clock … watching time, the only true currency

Unbelievably, it’s been two weeks since this event. But so it goes. A fortnight ago, the wife brought me to see Will Shortz over at Berkeley, as part of the Cal Performances series. The NYTimes crossword puzzle editor and enigmatologist extraordinaire just walked on stage, talked about the history of crossword puzzles, answered questions, and [...]

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I’ve known about NextBus, but today we took advantage of the service. We made the call to head down to the Ferry Building for a visit to the Farmers’ Market, and NextBus correctly said that the 5 Fulton was 4 minutes away. We made it, which saved 25 minutes of waiting. On the way back, [...]

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We went to see Zodiac earlier in the week, and I’m mildly glad we did. Though the saga went on for years, all the killing and concern was before our time here in San Francisco. So, if nothing else, we got to see a digitally-re-created Embarcadero Freeway, the time-lapse construction of the Transamerica Building, and [...]

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On Tuesday afternoon, KPIX, the local San Francisco/Bay Area CBS affiliate ran a ConsumerWatch segment called “Faster Internet For Free?” They didn’t need the question mark, because this was about OpenDNS. (Yes, I’m biased.) It was a good description of DNS, which isn’t easy for a non-technical audience. Kudos to Allison for convincing the CBS [...]

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I don’t know if the rest of the country celebrates the arrival of Super Bowl Sunday with a running race. But San Francisco does, with the half-marathon and 5K race in Golden Gate Park. Once again yesterday, I chose the shorter distance. Actually, I never even considered going 13.1 miles. Age brings wisdom? The 5K [...]

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On Sunday afternoon, January 28, 2007, a bit after 2pm, there was a house fire on the 2000 block of McAllister Street, just off Masonic Avenue, in San Francisco, California, USA. The fire trucks’ sirens drew our attention to the black smoke pouring into the sky. We watched the ladder trucks arrive and extend, and [...]

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Ran to the Apple Store and back for another power cord, killing two birds with one stone in just under 39:00 (with a break for purchase).

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Magnetic Yellow Card is a semi-polite way to make the point that the road is for sharing. Still, despite the non-invasive, non-marking nature of this method of spreading the gospel of good manners, I’m quite sure that attaching these magnets to offending vehicles will not improve relations between drivers and bicyclists. Politeness only dulls the [...]

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Three days after running 5K in 19:22, I put in an 18:57 at Run Wild. According to the official results, 29th place overall, 7th in the M30-39 age group, with a 6:07 minutes/mile pace. I’d have to drop 90 seconds to get to top three in the age group. Not gonna happen. The dinosaur T-shirt [...]

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I spent 90 minutes doing my civic duty with the absentee ballot this evening, and I’m not quite done. While I’m not going to share my votes, I will say that the lingering indecision is on Proposition 87 (the tax on California oil production to spur alternative energy sources) and on the competing (?) flood [...]

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