Al Abut

Wrapping Up November

Tuesday, November 21, 2006

I've had a bit of radio silence the last few weeks, here's what's been going on lately:

• poker/vegas - I'm still thinking about what an awesome time I had and it probably deserves a separate writeup of its own. a couple of guys at work started talking about finally doing a "bro trip" sometime in 07 too - that would be rad if it comes together.
• atkins - I lost another 5 pounds last week, bringing my total loss for the month since I started to 16. That was a welcome relief after hitting a plateau for a big fat zero pounds lost or gained the week before, which was a tiny bit demoralizing even though I knew that it was probably because I finally added exercise to the mix. Even better, I'm a pound under the weight my doctor wanted to be at when I see him for the next checkup and a month ahead of schedule, so I'm on track to lose even more by the time I see him hopefully.
• adobe max - I was still intending to post what a crap conference it was, but honestly, once I had to do a post-mortem for work on the things that actually were interesting and useful, I realized there might be some good info in there after all. so look for an upcoming post about that.
• Point Reyes - I took a Saturday day trip on the motorcycle out of the city, finally, and went to a gorgeous place called Point Reyes based on the recommendation of an SFist blog post about the area. I hadn't gotten out of the city for a long time, since the spring, and it was so worth it, an incredibly beautiful stretch of land just north of the city. I definitely need a bigger bike for this kind of stuff, although it was fun riding regardless - coming back on highway 1 involved a 30 mile stretch of road so curvy that I was in second gear for most of it and even scraped a foot peg on the ground on one of the turns!
• AS 2.0 - I'm finally jumping into actionscript 2.0 in preparation for the even bigger jump to actionscript 3.0, which has an extremely Java-like syntax. I'm starting to use it for little pieces of day work and now in personal stuff on the side - it most definitely is a huge mind shift in some ways to go from a procedural to OOP language, but in other ways I think it's really easy for Flash developers to grok OOP because we already understand and manipulate "objects" for a living. very fun, a little hard at times, it's great to be a newbie again.
• Isabelle's fundraiser - my girlfriend Yesi's sister is running a marathon and raising money along the way for a great cause, blog post about that to come soon too.
• Yesi's graduation - she's wrapping up nursing school and graduation is just around the corner! I can't wait for her to be done, she's done so well and gotten such great references that I feel like the Bay Area health care industry is her oyster.
• photography redux - I'm shooting film again and loving it (my friend John Dick called it a warmup to one of those big honking digital cameras - I can see that) but also hating it (no preview or review makes me feel like I'm flying blind and I only just last week figured out how to put these on the web, I'm going to do it when I get back).
• halloween madness - I didn't go out or celebrate the occasion this year, but I didn't realize that they go big for halloween here and that party central passes right in front of my doorstep. I've got a little bit of film and some camera pics of the insane crowd at the bart station trying to make their way through my neighborhood to the Castro. I felt like I was part of the school of salmon making their way upstream, part of an estimated 250,000 people to make their way to that part of town.
• pandora - I'm still in love with this damn web app. My latest trick is to use the quickmix to shuffle amongst stations, it's a pretty rad feature. I pick mellow stations for background aural fuel while working and kickass stations based on artists like James Brown for fun occasions like poker.
• persepolis - I picked up a graphic novel for the first time in ages and went to see the author Marjane Satrapi at a book signing, over at Booksmith in the Haight. I didn't end up getting the book signed, the line was way too long and I don't really see the point, actually. that night ended up being pretty fun - I met up with Diana and a few of her off-work friends to enjoy a couple of pints of Guinness and play pool with some locals. I haven't picked up a cue in years and it was pretty fun, it gave me a taste for more.
• skateboarding again - I picked up a custom-made skateboard for the first time in several years and got into the groove of skating to work. I've been doing it for just over a week and was getting along incident-free until I ate it twice on the way to work last Friday. So ever the the thoughtful nerd, I picked up some wrist guards last night to wear under my sweatshirt and low and behold, I ended up needing to use both of them this very morning when I went SPLAT! right in front of the bart station. Thankfully, the wrist guards worked as advertised and I came away nearly intact, with just a minor scrape on the elbow. It's a hell of a lot of fun and my left knee feels great, it's a lot less walking to work now.

That's about it! I'm looking forward to an awesome Thanksgiving weekend and hope you all have a great time too, remember to be thankful for what you have. Speaking of being thankful, Saturday is Yesi's birthday and I'm hoping to put together something really fun to show her how thankful for her I've been this last year. We're going to have a great time at the Getty in LA, it's one of our favorite spots and I don't think we've gone since last year or possibly even longer ago. I'm really looking forward to it!