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September 30, 2008
Time the Conqueror
Jackson Browne played McCaw hall last night, and Dawnise scored us awesome seats - Orchestra section, row "R".
Continue reading "Time the Conqueror"
Posted by dberger at 6:57 AM
September 29, 2008
A weekend and then some
Saturday night we and the Beltz's had tickets to Who's Live Anyway at the Moore. The show was hilarious, and reminded me of all the laughs we had at the Who's Line tapings we attended while living in S. California. Before the show Dawnise and I stopped for happy hour at Tango (home of el Diablo) and had their food for the first time. Good stuff, definitely worthy of a repeat performance.
Sunday we decided to take advantage of the weather and hop on the bike for the first time in what seems like ages. We left a bit after 9, had breakfast at the Brown Bag Cafe in Kirkland, and then made pretty much every "wrong" turn possible to finally end up here.
Tonight, the fun continues when we leave (in about 45 minutes) for a Jackson Browne concert at Seattle Center.
Good times.
Posted by dberger at 5:18 PM
September 28, 2008
Predictably Irrational
I forget where I heard about Dan Ariely's book Predictably Irrational, but I had the presence to put it on my library hold list at the time. It came in a week or so ago, and I finished it while watching Dawnise bake for the last time in our current oven.
As I sat here for a few minutes, trying to summarize my thoughts, I realized I need a bit more time to digest the work. It's either "very interesting" or "incredibly significant," and perhaps both. Through repeated experiment, Ariely turns classical economic theory - with it's foundation built on rational actors making rational decisions - into something of a laughing stock. He shows, in contexts ranging from honesty, to sexual arousal, to our reaction to something being "free" how humans not only don't act rationally, they act predictably irrationally.
Read it, digest it, and let's talk - I want someone to bounce this one off of...
Posted by dberger at 7:04 PM | Comments (1)
September 26, 2008
A Tale of Four Americanos
A Top Pot Donuts opened across the street from work, which is both a blessing and a curse.
Bellevue has no shortage of coffee places - there are three Starbucks in a two block radius of the office, and two Tully's - but finding a good Cafe Americano (or even a good cup of drip) has been damn near impossible.
Turns out that in addition to really yummy donuts, Top Pot makes a pretty reasonable Americano. It looks like espresso, complete with crema, smells like espresso, and has flavor beyond the "acrid bitter" that Starbucks and Tully's seem to aim for (and hit pretty reliably, I might add).
Posted by dberger at 4:50 PM
September 24, 2008
Here We Go
Tomorrow morning, Dan arrives to start the demo phase of the kitchen project. Dawnise has kicked ass packing up the kitchen over the past two days, and aside from some random stuff on the counters, I think we're in good shape... Tomorrow morning we take care of the last few items, and take "pre-demo" pictures.
The cabinet folks have re-confirmed their Monday delivery, the appliances are ready to go with a few days notice, and the granite folks show up in just over a week to template.
No turning back now...
Posted by dberger at 9:21 PM
There's a bit of money I didn't plan to spend...
Got the bike back to I-90 motorsports, and a few hours later they called to tell me that they'd figured out why the fuel warning light was staying on...
Continue reading "There's a bit of money I didn't plan to spend..."
Posted by dberger at 3:03 PM
September 23, 2008
I'm Too Young To Feel This Old
My lower back is grumpy, and getting on the race bike this morning didn't help.
Grumble, grumble.
On the plus side, I got confirmation that all the appliances are sitting in the warehouse ready for delivery with a couple days notice, the granite templating is on-schedule, and by this afternoon I should know if the cabinet makers are going to hit their Monday date.
Posted by dberger at 10:24 AM
September 20, 2008
Crash Plan
On and off over the past year or so I've been looking for an off-site backup solution. I had looked into Mozy, but gave up on it when I discovered they didn't support backing up remove drives in the windows client (a feature they seem to have removed in the Mac client as well). I briefly looked at JungleDisk before stumbling on CrashPlan, a peer-to-peer solution that doesn't scale in cost with the amount of data to be backed up.
Continue reading "Crash Plan"
Posted by dberger at 4:18 PM
Fall Is In The Air, And Other Updates
It's cool and drizzly this morning - and last night, before nodding off, Dawnise and I were discussing the eventual coming of winter. I found I was looking forward to it with some anticipation - which is a switch from last year, when the coming of winter brought thoughts of commuting to work on the motorcycle in the cold, and treacherous trips in and out of the garage in our rear-wheel drive car. The leaves on the tree outside our bedroom window are getting color on their edges...
Continue reading "Fall Is In The Air, And Other Updates"
Posted by dberger at 10:01 AM
September 19, 2008
Leverage: Archimedes vs. Le Gendre
As you may have heard, the US is in something of a financial crisis at the moment. - some are saying it's the worst since Black Tuesday. Others are saying it's worse.
I'm not a financier, I don't pretend to understand the market, I've always lived by a fairly simple set of rules - "you can't spend more than you have," and "don't gamble what you can't afford to lose."
They've served me well - allowing me to live a fairly luxurious lifestyle (incredibly luxurious by global standards), and weather downturns in both local and global economy. They're not going to get me rich quick, and they're positively anathema to the notion of leverage.
Continue reading "Leverage: Archimedes vs. Le Gendre"
Posted by dberger at 6:42 PM | Comments (4)
September 18, 2008
Comcast Made Me Do It
The recent change by Comcast - clarifying their "acceptable use policy" as no more than 250GB/month, but not giving users a means to measure their progress toward that cap, finally convinced me to turn on security on our wireless network.
Continue reading "Comcast Made Me Do It"
Posted by dberger at 8:53 PM
September 16, 2008
T-Mobile VoIP@Home - Strike 1
Didn't think about testing this during our eval - and sure enough, can't send faxes from the multi-function printer anymore.
If I sent more than a fax or two a year I'd be annoyed.
But I don't, so I'm mostly not.
Posted by dberger at 12:19 PM
September 12, 2008
Victory of Eagles
Just finished the fifth in the Temerare series - not much to say other than "please madam, may I have some more?"
Posted by dberger at 9:31 PM
September 10, 2008
iTunes: Now With Less of What You Use Most!
After a few minutes use, I came to the conclusion that Apple had dropped the one feature I found useful in iTunes (album shuffle) and "replaced" it with "Genius" (they sure love that word - the techs at their stores are Genius's, and they sit at a Genius Bar.)
Continue reading "iTunes: Now With Less of What You Use Most!"
Posted by dberger at 1:15 PM | Comments (1)
I Wasn't Expecting the Spanish Inquisition...
Yesterday, on the way home from work, I witnessed a hit-and-run. Inching forward in a right turn lane behind a red light, the white pickup in front of me failed to stop before crunching into the rear bumper of the sedan in front of him. He backed off, cranked the wheel hard left, cut across two lanes of traffic, and made a right turn from the left turn lane at the light.
Continue reading "I Wasn't Expecting the Spanish Inquisition... "
Posted by dberger at 8:09 AM
September 9, 2008
Bandwidth Caps and the Burden of Proof
A few weeks ago, several media outlets carried the story that Comcast has finally announced a concrete bandwidth cap for it's residential customers. I don't mind having limits placed on my service - and now that Comcast has announced that 250GB/month is the magic number, it seems only reasonable that they give me an easy way to see how close I am to that limit.
They haven't, of course, so I submitted the following note to them via their online support mechanism this evening...
Continue reading "Bandwidth Caps and the Burden of Proof"
Posted by dberger at 9:24 PM
September 8, 2008
Naked Fingers
I left my wedding band on the bathroom counter this morning.
My finger feels naked, and I suspect I'm going to keep "checking" for the missing ring all day.
Posted by dberger at 7:56 AM | Comments (1)
September 7, 2008
Maginot Line
Over the course of 6 weeks, the exterminator has pulled around 8 (dead) rats out of the basement, and the local population has consumed around 18 "anti-coagulant non-secondary poisoning" bait blocks. Two weeks ago, the exterminator (a very pleasant So. Cal. expat who goes by 'Mac') and I think we figured out where they're getting in, and this morning I spent several hours (a chunk of that looking for a misplaced tool) building my own version of the Maginot Line...
Continue reading "Maginot Line"
Posted by dberger at 1:00 PM | Comments (1)
September 5, 2008
It's All Good
Lately I've been hyper-sensitive to the fact that, as my aunt Amy likes to say, "it's all good."
Continue reading "It's All Good"
Posted by dberger at 12:21 PM