Saturday, November 28, 2009

Cars. Delayed post.

Today we made it up to the San Fransisco car show. Most of the pictures out of this show will be of the high end Lambos and Aston Martins. I'm a little bored of that. Last weekend, just driving around the Bay Area - I saw a Viper, Aston Martin and a Lamborghini Diablo. Instead, my new favorite thing is flat paint jobs.



When I first starting seeing this trend in the summer of 08' I loved it. Mr S. hated it. Which I honestly can't believe. He'll put lambo doors and anything that moves. Yet a little flat paint turns him off. Seriously.

Previous sightings here and here. It's the first time I've seen them in color. Previously it's been flat black.

Lexus really seems to be embracing the flat back trend.



They had two cars painted that way.



Flat yellow Lamborghini MurciƩlago.



Not sure I love the flat grey so much.








Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Modern art? It's bullshit.

Since I'd gotten the weekend wrong for the car show - we decided to find something else to do. The San Fransisco Museum of Art is right across the street from the Moscone so we decided to go there. I'd seen pictures of some of the displays before and thought they were interesting.

We walked up to get tickets. Right at this moment, a woman says "I have an extra ticket if you want it". Mr S. and I look at each other and attempt to tell her we'd buy it. In a hurried tone she says "take it - I have to go in", and thrusts it into my hand and rushes into the museum. We thank her as she's rushing off, and buy just one ticket.

As soon as we get in - I become a little surly. It was all just photographs. Not art. The net is filled with photographs. And, some really good ones I might add. I explain to Mr S. that I'd seen pictures out of this place of sculptures and they were pretty interesting. So, we walk through the floors and my mood doesn't get any better.

Mr S. however finds this funny. He starts pointing out the ridiculousness of the displays. Including, but not limited to, a sheet of white paper with 4 thumbtacks. I swear to you - it was an art display. A completely grey canvass.



A cervix.



A display of cardboard boxes. Painted white.





How is that fing art? That is a Mailboxes Etcetera.

The whole thing was just stupid, and I left feeling really glad that woman had given us that ticket. I was pissed to even pay 15 bucks to get in. Honestly.

Monday, November 23, 2009

Success. Sort of.

I know most of you stalkers come to the blog in the morning. So I'm going to give you something for the morning. Sort of.

I'm going to try really hard to push a post out my SFMOMA by the end of the day tomorrow.

You know.. when that whole pig flu thing started happening. I don't even remember when it started now. I said to myself - self - that whole thing is bullshit. I'm just going to be in as many crowds as possible and slightly infect myself so I can gain the immunity. I never got the swine flu, but I have had a cold almost all summer long.

I finally had to take antibiotics. But, the whole thing leaves me really tired.

That is all.

Saturday, November 21, 2009

Saturday fail.



Today we were up in the city. There was suppose to be a car show. Yeah, I know this blog has been more car shows than technology lately. You see we are in a recession. Right? Tech is mostly in survival mode more than anything else. So, they aren't showing as much stuff off lately. Even my robot show was canceled in Nov. I think everyone is saving their powder for CES in a little over month.

Since we were going to be in the city, we decided to find a place to find some sourdough starter. I wanted this to be the winter of bread making. It hasn't gotten super rainy yet. So, I haven't really begun.

Anyway. This took us to the Ferry building. I've never been there in the daytime. Only at night. In the day - they have this great farmers market.

Oh - not just any old farmers market. They have cheeses and bread. And, they had this shop that had more mushroom varieties than I've seen in the whole bay area.



I've passed this place a ton of times, but I thought it was just a run of the mill farmers market. So, I've never been interested to stop. But this place called Boulettes Larder had live sourdough starter, and now I regret never having stopped. Honestly, I was in such a hurry to get to the car show that we spent about 30 minutes there.

When we got to Moscone I realized that I had the weekend wrong. It's next weekend.

We wound up stopping over at the SFMOMA. Which was super annoying. But, I'll post about that tomorrow.

Now I have to learn how to keep my yeast alive.

Friday, November 20, 2009

Audrey.



Every so often - I drive by my old house. I will always be attached to that house. Not because I loved it - because of the enormous struggles the house holds. I'm starting to think that I'll be attached forever to all my houses. Every one of them has been a struggle.

I tend to drive by that house a little more than I might normally be inclined. The people who own it now bought at the height of the market. I always hope they are okay. I don't know why.

So, I drive by apprehensively to see if there is a fore sale sign in the front. And I feel relief when I see none. They've never changed one single item in the front. It looks exactly like the day we sold it. I'm always perplexed by this. Not one bush. Not one flower. It's all the same.

Anyway, a few blocks from the house was a giant little shop of horrors plant. It must have been left over from Halloween. The house... a crapshack. It would be perfect for taking over. In another time. The neighbors with pristine lawns, and well kept houses. I just found it funny. I mean, they put a lot of effort into the decoration. The house. Not so much.

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Sprint, a company the government can brag about being better than.

We've been with Sprint for all of two months. We've already logged over 10 hours of tech support. Oh no. I'm not kidding. How these people can not figure out why they are bleeding money is beyond me. Just walk into one of your stores Sprint! Simple as that. Look. Let me help you.

A few weeks ago, Mr S's Palm Pre stopped wanting to connect to internetty things. Like turn by turn navigation, and the Internet. He finally broke down and called tech support. Our previous experiences on tech support ate up hours of time. So deciding to call them was no small decision.

Three tech support guys (who all had him do the same thing-despite being landed in front line support and back line support) and two and a half hours later Mr S. is given a trouble ticket and sent to a Sprint brick store in our city.

We walk in, show the ticket number and ask for the repair department. The girl just looks at us, then around the store like "duh, you can see this isn't a repair store". We tell her customer support sent us there.

Oh yeah, she says -the customer support line has been doing that. The repair store is in the city next door.

She gave no hint she would call them and make them stop sending people to the store when there wasn't actually a repair shop there. Oh well. Not her job. Most people have nothing better to do with their lives anyway. Right?

We drive to the repair shop, and the guy tells us to come back in an hour. We don't want to do that, we leave a number to have them call us when the phone is fixed. After three hours we call. It's taking longer than expected. They will call us.

See why I didn't just want to drop back in after an hour?

Finally about 5:00, they call and say the phone is done. We hop over there. They hand us the phone. Mr S. asks "what did they do to fix it"?

The rep - I don't know, but it's fixed.

Mr S. - well, I want to know how they fixed it.

The rep - you know what was wrong with it.

Me - Can you ask the guy what he did to fix it?

He finally walks over and talks to the tech and Mr S. walks over too. The tech is behind this bank style bullet proof glass with holes and a tiny slot kind of deal. The tech tells him he wiped the phone. Mr S. responds that the techs on phone support already did that. So, the guy tells him he should test the phone before he leaves. Mr S. is kind of annoyed because if the tech would have read anything in the trouble ticket he would have known the phone was already wiped.

Mr S. tries his phone, and it still doesn't work. The tech takes his phone back and doesn't say anything to us. So we assume we are just suppose to wait around. This is where I start focusing on the employees. There are 12 employees in the store. One shopper. Three people including us on the repair side. And there was this other woman who was just hanging out.

Three of employees were just sitting around in the repair side. One was surfing on his phone. One was poking holes in his forehead with his fingers and rubbing his face like he was trying not to fall asleep, and the other was just hanging out with the friend. I immediately wanted to fire all these people.

Most of the other employees were trying to look busy by doing stuff on the terminals. Still - only one customer in the store. 12 employees.

Finally after 20 minutes they decided to swap the phone out.

The whole thing took all day. We finally got out about 6:00. I've spent less time in the DMV behind a hundred people in line in front of me. Sprint would make any government bureaucracy proud.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

More interesting than any insect had a right to be. The rise and fall of Jeff the mantid.



We woke up on Sunday and found that Jeff had died. We were surprised she lived as long as she did. Still, it was somewhat of a bummer. Which proves you can get attached to anything. Truthfully she turned out to be a really clean pet. Although the last couple of weeks she did start to take on a fishy tone. We were trying to resolve how we'd handle that.

We were always fascinated about how well she adjusted to being handled. She had no fear of us, and in the end seemed like she owned us rather than us owning her. Without putting to many human characteristics on her - she seemed to like the human interaction. Which I think mostly amounted to enjoying body heat. Even though they are cold blooded, she often sought places that were warmer. Computer monitors. People. The fireplace.

This picture was from the first escape. You can see how big and fat she was. We kept the lid on her a lot more after that. It took us a while to find her.



She never flew, and the only time she'd use her wings was to threaten. Which always made this amazingly loud scraping sound. And the only time she seemed inclined to leave her cup was when it was time to lay an egg sack. She laid her last one a couple of days before she died. 3 and a half in total. Though only one is fertilized.

Even then, she wouldn't fly anywhere. Opting instead to just fall off the table. On Friday she did this and took off. We let her, because she'd been cooped up for a while. This is where she encountered Saffron and threatened her. Which was pretty funny.

It was totally unexpected that there could be any attempt to domesticate these things. But, she seemed content to just hang out on her Styrofoam cup. Often unattended. When you'd walk into the room, she'd swing her head around and just watch you.



I think the best hope is getting them when they are an inch of so in size. Before they get their wings and become adults. Feeding her moths seemed to give us the biggest bang for the insect food buck. In summer that was much easier.

Anyway.

The End.

Monday, November 16, 2009

Ya'll squeeze in.


On Saturday Mr S. and I decided we were going to a car show in Sacramento. I've actually never been. I've never had the motivation to go there, and it turns out I'm not missing all that much.

I spent a fair amount of time yelping a place to have lunch. Because lets face it. I live to go out of town to eat. The thing about suburbs - they are bathed in the soft white glow of conformity. They all have the same strip mall eateries. My city is especially interesting in that if a good chain exists, it will find a way to crap it up. Restaurants close here faster than you can say "hey, didn't that new place just open".

And, you can tell the city is dying for good places. When a new restaurant opens the place is packed for two solid months. Then everyone vanishes because they suck. The yelpers in my town even make jokes and bets about how soon things will close. It isn't just me. It's an official running joke.

Anyway, sometimes I'll even go over to flickr to see if people are sharing photos of good places to eat. Which is what I did for Sacramento. This is where I ran across photos from this guy.

We set out for Sacramento on Saturday, and got up there around 11:30. Completely passed the place 2 times. When we did find it - my first response was "holy shit! Look at the line"! The restaurant itself is literally the size of three Chevy SUV's packed side by side.



So, we feel the wait will be short. We find a place behind this suburban biker group who honestly can be best described by that recent South Park Episode about bikers here.



By noon my mood is starting to go downhill. I'm fine if I don't eat anything until noon - but between 12 and 12:30 I start getting surly. After that I just stop talking. Mr S. will ask me a question, and I just start replying with "I don't knows." Which is what happened. Oh, we are at that spot then? He says. I just glare.

When I was younger I could not eat anything until the evening. I'd be hungry, but fine. Now my blood sugar drops off and it gets super moody if I don't eat something by noon.

So, this line is unrelenting. We stand there for more than an hour and a half. Not one person walked up to that line and aborted. Not one person left. No one said "hell no, I'm not waiting in that line". All the while they have signs every where about the businesses towing your car if you park in their lot. And it was freezing cold that day.

It took us almost two hours to get our burgers. It was slight before 2:00. I'd gone to check on the car at 1:30. There was a tow truck sitting in the parking lot. So I was pretty glad I'd gone to check. Though it didn't look like they were towing anyone.

If I was in the area again. I'd probably do it all over. Not on peak hours though. If that place ever has non peak.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Still limping along.

Last night Mr S. came up to me and said - guess how big my disk drive is.

Me - 200 gig. I said proudly.

He points to the ground.

Me - Whaaaaaat?

Him - 80 gigs.

Me - No way! It's like from the 1970's.

Him - when I bought that drive 5 years ago, it was a decent size. Drives double in size every year.

Me - well, more than double right? When I got that terabyte drive it was about a year ago and now they are out with 2.5s.

Him - I've even been seeing terabyte laptop drives now.

Me - that's crazy. I think I've chewed through 4 sets of drives in that time, and you are still on the same drive.

I hope to be fully up by this weekend. But, I'm also going out of town-ish and hope to have something interesting for you.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Offline.

I don't know when I'm going to get back online. I got hit with a virus. Spent the last day just trying to get a bootable CD. It so irritates me that you have to play 7 games of twister to find a valid bootable image.

Oh - back in the day you used to be able to just burn a floppy. Machines these days don't come with floppies, and for some reason burning a bootable CD or thumb drive image seems to be an act of nature. And of course, when you buy a machine these days they hardly even give you the CD's for the OS, little alone a boot disk.

I was feeling so clever that I raided my drive (mirror). But, that only helps you in a failure. When you have a corruption. Both drives are corrupted.

And, since I'm dealing with a terabyte drive. It litterally takes 4 hours for just about everything. Even a virus scan. Which is what got my into this problem in the first place. Instead of running a full scan - I rebooted. Yeah me. I told you I wasn't smart.

It's amazing how butt puckered you get when you realize that 1000's of gigabytes of pictures are at risk.

Anyway. If you were wondering.

Sunday, November 08, 2009

Saturday, November 07, 2009

Freeway stories.

Today was suppose to go much, much differently. We were going to get some lunch in Santa Clara, then go to the Tech Museum.

Yeah... notsomuch.

In the roughly 10 miles it took to get through San Jose to Santa Clara there were 6 accidents. I've never seen anything like it. Especially on a sunny, unobstructed day. And they weren't follow on accidents. Every two miles or so - someone had spun out, or crashed into someone. It was just the weirdest thing. I've seen a ton of pileups, but never so many in such a short stretch.





If you look closely where those guys are standing - you can see a tire. This was a full on rollover.





The whole thing was the suckiest thing ever. And, there were even a few bad ass cars on the road. But, since the traffic was so thick I couldn't get a clean shot.

Lamborghini diablo. They were only 250 grand new. Now a mere 200 grand.



And a meh Tesla Electric. They do cost a lot of money though.



It amazes me how often I can get shots of really expensive sports cars. It's like Silicon Valley is paved with pricey sports cars. Which makes me happy.

Then, there was this funny dog.



The whole traffic thing sucked the life out of me. So I didn't get to the museum.

Tuesday, November 03, 2009

Great. Before long we are going to get a drum circle.

Today I was at the drug store picking up eye KY for Saffron. It's basically sterile Vaseline. Usually the stuff costs around 10 bucks. But, the store I was in had the prices as high as 18 bucks. For a tiny tube of Vaseline mineral oil two inches long. Which sort of pissed me off. I mean - the people who would normally use this stuff is old people. And, 18 bucks. Why not bend them over and ball gag them. It's ridiculous. Oh no... there isn't any inflation here though.

My pissed offedness didn't stop there. When I checked out the item was 10.99, but my charge was 12.08. You see it's the small items were you really notice the state is raping you. A buck in tax. 9.75%. When you buy a bunch of stuff it gets lost in the noise of overcharging. Then, I guess I'm just a little pissed that starting today the state is basically mugging Californian's.

Apparently they can just say they are going to randomly take 10% more in taxes. But, it isn't a tax. You will get it back in April. These assholes don't get that everyone who can - will just change their withholding so they get even less money.

Then, I guess my town is being successful at making this place and "art" town. Which is basically code for bum haven. These people looked to be camping in the parking lot of the drug store. They were all hanging out in their bean bags on the ground. I know it looks like they might be broken down. Yet their beggar sign said "can you spare a smiley". Which is so fing Berkeley style bumming. Pisses me off.





Plus my cell phone didn't get very good shots. I should know to never leave the house without my camera.

Sunday, November 01, 2009

Bad ass cars - stuff you don't see everyday edition.



Mr S. and I were driving down the freeway and this black viper passes us.

I say - Ooooh. Viper!. Then start whipping out the camera to take photos. Just at that moment, Mr S. catches the Ford GT crawling up on us. He was back drafting the Viper. I don't think they were together as they went in different directions.



I don't really like these Ford GT's. But, Mr S. does. And he says they are pretty uncommon. They've only made them one year or something. Much more rare than Vipers. I still think they're ugly.

The GT got off on the same freeway exit as we were getting off on. Mr S. thought he might be going to the exotic car lot. I said he was probably going to Hooters. Which was just a block away.

We run our errand. Two hours later we were in the same area finishing the errand which just happened to be a couple of blocks from the hooters. Which we had to pass to get back on the freeway. And.... who do you guess was at the Hooters? Ford GT guy. Mr S. and I both laugh. I win!

If that guy can afford that car - he should really think about getting better chicks. The hooters girls are pretty meh. And what is with those 70's shorts?

OMG! They killed Kenny!





For your entertainment Davis.

Mr S. was able to re-purpose the pumpkins by just changing the mouths. Before pictures for everyone else here.