Happy Winter Solstice!

[http://dummy.us.eu.org/robert (Robert)]

Happy Winter Solstice!

Here is my latest contact information:

Robert

where-I-live
my-Oakland-voicemail-number (voicemail)
our-Hayward-phone-number
our-Oakland-cell-phone-number (cell)
http://dummy.us.eu.org/robert

This is short and sweet this year.

[Sorry to those who received my "test4" message.  Its mailing was an
 accident.]

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Lifestyle
  * Careers
    * Is it contingency or temporary?  I'm working at So_ny in San Jose
      through an agency.  I found my job by posting my resume on
      Craigslist.  (Surprisingly, all the networking groups I was involved
      in didn't help me at all.  Oh, well.)  The work is quite fun
      (machine learning research), but the commute is miserable.  Whether
      I get a ride from my co-worker (usually a 50 minute drive) or take
      public transit (a 1.75 hour trip).
    * No common tragedy here.  Up until I started this So_ny position, I
      was working occasionally for a programmer co-operative (co-op).
      (And, actually, even after I started the So_ny position, on the
      weekends.)  It's in  and are a fine bunch of people.  It is
      unfortunate that the work is not steady.
    * Breathing a business-friendly atmosphere.  To deal with taxes and so on
      as a computer consultant, I found out that I needed to acquire a
      business license.  (Not that I have had a lot of consulting gigs.  But,
      I was trying to be safe 'cause penalties for not paying business tax
      can build up.)  It was unbelievably complicated here in Alameda County
      and I am not even sure if I still met all the requirements for holding
      the license.
  * Money
    * It's your money.  It took 3 months to get our full tax refund.
      Apparently, a Robert who lived on  in  had
      piled up $300 in parking tickets in Oakland.  This other Robert
      (interestingly, by merely calling the Oakland Parking Citation Dept., I
      was able to find out what kind of car this rogue Robert drove
      as well as his full name and address; so much for privacy) had a
      different name and lived (lives?) there at a different time than when
      I lived there.  But, despite that, the state of Ca usurped
      part of the refund to pay the City of Oakland.  I had to make numerous
      calls, send lots of documentation, and eventually had to show up there
      in person to finally get the money back.  I'm glad I was unemployed
      during all this, so I had the time.
  * Transportation
    * Commuting
      * Some take the high road.  I was very lucky to find that the
        administrative assistant for the group I'm working in at So_ny
        actually lives in the same city (where-I-live).  So, she gives me a
        ride, usually 3 or 4 times a week.  It gives me more free time.
        The other days I commute by bicycle and public transit.  This
        gives me a chance to go through my bills, record my receipts, and
        get some reading done.
    * Bicycle
      * It's still trash.  I am still been riding Noelle's old beat-up
        Peugeot bicycle for commuting to work.  It still has a lot of problems.
        For example, the rear tire was constantly going flat, even after trying
        various solutions including Slime Tire.  I finally went with a solid
        polymer inner tube and it works great.  But, no matter what problems
        it has, until I know that I'll have a steady job at So_ny, I'm reluctant
        to buy a new bicycle.
      * Not too annoyed.  The drivers don't seem as aggro as Boston during
        the Critical Mass bicycle rides.  While I was unemployed, I was going
        nearly religiously every month to the  Critical Mass.  But,
        being employed has put a damper on that.
    * Buses
      * You get what you pay for.  I've been slowly discovering that despite
        San Francisco (MUNI) buses being only $1, they are chronically late
        and slow.  When using http://transit.511.org, I think you have to
        assume that bus trips will take about 3 times longer than it reports.
        Account accordingly.
  * Travel
    * Not since I was 2.  At least, that's what my mom tells me when I asked
      when I was last at Yosemite Park.  We visited Yosemite end of October.
      We stayed in a hotel in Mariposa (since it was cheaper) and drove to
      Yosemite.  We went to both the valley and the giant Sequoia trees.
      It was raining on and off and there was snow on the ground.  Because I
      wore my rain boots and not hiking boots, my feet were killing me for
      several days after that.  Our original plan was to go to Mono Lake, but
      the pass was closed due to an early season snow storm.
  * Family
    * My vas is still gone.  We still occasionally go to S.F. No Kidding
      events.  Noelle goes to a monthly No Kidding book reading group.  And
      I've been involved in the East Bay Childfree Meetup.
    * It's hard being a vegan.  So, we held our wedding reception/party on
      Feb 14.  My parents and my sister came.  We all drove down to Santa
      Barbara.  I wore my outfit and various people made toasts and so on.
      It was good, except all I could eat was salad, bread, wine, and water
      since they failed to make any vegan items.  Darn.  We all hung out at
      Santa Barbara for a day and then we drove back towards the Bay Area,
      dropped off my mom in Santa Cruz, and my sister and dad hung out
      in the Bay Area for a while longer before picking my mom up in Santa
      Cruz.
  * Home
    * More Boston realizations.  I was thinking about the Childfree Meetup
      group in Boston and remembering that it almost always met at a pub.
      Here in the Bay Area, there are far fewer pubs and it's easier to
      find places to meet where I am able to eat vegetarian and not have
      to drink.  Just a small level of culture difference, but something
      that makes me understand my values and where I am.
  * Holidays
    * Oh, foo.  Tofu, that is.  I went back to tofu this year on Thanksgiving.
      It was good.  I also didn't bring rutabaga and other stuff.  So, it was
      a pretty minimalist T-day.
    * Nothing changes on New Year's Eve Day.  My friend in  invited
      us for an Ethiopean Feast on New Year's Eve.  It was interesting and
      good ('though quite crowded).
  * Health
    * Back to the chain.  I had been exercising at the gym regularly before
      I started working, but now I only work out once a week at Bally's
      Fitness (the same club chain I went to in Boston).
    * Breakfast of Champions.  I tried an experiment and tried cutting wheat
      out of my diet as much as possible.  I've found that my RSI (repetitive
      strain injury) is better if I don't eat anything wheat-based in the
      morning.
  * Food
    * Got 'shrooms?  We went to the Fungus Fair early December, all about
      mushrooms.  We bought a small amount of matsutake mushrooms and fried
      them with some garlic at home.  Quite tasty.  We attended a presentation/
      lecture on psychoactive mushrooms.  It was really entertaining and very
      interesting.
  * Books
    * Getting a job is a job.  I only read two books this year:

        The Overnight Job Change Strategy
        I'd Rather Have a Root Canal Than Do Cold Calling

      I've started other books, but haven't finished them.
  * People
    * Missing persons.  Last solstice message, some messages bounced.  I no
      longer have email addresses for these people:

        Louis Dunne
        Michael Teixeira
        Amanda Dahl
        Marc Berkowitz
        Clayton Glad
        Tracey Layman (Ingle)
        Susan Norris
        Chris Golden
        Mike Hamrick
        Ben Morss
        Debbi Baird
        
      If you're in contact with any of these people, please tell them that
      I am missing their email addresses.

Entertainment        
  * Movies
    * We sold out.  Or perhaps bought in.  Regardless of which, I bought
      a DVD player.  It turned out that there was a bunch of stuff that was
      only available on DVD.  The other side effect of this is that we signed
      up for Netflix.  (At first, I signed up for Facets, but that turned out
      to be a mistake.)  So, the bad part of that is that we are no longer
      supporting the mom-and-pop video places, in addition to feeling less
      drive to actually go to a movie theater to see a movie.  (There are
      some movies at the Pacific Film Archive which do not seem to end up
      in Netflix.)  We'll find out whether it was all worth it.
    * Lens or net.  MovieLens (http://movielens.umn.edu) database has been
      bad about keeping up with new movies.  Netflix's recommendation system
      seems fairly lacking, but I still use it.  Here are the significant
      movies we've seen at Netflix which are not in MovieLens:
        Hearts and Minds (1974)
        NoMeansNo/Hanson Brothers
      Here the movies that we saw in the theater but is not in MovieLens:
        The Corporation
        The Yes Men
      BTW, if you'd like to see our Netflix queue, click on
      http://rss.toolbot.com/?feeds=http%3A%2F%2Frss.netflix.com%2FQueueRSS%3Fid%3DP8598597045281752300300559819027949%0D%0A
    * Idle hands.  A couple of my team members at Prosearch (the job search
      group) and I saw a lot of movies in the theater while unemployed, but
      none of which aren't listed in MovieLens or Netflix.  It certainly gave
      me the opportunity to see a lot of movies which Noelle would never see.
  * Music
    * A midsummer night's rock.  Noelle and I finally saw Rush at the Concord
      Pavillion.  It was good to see them, although the parking arrangements
      at the Concord Pavillion leave a lot to be desired.  There was not
      supposed to be any smoking, but someone was there violating the rules
      and it was unpleasant.  We got the cheap tickets so it was hard to see
      'em.  What I thought was funny was how Geddy Lee kept saying "thanks a
      lot" because another Canadian band we know (No Means No) always says
      that, too.  I was trying to convince Noelle that that was how they
      say it in Canada (just in case we have to flee the country due to the
      outcome of the presidential election).
    * It's spelled different than the company or train set.  My Prosearch
      team members and I went to the San Francisco Asian Museum.  They had
      a no-entrance fee day (just the price I was looking for while unemployed)
      and we walked around.  We also saw some Taiko drumming.  It was really
      cool and impressive.  I never got to see it so close before.  The
      rhythms are fairly complex but performance plays a big part.
  * Television
    * What do we want?  NOW.  When do we want it?  NOW.  NOW (with Bill
      Moyers) is one of the few shows we still watch on television
      regularly.  Sadly, since Bill Moyers has left the show, the show
      will be cut down to a half-hour.  It's already painful to see it as
      it is (10pm on a Friday on our local PBS station) and cutting it
      down to a half-hour will severely restrict the show.  Probably the
      sole corporate underwriter of the program will stop its funding once
      Bill Moyers leaves and the extreme right wing conservatives don't
      want any public money going towards a left/progressive show,
      especially one that's so well-produced and poignant.
  * Radio
    * A commercial alternative.  The one thing that makes the marginalization
      of NOW (see above) tolerable is Air America Radio.  They finally started
      broadcasting it here in the Bay Area (a Clearchannel Communications
      station, unfortunately) and we especially like The Majority Report with
      Janeane Garofalo.  We tolerate the ads, but it's programming that we
      can't get anywhere else, not even Pacifica (KPFA) nor PBS/NPR (KQED).
    * Frankly speaking.  We went to see Joe Frank in person (or perhaps
      "in concert") for Noelle's birthday.  He's a monologist (see
      http://www.joefrank.org) who is broadcast from KCRW and from
      Pacifica radio stations.

Politics/Society
  * Economics
    * An oldie but goodie.  Over the summer, Noelle and I attended
      Thursday nights classes held by Doug Dowd (http://www.dougdowd.org),
      an 85 year old radical economist who knew Roosevelt.  He tells it
      straight and doesn't mince words.  The classes were held in 
      at the Niebyl-Proctor Marxist Library.  The classes provided a lot
      of insight into modern U.S. society and some glimpses of Italian
      society.  He's author of several books, of which we'll probably
      never have time to read.
  * Ecology/Overpopulation
    * The Supreme Court may decide.  I didn't know that Bush would win
      and Rehnquist would be a goner when I took classes at the San
      Francisco Planned Parenthood to train as an escort earlier this
      year.  This involved not only attending classes, but also signing
      all sorts of forms and ultimately getting a TB test and a physical
      exam.  It wasn't as complicated in Boston.  Anyway, I was hoping to
      help out in the where-I-live office, but it looks like there are no
      anti-choice protesters.  I do occasionally get e-mailings for the
      San Francisco and San Mateo offices, but I haven't volunteered yet
      for those offices.
    * Squash hasn't been quashed.  I did table for Planned Parenthood at
      the where-I-live Zucchini Festival.  I can't say that it was exciting, but
      I did feel I was doing my part towards supporting Planned Parenthood
      Golden Gate.

Technology
  * Software
    * PC
      * Users from another planet.  I've finally started attending some
        Linux Users Groups in the area.  Conveniently, the where-I-live Linux Users
        Group (it took me forever to actually find out when and where they
        meet -- it seems a well-kept secret) meets on Saturday, which means,
        even with this job, I can participate.  I did attend a couple of
        San Francisco Linux Users Groups meetings, but, since I've been working
        a full week, I can no longer make those meetings.  (Even the users
        group in Fremont doesn't completely work out for me because the
        meeting runs 'til after all the buses stop running.)