This little fact is something that has hounded me my entire life. From a very early age I just hated eating onions. They were soggy, gross, and made me gag, so I would spend an eternity to pick them out of my meals as a child. This is odd, as for a good chunk of my adult life, I was a professional chef/cook. Italian, Mexican, Seafood, bistro food, catering, large banquet cooking, I did it all...
We moved to Arizona in 2003 for a job. We spent nearly 10 years in Tucson, then in 2012 moved to Chandler for another job. In general I liked Arizona, and will miss much of what the state offers. This post is what I will miss. Some of it greatly, some of it less so, but I am headed back to a place that has equal yet different charm. The Weather While my wife will grumble about the brutal summers...
It is with sadness in my heart that I must announce the passing of my Cateye Enduro 2 cycling computer. I acquired it in early 2002 when I bought my road bike, and it has been a rugged companion since then, logging and recording over 9,000 miles on the bike. It was not the first (my first cateye was on a roadbike I bought in 1988), but it will be remembered as the last. The UI was meh. The...
I was a relative latecomer to the digital photography world. We got our first digital camera in 2003, a Canon sureshot. It lasted us a couple years before the desire to go DSLR bit hard. But this isn’t about the camera, but instead about how to manage the deluge of images that come poring in. Alas, us mere mortals take lots of pictures and have no discipline as to the filing, organization...
I would like to formally nominate the drivers in Phoenix AZ as the stupidest in the world. This AM, on the way into the office, there was an accident (not surprising) just before Chandler Boulevard crosses the 101. You could easily see that 2 lanes of traffic were closed about a mile and a half before this (pro tip: 8 or so police cars with lights flashing should tell you something.) Of course...
Yesterday I had a great experience at the local AT&T store, and I have to share. My wife has been a Verizon customer forever. She chose them way back because they had better coverage where she spent a lot of her time. Being somewhat of a luddite, she has been using a flip phone (a pretty plain, but solid LG flip phone) for about 5 years. As time went on, she began to use it more, and often...
I have long desired to own a Yamaha SR500. A big, single cylinder street bike. Fun to ride. Not a lot of power, but enough. Light, easy to ride, and distinctive. Several times in my life I have run across one for sale, but never had the money to buy one. And, when I had the money, they were scarcer than hen’s teeth. Yamaha took the SR500, and its successor, the SRX600 off the market in the...
Last week, I fancied a bit of nostalgia, and enjoyed playing LPs on a real turntable. The ritual of playing the music harkened back to a much simpler era, and it was quite enjoyable. I can't way that the vinyl sounded better, or even different than CD's (alas, I don't have an apples-to-apples comparison set), but there was something satisfying from digging out a Miles Davis album...
In just about every way, the internet has improved life. From booking airline tickets, to looking up local businesses in the yellow pages, the internet has streamlined the process, and upset business models everywhere. But I found something it didn’t improve. I am moving back to the bay area, and I am contemplating getting back into mountain biking to explore all my old haunts. I had to...
Early in my life, I became a music buff. Sometime in High School (probably by my sophomore year), I pieced together a simple hifi system, saved my paper route money, bought a decent turntable and the best needle I could afford, and started buying records. Lots and lots of records. I could be found at Tower Records in Campbell California at least once a week. When I started driving (at 16) we...