Mailbox Peak

I hiked Mailbox Peak with my friend Andrew and some of his friends a few weeks ago. I hadn’t been hiking in a long time and was really out of shape.  It was three miles long and 3900 feet up to the summit. I was so tired by the time I got to the bottom I was hobbling with the help of my walking stick. The trail didn’t switch back and forth so much as plough straight up the mountainside with few places to rest. The sky was overcast for most of the morning, but burned off later. Sunbeams poked through the clouds and trees near the tree line, making a striking effect. I forgot to bring sunscreen, of course, having not done outdoorsy things in a great while, and got quite a burn on my forearms and neck. My arms just stopped peeling a couple days ago. My legs were sore for days, almost a week. It felt great to get out there and feel my heart thumping in my chest again.

Facebook changed my profile

At some point Facebook decided to convert everyone’s profile information like Favorite Movies or Interests from free-form text to lists of Facebook pages. Now my profile doesn’t say I like the TV show Heroes, but instead says I like the TV show Official HEROES Page. Terrible.

When they switched, they automatically matched up your profile’s text with existing pages and converted it for you. Unfortunately, the exact meaning of the text can be lost. For example, under Interests, I put Girls (in a dating sense), but if you go to the Girls page, it shows two adorable young girls, no more than eight years old. Great, now I’m a pedophile.

Thank you, Facebook.

My favorite Snow Crash quotations

I’m rereading it again. Ah, so good.

“In fact, the squat franchise itself looks like nothing more than a low-slung base for the great aramid fiber pillars that thrust the billboard up into the trademark firmament. Marca Registrada, baby.”

“When Hiro first saw this place, ten years ago, the monorail hadn’t been written yet; he and his buddies had to write car and motocycle software in order to get around. They would take their software out and race it in the black desert of the electronic night.”

“It’s like, if you—people of a certain age—would make some effort to just stay in touch with sort of basic, modern-day events, then your kids wouldn’t have to take these drastic measures.” —Y.T.

“After that—after Hiro gets onto his motorcycle, and the New South Africans get into their all-terrain pickups, and The Enforcers get into their slick black Enforcer mobiles, and they all go screaming out onto the highway—after that it’s just a chase scene.”

“Jack the sound barrier. Bring the noise.”

LinkedIn

I signed up for a LinkedIn account a while ago. I can’t remember how it happened. I know it wasn’t because all the cool kids were doing it. Maybe I did it just in case it turned into something big, and then I’d already be registered. Anyways, I never use it, but I periodically get ‘acquaintance’ requests (there’s nothing fun or friendly about them; the lame default message that everyone uses is something like “I would like to establish a connection with you”) from people I know in person, and occasionally from people I’ve never met. It’s a chore. Sign in, accept, sign out. I don’t look back. I don’t know why I do it. I don’t know why other people do it, either. I never hear anyone talk about being on LinkedIn. It’s such a boring place to be. ‘Connecting’ with connections just to network is so uninteresting. I’m pretty sure my profile doesn’t have any of my work information past my second or third year of college. I guess the point is that LinkedIn should just die and we can all stop feeling obligated to maintain our presence there. Good riddance.

Translations

I’ve sometimes observed the following meanings for religious sayings:

• It’s god’s will: I think it’s fine; I want it to happen; leave things alone.
• Amen: I agree; I’m right.

Apparently, when you have a personal thought, you can shroud it in divine invocations to make it sound more legitimate and unquestionable. It’s really quite fascinating when you consider the complexity of what’s being communicated and how it’s being interpreted.

District 9

Just saw District 9 with Brian and Shay. It was great to see a sci-fi movie in the theaters (and I don’t mean the kind of sci-fi that Transformers is). Although there wasn’t much science in the movie. Still, fun to see aliens, and the parallels between how the humans treat the aliens and South Africa’s racial history were interesting to see. There were a few plot holes, I think, but it was still fun to watch. I got creeped out by the mutation and mutilation scenes. Ugh. I was hoping they’d show the guy being turned back again at the end, but oh well. The main character (I don’t even remember his name, it was a foreign one) reminded me of the British TV show The Office’s version of Michael Scott before he was told there was a way to save himself. All in all, good stuff. I’d see it again sometime.

Bought my holiday flight tickets

I figured that it would be cheaper to fly from the SEA airport in Seattle to SFO in San Francisco than to SMF in Sacramento, since there would probably be more flights on that route. I just checked and found to my surprise that SFO tickets are significantly more expensive. Maybe there’s more demand? Interesting.

I wish one of these flight booking web sites would create a feature that would find the best ticket deal for me for a given holiday. I could just say, “I want to fly from Seattle to Sacramento for Christmas and be there about a week,” and it would alert me when it found the best deal. Super sweet. Bing has some new tools that help you figure that stuff out yourself, but it doesn’t do it for you.

I just bought tickets for my flights home for Thanksgiving and Christmas. For the first time, I bought tickets directly from the airline instead of through sites like Priceline or Travelocity. The last time I bought through one of those sites I got sick just before the flight and had to eat the cost because the tickets were non-refundable. Never again.

Around and around

I just know Herbal Essences is scamming me. The shampoo bottle empties faster than the conditioner bottle, but both are the same size. So I get more of the same shampoo, but then the conditioner runs out, so then I get more of the same conditioner. Around and around. Curse you, evil cleansing company! Must you torment me so?

Bang

There was a gunshot about a block from my building after midnight about a week ago. A few minutes afterward, several police cruisers arrived with lights flashing. It seemed to happen in front of some kind of bar or restaurant that I could see from my bedroom window.

What the hell’s going on? Chill out, people!

Fleeting expertise

I discovered a web site that’s great for learning how to shop for products I’ve never bought before in a short period of time. When I shop, I want to buy something I know will satisfy my needs for the foreseeable future. I don’t want to have to buy another one because it broke or a newer one came out that I want instead. I want to do the comparison shopping and deal seeking just once.

This web site helps me do that. It covers a variety of products, from electronics to kitchen. For each kind of product, they tell you what to look for, how to make comparisons, and then list several products they’ve concluded to be the best in several categories according to a variety of sources like Consumer Reports and the Amazon.com customer reviews. It’s a great way to get to the bottom of it all and come out feeling like you’re making the right choice. I’ve used it for buying my television, my mattress, and my paper shredder.

For example, here are my notes from this web site about down comforters:

• Egyptian cotton and white goose down. Feathers and synthetic are bad.
• Fill power is the space occupied by one ounce of down. It provides warmth, insulation, loft, and overall quality. More is better. High quality: 700+. Excellent quality: 600-700. Good quality: 525-600.
• Thread count determines softness and durability. Higher is better. A high thread count keeps fill in and impurities out. Examples: 325, 400, 600, and 700.
• Baffle box construction (“baffled”) has vertical cloth walls sewn in to spread out the fill. Not all have it, so check.
• The warranty can indicate its quality. It can range from one year to lifetime.
• Must get a duvet. It should be 100% cotton and have a high thread count.
• The size should be specific. For example, “Queen”, not “Full/Queen”.
• Measure your bed to ensure it will fit properly. It should drape down the sides of the bed.
• Gusset edges surround the outer edge and maximize loft.

I have a problem with my current down comforter. The down pokes through the comforter and duvet, and looks like a mess on the duvet cover. After reading this web site, I learned this was because the thread count of my comforter and duvet are too low. Who knew? Not me.

The web site is consumersearch.com.