gay marriage

A few thoughts on gay marriage:

  • I can't even imagine how gay marriages are going to turn the wedding industry upside down. How cool can gay weddings get? When you get a wedding invitation from a straight couple, isn't your first reaction, "oh shit, another wedding. When is it?" But when you get a wedding invitation from a gay couple, your response is probably "oh cool, that'll be fun." (depending on the couple of course)
  • I've been to one lesbian wedding already (last year?). It was a beautiful wedding and it was a lot of fun.
  • I'm invited to a gay wedding for a good friend of mine in August but unfortunately can't attend because of Ironman. I wish I could go though.
  • We all need to leave gay people alone. It's hard enough to find a life partner (and live in general), we shouldn't make it more difficult for people to share their life w/ someone they love.
  • I don't think folks who are against gay marriage know enough gay people. I'm not exactly sure how I know so many gay people, maybe living in the Bay Area and having gone to school in Boston. Maybe I just opened my eyes a bit.

So, we need to get off the subject of gay marriage, stop discriminating against gay people, and if gay people want to get married and be all miserable, let them be miserable.


For Christians who want to make this a religious/biblical issue, don't bring your religious issues to state affairs. I'm a Roman Catholic w/ 12 years of Catholic school and there is nothing in the Bible in opposition to gay marriage. If Jesus were alive today, he would slap you upside the head for being so stupid.

desperate house-husband

Man.  This staying at home stuff is some hard work.  Stay at-home Moms should get a medal.  Can I get a medal?
Some observations and things I'm doing:

  • I'm somewhat watching over the construction guys who are rebuilding our porch (woohoo!)
  • I've thoroughly cleaned the bathroom, cleaning the bathroom is usually something I don't do.
  • Making dinner and thinking about stuff to make is harder now than when I had less time, because now there's more time to think about it.  It's counter-intuitive but true.
  • I'm doing a bunch of laundry and constantly washing dishes or loading/unloading the dishwasher.
  • When I go out I'm surprised to see a lot of people out and about — a lot of older people and I'm not sure about the rest, retired young people, off day?  Why isn't everyone working.

I still have steam clean the carpets, work on the landscaping outside and getting a landscaper, paint the master bedroom, get some artwork hung up, and lots of other stuff.

Rather than soap operas though I'm surfing the Web and checking out what's happening in Mozilla-land here and there.  I'd like to devote the two hours I used to use to commute to work for mozilla.org stuff.  What's interesting about not commuting to Mountain View is that my car stays a lot cleaner longer.

summer movies and playlist

Summer movies on tap for this summer that I want to watch:

If there's anything else I should be watching let me know.  The last movie I watched in the theatre was A Prairie Home Companion just last week but before then it may have been Lord of the Rings Return of the King.  That was a long time ago :(

I'd like to post my iTunes playlist too a la the celebrity ones at iTunes music store.  It's actually a really cool way to discover new music.  We wanted to do the same thing for Firefox, e.g. Celebrity Bookmarks.  Ma.gnolia.com kinda already did it.

I don't know how anyone can remember ma.gnolia.com.  I can hardly remember where to put the periods for deli.cio.us (aka Backflip 2.0.  I didn't use BackFlip either).

Home Computer Setup – Apple Mac Mini and 23" Cinema Display

prodshot_23_inch_3display.jpgmm_step1_hero_060228.jpg

The hard drive in our iMac (lampshade version) seems like it's dying. We're going into our fifth year with the old iMac so it's about time for a new one. Plus, I'm in the "industry" so I should have a more up-to-date machine. A 2-3 year hardware cycle for a software company or someone in the business is about right.

Our next machine is going to be a Mac Mini with a 23" Apple Display.

I wish I wrote down all the systems I've ever used, it would be pretty neat to be able to reference it all. From memory I've had an IBM PS/2 desktop thingie, a PowerBook 240, a Compaq notebook, an HP notebook, a SGI desktop, a Dell notebook, an IBM Thinkpad X31 and an X40, and an iMac.

Specs for the new computer:

  • 1GB 667 DDR2 SDRAM – 2×512
  • 100GB Serial ATA drive
  • SuperDrive 8x (DVD+R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
  • Wireless Keyboard & Mouse Set – U.S. English
  • Apple Cinema HD Display (23" flat panel)
  • Mac OS X – U.S. English
  • AppleCare Protection Plan for Mac mini (w/or w/o Display) – Auto-enroll
  • 1.66GHz Intel Core Duo
  • Intel GMA950 graphics

Sightseeing in San Francisco

For my friends at Mozilla, I'm going to keep updating this as I go but Tine, Grace, mcolvig, etc if you've got ideas for sightseeing activities for friends here at Mozilla, that would be great. We've got folks from Japan, Europe, etc.

So restaurant ideas, sights, etc.

  • Golden Gate Bridge
  • Ferry Building (Saturday Farmer's market)
  • North Beach
  • China Town
  • Cable cars
  • Golden Gate Park?
  • bar hopping on Broadway St

Stanford University tour hang out on University ave, UC Berkeley Tour hang out on Telegraph Ave

Updated: Check comments and also check out this virtual tour from Riya.  It's pretty neat, just drill down to San Francisco.

take care of your belly and your back

I need to visit a few folks that I haven't seen in a while, Mrs. Orear an old grade school teacher who's teaching over at St. Isidore's now in Danville, Father Pat who's over at some church near me, and Mr. Anderson (Daddy-yo). I ran into Daddy-yo in January but didn't get to talk to him much. Hadn't been comfortable chatting with him since he had gotten me my first job out of college. I ended up not liking that job very much, left as soon as I could, and high-tailed it over to Netscape.

Daddy-yo was Troop 89's Scoutmaster. He's very old school, and is partly why I'm old school. He had one rule to live by that I still follow, take care of your belly and your back. That's it. Makes life easy when you break it down like that – meaning make sure you eat, and have clothes on your back/roof over your head.

crowbar story and a mashup idea

I wrote a while back that I told the whole world we were on vacation and no one stole anything while we were away. Probably not a good idea to blog you're going away on vacation. Anyhow, turns out there are "professional" burglars in our neighborhood. (how does one become a professional burglar?).

From a neighbor:

This evening about 7:30 while we where home, our home was burglarized. Someone came in our back kitchen door, moved through the house and took our wallets and a camera. We were upstairs during the short period that this happened. We nor our dog heard anything, no TV or music was playing. Seems to be the work of pros. Within 20 minutes one of credit cards was used at a 76 gas station.

The other evening, I went out for an hour run or so. I'm all energized afterwards and start doing chores. I go take out the garbage and as I go back inside I notice something on the ground. It's metal. Oh hey, it's a crowbar…in my backyard. The joys of living in the 'hood. It's good we have a security door and motion lights in the back. It's also good that we don't have much to steal. It's great that I didn't run into the owner of the crowbar either. I very much hope this person doesn't read my blog.

Mashup Idea

If you've read this far might as well listen to my mashup idea. I'd like to see a Google Maps or Yahoo maps that has crime overlays for burglaries, homicides, rapes, and assaults (other crimes?) by year. I'd like to see this done for all cities and then I'd like to be able to zoom out and be able to visually compare cities and countries.

Any takers? If you can show me this app at the MashupCamp conference, I'll get you something nice from the Mozilla Store.

test driving the "pre-owned" Benz

Mercedes Benz

I guess December 31st is the best day to buy a new car. Katina and I went test driving today and almost bought this pre-owned, Mars red Mercedes Benz 2005 C230 for her. We decided against it because it had too many miles (17,000) and didn't have all the options we wanted nor was it the right color (she wants Barolo red). It's a manual transmission (which we want) and 4 cylinder engine (which is okay, less pep but better gas mileage). Considering that a new car was only a few thousand more and we could get it in the right color we wanted, with the options we wanted, with a V6 engine, we decided against buying it. It was mighty tempting (Katina's heart was beating fast, she was feeling all hot and bothered, and we actually went back to the dealer after having left it from the test drive to see how much it would cost…$28,900).

the perfect browser

The perfect browser to me has several elements:

– renders web pages and applications as meant by the author
– gives authors/developers the ability to create rich web pages/content/applications
– allows users to interact with the web site in a complementary way (doesn't get in the way)
– puts the user in control of the experience (meaning extensible, customizable via options)
– has to be simple and efficient (meaning has to be familiar, easy to use, fast)