DanRochman.com

Yes, we’re back.  Another great year of Burning Man: lots of great people, lots of great art, lots of great times.  No real disasters, except that Em caught a cold this year, and the playa is a lousy place to have a cold.  She’s just getting over it now…  As for me, I’m somewhere near Chicago for a company event that started this evening with a Cubs game at Wrigley Field (neat, that - I’ve wanted to go ever since I watched Ferris Bueller cut class to do it), and which will run into Saturday (yes, SATURDAY) afternoon.  Tomorrow’s agenda runs from 8:00 AM to 10:00 PM (nope, still not kidding), so I should have been asleep two hours ago, but my head is still on Pacific time and I just can’t sleep.  So I figured I’d post something/anything, and then try again.  Wish me luck.

Thanks to meep (thanks, meep!), there’s now a meep album of wedding photos in the gallery (just click on the thumbnail above “Album: meep”). That’s 106 tasty new photos, plus three (AVI) video clips that are a tad dark, but *sound* really great. We got these on CD a while back, but Michelle had to remind me to get them uploaded because I am a slacker. The slacker thing is also why only 3 of the 106 photos have captions - but at least they’re online.  There probably won’t be any/many more pics going up until after our return from Burning Man. Hopefully we’ll actually have some of our own pics from that event to upload this year (I even bought a housing for my camera to protect it from deadly “playa dust”), and then at some point we’ll get the “official” wedding pics from our photographer.

I’ve also got a (somewhat rough, but not too shabby) audio recording of the wedding ceremony that I’ll eventually post, but right now I have a ton of work to get back to, so that’ll have to wait.  Plus, the recording features our beloved Reid Jamieson singing a couple of songs, so I probably have to get permission from Reid and/or SOCAN before I post it.

As usual, I haven’t written much lately.  Work’s been busy, the man burns in just over 16 days, yadda yadda yadda.  Truth is, I still could have written more, but didn’t.  My bad.  Today I will write that I just saw a dog (way up on the hill) that was out for his very first walk.  It seems that nowadays puppies aren’t supposed to go out in the world until they’ve had (at least?) their first round of “puppy shots“.  So he was several (six?) weeks old, and bouncing and scrappy and happy.  Just flipping out at the breadth and diversity of the world, and the scenery, and the other dogs, and the other humans…  Fun to see a great spot through fresh eyes, even fresh pooch eyes.  Especially fresh pooch eyes?  The dog’s humans were also loving the walk.  They said that he was their first dog (as a couple, anyhow?), and so in a way it was their first walk, too.  I look forward to a first-dog-walk day someday.

Today’s Trivia Tidbit: the etymology of the word “trivia” (at Wikipedia)

It’s been four weeks since the wedding, and I’m finally getting the answers to the trivia questions (PDF) posted. Few cared then, and still fewer care now, but Em and I worked pretty hard to come up with these, and at least one person (Hi, CVM!) worked her ass off to answer them, so here they are at long last. I actually printed up a huge batch of these at Kinko’s, and we brought them all the way to Toronto, but in all the excitement of the wedding night we completely forgot to set them out.

In case you do care, and in case you’ve long since lost and forgotten the questions, I’ve also got the wedding program (PDF) for you right here. The on-screen layout’s a bit odd, because it’s meant to be printed and folded, but the content’s all there, including all of the trivia questions. If you missed the game the first time around, feel free to play the home version. Since we’re done handing out prizes, you may cheat to your heart’s content.

Woot!  Thanks to Gray, there are pictures on flickr of my little surfer (surfr?) girl - not to mention the rest of the girls - catching some beginner waves in Bolinas last Sunday.  According to Emylene:  “just so you know how to spot me, i’m the only girl w/ the pink surfboard — specifically, i’m in photos 10 and 15 standing up (see, i *am* surfing!), and in photo 22 w/ the rest of the girls!”  So there.  Photo 10 (aka “010_10.JPG”) is my favorite - I’m so proud of my baby!!

I’m tired - it’s almost time for bed.  Em’s even more tired, because she went SURFING today, in beautiful Bolinas.  I went for moral support, but didn’t try to surf.  My poor widdle wife is now very, VERY pooped - but she GOT UP.  Three times, no less!  I’m so proud…

In other crazy news, I’d be posting more tonight, except that it’s time for bed.  And while nearly all of the wedding work is a thing of the past, I was amazed when I realized that the man burns in just 41 days…  I’m leaving tomorrow night for Seattle (back on Friday), but I hope to be able to post tomorrow, and/or from Seattle.

Thanks to a wonderful-and-generous wedding present from Leslie, Clint, and Brody (thanks, you guys!), Emylene and I are the proud sponsors (adopted parents?) of an adorable otter named Lelly.
Isn’t she CUTE?!? She’s being cared for by the International Otter Survival Fund - you can read all about her on page five of issue number 44 of the IOSF newsletter (PDF). If you’re moved by the work they’re doing, feel free to show them the money.

It gets even better - it turns out that the IOSF has a live webcam, which means that you can watch Lelly and her friend Tweed play (or at least sleep) in their pen! I just checked it a few minutes ago and saw Lelly (or maybe it was Tweed) smile up at the camera!! Okay, it looked like she (or he) was smiling up at the camera. Close enough. Either way, the cute is just right off the charts.

Still, we did have a No Gifts policy, and this disobedience will not go unpunished. Speaking of which, I’m probably doing a Bad Thing myself by blogging one of the awesome wedding gifts we received (Which part of “No Gifts, Please” is ambiguous to you people? It’s the comma, isn’t it?), and NOT blogging all of the others. I think we still have the Emily Post book of etiquette in the other room, and maybe I’ll go look that up… [Seriously. We borrowed the book from Norma and Brendan for our wedding. They'd bought it for their own wedding. It is a silly thing, but a neutral-and-respected third party is always your friend where etiquette is concerned.] On the other hand, the next few posts will probably also be wedding-related (this will taper off soon, I promise), and it’s obvious that I haven’t got much else to write about, so I guess I could blog all the others - or would that be even worse? Tell you what: if you’re reading this, and you’re hugely offended, leave a comment to that effect. I promise that I will then blog the really awesome wedding gift that you gave us. Or even one that someone else gave us - your call. It just so happens that this particular awesome wedding gift was gazing out at me (well, from my monitor) with its adorable eyes in its fuzzy little face, and I just couldn’t help myself. And yes, I am obviously a big, creamy creampuff from Outer Creampuffistan.

I have other things to blog, but they can wait.  This can’t:  Stop-Motion Human Space Invaders

The post title should actually be “Allergic Reaction”, but that’s not the title of a great song (okay, their only hit) by Count Five.  I went out for an allergy test this afternoon, and after 2.5 hours and about 100 needle-sticks, found out that I’m allergic to almost every damned (airborne) allergen that they test you for.  Trees, grasses, weeds, cats, dogs, dust mites, some molds - the list of things I’m *not* allergic to is a lot more manageable.  I had a wicked seasonal-allergy attack back in May, that prompted me to score some black-market Flonase and set up an appointment with an allergy specialist.  He revealed to me that I have a very deviated septum, and then scheduled me for the tests they just ran on me.  So now I’ve got a follow-up visit scheduled, to discuss what to do about the septum, and the allergies.  Joy.  Oh, and the poor woman sticking my right arm also managed to stick her own finger at one point, which means I have to drop by a lab tomorrow or Friday for an HIV test.  I know I’m negative, but I can’t expect them to take my word for it - it’s standard procedure if a technician gets a needle stick.  It just means that I’ll lose at least another hour waiting at the lab…

At least I don’t have any major food allergies - none severe enough so that I know of them, anyhow.  And at least I’m not allergic to Emylene.

We did it - we got married in front of a gazillion people.  Well, maybe some small fraction of a gazillion, but it’s the quality of the people that counts.  The weather was almost perfect, the venue was amazing, the food (I’m told) was super-yummy, and a great time was had by all - even the somewhat frazzled groom, and un-frazzlable (?) bride.  I’ll have more to say about it later, but it was an amazing experience.  [How's that for verbosity?]

Now that married is out of the way, Em and I are both buried under our respective workloads.  I thought that having (most of) the wedding-related to-do list items gone would mean lots more free time for both of us this month, but the fates would NOT have it.  By some not-that-unlikely coincidence, we’re both totally swamped at work right now.  I’d been back from Toronto less than 48 hours when a project manager asked me to fly up to Seattle that same (Thursday) night, to work at Boeing all day on Friday and Saturday.  Yes, Saturday.  At least yesterday was, for me, a mostly-work-free Sunday.  But now it’s back to the grind, with a vengeance.  And Em is just as busy.  Yikes.

I’ve got two remote desktop windows going right now, plus an Instant Message chat session with a colleague, plus about ten e-mails that I still have to reply to, so I’ll cut it off here for now.  Just know that there are some photos of the wedding (and the Toronto trip in general) in the gallery already, and that if you have any photos of your own to contribute, PLEASE let me know as soon as you can.  We’re eager to get as many pics as possible into the gallery while the momentum is still with us. 

D’oh - one more thing.  Congratulations are due to Judy, Jay, and Jessica!!  Welcome to big-sisterhood, Jessica, and welcome to the world, baby Justin!!!

It’s June - and I’m buggin’.  Whatever that means.  All I know is that it’s pretty warm and sunny here in San Francisco, which is making it hard for me to stay indoors.  I have a lot of stuff to do this weekend, but some of it will have to wait, because when it’s Saturday (which it is), and the weather’s warm and sunny (which it is), and I just scored some grey-market Flonase (which I did), then I just HAVE to go for a walk up on top of Bernal hill.  For the record, Flonase is simply amazing.  It is the only substance in the explored universe that can beat back my allergy symptoms, even when pollen counts are off the charts.  I was *very* miserable for about a week, before I got my hands on a fresh cache of Flonase.  Okay, that’s enough of a plug for the drug - just one last shout-out to whatever research posse stumbled upon it.

June also means that it’s officially less than a month until the wedding.  Wowza.  And today was a banner day for the RSVP crowd, too.  We got a dozen envelopes in today’s mail, which is twice the previous 1-day record.  Keep those cards and letters coming, folks - we love to hear about your dietary and seating preferences.  Oh, and just to clarify something once and for all (well, no - it’ll still have to be clarified to those invited who don’t follow this blog, which is actually almost everybody, but oh well), if you don’t want kosher or vegetarian food, you just leave both boxes unchecked.  It seems a lot of people saw the two checkboxes, regressed to their last trip to the ballot box, and assumed that they were being presented with a binary choice:  Kosher, or Vegetarian?  We do know a few vegemetarians, and they’ve dutifully checked their cruelty-free little boxes.  But there are a LOT of people checking the “Kosher” box, most of whom (like the older Pinoy couples on the list) are definitely NOT people who keep kosher.  So Em’s been having to follow up with those people just to find out whether they’ve developed a sudden interest in obscure Judaic dietary superstitions (not very likely, but always possible), or whether they were simply confused by the RSVP (very, very likely).  Since Em designed (and prepared) all of the invitations and RSVP cards herself, pointing out that the card *could* be confusing to *some* people is a delicate matter.  Well, it used to be before I blogged about it…  Em says it’s at least as much my fault, because I reviewed the cards before she sent them out and I didn’t say anything at the time.  Didn’t I?

Speaking of Em, she’s on a whirlwind Toronto trip, mostly doing the last little bits of wedding prep that can’t readily be done from here.  She flew out on the red-eye late Wednesday night, and she’s coming back tomorrow night.  It’s odd, but I find it harder to be home for four days without Emylene than to be on the road by myself for four days while Em’s back at home.  Probably because nothing in a hotel room really reminds me of Em, but EVERYTHING here in (and even around) the house reminds me of Em every few seconds.  I know, that’s pathetic - she’s been gone a whole 3 days (not even), and I’m whining.  At least we still miss each other… 

Okay, I’m late for that walk on the hill - gotta go before it starts to get too cold and/or dark.  More later.

Just a random quick-post to let people know I’m still alive, and to break a dry spell that’s gone on way too long. Work has been crazy-busy (but otherwise good), and my Mom and her boyfriend (did I mention that my mother has a boyfriend?) were out here for a visit on Mother’s Day weekend, and well, it’s just been so busy all around that I haven’t had much time to post. Granted, these little posts take almost no time - but something in me just hates little posts. Why write 100 words when 10,000 will do? Wait, maybe that’s not right…

Quick Windows freeware tip of the day: Taskbar Shuffle, recently released by a kind and clever geek named Jay Elaraj, is something I’ve been seeking for years. It’s simple, elegant, and free (although a donation might be in order if you like it as much as I do). Most people don’t seem to care about the order of their task bar items - actually, I figure most people have never noticed that there’s a thing called a task bar down at the bottom of their screen. But I’m funny that way. I usually have a LOT of apps open, I hate grouping taskbar items, and I’ve always wondered why the OS doesn’t let you order them.

Quick my-life-in-video update: I’ve been playing around with YouTube a bit, and I’ve decided that I’m loving it. In general, I’m pretty obsessive about hosting all of my own apps and content: I run my own web server and mail server, and I host my own blog and photo gallery, all behind my own (homebuilt) firewall appliance. Aside from the fact that doing so helps me hone skills that I use at work every day, and gives me some much-needed geek cred (uh, kidding), I really love having the total control, the virtually unlimited storage and bandwidth, and the knowledge that I won’t have to re-post everything whenever the outfit that’s hosting my stuff shuts down for lack of a business model. All that said, many of these services seem to be doing a killer job of hosting content - for free, no less - and seem to be around for the long-ish haul. And since video handily takes the biggest toll on storage and bandwidth, it seemed like a good place for me to start experimenting with letting someone else host some of my content for me. So, I shot some low-res video clips of the Fire Arts Expo the other night, uploaded them to YouTube, and grouped them into a playlist. So far, the whole experience has been very, very sweet. The only downside is that no one clip can exceed 10 minutes in duration or 100 MB in file size - but I might look into their Director program, which is also free, and which lets you blow past those limits. Sweet bonus: If you’re actually browsing my site (as opposed to just consuming the feed), there’s a good chance that you can watch the playlist via an embedded Flash player right below this paragraph.

Who’s fault is it?  It’s San Andreas fault!!  Ha ha ha ha.  Okay, that’s not even remotely funny.  But Tuesday (April 18th) was the 100th anniversary of the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906, and the local media’s been fairly saturated with quake-related items.  There were also a host of quake-related events going on in the Bay Area, none of which we ended up going out for.  Well, the closest we came was going kayaking on Tomales Bay (thanks to Janna for organizing the trip!) last Saturday with a group of friends.  Tomales Bay sits right on top of the infamous San Andreas fault.  In fact, it was *created* by the fault spreading at that point, and creating a depression in the landscape that happens to be open to the Pacific at one end.  The Exploratorium has a great web page (with a really cool webcast!) on the geology of Tomales Bay.  It’s part of their excellent “Faultline: Seismic Science at the Epicenter” project, which I wholeheartedly recommend as a starting point for the curious.  And by “the curious” I mostly mean Em’s brother Nelson.  He’s coming down from Toronto (and by “Toronto” I mean Brampton) to visit us at the end of June, and I guess he must have caught a whiff of the hype surrounding the big quake’s centennial.  He told Em he’s all excited about the potential for the next “big one” to happen while he’s out here.  Of course, if it *does* happen while he’s out here, and assuming he were to survive it and all, well then I guess it *would* probably make for a pretty cool story. 

True Story.  Within a day or so of moving to San Francisco, back in February of 1999, I went to the offices of a company called “Rent Tech”.  [Back then, with the dot-com boom in full swing, and before all such services were obliterated by the inexorable rise of craigslist, two or three private firms (including Rent Tech) shared total control of the *frenzied* rental housing market in San Francisco.]  While meeting with one of their reps, I was distracted by a huge (6′ x 4′, maybe?) framed poster on the wall behind him.  It was obviously a map of San Francisco, but covered in splotches of different colors.  I couldn’t make out the legend from where I was sitting, and had to ask the rep what the colors represented.  He walked me over to it, and explained that it was a “Seismic Hazard” map.  The different colors represented the underlying geology - one color for bedrock, another for fill, and so on.  I can’t remember it exactly, but it looked a lot like this map I just generated [warning: link is to a 1.2 MB PDF that I'm self-hosting] using the extremely cool ABAG Interactive (GIS) Liquefaction Susceptibility Map.  It turns out that fill (aka landfill) is stable enough under ordinary circumstances, but when shaken it tends to “liquify” (a process known as liquefaction), which makes living on fill particularly risky in earthquake zones.  Coming from Toronto (and Montreal before that), I was completely fascinated - it had NEVER occurred to me that people who weren’t geologists would ever be interested in a map like that.  But of course, in places like San Francisco, the makeup of the ground beneath you is a HUGE deal.  In the last big quake out here, back in 1989 (known as the “Loma Prieta” earthquake - 7.1 on the Richter scale), parts of the Marina district of San Francisco (which is mostly fill) suffered disproportiate amounts of damage, most of it due to liquefaction.  So maps like these can really be a major factor when people out here decide where to buy a home - or even where to rent.  Speaking of which, I’m writing this post from our apartment, which *is* located on bedrock (in your FACE, Marina district!).  And yes, I’m having a yabba-dabba-doo time.

On a completely unrelated note, Michelle Parise (thanks, meep!) sent me this very sweet (sorry) link today: Top 10 Creatively Decorated Nerdy Cakes.  Those cakes are cool, but I’d certainly never try to make any of ‘em myself.  Not like I’m the one who makes the cakes in this family, anyhow.  But I don’t even think Em would try to make any of these.  Now photo cupcakes, on the other hand… Well, I just cannot WAIT to make me some photo cupcakes. First of all, I like to think that even I can make cupcakes.  Second of all, the mind literally REELS at the possibilities. And yes, I know that photo cakes have been around for some time, but these are photo CUPcakes. I mean, this is a whole new ballgame. Okay, I can’t explain why it’s a new ballgame - it just is.  Humor me!  Or not.  But if you don’t humor me, then no cupcakes for you…  And if you aren’t craving a cupcake by now, it can only mean that you still (how??) have not yet seen this awesome video (watch it quick, before the jerks at NBC shut it down - they had it pulled from YouTube ages ago, so this mirror’s days are surely numbered).

I just want to say for the record (this *is* The Record, right?) that poker night with the boys is great, even when you lose.  And man, did I lose.  But hey, at least when you play with friends, your loss is a friend’s gain - as opposed to a blip on some casino’s “Gross Gaming Revenues from Suckers” radar.  And you get to hang out all night, drink, smoke, and tell dirty jokes.  It doesn’t get much better than that.  Well, actually it does.  When my friend Stuart is the host, he throws down some feastage like most people never see.  Smoked duck, anyone?  Giant tiger shrimp poached in butter?  Gougère?  Cheese board with four types of cheese?  Two home-made pizzas (one carmelized onion with olives, and one margherita)?  Great beer and wine?  A home-made chocolate-chocolate-chocolate-chocolate cake, with chocolate ganache, and raspberry something-or-other?  And that’s just the stuff I can remember.  And never mind that the rest of us (we car-pooled to Stuart’s) picked up two dozen Krispy Kreme doughnuts (for five guys??) on the way there…

Ah, but that was Friday night.  Back to the present.  It’s raining, as usual.  It seems that last month was the rainiest March on record here in the Bay Area.  Twenty-four days of rain, breaking a record set in 1904.  Hurray.  It’s almost two weeks into April now, and the rain hasn’t let up much.  The ground is so rain-soaked that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (yes, it’s as strange to write that as it is to read it) declared a state of emergency yesterday in seven northern and central California counties.  Aside from the mudslides and such, it seems that California has its own levee system that’s severely strained in a number of places, which in turn is putting a lot of people at extreme risk of severe flooding.  At least San Francisco isn’t one of the seven counties - we’re soggy here, but at no real risk of being flooded that I know of.  And I’m out of here tonight, for a three-day trip to Everett, WA - where the forecast (duh) calls for rain every day over the next three days.  Sigh.  And the San Francisco forecast says it’ll still be raining here when I get back Friday night.  In fact, it’s not supposed to be sunny here for at least another week.  Sigh.  At least it’s not snowing. 
I haven’t posted much lately, because work’s been fairly busy, AND it’s tax season.  I’ve been a US resident for the last seven years, which means I haven’t filed a Canadian return since 1999.  But last year I sold some shares in a Canadian business, and that’s making my tax return life incredibly complicated this year.  I had to pay taxes on the sale in Canada, which means I have to file a Canadian non-resident return (with a TON of ensuing additional paperwork), and I also have to record that income on my US (federal and state) returns, and claim a foreign tax credit, and…  Words just can’t describe the fun I’ve been having.  To cheer myself up, I’ve been looking at this photo of three baby hedgehogs (warning:  link is work-safe, but the cuteness factor is off the charts, and is likely to sicken people who aren’t coming off of doing their tax returns).

Oh, and thanks to Arnon and Carlos for the wedding reception music tips.  I’m slowly building a playlist of 30’s music that ought to do - it’s just for background music during dinner.  And when I mentioned “the band”, I should have mentioned that the live music will be provided by Alex Pangman & Her Alley Cats.  We’ve never seen her live, but we’ve got one of her CDs, and we’re thinking it should be great.  You can even check out a video of her on her site, which is an excerpt from the made-for-TV period movie Torso: The Evelyn Dick Story.  Not a great film (yes, we rented it), but not bad, and it covers an interesting episode in Canadian history that I’d never heard about before.

Side note to Ronen:  Yup, it’s the same Daniel’s Broiler.  They have three locations - I was at the Bellevue location, and it sounds like you were at the Lake Union location. I’m sure the food is equally good at all the sites, but the views from the Bellevue location can’t be beat.

I’m a little late getting this in, but it *snowed* here (where “here” = “San Francisco Bay Area”) a couple of weeks ago. The link has some really cute video clips of local kids sledding down steep side streets not a mile from where we live, and of other kids amazed at the really cold white stuff all over the place, and how picking it up makes your fingers go numb. Turns out the last time it (officially) snowed here was thirty years ago, so most local kids had never touched snow before in their lives. It stuck overnight, but was all gone by the middle of the next day. Good thing, too, because steep roads and inexperienced drivers don’t mix very well with snow and ice…

In other news, I ate the world’s two most expensive tacos last week. I was asked to attend a luncheon near Seattle on Friday - even though I had to work in San Francisco the rest of the week. So on Friday morning I got up at 04:00, got into a cab at 04:30, got to SFO at 05:00, boarded my flight at 05:30, took off at 06:00, and landed at SEA at 08:00. I got to the site around 10:00 (after picking up the rental car and driving over an hour), and headed to the luncheon itself around 11:00. Lunch consisted of two “make-your-own” hard-shell tacos from the buffet table, and a plastic bottle of diet soda, consumed while some nice people said some nice things about all the hard work many of us there had done on a recently completed project. Then, because I was booked on the 16:07 flight back, I got back into the rental car and headed straight back to SEA. Unfortunately, after boarding my flight, the co-pilot reported a mechanical problem (right engine fuel pump failure) resulting in a 3-4 hour delay, so we all had to go back into the terminal and wait it out. I ended up taking off around 20:00, getting back to SFO around 22:00, and getting home around 22:45. LONG day, that. Oh, and I then submitted an expense report (round-trip airfare, rental car and fuel, food, and taxi rides to/from SFO) totalling almost USD$600 for the trip. Which works out, of course, to roughly $300/taco. Devoting an entire day of your life to eating two $300 tacos? Priceless.

Trivia Time: On another recent trip to that neck of the woods, I had lunch at a hotel right beside Paine Field Airport. The chef came by our table, and we chatted a bit. He pointed at a very large transport plan we could see parked on the tarmac, and mentioned that it took a crew of SEVENTEEN - the result being that they were putting up a party of seventeen Russians at the hotel. The interesting trivia bit is that it turns out Russians (well, these Russians) just LOVE sausage. So much so that at breakfast on their first day there, they cleaned out the hotel’s entire supply. The kitchen staff notified the head chef, who placed some rush orders with their suppliers to try to keep up with the demand. Apparently, the total Russkie breakfast sausage consumption was three *cases* of sausage, EACH DAY. “Three five-pound cases of sausage?” I asked, somewhat aghast. “Nope. Three TEN-pound cases of sausage. Almost two pounds of sausage per person. And that on top of all the eggs, bacon, bread, cheese and fruit they ate.” It’s a wonder the transport plane was able to lift off…

Finally, in wedding-planning news, Em has tasked me with making up a playlist to fill the time between when people first start to arrive at the venue and when the band takes the stage. She’s doing absolutely everything else related to planning and preparing for the wedding, so I figure I should at least be able to throw some mp3s together. The playlist duration should be four hours, tops, so maybe 80 to 100 (2- or 3-minute) songs or so. In keeping with the look and history of the venue, we want “period” music, ideally from the 1930’s. Since I’m lazy a populist at heart, I figured I’d ask you folks to do my homework for me solicit input from the readership. Anyone have any recommendations for songs from the 1930’s that would make good wedding reception music?

How cool is the internet? Last weekend, I mentioned Patrick Roddie’s beautiful book Hips in a blog post on this, my humble personal blog (with its worldwide readership of five, maybe even six people). Then just yesterday, none other than Mr. Roddie himself pops by to leave a comment on that post. I’m not sure how he found me - either via the referrer logs of the server(s) hosting the page I linked to over at Chronicle Books, or else via some active search for links to that page, and/or links containing key terms in general (like “Roddie”, “Hips”, and such). I can’t find that post in Google at all (not yet, anyhow), so I’m kinda stumped. I may just have to e-mail him to find out… And while it’d be *very* cool to hire him as our wedding photographer, (a) we’ve almost sealed that deal with Jason Raposo, and (b) I don’t think that when he made the offer, Mr. Roddie realized that the wedding is going to take place roughly 2,500 miles from San Francisco. But I do know that I’m going to seek him out at Burning Man, and see if I can get him to autograph my copy of Hips.

Speaking of being away from San Francisco, I’m posting this entry from a conference room about 680 miles from San Francisco. You can get a bird’s eye view of the *very building* I’m sitting in via the super-cool Windows Live Local (formerly known as Microsoft Virtual Earth). This is Microsoft’s answer to Google Maps, and while each service has its strengths and weaknesses, there are two features of the Microsoft offering that everyone MUST check out. The first is the “bird’s eye view”. While all the major mapping services have satellite views of varying currency/quality, Windows Live Local has *aerial* shots. So instead of looking straight down, from space, you’re looking down at a (roughly) 45-degree angle, from a (relatively) *very* low altitude, and zoomed in *super* tight. They don’t offer bird’s eye views of all map areas, but the major metro centers in the US have good coverage, and I’ve already killed a few hours gazing at bird’s eye views of various landmarks, natural wonders, friends’ homes (I’m not linking to those - you five all know where you live), and so on. You can choose between two different zoom levels, and (by clicking on a compass in the left nav bar) change the orientation so that you’re looking down from the north, south, east, or west. The other cool feature, still very much in preview mode, is a massive database of STREET-LEVEL photos, that you can navigate (using your arrow keys) as though you were actaully driving (or walking) around on the map surface. They’ve only got parts of downtown Seattle and San Francisco available right now, but it’s so much fun to just play around with that I just don’t care. It’s not all that useful yet, even if you’re in one of the two cities listed, but it’s truly thrilling to get an idea of what the near-term future holds for online maps and directions. Can you say “virtual self-guided walking tours”?

Speaking of nice views, we ended up going to Daniel’s Broiler last night, instead of Monday night. On Monday, it was McCormick & Shmick’s. Not bad, for a chain, but not quite as good (nor, in fairness, as pricey) as Daniel’s. Quick recommendation: Daniel’s Broiler is an *excellent* steakhouse, with beautiful views - the location we went to is in downtown Bellevue, on the 21st floor. Ask for an end cut of the prime rib - if you’re lucky, you’ll be served by the very same (Buddhist) gentleman that waited on our party. It’s horrible, I know, but being served a perfect slab of rare meet by a smiling vegan just put me over the top…

I also found out (over dinner at Daniel’s, as it happens) that Salish Lodge is much closer to Seattle than I’d thought it was. That means I *really* have to get there on one of these Seattle trips. Apparently, their breakfasts are the stuff of legend. And if it looks familiar to you, you’re probably - like me - a fan of Twin Peaks.

I’m stuck in an all-day training session in Bellevue, WA - the first of five straight days. At least I have my laptop, and a wireless connection, so I can sneak in some quick posts during the lulls.

Also, they’re taking us all out for dinner at Daniel’s Broiler tonight, which is supposed to be a really killer steakhouse in this neck of the woods. Sorry to all you vegetarians and vegans out there. But if it’s USDA prime, then it’s meat - meat for the beast.

Oh, and Ducky just sent me a sweet link - I might as well share that. Check out this ad, they’ve recreated the opening sequence of The Simpsons as a live action (plus some special effects) clip. Thanks, Ducky!

One more cool video link before I jump back into this training session. Someone tossing boiling water up into some VERY VERY COLD air in Saskatchewan - poof! Much as this looks like a very coolfun thing to do, it reminds me of why I now live in San Francisco…

Okay, the title is a lame (is there another kind?) Matrix reference.  But for reasons beyond my ken, I just love letterfu.  I’ve printed out a few pages, so some of you will be getting letters from me soon.  I’m off to Seattle tonight (my cab should be here in 10 minutes), and back on Friday, but I’m taking the letters and stamps with me, so I can mail them from there.  Can you imagine?  Old-fashioned *paper* letters??  What a nostalgia kick.  Props to letterfu for the inspiration - the sweet origami letter designs made we want to skip e-mail for a bit and send people something tangible. 

Today is March 4th - but apparently in Roman times this date would have been referred to as the IV Nones of March. The 15th, infamously, is the Ides. The 7th is (this was new to me) the Nones. And the 4th (this was somehow even newer to me) is the IV Nones. See - I learned something new today, and you probably just did as well. If that was old news to you, well… you get a Gold Star. Either way, head on over to this infoplease article on the Ides of March - you’re bound to learn something new. And isn’t that what killing time on the intarweb is all about? Okay, maybe sometimes?

Me, I also learned that the only way to actually blog anything, ever is to *literally* move the line that reads “Blog.” to the top of your to-do list. Ignore the internal howls of protest. That other thing can wait a few minutes. Then again, I told Kevin I’d meet him for a beer in a little bit, so maybe that other thing really can’t wait that long - but hey, I’m here and I’ve actually typed something, haven’t I?

In other news, Emylene has recently taken up knitting. We watched half (that’s a long movie!) of The Aviator today, and she knit the whole time - except when she purled. She even joined a “knitting gang” - the Soma Stitchers. I don’t know if this means they cruise around in (knitted) biker jackets with “Soma Stitchers” stitched (forgive me) on the back, but I hope she doesn’t fall in with the rough knitting crowd… They carry these wicked long needles, ya know?

Oh, and in my last post, I did say I’d post links to some burning man pics. I take “better late than never” to heart. So here, many months too late, and not like anyone cared in the first place, are some very cool “Burning Man Photo” links that I’ve known and loved. There are obviously many more, but these are just a few I’d tell someone to start with. Oh, and please note that some Burning Man images are *not* what some people would consider “work-safe”.

• The “Official” Burning Man Image Gallery
• Our art car (”Wallace”), captured in said Gallery
• Burning Man 2005 The Comic Book - an *awesome* Flash-based gallery
• burningcam.com - good enough to be mentioned by BoingBoing
• Burning Man photos by Tristan Savatier (aka loupiote) - a nice flickr gallery (NOT work-safe)
• All flickr images tagged with “burningman” - definitely NOT (necessarily) work-safe
• Hips - a photo-book by Patrick Roddie
  

In other news, Em and I are getting married on July 1st at The Carlu. If you’re reading this, and think we’ll forget to invite you, well… who knows? We might. Emylene’s real sharp, but me, well - I’ve got a head like a ping-pong ball. Drop me a line and remind me. We haven’t actually sent out (paper) invitations just yet.

And finally, I just noticed that I made heavier use of italics in this post than at any. other. time. in my life. Don’t know why - just did. I’m usually far fonder of using *stars* for emphasis (yes, I know they’re not “stars”), but not tonight it seems. Weird.

Wow - it’s 19:40 already! I’d better get going, before Kevin heads out without me. Ciao.

[Sung to the tune of "I feel like chicken tonight, like chicken tonight...".]

Well, I’ve been back from the playa for a LONG time now, and I obviously haven’t felt like posting in at least that long. But I feel like posting (*and* chicken) tonight. Not a long post, though, because I have to be asleep soon, because we hafta be up early tomorrow. Early for a weekend, anyhow. But I hope to get a long post in tomorrow. I’ve hoped that before, though.

In the meantime: Burning Man was amazing, I didn’t have to fly to Toronto (although we’ve been to Toronto since), and for reasons I don’t have time to explain right now, I hardly took any pictures. A lot of other folks did, though, and I’ll soon post links to my few humble pics, and to some of my favorite collections of pics and videos taken by others.

Good Night, and Good Luck