True Burger

We ate at  True Burger, in Oakland, last weekend and have to say that True Burger is now my new burger place — post workout reward, post Tahoe/road trip meal.  It’s a small restaurant and they do burgers, fries, milkshakes, and that’s about it and they do it really well.

In comparison to In N’ Out, True Burger’s burgers have much better flavor, better bun, slightly larger, and less greasy.  In N’ Out’s fries aren’t very good, True Burger fries are crispy and tasty.  The milk shakes are tastier too, it’s vanilla or chocolate or with fill-ins like vanilla with strawberry, peanut butter, coffee, etc.  You could say that True Burger is looking to create reference, by the book best versions of the American burger, fries, and milk shake and they do a ridiculously great job.  Here’s a much better review but essentially, no more trips to In N’ Out.

red velvet cup cake, from Cupkates Bakery

Cupkates Bakery

The other “best thing I’ve eaten” moment was a week or so ago when I was gifted with a Key Lime pie cupcake from Cupkates Bakery.  If you see the Cupkates cupcake truck, wave them down and buy the $3 Key Lime pie cupcake.  It’s just crazy good.  I guess they drive around Oakland and San Francisco. 

Key Lime Pie $3/ea
A graham cracker crust, key lime cake, curd filled, and topped with meringue frosting. Available with or without toasted coconut.

pop-up general store (OPEN TODAY 6/30/2010 at 5pm – 7pm at Grace Street Catering) is part of this interesting food movement that’s happening in the Bay Area along with Jon’s Street Eats, Eatwell Farm, any Bay Area farmer’s market — where there’s this mix of food reverence, technology, and a bit of grunge.

Anyway, here’s pop-up general’s store description:

is a group of professional cooks {nearly all of us current or former Chez Panisse cooks} making the foods we love to eat. We Pop-Up every two or three weeks so that you can get your hands on some.

pop-up general store is effectively in Ghost town.  Whatever.  Will check it out.  One of our favorite restaurants that closed, Cafe Jojo’s in Oakland (which had the best steak frites), is now doing catering and offering products through the store so it’s pretty cool to see them back in action.

Recommendation: Definite Buy

This is the Garmin Edge 500 and I’m super attached to this thing mostly because it works.  I bought this in December last year and it’s reasonably priced.  DC Rainmaker has this crazy long review.

I use this computer for cycling and running though it’s optimized for cycling.  I have a heart rate monitor for my heart rate and it comes with a cadence monitor to monitor rotations per minute (RPMs) or my legs around the bike crank.  It’s a Garmin so there’s a GPS so it measures distance and elevation.  It’s also an ANT+ product and so it works with other ANT+ products like power meters and such.

The computer also comes with Garmin training center software so I can download all the information from the Edge 500 onto my computer (Mac OS X but works on Windows too).  From there, I upload the data to WorkoutLog.com which records all my workouts.

From a technology standpoint, it’s pretty freaking cool — a total home run product.  It works, it’s minimalist by default, configurable to your needs, easy to get data in and out.  Even the battery power is pretty good, lasted me a whole Ironman race (well the bike and the run part…and I took a long time).

It’s a piece of technology that will actually tell you about yourself, what you did, and could actually make you faster, stronger, better because you have data to measure against.

Some personal yes/no/maybe recommendations on Apple Products:

• Apple iPhone 4 – Yes (our first iPhone purchase and will be buying for wifey to replace an old Treo…my phone is a Nexus One)
• Apple MacBook Pro 13″*, other MacBooks – Yes
• MacBook Air – No
• Mac Mini* – Yes
• Apple TV – No
• iMac – No, better off with a mini or an iPad
• iPad – Not yet, waiting for the next version w/ Retina display and front facing camera, printing support, and general tweaks, and generally an actual need for one given that I own a MacBook Pro already…
• iPod – Nano, Yes; Shuffle/Classic */Touch, No;
• Peripherals – Keyboard*, maybe; Magic mouse, no; Cinema display*, maybe; Airport Express*/Time Capsule, No; Airport Extreme*, maybe
• Software – iLife*, Yes; iWork*, if you have to; Aperture, No; MobileMe*, No

*products I own

I think a pretty good Mac setup would be a Mac Mini for “home” stuff/home server type of deal.  A MacBook Pro for work, iPads as the “secondary” computer.  iPods for on the go, exercising, and for the car.

From a PC side, probably harder to cobble up a similar setup.

Belorussian Translation provided by PC.

The Devil’s Key
Corporate e-mail can be a vast wasteland, but there’s one email function that Jamie Barnett calls the devil’s key — the dreaded ‘reply all.’

Corporate e-mail is a funny thing. Sure, it’s the stuff of great ideas delivered with speed, but it’s also the domain of hopeless misunderstandings, shots across the bow, and somehow absolves us of the decorum required in face-to-face communications.

While volume and grammar are oft-cited grievances, my grumble is about ‘reply all.’ ‘Reply all’ is the devil’s key.

I ran the Oakland 1/2 Marathon yesterday, the inaugural Oakland running festival which had other running events like a relay, 5k, and of course the full marathon.

I had a lot of fun, the course is super fast and flat, folks were great/happy/excited, the running shirt was nice.  The support was awesome, no shortage of volunteers and spectators.  I was surprised by the number of people that were out and about cheering (moreso than the San Francisco marathon).

Ran into a few folks Derrick and Dr. Bean from IronTeam.  Ben was at the finish line volunteering.

More thoughts from other folks

The other day, I encountered eight (eight!) people who had come to town just for the marathon. All of them made a point of saying how surprised they were to discover what a beautiful city Oakland is. It was totally heartwarming.

For whatever reason, my dream car as a kid was a candy apple Porsche 911.  I’ll have to say that this Porsche Spyder hybrid in whatever color for my 50th birthday (still along time away) would be pretty nice.  I suspect that by the time I’m 50 there’ll be an even better car.  I like the Cayman S too, and the 911 Carrera 4S is not too shabby.

The 918 Spyder prototype combines high-tech racing features and electro-mobility to offer a fascinating range of qualities: An emission level of just 70 grams CO2 per kilometre on fuel consumption of three litres/100 kilometres (equal to 94 mpg imp) truly outstanding even for an ultra-compact city car, on the one hand, combined with the performance of a super sports car and acceleration from a standstill to 100 km/h in just under 3.2 seconds, top speed of 320 km/h (198 mph) plus, and a lap time on the Nordschleife of Nürburgring in less than 7:30 minutes, faster than even the Porsche Carrera GT, on the other.

A friend of mine was telling me that the prettiest money she ever saw was the Dutch guilder.  I had to look it up and I now have to agree.  Wouldn’t be a bad collection to framed up on a wall somewhere.

We’re over at the Berkeley Bowl and I’m about to go grab some Nutella.  Nutella has a low glycemic index and therefore ok to eat?  That’s what I told myself anyway.

Next to Nutella on the shelf is Nocciolata and instead of grabbing Nutella, I grabbed it instead.  Glad I did because Nocciolata is ridiculously delicious, tons better than Nutella — game over.  It’s available on Amazon and it’s worth seeking out.

Anyway, make sure you’re on a workout program before you buy a jar.

Training for Ironman St George and Ironman Canada started in earnest for me in October last year.  I have this training log that I use to record my workouts.  It’s a pretty neat tool but could be a little faster and little more slick on the user interface side.  I upload my workouts from a Garmin Forerunner which I’ll talk about in another post.

What’s new this time around is that I’m working with a coach, Chris Hauth (a genuinely nice guy, an ’92 and ’96 Olympian representing Germany, and he’s *won* a few Ironman races).  He’s coaching a few of my friends as well.

The workouts have been/are super efficient in terms of time and effort, and I’m also working out strictly on heart rate and also interval training.  I just don’t have time for any bad workouts, and his philosophy of doing something every day and getting enough rest and recovery to move on to the next level is proving to be right.

I’m also doing a bunch of (cycling) spin classes but the spin classes are based on wattage.  We use a CompuTrainer in class which you attach to the rear wheel of your bike, and it adjusts the resistance on your wheel based on what watt resistance level you give it.  Training by watts and high cadence and going to a ton of spin classes is also new this year.

In any case, St George is coming up, May 1 and Canada is right around the corner at the end of August.

*Updated for Mike, (removing thingie which was just the CompuTrainer)*

Also, adding below, the difference in training with Chris vs IronTeam.

The differences:

• I’m training using time versus distance e.g. 2 hour run vs 10 mile run
• I’m doing lactate threshold tests to determine my workout zones and bike wattage
• I’m training on strict heart rate, at a “Zone 2″ primarily using a heart rate monitor
• I’m training on the bike using watts/power
• I’m training on bike focusing on cadence, less hill work, and sustained effort
• I’ve got a good bike fit

We’ll see if it translates into a better time.  It is translating into far easier and manageable (even pleasurable) workouts.

Top of lift six, Cornice Express at Kirkwood.

What a great snow year in Tahoe!  We’ve been up a few times, wished we could have gone up more.  We’ve really only gone to Kirkwood which gets a ton of snow early in the season and it got dumped on this year, so we just kept going there.

Here, I’m all Burton-ed out.  Jacket is from the Shaun White collection.  Shirt is a snowboarding shirt from Burton too.  Snowboard pants are denim (goretex but it does still get cold and wet so good for warm days…but they do look cool).  Boots are Burton Hail.  The helmet is Giro, the bindings are Flow, the sunglasses are Oakley, the cap is from Rapha.

I’m more than happy to model Burton’s 2011 collection next year…Call me :-)

[Apologies for the lack of writing, going back to writing now, hopefully a post a week if not more].

Just a quick note to get back into the blogging groove (been somewhat preoccupied microblogging on Facebook and to an extent Twitter).

The next version of Thunderbird has the project name Lanikai which made me super happy because it’s one of my favorite beaches of all time. Some photos.

Lanikai beach is on the East side of Oahu, in Lanikai and near Kailua (which is where the Obamas like to stay when they visit Hawaii).  You can walk up to Kailua beach for more action where there’s windsurfing, kite surfing, and kayak rentals.  What’s interesting is that they’re not crowded at all, probably because the towns of Kailua and Lanikai are a bit far from Honolulu and they’re small sleepy towns, more local than tourist area.

The water is very clear, warm, and it’s a very swimmable beach.  The sand is white to light tan and soft.  The beaches are easy to access, and stores are near enough for some coffee, snow cones, or sun block.

I like to think that part of the reason we’re going with Lanikai and beach themes is that it’s aligned to how we’re thinking about the Thunderbird email client.  We want to make Thunderbird run so efficiently that people spend more time on the beach than in their email.  Sounds good to me.

A couple more links for Thunderbird 3.1/Lanikai:

• Thunderbird – Lanikai/Thunderbird 3.1 nightly builds now set up
• A public internet deserves great beaches
• Project page

Keep the feedback coming in, they’ve been extremely helpful and we’re doing our best to incorporate your suggestions.

Please click on the image to see the large file.  In this version we have the different sizes.  The majority of people will view Thunderbird on a daily basis with the smaller sized icons.  The larger icons will be displayed more on the web site, posters, and other promotional items like t-shirts.

Changes in this version:

• Uppermost right wing feathers are rounded to match the other side.
• Second row of feathers on the left wing slightly pointed.

Based on feedback, we’re choosing the white envelope with no seal.

Background Information

• Thunderbird 3 Icon Refresh – Creative Brief
• Refreshing the Thunderbird Icon
• New Firefox Icon

Please provide feedback via the comments section through these blog posts.

Keep the feedback coming in, they’ve been extremely helpful and we’re doing our best to incorporate your suggestions.

Iteration 6. 20090729

Changes in this version:

• A third row of small feathers.  Small feathers are less defined, less bright.  No seal.  Slightly whiter envelope.

Iteration 5. 20090729

Changes in this version:

• Fewer feathers.  No seal.  Slightly whiter envelope.

Iteration 4. 20090729

Changes in this version:

• Logo with seal and example of small version of logo w/ seal.
• Lots of feathers.

Background Information

• Thunderbird 3 Icon Refresh – Creative Brief
• Refreshing the Thunderbird Icon
• New Firefox Icon

Please provide feedback via the comments section through these blog posts.

Iteration 3. 20090715

The icon is being rendered by Anthony Piraino at the Iconfactory.

Changes in this iteration:

• removed seal from previous iterations;
• added detail to the envelope;
• feathers shaped to be slightly more accurate

Current Icon

Background Information

• Thunderbird 3 Icon Refresh – Creative Brief
• Refreshing the Thunderbird Icon
• New Firefox Icon

Please provide feedback via the comments section through these blog posts.

Iteration 2. 20090708

The icon is being rendered by Anthony Piraino at the Iconfactory.

Changes in this iteration:

• rounder/smoother shape for the circle;
• modified the seal/”@” but this detail will be removed in the next iteration;
• warmed up the envelope color, corrected the “v” shape on the envelope;
• added more detail to the feathers;
• updated bottom shadow

Current Icon

Background Information

• Thunderbird 3 Icon Refresh – Creative Brief
• Refreshing the Thunderbird Icon
• New Firefox Icon

Please provide feedback via the comments section through these blog posts.

Iteration 1. 20090706

The icon is being rendered by Anthony Piraino at the Iconfactory.

Current Icon

Background Information

• Thunderbird 3 Icon Refresh – Creative Brief
• Refreshing the Thunderbird Icon
• New Firefox Icon

Please provide feedback via the comments section through these blog posts.

Great job!  Lot of great changes to help move the web forward.

Check out http://hacks.mozilla.org to test drive our new toy.

But what about Thunderbird icon? Will it be updated too? Please!

Short answer, yes.  You didn’t even need to say “pretty please”.

We’re beginning the work to update the Thunderbird icon.  We really like how the Firefox icon turned out, and we’ll be working with the folks at Icon Factory so we can be consistent.

I’ve been impressed with how Alex Faaborg has led the charge with the Firefox Icon refresh, his vision, and his ability to communicate and work with everybody.  We’re working with Alex as well, he’s got a great eye, and we’re lucky.

The Process

As I understand, it’s going to be fast and furious in terms of the design and feedback loop the next couple weeks.  I’ll be posting a final creative brief before we get started, and happy to take feedback on it now.  I’ll be posting the iterations and calling for feedback as soon as I get them.

It would be great if all feedback can be done as comments to these blog posts as opposed to direct emails to me.

Palm Pre looks pretty good, probably will wait for the next version though.  Even with the iPhone 3GS, it’s probably the right upgrade path from a Treo.  A lower price/plan, better battery life would have knocked the Palm Pre out of the ballpark, but still good.  Walt Mossberg’s review

Other stuff I’ve been playing around with:

• an unlocked G1 phone (w/ Android 1.5, fun to play with)
• mobile wireless via Sprint (though heard AT&T’s was 3x faster)

I check out the Netbooks every once in a while and I like the Dell Minis but there’s so many out there now.  It’s an interesting (and confusing) product segmentation — second laptop, ultralight for business travelers, kids.

LED light bulbs like the one above are cool.  The one we got is 2.5W and it’s equivalent to a 45W incandescent light bulb.  There are 7 led lights inside that power the thing.  LED lights should be what we all move to but the investments made in cfls (contains mercury, higher wattage) has everyone buying cfls first.  LED lights are already showing up in street lights and will also get more popular in car head lights.  They’re also great in flashlights.

We’re using one of the LED bulbs for the porch light, one over a vanity as a night light, and one other for my end table– so high use areas that need just enough light.  The lights are a bit expensive and the brighter ones even moreso.  But the ones we got should last a long, long time.  And at 2.5W, can’t really complain there.

The rest of the house we’re using 7W to 13W compact fluorescent bulbs.

We also need (and on the lookout for) 3-way LED or CFL bulbs for lamps.  The 3-way CFLs that are out now are way too big to fit in a lamp.

We’re figuring, in lieu of solar panels, we can reduce the amount of electricity we use by having efficient appliances and lighting, turning off our electrical equipment when not in use, and insulating the house.  Google has several more good energy saving tips.

—-

* I’m in a bit of a writer’s funk.  Maybe the WordCamp this Saturday will get me out of it.  I’ve got a few more posts on products in general and then the rest of the year will be focused on work related stuff with hopefully some updates on a bathroom remodel once we get started at the end of June.

• still on track for a bathroom remodel this Summer, uncertain on the details
• no matter how we calculate solar panels, it makes no sense for us so evaluating led lights, attic insulation, solar attic fan
• Rikyu updated their menu — it’s our go to restaurant, *great* food
• When it’s out, will probably go with the Palm Pre to replace  a 2+ year old Treo for the boss lady (I still think *smart* phones are gadget overboard)
• Couple of interesting pop culture links: Susan Boyle and YouTube symphony

work

• Thunderbird 3 launch – going to be very fun
  
• SpreadThunderbird – slowly coming along
  
• GetSatisfaction/Thunderbird – customer support for software is certainly challenging
  

travel

• nothing planned yet for fun or for work, maybe a weekend side trip

volunteering

• landscaping project at Santa Fe elementary school

books

• struggling through The Intelligent Investor but already made some money just reading through the first 3 chapters
• The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

training/events

• finally starting marathon training for SF marathon in July
• planning to struggle through the Marin Century in August
• Berkeley pow wow May 2
• Stanford pow wow 8 – 10

I’m signed up for Ironman St. George (Utah) scheduled for 5/1/2010.  The rest of the Ironman Series can be found here.

• It will be the first year for Ironman St. George.
• I like it because it’s drivable (about 10 hours away).
• I was lucky to be able to get some friends to sign up too, about 4 others so far.
• Ironman St. George will be my sixth race and I’d like to sign up for Ironman France in June to get my seventh race out of the way since the timing is so close.  I still have to get permission from the big boss lady and be successful with the sign up first.

Yea, looking forward to it but won’t really start training for it until November.

Some good ideas for a vegetable garden (especially for people with a new empty backyard).

Square Foot Garding from Frugal Dad