typically brain dead (like right after lunch) and work when I’m most alert (late at night, like now, for example).

The most interesting thing that this work flexibility has affected is my sleep schedule. The only time I really have to set my alarm clock is on the weekends, but otherwise I just wake up whenever my body says “wake up”.. And, if I get too tired and lose focus during the day, then it’s cool to just veg or take a little nap for a bit. But, when I add all of the hours of sleep up I typically get during a 24 hour period, it works out to about 5 or 6 hours, and I’ve actually been feeling a lot more alert than I recall feeling when I had to set an alarm before..

So, my typical schedule is something like:

8am - wake up, eat some breakfast and start work…
10am - mind starts to wander, go downstairs and play some MLB 06
noon - go forage for food and chill or (not lately, admittedly) work out or something
2pm - back at work, ok, maybe lie on the couch and rest my eyes for a few minutes
6pm - take bailey to the park and run her around a bit, then have dinner and go out and do something social or play softball or something (or, if I don’t go out, I might fall asleep on the couch for a little bit after dinner)
midnight - back at work, this is when I get my best coding done
3am - force myself to go to sleep, cuz if I don’t, I’ll just keep going

So yah, it’s a little bit of a weird schedule, but it’s been working out for me quite well I think. I get plenty of work time in, and I still am able to fit in work out time (ok, not lately, I’m getting fat) and social time.

Anyway, I’ve never really heard of it before, but there’s this thing called Polyphasic sleep that sounds really interesting… Instead of this kind of ad hoc sleep schedule I’ve been subscribing to, the Polyphasic plan puts you on a specific, regimented sleep schedule of 20 minute naps spaced every 4 hours throughout the day. You end up getting about 2-3 hours of sleep daily.. Sweeeet. Imagine if you had 22 hours of waking time a day… That’d be awesome. AND supposedly you get to eat 4 meals a day on this whole thing (or you lose weight, which could be another benefit)..

Supposedly the main drawback are that it’s actually hard to stick to the schedule and if you go off it, then you get really really tired. (hey, it’s nice hanging out and all, but I gotta go take my 20 minute nap) And, some people actually report that they get bored with all of the extra free time (great, I’m up at 4am, but nobody else is..)

Anyway, There seems to be lots of people trying it though, so hmm.. I’m intrigued.. Maybe I’ll give it a try…

I mean, it’s gotta be better than just popping Provigil, right?

This weekend was the San Francisco Classic, which is a Vespa rally that has been going on for like forever… (formerly it was the King’s Classic)..

About 200 scooters showed up for the Sunday ride, which went all around San Francisco, ending up in Golden Gate park for a BBQ… Andy took some great photos of the event, including one of a nicely restored version of my scooter, Gail (a ‘64 Vespa GL)..

Woo.. what a weekend… I opened the weekend with the Superstars first victory of the season. (ok, it was a forfeit, cuz the other team didn’t have enough guys, but a win’s a win.) But, we still scrimmaged, and I got my first hit of the season, an RBI single. Woo. I was 0/5 before the broken ankle, and now I’m 1/5 after the broken ankle, so statiscally speaking, the broken ankle improved my batting average.. not that I recommend it.

Anyway, Jablow, Kai and Pius share the same birthday (the 13th) and Michelle’s is this week too, so they (minus Pius, cuz his moochie-ass is back in Jersey) had a fabulous birthday celebration at Hog Island Oyster Company, which is like 50 miles north of San Francisco in Marshall, CA… Up there, you can buy sacks of oysters for like $36 bucks or something, and sit there, shuck them, drink beer, bbq and in general have a frolicking, oystery good time. Good stuff. Happy birthday Jablow, Kai, and Michelle (oh, and Pius too).

Dana organized a fabulous trip to Pigeon Point this weekend, which is about 50 miles south of San Francisco right on the California.. The Pigeon Point lighthouse has a hostel there, that we all stayed at (for which Dana has been trying for years to get reservations) — it’s $30 a night, and arguably one of the best locations for a hostel in the world… Perched right on the cliffs of the California coast, right underneath a gorgeous working lighthouse.

It was a fantastically warm, clear, fog-free night… and we even spent a few hours in the hot tub, which was perched right on the cliff’s edge. Sooo nice… True to hostelling style, we cooked a tasty dinner in the communal kitchen (although since we had a big group, we basically filled one of the houses).

Most of the folks had biked down the 1 that morning from San Francisco (about a 50 mile ride), and I decided to ride with them back up to the city on Sunday.. We took a different route back than they had taken on Saturday, so we ended up going past the San Gregorio General Store (super cool market with a bar and bluegrass music).. then up La Honda (um.. it was like a 15 miles of UPHILL riding.. ouch) to Alice’s Restaurant for lunch… Then, up Skyline to Crystal Springs (with some awesome downhill.. I hit a max speed of 39.7 mph.. woohoo).. When we reached Crystal Springs, my legs were dead tired, so instead of continuing the 25 miles back up to SF, I chickened out and dropped off the ride at my parents’ house, who convienently live like a few miles from Crystal Springs. Considering that I only just got back on my feet from my broken ankle a few weeks ago, I was happy with the 47 miles that I did.. That said, congrats to Dana, Davin, Dan, Chris, John and Mike who all did 125 miles this weekend.. that’s awesome…

I made a little wayfaring map of the part of the bike ride that I did this weekend.. granted, it doesn’t show elevation change, but I promise that there’s a HUGE hill in between the coast and the inland bits, so that’s why I’m so tired today…

Woo! It’s good to be in California.

Update: Dana posted her pics from the weekend here.

Friday night, I get a call out of the blue from my old high school friend Aveh.. He’s an ER doctor now, and was in town for some sort of big doctor convention. Aveh and his cousins meet up with me at some North Beach bar, and we head over to Supperclub for some more drinks. Determined to give him the true San Francisco experience, we down a round of Fernet and then head for San Jose Taqueria, the best place in SF to end up after a long night of drinking.. It was great to catch up with Aveh — I hadn’t seen him since the OHS Reunion back in 2003..

But wait… there’s more.. So, I’m in NYC now, and last night I met up with some more high school friends, Kofi and Dave, both of whom I haven’t seen since.. um.. 1993. That’s like a long time — which apparently means we’re “old” now, but honestly, I don’t think we look all that old at all.. Kofi is starting his own company here in NYC and Dave is an attorney who recently had a kid (congrats!).. 13 years was a long time, apparently, but it really doesn’t feel like that much time has passed though.

And.. to top off this whole week of OHS re-connecting, Brian gives me a shout-out on his blog..

At last week’s Techdirt dinner salon, we discussed how the new generation of MySpacers will be different than us. As this generation of kids grows up, they will continue to be much more connected to each other than we are. Out of my entire high school class, I only know of two of us that actively blog and IM (hey… if any of you other folks are out there, drop me a line, by the way).. But, for generation M, blogging, IM’ing and connectedness is like breathing to them, an unconscious act. So, they’ll keep in touch with many more of the people that they meet, so by the time that they’re 30, they’ll have amassed a huge network of acquaintances from which to draw. The power of a network is correlated to the square of the number of nodes, so the value of these social networks will finally be realized at a wholesale societal level at that point by facilitating social and business connections that were there, but hidden until now.

Kids these days are using available tools in a way that already seems foreign to even those of us who live and breathe this stuff every day. Hmmm.. *now* I am starting to feel old.

Wooohoo.. so it’s been three days that I’ve been dealing with this broken ankle now. I can’t believe it’s only been three days, it honestly feels like forever. I’m learning how to do things all over again, since apparently this world isn’t really designed for people with one leg and two arms operating crutches. Simple things like.. um, carrying things. My friend Alex told me that her sister had devised a “magic basket” filled with everything that she needed as she hobbled around during her period of one-footedness. In it were her medication, water, chapstick, and a phone.

So, I’ve turned my circa 1999 manpurse into my magic basket… And, as a bonus, I found my chinese chop, which was lost for the past year!! I remember exactly how I lost it last year… I kept the chop at my office at CNET, and when I was moving my stuff out, I wanted to make sure to put it somewhere “safe” since it was really important to me not to lose it. So, in the manbag it went… and there it stayed for the past year. ha. It’s crazy how it’s impossible to find stuff when you’re actually looking for it.

Anyway… Percocet has been a fantastic help in dealing with the pain. It’s much nicer than Vicodin, I think… I find that Percocet seems to just deal with the pain in my ankle, whereas Vicodin seems to dull *everything*. I mean, yes, Percocet also makes you kind of dizzy and happy all over, but it doesn’t seem as dumbing as Vicodin. But yah.. Percocet is good stuff man. I can totally see why this is like schedule 2 narcotics. Wee.

So… yesterday I played in our third baseball game, a scrimmage with the Grizzlies.. In my first at-bat, I walked, and was then batted over to second on a fielder’s choice (avoiding the double play, I slid hard into second). So far so good.

I took a good sized lead-off from second, saw the catcher bobble a pitch, and I took off towards third. I saw out of the corner of my eye that the catcher had quickly gotten control of the ball so there was gonna be a play at the bag, so I ran hard, and slid hard into third base, just under the tag..

Then I heard a disgusting CRUNCH. Uh oh. Not good. I look down, pick up my leg, and my foot is hanging kind of down and to the left — I get that sinking feeling in my stomach that I’ve just done something really bad to myself. Crap. It didn’t really hurt that much though. It was just the sound and the realization that you’ve done something really bad to yourself that was the sucky part.

So my teammate Bruce drives me over to the hospital, where I’m hoping that I’ve only just sprained my ankle. We go into the ER, which is empty and everyone seems incredibly calm and relaxed — I guess real world ERs aren’t crazy and dramatic places like they are on TV. Like, nobody really seemed to be in a rush like they seem like on TV, but maybe that’s a good thing. They were calm and friendly and just kind of progressed about their tasks like it was their everyday job. Oh wait, it IS their everyday job. I suppose if they ran around like crazy people like they do on TV they’d go crazy and stick themselves with needles in all of the panic and stuff. And I suppose the calm ER doesn’t make for good television.

Anyway, the ankle is swelling up quite a bit, which is a bad sign, but when the doctor takes an initial look, she doesn’t seem to feel anything broken… good good.. there’s hope. I’m in good spirits and take a pic of my swollen ankle (it looks really gross, so don’t click over unless you’re cool with that).

But, we need to be sure, so off to the xray I go…

Yah.. so, I guess that’s not how a healthy ankle should look. I hear mumblings that it’s maybe just dislocated, and that makes me happy.. and then I hear that the emergency room doctor needs to get a second opinion. Uh oh.

And then two doctors come into my room with somber looks on their faces. My heart sinks.

“Yes, it’s broken.”

Crap. And, there’s more — I need to go in today to get surgery to put pins and screws into my ankle so that it’s sufficiently stablized during the healing process. Hooray. Oh, and my ankle was still dislocated, so they needed to pop it back into place. The nice doctor asks me if I’d like some drugs for the pain while they pop it back, and at that point, I’m like hells yah I want some drugs… So, the friendly nurse pushes in the happy drugs.. Weeeeee. I don’t really remember what really happened next, except the room looked really wobbly and the doctor said to relax so I did. My body felt like jello. Ooopy goopey jello. Wee. Where am I?

I kind of come to and there’s a cast around my ankle now, which is getting really hot from the plaster setting. The warmth feels nice around my poor ankle, and the happy drugs are starting to wear off, so the pain is coming back. Not so good.

So yah.. now I’m resting at home (hooray Percocet!) before I head back into the hospital for the surgery.

Yah.. so that was my Sunday.. Woo.. Apparently Coco Crisp also broke a bone while stealing third base yesterday. He broke his left ring finger but apparently he’s still gonna play in the season home opener. Yah, there’s no need for me to play on this broken ankle, and luckily I can still work (thank goodness the commute isn’t that bad). Granted, living in a 3-story place isn’t the most ideal of situations, but I have been thinking about getting a mini fridge for my room for awhile…

So.. no more dancing for me for a few months. Looks like I’ll have to be like Lisa from Saved by the Bell and just dance “The Sprain“. I really just hope I didn’t do anything permanently bad to myself. Apparently I’m 30 now and not “young” anymore or something.

So.. I turned 30 on Friday.. wahoooo!! And what a crazy few days it’s been.. it’s been three days of non-stop fun and excitement…

Thursday night, I met a whole bunch of peoples at The Page for a drink, which has apparently become the neighborhood hangout on Thursday nights… So, since I happened to be there when the clock struck midnight, everyone was nice enough to greet the first minutes of my birthday with a raucous shot.. of something.. I don’t remember what it was that we drank. That said, I didn’t have a crazy night out since the next morning I was waking up at 5am to head up to Infineon Raceway (formerly known as Sears Point) for a track day…

So, I woke up at 5am, as planned and headed towards the Golden Gate Bridge to meet up with Jason, who was also going up to the track, at the first parking lot right across the Golden Gate Bridge. As I’m driving towards the bridge, I notice one of those tall cylindrical cones lying on its side in the MIDDLE of the freeway (Paul later informed me that it’s called a delineator) — there was a car in the lane next to me, so I couldn’t swerve to get out of the way, so… I went over it. *THUNK*

You know all of those lights on your dashboard? The ones that inform you when something’s wrong? Well, they all started coming on. Alternator light. Temperature light. Coolant light. Yah.. shit. Something was bad. Very bad.

It was a good thing that I was meeting Jason at the next exit right after the GGB, so I pulled off the exit (only narrowly missing the wall since, as I then found out, my power steering was out too).. We open up the hood and find that, somehow, I hit the cone just right and it managed to knock the serpentine belt off the engine — which powers the alternator, power steering, water pump.. lots of important stuff. Ouch.

So yah, my car was knocked out *before* we even made it up there… how sad is that? (But wait, there’s more) We decided to not let a little setback kill the day, and since Jason had his S2000, we parked my car at the vista point parking lot and continued up to Sears Point.

The morning was cold, and so was the track, so Jason started driving the laps around Sears Point gingerly. After about five laps, at about turn 4, he started to open it up a bit more.. and then… I look behind my shoulder (it’s a convertible) and see black smoke, and a huge FIREBALL. One of the spotter dudes that watches the track from up atop a tower shouts out “Fire! Fire!” so we pull over to the side and open up the hood, finding that the entire engine bay has caught fire. Do we have a fire extinguisher? No. Uh oh. The entire track is under yellow flag, so a few cars drive slowly by us, kind of looking at us with an “oh shit” look on their faces. It seemed like an eternity, but it must have only been a minute or two, but the fire trucks came by and finally put the fire out. Oops.

An oil gauge that Jason had installed to monitor the s2000’s oil pressure had most likely sprung a small leak, causing oil to be sprayed all over the engine bay. Once oil gets hot enough, apparently it catches fire. Crazy. Two cars out of commission, and I didn’t even get to drive (although, lucky for me, I’m getting a credit for the event, and I get to go back in July.. whoohoo!) Good thing I brought my camera.. since otherwise, I’d have nothing else to do up at the track besides watch everyone else drive around the track. So, I did get some good pictures.

We had to call AAA that day. Twice. On the way back from Sears Point, I had Jason’s tow truck drop me off at my car, where I waited for my tow truck. Woohoo.

Since I had some extra time now, since I was home early from the track, I went on a little bike ride with Jason (who was also home and not wanting to be sitting at home looking at his burnt car), we went on a nice bike ride around the city.. It was a gorgeous day, and I didn’t want to waste it. I met Mom, Dad, Andy, Meredith and Stephanie for dinner in South City (bacon-wrapped anything is good in my book) and then headed back to my parents’ house for cake. For my birthday, my parents got me the Digital Rebel that I’ve been taking pictures with for the past month — thanks mom and dad! Stephanie made me some awesome books by printing out the past two years of dennisyang.com — it was actually really cool to see all of this stuff that I’ve written in printed form.. What a great gift! Meredith got me an awesome book of the Golden Gate Bridge, which is completely ironic considering I spent like 3 hours sitting at the vista point waiting for the tow truck. And, Andy got me a new tennis racquet, since I’ve re-found the whole tennis thing lately. We broke out the ol’ VHS tapes and watched some home movies and I headed for a drink at Jade for the last few minutes of my birthday..

Whooo.. tired. So, to re-cap, the first 24 hours of my 30s wasn’t exactly what I was expecting, but.. exciting nonetheless..

So Mike sent me this link to this article about how people with ADD are more inclined for careers in high tech because their ability to hyperfocus, amongst other things (I guess when you can’t focus very well, you learn to hyperfocus, maybe?) Anyway… I’ve never really been officially diagnosed with ADD or anytihng, but maybe I do exhibit a lot of the signs… I mean.. isn’t my desktop ADD-land?

Yah, that’s what my desktop usually looks like on a normal day.. usually about 5 or 6 active IM sessions, like at least 3 files I’m coding at a time, emails mid-sentence, fun fun… and.. there always needs to be music playing (it’s not on my desktop since I use XM these days).. I can’t concentrate in silence… I don’t really process the actual song that is playing, but I definitely need something on in the background…. People have commented that watching me work is bewildering because I’m constantly switching between windows..

So yah, I dunno, maybe I’m one of the 85 percent of adults that don’t know they have ADD, but if I am and (as explained by the article) if these traits help me be successful in my job, then why is it a “disorder” then?

But, part of me wonders if I’m a product of my environment.. working in tech definitely encourages the multi-tasking-ADD-like environment that I’ve become accustomed working in, no?

Wahoo! so for alot of my friends’ 30th birthdays, it’s a big deal, so we’ve been going on a trip somewhere to celebrate and stuff.. Last year, Jo’s was in the Bahamas on a cruise, Korby’s was in Vancouver, Jablow’s was in Vegas.. fun fun fun.. So, since my birthday is coming up, i’m planning to hit up Austin for south by southwest. I was in Austin last year, but missed SXSW by a week, and it looks like mad fun.. 1,100 bands!!

In looking through the list.. Hmm.. most of these bands I’ve never ever heard of, but I guess that’s the point of SXSW.. I really want to see:

• The Avalanches
• Her Space Holiday
• Hey Willpower
• Morningwood
• Belle and Sebastian
• Mogwai
• Cat Power

Of course, Mongolian Candidate will be there.. so don’t miss their show, for sure. Uh, they’ll be playing at whichever hotel or house we’re staying at.

So, come on down to Austin and celebrate my birthday with me! And.. Let me know if there are any other bands on the list that you think I should see — 1,100 is a lot to look through!

Here’s some great links I’ve found about SXSW:

• The Unofficial SXSW Blog
• Great Forum Post about what to expect

Crap.. since I just decided yesterday to do this whole trip thing, I’m realizing now that most people have booked their accommodations like months ago. So, um, if you have a place for us to stay (as in, can we rent your house for the weekend), then let me know please…

Setting: My house, 11:07am.
Background: Pius is taking a vacation from his 3 year travelling vacation and is staying at my house.

(phone on my desk rings)
Me: Hello?
Dude on the phone: Is Pius there?
(I’m confused since the only people that call my land line are telemarketers and the UPS guy with a package)
Me: Who?
Dotp: Is Pius there?
Me: Ohh.. Pius.. yah, um.. sure.. hold on..
(I cover the phone mouthpiece)
Me (yells): PIUS!!! TELEPHONE!!!!

So yah.. I mean, when was the last time that someone actually called you on your landline to *talk* to someone.. and especially someone other than yourself? I mean when we were kids and stuff, yelling someone’s name for the phone was typical (and today’s kids don’t know that pleasure?)..

Anyway.. as a side note.. I was upstairs, and Pius was down in the living room, so he couldn’t hear me yell.. so I IM’ed him to get the phone. I guess that puts us firmly in the 00s.

Woohoo.. another blog meme wagon to jump on.. Willo put together a list of cities that she visited in 2005 (cities in which you’ve spent at least one night).. I guess this meme was really kicked into high gear by Kottke last week.. hmm… 7 days to reach me, that’s a little slow.. oh well.. here’s my year in cities.. It was quite a travel-y year, it seems.

In rough chronological order… Entries with *’s were visited multiple times…

Beijing, China
Shanghai, China
Hangzhou, China
Hong Kong, China
San Francisco, CA *
Hillsborough, CA *
On a ship between Miami, FL and the Bahamas
Chelmsford, MA
Providence, RI
Hanover, NH
New York, NY *
Las Vegas, NV *
Stateline, NV
San Luis Obispo, CA
San Diego, CA
Tucson, AZ
Van Horn, TX
Austin, TX
Sulphur, LA
New Orleans, LA
Hot Springs, AR
Guymon, OK
Vancouver, BC Canada
Hatch, UT
West Yellowstone, MT
Cody, WY
Salt Lake City, UT
Twin Falls, ID
South Lake Tahoe, NV

Wow.. that’s a lot, but I guess I did a lot of travelling last year.. new years in China, and then 2 roadtrips, plus the multiple birthday trips.. woo! This year has started off with New York, Hoboken, and San Francisco already, so already I’m on my way to another banner travel year..

Grrr…

So I’ve outgrown my external backup HD… I have an 80gb Maxtor USB that has trustily served as my backup drive for the past few years… And, now it’s getting painfully full, so I really need a new external hard drive. I know what I want.. about 200 gb, USB2.0 (I don’t have firewire), reliable and cheap.

Now, I realize fully that reliable and cheap are sliders that don’t really work in concert, so I’m willing to weigh the options when making my decision in buying something.

But.. in looking around for these stinkin’ things, I realize that even though we live in the new era of information, and all of this product review data is out there, and that we have a read/write web, blah blah blah blah… it’s still an immense PITA (pain in the arse) to actually compile and find all of this data and make an educated buying decision. Grrr.

A quick search for USB drives comes up with a PCWorld article from last year (yay).. and at CNET, I find a review of a bunch of Firewire drives with this comment.. “The fastest, best-looking external hard drive we’ve tested to date.” — Um.. ok, last I checked, I was looking for a BACKUP hard drive.. Shouldn’t reliability trump speed and good-looking-ness? Jeez. Ok, I’m getting annoyed now.

So, I do what I usually do when I look to buy stuff, and go to the actual merchant site to see what’s actually being featured, with the intention of going back and then looking for reviews on the featured stuff to see if it’s just a load of crap. So, at Buy.com their most popular drive is this LaCie 250GB drive for like $139.95.. Damn, that’s not a bad price. I remember back in the day I bought a 300mb hard drive for like $300.. I was so excited. I was like.. whoa.. 300 megs? I’m NEVER gonna need another hard drive! This is awesome! It was a western digital caviar drive, man.. caviar.. what a good name for a hard drive.

Anyway.. so seems like a good deal, right? So I go around the net, looking for reviews about this hard drive, and surprise, surprise.. they’re mixed.. Well.. in the case that the hard drive worked, people are ecstatic, giving it a high rating.. in the case that the hard drive crashed, people are pissed, giving it a low rating. Well.. duh, I coulda told you that. This is the type of product where, frankly, subjective user opinions really don’t add very much to the mix.

(really nerdy paragraph ahead…)
What I really need is some sort of quantitative failure rate of these hard drives in the field, and then I can weigh for myself the relative reliability of the product. I try and look around for user reviews for other hard drives, and yes, there are a few with better aggregate ratings, but since the sample sizes are so small relative to the number of hard drives sold, I don’t know what good it actually does.. But, is anyone going to actually do that work? I kind of doubt it.

Not to mention the fact that if someone’s happy with their external hard drive, how many people are gonna write about that… if it crashes, sure, tell the world.

Argh.. so I’m back to square one, really.. I just want a 250gb external USB 2.0 hard drive.

So, what am I going to do? I’m probably going to buy that LaCie 250gb hard drive from Buy.com — why? not because the reviews are good.. not because I’ve done all of this research. but, because that drive seems like a good deal and it was “featured” on the Buy.com hard drive page. baa.. baaa…

And now, since I complained, this drive will most likely crash at some inopportune moment and I will lose years and years of my digital pictures and I’ll be really really pissed.

Oooo.. the hard drive is designed by Porsche though. That means that I can show it off to chicks and they’ll be impressed, right?

Wahoo! Andy, Meredith and I went last weekend to get a Christmas tree… It’s so nice to walk down to the living room now and see the tree all alit with lights and stuff. I love the holidays.

I’ve made another holiday cd mix this year, so if you want one, tell me and I’ll get you one the next time I see you.. Actually, I’m listening to this really cool christmas mashup mix, Santastic — none of these songs made it on to my mix (since I just got it yesterday), but some of these songs are good (and, as to be expected for mashup, some are.. not so good). Doug gives it a “6/10 for listenability” and a “10/10 for boldness and creativity”.

Happy Holidays all…

Ok.. so it’s been awhile since I’ve posted anything.. sorry codekitty! I’ve been really busy and this month has simply flown by…

Anyway, aside from the late nights coding the latest InfoAdvisor updates for Techdirt, November has been quite the crafty month… Shooey is the instigator I think, since she invited me to a craft day over at Willo’s house a few weeks ago. I was very ambitious and wanted to make new curtains for my room (since the designer-y blinds that it came with, while very hip and chic, do very little to darken the room)..

So.. first project of the month.. a curtain rod, after seeing the curtain rods in the P.barn catalog, they look easy enough, so I dropped down to Max’s studio to do some fabrication… It’s been a little while since I’ve welded anything, but it’s kind of like riding a bike, so the project didn’t take very long… the first time.. I’m pretty legendary for “measure once, cut twice”… and this time I didn’t disappoint.. I used the measurements from the wrong window to make the curtainrod. Ooops. I’m an idiot, yes. I wonder if it was my subconscious sabotaging the original project though — since this meant that I got to go back to Max’s and weld some more (more fun!).. The second curtain rod turned out even better than the first one.. wahoo…

Second project of the month… I made Natalie a warm fleece blanket for her birthday.. I was at the fabric store and came across this awesome US map and road trip fleece, and it was perfect for a gift for Natalie the adventurer.. Using the skills I had learned in 5th grade home economics (where I made a very nice pot holder), I fashioned the two pieces together into a plush blanket…

Since I was honing my newly re-learned sewing skills, Shooey invited me to help out with the furniture at the new club, Shine… Trip, Brian and the Sauce folks just bought the old Red Eye on Mission, and they needed a hand sewing covers for the furniture… So, I wandered down to Stitch, down the road, and joined in on the help…

Look how domestic I’ve been all month.. woohoo. My curtains still aren’t done yet though.. that’s next…

Oh, and Happy Yangsgiving to everyone!! Andy and I are throwing a big thanksgiving dinner at mom & dad’s house tomorrow… on the menu, THREE different styles of turkey… deep fried, bbq’ed, and rotisserie.. more to come soon, I promise…

Last night was La Dia de Los Muertos here in San Francisco… An estimated 15,000 people took part in the procession, which started at 7pm in the outer mission.. I joined up with Max, Nancy and Pang there. Pang’s friend Siouxsie is one of the organizers of the event, and one of the neat things is that a lot of it sounds relatively organic… I didn’t really see any promotional things about it, it just kind of gets known through word of mouth, including a lot of the bands and people that attend the events..

The procession was an assorted group of people, about half of which were dressed in some sort of skeleton-like or ghoulish costume.. This was very much the opposite of the festivities in the Castro a few nights before.. No hordes of stupid drunk people at all.. kind of nice. Lots of people were holding lit candles, giving the procession a kind of somber, yet celebratory feel to it. Nobody seemed to really know the route that we were supposed to take, but eventually we happened upon Garfield park in the outer mission, where Siouxsie and her crew had set up a bunch of altars..

But.. before going to see the altars, we took a little detour and walked through Balmy Ave, which was right there.. I’ve lived here for eight years now and I’ve heard about the murals in the Mission, but I’ve never seen them.. They’re sooo cool. I’m sure seeing them at night is a completely different experience, but being lit only by the streetlights (and the headlights of a passing SFPD car) was kind of cool too.. Jet (who I still have a box of beignet mix from NOLA for) has a mural on the avenue, so we got to see that..

Anyway.. after wandering on Balmy for a bit, we did make our way back to Garfield park.

It was a cool, but not cold evening in SF with clouds looming in the sky (the weatherman predicted rain, but was wrong, thankfully.. aj thinks that SF weathermen are slackers, but that’s a whole other story). There were numerous altars set up all over the park with all sorts of different themes. Wandering around in the dark looking for art amongst costumed folks listening to drums in the distance evoked comparisons to burningman-like feelings, so that was kind of nice.. There was an altar made entirely of rusted guns (obvious political statement), another where you could dress up in macabre costumes and lie in a coffin, and then this really cool one under a huge tree with suitcases full of paper cranes and other assorted things..

I took a whole bunch of pictures, so look at them here, but keep in mind that it’s really dark, and I don’t like using the flash.

It was quite the busy busy labor day weekend.. This was my first labor day weekend in five years that I actually spent here in san francisco, since I usually am at burningman… This year, I held on to my ticket until the very last minute to keep alive the possibility that I might actually make it up there again, but it never happened. This year was the 20th anniversary of the event, and it sure did look like fun. Oh well.. Less than a year till the next burningman, I suppose..

The weekend was kicked off with a bang, with the wedding of my friends, Amy and Joe.. Their wedding was in Sausalito, and went off without a hitch. The ceremony was in this awesome little church atop a hill, followed by the wedding reception just across the street.. It’s been quite the wedding season this year already, this being my third, after Steve & Monnia’s and Jason & Bonnie’s… The reception was at the Alta Mira, which usually has a spectacular view of San Francisco (which was smothered in fog the whole day). Congrats Amy & Joe! (Oh yah, congrats to Steve & Monnia and Jason & Bonnie too.. albeit belated on the blog.. oops).

Sunday was marked by Paul M’s first evite’d event (welcome to the internets, Paul) — a bbq at the famed 629 Elizabeth house. We were graced by Korby’s return to SF for the weekend (it really seems like he didn’t move to NYC).. True to a San Francisco September day, the weather was actually quite warm, though a cold, foggy breeze rolled in midway through to remind us to not leave our jackets out of arm’s reach. As would be expected with any gathering of the jerks, there was an excessive amount of sausage present (both literally and figuratively), an ton of yelling, and copius quantities of beer consumed. Approximately 169 cans and bottles, to be exact. Paul had initially forecast beer consumption at around 80 beers, and clearly he underestimated the amount of beer consumed during several rounds of raucous asshole.

We groggily awoke Monday and headed for Tomales Bay, for oysters straight from the farm.. Ahh.. more bbq’ing and beer. We were quite weary from the previous night’s outing, so the beer drinking was actually kept to a minimum. The oyster eating was quite sweeeeet.. I highly recommend it — I mean, for like 8 bucks, you get a dozen oysters in a mesh bag that have just been freshly plucked right out of the bay in front of you.. delicious tasty goodness.

Yes, living in San Francisco is good.

Much like the memory maps that I annotated to illustrate what I remember from my childhood, the flickr desknote meme is composed of a bunch of people taking pictures of their desks and annotating the hell out of the resulting picture on flickr (so click over to look at what all these things are on my desk)…

I actually didn’t take this picture with the intent of adding to the desknotes group — I was chatting with Jason, a wedding photographer, and he mentioned that he’s started taking everything in RAW format as opposed to JPG… So, I tried it out.. RAW is impressively flexible and all, but for most pics I think I’ll still use JPG since it takes a lot more work to get the pictures viewable — and it takes a ton more space (about 2.5mb per picture as compared to 500kb).. and it’s slower.. but, you sure can make some neat pictures with it…

Um.. ok, here’s an example of the random stuff I wonder sometimes..

Ok.. so I think for US currency, the penny (1 cent) is the best deal at 2.5 grams.. So that works out to $1.81 a pound. Bills are a much worse deal US $1 bills are about $490 per pound.

So — my question is… what currency out there is the best deal by weight? It’d probably have to be modern currencies, since any old or collectible currency would probably be worth more than the actual currency.. For example, I’ve been looking around and an Iranian 2-rial coin (at an exchange rate of 8,998 rials to 1 USD) is selling for $2.50….

This question is so vexing, that I’ve asked metafilter.