Bookshelves

http://bookshelfporn.com/

Musashi "Daisuki! Itsutsugo" + Power Age (Pawa-aiji)

Humans and cats:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQLV3vdUyYI

and

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XICVsXNotQY

Via the Sep 2012 Wired article on Internet cats, "im in ur internets, krontrolin ur mindz".

You do not want to know how much of my finite life I spent looking for these. x_x

Doughbot donuts

Visited Doughbot Donuts at 10th and W in Sacramento (http://doughbotdonuts.com/).

They have a trunk in the lounge area with lots of stickers:

http://clango.com
http://thejellybean.com/
http://overcompensating.com/

and one I thought said growland.com but that does not resolve.

We ate the following four donuts today:

1. The Dude
2. Bacon Chocolate
3. Coconut Malasada 
4. PBJ

They have super-cute art by Sacramento-native Cinder:

Audio gear

FiiO E11 Portable Headphone Amplifier - E11

Sony MDR-V6 Monitor Series Headphones with CCAW Voice Coil

Pioneer SE-A1000 Lightweight Audiophile AV Over-Ear Headphones (Black)

Via

Spirits to try

• White linen
• Sazerac

Via: http://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/midtown-cocktail-week-high-spirits/content?oid=7177038

Red Hot Chili Peppers at Oracle Arena, Oakland, August 15

Dawn and I attended a concert by the Red Hot Chili Peppers at Oracle Arena, Oakland on August 15.

I enjoyed hearing their earlier stuff, like Sir Psycho Sexy. I must be jaded with listening to their greatest hits at work.

We got home at 2:15 a.m.; ugh. Took BART from the arena back to downtown Berkeley. Prior to the show, we ate at Triple Rock Brewery in Berkeley. Dawn hurt her jaw attempting to eat through the bread of a turkey and avocado sandwich but said it was almost as good as Ike's in Oakland, which had cranberry sauce.

Flea's wife and daughter attended and sat on the steps of the stage (with ear protection, thankfully).

Josh Klinghoffer wore a foot brace and had apparently broken his foot during the previous night's performance. He sat on a stool and hobbled around gamefully to jam at various points.

Overall, impossible to live up to the hype and expectations, but a very good performance, especially Chad Smith and Flea.

1. Monarchy of Roses 
2. Dani California 
3. Can't Stop 
4. Scar Tissue 
5. Factory of Faith 
6. Throw Away Your Television 
7. Universally Speaking 
8. I Could Have Lied 
9. The Adventures of Rain Dance Maggie 
10. Right on Time 
11. Under the Bridge 
12. Higher Ground (Stevie Wonder cover)
13. Californication 
14. By the Way 
15. Encore: Chad & Mauro & Josh Jam 
16. Encore:  Sir Psycho Sexy 
17. Encore:  They're Red Hot (Robert Johnson cover)
18. Encore:  Ethiopia 
19. Encore:  Give It Away 
20. Encore:  Final Jam 

Dead Can Dance at the Greek Theatre, Berkeley on August 12

Dawn and I had the opportunity to see and hear Dead Can Dance at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley on August 12.

An amazing show. Lots of goth and subculture dress in attendance. 

1. Children of the Sun 
2. Anabasis 
3. Rakim 
4. Kiko 
5. Lamma Bada 
6. Agape 
7. Amnesia 
8. Sanvean 
9. Nierika 
10. Opium 
11. The Host of Seraphim 
12. Ime Prezakias 
13. Now We Are Free 
14. All in Good Time 
15. Encore 1: The Ubiquitous Mr. Lovegrove 
16. Encore 1: Dreams Made Flesh 
17. Encore 2: Song to the Siren (Tim Buckley cover)
18. Encore 2: Return of the She-King
19. Encore 3: Rising of the Moon 

Evening music

Vangelis: Fields of Coral

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ad1wFWdmZUs&feature=autoplay&list=PL8EBF7ED220B5F87C&playnext=9

Break-even spending rate

Via Quora:

"A better model would be the break-even spending rate, defined as the salary earned divided by the amount of free time.  Another way to think about this is the amount of money one needs to spend per hour to have zero savings.  Assuming you sleep 8 hours per day and spend 1 hour per day on basic needs, there are 105 hours left per week to divvy up between work and free time.  If you work 40 hours a week for $30 / hour (so $1200 per week), your break-even spending rate is $18.50 per hour.  It goes up to about $26.50 if you work 60 hours per week and $48 if you work 80 hours per week, though I'd expect an investment banker working 80 hours per week to be earning significantly more."

Sick day three

Finished watching seasons two and three of Arrested Development.

Watched documentary Bill Cunningham New York:

• “Now, I mean imagine the extravagance of these pages; Annie Flanders never blinked. You can't say anything; Annie; I didn't take money, so I can do what I want...and if I...well I knew she didn't say, "that didn't mean you can bankrupt me."
• "See, if you don't take money, they can't tell you what to do, kid.That's the bad...that's the key to the whole thing. Don't touch money. It's the worst thing you can do. … that's the most important thing, never to be owned.”
• "Yes, but they don't own me, you see." "They don't own you?" "That's the important thing, never be owned. Keep free. Money is the cheapest thing. Liberty and freedom is the most expensive.”

Watching PBS "This Emotional Life" (2010; WGBH)

• Oxytocin represents a hormone which assists in forming relationships
• It's about reward...Love could be a lot like a drug...when we take it, it results in a socially rewarding feeling. When your early relationships have been disrupted, do social relationships have the same reward?
• Parents' and childrens' brains are each changed by the relationship

Wine winners at the California State Fair

Double Gold: Red Rock Winery's 2010 Reserve Winemaker’s Blend ... a blend of Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon and Petite Sirah grapes.

It won Best of California, Best of Class (Tie) California (State) Appellations.

Purchased a bottle for a gift .  : o )  Only $14.

Note: I think the whole "points" scheme fails miserably as a science, and am not including it here.

Wired Geek Dad May 2012 Secret Page: Dadrules

Slowly going through the May 2012 "Geek Dad" section and they have a secret code embedded in the package, or section.

The text of the setup reads, "A Secret Page for Parents: Just Crack the Code / Visit wired.com/geekdad/????????. (The eight missing letters are somewhere in this package)."

You can see the package here: http://www.wired.com/geekdad/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/3190_GD_12_Event_Guide4.pdf

Per the package, the solution should read http://wired.com/geekdad/dadrules/

But that does not work; it returns page not found.

Instead, you need the www prefix: http://www.wired.com/geekdad/dadrules/

For the life of me, I must have looked a dozen times through that package before seeing the second picture. I figured out the "rules" suffix almost straightaway...I figured the first image was either "r" for RPG9000 or "d" for Doom...and when I finally tried the former link, above, and found dadrules did not represent the key, I felt a lot of frustration...like maybe they had decided to kill the link after only a month. However, a Google search saved the day ; o )

Sick day #2

Still feeling under the weather. x_x Much better physically, today, but voice sounds really cracked. :o|

Today I watched the movie Food, Inc. (2008) and the TV series Arrested Development (2003-2006; watched season 1 and part of season 2).

Notes

• Food, Inc.:
• Breaks your heart to see the mother who lost her two-year old child to E. coli.
• The movie covers so much ground...it seems to ultimately comes down to voting with our wallets
• Lots of companies come off as anti-transparency...and some unexpected ones showing they do care, at least in the sense of increasing their profits by organic branded products
• Arrested Development
• Steve Holt!
• No touching!
• Great cameos
• The ending bumpers seem to contain a lot of bits of info not shown in the next show (for example, Lucille's housekeeper Lupe discovering Hel-loh "Annyong" Bluth's passport, which shows him as 18 years of age)

Bed prism glasses

Saw bed prism glasses generically mentioned in a post about gear in Steve Wozniak's backpack.

Great idea!

Sick day documentary movies

Sick with an upper respiratory infection today. x_x

Watched the following documentaries:

Stephen Hawking's Into the Universe: The Story of Everything (2010; 3 episodes)
Magic Trip (2011)
Page One: Inside the New York Times (2011)

Notes

• Learned about Ken Kesey
• He wrote One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (did not realize the book narrates from the Indian character...or Kesey came up with the Indian character while high on peyote)
• A self-described "middle-of-the-road" guy (champion wrestler, ventriloquist, charasmatic) who just happened to be an acidhead
• After getting a scholarship to Stanford, he first took LSD as a volunteer subject in the CIA-financed study named Project MKULTRA (!) at the Menlo Park Veterans Hospital, where he worked as a night aide

• After his 1964 LSD-fueled cross-country bus trip to the NYC World's Fair, LSD-fueled private parties to review the filmed trip footage morphed into the public Acid Test phenomenon (after the term acid test used by miners to differentiate precious metals from baser metals)
• The 1965-66 Acid Test phenomenon, in turn, according to Wikipedia, were "notable for their influence on the LSD-based counterculture of the San Francisco area and subsequent transition from the beat generation to the hippie movement." (emphasis added)
• The Grateful Dead played their first gig under this name at an Acid Test event, and rose to prominence in close collaboration with this emerging scene
• Lots of footage of On the Road protagonist Neal Cassady's frenetic ramblings as he drove the bus
• Really appreciate New York Times media and culture columnist David Carr...his interpersonal skills blew me away 
• To wit: "Just a sec, time out. Before you ever went there, we've had reporters there reporting on genocide after genocide. Just because you put on a fucking safari helmet and looked at some poop doesn't give you the right to insult what we do. So continue, continue...."
• He wrote a book
• Actually, everyone at the NYT came away as particularly professional and impressive...but they do this day-in and day-out...they have to have incredible people skills 
• Paul Krugman's take on the NYT movie
• The Stephen Hawking series impressed me...great visuals
• I believe he said one star gets born every fifty years?
• They had a part where apples begin falling around the immobilized Stephen Hawking, and I thought, "They're not going to drop an apple on Stephen MF'ing Hawking's head, are they?" And then a guilty part really wanted to see that happen. But they didn't. 
• Stephen Hawking believes in time travel to the future but not the past (paradoxes, lack of time travelers to his private time-traveler party)...and the best ways to do this are spinning around super-massive black holes or approaching the speed of light
• He believes humans will master their genetics, which will allow us to better adapt to interstellar travel (minimize issues with radiation, longer lifespans)
• He thinks aliens, if humans are any clue, may likely arrive looking to exploit the Earth.

Lots of really interesting other bits in these movies; great choices, all around