brainwagon

Yeah, my blog was a little sparse on the nerd front this weekend: Carmen and I were off for a short anniversary getaway in Napa, sampling some of the local food and wine and generally trying to relax. We give a hearty thumbs up to Julia’s restaurant in the Copia center in Napa. We began […]

Well, I’m back from the Bay to Breakers. Carmen and I mostly walked the course at a fairly brisk pace, we completed in about 2h 15m. I snapped some pictures, and got a GPS track of the parade route. Expect an update after I’ve rested up a bit.

Carmen and I spent a short weekend at Reno/Tahoe, and I snapped this picture of her at the shore of Lake Tahoe. A nice trip, alas, all to short. Love you honey! Every moment with you is a vacation all by itself. Picture seems overblown because I used my cameraphone, and let’s face it, it’s […]

I’m freshly back from a whirlwind trip to Reno to scout locations for my father-in-law’s 80th birthday party, and I’m going to be tied up with SIGGRAPH sketch jury duty through next weekend, and the following weekend I’ll be trying to paint my garage door and run (or more realistically, walk) the Bay To Breakers. […]

On the other hand, my new Dell 20.1″ LCD monitor is the bee’s knees. Beautiful 1600×1200 resolution, with no bad pixels. Yum.

My son’s Chevy was in the shop this week for difficulty starting. Today, I got it back, after paying $700 and replacing three seemingly unrelated parts. Tonight, its check engine light is on, and it’s running rough. Sigh. Back to the shop tomorrow, with a calm but stern discussion.

I’ve been busy all weekend, caught Sin City, the Courbet exhibit at the Legion of Honor museum, spent some quality time with my wife including a night out eating sushi, listened to a little baseball and in my down moments, blew away my Windows XP installation and reinstalled from scratch. Expect a podcast in the […]

Our cat Scrappy seems no better. He just lies on our couch, completely zonked out. I got him to eat and drink a little, but his leg is still obviously hurting him. Vet appointment at 10:30. Update later.. Update: Well, Scrappy was running a fever of almost 105, which is indicative of an infection (probably […]

Our sometimes-feral cat Scrappy has been fiesty lately. The previous two nights I’ve heard him picking a fight with random cats which stray into our yard. Last night he didn’t show up for his regular night time meal, and this morning he was in our garage (through his cat door) and meowing pitifully. He’s favoring […]

You know, the thing I really like about Chinese calligraphy isn’t that I have an abiding interest in China, or in learning the Chinese language, or even in trying to become more comfortable with a brush and ink. It really is just that for the couple of hours that our classes tend to last, I […]

It’s kind of a bummer day. Speedy, one of a pair of Betta Splendens that my wife and son bought for me over a year ago has gone to that great fishtank in the sky. I noticed that he wasn’t eating very much in the last few days, so it wasn’t entirely unexpected, but I […]

Yes, it’s not just for the Pope, yours truly is experiencing the high fever, bodyaches, headache and general crappiness that marks the arrival of the flu. Last night I started getting the aches, which quickly shifted into the sweaty chills. Yuck! So, I’m stuck at home with my laptop, feeling bored but too sick to […]

This morning I’m try to cross off six or seven niggly tasks that require concentration but relatively little time. I didn’t bring my iPod, so I’ve decided to fire up xmms with some of the mp3s that I ripped last year before I discovered podcasting. And it sounds terrible! Argh! Distraction! What’s the deal? I […]

Sorry about the lack of updates yesterday, I took the wife off to a whirlwind 1-day Reno vacation. Got a spa suite at the Silver Legacy, caught Bill Cosby in a show, ate too much, and then a long drive home that involved passing lightning, rain, and a couple of tornados outside Sacremento. Had a […]

In an article which was nominally about Robert Scoble, Hugh Macleod of gapingvoid had one of his brilliant cartoons on the back of a business card which captures my sentiment as a married guy at age 40 precisely. To my darling wife Carmen, Happy Valentine’s Day!. We are coming up on our five year anniversary, […]