Remembering Mosaic at Sun

This probably dates me, but I still remember the time back in probably the mid 90's when Eric Schmidt as CTO at Sun, had to call a "Town Hall" meeting because so many employees were outraged that he had started charging departments something like $25 per month, per employee to use Mosaic. Considering where he is now, he clearly saw the light.

(2008-04-15 13:57:45.0) Comments [0] // Permalink

Human Pavlov

Too much of Sega Dreamcast (back in the day) has left me with some brain cells configured such that any time I hear Rage Against the Machine's "Guerrilla Radio" I think of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2, and whenever I hear Offspring's "All I Want", I want to play some Crazy Taxi. Must figure out how to mark and sweep those from my head...

(2008-02-19 15:00:13.0) // Permalink

So much for being ahead of the game.

I always seem to wait until the last minute to get my wife flowers for Valentine's day, but this year I miraculously thought of it earlier than usual and last week went on FTD.com to pick out something and schedule a delivery for the 14th. Before I submitted the order, I double checked the date and everything, so you can imagine my surprise when I was working from home a few days later and saw a shipment email from Fedex cross my inbox. I scratched my head when I saw the subject. Fedex? I didn't order anything Fexex. Looked at the mail, and it was the flowers - fresh Tulips - being shipped from Miami. Uh, uh oh. Those weren't supposed to be delivered for over a week. And since I was working from home with my wife here taking care of our 2 month old, I couldn't quite ring up FTD and try to fix it. So I did what I could and sent them an email asking them to fix the delivery or refund me as this is kind of embarrassing. I got a canned response from FTD essentially saying "we'll get back to within a couple of days." So yes, the flowers did arrive by Fedex too early. And my wife was definitely surprised, not necessarily how I had planned though. But still no response from FTD. I waited a couple more days, I didn't want to mess them up by calling them while my email was in a queue somehere. A couple of days later I got a message from Paypal - I had used Paypal to pay for the flowers. It was a refund notice. A REFUND! I rubbed my eyes, FTD actually gave me a refund?! I didn't quite believe it 'cause I still didn't get any response directly from FTD. Until a day or two later when they finally responded. They apologized for the service error and said that they did actually refund my order. Kudo's FTD for just doing the right thing. Much better experience than several years ago when I ordered from 1-800-FLOWERS and the flowers weren't delivered on Valentine's day, and didn't arrive until a few days later. And when I complained, the best they could do was give me a partial credit.

(2008-02-10 12:52:57.0) // Permalink

Is it me or does Mail.app suck?

Normally I steer clear of Mail.app on OS X, but I was trying to test something for Curtis so I had to actually go and set up an account in Mail.app. I don't know if its me, or people just don't do anything out of the normal on Macs, or its the Mac Fanatics who gloss over the issues but it seems like when ever I try to do something that seems simple on OS X, I get some cryptic message. This time its even better than the last time I had a problem So, as I mentioned, all I wanted to do was configure Mail.app to connect to my IMAP server. Now I run my own IMAP server, and it runs on a non-standard port, and SSL is enabled with a self-signed certificate. A little out of the ordinary, but Thunderbird handles it just fine. I muck around with the account setup options and find the places to enable SSL and change the IMAP port number. Not much different than Thunderbird. So I expected to see something similar to Thunderbird when I click "Get Mail" for the first time. Which is, that a notice about the self-signed certificate pops up, and I am asked to allow or deny it. Not so with Mail.app. It just spins a while. Never really gives up, never really does anything. Ok so a quick web search and I find about Mail.app and self-signed certificates so I give it a try. Try to quit and restart Mail.app. First off I need to force quit. Odd. When it starts up, The icon next to the INBOX is different. And here's the greatest error message of all. I click on Mail.app, and all I hear is a "Bong". WTF does that mean?!

(2008-01-23 15:56:30.0) Comments [1] // Permalink

I have away $500 in Persimmons and all I got...

Is this thanks you letter/picture. No, seriously. We have a huge Hachiya persimmon tree in our yard. Every year it produces way more than we can possibly consume so we end up picking them and giving them away. This year's take was probably about 200 persimmons. When I looked on safeway.com at the time they were going for $2.49 each. EACH!. It amazes at how much interest there is in them. For years there was a family around the block that would come back every year even before I picked them to harvest them for themselves. Last year I posted a message to the local "freecycle" alias and have had people save my email address and contact me again this year to ask about them. I also had freeloaders whine that I should have parceled out portions to leave more for others. Whatever. Actually its not quite true that the drawing is the only thing we got. There's always a few persimmons out of the reach of my picker that I have to leave on the tree. Some folks offered to buy them until we explained we can't get to them. Not to worry, they asked if they could come back with ladders and their own picker, which they did. And in return they gave us a box of Trader Joe's Truffles, they are actually pretty good. I expect we'll see them again next year.

(2007-12-30 14:20:29.0) // Permalink

No-lactose pot pie

I had a hankering for turkey pot pie the other day. I had cooked a turkey for Christmas - thanks Alton for the excellent brined recipe - and I thought it would be tasty to make some of the left overs into a pot pie. Only problem is that my wife is lactose-intolerant so the typical cream sauce wouldn't do. After a brief search of the internets I found a gem of a Chicken Pot Pie recipe. I didn't have any plain soy yogurt handy so I can't vouch for the crust, but the sauce and the filling was quite tasty. I ended up just making a basic biscuit dough for the crust. And even better, I found a source of milk free ideas now by finding the recipe on this Got No Milk blog.

(2007-12-29 14:24:32.0) // Permalink

A couple for couch potatos with kids

Not surprisingly, since the new kid arrived, I have been spending a bit more time in front of the TV surfing around, while feeding/chilling with the kid. It still amazes me that I've got over 300 channels and its difficult to find something interesting to watch all the time. But there are a couple of shows that have caught my eye lately. Hard as Nails - This is a profile of a 28 year old un-ordained minister, Justin Fatica, who uses unorthodox techniques in his preaching. I was raised as a Roman-Catholic but I'm not currently "following my faith." I think what's fascinating about this is a couple of things. First, how fanatical people can be about religion. Even young people. When I was a kid, it was like pulling teeth for my parents to get me to go to Catechism school, so its interesting to see young kids really into it. I also find it interesting how driven Justin is. Through verbal abuse from nay-sayers as well as preaching techniques which cause him pain physically, he doesn't appear to skip a beat. Whether his drive is misguided or not is hard to say, but just seeing someone that driven for something is impressive. ...So Goes The Nation - An excellent expose on the 2004 Presidential Election in Ohio. Besides copious interviews from the "men" in charge, it follows the lives of several individuals down at the grassroots level. I got a sense when watching this is that the "leaders" of the media machines didn't really care so much that they are fighting for particular parties as much as they are just interested in being the winner. One memorable young man they follow is part of a college "votemob", and I found it a bit ironic that he's working for the Republicans and yet he's got a car that he has to get in from the passenger side because the driver side door doesn't work.

(2007-12-29 14:14:48.0) // Permalink

Christmas Karaoke

The other night I pulled out a an old print out I made a few years ago of a bunch of Christmas Carols, so that I could sing them to my daughter. I was kind of surprised at how interested she was in listening and trying to sing since she's only three. It also surprised me that I couldn't remember the tune to several of them. Then I started thinking, how could I get some music to sing to. I'm not a musician, and can hardly hold a note, but my daughter doesn't really care. All I really wanted was some musical accompaniment. Then it struck me. Karaoke! The great thing is that you can do this all on your computer/laptop/desktop. And you can even purchase and download MP3+G files. And you can do it on the cheap, even better. 'Course you won't get your vocals out the speakers, but that's no big deal if you are just singing with your friends/family. A quick run down. First you need some Karaoke software. For Mac I found KJams. The "Lite" version is shareware and only $10. For Windows, there's KaraWin, which as a "Free" version. Either of those are enough to play CD+G's and MP3+G's. So now all you need are some of those files to play. I'm sure there are a bunch of sites out there, but the first one I found was Buy Karaoke Downloads. Songs go for the typical 99 cents. You could easily round out a collection of 10-20 carols for under $20. Not bad for hours of fun with your kid(s).

(2007-12-19 13:48:28.0) Comments [1] // Permalink

Restaurant Idea

While I was up last night, in a sleep deprived semi-consciousness, watching TV while feeding the kid a 2AM, I had one of those Great Ideas like Jed. I was watching Iron Chef America "Carrot Battle", and one of the courses was a sort of carrot cannonelli, which one of the judges commented that it could be the basis of a vegetarian meal. It actually did look pretty delicious. Then I thought, hey why not create a Iron Chef themed restaurant? Feature the courses of the winners of the battles on some regular basis. I guess it could end up being a little campy, but it seems like a novel idea. But the motivation is really that they come up with some pretty unique meals that you don't typically find in restaurants, so why not feature them in a way for the public to taste. Maybe I need to go back to bed.

(2007-12-09 08:16:15.0) Comments [1] // Permalink

My Christmas List - Part 1

It would be really great to get one of them Dodge Sprinter's for Christmas. I'm sure it gets horrible gas mileage but the thing is probably the ultimate in flexibility. There are so many different options and ways to trick that bad boy out, I doubt one could ever get tired of it.

(2007-11-29 15:35:28.0) Comments [2] // Permalink

And you really wonder why people pay $400 for an iPhone?

I don't.

(2007-11-20 12:13:49.0) Comments [1] // Permalink

Scarf girl who are you?

I saw "scarf girl" again today driving into Palo Alto on University. She's almost always riding a bicycle and always wearing one of those really long scarves wrapped once around her neck and dangling down from there. I must admit I am fascinated by her. Probably partly because I've seen her so many times driving into PA. Its almost eerie how many times, considering I don't recall recognizing or seeing anyone else so many times on any part of my commute. Who is she? And where is she going? I've seen her going the opposite direction in the evening when I'm heading out of Palo Alto, so she must be heading out to some job. But I don't recall there being many businesses on the Bay side of 101 at University except for Ming's and I think a Porsche dealership. And the scarf and bicycle. Clearly what caught my eye in the first place. She's usually pretty well dressed. Dressed nice enough where it seems odd that she's riding a bike to where ever she's going. So where is she going!? Arg.

(2007-11-20 12:07:14.0) Comments [2] // Permalink

Meerkat Manor

I was just thinking how brilliant the Discovery Channel show "Meerkat Manor" is. The way they attach human characteristics to the Meerkat family and the narration of how they live their lives is very compelling. So compelling, you forget that they are most likely just living their lives as they are genetically programmed to do, and are in fact weighing alternatives and making active decisions while evaluating their possible consequences. And that they possess such emotions as jealousy, love, hate, anger and shame, to name a few. My wife vowed not to watch the show anymore after the episode when Flower died attempting to defend her family against a Cobra that had invaded their den. I must admit that I was a bit saddened as well. It almost enough for me denounce my past carnivorous lifestyle, and even take the leap and join PETA. But then, dang, pulled-pork sandwiches are just so good.

(2007-10-28 07:51:29.0) // Permalink

Its a dirty job...

... but the city will do it. So, as with many older houses, the sewer line running to the city occasionally clogs. The city used to clean our sewer line for free, but apparently it became too expensive so they discontinued the service. Well, we got our fair use out of it, so although I was saddened to see it go, I understood. Yesterday, the line backed up again, and so I called one of your yellow pages sewer line fixers, which don't give you an estimate over the phone, to just come and snake our line. After a good two hour wait, someone comes by. I show him my clean out near the house, and he asks if there is a city clean out. Uh, well there is, but its covered by grass - last time this happened I actually needed some pipe replaced and they put a property line clean out in. And I was pretty convinced the problem was before the city main line anyways. He mentioned that the city would clean from the property line for free and if the blockage were from there, then I would save some money. Well I just wanted to get it done yesterday, so at first told him, I was tired of waiting and to just do it, but then wised up a little asked him for a quote first. When he said the minimum charge would be nearly $500, I really wised up and thanked him for his time and sent him on his way. So now I had to find the grass covered clean out. After about an hour of poking in the grass with a pitch fork I did finally find it. It was no where near where I though it was - and of course when I mention it to my wife she knew exactly where it was, thanks for offering up that information honey. Now, checking where the clog was, I opened a hose on the house side clean out... and wouldn't you know it, the frickin' blockage did appear to be on the city side. I wasn't entirely convinced because we have pipe called "orangeberg" which is actually some sort of compressed tar-paper thing which runs right under a bunch of rose bushes and I figured some roots just broke through and snuck down there. Anyways, so I call the city today, they send someone out within maybe 30 minutes. The only way I know they are there is that I here the snake running outside. So I peek through the window, and don't see them at the city clean out. What the heck? Ahh, there they are, at the house clean out. Nice! Wonderful! They are doing the entire run from the house. I thought they stopped that? Oh well, not going to point it out to him now. Expecting that he'll knock on the door when he's done, I get some cash ready to tip him, after all he just saved me somewhere around $500, but alas, he did not knock. Just packed up and left. Well, here's to you, Mr. City Public Works fellow, I bow in your general direction.

(2007-10-09 15:10:30.0) Comments [3] // Permalink

Caltans has failed me again

I had high hopes that the 85/101 Interchange Project would ease congestion in that area, which had a lofty goal of reducing the onramps and offramps in that area from like 8 to 3 in a 2 mile stretch. But alas, after completion of the project congestion really isn't much better, and it leaves me still amazed at how little Caltrans knows about traffic. Although the project did reduce the number of ramps in the area, I think it has some fatal flaws. First of all, from the non-carpool entry to 101 from 85, as traffic enters 101, the two lanes from 85 are merged into one and then about 1/4 mile ahead that lane merges into the lane next to it. If that weren't bad enough, that merged lane then merges with another onramp only perhaps 1/8 of a mile down. Now, one nice thing about the new interchange is that the carpool lane from 85 merges directly into the carpool lane on 101, however, first off, there is about a 1/4 mile where there are two commuter lanes, which then merge into one. And, the best part is that the merge happens around the same spot as all the non-carpool lane merges. So, essentially you have about 3 or 4 lanes all merging at the same spot on 101. How can that not be a recipe for a parking lot? And how did Caltrans even plan it this way in the first place? Do they not have computer models, and simulations and so on that didn't indicate this was going to be trouble? And the best part. They are now making preparations for enabling traffic metering lights from the non-carpool entry of 85 to 101. Why did they even redo the interchange if this were going to be the plan? It would have been a lot cheaper to just put the metering lights in the old interchange. Arg!

(2007-08-28 15:37:02.0) // Permalink