Thursday, April 30, 2009

In Seattle!

I'm in Seattle for a land use growth forecasting conference for the next few days. Having lived here in the '90s, it's crazy seeing how different things here have become. I don't remember downtown having so many people living in it -- it was more of an evening ghost-town financial district back when I was here. Looks like the new urbanism is really happening here!

Sparky's meeting me here tonight and we're spending the weekend in town, so more to come shortly.

Monday, April 27, 2009

Dominion

It's been a long time since I spent all weekend playing a card game. This Saturday I picked up Dominion at Gamescape on Divisadero, and pretty much played it all weekend.

Zabe and Pooja came over that evening, and after some serious affogato caffeine injections we played round after round until 1:30am. Sparky and I hadn't had enough so we continued the madness on Sunday. And since he was struck by a car while cycling to the gym yesterday, I'd say staying home playing cards was probably not a bad idea. (Don't worry, he's fine, but he was definitely shaken up by the ordeal.)

It's not exactly a drinking game, at least not like Killer Bunnies where you can be pretty toasted and still know how to play. There's more strategy and thinking, but it's surprisingly fun and every game plays out a bit differently. Two thumbs up!

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

That was easy!

So it turns out, telling my friends to chill and then telling my Ex that it's all going to be fine and there's no reason to be all freaky, was really easy. Now we'll just have to wait and see if they can all actually just chill and be easy. Glad that's over!

My sisters Suzan and Sonya are arriving in two days — I absolutely can't wait to see them, it's going to be two tons of fun. Depending on weather we'll either be sitting in Dolores Park drinking beer.... or sitting at home drinking beer, all weekend long.

Sweeeet!!

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Complicated Friendships

John's post on friendship got me thinking a bit over the past few days. I now basically have two separate sets of friends: (1) people I know from my own independent efforts, whether that be from the deep past, from work, or more recent acquaintances; and (2) people that I met either during or because of my marriage.

It's probably no surprise that the set of friends from the married era are the most complicated personal relationships in my life right now. They are tortured because things are now "so different" and they feel that the burden is on them to balance time and social engagements between me and my ex. It's funny; since they do such a good job of fretting over this, I never see what they go through and only see the results (and the results are that I frequently get to hang out with them and do fun things, and occasionally I am subjected to complete radio silence for a day or two when they're too embarrassed to let me know that they're hanging out with my ex.)

It's been almost six months now since our divorce. I think that's long enough that they really need to stop worrying about it; I certainly have. The opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference. At this point, I don't particularly care if I do or don't see my ex when I'm out socially. That isn't to say there won't still be some awkward moments in the future, because I'm sure those will still occur. Can't avoid that. But it has only as much energy as people give it: I do hope my friends from that era really hear me saying that they don't need to keep doing this. I love them too much to see them suffer.

Monday, April 13, 2009

Happy Easter!

What a fantastic day in the park yesterday. Hope y'all had as much fun as I did! Sorry, no pictures though... some things are better left for the memories and not my burning eyes! :-)

Friday, April 10, 2009

How Billy sees San Francisco

I think this image (which I just whipped up at work) explains my new vantage point of this city: it is a big messy pile of steep hills, with some (not so) secret passages connecting the lowlands.

Now that I'm biking everywhere, I find myself constantly wondering what route has the least amount of elevation climb. This is pretty fascinating since I spend all day at work trying to guess how people make travel decisions anyway; now, there seem to be some new variables entering the equations. If you're driving you don't much care about hills unless you're driving stick and you can't get up the Divisadero Street climb from Lombard without crushing the little green Honda behind you. But on a bike, suddenly about half the city seems pretty impassable.

I love how the "wiggle" to Golden Gate Park shows up on this map, the finger of green and yellow just north of the central red blob. Now that I've biked it, I finally "get" why those bike routes are so important.

Thursday, April 09, 2009

Does your Atari have a USB port?

Mine does. :-)

My recent re-fascination with all things retro Atari has reached a new plateau: I soldered a $14 USB port onto my Atari 800 motherboard, melted a hole in the plastic case for the connector, and — voila! — I can now connect my Atari to my Windows laptop, and the Atari just thinks the laptop is a regular disk drive.

What does this mean? It means that I can now download all the old ROM images off the internet, and play them on my original Atari with the original joysticks! I definitely feel a retro gaming night coming up.

Saturday, April 04, 2009

Bike ride!

Wow, just got back from a 19 mile ride on the new bike. Sparky and I went from his place through "the wiggle" to Golden Gate Park, all the way to beach. That part was easy, it's basically all downhill. The way back, around Lake Merced and up over St. Francis Wood, was pretty grueling for a first ride -- 1300 feet of climb according to google maps. Ouch.

But, I made it the entire way without walking the bike, and other than a sugar crash in Glen Park which required an immediate injection of beef jerky and Coca Cola, the ride went without a hitch. And what a gorgeous day to be out there all afternoon!!

I love spring.