My father used to go on and on about how a Morgan would be the perfect car for me. Because of their over-sized, smog-producing, hand built British engines, the old Morgan’s from the 50’s were eventually banned from the US and I never saw one. Morgan, one of Britain’s oldest independent sports car maker has now updated itself and is going to begin selling it’s new Morgan Aero 8 in the US this year. The look has been updated but it’s classic styling remains. I think I understand what my father was getting at. Now if I only had $100k to spend on a car. . .
Category: Current Events
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Skiddaddling Alarm Clock
Ever had one of those mornings where you hit the snooze bar one too many times and end up having to rush out the door with a bagel in your mouth because you’re late? Gauri Nanda, a researcher at the MIT Media Lab has a device that will solve that for you.
When the alarm clock goes off and the snooze button is pressed, Clocky will roll off the bedside table and wheel away, bumping mindlessly into objects on the floor until it eventually finds a spot to rest. Minutes later, when the alarm sounds again, the sleeper must get up out of bed and search for Clocky. This ensures that the person is fully awake before turning it off. Small wheels that are concealed by Clocky’s shag enable it to move and reposition itself, and an internal processor helps it find a new hiding spot every day.
Problem solved until you’re one of those people with a pistol in your bedside drawer.
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Podcast at 30,000 feet
In what has got to be a first, Jason Calcanis “Planecasts” from 30,000 feet about John Battelle’s new company, FM Publishing.
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Romance Novel Cover Art
Spotted on PC Magazine’s Backspace page. Mark Longmire pokes fun at romance novel cover art.
In other news, I took the trolley today to drop in on a talk given by John Battelle at a conference at the Fairmont Hotel up on top of Nob Hill. It’s about a 30 minute walk but I was in a hurry and running late so I hopped on a cable car to take me up the hill. I was fully prepared to pay the $3 fare but my ride was so short (just a few blocks, albeit steep ones) that the driver just waved me off.
I forgot about this aspect of living in this fine city, our quaint mode of public transportation is funded by the tourists. Those of us that actually use the cable cars to shuttle us from point A to B can use it as it was originally designed, a ski lift for those of us in a rush!
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Birthday
Let’s tag this one as “Current Affairs” as my 39th birthday is something that only happens once, (today) and will no longer be relevant tomorrow. Thirty-nine seems such a ho-hum number, like watching the white number reel tick over on an odemeter before the next significant digit rolls in, a little excitement and anticipation because it’s almost 40 but, it’s not.
Since having kids, my birthdays have no longer really been important as I choose to celebrate each year’s passing with each of my children’s birthdays. It’s much more fun to celebrate someone turning six or making it to first grade which is so much more significant than adding another year onto 38 which seems so totally mundane in comparison.
After finishing up some chores around the house I’ll head into the city to visit with Mie and Dav so we can see the Scraphouse and then they’re going to take me out to dinner and a concert which I haven’t done in a while. Hopefully this change in routine will snap me out of the rut I’ve been in. I think it all has to do with not having Izumi and the kids around to crack me out of my one track mind which has been so totally focused on work. I do love my job and all but without family to distract, I tend to zone in on what needs to be done (which I should know is a bottomless pit).
It should get better. It’s the weekend, the weather’s glorious, I ate breakfast out on the back patio with the birds chirping in the garden (I need to mow that lawn) and I’m no longer on the losing end of a poker game (I think I only won two hands last night, pitiful!).
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Weekend Treasure Hunt
Looking for 10% lifetime discount off on a TypePad subscription? Just to keep things interesting and fun around here, I’m going to start hiding little promotional discount cards for TypePad around the city and post hints on this blog where you can find them. The first card is hidden near the corner of 4th and Harrison in San Francisco, in front of the Whole Foods entrance on 4th
Once you see this lightpost, look down, then around. A little froggie will be peering out at you.
Leave a comment once you pick up the card to keep others from looking. Stay tuned for more Weekend Treasure Hunts!
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Game On!
Tyler’s T-Ball league teams are all named after real Major League teams. Tyler plays for the Washington Nationals who were most recently the Montreal Expos. Last weekend we all went to the beautiful SBC Park to see the real Washington Nationals play the San Francisco Giants. It was pouring down rain on our way in and everyone was wondering if the game would be called. As we waited for the light to change so we could cross the street to the stadium, I looked around and could see that this was a die hard crowd. They were going to this game even though it was raining and was predicted to rain through to the evening. They were there on the off chance that the game would be on. Folks were huddled under their umbrellas in grim determination and I began to wonder if this day at the ballpark was going to work out as planned.
As we waited, a station wagon rolled by in traffic with a young girl, maybe 9 or 10 years old, leaning out the window and waving her baseball glove madly and egging on the crowd, “Game On! Game On!” as if she could will the game to happen. You could see she couldn’t wait to see her SF Giants hit the field. And would you believe it, after a short delay, the grounds crew came out to pull the covering off the diamond to the roar of the crowd.
The game went into extra innings and came down to some questionable calls but by that time we had already gone. As you can see from the photo above, attention spans were waning and when the wind picked up in the fifth inning, it was time to duck out and head home.
The seats were great (thanks Andrew!) and the kids had a blast.
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Guess The Google
Here’s a bit of distraction for you. This site will pull together a set of images from a Google Image search and ask you to guess the keyword that generated the results. It’s addictive.
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She Passed!
Izumi’s had a bit of a struggle with getting her California Driver’s License and I don’t blame her. In order to transfer her license from New Jersey, she needed to pass a written test which is hard enough in English. While multiple choice, many of the possible answers are written in a twisted grammatical form that make it challenging for a native speaker but pure hell for a non-native. The questions are also devilishly obscure and sometimes defy logic.
Q: When on a hill, without a curb, which way do you turn your tires?
A : To the right.So if you’re brake fails, now your car will swing out INTO traffic? Go figure. . .
In order to give herself a fighting chance, Izumi chose to take the test in Japanese. Unfortunately, that didn’t make it any easier as there was no Japanese booklet to study and their translations left something to be desired. On top of this, Izumi’s got one of the worst cases of test-phobia I’ve ever seen (she actually breaks out in a cold sweat) so you can appreciate the dilemma. She had failed twice so you can imagine the tension as well as we went in on Friday morning for her third try.
I took her to the DMV while Tyler was in school and played with Julia while mommy labored over her test. We made up little cheers and whispered them quietly in the corner (“Go! Go! Mommy!”) hoping that the positive vibes would boost her confidence. We were crestfallen when the scores came back and she had again failed by missing seven questions when you need six to pass.
On the way home, as we reviewed which questions she had missed, Izumi noticed that one of the questions was marked incorrectly as a miss when in fact she had marked the correct answer. She had pointed this out to the woman scoring her answers but she was distracted and had somehow missed it (see picture above).
I pulled a quick U-turn and floored it back to the DMV hoping to catch the lady that graded her test before she went out on lunch break. Luck was on our side because not only did we catch her, she remembered that Izumi had pointed out the proper answer and now the “-7” became a “-6”. When I confirmed that Izumi passed, I couldn’t contain myself and caused a minor disturbance by shooting my arms straight in the air and shouting “YESSS!”
The Kennedy household is a couple of notches less tense now that the test is behind us and we’ve ticked off another hurdle to becoming Californians.