Today I got a new toy!!!! A brand new GPS-enabled heart-rate-monitor super watch, the Garmin Forerunner 305. It’s the ideal gadget for serious runners and triathletes. Not that I’m a serious runner, but I do love to geek out. The GPS is pretty robust, allowing the device to record your route as you run (GPS accuracy within 10 meters, typical). The heart rate monitor keeps track of your pulse (of course), so you can see how hard you’re working. And its got all sorts of timers and alerts and other stuff.
The main reason I got it is because I *do* run and wanted to track my routes. After some looking, I was sold by this one picture – it shows a map of SF with the route highlighted, and some stats on the left. Exactly what I was looking for. Thanks for the pic, Bijan Sabet.
Who doesn’t love Pirates? Matt Mason points out another reason to love them – they are good for markets in the long term. For example, William Fox didn’t want to pay Edison royalties to do movies, so he went out west to what eventually became Hollywood. Today pirates still do illegal activity, but is it really wrong? Read more on the Pirate’s Dilemma.
The New Year has arrived. And with it people pause, look back, look forward, figure out where they want to be and what changes are needed to get there. Well, that’s what I’ve been doing the last two years. Mostly looking back on my career and trying to figure out where i want to be in 5 years. So far nothing has presented itself as the clear winner. But during this time I’ve lived life – traveled, learned, had fun, and did what i wanted to. Here’s what I’ve concluded
- Spend time thinking about what’s really important to you. Be honest. Write them down. Look at it everyday. Make changes as you need to so it is accurate, but work towards a final list. Revisit only when you have major life changes.
- Implement it. That is, do things that are directly related to what is on that list. For example, If family is important, do activities with your family (watching TV does not count). If they are not around, make something for them. The point is to consciously spend time on the things that matter.
The steps are simple, but they have definitely improved my life and reduced some of the anxiety I’ve felt about “what do i want to do with my life”. Here is my list, still in flux, and kept concise – note the last one – more of reminder on how to live life, to be applied no matter what i’m doing. Likewise, i can combine things like have fun listening to new music with friends (triple play).
– Friends, Family
– Fun, Music
– Learning, New Experiences
– Exercise, Nature
– Giving Back
– Love, Honesty, and Respect
This is not a “New Years Resolutions” List. This is just a list of what’s important to me. I also made a new years resolution list – some of it is personal, but i’ll quickly list a few things
– Work on patience – especially for those i love.
– Perfection – Be more comfortable with lack of it.
– Start getting paid again (5 year plan)
– Be more Green (see Understanding Green Business, coming soon)
– Spend more time appreciating friends and my blessing (thanks to Otto for reminding me to give thanks)
This was another big year for me. Not as life changing as 2006, but still very significant. The 2 biggest things were traveling around the world for 6 months and getting serious with Shayna Cohen. Most everything else could be lumped into 2 groups – working on my 5-year plan and having fun (and how).
Similar to last year, i like to look at flickr pics to give me a recap on what i did. Starts off with a couple events before my Round The World trip – Dinner and Trivial Pursuit at 126 and My sendoff. Then there’s Round The World 2007, My return, Fred and Megan’s Wedding, Burningman, Moving into 116 San Jose with Shayna, Treasure Island Music Festival, halloween and Brasstax Renegade, Birthdays (Shayna, Eumi, Rick, Carrina, Sarah Bates) and Quality time with the Family over Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Besides all the fun with friends and family covered in those pics, I also spent time looking inward. Organizing and Prioritizing my life. Some of the fruits of this led me down paths such as getting an MBA (postponed for now), Understanding Green Business (lots more on that later) as well as starting my own business, among other things. I also got closer to Shayna. I feel so lucky and blessed to have her in my life. Looking forward, she is moving to Chicago in August to attend grad school. So the big question is .. do i go with her?
Just got back from another trip back to the east coast, this time for Christmas. Similar to Thanksgiving, I flew in and out of Atlanta, spending a few days at my parents house in Atlanta and then a few days on Tybee Island, about 5 hours away on the coast of Georgia. My younger sister Leslie and her family did not make it to Tybee, so we had a nice Christmas dinner at her house Saturday. My older sister Lara and her family drove up from Tybee for this (and other reasons), so we had the whole family together Saturday (Yay). After dinner on Saturday we exchanged a few presents, including my gift to my family – a 8×10 149 -picture Flickr/Qoop photo book (a great success).
Sunday we drove down to Tybee Island to spend Christmas day on the beach. We got to see Amazing Addy (my niece) and Super Sam (my nephew) take part in Christmas eve services at the local church. Then we went home, had our usual homemade pizza, set out milk, brownies, and carrots for Santa and the reindeer. Christmas morning was not as hectic as in the past. The kids opened presents around 8am, I got to play with them while we snacked on sausage biscuits, egg and ham casserole, and apple cinnamon bread. Then my parents and I hit the road back to ATL to catch my flight back to California.
Over a year ago i talked about getting health insurance. As I discussed in that blog, I ended up with Blue Cross PPO. Over thanksgiving health insurance was being discussed, this time with my sister and her family, and decided I should re-survey the landscape. Especially since Blue Cross jacked the price in March 2007 from $127/month to $170/month.
This time I went with Blue Shield’s PPO 4000 plan. Basically its $96/month for $4,000 deductible. Once deductible is met, Blue Shield covers pretty much everything, as long as i see in-network doctors. But until deductible is met, i pay for everything myself except regular doctor check-ups, which are $35. Of course, you never know if everything is really covered. Once again, thanks to eHealthInsurance for making it easy to find and apply for my current plan.
Friday we went to see Kooza for Fritz’s Birthday. Kooza is the name for the Cirque du Soleil show here in San Francisco. It was amazing. It’s my third Cirque du Soleil show, not the best, but none were better – they are all awesome in their own way. Music, Lighting, Showmanship, Story (yes, the show sorta had a story), and unbelievable acts. My favorite act was the 2 dudes running in 2 giant metal circles as they spin around like a ferris wheel. I also love the couple dancing while the guy rode a unicycle, as well as the 3 crazy gymnastical girls. But the whole show was awesome and I highly recommend going. They’re in SF till Jan 20 and then San Jose till March 16.
Like last weekend, this was another busy one with friends. Too many parties and events. Even with my cold, I still made it to House of Things party friday night, a little bit of Santacon Saturday, and still had enough energy to help my friend Juan move on Sunday. Last weekend involved Amnesia, Shooting Ranges, more house parties, and Birthday expedition to the Exploratorium.
I also returned my 42″ Panasonic to Costco (after 88 days and no box, no questions asked, cash back, Hurray) and bought Juan’s Sony 40″ Bravia. I did it cuz i wanted a better picture (the panasonic sometimes was off with the colors), but some have complained about a sony backlighting issue. We’ll see.
Did i ever mention i love my friends? Well, Emily got the girls together and made this HOT calendar. Pictures were taken earlier this year, and they just had their release party last night at Shine. From the back of the calendar
“While visiting a friend’s garage, I noticed he had no girlie calendars displayed. Instead of buying a calendar that had some unknown hot women, I thought it would be much more appropriate to create a calendar featuring my own hot friends. Thus, with tireless help from talented photographer and friend Gwen McKay, this calendar was borne. What this calendar doesn’t reveal about these women is that not only are they beautiful, but they are also incredibly smart – a deadly combination. I am fortunate to have such an amazing cast of friends, and I want to thank them all for their participation in the creation of this calendar.” – Emily The Great.
These 2008 calendars cost $20 – lemme know if you want one.
Today my beautiful new 24″ monitor arrived. Thanks, Mr. Fedex!! I ordered the Samsung 245T after doing a bunch of research (xbitlabs, trusted reviews, cnet). Specifically, its the best 1920×1200 24″ flat-screen out there under $1000. Besides awesome screen quality (my, what a wide color gamut you have), it has tons of inputs (DVI, HDMI, VGA, S-Video, RCA, Component), USB Hub, and PIP (picture-in-picture). Its also quite popular – constantly out of stock everywhere as soon as stock arrives (pricegrabber). I ended up paying about $700 for it. Yeah, i’m a geek.
I haven’t had cable or satellite since 2003 – over 4 years. Just a DVD player and computer connected to my TV. And i think its great – easier and better suited to my lifestyle. Everybody knows how to rent a DVD from the local video store or get’em in the mail from Netflix, so today i’m just gonna discuss watching from your computer (I connect my macbook pro to my HDTV and watch it on that).
So what to watch? Well, some people really like Tivo to get shows – it saves stuff for you as it comes on TV, makes it easy to skip passed commercials, etc. I prefer to download an entire season of a TV show at once, like LOST, Heroes Season 1, or my favorite, The Wire. But sometimes you need more recent shows, like The Colbert Report. You can also get classic movies like caddyshack or browse the latest comedies or latest action movies.
Note – the system is not perfect – if something is not popular, its hard to download. Thats why i always tell people to sort the results by number of seeders (people sharing), and only download ones that are easy to get (like 10 seeders minimum, 50+ seeders is best).
On the techie side, you’re just downloading a small torrent file from the links above, which just tells your torrent client where to get the rest of the data. Kinda like google search results tells your browser (firefox) where to get the thing you’re looking for. Once you have the torrent file, you wait anywhere from a day (new movies are popular) to over a week (Heroes season 1 is 4 GB) while your torrent client does all the downloading. What torrent client should you get? I like Azureus for Windows and Transmission for Mac OS X.
Mininova is the most popular site to get torrent files, but there are other torrent sites.
Disclaimer: Don’t download any movies you don’t already own – thats illegal.