You know those customized car horns that play a song instead of going “BREEEP!”? Like in “Dukes of Hazzard” or on the streets of the L.A. ghettos?
A car (“a ’68 Mustang,” Amy says) just drove past our apartment “playing” its custom horn: The theme from The Godfather.
(dah dah DAH daaaah, dah da DAAAAAAAH…)
Just had a total Indiana Jones moment:
Transferring from MUNI to BART, escalator traffic is held up by a jackhole who refuses to listen to pleas to “stand on the right; walk on the left.” As I make the loop back down the BART-bound escalator, I see that a train is there on my platform, doors open.
I pick up the pace.
The marquee comes into view. This is the train I need to catch.
I half-shout “Excuse me!” to the people now standing between me and the platform.
The BART train “dings” to signal that the doors are about to close.
Simultaneously, I hit the platform running.
As the doors slide closed, I fly between ‘em, startling a tourist-y couple sitting to my left.
Sweet. 
The commute in was interesting today. I took the bus from the pad to the MUNI station in the Castro. That went normally; plenty of room and seats for everyone.
When I got to the station, though, the platform was a solid mass of people running the length of the waiting area.
I let one full train go by before I decided to elbow my way into the next car, also totally packed.
I ended up riding all the way to Embarcadero (where I transfer to BART) wedged up into a corner by the door, my left arm in an awkward, almost-dislocated position.
That said, I still like living somewhere with public transportation.
Google’s got satellite photography of the Bay Area; now they’re going to complement that by adding 3d modeling to the mix:
Google plans to use trucks equipped with lasers and digital photographic equipment to create a realistic 3D online version of San Francisco, and eventually other major US cities.
The move would trump Amazon’s A9 service, which offers two-dimensional photos of buildings on US city streets.
Friday night I went to see a co-worker perform as Maria (the lead) in “Sound of Music” at a theatre down in Foster City.
Well, calling Karyne a “co-worker” is a bit of a misnomer, thanks to the wonders of technology: Though we’ve carried on many a conversation and have joked around with each other, we’d never actually met face-to-face. Our interaction was rooted in email messages.
So when she mentioned that she was in the musical, I knew I had to make the time to go see her. And man, I am so glad I did!
Karyne was fantastic, a funny, natural, real Maria. Her sense of comedic timing was spot-on, and she was able to play some of her reactions very broadly in a way that was hilarious without being at all cringe-inducing. Take all that, and then add in a superb set of pipes and you begin to grasp just how well she nailed it all.
She really was the highlight of the show, and that would’ve been true even if I hadn’t been there to see her perform. Most of her fellow thespians were decent-to-good, with only one fellow that truly shouldn’t have been there. (No sense of rhythm; unpolished; wore his character like a rubber mask: stifling, uncomfortable, and devoid of any visible emotion save the one stamped into it.)
The kids they had playing the Von Trapp children were quite good, though I must confess I was distracted for the first few minutes they were on stage; I was trying to figure out why each of them had this strange little cowlick of hair over an ear. Turns out they were some sort of fancy-shmancy microphones and not hair at all.
After the show was over, I hung around outside to say hi and to tell her how much I’d enjoyed her performance.
The meeting went… um… awkwardly.
As it happens, she had a bunch of family members and out-of-town friends there, and given that I hadn’t told her ahead of time I was going to show up, she was caught off-guard by my popping up. That’s me, the accidental stalker.
But we’ve since made tentative plans to go do the face-to-face chat thing sometime soon, so yay! for that.
A view of the Financial District and surrounding areas from space:
[San Francisco] is also argueably (sic) one of the most beautiful cities in the United States, sitting right on the San Francisco Bay. The city’s climate is moderated by its closeness to the Pacific Ocean, and the relative warmth of the Pacific air that flows toward the city over the cold water currents near the coastline is resposible for the city’s famous fogs. The city is bounded on the east by the rocky and forested hills of the Coast Range Mountains.
There was no such fog on August 28, 2004, when the IKONOS satellite took this unusual oblique-angle image of the city’s financial district. By aiming its sensors off nadir, IKONOS was able to capture a sense of the city’s tall skyscrapers: a unique perspective on a unique city.
Dilbert creator Scott Adams will be appearing at a pair of book signings in the Bay Area over the next week. As listed in the newest issue of The Dilbert Newsletter:
Tuesday, December 7
7:00 p.m.
Borders
120 Crescent Drive
Pleasant Hill, CA 94523Tuesday, December 14
7:00 p.m.
Borders
200 King Street
San Fransciso, CA 94523
Today I took BART to work for the first time, avoiding rush hour traffic back and forth across the Bay Bridge.
Here’s where it gets interesting: The BART station is 1.7 miles away.
Going there this morning wasn’t too bad. Though the morning was chilly-and-a-half, and fog-borne vapor was thick in the air, it was a nice walk. Oh, and it was all downhill.
…which means, of course, that I had to 1.7 miles home from the station this evening.
All.
Up.
Hill.
Once upon a time, Scott and I found ourselves playing around with an altimeter (I think it was his dad’s, but I might be wrong), watching the display drift up and down ever so slightly as we drove around the modest, rolling, perfectly manicured hills of Mission Viejo.
As I trudged up, up, forever up this evening, I was more than a little curious what that altimeter would’ve told me.
Probably best, though, that I don’t know for sure. That way, I can just know, maaaan, that it was the equivalent of a quarter mile straight up.
Though that might just be the oxygen depletion talking.
I am extremely happy to report that I have been offered a job with ANG Newspapers in Oakland as a “Web Producer!” I start on Monday.
The downsides are that it’s an entry-level job, so it’s not going to involve getting to the full-on design and programming stuff that I’m used to (and enjoy), and that it features correspondingly entry-level pay.
The upsides, however, are plentiful: There’s room for growth (a higher position more suited to my experience should be opening up in January or February); there are medical and dental benefits; they have a 401(k) plan and subsidize a portion of their employees’ public transportation costs; and, most importantly, the people that I’m going to be working with strike me as a really great group of folks.
I’m really, really looking forward to this! 