theLaconic

Labor Day Weekend

It's a long weekend here in the states, I've tried to take a Summer Friday but my workload has caught up with me and I'm here at home (which is half good) working away while Kayla is in San Diego. The good news is that it looks like the weather is going to be amazing for the weekend:

I love this climate. It's a shame I am going to have to work a little bit this weekend or else I could be working on my Sunburn/Tan.

Baseball sucks a little less

I think I have written a little about my love of some American sports namely Football (not soccer) and Basketball. I have never really taken to Baseball - when you watch it on TV it's slow and boring, the 'athletes' look fat and bearded (a bit like me really).

This week I came closer to understanding the game, much closer. In fact we sat behind Home Plate and we were therefore on TV all night (the picture is from the broadcast I highlighted me talking to Carrie from Facebook who took us to the game and got us these great seats, the picture was originally taken by Paul from Facebook).

I still don't really know anything about the game but I do know you can drink beer and nice people bring you food like hotdogs and burgers all without leaving your seat. I think that's the point of American Sports: it helps you enjoy weak beer and fast food.

Oh I forgot to mention the score The SF Giants beat the Rookies 4 to 1.

A pretty good weekend/week/month

Yeah, I know I haven't been around here much but my addiction to facebook and twitter has taken my attention, it hasn't for my work and blog buddy Greg who has just written what I consider to be the best blog post ever written.

So what have I been up to? I've been reading about Tony and Nico's new baby son Noe Zachary, Neil's huge North American road trip (3000 miles), seeing Nigel off to Singapore and missing Kayla when she spent a week in Budapest (she's back now).

Of course I have also been working my nuts off but if you know me you probably knew that already. I have found some time to finally organize a few driving lessons and I took the first one this morning - apparently I am already ready to take my Californian driving test. I guess it's just like learning to ride a bike.

Maybe I am maturing

But I'm finding myself be drawn to furniture stores rather than electronic stores and so this morning I awoke early and went down to the local Design Within Reach store in Potrero Hill and started queuing 2 hours before they opened.

I wasn't really after anything in particular but was prepared to buy-something if the price was right and so I found myself with two purchases: An Eames Side Chair in the most supple and beautiful black leather and Bertoia Counter Stool with a white pad for my Kitchen so Kayla can sit and talk as I cook.

Now I am trying to save up some money and buying expensive designer furniture is almost counter intuitive but a bargain is a bargain and the value of these will almost increase especially at the price I got these for.

A note from Bam Bam

Kayla and I are currently looking after a poodle for Tommy and Claudette (friends of Nigel who have become friends of ours), I wrote this email to them from Bam Bam:

Dear Mommy and Daddy,

Bam Bam here, first off let me say that above all I am missing you guys but I am also having a great time teaching Alastair and Kayla the finer points of dog sitting.

First night is always the toughest night in a new home but I settled down and managed to get a few zzzz's while curled up next Alastair.

Al awoke pretty early and we used that time to discuss the geo political situation in South Asia
(I feel I made some headway against Alastair's bone headed stance on North Korea) and we played with my dead stuffed rabbit and the tennis ball.

I spent the day chilling out on the sofa, occasionally barking at passing people and scaring the post woman who didn't know I was visiting ;)

Alastair got back around 7 ish and took me for a quick walk where I showed him he had to carry more than one bag for my poop. A local girl called me a frou frou or was that Alastair?

Anyway I must go he want's to make a fuss out of me.

Have fun in San Diego and see you on Wednesday night.

Bam.

Dark Meta

Look I think we all know, I don't really possess any real writing talent, but luckily for you dear reader I do work with people who do.

I also know how to cut and paste (which any good writer worth his salt knows only too well) so instead of describing in my own butchered prose I will just cut and paste Greg's blog post:

"As any longtime reader of this blog would tell, one of my longterm interests is exploring the intersection between technology and pointless idiotic bullshit.

To that goal, colleague Alastair and I have created a group on FaceBook called In the search of the Dark-Meta, which is a bunch of idiotic crap, really. It’s about taxonomy or something.

Here’s our manifesto:

In the search of the Dark-Meta.

Web 2.0 has offers we humans a historically unprecendented ability to catalogue all our shit, then look at our various catalogues of shit and say “that is a whole lot of shit.” We can then inform an international network of loosely affiliated shit-cataloguers that our shit is in fact catalogued, and they should really come check out our large pile of shit.

Yep, we’ve reached history’s end. Or have we? Because there is one last great human project: the Catalogue of Dark-Meta, that is, shit that hasn’t be tagged, catalogue, taxonimized or otherwise corralled into service. Wild shit, free shit, sun-dappled shit mustangs thundering across the Meta-Plain.

We are on the hunt for Dark Meta. Because anything left uncatalogued by we humans may become a weapon against us all, come the Great Web 4.0 Widget Uprising.

We invite you to carry our Mark, The Mark of the Dark Meta, which brands you as one of the many good ones, Web 2.0ers dedicated to bringing shit out of the out meta-darkness, The Cursed Set of Things of Uncatalogued, into the bright world of the catalogued, ordered and pwned.

Fuck ambiguity! Up with Taxonomy! Exclesior!

I’m not entirely sure why you should join, but if you have a FaceBook account, you should join. It’s fucking awesome."

10 years

This week I realized that I have just broken 10 years of work. It's kind of scary to think that I have another 30 plus to go, or twenty if I up my pension contributions. Anyway I found this while doodling my way around the internets, it's pretty good.