the giants redeemed their costly losses in colorado with a 3-game sweep of the rockies. this now ties them for the national league wild card spot with the rockies. looked like a beautiful day at the ballpark. alas, i missed the game because of my fantasy football draft earlier in the morning.

edgar renteria is the hero with this grand slam in the 7th.

let’s get our bbq on!

i think he was more interested in the quality and consistency of the dirt on the field than the fact that he was actually on the giants home field.

so, when i wasn’t expecting at all, steven spilborghs of the colorado rockies punched me in the gut last night, leaving me out of breath.

the giants and rockies are (were?) in a very tight race for that NL wild card spot and the game last night was the last game in a 4-game series at mile high stadium. they had played 13 innings to a 1-1 tie and were using bench players in interesting situations. they had pitchers acting as pinch runners and injured players taking fake warm-up swings to alter the balance of the game. also on clear display was the usual giants ineptitude at closing games out (they led in each game this series, yet let the rockies come back and beat them in 3 of them). the giants score 3 runs in the top of the 14th to supposedly seal the game, but then give up 5 on a walk-off grand-slam to end it.

EDIT: some good post-game notes here [mercury news]

baseball season is officially over for me, and the giants. time to start working on that fantasy football draft coming up this weekend. GO NINERS!

here are some stories to pull you out of the deep funk that is giants baseball:

-> a palindrome is a word that is spelled the same backwards and forwards, like racecar. imagine a 224-word palindrome poem [neatorama]

-> think your neighbors are stealing your wireless internet at home or work? you can modify your router to do some nifty stuff to your freeloaders. skip the techy part in the beginning if you don’t care about it – the pictures at the bottom are good [ex-parrot.com]

-> article on san francisco – there’s still a chance of moving up there to take advantage of better mass transit if i am not going to be driving. the 1,000+ comments are funny to read through also [stuffwhitepeoplelike]

-> the other article i read mentioning san francisco was a reddit posting asking foreigners what US cities they romanticize about. it’s good reading if you’re interested to see how the rest of the world views us. for example, i see british people as depressed and pale (like Morrissey) and i see french people as aloof, but very well-rested (like the people i work with. kidding. kinda) [reddit]

and…

-> shit my dad says (and your dad too) [twitter.com/shitmydadsays]

what’s next? the 100-cougar-run?

these people seem to have a negative taint on young asian people?

oh wait, they are trying to spell EUTHANASIA. i would be less worried about the universal health care plan and maybe just try and get a little smarter.

1 year old today and already a giants fan. the genes run strong for the orange and black.

i was able to make it to our walnut creek office this morning since the bart workers didn’t get their strike on today. i was thinking that the AMTU station agents should have worn a badge or otherwise identifying mark to indicate to the train riders this morning that they were the ones willing to disrupt the lives of millions of people. $65k+ for a train operator? the whole system is run by computer! the train operator only opens the little side window to make sure the doors aren’t going to pinch anyone and to drearily utter the station names as they approach.

anyway, enjoy the links while i bake in the 95 degree weather here in walnut creek.

-> new home battery technology being worked on could store energy from solar panels or windmills. imagine a battery the size of a washing machine that could charge up at an off-hour when demand and rates are lower and provide enough power for 4-6 hours of typical home usage. a longish but very intriguing article [heraldextra]

-> i was first drawn to this article because i saw the word ‘teabaggery’ in the title. it wasn’t what i thought it was, but it definitely bolsters my case for having the US split into two countries. one for the blue people and one for the idiots [bluehampshire.com]

-> california prop 6 bill author who wanted to outlaw same sex marriage to maintain the sanctity of traditional marriage has just been served with divorce papers. you have to see the details of how it all went down [sd city beat]

and…

-> the hubble deep field telescope has found 100 BILLION other galaxies in the universe. there’s gotta be other life out there somewhere.

…and nothing happened. what am i missing?

further confirmation that i can safely ignore any FB friend requests from anyone in arkansas.

it’s not emo when you forget to put the ketchup bottle away behind you before cutting yourself.

stopped by the display of the bay area lego user’s group [baylug] in san leandro yesterday with the boys. there were some very nice model cities, star wars ships, trains and things like this 4-foot-tall eiffel tower. it was impressive to see the variety of things built with lego’s there. not as impressive was the overall attractiveness of the crowd, as you can imagine for an event like this lego-orgy.

i think it’s a good time to bust out the home lego collection for me and marcos to start building things. i was afraid he would try and eat the bricks before but he’s past that stage now. it also will guarantee his success in life, much like it has for his father.

DM is playing at shoreline next week – i wonder if i can hitch a ride with someone? Here’s a vid from Letterman a while ago.

after resisting the lure of social networking sites, i’ve finally succumbed to the pressure from friends and family and am now on facebook. i don’t know if i can do any less work at work, but this will surely help.

visit me [facebook]

back in 5th grade or so, we had gi joe toys and chetty had the tomax and xamot twins that were part of the evil cobra forces. they were twins and you could only tell them apart by the location of their facial scar (can’t see too well in the above picture). anyway, it spawned some ideas and so me and my friends started backwards names also (DE, IRT, RETSEHC, etc). we had lots of time to think of stuff like this because we didn’t have girlfriends at the time, or for the next several years.

fast forward to today, i am proud to say that MARCOS also responds naturally to his nickname/backwards name of SOCRAM. mom might not be as proud, but i still think it’s pretty funny. next up is OETAM.

here’s a picture of our good buddy SOCRAM:

thanks to gma and gpa doyle for springing for these fancy pictures from his preschool.

a couple stories to help you get closer to the week-end.

-> 100 things that my kids will never have the pleasure of knowing – things like auto-reverse cassette decks, high-speed dubbing, blowing the dust out of a nintendo cartridge to help it load better and having a actual book dictionary around the house [wired.com]

-> we need some of these posted at strategic locations in downtown areas [design blog]

->  how did i miss out on the baconcamp. do not browse this site if you are hungry and you like salty, cured pork strips [baconcamp sf]

-> add a strip of bacon to any website, like this [example][bacolicio.us]

-> more doctors condoning coffee consumption, after research proves that it helps parkinson’s, diabetes and liver cancer – as if i needed more motivation to drink more coffee. if only i could find a study that says guinness has the same powers, i’d be set! i also have a peet’s card, courtesy of fishbowl, so someone call me up and we’ll go [la times]

doing some pre-work browsing this morning and saw this place in campbell called psycho donuts. aside from krispy kreme’s, most donut places are pretty bland in decor. here, you can get a pretend nurse to feed you a bipolar donut or donut fries, seen above.

i wonder if most of my posts that mention food happen early in the morning before i’ve had something to eat for the day?

story here [associated content]

official website here [psycho donuts]

UPDATE: seems like some people didn’t like the concept of the store so they complained about it. LAME. if you don’t like the store, don’t patronize the business and shop somewhere else. don’t just throw a hissy fit. there are probably some people in the world who find it humorous, even those with mental illness and you’re depriving them of the chance to have a laugh at it [san jose mercury news]