Lee.org

I’ve built up a huge list of Fun Things to do in the Bay Area. When I want to find something fun, I go to my bookmarks and just open up ALL of these links and scroll through them looking for a muse. It often works out well.

Things to do

1

SF FunCheap

San Francisco Bay Guardian

The Dark Room: Theater, Comedy, Music, Bad Movie Night and more

Clash SF

| Fireside Storytelling

18 Reasons | Engaging Our Community Through Food and Art

BACDS — The Bay Area Country Dance Society Website

Bawdy Storytelling – Adventurous adults telling their true stories

Nerd Nite SF: Welcome to Nerd Nite SF — Every 3rd Wednesday!

HappyCortex – Event Listings – Home

Concert and Lecture Series

San Francisco Walking Tours | City Guides

Bay Area Flashmob

2

SFGate Entertainment — Guide to arts, culture, nightlife and things to do in the San Francisco Bay Area

Stage Werx Theatre

Make-Out Room Events

San Francisco Social Meals, Meet New Friends, Group Dining | Grubwithus – Never Eat Alone

SFAA Online Membership Form

SHN: The Official Site of Broadway In San Francisco – tickets, subscriptions, shows & events at the Curran, Golden Gate and Orpheum Theatres

SOMArts — Calendar

The blog

Friends of the Urban Forest – Other Projects – Tree Tours

ReidAboutSex | Reid’s Calendar

ZVents

NightLife: California Academy of Sciences

After Dark: Evening Hours for Adults | Exploratorium

Friday Nights at the de Young | de Young Museum

3

The Independent :: San Francisco, California :: Live Music Live

Broke-Ass Stuart’s Goddamn Website

readers | Quiet Lightning

Down to a Science – A San Francisco Science Cafe and Science Blog

Events | Books Inc. – The West’s Oldest Independent Bookseller

The Starry Plough Pub and Nightclub

Viracocha Sf

Welcome to 27Bards

BayAreaScience.org – The Best of Science by the Bay.

BayAreaScience.org | The Best of Science in the Bay Area

| Freight & Salvage

Ashkenaz Music & Dance Community Center

San Francisco Salsa Dance Club Bay Area Salsa Dancing Lessons

SalsaSF

4

CCSF Astronomy

SFSU Observatory

RIP  Squidlist  2013 :-(

I have been wanting this email feature for oh my god, like 20 years. Thank you internets!

Boomerang for Gmail is awesome! (that is a referral link, if you use it, we both get some free prizes like these.

Here’s a video showing Boomerang in action

You know when you send an important email and a timely response is important but you aren’t sure the person is going to respond quickly? How do you keep track of this important tidbit? What I used to do was copy-and-paste the email into a Calendar item… which is cumbersome and a PITA to do on a regular basis!

From their website:

Boomerang allows you to schedule messages to be sent or returned at a later date. Write a message now, send it whenever, even if you’re not online. Track messages to make sure you hear back, and schedule reminders right inside Gmail

I’ve been using it for a week and it works as advertised! I’m in!

There is Boomerang for Gmail on Chrome, Firefox, and Safari (Hahah, no Internet Explorer!), and Outlook too.

These are all Android apps I heartily use and recommend for my AT&T Galaxy S phone.
Find all these apps on Google Play for your Android phone.

RealCalc Scientific Calculator – a great calculator. The stock calculator suuuuucks but RealCalc is great (and costs like a buck or something!)

NoLED – It turns on the screen and tells you when you’ve missed a call or text. Essential (I can’t believe Samsung forgot this functionality!)

Google Goggles – great for scanning QR codes (those fancy new computer bar codes). It holds promise for doing a lot more, but not much more yet.

Fish Bowl – photo gallery

Clock – The built in Clock app with the wake-me-ever-so-gently “Smart Alarm” is my daily alarm clock and I love it.

Lord Of Magic – fun shoot’em up

Gmail – of course
Google Maps – of course

Silent Time – Works great to keep my phone quiet for my weekly appointments.

SwiFTP FTP Server – I use this and an FTP client on my home computer to move files from my computer to my phone

Hi-Q MP3 Recorder – Rock solid
I use this every day to record lectures and people giving me information. It is indispensable.

Chase Mobile – it’s pretty convenient depositing checks remotely!

Google Voice – works great. Once every couple months it doesn’t let me listen to voicemails but generally works great.

Andmade Share – makes sending  attachments  and such way easier

Astro Player – Music playback. Love it for the equalizer and playback speed adjuster. I record lectures in school. I use the equalizer to make the recordings listenable and I use the playback speed changer to scroll through the lectures quickly. Win!

BART Usher – It’s my go-to schedule travelling through BART

Data Traffic Monitor– Helped me diagnose a bandwidth hog program

Screen Filter – Indispensable brightness control for my AT&T Galaxy S phone.

Tasker – It is supposed to be super-duper powerful but the best use I found was that I created 6 (pretty useful) buttons with it that have obvious purposes: Sound On/Off, Wifi On/Off, 3G On/Off.

Wifi Manager – Lets me see the wifi networks around me at a glance. Nice.

Google Authenticator – If you use Gmail, you should use 2-Step Verification to protect your account! How to enable it. And a friendly video that walks you through it.

————————————————–
Here are the maybe/maybe-nots

Groupme – I WANT to love it but 2 of my friends don’t receive the messages reliably :-(

SomaFM Radio Player – I WANT to love it but It uses a bit (30kb/min… 43 megabytes/day) of bandwidth and a lot of battery even when paused. I don’t have unlimited monthly 3G bandwidth so I’m wary to use the app.

Prey – It is supposed to track my phone in case I lose it. So far I haven’t gotten it to work right. But I’m on it.

September thru December 2011 I beefed up my body a lot working out at CCSF. This semester I didn’t make nearly as much progress. On a lot of fronts I just kept things even. Here are the highlights:

Everything I do is 2 sets of 10 reps. On most machines I stayed even from last semester. Here are the differences:

Chest Press: 75lbs to 110lbs. Excellent… except that I had left off in December at 120lbs. Feh!

Lateral Raise (still trying to build up my shoulder profile) I worked it every time I went to the gym and went from 70 to 85. Importantly, just a few weeks ago I realized I’ve been sitting on the machine such that I’m mostly just using my anterior deltoids instead of the correct posture that would use my anterior AND posterior deltoids. Ugh, it’s waay harder to do the exercise the right way!

Bicep Curl: Still I’m hovering around 95lbs, but I still like how my biceps look and feel compared to before working out.

Yoga ball crunches: I lean back on top of the yoga ball and do a sit-up, it works the abs better than a sit-up, and it burns like someone is stabbing me repeatedly with a knife (joy). The knives used to be unbearable at about 8 reps, 2 sets. Now it’s about 11 reps, 3 sets.

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What’s next? I’ve always noted that I don’t have enough cardio. I’ve just been running on the treadmill to warm up for the machines. Well, over the summer I’ll be visiting Megan a lot, she lives in Kensington at the top of the Berkeley Hills, about 800 feet of elevation… I now have a nice bike… Bring it on!

Watch out for this scam. I just got an email seemingly from a professional  acquaintance  of mine saying that she had been mugged in London and needed money. It was signed with her usual signature so it looked reasonably legit. The email originated from (example) First_Last@yahoo.com. However, her email is actually First_Last@att.com! Note the changed domain!  Someone was trying to impersonate her with a new, real email address!

It was the tone of her letter that told me something was fishy. If something seems fishy, it usually is!  But man, those scammers are getting better.

Here is the message I got (I changed the name and email)

From: First Last First_Last@yahoo.com

I’m writing this with tears in my eyes, I came down to London, United Kingdom for a short vacation. Unfortunately,I was mugged at the park of the hotel where i stayed,all cash and credit card were stolen off me but luckily for me i still have my passport with me.

I’ve been to the the Police here but they’re not helping issues at all and my return flight leaves in few hours from now but I’m having problems settling the hotel bills and the hotel manager won’t let me leave until I settle the bills. Well I really need your financial assistance..

Please let me know if you can help me out?

I’m freaked out at the moment!!

First Last, Her Title
Her Organization
First_Last@yahoo.com

[Her usual email signature]

Thanks to J.D. and Gil at Workshop Weekend, I’ll be on a panel discussion Sunday at Maker Faire!

Nestled neatly between “Combining Soft Circuits and Hula Hoops” and “Creating a Middle School 3D Prototyping Lab”!

Sunday, Innovation Stage, 1:30pm. Be there!
Teaching and Inspiring New Makers – Anca Mosoiu , Workshop Weekend , Katie Dektar , Lee Sonko , Michael Shiloh
The hands-on discovery and exploration typical of Maker projects presents different challenges from traditional step-by-step instruction. Five Maker teachers with experience teaching Maker subjects discuss their experiences.

Six weeks ago I was in Florida seeing my folks. Here we are with my aunt having dinner poolside at my aunt’s place!

And sunset just down the street

Three weeks ago there was a parade here in the Mission. Here’s a shot rounding from Mission to east on 24th st :-)

I love da machines!

Two weeks ago Ben Cowden and I went out to the Monk’s Kettle at 16th & Valencia. I was passing the torch of Crucible Kinetics and Electronics Department Head to Ben. Our bartender really knew her beer and poured me this Cuvee des Jacobins Rouge beer.

I had asked for a sour tasting beer and BAM she delivered. My best description for it is “strange adult candy“.
And thanks for the beer Ben!

Last weekend I was at an engagement party at Megan’s place. It was great fun!

I just like this photo of Megan :-)

A few weeks ago in chem class we made cheese. This week we ate some eggs in vitro… eg. we digested eggs with hydrochloric acid and pepsin in test tubes. And we also digested some oil – presumably from the chips. The science of salsa is next week. Here you see some yummy oil digestion!

Lastly and certainly not leastly, the Kinetics and Electronics department set up a great table at the Crucible Fireside Lounge last night!
Rich brought his milk crate bots, Ben was manning Corpse Reviver and had some work in the gallery show. Jon and I brought our winning personalities. Darn it was fun.

I didn’t have any but I think it’s funny and amazing that products like this exist in the Bay Area:

Chronic Tonic Leisurely Lemonade

Why are things like this so hard to come by elsewhere in this fine country of ours? What a strange world we live in!

I just wrote this to BART:

I’m riding on a BART train with what I’m guessing is the new seat design… train #1773, April 30th, 6pm. They are very nice. But the seats and the whole car smells like antiseptic cleaner. Could you try to find a cleaner that doesn’t make the car smell so “antiseptic”? It kind of hurts my nose the same way that breathing Lysol fumes does.

I’m assuming the car received a “normal” cleaning and not some special bubonic plaque wipe-down.

Thanks,
Lee Sonko

Update: Michael M from Bart replied 5-2-12 at 2:58 PM

to Lee
Thank you for the message which I will share. We’ve had a very positive
reception to the new seats.
I believe the scent is just because the seating is new and the material
will “break in” after a very brief time.

Here is yet another followup post for my very popular and very useful “Nonyx Nail Gel” post. This topic has so many comments that it’s hard to sort through them, so here is another post.

Before posting a question here, please check my other posts on nail fungus:

1. Search my blog for the word “fungus”. . Make sure you read posts like the following:
2. Nonyx Nail Gel
3. Nonyx Nail Gel: Part 2
4. Nonyx Nail Gel: Part 3
5. Fungal Nail Infection Treatment
6. Zetaclear
7. Fungavir
8. Fungavir Review: Meh
9. Fungisil is a Scam

Thanks for everyone’s continued comments!