On the positive side, our house does seem to be reasonably secure, at least to the casual would-be burglar. The negative side? The $185 bill for the locksmith’s services, pissing off the cat who was on the other side of the door, and the approximately hour-long wait in the garage–until about 11 pm–after I locked […]
Newsweek International Edition has published a “Global Education Special Report” with a Web Exclusive feature ranking the top 100 “global universities.” Harvard and Stanford were ranked first and second respectively, and UCSF was ranked ninth, so my household’s alma maters and current employer were quite well represented. Yale, Cal-Tech and Berkeley were ranked third, fourth, […]
I got some good news from my property management company today: my condo in Arlington has finally been rented, to “two young professionals” who will be moving in this Thursday. There’s one less thing to stress about now, at least.
The past few days, after having been to Crate & Barrel over the weekend, we’ve been thinking again about the lack of furniture in the house. At Crate & Barrel we were quite taken by the Petrie sofa (as in Rob and Laura), with its tufting and retro 1960s look. Sitting on it, we found […]
Speaking of birthdays, last Sunday we drove down to San Jose to celebrate Gene’s 40th birthday (his birthday really is the 14th, but he held his party on the 5th). We had great food (munchies first, fajitas and barbecued chicken next, and a huge pink cake–I’m talking pieces the size of a person’s head–for dessert), […]
The Web turned 15 on August 6. The BBC, which offers an interactive timeline, dates the birth of the web to August 6, 1991, when “Tim Berners-Lee formally introduced his world wide web project on the alt.hypertext newsgroup.” The first week of January 1995 I announced the availability of my first professional web site, for […]
I experienced my first California earthquake this evening. At 8:08 this evening, PDT, while Jeff and I were in the middle of making dinner, the house shook a little and belongings rattled for somewhere around one to two seconds; it sounded and felt a little like a large truck going by, and not much more […]
Yesterday I turned 44, still a pretty neat number if not quite as geeky cool as this past year’s 43. My birthday itself was quiet; Julie took me to lunch, and gifted me with a collection of Ursula K. LeGuin (a shared favorite author) short stories, but otherwise the day was unmarked. Jeff, who had […]
In my condo apartment back in Virginia I never had to deal with door-to-door solicitors. In five weeks here we’ve already been visited by Jehovah’s Witnesses twice and a young boy selling something. This afternoon was the second visit by the Witnesses. The first time we just waited quietly inside until they went away; this […]
Oh, one more thing about the San Francisco heat wave. Saturday evening Jeff and I still were comfortable in shorts and t-shirts at 9:00 when we drove his uncle and cousin to the bus station. Afterwards, before taking his mom back home, we decided to stop at a Starbucks for refreshing frosty frappucinos. The parking […]