Lee.org

The DNA Lounge is being attacked by the California Alcohol Beverage Control board. In response to JWZ’s post and Violet Blue’s article in the Chronicle, I wrote a letter to my supervisor, David Campos and a few other supervisors. It went a little like this:

Supervisor Campos,  Mirkarimi, Dufty,

Could you please look into the matter of the ABC (Alcoholic Beverage Control) attacking the DNA Lounge, a night club in the city.

I have been to the DNA Lounge on several occations and can say definitively that it is a very well run, well kept, clean, and eminently enjoyable place to spend an evening. The management does absolutely everything required of the city to run a good establishment.

The harshness of the penalties being sought against the club are entirely out-of-line with the offenses.

Business regulations exist for a good reason, to protect the public. It certainly appears in this case that the ABC is trying to wield their power inappropriately. They are not protecting the public but their egos.

Do not let the ABC bully you into thinking that they are right on this matter. They are not. They are just bullying because that is what bullies do.

Thank you,
Lee C. Sonko
[contact information redacted]

PS. You can find out more about this issue here: http://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/log/2009/02.html#13

My new band is called Ectotherm
Our debut album is titled “Do as the Romans”
Check out the cover:

(via, and)

Now it’s your turn.

The rules:

go to wikipedia, go to a random article. that is your band name.
go to random quotes and the last few words of the last quote on the first page is your album title.
go to flickr and explore the last seven days. the third picture is your album cover.

I’ll provide links:

1. random band name
2. album name
3. album cover

Thank You For Smoking – I loved this movie! Laugh out loud funny and wry. Charlotte wasn’t nearly as into it as I but she liked that I liked it.

300 – Very cool. And darned if it isn’t historically accurate.

I rode my bike to Extra Space Storage on Folsom. I had accidentally driven over the tail end of a moving truck’s ramp and I was going there to pay the guy to repair it. I wasn’t driving over because my car just the other night started sounding “bad”. Maybe a rear-right tie-rod is broken. Whenever I turn left or right, it makes this *thunk* like someone hit the side of the car with a baseball. :-(

So I’ve paid the guy and I’m getting ready to ride home and I find that I have a flat front tire on my bike. That is in addition to the slow leak on the rear tire I discovered the other day. Feh. So I walked to Box Dog Bikes but they were closed for renovations (they’ll open in a day or three, so said the guys there). So I walked to Valencia Cyclery and got a $5 patch kit. The thought of paying $40 for them to repair both my tires made me unhappy…

Feh.

But at least my dad called and told me that lonza was on its way to me shortly! Italian specialty meats will be my new avocation!

Wow, 3-D movies might just have come of age. I saw Coraline at the Alameda theater with Charlotte, Vevi and Rick the other night. The movie was such a terrific escape. They didn’t overuse the 3D and, just as importantly, it didn’t give me a headache.

What does this mean?

I feel as though some sort of “understanding” is conveyed in this video.

Wow, I’m really pretty freaked out by it.

Please tell me what it means!

If you are a friend of mine and want to use the service mentioned below via my website, give me a buzz. You won’t have to install anything on your computer. You’ll be able to read your friends’ “Friends-only” posts with Google Reader or any other service that reads RSS feeds.

Google Reader can’t read Livejournal Friends-only posts. That is a bother. It means that you have to log in to Livejournal when you want to read your friends’ “private” posts. I hate having to log in to different RSS readers which means I rarely read my friend’s private posts on Livejournal :-( ….. until now :-)

Scatmania wrote a proxy tool that makes it so your Friends-only posts can be seen by Google Reader. He released the tool as open source. Thank you Scatman Dan!

Here is the Google Reader Livejournal Feed Fetcher source code with some easy notes from me on getting it to work.

I am almost 40 years old and I still have this problem EVERY FREAKING DAY. (via)

The LCD on my Arduino works now :-)

Including the backlight (it took me wayyyy to long to figure out that I had forgotten to install one resistor on the LCD interface PCB)

Noisebridge is a good place to hang out and work on electronics :-)

I recently finished listening to an excellent audio version of Sun Tsu’s The Art of War. Wow, extremely worthwhile but watch out or you’ll start seeing the world in very extreme terms.

Just before that, I finished listening to  Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle. Bokonon is a bastard. I like him, I think.

A few nights ago I went to a Pecha Kucha event with Charlotte and Barry Cogbill. I think I would have liked it better without the loud, incessent backbeat the DJ added to everything. Though I suppose we sat too close to the speakers. I like the idea though.

I’ve been babysitting a bit. Tuesday and Wednesday. Tommy and I practiced spinning bamboo sticks, started a crystal growing kit growing, tried working out a way that he wouldn’t automatically win at his favorite game Heroscape, found out where the hidden laundry chute door is, re-worked some of his Mission to Mars Lego sets into cooler configurations (skeleton-footed rocket-pack aside), learned some karate, got really good at ReMovem on the iPod (knocking his sister’s scores off the high-scores), and all around had a good time. Phew and that was in just 2 days.

I applied for a job with Michael’s company, Earthmine. Taking apart and rewiring fancy SLR cameras. It might have worked out but unfortunately (for me) a guy with an EE degree and a willingness to do the work presented himself well :-(

Rich Humphrey had hired me 1 or so days per week to help with computer stuff. It really had the potential to go someplace but just two days ago his largest client didn’t get the funding it needed so they are likely folding / massively contracting soon… and Rich’s company is going into hibernation. :-(

Last night Rich came to the SWARM meeting and I think really pointed the group in a good direction, toward very accessible robotics for the masses. :-)

With all this laid-off-edness, I still never get enough time to work on the T. Pen!