Blog Master G

What do you do when you’re working from home and have called into a conference call and need to mute your phone so your dogs don’t bark into the phone but your phone is Old School and doesn’t have a “locking” mute feature and you don’t want to sit there holding your thumb or other digit on the button until it’s numb by the time the hour-long call is over?

Simple: You fashion a MacGyver-style mute button and voila! Your Old School phone can now run with the big boys of the 21st Century. And you can walk away from the phone and use your hands to do other things like write in your blog rather than sitting there not twiddling your thumbs because one of them is in use and getting sore.

• MacGyver Mute Button 1
• MacGyver Mute Button 2

Materials needed to craft your very own MacGyver Mute Button:

1. Old School Phone with “non-locking” mute button
2. Solid rubber band that will stretch around entire width of phone
3. 100th-Anniversary Swiss Army pocket knife or other similar tool to use as a “raiser” to compensate for distance between other dangerous buttons like redial that you don’t accidentally want to hit for the 30 people in the room and 5 other people calling in to your meeting to hear
4. Wall hanging or other heavy item to place atop Swiss Army pocket knife or other device used in previous step and anchor on table

Note: It is very important that the area where your Old School phone resides is surrounded by random tools like those described above should you find yourself in an unplanned situation where a MacGyver Mute Button is necessary.

Good luck, and may the Mute Button Gods be with you to relieve you of your tethered relationship with your Old School phone.

Alternate plan: Get your company to give you a 21st-Century phone with “locking” mute button.

Today’s Dilbert cracks me up.

How funny would it be if everyone took mind-altering drugs and went to work? People would be so much more mellow, I’m sure. It reminds me of a scene in A Very Brady Sequel, wherein Roy Martin eats psilocybin-filled spaghetti ala Alice and says the classic line, “Oh my God, I’m trippin’ with the Bradys!”

While sitting here late at work listening to a boring conference call with the APAC region that has basically nothing to do with me, I took this quiz (Which OS Are You?), courtesy of bit.ch. According to the results, I am Slackware Linux. Nice. I like the description:

You are the brightest among your peers, but are often mistaken as insane. Your elegant solutions to problems often take a little longer, but require much less effort to complete.

Sounds good to me. And not too far off, I’d say.

I now know all too well that street cleaning on Judah St. where I live is Tuesday and Friday mornings from 7-8am. Last night I got a great parking spot in the neighboring building’s driveway (owned by same owner of my building and first-come, first-serve parking) and only half-noticed this morning while leaving for a walk with the dogs that my car seemed to be the only one on my block. Of course, I didn’t think much of it at that point.

When I returned from my jaunt with the dogs to Golden Gate Park, I had received a street-cleaning parking ticket: $30.

This after being amidst many hoops required for getting a residential parking permit. Yesterday morning I had to fork over 20 bucks for a temporary one that expires in a month since I don’t yet have my new address on my car’s registration. I learned later in the day yesterday that I will need to visit the DMV in person and pay 7 bucks for a registration document with my new address on it (simply sending in a change-of-address form isn’t good enough if you don’t also send in DMV Form 156). So after I get that, I’ll then need to mail in a copy and another 27 bucks for my residential parking permit that’s only good through the end of November. All this so that I can park for more than 2 hours at a time in my neighborhood on weekdays from 8am to 6pm. This is key for when I work from home, but still doesn’t guarantee parking.

Ah, city life. I still love it.

The move to San Francisco is complete and I’m beat. Jen, Stella, Happy, and I are really loving the new apartment (we took a bunch of photos, which I’ll post here once the DSL is active at home). The last time I can remember having a weekend this busy was December 9 (Jen’s birthday!), when I quoted Margaret Thatcher and was reminded of the dog poster that now sits on my desk (I just brought it in last week, so I haven’t yet hung it up).

Although the last time we moved was just 6 months ago, it seems like it was ages that we were living in Marin. One weekend down and we’re much happier in SF.

We both took Friday off work and woke up bright and early for last-minute packing. The movers arrived at 9am sharp. (Two for two in satisfaction with Delancey Street Moving! Those guys are great). We really planned well this time, selling our excess furniture, throwing lots of stuff away, taking the time to sort through junk rather than just jamming it in boxes, and having everything ready to go when the movers arrived. Last time we moved (following 3 years on Treasure Island), we ended up doing at least 12 round-trip car trips to move all the stuff that we thought didn’t amount to much! This time we only had to make a handful of trips (one on Thursday night, one with the movers on Friday, then a final trip with both of our cars filled up following the cleaning and dog pickup Friday night). Cleaning was much easier, too, since (A) we kept it so much cleaner than TI, (B) it was just the two of us living there, and (C) we lived there 1/6th of the time we lived on TI.

I think we must have set some kind of unpacking and decorating record. Aside from our handy sideroom (the room that leads from the living room to our backyard) and a few stray boxes, our unpacking is done. And our wall hangings are up. Yup, somehow we managed to move, unpack, and decorate all in the same weekend. Taking Friday off was key.

But what was great about the weekend was how much fun we managed to have amidst all the moving and unpacking. The more we unpacked, the more we loved being in our new apartment; the more we walked around our cool Inner Sunset neighborhood, the more we loved being in the city and knew we had made the right decision moving there; the more company we had, the more we knew how much fun it was going to be having people over (and that friends would be able to come see us much more easily than in Larkspur).

Yes, all of this in one weekend. (We even crammed in a couple episodes of Buffy Season 3, the first-ever Sopranos episode, and a 9pm Sunday night conference call I had with Neuchatel and Japan.)

Saturday we had DirecTV installed, had PG&E come over to look at our gas stove and make sure it was functioning properly (we smelled gas and will have to use a lighter to use the stove), and did a great deal of unpacking. (I also discovered that we have roof access when the DirecTV installer needed to get up there for the install.) We had lunch at Naan ‘n Curry on Irving St. (415.664.7225) and returned to our place to find that some jerk had squeezed his big ol’ Jeep Grand Cherokee into the spot behind my car and had left it pressed against mine. There was a dent in the bumper that pissed me off. Luckily, the dent somehow expanded itself out and the jerk actually did call. Turns out the guy is a neighbor of ours in the building next door (I realized I had met him), so it’s good that it’s probably a non-issue.

Saturday night Dad came over for dinner, and we ate at a ’70s pizza parlor on 9th Ave. that looks pretty much like our apartment (right down to identical wall hangings!). Later that night, Ben, Jess, and Enoch arrived for some drinks. After a few rounds at our place, we walked to Yancy’s Saloon on Irving St. (here are the urinals there) and played Ms. Pac-Man into the night. We really had a blast as we capped off the night with the requisite stop at the 24-hour doughnut shop and the climb to the roof of our building.

It was a great first weekend in San Francisco and one I won’t soon forget.

My friend and former coworker Sandy Clark has a new comic strip called moo. It’s really funny. Check it out online:

mootoons.net

Go, Sandy, go! I’m keeping my syndication fingers crossed for you.

My post yesterday about Mandela’s comments on Bush raised quite the controversial dialogue. While I’m offline for at least a couple days during the move, please have a read, browse the comments, or join the discourse.

I must say I’m really psyched that my blog has spurred such dialogue, as I believe it’s incredibly important. It reminds me of one of my favorite quotes, from one John Milton, on whom I wrote my senior thesis in college:

Where there is much desire to learn, there of necessity will be much
arguing, much writing, many opinions; for opinion in good men is but
knowledge in the making.
-John Milton, Areopagitica

Have a great weekend!

At long last, moving day has arrived. Jen and I brought over the first carload of stuff to our strange new San Francisco apartment last night and eagerly skipped up and down Irving St. enjoying how many cool restaurants, bars, cafes, bookshops line the street. We had a tasty (less-than-20-dollar) dinner at Pasquale’s, a pizzeria on the corner of 8th Ave. & Irving.

Our apartment sure is strange, though. Pictures forthcoming…

According to former South African President Nelson Mandela, “All Bush wants is Iraqi oil, because Iraq produces 64 percent of oil and he wants to get hold of it.” You couldn’t have said it better, my friend. Here’s another great quote from Mandela on the United States:

One power with a president who can’t think properly … wants to plant the world into holocaust.

Read the full article by Common Dreams:

All Bush Wants is Iraqi Oil, Says Mandela

Will Bush and his stupid white cronies ever wake up and listen to the American people and to other world leaders?

Another interesting point from this article is this: “Mandela also questioned whether the US was ignoring the UN because its secretary-general is black.” Of course no one would ever admit that, but the black man has been repressed for so long, why would Bush stop now?

When they’re not starting trouble at the dog park or barking at your friends, life with dogs truly is priceless. Amid all the packing mania in the final stretch before tomorrow’s move to the city, Stella found a way to help out this morning:

• Stella in closet 1
• Stella in closet 2
• Stella in closet 3

Stella loves to be in small spaces, after all.