What isn’t Apple, audiobooks, or alcohol is probably cats.
News and activities related to my wife.
Heard while discussing whether we should go to an upcoming high school reunion…
While discussing whether we should go to an upcoming high school reunion:
“I think I’ll pick out the most boring jackass there, latch on, and just Rochelle all over him.”
“Isn’t that what you did when you married me…?”
It started with the idea of replacing our 12 year old (hideously cat vomit-stained) carpet. After searching for a while, Rochelle finally found a great carpet that should be durable and look terrific. But then, the real scope of the project became, if not clear, at least a topic of discussion. We would need to paint all three rooms that were getting the new carpet. And the hallway.
It started with the idea of replacing our 12 year old (hideously cat vomit-stained) carpet. After searching for a while, Rochelle finally found a great carpet that should be durable and look terrific. (Rumors that we color-matched against current stains can neither be confirmed nor denied.) But then, the real scope of the project became, if not clear, at least a topic of discussion. We would need to paint all three rooms that were getting the new carpet. And the hallway.
This past weekend was phase 1 of what will surely be a 5+ phase project. Colors were chosen, paint and tools acquired. Rochelle took Friday off, and we emptied our bedroom, and started prepping the walls. Which led to the second unfortunate discovery, that the wallpaper under the paint was sagging and bulging in places, and basically came off like peeling a bad sunburn. Three hours later, we had stripped off two of the four layers from half the bedroom, and sensibly called a halt to further destruction.
(Side note: the first unfortunate discovery came weeks earlier, when Rochelle went to start stripping off the wallpaper, and discovered she was peeling the paper off the front of the sheetrock that had replaced one wall. After she’d peeled half the wall. We became convinced there was no wallpaper in the room. We were wrong. The only place without wallpaper was where Rochelle started peeling. Unfortunate discoveries are a part of home improvements if your home is a Victorian…)
Saturday David arrived, took charge, and made us start painting what we could. Nothing is more motivating than seeing fresh paint on your ceiling and walls, and we got a lot done (while also going through three bottles and one magnum of sparkling wine).
Sunday, supposed to be the last day, it was back to the damaged walls. Lots of Fix-It-All and sanding. And dust. Lots of dust. This was a lot of work, and while we put a second coat on the ceiling and picture rail, and a first coat on one wall (which looked terrible, because we stupidly decided not to take off the last layer of wallpaper), we didn’t paint much.
Monday Rochelle went back to work, and I finished stripping walls, and then painted like crazy. Finally the room was starting to look good again. Tuesday saw the “final” coats of paint, followed by some hole patching, that will require, you guessed it, another coat of paint. I am very, very tired of painting.
Tomorrow I’ll paint one last time, one wall and some touching up, and tomorrow night, barring more unfortunate discoveries, we’ll move our bed back into the room, which should make the cats, if not happy, on the road to happy. (Ironically, the cats have not been taking the project well. Billie was so stressed out the first night that she, you guessed it, puked on the floor.)
Then it’s on to the parlor and office, both of which are bigger than the bedroom.
I think 2004 is going to be the Year of Paint.
I hit my peak weight of 208 pounds last fall. Between us, Rochelle and I have gained more than 60 pounds since we met each other. At the end of last year, we resolved to do something about it.
I hit my peak weight of 208 pounds last fall. The photos of me from our trip to Tequila are painful to look at. Between us, Rochelle and I have gained more than 60 pounds since we met each other. At the end of last year, we resolved to do something about it.
Today, after about six weeks of more moderate and healthy eating, I weigh 188. I’ve lost 20 pounds! (However, looking in the mirror, I either need to hit the weight machines at the gym really hard, or lose another 10 pounds.)
I’ve been fairly successful by concentrating on only a few things:
I came to these by combining advice from David, our friend who has lost over 100 pounds, on his own plan that is basically “No Processed Foods!”, and the Phase 1 and Phase 2 food guidance from the South Beach Diet (which is a lot more healthy than Atkins, and not bad at all for a fad diet).
All things considered, my “diet” hasn’t been that painful. I’ve gorged myself on pizza twice (once for the Super Bowl, once for the Duke-North Carolina game), eaten well most of the time, and certainly gone drinking plenty often. A little more exercise wouldn’t be a bad thing, though…
Last week we had a reunion of our group that went to Tequila. (Actually, it wasn’t so much a reunion as a reenactment; five people passed out at the host’s house, two of them were Rochelle and I.) A couple of days before the party, I put together a terrific DVD of the trip, using photos from all the participants, and iPhoto and iDVD for Mac OS X.
Last week we had a reunion of our group that went to Tequila, to tour the region and visit the fabricas that make the distilled spirit we love so much. Actually, as Martha described it the next day, it wasn’t so much a reunion as a reenactment. Five people passed out at the host’s house, and only one of them was the host. (Two of them were Rochelle and I.)
But the point of this posting is the DVD I brought to the party. I collected 1,400 photos from the folks who went on the trip, and organized them down to about 750 photos broken into 10 slide shows, using iPhoto for Mac OS X. Then, using iDVD, I was able to build a kick-ass DVD of the slides, which we spent an hour watching and laughing hysterically at during the party.
There are definitely some defects in iPhoto and iDVD, that made the task harder than it should have been. But given the amount of material I started with, and the quality of the finished product, it’s amazing that I was able to put it together in just a couple days. Especially since I had never used iDVD before this project. iDVD is an amazing piece of software.
There were a couple bugs in the disc I burned for the party, that I’ll fix some time next week for a 1.0.1 release. But then I get to add iMovie into the equation, and really put on a show, with better transitions, better control of timing to the music, and most importantly, captions for all the crazy photos. Should be a blast.
Last week I signed up for a new ADSL account with Speakeasy, a top-rated ISP providing service in the Bay Area. Over the last five days, just about everything that needed to happen has happened, except for receiving the new DSL hardware, which is “out for delivery” according to UPS’s package tracker. I will probably have it up and running later today — at nearly 8x the speed of my current SDSL connection!
Last week I signed up for a new ADSL account with Speakeasy, a top-rated ISP providing service in the Bay Area. Over the last five days, just about everything that needed to happen has happened, except for receiving the new DSL hardware, which is “out for delivery” according to UPS’s package tracker.
The reason for the change is simple: we signed up for DSL after I moved in with Rochelle, at the end of 1998, when it became clear that our needs for internet access could not be met by a single phone line. “When are you going to be done with the internet?”
Back then, only one provider covered our neighborhood, and even then, only with their more expensive business-class SDSL service. With no other options, we signed up for it. We’ve had the 192/192Kbps service for about five years now, and neither the price nor the speed has changed.
Even once other DSL options came to our neighborhood, they initially weren’t much better, or cheaper, than what we had, and were a whole lot less reliable. I can count the number of times our DSL service went out on one hand — in five years! And of those, two occurred when the service was sold and transferred from one ISP to another, two outages that could have been planned for and minimized if the new ISP had been communicating better.
Today Moore’s Law and other developments have improved reliability tremendously, and left our 192Kbps service in the dust. We can get way more speed for half the price, and with reliability and quality of service that’s certainly good enough.
It took a little searching to find a DSL provider who explicitly allows running servers, who doesn’t block ports, and generally meets our slightly different needs (since we run our own network at home, including servers and custom domains, etc.). And then I needed to set up a more powerful firewall, that would make the migration smoother, etc.
That’s all mostly done, so I’m sure as soon as the new hardware gets here I will be tearing into the box, setting it up, and switching over — even though I should be doing other things. The concept of surfing 800% faster is intoxicating!
Our servers will migrate a little more slowly, since I’ll need to do things like update the DNS records, and other tricky technical stuff. There will be some disruption when I start those, probably this coming weekend, but using the new connection for our desktop systems should be a piece of cake.
A year or so ago, Rochelle and I went to one of the Fancy Food shows held in San Francisco. All kinds of luxury foods, just waiting to be sampled. If you go only for one day, it’s impossible to sample all of them, or even half. Our experience doesn’t even begin to compare with what Joe Bob Briggs went through at a Fancy Food show in New York.
A year or so ago, Rochelle and I went to one of the Fancy Food shows held in San Francisco. All kinds of luxury foods, just waiting to be sampled. If you go only for one day, it’s impossible to sample all of them, or even half. We tried anyway.
Our experience doesn’t even begin to compare with what Joe Bob Briggs went through at a Fancy Food show in New York. Recommended reading, unless you’re hungry.
Rochelle and I recently tested the early waters on mobile phone number portability, by switching our mobile phones from AT&T Wireless to Verizon Wireless while keeping our existing mobile numbers, in the third week that it was possible to port the numbers.
Rochelle and I recently tested the early waters on mobile phone number portability, by switching our mobile phones from AT&T Wireless to Verizon Wireless while keeping our existing mobile numbers, in the third week that it was possible to port the numbers.
We wanted to switch for a variety of reasons:
I did almost a week of research, inputting our old bills into a spreadsheet to review our historical usage patterns, comparing different carriers’ available service plans, learning more about mobile phone technologies (e.g., TDMA vs. CDMA, 800MHz vs. 1900MHz, etc.), finding the right phone, finding software for the right phone that would connect it with my Mac, etc.
In the end, Verizon having an arrangement with Gap, plus the ringing endorsements and explanations of technical superiority, made it impossible not to go with Verizon. Picking phones was a little harder, but after narrowing the options to three phones and Googling around for reviews and other info, it became clear that the LG VX4400 was the way to go for us. I’ll write more about our phone selection in another post.
Once the decisions were made, Verizon’s corporate rep made it incredibly easy to place the order and get the ball rolling. During the order process he was very careful to caution us that, because of the very early nature of number portability, it could take between 2 hours and a week for our numbers to completely transfer from our old carrier.
It turned out that AT&T wasn’t happy with our decision to switch, and our phones were deactivated immediately after they were notified we were transferring to Verizon. Since this was a few days before we got our new phones, let alone activated them and the number transfer, it seemed a little harsh, but making do without mobile phones for a couple days wasn’t a big deal.
In the end, the number transfers were anti-climactic. When the phones arrived I charged them for a few hours, and then followed the two-step procedure to activate them. Instead of it taking 2 hours or a week, the phones immediately came up with our old numbers. Yay Verizon!
So far we’re pretty happy with the new service and phones. I still don’t get perfect reception in the house, especially not in the computer room, but the phone is definitely usable in what is apparently a very tough environment for mobile service. After hours of “dicking around” (Rochelle’s term for it) with BitPim, the phone sync software, I managed to get our contacts copied from my computer to my phone, along with a bunch of custom ringtones and wallpapers.
Those poly ringtones make it all worthwhile.
I just got a card in the mail, from Symantec’s rebate center. I am due a $30 rebate on updated anti-virus and personal firewall software we just bought for Rochelle’s computer, and their rebate center rejected the rebate claim for completely bogus reasons.
I just got a card in the mail, from Symantec’s rebate center. I am due a $30 rebate on updated anti-virus and personal firewall software we just bought for Rochelle’s computer, and their rebate center rejected the rebate claim. The supposed reasons are:
The first reason is completely bogus, because (a) it’s not my fault, it’s the USPS; and (b) they don’t need a postmark; the rebate claim was submitted well within the required period, and even the rejection card itself got here within the mandated period. Postmarks are only necessary if an item is received past an expiration date, which isn’t the case.
The second claim is, in a way, even worse. The claim submission included a copy of my Costco receipt. I know Costco receipts, and they always have the date. Just because some minimum wage processing drone in Florida can’t find it in the 60 seconds they’re allowed to spend handling each claim doesn’t mean the purchase date isn’t there.
This is yet another example of the false savings that “rebates” represent. I can’t tell you the number of rebates we have failed to get, due to denied claims, or just laziness in submitting. One of these days I may actually wake up and realize that rebates are not savings, they are a bet, and sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.
I should note that this rebate is offered — and processed — by Symantec themselves. I’ve always had good luck with the rebates that get processed by Costco (which are the ones where they print the rebate form directly onto your receipt, extremely convenient).
What’s really ironic is that I dithered in the store, with both the McAfee and Symantec packages in my hands. About the same price, equivalent features. I eventually went with the brand I’ve purchased in the past. But if Symantec doesn’t come across with my $30, they’re going to lose a customer forever.
In preparation for the coming year, a progress report on last year’s resolutions, which Rochelle recently found on her computer.
Rochelle found the following snippet on her computer, dated at the end of last year:
“Crap Reduction and Abatement Program — While we have remained committed to the idea of having less stuff, we still have way too much crap. Michael has promised to get rid of his BeBox collection by January 17th (the one year anniversary of their arrival). I have promised to throw any remaining BeBoxes out the front window on January 18th. I have vowed that since Spring semester doesn’t start until February, I would dedicate a couple of weekends in January to weeding through the dressing room which, despite our good intentions, has reverted once again to the Island of Lost Crap.”
For the record, all three of these things will be on our resolutions list at the end of this year, too.
It might be hard to believe that in a food city like San Francisco it can be hard to find good pizza. Indeed, it’s not hard to find good pizza — if you’re willing to drive to it. Tommaso’s on Kearny, Vicolo on Ivy, and Arizmendi, on 9th Avenue are all good. None are close, none deliver. My kingdom for good pizza delivery!
It might be hard to believe that in a food city like San Francisco it can be hard to find good pizza. Indeed, it’s not hard to find good pizza — if you’re willing to drive to it. Tommaso’s, on Kearny at Broadway, is probably our favorite. Vicolo, on Ivy, is also outstanding (but not open on Sundays). Arizmendi Bakery, on 9th Avenue between Irving and Judah, changes their pizza every day; most days the combinations are both unique and tasty.
None of them deliver. And none are in walking distance.
We have a couple pizza places on our block, but I have come to the conclusion that you can tell if a pizza place is good or not just by looking at their sausage. If they use the little Sysco sausage pellets, the ones that look like rabbit droppings, it’s mediocre-at-best pizza. That’s our block.
North Beach Pizza makes pretty good pizza, if you get it from the right location, and they deliver. The problem is, you can only get delivery from the location closest to you, and the North Beach Pizza on Haight delivers crappy pizza (it inevitably arrives soggy and warm, not hot and crispy).
As you might imagine, this makes football and, especially, college basketball far less enjoyable than they might be. What’s a sportsfan to do? (Don’t get me started on the food in sports bars in SF.)
But, glory be, I have been delivered. We finally found excellent pizza delivery, from Bambino’s Ristorante on Cole Street. Pizza arrives fresh and hot, with a crisp crust, and outstanding ingredients. I especially recommend the Number 10, the “Tre Fromaggi”, which is a thin crust pizza without sauce, three cheeses, garlic and fresh basil. Out of this world good. Rochelle and I had to stop ourselves from eating an entire Extra Large in one sitting…
Two years ago, Rochelle and I attended a champagne tasting held at Absinthe, and hosted by Terry Theise, a specialty wine importer. He introduced us to “grower producers,” or, champagnes made by the same people who grow the grapes. It was eye opening, and we immediately decided our next big vacation would be to the Champagne region of France.
Almost two years ago, Rochelle and I attended a champagne tasting held at Absinthe, and hosted by Terry Theise, a specialty wine importer. We had gone to a couple other champagne tasting events, but this was a smaller setting, and Theise had a different agenda.
He introduced us to “grower producers,” or, champagnes made by the same people who grow the grapes, in very small quantities. It was eye opening, and we immediately decided our next big vacation would be to the Champagne region of France. That trip was in September of 2002, and will probably remain our best vacation for many years.
Yesterday’s New York Times has an excellent article about champagne grower producers, and also provides a fine introduction to some of the subtleties of champagne. I’ve been meaning to write up my own introduction, but for now, I’ll just point you at the Times.
I will add one thing to the NYT article, that Rochelle and I thought was the key lesson we learned at our tasting with Theise. Grower producers don’t have any money for marketing, and don’t make enough product where marketing would actually help them. So when you buy a bottle of their wine, you’re paying for the wine, not the marketing budget.
By contrast, the largest champagne houses spend zillions on marketing and distribution. That’s what puts them on supermarket shelves across the US, and what drives people to buy them off those shelves. A substantial piece of the price tag for that wine is the marketing and other costs that are not reflected in the quality of the wine.
So, if you’re drinking a well-made $40 champagne from a grower producer, it compares favorably to a $80-100 champagne from, say, Moët & Chandon. Dom Perignon, the premium label of Moët, is $80 at Costco. While in France we paid 30€ for bottles we liked better.
When I arrived at Rochelle’s house to pick her up for our very first date, she invited me in for a few minutes, and offered me a beverage. She took an old fashioned seltzer bottle out of the refrigerator, put a little vanilla syrup in two glasses, and spritzed in the seltzer, stirring to mix in the syrup. It was delicious, a retro luxury, and I knew then that Rochelle was supercool, someone whose tastes would complement mine. Less than three months later, we were engaged.
When I arrived at Rochelle’s house to pick her up for our very first date, she invited me in for a few minutes, and offered me a beverage. She took an old fashioned seltzer bottle out of the refrigerator, put a little vanilla syrup in two glasses, and spritzed in the seltzer, stirring to mix in the syrup. It was delicious, a retro luxury, and I knew then that Rochelle was supercool, someone whose tastes would complement mine. Less than three months later, we were engaged.
Rochelle’s seltzer came from Seltzer Sisters, a local small business that provided home and commercial delivery of seltzer all over the Bay Area. Rochelle had been a customer of theirs almost since she moved to San Francisco 15 years ago.
Today we learned that after being in business for 20 years, Seltzer Sisters has ceased operations, due in large part to the wildly escalating costs associated with workers’ comp. insurance.
I don’t know who’s to blame for the horrible workers’ comp. situation, but it’s clear it’s killing businesses I care about. Here’s hoping that the new governor of California, whom I didn’t vote for, can fix it, and that Seltzer Sisters can find a way to make a comeback.
To Craig and the rest of the crew at Seltzer Sisters, we wish you the very best of luck. We will miss you terribly.
Update: They’re back, and as good as ever.