Every Day Life – Work (Browsers | Web) – Ironman Training
I'm looking forward to the following this year:
Fairly basic. That's it for now.
This reporter and I were at this same meeting, a North Oakland Community meeting where this time Ron Dellums, our mayor spoke. I have some different takeaways from what she wrote, though top of mind for everybody at this meeting was how to control the violence in North Oakland. You'd think the easy answer is get more cops on the street but it's not that easy. If it was easy, it'd be already done.
So violence was the main issue, the expansion of Children's Hospital/zoning in general was the other top issue. I should be more concerned since several murders and shooting have happened within a one/two block radius of my house, but I know the neighborhood is getting better. I see it everyday.
What I did like hearing was what Ron Dellums had to say with Oakland as a model city. I think he's right about the opportunity. There's a lot of Oakland pride and there's a lot to like about Oakland, people just see the violence in Oakland but don't see the there there. People outside of Oakland don't get it and that's fine with me.
What I believe we're going to get from Ron, is a lot of resources (money) poured into the City of Oakland from Foundations, the State, and Federal governments. As a former Congressman with quite some power, we're going to get that funding and it's going to be pretty cool.
Anyway, the next 4 and hopefully 8 years of Ron Dellums term as Mayor of Oakland will be great to participate in. Only problem is Ron isn't tech savvy; but his people seem to be so that's fine.
Some things I've discovered recently:
Sometimes the results you get from a search engine aren't that great (even from Google, these days), and you want a little extra and you want more relevant results. That's where Search Plus comes in.
So, pound on it. Search Plus for Video is in Beta and the way we created it we can make a bunch of changes to the UI/UE via the server-side, so new features and changes/fixes will be introduced much like a web page. It's our first entry into the Firefox/IE Add-on space.
What does is it do exactly? It's very simple. Search Plus is multiple searches in one. Doing your normal search on Google, Yahoo!, MSN, or Ask we'll also query video providers (starting with YouTube) and we'll present the results if there's a relevant match. We're playing around with the UI, location of the results, and other features and doing our best to make the results even more relevant.
Video results are becoming much more relevant, i.e. when you search for "irreplaceable" you probably want to see Beyonce's music video or if you're looking for "NASA voyager" why not see related videos to it versus just reading about it. Anyway, send feedback.
"In my 14 years of doing this, I've never had anyone faint on me while they're laying down."* – the nice LabCorp technician
System Error -45: rebron system crash, fainting spell when blood is drawn
I mentioned I had a physical exam a couple weeks ago, sailed through it with flying colors. You'd think I would, right. Doc said to go get a blood test which is just part of the whole getting a physical thing. I didn't get a blood test a couple years ago because I knew what was going to happen.
So anyway, went and got my blood test today around 9am. Hadn't eaten yet and ate around 8pm the night before — sushi/sashimi, some chocolate cake.
I get into the office and I'm trying to psyche myself out of fainting. I'm a big boy, this time I'm going to watch so I know what's happening, so my mind doesn't wander. It's not a big deal, I've done this before. I do the pee sample and then back into reception area still trying to psyche myself out of fainting.
I tell the lady I've had a history of fainting when getting blood drawn and that I should lay down, so over to the scaredy cat room. We start talking, tell her my problem, asked her if the needle felt like a mosquito bite, and she said I wouldn't even feel it.
The technician puts that rubber thing around my arm. She tells me to make a fist. She puts the needle attached to a tube in my arm and I don't feel a thing except I can feel my arm stressed a little bit just like when you get your blood pressure taken.
For some reason, I can feel the blood getting drawn from my arm, not really, but mentally I feel like someone started a slow leak that's not going to stop. I'm still trying to talk to the technician. I start to feel light headed. I'm sweating, and then *poof* done, I'm out. I don't even realize it. It's a lot like a Mac OS X system crash or a blue screen of death. One second it's working, another second done.
Lights out, completely. I'm in this dream world. There's people around, I'm in this very happy place, and the technician starts calling my name and waking me up and I groggily get up. I really don't know how long I've been out for, could've been 2 minutes could've been 30 minutes (but I think it was just a minute). I have no idea where I am, and then I finally remember, oh yeah, I'm getting my blood drawn.
Crazy.
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* The real translation for the technician's quote. "In my 14 years of doing this, you're the biggest pu$$y I've ever met…" I need to go do another Ironman. F#ck!!
I'm curious as to what people use for their feed reader and which one has the highest market share if that's even tracked.
The feeds I follow are:
If I should be reading someone not on this list or if I should bump people off this list let me know.
If I should be using something else for my feed reading other than Firefox/live bookmarks, let me know that too. I've played around with Bloglines, Google Reader, Thunderbird, etc. and Vlad's live bookmark implementation in Firefox works for me fine.
I'm thinking maybe a Planet version of the feeds similar to what bsmedberg has done but that requires work. It would be cool if there was a Planet like plug-in for WordPress (maybe there is one).
A day in Mexico City was interesting. Got to stay in a cool hotel, the Emporio Reforma Hotel, very chic and modern with lovely soap and shampoo (that I of course brought home). Didn't get mugged, didn't get kidnapped. Mexico City is a tad busy, dirty, smoggy, muggy, and it kinda made me sad. Reminded me of Manila.
Anyhow, made my pilgrimage over to La Basilica de Guadalupe which is basically falling down. The new Basilica next to it has a funky looking architecture on the outside but it's nice on the inside. Ended up going to Mass there, that was cool.
Now La Virgen de Guadalupe is an interesting story that we do get taught in Catholic school. It became a little more concrete when seeing the cloak of Juan Diego in the Church, as in, oh this story is real. It's hard not to be skeptical but you have to not be if you plan on being religious. If you're not familiar with the story of La Virgen de Guadalupe, you have to read about it. It's required reading for wanting to know anything about Mexico and Latin America.
It was cool seeing a miracle first hand (even though I'm about 500 years too late). Not often miracles happen.
photo of Playa del Carmen
This is Playa del Carmen, I'm here through Sunday and then to Mexico City for a day and then home on Monday. May drop over to Cozumel on Saturday and definitely would love to vacation here for real to see Tulum, Chicken Pizza, and hang out for a while.
I'm doing work though and actually a product launch hopefully today. I came because have to work out some things and then the fact that Playa del Carmen has wicked good web access sealed the deal. Otherwise, I'd do the product launch from home but then why not launch a product from Mexico or work from Mexico or anywhere in the world really if you can.
Which brings me to this. Wireless internet access should be ubiquitous as the phone. I should just be able to open up my laptop and start surfing away regardless of location: in the mountains, on the beach, in a cafe, at home, wherever. I had a problem in San Mateo the other day and I was looking for directions. I had to go into a Starbucks and pay for web access when I really should've just been able to open up my laptop and start surfing.
Mountain View and San Francisco via Google is going to get wireless access City Wide. I'd like to see Ask step up and give free wireless access to the city of Oakland. Maybe Microsoft should do the same and do it for Seattle and possibly AOL for Washington D.C. Once that starts happening, maybe other companies need to step in and the government can step in and then we'll have this crazy free (or pay a premium for a little better/more secure) wireless network.
(not Clean Cuts, just a cool barbershop photo)
I found a new hair cut place, Clean Cuts Barber Shop. It's a Black barbershop, just like the ones the barbershop movies are based on. It's just a couple blocks down the street from me and while I like my Korean barbers at Cutaway, I know the barber at Clean Cuts, Shamelle, wife of a high school classmate of mine.
Anyway, she did a nice job with the hair cut (though the haircut is a little '80s) plus it really is a whole different experience getting your hair done at a Black barbershop. People are coming in talking about where they traveled to, a teenager comes in he was the prom king and was supposed to bring a photo of himself. I'm chatting away talking about her husband, kids, ranting about housing prices, reminiscing about the prom. It was pretty cool, you just don't get this at the Supercuts.
I've been told that I have a "Ghetto Free Pass card" which I guess means I'm allowed to hang out with Black people. I'm not sure how I "earned" it. I thought that was kinda funny. Quite a different experience from the Asian dude that hates black people no?
