CNN's "holograms"

I saw this when it happened. It was so painful to watch I actually changed the channel. Do they think we're retarded? You may have an awesome name Wolf, but you're a moron.

CNN's story on the subject is equally absurd/funny. They begin to describe the technology but never actually come out and admit that in the end its still just a special effect that only the viewer can see. Wolf Blitzer was just looking at empty space.

(my inner nerd can't help but add: please, if you're going to use a star trek metaphor, at least use one that's related to holography not teleportation!)

facebook scrabble

Man, does this app suck. Constantly erroring on me, I have to completely reload the application every other turn. Its even played something incorrectly for me once.

Its one thing to protect your IP and tell scrabulous to get out. But to replace it with this POS? Ridiculous. They should have just bought scrabulous. Or maybe EA could hire a QA guy. You can't just stick "beta" on it and expect it to be ok to have all these bugs.

Ugh.

24 Season 5+2

Meh. The trailer looks decent. They're bringing back Tony but as a bad guy (or is he?) which could be cool. Unfortunately trailers don't make up for the suckage that was season 6. I actually don't even remember if I finished watching that season, that's how forgettable it was.

The Desktop Paradigm

I've realized that I work very different on my work linux machine and my home mac even though they are quite similar. Both offer a frontend file manager (i.e. the Finder in OS X) and both offer a command line interface (i.e. the Terminal in OS X). On linux I spend 95% of my file interaction time in the command line to do even simple things like moving files, creating directories, deleting stuff, etc. All of these things I intuitevly do in OS X's Finder; I only use the Terminal for esoteric things like changing permissions (I know you can do this in the finder, but its faster for me to do in the Terminal).

I'm not entirely sure of the reason(s) behind this. Part of it, I'm sure, is that linux's GUI is just not as polished and as integrated as Apple's. Odd as the two OS's are surprisingly similar.* Another part is habits. I've always kept my Unix and Mac computing pretty separate at least in terms of what I do on them (my mac is for my everyday personal computing. Unix/Linux is for work, or specific hobbies like getting a home theater pc running).

One specific is that anytime I use the actual graphical file browser in linux to trash a file I can help but see that for what it really is: a program moving a file to a special, hidden folder until such time that I "empty" the trash. This is EXACTLY how it works on the mac, yet when I do the same thing there I don't think of it that way (unless I actually think about it). The Mac has just done what I wanted it to: thrown a document in the trash. The illusion on the Mac works for me, but it doesn't in Linux.


* The basic framework is the same. OS X is built on BSD a UNIX implementation much like Linux. Apple made some custom changes to BSD and called the result Darwin which is open source and you can actually download this and install it on pretty much any PC. But what puts the "Mac" in "Mac OS X" is what we all recognize as being the Mac: the graphical user interface. This interface is just a program running in Darwin much like X Windows and a window manager in Linux. There are differences of course, but those are relatively trivial. The idea is the same.

Acquerello Review

Yin and I went to Acquerello. The food was quite good. I'd even say excellent. But no one thing really blew me away.
Me:

• grilled sardines with trio of eggplant (the pickled eggplant was amazing)
• lobster ravioli (very rich. good, but not spectacular)
• pork chop with nectarines and polenta (the pork chop was cooked perfectly, as in not overcooked, and the nectarines and polenta were a great compliment to it)
• caramel semifreddo (this was probably our favorite part; subtle and fantastic)
• glass of 2006 pinot nero. Excellent. Light and dry.

Yin

• figs wrapped with duck prosciutto accompanied with a different type of prosciutto and a rather large piece of foie gras (excellent all around)
  
• penne with a foie gras, black truffle and butter sauce (this was, unfortunately, way too buttery for Yin though she did eat some of it and said it was quite good. I hate black truffles but I had a taste and even for me I'd say the butter content was almost excessive)
• fresh pasta with a veal ragu sauce (excellent, the ragu wasn't rich at all but was excellent, so it was perfect for Yin after the previous dish)
• my dessert (dammit!)

4 solid stars for food. Almost 4.5. Amazing wine list, especially for the Italian wines. Though we only had one glass.

The service was good, but not spectacular. They brought Yin's veal ragu out with cheese grated on top when we had made it clear to not do that. They didn't blink however and quickly substituted with a fresh one with apologies. Everyone was nice, and they did the regular "fancy restaurant service" stuff like serving both our respective dishes at the same time witha 1 waiter per dish and laying our napkins on our laps for us (actually, I did that myself, I find that silly). They even offered Yin the choice of a black napkin to match her skirt. Also, like at Gary Danko, at the end of the meal they gave Yin a sack of chocolates "for the lady." Kind of sexist... where the fuck are my chocolates?

But after the service at Gary Danko's, really this seemed only like 3.5 star service. No valet parking which is kind of surprising. Street parking was doable but not great and there is a parking lot across the street. But being in the Tenderloin they really should have valet.

Decor was nice, if reserved. The room was quiet, though it was pretty empty being a Wednesday night. No view or anything... no windows in fact. 4 stars.

Overall, I'd give it a solid 4 stars. It was a very nice experience and I'm glad we went there for our 2 year anniversary. But, for the price I think I'd go to Gary Danko next time... though there are other places I want to try!

2 Year Anniversary

Yin and I have been together for 2 YEARS TODAY! Woot! I save "woot" for very special occasions only.

Tonight we dine at Acquerello (shh... don't tell her, its a secret... oh wait, no one reads this...).

Happy birthday!

I just realized that its the 9th birthday of the Sega Dreamcast which was released (in the US at least) on 9/9/99. So this makes it their uber-golden birthday.

I remember weird things sometimes, but I always thought that date was kinda cool and their commercials for the release stuck in my head. Besides it was a really cool, under appreciated, and ahead of its time console. And I'm a geek.

Call me Ishmael

Actually, I prefer Vince. And I hate that book. Boring as hell.

So, this might be my personal blog. I say might because the last time I tried this it didn't go well. I posted a few times, then I stopped for a long time. Then I posted again. Then stopped for even longer. And then my hosting provider died and lost all my data, including the work/time I had spent setting up my custom picture gallery.

I'm just not very good at this. Kind of like how I suck at corresponding with people who live more than 10 miles away from me (sorry, guys). I realize the internet has made this world tiny for some, but it just didn't take for me. Ironic, as I'm a huge geek. For about the 53rd time, maybe I'll try harder now. We'll see how that goes. I have low expectations.

Maybe I'll give this site out to friends and family and they can keep updated that way. Meh. I'm also not a big fan of people reading my blog. It kind of weirds me out. I guess I'm actually a pretty private guy. So, why am I doing this at all? For me mostly. Things may change as (if) I get more comfortable.

All of this, of course, presupposes that I'll actually post to this thing on a semi-regular basis.

out