Posts

Thanks to everyone who took part in yesterday’s test of this new personal site, and after a few short hiccups, showed that the Bluesky integration is, in fact working. I wanted to write a quick thing about what’s going on here.

The history

I’m not even quite sure when I set up my personal blog, though it was long after Techdirt was a going concern (after all, I set up Techdirt before the word blog even existed!). But somewhere in the mid-aughts I figured it might be good to have a personal site as well. This was before social media got big, and I figured it might be good to have a space that wasn’t Techdirt.

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Hello world (kinda?). I totally revamped my abandoned-for-14-years personal page, and as I’m getting it set up, I’m connecting it to Bluesky. This is a test of the Bluesky broadcast system.

If this works, then this will show up as a blog post on Masnick.com, but will also post to Bluesky on my new handle (@masnick.com). In theory… people who reply to the post on Bluesky will have those replies show up beneath this blog post as comments, all thanks to the magic of Bridgy.

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Glances around.

And, uh, looks like the new site is live. The last post was a test of the dev testing site, and this one is a test with the newly moved domain name, away from the old site. It turned out it was a bit more of a process to get the domain working than I expected, some of which had to do with… well… how old the old site was and some legacy cruft that had to be cleared out. Once again, Claude (and a bit of Gemini) were helpful in walking through why things weren’t working and how best to deal with them.

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Huh. Perhaps this works?

If you look at this (very differently looking) Masnick.com page, you might notice that the last blog post I had posted here was from… 2012? 2012! Dang. That’s a long time ago.

It’s so long ago that the WordPress install I had on the old site was so incredibly out of date that nothing worked on it any more. And, for about the last year or two I’d sorta been contemplating wiping out the whole thing and starting again. But then I’d lose links to some of my favorite old blog posts, like the story of my old boss, the bagel shop murderer.

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Okay… so, this blog has been totally neglected for two whole years. I know… I know… it just seems like with Twitter/Facebook/Google+ handling the small stuff, and Techdirt handling a lot of the big stuff, I haven’t had as much need for a personal blog. Plus, somewhere, a little less than two years ago our son arrived… and (shocking, shockers) pretty much any and all spare time has switched over to spending time with him, which is all sorts of awesome, but means less time for random musings here on this blog. Actually, it’s meant no time at all for such musings.

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Ok, a little late on this (again). I realize this blog has become neglected, but hope to start posting a bit more again soon, but in the meantime, I need to repeat last year’s tradition, totally ripped off from Dennis about my “year in cities,” highlighting every city where I spent at least one night… So, here we go, in order of attendance:

San Carlos, CA (home, so multiple times) Washington, DC (multiple times) Lorton, VA Many thousands of feet over the Atlantic ocean (multiple times) Juan-les-Pins, France Edinburgh, Scotland Nashville, TN Toronto, Canada Huntington, NY (multiple times) New York, NY (multiple times) San Diego, CA Stavanger, Norway Wheaton, IL

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Five years ago, one of my college roommates was getting married in Miami, and with my grandparents (at the time) living just a bit north of there, it became an opportunity to visit them and (more importantly) to introduce them to Sunnia for the first time. She was nervous, and even I was a bit nervous, though I knew my grandparents would make her feel right at home. They did much more than that. My grandmother and my (future) wife bonded immediately. Despite there being nearly 60 years difference in age, being born on different continents, having different native languages and cultural backgrounds, the two of them bonded as if they had known each other forever (much to my own detriment at times). The two of them both have a mischievous joking side, and they would kid each other — and (more frequently) team up to make fun of me together.

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Well over a year ago, I wrote about just how useful Twitter can be, and over time that’s only increased. I have to admit that until about a month ago, I mostly just used Twitter in the web interface. I did install Digsby as a client, but I basically just used that to notify me when new Twitter messages were showing up. But then I kept hearing about neat things (such as groups) that TweetDeck allowed, and I started playing with that. It took some getting used to, but there were definite advantages. Being able to set up groups/columns/persistent searches and laying it out in a nice format actually made Twitter that much more useful. It became, as I noted in a Tweet sort of a “personal Bloomerg” for me.

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So, last year I tried doing two separate ska/reggae podcasts that I posted to this blog… and I’d been meaning to do another one, but really wanted to try one with a co-host, because I think it sounds a lot better. This weekend, I went up to Dennis’ place and we set up and recorded another one. I’m pretty happy with the results (though, yes, there were quite a few mistakes if you listen closely enough… but you won’t… right?):

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So… I actually wrote most of this post in July of 2008, while I was traveling somewhere on a plane. It sat in a text file for all this time, because I was too lazy/busy to get the images. I figured, however, now that it’s spring training (whoo hoo!!), I might as well finally get it posted. I did some editing on what I originally wrote so that it makes sense now — i.e., saying “last year” instead of “this year.”)

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My presentation at MidemNet last month in Cannes has received more attention than I ever imagined (nearly 17,000 views on YouTube at this time!). If you haven’t seen it, here it is:

However, being that this is a personal blog, I wanted to discuss some of the behind-the-scenes stuff that went on and answer some of the other questions that have been asked by some folks.

First, I have no idea how I got asked to do this presentation. Despite writing about the music industry for a while, and pissing off numerous lawyers who work for the industry, I very rarely hear from the business folks. I don’t think they have any clue who I am. However, I apparently got onto someone’s radar screen, and they called me out of the blue and asked me to present (they picked the topic).

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Long time readers of this blog (all three of you) may remember my post in 2007 about how Bob, my boss at Super Bagel — where I worked throughout my high school years — had just killed his wife, Ann, with whom I also worked. The story is really tragic. I’d received a couple calls from TV magazine show producers thinking of doing an episode on the case, and I occasionally have looked around for updates, and to see whether or not a trial was underway. Thanks to my sister for sending over the news that the trial has, in fact, begun, and it’s already off to quite a start, with allegations that Bob offered an employee at Super Bagel $5,000 to kill Ann, saying:

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I’m usually not a big fan of these sorts of things, but eh, haven’t had time to write up any actual posts, so via Dennis we get a silly high school style musical meme test that reveals a bit of what’s in my music collection… Here’s how it works:

1. Put Your iTunes on Shuffle. (I used Party Shuffle, cuz Shuffle isn’t really “random”)
2. For each question, press the ‘next’ button to get your answer. (or listen to each song, like I did.)
3. You must write down the name of the song no matter how silly it sounds!
4. Put any comments in brackets after the song name.

What do your friends think of you? You don’t Know Like I Know… by The Pepper Pots I’m really not sure what that means

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Been catching up some random podcasts lately, and there were two totally unrelated ones that both caught my attention and seemed worth mention.

The first, was Kevin Smith’s “SModcast” that he does with his long time producing partner Scott Mosier. I started listening to Smodcast a few months back, and while there are times it goes off the rails a bit, when it hits it’s really quite enjoyable. It’s one of the few “non-professional” (i.e., radio shows turned into podcasts) I can listen to. Back when the wife was away for nearly two months back during October and November, I used the time to catch up on some of the movies I hadn’t had a chance to see in a while… and that included those in the Kevin Smith and Judd Apatow world… So, I ended up renting both Clerks II and Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and then soon afterwards saw (in the theaters) Zack and Miri Make a Porno and then Role Models.

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I’d been meaning to work on this over the holidays and didn’t, but now that Dennis (from whom I got the idea) put up his annual post of cities where he spent the night, it seemed like I finally ought to get around to it as well… So, here they are: cities where I spent at least one night during 2008 (in order of attendance):

San Carlos, CA (home sweet home, so multiple times) Phoenix, AZ Somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean (well, depends on how you define “night” but I landed at 9am… so…) Edinburgh, Scotland (looking forward to going back soon) Huntington, NY (multiple times) New York, NY (multiple times) Rockville Centre, NY Jacksonville, FL Toronto, Canada Beaver Creek, CO Salt Lake City, UT Cheyenne, WY Lincoln, NB Indianola, IA (outside Des Moines) Wheaton, IL (multiple times) Chicago, IL (multiple times) Albuquerque, NM Santa Fe, NM Flagstaff, AZ Grand Canyon, AZ Needles, CA

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Two posts in one night… and both music posts. Actually, this one is a follow up to my first attempt at recreating my old ska radio show from the 90s. This is my second attempt and while it’s fun… getting it to really sound right isn’t going so well. Getting the levels on the voice right is really tricky and I know I need to work on that. Hell, I was so frustrated by the voice levels I considered recording a version of this “show” without any voiceovers — but Dennis says he likes the voiceovers, and he was the only person I asked, so given a 100% result on my all too small sample size, the voiceovers stays in.

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In a bit of a followup to my recent post on great ska performers like the Scofflaws and Skapara, I finally had a chance to see the Aggrolites live a week and a half ago. I’m a child of the NYC ska scene, so my exposure to California ska was a bit delayed — and often came through a New York City lens — I discovered CA bands like Hepcat and Lets Go Bowling only because they put out albums on Moon Ska, the classic NYC ska label of the 90s. There was Jump with Joey, but until Ryko reissued their albums in the US, JwJ always seemed like a mythical creature. I’d hear about them and their weekly live shows at the King King club — but hadn’t heard a damn thing from them as all their albums were only available in Japan.

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Another quickie post. Back when I was first getting into ska in the early 1990s, the band I first was obsessed with was the Scofflaws, who not only made great recordings but put on a great live show. It wasn’t just that they performed well, but that they entertained. Soon after I started trying to find out about any and every ska band out there, someone (maybe my friend Rod?) gave me a tape of a Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra recording. It was on a cassette tape with no details other than the band’s name and it was fantastic… and the most hilarious part was the rendition they did of the Sesame Street theme, and they start chanting “How… To… Get… To… Sesame Street!”

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So, Dennis posted about how he almost almost almost bought some night vision goggles on Woot recently, but was talked out of it via instant messenger by his brother. It caused me to write the following story as a comment on his post. However, in thinking about it, perhaps it deserves to be a blog post on its own:

When I was in high school, I read an article in Time Magazine about how, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, old Soviet army equipment could be picked up on the cheap on the streets of Moscow. Specifically listed: $80 for night vision goggles. I went nuts. I wanted such a pair badly.

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As some of you know, my wife’s been away traveling for the past 5 weeks, though she’s currently driving (my car) back across the country, and I’ll be flying out to meet her shortly, after which we’ll drive around a bit, checking out the southwest. In the meantime, I’ve got way too much free time on my hands, so I’ve been killing time catching up on various things, including ripping a bunch of old CDs that have been gathering dust on the shelves.

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To BART Customer Service,

This morning, October 4th, 2008, my wife and I tried to take BART to the San Francisco Airport. We have done this in the past with no problem. We purchased a parking permit, drove to Millbrae, and parked in the lot. We purchased our tickets, $1.50 each, and boarded the 5:48am train on Platform 3, which was clearly labeled as going to San Francisco Airport. We had looked up the train schedule online, where it also clearly stated that the 5:48 train went to San Francisco Airport.

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I first met Sugar, our golden retriever, over ten years ago, when she was just a little puppy, days after my future wife had adopted her. I remember going to her apartment in Foster City with some friends (who worked with her). There was this tiny, friendly, playful golden retriever who no one could resist playing with. I had no clue she would one day become a part of my family.

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Okay, so I still (yes, yes, I know) have a bunch of other posts I’m planning to put up, but here’s a quick one. Our friends Kai & Ingrid (newlyweds, congrats) are moving up to Seattle, and so we all decided to have a bit of a going away event for them. Mike Ho misremembered an idea that Kai had and decided that should be the event. Here’s Mike Ho’s version (which is what we actually did):

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Yeah, ok, so this blog has been totally neglected lately, but I’ve been sorta crazy busy. The truth, actually, is that I’ve got about 7 or 8 posts that I’ve written up over the past 3 or 4 months, mostly while flying on airplanes… and then I just haven’t had the time to actually import them from text files into WordPress as posts. I know… I know… it shouldn’t take much, but for some reason I haven’t found the time. But I’m going to start getting those posts up over the next few weeks (I hope), even if many of them may seem a bit out of date.

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So it’s been one full year since the wedding, and for our anniversary I could write up a long post about how wonderful married life is and how awesome my wife is, but since me sitting at the computer rather than spending time with her isn’t the most effective way of showing her how much I appreciate and love her, I’ll just say: married life is wonderful, and my wife is awesome. Year one was fantastic, and here’s looking forward to many, many more that will be even better. Happy first anniversary…

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Last Friday evening, I had mentioned on Twitter that we were preparing to dogsit for two rowdy dogs for a week — joking that I wasn’t worried how our dog would handle it (seeing as she’s incredibly lazy and prone to ignoring other dogs), but more about how the cat would handle it. Little did we know what was to come. Our cat has learned to live with strange and rowdy dogs in the past when we’ve done dog-sitting for friends, but we know that Max is a bit more rowdy than most rambunctious dogs. We’ve dog sat for him in the past, but always at his own home. This time, he was going to stay at our place, with another dog, Daisy, as well. Daisy is a nervous dog, but she pretty much follows whatever Max does.

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On my mother’s side, I have 5 cousins, making a total of six of us. From oldest (my sister) to youngest (my cousin Steven), there’s only 7 years difference. We all grew up in and around New York City, and we spent plenty of time together. We’re extremely close to this day (even though I’ve been 3,000 miles away for the past 10 years). The six of us all come from three sisters who were born to my grandparents in the 1940s: my mom, my aunt Carol (my mom’s identical twin sister) and my aunt Betty. And, of course, at the top of the pyramid are my grandparents, Rose & Sid, who really have kept this entire extended family so close together all these years:

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“True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

I went to a fun gathering last weekend, put on for Jonathan Zittrain, the founder of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard. The occasion was Zittrain’s new book The Future of the Internet… And How To Stop It. I’ve known Zittrain’s work for a while, but never met him, so jumped when I got an invite (thank you, Kara Swisher) to the come to a party for the book. The party itself was put on by Arianna Huffington and Melanie Ellison, who I guess you need to refer to as “Larry Ellison’s wife.” That meant the party was at one of Larry Ellison’s homes, on Billionaire’s Row in San Francisco, where pretty much all of the neighbors are billionaires, and the view is magnificent.

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Ok, so remember that last post about the old photo of an Atari 800 on a desk from 1983? The one that I said reminded me so much of the old Atari 800 I grew up with? The one that I said that I was pretty sure my parents had walled off as a disaster area? Yeah, well, my memory was correct, and my parents are awesome. They just sent me a photo of the desk, taken today.

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Boingboing has a post today including a photo from one of Pesco’s friends, Jennifer Brown, of a computer desk showing an Atari 800. The photo is circa 1983:

The scary bit is that looks exactly like the setup I had with my Atari 800, which I used all through school, right up until I went away to college. The differences are really small. But we had a similar ancient TV. We had the tape player (remember when you loaded programs via cassette tape?). At one point we had two separate floppy drives (the 810s), with the two different doors (one flips, one goes up and down), just like the photo shows (though, i think we had two because one broke, so I don’t think we had them lined up next to each other). I also don’t think we had an Atari branded printer. But, even the desk and the overall setup looks kinda similar to what we had.

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Thanks to RSS, just noticed that Amazon is now taking pre-orders on the latest Slackers album, Self Medication which will be out in a month. Fred was asking if I’d heard it, and while I haven’t heard the full album, I definitely recognize some of the songs, especially the first one, so I figured I’d post it here:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

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Mentioned this over on Techdirt last week, but might as well mention it here as well, since all sorts of folks are emailing/texting/calling to say they heard the show. On Friday evening I got interviewed by Robert Siegel on NPR’s “All Things Considered” talking about “The Streisand Effect,” the phrase I jokingly coined a while back. It was quite a bit of fun. Siegel seemed pretty cool, making sure I was at ease before we got started. I had expected the questions mostly to be about examples of the Streisand Effect in action. Many of the questions were of that nature (though a few other examples I spoke about got left on the cutting room floor). I wasn’t expecting that last question about other phrases I’ve coined or a separate question which didn’t make the cut either about other similar phrases (not by me) that had caught on. I rambled on about Godwin’s Law for a while, but even as I was saying it I knew I hadn’t done a great job describing it, so I was pretty happy that got cut. Either way, it’s been nice to discover just how many people listen to All Things Considered — and I’m glad I didn’t make a total fool of myself (thanks, in part, to the NPR editors).

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I’ll admit that I was pretty skeptical about Twitter for a long time. I had a few false starts in trying to use it, but a couple months ago I got serious about it and have discovered that it can be useful in surprising ways. It seems that a lot of bloggers have recently been coming to the same conclusion with a bunch pointing to Howard Rheingold’s post about why Twitter is useful. Russell Beattie followed it up with a post claiming that Twitter is great because there are no spammers and no trolls. Unfortunately, that’s not quite true. Over the last few weeks, I’ve been noticing more and more messages alerting me that my Twitter feed was being “followed” by some odd name I didn’t recognize. Like I do with most followers, I’d go check out their Twitter-feed, and discover that it was mostly spamming stuff. I’d also notice that they were following thousands of people with very few following them. Even better, despite having said they were “following” me, most stopped following me immediately. They only followed me to get an alert sent to me so I would check out their spammy feed.

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This is a crazy long post, so if you actually decide to read it, might as well hit the play button on this playlist, since it’s equally as long. And, yes, if you’re wondering where the hell I found the time to write this up, I’ve been traveling way too much lately, so this post was written over the course of a month during multiple flights and airport layovers, in between sleeping.

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Ok, I’ll admit that I was a bit unsure of the actual usefulness of Twitter, but a couple months ago I figured I’d give it another shot, and it’s been growing on me. The first thing about it that struck me was how incredible it was to follow the Iowa caucuses via Twitter. People who were actually taking part in the caucuses were reporting in real-time on what was being said in the caucuses, and it made it clear that there was a real groundswell of support for Obama. What was most amazing was contrasting that to CNN, which reported a statistical dead heat between the three leading candidates quite late into the night, before Obama’s sizable lead emerged. Yet, watching the real-time reports via Twitter, it seemed clear that there was strong Obama support. That’s only one data point, but it was kind of neat.

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So said the guy renting me the kilt.

As mentioned, I’ve been in Edinburgh, Scotland for the week, thanks to Mike Clouser over at the Edinburgh-Stanford Link. It’s really been a blast. I gave three separate talks (one on market research, one on economics and business models and one on the history of Techdirt) and then we had a Techdirt Greenhouse over at a local incubator, the Alba Innovation Centre (which is a bit tricky to get to apparently). The students have all been fantastic, generating lots of interesting discussions. The local entrepreneurs I’ve met with have been great as well. While there’s definitely some concern from folks about entrepreneurship in Scotland, there does seem to be a fair amount of energy and buzz around.

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So my hotel room in Edinburgh is tiny, but decent enough. I realized that it was missing things I’ve come to expect in a hotel room, such as an alarm clock, but was a bit surprised to see a note saying that I could schedule a wakeup call through the television. I’m fairly used to hotels having interactive TV systems using LodgeNet, which seems to be the standard interactive TV solution, but I don’t recall them offering a wakeup/alarm offering. So, I was a bit surprised when I turned on the little TV in the corner here and discovered what appears to be interactive TV using ancient DOS applications:

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Man. Wasn’t expecting this when I opened my BoingBoing feed today:

There are a ton of little hidden ska jokes in both the song and the video. Someone had a lot of fun creating that. As a sidenote, in my dealings with him, at least, Alex was one of the nicest, coolest people I met in the ska world way back when — perhaps even cooler than the character he later played in the movie Swingers. Though, still not sure this would have actually made me clean my room as a kid (sorry, Mom).

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It’s funny that in all the time I’ve lived in California, I’ve barely known any of my neighbors. Perhaps it’s been my fault for being anti-social, but it just seems like I always end up living places where neighbors pretty much keep to themselves. Apparently, that’s no longer the case. Following our Halloween fun with the neighbors (and, yes, the caramel covered apples were delicious), we’ve had yet another enjoyable gathering with some more neighbors.

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](http://www.flickr.com/photos/45779952@N00/1866684517/)

Originally uploaded by Paul M.

So, DiPasquo and Robin got married last Friday, and while it was a lovely and fun wedding in many ways, it may be most memorable for the… er… somewhat unplanned pre-ceremony group event known as “everyone search through the grass for the missing wedding band.”

While apparently the rings were originally tied to the young ring bearer’s pillow, somehow they came undone right before the ceremony. Someone saw Dan’s ring fall, so that was picked up quickly, but Robin’s was already long gone. So, a large segment of the wedding attendees spent 15 to 20 minutes combing the grass for the elusive wedding band to no avail.

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So, we’re finishing up dinner tonight, and just as I stand up to pick up the dishes, the whole house starts shaking along with a low rumble. It sounded like a big truck was driving by, but the truck sounded really close and really loud… There was a brief discussion: “Is this an earthquake?” “Hmm… yeah, it’s an earthquake.” At which point my wonderful wife, still seated in her chair as I move towards the relative safety of a doorway, starts looking around calmly at the walls of our new house and repeating the mantra: “don’t fall down! don’t fall down! don’t fall down!”

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When I lived in Foster City, every year at Halloween the house would be mobbed by kids trick-or-treating. It was a non-stop barrage of costumed kids, and required quite a lot of candy. I don’t know if things were organized, but Foster City is a very planned community, and my neighborhood was very residential (and very flat). There was a shopping center nearby and I once drove by on Halloween and saw the entire parking lot filled with trick-or-treaters. It seemed like other towns must have bussed their kids in. Perhaps they came from Belmont or San Carlos.

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Well, my last request for help from all two of my readers didn’t work out so well, but I can’t resist trying again. As mentioned, as a wedding present, Audris put together a really cool cookbook with recipes (and stories and well wishes) from all our friends and relatives. We’ve actually been using some of those recipes (thanks!) but now we could use some more help. We moved into our new house and have discovered it has a cool fig tree in the front. So, for a couple of weeks, we’ve been eating fresh figs. But, plain old figs are starting to get boring… so, anyone got some good fig recipes?

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I recognize this sounds like a Steven Wright bit or something, but… uh… how do you throw out a garbage can?

One Comment

masnick.com » Anyone Got Recipes For Figs? on October 8th, 2007

[…] Well, my last request for help from all two of my readers didn’t work out so well, but I can’t resist trying again. As mentioned, as a wedding present, Audris put together a really cool cookbook with recipes (and stories and well wishes) from all our friends and relatives. We’ve actually been using some of those recipes (thanks!) but now we could use some more help. We moved into our new house and have discovered it has a cool fig tree in the front. So, for a couple of weeks, we’ve been eating fresh figs. But, plain old figs are starting to get boring… so, anyone got some good fig recipes? […]

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One of the things I enjoyed most back when I lived in Foster City was that I was like a block away from the Foster City Bay Trail and could bike along the Bay up to the airport and back. These days, I tend to (when I get the chance) drive down to Oracle and pick up the trail there (just south of Foster City). Over the years, if you bike that portion of the Bay Trail, one thing you learn about is the feral cat population. Foster City has a feral cat problem with probably hundreds of wild cats living along approximately a two mile portion of the Bay Trail surrounding the San Mateo Bridge. If you’re out around twilight, you can’t miss the cats. They’re everywhere. About six months ago, as I was biking that section in the evening, marveling at the number of cats, I noticed that one of the cats wasn’t a cat at all, but was clearly a skunk, hanging out with the cats. I thought that was odd, but pretty much forgot about it…. until Friday night.

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Two months ago, I got a new laptop. It’s a Lenovo Thinkpad z61t. I actually ordered a t61, but I accidentally got the z61 instead — and, I actually really like it. It’s quite similar to the t61, but a little smaller and lighter. I was worried that the smaller part would be a problem, but I’ve gotten used to it. I really like the fact that it’s much lighter than my old t42. It just makes it seem so much more usable on the go. Lugging out the t42 was always a chore.

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So I really do plan to write more about our wedding, but time is seriously lacking. Maybe I’ll get to it by our first anniversary. In the meantime, we went to two great weddings this past weekend, so I wanted to share my photos.

• Mike & Thu
• Tom & Joann

Lots of photos at those links, but in the meantime:

Two very different weddings, but both were a lot of fun.

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So last week, I got to stop by and get lunch with Wall Street Journal star reporter Kara Swisher (and her son, who required some practice pitches from me while he worked on his baseball swing). As always when talking to Kara, it was a fun, fast-paced and eye-opening conversation. Kara, along with Walt and John P (whose writing I’ve always been a huge fan of), are doing a fantastic job with bringing the Wall Street Journal into the internet age with their AllThingsD.com website. Kara posted all too kind blurb about our meeting which includes one of Kara’s famous on-the-spot videos, with me talking about media companies not quite getting the internet. Bonus points to Kara for calling it “The Rupert Street Journal.”

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I’ve got like 3 or 4 other wedding-related posts I want to write up, but don’t have the time right now, so here’s a totally unrelated post about a movie we saw last weekend. “Mockumentaries” have gotten pretty popular in the last two decades, in large part due to the success of Christopher Guest’s This is Spinal Tap…. Guest has gone on to make a bunch of other mockumentaries (though, none nearly as successful as Spinal Tap), and for some reason lots of folks seem to think they can make one. However, many of them suck — and often you can get much more satire value out of a real documentary.

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Yeah, so there’s lots to write about the wedding and everything, and I really intend to do it, but I don’t know when. Just got back from the honeymoon, swamped with catching up on work and about to head out again on a business trip (internet access on the airplane would be really useful here). Overall, though, the wedding, the honeymoon and married life have been pretty damn awesome so far. Everyone warned that the wedding would go by in a blur, but it didn’t really. However, perhaps as we get further away from the day it will feel more and more like a blur.

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Okay, okay. I’ll admit that it will never live up to the craziest bachelor party of all time, but it wasn’t bad. Dennis did a nice job getting us some fantastic seats, right next to the Yankee bullpen, at AT&T park to catch the Yankees/Giants game on Saturday.

If you notice a huge crew of Taiwanese folks behind us snapping photos with their cameras, it wasn’t because of us, but because Taiwanese Yankee pitcher Chien-Ming Wang was warming up. As you may (or may not) know, Wang has been a huge success for the Yankees, and the first really successful Taiwanese professional American baseball player. Also, San Francisco has a huge Taiwanese community who all wanted to see him play. Apparently, he had more requests for tickets than at any other park, and the local Taiwanese media even gave him flowers. Of course, since we’re right in front of the bullpen, this is what they were taking photos of:

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Last week, in talking about pre-wedding stress, a friend of mine said that couples come out of it stronger, noting something along the lines of “the best bonds are formed in the hottest fires.” I didn’t know he meant it so literally.

It can’t be a good thing when the site of your upcoming (less than 2 weeks) wedding is engulfed in flames and making headlines half way around the world. Google News currently shows 1,402 results for “tahoe fire.” Yay.

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When I was a kid, I went to Canada a few times with summer camp (it was a “travel camp”) and I always enjoyed it. I remember a time, in Toronto, just as we were all supposed to be heading back to the buses when a group of three or four of us were killing time outside some sort of theater that had some guy standing out front trying to convince passing tourists to buy tickets. Like a bunch of punk kids, we wasted his time for a bit before one of us asked, “Hey, if we buy one ticket, and all of us sit on top of each other, is that okay?” The guy paused for a second and said, “You must be from New York,” before turning and walking away.

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In the spring of 1991, I was finishing up my sophomore year of high school and I needed a summer job. Until then, I’d always gone to summer camp for the summers, and going back as a camp counselor wasn’t that appealing (and wouldn’t earn very much money). Being the nerd that I was, I attached a photocopy of my report card to a cover letter and handed it out to a few shop owners in town — starting with the ones that seemed like cool places to work. The video store expressed interest, but then never called back after promising to set up an interview. The printing place said they didn’t have any openings. The book store said they only hired college graduates.

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Wednesday Busy day knowing I’m heading out of town for a bit. Rush around tying up loose ends at work, before heading out to Bay Area Blawgers event (not sure I qualify, and not sure I like being in a room full of lawyers, but hey, it was fun), meet cool folks like Matt Cutts, recognize that you can’t easily sneak out by 7pm as you had promised… stick around to the end. Then rush up the peninsula to meet Sunnia and Teck for dinner. Head back home to show Teck around (he’s house/cat sitting), pack (yeah, that’s important) and finish up some work. Finish up at 2:30am. Realize I need to be awake at 4:30am to get to airport.

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Ok. Now that I’ve done the video blog thing and the photo blog thing, I might as well figure out how to do the music blog thing. I just installed the audio player plugin that plenty of sites seem to use and wanted to test it out with a few of the songs I’ve been listening to this week.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

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