Talking with Mothers

I never did mind chatting amiably with someone's mother. Today, I ran into a mother who has scolded us a bit for making a racket on the porch after hours. She was outside playing with her cute 2-year old in the afternoon and we struck up a conversation.

I guess being a mother makes you want to interface with adults, and since, as I learned, she has a product management job she does from home, she never escapes. Brad's mom too can really chat up a storm, as I learned crashing at his house for a week or so just before I ejected from Pittsburgh. Maybe my perception is skewed because mothers all want to give me personally advice, since I probably seem so in need of it. But there have ust been so many chatty mothers.

While I know multiple anecdotes does not equal data, I believe mothers are a chatty bunch, and we should all remember to talk to our own and others once in a while, though I am perhaps the most guilty on the planet of neglecting my own mother. Sorry mom!

Be nice, because the mothers do the birthing and the raising, until Sara4 has her way and men get special genetic enhancements to enable them to bear children and share the burden that has kept women subdued since random chance created our mottled universe.

Pictures of Me

Since I resucitated my laptop for the move out west, I came across a host of pictures from my college days. I culled the ones of me and posted them on www.myspace.com/darnjew

See if you can pick out all the ex-girlfriends :)

Thank You, Mister Window Smashy Man

Thank You, Mister Window Smashy Man.

I know I was dumb to leave an iPod charger cable in sight, and that lockbox that could have had money in it in plain view. Why didn't you steal the charger cable? The contents of that box weren't nearly as valuable.

I'm sure you liked examining my dice, small glass stones, geodes, and my little stacked turtle statue made of shells with heads that bob that my Grandma (God rest her soul) gave me because I always loved turtles.

I'm sure you are enjoying the foreign coins from all of my travels, my old pennies, and the small section of Bic pen tube with the suspicious blue residue on it. I surely hope that my passport serves you well, my rubber bands, and the statuette of the Egyptian Jackal God(EJG) that one of my ex-girlfriends brought me as a souvenir.

Maybe you will come across this post, and if so, what can I give you for my knick knacks and memories? You can keep the Gameboy games... I've beat them all and they wouldn't sell for a dime. I hope the EJG eats your face.

Wrong Andrew

Here is the best misfired email that I have ever gotten, fresh off the presses, received this morning, complete with one-hour later follow-up after realizing the mistake. This was from a recruiting manager with a firm I had been in talks with:

--------------------------------
Subject: Worms

Andrew,

Yep…that can has been officially popped open. Ut oh….i better watch out.

How are you today?

I am wearing a skirt…if you were wondering : )

Kim
--------------------------------

Talking about your skirt in a work email... tsk tsk tsk. Her follow-up isn't nearly as amusing:


--------------------------------
Subject: SO Sorry!!!

Andrew,

I just realized…that my e-mail went to you and not my friend Andrew. I profusely apologize!!!

Kim
--------------------------------

The Trouble with iPods

Must have been last night, some drug-crazed lunatic wandered up a terribly steep hill to my car and smashed in my passenger side window. I can only assume, since they didn't take anything, that they were allured by the iPod charger cable that I foolishly left in view.

I can only assume because they didn't even rummage through the rest of the car, which contains most of my worldy stuff, including an electric guitar, an amplifier, and a nice set of speakers, among other things. If they only knew what the fishing rods were worth, they would have taken those.

Thanks you Mr./Ms. Thief for not taking my iPod charger cable. I only wish I could have made you sweep up all the glass around the car and deal with this new expense on my "just moved to California and rented a $900/month apartment" budget.

P.S. Brad, now I know how you feel.

Apartments in San Francisco

After a long, arduous search, Kevin, Dan, and I have found a San Francisco apartment that left us all wide-eyed with excitement as we glanced furtively at each other to ensure we all felt the same way upon viewing. We just hadn’t seen an apartment this nice, with all the accoutrements that we went in wanting, and mostly uncontested based on poor computer use.

We’d seen some stuff during the week, probably about 10 apartments over the last two weeks, but they were all majorly imperfect. Some had rooms that were about 8 x 8. Some were in the Mission, but had no parking, laundry, gas burners, or porch. Others were just in the Sunset, oh so far away from everything and even colder than everywhere else.

As it turns out, when looking for apartments in San Francisco, you get good ones the same way you get good deals on eBay. You look for the misspellings and mispostings that everyone’s well-designed queries were missing. After we did our normal 3 bedroom, less than $2500 search, couple with a 4 bedroom, less than $3300 search, and set up some appointments, Kevin went trolling through all the apartments until he found our gem.

He found a place which had no price listed, that was categorized as Bernal Heights, but was really more of the Outer Mission. So we scurried over there and found that it fell just barely in our price range, was close to everything, was a cool nook with three well-sized rooms, and included a breathtaking view of the city from our porch. You can see the entire Downtown and surrounding resedentia, along with a piece of the Bay.

It’s sunny, has gas burners, our own washer and dryer, dishwasher, a loft in one of the rooms, and is no more than .5 miles from Mission restaurants and shops. Pending approval of our application, we’re set to move into perhaps the best apartment in all of San Francisco about the 25^th of September.

Kevin’s girlfriend Anna also found her San Francisco apartment similarly, by responding to a sparse ad and finding it terribly cool. Part of the reason the ad for our house was so short was that it was posted from a PDA. I guess the key to finding apartments in San Francisco is just persistence and thoroughness. Showing up at two open houses with 50 people waiting half an hour early with pre-printed applications is just not going to cut it.

Pictures of our breathtaking view are forthcoming, which only cost me a bit more than triple what I was paying in Pittsburgh.

Lyrics, Before I Lose Them

I Can Tell

I can tell how much you love me.
It shows in the things that you do.
And not the things that you say,
Nor the things that you pray,
Could ever make me love you the way that I do.

I can tell how much you love me.
It shows in the things that you do.
And when you're not around,
I get to feeling pretty down,
And it makes me want to go right home to you.

I can see we'll be together.
We'll wile away our glory years.
And when the time comes,
When we're old, grey and glum,
I'll be there to call you my dear.

Each verse I play with this chord progression: G A7 DD G A7DD GA7D GA7DD

And a refrain between the 2nd and third verse with a lead guitar: GGG DDD GGG DDD GA7DD

I'm working on a verse with these chords to go with: G Bmin C D

New Hobbies

If you are going to be in the software business and live with two programmers, I guess you have to participate in the odd CS puzzle game:

Imagine a graph that consists of directional links between nodes identified by small non-negative integers < 2^16. We define a "cycle" in the graph as a nonempty set of links that connect a node to itself.

Imagine an application that allows insertion of links, but prevents insertions that close cycles in the graph.

... Very fun, it's nice to be living with hardcore nerds again.