The Wonders of the Planetary System Displayed

SFO bike route.

Sat, 03 Oct 2009 21:18:33 GMT

SFO bike route.
Originally uploaded by midendian

Bike ride from SF to SFO/Bayfront for planespotting! Fun afternoon :)

Wind 260@27, gust 31. Only have two runways today due to that...

Bridge.

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 14:44:08 GMT

Bridge.
Originally uploaded by midendian

Oh hai internets!

It's been a long year, I needs a break. Taking a four day weekend!
Kthxbye.

Love,
Bay Bridge.

mongol rally 2010.

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 03:13:15 GMT

It's a long-shot, but is anyone (or know anyone(s) who would) be interested in joining me on the ridiculous adventure of the Mongol Rally in 2010? Fairly likely we can get a spot.

For those not familiar, the Mongol Rally is an absolute batshit crazy plan whereby you start in London and drive to Mongolia, during which hilarity ensues.

Companion(s) should have a sufficient set of these improbable qualities (in no particular order):

financially solvent;
crazy;
willing to commit with 51%+ certainty before Saturday;
flexible work schedule; and
resourceful to an almost inhuman level.

To be clear: I am serious. Roadtrips are serious business, even in Central Asia.

.

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 03:25:58 GMT

.
Originally uploaded by midendian

Ual900.

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 20:17:11 GMT

Ual900.
Originally uploaded by midendian

Going to Germany. Brb.

long shot, but...

Wed, 27 May 2009 17:33:39 GMT

I'm in need of work; I'm down to less than half-time consulting schedule at this point, and have basically been looking for full-time work. Anyway, looking for:

Embedded programming (C/assembly for whatever random architecture is cool lately)
Low-level/network server programming
Nearly any operations gig

Resume here.

Mostly been interviewing on the operations side 'cause that's where my recent experience is, but I'm finding my skills are an odd match for most ops jobs (ie running java websites)

kthx!

Argentina; photos in lieu of anything resembling an actual travelogue.

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 19:14:48 GMT

Flickr set

Parque del Centenario

Sat, 04 Apr 2009 21:46:45 GMT

Parque del Centenario
Originally uploaded by midendian

Beautiful autumn afternoon in Buenos Aires.

Bariloche, Argentina.

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 11:10:25 GMT

Bariloche, Argentina.
Originally uploaded by midendian

Unexpected view from my bed this morning: wide view of Lago Nahuel
Huapi.

Bariloche is like Valparaíso de Chile meets tacky Swiss Alpine
village. Obviously this hostel has some mid-century modern thrown in
for good measure.

Whole town sits at like a 35deg angle on the side of a mountain next
to a glacial lake -- a discription which immediately concludes: global
warming flood risk!

UAL847.

Fri, 27 Mar 2009 07:57:37 GMT

UAL847.
Originally uploaded by midendian

Going to Argentina. Brb.

UAL847.

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 18:37:30 GMT

UAL847.
Originally uploaded by midendian

Going to Argentina. Brb.

That's just great, muni.

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 00:17:59 GMT

That's just great, muni.
Originally uploaded by midendian

Threw a system-wide red flag at exactly 5pm on a weekday!

Also, anybody else having major problems with TransLink lately? It's
been taking multiple attempts at the turnstiles lately, and takes 15
sec to authorize when it does work.

Errr...

Sun, 01 Mar 2009 04:58:23 GMT

Errr...
Originally uploaded by midendian

We're in Reno! It's awesome! Or something.

poor E*trade.

Wed, 25 Feb 2009 19:49:58 GMT

The last few months I've been joking that I'm confident staying with E*trade as my primary bank+brokerage because they're so experienced at teetering on the edge of collapse. They've been doing it for years! Lately their insistence of their non-failure has been taken up a notch though. Every other month is an email dedicated to discussing their solvency, and pretty much every email about anything else includes something like this:

Please be assured that this decision has nothing at all to do with the financial health of E*TRADE FINANCIAL, which has been, and continues to be, very well capitalized by every applicable regulatory standard.

They pretty much have to justify and/or apologize for their every action now, but I suppose most banks are doing that these days.

(This particular email was about how they're closing down their proprietary index funds, which had barely any humans involved and therefore have exceptionally low loads. Of course I own a decent amount of them, so this is kinda annoying...)

night flight time lapse.

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 02:21:50 GMT

Ok so the technical quality is uh not up to my usual elitist standards, but this is seriously my favourite video posted to flickr to date. (from xaosenkosmos like a month ago but I've watched it enough times that it seems worth sharing!)

Anyway, I don't make real posts anymore. How are you, internets?

Steamy!

Tue, 17 Feb 2009 21:55:10 GMT

Steamy!
Originally uploaded by midendian

Really should wear contacts on cold rainy days when I'm craving udon.
If I have to take my glasses off to eat, I can't also read wikipedia
on my iPhone!

Nails.

Mon, 16 Feb 2009 21:34:14 GMT

Nails.
Originally uploaded by midendian

Given the choice, this specimen preferred the bed of nails.

Hilarious.

Sun, 01 Feb 2009 02:39:49 GMT

Hilarious.
Originally uploaded by midendian

Walked in my building this afternoon and found this sight. For a
second I thought the killer tomatos were back once again to exact
their revenge!

On an economic note, this is the second person this week moving out
because they can no longer afford this building. (Crumbling economy
and epic drought... 2009 is great!)

NYC MTA MetroCards

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 04:40:31 GMT

NYC MTA MetroCards
Originally uploaded by midendian

Just noticed that MetroCards seem to come in both liberal and neocon
versions!

Top de la roca

Mon, 26 Jan 2009 21:52:21 GMT

Top de la roca
Originally uploaded by midendian

Hello internets. Did you know New York is cold this time of year?
It's the warmest day since I've been here and I still have snot
crystals in my beard.

United 870.

Thu, 22 Jan 2009 19:57:31 GMT

United 870.
Originally uploaded by midendian

Flying exit row business class on United p.s. Should I have a
"Coastal Breeze"?

characterizing 2008's side-effects.

Mon, 12 Jan 2009 05:20:26 GMT

Overall, life and mind broadened, some major realizations made, significant goals met, and process of reconciling past has begun. Across the year, new extrema were set on both ends of the emotional continuum; happy to report that the standard deviation has kept unexpectedly low variance as the mean has significantly increased. Year over year trend is monotonic in the direction of unabated improvement. Of particular interest is the character of the first derivative, which also seems to be increasing on an annual basis. Attempting not to foil myself by creating artificial asymptotes in either function, let alone consider the natural ones. (Kvetching about my body falling apart can be left to another day.)

2008.

Mon, 12 Jan 2009 05:03:12 GMT

I'm not much one for year-in-review posts (in fact I don't think I've ever done one!), but I had a good time trolling my flickr stream for 2008 anyway. It was really hard to just pick one thing/photo a month. (Also interesting to see my photo style evolve. A year is enough to actually see changes!)

January I spent a weekend in Los Angeles, planespotting and hanging out with nibot and breelupia. We went on a hike in the mountains and spent a moon-lit evening lounging around in a lovely natural hot spring. I got hit on by a naked redneck, we hiked back to the car in complete darkness, and we took a long drive in the mountains to take some stoned kid home. Good times.
February I went to Tokyo for the first time, to finish setting up a datacenter. It was pretty awesome.
March tony_m and I had spent the last half of 2007 trying to figure out where to go on a big hiking trip. Eventually we decided on the Grand Canyon, Tony planned the hike and got the permits, and somehow we wrangled terraplanner and Albert into joining us. Four days in the Grand Canyon. It was, predictably, amazing.
April Took a pleasant flight down to San Louis with Paul. By all accounts, I also turned 26.
May We threw terraplanner a big weekend-long 30th birthday party at a rental in Half Moon Bay. Turned out to be a great party!
June Took a trip up to BC to visit j0ni and Rachel and the kids for a week in Nanaimo. Nice, relaxing trip. (That month I also met (via flickr!) my neighbors Brian and Kelly, who have since turned out to be very good friends.)
July Visited my family in Phoenix for a weekend, and enjoyed monsoon season (the most interesting weather Arizona has to offer).
August Took a long weekend in San Diego for cpratt and danlmarmot's wedding. Very fun, and got to spend a day with valdelane too. All people I don't see nearly often enough.
September Went to Paris for the first time! Also a few days planespotting in Frankfurt and Munich.
October Another trip to Tokyo! This one was even better than the last. Explored a lot more, and went for a fantastic hike in the mountains.
November Met someone special. We had some great times.
December Took a long weekend in DC, one of my favourite cities. It was all wintery cold and decorated for Christmas and the Obamathon. I look forward to going back again very soon, as soon as the mess is over.

holiday geography.

Wed, 24 Dec 2008 07:34:20 GMT

Not that it really matters to anyone reading this, but I'm effectively out of the bay area until the 2nd!

2V 6618 (Bus) Wed Dec 24 2008 dep SFC 1715 arr EMY 1745 2V 0718 (San Joaquin) Wed Dec 24 2008 dep EMY 1800 arr FNO 2151 2V 0717 (San Joaquin) Sun Dec 28 2008 dep FNO 1745 arr EMY 2143 2V 6617 (Bus) Sun Dec 28 2008 dep EMY 2145 arr SFC 2210

Heading down to Fresno to spend the holiday and weekend with furrylilfucker. Get to meet his mom and a couple of his friends from there. Should be fun and interesting!

Also, never taken an Amtrak California train before. Stephen says I'll be surprised, both pleasantly and unpleasantly. I don't know what to make of that.

UAL0216 Mon Dec 29 2008 dep KSFO 0854 arr KSNA 1023 UAL0450 Mon Dec 29 2008 dep KSNA 1054 arr KDEN 1413 UAL1477 Mon Dec 29 2008 dep KDEN 1505 arr KPHX 1700 UAL1437 Fri Jan 02 2009 dep KPHX 1350 arr KSFO 1509

Heading to Phoenix to see family and mousetrout. Probably do a trip to Prescott one day, and hopefully some star photography if I'm not too busy in the evenings.

So, I really hate to do a mileage run, let alone at Christmas, but, goddamnit, with over 48000 miles flown this year, I can't not do the last thousand+ for Star Alliance Gold again. I would have been done already, except Stephen and I volunteered to get bumped on an overbooked flight back from DC two weeks ago. It didn't even occur to me that they might fly us home on AMERICAN instead. Alas, no miles for that. (Also no status -- American coach seats for five hours made my lower back ANGRY.)

Happy Festivus, y'all!

hypochondria lulz, 2008 edition.

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 06:52:19 GMT

It's that time again for a "So, I just went to the doctor about this lump [in my throat]" entry.

It starts last month, when I just got back from Tokyo. Though I was feeling some sore throat and malaise upon arrival, I thought it was just the dateline-jetlag and some allergies -- alas, a few days later I was huddled in bed shivering with a fever. After quite some convincing by Stephen and google, I finally submitted to a doctor. Of course, a week into strep throat, it was completely obvious what was wrong with me -- the doctor didn't even bother with any tests past squeezing some lymph nodes a bit. A few days of mold spores and I was all better. (This was all extremely weird to me, 'cause I hadn't had strep throat since I was literally like twelve years old. What am I gonna get next, chicken pox?)

Fast forward to last Tuesday... Wait wait, no: rewind again to the very beginning of October, when I was out getting my, uh, regular tests and where they totally upsold me on more free health products! I'd had a 'quickie' hepatitis vaccination before I went to Patagonia in 2007, but I never followed up when I got back to complete the regimen (it takes three shots to have full 25-year immunity). So they gave me the first of three right there last month. I had no side-effects other than a sore arm for a few days.

Ok, now back to last Tuesday: I was two weeks overdue for shot #2 of the HAV/HBV combo vaccination, and I finally remembered to go take care of it. I was feeling fine when I went in, and fine when I left. The next day, however, I woke up with a ridiculously swollen lymph node on the left side of my neck, right below the mandibular joint. I mean really ridiculously: you could see that half my neck was swollen from several feet away. It was also super-tender. Oh dear, I thought, the strep throat is coming back.

Thursday, the swelling was gone, but: I had what I can only describe as the worst headache of my life. It lasted all of Thursday (Thanksgiving) and into Friday. Eventually this went away too -- which is good because at its strongest, it was completely fucking debilitating. I don't know how people with regular migraines manage to not commit suicide.

So after the headache phase, a new and mildly terrifying symptom started: my throat started feeling constricted! Not to the point of making it hard to breathe, but definitely troubling to eat. This has lasted all weekend and through today. If it'd been even slightly worse (or I was slightly less of a cheap bastard) I'd have been in the hospital in a second, but this felt from the start to be a fairly benign sort of throat swelling, if there is such a thing.

Anyway. So today I went to a doctor. Given the progression of symptoms/events, he was fairly well baffled. The best he could come up with was the same I came up with: the HAV/HBV shot somehow stirred up the pot of my immune system and caused my lymph nodes/tonsils to freak out and nothing has managed to set things right again. His rather uninspiring recommendation was to keep myself full of aspirin and if it doesn't get better come back in a week.

So there you have it. In the coming months don't be surprised if you see a post from me saying I have an inoperable lamprey sucking on my brain stem, or maybe even the primary amoebic meningoencephalitis I've always dreamed of having! (Though, realistically, I'll probably just end up with strep throat again.)

Sorry, I probably owe you a drink or maybe a Valium if you actually clicked on the lamprey link!