One week this summer, Mike was visiting California while I was visiting Pennsylvania, so I let him stay in my apartment. Mike can’t just leave things as they were like a normal person, so here’s what I found on my table when I returned:
Yes, he created his own invoice. Click on it for a larger view.
But that’s not all.
I had mints on my pillows, like you’d find in a hotel.
And then surprisingly, a mint on my towels.
I’m still finding mints.
I need to take a second look at that plant watering credit.
Turns out the city was built “on rock and roll,” and not “on Broadway.”
Yeah, I know this one is a stretch, but that’s really what I thought I remembered hearing.
Last week, we had a small apple festival at work, complete with a barbecue lunch:
and apple pies:
… and caramel apples. I didn’t plan on eating a carmel apple when I first saw them, because I don’t like food that is difficult to eat, especially if I risk getting sticky. On my way out, however, I turned around and decided that it’s been a long time since I’ve had a carmel apple, and I should take advantage of this rare opportunity. So, I grabbed an apple, got it coated in carmel, and then filled my cup with some nuts and chocolate chips and raisins and stuff. It was going to be delicious.
I sat myself down on a bench in the shade, and went for my first bite. My teeth slipped (hey, it’s an apple on a stick!), and all I got was some caramel. Didn’t even break the skin. So, I tried again, this time holding the stick firmly and pushing the apple into my mouth. *Snap!* — the stick broke, the apple hit my chin and then landed on my phone (sitting on the bench), which then fell onto the ground, where phone, apple, and phone’s battery cover then lay in a triangle of defeat. Fortunately, I don’t think anyone saw me, but it must have been pretty sad sight, like the time on Reading Rainbow when LeVar Burton got an ice cream cone and it fell on his shoe. Here’s what my apple looked like afterward:
I would have shown you my phone’s screen covered in caramel, but as Beah has noted, it cannot take a picture of itself.
One night while I was driving back to my apartment after work, something unusual happened. In the lane next to me, I saw a Prius pull up with a spinning device attached to a large roof rack, and a passenger in the front seat who appeared to be operating a laptop. As it looked very similar to what Google’s our Street View cars look like, my only thought was, “Why doesn’t that Street View car have a camera, and why is it driving at night?” I guessed that they were just testing the laser scanning system, which is used to map building facades.
Shortly after that encounter, I learned about one of those projects brewing within Google that made me giddy. In fact, it made my dream come true. We were developing self-driving cars. In case you haven’t heard about this yet, take a break from my post and read Google’s official announcement or this piece in the New York Times, which includes a brief video.
I’m incredibly excited about this project, though I understand one of the biggest challenges will probably be getting humans to accept it. The only thing I have to say regarding that challenge right now is that a lot of airline passengers would probably be freaked out if they knew how much of their journey the human pilots voluntarily hand over to the autopilot.
On the last weekend in September, Brandon, Maria, and I went to Telluride, Colorado to do some hiking and practice our photography skills on the fall colors.
I’ll share some pictures and stories below, but for further viewing or reading pleasure, you may wish to check out:
This trip had three main focus areas: food, hiking, and fall leaves.
Our first meal was actually at a place I had never been to before, but had passed by many times: Brown Dog Pizza, on the recommendation of a Colorado native. We had the “Dog Biscuits” appetizer, which is their cheesy breadsticks. It was delicious. We went back to Brown Dog another night for pizza, and while it was good and likely the best Telluride has to offer, I liked the breadsticks the best.
For our first dinner, we hit up Smugglers, which was as usual fun and full of good food. We had their house-brewed root beer as our beverage of choice. I don’t like to drink root beer that often, but when I do, it’s a nice change and reminds me of my childhood sitting on our deck enjoying a root beer float.
Our final dinner was at Rustico, one of my favorite restaurants. But what I was really looking forward to on this trip, what I was craving, was a fried Oreo sundae from The Sweet Life.
It was just as good as I had remembered from last time, and I’m reminiscing about the taste right now. Because of this, it’s best that I never learn how to fry things myself.
We went out for a few hikes on the trip, but our longest and favorite was the hike to Bear Creek Falls. The fall weather was just about perfect for hiking. It wasn’t cold yet, but it wasn’t too hot either. And of course we saw plenty of golden aspen leaves.
2.5 miles later, we reached the falls. I don’t think I meant to take the first picture with a tilt, but I like it.
As I mentioned before, I really want to get a new DSLR with a GPS receiver. I’ve carried around a GPS logger before and then matched things up with software, but I don’t like that process. This time I just took a reference shot with my Nexus One so I could see where the DSLR shots were taken and geotag appropriately. One reason that I wanted to geotag all of my photos was so that I could get them added to the cool photos layer in Google Maps, which also appears in Street View. My photos haven’t been included as of this writing, but I’ll keep checking back to see if they make it onto the map.
Speaking of gadgets, while we were watching the sunset we noticed two bright lights in the sky before the starts started appearing. Using Google Sky Map, we were able to identify them as Venus and Jupiter.
Well, we were pretty sure that this first one is Venus. It’s right next to Mars, so it was hard to tell, but I think Venus is easier to spot.
In the above photo you can see Venus to the left of Wilson Peak.
Jupiter looked like this:
It’s always sad to end a vacation, but at least we got to wait for our plane in this comfy lounge:
…which came equipped with this view:
Thanks, Telluride. Until we meet again…
It’s a quadricopter with augmented reality video games built in to the control system. It looks awesome.
High speed video camera
I looked at the EX-F1 from Casio, but it looks like the higher speed videos are recorded at lower-than-SD resolution, and I don’t think that’s worth $1,000. Anybody have other suggestions at or below that price point?
Full-frame Nikon DSLR
I need Nikon because Canon doesn’t have an acceptable GPS solution. I want full-frame because I don’t like noise. I’m not buying anything right now though, because the least expensive full-frame Nikon DSLR is the D700, which was released in October 2008. Assuming that there is either a price drop or a product refresh every two years, I think I just need to wait a little longer for one of those things to happen.
Anyway, just thought I’d put that out there in case you didn’t know what to get me for Columbus Day.
I saw The Social Network (the Facebook movie) last night. It was entertaining. I’m not going to get into an extensive list of the factual inaccuracies of the story because I don’t know the true story and I don’t think that the film was intended to be historically accurate. However, I have two nitpicks that stuck out in my mind during the film:
I spent the first two weeks of August in Dublin, Ireland on a trip for work. What follows are some observations of the little things I noticed as an American without much international travel experience.
My pictures
Stuff I liked
Irish accents are cool. I wouldn’t mind having one (or one of the southern English accents). I was almost too embarrassed to speak at times because an American accent must sound horrible to them. And I know it may sound silly, but many times when I heard an Irish woman talking on the street, I turned around to see if it was Ríona, even though her accent is sadly waning.
Another thing that I enjoyed hearing was the ringback tone— the ringing sound that you hear when you’re calling someone. It’s a lot smoother than what you hear when calling a North American number.
I liked how technology enabled me to feel a little less like a tourist and a little more like a local. When it came to food, I was able to use Yelp to look for reviews, and then with my phone was able to confidently get walking directions to the restaurant’s location. I wasn’t limited to using tourist maps or judging a restaurant by what it looked like on the outside. And, since I checked in everywhere on Foursquare, I had a record of every place I visited which ended up being helpful when I did my expense report. I also have location history enabled on Google Latitude, which allowed me to look back and see things like the route our bus took from Dublin to Doolin. So, the two gadgety things that I’d recommend as an international traveler (besides a voltage converter) are a local prepaid SIM card with a data plan (likely much cheaper than roaming), as well as an extended or extra battery. If you’re in the US, you’re probably used to unlimited data, but you’re unlikely to find that when traveling. I found 3G Watchdog on my Android phone to be a helpful app for monitoring my data usage.
I like sandwiches (everybody does), and the sandwiches in Ireland were generally good. I especially liked that it was easier to find a sandwich with sundried tomatoes than it was to find one with avocados. My favorite meals came from Listons Food Store, which was highly rated on Yelp and navigated to using Google Maps on my phone. During both of my visits to Listons, I had a delicious ham and cheese panini. The first one I ate inside the store, but for the second one I took a short walk to St. Stephen’s Green and had a pleasant lunch on a park bench. One thing I have to say about Irish food though is that Dublin’s definition of “crispy” in the context of “crispy bacon” is not the same as it is in the US.
I really enjoyed my one-day trip to the west coast, particularly because I traveled through the countryside and saw the Cliffs of Moher. Those of you who know me personally know that I would never want to live in a city (though I don’t mind working or visiting one), so when I travel I enjoy getting outside of the cities. While they all have significant differences, in a way visiting a major city anywhere in the world is kind of like visiting a major airport anywhere in the world: many things are the same. Traveling outside of Dublin, I was able to experience the green of Ireland that I heard so much about. It really is a beautiful country, and the abundance of green reminded me of home. On my next trip, I’d like to spend more time on the west coast and in the countryside.
My self-confidence was constantly being boosted by their overuse of the word “brilliant,” which seems to be a UK thing as well. As an example, when I turned in my SIM card that I was borrowing during my stay, my Irish coworker responded with, “Excellent brilliant stuff, mate. Cheers.” And when I was in Heathrow, a woman who was handing out flyers for some survey asked if I would be using the Internet in New York (I was flying into JFK). When I indicated that I would in fact be using the Internet, her response was simply, “Brilliant.” Yes, I am. Thank you.
Of course I liked seeing my coworkers. The funny thing is though, due to the multilingual nature of our work, most of the people I work with (and therefore hung out with) in Dublin actually aren’t Irish at all. It was interesting to hear them proudly speak of their homelands (I think a trip to Berlin or Munich is in my future), and I think they were surprised at my ability to sympathize with them when they learned that a trip from California to Pennsylvania is actually longer than a trip from Dublin to most of their hometowns.
I only took three taxis during my stay, but they were a refreshing change from what we have to deal with in the US. Besides the “just round up to the nearest Euro” tipping custom (don’t get me started on how horribly awkward and confusing the tipping culture is in the US), I was relieved to find that the drivers were both courteous and knowledgeable. In the US, it’s such a crapshoot. You can take a cab in the morning and have a friendly driver who can give you helpful suggestions about the area, and then later that afternoon have a driver who seems to hate the idea that someone else got in his car, has no idea where your destination is, and has no map or GPS to help him out.
Even though I had to go through security multiple times on the way home (once in Dublin, twice in Heathrow), I liked that I didn’t have to take my shoes off. They still have the strange liquid restriction though, which didn’t affect me but I felt bad for the non-English-speaking family I saw trying to get medication though the screening process.
Stuff that was kind of weird
It was nearly impossible to find non-American television content, let alone Irish programs. Even when I settled on the BBC one night to catch some European material, they were showing Insomnia, an American film. Not a bad movie, though.
Everything closes early… even earlier than in the Bay Area. I tend to get in late and work late, so it was a challenge for me to rush out every night after work to get food. I thought I had found a solution when I discovered an “American diner,” but it closed at 10:00! That kind of defeats the whole purpose of a diner. When I tried to load up on some food at a convenience store instead, I discovered that they had closed at 9.
By the way, if you want to see more of Ireland, Google just launched Street View in that country, so start exploring.
As part of my Saturday ritual, I go to Quiznos, pick up an Italian hoagie, bag of Cheetos, and a bottle of lemonade and bring it back to my apartment, and eat it while I watch one of those cooking shows which features Gordon Ramsay yelling at people. I eat the hoagie first, so by the time I’m into the bag of Cheetos, my TV is usually showing a segment where there’s some competitive cooking going on. And so every Saturday, I have these two simultaneous thoughts:
Oh, and after a long hiatus, I have two new cooking shows in post-production. I’ll be releasing them as soon as I get around to doing that.
