Fluffy Cat

Last night we came home to Berkeley (from the Salt Lake City trip that I will post about later)
to find Squeeky had not been taken away as planned. We walked into the yard to find Squeeky sitting in the middle of the yard mewing, and two metal food bowls on the bricks, for the two nice downstairs kitties.

This perturbed me for many reasons, including that I knew the owner of these two cats wasn't home and hadn't been for days, indeed, had moved out, telling us that the cats would be picked up last Friday to go to her dad's house.

Cat and two bowls were there, but we had a bad feeling about the little cat, since she was nowhere to be found. Last time she came back from the dad's house, she had lost three or four of the few pounds she ever had (at most ten? to start?) and came back with bones sticking out. She'd lost so much weight, she was eating birdseed to feed herself.

Paul and I are the ones most frequently at the house, and as such, we take it upon ourselves to shower the two downstairs cats with love and, when we can, extra food. But the last trip to the dad's house had taken most of Flluffy's weight away.

A telephone call confirmed our fears. Fluffy had been put to sleep. Something about dehydration and a possible urinary tract infection, and possible kidney damage from said dehydration. As much as we loved the little cat, serious neglect from the proper caretakers had hurt her, and she was either too far gone, or deemed not worth the effort.

R.I.P. little kitty. I'm sorry you landed where you did.

Fluffy cat had grown her personality tenfold since I met her. first a shy, skittish ball of fur who was frightened by the sound of her drool hitting the couch, she gradually gained self-confidence finally to the point of slapping and ambushing the other two, much larger cats in the yard. Once, after she'd spent a few days ambushing Fang repeatedly (and she was too small to hurt them, but kept trying), I pulled a cat claw out of her head while petting her in the garage. She turned into a little scrapper! I declared her a bully; Paul called it "sassy," and was charmed by it. Paul was her favorite, and she'd follow him around the yard, "ack"ing. She rarely could squeak out a real "meow," usually just choking out an "ack... gaaak" instead. She was a beautiful soft little kitty, who we will miss. I can't help but feel we failed her.

Countrywide

Anyone else out there who's a housing bubble and crash junkie like myself?

You've probably been following the Countrywide situation... and OMG, and honest-to-goodness run on a bank!

Meanwhile, customers crowded into branches of Countrywide Bank today to withdraw as much as $500,000 at a time because of concerns about the financial problems of the mortgage lender that owns the bank.

Everyone said this couldn't happen, right?
So now the billion dollar question is:
Is Countrywide too big to fail? Will this jackass get a government bailout?

it's ok, real estate always goes up. Just keeping buying, folks!

In the "damn, I didn't think he'd be one of the ones to get taken down" news, Craig Hightower died today in Oakland.

OAKLAND - A man was killed Tuesday morning near Chinatown when the motorcycle he was riding was brushed by a SUV causing it to hit a parked car and eject him into a retaining wall, police said.

OK, and seriously, "brushed by a SUV!??!?!!??!!" Cars do not "brush" motorcycles. How a writer and editor allowed this to be printed?!?!? Correction: the SUV driver hit the motorcycle. That kind of bullshit writing makes me really angry.


Craig wasn't a friend of mine, just one of those staples in the Bay Are motorcycling community, in the vein of solid riders you just assume will be riding around into their 90's.

Motorcyclists die all the time (so do car drivers, McDonald's eaters, and skiers, for that matter) and I see a hell of a lot of bad riders out there. I expect it when they go down, and I vacillate between callous and frustrated by their actions and attitudes and impact it has on the rest of us. But there are a lot of riders who I consider to be in it for the long run, more skills, less stupidity, just better, right? When I consider the weight of "motorcycles are dangerous...." comments, I simply group myself with the better riders, the ones who will be going into our old age on our bikes. Some are my friends, others just people I know about. I feel secure(ish) in knowing that there's a sub-set of motorcyclists that the public doesn't consider, and that being a part of that sub-set makes me safer.

But it's not necessarily the case.

There are still hurried SUV drivers trying to "brush" even the good ones. There are moments our minds drift. There are moments when a driver comes up with some maneuver so completely beyond any bizarre or stupid thing we've seen before (and we have seen a lot of bizarre and stupid driver tricks)

And then you're done, extinguished, and in conversations with people who don't know the difference, tossed back into the group of failed squids, as yet another example of why motorcycling is necessarily deadly.

linky goodness

Tinfoil Hats


A very funny video about Microsoft Paint. Why DOES this stuff suck so much?



ZOMG! Zombies! Ants! Fungus! This is REALLY interesting, cool and spooooky.

If only I could get a loan to buy more tulips

The Fed is leaving rates where they are today!

Am I worried about the credit crunch and recession? Yes.
Do I recognize that sometimes we have to take our medicine even though it's unpleasant? yes.
Do I feel bad for all the speculators ("homeowners") who will be stretched to or past their limits? Not really.

Rates were too low, too long. We put off reality for a long time with easy funny money. But now it's time to take the medicine. There has been a lot of bad news in the mortgage sector this past week, and credit is tightening everywhere. It may be painful, but it's far past time for this.

Fasten your seatbelts! Tulips do NOT always go up.

Doped up on Dramamine

Saturday night I worked at New Wave City and got in about 2 am. Which meant that I had gotten about 4 hours of sleep when the alarm went off at 6:30 am. No matter! There were BIRDIES and WHALES to go visit! And they would have no lateness.

We got to Fort Mason to meet our boat at about 7:30. I had already taken my Dramamine Less Drowsy an hour before takeoff time, and so at 8 am, we were on our way! With about 40 other people. One of whom was some Marina chicklet (she had not fully grown into a Marina chick, as she was not wearing heels or carrying a large purse) and her boyfriend. She complained about her hair and the ten pounds of makeup she had dutifully applied getting mess up as we made our way out through the bay and into the ocean.

I had worn my entire riding get-up, sans helmet, which, as it turned out, was a very fortunate outfit. Standing on deck gets you really, really wet. And it's cold too, but mostly, wet. Seawater, which is super salty and tastes icky. We stood on the deck most of the time, as sitting inside is more for people who wish to get seasick, which I did not.

We first made our way up along the coast of Marin, never getting close enough that I would have the misfortune of meeting any Marin people. We did come upon some harbor seals in a cove, balancing their fat carefully on tiny rocks. Puppies!

Out at a bouy, we found a bunch of sea lions playing in the water. The picture doesn't do it justice. They were jumping up out of the water over and over, and when they traveled as a pack, they were jumping and propelling themselves they way we imagine dolphins doing, only with less finesse and showiness.

We quickly left the sea lions when someone spotted a whale nearby. And as we chased that whale (not really chased, just trying to get closer), and everyone got to the front right of the boat, I was left on the left side of the boat, and something weird was in the water near our path. At first thought? Dead body. No, wait, too much surface area. Not a whale, too ridgey. Then, holy CRAP! The biggest damn turtle I have ever seen! It's unfortunate that I did not have the camera at this point, because I had a very, very clear shot of this thing. I have never seen a turlte in the wild before, and certainly not on e like this. It must have been about 10 feet long? And was floating near the top of the water nearly directly by where I was standing. Beautiful!

Once the captain saw what we had found, he kind of lost his shit and got on the horn to tell all of the other boats, which all stopped whatever they were doing to rush over to see the Leatherback. Leatherbacks are very rare to sight, and very, very endangered. They will most likely be extinct within the next decade or so. To bad, they are cute. And could probably be saved with some party hat fashion, to warn fishers to get them out of their nets.

After all the other boats had come to see the turtle, and it had become less easy to see anyway, we went back on our way, stopping here and there to see whales. The rest of the people on the boat were starting to get seasick as we headed out to the Farallones, so I thought maybe I'd better take a second dose of Dramomine Less drowsy to make sure I did not get sick. Big mistake! That stuff mess you up! Two days later, and a whole lot of extra sleep hours, and I am just feeling normal again.

The shape of the Faralonnes through the fog emerged slowly around the same time the smell emerged. Nature is stinky, and noisy. As we pulled close to them, the noise of the sea lions and gulls is nearly deafening. The islands are covered, literally, with birds; Cormorants hop up the rock face, murrs are hanging out on the beach, gulls are flying around picking stuff out of the water and carrying it up to the top of the rock (I guess they are nesting up there?)

As we floated away from the Faralonnes, we found the water teeming with jelllyfish. I had also never seen jellyfish in the wild, and to see so many was, frankly, a little much. Somebody should eat them! Like the Leatherback, but unfortunately, he was nowhere near there.

Coming back to the bay was a long trip, and everyone was basically passing out. Trying to keep my eyes open on the way, Paul and I sat in the front of the boat by ourselves and got to see several more whales. Each time we saw some whales, people would rush to the front of the boat and then we couldn't see anymore, nor could I sleep. Bummer. This must be when I got sunburned as well. Fortunately, I was wearing a hat to keep the sun off of my scalp.

Eventually, we came back to the bay, where the water got choppy again, and we saw some porpoises. The porpoises were not all that exciting, because you could barely see them in the water. They were not feeling like putting on a performance for us, apparently.

We got back to dock around 3:30 I think (I was so out of it by this point, I just wanted to nap, and could not be bothered by any more whales) and then headed back to Berkeley, where we took a nap, hobbled to dinner, then returned to bed. We were in bed by 8pm! Monday morning I had to be at work early, but still managed a good 9.5 hours of sleep. Unfortunately, no amount of sleep would cut through the thick cloud of Dramamine, and I was drowsy all day Monday as well.

We went whale watching with sfbaywhalewatching.com and I highly recommend them. they seem to really like what they are doing (there is a lot of cool info and pictures at their website) and they allowed a good deal of flexibility in going to see what we wanted, when we wanted. Good times!

Never Trust a Robot

Paul and I had dinner with his mom last night for Birthday Dinner II.

We ate a ton and polished off a bottle of champagne (mainly Paul's mom and myself)

Paul's mom drilled him about his job. I do this too sometimes, because I worry that Paul isn't all that engaged in his job. I want to him to enjoy work and be challenged! Little did I know how dangerous his robot job could be!


Tonight is Birthday Dinner III.

I'm enjoying relaxing a bit while I'm not in class. I think my two Fall classes start in about a week, so then it's back to a somewhat crazy schedule. For now? Long walks around the City, whale watching, and sitting in the hammock with the cats.

Paul's Birthday, and OMG- Stuffed!

Last night was Paul's birthday, so we went to Indigo for dinner, where we opted for the wine dinner (after 8pm, they'll pour as much wine as you like off of a list of like 12 wines, with a prix fix menu) My food was tasty, but it was too much to eat, so most of the dessert course went uneaten.

Fine, after Google food all day, I'm not all that hungry.
There is a ton of food here now, but I mostly avoid the crap. After the initial few days of wonder, I've toned it down quite a bit. Today is like this so far:
8:30 coffee and oatmeal (organic, maple nut)
10:30 about 1/2 cup of nuts (organic, mostly cashews, but with almonds, walnuts, and those big nuts I don't know the name of)
12:30 LUNCH! snap peas (with some teriyaki sauce), salad, and some really tasty fruit (organic: strawberries, kiwi, cantaloupe)


Really, the worst thing is probably the nuts. I shouldn't eat so many. But it could be worse. I mean, just look at what they are tempting us with in the snackroom:








OK, so this is just one of the snack fest areas. There's actually a bigger one upstairs. And every day there is something new. Like yesterday they added an espresso machine. And new cookies. I am declining all of this though. I do appreciate the veggie food though, and the fruit is awesome!


Anywhooo, we enjoyed Paul's birthday dinner and had presents. Paul is impossible to buy things for. What did he get? A new camera? Well, OK, so I'm the one who mostly uses the camera, but whatever. So there's finally a decent camera. Mine sucked and Paul's old one broke last week. So, yay. What else? We are going to look for birds on a whalewatching cruise this Sunday, out by the Farallone Islands. Cool! I don't know why birds go out to watch whales, but I'm not going to argue. Birdies!!!

Weekend, with birdies!

Saturday we went to Boulder Creek for a surprise birthday party. There were babies and mojitos with no liquor and some very noisy Bong brothers.

Sunday afternoon, we decided to go for a little walk that turned into a 12 or 13 mile hike. We started with beer (of course) and hiked out toward the Presidio. This took us through some fancy-pants neighborhoods, where the only really good way to piss off your 7 million dollar neighbors is by posting a giant robot out front next to their chateau. Bonus if your giant robot appears anatomically "correct."















Paul stopped to pop some flowers, and then found a house he liked.




























Heading down the Lyon Street steps, we found some great views of the bay and Alcatraz. I found a house with nifty glass and stuff.





At the Presidio, we played on the wartoys and then wandered around a bit looking for lunch. Instead, we found parrots. Laughing at us. No pigikeets these! These were big and green and had a different call than the ones in Berkeley or at the Embarcadero. They were too shy to photograph.





















Out by the water, we found a little marsh that had been reclaimed and set aside for birdies. There were a ton of seabirdies that we hadn't seen before. They were rather noisy, and enjoyed divebombing the pond. Fishing? Or just screwing around?




























We finally got out to Fort Point just as they were closing. We just got to run in to the main interior area as they were telling us to get out. Bummer. But we caught some nice touristy photos at the Fort Point parking lot.



































Then Paul climbed down to the rocks to make the starfishes famous. He apparently forgot that we were close enough to the ocean to get waves, and got splashed a whole bunch.




























On the way back from the Fort, we found this friendly bird of prey. He wanted to play with us, but was too shy to ask. Oh well. Better luck next time, birdie!






The hike home was a bit of a death march, but we did make it back around 7:30, in time to return to Berkeley to visit cats and clean up the birdfeeder (catfeeder?)

Wednesday is Paul's birthday. He is teh bestest.

It started Monday morning, when a new rack went up in the breakroom and a bunch of new food went in.
Then the announcement, we'd be getting Google lunch! Wahoo!
Then more food on the rack Tuesday morning.
And this morning? MORE!
It is a dizzying sight.
Our breakroom isn't all that large. But every time I go in there, there are like 4 people standing in there, just staring at the food, with their mouths hanging open.

I am trying to stick to the more healthful stuff.
Lunch is awesome, and yesterday there was a salad bar. The food is tasty, and mostly organinc, and with lots of vegetarian and healthy options. I am so totally stoked.

This is really convenient for all of us, and we will save money too. If we stick to the good stuff, it can even be more healthy, since a lot of take-out is crap anyway. I am so lazy about bringing lunch, so this is very cool to me.

I also met with the new director of my department yesterday, and I think maybe I could have been more prepared to talk about where I want to go. People ask that now and all I can say is that I want to master this job first. That seems like a steep hill first to me! But I think maybe I'm missing an opportunity there. Huh. Well, I am looking into if/where there might be classes that would bring me more up to speed on some of the technical knowledge I lack.

We may have some fun work coming in in the next week, and I'm very excited. Thus far, I haven't felt all that useful.

Besides useful? Last Friday we did some volunteer work, transplanting plants at the nursery at Fort Funston. This nursery grows all the plants needed for the parks in the area. It was fun (team-building exercise) and we had a nice lunch afterward. The week before that, I spent in Austin getting to know our Austin team and learning about their processes. In austin as here, the people are really nice and they are a wealth of knowledge. I am building my network of people to ask for help when a customer comes with a strange question. I'm thrilled to be working with such a neat group of people.

Koolaid! I totally drank it!

(I wrote this a week ago, and forgot I did not publish it, so here it is now)


So!

It has been one month now and I'm finally ready to talk about my new job.

My last day at the old place was June 8th, and my first day at the new place was June 11th.

I have changed careers completely. I used to work in apparel. Now I work in... tech. Specifically, email, web, etc.... communication security and compliance? That sums it up I guess.

I'm on a brand newish team in a wonderful company, which has been growing fast, and has an awesome product. that works, really, really well, and is very useful, and becoming more useful every day.

The people I work with are geniuses. When they explained the architecture of our product to me, and how it differs fundamentally from our competitors, I was so totally impressed. The way they take care to hire, train, and grow people is awesome. The people are really nice and happy, AND?!?!?!

We are having fun. A lot of it.

Of course, there's the small detail about how I know nothing about the intricacies of setting up servers and janky protocols. Never you mind! I will learn it! This is my big hurdle. I am starting at the back of the pack with my shoelaces tied together, but I will come up to speed. It is stressful, and overwhelming sometimes, but it will come. They knew I wasn't a tech person when they hired me, but I did promise them I was smart and liked to learn, so here we are.

And I have the best boss I've had since Rainbeau. A mentor boss. A sane boss. A "what are your strengths and interests?" boss. Yay!

I baked them brownies. I may bake more this week. I like these people that much.

I guess this means I'll have to stop using "Google" as a verb

I had planned to not really post about my new job until the one-month milestone, which is tomorrow.

BUT?!!??!

Yesterday, my company got bought by Google. (!)

Everyone seems very excited. I have to say it's exciting but I'm a little anxious about it.

My company is awesome. Strong, makes a very good product, has very high customer satisfaction, and a bunch of brilliant people behind it. I am working on being one of those people that makes the company great. I am not there yet, at all, but every day, learn more.

I, for one, welcome our new overlords!

Mysterious

A couple of weekends ago, I got to go to Rich Oliver's Mystery School.
After this year's Sheetiron, Paul was so mortified to be seen with me, that he decided to ship me off to school to learn to ride a dirtbike.

2 Day Fun Camp, coming right up.

Given that the only dirtbike I have is my DRZ400S, I was really looking forward to being able to learn on a smaller, lighter bike. All the students in the Fun Camp ride the same bike: TTR125 with a kick start (Rich sets the bikes up for each individual rider before you get there) These bikes were terribly fun. For one thing, I could finally just step over something instead of having to climb up onto it. Second, the kickstarter actually worked, every time, third, with a whopping TEN horsepower, I was pretty sure I could not actually hurt myself. But mostly? I didn't need that bike to get me to work in the morning!

I am in no way interested in racing. I consider myself interested in dirt riding mainly for trail riding type stuff. This camp was mainly geared toward flat track style turning techniques, and a bunch of races. Despite that, I had a really good time and I think I improved some. I definitely felt more confident afterwards?

There were starting, stopping, turning, and crashing drills (OK, not crashing) there were timed trials, and races. We watched the pros go around, then looked at the corners and talked about how to take them. But there was also a lot of off-track stuff, about seeing, health and fitness, and mental and interpersonal stuff, inasmuch as how it can pertain to riding.

I was lucky enough to go on a weekend where the other people in the class (one of whom I knew, coincidentally) were really nice and friendly. There was a lot of clapping and cheering, which I think isn't all that common for other classes. So yay.

Paul and I stayed in a barn converted into a rustic cabin. There were llamas staring at me in the morning when I got up. It was grand.

Now if only I had a TTR125 and a big pickup truck?
Actually, we went down to Metcalf on Saturday to give it a whirl on my DRZ. Of course it is heavier and bigger, but still fun. I went around in ovals, and on the TT Track, and did not fall. We saw a roadrunner, which I had never seen before. Dirt biking is fun, yes?

You have a responsibility to the people that love you.

Caltrain wins, always.

I am just glad I did not take Caltrain yesterday and get stuck waiting for this dumb broad to get scraped off the train.

Hello? Train tracks? They have TRAINS on them! "How did this happen to me!?!?!?"

There have been no blogs lately. I am waaaayyy too busy for such things.

Hey! Marisa was singing!

Last night, I met my sister in San Jose, and we had Thai food dinner, then went to the Montgomery Theater to see Marisa perform. It was her first solo gig with a real company (I think?) and she was very excited, so we were there to check it out and support her. Hey! Marisa is singing!

I bought tickets not knowing what it was. All I know about Gilbert & Sullivan is that it was on the Simpsons. (Sideshow Bob)

The night before the show, I realized it was a sing-along version. (!) This scared me, but we persevered. Hey! Marisa is singing!

Well, I still don’t see what the hype is about this musical, but Marisa was great. I know nothing about opera (OK, yes, this isn’t really opera, but Marisa is an opera singer, so that’s what I’m calling it) but Marisa’s voice is so very purty and it’s cool to pick it out of the chorus, and even cooler that she had a solo role. I know it’s hard to break into, but I can’t help but think once she starts getting gigs like this, it will snowball once they see how delightful she is to work with and how awesome her voice and presence are. It’s exciting, though I know nothing about it.

Hey! Marisa is singing!

There were a lot of grey hairs in the audience. Old people came by the busload to see this musical. I don’t know why, but they were really into it. They guy next to us had a hardbound book of the songs with him. These old folks were really into it. Many had sailor hats and shirts with logos and phrases from the musical, and a few were in head-to-toe costumes. Ooooo-Kay… It was like being at a Dungeons and Dragons convention or something, except everyone was old and had a cane. But, hey! Marisa is singing!

It was fun. I got home too late. It was nice to see Marisa, and she looked great!

Yay!

Thursday

Paul is going to hate me for this, but this sounds like the best show ever!



I rarely go out or to shows, but this sounds priceless.... who's in? OK, fine, I'll go alone.

Still Hearting LOLcats

I never took physics.
This is all I know about physics.... KITTIES!
I LIKE KITTIES!!!!!!!




(ruthlessly stolen from BoingBoing)

If this was China, i'd just hire a driver

I know, it's a sign of the pockyclypse

but I think it's time for me to learn how to drive.
I am thinking that if I am sent to Austin as threatened, I will be needing to pick up a rental car or some crap, to get around, as Austin is a sprawl. New York, no problem. Austin, long walk!

Who wants to teach me to drive? Stick shift preferred.

Tyranny of crappy majority

OK, fucking goddam windows time.
Yesterday I downloaded the Gerber Manual that I'd emailed myself from home, and was working on it in Word all day, saving frequently. Today I can't find it. I think it must have gone into a TEMP file, since I opened it from an email? So where is it? Did I just lose all my work? What the fuck is wrong with Windows? If I download something and work on it all day and save a bunch of times, isn't it fucking obvious that I WANT it?!

Fuck you windows! Maybe if I have something open and am working on it all day and "saving" it, that means I want it. Whst exactly did you mean by "save" because clearly it didn't mean "save" as we know it.

I just lost an entire day of important work.

Fuck you very much Windows.