Stupidfool.org

Water Wars

I discovered today that our monthly water bill (from the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission) includes a graph of our water usage over the last year. [1] It's pretty fascinating trying to correlate it to events; for example, we used a lot of water last November, the month after Penelope was born.

I think I'm going to experiment with bringing our water usage down to see how much of an effect I can have, now that I'll have this data on a monthly basis.

But here's what I'd like next: a comparison chart (anonymous, of course) to everyone in my neighborhood; my city; my state; and so on. That way, I can see how we compare to other people in our area, and it can become a competition. Give me stats, charts, and graphs showing us how we compare, and you'll see our water usage drop!

[1] Considering that they're pushing water conservation, I'll bet this isn't a coincidence.

Sometimes, I'm rather pathetic.

On Sunday I was watching the Super Bowl, and I was making myself another margarita—you know, to celebrate the Big Game, &c.—& in order to do that I had to open a new bottle of tequila. So I did, and after a lot of tugging, I pulled out the giant cork-like thing from the bottle.

In the process of which, I spilled tequila all over the v-neck undershirt I was wearing, which Mena thought was quite trashy.

That's all.

Mena posted!

And she tagged me for the fun game!

Four jobs I've had:

• Soccer referee. Does that count? I don't know if I actually got paid. I was probably 12 or 13.
• Ice Cream vendor, Baskin Robbins. I worked at Baskin Robbins for about a year, I think. I was probably the worst BR employee ever—I wasn't openly disdainful, I guess, but I never really smiled at customers, &c.
• Software Engineer, Excite@Home & Ignition Design. & some other places while in college, too.
• Co-Founder/CTO, Six Apart

Four movies I can watch over and over:

• The Godfather, Part II
• Brain Candy
• XXX
• Trapped in the Closet (more)

Four places I've lived:

• Petaluma, CA
• Santa Clara, CA
• Redwood City, CA
• San Francisco, CA

(Yes, very boring.)

FourTen TV shows I love:

• Blow Out
• Project Runway (more)
• America's Next Top Model (more)
• Survivor (more)
• Lost (more)
• I'm Alan Partridge / Knowing Me, Knowing You (more)
• 24
• The Sopranos
• Arrested Development
• Freaks and Geeks (more)

Four places I've vacationed:

• Los Cabos, Mexico. November 2005, after Thanksgiving. (some photos)
• Big Island, Hawaii. July 2005. I fell off of a bike & had to get 15 stitches in my chin, & thereafter couldn't go in the water. But it was still a fun trip.
• Charleston, SC. Twice, as day trips while visiting Mena's family in Charlotte, NC.
• England & France for a month, after college.

Four of my favorite dishes:

• Curry Udon in Tokyo, which is always our just-off-the-plane-and-somewhat-delirious meal. Mie has some good photos.
• Coconut cake at Peninsula Grill in Charleston, SC. This cake was so amazing! Here's a photo.
• Fish tacos! Anywhere, really, but especially here.
• Vietnamese potstickers, which I haven't had for probably 15 years, I guess, but when my dad used to work in San Francisco, my family would drive down to visit him every so often. We'd meet him out in the Inner Richmond (he'd take the bus out from the Financial District), and we'd go to a Vietnamese restaurant, The Garden House, around 3rd and Clement. The restaurant isn't there anymore—I remember when they told us they were moving to the East Bay, & that was a sad day. I loved those potstickers.

FourThree sites I visit daily:

• my LJ friends page
• my blog
• Whatever sites NetNewsWire tells me have been updated.

Four places I would rather be right now:

• New York
• Disneyland
• Hawaii
• sleeping

Tag some other bloggers:

• Sippey
• Tatsuhiko

"Some days it's dark. Some days I work. ..." [1]

Is January 24 still the most depressing day of the year in 2006? Seems that it must be, according to news stories.

Now, granted, I realize that the formula for Most Depressing Day isn't particularly scientific [2], but I find it quite suspicious that it's chosen the same day at least two years in a row, now.

But for those who're looking for a little Tuesday depression, here are some suggestions on how to prove the scientists right:

Listen...

to one or more of the following:

1. The Clientele, "K"
2. Dios, "Just Another Girl"
3. Dusty Springfield, "Breakfast in Bed"
4. ABBA, "The Winner Takes It All"
5. Jane Birkin, "Fuir le Bonheur"
6. The Go-Betweens, "I'm Allright"
7. The Beach Boys, "You Still Believe In Me"
8. The The, "Love is Stronger Than Death"
9. The Afghan Whigs, "When We Two Parted"
10. Willie Nelson, "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain"

Watch...

The Godfather: Part II. Or, maybe, watch it more than once! It gets more uplifting the second & third times round—I promise. [3]

Happy Sad Day!

[1] Best song ever.

[2] This is the frighteningly new-agey, feel-bad formula, btw:

The model is:

[W + (D-d)] x TQ
M x NA

The equation is broken down into seven variables: (W) weather, (D) debt, (d) monthly salary, (T) time since Christmas, (Q) time since failed quit attempt, (M) low motivational levels and (NA) the need to take action.

Of course, it leaves quite a few questions unanswered:

• What about the southern hemisphere, where the temperature in January can be above 100 degrees Fahrenheit?
• What about people who celebrate another holiday (or none at all) instead of Christmas?
• What if I have no motivation whatsoever, which would cause M to be (presumably) 0, which would cause a division by 0 condition, leading to an infinite amount of... something?
• & most importantly: What is the final unit of measurement? Days? Weeks? Minutes? Number of depressed people?

&c.

[3] Not really. But it does tend to numb you after a while, which can be helpful.

"You can't say no in December..."

2005 == the year where I had a blog! As in, for real! [1]

And so I actually posted a lot this year, starting in around August or so. 72 posts this year (again, all but 3 of them since August), as compared to 7 in 2004, 14 in 2003, &c. [2]

But if there's ever been a type of post that I'm consistent about, it's the year-end wrap-up/favorites post (c.f. 2004, & 2003). I love reading them (I've already read a bunch this year, on other people's blogs—in fact, I feel like I'm reading more this year than usual). And I even like writing them, because I love that combined feeling of sadness & hope that the EOY always brings.

So, to the favorites of 2005!

Favorite Songs

I've spent way too much time on creating this list—much more than you'd think by looking at it—& its size has varied greatly, from about 28 songs now down to half that size. Not all of the songs have "listen" links alongside, because some artists just don't want you to hear even samples of their music without paying for it. Or, at least, they seem to want to make it prohibitively difficult. [3]

So then, in no order other than alphabetical, & without any useful commentary alongside [4]:

• The Ark, "This Piece of Poetry is Meant to Do Harm" (listen)
• The Clientele, "Since K Got Over Me" (listen)
• Dios Malos, "Feels Good Being Somebody" (listen)
• The Fiery Furnaces, "Evergreen"
• Fiona Apple, "Red Red Red"
• Girls Aloud, "Models"
• Hey Willpower, "Hundredaire" (listen)
• Jamie Lidell, "When I Come Back Around" (listen)
• Maxi Geil! & Playcolt, "Making Love in the Sunshine" (listen)
• M.I.A., "10 Dollar"
• Spoon, "The Beast and Dragon, Adored" (listen)
• Sufjan Stevens, "Chicago" (listen)
• Sugababes, "Push the Button"

Favorite Awesomely Amazing Song Cycle!

R. Kelly, Trapped in the Closet (more)

Favorite Unexpected Reissue

Jean Claude Vannier, L'Enfant Assassin Des Mouches (more)

Favorite Thing about 2005

Friends, having such & spending time with, which it seems like we did more of this year. [5]

Favorite Search Terms that led people to my blog

These are from just one day last week, when I chanced to look at my stats!

I'm unashamedly proud of this list, mostly because they're like a reward for me: I've always wanted the sort of blog that would lead to search terms like this. I've helpfully linked each of the search terms to the post that they lead to.

• cat glover
• clinton kelly gay
• criss angel
• mindfreak
• songs on degrassi tng
• anti clay aiken boards
• selena and chris
• alan partridge abba medley
• crack den

---

[1] Well, hopefully, the first of many such.

[2] One of the greatest things about having a blog, I'm now finding, is that I actually have posts to refer to in this post. Which is just so meta, really, but to me it's all new & amazing, because I have actually produced content this year (i.e., written content, as opposed to just code).

[3] Of course, it doesn't escape my notice that it's the indie bands, generally, who've got the best (official) arrangements for fans to listen to their music.

& the reason I've not linked to the Fiery Furnaces site is that it's so fucking inscrutable that I can't even figure out where the songs are. But I have to say, these videos are just so relentlessly charming that it makes me forget about their frustrating web site, & love them once again.

[4] I actually tried writing something about each of these songs, because personally I like reading commentary. I started by aiming for a couple of sentences, which didn't really work, partly because I've just gotten over the work involved in writing such treatises in my set of holiday mix posts. I must say, I've really got a huge amount of respect for music bloggers who can write about music every day. It's fucking exhausting.

So anyway, I then tried describing each song w/ just a single adverb-adjective combination. I even loosened the rules here rather severely, such that neither the adverb nor the adjective needed to be real words. E.g. "authentically timberlake-esque".

But that was even more difficult, because it seems it's even more difficult for me to be succinct—I suppose I'm naturally discursive, though you'd not know it to talk with me. So, I gave up on the commentary.

[5] Yes, I'm a sentimental & sappy fucker, but you must've known that by now.

Something for the Weekend

Mena & I've had a busy (but fun!) weekend. We flew to North Carolina for Anil's and Alaina's pre-wedding party. It was fun to see David and Adriana, who we don't get to see very often, along with Anil's parents and sister. We also got to meet a friend of Anil's from his Harrisburg days, and hear about the time (or one time, at least) that Anil spent $100 on a Prince CD that he already owned, just because it was in a pretty wooden box. [1]

But so as part of the trip, we also got to see Mena's family in Charlotte. We took a red-eye flight to Charlotte on Friday night, and arrived at 6:30am, then drove about 30 minutes to their house. Somewhat exhausted, we took a nap for about 3 hours, and then Mena went swimming in her parents' pool, while her grandparents watched from the shade. Mena took Annie in the pool with her, as well.

So when I got outside it was kind of a crazy scene: Mena, and her dad, and Annie in the pool; the theme from the Enchanted Tiki Room playing loudly on the speakers out by the pool; Augie locked up in the house, because he'd been barking too much.

But then, to top it off, Mena's dad said, "Turn on the fountains!" As an added touch, Mena's parents had some fountains installed out by the pool—they recycle the water from the pool & spray it in an arc from the brick fence back into the pool. And so, after they turned on the fountains, I took a picture that just seems to completely capture Mena's family:

All I'd need to do is to embed some audio into it that plays music from Disneyland, and it'd be a quintessential representation of Mena and her family.

[1] Which I can actually relate to, sort of. In college I had a phase where I bought a bunch of nicely-packaged versions of albums I already owned: the glow-in the dark version of Spiritualized's Pure Phase; the actually in-a-metal-canister version (Metal Box) of Public Image Ltd's Second Edition; etc.

All very pretty, and very useless, & which I just sigh about whenever I have to pack them in a box when we move.

And none of these cost $100, mind you, but then again, it's not really the price that's important—it's the fact that you're buying an album that you already own.

Blogging is fun!

Inspired by Mena's graph of posting frequency on all of the sixapart.com blogs, I decided to plot my posting frequency per month for all time on StupidFool:

Those months without any bars on them are where I didn't post at all. Yes, there are a lot of such months.

To put it in perspective, I've written more in the last 2 months than over the previous 3 years combined [1]. The main reason being to remind my vast readership that they're pretty lucky how often I'm posting now!

Yay for my blog!

[1] Note that September 2005 is a projection based on my posting thus far, which could be considered cheating.

Math Quiz!

Via Jason I read & took this math quiz, which is a sample of a math test for 8th graders from the Illinois State Board of Education [1].

I scored only 8 out of 10, because I forgot the formula for the length of the diagonal of a triangle, and two of the questions were dependent upon that knowledge.

Stupid triangles!

[1] Note the smooth transition from my previous post!

Wholesome Family Fun

River Rock Casino bills itself as "San Francisco's closest casino", which may be the case—but that doesn't change the fact that it's actually pretty fucking far away. [1]

Some background: Mena's parents are visiting us this weekend, and so we were driving San Francisco basically trying to figure out what to do, and inexplicably decided that an Indian casino was the way to go. If you've read Mena's blog—or rather, if you read it 4 years ago—you might remember that she has a number of Las Vegas stories about her family and herself. So there's a lot of, um, history around gambling with Mena and her family.

But anyway, in honor of our trip this weekend to the casino, I've compiled the following list!

Reasons to hate the River Rock Casino:

• It's not actually that close to San Francisco.
• They don't serve alcohol. I don't know why.
• They've taken a beautiful setting (the Alexander Valley, in the middle of vineyards), ripped it up, and built a building that looks like a penitentiary, spoiling the area forever.
• They don't have any Blackjack machines. (This is mainly Mena's reason.)
• It's horribly depressing. This is in turn because of a number of factors, including all of the reasons above, but in addition: the buses pulling up with giant groups of tourists; the old people breathing through oxygen tubes and basically living for the thrill of pushing the button on the slot machines; etc.

All that said! We took some pictures, and had a generally good time, because frankly, it's kind of funny to see Mena blowing smoke into her mom's face and giving her dad a cigarette:

[1] By the way, see that "Now More Parking" line on their website? Seriously, the parking lot is gigantic, which in and of itself is kind of depressing, because it was so not full.

Winner

Yesterday, at Disneyland, we went to see what was new at Innoventions, which is a showcase of technology/health/gaming/entertainment/etc. But in addition, this year is the 50th anniversary of Disneyland, so all over the park, there are decorations & stuff about its history. So at Innoventions, they had a mock game show (sponsored by TiVo, incidentally) with trivia questions about the last 50 years of Disneyland.

So they called for contestants out of the crowd, and Mena--Disneyland fan that she is--frantically raised her hand, and was chosen to be contestant number 2 (out of 3 in total). The other two contestants were much younger.

Before they began, Mena had her hand poised directly above the buzzer, waiting to hit it. The game show host said that, to be fair, everyone had to have their hands on their head until she gave the signal that the contestants could answer.

There were 5 questions overall, and Mena answered all of them first, showing her extraordinary skill at the buzzer. She answered 4 of them correctly, and the one she missed concerned the length of the original broadcast announcing Disneyland in 1955. She guessed 15 minutes, and the correct answer was 90.

Though she said afterwards, "But I knew that the host was Art Linkletter! If they'd asked that, I would have known!"

So, in short, she won. The prize was a little stuffed TiVo mascot.

(3GP video)

This video is a better demonstration of her intensity than anything I could write. This is from one of the questions she answered correctly.

Note:

• her speed at hitting the buzzer!
• her poise as she answers a tough question!
• how, even when she's answering the question, she puts her hands back on her head so as not to break any of the rules and thwart her chance at winning!