March 2005 Archives

For my party a few weeks ago E got me a special cable so I could plug my PowerBook directly into my ancient stereo. This way we could use the larger speakers rather than the PowerBook's dinky speakers. It worked just fine, and sounded as good as those speakers can.

Well, I just tried plugging my iPod into the stereo with the same cable, and lo and behold, it worked! Yay! I'm sure this is probably obvious to folks (that they would work), but for me it's a big thing. I've been using my PowerBook as a home stereo for, well, since I got it in September.

It also means that I don't have to worry about spending $$ on a speaker system for the iPod. Something like what Bose has. Oh, I'm sure it would sound better on a new Bose system. But I'm really not that much of a sound snob. And I'm sure I could find a better use for $300.

I just learned about TerraPass.

TerraPass invests its members' money in renewable energy projects that result in a decrease of carbon dioxide emissions. We guarantee that the money from your membership will result in a reduction of carbon dioxide that counterbalances the pollution from your car.

Your membership amount varies with the type of car you drive, and the amount you drive in a year. So SUVs and trucks pay more than hybrids.

I think this is a wonderful idea. It certainly doesn't excuse Hummers and other polluting vehicles or make them okay. But it's a step in the right direction, giving renewable energy sources a fighting chance.

I signed up tonight. Will you?

The picture to the right is not a pile of crap. It's a mound of sand from a beach in Maui that a little sand crab made. Yes, there really is a crab there. I swear.

And yes, that means that I finally uploaded my photos from the Maui trip to Flickr. Everything is titled and described and tagged now. (Well, except for a few whale shots that I decided to recrop so you can see them better. Flickr got /.ed last night and hence was VERY slow, so I stopped cleaning up the dups. But I'll do that soon.)

Enjoy.

I've been hit a lot lately with track-back ping spam. So I'm going to turn track-back pings off. If you want them turned back on (you know who you are) let me know and we can talk.

*grumble*grumble*stupid spammers ruin it for the rest of us*grumble*grumble*

Life is settling down again. This weekend was my party. My It's-My-Birthday-and-House-Cooling-and-New-Job-and-Unwedding-Party. It was a blast. It's the first party I've had in over 1.5 years (at least). First time I've had folks over to that apartment. I went way overboard with the cake, and food, and flowers, and dress, but that's okay. It was fun. Lots of fun. I'm so glad everyone came.

Brett was kind enough to take these photos of the cake cutting and post them on Flickr.

I spent Sunday sleeping until noon and then cleaning up the aftermath. Which really wasn't that bad at all. Mostly it involved getting the spilled Midori off the carpet and figuring out where to put all the unopened beer. Oh, and I still have cake. Lots of cake. At least it's very yummy cake. :)

I actually slept really well last night, which was a pleasant change. As I drifted off to sleep I kept thinking that I should take an Ambien, but the thought of getting out of the feathery-fluffy-goodness of my bed was too much. I still woke up in the middle of the night, but I felt rested when I did finally get up. Yay.

The only big project/stressor on the horizon is The Move. And that really should be simple and straight forward, since I'm hiring movers to do it all. *happy sigh* Life is good.

Adaptive Path Fourth Anniversary and Office Warming Party

In honor of Adaptive Path's fourth anniversary, and as an office warming for our new space, we're having a party!

We're inviting our clients and friends, colleagues and neighbors. Stop by to have a drink with us and meet the team. It'll be a great time.

Adaptive Path Offices
363 Brannan Street
(between 2nd and 3rd Streets)

Thursday, March 24, 2005
5:30 p.m. to whenever

Sleepers

Six Feet Under: Season 1: Disc 2

I'm moving to Berkeley. *giggle* I can't believe it. I get a goofy grin and giggle each time I say it.

I went and looked at places this afternoon. Or rather, looked at a place this afternoon. Part of me says it was wrong to take the first place I saw. But the location is perfect (less than 5 minute walk to the Bark station). I really like the neighborhood. I wandered around some and it has a good, safe feel. The price is completely doable. The landlord is really nice. They take cats. There is a patio and I can garden. It has hardwood floors thoughout, which really make it feel bright.

The downside to the place is that it is a bit smaller than my current space and doesn't have all that much storage space. Which wouldn't be an issue except for the fact that I have a ton of shit. Now, this is an opportunity for me to pair down and get rid of said shit. But that is going to be hard since I'm rather fond of all my shit. It also doesn't have a lot of curb appeal, but I think the location and charm inside will make up for that. Oh, and no dishwasher, but given how much I've been cooking lately isn't a big deal. Oh, but there is a washer and dryer in the unit, thankfully.

I still haven't signed a lease, but I've spoken with the landlord and we are going to take care of paperwork early this week. If anyone else calls he's going to say it is rented. I can't believe it. I'm moving. To the People's Republic of Berkeley. Egads.

Today is my first full day home in I don't know how long. Literally weeks. I've spent the last few hours watching the first 3 episodes plus the pilot for Six Feet Under. I really enjoyed them. I get another disc from Netflix soon and I can't wait.

It's felt really good to just hang around the house with the cats this afternoon. I didn't sleep-in all that much - was up around 8ish. I ran a bunch of errands around lunchtime and finished vacuuming the house and laundry. So I have been productive. I feel like I should (there's that awful word again) be doing more (see, I have this list...), but, well, it feels so good not to.

E went skiing up at the cabin in Tahoe this weekend. I miss him. It was hard going from seeing him all day everyday on the trip to not seeing him at all. I miss him. Though at the same time, it's kind of nice to be by myself, with the cats. It's interesting how you can miss people and want to see them yet be glad they aren't there at the same time.

I need to really start looking for a place in Berkeley. Originally I was going to spend today looking at apartments and do errands tomorrow. But I kept thinking about all the little things I had to get done and somehow I just ended doing them instead. I might look at places tomorrow, instead. I really don't have that much time if I'm going to be moving in April. I've been looking at postings on Craig's List, but for some reason I feel really shy about calling about any of them. Strange I know. Not sure what is up with that.

Things are coming together for my party next week. I ordered the cake, the flowers, and the somosas today. I've also been picking up beer, and soda, and other drinkages. I need to make a grocery list of all the little things like lemons and limes, as well as the stuff I'll need for the munchies. I hope people come. I'm always so afraid that no one will show up and those that do will have a miserable time.

Anyway, I think I'm going to be a couch potato for a while longer. There are some felines in the vicinity that need some scritchen. Mmmmm... kitten snuggles.

From Jen:

If you have read the whole book, bold it. If you have read part of the book, italicize it. If you own it but haven't gotten around to reading it yet, ** it.

1 The Bible
2 Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
3 Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
4 The Koran
5 Arabian Nights **
6 Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
7 Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
8 Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
9 Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
10 Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
11 The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
12 Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
13 Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
14 Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
15 Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
16 Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
17 Dracula by Bram Stoker
18 Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin
19 Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
20 Essays by Michel de Montaigne
21 Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
22 History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
23 Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
24 Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
25 Ulysses by James Joyce
26 Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
27 Animal Farm by George Orwell
28 Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
29 Candide by Voltaire
30 To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
31 Analects by Confucius
32 Dubliners by James Joyce
33 Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
34 Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
35 Red and the Black by Stendhal
36 Das Capital by Karl Marx
37 Flowers of Evil by Charles Baudelaire
38 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
39 Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence
40 Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
41 Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
42 Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
43 Jungle by Upton Sinclair
44 All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
45 Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx
46 Lord of the Flies by William Golding
47 Diary by Samuel Pepys
48 Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
49 Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
50 Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
51 Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
52 Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant
53 One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
54 Praise of Folly by Desiderius Erasmus
55 Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
56 Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X
57 Color Purple by Alice Walker
58 Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
59 Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke
60 Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison **
61 Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
62 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
63 East of Eden by John Steinbeck
64 Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
65 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou **
66 Confessions by Jean Jacques Rousseau
67 Gargantua and Pantagruel by Francois Rabelais
68 Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes
69 The Talmud
70 Social Contract by Jean Jacques Rousseau
71 Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
72 Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence
73 American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
74 Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler
75 Separate Peace by John Knowles
76 Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
77 Red Pony by John Steinbeck
78 Popol Vuh
79 Affluent Society by John Kenneth Galbraith
80 Satyricon by Petronius
81 James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
82 Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov **
83 Black Boy by Richard Wright
84 Spirit of the Laws by Charles de Secondat Baron de Montesquieu
85 Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
86 Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
87 Metaphysics by Aristotle
88 Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
89 Institutes of the Christian Religion by Jean Calvin
90 Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse
91 Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
92 Sanctuary by William Faulkner
93 As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
94 Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin
95 Sylvester and the Magic Pebble by William Steig
96 Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
97 General Introduction to Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud
98 Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
99 Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Alexander Brown
100 Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
101 Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest J. Gaines
102 Emile Jean by Jacques Rousseau
103 Nana by Emile Zola
104 Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
105 Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
106 Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
107 Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
108 Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck
109 Ox-Bow Incident by Walter Van Tilburg Clark
110 Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
111 Are You There God, It's Me, Margaret, Judy Blume
112 The Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling
113 The Merchant of Venice, William Shakespeare
114 A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'Engle
115 The Witches of Worm, Zilpha Keatly Snyder

*sigh* Some of these I can't remember if I've read them or not. I spent so much time working in libraries that I know the books so well, but I can't remember if I've actually read it.

I do wonder where this list came from. Things like tihs always make me feel unread and unlearned and that I need to get reading.

Much posting needs to be done. For now, know that I had a most wonderful time in Maui. We saw so many beautiful and wonderful things; met so many incredable people. I will post more later (both stories of the trip and photos). For know, here's a brief list of highlights/things to know:

1. We scuba dived with sea turtles. Four of them. It was so amazing.
2. Scuba diving in warm water is so much better than cold water. Though I kept looking for sea otters and wondering where all the kelp was.
3. E and I will be building a website for Maui Cultural Land Trust, the group that we did the service project for. More on that soon.
4. Neither of us got sunburned. (Hey, with our fair skin that is a big deal.)
5. I actually relaxed, didn't think about work or responsibilites, and enjoyed myself.

At the IA Summit in Montreal this weekend, Donna asked me to add an RSS feed to my website so she could keep up with my blog.

There ya go chica. (At least, I think that's all I have to do. Lemme know if it doesn't work.)