Let Me Crazy

• Jon Minus Nine! RT @disgrasian Jon & Kate File Divorce Papers: http://tinyurl.com/ncrcfy #
• Newsweek article by @fareedgpscnn "Theocracy and its Discontents" RT @vicgundotra The fall of Theocracy. http://bit.ly/4O6X0 #
• Didn't realize I was drinking spoiled milk until I finished my cereal. Blargh!!! #
• So he wasn't naked hiking in Appalachia? RT @cnnbrk South Carolina governor admits extramarital affair http://bit.ly/TsF3c #
• Can we just skip the regular season and get to the Lakers/Cavs finals already? Kobe vs Shaq for #5. and some dude named Lebron #nba #
• TMZ is reporting Michael Jackson has died http://bit.ly/ye2kD #
• I feel bad for Farrah Fawcett's publicist right now. Can't catch a freaking break! #
• Found out last night that @jessicanaomi doesn't signal and also talks on her cell phone while driving. What a scofflaw! #

Powered by Twitter Tools.

• If you search Twitter for "riot", you get results about Los Angeles and Tehran. #
• Good taste at YT! RT @youtube Music Tuesday: Sonic Youth + Grizzly Bear = Explosions in HD. http://www.youtube.com/ #fb #
• Hurt my knee this weekend. Can I tell my mgr I'm out for the regular season and hope to be back for the playoffs? #
• "Can you dig it?!?" @THE_REAL_SHAQ circa 2000-2002. #lakersparade #canlafanscelebratewithoutdestroyingproperty? #
• Thanks Mike! RT @lunalot is watching the live raw footage of the Laker parade on http://cbs2.com WHOOO!!!!! #
• Installing iPhone 3.0. Apple needs to use cool code names like Cupcake and Donut on Android. #
• "iTunes could not connect to this iPhone because an unknown error occurred (0xE8000001)." why didn't i listen to the internets? #
• Received a hand written thank you note for my purchase from Louis Vuitton Waikiki. @jessicanaomi thinks I should write back and ask to KIT #
• Spent the cost of 2 tickets to Europe to fix my M3. Just to be able to brake and have the aircon work! Stopping and being cool are overrated #
• If you Twitter or Facebook or email asking someone to sign an online petition, you should be kicked off the Internets #
• cannot hang with p90x+ #
• ♥ Google for putting a pride banner on some Google search results pages. Try [marriage equality] or [gay pride]. #fb #
• dang, I passed 1000 Twitter updates 17 Tweets ago and didn't celebrate. #
• Ordered item from new Muji USA e-store. They charged me, sent me item, charged me again, and sent another item. ingenious way to make money. #
• At poleng lounge #

Powered by Twitter Tools.

Earlier today I went to Red Rock Cafe in Downtown Mountain View to finish reading the newish David Sedaris book When You Are Engulfed In Flames. Red Rock is known to be a good place to read, use a computer, and study, and I heard good things about their upstairs seating area.

About 10 minutes after sitting down, one of the baristas came upstairs and started looking around.

Barista: Does anyone here drive a blue Jetta?

Obviously there was an issue with a blue Jetta parked outside. Perhaps it was parked illegally and was about to be towed.

Barista: Blue Jetta anyone?

Maybe it was double parked and blocking another car’s way.

Barista: Anyone drive a blue Jetta?

Maybe the car was on fire and there was a baby and Chihuahua in the back seat?

Barista: Kevin Thomson, is it your blue Jetta?

Obviously, Kevin Thomson (not his real name), the late-20s/early-30s MacBook user, was a frequent customer of Red Rock Cafe and therefore the Barista knew his name. His response is the reason I write this post.

Kevin Thomson: I wish!

I wish! “I wish”? This blew my mind for some reason. First of all, it wasn’t a sarcastic “I wish”. It wasn’t like someone found a dirty diaper on the floor, came by swinging it around asking who it belonged to, and someone sarcastically replied “I wish that dirty diaper you’re swinging around were mine.” No, this was a “Yeah right, I wish I owned something so awesome.”

Again, it was a blue Jetta. A blue Jetta! Who *wishes* for such a thing? A Jetta is unremarkable on its own, but a blue Jetta. It’s crazy talk. I’m not saying there is anything wrong with owning or driving a blue Jetta, but to wish to do such a thing? It’s like a kid wishing for a middle-management position when she grows up. You don’t wish for such a thing, right?

My mind is blown, and I haven’t been the same since.

The Embarcadero, originally uploaded by Roshan V.

Taken here between Google SF and The Ferry Building.

Is there a better place to be on a Saturday afternoon?

• loves how Apple incorporates features that have been around for years in other computers and phones. I still want 2 of everything tho. #
• The @deyoungmuseum from the Living Roof at the Academy of Sciences http://bit.ly/Lfqth #
• RT @Mona Safari 4 is the Canal St. bootleg of Chrome. #
• Twittering from the new Google Quick Search Box http://bit.ly/SJyYg "It's free and awesome" #
• headed to Rose & Crown in Palo Alto for trivia night and to watch the Lakers win #
• So we'll do it in 5? #lakers #
• When they say to add more greens to your diet, mint chocolate chip milkshakes count, right? Right? #
• Good to see dwight howard learned one thing from the big shaqtus: how to miss free throws. #
• RT @bluescholars FREE dl: Cornerstone Mixtape 115, ft the exclusive Blue Scholars track "HI" off our upcoming EP. http://tinyurl.com/mlquyu #
• in the office past 6pm on a Friday and Docs goes down. And there is no one here to kick! #
• humming the NBA on NBC theme song #
• Dwight Howard: "As god said, don't stop believing." I'm pretty sure that was Journey, Dwight #
• Lets go Lakers!!! #

Powered by Twitter Tools.

dry eyes hydrant, originally uploaded by Roshan V.

New hosting provider – check! Migrated 4 domains to new DNS – check! New WordPress install – check! Imported 7 years of blog posts – check! Unpublished 90% of those 7 years of posts because they’re embarrassing – check! Flickr integration – check!

I’m back, baby!

Back when I went to UC Davis at the start of this decade, I worked at the campus box office with some crazy native Sacramentans, Yen and KT, which is how I ended up meeting Aaron Peckham. Aaron had just created a site called Urban Dictionary, a site that was filled with what we would now call user-generated content. And by “user” I mean “immature teenagers” We had a lot of fun submitting words to Urban Dictionary our second year of college. This was all before Wikipedia, Friendster, and Facebook, so it was new to us and a lot of fun to interact with others on the site.

Randomly and coincidentally, I ended up running into Aaron at Google a few years later and reconnecting. Urban Dictionary was (and still is) a big phenomenon and was even being turned into a book of selected entries. I think we can all obviously see the effects of my participation and early adoption in the huge success and fame of the site!

Anyways, I recently found out Aaron left Google so I messaged him about what he was up to now. A week later, I checked my mailbox and found a package from him containing the original book, Urban Dictionary: Fularious Street Slang Defined, and the follow-up, Mo’ Urban Dictionary: Ridonkulous Street Slang Defined! They were even signed! Thanks Aaron!

If you’re looking for a holiday gift this season, I highly recommend these books!

Most of my day is spent on my laptop and I like to find or come up with new ways to work faster and more efficiently all the time. Bookmarks, bookmarklets, keyboard shortcuts, GMail filters, and scripts are all great ways to automate repetitive steps. Since I use Google Docs at work and at home to create new documents, spreadsheets, and presentations, I recently set up some bookmarks and keyboard shortcuts to quickly create new files.

The Official Google Docs Blog had a post (Hot Tips: Create new docs, even faster) which contained the following links that you can drag to your browser’s bookmarks toolbar to easily create new files at docs.google.com:

New Document

New Spreadsheet

New Presentation

Since most of my Docs usage is at work and my work uses Google Apps (duh), I had to modify those links to point to my work account rather than my personal account. You can easily do this by opening up your bookmarks manager and editing the properties of each bookmark to point to the correct domain. For example, the link to create a new document would change from http://docs.google.com/?action=newdoc to http://docs.google.com/a/example.com/?action=newdoc where example.com is the domain you’re using with Apps

The /a/ in that URL is for Apps

Finally, since I like to use my keyboard as much as possible without having to constantly switch to my trackpad or mouse, I set up some keyboard shortcuts to point to those bookmarks. I use Camino, but this should be the same in Firefox and Safari: Open up your bookmarks manager, right click on one of the bookmarks and hit Bookmark Info:

In the Shortcut field, I put in s for spreadsheet. Now when I want to open a new spreadsheet, I just need to type s into my browsers location bar! You can use d for document, s for spreadsheet, and p for presentation. I use one set for my personal account and others for my work account (ie. w for Writely)

Using CMD-L to get to the location bar or CMD-T to open a new tab, I never have to use my mouse again to open a new file in Google Docs!

On the way back from Hyderabad, I stopped in Japan for 15 days of vacation. Singapore Airlines has daily flights from LAX to Tokyo to Singapore, LAX to Singapore, and LAX to Taipei to Singapore, as well as flights from SFO to Hong Kong to Singapore. I planned my business trip to Hyderabad with the direct LAX to Singapore flight, and returned to LAX via Singapore and Tokyo. I left Hyderabad on Saturday night just before midnight for the 4 hour flight to Singapore. I couldn’t sleep so I drank many Bombay Sapphire Tonics and watched Hindi and Korean movies. On Sunday morning I had a few hours in Singapore, where I just stayed in the airport, and then hopped on a flight that reached Tokyo in the evening. I took 10 vacation days and spent 15 days in Japan, mostly by myself. Here are the photo albums from the various cities I was in. A best of album and more writeups coming soon.

Last summer I went to an Authors @ Google talk by Christopher Hitchens where he discussed his book God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. The talk is entertaining and a good summary of the book.

I received a free copy of the book at the talk, which I got signed after he was done, and recommend it to others – atheists or not. Well, you’ll probably like it more if you’re an atheist. I found the writing to be pretty interesting, but not always completely engaging. It ended taking me a month to finish the book because I couldn’t read more than a chapter at a time. Still, I agreed with most of his points and found his arguments to be sound. This is in sharp contrast to when I’ve seen or read his views on foreign policy, which I completely disagree with.

Also, I recommend reading the book with a condescending tone and a British accent in your head. Religious skewering is entertaining as it is, but even more so like this.

I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to go to that talk, but the title of the book and the following clip from Fox News’s Hannity & Colmes peaked my interest:

After the talk when I was getting my book signed, I let him know that this clip was one of my favorite YouTube videos of the year.