October 25th, 2004
Jon Stewart on 60 Minutes. Without question, Stewart is the best journalist on television today. As everyone and their aunt know, his appearance on Crossfire is destined to become a classic of television history, and is on its way to being one of the most downloaded clips on the internet (more than Crossfire's normal audience, in fact). —Continue reading....
October 26th, 2004
I lived in New York for over 18 years. In that time, I never needed a car, never even had a license. (This will make perfect sense for anyone who lived in New York, and be a completely foreign concept to just about every one else in the world.) —Continue reading....
October 28th, 2004
I was 17 in 1986 when the Boston Red Sox lost to my beloved New York Mets, thanks in part to an errant ball through the wickets of Bill Buckner. I didn't know much about "The Curse of the Bambino" at the time, I was just thrilled that my team had won its first World Series in those 17 years. Who cared about a 75 year old curse? —Continue reading....
January 1st, 2006
On my way home today I noticed a van engulfed in white smoke. My first thought, of course, photo-op! Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera with me, so I sped home, grabbed my camera bag and dashed off to take a few shots. By the time I got back, whatever fire there was was put out, and the van was soaked with foam and water. Not wanting to leave empty-handed, I took a few shots of what was left (and of the firefighters): —Continue reading....
January 1st, 2006
Back in college, everyone drank way too much alcohol, leading to the inevitable purging in front of the porcelain god. When it was bad enough that we couldn't make it into work that day, we used the standard excuse: "I had some kind of stomach flu". This was code for "I had way too much to drink last night, and I am still paying for it" and everyone knew it. —Continue reading....
April 9th, 2006
I've decided that there very much needs to be an Undercover Brother Meets Austin Powers movie. —Continue reading....
April 12th, 2006
After several years of talk and no action, the New York Mets organization announced recently that they'll be building a new ballpark for the team. —Continue reading....
April 15th, 2006
I have an A.C.T. (American Conservatory Theatre) subscription which allows me to see the seven plays A.C.T. puts on each year. Today's play is "The Rivals". Perhaps I'll give a report on it upon my return. —Continue reading....
April 16th, 2006
As I mentioned on Saturday, Ying and I went to see The Rivals, a laugh-out-loud comedy you may not be familiar with, but which has probably influenced you. It's the play by Richard Sheridan that introduced Mrs. Malaprop, the woman who constantly used the wrong words, to hilarious effect. —Continue reading....
April 21st, 2006
Ying was over the other night, and as we flipped the stations looking for something to watch, we came across Deal or No Deal. I've watched it a few times before; it's an interesting game of chance driven by greed, and injected with hot, well-dressed models with money-filled suitcases. —Continue reading....
April 23rd, 2006
Ying does it again. Last night, once again, we're lazing around, this time after a day of wine tasting in Sonoma County. On tv is Pretty Woman. At some point after Julia Roberts is offered "the deal", Ying turns to me and asks: —Continue reading....
April 23rd, 2006
One of the reasons I love living in the Bay Area is how close we are to interesting activities outside “the city”. One of these activities is visiting wine country, either Napa or Sonoma. And going to wine country is a day trip at worst, even from the south bay: a couple hours drive and you're surrounded by grape vines and group tours. —Continue reading....
May 26th, 2006
OK, so most people who know me know I enjoy beer. But not just any beer. No, it has to be good beer. No cheap watery beers for me, thank you very much. Some may say I'm rather a bit of a beer snob in fact. I tend to prefer beer connoisseur. —Continue reading....
July 4th, 2006
For the second time since moving to the Bay Area, I found myself following the 17-Mile Drive, and for the second time since moving to the Bay Area, I found myself wondering why I was following the 17-Mile Drive. —Continue reading....
July 10th, 2006
Everyone's trying to improve the security of their websites these days. Several banks have started using on-line images you select, along with a normal username/password combination, to determine if to let you in. —Continue reading....
July 12th, 2006
A couple of days ago I wrote about Washington Mutual's new security "challenge questions". So put off was I by the fact that I couldn't choose just about any of their questions for my profile, and that without selecting a set of questions, I couldn't access my account, I called them up. —Continue reading....
July 14th, 2006
An aside to the Washington Mutual issue with silly security questions. Turns out this was something they first announced in December 2005 in a press release. The release is full of your typical flowery prose that says a lot of nothing: —Continue reading....
July 21st, 2006
I've started watching Psych, the new "fake psychic/real detective" show on USA. It stars one of my favorite actors, Dulé Hill, from The West Wing. He's not the main character, he's the sidekick, but he's funny as hell. —Continue reading....
November 12th, 2006
The city of Campbell has a weekly farmers' market. Every couple of months, Y and I stroll through the 4-block-long market, sampling the foods and enjoying the weather. And, every couple of months, I find myself drawn in by the allure of the fresh food and pay lots of money for stuff I could get cheaper at the local Safeway, freshness be damned. This time, I bought the following items: —Continue reading....
November 15th, 2006
I'm sick of all the cheaters in the carpool lanes.—Continue reading....
November 17th, 2006
There's some kind of stomach virus floating around Silicon Valley. About a dozen or so people in my department at work have come down with stomach-flu-like symptoms, some lasting about 24 hours, others lasting three or four days. One guy had to go to the emergency room at 4 am after he collapsed and slammed his head onto his sink. —Continue reading....
November 18th, 2006
Some eight or nine months ago, Y and I found ourselves on one of our many drives along the California coast, cruising down Highway 1. We came upon a lighthouse and decided to stop in. Although we couldn't get to the top (because they closed it for repair), we did learn that once a year, on the anniversary of the first time the lighthouse went into operation, they fire up the lights for a few hours, giving visitors a taste of what hundreds of ships saw to guide them safely.—Continue reading....
November 22nd, 2006
As I mentioned the other day, Y and I went to Pigeon Point Lighthouse, hoping for some pretty photographs. Alas, our position didn't allow it. We did take a few nice shots, though.—Continue reading....
November 24th, 2006
I mean, really. (In Costco parking lot.) —Continue reading....
November 29th, 2006
I abhor bad drivers. I've often wished I could pull over that guy in the 1988 Acura who made a right turn from a no-turn middle lane, veered into the car-pool lane during rush hour with no one in his car, all without signaling.—Continue reading....
December 1st, 2006
On a recent episode of Says You!, the host, Richard Sher asked the panel to explain the food "muesli". He'd never heard the word before, and when he came across it, he figured it would be a stumper.—Continue reading....
December 1st, 2006
FilmCritic posted its top 10 movie spaceships, and somehow manages to leave out Serenity, the Firefly-class spaceship from the Joss Whedon movie. How do you talk about the top 10 movie spaceships and leave out Serenity? It's one of the sexiest, coolest-flying ships out there.—Continue reading....
December 5th, 2006
I must implore you: Don't buy a Nintendo Wii.—Continue reading....
December 6th, 2006
The Porsches are sexy cars, and I'd very much enjoy driving one. Preferably a convertible, but I'd settle for a coupe. Unfortunately, the Porsches sell for about $50,000 and up. Way up.—Continue reading....
December 17th, 2006
It's 5:30 on a Sunday morning, and I'm about to go stand in line for a Nintendo Wii. What am I, crazy? —Continue reading....
December 20th, 2006
In 1984, my mom woke me up early Christmas morning. Sitting next to my bed was the unopened box of an Apple //c computer and monitor. My uncle owned one of those, and I'd spent time at his house hacking with it. He'd once promised he'd bring it over to my house so I could have more time with it. Even in my sleepy state, when I saw the box, my initial shot of excitement was quickly replaced with cold logic: "what's my uncle's computer doing here?" I asked.—Continue reading....
December 21st, 2006
As promised, a few photos of the Nintendo Wii being unboxed.—Continue reading....
January 3rd, 2007
It's been quite a while since a video game caused me to lose time. Because I'm not much of a video game guy, I don't tend to get sucked into a game very often. The last time I can remember it happening was Diablo, some seven, eight years ago. Back then, I would regularly stay up until 2, 3, even 4AM, slashing my way through dungeon after dungeon, gaining experience points and doing everything I could to level up.—Continue reading....
January 4th, 2007
My current stove is electric, 15 years old and long due for a replacement. I've been meaning to upgrade it, to gas or dual fuel, from the second I bought my home, more than a year ago. I finally made the jump: when I got my toilets replaced a few days ago, I had a gas line installed, then, after a bunch of research, went to Sears to buy my new range.—Continue reading....
January 16th, 2007
A few months ago I wrote about Washington Mutual's banking site asking me to give answers to questions I couldn't give answers to, like my "oldest sibling's birthday" when I'm an only child, or my "youngest child's middle name" when I have no children.—Continue reading....
January 16th, 2007
Have you ever felt burned out? Like you just can't stand to get out of bed to face one more day at work? You don't hate your job, you just don't know why you're doing it, or what the benefit is (beyond the financial). Perhaps you fantasize about quitting, cashing out, moving to a little town in the midwest and raising cattle.—Continue reading....
February 7th, 2007
When I moved to the Bay Area nearly 10 years ago, one of the first things I did was join a softball league. It was in that league that I met my birthday twin, Elliot. Elliot met his fiancé Lisa playing sports, volleyball to be exact, and this past weekend they got married. I was lucky enough to be invited and to be a groomsman.—Continue reading....
February 11th, 2007
For the last several weeks, I've been experimenting with making Martinis. For Christmas, Y bought me Martini glasses from Williams-Sonoma (with my initial on them), and coincidentally, TT got me a Martini shaker. To top it all off, I'd recently watched Alton Brown's Good Eats episode "Raising The Bar", and he offered a recipe for a dry Martini: —Continue reading....
February 13th, 2007
I'm a fan of America's Test Kitchen. I watch the show regularly, subscribe to the magazine and recently purchased the 2006 DVD set and accompanying book (I got the book for with the DVD purchase).—Continue reading....
February 16th, 2007
Take a look at this image, from the video game Beyond Good and Evil:—Continue reading....
February 21st, 2007
The late classical pianist Joyce Hatto released over 100 recordings shortly before her death in 2006. According to Gramaphone magazine, —Continue reading....
February 25th, 2007
I was perusing the inter-web today when I stumbled across "How's your vocabulary?" Thinking myself the erudite one, I of course took the test. When I received my score, I was flabbergasted, as instead of getting a perfect score, I got an A-. —Continue reading....
March 1st, 2007
A few days ago a 34 year old middle school teacher sent a text message to her pot dealer to score some weed, except she fat-fingered the number and accidentally sent it to a cop instead.—Continue reading....
March 8th, 2007
I never thought I'd bother to do this, but my natural paranoia has led me to put password protection on some of my posts. Thank goodness Wordpress makes this easy. For the (very, very) occasional posts I would rather the entire public not see, you'll have to enter a password to view the entry. If you know who I am, then you know (one of) my personal email addresses. If you email me there (and we've spent more than five minutes together), I'll send you the password. Or, just ask the next time we're together.—Continue reading....
March 13th, 2007
You may have noticed my Netflix queue on the right-most column (under Netflix @ Home). As the name implies, it's the movies I currently have sitting next to my eight-year-old standard-definition TV (or on their way here).—Continue reading....
March 20th, 2007
Some ten or so years ago, I was playing You Don't Know Jack on my Mac. It was great. Snarky, funny, just a bit naughty, it was a party game that made trivia fun and sitting around a computer a wee bit less geeky.—Continue reading....
March 27th, 2007
I mentioned before that I love You Don't Know Jack, and that I play just about every day. Tonight, I did something I aspire to. —Continue reading....
April 8th, 2007
For some unfathomable reason, Y won't let me buy this fantastic hot dog maker (and bun warmer). I don't understand the problem. It will cook 48 hot dogs at once, and warm 36 buns at the same time. It can broil up to 150 hot dogs an hour. And it's a mere $759.—Continue reading....
April 8th, 2007
I love hot dogs. Meat, bun, mustard. What's not to love? And growing up in New York, it was easy to indulge: there's a hot dog stand on every street corner in Manhattan. These "dirty water dogs", as New Yorkers are wont to call 'em, aren't great food, but they're most certainly good. And they're convenient: they're nearly perfect walk-and-eat food. When you're done, you have a tiny wrapper to toss. You'd be hard-pressed to find a New Yorker who hasn't eaten a ton of these.—Continue reading....
April 20th, 2007
E*Trade is starting to work my last nerve. Yesterday I got an email from them:—Continue reading....
May 1st, 2007
For the last year or so I've been trying to follow David Allen's Getting Things Done methodology, with varying levels of success. One reason for the less-than-stellar progress is a lack of a "trusted system" into which all my projects, tasks and "next actions" go.—Continue reading....
May 4th, 2007
One of the few issues of getting a Nintendo Wii, especially in the early days of our Wiinfatuation, was the constant changing of the remote's pair of AA batteries. For a while it seemed like we went through a two or three pairs a month. I thought of buying a set of rechargeable AAs, but still didn't relish the idea of swapping out batteries every few weeks to recharge them.—Continue reading....
May 7th, 2007
It's 6:48pm and I (and my entire complex, and, it seems, much of the area) am without electricity. I have a couple of battery backups, and I have my Airport Extreme and DSL modem plugged into one of them. I'm posting this from my trusty MacBook.—Continue reading....
May 8th, 2007
With a title like that, you almost have to click through to read it. I did a few weeks ago when it came across my newsreader, and ended up on the website of Tim Ferris, where he was talking about his forthcoming book The 4-Hour Workweek
May 20th, 2007
This Friday was Y's big 3-0, and we celebrated throughout the weekend. On Friday, a small group of friends had dinner in a new Chinese restaurant, followed by Shrek The Third at a new movie theatre. What better way to enter a new decade than with new experiences?—Continue reading....
May 25th, 2007
During the damp, dreary darkness of California winter, I looked at buying a new grill. I enjoy grilling, and for most of the year, California has great grilling weather. Buying a grill during the winter is akin to buying a convertible during a rainstorm: salespeople are thrilled to see you and will give you a great deal.—Continue reading....
May 28th, 2007
A few weeks ago, when we first saw the apartment Y moved into this weekend, she commented unfavorably on the lack of an elevator in this third-story walk-up. I retorted "you only have to worry about it twice: once when moving in, and again when moving out."—Continue reading....
June 2nd, 2007
I love reading John Gruber's Daring Fireball. Witty, insightful, technical, it's one of the better Mac-oriented websites around. John comes across as a rather brilliant guy, but even the brilliant get it wrong on occasion.—Continue reading....
June 4th, 2007
I found a grill which is more reasonably priced than the last one I drooled over. It's a 42,000 BTU Weber grill with over 500 square inches of grill space. Available in sleek black
—Continue reading....
June 27th, 2007
I've had the worst luck with building contractors. They show up late (if they show up at all), and when they do arrive, they're less than helpful and, of course, expensive. With the housing downturn, more people are staying where they are and remodeling, so I suppose the contractors have no lack of work, and, therefore, no concern for losing a job.—Continue reading....
July 3rd, 2007
I read The 4-Hour Workweek
July 13th, 2007
I realized a couple days ago that I buy a lot of stuff from Amazon and iTunes. Here's a peek inside what has captured my interest (and credit card number) recently.—Continue reading....
July 19th, 2007
Thanks to CowPuppy K, I learned today that the Nike+ website lets you share graphs of your runs (or, in my case, my walks...). Great for bragging rights if you're in a challenge, like I am with Y. Here's the graph of my last five "runs" (alas, you will need Flash, so if you're reading this on your iPhone, my heart bleeds):—Continue reading....
July 21st, 2007
I don't like going to concerts. They're crowded, you usually can't see the stage well, and the music is either too loud or the performers are screaming and out of breath. Not the best experience. I haven't been to a live show in some ten years.—Continue reading....
August 8th, 2007
John, John, John.—Continue reading....
September 6th, 2007
In Superman III, Richard Pryor figured out that he can make himself rich by taking the fractions of pennies left over from rounding down on financial transactions. Corporations for years have added millions of dollars to their bottom-line by raising rates a few pennies per customer (calculate PG&E's 9.1 million customers getting a one-cent-per-month increase: $1,092,000 a year). And financial institutions use money in your account as loans and investments.—Continue reading....
September 14th, 2007
Anyone who tells you owning a house is a pure joy has never owned a house. Yes, yes, the American Dream, pride of ownership, blah blah blah. Bottom line? When you become a home owner, you take on all the problems your landlord used to handle, and then some.—Continue reading....
September 18th, 2007
I recently added Ask MetaFilter to my news reader. It's a colossal waste of time, but occasionally will have something that educates or amuses.—Continue reading....
September 28th, 2007
Two days ago I ordered a three-pack of Field Notes Notebooks. (Think of them as the start of a backlash against the seeming ubiquity of Moleskine users everywhere.) I first heard about them from a side reference on Daring Fireball earlier this year. Today I got SPAM from Coudal Partners, the makers of Field Notes, asking me to opt-out if I don't want any more mail.—Continue reading....
October 2nd, 2007
Fifteen years ago I sat through a multi-level-marketing sales pitch. I don't remember what company or what product; I recall only two things: One, thinking "this is interesting, but what if I don't sell any products or don't find anyone for my downline?" (yes, even in my 20s I was jaded and cynical); and two, the sales guy, at the front of a room of 150 eager listeners, pitching the ultimate in freedom: walking to work every day with a single manila folder, with a single sheet of paper representing your sales.—Continue reading....
October 29th, 2007
Everyone knows by now that Gmail has opened IMAP up to everyone. Well, OK, perhaps not everyone. Someone people, like Ying, don't have Gmail IMAP on their accounts. Ying is particularly upset, because I have it, she doesn't, and she's the one who invited me to Gmail in the first place, three years ago.—Continue reading....
November 14th, 2007
In 1948, Strom Thurmond formed the States' Rights Democratic Party (aka the "Dixiecrats") with the express goal of having "Segregation Forever," with the help of 35 Democratic National Convention delegates from Alabama and Mississippi.—Continue reading....
January 11th, 2008
This cracked me up. While searching Amazon for a wine fridge, I came across this page:—Continue reading....
March 11th, 2008
In case it ever comes up, this is not what a functioning garage door chain should look like. In fact, I would say that's a really good example of the exact opposite of a working garage door chain.—Continue reading....
May 2nd, 2008
If you don't believe your life can change twenty-four hours from now, you're deluding yourself. Twice in the last three weeks I was reminded in the most graphic way possible that you can be out of a job tomorrow.—Continue reading....
May 21st, 2008
I bring you proof that a geek can't change his spots. I came across some old blog entries from 2000, 2001 and 2002, back when I was experimenting with the concept (and Movable Type). Even then I loved the idea of self-publishing and content management systems. I didn't write too many entries, but I thought I thought I'd add them to Jasonian.—Continue reading....
May 24th, 2008
My 2008-2009 assessed value notice for my property tax arrived recently. Each year for the last two years my home's assessed v