Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger
April 28th, 2009Last Saturday, after having received my tax refund, I finally went to buy the road bike I will need to participate to the Tour de Cure in 2009. I got last year’s model of the Trek 1.5 from Chain Reaction in Redwood City
Ain’t it a beautiful bike? Not only that, but it’s a lot faster than anything I rode in the past year. I took it for a commute on Monday and not only did I take less time than usual (25 mins vs. 31 mins) but I was barely even tired when I arrived. Same thing on the way back despite a crazy head wind. I really have the felling this is going to make an amazing difference next time I’ll practice the 50km route in a couple of weeks and for the race in June. On the other hand, after having bought that bike, paid my car insurance and made reservations for three trips in the past month, I have a mere $300 on my checking account to go on with life until May 15th. When’s the electricity due already? Ah, yes; the 6th =/
Angel Island
April 27th, 2009
On Sunday, Catherine, Celine, Sandra, Louis and Nicolas and I went to spend the day on Angel Island, centrally located in the bay, with great views of San Francisco, both bridges and the North bay. The island itself is a state park, meaning it mostly empty and left for nature to develop. Angel Island actually used to be the San Francisco equivalent of Ellis Island, where immigrants were registered and quarantined. Later, it was used as a military camp and retreat for wounded privates. There are only a couple of roads that circle the island, and a few trails left for hikers to enjoy. Nico and I took our bikes but were mostly riding at walking pace, except for a couple of downhill sections.
We had a picnic lunch on a super secret beach, where we would have been mostly alone if seagulls and tourists hadn’t spotted us from up high. We took our time to walk around the island (13km) and had frequent stops for resting our feet and taking pictures of the gorgeous landscapes offered to us. I realized how much I cannot get enough of the Golden Gate. This bridge is so monumental and fits so well into the landscape, I think I could just watch it forever and never get bored. I think I must have taken a thousand pictures of it since I first saw it and just cannot help but taking more.
Weekend project: fix bike
April 19th, 2009We’ve had a gorgeous weekend: 25℃ and a cloudless sky. Plus, it’s the spring, so I really wouldn’t have any excuse to keep something broken around the house, would I? So I set my mind on fixing my old cruiser bike, which I haven’t ridden since last July and which has stayed since then in the garage. I tried riding to for a short while when I needed to go to the laundry room down the road a couple of weeks ago – only to realize it was really out of shape. Deflated tires, misaligned wheel, loose handlebars, wobbly seat post, dirty chain and a big fat layer of dust and dirt on the whole frame. After a visit at the Home Depot to buy new screws and another at Palo Alto bicycles to get some lube, it took a good hour to take apart whatever needed to be, clean up everything and tightening things up in all places, I now feel like I have a brand new shiny bike. With only three gears and a very large saddle, it feels totally different than the mountain bike I’ve been riding for the past year. I took it for a ride today in Palo Alto and in Stanford, and with its fat tires and large handlebars, it also feels very much like it belongs in an american setting.
Look Ma – no hands!
April 19th, 2009In the ever growing list of useless feats of mine, I can now ride my bike with no handlebars.
Blowing some steam off
April 18th, 2009A guy at work recently made me discover moronail.net. It’s a humorous website in the same vein as ICHC but with a touch of 4chan. They post fun pictures a few time a day, with material coming from movies, politics, motivational posters, the news, lolcats, internet memes, wiii, etc… There’s a very high dose of black humor and you’ll need a strong tolerance to bad taste to get into it. It didn’t take me too long and I now laugh at most of what’s posted. I guess it can sometimes be very politically incorrect, but not to the point where it makes me feel (too) bad. They have an pretty good collection of capstrips (comic strips made of movie caps where only the captions change) and parodic motivational posters (those black bordered supposedly inspired pictures with an encouraging caption that can most often be seen in corporate settings). Though the sample below is perfectly ok, some of the pictures on the site are definitely NSFW; you were warned.
Taxes and dance
April 16th, 2009Yesterday was a noticeable day for two reasons: first, it was tax day. Everyone in the U.S. has been rushing to get tax returns ready, including myself. I went to H&R block to prepare my return and it’s little to say that their guys are barely more competent than Fry’s sales guys. Meaning that I don’t think I’ll use them next year. Turbotax is the de-facto standard for the task and I probably should have gone with it. I just feel like it’s better to be able to talk to someone. But frankly, talking to someone who doesn’t care is even worst than using a computer.
The second reason why yesterday is a day to remember is because I say don’t you know? / You say you don’t know / I say… take me out!. That’s right, Franz Ferdinand was playing in Oakland yesterday. The Fox Theater (absolutely gorgeous place btw) was packed and the moshpit was, well, pretty friendly. I didn’t expect much for a FF show, but they were actually pretty good. They played a carefully crafted setlist at the speed of light, barely leaving 10s between songs for the first 50 minutes. The audience responded pretty well and even though Americans don’t mosh much (and slam even less), the pit was in a pretty dance-y mood. After having played a good share of past and recent hits (The Dark of the Matinée, No You Girls, Take me out, Ulysses, 40 Ft), the Scots came back for the encore and played a very lengthy Lucid Dreams which ended in the four guys and a roadie all hitting the drums together in sync. The show ended with a heated This Fire which left the floor buzzy and screaming. The Franz’s really have a innate sense of rhythm and a gift to make the people simply enjoy the moment.
Monopoly
April 12th, 2009If this is true, this is really worrisome. As a global supermarket for culture, Amazon should not be concerned about “protecting” their consumers from whatever they feel like. Why would people need protection from knowing that porn or violent books sell? This is turning established, obviously popular culture into subculture on grounds that are arguably quite shaky. As someone who works in internationalization, I can say that the perception of porn varies widely from country to country. You can’t be the judge of what is ’‘adult” based on your own criteria, because they are necessarily biased. The more you’ll try to get it right, the more you will piss people off. As a reader of books such as American Psycho, I find it insane that such books will no longer appear in the sales ranking. This book is very violent but it’s a masterpiece. As a supporter of the LGBT folks, I find it disgusting that gay literature is particularly affected by this new feature of Amazon.
Amazon says it’s a glitch. But their support channel says it’s a policy. There is, however, an amazingly long list of affected books, which looks like more than a glitch. They need to get their story straight (no pun intended). Oh well, I guess these are the joys of having made them a monopoly.
This story is spreading like crazy in the twittosphere. 300 posts since I started typing this.
Yes, I just invented the word twittosphere.
Mindsets
April 6th, 2009Live 105 is pretty much the only radio that airs listenable music in the Bay Area, and I have been listening since the first time I came here. Every morning, the flagship show of the radio occupies the slot from 6am to 10am. There used to be a time when I actually liked the Woody Show. I tuned on it even from Zurich at a time. This is surprising to me because Woody, Tony and Ravey are true conservatives, with their opinions strongly aligned with the Republican party on most issues. To some extent, I liked listening to this because it gave me a chance to discover this kind of mindset. On certain issues, I came to be in agreement with them. On certain others, I loudly shouted back at my car stereo. This was not an ideal situation, but I could bear the level of annoyance, because of the music.
But after some time, it was getting on my nerves and I couldn’t listen to them without thinking about how much WTR are a bunch of ignorant, mean and arrogant tasteless douchebags. Which is why it made my day when last Monday, I turned my car on to hear nothing but music. The host said that they were on vacation which was odd but it’s not my problem after all. So this morning again, I feared hearing their voices coming from my alarm clock, but still nothing. Could it be that… Oh God, that would be too good. Is there anything on the station’s website? Nada. So, on the wikipedia page? Gone. What about their Twitter feed? OMMFG. So that’s it. I’m extremely happy about this and wish I could simply enjoy music without the additional fuss caused by a radio host who thinks it’s interesting to know what he did last week-end. ‘Nuff said.
I’m giving up on TV. I finally acknowledged that I’m watching it too much, and that there are only a few programs that I actually care about (basically boils down to SNL, Mythbusters and the Daily show). So I called Comcast yesterday and cancelled my service. To some extent, this is the same process as for the Woody Show. I became slowly accustomed to the 25 minutes of advertising per hour. I thought I could stand it forever. But in the end, it became a greater an annoyance than a service. I’m downgrading my Triple Play to a simple Internet access and saving a bunch of dollars along the way. I still have it right now, but I look forward to the actual cut. The only negative side is that I will have to drag my ass off to Foster City to give the Comcast terminal back.
Finally, I booked my trip to Hawaii with Adrien in September and I’m totally excited about it. We’ll go to the main island and stay at the Hilton on Waikiki beach. As we say in French, this cost me a kidney, but I seriously think it was worth it (Adrien, the drinks will be on you). 5 days. 4 stars hotel. 5 months away. It’s funny how the simple act of paying for a vacation can make you instantly happier.
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See this? This is the hotel’s private lagoon. Private. You can’t make that stuff up.
Tour de cure 50km route
April 4th, 2009This time, I checked and it really is 50km long:
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It took me 2:45 to complete. I was in a pretty bad shape when I was done, basically unable to do anything for an hour or so. The creamery’s french toast helped the recovery. The last bit on Junipero was especially painful as it seemed a lot longer than a few hours earlier. It’s 7pm now and I still feel pretty shaken. That ride was too long and I definitely don’t have the right bike to cover that kind of distance. I think I’ll be napping from now on until SNL in 4 hours.
Tesla frenzy
April 2nd, 2009I must be working in the only company in the world where one can see 3 Tesla Roadsters in the parking lot on the way out of work. That’s 1/60th of the worldwide production right there. And I am positive about seeing a founder drive a different unit a few months back. You just can’t make that stuff up.
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The views expressed on this blog are not connected with my employer in any way.