On my morning exercise walk, I saw SFFD ladder trucks doing some sort of rescue on 17th Street. 17th Street is pretty steep; it's easy to remember it's 17% steep (though not that steep on the block w...
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My local Nextdoor is full, as ever, of whiners. Lately, car drivers have been squawking about streets that got closed to through traffic to ease pandemic exercise—give folks space to bike and r...
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[Content warning: implied violence] This morning, I went for a stroll on the Embarcadero. I came up to a small gathered crowd and stopped when someone pointed out the reason for the crowd—a jo...
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Getting COBRA Complete? Don't use automatic payments, they're b0rken
You might hazily remember some months back my COBRA provider messed up an automatic payment and bizarrely handled it by cutting off my coverage and encouraging me to set up automatic payments to avoi...
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I'm a week into calling up my new COBRA provider begging them to let me pay them, occasionally mailing them checks (yes, mailing out physical checks like a caveman). There are some "qualifying life e...
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I went with an aunt and an uncle to see another aunt perform in a play. So it was family drama but, like, on purpose. ...
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Book Report: The Powerhouse
It's a book about advanced battery research in the USA. I learned that this field is favored by "charismatic thieves, swindlers, who are tricking people." Not all such researchers are charlatans; som...
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When we ran that Telegraph Hill Hunt game a few months back, we started in San Francisco's Washington Square. Not wanting the cops to roust us from the park, we sought permits. But in the end, we did...
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Today, I got to see 12 Angry Jurors, a.k.a. "12 Angry Men, but NOT ALL MEN." I was glad to see it, since I'd alluded to it before but only bluffingly—I didn't know anything about it. I'm still ...
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Caught the play "Fanny" at Fort Mason this afternoon. It'll be playing for the next week. It hearkens back to a simpler time, a time when ruination was darned simple and common. A time when everyone ...
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Kinda wonder which rent-board-mandated alarm went off for a few seconds just now. Carbon monoxide alarm? Probably-a-smoke-alarm-but-who-knows? I'm pretty sure it wasn't the definitely-a-smoke-ala...
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Sorry About That
So as Team Mystic Fish sat down at the finale of the role-playing-intense The Game earlier today, someone seated behind us cracked a joke: "Oh, you're sitting in the front row. So you inherit ou...
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Puzzle Hunts were everywhere, even the Magic Mountain area at Coyote Point park
I went for a walk partway down the peninsula this morning. At one point, I realized I was walking past the Coyote Point playground, the one with the big castle-themed play structure. This site was th...
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These are the steps
Steps to reproduce the computer bug: The computer doesn't do what I want. Frustrated! Rest head on desk. One hair falls off head. All rested! Try to use the computer again. Computer mouse runs ove...
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Book Report: Not Becoming My Mother
Ruth Reichl's mother was kind of depressed, kind of goofy. Reichl's written some autobiographies with scary parts. The scary parts were dinner parties. Yes, really. When her mother hosted dinner ...
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Book Report: How to Win Friends and Influence People
This is a popular book about how to be well-liked. The good news is that there's some good advice in here. E.g., try to see things from the other person's point of view. The bad news is that some o...
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Book Report: Slack
Today I was that guy on the bus who wears too much scent. Not my fault! An automatic air freshener squirted me. Now I know why "fresh" can mean "offensive". I am very fresh right now, in that sens...
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Book Report: Getting to YES
This book is about negotiating agreements. You want mushroom pizza, they want bell pepper pizza, how do you figure out what to do? You look for middle ground, of course, and this book talks some ab...
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Book Report: Too Cool To Be Forgotten
In this comic book, our hero goes under hypnosis and dreams he's back in high school. He gets a chance to get things right. It's nice enough.Labels: comic, drama, when's nap time?...
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Book Report: The Air We Breathe
This was a fun novel. As with other Andrea Barrett novels, the heroes are scientists, so I'm inclined to be sympathetic. This novel is narrated in the first person plural, by a community of people....
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Book Report: Goodnight, Irene
My internet service provider sent me an interesting email--in a few weeks, they will stop offering dialup service. Yes, my main computer is still on dialup. Stop laughing. It has an ethernet port,...
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Book Report: Botany of Desire
This book by Michael Polan was fun. It's about four domesticated plants, talking about how some plants survive not by being tenacious but rather delicious. Or maybe beautiful or nutritious or intox...
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LJ People: Do not be alarmed
(If you have a LiveJournal and you befriended my lahosken.myopenid.com account, I encourage you to stay awake through this post. The rest of you folks can fall asleep. Oh, but if you have your own ...
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Puzzle Hunts are Everywhere, Even the Courts
Peter Sarrett wrote about that scary mine shaft accident in the Shelby Logan's Run game that happened a few years back. Playing these games, you hope that you won't sleepily run around someplace dan...
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Book Report: Travesties
I walked partway home tonight; stopped on a narrow road. The streetlight wasn't on, but I was stopped by brilliance: some tree flowering full. Would I have noticed it if the road hadn't been darker...
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Book Report: Fun Home
If my earlier snarky, whiny post about folks organizing a multi-day puzzle hunt in New Zealand made you think, "Ordinarily, this is just the kind of thing that would interest me, but Larry has talked...
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Book Report: Mixed Reviews
Somedays your quality of life is mixed, but a good discovery can brighten everything. Yesterday morning, my streetcar was late, my bus was late, my bus filled up, I had to sit on the floor of the bus...
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Baby vs Bathwater: Fight!
Yesterday, I talked with Griff, who I'd seen at a couple of recent puzzle-hunt activites. Griff used to work at Microsoft. He may have interned there, since he mentioned, On the first day of summer...
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Book Report: The Hero's Walk
Anita Rau Badami wrote this family drama set in an India in transition. It's a difficult read because so many of the characters waste so much effort being mean to each other. You grit your teeth at...
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Book Report: Y the Last Man book 4 (Safeword)
It is another collection of "Y the Last Man" comics by Vaughn, Guerra et al. There is a dumb story arc which uses a brainwashing attempt to give us a glimpse into the mind of the main character. Why...
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coincidence
I was sitting on the streetcar and reading Martyr's Crossing by Amy Wilentz. A young lady sat down next to me and started reading Camus' The Stranger. And we rode on, a two-seat survey of literatur...
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