Muir Woods with Tim and Molly

Sunday was fun, I took Nash to the airport after a long day out at Muir Woods and in Sausalito and bootin' around a whole bunch, it was a lot of fun. We went to Muir Woods and Muir Beach and then to a great breakfast place in Sausalito (for lunch at 3pm) and then to a great lookout for the GG Bridge before heading back into San Francisco.

These 2 are self-proclaimed "eco-geeks" so it was awesome to hang out nature-wise with people who are really excited and knowledgeable about the forest, ecology stuff, "conservancies" (what that means, I'll never know), and other cool non-Computer Science stuff. It's also weird NOT to talk about Computer Graphics and Animated Films all day long. :)

I guess I balanced that by driving directly to Matt's place after dropping off Tim, picking up him and his computer, and going to my house to finish an update fix for iMenorah until 2am. Busy weekend!


Nash in his element


This was gorgeous


AMAZING!!


"The San Francisco Giants"


Sweet


I love this one too


Awesome-o power


Ah buuuh!!!!!


Tim and Molly just lovin' it


We decided my house should be the one with the huge windows


Muir Beach


Tim and Molly


House boats?!!!


Haha, these are so weird. This one had a spiral staircase, and I really wished it had a spiral slide into the water instead!


Siiick 'ol school Masterati


Amazing Ferrari!!!!!!


Nash and I at the GG Bridge viewing area


Great times!!


I love this city!!

Thanksgiving 2008 Party!

On the Friday after Thanksgiving I threw a huge party at my apartment, it was nuuuuuuts!!!!!! R.Rose came over super early to help out which was nice cause I really needed a lot of help. We all cooked and cleaned the apartment for about 7 hours straight, and then people started to arrive around dinnertime. It worked out amazingly well, I somehow managed to have enough food for 18 people to eat dinner, which was insane but somehow we pulled it off. Great times, and great to see J-Kiz and A-Griz too. Funny to have so many Texans in one room!! :)


Me and Gabe-rielle


Me and Frizzle


Tim mashing the potatoes


And so the food begins


Hahaha


Molly, Suzie and Tim


haha


Turkey is alllmost ready!


Everyone running for the food


J-Kriz


Hip hop flava


Haha, A-Griz!!


Frank and Kurt... in a room at the SAME TIME?!


Cabernet giving the food a hearty thumbs up


Chillin'


Word


Woop!!!!


F-Griz


Orion looking alluring


Hahahaha!!!!!! Matt eventually descended into absurdity and started making the sock monkey dance


Then K.C. the Cat and the sock monkey started doing square dancing with each other


Matt laughing at his own sillyness


Serious bongo times


Haha, Gabrielle looking mad about something

Thanksgiving Dinner at Nick and Jenn's place

On Thanksgiving evening, Kurt, Tim and I went to Nick and Jenn's place for some glorious, glorious, glorious, glorious food and some (almost) equally amazing Rock Band video gaming! Jenn and Nick were amazing hosts as always. It was great, and maaaaaan the food was amazing. I tried a Quorn Tur'key Roast too, which is some sort of mushroom-based Tofurkey kinda thing. It was good! The sweet potato stuff they had was SO AMAZING.


Kurt's here! And paying his bills!


Kurt making faces, and Tim fast asleep


Ready for food!


Sooo goood

Ah crap. Mold.

I get excited about a lot of stuff, but I think we can safely agree that I don't much care for mold.

Last week I found a not-so welcome surprise of a bunch of mold growing on some baseball hats in my closet. So that was annoying, but I washed them a presumed that meant I was all set. Well, after all the bazillions of people in my house at my party last week, and my apartment that is painfully devoid of any decent ventilation... I wandered into my closet this week and found a ton of mold rockin' fierce on some of my important clothes (read: tux jacket) Ah, craaaap.

So the solution is I am going to re-wash everything in my closet. Most of it is probably fine but mold spores grow and are airborne, so I want to eliminate as much as possible.

The main problem is most likely the humidity level in my house due to lack of ventilation, and the fact that I don't open the windows as much as I should cause I live in a noisy area.

Anyway long story short, I gotta go dry clean a few things. And then I gotta clean up a bunch of stuff in my closet, and re-wash everything in there. Man, what a pain.

So I read a bunch that mold can't grow without moisture (thank you, EPA's "A Brief Guide to Mold, Moisture, and Your Home") so I gotta make sure I ventilate this place more. I should probably get a dehumidifier too.

A good rule of thumb it seems is that if your windows have moisture on them, you should open them and ventilate the house. I notice moisture on the windows often, especially if there are people at my house... so I gotta make sure to keep the windows open!

This is a massive annoyance, but at least I learned something I suppose. :) Also I guess now I gotta go find out where the nearest dry cleaner is to my apartment too.

Woo! Verizon!

If you know me AT ALL, you realize I am pretty often never sarcastic, and I actually DO think stuff rocks all the time.

If you read the title of this blog and instantly thought, "Oh, what a cynical comment. I bet he's gonna diss on Verizon for this entire blog post"... then oh my, friend... you have me all wrong.

First blog-title impressions aside, I SWITCHED TO A REAL CELL NETWORK, FINALLY!!!!!!!!!

The last year and a half of dropped-call fiascos and "can you hear me now-s" has finally come to a glorious end. And I am darn glad, I tells ya!

Verizon has some sweet deals and they work MUCH, MUCH, MUCH, MUCH better in the Presidio than my current provider, MetroPCS. Unfortunately although MetroPCS has some amazing deals, and $50 a month for 24/7 unlimited USA calls DOES rock... it is a pain in the kiester (haha) how terrible the reception is at work and around the Presidio and in my apartment and blah blah blah.

So, I've joined the ranks of nearly 70 million smart "Ammmericans" and hooked up some mad Verizon action. YES.

I am excited to actually be able to receive cell phone calls and texts at my desk during the day and to not have dropped calls every three seconds and to also be able to use my phone everywhere in the USA, not just in the limited MetroPCS metropolitan areas. So this is great for lots of reasons.

I ALSO got a sick phone, the Samsung Gleam! Haha, it is black and gold (I think that's the colour I got) and it's kinda blingin'. It also has a hilarious "Living Wallpaper", which is an animated home screen with a car theme... the battery life etc are all big car guages, which is hilarious. Awesome times!!

Most importantly, it's actually gonna be about the same price as I have now but for better service and I think I'm gonna be much happier with it. And it's gonna work in CANADA!!!!!!!!!!!! Finally!!!!!!!!!!!!


So... hot.


Haha car guage menus?!??!!


Sweet clock on the outside


This rocks

Ghostbusters - The Video Game

This is SO many shades of awesome.


Ghostbusters Video Game trailer

Might get a TV Tuner

I've been playing around with my new computer and Windows Vista's Media Center looks pretty darn sweet. Teaming it up with a cheap TV Tuner, it looks like I can create a TiVO Replacement pretty quick. Also with this huge HD I should have lots of room for recording... Anyhow this seems like a good idea, and the MC interface is pretty sharp.

Anyone have recommendations for TV Tuners for Vista? Newegg has the Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-1250 for only $49... http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815116024

I DON'T have HDTV, just regular cable. And presumably these cards need to support the new "Digital" cable changes that are coming next year... but anyway this looks pretty easy to setup. Also with a TV Tuner/Capture Card on PCI-Express presumably it'll be fast enough and good enough quality to plug in my S-VHS VCR and digitize all my old VHS tapes too. For only $49 just for that it's worth it!

Anyway going to look into this and see if anyone knows which cards are good and so on. Some of them come with remotes too which is pretty neat. I really like the idea of making my computer a TiVO, and since I have a 750Gb Drive, I'll have plenty of room for recording stuff.

Missing pins and Dell Support

Wow, I feel like I've got a few "missing pins" tonight after trying to install my Dell card reader. :)

Dell sent me my new 19-in-1 Media Card reader and it's pretty sweet, I just can't install the darn thing.

At first I was being stupid and not reading the instructions. I thought it would be obvious where to plug in the card reader on the motherboard. Apparently this motherboard is insanely complicated even though all the cables are perfectly labeled. I still had no idea what was going on.

Then it took me about 1 1/2 hours to find the Dell XPS 630i Documentation on the Dell Support site. Note to Dell: make it more obvious where the system guides and service manual are... and preferably send a PDF copy with the computer if you don't want to send a printed copy!!

Anyway, then I spent an hour reading this doc which is well laid-out but doesn't show you where the cables need to be connected. Eventually I found the schematics for the motherboard and realized I was looking in the wrong place. Apparently the cable goes into the front "Flex Bay" rather than on the main system board. Man.

So got that all sorted out, and figured out the magic needed to install a new drive. Also learned that SATA cables look really weird!

After all that I realized that the "missing pin" on my internal USB cable for the media reader is in a DIFFERENT SPOT than the "missing pin" on the back of the card reader.

The card reader looks like so: (where "x" represents the missing pin)
. x . . .
. . . . .

But the cable's connector end looks like so:
x . . . .
. . . . .

Note that the cable's "missing pin" is the top-left pin, but the back of the card reader has it's "missing pin" 1 spot to the right.

I didn't want to force the cable on, and I am pretty sure this is wrong anyway. So they either sent me the wrong cable or the wrong card reader. Finally figured that out, and once I have the right cable I think installing will go a lot smoother next time. :)

iMenorah - now available on the iTunes App Store!

Dear friends,

My buddy Matt and I have been very busy over the past month working on our first iPhone/iPod Touch App. It is an iPhone Menorah App!! Please support our work by downloading iMenorah. It's now available on the iTunes App Store! You'll find a link here: http://imenorah.mikejutan.com

By downloading iMenorah, you are also supporting San Francisco's local Jewish Community. We will be donating a portion of the proceeds to a local San Francisco Jewish charity. Please stay tuned to our website - more details will be posted once we make the donation.



The app is a lot of fun, and you'll even catch me singing the blessings (bruchas) for each night of Chanukah - right from your iPhone or iPod Touch!

You can light the candles with the touch of your finger. Take part in the century-old tradition of lighting the Hanukkah candles... now available at your fingertips. :)

For more details and a link to the download on iTunes, please see the webpage here:
http://imenorah.mikejutan.com

Matt and I thank you for your support, and for supporting San Francisco's Jewish community.