best headline so far of 2006

SACRAMENTO -- Authorities say they've cracked stolen nut case --
Warehouse owner's tip leads to 2 arrests -- $400,000 worth of almonds, walnuts found

link to Chronicle article


It's not as profound as the chilli-finger story, my top story of the year for 2005, but it's pretty good.

Statement of regret

Seriously, I'm sick of politicians and people in the news saying that they "regret" the incident. Just say you're sorry, damnit!

t-day

Thanksgiving is a great day to start on new projects because almost everything is closed. No chance to "buy more and save more" so you are "stuck" in yr home. Here's the top 5 things I (would) like to do during this unique Thursday:

1. Watch Star Trek marathons (especially Star Trek: Voyager) if it is on TV.

2. Cook: currently this would be my fried egg sandwich consisting of: two fried eggs, white bread toast pan-heated in copious amount of butter, two slices of folded ham, cheddar cheese melted on said bread with four jalapeno slices smothered into the cheese. It's sooo good.

3. Start a modeling project. And by model I mean scale modeling, like an aircraft or a World War 2 vehicle.

4. Rent European films and possibly fall asleep to them.

5. Sleep in.

crab crab everywhere

The crab season is back in San Francisco. This year the fishermen (crabmen?) and the processing company reached a deal of $1.85/pound before the official opening day. Sadly, due to work and other things going on, I have yet to try the fresh dungeness crab.


LINK TO THE SFGATE ARTICLE

An incident at Golden Produce, San Francisco, California, the United States of America

A while back Alecia and I were at our favorite local market run by a Cambodian family (a brother, a sister and their mother). Alecia is very friendly with them and even offered to write a letter of recommendation when they were trying to expand their store. There are two registers, each usually run by the brother and the sister. While the brother was ringing up our grocery, the sister had just finished ringing up another customer next to us and was bagging when the customer started ranting at her in a very loud voice. "You know plastic bags never decompose. It's really bad for the environment. You really shouldn't use them. blah blah blah" And then in the middle of it he says, "This is the United States of America."

? What? We're in the United States of America?

NO SHIT SHERLOCK.

Obviously he had some issues of his own that he had to take out on this nice family. All everyone could do was just let him finish his rant because how can you respond to that? The sister didn't say anything back and she was polite to the end but Alecia and I were incredulous and I got pretty angry later. I should have said something to him but it was probably best just to let him figure out for himself later.

Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House

wow

I think it was long due for a woman to run the House. I am so proud to be from the very district that she represents. I hope she gives Bush hell for all the damage he's done to this country.

tech support, Pebble Beach style

blech, I woke up to the sound of my cell phone Monday morning but it wasn't the usual alarm ("low chord") but a phone call from one of the admins at work. Joe, the CEO of the company I work for, is having computer problems and needs to talk to me right away. She puts me through and he has lost all connections to his internet... at his home in Pebble Beach.

Pebble Beach is a city two hours south of San Francisco where the rich hang out and play golf. I've been there once a few months ago to install a router and laptop for him. My co-workers thought this was so cool, that I got to go and check out his fancy house, get a ride from his driver, check out the golf courses.

The reality is that I spend two hours in a car and I immediately go to work under moderate stress (I'm getting better at interacting with the CEO now) and have to absolutely make sure everything is cool cause I really don't want to come back and waste my day (or his). As soon as I get there I start with the basic troublshooting techniques like resetting the router and modem... and voila it's fixed. So I'm going to spend four hours in a car for a one minute fix. To "make it worthwhile" I spend the next three hours checking every part of the computer setup but I couldn't find anything wrong. I even had their local computer guy come by to confirm this. One thing I learned is that I know almost nothing about Macs (he has both).

I suppose it's part of my job and it is kind of cool that I'm the go-to guy but both times I've been there, it's been taxing mentally. Fortunately, the driver and I have many things to talk about during the ride (I don't want to nap cause that would be rude). Mostly, it's either about his Harley-Davidson or gossip about the VPs or his days as a police officer.

Anyways, since it was "close enough" to the end of my work shift, I got dropped off at home. I keep my fingers crossed that I don't have to go back.