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There was a tiny earthquake a few minutes ago. It’s weird, no one else in the building felt it. If not for the USGS, I’d think the building was just settling, or I was going crazy.

It was a 4.1 near San Jose.

Went to Tron Legacy last night. Tron wasn’t very good but going out with Jeni was very nice.

Thursday went to a March Fourth Marching Band concert at the Independent with Jeni. It was seriously the most fun I’ve had in a while. To describe the band, put the following in one of those “Will it blend?” blenders: marching band, jazz, danger, soul, hula, burlesque, funk, stilts, big band, dixie, and 1 ounce of high grade plutonium for umph.

Skip to 1:00 into the video

Pix from our show

The stiltwalkers cleared an area in front and did some pretty amazing stunts. We were in the front row and our teeth were not knocked out by long wooden poles.

Presenting The March Fourth Marching Band!

The night went very well :-)

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Schuyler dancing with a coin operated boy at the Warfield, new years eve!

Friday night Schuyler and I went to the Dresden Dolls / Pomplamoose new years eve show at the Warfield. (sideline: I got awesome news, Schuyler officially became a professional artistic blacksmith at 7pm, when his Kickstarter campaign came through with $5,000 to build his portfolio in the coming months!)

Pomplamoose

I was a little disappointed that Pomplamoose hasn’t yet translated the fun energy they project on their multitudinous Youtube videos to their stagecraft. As a matter of fact, Schuyler and I were standing outside the hall for several minutes hearing “some opening act” before I realized it was them. I’ll still follow their careers, there’s a lot to come!

Dresden Dolls at the Warfield

Dresden dolls were in high form. Maybe I never realized it but Brian Viglione is a really good drummer. Their music is more “listen and connect” than “dance a joyous groove” like March Fourth from the night before. Nonetheless, they rocked.

As the concert was starting, Schuyler and I met a girl, then her boyfriend later. Z and Steven were in San Francisco from Vancouver for work and fun and we certainly helped them with the fun part, making a little fun in their hotel room til just past 3.

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The four of us met up again Saturday night. We weren’t sure what to do so we went on a burrito tour! We only ended up eating at Taqueria San Jose and Cancun because they were all closed for the holiday! But we got to throwing in a Chinese place in the Tenderloin and a fun hour or so at Noisebridge. It’s kind of an odd kismet that one of Steven’s missions in the Mission was to visit Noisebridge and, as it turns out, I’ve got a key to the place on my keyring! He was all worried about there not being events going on and getting in the front door and such. Worried were allayed :-)

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Sunday, fantastic birthday pajama brunch at Jeni’s. Then a late afternoon with Marah; SF Moma!

Some highlights include:

• The spotlight following people in the lobby. Apparently it’s computer and/or internet controlled. I’ll have to check that out tomorrow.
• The wine exhibit (I asked Marah to smell the wines blindfolded and she could tell the difference, calling the petrol scented one “not fruity and not grassy”, twisting her nose a bit. That’s a success in my book)
• Seeing an entirely black painting… actually, a photograph of a lynching that can only be seen in infrared. A camera and TV showed you what was really there. I like that the scene was blacked out. The museum had this whole area on death and violence and the blocked out one was my favorite. I say, “leave the dying for when I’m dead.”

Loving this Magritte at SF Moma

A wine glass INSIDE a bottle of wine (hard to see, sorry)

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4 days straight of being on the go for fun. Phew, I’m exhausted!

I ran Jailbreakme.com from my iPhone 3.whatever, installed Cydia, then installed SBSettings, Backgrounder, and ProSwitcher.

I’ve now got the ability to background tasks, enable and disable screen rotation at will, change screen brightness with just a few clicks, see the precise percentage of charge remaining

So far, it seems to be working fine. The most annoying thing is that it takes a long time to load Cydia each time I want to go shopping. But that’s it.

Screw you Steve Jobs for not allowing these features inside your walled garden willingly. This will be my last Apple product.

Lifehacker has good things to say about Jailbreakme.

I am still bothered by my phone running slower and slower over the past few months. I noticed that when I run my phone in Safe Mode, it is much faster. I might leave it in Safe Mode forever. To get into safe mode, start up SBSettings, click on “Power”, click on “Safe Mode”.

When you are in safe mode, multitasking doesn’t seem to work. I’m not sure yet which I prefer, having multitasking (and a crappy slow iphone) or having a fast iphone.

Want to join me to see Pomplamoose at the Warfield on New Years eve?

Tickets are $45 (general) and $60 (seated) (including Ticketmaster’s “fuck you” fee)

Call me if you wanna go. You wanna go.

Oh and Dresden Dolls too!

It’s 7am and I’m in Newark Airport waiting for a bus to Laguardia Airport. My flight back to SF was cancelled due to the weather on the 26th (oh the weather outside was frightful…) and Delta rescheduled my flight for this morning at 5:55am. I kept checking their website and was never able to “check-in” because of a problem with their site, “we have hit some turbulance” shone the letters in in Delta maroon. Well, it turns out that the error was hiding an important issue. Most flights out of Newark were cancelled. In retrospect, I should have looked up my flight by flight number instead of assuming that my rebooked flight was ok (I had figured that since they rebooked me last time the flight was cancelled, if the new flight was cancelled they would… Well it doesn’t really matter what I figured, does it?) so now I’m on a bus to Laguardia sitting next to a Brazilian/Japanese paleative care nurse. It was enjoyable trying to chat with her, using my horrid Spanish, her Portuguese and Spanish and a translation guidebook for words like “security” (she was wondering if taking a taxi instead of the bus to Laguardia was safe). I’m on a bus to Laguardia, on to Atlanta and the San Jose. I’m a bit worried because I’m getting in to San Jose at 10pm and I don’t have a solid idea as to how to get to San Francisco. All I know is that it’ll involve at least 2 transfers and if I’m unlucky, the BART will shut down for the night before I get home. I suppose that’ll just mean an expensive cab ride home.

I gave a hand in the airport to a Brazilian woman who only speaks Portuguese and Japanese. It felt good being helpful, it helped pass the time, and it’s a little better to travel with a companion than alone. We had fun translating words like “safety” from her poor Spanish to my terrible Spanish. She was concerned about the safety of taking a cab from Newark to Laguardia.

It’s remarkable how facial expressions are almost entirely universal while languages are infinitely divergent.

It’s now 1:30 and I’m sitting at the gate in Laguardia airport. Pheh.

I can’t tell if this wordpress app for iPhone is sucking or if it’s the phone itself. It is terribly slow and sometimes loses sections I have writtens.So I will write later.

A coworker’s sister produced this pretty sweet music video. Check it out.

A Token of the Wreckage” – Megan Slankard

local version:

Watch the lunar eclipse live right now. It’s cloudy in San Francisco so this will have to do.

My friend Schuyler has a Kickstarter project to help him build his blacksmith portfolio. Watch the video on his Kickstarter page.

skiing in Tahoe

horseback riding
saw walnuts in Walnut Creek, and California peppercorns in… ummm Walnut Creek,

drumming

horsing around

cleaned house (which was more fun than you might imagine)