Category: Haightlife

General news and thinking about living in the Alderete-McCune household.

New Channel: I Like

I’ve added a new channel to my Weblog, where I can give kudos to stuff I like, usually vendors with an outstanding product.

I’m a firm believer that voting with your dollars is the most effective way to influence the actions of giants. If everyone started buying In-N-Out burgers instead of Big Macs, you can bet that McDonald’s would improve the quality of their product in response.

This channel is all about leveraging my preferences via your wallet. If you’re a fan of high quality items, foodstuffs, and services, then you may find some good information here, especially if you live in the Bay Area. I.e., you win.

And if I can turn other people onto the things I like, like truly outstanding croissants or BBQ, perhaps there will be more of them in the world. I.e., I win.

So, check my recommendations out, and if you give them a try, be sure to tell them that Michael and Rochelle sent you.

The Jumper

Our littlest one, Billie, is constantly chased by one of our other cats, and hides out under our bed during the day. When we get home, she’s so starved for attention that she’s developed a cute trick: jumping. Onto us.

Our littlest one, Billie, is the most sweet tempered cat in the house. She is constantly chased and harassed by Basta, and hides out under our bed during the day. When we get home, she’s so starved for attention that she’s developed a cute / annoying trick: jumping.

It started off innocently, getting onto the refrigerator, or a shelf, or the TV, or some other high place, and then stepping onto our shoulders when we came to pet her. Then she started jumping from lower down, still up to our shoulders. The she started jumping from the floor.

As you might guess, jumping onto someone’s shoulders, for a cat, involves good leaping ability, but also good landing ability. In a word, claws.

This is usually OK when you’re wearing a sweatshirt. Less so when you’re wearing a regular shirt, and still less when you have no shirt on at all. Ouch!

Recently things have taken a turn for the weird. Instead of leaping straight up onto us, she’s taken to running up our bodies, climbing us like a tree.

But she still purrs when she gets to the top.

Another Fine Mess

Now my wife Rochelle is in the mess, too.

OK, so it’s not bad enough I’ve started doing this myself, but now I’ve also set Rochelle up with one of these things. Should be interesting to see what she has to say when I’m not her editor!

Note: You can’t get to Rochelle’s Weblog from outside our home network, yet. Coming soon, if you pester her about it!

Balance of Power

Ever since we sent Tex to The Big House, the balance of power in our house has shifted completely to Basta. Another example unintended consequences.

Ever since we sent Tex to The Big House, the balance of power in our house has shifted completely to Basta. Poor Billie is getting chased all over the house, and the brawls erupt at random, so much so that we’ve had to shut Basta in the office at night, so we can sleep.

It wasn’t supposed to work this way.

The original goal was to give poor Cecil some peace. Tex would chase him at every opportunity, and it was making him crazy. Tex also made Billie unhappy, but the two of them left each other alone most of the time (with Billie slinking away whenever they found themselves in the same area).

We thought that if Tex were no longer in the house, Cecil would be left alone to enjoy his golden years, and Billie might get a chance to sleep on the bed with us at night.

As it happens, Cecil is getting more peace, and Billie is sleeping on the bed with us. That part of our plan worked.

What we didn’t realize is that crazy Tex was keeping Basta at bay, unintentionally protecting Billie by not allowing Basta to dominate in the bedroom. With Tex gone, there’s no one to keep Basta from roaming every room in the house, and chasing Billie whenever she can.

Unintended consequences. This is why fucking with complex systems usually leads to Bad Things…

Hang ’em All, You’ll Get the Guilty

Truly the only approach to discipline when your cats misbehave whilst you’re away.

Yesterday I got a call at work from Rochelle, who had just arrived home. “Your daughter has been a very bad girl.”

Uh, oh.

“What’s she done?”

“You’ll see.”

When I got home, I found a pound of powdered milk sprayed across the kitchen floor. Apparently a cat, in some sort of frenzy, had clawed at the plastic bag holding the powdered milk we buy to take baths in, and then knocked it onto the floor, where the bag burst.

No proof which cat did it. But Basta is the one with the plastic fetish…

Yet Another Waste of Time

Announcing the launch of my personal weblog, for better or worse.

Yes, another weblog. I guess I’ve been wanting to keep some kind of a journal, and provide some kind of ongoing news for friends and family.

From another perspective, I’m doing this because I’m a geek, and I had to install MySQL on my new Mac OS X system, and then once it was installed, I had to do something with it.

Still another way to look at this is I am procrastinating on a project for work, and decided that spending a few dozen hours getting a bunch of software set up, writing, and fiddling, would be a “productive” way to do it.

Anyway, for better or worse, I’ve started a ’blog. We’ll see how well I stick with it.

Dot.com Daze: End of Daze

Today will probably be my last day going into my job. So ends my Cymerc daze…

Today will probably be my last day going into my job. I’ve cleaned out my desk, packed home my stuff, and pretty much just want to use the printer and copy a few things onto Zip disks. And so ends my Cymerc days.

We are going on a bender tonight, my former co-workers and I. One last hurrah, and all that…

Dot.com Daze: Accounting Knows More Than You Think

I heard today that our controller, who had known that our demise was immanent, was completely drunk at the all-hands meeting where our CEO announced that we were dead.

I heard today that our controller, who had known that our demise was immanent, was completely drunk at the all-hands meeting where our CEO announced that we were dead. Poor George, knowing what was coming for weeks, he could not tell us. It must have sucked.

Dot.com Daze: Spoils of War

My Aeron chair, should I choose to purchase it at the “fair market value,” is going to be around $500. It’s one of those badges of honor, or something, from the dot.commer experience. I think, even though I’m currently unemployed, that I’m going to buy it.

My Aeron chair, should I choose to purchase it at the “fair market value,” is going to be around $500. It’s one of those badges of honor, or something, from the dot.commer experience. I think, even though I’m currently unemployed, that I’m going to buy it.

Follow-up: the company’s landlord chose to “purchase” a large percentage of Cymerc’s physical assets (furniture), including all the Aeron chairs, in exchange for outstanding rent, or something. Our CEO “forgot” I wanted mine, and I hadn’t properly labeled it, so I lost out. Oh, well…

Dot.com Daze: Cymerc Is Dead

Today the CEO of my company called an all-hands meeting, to announce that he was 99.99% sure we were not going to be funded, and that we were closing down the business, effective today.

Today the CEO of my company called an all-hands meeting, to announce that he was 99.99% sure we were not going to be funded, and that we were closing down the business, effective today. It was a shock to all of us. Only a few people knew in advance. Supposedly we’ll get paychecks for the first half of this month, and hopefully “severance” pay through the end of the month.

Fortunately, my resume is up-to-date. ;-)

Unfortunately, I have over $3,500 in expenses that haven’t been paid…