Today I found something that bubble shared on Google reader. It was AWESOME. So I shared it. The second best part of my day, besides finding the item was seeing two other friends share the same thing. This is why the internet was built!

Also, climbing was good today. Trisha seems to improve much faster than me. 5-6 - 5-10B in one day. I have now finished only one 5-10A.

If anyone is still on Orkut, you now can import your friends birthdays into calendar. There is a link off the homepage. Now all I have to do is write some scripts to scrape all the local convert and movie venue calendars so I don't have to pick up the onion every week.

Horse Gym USA has a picture of a Canadian at the top of the page.

San Francisco looks like a small place from the top, i.e. the top of Golden Gate Heights. It also seems like all the views of the city face northwards. Mt Davidson does have some views south, but they aren't as pretty. San Francisco is sand and rocks, the trees that do well here are not from here. The cloud forest plants should do well, the botanical garden has lots of them.

This post is for Akash. You'll have to ask him why.

13 Mar 2009
White Swan, Black Swan: nice vocals, I only caught a couple songs

The Donkeys
Decent band, fun to listen to. A good whale joke:
Two whales are sitting at a bar
one says to the other [long whale noises]
The other says, "man you are trashed."

Quick to get on stage and play

Phosphoressence
Good country rock band. Slow to start playing and some assholes decided to pop into the front of the crowd, they were tall so they blocked a bunch of peoples view. Then they gained an extra 3 people and started moving backwards. For once someone actually got inside my bubble.

7 Mar 2008 -- Red Devil Lounge
* "Three of" (good luck googling these guys) -- very good
* A, b, and C -- not good, the lead singers voice cracked a lot, they did look like they should be in the movie "That thing you do" (my first date was at this movie).
* Moonlight Sexy -- ok, Andy didn't like these guys
* Marcy Playground -- Great!

14 Mar 2008 -- Writers with drinks
S.G Browne with Breathers: A zombie's lament. The chapter he read was really funny. I think this was the best part of the night. The host was also really good, but the host could be described as slightly scripted talking out of her ass.

I went to see Fruit Fly at the Castro Theatre tonight. It was a really fun movie and very local. Oh yeah, it's a musical, I don't think I've had that much fun watching a movie since I saw Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter the first time. The opening number is a song about public transit and not needing a car in San Francisco. The previous film by H.P. Mendoza is Colma: The Musical, it's got a lot of the same cast and also look like a lot of fun. Unfortunatly, movies are behind music and I can't find a stream or download on hulu, amazon or youtube of Colma the musical.

Anyway, if anyone wants to go see Fruit Fly it is playing in Berkeley on friday. I don't think I'll make it out to that since the Castro Theatre is having a triple bill "nerds with balls" Midnites for maniacs on friday.

In other good news, I couldn't get either a Petzl size 1 or size 2 harness since my legs are size two, but my waist is size 1.

For anyone that goes to Cantina at 580 Sutter, you may as well skip the cocktails since they are weak and overpriced. It's as good to go for the crappy red strip which is still overpriced, but at least only by a dollar or two.

[This is something old I wrote up while I was in Brazil]

It turns out I can't have an uneventful *set* of flights when Brazil is involved. My first flights to Brazil would be the most uneventful, I got earlier flights than I had booked. The next time I tried to fly, I flew out of Brazil, which since I booked through an agency outside Brazil I had to get paper tickets. The paper tickets didn't get to me in time, so I basically had to rebuy my tickets.

So this time, I learned my lesson, I bought the international tickets separate from my inside brazil tickets. This means I could get electronic tickets all the way. One problem is that I can't pay any of the Brazilian carriers directly since I don't have a Brazilian CPF. So a friend bought my ticket the day before I left. The ticket had a small problem, I had to go through Rio to get to S o Paulo. I would have two hours between the flight from Rio to the flight to JFK. Unfortunatly the leg from Rio to S o Paulo was an hour late and I had to run to get checked into to the flight to JFK. It turns out I had lost my seat, but I did get on the plane and wasn't the last one to check in. The way back to Belo Horizonte was supposed to be simpler, I had a lot of time in S o Paulo before the direct flight to Belo Horizonte. Well, unfortunatly the boarding passes I was given was for Larry Morrison going to Lima, not for James Morrison going to S o Paulo. It feels really bad that the woman who checked me in, used checked two pieces of ID, and the security guy who checked my boarding pass didn't notice this. I didn't notice this either since I had two boarding passes with the first one going to Miami. Anyway, so after Larry and I had the same seat on the flight to Miami we figured out I had the wrong ticket. I got the right one then we were off. We arrived in Miami in good time, but our gate was occupied, which meant we disembarked 20 minutes late and 10 of us had to push through the aisles to get out and onto the connecting flight to S o Paulo. This flight was again uneventful. However, in S o Paulo there was a nice long wait at customs, no processing time for me, then the discovery that I had made it to S o Paulo, but my backpack hadn't. Fortunatly, there was a second flight from Miami arriving in 30 minutes (left 2 hours later than mine) that should have my bag. It turned out I did, so I could finally go check in for my flight to Belo Horizonte. That checkin was almost uneventful, but again the line took forever. I waited for 8 minutes as the second person in line. Again, I took no time getting processed. Given the time I take to go through customs and checking in, how could both those lines move so slow?

It's been a little wet around here recently. Enough so that I bought an umbrella yesterday. Unfortunately, I didn't take it out on my walk today. So on my way back from Golden Gate Heights, I felt more soaked than when I went out to walk all of Broderick in the pouring rain.

On the getting things done front, I have finally put up my disco ball. It's been 9 hours and it is still up so I think it will hold over night.

I would like to thank James for saving me two tubes and two floor pumps.

I've decided I would like to get myself a small laptop that has a projector built in. It doesn't have to be super powerful, but the projector from a phone would probably be good enough.

I found a reference on the 'net about a week ago about SimTower. I remembered playing it a long time ago and thought it would be fun to try again since I hadn't beaten it. so I found my old copy and started playing. I've acheieved TOWER status in the game in 9 years.

The basic plan I used to beat the game was to build as wide as possible and to use 3 normal elevator shafts per 15 floors, 8 stairs and 2 escalators. Primarily my building was all offices. For the there are two sets of stairs going up 3 floors from each lobby. There is also an escalator going down from the lobby for each set of stairs and one more set of stairs going down a floor from the escalator. For the floors that have stairs going to them, there should be no elevator for that floor.

Now there are only 9 floors left that need elevator transportation. The best strategy I figured out for these floors was 3 elevators, each hitting 5 floors. That way each floor got one elevator shaft and a 3rd elevator shaft provided a bit of extra transport.

The 14th floor in each set is a good place to put cafes, and shops. I put a couple cafes and shops in, a security office at on one end, then put some offices in to use up some of the remaining space on the outside of the building. I left a bunch of space between the cafes and offices.

The first 15 floors are special since those floors should have 3 floors of offices, 6 floors of hotel rooms, one housekeeping station per floor, and a service elevator between the hotel floors. Then topped off with offices.

The basement floors had shops, cafes, restaurants and a cinema on floors b1 and b2. Parking was on floors b3, b4, and b5. The recycling centers were on floors b6 and b7, then the metro was on floors b8, and b9 with the metro taking up b10. I also put shops and cafes on floors b8 and b9 with the metro.

For the express elevator I tried to have on each express elevator go to the basement floors and 1 above ground floor. This way floor 15 and floor 30 has separate elevators shafts. Each elevator had as many elevator cars as it could take.

Using this strategy I used 63 above ground floors to get to 15k people and had 128 million dollars. I didn't lower the rent on any offices until I was building up to floor 100 for my cathedral, where I lowered prices on many offices between floors 45 and 60 where I did lower the price to keep tenants. I did lower the price on some hotel rooms much earlier in the game.

You can browse with my wide tower.

I've been using my G1 phone for a month now. It is nice, but the one that I like more about my old phone was that it had a real number pad. So, I'm pondering how well a touch screen would work on a cell phone with designed sort of like the LG MediaFLO phone.

Sarah came up a great idea for us to do over the long, long weekend after New Years. She wanted to go to the Grand Canyon, and hike in it. I, also enjoying hiking trips, went along.

We organized the trip rather late, I think on the 27th of Dec from my parents house (I think my mom enjoys being around for trip planning since it reminds her of the trips she should plan). Given our late planning we could only get a reservation at Phantom Ranch for the night of the 1st. So the trip plan was get back to SF on 30 Dec 2008. Take bart from the airport, sleep/pack (in either order), then drive to Williams, AZ on the 31st. Take a bus the to Grand Canyon on the 1st, hike down to Phantom Ranch, sleep, hike back up to the top, see the Grand Canyon from the top. Take a bus back to Williams and drive somewhere near the Hoover Dam. Sleep. Drive, see the Hoover Dam, get to Las Vegas, and see the Cirque du Soleil show Ka. Sleep. Drive home.

So that was the plan, now for the execution. We got back to SF on time and picked up our bags from the baggage claim without any issue. The next morning we got up and moving. The optimistic hope was that we would be on the road by 8am to Williams, then stop in Fresno for gear and food. It turns out we weren't ready to go until 10, so we got hiking poles and fake crampons at the REI in SF. We also did our grocery shopping in SF. We were on the road to Williams by noon. We shared the driving Sarah took the parts with traffic, I took the 4 and two lane highways. The fortunate part about this is that I drove through the San Joaquin. One the way there, it was basically IFR conditions (I had no instruments), so I was driving through a cloud (some call it fog) and I couldn't see anything that wasn't on the road. It was really pretty but not the best for a road with lots of ups, downs and turns. I felt like a race car driver. The other interesting part (at least while I was driving) was going through the Mojave desert at sundown. I don't think Sarah has any pictures, but it was very pretty.

Finally we arrived in Williams, AZ and got to the Grand Canyon Railway Hotel, at 2345hrs, (for those counting that means we were on the road for 10h 45m). We checked in by 2358hrs on 31 Dec 2008. So we stood by the fire for two minutes, counted down, and kissed for New Years.

In the morning, things went as expected, we backed our bags to hike 10 miles, and put the rest of the stuff in the car. We got in a van that took us to the Grand Canyon. Our driver up to the Grand Canyon was very nice and showed us the sites along the way. We also met two Japanese exchange students on their way to see the Grand Canyon.

On the way was slow since we took a lot of pictures (Sarah has them all since I lots my 1GB SD card before it made its way into my camera). Unfortunatly, Sarah got tired on the way down, and also hurt her ankle. So we stumbled our way to Phantom Ranch around 1600. From the time we got to the ranch until supper at 1830, we laid back and relaxed, we needed it, our feed were sore and Sarah iced her ankle. The food at Phantom Ranch was good, not great, and there was enough of it after being on our feet all day. At end end of the day, we slept, as planned. In the morning we got up for the early breakfast. Again, it was decently, but not great, but there was enough food. Unfortunatly, Sarah was sick (She'd figured out how to deal with her ankle though) (Oh, and she isn't pregnant). So we harrassed the rangers, got some imodium, and started on our way back up the Bright Angel Trail, we took the Bright Angel Trail down and were planning on the South Kaibab trail up but the Bright Angel Trail has places to stop the South kaibab trail doesn't. Again were were planning on an early 630hrs start, but started a little later at 745hrs. We used our poles with gusto on the way back up and made it up by 1345, 6hrs on the way back up, the same time it took us to get down. The rest of the daylight hours was spent taking the village bus around the Grand Canyon village and seeing the sights from the top.

After the Grand Canyon, we drove to Kingman, stayed there, then continued on, saw the Hoover Dam, it is like Itaipu, but less political and taller, then went on to vegas. In Vegas we saw the inside of a couple hotels, I spent $1 on a slot machine, then we say Ka. Ka is an amazing show, I don't think it really suck in until after the show was over all the things the performers pulled off. That said, the stage itself was an engineering marvel that I watched almost as much as the performers.

After Vegas, the drive back was mostly uneventful, the fog in San Joaquin was a little lighter, but still heavy, Mojave is prettier at sunset and it is still good to sleep in my own bed.

What a difference a border makes.

Compare Windsor to Detroit.

I read my rss feeds through Google Reader. I like it, it is fast and easy to use. I also really like the 'share with note' button. I dislike the share button since you are sharing something without telling me why! Anyway, as a public service announcement.

NEVER SHARE XKCD COMICS ON GOOGLE READER!

Everyone who you are going to share it with already reads xkcd and 6 of your friends
have already shared it. They are wasting your time, as well as mine. (I was tempted to share this annoucement by sharing an xkcd comic.

Apparently someone actually did some research to find out if the fixie trend will die out. This link lead people to debate, on SF2G, about what people should ride to work on next. The ultimate response was that a penny farthing on skyline is the way to go.

It seems someone has figured out where in Canada it is worth strategically voting. So take a look to see if you live in an important riding.

I wonder if it is worth setting up a counter website that says if you live in a riding where the Tories, Grits or Bloc are almost certain to win, then you can vote to give the NDP or Greens money. Remember your vote is worth C$6.

"At least in this part of McCain-Palin energy policy it doesn t seem that Palin will add much to the debate other than supporting the official position on clean coal." -- y Matthew McDermott, treehugger.com .

Where has Mrs Palin ever added to the debate? Well except for me to mention her in my blog and getting mentioned on almost any other news source.

Remember, put your C$6 to work, vote green.

Thanks to all that donated to the MS society in my name. Thanks to the generous donations and a match from Google I surpassed my goal and I may even get a cool bike jersey from the event. The actual ride was a lot of fun. The ride was very well supported. It felt more like 8 12 mile rides the first day instead of one 100 mile ride. The second day was even better. I managed to tag along with a group of cyclists from Deloitte who I could draft off of, for the second half of the ride, which made it very fast and a good learning experience. I have not had many opportunities to draft on rolling hills before.

The first day route had 7400ft of climbing over the 100 miles. The second day route had only 3500 over the 75 miles. However, by looking at the routes it is obvious that neither day was exactly the most direct route to the destination. Which is ok, I had all day to do the ride on each day and didn't have to turn around and ride home afterwards.

Speaking of afterwards, when I got back to AT&T park to pick up my stuff, I tried to ride back to my house. That was the slowest riding I have done for a very long time. The bright spot was I passed a couple of people starting on the wiggle, who did comment that everyone seems to be passing them :)

So, I would like to see the Green party win this election. There are some other good parties running canidates this time around. The Rhino's are back! There is also the 'Work Less Party' and the Bloc Qu b cois.