Tag Archives: ramblings

kenny george is tall

i just saw this guy on espn last night. he’s tall (7-8) like gheorghe muresan was, but hopefully he can keep his body in order and make it to the nba. the game is faster-paced than college ball for sure, but there’s gotta be a place for someone who can dunk the ball without even jumping:

lots of grey skies and rain

…and more to come from what it sounds like. the gal below seems like she’s prepared for more rain.

[this was a wonderbra ad in the uk – note her arm placement]

also, i guess i lost my wallet either on dec 31 or jan 1. i thought i had just misplaced it around the house or marcos might have hidden it. after a couple days of looking without finding it, i noticed a couple weird charges coming through on the online statement so i canceled the cards right away. all the fraudulent transactions were done right within a mile of the house. since i lost my wallet along with the debit card, it would be easy for them to get gas, for example, because they have my zip code from my drivers license to authenticate with. what a bother. we got robbed a few months back and now this is happening. i’m going to have to revisit my personal handling of that stuff and see if we can totally lock down to prevent this from happening. the bank will refund any money from transactions we didn’t originate, but it’s more just a hassle than anything else having to get new cards and all that. to top it off, it was a nice wallet that leslee had gotten for me. bleh. happy new year!

chico state produces winners

chico state students represent a large portion of the market for drugs and alcohol in northern california. keeping this in mind, it comes as no surprise to me that there is a ‘construction management’ degree in chico. however, it is a little bit of a surprise that this girl is so proud that she’s wearing a sweatshirt with the logo on there.

i wouldn’t last a day in construction.

should we legalize?

saw this interesting table comparing the us and netherlands. keep in mind netherlands has a very lax drug policy.

Social Indicator USA   Netherlands  
Lifetime prevalence of marijuana use (ages 12+) 36.9%
1
17.0%
2
Past month prevalence of marijuana use (ages 12+) 5.4%
1
3.0%
2
Lifetime prevalence of heroin use (ages 12+) 1.4%
1
0.4%
2
Incarceration Rate per 100,000 population 701
3
100
4
Per capita spending on criminal justice system (in Euros) €379
5
€223
5
Homicide rate per 100,000 population 5.56
6
1.51
6

i’m not a smoker myself but i know many others who do. it’s interesting when our jails are full of drug criminals and not enough child molesters, bank cheats, robbers, etc. do you think we’d be better off decriminalizing personal drug consumption and maybe focus on the greater ills of society?

source [presscue]

one drink per person

we had our company holiday party last night – dinner at buca di beppo downtown and then grabbed a couple beers afterwards at nola’s. i got a text from liz saying that frances would be in town from the uk for the holidays so i swung by coach’s on the way home and toasted one up there.

most people at the company party behaved pretty well. there were a couple loud cackles and a couple people stumbling but, for the most part, very little revenge material on display, considering the amount of drinks that some people had. bryan did end up wearing one of those overpriced balloon hats:

one company had a problem with drinking at the holiday party, so they instituted a ‘one drink per person’ policy. it seems that someone got creative with that:

where do you even find cups like that?

happy festivus!

i did manage to snag every seinfeld episode off bt the other day and loved watching frank costanza at the cafe talking about festivus.

“Many Christmases ago, I went to buy a doll for my son. I reached for the last one they had, but so did another man. As I rained blows upon him, I realized there had to be another way.” – Frank Costanza

for more information on this fascinating holiday, check out the wiki [wikipedia]

giants sign aaron rowand

the giants signed aaron rowand today to a 5-year, $50m contract. he had his best year, statistically, last year while playing in the offensively-charged citizen’s bank park. all his numbers were at career highs and he won his first gold glove. he’s a good pickup, and even better since the giants didn’t give up either lincecum or cain for him. the giants will still finish in last.

i can tell he’s going to be good – look at his batting stance with his back leg in the classic “L-shape” which gives him power. kevin mitchell had the same stance.

snoozing at work

i am an ardent supporter of taking a quick snooze at work. the problem is that i snore so loud i usually give it away. here’s a couple things you can say to save yourself if you get caught napping at your desk:

5. “They told me at the Blood Bank this might happen.”

4. “This is just a 15 minute power nap they raved about in that time management course you sent me to.”

3. “Whew!” Guess I left the top off the White-Out. You probably got here just in time.”

2. “Did you ever notice sound coming out of these keyboards when you put your ear down real close?”

and the NUMBER ONE thing to say if you get caught sleeping at your desk…

1. Raise your head slowly and say, “…in Jesus’ name, Amen.”

…but you didn’t hear it from me.

barry is done for

barry made it interesting while he was here. it was pretty obvious to everyone that he was on the juice, erm, flaxseed oil. if flaxseed oil rubbed on the thighs worked that good, imagine what it could do if you rubbed it on your arms, chest, neck, wang, etc.

before

after

victor conte thinks that they don’t have a case against bonds, but recent moves by greg anderson and marion jones seem to indicate the us attorney has a strong case. who knows? i’m just glad he didn’t re-sign and then have to dog all the questions over the next season. the giants have enough problems to deal with.

it’s a shame the giants missed out on the a-rod sweepstakes, although i don’t know if they were ever officially in them to begin with.

the chronicle always has good information about the latest barry news.

peet’s is good coffee

i bought peet’s ground coffee from safeway the other day in lieu of the usual safeway stuff. i made the mistake of telling the wife, who has an affinity to the safeway select brand. i should have staged the whole thing like those hidden camera coffee commercials some years ago.

‘we’ve secretly switched the coffee at this fancy restaurant to folgers crystals. let’s see if anyone notices.’

of course, i got some chirping when i let her know of my experimentation. something about ‘not authorized’ or ‘why didn’t you clear it with me’.

this morning, i get the following over chat:

[09:32] leslee: the peets coffee is good
[09:32] leslee: doesn’t have the extra flavor of the safeway

excellent! it’s not a clear admission, but i’ll take what i can get!

side note: peet’s business is rising, kind of the ‘anti-starbucks’ [yahoo biz]

update: we recovered most of our stuff!

so we get a call on monday night from the santa clara county sherriff’s office saying that they have some items from our house burglary the week before. they asked if we could meet them at the office the next day at 9am. after getting lost trying to get some morning coffee at the rivermercado, we got to the office to find a conference room full of stuff. the officer there said that there were about 5-6 families’ stuff that they recovered from a couple people in a stolen uhaul and their hideout at a local motel 6. i got my camera back, les got most of her purses and some of her jewelry back too. we’re still waiting for a couple weeks to either complete or cancel our insurance claim because we don’t know yet if the rest of the things will turn up. they also had taken some things that we didn’t realize were missing like a checkbook, a credit card bill. they did end up having the registration stickers for the yukon.

the officer said that our house was the only one hit in fremont and the other houses were scattered across the bay area. that was a little weird to me, and makes me feel like we were targeted somehow. the officer asked if we had been a victim of identity theft in the past several months, and of course his guess was right. he said that they have seen that recently, where people get their mail taken from them and then a few months later they get broken into. i’m not sure what the connection could be and he declined to elaborate.

the officers were actually thankful that we came in to get our stuff. the more items that were left unclaimed, they said they had to do a mountain of paperwork. they even were dropping hints to take stuff that we maybe even weren’t too sure was ours, just to get it out of their hair. i told the main officer to give me a call if there was some stuff left over after the families went through it – there was a good camcorder there, along with a couple game systems and things.

one theory i have is that they came in during an open house of ours – only because the house would have been open and they could have scoped it out pretty well about how to get in and what stuff they may have taken. most of our goods were in the garage during our open house, like the jewlery box and my camera. but they did show up at our place on tuesday with a uhaul truck and that might have looked not as suspicious when people were moving stuff from the house into a uhaul when there’s a “for sale” sign in the front yard.

the officers that nabbed them were actually working for a stolen car task force in the bay area when they ran across our items – they weren’t specifically looking out for crooks in our particular robbery. he said they’re a bunch of meth-heads that already had 2 strikes on them and this will be the third, considering the value of the goods taken. i was a little worried that i’d have to testify against them but he assured me that they could prosecute without my testimony, provided i leave them some item that was taken which could be personally identified. we left behind an old checkbook which had our name and address. this alone should be enough to convict them. we’ll be moved out soon anyway, and so i won’t have to worry about them coming back at all.

so, after some careful thought, here’s some other suggestions coming from a recent victim of some property crime:

  1. anything over $100, record a little something about the item and tuck it away. something low-tech like writing a couple lines in a notebook about where you bought it, a serial number, and how much it cost – or something higher-tech like scanning the receipt and posting it to a secret flickr account. this way, even if your computer is stolen, all your receipts are online somewhere. this would make recovery very quick.
  2. get a small house safe for your important documents like passports, birth certificates and any other old idenfitication documents. cranksters will try to establish credit in your name, so keep these items under wraps. it doesn’t have to be a fort knox-style safe, just something that would take longer than 5-10 minutes to open or pry loose. remember, they want to be in and out quickly and won’t fiddle with a small safe that’s bolted securely to the ground.
  3. get an alarm system. of all the officers we met at the sherriff’s office, each asked if we had an alarm system. the main officer we dealt with said that even though a police response to an activated house alarm can be 15-45 minutes, the noise and attention it brings could deter some people, or at least shorten their stay in the house. with an adt system, for example, they will call the homeowner when the alarm is tripped so you might have a better idea about when your house was broken into. also, you could get home sooner and alert the authorities sooner if you know when the house was burgled. we didn’t find out for several hours, until people started coming home.
  4. get a dog. a loud, medium-sized dog may make people think twice about hanging out in the backyard to try and pry a window open. they may not even try to break in from the front of the house, in plain view of people driving by.

anyway, thanks to everyone for their support. hopefully this is a sign of good things to come.

back after a couple weeks

i just have finished a rough two weeks consisting of vacating our office in marina del rey, staying at a cabin in twain harte with the family, coming back to work and fixing all the shizzle from the office move a week prior, and preparing for open house so we can have complete strangers walk through and poke around our personal lives.

for the 2 visitors that are checking for new posts, please resume checking as i’ve been collecting some good snippets over that time.