I enjoy taking photos, but I am nowhere near being a good amateur photographer. My biggest problem is not spending enough time developing my skills. When I took a few photography classes at the local junior college, I managed to scratch-the-itch to take photos in order to fulfill class assignments. Now without that pressure of producing I find it difficult to, well, produce any photos.
This is where a good podcast on photography can help.
I’m saddened by the demise of Pownce - in its current form. They were acquired by Six Apart earlier this week which means…I don’t know exactly what it means. I wasn’t a heavy user of Pownce, but I did use it to communicate with friends. I was able to privately share small files, photos, links, and messages with various friends. I’m not sure if Pownce will be integrated with one of Six Apart’s services such as Vox or Typepad, but it won’t be the same.
However long you live, you will remember where you were when you heard that Barack Obama was elected the 44th President of the United States.
Did you get to watch his acceptance speech? If you haven’t, it’s worth listening to the whole speech.
Farrah and I went to the Bridge School Benefit concert this past Sunday. The lineup for the concert on that day was:
Cat Power Wilco Death Cab for Cutie Smashing Pumpkins Josh Groban Norah Jones Jack Johnson Neil Young (of course) We chose to go on Sunday the day the Smashing Pumpkins were playing. We would have liked to have watched Sarah McLaughlin, who was only playing Saturday, but Farrah had never seen the Smashing Pumpkins in concert.
“Waaaasup! The Pro-Obama Version” Yeah, those are the same guys.
The man speaks the truth - in 2000. He must have lost his vision (of the future) or his ability to articulate his stance on the issue. I’m guessing it’s both.
NSFW due to language. Listen at your own risk.
I haven’t watched South Park for some time now. But it seems that they are still as funny as ever.
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I’ve been thinking of creating more and more video. I can post video onto my Smugmug account, but I like the controls and feel of Vimeo more.
I’ll need to consider this further. But first I need to edit and shoot more video!
I wrote in a previous post about having to track my bandwidth usage since Comcast was implementing bandwidth limits. Well, my results for September are in. According to my Tomato router I used 195.11 GB total bandwidth. 57.51 GB was used for downloading content and 137.60 GB was for uploading.
What does this mean?
Well, my upload number is high because of the online backup service I use, Mozy. The data I am backing up - music, photos, and documents - is about 200 GB total.
The other night Farrah and I went to Cafe Du Nord to see Rachael Yamagata perform. We enjoyed her first album, Happenstance, which is a somber but strong debut album. We downloaded and listened to pre-released tracks from her new album, Elephants…Teeth Sinking Into Heart. Some of her songs on the album go into a more uptempo direction.
Cafe Du Nord, in size, reminds me of the old Cactus Club in San Jose—except Cafe Du Nord is much darker and has the vibe of Bimbo’s 365 Club.
Comcast made a lovely announcement last week that they were imposing bandwidth caps for their users. The limit is 250 GB a month. I have no idea how much bandwidth I use. Funny thing is Comcast is not giving users a way to determine how much bandwidth they actually use!
Comcast suggests using one of the “many online tools…to measure [your] consumption.” The problem I had was trying to find a tool that could measure all the devices in our household that access the Internet.
The Matrix has been reloaded. Reason? No real reason, just sheer boredom.
Anyone who’s been reading these pages knows that I’ve been having a nasty habit lately of changing things around. I’m not sure why I am so scatterbrained about the blog the last couple of years, but I’ve learned to live with it.
So I’ve archived the old and started once again from scratch. I’ll post something worth reading some time soon.
Happy 60th Birthday and Happy Retirement
My iPhone Contacts Disappeared!: While I was out and about today, my iPhone contacts disappeared. I noticed this when I received a text message from someone on my contact list, which showed their phone number instead of their name. I’m guessing my over-the-air sync with Mobile Me was the cause since I have seen this sync problem before but only with my iMac and dot Mac. But when I got online, my Mobile Me account and my iMac contacts were fine.
Beginning in July, California went ‘handsfree’. Now, I don’t talk on my cellphone often while driving but Farrah does. And so I did some research on a solution that would work for her.
The iPhone comes with a nice standard headset for listening to music and taking phone calls. It can be used in the car as long as you only use one earbud while driving. I do this often, but it can be uncomfortable, and I think Farrah finds this so as well.
I don’t know how I forgot, but I did. Angche proposed to Lotte at her birthday celebration several weeks back. You can relive the moment on their wedding web site (or my almost similar video.)
Congratulations to you both!
Anyone who knows me knows that Batman is my favorite comic book character. When The Dark Knight was announced, I couldn’t be more excited to see it. After all, I think Chris Nolan did a great job with Batman Begins. With my high expectations—believe me, I tried to lower them—Farrah and I headed into the IMAX theater at the Metreon to watch The Dark Knight. Did we like it? What do you think?
Two Sundays ago I received an unexpected phone call from old friends who were traveling to Las Vegas for a vacation they had planned over a year ago. They asked if I could meet them there. It was fairly short notice, but I asked Farrah if I could go to Vegas because I hadn’t seen these friends in over 20 years. After working out the financial details - after all, have you seen the airfare prices!
Yen and James welcome Timothy into this world. Congratulations!
Update: I just posted the photos we took.
I’ve incorporated, once again, RSS feeds into the sidebar of the page. This should give my many visitors - I say this smiling - access to our friends’ blogs, as well as updates to my found Tumblr page. You can simply click on the link to view the blog entry. The sidebar should update as they post more (hint hint!).
It’s a fact that when it comes to hi-tech toys you will eventually be behind the curve. Sometimes it can take a year to fall behind. Other times it can be weeks.
I was reminded of this when I read Gizmodo this morning. I found out a new version of Drobo came out. I only bought mine three weeks ago. Should I send back the old one (if I can) and get the new improved one?
Are you going to get the iPhone 2.0?
I have been asked that several times the past few days. As Friday fast approaches the answer is still the same, no I won’t be upgrading.
My three reasons why I won’t be upgrading:
I don’t want to pay AT&T the $18 for the privilege of changing phones. The fact that the data plan cost slightly more, though understandably with the 3G speed and GPS included.
For some reason the blog has been acting up lately. Pages have been loading slowly and posting has been difficult. The problem does not appear to be the server, as I’m able to access files by FTP and use other portion of the site that are not built using Wordpress fine.
And so I’ve deployed Movable Type once more. The feeling of generating static HTML pages is starting to appeal to me more and more.
I don’t know when Farrah starting putting massive amounts of pepper on her ketchup when we have fries, but now I can’t eat fries any other way.
When I met up with some friends at Yahoo! for lunch at the local In-N-Out, I notice Gloria did the same thing to her ketchup. I forgot to ask her where she got the habit from. I’m curious, who else do I know that does this?
I have had about five digital cameras. I didn’t enjoy the Sony Cybershot DSC-T1 as much as I had hoped. Daytime results were good, but anything indoors or at night was very problematic. I bought it before a trip to Hawaii. This is when I learned to never buy a camera right before a trip, as you may not be happy with the results. I was happy with about 60% of the photos I took.
I forgot to acknowledge several accomplishments on the blog. Kayla graduated middle school this year, and Jonathan graduated high school. Congratulations to you both!
I also forgot to mention (probably because I haven’t blogged in some time) that I have changed jobs. It’s been about a month now since I left my previous company and started working at the new one. It was a tough choice moving on, but change is good, right?
I don’t blog about work much, but it’s difficult to read that many talented people are leaving Yahoo! lately (here, here, and here). When I was luckily enough to join Yahoo! in 2002, I was met with a work environment very similar to my first Silicon Valley job. The company seemed full of energy, wanting to make a big impact on the Internet, more so then it had so far.
For the last couple of months, I’ve had the urge to start running. I was never much of a runner. My lack of endurance only allowed for short sprints. But I think all the walking Farrah and I did in England, France, and New York has made me realize you can get far on your feet. This fact, plus the cost of gas, is making self-powered transportation a good alternative to driving.
Farrah and I are planning on going to Hawaii in September. Luckily we purchased our plane tickets before the whole crazy mess with the gas prices. Otherwise the price of a ticket would be insanely high. I haven’t been back since our wedding in 2005, so it will be a real treat for me. I can’t wait until September.
I wasn’t sure what to expect when Farrah and I sat down to watch the latest Indiana Jones film. It has been nineteen years since the last movie in the trilogy—well, I guess it’s no longer a trilogy but a series of films—with many action films to wow us during that time. Could Indiana deliver the ‘wow factor’ still?
The short answer is yes.
OK, here is the Netflix summary of the movie:
At about 5:30 PM yesterday Farrah heard a large crashing sound in our backyard. It seems the old lemon tree we have there decided to partially crash.
The other half of the tree is up and seems to be holding well. We trimmed a few branches from its side just in case.
Anyone need any lemons?
OK, I have an idea of what I can write in the future on Janella.com. I have always said of myself, “I know a little bit about a lot of things.” I’m a classic example of being a “Jack of all trades, master of none”. Unfortunately, I’m not really an expert in any area, but this fact hasn’t stopped friends and family asking my advice on a few things.
I’m a bit late with my review of the Morcheeba concert Farrah and I went to last week. The taxman could not wait, taking up all my spare time until today.
I knew of Morcheeba, owning a couple of albums, but to be honest I hadn’t really been into them. I prefer Massive Attack’s music. Morcheeba has always taken a backseat on my playlists. They are touring to support their latest album, Dive Deep.
Grand Central Terminal It has been a week since we came back from our trip to New York City. I thought about writing a day-by-day account of our adventures in The Big Apple, but I think the Twitter postings during our trip suffice.
What I will do is point out some highs, and a few lows, on the trip.
Getting Around Best Experience: Virgin America and walking.
As expected, Virgin America provided an enjoyable airline experience.
Landed @ SFO! A bit late, but here. # The waiting (for luggage) is the hardest part. Still @ SFO. # Back @ the office. Downloaded my work email last night. 35MB data for 1100+ messages. Not bad. Last long vacation it was 1800+ emails. # Finally finished email. Can’t believe the noise. Now I get to actually work! #
Just got back from Gray’s Papaya. Deciding if we should get a drink before packing. # Having a Long Island (and Farrah is having a Dirty Martini) @ Gaby’s downstairs in the hotel. # Need to start packing. Checkout is @ Noon. Then to JFK to wait. Wonder how much the cab ride will be? # @ The Red Flame for the last time. # Is it a flat rate fare FROM Manhattan to JFK?
It’s cold and windy at the Top of the Rock. We can see the Empire State Building all lit up. # @ Katsu-Hama for dinner. Yelp, don’t fail me now # Having a small breakfast @ Grand Central Terminal. We picked up some pasteries from Junior’s. # @ the Met. Not too crowded, yet. # Looking @ a Van Gough. # In the Greek & Roman art section. Farrah was scolded for taking video of me doing a Tim Gunn impression.
Intermission @ Young Frankenstein. Too bad Megan Mullaly isn’t playing her role. The show is good so far. # We just got up. Trying to get our bearings on what to do today. # @ The Red Flame again for breakfast. # Trying to find the correct subway station to take to Lower Manhattan. We’re trying for the Brooklyn Bridge even though the weather is raw. # We are on the Brooklyn Bridge right now!
We are planning to see Lower Manhattan. Later in the day it’s Central Park. We’ll see how it goes. # Standing in line for the bus tour. We are taking the Gray Line Tour. # On the bus. We’re by the seaport side. It’s pretty cold now. We should have brought that extra jacket. # Learned term: “Blocking the box.” When a persons car, truck, etc blocks the intersection, not allowing cross traffic to go through.
Driving to the airport. # OK, Virgin America is in the International terminal. # We’ve landed in New York City!!! # Our plane was initially early - good tailwind - but due to JFK traffic, we’re stuck on the runway. # Farrah & I are in our first NYC taxi ride from the airport. # Morning traffic is heavy. Funny, our cab driver hasn’t said much. He’s talking lightly to someone on his bluetooth.
As this entry posts, I will be in New York City with Farrah. First off, I want to thank everyone who celebrated my birthday the other night. I was really happy to see everyone.
Now, please tolerate my incoherent ramblings, as I try to purge my mind of the few thoughts I have regarding this milestone birthday, the fortieth year of my life. My thoughts sway to and fro of what has been and what is to come.
Heading out to eat soon. Getting some Japanese food. #
We’re getting ready to go to New York City! We’re taking Virgin America as our airline. I’m hoping for as a good flight experience as we had when we took Virgin Atlantic to London last year.
I’ll see if I can blog from NYC on the iPhone. I’m not sure if it will happen. At the least, I’ll provide some updates via Twitter - which will, in turn, appear on the blog.
Happy Easter everyone!
I can’t say much is going on this fine and sunny day. We’re still in the midst of cleaning up, planning, and packing for our trip to New York City in a couple of days. I just wanted to post something real quick on the site.
Next door they are having an Easter egg hunt. The neighborhood has been short on the kid factor the last several years.
OK, I figured out how I “screwed the pooch” on the web site. I fracked an upgrade to a new version of Wordpress, not following directions because I thought I knew what I was doing. Clearly, I was incorrect in my assumption.
I do have a month old backup of the web site which I could restore. But I am extremely lazy at this point in time and am seriously thinking of simply just pressing on from here.
I got up late this morning, around 10:30. I was up too late trying to figure out what is up with the web site. I still haven’t figured it out yet.
But I also think I’m a bit in vacation mode.
OK. I am still not sure what happened, but I was able to recover March entries. Worse case scenario is everything is lost. I don’t think that is the case though. I’ve done monthly backups so the content is somewhere.
Anyway, it is very very late. I’m going to bed now. I think with more rest I will be able to figure this out.
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My sister sent me this mobile photo of the kids, who I have not seen in a very long time. I was surprised to receive the photo by phone.
Unfortunately, AT&T does this very funky thing with multimedia messages received for an iPhone. Instead of just sending you the image or item, they send you a text message saying you received a message. They require you to go to a web site, viewmymessage.
I’m not sure what just happened.
If you visit this page with any frequency, you would know there were many posts here. I was messing with the site and now those posts, about 470 or so, are no longer visible. This teaches me not to mess with the site at such a late hour.
Interesting.
Yesterday, we celebrated Rex and my birthday with a small dinner at Nana’s house. The other birthday boy this month, Big Gordon, is in Nebraska. Of course, he couldn’t make the celebration.
We had an early dinner. I tried to BBQ some steaks, but they didn’t turn out their usual juicy selves. I decided to rely on a meat thermometer while BBQ-ing instead of my instinct. Next time I’m going to rely on my gut feeling.
I wasn’t sure what to title this post. What I’m thinking is that as of April 1, 2008, I am going to disable comments on the blog. This will effectively make this blog a tumblelog instead. If you read my previous post about tumblr and tumblelogs, then you know what I mean.
The reason I thinking of going this way is: (1) the amount of spam comments I’ve been receiving lately; (2) my inability to approve comments; and (3) I’ve been lately doing quick posts which fit the format of a tumblelog better than a blog.
Farrah let me in on my birthday gift early. It is quite a gift: a trip to New York City!
Hesitantly, she revealed my present to me a couple of weeks ago. My mindset regarding flying, and traveling in general, made her feel that it was best to let me in on the gig sooner rather than later. Also, she wanted me to be part of the planning.
I readily admit I didn’t jump on the planning bandwagon right away.
Dirty. Nasty. The dirtiest hotels according to TripAdvisor (TripAdvisor.com)
We Are The Ones. New Obama inspired video by will.i.am. (Dipdive.com)
Enjoy More Picnik. Once premium features are now free, but ad supported. There still are premium features, but for only $24.95/year it’s not a bad deal. I just wish they could interact with Smugmug. (picnik)
Python vs. Dog. Guess who one? (CBSNews)
Rocking the Kids. Kids’ songs sung by rock stars.
(Better quality version available directly at Dipdive.com
Interesting Presidential race this year. Choices seemed plentiful earlier in the year, but they are narrowing quite rapidly. At the least, get out there to vote this November. Me? I have yet to make up my mind.
The choices come down to three at this point: John, Hilary, or Barack (Please, Ralph Nader doesn’t stand a chance). Read about them, pick them apart, and then decide at the least to exercise your right to vote.
A few things to look at for today.
A sad story without words. You can figure it out, can’t you? (Imageshack) [Update: If you can’t access the Imageshack link, please try this link)
Turtle soup. What do you have in your fridge? via steveny (DailyMail)
Guilty! But of what? (GuessMyCrime)
Cool invites. Evite is cool, but Pingg is looking interesting. via Techcrunch (pingg)
This is a new type of blog entry for me, at least on the main blog. It is simply a collection of links that were either IM’d to me or I ran into through my daily browsing. This type of entry takes the place of my now dead Tumblr account. I like to call these entries “Around the Horn” (another baseball term).
Obama Hype or Substance? Well researched write up on Obama versus Hillary.
The 40-40 club.
In baseball, it is an exclusive club. You need to have stolen 40 bases and hit 40 home runs in a single season. Currently, only four players have done it. First was Jose Canseco. (Yes, I don’t believe it either.) Next was Barry Bonds. I’m pretty sure this was the pre-roid-juiced-up-mofo Bonds. But if Canseco was taking the juice back then, I guess you can never be certain.
It’s great to hear the Writer’s Strike is over. But according to Kristin at E!online, some of my favorite shows won’t be on until next season!
My favorites:
24 - Looks like Jack won’t be back until next January, since they only finished half of their episodes. A long break may be good for this show, which has had some weak writing as of late.
Battlestar Galactica - For the final season, it looks like they are going to split it just like the 2.
Since I had ordered my Dell over the phone, I tried to seek technical support the same way. The Dell answering menu kept directing me to seek help online. After nearly an hour, I finally contacted a human, but there was an infuriating language barrier. It sounded as if the customer representative was repeatedly asking if I’d pressed the “cat slap button.” Then I realized she was referring to the “caps lock” button.
I’ve been meaning to blog more this year than I have in the past. Unfortunately (or fortunately), it has been busy at work. Then two weeks ago I had dinner with friends I had not seen in years. It was great seeing them, but I caught the flu from one of them! A small price to pay to see friends, but it really through ‘my game’ off for the next couple of weeks.
…or post private photos online.
A 17-gigabyte file purporting to contain more than half a million images lifted from private MySpace profiles has shown up on BitTorrent, potentially making it the biggest privacy breach yet on the top social networking site. Sounds like it’s possibly a very bad thing. But I’m wondering who has the bandwidth to download all 17-gigabytes of data. Read the rest of the article here.
I have been to a salon twice before Farrah and I were married. The salon was Atelier Aveda on Santana Row. Aveda is for everyone, both women and men. But it appears to cater to women more. Since I have been growing out my hair again, Farrah thought I would like to visit a salon again. Instead of Aveda, she found the American Male Salon.
The salon is located in San Antonio Shopping Center, an outdoor mall where I spent many days hanging out.
Anyone one a invite to Skitch? I just got invited, and have been playing around with it. I think the only requirement is Mac 10.4.6 or later.
Leave an email address in the comments if it’s not visible in your profile.
People are crazy interesting, aren’t they? For example, take a look at the below photo.
Yes, what you see is a wedding cake made in the bride’s image. Very disturbing, isn’t it? You can find more photos on CNN through this link.
It has to make you wonder, “How the heck did the groom get talked into this?”
One’s past is what one is. It is the only way by which people should be judged. – Oscar Wilde Since the site change in late December, only a week ago, I have been in several online and offline discussion about the older blog entries being gone. Some understood why I wanted to change. Others simply didn’t like it. After all, in life you cannot easily deny what has come before.
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Interesting building I found on my visit to Digg.com. Imagine being drunk and wandering by this place in Paris. I guess it’s a surrealist building, but I’m not sure if it is built this way or if the building is covered to obtain the look. You can find more information about the building by visiting the following website . This is where I obtained these press photos (more photos after the jump).
The first movie to be reviewed on the “reloaded” website is Juno. Farrah and I watched Juno about a week ago at the AMC Cupertino Square 16. This theater is becoming our number-one place to watch movies. I suppose because it is new, clean, and doesn’t smell like feet yet.
We had only heard good things about the movie, so expectations were slightly high. The only aspect I wasn’t looking forward to was Jennifer Garner’s acting.
Happy New Year to All!!!
May your year be a joyous and prosperous!
Now, I need to do that resolution thing, right?
Ok, in particular order, my resolutions are to:
Use the sleep apnea (CPAP) machine more often, which will give me more energy to… Exercise more, which will help me in… Losing weight, which will also help with… the sleep apnea-thing For those you of you who don’t know what sleeping with a CPAP machine looks like, see the photo below:
