San Francisco Firehouse Budgets

I wrote this email to my city Supervisor today

Supervisor Campos,

I recently received an email from the San Francisco “Save our Firehouses” campaign (http://saveourfirehouses.com) They urged me to write to you.

I don’t know if the budget should be cut for fire houses. But I -do- know that unions usually have too much sway. Since the fire department is begging to not have their budget cut, and their campaign does not seem to be driven by fire fighting statistics, but firefighters saving cute dogs (http://saveourfirehouses.com/about.html), then I suspect their budget is a little too large.

Thank you and have a great day,
Lee C. Sonko
[address redacted]

Alcohol Beverage Control Goons

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 Band

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

Movies of Late

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.

Some days…

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!

Coraline

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.

Staring Rats

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!

Google Reader Friends-Only Livejournal Feed Fetcher

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.

XKCD Speaks to Me

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

Arduino LCD

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 :-)