I'm diggin' the new design for my Blog. I also forgot to mention in yesterday's entry that with my switch to DreamHost I figured it was also time for a change to the design of this page. And now I'm wondering if this may be the template I use for the rest of my site. We'll see...
Thinking about this design led me to think about who designed this template. So I looked at the Blogger credit for the template and headed on over to the site of Heather Mannion, a 19-year-old chick who just finished her freshman year of college. Geez...kids these days. Their Web design skills are so much better than mine ever were. Makes me feel old. It's hard to believe that I created my first Web page way back in 1995, when I was a freshman in college. Ahh...the good ol' days -- when things were simpler and so much more carefree.
Gabe Anderson // 12:17 PM
Sunday Jen and I took a bunch of folks out to brunch at the Connecticut Yankee. The rest of the day we just chilled and took it easy, recovering from the exhausting day-and-a-half of entertaining.
Yesterday I worked from home to get a quote from Delancey Street School of Moving for our August 17 move to Larkspur. The quote was quite outrageous: nearly $1,000 for four men and 7.5 hours of moving time. I think the quote is bloated, since they're not allowed to charge us more than they quote, but they can charge us less -- depending on how long it actually takes. I sincerely doubt that (A) we'll have 100 boxes worth of stuff (as they estimated) and (B) it will take four ex-cons three hours to load (and three more to unload) all our stuff. I also forgot to mention that we'd be taking over some stuff on our own, too, which I'm sure will help cut down on actual time to move.
Last night Jen and I headed over to Emeryville for the latest installment of the Austin Powers films: Goldmember. It was a fun movie, but, of course, more of the same from the first two flicks -- including some recycled jokes.
I have successfully migrated my Web hosting service from Pair Networks, which served me reliably for four years, to DreamHost, which offers many more features (for the same price) that I'm excited to begin using: Web Admin Panel, PHP, MySQL, cron, SpamAssassin (woohoo! already it's cut down my SPAM intake to about zero! (yesterday evening through current moment)), really knowledgeable/friendly/responsive staff, and more!
This is my first day posting to my Blog with my site hosted by DreamHost.
Gabe Anderson // 12:43 PM
Today has been a good day. I spoke with our nice leasing agent Kelly (of Larkspur Shores) earlier today. After watching (on craigslist) the price of a comparable place to the one Jen and I are getting Aug. 14 (2-bedroom/2-bath townhouse) drop to less than 200 bucks below what we were slated to pay, I decided I'd better do something about it. Good thing. Rather than having to pay $1799, Kelly agreed to drop our rent down to $1699 (and we still have the place with a great view overlooking the park). Woohoo! Moral of this story? If you want something, sometimes all you have to do is ask.
Later this evening Jen and I will be going to purchase our first very own TV. We're getting it for just 400 bucks, which I think is a great deal for a year-old flat-screen Sony still under warranty for another year. Woohoo!
Gabe Anderson // 3:49 PM
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Friday, July 19, 2002:
Last night Jen and I attended a sustainable-growth wine tasting and lecure at the Commonwealth Club of California (in San Francisco). We sampled quite a few wines (labeled A through M, exclusive of D, which seemed to have grown legs (this is a thinly disguised wine pun), and H or I -- I can't remember which) in a blind tasting and scored each wine on a scale of -3 to +3. As we progressed toward the end of the list of wines, the scores we gave the wines got better, as one might expect. We grew restless before the panel lecture came to a close, so we headed out for a spontaneous date at a great osteria-like establishment on 3rd Street: Piazzia. It took us back to Italy, with Italian-speaking waiters, tables in close proximity, and, of course, delicious food. Even the decor reminded us of an osteria in Venice where we ate back in April.
Gabe Anderson // 10:10 AM
Last night Jen and I saw the independent film Cherish, starring the very talented, wry, funny Robin Tunney as Zoe Adler, who is accused of killing a bike cop while driving drunk (though it's a bit more complicated than that). She is subsequently put on house arrest and the remainder of the movie -- filmed in San Francisco with one scene shot from Treasure Island! -- is an intense, hilarious roller-coaster not unlike Run Lola Run. I love seeing independent films that consistently put so much of the crap that comes out of Hollywood to shame. This is one movie certainly worth seeing. (Though Jen and I, at the very back of the theater, seemed to be the only folks in the audience with any sense of humor. No one else was laughing nearly as much as were we.)
The South African version of Sesame Street will soon be introducing a female character who is HIV-positive for its "Takalini Sesame" show. I think that is great. For a disease that's so wide-spread and such a serious problem in our world, it's about time we begin educating our children early about the realities of the world. I'm glad also that a similar character will also be introduced in the U.S. version of the show -- though not without much protest from the right wing and close-minded idiots like Jerry Falwell, I'm sure.
Gabe Anderson // 8:16 AM
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Thursday, July 11, 2002:
This article in Wired is pretty cool. It's also kind of scary to think about what a Brave New World we're beginning to create. Is this the beginning of the Six-Million-Dollar Man with corporate backing? In this case, Nike has created a house in sea-level Portland, Oregon to simulate an elevation of 12,000 feet. Why? So that marathon runners can live and breathe and train there. And plug in to a laptop with 35 grand worth of software that will tell them when and how to work out. With Nike shoes strapped on their feet, of course.
Gabe Anderson // 10:47 AM
Yesterday while embarking on a walk on the Treasure Island perimeter path with Jen, Stella, and Shannon, there was a stressful dog altercation. Stella's friend Beppo was running around off-leash and came up to greet Stella. No worries. Stella was on leash, but she and Beppo get along great. Upon approaching the path, we saw some guy and an off-leash dog. All too many times, Stella (usually on leash) is jumped by other off-leash dogs. So my new policy is to take her off leash whenever an off-leash dog she doesn't know approaches (which is only fair). So I took her off leash and she and Beppo began to run toward the other dog. Right when this happened, the guy puts his dog on a choke collar. Stella and Beppo charge the other dog, and the dumbass owner begins to lift his dog up in the air by the neck with the choke chain, kicking at Beppo and Stella. Stella mostly circled and Beppo was doing the attacking, but this idiot guy who claimed to "train dogs for a living" was literally choking his dog, making the situation a great deal worse than it had to be. If people would just let go of dogs and let them work it out, it wouldn't be so bad. Of course, if I had known this asshole was going to put his dog back on leash, I wouldn't have let Stella go, either.
The humans are always more traumatized and upset by dog altercations than are the canines. Stella was over it just minutes after it happened.
There are two hotels included in this plan, but no theme parks, which is good. Past proposals have included ridiculous ideas like theme parks, a giant replica of just the arm of the Statue of Liberty, and, of course, a hill-top mansion on Yerba Buena Island for mayor Willie Brown. The proposal includes ferry service, but I'm still skeptical of turning TI into anything more than it is today -- as if Bay Area traffic isn't bad enough to begin with. And major earthquake retrofitting would be necessary.
Still, if development won't begin until 2005 and the project won't be complete for another 10 years after that, I think I'll be able to afford one of the $480,000 homes by 2015. Talk about an investment opportunity (with some serious earthquake insurance, of course).
Gabe Anderson // 8:53 AM
Saturday afternoon was our big BBQ and final party here on TI. We had about 20 friends stop by and had a really good time. We partied from about 230pm to 230am!
And to top off our banner weekend, last night we went out to the Richmond to look at a black leather couch that someone was selling on craigslist. We really lucked out. Not only are we getting an $800 practically-new Ikea soft leather couch for only 300 bucks, but the woman is also throwing in a really nice glass-top dining room table with four chairs and an outdoor table with two chairs for practically nothing. We pick up the Budget truck and head out to the Richmond again this afternoon to pick up everything.
Today is my first day off this week. Stella and I celebrated by hitting Crissy Field after dropping off Jen at work. It's a beautiful day here in the city, so we had a really good time at the beach, walking through the ocean and playing fetch.
Gabe Anderson // 12:28 PM
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This isn't necessarily the end of the postings for this month! Refer to the archives for more.
