Archive for October, 2006

2006.10.16

Two Great Tastes…?

This last weekend I had the “pleasure” of going shopping with some friends for clothes and Halloween costuming items in the Haight District. Don’t get me wrong; I don’t mind shopping so long as it’s not for me. I actually like helping others out.

Anyways, that’s neither here nor there. After a while we decided to get a beer and some food at Asqew Grill. Polenta, mashed potatoes, and ice cream sundays were the rule of the day. As a joke I took a spoonful of mashed potatoes and some chocolate syrup from the dessert and ate them. It tasted like…

Hot dog.

It was the strangest taste combination I’ve had in a very long time, and completely unexpected. Several others had a try, too, and agreed. So if you’re ever interested in the taste of hot dogs but want to avoid the mystery meat they contain, I recommend mashed potatoes and a bit of chocolate syrup. You won’t regret it. Maybe.

2006.10.14

How Long Before We’re Gone

If humanity disappeared today how long would it take for Earth to recover and make it seem as if we were never here at all? Not long at all, is the answer. Right away, within weeks, as conventional power plants lose their ability to feed the lights that folks inconsiderately left on light pollution would all but disappear. Modern buildings, which require constant maintenance, would start to crumble aided by nature in the form of plants, storms and natural disasters. Disaster… Would it be a disaster if we aren’t there to suffer the repurcussions? Heh. I find it ironic that even with our modern architecture what will probably survive the longest are the old stone buildings from the Middle Ages.

True, some artifacts would remain. Cemeteries might eventually become fossil beds. Nuclear power plants would continue to leak radiation for thousands of years. Carbon in the atmosphere will continue to affect Earth for almost as long. Still, in several thousand years there will be little left to tell possible visitors that there was any intelligent species on this big blue marble. Even our artificial satellites would eventually suffer orbital decay and burn up in the atmosphere.

This gets me wondering whether we would even recognize if there had been any previous intelligent species on this planet in our prehistory. How would we know? The fossil record doesn’t show everything. If a civilization evolved even a hundred thousand years ago there would be nothing left of them, or at least so little it would be nigh impossible to find. Hell, we’re still discovering civilizations that are a mere 9,000 years old.

Food for thought, especially for anyone interested in speculative fiction.

2006.10.13

Looking for a Job?

If you’re looking for a job then you might want to investigate my employer’s jobs page. There are a number of open positions and it looks like we might be going through another growth spurt. I wouldn’t even mention this except that HR has said to put the word out… If you’re interested and I know you personally I can put a good word in for you, too.

If I don’t know you but you apply pretending to know me I will find out about it and me and HR will have a good chuckle at your expense.

2006.10.12

The Apple iLon

I found this in my perusing of the interweb recently. As I’ve been on a big Battlestar Galactica kick recently I thought I’d share the Apple iLon. It’s my text (bolded), but I don’t know who the creator of the picture is…

The iLons were created by Apple. They thought different. They rebelled. They have many fans. And they have a plan.

2006.10.10

Name That Hotel

The Best Western Miyako Inn in Japan Town, San Francisco is looking to spiff up its image with a name make-over.

The inn’s low-profile, generic Japanese theme will be revamped into an “an energetic, optimistic expression” of contemporary Japanese culture, particularly anime, manga comic books, J-Pop music and street fashion, Harvey said. The hotel aspires also to be a base for shopping in nearby commercial districts.

You can read the whole article on SF Gate.

It’s kind of a cool idea. Any ideas? And NHK, no “Hello Kitty” names… Thanks to Dave for the link!

Disclosure: Shogakukan, an investor in Japan Town, is a major investor in my employer, VIZ Media.

2006.10.09

Bury These People in a Cemetery Party!

So we’re having a party at my house and if you’re in the neighborhood then you should drop by! From the invitation:

Happy Dead People!
Welcome to the Bury These People in a Cemetery Party! On October 28th from 8PM at 768 16th Avenue join your hosts Scott, Jonny, Dave, Meg, Kylie, Doug for an evening of dancing and fun.

Click on the picture for the invitation! Costumes are not mandatory, though encouraged. Bring your friends; this is an open party!

2006.10.08

Mild Insomnia

I’ve been suffering mild insomnia for about two months now. Basically my brain doesn’t want to switch off and I end up wide awake for far longer than I should; 2AM is fairly early and if I get to sleep by 1AM I consider myself lucky. A bad side effect is that once I am asleep it is painful hard to wake up. I could probably sleep through an atomic bomb. This does nothing good for my job and I’ve been mildly tardy a number of times now. Compounding the insomnia is a psychosomatic vector I call the Sunday Curse. On Sunday nights I have a hard time falling asleep regardless of insomnia.

Many well-meaning friends have encouraged me to take pills and others massage therapy or accupuncture. I’m not really interested in any of that. I’m not a fan of pills or medicine unless it is to cure something. Sleeping pills don’t cure insomnia; they mask the problem. The same for the other solutions people have suggested. But the problem is in my head and it’s there I have to begin searching for the solution.

The best advice I’ve been given is to pull out pen and paper just before going to bed and making a list of what is on my mind just as I’m going to bed. I can see that doing one of two extremes. The first is that it will purge my mind and allow me to not think about the problem(s). Kind of like how for years I used to think about sharks before going to sleep so they wouldn’t swim in my dreams. The second possibility is that once I’ve made my list I will focus on the items I’ve written down not be able to stop thinking about them. After all, I feel that part of my problem is that I can’t turn off my brain.

We’ll see. Tonight I start the experiment.

2006.10.05

Fleet Week 2006

If you’re a resident of San Francisco be prepared for some noise this weekend. It’s the annual San Francisco Fleet Week. I’ve written before in veiled terms about my enthusiasm for jets and afterburners; I’m not going to address that. I am kind of surprised at one of my coworkers who seems mildly bitter that there are military planes in the city.

I don’t quite understand it and I know that’s a perspective of the way I grew up. Even so, it would seem obvious to me that the military is not evil. The military is merely a tool, and I don’t mean that in any derogatory manner. If people hate things like war then they can’t look to the military for the cause of a war, they have to look at the policies of their leaders. The President, in our case, and the Congress that support him. And I’m not just talking about the current Bush administration.

Look at any point in our history. If there’s a war our military was involved in you can pin the blame on the leaders of this country. I’m sure you could be a prick and bring up an exception to that rule, but it would be the exception.

This is one of the things that makes me mad about how the hippies treated our military when they returned from Viet Nam. Those troops weren’t there because they thought, Gee, today I think I’ll go kill people in south east Asia. They were there because our administration wanted to contain Communist incursions and sent our military after the Gulf of Tonkin incident gave them an excuse. Whatever. I’m not here to ramble on (though I do tend to do that alot!).

The point is that the Blue Angels are in town representing the US Navy. They deserve our respect and, regardless, will give us an amazing show along with the US Air Force’s A-10s and the rest of the planes and naval ships.

2006.10.05

Just a Friendly SciFi Reminder

Tomorrow night, Friday, at 9PM PST (probably EST, too) is the premier of Season Three of Battlestar Galactica. If you are interested you can catch up with all the goings on with a special free episode click on the image at the side! I must warn you it’s a large download (over 400MB) but it’s an hour show and it’s free. I’ll probably be watching it myself sometime tonight.

For more filler, SciFi Channel has been releasing brief webisodes of the crew eeking out life under Cylon rule. I hope they release these as a set sometime soon because it would be nice to see them all at once.

2006.10.02

Corporate Meetings

Today we had special visitors at work. Presentations were given and Redge and I had to help things out. At one point between shows he and I were talking and Redge had a funny notion.

What if during big meetings, such as those to sign multi-million dollar contracts, one side put mild narcotics in the coffee to ease the opposition into agreeing more readily to terms? This got us chuckling at the possibilities. Naturally we escalated the scenario to stronger drugs, like LSD.

“Oooo, pretty Powerpoint presentation.”

“Yeah? You like that? How about if I move the mouse in circles like this?”

“Ahhh! So happy!”

“Well, if you like being happy and don’t want to feel like this…” He flashes a deformed devil baby dancing in elephant brains “…then you’ll sign the contract.”

“I’ll sign! I’ll sign! Bring back the pretty!”

I love the people I work with. Such twisted minds.