Every workday I wake up to NPR, get my act together then drive down the hill to the Oakland Coliseum BART station and wait a bit before picking up my commuting buddy, Mafalda. I used to squeeze in a little Air America before her train would show up, but KQKE (the Air America affiliate) blew a great idea before they even implemented it and lost my morning drive-time patronage - they created a local show (good) but put Willy Brown and Will Durst on the air as its hosts (decidedly bad in my book).
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Well, I guess you can say it wasn’t too bad of a performance given my pathetic last-minute effort to get ready for it: I averaged a 10 minute/mile in yesterday’s Run to the Far Side 10K (overall time was 1:03:48). Actually, it just goes to show me that I need to find a running partner that will temper my pace - I found that I was going way too fast too often during the race (my average time is slowed by the walking breaks I forced myself into, or was forced into).

I think it’s only the second race I ran this year, but none too soon with the new year and the spate of fun runs waiting right around the corner. Time to get training…

As you kind readers might recall, last year at this time I was getting pretty anxious as the training was waining and I was preparing for my first marathon, The California International, just right around the bend. Well, an inconveniently-timed cold canned that effort and I had subsequently started a part-time job. Working 65 hours a week between my full-time job at my previous employer and the store put a serious dent into my running schedule. It was so dented, in fact, that it stopped. I sporadically ran here and there, but with absolutely no consistency and consequently I bailed out of racing altogether.
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So given all the recent press events launching new iPods, PowerBooks and PowerMacs, does anybody else wonder what is going to be announced at MacWorld in January?

OK, so I have to admit a little hypocracy here and say that I induldge a little white trashiness in my appreciation for aerobatics. Can’t say that I love it and go to every event possible, but I do enjoy watching it. All while trying to ignore the staggering statistic that I heard from an NPR interview that the Blue Angels typically burn 1,000 gallons of jet fuel per hour per plane in an average show.

That said, last weekend was Fleet Week here in San Francisco. Being the sucker for aerobatics that I am, I was lured by the siren song of the Red Bull Air Race and, of course, the Blue Angels. Thrown in for good measure was “Team Oracle” (a.k.a. Sean Tucker), the civilian Airshows America L-39 Patriot team and taking up the slack waiting for the Blue Angel finale performance, the Blue Angels’ C-130 Hercules transport, “Fat Albert” (which was repeatedly being referred to as “Big Albert” by the monster-truck-rally-trained announcer). An obviously military-oriented event, there were recruiters a-plenty from every branch littered liberally on Marina Green, with overweight & over-machoed men meandering around rutting along to airshow soundtrack selections including classics from Van Halen, “patriotic” unidentified country singers and, curiously, Neil Diamond. Decidedly not your typical San Francisco event.

Fortunately, I had planned ahead, charged up my battery and went crazy with my digital SLR (well, as crazy as you can get with being hampered by a 128MB CF card). Enjoy!

Today was my last day at Mountain Hardwear and the outdoor industry in general. I’m extremely ecstatic to say that I’ve been offered a similar position that I held at ReplayTV at a PC components company down in Fremont by the name of Antec. After almost 3 years at Mountain Hardwear and almost 5 out of the tech industry - a period in my life that many of you know has been extremely difficult & humbling for me - I have finally returned to the industry that feels like home to me.
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So here I am, two months after having moved out of the ghetto-border area of El Cerrito and into a nice neighborhood in the Oakland hills, the house gets broken into last night. Fantastic.

Fortunately, nobody was home at the time, so nobody was hurt and the amount that was taken was minimal. Denise lost her work laptop and I about $15 of spare change and my first-generation Canon Digital Elph, which really pisses me off because I hadn’t downloaded that last of the digital photos off of it yet.

Taking off work today as I’m not feeling particularly secure (Denise is actually on the phone right now with the locksmith to get a dead-bolt on the door that was jimmied open). Also waiting for somebody from the police to come by to fingerprint - I’ll let you know if someone good-looking enough to guest on CSI shows up, but I’m betting good money that they won’t be.

Both Denise and I are rather at a loss as to what to do from this point. It’s obvious from all the open doors that they went through the entire house despite having taken only two items, from what we can tell. Apparently the cop that came by to do the report last night (I was on my way home from work at the time) downplayed the idea of getting an alarm system (Denise’s boyfriend Jeff mentioned that the cop said they don’t really respond that quickly to alarm systems, which is alarming in and of itself) and encouraged the addition of a canine into the household instead (curiously, the cop said that it could be any dog - even a toy breed). While I love dogs, I think it’s pretty safe to say that neither she nor I are particularly interested nor have the time to get one at this point. So now what?

I feel really bad for Denise - here she bought this place, was even reassured that it was a safe neighborhood, and it gets broken into 4 months after she moved in. I can easily move out (although I don’t want to for numerous reasons, despite my immediate gut-reaction to get out), but she’s pretty much tied down. Yeah, she could sell if she really wanted to, but that would probably be at her disadvantage as who knows if she would be able to afford a new place.

Hopefully an adequate (and successful) solution will present itself as we settle into what happened. It’s still a bit of a shock right now.

If you haven’t been checking out the “Random Bits” part hanging out over there on the right side of my blog lately, you might have missed the pointer to Wednesday’s column written by Mark Morford of the San Francisco Chronicle, entitled “What’s On Jesus’ iPod?”. If you missed it, go read his column and come back. No worries, I’ll wait.
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Awesome, awesome, awesome opinion piece at the Chron: What’s on Jesus’ iPod?

OK guys & girls, while I’ve avidly taken advantage of my friends in learning about new artists and expanding my own musical tastes, the time has come to return the favor. My friend Adam has been playing for many, many years and now he’s starting to open up and wanting feedback as he’s beginning to make some great musical connections here in the Bay Area.

So please download the following tracks (MP4 @ 128 kbps), give them a good listen and report back with your thoughts! And please pass the link along to other people!

1. Watered Down Whiskey (3.68 MB)
2. I’m Sure (3.81 MB)
3. Prayer Flag (8.03 MB)
4. Karate Forever (7.87 MB)
5. I’m a Visual (3.93 MB)
6. Ink Black Water Below (3.15 MB)
7. Lead in the Sea (3.45 MB)
8. Catwalk (6.11 MB)
9. Wildchild (3.46 MB)

Update (4/18): I forgot an underscore in the filename for Track 7, “Lead in the Sea”. It’s fixed now (Thanks Chandra!).
Update 2 (2/19/06): In doing some housecleaning, I’ve deleted the music I was originally hosting. For more on Adam, you can find him on MySpace.

Salon has a great article on a little-known story about the flaunting of the organic label by not-so-organic dairies like Horizon and Organic Valley. While the article is great, I have to admit that I’m a little disappointed in the lack of citation of resources for those of us who want to buy organic dairy but aren’t so informed as to know where to go (nevermind newly annoyed at Salon’s recent change to how their Day Pass works, or doesn’t as it was when I was forced to re-view the ad 5 minutes after doing it the first time).

That said, while buying goods from a local (and reputable) organic label would be most ideal, I’m not too sure where one would start - that is, aside from Googling a bit. For those who want a bit of a short-cut past that effort, I recommend Straus Family Creamery. They’re local to the Bay Area, but their products are also available in stores outside California and via some select home delivery services and mail order. Their products are excellent and can’t be recommended highly enough - cool little side note: they don’t homogenize their milk, so you can get it old-school with the cream on top like our parents did.

If the name sounds a little familiar but you can’t quite place it, this is the same dairy that got some press a while ago for building a methane digester to produce electricity from the manure from their cows. Can’t beat that in trying to make as closed-loop a solution as you can.