Category Archives: ramblings

goings on, music, ramblings, random

Clearing the Cobwebs

Oof, where to begin? I’ve been busy doing life things (so say we all, given the rather unappealing alternatives), but have not enjoyed the intermittent reminders from this website that I had “content” to moderate.

“Content” being of course the millions of admirers and followers I have amassed over the course of my storied career as a tastemaker, influencer and wheeler-dealer.

Or maybe it was innumerable spammers telling me how excited they were to find my site and how insightful my posts were and that I should checkout their site or look at some sexy milf pics.

After previously logging in only to prune all the comments, I’ve finally updated all the things. I’m not terribly happy with how unresponsive the design is right now, but it’s serviceable. I’m a bit annoyed that Instagram shut down the scraper I was using for posting photos. But then, I don’t post anything but stories these days, so I suppose it’s a wash. Perhaps I will write more often.

While I have no pretensions that folks give a shit about what I have to say, I do find it a bit cathartic to put finger to key. And in today’s what-the-fuck-is-going-on-with-everything world, that’s not something to discount.

I type this on the eve of the midterm elections, the results of which I fear will accelerate the decline of the US as a global power and beacon of hope and freedom.

Perhaps, not unrelatedly, I’ve turned off comments. That’s until I can get my “$5 a month to post all you want on my blog” service off the ground.

[This post was typed while listening to the excellent Natural Brown Prom Queen.]

ramblings, wrong number

My gmail account is a never-ending source of comedy and weirdness…

3 Comments

I've had a gmail account for some time, but have not yet made the switch from my primary yahoo-based one. One reason is that google requires at least six characters in the username, which means I can't have "xispo" as an option. Boo. Another is that it's a pain in the ass to change e-mails. So many accounts are tied to my e-mail and the thought of doing double duty for x number of months to ease the transition irks me. The last is that my google account gets a constant stream of spam. There's the usual V1@grA stuff, but I also get a decent amount of e-mails that are meant for someone else. Some of them are pretty personal, but not *that* personal, heh. My initial reaction to getting these was to send a polite e-mail to the sender, letting them know they had the wrong person. Some replied and stopped e-mailing my account. Others didn't. 

So, in an attempt to resurrect mah blog, I'm going to start posting these missives to bizarro me. Some will be banal, others weird and others kind of funny. 

First up:

Wrong_number
 

ramblings

Life is again good

In an attempt to flush these fatty veins (i’m not fat, just my blood system), I hopped on my bike for the first time in many months and humbled myself on the streets of San Francisco. The weather was gorgeous, so it felt good to be out, but what really did me good (I had me a case of the grouchies), was just realizing what a beautiful city I live in.

Of course, it was also amusing to witness some solemn procession of nude people about to engage in some hippie/sufi ritual or something. 🙂

So there’s been A LOT of stuff going on. First and foremost, I am now an uncle! You can read all about it on Abigail’s own site. Mom is still recovering, but I hope she’ll start posting again soon. Hopefully sooner than I post. Ahem.

Other cool stuff. My friend’s David and Alissa came to visit with their youngin’ Ryder. Yeah, it’s raining babies lately. We had a great time–check out the flickr for more. They keep threatening to move out here, but I’ll believe it when I see it.

Dnanr

That’s it for now. I’ll try to post some more stuff in a bit. I do have some other fun things to talk abouts…

film, goings on, ramblings

Weekend update+

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I’ve finally received a jolt of motivation and I have to say it feels good. I’ve been kind of low-energy/initiative for the past few months. Some of it stems from a bit of post-Dad depression, I think. Also, I’ve been hobbling around on a bum knee for several months. I went and got an MRI which revealed that I have two small meniscal tears in my left knee. Not bad as far as knee injuries go (better than, say, a torn ACL), but still no fun to deal with. The doctor recommended a rather simple relatively non-invasive surgery (arthroscopic). That really didn’t sit so well with me, so he gave me a shot of cortizone instead, which was supposed to help with swelling. It actually did help a bunch and let me go have a great time down in Mexico with Deborah. However, after about a month, the tweak sensation came back.Yay. So now I’m seriously thinking about the surgery. I really haven’t been able to get any excercise for fear of hurting myself. As a result, I’ve felt kind of sluggy. One positive is that I’ve tried accupuncture a few times. It’s helped with the knee a bit (more pain management than anything else), but I have to say the best benefit has been stress reduction. I love them needles! Which is funny, because I used to pass out when I got shots, so I’m a bit nervous around the needles. I neglected to tell that to the accupuncturist until she had sunk about four needles into me, heh. It went fine and I definitely plan to get treatment from time to time. The treatment definitely makes me feel good afterward. Almost stoned, actually.

Guinness_logo

Friday, Bill, Vadan and I went to a Guinness tasting in the Financial District after work. It was some semi-cheesy marketing thing that turned out to be pretty fun. Well, they were pretty generous about the beer anyway and had a small buffet of nibbles. We sat at large round tables in an oak-panelled banquet hall and listened to some guy yammer on about Guinness while we kicked back some frothy goodness. We took bets on how much/little the guy made shilling beer. It wasn’t a hard sell really–more of an infomation session. Learned a few things, like: Guinness is nitrogenated. That’s where the bubbles come into play and that’s what’s in the draft cans and bottles. Also–you are supposed to pour the cans into a glass and drink straight from the bottles. It has less calories than Corona or Heineken. The final "take away" was that I walked out with a few Guinness glasses for the home collection. Pretty fun time, all in all.

Brick_poster

Made a quick stop at Cassanova for another drink before heading out to meet Deborah on the BART. We treked to Embarcadero Cinema to meet a friend to see Brick. I had seen the trailer some time ago and remember it being interesting. Well, it was interesting up to a point, but I can’t say that I’d recommend the movie. Of course, I was a little tipsy, so that might have a bit of an effect. The movie defiinitely gets style points and some originality points–it’s a total Noir film with a modern day high school setting. The kid from 3rd Rock in the Sun (who I loved in Mysterious Skin — that’s a great film), plays a kid who tries to unravel the circumstances behind his ex-girlfriend’s death. She had fallen in with the bad crowd (gang-bangers, drug dealers, etc) and was in deep. The movie starts with him staring at her dead body face down near a drainage tunnel and then re-winds two days. The dialogue is definitely noir-ish, which makes for some humerous moments–the Vice Principle’s exchange with Brenden is particularly funny, but I felt a bit too jerked between humor and serious to really get affected by either. Again, high marks for originality, but sticking so closely to such a campy formula lost its appeal to me.
 

Saturday, I puttered around on the computer for a bit (including setting up a blog for my niece-to-be). Sister’s due in August and they already have a name: Abigail. And here’s her blog–nothing fancy. I also spent some time on MySpace. We are gearing up for a redesign of Sega.com and wanted to see what kinds of things we might be able to include on the next version of the site. The site is pretty interesting–much more flexible than Friendster. Of course, that leads to some really ugly pages, heh. But I guess the key is letting folks do what they want. Even if it does sometimes assault the eyes.

Ok, signing off for now. Going to go try to swim…

Cheerio.

ramblings, tri

Ketchup + the agony of da knees

Today was a pretty hectic day at work. One of those days where you look up and it’s 6PM and you really haven’t made a dent in the work you wanted to get done. I was sooooo looking forward to a nice swim tonight, but it seems I left my blasted goggles back in NoVa. Wheeeee… Got home too late to bike, so I loped around P. Hill for a bit. Didn’t want to go too hard because I have a group run tomorrow. So I just ran for 25 minutes or so–enough to get my heart going a bit and work out a few of the grumblies from the day. I felt better after running but probably could have used another half hour at least to run off the edge from work today.

I’ll try to update this more often now that I’m back from the East Coast. It was a good trip, all things considered. Got to see some old friends, including my best friend from high school, who I hadn’t seen in more than 10 years and some family. Deborah came with and got to meet some peeps and family, which was cool too.

Dad’s funeral was a mercifully short affair with no small amount of pomp and circumstance. It was a military funeral complete with horse-drawn caisson, color guard, marching band and soldiers with guns. Pretty impressive. My remarks were brief and I managed to get through them ok. There was a nice reception at Sandy’s house afterward and I got to mingle with a bunch of folks — some old friends and some folks I had never met before but obviously cared about Dad. After the reception, I got to hang with a few friends, which was really nice. It included Chris (best friend from high school) and David (best friend) so I was feeling pretty spoiled. Hanging out with Chris was great. We haven’t been great about keeping up over the years, but it wasn’t awkward at all, hanging out with him. He’s a swell guy and I hope to see him in less than 10 years, heh. Oooh–strange coincidence: Deborah went to school with Chris’s younger sister Karen. In fact, they lived together one year! That really kind of blows my mind–small world, etc etc. Pretty crazy.

Before the funeral, I had a good time catching up with some friends and meeting a pair of Deborah’s good friends. Went to the National Gallery and looked at some pretty pictures. The weather was typical DC weather–hot and muggy. It’s actually nice to get a little bit of that weather and be able to leave it. I miss hot summer nights sometimes–loafing around in shorts and a t-shirt…

Did manage to get one work out in with Erika whilest away. It was an recovery week, so I didn’t feel too bad about missing training. We did a good workout though: swam 2100 meters and then ran for 4 miles or so. Felt pretty good too. Erika is a better swimmer than me though, heh.

Thursday after the funeral Erika, Deborah and I went and played mini-golf before packing up and heading out. Our stupid flight got delayed so we didn’t get home until like 3am. Pooey. Slept in a bit and went to work to slog through some e-mails.

Saturday, got up and went for a bike ride with Sirr. Did about 50 miles — to Tiburon and back with some detours (i.e. getting lostish). My legs and lungs felt pretty good, but I got this weirdo pain in my left knee that disappeared and then resurfaced into my right knee with a vengance. It really hurt–pretty disconcerting. I powered through though (perhaps foolishly) and finished the ride. Got home and popped some alleve and had a mellow night at home.

Sunday I spent the day cleaning the house with Bill for our 3rd of July party. It went well. I had fun, at least. That + a kicked keg = success to me.

Total Tri Numbers
Swim: 6800 meters
Bike: 106 miles
Run: 27 miles

ramblings

A visit from an old friend

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Early last week, I got word that my bestest friend David was going to be in town later in the week. He’s in Boston right now, finishing up a Master’s at M.I.T. He’s majoring in "I Have More Degrees Than You," but is now staring the end of school in the face and seeks alterrnate ways to ensure  he has no free time whatsoever. The first step was getting his lovely wife preggers. Now he’s looking for a job well-suited for his considerable array of skills. Anyhoo, he had a phone interview with PDI, which is Dreamworks’ animation studio, based down in Redwood City. Apparently the interview went well as they booked him a flight later in the week. This was doubly great news as it meant I got to see him and also enjoy thinking about the prospect of him, his wife and their meatball to-be moving out here. I would LOVE to be closer to them. I lived in NYC for two years with David and we are still quite close, even if we don’t get to see each other as often as we’d like.

His trip out here was rather whirlwind. He came in Thursday evening and left Saturday morning. I’ll take what I can get though… Thursday, he picked me up in his sweet-ass rented Azteca. It drives like a dream. A very bad dream. We picked up Deborah in the Mission and headed over to Sirr’s for dinner. He and Vadan cooked up a vegan meal that was quite tasty: a nice Italian bean soup, with two awesome salads some rice stuffed red peppers. Great stuff, especially for a first try with the vegan fare. David was getting pretty sleepy so he dropped us off and headed for his hotel.
Friday was pretty much a write-off, work-wise as our office got moved. It was just across the hall, but it was enough to be disruptive. Which kind of sucks as we are releasing a major product on Monday morning. Heh. The upside is that since the network was down, I got to skate out a little earlier than usual. I was beat (I think the Tri training is catching up with me), so I took a quick snooze on the couch. David then came over after his grueling five hours of interviews (which went pretty well–sweet!). We decided to take it easy and just headed into the Mission, ending up at one of my faves (for character, anyway): Country Station Sushi. It’s kind of a punk-rock sushi bar–high marks for ambiance with pretty decent fish. There was only one chef, so the service was a bit slow, but that was fine with us–gave us some time to catch up.
It’s funny–it’s so easy for me to get caught up in living the day-to-day stuff and forgetting about those I care about that are far away. Hanging out with David made me realize how much I miss him… I hope he gets the job and manages to get out here.
After some tasty slabs of fish and a little Nigori, he dropped me off and headed back to his hotel. I hit the sack as I had get up early for a group swim/bike in the morning… It was great to see him, even a short trip is great. I hope it’s the start of seeing him more often!

I’ll get the rest of the weekend updated in a bit…

ramblings, tri

Trip down memory lane…

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Today was a group train for the triathlon. Work was pretty grueling today, so if felt good to get out and do some running. Jesus. I never thought those words would ever come out of my mouth. Heh. Oh well. It was raining too. It actually wasn’t too bad. Of course, it wasn’t raining too hard either. We did some hill springy things and ran for a few miles. Nothing too bad. I’m feeling pretty good, considering this is only the third time I’ve run in a week. Before that, I seriously can’t remember the last time I ran. Maybe to catch a bus. But certainly not loping around for a few miles. I think I’m going to keep track of distance, just for yucks…

So far:
Running: around 10 miles or so.
Swimming: 2000 meters or so
Biking: 10 miles or so (slacking on this. Ironic as it’s probably the most comfy area for me)

After training, I swung by Tu Lan and picked up my favorite bean curd in tomato sauce. Good eats.

Then I went through two shoe boxes full of pictures. My friend Anne is amassing photos for a collage for our friend June, who’s getting married next month. Unfortunately, I can’t go to the wedding–it’s in Wales and shit with my Dad prevented me from booking tickets in time. Oh well. At least I found some good pics to share…

It was also a pretty jarring experience. A lot of history in those two boxes. Ex-girlfriends. Dead friends. Ex-wife. Ex-friends. Dead parents. Lots of good times too, but man, it was kinna draining, I have to admit. A lot of funny/incriminating photos too, heh. Maybe I’ll scan some and put ’em up….

Anyhoo. Orf to bed I go. Have to putter about a bit. My best friend David is coming out for an interview with Dreamworks. I am a bit psyched (to put it mildly) at the prospect of he and his wife moving out here. Not holding my breath though as he’s threatened to do it in the past. At the very least, I’ll get to spend a few days with him. Hizzah.