The Da Vinci Code review - see if you can decypher it

DbOoNr'iTn BgOsThHiEtR

Between September and Januray, I took pictures of these trees once or twice a week.



Two weeks ago they grew all their leaves back in about 10 days, but I kept forgetting the camera and missed it. So the slideshow shows only half the cycle, but it's pretty neat.

My blog is real!

Ohmigod ohmigod ohmigod! This is so huge. It's bigger than Ron getting a non-secured credit card. It's so big, it's life altering. It's mind numbing. It's practically ing.

This ONLY happens to REAL bloggers. Which now officially includes me. I am now officially part of the blogosphere. I can finally say "Hello, my name is iDoc, and I'm a blogger." This is so unexpected... I just don't know what to say!

I can finally start writing about Ruby on Rails (What do you mean I have to know HTML?), whether Perl is still a valid choice for anything (Hell no! Uh, I mean, of course it is!), Linux as a desktop environment (Ain't gonna happen, honey. And yes, of course my desktop at the office runs Linux - I need it to work), what I miss the most about Israel (Hold on baby, daddy's coming next week) and why I can't stand it when Marina leaves the shampoo bottle open (mostly because it could end the world).

Yes, people. I got linked by another blog. Yay Mandy!

Why this was a great day

1. I rode my bicycle to work today. Between my shoulder pain, the hernia, and the unusually long winter, I've been aching for activity. Last weekend we got our first proper sunny day and we went on a short ride in Shoreline. It was fun, but I wanted more. This morning I finally made good on my promise (to myself) to start riding to work and I love it. The morning air is still chilly, but I got warm very quickly (one of the many benefits of being in awful shape). The five mile trip was exactly long enough to get me properly tired, but not so exhausted that I couldn't work. I got to the office feeling like a million dollars and a blowjob, took a shower in the company's quite impressive facilities, and went straight to work with a feeling of utter invincibility.
   
   
2. I had a really productive day at work. I didn't actually get ahead with the goals I had set for this week, but I got rid of a lot of peripheral stuff that was nagging for my attention and will allow me to stay focused on important stuff for the rest of the week. Basically it just felt good to stay focused on my priotities and manage to go through a whole day without getting distracted and Googling for the reason dogs get this itch in their anuses and need to drag it all over your rug to scratch it. I try to use the word "anus" once a day. It's one of my favorites.
   
   
3. A few of the guys from the office went out drinking and pooling (or is it snookering? I never remember which is which). It turned out to be an evening of laughter and merriment with the guys, and there just aren't enough of these. We sort of got hustled by sort of pool sharks who weren't that good at pool or sharking, but when I finally got to play against my friends, I did pretty well. I only wanted to spend time with friends - I didn't care at all if I won or even if I scored. But fuck if it doesn't feel better to win.
   
   
4. In the course of this evening, Ron was telling us about his friend who dropped his contact lens at the beach, found it, cleaned it with what he had available, and put it back in his eye.
   
   Ron: He just put it in his mouth.
   Mandy: Was it hard or soft?
   iDoc: Before or after he put it in his mouth?
   
   You don't get a setup like this every day. And when one comes, you take it. It just ties the whole day together.
   

The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill. And Me!

Yesterday we went to The City to meet with Chiara and Stefano for some food and sun. It was a beautiful day, and it wasn't too crowded, and life was beautiful.

Is that my favorite bridge behind me? Why yes, it is! Remind me to tell you about Emperor Norton Bridge some time.


Every time we visit The City, we discover something new.


I just love San Francisco.


But that's not the point of today's story. On our way back from Little Italy, we saw the real, the original, the wild, the lovable, the incredible parrots hanging out in a park. You know, The Parrots! You've read the book, you've seen the movie, now check this out!

As I'm sure everyone knows, there's a flock of parrots living in Telegraph Hill (that's in San Francisco). These are wild-born parrots, not escaped pets. It isn't clear how they got to SF and how they all found each other, but who cares? They're here and they're amazing. There were at least 30 parrots there, maybe even all 50 of them.

They were sitting in the trees


on the lamp post


in the other trees


and on me!!!


There was some bird food, probably left there by locals, and we tourists held some of it and tried to get the parrots to eat out of our hands. The parrots already know it's easier to collect food out of people's hands than out of feeders, and they were all over us in a second.

They're amazing. They can hang upside down from a leaf they're holding with only one foot, while picking a single seed out of your hand with their beak. And they manage to look smart doing it.


They will let you come close even if you don't have food, but if all you have to offer is a finger, they will try to eat it. It hurts.



If you do have some tasty seeds in your hand, they will honor you with a personal visit. The underside of their toes is smooth and softish, but they're very strong - my hands we covered with deep claw marks. They're not domesticated - if you try to touch them, you get bitten. Unless you have food, that is. As long as they're chewing food, these flying green sluts will let you pet them gently, or even sneak a belly rub. I expected them to be soft and fluffy, but feathers are very smooth and firm, in a wow soft of way. Makes sense when you think about aerodynamics, I guess. And they're just as light as David Attenborough says. (Oh how I love David. But that's also for another day.)


But as soon as their mouth is empty, play time is over. The speed of their their wings at take off, and force of they wind they generate, are awe-inspiring. Powerful little fuckers.


Grimace: contort the face to indicate a certain mental or emotional state.
In this case, my mental state is "ohmigod ohmigod this is so awesome I can't believe I'm really here, but goddamn that sumbitch is cutting my finger off!"

I like the way we're both cocking our heads in the same direction.


And I loves me a daytime moon.


What a great day to be alive.


Go watch the whole slideshow.

iDoc Beuller's Day Off

Just some nice pictures to show you.

Back in November, I took a day off work, to sort my thoughts, get connected to my inner beauty, and go up to some place in the hills that I consider "mine". It was a total failure, mainly because it was a very sunny day, but too damn cold to go anywhere interesting.

I ended up wasting some time in Gaudalupe Park, down in San Jose, and reading in the cold at the duck pond we have across the street. I felt completely cheated and was even angrier at the end of the day than I was before.

But I did take 50 pictures of this beautiful great egret in the park, and some nice bright duck pitures at our pond. And a few shots of the weird duck-chicken-moose hybrid we have at the pond. Fascinating, but rather sad guy.

Check it out.

As a teaser, check out these beautiful ducklings, from the pond across the street from out complex.

SHE'S IN!!!

Marina got accepted into the San Jose Masters in Psychology program!!!!

Rejoice!

Marina Alejandra Cinella-Carmel, future certified Marriage & Family Therapist. I like the sound of it.

Send your congraulations to marinacinella at gmail. And tell her she should start reading this blog herself.

And here's me, on a cold morning. Pretending to be a big white turd.

Operacion Triunfo

We "invested" the last three hours watching the finals for the Argentinian version of American Idol (that's Kochav Nolad for all you ingnant Israelis)

It was a tense show, but girls vote more than boys, so Benjamin won.


But boys do vote a lot, so Luba did get third place (out of six finalists), and got multiple kisses from every man on stage.


Thought you might like to know.

Tahoe again

I already spent about 5 hours today working on the blog, so I'm not going to talk about it in the blog. Takes too damn long to tell everything.

I dont' really have that much to say about it actually, except that it was awesome, but we had to spend the night in a motel half-way to Tahoe, because the road was snowed.

Head over to the Flickr set and read my comments.

The Tahoe Adventure(s)

I've been spending a lot of time on this blogging deal, and actually having some fun with it. I love that you can do all the basic stuff so easily, but it's also easy to start playing aroung. You won't usually notice it, but I'm doing something new every week.
As good as the on line tools are, it's still a lot of work. It's hard enough to write the blog, but when you add the time it takes to get your HTML, CSS, and JS just right, selecting and croppoing pictures, and uploading to Flickr (I insist on not hosting them on Blogger because they compress and reduce quality. You can't notice it, but they do it. And I can't make up my mind on the BEST way to work with Flickr. There are just so many! This condition is commonly called OCD) it's a real weekend killer. As if it wasn't complicated enough already, I just got a Flickr pro account and started organizing everything in sets, and I just started to seriously work on putting some of our videos on the net. It took me weeks of work to decide on Flickr as my image hosting service, and video is SO much more complex. I've spent about two hours today messing with Windows Movie Maker and Vimeo, and I'm nearly shocked at how close they are to doing everything I need. Let's see how good they are at what I want. Speaking of Internet tools, big shoutout to my homies at Writely. Y'all was gonna change the net all over again, and then Google bought you, and they already changed the net, so you sorta lost that. But I still love you and use you all the time.

Anyway.

Between my hernia and Marina's studies, we've had very little time for traveling lately, and work effectively killed what was left. Almost eight months after the last time we spent a night away from home, we finally traveled outside the bay area again. To the same place we went last time - Tahoe.

Our previous trip was a camping trip last August. Lake Tahoe is so high up the mountains that the camping sites are only open three months a year, so you have to reserve months in advance. We did. After the Shasta fiasco (I really should put that stuff on blog. Some day...), we weren't sure what to expect in term of weather and activities. Renting a boat again is a bit boring, jet skis are so expensive that it takes the fun out of it, and the lake water is freezing even in August.

So we just relaxed and took it very very easy for three days, and the weather was just perfect, and even the water was bearable for a few minutes at a time.

We got there around midnight and started setting up our brand new tent. Our little blue $24.99 tent has served long and well, and is a pleasure to set up in total darkness. But this is America, and I'm making all these piles of money*, and everything is so cheap here*, and I figured that I deserve a tent that's actually longer than I am. So we went all out and spend 40 whole bucks on a bigger, fancier, not quite so easy to assemble in darkness, tent.

There was a great meteor shower that night. Here's a picture I took of the sky.


Apparently, I need to improve my equipment a bit.

Morning came, and we started to work on breakfast. Note that every site gets its own picnic table, bear-proof locker, wooden shelves, and camp stove. America.
And the awesome new tent.


The camp chef made some omelets.


And the neighbors came to sample the leftovers.


Later we hung out on the beach below our campground.





Chipmunks were everywhere.


We drove up above Emerald Bay.
Looking at these views, I think this summer I'll post pictures from down below, from the boat I am going to rent after all.




Evening descended...


And the camp chef started to work on dinner.
It took me over an hour to get the fire started, because I forgot you need to wave. I'm an embarrassment to Israelis everywhere.


Day two: More of that hanging out on the beach stuff.

I know, I know. We need to get out in the sun more often. STFU.








OK, enough with the pretty lake. Time to go home.

We've never had really good luck with Tahoe weather, so of course it started raining. In mid-fucking-August! Just like it did in 98!
Apaprently, Writely doesn't let me embed flash in the document. So I'll just put links to Vimeo. Like this.
Like most of our videos, this one ends with Marina asking how to turn the recorder off.

A while later, the rain stopped, and we saw the wind turbines at Altamont Pass for the first time. Thousands of them!
I was quite excited and took a million pictures. Video.


Sunset. Video.


Crossing the the bay on the San Mateo bridge. Look how close we are to the water!



* not really

Con Voyage (WonderCon Finale)

Last thing to do before we're don't with WonderCon: A special screening of Sin City with Frank Miller, followed by Q&A, followed by a special "mixer" hosted at Berkeley Comic Relief, current holder of the "Best Comic Shop I've Ever Seen" title, dedicated to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. Whew!

Took this picture on my way out of the parking lot. Karamba!


And took these on my way out of the McDonalds at Berkeley. Where would people defecate if it weren't for McD?


The sky was, in fact, just as red as it seems here, and Berkeley is, in fact, just as nice a place as it seems here.


Frank Miller came in, gave a short introduction, we watched the movie (Yeehaw!), there was some more Q&A and we headed on to the "party" at the comic shop.


It was a nice little party. A "mixer", they called it, because you meet new people and stuff. And some people there really had some mixing skills. Me? I lurked in the corner, awaiting the high point of my life, the moment when I would ask someone to take a picture of me with Frank Miller. Me. With Frank Miller. I kept thinking about all the funny things I would write in the blog when I uploaded the picture at some late hour of the night, when I finally got home, after partying all night with Frank Miller. The man who gave us The Dark Knight. The man who reinvented comics. The man who, about 30 minutes into the party, went out for a cigarette and never came back.

At least I got to drive on the upper deck of the Bay Bridge at night.

If you're ever in the area, visit the Comic Relief shop. The used bookstore (right next door) alone is worth the trip.