An actual burning man attendee? Well How-dee! I’m a pretty huge DDR fan as well. I can’t believe I’m posting on THE Dan Rochman’s blog! I feel so big. Alright, all of you blog-rollers, live long lives and take more pictures.
You might wanna try some different colors around here. Default doesn’t fit you. Gotta go!
Over dinner last night (hey, Judy - remember Lotus Garden?), Emylene told me I’d better liven this blog up a bit. The technical posts (updated PHP to 4.3.10, and WP to 1.2.2 - wowee!) just aren’t too exciting, I’ll admit. Those are more like little sticky notes I’m leaving for myself, since I know that a few years from now (when I look back over the development of the site?) I’ll want to see that sort of stuff. Guaranteed to bore ordinary humans to snores, though. So who needs ambien?
So let’s see, what’s new and exciting. I have a cold - it’s new, but not that exciting. It’s 9:45 AM here, so I’ve been up for a few hours, which means my nose and throat are pretty much just starting to function. The first hour or so of the morning is just the worst when you have a head cold. Shout-outs to Judy and Arnon, who are also (according to their respective blogs) under the weather. Let us raise a toast to each other, and to all those who sniffle and croak along with us - wassail!
The more exciting news is that Em and I are going to Florida! We’re catching the red-eye (well, that’s hardly new - sigh) on Thursday night. We’ll be there for about a week visiting my mom (and one of my nephews, who is also visiting my mom), and we’ll be back (just) in time for New Year’s Eve here in San Francisco. Which we don’t have any plans for, but whatever. We do have lots of plans (thanks, Em!) for the week in Florida. We’re just hoping the weather holds out well enough that we don’t have to fall back onto “Plan B” too often. Either way, it should be a whirlwind week. We’ve got the Everglades National Park on our list, even though we were there on our last trip, because it’s so amazing and unique that I can’t wait to go back. Plus, this time around we’re going down to the Florida Keys and Key West - Em’s never been, and I’ve only been once (and so long ago I barely remember it). The highlights are an overnight stop in Key Largo (where Em and I will be scuba diving, my nephew will be snorkeling, and my mom will be chilling in town), and a couple of nights in Key West. From Key West, we’ll be doing a day trip to the Dry Tortugas National Park - none of us have ever been, and I’ve always really wanted to go. Back on the mainland (closer to where my mom lives), the big attractions on our list are jai-alai, Calle Ocho (again - I wanted to spend more time there last time, plus my mom and nephew haven’t been there yet), and the ginormous pool at The Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables. From the spas.about.com photo page:
In the 1940s, swimming sensation Esther Williams performed there. Now some 60 years later, The Biltmore’s pool is still a record holder. At 700,000 crystalline gallons, the pool ranks as the largest hotel pool in the continental United States. Frequently used as a backdrop for movies, fashion spreads and video shoots, it has become a favorite “photo stop.”
Other than that, the plans include some beach and swimming pool time (weather permitting), some shopping, and (if it rains enough) a couple of mainstream movies. I’m itching to see the new Blade Trinity, even though it’s surely trash - you know it’s gotta be SLICK trash.
The good news is that I have my “t-moblog” all ready to go, so I’ll be able to post pics (of truly pathetic size and image quality, but what the hell) right from my phone as we go. And I’ll try to be better this time about having some real pics in the gallery soon after we get back.
Just updated this site to WordPress version 1.22. Now I’m eagerly awaiting w.bloggar v4.00 on the client side. Much more to report, but it’s midnight, and I have a cold, and am late for bed (again). More tomorrow morning.
Welcome to the new blog. Well, it’s (largely) the same old blog, with the same old infrequent-but-long-and-boring posts. But it’s now powered by new software, and it’s now running on a server (of sorts). Up until now, the whole site had been hosted on a rather ancient laptop, so this move has been a long time coming. Cosmetically, the site has gone from a somewhat-ugly out-of-the-box template that came with Movable Type, to the somewhat-uglier out-of-the-box template that currently ships with WordPress. I might eventually get around to making the site less ugly, but, as always, that’s pretty low on my list of priorities. Ugly is one of the few things I’ve always done well, and pretty is something I’ve always had a hard time with.
I’m listening to the truly awesome KEXP out of Seattle, WA (easily one of my favorite radio stations - tune in online and check it out!). At the moment, the “Sonic Reducer” program is being guest-hosted by none other than Nardwuar the Human Serviette. Nardwuar can be, um… challenging to listen to. So much so that Em just asked me to switch it off. But if you don’t know Nardwuar, you don’t know Canadian music. Well, maybe you know a little somethin’-somethin’, but Nardwuar is some kind of bizarre, rambling, encyclopaedia of Canadian music. He is also a radio DJ, frontman of his own band (the Evaporators), and one of Canada’s most entertaining guerilla journalists. If I do one thing today, I will encourage others to go check out KEXP and Nardwuar. Okay, that was two things. I’ll take tomorrow off.
As usual, about a month has gone by since my last post. Since that time, a couple of things have happened. On the personal side, we went to Toronto over the Halloween weekend for my niece Dalia’s bat-mitzvah. Yay! On the global events side, and as some of you may have heard, George Bush won a second term as President of the United States of America. Boo, hiss.
To get the bad news out of the way first - Em and I live in a country that is steadily being overrun by complete idiots. It didn’t seem so bad when (it seemed that) there were isolated *pockets* of idiocy - you just made a point of avoiding those places if you could. But now the worm has turned, and we find ourselves in what is, as it turns out, one of the remaining pockets of non-idiocy. It’s a really nice pocket, mind you, and we still really like living here. So much so that we’ve answered all of the (many) “So *now* are you moving back to Canada?” questions with (variations on) “No, not yet.” I do hope those of you still in Canada do your best to idiot-proof (or better yet, idiocy-proof) the borders, and shore up the anti-idiocy defenses there. What I’d hate most is to see the decline of this Empire Americain take Canada down with it. For my part, I do what I can from here in this very-blue part of this rather-red nation to destroy idiocy at its roots. It’s an uphill battle…
On the good news side, Em’s brother Nelson came to visit us here in San Francisco - we had fun doing touristy stuff, and he took about a million pictures. Right after Nelson’s visit, Em and I had a fun (quick!) trip to Toronto. The weather in Toronto was nice enough (when it counted), the bat-mitzvah was bat-mitzah-y, and (best of all) we even managed to sneak in some time to hang out with some of our bestest friends. We even got to drop in on a really cool Halloween party (pics from which are *finally* up in the gallery) after the Bat Mitzvah - it made for a VERY late night, but it was worth it.
Let’s see - what else has happened. Szecket and his family made their move from Los Angeles to somewhere-near-Boston. They ended up driving out there in a camper. Must have been quite the cross-country trek, what with two kids and three dogs along for the ride. Congrats to those folks for making it out there (relatively) unscathed. I’m hoping we’ll get a chance to visit that part of the world soon. In the meantime, I turned Szecket on to flickr the other night, and he’s already gone and posted some photos to his new flickr account. Those of you who haven’t already done so should checkk flickr out - it’s a very cool way to share photos, as well as a MASSIVE online gallery of other people’s public photos, all tagged by keyword for easy searching. And of course, albums and searches are available as RSS and Atom feeds. Sweet!
Oh, and another cool new toy that’s out there is Microsoft Photo Story 3 - I haven’t had a chance to play with this yet, but it’s FREE for any of you using Windows XP. Nice way to make simple-but-elegant slide shows, and it seems squarely aimed at closing some of the obvious functionality gaps between Windows XP and the iPhoto/iLife apps on the Mac OS. The demos look nice, and I like that the finished file sizes are relatively small. This ought to be a good way for me to (e.g.) publish narrated slide shows to my Pocket PC…
Hey, I almost forgot - it’s Thanksgiving weekend here in the US! Em and I went and got stuffed at Jebava’s place. Seb made his now-famous butterflied turkey (soooo good), and there was just a ridiculous amount of delicious food. Em brought a couple of yummy home-made pies (I peeled and cored most of the apples for the applie pie, I’ll have you know!), and a good time was had by all.
In sad, sad news, Seb’s grandmother is quite ill, and her health has just taken a bad turn. Seb, Janna, and Ava caught the red-eye on Friday night to be with her, and our thoughts are with them all.
As for today (yikes, I started writing this last night, but that was before we slipped out to the Argus Lounge for a quick nightcap, and then I came home and fell asleep… oops), we’re about to head over to Mission Cliffs for an introductory “Belay Safety Class” for first-timers (like us). It seems like fun, and I’ve always wanted to try it, and Mission Cliffs is just a few minutes away from here… I’ll report back later with how much fun it was - or wasn’t. Any rock climbers in the readership care to comment?
Twitter / Dan Rochman